Supreme Court set to rule on abortion clinic restrictions

The Supreme Court on Monday is poised to once again enter the fray on the abortion issue, an already divisive subject complicated by election-year politics and a split bench that may lack the votes to rule definitively.

The high court will wrap up its work for the summer by issuing a judgment on how far Texas can go to regulate abortion clinics in the state, and whether those provisions have the effect of limiting first-trimester abortions guaranteed by the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling. Texas reproductive clinics are asking the justices to keep their facilities open in the face of the state restriction.

Activists on both sides of the issue are expected to rally outside the court when the ruling is announced.

A 4-4 tie would sustain the lower court's ruling, meaning a default victory for Texas, and likely for similar laws in other nearby states, including Louisiana and Mississippi. But no legal precedent would be established, leaving continued uncertainty nationwide. The Supreme Court could later hear new arguments in the case, when a ninth justice has been sworn in to replace the late Antonin Scalia.

Tied rulings are becoming common for the post-Scalia court. The justices last week ruled 4-4 on a closely watched immigration case, dealing a setback to President Obama's executive action to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.

Scalia, who died in February, was perhaps the most outspoken of the current justices in regards to the abortion issue. A year ago, he, along with three other conservative members of the court, opposed issuing an order delaying enforcement of the Texas law while the case was being appealed.
The four liberal justices -- along with swing vote Justice Anthony Kennedy -- gave a temporary victory to the clinics in that case, allowing them to remain fully operational. It suggests there may now be five votes to ultimately strike down the Texas restrictions.
The oral arguments from March were especially tense, though. Kennedy asked tough questions of both sides and did not tip his hand on how he would ultimately vote.
If upheld, all clinics performing the abortion procedure in the state must operate as certified "ambulatory surgical centers" regulated under the same standards as hospitals. Another challenged provision would force doctors performing abortions to first obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.

Lawmakers in the state's Republican-majority legislature have said the regulations contained in the 2013 law -- known as H.B. 2 -- would improve patient care and safety.

Abortion rights groups counter that the law is designed to make it nearly impossible to operate an abortion clinic in Texas. Only nine or 10 such health centers would qualify to stay open, and large areas west and south of San Antonio would have no full-time abortion providers.

The Center for Reproductive Rights had sued Texas, on behalf of a coalition of abortion clinics.

A federal judge initially concluded the "ambulatory surgical centers" requirement was unconstitutional and imposed an injunction. But a federal appeal court ruled largely in favor of Texas. The clinics then asked the justices to finally decide the matter.

"There was a lot of talk at arguments about what impact this has on clinics," said Thomas Dupree, a former top Justice Department officials in the George W. Bush administration, now a private appellate attorney. "So it could be the court is working behind the scenes to fashion some sort of compromise resolution where they basically punt, at least for the time being on the constitutional issue, and send the case back for more evidence gathering" by the lower courts.

But some court watchers on the progressive side worry what a tie vote would mean in the short term.

"It will definitely be a dramatic example of the problems of having a mere eight-justice court," said Elizabeth Wydra, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center. "And if the court splits 4-4 they will leave in place a difference of opinion, in the circuits [courts] below. That means women would enjoy their fundamental rights differently based on the state in which they live and this is not how our Constitution works."

A Fox News poll from August revealed an even public split on the abortion issue, which has inevitably become enmeshed in presidential election-year politics.
Among registered voters, 47 percent surveyed favor abortion rights or consider themselves "pro-choice" while 46 percent oppose the procedure or are "pro-life."

The number of abortions is at the lowest level since the Roe v. Wade decision, according to research from the Guttmacher Institute. The number remained steady at about 1.1 million reported procedures in the year 2011, down about 25 percent since the all-time high in 1990. Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, about 53 million legal induced abortions were performed through 2011.
What the Supreme Court decides Monday could ripple across other states and in Washington. The court has not ruled substantively on the abortion issue since 1992, when the justices said any such law could not place an "undue burden" on women's access to abortions. The swing vote, as in previous cases, came from Kennedy. It appears inevitable his vote will again prove crucial in the Texas dispute.
This appeal could effectively be set aside as a political and legal issue in 2016 if the high court is unable to muster a binding majority. By next spring, a new president, and possibly a new member of the high court would then reset the abortion debate in a post-Scalia era.

Clinton says 'experienced leadership' needed to avoid troubles Britain faces

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Sunday spoke for the first time publicly about Britain’s vote to exit the European Union and took a jab at the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump in the process.
Without mentioning him by name, Clinton, speaking at the annual gathering of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Indianapolis, said “steady experienced leadership” is what the U.S. needs to avoid the kinds of troubles Britain now faces.
"We need leaders ... who understand how to work with other leaders to manage risks, who understand that bombastic comments in turbulent times can actually cause more turbulence and who put the interest of the American people ahead of their personal business interests," Clinton said.
Clinton called the vote for Britain to leave the 28-member bloc a sobering reminder that “what happens around the world has consequences that can hit home quickly.”
"Our priority now must be to protect American families and businesses from the negative effects of this kind of tumult and uncertainty," she added.
Clinton was piling onto Trump after her campaign accused Trump of caring more about how Britain’s decision to leave the EU would benefit his bottom line more than how it would affect the U.S. economy.

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Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said Trump’s reaction showed that he’s not a good fit to serve as president, despite acknowledging the parallels between the anti-establishment movement that sparked the Brexit vote and Trump’s rise.
"Hillary Clinton looks at this through the lens of how it's going to affect middle-class families, Donald Trump through the lens of how it will help his bottom line,” Mook said on “Fox News Sunday.”
The Clinton campaign also released a national television ad earlier Sunday that showed Trump speaking about the vote and how it could affect business at his golf course in Scotland.
"Every president is tested by world events, but Donald Trump thinks about how his golf resort can profit from them," the ad said.
Trump has widely backed the “Leave” movement and called the decision to depart the EU as an example of people “trying to take their country back.”
Striking back against the scathing advertisement, Trump said Clinton used poor judgment in backing the “Stay” campaign.”
"Clinton is trying to wash away her bad judgment call on BREXIT with big dollar ads," Trump said on Twitter.

Hillary Hacker Cartoon

Ann LePage, wife of nation's lowest-paid governor, takes waitressing job

Could you ever picture Hillary Clinton working as a waitress? 

The waitress bounded with a cup of chowder and a plate of fish and broccoli.
It was Ann LePage's first double shift at McSeagull's, a bustling restaurant touting double-wrapped bacon scallops and views of Boothbay Harbor.
The wife of Maine Republican Gov. Paul LePage had kept a low profile for the first few weeks of her summer job. But then her husband told a crowd at a recent town hall that his wife took a job to "supplement" his $70,000 salary, the lowest of any U.S. governor.
The LePages live with their dog, a Jack Russell terrier mix named Veto, in the Augusta governor's mansion and bought a $215,000 Boothbay home two years ago. The governor recently tried but failed to increase his successor's salary to $150,000, above the nearly $135,000 average for all 50 state governors in 2015.
Ann LePage said being a waitress is "something I've always, always wanted to do."
Her daughter Lauren made $28 an hour last summer at McSeagull's. LePage said she spent years taking care of her mother, who long suffered from scleroderma and passed away in October.
Now it's time to follow through on her interest, LePage said, adding: "I know she'd be proud of me."
Wearing a black McSeagull's T-shirt and sneakers with pink shoelaces, LePage greeted customers with an easy: "Hey, how are you?"
LePage, who's saving up for a Toyota RAV4, works three days a week, and is asking for more shifts.
"Because of who I am and who I'm married to, I want to work extra hard just so I can show them I can do the job," she said.
She doesn't tell customers, or co-workers, who she is unless they ask.
But when a reporter revealed her identity Thursday, the news just confirmed a customer's inklings.
"I knew, that's why I kept staring!" exclaimed Nina Stoddard, of Bridgton, a Republican.
She later wondered: "I mean, is she really here just making money?"
Her friend Laurie Green, of Casco, said she loved it.
"I really hate a lot of our politicians nowadays that have the wealth, the money," said Green, an unaffiliated voter. "They have no clue what the average person out in the world is doing."
Stoddard agreed and suggested LePage herself should run for office: "It's the best of Maine, the best of who we are. Two feet on the ground."

Top IT official: Disabling security for Clinton server laid out 'welcome mat' for hackers

A 2010 decision temporarily disabling State Department security features to accommodate Hillary Clinton’s private server effectively laid out a "welcome mat" for hackers and foreign intelligence services, a leading IT official who oversaw computer security at the Defense Intelligence Agency told Fox News.
"You're putting not just the Clinton server at risk but the entire Department of State emails at risk," said Bob Gourley, former chief technology officer (CTO) for the DIA. "When you turn off your defensive mechanisms and you're connected to the Internet, you're almost laying out the welcome mat for anyone to intrude and attack and steal your secrets."
He was referring to revelations from new court-released documents in a lawsuit by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch. They show the State Department temporarily turned off security features in 2010 so that emails from then-Secretary of State Clinton's personal server would stop going to the department's spam folders.
Gourley, who has more than two decades of cybersecurity experience and is now a partner with strategic consulting and engineering firm Cognitio, noted the Russians did breach the State Department system at some point – though it’s unclear when, and whether disabling the security functions in 2010 played a role.
He said, though, that when the Russian presence was detected in 2014, there were indications “they had been there for quite a while … [and] also hacked into unclassified systems in the White House.” He said the Russians would have tried “everything possible to get in.”
Gourley said: "A professionally run system is going to keep their defenses up all the time to at least make it hard on them.”

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The court-released emails show State Department IT staffers struggled to resolve the issue in December 2010, and it was considered an urgent matter. "This should trump all other activities," Ken LaVolpe, a senior technical officer, wrote on Dec. 17, 2010.
The disabled software was designed to block so-called phishing emails that could insert viruses into the system. Another senior State Department official, Thomas W. Lawrence, wrote that Clinton aide Huma Abedin was personally checking in for status reports on the progress.
The State Department inspector general's report released in May found Clinton's personal server used exclusively for official State Department business violated government rules. It also reported that in early January 2011 -- a month after the security feature shut-down -- an IT worker shut down the server because he believed "someone was trying to hack us." The individual, who was not identified by name in emails released by the IG, reported a second incident only hours later, writing, "We were attacked again so I shut (the server) down for a few min."
An email also from this time period documented Clinton's concern about getting a government email account. In November 2010, Clinton wrote to Abedin: "Let's get separate address or device but I don't want any risk of the personal being accessible.” Though Clinton said all her work-related emails were turned over, this document was provided not by Clinton but by Abedin.
While Clinton swore under oath last fall all records had been provided, campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement that Clinton did not have all the emails.
"We understand Secretary Clinton had some emails with Huma that Huma did not have, and Huma had some emails with Secretary Clinton that Secretary Clinton did not have," he said. He asserted the November 2010 email shows that “contrary to the allegations of some, Secretary Clinton was not seeking to avoid any use of government email. As indicated in this email, she was open to using a state.gov account but she simply wanted her personal emails to remain private, as anyone would want."
The FBI is investigating Clinton's emails practices. Agents are looking into whether classified information was taken outside secure government channels, and whether the server was compromised by a third party. Fox News first reported in January the FBI investigation had expanded to public corruption and whether the possible “intersection” of Clinton Foundation work and State Department business may have violated public corruption laws, according to three intelligence sources.
This week, the head of WikiLeaks Julian Assange told a British television network that he was in possession of Clinton emails that have not yet been released, indicating the system was compromised.
In an interview with British Television Network ITV, Assange said he has Clinton emails that are not public, and there is "enough evidence" for criminal charges, including regarding the Clinton Foundation, though he claimed she was too protected by the Obama administration for an indictment to go forward.
"There's very strong material, both in the emails and in relation to the Clinton Foundation," Assange said.
The Clinton campaign has dismissed claims the server was compromised by a third party, including those of Romanian hacker "Guccifer." Fox News was first to report his claims that he accessed the server with ease in March 2012. The Justice Department extradited the hacker to Northern Virginia where he recently agreed in a plea deal to cooperate in future investigations and testify before a grand jury.
An NSA whistleblower said the Assange claim should be taken seriously, given WikiLeaks’ track record of releasing authentic documents.
"It just says that she put all this material on a server that was insecure, that anyone in the world could access it and break in," said Bill Binney, a former National Security Agency specialist who spoke out against the agency's broad surveillance programs. Binney was investigated by the FBI, though there was no evidence he mishandled classified information.
Binney said there is a double-standard at play in the Clinton case, given more than 2,100 emails on her server containing classified information have been identified. He called her files “vulnerable [to] attack [from] all people in the world -- hackers, governments, everybody."

No ‘Texit’: Trump says Texas ‘will never’ secede, amid renewed calls

Trump: Texas would never secede from US if I were president

 

Donald Trump splashed cold water Saturday on renewed calls by U.S. secessionists for Texas to break away from America in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.
“Texas will never do that, because Texas loves me,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee told reporters, while touring his golf resorts in Scotland.
So-called Texas nationalists, who for years have waged a quixotic campaign to secede, swiftly seized on Thursday’s Brexit decision to demand a similar referendum, only on Texas “independence.” In the spirit of the vote, supporters like Texas Nationalist Movement leader Daniel Miller called for “Texit” -- a hashtag trending Friday on Twitter.
However, even as Britain’s vote to leave the E.U. raises the prospect of similar referendums across Europe, the push for Texas or any other state to break away from the U.S. stands little chance of succeeding. While Trump says the U.K. vote exposed an anger in the electorate that will rear its head elsewhere, he indicated he does not think that extends to any secession movement inside the United States – especially if he’s in the White House.
“Texas would never do that if I’m president,” Trump said, adding the same goes for Vermont when asked about a secessionist movement there.
Trump’s comments mark a rebuke from the candidate who has drawn explicit parallels between the anti-establishment sentiments that fueled the Brexit decision and those fueling his campaign on this side of the pond.

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The secessionists have long faced setbacks at every level of government.
The White House, in response to a petition, said three years ago that Texas simply cannot leave the union.
The state Republican Party took up this same issue at their convention just last month – and defeated a bid to get a Texas independence measure in the party platform.
The Texas Tribune, in an analysis Friday, also said that while Texas could potentially split into separate states it could not legally secede. The Tribune quoted the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who once wrote in a letter, “If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.”
Nevertheless, Miller issued a statement Friday urging Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to call a referendum.
“The win for Brexit opens the door for Texit by establishing, concretely, that it is possible to have an adult conversation on independence and letting the people have the final say,” he said.
After winning independence from Mexico in 1836, Texas was its own republic until 1845, when it joined the U.S. Secession advocates argue the second-most populous state in the country is burdened by the federal government and has a large-enough economy to survive on its own.

Clinton campaign offers chance to see 'Hamilton'-- at a cost

WASHINGTON –  Hillary Clinton supporters will get a chance to see the hit musical "Hamilton" if they're willing to pay prices that are breathtaking even by Broadway standards.
Tickets for a special matinee July 12 to benefit her campaign start at $2,700 each, while $10,000 will get a "premium seat" that includes a photo session with Clinton.
The campaign website says that for $100,000 people can get a deal that includes two premium seats, a "wrap party" with Clinton "and other special guests" plus other benefits.
The hip-hop-flavored biography about the first U.S. treasury secretary is the hardest ticket to get on Broadway, even at a record $849 for a premium ticket and even higher prices in a thriving black market.
"Hamilton" won 11 Tony Awards, including best musical.

Cuba Cartoons

Cuba denies visas for House lawmakers

Lessons from Cuba: Why people are seduced by socialism

Cuba is refusing to approve visa applications for members of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, according to the committee's chairman.
Members were hoping to leave on Friday afternoon to examine lagging security in the country's airports, which are set to begin making flights to the U.S. this year. The lawmakers were forced to cancel when their applications were denied that morning.
"We wanted to look at their airport security ... because TSA has been backchanneling to us that it's not adequate," said Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas. "So I attempted to go down there to just look at them, there were five of us, and they denied our visas."
Officials say Cuba is set to begin making 110 daily flights into the U.S. from 10 airports in the country this fall, but lack security measures that include scanners and bomb-sniffing dogs.

Clinton's State Dept. calendar missing scores of entries

An Associated Press review of the official calendar Hillary Clinton kept as secretary of state identified at least 75 meetings with longtime political donors, loyalists, Clinton Foundation contributors and corporate and other outside interests that were not recorded or were listed without the names of those she met.
The missing entries raise new questions about how Clinton and her inner circle handled government records documenting her State Department tenure -- in this case, why the official chronology of her four-year term does not closely mirror other more detailed records of her daily meetings.
At a time when Clinton's private email system is under scrutiny by an FBI criminal investigation, the calendar omissions reinforce concerns that she sought to eliminate the "risk of the personal being accessible" -- as she wrote in an email exchange that she failed to turn over to the Obama administration but was subsequently uncovered in a top aide's inbox.
The AP found the calendar omissions by comparing the 1,500-page historical record of Clinton's daily activities as secretary of state with separate planning schedules often supplied to Clinton by aides in advance of each day's events. The AP obtained the planning schedules as part of its federal lawsuit against the State Department. At least 114 outsiders who met with Clinton were not listed in her calendar, the AP's review found.
No known federal laws were violated and some omissions could be blamed on Clinton's highly fluid schedule, which sometimes forced cancellations at the last minute. But only seven meetings found in Clinton's planning schedules were replaced by substitute events listed on her calendar. More than 60 other events listed in Clinton's planners were omitted entirely in her calendar, tersely noted or described only as "private meetings" -- all without naming those who met with her.
Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said Thursday night that the multiple discrepancies between her State Department calendar and her planning schedules "simply reflect a more detailed version in one version as compared to another, all maintained by her staff."

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Merrill said that Clinton "has always made an effort to be transparent since entering public life, whether it be the release of over 30 years of tax returns, years of financial disclosure forms, or asking that 55,000 pages of work emails from her time as secretary of state be turned over to the public.

Hillary Clinton's Email Controversy | Graphiq

Clinton's State Department calendar omitted the identities of a dozen top Wall Street and business leaders who met with her during a private breakfast at the New York Stock Exchange in September 2009, minutes before she appeared in public at the exchange to ring the market's ceremonial opening bell.
State Department planning schedules from the same day listed the names of all Clinton's breakfast guests -- most of whose firms had lobbied the government and donated to her family's global charity, the Clinton Foundation. The event was closed to the press and merited only a brief mention in her calendar, which omitted all the names -- among them Blackstone Group Chairman Steven Schwarzman, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and then-New York Bank of Mellon CEO Robert Kelly.
The missing or heavily edited entries in Clinton's calendar also omitted private dinners with political donors, policy sessions with groups of corporate leaders and "drop-bys" with old Clinton campaign hands. Among those whose names were omitted from her calendar were longtime adviser Sidney Blumenthal, lobbyist and former Clinton White House chief of staff Thomas "Mack" McLarty and Clinton campaign bundler Haim Saban.
The AP first sought Clinton's calendar and schedules from the State Department in August 2013, but the agency would not acknowledge even that it had the material. After nearly two years of delay, the AP sued the State Department in March 2015. The department agreed in a court filing last August to turn over Clinton's calendar, and provided the documents in November. After noticing discrepancies between Clinton's calendar and some schedules, the AP pressed in court for all of Clinton's planning material. The U.S. has released about one-third of those planners to the AP, so far.
The State Department censored both sets of documents for national security and other reasons, but those changes were made after the documents were turned over to the State Department at the end of Clinton's tenure.
The documents obtained by the AP do not show who logged entries in Clinton's calendar or who edited material. Clinton's emails and other records show that she and two close aides, deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin and scheduling assistant Lona J. Valmoro, held weekly meetings and emailed almost every day about Clinton's plans. According to the recent inspector general's audit and a court declaration made last December by the State Department's acting executive secretary, Clinton's aides had access to her calendar through a government Microsoft Outlook account. Both Abedin and Valmoro were political appointees at the State Department and are now aides in her presidential campaign.
Unlike Clinton's planning schedules, which were sent to Clinton each morning, her calendar was edited after each event, AP's review showed. Some calendar entries were accompanied by Valmoro emails -- indicating she may have added those entries. Every meeting entry also included both the planned time of the event and the actual time -- showing that Clinton's calendar was being used to document each meeting after it ended.

With Clinton at helm, State Dept. got 'prestigious' award for record-keeping

What a Joke!

At the same time then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was storing emails on a personal server in violation of the rules, her department twice received a "prestigious" award for its record-keeping practices -- an honor that, in retrospect, has watchdogs scratching their heads.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) gave the so-called Archivist Award to the State Department in 2010 and again in September 2012, toward the end of Clinton's tenure.
During the 2012 ceremony, NARA Chief Records Officer Paul Wester described the honor, also bestowed upon the Treasury Department, as “prestigious.”
How did State merit such recognition?
According to NARA spokesman John Valceanu, the award was “specifically focused” on its work related to the management of inactive paper records stored in the State Department records center.
But at the time both awards were given, Clinton was skirting records rules with her email practices, according to a recent and highly critical inspector general report.

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“It is ironic, to say the least, that the National Archives and Records Administration presented awards to the State Department for their record-keeping practices while Secretary Clinton was violating the law by using a private email server,” said Alfred J. Lechner, Jr., president of Cause of Action Institute, a public interest law firm suing over department record-keeping.
At the beginning of Clinton's tenure, the department started using State Messaging and Archive Retrieval Toolset (SMART), a system that let employees preserve emails through their department accounts without having to print and file them the old-fashioned way for record-keeping purposes.
Clinton chose not to use it. While the Democratic presidential candidate claimed all along that her emails were being captured on the government accounts with which she corresponded, the IG report said that was not an “appropriate method of preserving any such emails that would constitute a Federal record.”
Further, the IG indicated Clinton potentially violated federal law when she left State without handing over her emails.
“At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act,” said the IG report.
The report also cited officials affirming that her private email set-up would not have been approved had she sought permission.
At the time, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said the report still showed “how consistent her email practices were with those of other Secretaries and senior officials,” while urging steps to improve record-keeping. Though no official had a known set-up quite like Clinton's, the IG report did cite former Secretary of State Colin Powell as well for not turning over records when he left.
Lechner, a former judge, has joined with conservative watchdog Judicial Watch to file a lawsuit against U.S. Archivist David S. Ferriero and Secretary of State John Kerry for the alleged failure to carry out statutory obligations to ensure records were preserved.
They filed a joint brief on Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia arguing that some email records from Clinton’s private server have yet to be recovered by the department in accordance with the Federal Records Act (FRA).
NARA’s Valceanu says they were in the dark about Clinton’s email practices at the time of the award.
“At that time, NARA was not aware of the use of non-governmental email accounts by Secretaries of State, which we only found out about in March 2015, when the New York Times article was published,” he said in a statement to FoxNews.com.
NARA was not completely unaware of potential record-keeping problems, however, according to an email released by the Archives’ chief counsel.
In a Dec. 11, 2012 email to colleagues, Wester asked for a meeting to talk about concerns that an effort was afoot to take her records to the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark.
“Tom heard (or thought he heard) from the Clinton Library Director that there are or may be plans for taking her records from State to Little Rock,” Wester wrote. “Tom then got to asking questions about what we are doing to make sure everyone leaving the Administration does not leave with Federal records. I told him we are aware of the issue and are working on it.”

Lawsuit seeks to unbind RNC delegates from backing Trump

A Virginia delegate to this summer's Republican National Convention filed a lawsuit Friday challenging a state law which commits him to backing presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.
Carroll B. Correll, who served as a campaign co-chair for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in Virginia's 10th congressional district, is seeking class action status for his suit on behalf of the commonwealth's 49 Republican delegates and 110 Democratic delegates.
At issue is a Virginia law that states "Delegates and alternates shall be bound to vote on the first ballot at the national convention for the candidate receiving the most votes in the primary unless that candidate releases those delegates and alternates from such vote."
Correll, who argues in his complaint that Trump is "unfit to serve" as President, claims the law violates his right to free speech. He's seeking an injunction that would exempt him from criminal penalties under Virginia law or possible retaliatory litigation by Trump for backing another candidate on the first ballot.
Trump won Virginia's primary in March, narowly defeating Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and scooping 17 delegates in the process.
Correll's attorneys, who filed the lawsuit in the Eastern District of Virginia, have asked for the case to be expedited in the hope of getting a ruling for the start of the convention in Cleveland July 18.

Clinton Email Cartoons

Clinton failed to hand over key email to State Department

WASHINGTON –  Former Secretary Hillary Clinton failed to turn over a copy of a key message involving problems caused by her use of a private homebrew email server, the State Department confirmed Thursday. The disclosure makes it unclear what other work-related emails may have been deleted by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
The email was included within messages exchanged Nov. 13, 2010, between Clinton and one of her closest aides, Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin. At the time, emails sent from Clinton's BlackBerry device and routed through her private clintonemail.com server in the basement of her New York home were being blocked by the State Department's spam filter. A suggested remedy was for Clinton to obtain a state.gov email account.
"Let's get separate address or device but I don't want any risk of the personal being accessible," Clinton responded to Abedin.
Clinton never used a government account that was set up for her, instead continuing to rely on her private server until leaving office.
The email was not among the tens of thousands of emails Clinton turned over to the agency in response to public records lawsuits seeking copies of her official correspondence. Abedin, who also used a private account on Clinton's server, provided a copy from her own inbox after the State Department asked her to return any work-related emails. That copy of the email was publicly cited last month in a blistering audit by the State Department's inspector general that concluded Clinton and her team ignored clear internal guidance that her email setup violated federal standards and could have left sensitive material vulnerable to hackers.
"While this exchange was not part of the approximately 55,000 pages provided to the State Department by former Secretary Clinton, the exchange was included within the set of documents Ms. Abedin provided the department in response to our March 2015 request," State Department spokesman John Kirby told The Associated Press on Thursday.

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Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said she provided "all potentially work-related emails" that were still in her possession when she received the 2014 request from the State Department.
"Secretary Clinton had some emails with Huma that Huma did not have, and Huma had some emails with Secretary Clinton that Secretary Clinton did not have," Fallon said.
Fallon declined to say whether Clinton deleted any work-related emails before they were reviewed by her legal team. Clinton's lead lawyer, David Kendall, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The November 2010 email was among documents released under court order Wednesday to the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch, which has sued the State Department over access to public records related to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's service as the nation's top diplomat between 2009 and 2013. The case is one of about three dozen lawsuits over access to records related to Clinton, including one filed by the AP.
Before turning over her emails to the department for review and potential public release, Clinton and her lawyers withheld thousands of additional emails she said were clearly personal, such as those involving what she described as "planning Chelsea's wedding or my mother's funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends as well as yoga routines, family vacations."
Clinton has never outlined in detail what criteria she and her lawyers used to determine which emails to release and which to delete, but her 2010 email with Abedin appears clearly work-related under the State Department's own criteria for agency records under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
Dozens of the emails sent or received by Clinton through her private server were later determined to contain classified material. The FBI has been investigating for months whether Clinton's use of the private email server imperiled government secrets. Agents recently interviewed several of Clinton's top aides, including Abedin.
As part of the probe, Clinton turned over the hard drive from her email server to the FBI. It had been wiped clean, and Clinton has said she did not keep copies of the emails she choose to withhold.
On Wednesday, lawyers from Judicial Watch, a conservative legal organization, questioned under oath Bryan Pagliano, the computer technician who set up Clinton's private server. A transcript released Thursday shows Pagliano repeatedly responded to detailed questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, as he did last year before a congressional committee.
Dozens of questions Pagiliano declined to answer included who paid for the system, whether there was technical help to support its users and who else at the State Department used email accounts on it. Pagliano also would not answer whether he discussed setting up a home server with Clinton prior to her tenure as secretary of state, according to the transcript.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said the November 2010 email cited in the inspector general audit was one of more than a dozen work-related emails that his group identified that Clinton sent or received but later failed to turn over the State Department.
"Contrary to her statement under oath suggesting otherwise, Mrs. Clinton did not return all her government emails to the State Department," Fitton said. "Our goal is to find out what other emails Mrs. Clinton and the State Department are hiding."

Ex-Clinton official got Boeing bucks while pushing Iran nuke pact – before $25B jet deal

A former top Clinton administration diplomat who used his political sway to garner support for the Iran nuclear deal apparently was being bankrolled the entire time by Boeing -- which is set to make billions off a jet deal with Tehran now that sanctions have been lifted.
Thomas Pickering, who also served as co-chairman of the board examining the Benghazi attack response, publicly pushed for the nuclear deal before its approval last year. He did so by penning op-eds, writing to high-level officials and even testifying before Congress.
With the deal in place, Boeing has since moved forward on a $25 billion deal with Iran Air made possible by the nuclear agreement.
While Pickering never denied being on Boeing’s payroll during the talks, he didn’t regularly disclose it either, according to a new report in The Daily Beast. And that’s the problem, transparency advocates say.
“In Pickering’s case, he has a direct connection to Boeing, which I think should be disclosed,” Neil Gordon, an investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, told The Daily Beast. “I think it’s necessary for the public debate. It’s necessary for the public to fully realize the participants’ financial interests. Some of them might have a direct financial stake in a particular outcome.”
Pickering was a former top State Department official in the Bill Clinton administration, and before that ambassador to Russia. He also served as ambassador to the United Nations, Israel and elsewhere in prior administrations.
When Pickering testified before the House Armed Services Committee on June 16, 2014, the biography provided to committee members touted his military and government services but did not list his business ties.
Pickering also sent a July 7, 2015 letter to lawmakers urging them to back the nuclear deal but reportedly did not make his association with Boeing known. The letter was cited by the media, lawmakers and the White House in the push to sell the nuclear deal to the public.
In op-eds for The Washington Post and Tablet, he also made the case for the deal but again did not disclose his ties.
He confirmed to The Daily Beast that he was a Boeing employee from 2001 to 2006 (which was more widely known) and later worked as a "direct consultant" from 2006 to 2015.
Earlier this month, Boeing reached a tentative agreement to sell passenger planes to Iran’s state-run carrier, Iran Air. The deal is the first major business venture after sanctions were eased against Tehran last year and is seen by many as a groundbreaking test for other American companies looking to profit from Iran’s untapped economy.
The deal is still in its early stage and will likely face scrutiny from U.S. trade regulators and lawmakers.
“It’s tragic to watch such an iconic American company make such a terribly short-sighted decision,” Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., told FoxNews.com in a statement. “If Boeing goes through with this deal, the company will forever be associated with Iran’s chief export: radical Islamic terrorism. The U.S. Congress will have much to say about this agreement in the coming days.”
Roskam and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, sent a letter to Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg last week raising concerns about Tehran’s history of using commercial planes to support "hostile actors."
“We strongly oppose the potential sale of military-fungible products to terrorism’s central supplier. American companies should not be complicit in weaponizing the Iranian Regime,” the lawmakers wrote.
Boeing wrote back saying it would follow the lead of the U.S. government with regards to working with Iran Air and that “any and all contracts with them will be contingent upon continued approval.”
“And as we have stated repeatedly, should the U.S. Government reinstate sanctions against the sale of commercial passenger airplanes to Iranian airlines, we will cease all sales and delivery activities as required by U.S. law,” Tim Keating, Boeing senior vice president, wrote.
Five years ago, the Obama administration slapped sanctions on Iran Air, claiming the company used passenger and cargo planes to transport rockets and missiles to places such as Syria, sometimes disguised as medicine or spare parts. In other cases, members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps took control of flights carrying sensitive cargo.
Although U.S. officials never said such conduct ended, the administration used a technicality to drop those sanctions as part of last year's seven-nation nuclear deal. The agreement also allowed the Treasury Department to license American firms to do business in Iran's civilian aviation sector. The changes enable Boeing to sell up to 100 aircraft to Iran Air, by far the most lucrative business transaction between the U.S. and Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and U.S. Embassy hostage crisis.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said the sale and any possible future deals depend on Iran's good behavior.
The U.S. could revoke the license for the deal if planes, parts or services are "used for purposes other than exclusively civil aviation end-use" or if aircraft are transferred to individuals or companies on a U.S. terrorism blacklist, Kirby said.
Any suggestion "that we would or will turn a blind eye to Iran's state sponsorship of terrorism or their terrorist-supporting activities is completely without merit," Kirby said.
The details of the arrangement between Boeing and Iran Air aren't entirely clear. Iran's Transportation Minister Abbas Akhoundi said it could match the $25 billion package between the Islamic Republic and Boeing's European rival, Airbus. Iran Air has stated its interest in purchasing new Boeing 737s -- single aisle jets that typically fly up to five hours. It also wants 777s -- larger planes that can carry passengers for 12 hours or more.
But if Iran Air continues supporting Iranian military or Revolutionary Guard operations, it would put the Obama administration or any successor in a bind.
Revoking the license and suspending future plane transfers risks angering the Iranians, who've already complained about not receiving sufficient benefit for their nuclear concessions. It also could mean billions in lost revenue for a large American company with more than 130,000 employees in the United States.

Colorado considers replacing ObamaCare with state single-payer plan

Colorado could become the first state in the union to offer its citizens universal, single-payer health care if voters approve an amendment on November's ballot.
Supporters hope that if Amendment 69, known as ColoradoCare, passes, other states will follow.
"The way to get here is state by state," according to T.R. Reid, spokesman for ColoradoCare and author of "The Healing of America."
"That's how we got female suffrage, child labor laws, interracial marriage, marijuana. One state does it and the other states see that it works and it spreads."
Proponents believe Colorado is the perfect testing ground for this issue because its constitution is far easier to amend than most other states. They cite the passage in 2012 of an amendment legalizing recreational marijuana despite the opposition of nearly every elected official in the state.
"People trust us to take ideas and make them work," Reid said, "and we can make this work and then the whole country will finally provide health care for everybody."
The proposal would double the state's $25 billion budget, prompting opponents like former Democratic Governor Bill Ritter and Republican State Treasurer Walker Stapleton to charge that free health care for all will not really be free at all.
"This proposal would bankrupt the state of Colorado in short order," Walker said, adding that the 10 percent payroll tax that would be required to fund ColoradoCare would crush the state's healthy economy.
"It would quickly make Colorado the highest taxed state from an income tax standpoint in the entire country. Businesses would flee in droves," he added.
The treasurer also predicted ColoradoCare would chase away the best doctors while bringing in a flood of new people, adding, "if you think legalized weed brought a lot of people to Colorado, you should try out free health care."
Small business owner Nathan Wilkes disagreed. His family knows firsthand the shortcomings of the current health care system.
"We have the Affordable Care Act, which gave us some protection, but it really doesn't address the under-insured that remain," he said.
Walker's son Thomas, 12, was born with hemophilia, a disorder in which blood lacks the element that helps it clot after an injury. The medication needed to keep Thomas alive is astronomically expensive.
"Just this year alone...our claims are over $2 million so far,”Wilkes said. “And over the last 12 years, 10 different insurance plans across four carriers, and every single one of them tries to get rid of us and tries to deny claims."
He said universal health care is not about politics. "This is not a partisan issue. It's health care. Everybody can agree that it's good to have access to it when you need it and that's what we're trying to get."
Although opponents decline to address specific cases like that of the Walker family, they maintain that Amendment 69 is not the answer.
In a statement to Fox News, the Colorado Hospital Association said it  "...acknowledges that there may be problems and challenges with the current system." But the statement also said, "This proposal would threaten the sustainability of the state's health care system and potentially impede access to care."
States around the country will be watching closely to see whether Colorado voters once again decide to buck the establishment this November.

Cameron intends to resign after Britain votes to leave European Union

LONDON –  Britain voted to leave the European Union after a bitterly divisive referendum campaign, toppling the British government, sending global markets plunging Friday and shattering the stability of a project in continental unity designed half a century ago to prevent World War III.
The decision launches a yearslong process to renegotiate trade, business and political links between the United Kingdom and what will become a 27-nation bloc, an unprecedented divorce that could take decades to complete.
"The dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom," said Nigel Farage, leader of the U.K. Independence Party. "Let June 23 go down in our history as our independence day!"
Prime Minister David Cameron, who had led the campaign to keep Britain in the EU, said he would resign by October when his Conservative Party holds its annual conference. He said the next prime minister would decide when to invoke Article 50, which triggers a departure from European Union.
"I will do everything I can as prime minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months," he said, "but I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers the country to its next destination."
The electoral commission said 52 percent of voters opted to leave the EU. Turnout was high: 72 percent of the more than 46 million registered voters went to the polls. Polls ahead of the vote had shown a close race, but the momentum had increasingly appeared to be on the "remain" side over the last week.
The result shocked investors, and stock markets plummeted around the world, with key indexes dropping 10 percent in Germany and about 8 percent in Japan and Britain.
The pound dropped to its lowest level since 1985, plunging more than 10 percent from about $1.50 to as low as $1.35 on concerns that severing ties with the single market will hurt the U.K. economy and undermine London's position as a global financial center. The Bank of England pledged to take "all necessary steps" to keep Britain stable.
The U.K. would be the first major country to leave the EU, which was born from the ashes of World War II as European leaders sought to build links and avert future hostility. With no precedent, the impact on the single market of 500 million people — the world's largest economy — is unclear.
The president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, said the bloc will meet without Britain at a summit next week to assess its future, and Germany's Foreign Ministry said it will host a meeting Saturday of the top diplomats from the original six founding nations of the European Union. Tusk vowed not to let the vote derail the European project.
"What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," he said.
But already, far-right leaders in France and the Netherlands were calling for a similar anti-EU vote.
The referendum showed Britain to be a sharply divided nation: Strong pro-EU votes in the economic and cultural powerhouse of London and semi-autonomous Scotland were countered by sweeping anti-Establishment sentiment for an exit across the rest of England, from southern seaside towns to rust-belt former industrial powerhouses in the north.
"It's a vindication of 1,000 years of British democracy," commuter Jonathan Campbell James declared at the train station in Richmond, southwest London. "From Magna Carta all the way through to now we've had a slow evolution of democracy, and this vote has vindicated the maturity and depth of the democracy in our country."
Others expressed anger and frustration. Olivia Sangster-Bullers, 24, called the result "absolutely disgusting."
"Good luck to all of us, I say, especially those trying to build a future with our children," she said.
Cameron called the referendum largely to silence voices to his right, then staked his reputation on keeping Britain in the EU. Former London Mayor Boris Johnson, who is from the same party, was the most prominent supporter of the "leave" campaign and now becomes a leading contender to replace Cameron. The vote also dealt a blow to the main opposition Labour Party, which threw its weight behind the "remain" campaign.
"A lot of people's grievances are coming out and we have got to start listening to them," said deputy Labour Party leader John McDonnell.
Indeed, the vote constituted a rebellion against the political and economic establishment. Farage called it "a victory for ordinary people, against the big banks, big business and big politics."
After winning a majority in Parliament in the last election, Cameron negotiated a package of reforms that he said would protect Britain's sovereignty and prevent EU migrants from moving to the U.K. to claim generous public benefits.
Critics charged that those reforms were hollow, leaving Britain at the mercy of bureaucrats in Brussels and doing nothing to stem the tide of European immigrants who have come to the U.K. since the EU expanded eastward in 2004. The "leave" campaign accuses the immigrants of taxing Britain's housing market, public services and employment rolls.
Those concerns were magnified by the refugee crisis of the past year that saw more than 1 million people from the Middle East and Africa flood into the EU as the continent's leaders struggled to come up with a unified response.
Cameron's efforts to find a slogan to counter the "leave" campaign's emotive "take back control" settled on "Brits don't quit." But the appeal to a Churchillian bulldog spirit and stoicism proved too little, too late.
The result triggers a new series of negotiations that is expected to last two years or more as Britain and the EU search for a way to separate economies that have become intertwined since the U.K. joined the bloc on Jan. 1, 1973. Until those talks are completed, Britain will remain a member of the EU.
Exiting the EU involves taking the unprecedented step of invoking Article 50 of the EU's governing treaty. While Greenland left an earlier, more limited version of the bloc in 1985, no country has ever invoked Article 50, so there is no roadmap for how the process will work.
Authorities ranging from the International Monetary Fund to the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have warned that a British exit will reverberate through a world economy that is only slowly recovering from the global economic crisis.
"It will usher in a lengthy and possibly protracted period of acute economic uncertainty about the U.K.'s trading arrangements," said Daniel Vernazza, the U.K. economist at UniCredit.
The European Union is the world's biggest economy and the U.K.'s most important trading partner, accounting for 45 percent of exports and 53 percent of imports.
In addition, the complex nature of Britain's integration with the EU means that breaking up will be hard to do. The negotiations will go far beyond tariffs, including issues such as cross-border security, foreign policy cooperation and a common fisheries policy.
Among the biggest challenges for Britain is protecting the ability of professionals such as investment managers, accountants and lawyers to work in the EU.
As long as the U.K. is a member of the bloc, firms registered in Britain can operate in any other member state without facing another layer of regulation. It's the same principle that allows exporters to ship their goods to any EU country free of tariffs.
Now that right is up for negotiation, threatening the City, as London's financial heart is known, and its position as Europe's pre-eminent financial center.
Many international banks and brokerages have long used Britain as the entry point to the EU because of its trusted legal system and institutions that operate in English, the language of international finance. Britain's financial services industry is also surrounded by an ecosystem of expertise — lawyers, accountants and consultants— that support it.
Some 60 percent of all non-EU firms have their European headquarters in the U.K., according to TheCityUK, which lobbies on behalf of the financial industry. The U.K. hosts more headquarters of non-EU firms than Germany, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands put together.
"We believe this outcome has serious implications for the City and many of our clients' businesses with exposure to the U.K. and the EU," said Malcolm Sweeting, senior partner of the law firm, Clifford Chance. "We are working alongside our clients to help them as they anticipate, plan for and manage the challenges the coming political and trade negotiations will bring."
JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said earlier this month that a vote to leave would force his bank to move jobs to mainland Europe to ensure that it could continue to service clients in the EU. Other global businesses with customers in the rest of the EU will be in a similar situation.
The only question that remains is whether the dire economic predictions economists made during the campaign will come to pass.
"Uncertainty is bad for business," Vernazza said. "A sharp fall in U.K. risky asset prices, delays to investment, disruption to trade, and a loss of business and consumer confidence mean the U.K. economy is more likely than not to enter a technical recession within two years."