Obama administration tells states they can't block resettlement of refugees

WASHINGTON –  Amid a growing political controversy, the Obama administration told state officials Wednesday that states do not have legal authority to refuse to accept Syrian refugees.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement said in a letter to state resettlement officials that states may not deny benefits and services to refugees based on a refugee's country of origin or religious affiliation.
States that do not comply with the requirement would be breaking the law and could be subject to enforcement action, including suspension or termination of the federally funded program, according to the letter, signed by the director of the federal resettlement office, Robert Carey.
The letter came after more than two dozen governors, mostly Republicans, vowed to block efforts to resettle Syrian refugees in their states following the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris. The governors said they fear that militants planning a terror attack could enter the country under the guise of seeking refuge from war-torn Syria. In the House, lawmakers have voted overwhelmingly to erect higher hurdles for Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
The Obama administration counters that the vetting process is thorough and can take up to two years. President Barack Obama has said the U.S. will remain a welcoming place for refugees from around the world.
The letter from the federal resettlement office said would-be refugees "are subject to the highest level of security checks of any category of traveler to the United States." The screening process is "multi-layered and intensive" and involves multiple law enforcement, national security and intelligence agencies across the federal government, the letter said.
A spokesman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees refugee resettlement in the state, said the letter will not change the state's position of blocking Syrian refugees.
The commission will continue to follow the directive of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has called for Texas not to participate in the resettlement of Syrian refugees, said Bryan Black, a spokesman for the Texas commission. A spokesman for Abbott declined to comment.
The letter sent Wednesday, first reported by the Houston Chronicle, largely tracks with what legal experts have been saying since Abbott and other governors said they would not accept Syrian refugees due to security concerns fueled by terrorist attacks in Paris. Abbott has cited a specific part of the law that he says gives him authority to block Syrians, but experts largely have disagreed.
Roughly 2,200 Syrian refugees have been allowed in over the last four years. Obama has outlined a goal of bringing 10,000 more Syrian refugees to the U.S. during the current budget year.
The House bill would add a requirement for the Homeland Security secretary, along with the head of the FBI and the director of national intelligence, to certify that each refugee being admitted poses no security threat.
A spokeswoman in the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the resettlement office, said 49 states and the District of Columbia have refugee resettlement programs. Wyoming does not have a refugee resettlement program. Want to be safe from terror attacks move to Wyoming.

Paul campaign slams CNN, says emails show reporter 'colluding' with Clinton aide

Rand Paul’s presidential campaign slammed CNN on Wednesday after emails were released that the campaign claimed showed a reporter “colluding” with a Hillary Clinton aide to “attack” the Kentucky senator.
The tweet last week criticizing a House bill limiting Syrian refugees. But her communications with then-Clinton State Department official Philippe Reines turned up Tuesday in a batch of emails obtained and published by Gawker.

CNN global affairs correspondent, Elise Labott

CNN global affairs correspondent, Elise Labott, already has been suspended over a separate incident – a
In those January 2013 emails, Reines appears to give Labott suggestions for tweets. Phil Kerpen, president of the conservative American Commitment, first flagged the exchange about Paul.
In it, Labott shares the following tweet, in reference to Clinton’s Benghazi committee testimony, with Reines. (TWEET) Elise Labott ✔ @eliselabottcnn

Sen Paul most critical on committee of Clinton, but a little late to the #Benghazi game.Not sure he was at many of the 30 previous briefings

10:19 AM - 23 Jan 2013

This was right after she asked Reines whether he was sure Paul wasn’t “at any hearings.”
The Paul campaign on Wednesday said CNN’s correspondent was working with Reines to discredit Paul, and called on the network to “address” the “bias” exhibited – particularly ahead of a CNN-hosted debate next month.
"The liberal media has taken their Clinton sycophancy to a new low. CNN needs to address this bias and lack of journalistic integrity,” Doug Stafford, Paul’s chief strategist, said in a statement. “This email revelation should give Republicans pause as to their coverage and possibility of fair treatment towards Sen. Paul during the next debate. All eyes will be on CNN's response to their employee colluding with Hillary Clinton in order to attack a prominent U.S. senator on their dime."
The campaign specifically cited a Daily Caller report that said the reporter coordinated with Reines.
A representative with CNN has not responded to a request for comment.
Kerpen said on Twitter, as he posted screenshots of multiple email exchanges, that Labott “Tweets on request!”
Another exchange from Jan. 23 showed Reines telling Labott: “I suggested a good Tweet.”
Labott asks what he suggested, and Reines responds, “Pin.”
This may have been a reference to a BlackBerry messaging system. Labott tells Reines she put her BlackBerry “near the window” and “will get back to you.”
A few minutes later, she writes, “Done.”
The tweet sent in that time period was:(TWEET) Elise Labott ✔ @eliselabottcnn

Clinton: I tried to be transparent. I could have joined the 18 ARBs, kept it classified and then said goodbye. That is not who I am.

4:01 PM - 23 Jan 2013

Names of key Paris attackers were known to Belgian mayor in 2014

Molenbeek Mayor Francoise Schepmans (Idiot)

The names of at least three of the ISIS terrorists who carried out this month's deadly attacks in Paris were known to the mayor of a Brussels suburb in early 2014, it was revealed this week.
Molenbeek Mayor Francoise Schepmans admitted to The New York Times that she had received a list containing more than 80 names and addresses of people suspected of links to Islamic militants. The paper reported that the list of names included Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind of the Nov. 13 attacks; as well as Brahim and Salah Abdeslam, one of whom blew himself up on that deadly night while the other fled to Belgium after apparently abandoning his suicide mission.
"What was I supposed to do about them? It is not my job to track possible terrorists," Schepmans told the paper, adding that tracking homegrown terrorists "is the responsibility of the federal police."
The Daily Telegraph reported that Brahim and Salah Abdeslam lived together in an apartment visible from the mayor's office approximately 100 yards from Molenbeek City Hall. A third Abdeslam brother, Mohamed, who has repeatedly called for Salah Abdeslam to turn himself in, works in the city administration.
The Times report did not clarify what Schepmans did with the information she was given. Elsewhere in the report, the mayor of Verviers, where police broke up a terror plot led by Abaaoud in January, told The Times she was informed by Belgium's security services that her town was home to 34 suspected jihadists.

More on this...

• Police search for man seen with Salah Abdeslam

• France trying to piece together a coalition to go after ISIS

• French ambassador on security changes after Paris attacks

"All I was given was a number," Muriel Targnion told the paper. "No names, no addresses. Nothing."
The latest revelations are sure to add scrutiny to Belgium's intelligence failings, which have given rise to a community of Islamic extremists in the heart of Western Europe. The French newspaper Le Monde, referred to Molenbeek, just west of the center of Brussels, as a "clearing house for jihadism".
The sense of unease in Belgium was heightened earlier this week after 15 of 16 people detained in a series of anti-terror raids Sunday night were released without charge the following day. No explosives or firearms were seized.
Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon said the raids had been designed to foil an imminent attack in Brussels.
"There were indications that there would be attacks on Sunday evening and they did not materialize," Jambon said, adding that otherwise "you don't impose terror level 4," the highest possible.
France and Belgium continue to hunt Salah Abdeslam, as well as a second fugitive believed to have played a role in the attacks.
Mohamed Abrini, who Belgian authorities have described as "armed and dangerous," was seen with Salah Abdeslam two days before the attacks on a highway gas station en route to Paris.
Speaking on RTL radio, Mohamed Abdeslam said he shares the pain of victims' families and wishes he and his family could have done something to prevent the Nov. 13 bloodshed.
"Let him turn himself in for his parents, for justice, for the families of victims, so that we can find out what happened," Mohamed Abdeslam said.
He said his brothers had shown no signs of radicalization. Mohamed Abdeslam said he saw them a few days before they left their Brussels suburb for Paris, but had no idea what they were plotting, and hasn't heard from Salah since.
In the Belgian capital, schools reopened Wednesday despite the city remaining on the highest possible alert level. Authorities raised it on Saturday saying the threat of a further attack was serious and imminent.
Police armed with automatic weapons stood guard outside schools, while Brussels' subway system partially reopened, bringing a sense of relative normalcy back to the city.
The heightened alert level had shut down shops, schools and the subway system in Brussels since Saturday. The Belgian government also ordered health and emergency services to take precautionary measures to ensure their services aren't infiltrated by extremists.
"When ambulances arrive, we have to see from where they come, who is in it," Health Minister Maggie De Block told VRT network. "Really as a precaution."

Same old republican regime cartoon

Austrian ISIS 'poster girl' reportedly beaten to death after trying to escape Syria

One of two Austrian teenagers dubbed "poster girls" for ISIS was beaten to death after she was caught trying to escape the terror group's de facto capital in Syria, according to published reports.
Two Austrian newspapers reported Tuesday that Samra Kesinovic, 18, was murdered. One of the newspaper reports cited a Tunisian woman who lived with Kesinovic and her friend, Sabina Selimovic, before managing to escape.
The Austrian government declined to comment on the reports, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Thomas Schnoll saying, "We cannot comment on individual cases."
Kesinovic and Selimovic have now both been reported killed since they left their home city of Vienna to join ISIS in April 2014. Late last year, David Scharia, an expert on the U.N. Security Council's counterterrorism committee,said he had been told that one of the girls was killed during fighting in Syria, while the other had disappeared.
The Osterreich tabloid reported that Selimovic was killed in December of last year.
At the time of their disappearance, they left a note for their families saying "Don’t look for us. We will serve Allah and we will die for him." The Daily Telegraph reported that Kesinovic confirmed in a phone call to her sister that she had joined up with the terror group.
In October, it was reported that both girls had grown weary of ISIS' strict enforcement of Islamic law and had written to their families saying that they wanted to return home. The girls' families have made no public comment on the latest report of their deaths.
Both girls' families settled in Vienna after fleeing Bosnia-Herzegovina to escape that country's war during the 1990s.

College campus protests: This is the generation that will destroy America

Old Black Power Salute?

What in the name of John Blutarsky is happening on our university campuses?

A new survey from the Pew Research Center reveals that a shocking number of Millennials support curbing free speech.

Click here to join Todd’s American Dispatch – a must-read for Conservatives!

According to their findings, 40 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 believe the government should be able to ban any speech that is offensive to minority groups.

We have apparently raised a generation of snowflakes so fragile that their psyches can’t handle offensive words or photographs or images.

We have apparently raised a generation of snowflakes so fragile that their psyches can’t handle offensive words or photographs or images.
It seems the only free speech this perpetually offended generation supports is speech they agree with.
And it appears our nation's public universities have become breeding grounds for such anti-American and un-Constitutional beliefs.
Websites like Campus Reform have done a tremendous job documenting the methodical way in which our public institutions have been turned against us.
Administrators, faculty and student government leaders who do not agree with the rampaging mob of anti-free speech protesters are threatened – their voices silenced.
From the University of Missouri to U.C. Berkley -- where they are creating safe spaces to protect persons of color and those who identify as gender queer.
The University of Michigan added a three-year diversity requirement to its undergraduate curriculum in the school of business. As Campus Reform reported, they will teach students “how race, gender and sexual orientation connect to larger systems of power, privilege and oppression.”
At Dartmouth, Black Lives Matter protestors invaded the library -- verbally assaulting white students.
“F*** you, you filthy white f***s!”
That's what they screamed at the kids trying to study for exams.
And at the University of Vermont white students were carted off to the woods for a three-day retreat on white privilege.
Universities are now judging students on the color of their skin, instead of the content of their character.
Oh, what have liberal educators unleased on our great nation?
We are watching the coming of age for a new generation -- a generation of intolerance -- a generation that will one day shutdown free speech, a generation that will purge dissenting viewpoints, a generation that will shutter our churches and burn our books.
We are watching the generation that will destroy America.
Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. His latest book is "God Less America: Real Stories From the Front Lines of the Attack on Traditional Values." Follow Todd on Twitter@ToddStarnes and find him on Facebook.

Media escalate attacks over Trump stumbles, but he remains impervious

It hasn’t been a great few days for Donald Trump. And it doesn’t seem to matter.

The media refs are really savaging him after a couple of misstatements and missteps, even as they struggle to understand why he pays no penalty when they blow the whistle. What they don’t quite grasp is that their attacks only make him stronger.

This is not to let him off the hook for mistakes, just to recognize that Trump has completely rewritten the rule book, infuriating those who thought they enforced the rules. What’s more, some of the media attacks against the Republican front-runner are so virulent that they overshoot the mark, and possibly even backfire.

We have the New York Times editorial page accusing him of “racist lies.”

We have the Washington Post editorial page calling him a demagogue running a campaign of  “growing ugliness” and declaring: “The only way to beat a bully is to stand up to him.”

And it’s hard to imagine the Post running this column headline about almost anyone else: “Donald Trump’s Rally Carries Echo of Hitler’s Rise to Power.”

A Trump adviser tells me that the mainstream media, Republican elite and Washington establishment—lumping them all together—will do anything they can to take down his boss. And the people who like Trump, in this adviser’s view, instinctively believe the media don’t treat people fairly.

Trump isn’t exactly meticulous when it comes to fact-checking. No one has been able to confirm his recollection that he saw, on television, thousands of people in New Jersey cheering when the twin towers came down. But after the Washington Post’s fact-checker gave Trump’s claim four Pinnochios, he found a small measure of vindication in a 2001article in that very paper that said: “Law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.” A “number of people” is not thousands, but Trump proudly quoted the piece at a rally.

The mainstream media, as Trump’s camp sees it, don't want to report that some people across the country were happy about the devastation of 9/11.

Trump also stumbled by retweeting some racial murder statistics that turned out to be bogus and wildly inaccurate. When Bill O’Reilly chided him for that, Trump said, “Am I going to check every statistic?”

The press has finally learned, after repeatedly being burned, not to seize upon controversial or questionable comments to predict Trump’s demise. So there is an anguished search for larger explanations: His supporters don’t care if he tells the truth, he symbolizes the modern-day GOP, and on and on.

This comes from all sides, with conservative commentators who fear he’s hijacked the party even harsher on Trump than liberal ones.

But here’s the thing: Trump projects strength, and part of that is not backing down, even when it’s obvious he has misspoken. In the wake of the Paris attacks, he’s going up in the polls, while Ben Carson is slipping. Trump leads nationally. He leads in Iowa, even with Ted Cruz surging. He has a huge lead in New Hampshire. A big lead in South Carolina. A huge lead in Florida. And that is driving the pundits crazy.

So let’s look at this latest media wave. Here’s that New York Times editorial: “America has just lived through another presidential campaign week dominated by Donald Trump’s racist lies…

“Mr. Trump has distinguished himself as fastest to dive to the bottom. If it’s a lie too vile to utter aloud, count on Mr. Trump to say it, often. It wins him airtime, and retweets through the roof.”

And here’s a NYT news story: “No one ever expected Mr. Trump to turn himself into the issues expert of the Republican presidential field. Yet the verbal shortcuts and salesmanlike stretches that he has relied on for months — generalities used to dodge questions, and questionable recollections — are tripping him up as the tenor of the campaign has grown more serious.”

Salon blames the press for letting Trump get away with untrue statements:

“The mainstream political media has such a pathological dedication to the notion of balance and ‘objectivity’ that it often finds itself at a complete loss when it comes to dealing with someone like Trump. But the kind of filth that he and others are putting out has long since moved past the debatable stage. There is an Islamophobic crisis building in this country.”

It’s not hard to imagine Washington Post columnist Chris Cillizza wringing his hands as he writes:

“In elections and campaigns past, there would have been a price to pay for The Donald's complete flouting of fact. It would have hurt him politically to just say things that aren't true.”

The reason, he says, is that “trust in the media — in both parties but especially among conservatives who comprise Trump's base — is at an all-time low. So, anything that a member of the media calls a ‘fact’ is inherently viewed as fishy (at best) by the people backing Trump. The media lies, we all know that, so why wouldn't they lie about this, too? All the mainstream media cares about is serving as the political correctness police, so if this did happen then of course they would work to cover it up, right?”

I think Cillizza nails it. And those of us in the media have no one to blame but ourselves. Donald Trump didn’t cause our slide in credibility, even as he feasts off it. And we’ll still be working on earning back trust long after this campaign has faded into history.

Fact check: Claims 'no refugees' since 9/11 took part in terror plots ring false

After the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris last week, many news sources claimed that not a single refugee had been charged with terrorism in the U.S. since the attacks on 9/11, but the assertion does not stand up to scrutiny.
The noted publication The Economist proclaimed: “750,000 refugees have been resettled in America since 9/11; Not one has been arrested on domestic terrorism charges.”
In fact, several refugees have been convicted in high-profile terrorism plots, and several more were “asylees” -- people allowed to stay in the U.S. for the same reasons as refugees, but who do not go through the same screening process. In one case, two Iraqi refugees in Kentucky were convicted after it turned out they had used IEDs to attack U.S. soldiers in Iraq and were plotting other attacks. An FBI agent recalled that they bragged about that and said they had soldiers “for lunch and dinner… meaning that he had killed them,” ABC News reported an FBI official as saying in 2013.

" ... it only takes a handful of ISIS infiltrators hiding among them to bring the carnage we saw in Paris to our streets.”
- Marc Thiessen, American Enterprise Institue

A Department of Justice report noted that one of those refugees, Waad Ramadan Alwan, left fingerprints on unexploded IEDs in Iraq and that he was sentenced to 40 years in prison after he “pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill U.S. nationals abroad; conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction (explosives) against U.S. nationals abroad; distributing information on the manufacture and use of IEDs; attempting to provide material support to terrorists and to [Al Qaeda in Iraq] and conspiring to transfer, possess and export Stinger missiles.”
His conspirator, Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, was also let in through the refugee program and is now serving a life sentence.

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Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, left, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, carried out the oston Marathon bombings, though at trial, Dzhokhar claimed his older brother was mainly responsible. (AP)

Since that incident, government officials say they have tightened procedures for refugees and that people like those two would no longer get in. But officials have also said that while the U.S. has an extensive database of Iraqis and their histories, built up over years of occupying the country, similar information does not exist for Syrians, some 10,000 of whom could be coming to the U.S. under a White House proposal.
“If we don’t know much about somebody, there won’t be anything in our data,” FBI Director James Comey said in congressional testimony in October, adding, “I can’t sit here and offer anybody an absolute assurance that there’s no risk associated with this.”
In another recent case, an Uzbek refugee in Idaho was found guilty of conspiracy and attempting to support a terrorist organization, after he had allegedly been stockpiling explosives. His sentencing is scheduled for January.

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Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, (l.), and Waad Ramadan Alwan, (r.), entered the U.S. as Iraqi refugees after helping build IEDs used against American forces in Iraq.

A State Department spokesperson told FoxNews.com that “Of the three million refugees we have admitted to the United States since 1975, including nearly 785,000 refugees admitted to the U.S. since the events of 9/11, approximately a dozen -- a tiny fraction of one percent -- have either been arrested or removed from the United States due to security concerns that existed prior to their resettlement in the U.S."
The statement added: “While no immigration program is completely without risk, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program is focused on upholding the national security of the United States.”
Supporters of letting more refugees in say that U.S. should not let the occasional danger get in the way of helping thousands.
“It’s a fairly small threat, and the benefits greatly outweigh it,” CATO immigration analyst Alex Nowrasteh told FoxNews.com, pointing to the results of past refugee flows.
“Every refugee flow in the past has been criticized and they turn out to be fine -- and a benefit in terms of economic growth and their contribution to the economy,” he said, adding that most refugees also have critical Arabic language skills and a dislike of ISIS that might prove a national security asset for future involvement in the Middle East.
But some terrorism experts say Americans should be very worried about taking more refugees.
“There are serious security concerns.The vast majority of Syrian refugees are legitimate victims of terror and persecution, but it only takes a handful of ISIS infiltrators hiding among them to bring the carnage we saw in Paris to our streets,” Marc Thiessen, American Enterprise Institute fellow and former senior policy adviser to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, told FoxNews.com.
“Moreover, polls show that while the vast majority of refugees oppose ISIS, about 13 percent support the terror network,” Thiessen noted.
Other high-profile terrorists entered the U.S. first and then applied for asylum, which can be granted to people who “meet the definition of refugee,” according to the government’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
That includes the Boston marathon bombers, who came from Chechnya and were granted asylum in the U.S. before killing three and injuring more than 250 people.
Members of the “Fort Dix 6,” who were convicted of conspiracy to murder U.S. military personnel, also entered seeking asylum; they were never granted it, but were never removed from the country, either.
Despite those cases, government officials caution that the vast majority of refugees are in need of help and don’t pose a risk.
But Thiessen said that while it is important to help desperate Syrian refugees -- for instance by creating “safe zones” in the Middle East -- the refugee program is not the best way to help.
“We need to help these people, but admitting them into the U.S. is not the best way to do it,” he said.

Liz Mair, Republican National Committee Cartoon

University suspends yoga class, citing 'cultural issues' that may offend students

Jennifer Scharf

A yoga instructor who teaches at the University of Ottawa says she is fighting to keep her program alive after the school’s student body suspended it over concerns that “cultural issues” relating to the class could offend students.
Jennifer Scharf, who has been offering free weekly sessions at the university’s Center for Students with Disabilities since 2008, told the Ottawa Sun that she was informed in September that the program would not come back for the fall semester.
In an email exchange between Scharf and a representative of the university’s Student Federation -- which was viewed by the newspaper -- a student wrote that “while yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students... there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice.
"Yoga has been under a lot of controversy lately due to how it is being practiced," the email continues, and which cultures those practices "are being taken from."
The Student Federation, which operates the center, went on to say that many of those cultures “have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and Western supremacy... we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practicing yoga."
Student Federation Acting President Romeo Ahimakin told the Ottawa Sun that the class has been put on hold until a way can be figured out "to make it better, more accessible and more inclusive to certain groups of people that feel left out in yoga-like spaces.
“We are trying to have those sessions done in a way in which students are aware of where the spiritual and cultural aspects come from, so that these sessions are done in a respectful manner,” he added.
But Scharf, who instructed about 60 students each week in the program, said, "people are just looking for a reason to be offended by anything they can find."
Scharf says she offered the student body leaders a compromise by suggesting she change the name of the course to “mindful stretching,” but after some debate, they couldn’t reach an agreement.
"I guess it was this cultural appropriation issue because yoga originally comes from India," she told CBC News. "We're not going through the finer points of Scripture. We're talking about basic physical awareness and how to stretch so that you feel good.”
Scharf added that she is “fighting so hard” to keep the class.

Grassley steps up Clinton email probe, blocks key nominees

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is putting a hold on top State Department appointments -- including the nominee for the department's fourth-highest post -- until he gets the answers he's seeking from a former top aide of Hillary Clinton tasked with helping determine which of the former secretary of state's emails should be made public.
The Iowa Republican -- who also is investigating the special employment status afforded to Clinton confidant Huma Abedin while at State -- has slammed the department for its "continued intransigence and lack of cooperation" throughout the inquiry, which dates back to June 2013. Critics, including Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, have derided the probe as a politically motivated bid to undermine the Democratic presidential candidate's campaign for the White House.
For its part, the State Department says it has responded to Grassley's questions "in 16 formal letters and many briefings, calls and emails," but remains overwhelmed by the volume of requests.
Grassley, who last week released holds on 20 career Foreign Service Officers, is now turning to bigger fish in a bid for leverage to get more cooperation from the department.
He is blocking the nomination of Thomas Shannon to replace Wendy Sherman as under secretary for political affairs, the No. 4 post in the department. In addition, his office told Fox News he has placed holds on the nominations of Brian James Egan for legal adviser and David Malcolm Robinson for assistant secretary for conflict and stabilization operations and coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization.
A hold is procedural tactic senators often employ to extract information or other concessions from the administration. President Obama himself made use of holds as a senator from Illinois, blocking nominations to the EPA during the Bush administration over objections to lead paint regulations.
Grassley’s holds came as he fired off a letter to former Clinton aide Heather Samuelson, posing 19 questions about the process used to screen the emails for the former secretary of state.
He also asked Samuelson what kind of security clearance she had at the time, given that hundreds of Clinton's emails have been shown to contain classified information.
"Given the importance of securing and protecting classified information ... it is imperative to confirm when, how, and why you, and any of your associates, received a security clearance in connection with your work on behalf of Secretary Clinton and whether it was active while you had custody of Secretary Clinton’s emails," Grassley wrote in the letter, first reported by Politico.
"Further, it is imperative to understand your background in determining what is and what is not a federal record, since you apparently played a major role in assisting Secretary Clinton in making a decision as to which emails to delete."
Clinton has come under heavy fire for routing official emails through a personal server during her time as secretary of state. The Democratic front-runner's aides have also faced scrutiny for their roles in determining which messages to turn back over to the agency, which has been slowly making them public under a court order.
Critics have accused Clinton of putting sensitive government information at risk under the arrangement. Separately, the FBI has been investigating whether the setup resulted in the mishandling of classified information.
The State Department insisted it is trying to work with Grassley’s office.
"Over the course of the last several months, the mounting requests from the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee have contained nearly 200 detailed questions and 65 unique document requests," department spokesman Alec Gerlach said in a statement. "The department is committed to working with the committee and providing responses as quickly as possible, but the growing effort needed to accommodate these requests is overwhelming the resources we have available."
A Grassley spokeswoman described the level of cooperation as “sparse.”
Senate Democrats have urged Grassley to drop his objections.
"The senior Senator from Iowa comes to the floor and talks about the proper use of taxpayer resources," Reid, the Democratic leader, said earlier this month. "He should walk into his bathroom and look into the mirror and find out what he’s doing about the proper use of taxpayer resources. He should be willing to tell us about the resources his committee is spending to investigate Secretary Clinton."

Republican donors, operative fueling new anti-Trump ad blitz

Liz Mair, former communications official for the Republican National Committee

Republican donors with links to several presidential candidates – as well as a prominent GOP operative – are pooling their resources in a new effort to go after Donald Trump and keep the party’s presidential front-runner from winning the nomination.
The most recent bid is a reported “guerrilla campaign” led by a group called Trump Card LLC and run by Liz Mair, former communications official for the Republican National Committee.
The group’s goal, according to The Wall Street Journal, is to collect money from anonymous donors to “defeat and destroy” Trump, who has essentially led the GOP presidential field since declaring his candidacy this summer.
Further, the super PAC supporting fellow GOP candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich is planning to air attack ads against Trump in New Hampshire. And, in a sign of the project’s appeal among donors, it is starting to get funding from donors backing candidates other than Kasich.
Fox News has learned that, as of Sunday, 10 new donors pledged money to the group, New Day for America, since a report Thursday on the super PAC’s plans.
The group confirmed most of those donors are supporting other candidates, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Among them, California donor Jeffrey Le Sage told Reuters, which first reported on the new donations, that he wants to help “stand up to Donald Trump.”
Le Sage, a Bush donor, confirmed to Fox News that he donated to the pro-Kasich group.
Some in the so-called Republican establishment and GOP “donor class” fear the party will lose the general election if Trump wins the nomination, arguing his comments and views are alienating Hispanic and black voters.
The relationship between old guard Republicans and Trump, the billionaire, first-time candidate, has been rocky from the start.
Trump’s laments about being treated unfairly by the Republican National Committee and his threats to mount an independent candidacy eventually led him to sign a pledge stating he wouldn’t run as an independent and would support the nominee if he lost.
However, after news broke about the concerted effort to undermine him, Trump hinted he might consider breaking away.
“We'll see what happens,” he said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “I have to be treated fairly. … If I’m treated fairly, I’m fine.”
The anti-Trump effort comes as he continues to dominate the polls. The latest Fox News poll showed him with a record 28 percent support from primary voters.
In addition to the pro-Kasich and Trump Card groups, the super PAC associated with the fiscal conservative Club for Growth is trying to raise money to resume anti-Trump ads, after running a reported $1 million worth earlier this year in Iowa.
Trump Card, which would not have to disclose donors, wants $250,000 from the other GOP presidential campaigns to run anti-Trump TV, radio and web ads and to pitch opposition research to local stations in early-voting states.
Mair, who also used to work for the Scott Walker presidential campaign, wrote, “In the absence of our efforts, Trump is exceedingly unlikely to implode or be forced out of the race,” according to a memo obtained by The Journal.
“The stark reality is that unless something dramatic and unconventional is done, Trump will be the Republican nominee and Hillary Clinton will become president,” Mair continued.
Trump has threated to sue New Day for America and reportedly said through a spokesman that Mair “worked for Scott Walker and lost her job -- who can blame her?”

Officials investigate whether Paris terror fugitive abandoned mission

The discovery of a suicide vest in a Paris suburb Monday has heightened the possibility that Europe's most wanted man, Salah Abdeslam, abandoned his murderous mission to cause terror in the French capital before fleeing across the border into Belgium.
The vest was found by a street cleaner in a pile of rubble in Chatillon-Montrouge, on the southern edge of Paris and a considerable distance from the sites of the attacks on the Right Bank of the Seine to the north. However, authorities say data from Abdeslam's cell phone placed him in the Chatillon-Montrouge area on the night of the Nov. 13 attacks, which killed 130 people and injured 350 others.
A police official told the Associated Press that the vest contained bolts and the same type of explosives — TATP — as those used by the ISIS attackers. A police source also told Sky News the vest had "the same configuration" as those found with the seven confirmed assailants.
In addition, the theory that Abdeslam originally planned to join the seven other terrorists would match the claim by ISIS that eight people carried out the attacks, not the seven confirmed by the French authorities. The terror group's statement of responsibility also said that simultaneous attacks were carried out in the 10th, 11th and 18th arrondissements, or districts, of the city. In fact, the assaults on sidewalk cafes and the Bataclan concert hall only took place in the 10th and 11th districts, while no attack in the 18th took place.
What remains unclear to investigators is why Abdeslam apparently ditched his mission before leaving France. One theory, advanced by Abdeslam's brother Mohamed, suggests that the would-be bomber simply had second thoughts about his mission at the last moment. Another theory, held by some authorities, holds that Abdeslam abandoned the vest due to a technical problem.

More on this...

• Terror threat paralyzes Brussels

• Belgian authorities on the hunt for Paris attack suspect

Abdeslam is suspected of playing at least a logistical role in the coordinated shooting and suicide bombings on the night of Nov. 13. He has not been seen since a few hours after the attacks, when he managed to cross into his native Belgium in a car with two friends, both of whom have since been arrested.
Salah Abdeslam's brother, Brahim, blew himself up near the Bataclan concert hall during the attacks, injuring 15 other people.
As authorities hunted Abdeslam Tuesday, Brussels entered the fourth day of its lockdown, which closed the city's schools and subway system. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said Monday that despite the continued high-alert level, schools would reopen Wednesday, with parts of the subway system beginning to operate. He did not say when the system would be completely online again.
"We are very alert and call for caution," Michel said. "The potential targets remain the same: shopping centers and shopping streets and public transport."
"We want to return to a normal way of life as quickly as possible," he added.
Belgian authorities have not announced any details of their investigation into potential attacks nor have they released information about four suspects who have been arrested and charged with terrorism-related offenses. These include one suspect who was arrested as part of a sweep that saw 21 people detained since Sunday night. Fifteen of those detainees have since been released.
Also Tuesday, the only person in France facing potential terrorism charges linked to the Nov. 13 attacks was brought before a judge to be either charged or released.
Jawad Bendaoud was taken into custody Nov. 18 moments after giving a television interview in which he acknowledged he had given shelter to two people from Belgium and said he didn't know who they were or what they planned. Among those killed in the apartment raid were Amdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind, a female cousin and an unidentified man.
  In the interview, Bendaoud, 29, told BFM television "I didn't know they were terrorists. I was asked to do a favor, I did a favor, sir."

College Cry baby Cartoon

Down with Wilson, up with Che: Wimpy colleges surrender to lunatic fringe

In a month when Western Civilization has come under renewed attack from jihadists, that other bastion of opposition to the economic and political freedom the West embodies has gone haywire: college campuses.  While it’s tempting to blame precious students who are demanding safe zones and freedom from unwelcome ideas, the real culprits are wimpy college administrators.
The latest chapter of political-correctness lunacy comes from Princeton’s campus, where a group of students staged an illegal sit-in at the offices of university president Eisgruber.  The students were outraged that the man who ran Princeton before becoming our 28^th president in 1913, Woodrow Wilson, was unable to see a century into the future during his life and comply with our contemporary racial sensibilities.  Despite a tenure that made him commander-in-chief during World War I and which fundamentally changed America’s role in the world, aggrieved students now demand safety from buildings and murals bearing Wilson’s name.
Princeton’s Black Justice League also wants a space on campus for “cultural affinity” groups and and a diversity and “cultural competency” training program.(Incidentally, China had a nationwide version of this beginning in 1966.)
Rather than having the trespassing students arrested and expelled, Eisgruber validated their tactics, signing an agreement that could lead to airbrushing Wilson, and which provided amnesty for the law-breaking students.
This is par for course in a year when college administrators have caved in to a loud minority of perpetually aggrieved students.  In the past month, kids at Yale made headlines for demanding administrators make them safe from potentially insensitive Halloween costumes and an email that dared suggest independent thought.  Instead of standing up for free expression and telling students to buck up, Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, gushed to protesters: “We failed you.  I think we have to be a better university. I think we have to do a better job.”
At the University of Missouri, students protested a lack of handholding after alleged racial incidents.  Ultimately, the school’s president was forced out.  In each of these cases, administrators indulged out-of-line students who should have been rebuked.
Administrators aren’t just kowtowing to fringe students in assaulting free speech and political rights, they’re also attacking economic freedom.  A case in point is the University of California at San Diego, which hosts a Marxist collective that can’t pay its bills.
The Che Cafe—named after communist Che Guevara--has graced its location on Scholars Drive at UCSD since 1980, when the self-styled “collective” began operating the music venue.  Its web site promises that, “Working in our co-op/workers’ collective, and learning to cooperate with others in a non-hierarchical setting can be a very valuable experience.”
Other helpful advice includes: “If you do not wish to be shoved by the mosh, do not stand in or next to the mosh.”  Words to live by.
But what about that mosh known as the real world, for which college is supposed to prepare students?  It can be tough out there, with things like laws and bills.  The Che has been brought to the brink of ruin not only by its pay-whatever’s-cool revenue model—a unique idea they oddly never taught us in business school—but also by a demand that it comply with health and fire regulations, including by installing costly sprinklers and alarms that do nothing at all for the radical-chic vibe.
The Che would very much like to keep bumming subsidies from UCSD—effectively seeking a bailout of about $700,000 from taxpayer funds and tuition.  In a moment of sanity, UCSD moved to evict the collective.  In true California style, the matter is now tied up in court.
Don’t blame PC-crazed kids.  It was actually a student-run committee that voted to cut funding for the Che. One of many reasons was a survey that revealed 83% of UCSD students never go to the place.
Nonetheless, even before a ruling from the court, UCSD has indicated it will back down.  In so doing, administrators would join the morally challenged presidents of Yale and Princeton.
At all of these colleges, PC thugs represent just a tiny minority; the vast majority of American students want to use college as a foundation for success and a good life, not a career of indulging grievances.  The real culprits are weak administrators who, rather than pander to the bottom 5% of future alumni, ought to stand up for the political and economic freedom that made America great—and which are crucial to critical reasoning and the attainment of knowledge.
No one expects students not to do stupid things on occasion, like hanging out at a collective or thinking they’re oppressed by a building named by someone who wasn’t culturally sensitive by standards a century after his death.  But it’s time for college administrators to start reflecting the values and judgment of parents and taxpayers who foot the bill for college—and for that matter the silent majority of students who want to learn to succeed in the great nation that pioneered political and economic freedom. 

FOX News Poll: Majorities say call it 'radical Islam,' oppose Syrian refugees

Most American voters believe Islamic terrorists will strike the U.S. soon.  A Fox News national poll released Sunday also finds Democrats and Republicans united against President Obama’s plan to accept Syrian refugees -- as most voters think at least one will be a terrorist who will launch a successful attack here. 
Here are five findings on the war against terrorism.  Voters feel:
-- The U.S. is at war with radical Islam, and Democrats who refuse to call the enemy by that name are doing the wrong thing.
-- Obama has not fought the war against ISIS aggressively enough, and that war is going badly.
-- Terrorism is now the top problem facing the country, and an attack is likely soon.
-- Bringing Syrian refugees into the U.S. is a bad idea, and a religious test would be shameful.
-- Closing Gitmo is wrong, and Obama should not side step Congress to do so.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE POLL RESULTS
Here are the details behind those findings:
Today 66 percent consider the country “at war” with radical Islam, up from 56 percent in January.
The poll asks about Democratic presidential candidates rejecting terms like radical Islam and Islamic terrorists to describe those who committed the Paris attacks. Fifty-six percent think they are doing the wrong thing by refusing to identify clearly the nature of the threat. Thirty-three percent feel Democrats are doing the right thing by being careful not to blame Muslim ideology.
More than 6 in 10 say the U.S. fight against ISIS is going badly (63 percent).  At the same time, voters continue to oppose sending a “significant” number of U.S. ground troops to fight the extremists (42 percent favor vs. 51 percent oppose).  However, opposition is decreasing; it was 37 percent in favor vs. 57 percent opposed in June.
While 26 percent think the actions of the Obama administration have been “about right” in trying to stop ISIS, most -- 65 percent -- say Obama hasn’t been aggressive enough. That includes 39 percent of Democrats, 61 percent of independents and 91 percent of Republicans.
The current situation has pushed the president’s job rating to a low point for the year. Forty percent of voters approve of the job Obama is doing, while 54 percent disapprove. It was 45-50 percent earlier this month. Some of the decline comes from Democrats: 78 percent approve now, down from 84 percent (Nov. 1-3, 2015).  Overall, Obama’s worst rating was 38 approve vs. 56 disapprove in September 2014.
In the wake of the Paris attacks, terrorism now tops the economy as the most important issue facing the country.  Twenty-four percent of voters say terrorism, up from 11 percent in August.  Currently 21 percent say the economy is the top issue, down from 30 percent this summer.  There’s a substantial gap before foreign policy (7 percent), health care (7 percent), immigration (7 percent) and the deficit (5 percent) are mentioned.  Only three percent say climate change is the priority.
Fifty-six percent think it is “very” likely Islamic terrorists will try to attack the United States soon, up from 50 percent who felt that way in January.
Two-thirds of voters -- and nearly half of Democrats -- oppose the administration’s plan for the U.S. to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year, and 77 percent think it’s likely at least one of those coming in through this process will be a terrorist who will “succeed in carrying out an attack on U.S. soil.”
Obama says it’s shameful to have a religious test for bringing Syrian refugees into the country -- and 64 percent agree with him. Fewer than one in four says it makes sense to only allow Syrian refugees who are Christian to come to the U.S. (23 percent).

Views by Party
Forty-nine percent of Democrats join majorities of independents (67 percent) and Republicans (86 percent) in opposing Obama’s plan to bring Syrian refugees into the U.S.
By an overwhelming 91-8 percent margin, Republicans think it’s likely a terrorist will sneak in as a refugee and carry out an attack.  Democrats agree that’s a likely scenario -- just by a smaller 62-35 percent margin.
Republicans (37 percent) are nearly four times as likely as Democrats (10 percent) to think a religious test for Syrian refugees makes sense.  Even so, a plurality of Republicans (49 percent) agrees with the large majority of Democrats (81 percent) who feel it’s a shameful idea.

Guantanamo Bay
Two days after the Paris attacks, the White House announced the transfer of five Guantanamo Bay detainees to the government of the United Arab Emirates.  That’s part of the Obama administration’s ongoing plan to close the facility -- a plan that by a two-to-one margin voters think is the wrong course of action (59-31 percent).
Even more voters, 73 percent, oppose Obama bypassing Congress to close the detention center by executive action. That’s widely seen as the only way he could close Gitmo given lawmakers’ opposition.
While a plurality of Democrats thinks closing Gitmo is the right thing to do (48 percent), a slim majority opposes Obama going around Congress to do it (53 percent).
Most say they would not be willing to have Gitmo detainees moved to a prison in their state (68 percent), however, nearly 3 in 10 say they would be (28 percent).
The Fox News poll is based on live telephone interviews (landline and cellphone) with 1,016 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from Nov. 16-19, 2015. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters.

California college newspaper creating 'safe space' for minority students

The “safe spaces” fad popular among many progressive college activists is occupying a new piece of real estate: The pages of a student government-funded newspaper.
The official newspaper of California’s Claremont McKenna College announced this month it would be setting aside some of its column inches to give “people of color” an unfiltered voice in the media.
“So for those who don’t feel all the messages of solidarity are enough, or who feel the mainstream media is misguided in representing people of color, or who feel compelled to speak and be heard, we would like to re-purpose its influence by providing a space in next week’s issue for students of color to voice their experiences,” a Nov. 13 editorial in The Student Life stated. “We will proofread, but we will not edit your voice or content.”

"They’re supposed to be neutral, non-partisan"
- Steven Glick

Junior Steven Glick, the publisher of Claremont McKenna’s Independent newspaper the Claremont Independent, told "Fox & Friends" on Sunday he didn’t feel the stance taken by The Student Life’s editorial board was appropriate.
“So with the school paper, they’re school funded, they’re connected to all the students, they’re designed to be a representative of the whole student body, they’re supposed to be neutral, non-partisan,” Glick said. “So for them to take a stand, side with one group on this issue, is not in the boundaries of what this paper should try to be accomplishing with their opinion section.”
On-campus protests related to perceived issues of race resulted in the Claremont McKenna dean stepping down on Nov. 12. The demonstrations, which included hunger strikes, were similar to ones seen around the country recently, most visibly at the University of Missouri, Yale and Ithaca College.
But Glick said student sentiment is far from one-sided and the protest issue has become contentious.
“It’s clearly a very divisive issue on campus; these protests that have been going on and the way they’ve been handled,” Glick said. “We had the dean of Claremont McKenna College forced to resign; we had the junior class president forced to resign as well. And it’s an issue that students have been very divided on. It’s something that, at a school of 1,200 students for Claremont McKenna College, a letter signed by 300 students in criticism of the protests was sent out. So clearly it’s something where the student body is very divided.”
The Student Life’s planned printable “safe space” is just one example of the trend in the Claremont College system.
The Independent posted a screen shot from the Facebook page of the Motley Coffeehouse at Scripps College purportedly advertising an event “only for people of color and allies that they invite.” The posting has seemingly since been deleted. The Independent also highlighted an event by 5C Students of Color Alliance at Pomona College that publicized a restricted meeting space. “As this is a space for students of color, please respect the space as such,” the Facebook post stated.

NJ mayor rips Trump over claim American Muslims celebrated 9/11 attacks

Jersey City Mayor Fulop, Democratic Party

The mayor of a New Jersey city slammed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump Sunday after the real estate mogul repeatedly claimed that he saw people cheering the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks across the Hudson River from where the Twin Towers fell.
Trump first told the story Saturday at a rally in Birmingham, Ala., as he pressed the need for greater surveillance, including monitoring certain mosques, in the wake of the Paris attacks.
"I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering," Trump said.
Trump repeated the claim Sunday in an interview on ABC's "This Week" after host George Stephanopoulos explained that police had refuted any such rumors at the time.
"It did happen. I saw it," said Trump. "It was on television. I saw it."
"There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down," he said.
"I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it," he added, "but there were people cheering as that building came down, as those buildings came down. And that tells you something."
A spokeswoman did not respond to a request for clarification Saturday about Trump's comments.
In a statement, Jersey City Mayor Fulop criticized Trump for his statements.
"Trump is plain wrong, and he is shamefully politicizing an emotionally charged issue," said Fulop. "No one in Jersey City cheered on September 11th. We were actually among the first to provide responders to help in lower Manhattan."
Footage of Muslims in Middle Eastern countries cheering news of the attacks were broadcast often on television, but there is no evidence in news archives of mass celebrations by Muslims in Jersey City, which sits right across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan, with clear views of the World Trade Center site.
While rumors have circulated on the internet for years that American Muslims celebrated the attacks in Paterson, New Jersey, police officials and religious leaders denied it at the time.
"Trump needs to understand that Jersey City will not be part of his hate campaign," said Fulop. "Clearly, Trump has memory issues or willfully distorts the truth, either of which should be concerning for the Republican Party."

Isis is really scared of Hillary Cartoon

To ISIS Women are Objects.

Hillary's terror task: Ramping up rhetoric without breaking with Obama

Hillary and Howard Kurtz,Fox News analyst.

Hillary Clinton gave her commander-in-chief speech yesterday.
With the Republican candidates uniformly slamming President Obama for an anemic response to ISIS, his former secretary of State decided to lay down her own plan. And while Clinton didn’t overtly criticize her former boss, she proposed a somewhat more aggressive approach—a reminder that she is a more hawkish Democrat than the incumbent.
Her situation is not unlike that of Hubert Humphrey, running as LBJ’s vice president in 1968 and having to gingerly discuss a Vietnam War that was not going well without openly breaking with the White House.

The Paris attacks have dramatically shifted the media's center of gravity in this campaign.
The main headline from Clinton’s appearance at New York’s Council on Foreign Relations, carried live on MSNBC, is that she doesn’t want to send U.S. ground troops to Syria—even if there is another attack on American soil. In that, she is in sync with Obama—and at odds with such Republicans as Jeb Bush, who this week explicitly called for using ground forces against ISIS.
Indeed, the RNC wasted little time in calling Clinton “the architect of the failed Obama foreign policy” who has “largely doubled down on the existing Obama strategy.”
The other headline was her criticism of the Republicans—without citing the party by name—on Syrian refugees. Again, Hillary’s stance put her in lockstep with Obama.
“Turning away orphans, applying a religious test, discriminating against Muslims, slamming the door on every single Syrian refugee--is just not who we are. We’re better than that,” she said.
But in calling for America to enforce a no-fly zone in Syria, Clinton is pushing a step that Obama is resisting. And by calling on Congress to quickly authorize the use of military force, she is challenging her former colleagues to do what they refused to do when the president asked for such authority in 2013.
In pure political terms, Clinton did not want to cede the stage to Donald Trump and other Republican candidates, who have been blitzing the airwaves with calls for more aggressive action against ISIS and halting the flow of Syrian refugees to this country.
Unlike every other presidential contender, Clinton ran the State Department for four years and dealt with terror issues—as is all too apparent from the failure in Benghazi. She made a point of threading her discursive speech with references to her Foggy Bottom tenure, such as building up “a unit of communications specialists fluent in Urdu, Arabic, Somali, and other languages to do battle with extremists online.” And: “We created the Global Counterterrorism Forum, which now brings together nearly 30 countries, many from the Muslim world.”
She was careful to observe diplomatic niceties, such as saying “the U.N. Security Council should update its terrorism sanctions.”
Clinton also dug in on the linguistic battle. “Islam itself is not our adversary,” she insisted. “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.” She declared that using the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” which most Repubicans favor, “is not just a distraction, it gives these criminals, these murderers, more standing than they deserve and it actually plays into their hands by alienating partners we need by our side.”
With the Paris massacre shining a media spotlight on fear and frustration, Clinton’s speech was not intended as a stirring call to arms. It was an effort to show she’s serious about terrorism—but sensitive to refugees—as those subjects dominate the campaign agenda.