Megyn & Donald Cartoon

Pentagon watchdog probing whether anti-ISIS campaign analysis altered

The Defense Department's inspector general is investigating whether intelligence reports about the progress of the U.S.-led coalition's campaign against ISIS in Iraq have been "skewed" to be more optimistic.

The New York Times first reported that at least one civilian employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) told authorities that officials at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) were improperly reworking intelligence assessments prepared for policymakers, including President Obama.
A senior military official confirmed to Fox News that an IG investigation has been initiated into the allegation.
The Times report did not say when the assessments were allegedly altered, nor did it say who may have been responsible. Officials told the paper the investigation was focused on whether military officials had changed the conclusions of draft intelligence reports during a review before passing them on.
Under federal law, intelligence officials can bring claims of wrongdoing to the intelligence community's inspector general. U.S. officials told the paper that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees were advised of the claims within the past several weeks, as is required if officials find the claims credible. At that point, The Times reports, the Pentagon's inspector general decided to look into the matter.
Government rules state that intelligence assessments "must not be distorted" by agendas or policy views. However, The Times reports that legitimate differences of opinion are both common and encouraged among national security officials.

More on this...

• New concerns ISIS threat at home is stronger than ever

• Were U.S.-trained rebels betrayed by an ally?

Central Command spokesman Col. Patrick S. Ryder said in a statement Wednesday that they welcome the IG's "independent oversight."
"While we cannot comment on ongoing investigations, we can speak to the process and about the valued contributions of the Intelligence Community (IC)," he said, adding that intelligence community members typically are able to comment on draft security assessments. "However," he said, "it is ultimately up to the primary agency or organization whether or not they incorporate any recommended changes or additions. Further, the multi-source nature of our assessment process purposely guards against any single report or opinion unduly influencing leaders and decision-makers."
The DIA is one of many intelligence agencies that has produced assessments about the progress of the Iraq campaign. According to The Times, analysts from one agency may make suggestions about another agency's draft analyses, but it is up to the authoring agency to decide whether to adopt those suggestions.
The U.S. began launching airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq in August 2014, and did the same in Syria the following month. Last month, however, U.S. intelligence concluded that the terror group was not fundamentally weaker than it was when the aerial campaign began. Officials said that while intervention by the U.S.-led coalition had prevented the collapse of the Iraqi government and resulted in the rollback of some gains made by ISIS in the summer of 2014, the extremist group remained a well-funded army able to replenish its ranks with foreign jihadis as quickly as the U.S. can eliminate them. The intelligence assessment also found that ISIS had expanded to other countries, including Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan.
However, earlier that month, retired Army Gen. John Allen, the White House's top envoy to other nations in the anti-ISIS coalition, told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum  that ISIS had been "checked strategically, operationally, and by and large, tactically," adding, more bluntly, "ISIS is losing."

Trump’s Planned Parenthood hedge brings risks, rewards

TRUMP’S PLANNED PARENTHOOD HEDGE BRINGS RISKS, REWARDS

One front of the ongoing feud between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush has been the question of defunding Planned Parenthood. In the wake of jarring videos of the group’s leaders discussing the value of the bodies of aborted babies, the issue has been intense among Republican voters.

Bush defunded the group in 2001 as governor of Florida and has been increasingly adamant about the need to do so nationally. Trump has said that that Bush is “terrible” about women’s health issues. The New York billionaire quickly backed off his initial support for cutting off all of the more than $500 million the group gets from federal taxpayers each year.

Trump’s position that the group “has to stop with the abortions” but provides other worthwhile services could yield long-term political benefits.

Poll results from Quinnipiac University today say that stout majorities in the swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania oppose efforts to cut off federal funds. That’s a help if he is facing a likely Democratic nominee who strongly supports and is supported by Planned Parenthood.

But Trump’s stance poses some serious primary problems for the GOP frontrunner. Drill down on the data from Quinnipiac and you see just how much. While 52 percent of Ohio voters overall oppose defunding the group, just 23 percent of Republicans agree. It’s 24 percent in Florida and 30 percent in Ohio.

This is a huge issue on the right. Sen. Ted Cruz hosted a conference call Tuesday with what he said were 100,000 faith leaders about shutting down the abortion provider. And other candidates have taken similarly aggressive stances. Trump’s hedging on Planned Parenthood may be good politics for the general election but poses serious peril for the primary.

‘We’re left to the wolves’: Videos allegedly show Memphis VA leaving disabled vets unattended

Video footage allegedly showing veterans -- many of whom are quadriplegics or paraplegics -- being left unattended at a Memphis Veterans Affairs hospital during staff meetings is reviving concerns about how VA hospitals treat American servicemembers. 

The videos, first reported by Communities Digital News (CDN) and said to be filmed at the Memphis VA Medical Center, show patients being left alone for about 30-45 minutes each evening during a staff meeting attended by all hospital staff, whistleblower and former Memphis VA employee Sean Higgins told FoxNews.com.
Higgins said the videos, filmed by a close friend of his, show a breach of hospital policy, which dictates that even during meetings, there should be a nurse at the nurse’s station. He said the videos all show the spinal injury ward, which contains quadriplegics and paraplegics.
“If there was an emergency, we’re screwed,” the unnamed patient filming the video says, as he films various empty hospital corridors.
Another video also shows the ward during a staff meeting, apparently empty, with the patient saying: “Once again, we’re left to the wolves.”
“Not a soul in sight,” he says.
Another video appears to show a nurse in a spinal injury ward not wearing the appropriate gown or gloves while treating a patient.
"You have a video there of a nurse in an isolation word, she’s feeding him and she takes a bite out of that cake," Higgins said. "As hospital policy, if his food was too hot she's not even allowed to blow on it."
The VA has been trying to overhaul its treatment of claims and patients after last year's scandal over patient wait-times. The VA said Monday it has cut down its disability claims long-term backlog to under 100,000 -- from over 600,000.
But complaints keep surfacing at the local level.
"The fact that they're videotaping this is indicative of clearly they don't have a good relationship with the staff," Pete Hegseth, of Concerned Veterans for America, told Fox News regarding the videos. "The Memphis hospital has been cited for some of the longest wait times, poor care, and yet administrators have continued to receive bonuses."
The videos, filmed in July of this year, did not come as a surprise to Higgins. He claimed that after the videos were uploaded to YouTube, a hospital official went to the patient's bedside, accompanied by police, and told the veteran it’s against policy to film in the hospital.
“She was more concerned that the guy violated hospital policy, than what he was filming,” Higgins said.
The Memphis VA did not respond to FoxNews.com's request for comment. A spokesperson for the Department of Veterans Affairs defended the hospital's policies:
“Caring for our Veterans is our highest priority. Often times when staff are working at the bedside with patients, it might appear that no one is at the nurses’ station.  We have technology in all patient wards in the spinal cord injury unit, which includes the assistive call button at the bedside for patient use to alert staff if the need for assistance arises. Activating the call button triggers a sound alert throughout the spinal cord unit and a light over the patient’s doorway. Nursing staff in rooms caring for patients are nearby and are able to respond to calls for assistance.  At no time should our Veterans be left unattended or without access to trained medical staff.”
Higgins is a well-known whistleblower and has been involved in exposing a number of alleged problems within the Memphis VA center. In 2014, he met with VA Secretary Robert McDonald and discussed the problems and scandals plaguing the VA, MyFoxMemphis reported.
“I don’t do it for notoriety,” Higgins told FoxNews.com. “I’m a veteran, that could be me one day.”

Clinton addresses Biden 2016 buzz, says he 'should have the space' to decide

Hillary Clinton addressed the speculation over a possible entry by Vice President Biden into the 2016 race, saying he should be given the space to make the best decision for him and his family but she would press on with her campaign regardless.
“He should have the space and the opportunity to decide what he wants to do,” Clinton said in a press conference in Iowa Wednesday. “I’m going to be running for president regardless.”
The comments are among the first by the 2016 Democratic front-runner regarding the vice president’s potential entry into the party's presidential primary.
Clinton said she has a “great deal of admiration and affection” for Biden and noted they have worked together in the Senate, during the Clinton administration and in President Obama’s first term when Clinton served as secretary of state.
“I just want the vice president to decide to do what’s right for him and his family,” Clinton said. "I don’t think it’s useful to be behind the scenes asking this or saying that. I’ve done none of that.”
Clinton said she understood it would be a hard decision for the 72-year-old to run, especially considering the death of his son Beau in May after a long fight with brain cancer.
“I was at his son’s funeral, and I cannot even imagine the grief and the heartbreak. Joe has had more terrible events than most people can even contemplate, losing his first wife, losing his first daughter, now losing his son,” Clinton said.
“But I’m just going to continue with my campaign, I’m going to do what I believe I should be doing and he will have to decide what he should be doing,” she said, adding that she expected it to be a competitive race.
Rumors have intensified in recent weeks about a potential Biden 2016 run. On Monday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest left the door open to President Obama even endorsing a candidate in the primary.
"He's going to collect all the information that he needs to make a decision," Earnest said when asked about a potential Biden bid for the White House.
Earnest reiterated that Obama believes picking Biden as his running mate was his smartest political decision. But he also said Obama has a deep appreciation for Clinton's service as secretary of state.
Without tipping his hand as to whether Obama was encouraging Biden to enter, Earnest said the VP was well-positioned to make the decision himself, as a two-time presidential candidate who's been on the Obama ticket twice.
"You could make the case that there's probably no one in American politics today who has a better understanding of exactly what is required to mount a successful national presidential campaign," Earnest said.

Biden Cartoon

Hot and Heavy: What the media’s flirtation with Biden is missing

The press is suddenly showing the love for Joe Biden—but may be painting a misleading picture in the process.

Most of the stories on the vice president weighing a late-in-the-game challenge to Hillary Clinton have an undertone of excitement, because the media want a contest and not a coronation.
Journalists are casting Biden as the anti-Hillary, the authentic pol who’s got the very shot-and-a-beer qualities that she lacks.
Nearly all seasoned political reporters have known Biden for decades—I first covered him as the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman in the 1980s—and they genuinely like him. Whatever his political shortcomings, he’s a warm and backslapping guy. So the temptation to contrast him with the cautious Clinton, who’s been wary of the press since her husband started running in 1991, may be too great to resist.
But one reason that Biden scores so well on trustworthy questions in the polls is precisely that he hasn’t been a candidate since 2008.
Sure, he gets criticized for what he says and does as VP, but he’s not the subject of regular political attacks and investigative reporting.
That would change the moment he jumped into the presidential race. And only a few journalists, in capturing the current snapshot, have made that clear.
The chatter surrounding Biden’s flirtation, if that’s the right word, has been amplified by the media. In fact, it’s become obvious that the Biden folks are cleverly orchestrating this boomlet to build interest in his potential candidacy.
The initial trial balloon seemed generated mainly by people around the former Delaware senator, but it soon became clear that the veep’s office was authorizing many of these leaks—particularly when Maureen Dowd reported in intimate detail conversations between Biden and his late son Beau, who wanted him to run.
Then came stories over the weekend that Biden is gaming out what it would take in terms of fundraising and early-state strategies. And this Wall Street Journal report on Sunday reverberated around the world as quickly as the stock market plunge:
“Vice President Joe Biden, who has long been considering a presidential bid, is increasingly leaning toward entering the race if it is still possible he can knit together a competitive campaign at this late date, people familiar with the matter said.”
Yet that was followed immediately by these caveats:
“Mr. Biden still could opt to sit out the 2016 race, and he is weighing multiple political, financial and family considerations before making a final decision. But conversations about the possibility were a prominent feature of an August stay in South Carolina and his home in Delaware last week, these people said. A surprise weekend trip to Washington to meet with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), a darling of the party’s liberal wing, represented a pivot from potential to likely candidate, one Biden supporter said.”

So he’s leaning toward running, but might not. What Biden is doing, in other words, is gearing up his machinery so he’ll have the option to run if he decides to jump in.
Some cautionary notes, from ABC’s Rick Klein:
“We know Biden would bring name recognition, deep experience, and a zeal for running that couldn't be matched. We also know that he's 0-2 in presidential races already, and that his own worst enemy tends to speak for himself -- literally.”
The Washington Post’s Daily 202: “Many observers think he’s already too late. Recent history has not been kind to late-entry candidates (Rick Perry, August 2011; Fred Thompson, early September 2007; Wesley Clark, mid-September 2003). None of them, however, were a sitting vice president with universal name recognition. So, we wait for Biden.”
The Huffington Post is practically trying to draft him, with Howard Fineman and two colleagues doing a listicle titled “YOLO: 11 Reasons Why Biden Should Jump In Already.”
Number 8 is kinda self-referential: “THE MEDIA WILL LOVE IT.
“You know, at least until you either get yourself into trouble…or emerge as the frontrunner.”

Obviously, Hillary’s email debacle and sinking polls have created a sizable vacuum, so Biden may take another month to assess whether she’s weathering the storm.
Reality check: The Real Clear Politics average puts Clinton at 49 percent, Bernie Sanders at 25 and Biden at 12.
If he became a candidate, would Biden run as the man to carry on Barack Obama’s third term? Would Biden, who’d take office at 74, pledge to serve one term? How would he distinguish his agenda from Hillary’s? Would he be willing to attack her?
For now the vice president, still grieving for his son, has a difficult and very personal decision to make. And no amount of media boosterism will change the fact that this would be a very tough race for him to win.

Ailes calls on Trump to apologize for 'unprovoked attack' on Megyn Kelly

Unprovoked Attack??

Fox News CEO and Chairman Roger Ailes on Tuesday called for Donald Trump to apologize for his "unprovoked attack" against host Megyn Kelly, after the Republican presidential candidate made a series of disparaging comments about "The Kelly File" host on Twitter the previous evening. 

"Donald Trump rarely apologizes, although in this case, he should," Ailes said in a statement. "We have never been deterred by politicians or anyone else attacking us for doing our job, much less allowed ourselves to be bullied by anyone and we're certainly not going to start now."
Trump targeted Kelly after she asked him a number of tough questions during a Fox News-hosted debate by GOP presidential candidates on Aug. 6. A series of subsequent remarks by Trump led to a clear-the-air conversation with Ailes, and the candidate has since made a number of appearances on Fox News programs.
But Trump renewed his attacks on Monday night, during Kelly's show. In a series of tweets, Trump criticized Kelly's handling of an interview segment on her show, claimed her just-concluded and long-planned summer vacation with her family was in fact unscheduled, and retweeted a tweet referring to her as a "bimbo."
Trump issued a response later Tuesday afternoon, saying "I totally disagree with the Fox statement." Trump also repeated his claims that Kelly's questioning of him during the debate "was very unfair."
Some of Kelly's Fox colleagues also came to her defense on Tuesday. Bret Baier, who moderated the debate with Kelly and Chris Wallace, tweeted that "this needs to stop." Brian Kilmeade said on "Fox & Friends" that Trump's comments bothered him personally.
"We are all friends with Donald Trump, but he is totally out of bounds reigniting that fight," Kilmeade said. "I don't know if he's trying to get ratings out of that or poll numbers, but he's not going to be successful."
Fox News' Sean Hannity also tweeted: "My friend @realDonaldTrump has captured the imagination of many. Focus on Hillary, Putin, border, jobs, Iran China & leave @megynkelly alone."
The full Ailes statement reads as follows:
"Donald Trump's surprise and unprovoked attack on Megyn Kelly during her show last night is as unacceptable as it is disturbing. Megyn Kelly represents the very best of American journalism and all of us at FOX News Channel reject the crude and irresponsible attempts to suggest otherwise. I could not be more proud of Megyn for her professionalism and class in the face of all of Mr. Trump's verbal assaults. Her questioning of Mr. Trump at the debate was tough but fair, and I fully support her as she continues to ask the probing and challenging questions that all presidential candidates may find difficult to answer. Donald Trump rarely apologizes, although in this case, he should. We have never been deterred by politicians or anyone else attacking us for doing our job, much less allowed ourselves to be bullied by anyone and we're certainly not going to start now. All of our journalists will continue to report in the fair and balanced way that has made FOX News Channel the number one news network in the industry."

Trump has Univision anchor tossed from news conference

DUBUQUE, Iowa –  Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump engaged in a prolonged confrontation with the anchor of the nation's leading Spanish-language network during a news conference Tuesday, first having the well-known news personality removed before allowing him back in.

Jorge Ramos, the Miami-based anchor for Univision, stood up and began to ask Trump about his immigration proposal, which includes ending automatic citizenship for infants born in the United States to parents in the country illegally.
As Ramos began to speak, Trump interrupted him, saying he hadn't called on Ramos before repeatedly telling him to "sit down" and then saying, "Go back to Univision."
As one of Trump's security detail approached Ramos, the anchor continued to speak, saying, "You cannot deport 11 million people." Ramos was referring to Trump's proposal to deport all people in the country illegally before allowing some of them to return.
As he was taken from the room, Ramos said, "You cannot build a 1,900-mile wall," another proposal in Trump's plan.
Moments later, Trump justified Ramos' removal, saying: "He just stands up and starts screaming. Maybe he's at fault also."
The billionaire businessman's immigration proposal has sparked intense debate within the 2016 Republican field. Several candidates, including former Gov. Jeb Bush, have called it "unrealistic," and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker bobbled his answer on whether he supports ending birthright citizenship.
Ramos was later allowed back into the news conference. Trump greeted him politely, though they quickly resumed their argument, interrupting each other during an extended back-and-forth.
"Your immigration plan, it is full of empty promises," Ramos began. "You cannot deny citizenship to children born in this country."
"Why do you say that?" Trump replied. "Some of the great legal scholars agree that's not true."
During the five-minute exchange, Ramos claimed that 40 percent of people in the country illegally enter through airports, not over the Mexican border. "I don't believe that. I don't believe it," Trump responded.
A 2006 report by the Pew Hispanic Center found that as much as 45 percent of the people in the U.S. illegally entered with legal visas but overstayed them.
Trump said he did not believe that a majority of immigrants in the U.S. illegally were criminals, or in the country to commit crimes. "Most of them are good people," he said. But he described recent cases where people had been killed by assailants later determined to be in the country illegally.
Finally, Trump reminded Ramos that he was suing Univision, which dropped Trump's Miss Universe pageant after he described immigrants in the U.S. illegally as "criminals" and "rapists."
"Do you know how many Latinos work for me? Do you know how many Hispanics work for me?" Trump said. "Thousands. They love me."
Isaac Lee, chief executive officer of Univision, responded to the confrontation with a written comment: "We'd love for Mr. Trump to sit down for an in-depth interview with Jorge to talk about the specifics of his proposals."

Exclusive: State Dept.-released Clinton email had classified intel from 3 agencies, possibly violating Obama order

One of the emails that triggered the FBI probe into Hillary Clinton’s server contained classified intelligence from three different agencies, Fox News has learned – which could mean the State Department violated a President Obama-signed executive order by authorizing its release.

That 2009 order, EO 13526, lays out the rules for "classifying, safeguarding and declassifying national security information." It states that the authority to declassify rests with the intelligence agency that originated the information.
"Information shall be declassified or downgraded by … the official who authorized the original classification ... [or] the originator's current successor," the order says.
One of the two emails that sparked the FBI probe was an April 2011 email from Clinton confidant Huma Abedin that, Fox News has learned, contained intelligence from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which oversees aerial imagery, including satellites.
Despite this fact and despite the executive order, the State Department publicly released the email and its intelligence -- which was not theirs to declassify -- onto its website in May as part of the initial release of documents on the 2012 Benghazi attack.
Fox News is told that in late spring, all three agencies confirmed to the intelligence community inspector general that the intelligence was classified when it was sent four years ago by Abedin to Clinton's private account, and remains classified to this day.
Clinton’s campaign and the State Department have maintained that the email was not classified and have framed the issue as a difference of opinion.
"What you're seeing now is a disagreement between agencies saying, 'You know what, they should've.' And the other saying, 'No they shouldn't.' That has nothing to do with me," Clinton told reporters last week.
The State Department spokesman also said last Wednesday they are seeking a second opinion on the classification of some emails from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, who leads the intelligence community.
“I made clear that we’ve asked the Director of National Intelligence for another assessment of those two, the two that the ICIG had determined should have been classified – or at least portions of which should have been classified top secret. So we’ve asked the DNI to look at that and we’ll see what happens,” spokesman John Kirby said.
But a source close to the email investigation emphasized there is no such appeals process, and the finding that the intelligence was classified by the agencies who owned it is "not negotiable."
A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment and referred questions to the FBI.
Separately, Fox News has learned that a senior State Department official, Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy, who was deeply involved in the Benghazi controversy, is running interference on the classified email controversy on Capitol Hill.
Two sources confirmed that Kennedy went to Capitol Hill in early July and argued the 2011 Abedin email – which as Fox News first reported kick-started the FBI probe along with a second 2012 email from Clinton aide Jake Sullivan -- did not contain classified material.
To make his case, Kennedy cited a 2011 Irish Times newspaper report about the Libyan revolution, to claim the information was already out there.
One participant found it odd Kennedy insisted on having the discussion in a secure facility for classified information, known as a SCIF, though Kennedy said the Abedin email was unclassified, and the Irish Times story did not contain comparable details.
Also, to defend the State Department's decision to release the email without redactions, Kennedy said a contact at the CIA was in agreement, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the claims, though the intelligence did not come from the CIA.
An agency spokesman declined to comment.
While not directly responding to Fox's questions about Kennedy, and its declassification of intelligence owned by other agencies, a state department spokesman said the department "thoroughly reviewed all of documents we have released on our website and appropriately redacted information exempted from release under the Freedom of Information Act."
"We have taken unprecedented steps to collaborate with the Intelligence Community in that regard and have engaged proactively with Congress to answer their questions," the spokesman told Fox News late Tuesday.
Since the initial tranche of 296 Benghazi emails was released in May, a government official said all of the intelligence agencies have reviewers at the State Department to identify emails that may contain classified material that came from them, in order to avoid a repeat of the Abedin situation.

Mexican Border Cartoon

Carson flanks Trump, floats drones for border wars

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson is going a step beyond rival Donald Trump in his hard-line proposals to curb illegal immigration, suggesting drone strikes along the southern border.

Carson first suggested last week, during a border tour in Arizona, that such efforts could eradicate border “caves” where smugglers hide illegal immigrants. He's since defended his comments, while also fighting back against any suggestion in the media that he wants to use drones to target actual border crossers.
Carson said in an interview on Sunday that the caves “can be eliminated” as “one of a number of possibilities” toward stopping the flow of illegal immigration.
However, he also told CNN, “In no way did I suggest that drones be used to kill people. … And I said to the media at the time, ‘Some of you are going to say Carson wants to use drones to kill people on the border.’ How ridiculous.”
On Monday, Carson communications director Doug Watts told FoxNews.com Carson was convinced after his border visit last week that a network of smuggler tunnels could be eradicated and acknowledged that the candidate has vowed to “do whatever it takes to protect the American people.”
But Watts also repeatedly said Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon, has never intended to use drones against people.
“After hearing what he heard, seeing what he saw, [Carson] believes that the American people will stand behind what he said,” Watts told FoxNews.com. “We have a security crisis on the border. This is not about illegal immigrants. We’re at war with hardened criminals, drug smugglers and human traffickers.”
To be sure, Trump, who is now leading the GOP field, has forced essentially all 17 major GOP candidates to take a position on difficult illegal immigration issues, and Carson is no exception.
The billionaire businessman began his candidacy in June by vowing to build a wall along the southern border. And most recently, he suggested the country’s longstanding birthright citizenship policies are open to legal challenge -- effectively pushing the GOP field further to the right on the issue.
Carson spoke at a rally in Phoenix on Tuesday and gave two interviews on Wednesday during his visit to Arizona’s border with Mexico that included talks with sheriff officers and a helicopter tour of the region.
“I’d get rid of [smugglers'] hideouts,” Carson said Wednesday, as part of a larger plan that includes surveillance drones, the U.S. military, more border agents and a more formidable border wall to stop the flow of illegal immigrants.

Amid Biden deliberations, WH leaves door open to Obama primary endorsement

The White House left the door open Monday to President Obama endorsing a candidate in the 2016 Democratic primary, raising the tantalizing possibility of Obama choosing between two administration powerhouses as Vice President Biden mulls a run against Hillary Clinton. 

The prospect of a Biden-vs.-Clinton rerun already is said to be dividing current and former Obama administration staffers looking at whom to support -- and potentially work for -- in 2016. Clinton was the obvious choice until her personal email scandal and problematic poll numbers stirred talk about Biden, whose supporters already are pulling together a team for a possible run.
"He's going to collect all the information that he needs to make a decision," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday. Earnest, on the president's first day back in Washington from a Martha's Vineyard vacation, was peppered with reporter questions on the prospects for a Biden bid and where Obama would fall.
He told reporters Obama certainly would support the eventual Democratic nominee in the general election next year -- but hinted an endorsement could come earlier.
"I wouldn't rule out the possibility of an endorsement in the Democratic primary," Earnest said.
Earnest, speaking as Obama and his No. 2 held their weekly lunch meeting, reiterated that Obama believes picking Biden as his running mate was his smartest political decision. But he also said Obama has a deep appreciation for Clinton's service as secretary of state.
Without tipping his hand as to whether Obama is encouraging Biden to enter, Earnest said the VP is well-positioned to make the decision himself, as a two-time presidential candidate who's been on the Obama ticket twice.
"You could make the case that there's probably no one in American politics today who has a better understanding of exactly what is required to mount a successful national presidential campaign," Earnest said.
Biden remains undecided but wants to make a call soon.
The Wall Street Journal reports that he is increasingly leaning toward running against Clinton if he can pull together a robust campaign.
Biden stoked speculation further on Saturday by interrupting his own time off and reportedly holding a meeting with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a darling of the left who herself had been urged by grassroots supporters to run. She declined, but she has not yet endorsed anyone in the 2016 race.
Politico reports that the possibility of a Biden bid is dividing the Obama administration, where many had assumed Clinton was the candidate to back. Sources suggested Biden still has strong support. "I don't know what the official line will be," an unnamed White House official told Politico, "but you will have a lot of people in the building rooting for him."
Josh Alcorn, a ringleader in the effort to get Biden in the race, said Sunday that while Biden trails would-be competitors in money and organization, he could still win.
"We have a grassroots list of 200,000 people that's growing every day," Alcorn, senior adviser for Draft Biden 2016, told "Fox News Sunday." "He may not have the financial resources, but there is a groundswell of support."

Ohio mulls Down syndrome abortion ban, Kasich mum for now

Ohio lawmakers are considering a controversial bill that would ban abortions sought because the baby has Down syndrome, placing the swing state at the center of a new battle for anti-abortion advocates. 

The measure also has implications for the 2016 presidential race, as Ohio Gov. John Kasich seeks the Republican nomination and tries to walk a fine line between burnishing his pro-life credentials and positioning himself as a moderate member of the GOP field. He has not taken a position on the legislation.
"The governor is pro-life and believes strongly in the sanctity of human life, but we don't take a public position on every bill introduced into the Ohio General Assembly," Rob Nichols, a Kasich spokesman, told FoxNews.com.
The Ohio bill would ban a physician from performing an abortion if they know the woman is seeking the procedure solely because of a test indicating Down syndrome in the unborn child.
The bill would hold the doctor, not the mother, responsible for violating the proposed law, which carries a penalty of six-to-18 months in jail.
The legislation is unique, though not unprecedented. North Dakota passed a similar measure in 2013 that banned abortions motivated by the sex of the baby; a diagnosis for a genetic abnormality such as Down syndrome; or the potential for a genetic abnormality.

More on this...

• Kasich touts bipartisan approach, successes as governor

The proposal in politically purple Ohio, though, could have widespread implications, particularly if it spurs even more states to act. According to a 2012 study in the medical journal "Prenatal Diagnosis," U.S. women who receive a fetal diagnosis of Down syndrome choose to have an abortion between 50 and 80 percent of the time, down from 90 percent in 1999 from a study in the same journal.
The legislation is thought to have a good chance of passing. The bill recently passed out of committee in the state House of Representatives on a 9-3 bipartisan vote. Ohio Right to Life, which helped draft the bill, is hoping it will be voted on in a few weeks, when lawmakers return from recess, and reach Kasich’s desk by Christmas.
“What does that say of us as a society if we make decisions about who lives or who dies dependent on if they are going to be an inconvenience, or they are [costing] too much money for health care costs?” Ohio Right to Life President Michael Gonidakis told FoxNews.com. “Someday we are going to find a genetic marker for autism. Are we going to have a 90 percent abortion rate for people with autism? I hope not.”
Gonidakis says he thinks the legislation will pass and Kasich will ultimately sign it.
“We have a track record of being strategic and putting forth an incremental approach to all our initiatives,” Gonidakis said, adding that they have worked with Kasich on roughly a dozen pro-life measures, including a late-term abortion ban.
Republican state Rep. Sarah LaTourette, a co-sponsor of the bill, also told FoxNews.com she is confident the bill will pass.
"While I make no effort to conceal my pro-life convictions, I firmly believe this bill is about discrimination, not abortion. Choosing to end an individual's life simply because they are different, or might have Down syndrome, is discrimination," she said in an email. "There is simply no other way to look at it."
However, if Kasich chooses to back the bill, he is sure to face stiff opposition from pro-choice groups.
"We believe we should all work to ensure people with disabilities are treated with equality and dignity. However, we oppose this ban because it interferes with the medical decisions of Ohioans and does nothing to help people with disabilities or their families,” Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, told FoxNews.com.
Copeland said she believes it will be an “uphill battle” to oppose the legislation, but people have flooded her group's phone lines with calls offering donations to fight it.
“We have to make it clear to Gov. Kasich that this is not good health care, this is not what the people of Ohio want,” Copeland said. “This ban would encourage patients to keep information from their doctors and that is bad medicine.”
Gonidakis said he is “100 percent” confident the governor will sign the bill. “He is the most pro-life governor in our state’s history,” he said.
Copeland seemed to agree with Gonidakis: “He’s signed everything they slapped on his desk so far so I don’t see why this would be anything different.”

GOP leaders from two states reportedly plot strategy to slow down Trump

Republican leaders in two states reportedly are plotting to make presidential candidate Donald Trump’s quest for the GOP nomination a lot harder.

Party leaders in Virginia and North Carolina told Politico.com that they are considering a push to require candidates entering their respective Republican primaries to pledge their support for the eventual nominee and not run a third-party candidacy — a pledge Trump, the current frontrunner, would not make when asked to during the Fox News debate earlier this month in Cleveland.
“Anybody who wants to seek the Republican nomination should have to commit to supporting the ultimate Republican nominee,” Virginia’s former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli told Politico. “I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
Republican party officials in North Carolina announced a similar proposal, and told Politico they already are in talks with lawyers to draft language for a provision that asks each candidate to support the GOP nominee.
“Everything is on the table,” an official told Politico.
Party leaders in North Carolina and Virginia say they hope their ballot proposals will help convince the billionaire businessman to fully commit to the Republican Party.
The primary requirements must be submitted to the Republican National Committee by Oct. 1, Politico reports.
“Ballot access usually is regarded as a party function,” former RNC Chief Counsel Tom Josefiak told the website. “It definitely would be left up to the state party to decide how it’s going to operate.”

Madison Cartoon

Trump turns attack on Walker

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Sunday turned his attack on rival Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, in his soaring and often unpredictable campaign that has largely targeted frontrunners but spared essentially nobody.

“His state has not performed well,” Trump, the billionaire businessman who now leads in most polls, told ABC’s “This Week.” “We need someone who’s going to make it perform well, this country perform well. … I’m the one to do it.”
Like many political candidates, Trump is spending the early part of the election cycle trying to downgrade the early favorites -- in this case Republican Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor, and Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state.
Still, Walker, another early favorite who remains a top-tier contender, was more than willing to block and tackle, telling ABC later in the morning that Trump sounds like a Democrat when attack his record as a two-term governor.
“He’s using the talking points of the Democrats,” Walker said. “They didn’t work in the past. They’re not going to work now.”
Trump essentially said he was unconcerned about the campaign for Walker, who trails Trump and Bush in an averaging of polls by the nonpartisan website RealClearPolitics.com.
He argued that Wisconsin has a $2.2 billion deficit, instead of an anticipated $1 billion surplus and that Walker has been forced to borrow money instead of raising taxes to keep state projects going.
Trump argued that people’s realization about Wisconsin’s situation is reflected in Walker’s declining polls numbers.
Walker, who began a second term is January, disagreed by saying the state’s roads and schools have improved under his leadership.
However, he acknowledged the voter frustration into which Trump and other first-time candidates have tapped, albeit misdirected at him.
“It’s why you see not only (Trump’s) numbers up, you see some of the other candidates who have not run for office before,” Walker said. “They’re angry at Washington. Heck, I’m angry at Washington. I’m angry at my own party’s leadership, who told us there were going to repeal ObamaCare and we still don’t see a bill on the desk of the president.”
Trump has also attacked Clinton, suggesting that her email controversy has put her campaign in jeopardy; Bush for comments about federal spending on women's heath care and even fellow GOP candidate and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Trump suggested Perry stared wearing eye glasses to look smarter. Perry's polls numbers are at about 1.5 percent, among the lowest of the top 17 GOP candidates.

Walker appears to take third stance in seven days on birthright citizenship issue

Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker said Sunday he doesn’t support a change to the country’s birthright citizenship laws, appearing to take a third stance on the issue in seven days.
The Wisconsin governor told ABC’s “This Week” that U.S. officials need to “enforce the laws, including those that are in the Constitution.”

Walker made the statement after fellow GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump raised the issue in an Aug. 16 white paper focusing on whether the 14th amendment provides for such rights.
Trump suggested some pregnant women are coming to the United States simply to give birth to secure their family’s stay in the country, which he claims is a misuse of the law. He also said his lawyers think the amendment might not withstand a legal challenge.
"Well, I said the law is there,” Walker said Sunday, arguing he prefers to address the problem of illegal immigration by bolstering border security and requiring employers to use the federal E-Verify system to check the immigration status of prospective hires.
At the Iowa State Fair on Monday, Walker told MSNBC that birthright citizenship should be ended.
"Yeah, absolutely, going forward," he said, arguing like Trump that Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has also supported such a plan. "To me it's about enforcing the laws in this country.”
Walker was less clear on Tuesday, however. When asked by Fox News about his position on the issue, he said: “I believe (in) securing the border, enforcing the laws. … I do not believe in amnesty going forward. I believe in a legal immigration system that gives priority to American working families and their wages in a way that will improve the American economy.”
Walker also said Sunday that any discussion on immigration that goes beyond focusing on border security and enforcing the laws “should be a red flag to voters.”
The issue has caused some division within the GOP field.
Ben Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon and another of the 17 major GOP candidates, said Tuesday that the U.S. allowing so-called “anchor babies” to stay just “doesn’t make any sense at all.”
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham agreed, saying the birthright citizenship issue must be addressed but disagreeing with Trump’s call for “forced deportation.”
The issue has also been complicated for another GOP candidate.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a former Supreme Court lawyer, suggested in 2011 that conservatives would be making a “mistake” in trying to fight against the amendment. Last week, however, Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American-born mother and Cuban immigrant father, said he supports changes to birthright citizenship.

Mukasey: FBI probe is about Hillary Clinton, not her private emails

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Sunday that Hillary Clinton is indeed the focus of a Justice Department probe, calling the argument that the investigation is about her private email network when she was secretary of state “ridiculous.”

“The FBI doesn’t investigate machines,” Mukasey, a Bush administration attorney general, told “Fox News Sunday." “It investigates people.”
"It is not a political witch hunt," he said.
For months, questions about the private email network Clinton used while secretary of state have nagged her 2016 Democratic presidential campaign.
In recent weeks, the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence community have asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether Clinton’s network received or sent classified emails.
Clinton and her campaign have repeatedly said that she neither sent nor received classified email. And they have argued the investigation is not a “criminal” probe and that government nomenclature is at the center of the issue.
"What's going on here is something that happens all the time," Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon recently argued. "You have a bureaucratic tangle over what counts as classified and what doesn't."
Mukasey, an adviser for Republican Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, said arguments about what information was either classified or unclassified is “at the margins” of the debate.
“It’s inconceivable that a great deal of the information was unclassified,” he told Fox.
However, Mukasey acknowledged that the issue of Clinton perhaps or eventually facing criminal charges like now-retired Gen. David Petraeus would depend on what she knew about the content of the exchanges.
Petraeus gave classified information to a female writer with whom he was having an extramarital affair.
Former California Democratic Rep. Ellen Tauscher, who is now a Clinton campaign surrogate, on Sunday largely dismissed the email controversy as a political attack.
“We can quibble about what [emails] should be re-classified when they go out to the public, but that’s dancing on the head of a pin,” she told Fox. “That’s partisan politics.” 

American train attack heroes awarded France's highest honor

The three Americans who helped thwart a massacre on board a high-speed European train were awarded the Legion d'honneur (Legion of Honor), France's highest decoration, by the country's president Monday.

U.S. Airman Spencer Stone, National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, and their longtime friend Anthony Sadler were honored for tackling and subduing a suspected Islamist militant carrying an AK-47 on the Paris-bound train Friday.
Francois Hollande praised the actions of the three men, saying "You behaved as soldiers but also as responsible men." Hollande added that the men demonstrated "that faced with terror, we have the power to resist ... You also gave a lesson in courage, in will, and thus in hope." British businessman Chris Norman, who helped Stone, Skarlatos, and Sadler subdue the would-be gunman, also received the medal.
On Sunday evening, Stone, who was stabbed with a box cutter during the melee, described his version of the events on the train for the first time during a press conference at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Paris.
The 23-year-old described how he was waking up from a deep sleep when Skarlatos "just hit me on the shoulder and said 'Let's go.'"
Stone and Skarlatos, 22, moved in to tackle the gunman, identified as 26-year-old Moroccan Ayoub El-Khazzani, and take his assault rifle. Sadler, 23, moved in to help subdue the assailant. "All three of us started punching" him, Stone said. Stone said he choked him unconscious.

More on this...

• French train gunman belonged to radical Islamist movement

On Monday, Hollande said that with Skarlatos' words, a "veritable carnage" was avoided.
"Since Friday, the entire world admires your courage, your sangfroid, your spirit of solidarity," the French president said. "This is what allowed you to with bare hands -- your bare hands -- to subdue an armed man. This must be an example for all, and a source of inspiration."
Stone is also credited with saving a French-American teacher wounded in the neck with a gunshot wound and squirting blood. Stone described matter-of-factly that he "just stuck two of my fingers in his hole and found what I thought to be the artery, pushed down and the bleeding stopped." He said he kept the position until paramedics arrived.
"When most of us would run away, Spencer, Alek and Anthony ran into the line of fire, saying 'Let's go.' Those words changed the fate of many," U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley said Sunday
Asked if there were lessons, Sadler had one for all who find themselves in the face of a choice.
"Do something," he said. "Hiding, or sitting back, is not going to accomplish anything. And the gunman would've been successful if my friend Spencer had not gotten up. So I just want that lesson to be learned going forward, in times of, like, terror like that, please do something. Don't just stand by and watch."

Border Crossing Cartoon

US judge orders immigrant families released from detention

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A federal judge in California has ordered the government to release immigrant children from family detention centers "without unnecessary delay," and with their mothers when possible, according to court papers.

 U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee

Another Dumb Ass

 In a filing late Friday, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee refused the government's request to reconsider her ruling in late July that children held in family detention centers after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally must be released rapidly.

Calling the government's latest arguments "repackaged and reheated," she found the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in breach of a longstanding legal agreement stipulating that immigrant children cannot be held in unlicensed secured facilities, and gave agency officials until October 23 to comply.

Lawyers for Homeland Security had asked the judge to reconsider her ruling, arguing that the agency was already doing its best to move families through detention quickly and that the facilities had been converted into short-term processing centers.

Attorneys for the government are reviewing the order, said Nicole Navas, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, said Friday night.
This is the second time Gee has ruled that detaining children violates parts of a 1997 settlement from an earlier case. The settlement requires minors to be placed with a relative or in appropriate non-secure custody within five days. If there is a large influx of minors, times may be longer, but children still must be released as expeditiously as possible, under the terms of the law.

In her order, Gee countered that immigration officials "routinely failed to proceed as expeditiously as possible to place accompanied minors, and in some instances, may still be unnecessarily dragging their feet now."

Peter Schey, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, said that the court's order "will protect refugee children and their mothers from lengthy and entirely senseless detention."

The government poured millions of dollars into two large detention centers in Texas after tens of thousands of immigrant families, mostly mothers with children from Central America, crossed the Rio Grande into the U.S. last summer. Many have petitioned for asylum after fleeing gang and domestic violence back home.

The centers in Karnes City and Dilley, both south of San Antonio, recently held more than 1,300 women and children combined. A third, smaller facility located in Berks County, Pennsylvania, held about 70 people. All three are overseen by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the two centers in Texas are run by private prison operators.

Between September 2013 and October 2014, some 68,000 family members — mostly mothers with children in tow — were caught at the border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Between last October and July of this year, less than 30,000 have been apprehended, a drop authorities say is a result of better enforcement in both the U.S. and Mexico.

In her order Friday, Gee challenged Homeland Security's claim that drastically limiting or ending its family detention policy could spark another surge in illegal border crossings, calling this "speculative at best" and "fear-mongering."

Report: Biden makes unscheduled trip to huddle with Warren, adding to 2016 speculation

Speculation about a White House bid for Vice President Biden intensified Saturday when he made an unscheduled weekend trip from his Delaware home to his Washington residence, reportedly to see Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Democrats in past months have called for the Massachusetts senator to seek the party nomination, convinced that her progressive, Wall Street-reformer message was good enough to defeat front-running Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Warren has so far decline. However, Clinton’s slipping polls numbers amid an email controversy has raised speculation that the 72-year-old Biden after the recent death of his son Beau Biden began considering a likely third-and-final White House bid
Biden ran in 1988 and 2004 but failed to get past the primaries.
Such talk has also been fueled by reports that Democratic donors and operatives along with Biden supporters are putting together plans for another Biden run.
The purported Biden-Warren meeting at the Naval Observatory, the vice president’s residence, was reported first by CNN.
Biden’s official schedule shows him spending the weekend in Delaware. The administration confirmed Saturday only that Biden went to his Washington residence for a last-minute meeting.
In addition, Fox News observed him traveling on Amtrak on Saturday morning from his regular stop in Wilmington, Del., to Washington, D.C., and Warren arriving via a commercial jet from Massachusetts.
Also this week, the pro-Biden group Draft Biden 2016 signed up longtime Democratic strategist Steve Schale, who helped President Obama win Florida in 2008 and 2012. And a Quinnipiac Poll showed Biden running strong in head-to-head match-ups with Republican candidates in key states.

Trump's call to end abuse of US birthright citizenship divides GOP field, legal experts

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s call to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants has refueled the immigration debate and spilt the GOP field and legal experts who question whether such a change is possible.

Trump’s plan goes after the 14th amendment, which grants citizenship to essentially anybody born in the United States. But he is particularly focused on stopping pregnant women from illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border for the purpose of having a child or an “anchor baby,” which reduces the likelihood of the parents being deported.
Trump announced his plan Sunday, calling the amendment the country’s “biggest magnet for illegal immigration.” And he continues to suggest that his lawyers think the amendment might not withstand a court challenge.
“I was right,” Trump, the billionaire businessman and top GOP candidate, said Friday night at a rally in Alabama. “You can do something, quickly.”
However, other candidates and legal experts are split on the issue.
“Trump thinks ‘our country is going to hell.’ Well, there is likely little more than a chance in hell that we are going to amend the Constitution,” Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola University of Los Angeles, said Wednesday. “Amending the Constitution is one of the most serious things that lawmakers can do. Therefore the path to doing it is rightfully arduous. I would put the chances … as beyond a longshot."
To be sure, changing the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, would require a two-thirds vote in Congress, then ratification from three-fourths of state legislatures. It could also be changed through a constitutional convention in which at least 34 states convene to vote on an amendment, which would then need ratification from a minimum 38 states.
Trump since announcing his candidacy in mid-June has made illegal immigrants from Mexico a top concern and has suggested several solutions -- including a wall along the southern border and the change to birthright citizenship.
“Many lawyers are saying that’s not what (the amendment) is,” he told Fox News on Monday. “They say it’ll never hold up in court. It’ll have to be tested.”
Trump's six-page immigration proposal was released on the campaign website on Sunday. And within hours, questions about it had become a litmus test for fellow GOP White House candidates and has largely divided the field.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Monday said he agreed that birthright citizenship should be ended but that he didn’t back the part of Trump’s plan that calls for deporting the so-called anchor babies.
“I categorically disagree with Trump and Gov. Walker on this point,” 2016 GOP candidate and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore said a day later. “Denying people citizenship is wrong. … I’d very surprised if any lawyer would tell Donald Trump anything like this.”
On Thursday, fellow Republican candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush defend using the term.
“You give me a better word and I’ll use it,” he told reporters on the campaign trail. Bush earlier in the week commended Trump for producing a comprehensive plan but suggest the issue of what to do with illegal immigrants in the United States must be addressed in a more “realistic” way.
The amendment was ratified to the Constitution in 1868, roughly 11 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sanford that denied citizenship to African Americans, whether free or slaves.
And the amendment has already withstood a Supreme Court test. In 1898, the high court ruled that San-Francisco-born Wong Kim Ark was a citizen despite being born to parents of Chinese descent living in the U.S.
Ben Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon and another of the 17 major GOP candidates, said Tuesday that the U.S. allowing the so-called anchor babies “doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Republican candidate and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham also agreed this week that the birthright citizenship issue must be addressed but told CNN that fixing the county’s broken immigration system must come first and that he disagrees with Trump’s call for “forced deportation.”
Supporters of such a change argue that most European countries don’t automatically grant citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.
The issue has also been a complicated one for GOP candidate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a former Supreme Court lawyer who in 2011 suggested that conservatives would be making a “mistake” in trying to mount a legal challenge to the amendment.
This week, Cruz, born in Canada to an American-born mother and Cuban-immigrant father, said he supports changes to birthright citizenship.
Critics of the amendment are trying to make the argument before voters that the hundreds of thousands of children who fall into that category are costing them millions in tax dollars.
However, Levinson questions whether enough Americans will buy the argument.
“It may be politically popular with a certain segment of the electorate, but I do not believe this is a mainstream view,” she said, arguing two-thirds of Americans support a path to citizenship or permanent legal status for illegal immigrants. “This is an argument that is likely to gain traction in the primary elections, but I think it could be viewed quite differently in the general election."

More evidence, questions arise about existence of second, private Clinton email server

It's all over but the Crying.

The tens of thousands of emails on Hillary Clinton’s private server from when she was secretary of state could also be on a second device or server, according to news reports.

The FBI now has the only confirmed private server, as part of a Justice Department probe to determine whether it sent of received classified information for Clinton when she was the country’s top diplomat from 2009 to 2013.
Platte River Networks, which managed Clinton's server and private email network after she left the State Department, has indicated it transfer – or “transferred” – emails from the original server in 2013, according to The Washington Examiner.
However, Clinton, the front-running Democratic presidential candidate, has suggested that she gave the department 55,000 pages of official emails and deleted roughly 30,000 personal ones in January, which raises the possibility they were culled from a second device.
Neither a Clinton spokesman nor an attorney for the Colorado-based Platte River Networks returned an Examiner’s request for comment, the news–gathering agency reported Saturday.
The DailyMail.com on Aug. 14 was among the first to report the possibility of a second server.
The FBI took the server last week, after a U.S. Intelligence Community inspector general reportedly found two Clinton emails that included sensitive information, then asked the FBI to further investigate.
Platte River Networks has told news agencies that the server, now in New Jersey, has been wiped clean. But forensics experts still might be able to recover some information.
There have been reports that some of the emails that Clinton turned over included classified information. Clinton maintains that she neither sent nor received classified data, which suggests the missives might have been marked after the fact as classified or with some other top-secret classification.
The emails that Clinton gave to the State Department were on multiple storage devices.  A Clinton lawyer turned over at least one thumb drive that reportedly included copies of the emails that his client has already given to the federal government.
Clinton has maintained that she has done nothing wrong or illegal and says she will cooperate fully with the non-criminal investigations.
However, polls show the controversy and frequents news headlines have hurt the front-running Clinton among potential voters, who are increasingly questioning her transparency and trustworthiness.

Trump’s Critics Are Wrong about the 14th Amendment and Birthright Citizenship

 

Donald Trump continues to bewilder political experts. He unabashedly wades into politically dangerous territory and yet continues to be rewarded by favorable poll results. He has clearly tapped into a reserve of public resentment for inside-the-Beltway politics. How far this resentment will carry him is anyone’s guess, but the Republican establishment is worried. His latest proposal to end birthright citizenship has set off alarm bells in the Republican party. The leadership worries that Trump will derail the party’s plans to appeal to the Latino vote. Establishment Republicans believe that the future of the party depends on being able to capture a larger share of this rapidly expanding electorate. Trump’s plan, however, may appeal to the most rapidly expanding electorate, senior citizens, and may have an even greater appeal to the millions of Republicans who stayed away from the polls in 2012 as well as the ethnic and blue-collar Democrats who crossed party lines to vote Republican in the congressional elections of 2014. All of these voters outnumber any increase in the Latino vote that Republicans could possibly hope to gain from a population that has consistently voted Democratic by a two-thirds majority and shows little inclination to change. RELATED: Not Hard to Read the 14th Amendment As Not Requiring Birthright Citizenship — And Nothing Odd About Supporting Such a Reading Critics say that Trump’s plan is unrealistic, that it would require a constitutional amendment because the 14th Amendment mandates birthright citizenship and that the Supreme Court has upheld this requirement ever since its passage in 1868. The critics are wrong. A correct understanding of the intent of the framers of the 14th Amendment and legislation passed by Congress in the late 19th century and in 1923 extending citizenship to American Indians provide ample proof that Congress has constitutional power to define who is within the “jurisdiction of the United States” and therefore eligible for citizenship. Simple legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president would be constitutional under the 14th Amendment. Birthright citizenship is the policy whereby the children of illegal aliens born within the geographical limits of the U.S. are entitled to American citizenship — and, as Trump says, it is a great magnet for illegal immigration. Many of Trump’s critics believe that this policy is an explicit command of the Constitution, consistent with the British common-law system. This is simply not true. Congress has constitutional power to define who is within the “jurisdiction of the United States” and therefore eligible for citizenship. Although the Constitution of 1787 mentioned citizens, it did not define citizenship. It was in 1868 that a definition of citizenship entered the Constitution with the ratification of the 14th Amendment. Here is the familiar language: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Thus there are two components to American citizenship: birth or naturalization in the U.S. and being subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Today, we somehow have come to believe that anyone born within the geographical limits of the U.S. is automatically subject to its jurisdiction; but this renders the jurisdiction clause utterly superfluous. If this had been the intention of the framers of the 14th Amendment, presumably they would have said simply that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. are thereby citizens.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/birthright-citizenship-not-mandated-by-constitution

Indeed, during debate over the amendment, Senator Jacob Howard, the author of the citizenship clause, attempted to assure skeptical colleagues that the language was not intended to make Indians citizens of the United States. Indians, Howard conceded, were born within the nation’s geographical limits, but he steadfastly maintained that they were not subject to its jurisdiction because they owed allegiance to their tribes and not to the U.S. Senator Lyman Trumbull, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, supported this view, arguing that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” meant “not owing allegiance to anybody else and being subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States.” RELATED: End Birthright Citizenship Now: Barack Obama Makes the Case Jurisdiction understood as allegiance, Senator Howard explained, excludes not only Indians but “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [or] who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.” Thus, “subject to the jurisdiction” does not simply mean, as is commonly thought today, subject to American laws or courts. It means owing exclusive political allegiance to the U.S. Furthermore, there has never been an explicit holding by the Supreme Court that the children of illegal aliens are automatically accorded birthright citizenship. In the case of Wong Kim Ark (1898) the Court ruled that a child born in the U.S. of legal aliens was entitled to “birthright citizenship” under the 14th Amendment. This was a 5–4 opinion which provoked the dissent of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who argued that, contrary to the reasoning of the majority’s holding, the 14th Amendment did not in fact adopt the common-law understanding of birthright citizenship. Get Free Exclusive NR Content The framers of the Constitution were, of course, well-versed in the British common law, having learned its essential principles from William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. As such, they knew that the very concept of citizenship was unknown in British common law. Blackstone speaks only of “birthright subjectship” or “birthright allegiance,” never using the terms “citizen” or “citizenship.” The idea of birthright subjectship, as Blackstone admitted, was derived from feudal law. It is the relation of master and servant: All who are born within the protection of the king owed perpetual allegiance as a “debt of gratitude.” According to Blackstone, this debt is “intrinsic” and “cannot be forfeited, cancelled, or altered.” Birthright subjectship under common law is the doctrine of perpetual allegiance. America’s Founders rejected this doctrine. The Declaration of Independence, after all, solemnly proclaims that “the good People of these Colonies . . . are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved.” So, the common law — the feudal doctrine of perpetual allegiance — could not possibly serve as the ground of American citizenship. Indeed, the idea is too preposterous to entertain. RELATED: Trump’s Immigration Plan Is a Good Start — For All GOP Candidates Consider as well that, in 1868, Congress passed the Expatriation Act. This permitted American citizens to renounce their allegiance and alienate their citizenship. This piece of legislation was supported by Senator Howard and other leading architects of the 14th Amendment, and characterized the right of expatriation as “a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Like the idea of citizenship, this right of expatriation is wholly incompatible with the common-law understanding of perpetual allegiance and subjectship. One member of the House expressed the general sense of Congress when he proclaimed: “The old feudal doctrine stated by Blackstone and adopted as part of the common law of England . . . is not only at war with the theory of our institutions, but is equally at war with every principle of justice and of sound public policy.” The notion of birthright citizenship was characterized by another member as an “indefensible doctrine of indefeasible allegiance,” a feudal doctrine wholly at odds with republican government. Nor was this the only legislation concerning birthright citizenship that Congress passed following the ratification of the 14th Amendment. As mentioned above, there was almost unanimous agreement among its framers that the amendment did not extend citizenship to Indians. Although born in the U.S., they were not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Beginning in 1870, however, Congress began to pass legislation offering citizenship to Indians on a tribe-by-tribe basis. Finally, in 1923, there was a universal offer to all tribes. Any Indian who consented could become a citizen. Thus Congress used its legislative authority under Section Five of the 14th Amendment to determine who was within the jurisdiction of the U.S. It could make a similar determination today, based on this legislative precedent, that children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. A constitutional amendment is no more required today than it was in 1923. A nation that cannot determine who becomes citizens or believes that it must allow the children of those who defy its laws to become citizens is no longer a sovereign nation. Legislation to end birthright citizenship has been circulating in Congress since the mid ’90s and such a bill is circulating in both houses today. It will, of course, not pass Congress, and if it did pass it would be vetoed. But if birthright citizenship becomes an election issue and a Republican is elected president, then who knows what the future might hold. It is difficult to imagine that the framers of the 14th Amendment intended to confer the boon of citizenship on the children of illegal aliens when they explicitly denied that boon to Indians who had been born in the United States. Those who defy the laws of the U.S. should not be allowed to confer such an advantage on their children. This would not be visiting the sins of the parents on the children, as is often claimed, since the children of illegal aliens born in the U.S. would not be denied anything to which they otherwise would have a right. Their allegiance should follow that of their parents during their minority. A nation that cannot determine who becomes citizens or believes that it must allow the children of those who defy its laws to become citizens is no longer a sovereign nation. No one is advocating that those who have been granted birthright citizenship be stripped of their citizenship. Equal protection considerations would counsel that citizenship once granted is vested and cannot be revoked; this, I believe, is eminently just. The proposal to end birthright citizenship is prospective only. More Immigration The Very Real Economic Costs of Birthright Citizenship What Conservatives Get Wrong about Birthright Citizenship and the Constitution Donald Trump’s Half-Serious, Half-Fantasy Immigration Plan Political pundits believe that Trump should not press such divisive issues as immigration and citizenship. It is clear, however, that he has struck a popular chord — and touched an important issue that should be debated no matter how divisive. Both the Republican party and the Democratic party want to avoid the issue because, while both parties advocate some kind of reform, neither party has much interest in curbing illegal immigration: Republicans want cheap and exploitable labor and Democrats want future voters. Who will get the best of the bargain I will leave for others to decide.