News/Politics

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News/Politics 9-11-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The President has announced his plan t deal with ISIS. While I disagree with much that he said, and I don’t see the reason you would announce your intent to ISIS and the world, they are a problem that needs addressing. I’ll leave the criticism for the anti-war left, who I’m sure are rallying protestors as we speak. 🙄

OK, not really. We know they only do that for Republican Presidents. But getting some backing from Congress first would be nice, but it’s obvious from his speech that Obama doesn’t feel the need for their approval.

From TheHill  “President Obama vowed to “destroy” Islamic State in Iraq and Syria terrorists in a prime-time address Wednesday that sought to restore eroding public confidence in his leadership and ability to safeguard national security.

The president announced a “systematic campaign of airstrikes” against fighters with the ISIS “wherever they exist,” signaling U.S. targets will expand from Iraq to Syria.”

“The speech marked a dramatic shift for a president largely elected on the promise to end the Iraq War. Obama has sought to use his second term to end American engagement in Afghanistan, the longest-running war in U.S. history.

Speaking on the eve of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that ushered in those conflicts, Obama took pains to say he would not commit U.S. ground troops to the new fight. He compared the new engagement against ISIS to fights in Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. has used drones and government partners to attack suspected terrorists.

“I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Obama said. “It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.”

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2. His overall foreign policy is taking some friendly fire.

From HotAir  “Via Ace, something to keep in mind tonight while The One is doing his johnny-on-the-spot shtick about fighting jihadism in Iraq. “Lie” is my word, not Tim Arango’s, but read his comment and tell me what’s more likely. That the vast American intelligence community was “ignorant” of how bad things were in a country where we’d spent eight years developing assets? Or that the White House had every reason to know how dangerous Iraq was becoming but chose to suppress that information because the truth was problematic?”

“Is “ignorant” really the best word to describe willful blindness to a politically inconvenient truth? Obama got elected promising to bring the troops home; the only way he could do that without major domestic headaches was to claim that Iraq didn’t need them anymore. So he did, the truth notwithstanding. Imagine how many low-information voters will watch tonight’s speech and wonder where this bolt-from-the-blue known as ISIS came from. Last they heard, Iraq was doing just fine.

You guys know better, though. I’ve linked it more than once before but it’s worth re-reading Peter Beinart’s post from a few months ago about Obama’s history of malign neglect in Iraq. He had one Iraq goal as president — to get out, come what may, just as he promised voters he would do in 2008. And he did it, even though that meant denying Iraq a small but potent residual American force that could have held Maliki’s sectarian impulses in check (which in turn would have made Iraq’s Sunnis less inclined to turn to ISIS) and would have been well positioned to smash ISIS once it crossed the border from Syria. Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker has written about this at length. Quote:

“We used to restrain Maliki all the time,” Lieutenant General Michael Barbero, the deputy commander in Iraq until January, 2011, told me. “If Maliki was getting ready to send tanks to confront the Kurds, we would tell him and his officials, ‘We will physically block you from moving if you try to do that.’ ” Barbero was angry at the White House for not pushing harder for [a Status of Forces] agreement. “You just had this policy vacuum and this apathy,” he said. “Now we have no leverage in Iraq. Without any troops there, we’re just another group of guys.” There is no longer anyone who can serve as a referee, he said, adding, “Everything that has happened there was not just predictable—we predicted it.””

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3. The majority of the public agrees something must be done about ISIS, but they don’t exactly trust the feds ability to handle international affairs.

Also from HotAir  “Wow: Public’s trust in federal government to handle international problems now lower than during the Bush years”

“I may have buried the lede with that headline, actually. Turns out the public’s trust in the feds to handle domestic problems has also sunk below Bush levels. And not just Bush levels but Nixon levels. Per Gallup, during the Watergate months of 1974, 51 percent said they trust the feds to handle domestic problems and 73 percent said they trusted them to handle international ones.

In a week full of gruesome polls for Obama, I think this might be the most gruesome. In fact, at this point if the GOP doesn’t pick up at least 10 Senate seats this fall, they’ve arguably underperformed.”

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4. And something else to keep in mind…..

From CNSNews  “Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Ca.), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, warned Tuesday that destroying ISIS would only empower those fighting against the terrorist group – who are almost as evil as ISIS.

“If you destroy one power in the Middle East, you empower the other side, and the four groups that are fighting ISIS now are in many ways nearly as evil as ISIS itself, and in fact, those who are fighting against ISIS today on the ground have killed far more Americans than ISIS has,” said Sherman, top Democrat on the Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade Subcommittee.”

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5. Here comes the other shoe.

From TownHall  “Dan wrote up yesterday’s Washington Post/ABC News poll, which was jammed with crooked numbers for President Obama.  Most striking was the (30/55) majority deeming Obama’s presidency “a failure,” along with the prevailing opinion that he’s divided the country, and his unsightly leadership score.  The survey also included a dreadful (38/56) presidential approval rating on the implementation of Obamacare; support for the law itself was also underwater, with an outright majority opposed, despite this polling series’ silly question wording that omits any mention of ‘Obamacare’ or the ‘Affordable Care Act.’  A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll produces similar findings, with support for the president’s signature domestic accomplishment swamped by opposition. It’s been this way for years, across hundreds of national surveys.

One major reason for the enduring opposition is that the law has violated virtually every major promise erected in dishonest ideologues’ sales pitch.  Another is that an ongoing parade of unpleasant developments continues to make headlines, including the recent revelation that Healthcare.gov was hacked last month.  Apologists can cherry-pick useful data points to try to convince the public that Obamacare is reducing premium costs and driving down costs, but that’s simply not the case.  Individual market premiums exploded in 2014, and are expected to grow by roughly eight percent in 2015 (with many consumers confronting double-digit spikes) — to say nothing of high out-of-pocket costs and narrow coverage networks. Overall health spending continues an upward climb.  The law was billed as a dramatic premium reducer that would also bend down the so-called “cost curve.”  Healthcare industry expert Bob Laszewski is out with a must-read post on next steps for Obamacare.  He argues that the law may have been largely out of the news for the last few months, but a fresh round of cancellations and the coming open enrollment period are about to change all that:”

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News/Politics 9-10-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. President Obama met with a group of foreign policy experts on what to do about ISIS. He also invited Sandy Berger, I assume for his expert advice on how to get rid of incriminating documents. You know, like the ones showing the Obama admin aiding “moderate Syrian rebels,” some who fight with Al-Qaeda and some that have now merged with ISIS.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “President Obama hosted “a private dinner with a group of foreign policy experts,” the White House announced last night. Among them: Sandy Berger, who was caught stealing and destroying classified documents that related to President Clinton’s record on terrorism issues.”

“Here’s the White House’s announcement of the dinner:

Tonight the President and Vice President are having a private dinner with a group of foreign policy experts, including former Administration officials from Republican and Democratic Administrations, academics and think tank experts. The President looks forward to engaging with this group and hearing their views on a range of national security and foreign policy issues.”

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2. Moderates huh?

From TheDailyCaller  “A spokesman for the family of murdered journalist Steven Sotloff claimed Monday night that Sotloff was sold to the terrorist group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) by Syria’s “so-called moderate rebels.”

Sotloff family spokesman Barak Barfi, a foreign policy research fellow at the New American Foundation, made the startling claim in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.”

“Asked how he knows this, Barfi referred to sources he and the Sotloff family have “on the ground.”

Barfi then turned his ire toward the Obama administration for making “a number of inaccurate statements.”

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3. And about those other “foreign policy experts”…..

Also from TheDailyCaller  “MSNBC’S Andrea Mitchell claimed President Barack Obama’s new cabal of foreign policy advisers “looks like a review of our guest list” on the liberal cable news network, with the AP’s Julie Pace explaining that the White House is trying to bring the commentators “into the fold.”

Mitchell spoke Tuesday with Pace about Obama’s Monday night dinner with the DC foreign policy intelligentsia, presumably designed to help craft a strategy to contain an aggressive Russia and defeat ISIS in the Middle East.

But as the MSNBC host ticked off the guests — including former Clinton aide Sandy Berger, longtime Democratic adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman — she couldn’t help but notice a trend.

“It looks like a review of our guest list here at ‘Andrea Mitchell Reports,’” she said. “Julie, why did the president finally reach out and bring in all of these different voices on foreign policy?”

“It was a pretty unusual thing for the president to do,” Pace explained. “Not only does he not usually reach out to folks like this, he actually has criticized what he calls ‘the Washington chattering class,’ people who tend to comment from the outside.”

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4. Looks like Sandy Burglar may have some work to do disappearing some more incriminating documents.

From PJMedia  “Last week here at PJ Media, I reported on the ongoing relations between the U.S.-backed “vetted moderate” Free Syrian Army and ISIS. I also noted that, at this time last year, the received wisdom of the Washington, D.C. foreign policy establishment was that the Syrian rebels were largely moderate.

Now, a report in this past Sunday’s L.A. Times from the frontlines in Syria finds that another “vetted moderate” rebel group, Harakat Hazm – which has received anti-tank missiles from the U.S. — has been working with al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra: a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.”

“As Al-Akhbar reported back in May, in addition to having U.S. backing, Harakat Hazm is also backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey, and Qatar.”

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5. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before….

From FoxNews  “The company that runs the conservative Breitbart.com news site says the IRS has selected the network for an audit, in a move company executives suggest is politically motivated.

Breitbart News Network, a California-based company which runs several conservative websites, says the IRS recently audited its 2012 financial information.

“The Obama administration’s timing on this is exquisite, but try as they might through various methods to silence us, we will only get more emboldened,” Stephen K. Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News Network, said in a written statement.”

“The IRS asked for a litany of documents, including logs of its receipts and expenses, but also its partnership agreement and a “written narrative” of the business.”

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6. Hmmmm…..

From Cincinnati.com  “Medical officials admitted a record number of children to a local hospital over the weekend because of what they believe to be a rare respiratory virus spreading throughout the country.

Although there’s been no confirmed cases of the enterovirus at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, officials admitted 540 patients Friday, said Dr. Derek Wheeler, associate chief of staff at the hospital.

The previous record was around 515, Wheeler said.

Some reports out of Missouri and Colorado suggest the virus, with symptoms similar to the common cold, brought sicker patients to hospitals, Wheeler said.”

“This particular type of enterovirus — EV-D68 — is uncommon, but not new. It was first identified in the 1960s. “I suspect that it’s something that hasn’t been around for a while and so there’s a lot of people susceptible to it,” Wheeler said.

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7. But hey, it’s not all bad news today, at least if this guys correct. 🙂

From Politico  “Political analyst Stu Rothenberg sees a wave election coming for Senate Republicans in November.

In a Roll Call column published Monday, the electoral expert said he is expecting Republicans to gain at least seven seats in the Senate and earn a November victory more dramatic than several pollsters have suggested.

“I am now expecting a substantial Republican Senate wave in November, with a net gain of at least seven seats,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be shocked by a larger gain.””

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News/Politics 9-9-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

I’m a little under the weather, so just a few from me today.

1. Sadly, it’s Mission Accomplished for the Obama admin. The new wussified version of the US Army Drill Instructor is officially complete. They’re no longer fearsome, just fabulous. 🙄 

From StarsAndStripes  “In the old Army, this probably would be accompanied by a torrent of curses and oaths. Butts would be kicked. But this is the new Army and Brooks just shakes her head, sternly calls the group together and starts instructing the recruits on the right way to do the exercise.

“I don’t like to yell and scream a lot,” said Brooks, who has trained recruits for nine 10-week cycles over the past three years. “If you’re yelling and screaming all the time, when are you going to teach them? Patience is a virtue when you are trying to instill discipline.””

“Brooks doesn’t fit the image Hollywood usually assigns to Army drill sergeants or Marine drill instructors. They most often are portrayed as hulking, red-faced, profanity-spewing brutes, a terror to any recruit unfortunate enough to enter their universe.

Conversely, Brooks is 5-foot-41/2-inches tall, and proud of the half inch. She lives in Northeast Richland with her wife, Shakerian. And she spent five years as a vocalist with the U.S. Army Europe Band and Chorus.”

“”We don’t smoke people anymore,” said Brooks, meaning using excessive physical training — running or push-ups — to break or wash out a recruit. “But sometimes you have to give them a little extra TLC.”

🙄

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2. Just like the Boston bombers, they operate in plain sight with no fear of the authorities. You’d think after the bombers, the feds would keep an eye on them, but I guess that’s asking too much from this administration.

From TheNYPost  “When it was revealed that the Boston Marathon bombers attended a Cambridge, Mass., mosque, its leaders were quick to disavow their actions.

Elder brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s ideology was not their own, the leaders of the Islamic Society mosque claimed. In fact, he was admonished for an extremist outburst he made during one sermon.

So, one crackpot in a congregation. Who can blame the mosque?

But what about eight — including a prominent member of ISIS?

“Now it can be revealed that another regular worshipper at the Islamic Society mosque was Ahmad Abousamra, who is now the top propagandist for ISIS.”

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3. Sacrificing the 1st Amendment to rally the base. That’s low, even for Democrats.

From HotAir  “Democrats have a real problem with their base voters. Heading into a contentious midterm election season in which the party faces headwinds and the increasingly likely prospect of losing control of the Senate, this condition is forcing the “in-party” to act in a peculiar and erratic fashion.

President Barack Obama rendered the judgment of Solomon over the weekend when he decided to save vulnerable red state Democrats a headache and postponed the issuing of an executive order which would have extended legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. While a handful of embattled incumbent Democrats are breathing easier today, a number of progressive activists, liberal lawmakers, and immigration groups are hyperventilating.

This decision will only exacerbate the problems Democrats have mobilizing their traditionally unenthusiastic base voters to turn out in a midterm year. To satisfy the wounded liberal ego, Democrats in Congress are turning to another progressive bête noire in order to gin up some enthusiasm among their supporters: That pesky First Amendment to the Constitution.

Yes, the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights has been driving Democrats nuts ever since the Supreme Court ruled in 2010’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms, which would have prohibited the airing of a corporately-financed documentary critical of Hillary Clinton within 30 days of the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, were unconstitutional. The decision paved the way to allow corporations, unions, and other groups to spend unlimited sums on political speech and advocacy. To prohibit such activities would constitute a violation of the First Amendment.”

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News/Politics 9-8-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Let’s start today with a good news story.

From FoxSports  “Still learned back in June that his daughter, Leah, has stage-four pediatric cancer. Since the diagnosis, Still’s mind understandably hasn’t been completely on football as he missed parts of organized team activities and minicamp this offseason to be with his daughter, which is why he understood the team’s decision to cut him.

“I completely understand where the Bengals were coming from when they cut me because I couldn’t give football 100 percent,” Still told ABC News.

But when Still received the call this morning that he had been signed to the practice squad and would receive health insurance as well as a weekly salary of $6,300, he was incredibly grateful. Still also will remain in the game he loves, for the team that drafted him, without all of the traveling, meaning he can be closer to his daughter as she undergoes treatments.”

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2. Providing cover for vulnerable Dems is more like it.

From ABCNews  “President Barack Obama said Saturday that the surge of immigrant children entering the U.S. illegally changed the politics surrounding the issue of immigration and led him to put off a pledge to use executive action that could shield millions of people from deportation.

Immigration reform advocates criticized Obama after White House officials said that the president would not act at summer’s end as he promised in June but would take up the matter after the midterm elections in November. In an interview taped for NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Obama rejected the charge that the delay was meant to protect Democratic candidates worried that his actions would hurt their prospects in tough Senate races.

By Obama’s own calculations, politics did play a role in his decision. In his remarks to NBC, which were to be aired on Sunday, he said a partisan fight in July over how to address an influx of unaccompanied minors at the border had created the impression that there was an immigration crisis and thus a volatile climate for taking the measures he had promised to take.

“The truth of the matter is — is that the politics did shift midsummer because of that problem,” he said. “I want to spend some time, even as we’re getting all our ducks in a row for the executive action, I also want to make sure that the public understands why we’re doing this, why it’s the right thing for the American people, why it’s the right thing for the American economy.”

Good luck with that.

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3. They can’t even handle the ones already here.

From YahooNews  “The backlog of pending deportation cases in federal immigration court has risen to nearly 400,000 amid a crush of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children and families caught crossing the Mexican border illegally this year, according an analysis of court data released Friday.

 The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University said in its latest report that as of the end of July, 396,552 cases were pending in the Justice Department’s 59 immigration courts. TRAC collects and studies a variety of federal prosecution records.

The backlog has grown by more than 75,000 cases since the start of the budget year in October, according to TRAC.”

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4. Meet the President’s excuses.

From TheWashingtonPost  “In his Sunday interview President Obama was not asked some fundamental questions: Where does he get the authority to change laws unilaterally? He bragged about pulling troops out of Iraq and then denied it was his call–so which is it? Didn’t his failure to act in Syria allow the Islamic State to grow? When the next GOP president wants to unilaterally change the tax code, what is he going to say? Hasn’t he lost Ukraine? 

It is not that new “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd did not try to be aggressive, but opening with a sharp question, letting the president ramble and moving on to the next question is not going to pin the president down. The reason Tim Russert was so good was that he dove into particulars and then went back and back, challenging and debunking. He would not have let the president falsely say he was not referring to the Islamic State when he called them the “jayvee.” team. That excuse has already gotten four Pinocchios from my colleague Glenn Kessler. Todd was clearly an improvement over his predecessor, but he was, to be blunt, not all that effective.

Such is the state of left-leaning politicians and the MSM. The former feel they need not be constrained by facts or laws, and the latter are not sharp enough to pin them down. But on immigration, the president certainly has gone too far, and perhaps he has underestimated both the anger among Hispanic activists and those genuinely upset by a breakdown in constitutional order.”

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5. A PA. mom who gave her daughter abortion pills is going to prison.

From MSNNews  “A Pennsylvania woman has been sentenced to up to 18 months in prison for obtaining so-called abortion pills online and providing them to her teenage daughter to end her pregnancy.

Jennifer Ann Whalen, 39, of Washingtonville, a single mother who works as a nursing home aide, pleaded guilty in August to obtaining the miscarriage-inducing pills from an online site in Europe for her daughter, 16, who did not want to have the child.

Whalen was sentenced on Friday by Montour County Court of Common Pleas Judge Gary Norton to serve 12 months to 18 months in prison for violating a state law that requires abortions to be performed by physicians.

She was also fined $1,000 and ordered to perform 40 hours of community service after her release. The felony offense called for up to seven years in prison and a $15,000 fine.”

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News/Politics 9-5-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Well, there’s confusion in the White House, so of course there’s confusion among the troops.

From FoxNews  “America’s GI “boots on the ground” in Iraq are so frustrated with the White House message about their mission against the Islamic State — which Vice President Biden vowed Wednesday to chase “to the gates of Hell” — that they’re wondering how they’ll accomplish the goal “when we can’t even leave the front gate of our base.” 

Biden on Wednesday delivered what was probably the toughest statement to date from the administration, declaring, after another U.S. journalist was beheaded by the Islamic State, “we will follow them to the gates of Hell until they are brought to justice.” 

But his tough talk was at odds with a message delivered earlier in the day by President Obama, who said that while his administration’s goal is to “destroy” ISIS — it also is to “shrink” it to a “manageable problem.” 

Amid the mixed messages, a source in contact with special operators in Iraq told Fox News that “frustration and confusion reign” among Americans on the ground there.”

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2. Has the President checked out?

From RedState  “Many people suggest President Obama has checked out. He treats the ever growing threat of ISIS as an abstraction. Sources from within the administration are now more openly admitting that for almost a year intelligence and Pentagon officials have advised the President of the threat. He has chosen to do very little. Last Wednesday, he said we would “shrink” ISIS and make it “a manageable problem” as opposed to eliminate it.

A few weeks ago, I had dinner with a sitting governor and a dear friend of mine. The friend leaned over to the governor and me and said Barack Obama is to America as Clarence the Angel was to George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Barack Obama is showing the world what it would look like had America never been born. As this friend later wrote, “Unsurprisingly, Bedford Falls is now Pottersville, and it’s a terrible place. Unfortunately we do not get to revert to the tolerable if modest status quo at the end of the lesson: George Bailey will eventually have to shell the town and retake it street by street from Old Man Potter’s Spetsnaz.”

 Consider how far the world has collapsed in the past year. Again, my friend noted, since Labor Day weekend last year the Chinese expanded their air defense identification zone to incorporate the territory of other nations, the Russians annexed Crimea, ISIS rose, the Russians invaded Ukraine, Mosul fell, the Hungarian liberal democracy collapsed into Russian aligned authoritarianism, a Central American refugee crisis spawned a border and humanitarian crisis in the United States, the Egyptians and Emiratis attacked Libya without telling the United States, Iraqi Christians and the Yazidi are suffering genocide at the hands of ISIS, NATO is scrambling to shore up its eastern-frontier defenses, mainstream anti-Semitism is re-emerging, the Americans are on the verge of yet another war in Iraq, middle America is seeing race riots, etc., etc.

Seventy-five years ago this past Monday, German tanks rolled across the Polish border setting off World War II. Sixty-nine years ago this past Tuesday, World War II ended as the Japanese formally surrendered. In the nearly seven decades since, the West has established a world wide peace. Though not flawless, we have lived a relatively stable and secure existence. In just the past year, Barack Obama has largely undone seven decades of gains toward peace.”

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3. Someone should have told these two that you only get away with this type of influence peddling if you’re in the White House or Congress.

From MSNNews  “Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife were convicted Thursday of using his office to promote a dietary supplement in exchange for gifts in a public corruption case that derailed the career of a onetime rising Republican star.

A federal jury in Richmond convicted Bob McDonnell of 11 of the 13 counts he faced; Maureen McDonnell was convicted of nine of the 13 counts she had faced. Sentencing was scheduled for Jan. 6. Both bowed their heads and wept as a chorus of “guilty” kept coming from the court clerk.

The couple left the courtroom separately and remained apart. Bob McDonnell left first and walked into a witness waiting room; Maureen McDonnell came out later, hugging one of her daughters while weeping loudly. She went into a separate waiting room.

The couple was charged with doing favors for a wealthy vitamin executive in exchange for more than $165,000 in gifts and loans. They also were charged with submitting fraudulent bank loan applications, and Maureen McDonnell was charged with one count of obstruction.”

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4. Democrats are pushing an amendment to limit the free speech rights of pro-life groups. Time to earn that blood money the abortion industry dumps in their coffers.

From LifeNews  “A leading pro-life group is sounding the alarm about a measure Senate Democrats are pushing that would place stringent limits on pro-life free speech when it comes to campaigns and elections.

The National Right to Life Committee today warned members of the U.S. Senate that it will “scorecard” the upcoming Senate roll call on a proposed constitutional amendment. The pro-life organization informs LifeNews that the amendment would allow Congress and each state legislature to restrict or prohibit virtually any type of communications to the public that might “influence elections.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has indicated that he will seek Senate action on the measure on September 8. Fifty Democratic senators have so far expressed support for the measure.

The letter, signed by National Right to Life President Carol Tobias, Executive Director David N. O’Steen, and Legislative Director Douglas Johnson, referred to the proposal as “a radical assault on the Bill of Rights.” It underscores how the amendment could allow states to prohibit pro-life groups from issuing scorecards letting pro-life voters know how their elected officials in Congress voted on key pro-life issues.”

If this fails they can always turn the IRS lose on ’em like they did with other conservative groups.

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News/Politics 9-4-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. First up today, an update to a story from last week.

From National Review  “An independent investigation released last week says: “It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered. They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten, and intimidated.”

In other words, the local government tolerated sexual violence on a vast scale. Why? In part, because the criminals who committed these sickening acts were Muslims from the local Pakistani community, and noticing their depravity was considered insensitive at best, racist at worst.

The British home secretary says “institutionalized political correctness” contributed to the abandonment of hundreds of girls to their tormentors. Imagine something out of the nightmarish world of Stieg Larsson, brought to life and abetted by the muddle-headed cowardice of people who fear the disapproval of the diversity police.

In Rotherham, multiculturalism triumphed over not just feminism, but over the law, over basic human decency, and over civilization itself.”

And over at Patheos the Anchoress raises some good questions.

From Patheos  “For days I avoided the story, as I know many others have. Coming on the heels of the atrocities of the Islamic State, the take-over of Mosul (now a holding camp for kidnapped Yazidi “brides”) the purging of the Iraqi Christians from their ancient lands and the pursuit of genocide — the disheartening knowledge that, despite the official pivot away by our government, there are still thousands on Mount Sinjar who will not be rescued, because they are very old, or very young, or very weak — who could take any more? Who could read about 15 years of rape and abuse, happening while authorities feared breaking the rules of political correctness by questioning cultural practices?

Download the report and read it. Note that over 100 babies have been born of all this. Note also how, again and again, the official response to this behavior seemed to be a puzzled shrug.

What Rotherham puts me in mind of is the behavior of the conqueror. One of the terrible after-effects of invasion and war has been the subjugation of the women, the rape of wives and daughters, the seed of the conqueror, inserted into a culture and a society — yet another tactic meant to subdue and eradicate.

And yet, there has been no old-fashioned “invasion” and no “war” in the southern part of Yorkshire. This conquering was invited, and it was invited throughout Europe, where Rotherham will be discovered to have been replicated. Why wouldn’t it be? Who in Europe would dare to prosecute?”

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2. Meanwhile, in liberal LaLa Land, DWS whines about an imaginary war on women, while ignoring real ones like the story above.

From TheJournalSentinel  “Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz ripped into Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s record Wednesday during a round-table discussion on women’s issues at the Milwaukee Athletic Club.

The Florida congresswoman said: “Scott Walker has given women the back of his hand. I know that is stark. I know that is direct. But that is reality.”

Wasserman Schultz added: “What Republican tea party extremists like Scott Walker are doing is they are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back. It is not going to happen on our watch.”

Republican Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch said she was “shocked” that Wasserman Schultz used domestic violence language to discuss political disagreements.

“I think the remarks were absolutely hideous and the motive behind them was despicable,” Kleefisch said.”

And a perfect example of Debbie’s character.

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3. A federal judge has upheld Louisiana’s marriage law.

From ArkLaTex  “A federal court in New Orleans issued a landmark decision on Wednesday upholding Louisiana’s constitutional right to maintain its traditional definition of marriage.  Judge Martin L.C. Feldman ruled in Robicheaux, et al v. Caldwell, et al, that “[t]he State of Louisiana has a legitimate interest under a rational basis standard of review for addressing the meaning of marriage through the democratic process.” The opinion upholds Louisiana’s Defense of Marriage Constitutional Amendment (Art. XII, Sec. 15), which was adopted by a statewide vote of 78% in 2004. 

 Wednesday’s decision from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana is significant as it is the first federal court victory for traditional marriage in more than a year.  Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act last June in Windsor v. U.S., at least 40 consecutive lower courts have issued rulings that same-sex marriage must be imposed on the various states. 

 Attorneys representing Louisiana in Robicheaux applauded the ruling, and vowed to continue the state’s vigorous defense if the case is appealed.  “The decision today is precisely correct,” said Mike Johnson, a Shreveport attorney hired by the state to help defend its law.  “The Court has merely affirmed that it is the people of each state who have the authority to define and regulate marriage within their borders—rather than a handful of unelected federal judges.  We believe the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately uphold this important principle.””

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4. The Ebola outbreak in Africa continues to worsen.

From AtlantaCBSLocal  “The director for the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention says that the Ebola outbreak is going to get worse.

Speaking to “CBS This Morning” following his trip to the West African countries dealing with the outbreak, Dr. Tom Frieden explained that they have to act now to try to get Ebola under control.

“It is the world’s first Ebola epidemic and it is spiraling out of control. It’s bad now and it’s going to get worse in the very near future,” Frieden told CBS News. “There is still a window of opportunity to tamp it down, but that window is closing. We really have to act now.”

Frieden, who visited Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, will tell Washington tomorrow that the Ebola outbreak is “spiraling upward.” The CDC director explained that these countries still need help to deal with the deadly outbreak.”

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5. The surge in school taxes will be coming as well.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America who have recently crossed into the United States will cost state and local governments a staggering $761 million dollars this year, a group that favors immigration reduction has calculated.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which is pushing for reduced legal immigration and stronger border security, made its calculation based on federal government data indicating that more than 37,000 children who are part of the recent border surge have now been placed with families across the United States and are eligible to attend public schools.

The immigrants will cost local schools far more than other students, FAIR contests, not only because they speak little English but because most have likely had little schooling.”

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by

News/Politics 9-3-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Oh boy.

From TheFreeBeacon  “Islamist militias in Libya took control of nearly a dozen commercial jetliners last month, and western intelligence agencies recently issued a warning that the jets could be used in terrorist attacks across North Africa.

Intelligence reports of the stolen jetliners were distributed within the U.S. government over the past two weeks and included a warning that one or more of the aircraft could be used in an attack later this month on the date marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, said U.S. officials familiar with the reports.”

“Meanwhile, officials said Egyptian military forces appear to be preparing to intervene in Libya to prevent the country from becoming a failed state run by terrorists, many with ties to al Qaeda.”

Might become? Already is.

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2. So what’s being done to ensure they don’t return to the US?

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3. Rationalizing the indefensible.

From Yahoo  “The White House is crafting a blame-it-on-Congress legal justification to back up President Barack Obama’s impending executive actions on immigration.

 Facing an expected onslaught of opposition, the administration plans to argue that Congress failed to provide enough resources to fully enforce U.S. laws, thereby ceding wide latitude to White House to prioritize deportations of the 11.5 million people who are in the country illegally, administration officials and legal experts said. But Republicans, too, are exploring their legal options for stopping Obama from what they’ve deemed egregious presidential overreaching.

A self-imposed, end-of-summer deadline to act on immigration is rapidly approaching. While Obama has yet to receive the formal recommendations he’s requested from Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, administration officials said the president is intimately familiar with the universe of options and won’t spend much time deliberating once Johnson delivers his recommendations.”

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4. It should be interesting to see how he justifies this to millions of unemployed citizens.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “The number of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States would surge more than five times the current wave of 90,000 if President Obama grants amnesty to up to 6 million undocumented people as many advocates expect, according to an immigration expert.

“It could hit nearly half a million people,” said Jessica M. Vaughan, director of policy studies with the Center for Immigration Studies. She said that the additional 500,000 would come in the first year following an amnesty plan.

Obama has hinted that he plans to wait until after the upcoming midterm elections before unveiling his executive order, an action that could move immigration out of the mix of big issues roiling House and Senate contests.

Vaughan said that illegal immigrants already believe that the United States has an open door policy since virtually all of the undocumented children from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are entering to welcoming officials. Some 37,000 illegals have been released into the country and only 280 deported so far this year.”

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5. How do voters feel about it?

From Reuters  “It has been a question heard repeatedly by lawmakers this month in “town hall” district meetings punctuated – and sometimes dominated – by concerns and angry outbursts over immigration policy and the crisis caused by a flood of child migrants at the southwestern border in recent months.”

Those summer town halls have provided lawmakers a first-hand glimpse of growing discontent among Americans over U.S. immigration policy. Seventy percent of Americans – including 86 percent of Republicans – believe undocumented immigrants threaten traditional U.S. beliefs and customs, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in mid-July.

Those fears have been exacerbated by the recent wave of illegal child migrants from Central America. An issue that had been simmering is now hotting up as voters prepare to go to the polls in congressional elections due in November.

The anger and frustration expressed in the town halls suggests there will be a fierce debate when U.S. lawmakers return to Washington on Sept. 8 and take up proposals to address a flood of child migrants crossing the southwestern U.S. border.”

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6. The DoJ is using the shakedown method to help fund their allies. Again. Jesse and Al must be so proud.

From JudicialWatch  “Judicial Watch first reported the scheme two years ago when Countrywide Financial Corporation doled out $335 million to settle its discrimination lawsuit with the feds. The money was supposed to be distributed to more than 200,000 minority victims who supposedly were charged higher interest rates and fees than white borrowers based on their race not their credit. Instead, a chunk of the money went to Democrat-tied groups not connected to the lawsuit, including the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the open-borders National Council of La Raza (NCLR).

Now many of the same groups will get more money from a record $16.65 billion settlement with Bank of America. It’s a “historic resolution,” according to Attorney General Eric Holder, and the money will help make amends to borrowers and communities that were negatively affected by the bank’s conduct. Besides settling civil penalties at the state and federal level, the billions will bring relief to struggling homeowners and communities by, among other things, offering new loans and providing financing for affordable rental housing. Delinquent borrowers in Democrat strongholds like Chicago, Oakland and Detroit will also benefit from debt forgiveness.

Leftover funds will go to politically-connected community groups—like the NCLR, Operation Hope and National Community Reinvestment Coalition—that intimidate banks into qualifying more minorities for home loans, even if they really can’t afford it. This part of the deal is conveniently buried in an annex to the 37-page DOJ agreement, but a publication dedicated to covering business, finance and economics draws attention to it in a scathing editorial that refers to the arrangement as extortion.

“In effect, the government has ordered the nation’s largest bank to create a massive slush fund for Democrat special interests,” states the editorial which reveals that radical Democrat activist groups stand to collect millions from Holder’s record deal with Bank of America. “The recession has dried up funding for such groups. But Holder’s massive bank shakedown could rebuild their war chests in a hurry.” The piece also points out that Holder has brokered other similar deals that will provide more back-door funding for the Democrat groups. They include a $13 billion agreement with JPMorgan Chase and a $7 billion deal with Citibank.”

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7. Your tax dollars hard at work getting to the bottom of the issues that matter to Americans.

Or not……..

Also From TheFreeBeacon  “The federal government is still seeking answers as to why the majority of lesbians are obese and U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill, which now totals $2.87 million.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) study is now in its fourth year, receiving an additional $670,567 for fiscal year 2014. The project seeks to determine why “nearly three-quarters of adult lesbians overweight or obese,” and why gay males are not.

In just two years the project’s budget has nearly doubled, growing from $1.5 million to nearly $3 million today, despite fears that sequestration could jeopardize the project and other NIH funding.”

“The sexual orientation and obesity study is slated to last until 2016. The latest grant comes receiving $682,873 last year, $778,622 in 2011, and $741,378 in 2012. The total for the project thus far is $2,873,440.”

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