What’s interesting in the news today?
Open Thread
1. This is the problem with these secretive deals, which most haven’t read (again). It’s the unknown details which come back to haunt you. Establishment Republicans probably like it because it provides them cover to do what they want to do anyway, which is to expand immigration.
From Breitbart “Discovered inside the huge tranche of secretive Obamatrade documents released by Wikileaks are key details on how technically any Republican voting for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) that would fast-track trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal would technically also be voting to massively expand President Obama’s executive authority when it comes to immigration matters.
The mainstream media covered the Wikileaks document dump extensively, but did not mention the immigration chapter contained within it, so Breitbart News took the documents to immigration experts to get their take on it. Nobody has figured how big a deal the documents uncovered by Wikileaks are until now. (See below)
The president’s Trade in Services Act (TiSA) documents, which is one of the three different close-to-completely-negotiated deals that would be fast-tracked making up the president’s trade agreement, show Obamatrade in fact unilaterally alters current U.S. immigration law. TiSA, like TPP or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) deals, are international trade agreements that President Obama is trying to force through to final approval. The way he can do so is by getting Congress to give him fast-track authority through TPA.
TiSA is even more secretive than TPP. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill can review the text of TPP in a secret, secured room inside the Capitol—and in some cases can bring staffers who have high enough security clearances—but with TiSA, no such draft text is available.
Voting for TPA, of course, would essentially ensure the final passage of each TPP, T-TIP, and TiSA by Congress, since in the history of fast-track any deal that’s ever started on fast-track has been approved. Roughly 10 pages of this TiSA agreement document leak are specifically about immigration.
“The existence of these ten pages on immigration in the Trade and Services Agreement make it absolutely clear in my mind that the administration is negotiating immigration – and for them to say they are not – they have a lot of explaining to do based on the actual text in this agreement,” Rosemary Jenks, the Director of Government Relations at Numbers USA, told Breitbart News following her review of these documents.”
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2. Anybody shocked?
From TheWallStJournal “Last September the Obama administration produced an FBI report that said mass shooting attacks and deaths were up sharply — by an average annual rate of about 16% between 2000 and 2013. Moreover, the problem was worsening. “The findings establish an increasing frequency of incidents,” said the authors. “During the first 7 years included in the study, an average of 6.4 incidents occurred annually. In the last 7 years of the study, that average increased to 16.4 incidents annually.”
The White House could not possibly have been more pleased with the media reaction to these findings, which were prominently featured by the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, the Washington Post and other major outlets. The FBI report landed six weeks before the midterm elections, and the administration was hoping that the gun-control issue would help drive Democratic turnout.
But late last week, J. Pete Blair and M. Hunter Martaindale, two academics at Texas State University who co-authored the FBI report, acknowledged that “our data is imperfect.” They said that the news media “got it wrong” last year when they “mistakenly reported mass shootings were on the rise.”
Mind you, the authors did not issue this mea culpa in the major news outlets that supposedly misreported the original findings. Instead, the authors published it in ACJS Today, an academic journal published by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. “Because official data did not contain the information we needed, we had to develop our own,” wrote Messrs. Blair and Martaindale. “This required choices between various options with various strengths and weaknesses.” You don’t say.
John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center—who has studied FBI crime data for three decades—told me in an interview that the FBI report is better understood as a political document than as a work of serious social science. For example, the authors chose the year 2000 as their starting point “even though anyone who has studied these trends knows that 2000 and 2001 were unusually quiet and had few mass shootings.” Data going back to the mid-1970s is readily available but was ignored. How come? Over the past 40 years, there has been no statistically significant increase in mass shootings in the U.S.”
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3. Again, is anyone shocked? Nope.
From TheWashingtonExaminer “State Department Inspector General officials edited out passages of a high-profile report in 2013 that could have embarrassed Hillary Clinton just days before she quit President Obama’s Cabinet.
The officials excised details of a cover up of misconduct by Clinton’s security team.
The edits raise concerns that investigators were subjected to “undue influence” from agency officials.
The Washington Examiner obtained earlier drafts of the report which differ markedly from the final version. References to specific cases in which high-level State officials intervened and descriptions of the extent and frequency of those interventions appear in several early drafts but were later eliminated.
The unexplained gaps in the final version, and the removal of passages that would have damaged the State Department, call into question the independence of Harold Geisel, who was State’s temporary inspector general throughout Clinton’s four years at the head of the department.
The drafts were provided to the Examiner by Richard Higbie, a senior criminal investigator at the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, after he said he disclosed the documents to several members of Congress and multiple congressional committees under federal whistleblower protections.
Higbie is presently suing the State Department for retaliation.”
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4. Hillary appears to have been providing favors for Clinton Foundation donors even back when she was a Senator.
From TheWashingtonTimes “Hillary Rodham Clinton’s efforts to provide favors to major donors to her husband’s global charity or her own political career stretch back far earlier than her tenure as America’s top diplomat, dating to the time she served as a U.S. senator and had the power to earmark federal funds and influence legislation, records show.
For instance, Mrs. Clinton introduced a bill when she was New York’s junior senator that allowed a donor to the Clinton Foundation to use tax-exempt bonds to build a shopping center in Syracuse, New York, public records show.
She also went to bat for Freddie Mac, working to defeat legislation that would have subjected the mortgage giant to tougher regulations before the housing bubble burst and led to a major recession. That same year, Freddie Mac donated $50,000 to $100,000 to her husband’s charity, originally called the William J. Clinton Foundation records show.”
“Mrs. Clinton also used her leverage as a senator to help persuade the Chinese government to reduce tariffs on Corning Inc.’s fiber optic products. The central New York company’s employees and executives contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to her campaigns and political action committee.
Analysts on political money have said the pattern of Mrs. Clinton’s intervention on behalf of donors to her husband’s charity raise troubling ethical questions.”
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5. Apparently his hometown of Chicago is where Obama learned to use fuzzy math. It’s one of the few courses required. 🙄
From HotAir “Have you heard the good news? (No.. not that Good News.) The high school graduation rate in Chicago has finally started going back up as of the last full year of available records. (2012-2013) It jumped up from 61% to 63%, which still isn’t really close to the national rate of 81%, but hey… at least it’s improving, right?
According to an investigation done by NPR (of all places) the news might not be quite as sunny and cheerful as the headlines would indicate. Graduating more students isn’t really a positive accomplishment if the graduates in question are making it out the door on a technicality and are not prepared for either college or a job. And in Chicago, that seems to be the case far too often.
First of all, the “percentage who graduate” isn’t accurate if you mislabel a lot of the dropouts.
Basically, we found that many high schools in the city were mislabeling students when they left. They were saying they were moving out of town or going to private schools when, in reality, they were enrolling at the district’s alternative schools or, in some cases, GED programs…
Well, it’s making it look better than it really is because mislabeling those students makes them disappear from the denominator.
But even the ones who stick around and graduate were frequently getting credit for work which was dubious to say the least. Many students achieved the required minimums through “credit recovery.” This process allowed students who failed required courses to “retake” the class at home and/or online with limited teacher supervision and far fewer questions to answer.
Plenty of cities are apparently using similar tactics to Chicago. Camden, New Jersey has an interesting optional program for kids who fail their finals. They get to try again with a substantially easier course.”
“In New Jersey, if you fail the first-round high school exit exam, there’s a second exam you can take — an easier one. It’s untimed, and it consists of just one single question per subject. In Camden, half the senior class failed not just the first test but the second one too…”
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Wandering Views 
And there are still people who think homeschooling can’t be as good as public schools. If public schools are the standard, we’re in trouble.
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I’m glad you posted #1, AJ. Paul Ryan was (sort of) close to being VP. Folks, toeing the Republican line is no longer a viable strategy. It never was; it’s part of the reason for how we got here. Ditch those worthless politicians and vote only for good candidates. The phrase “the perfect is the enemy of the good” (or whatever it is) doesn’t even remotely apply. The best of our standard Republican politicians are nowhere *near* perfect, good, so-so, or of no use. No, they are *ACTIVELY TERRIBLE.* Stop voting for them.
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You know what happens now, right? The left and media will have a fit.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/06/11/north-carolina-legislature-overrides-governors-religious-liberty-veto/
“Magistrates and clerks who object to same-sex marriage for religious reasons can keep their jobs in North Carolina.
The NC House voted this morning, 69-41, to override Gov. Pat McCrory’s veto of Senate Bill 2, which allows magistrates and clerks to recuse themselves from performing all marriages due to religious objections to same-sex marriage.
The vote came after the Senate passed a motion, 32-16, a week ago to override the governor’s objections. The bill allows magistrates and clerks to recuse themselves from performing any marriages (heterosexual or same-sex) for at least six months. Any couples showing up at the courthouse will still be able to get married as other magistrates or judges will take over the duty of performing the ceremonies.
The bill, however, has been labeled by some as “anti-gay” and a “right to discriminate bill.”
“We’re extremely disappointed that the legislators passed this bill, which is clearly discriminatory,” said Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrar of the Campaign for Southern Equality. “Today we saw the Legislature move forward with a transparent anti-gay agenda. . . . It is unconstitutional and won’t stand up in court.”
Better duck folks, here comes the hate.
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A Facebook friend was writing that he doesn’t think Republicans will ever win another presidential election. He points out that the main difference of late between Republicans & Democrats has been on social issues, & people are rapidly changing their support from the “family values” supposedly supported by Republicans to the more liberal “values” supported by Democrats.
I don’t know if he is right (that no Republican can win the presidential election) but it does give us pause to consider. Which direction do we go in now?
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“Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrar” LOL, but face-palm, also.
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That’s definitely something to ponder, Karen O. There have been and will continue to be so-called Christians who continue to urge assimilating the values of “the world” in order to remain relevant. That’s nothing new, of course. I know it’s my one trick pony, but I really believe part of what is the only effective “resistance” to that compromise is for us to quit voting for these Republican bozos. It’s not that I think that’s *the* most important thing for Christians to do, but it’s the *kind of* thing Christians should be doing–making a clear distinction between the people of God and the pagans surrounding us.
Sort of related note which may not mean much to anyone looking in, but the PCA (Presbyterian denomination) recently voted to make paedocommunion not-a-big-deal. That’s heretical. Expect worse from that denomination in the next few years.
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Seen on Facebook, from “Occupy Democrats”:
“The next Democratic president should nominate Barack Obama as their first Supreme Court pick. He’s a superb writer, a former constitutional law professor, and has the right temperament and values.”
Seriously? Is there another Barack Obama out there that fits that description?
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