National Pro-Life Groups Back Marco Rubio on Zika Abortion

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Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fl. (C, 77%) infuriated the Left when he said that pregnant mothers who have contracted the Zika virus should not be permitted to abort their children. But prominent pro-life organizations are siding with Rubio in defense of the innocent, disabled children.

The Zika virus has been linked to cases of microcephaly, a birth defect which leads to an underdeveloped brain. Microcephaly can lead to a host of developmental problems for children, including seizures, intellectual disability, problems with movement and balance, hearing or vision loss, difficulty swallowing, and speech impediments.

To slow the spread of Zika, many have called for what Conservative Review’s Nate Madden referred to as “Machiavellian, eugenic tactics”—namely, the abortion of infected children.

Sen. Rubio, who is running for re-election in his home state of Florida, told Politico, “a lot of people disagree with my view—but I believe that all human life is worthy of protection of our laws.”

“And when you present it in the context of Zika or any prenatal condition, it’s a difficult question and a hard one,” he said. “But if I’m going to err, I’m going to err on the side of life.”

In response to Rubio’s statement, you have headlines like “Anti-Choice Marco Rubio Thumbs Nose at Pregnant Women Amid Zika Scare,” and tweets like, well…

Rubio’s comments are completely in lock-step with the nation’s largest pro-life organizations though, as The Daily Beast reports.

“Senator Rubio is absolutely right,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, in a statement. “Zika should not be used as a springboard for a search-and-destroy mission against disabled babies.”

“Exactly right” were the words that Clarke Forsythe, acting president of Americans United for Life (AUL), used to describe Rubio’s position, adding: “We should value all human lives, refusing to devalue people based on prejudices against their mental or physical disabilities.”

American Life League (ALL) President Judie Brown told The Daily Beast, “We agree with Senator Rubio because regardless of the alleged condition confronting a preborn child, there is never a reason to kill that child.”

“Instead of killing human beings, born or unborn, because they have a disability, I would hope that this nation would extend mercy and compassion to them,” said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). “Kill the virus; kill the mosquito. Don’t kill the baby.”

The message from the pro-life movement to Sen. Rubio is clear: Stand strong and continue to defend the lives of the innocent. (For more from the author of “National Pro-Life Groups Back Marco Rubio on Zika Abortion” please click HERE)

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The IRS Just Admitted They Could Resume Targeting Conservatives

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As we all know, the Obama administration has made sure that no one at the IRS suffers any consequences for the political targeting of conservatives prior to the 2012 election. Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch have refused to prosecute any of the bureaucrats who were involved. They have declined to enforce the contempt citation against Lois Lerner for refusing to provide any information to Congress about her misbehavior and the inexcusable (and unlawful) abuse of the IRS’s power and authority for political purposes. But thanks to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, some of the organizations that were persecuted, like True the Vote and Linchpins of Liberty, may finally get their day in court.

On Friday, Judge David Sentelle, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit, reinstated a portion of the lawsuits filed against the IRS by these and other organizations. In 2014, a district court had dismissed both the plaintiffs’ claims for money damages against the IRS and some of its employees, as well as their request for an injunction and a declaratory judgment (what is known as equitable relief) to stop the IRS from ever doing this again.

The district court held that money damages could not be obtained against the IRS or its employees and that the claims for equitable relief were “moot” because the IRS had supposedly stopped its wrongful behavior. While the court of appeals agreed with the ruling on money damages because of past precedent, it reversed the ruling on equitable relief and sent the cases back to the district court for further proceedings.

For those who have blindly accepted the claims of the administration and their political supporters in Congress that nothing untoward happened with the IRS, this opinion should be a wake-up call. As the appeals court says, “there is very little factual dispute between the parties as to the conduct committed by the IRS.” Instead of routinely processing their applications as it was obligated to do “in the normal course of IRS business, as would have been the case with other taxpayers, the IRS selected out these applicants for more rigorous review on the basis of their names, which were in each instance indicative of a conservative or anti-Administration orientation.”

The appeals court pointed out that the IRS had taken no action in this litigation “to disavow or discredit the report of investigation by its parent department.” This refers to the now well-known report of May 14, 2013, of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (IG) that exposed the “Inappropriate Criteria” being used by the IRS to target conservatives. That criteria included looking for any organizations with “Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 in the organization’s name” and then adding them to a “Be-On-The-Lookout” or BOLO list for special scrutiny.

That IG audit report, according to the court, recognized “that the IRS’s handling of exemption applications from persons of disfavored viewpoints utterly failed” to fulfil the mission of the IRS, which is to apply “the tax law with integrity and fairness to all.” The audit report is “replete with details of discriminatory processing and delay.”

As the court warned the IRS, the First Amendment bans the government from restricting “expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or it content.” In administering the tax code, “the IRS may not discriminate on the basis of viewpoint.” Processing “exemption applications pursuant to different standards and at different rates depending upon the viewpoint of the applicants” is a “blatant violation of the First Amendment.”

Indeed, the appeals court said that it is “plain to the Inspector General, the district court, and this court that the IRS cannot defend its discriminatory conduct on the merits.” Thus, the question is “whether the controversy is moot.” While the district court concluded that it was, “we conclude that it is not.”

The IRS argued that it had stopped its wrongful behavior. But the appeals court said there is a difference between a controversy where the defendant has stopped his wrongful conduct but could resume it at any time, and a controversy where there is no “reasonable expectation that the conduct will recur” and “interim relief or events have completely and irrevocably eradicated the effects of the alleged violation.” This latter concept is referred to legally as “voluntary cessation.”

But the IRS cannot meet the “voluntary cessation” criteria according to the appeals court. Why? Because “voluntary cessation has never occurred.” The IRS admitted that the “applications for exemption by some of appellant-plaintiffs have never to this day been processed.” The IRS “proudly boasts” that “no more than two” applications are still pending. To that boast, the court said it “would advise the IRS that a heavy burden of establishing mootness is not carried by proving that the case is nearly moot, or is moot as to the a ‘vast majority’ of the parties. Their heavy burden requires that they establish cessation, not near cessation.”

The court also faulted the IRS for its “rather puzzling explanation for why the continued failure to afford proper processing to at least some of the victim applications should not prevent a finding of cessation.” The IRS’s explanation is that the applications have not been processed because of the litigation filed by the organizations. As the court says:

It is not at all clear why the IRS proposes that not ceasing becomes cessation if the victim of the conduct is litigating against it. The IRS position is reminiscent of Catch-22 from the novel of the same name. Under that ‘catch,’ World War II airmen were not required to fly if they were mentally ill. However, anyone who applied to stop flying was evidencing rationality and therefore was not mentally ill.

The result is a catch-22 situation, according to the court: “The IRS is telling the applicants in these cases that ‘we have been violating your rights and not properly processing your applications. You are entitled to have your applications processed. But if you ask for that processing by away of a lawsuit, then you can’t’ have it.’”

The IRS’s only other attempt to justify this was to refer to it as “longstanding policy.” But the court admonished that “if you haven’t ceased discriminatory conduct, the fact that you have been failing to cease it for a long time does not create cessation.”

While the main focus of the court’s opinion was on the delay in processing the applications of the organizations, it also held that the claims about “harassing, probing, and unconstitutional requests for additional information that … required applicants to disclose, among other things, donor lists, direct and indirect communications with members of legislative bodies, Internet passwords, and user names, copies of social media and other Internet postings, and even the political and charitable activities of family members” were not moot.

In a final warning that should scare all taxpayers, particularly conservatives, the court pointed out that even if the IRS had ceased its wrongful conduct with regard to these organizations, the IRS failed to show that there is no reasonable expectation that the conduct will reoccur. The IRS itself said that it had only “suspended” the use of BOLO lists “until further notice.” A “violation of a right that is ‘suspended until further notice’ has not become the subject of voluntary cessation, with no reasonable expectation of resumption.” At most, it is advising “the victim of a violation – ‘you’re alright for now, but there may be another shoe falling.’”

In other words, there are no real legal barriers in place to prevent the IRS — one the most powerful agencies in the federal government — from targeting Americans for their political viewpoints again. (For more from the author of “The IRS Just Admitted They Could Resume Targeting Conservatives” please click HERE)

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These Gun Owners Are Least Likely Criminals, Report Finds

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Concealed-carry permit holders are nearly the most law-abiding demographic of Americans, a new report by the Crime Prevention Research Center says—comparing the permit holders foremost with police.

“Indeed, it is impossible to think of any other group in the U.S. that is anywhere near as law-abiding,” says the report, titled “Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States 2016.”

From 2007 through 2015, permits issued by state and local governments increased by 215 percent, to more than 14 million Americans, according to the data.

The study compared permit holders to police, who committed 703 crimes from 2005 to 2007, and 113 of those were firearm violations.

“With about 685,464 full-time police officers in the U.S. from 2005 to 2007, we find that there were about 103 crimes per hundred thousand officers,” the report reads. “For the U.S. population as a whole, the crime rate was 37 times higher—3,813 per hundred thousand people.”

The study refers to Texas and Florida, which it says mirror most other states, to compare permit holders with police and the overall population. It used data from 1987 through 2015.

“We find that permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies at less than a sixth the rate for police officers,” the report says. “Among police, firearms violations occur at a rate of 16.5 per 100,000 officers. Among permit holders in Florida and Texas, the rate is only 2.4 per 100,000.10. That is just one-seventh of the rate for police officers.”

Crime Prevention Research Center President John Lott, a noted economist, said the finding is not surprising considering the rigorous process it takes to get a concealed-carry permit.

“The type of person that would go through the process, one in which you can often lose the license for fairly trivial offenses,” Lott told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “They are reluctant to use the the guns in a wrong way because they have a lot to lose if they do something wrong.”

The Daily Signal contacted gun control groups Everytown for Gun Safety and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, but neither responded.

Everytown for Gun Safety—founded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg—has focused on opposing state proposals for allowing concealed carry without permits, touting that it helped defeat permitless-carry proposals in 16 states, including pro-gun states such as Texas, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Montana, and West Virginia.

However, the new report reads that in states without required permits to carry, crime has declined.

“In 2014, the seven states that allowed concealed carry without a permit had much lower rates of murder and violent crime than did the seven jurisdictions with the lowest percentage of permit holders,” the Crime Prevention Research Center report reads. “Indeed, the murder rate was 31 percent lower in the states not requiring permits. The violent crime rate was 28 percent lower. Compared to the rest of the country, the 25 states with the highest rates of permit-holding experienced markedly lower rates of murder and violent crime.”

In March, a federal judge cited a Brady Center legal brief in upholding the District of Columbia’s law requiring citizens to give a reason for applying for a concealed permit. After that, Brady Center President Dan Gross said, “The fact is, despite the repugnant lies and wild west fantasies peddled by the corporate gun lobby, communities with a greater number of loaded, concealed guns are markedly more dangerous, and their citizens’ lives are at greater risk.”

The Gross comment conflicts with public opinion, which the report attributes to the rise in concealed-carry permits over the course of President Barack Obama’s administration. A Rasmussen poll in June found 68 percent agree they “feel safer in a neighborhood where guns are allowed.”

In December 2014, the Pew Research Center poll found that a plurality of 57 percent believed owning a gun provided protection from being a victim of a crime, while 38 percent said owning a gun put people’s safety at risk. A 2014 Gallup poll found 63 percent believed gun ownership made them safer, compared to 35 percent in 2000. (For more from the author of “These Gun Owners Are Least Likely Criminals, Report Finds” please click HERE)

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GOP Lawmaker Suggests Obama Administration Employees Should Face Jail Time for Iran Cash Deal

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A leading Republican critic of the Obama administration’s policy toward Iran is alleging that the U.S. government violated federal law when it delivered $400 million in cash to Tehran on the same day the country freed four American prisoners.

“I want to know what Obama administration employees were involved with this and how long do they serve in prison,” said Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “There is no doubt they violated federal law when they transferred U.S. taxpayer funds to a state sponsor of terrorism.”

Pompeo’s assertion to The Daily Signal goes farther than most Republicans have gone in their criticism of how the administration handled the cash payment, which the government says was not related to the prisoner release, but the result of a settlement with Iran of a decades-old financial dispute over an uncompleted arms deal.

Because the money already belonged to Iran, and did not have to be appropriated by Congress, most lawmakers and observers say the administration acted lawfully. Critics are more concerned that if Iran considers the $400 million to be a ransom payment, Tehran will be encouraged to seek similar terms for other dual national hostages it unlawfully holds.

“While I think the $400 million cash payment was handled in an incredibly stupid way, I don’t agree with Rep. Pompeo that the administration violated the law,” Patrick Clawson, the director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in an interview with The Daily Signal. “The money is coming from a settlement account, which is frequently used for nonappropriated purposes. They’ve been in meetings trying to settle this claim for 20 years.”

Other observers say the administration should have informed Congress about the details of the $400 million cash payment before it happened.

“It may not be a legal issue, but it’s a best practices issue,” John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said in a interview with The Daily Signal.

“These were sanctions established by Congress and for the president then to seek to circumvent them, even if it’s technically legal, without notification or consultation with Congress, is just bad practice and something the Congress ought to be upset about,” added Hannah, who was the national security adviser for Vice President Dick Cheney in the George W. Bush administration.

Pompeo, however, is asking for more. He told The Daily Signal he plans to send letters to the Treasury and Justice departments in the coming days seeking more information on who in the administration authorized the $400 million payment to Iran, and the government’s justification that the transaction was lawful.

“Until the president made an affirmative decision to pay that claim, it wasn’t Iran’s money,” Pompeo said in an interview. “It was American money. So they broke the law. The thrust of it is, ‘It’s illegal. You did it.’ And Congress has a role of identifying a breach of law and referring violators to the Justice Department for prosecution.”

After The Wall Street Journal last week broke the story reporting the details of the cash payment, Republican lawmakers were quick to call it a ransom, while some members of relevant congressional committees expressed frustration about not being fully informed by the Obama administration about what happened.

In January, Obama announced publicly that the U.S. and Iran had struck a deal for the U.S. to pay Tehran $1.7 billion to settle an arms deal from before the Iranian revolution of 1979. On the same day, Obama said the Iranian nuclear deal had been implemented, and that American hostages had been released.

The new Wall Street Journal story shed further light on what happened, reporting that the first installment of the $1.7 billion—the $400 million cash—had been shipped to Iran in the form of euros and Swiss francs on an unmarked cargo plan.

“We’ve been chasing this since January, when President [Barack] Obama announced he was giving Iran almost $2 billion,” Pompeo said. “In both classified and unclassified briefings, at no time was I told the timing of the money transfer, or the format in which it was transferred.”

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., told a local television station last week that he too did not know specific details of the $400 million cash payment.

“It alarms me as the chairman of the Intelligence Committee that something of this magnitude was not briefed to me,” Burr told WGHP Fox Greensboro. “Not only prior to the exchange but since the exchange. Only through, in this case, the Wall Street Journal do the American people know the truth about what was committed to by the American government to the Iranian government.”

Sen. James Lankford. R-Okla., a member of the Intelligence Committee, did not learn about the cash payment until the administration announced it in January, his spokesman told The Daily Signal.

In June, Lankford offered legislation that requires the White House to make public the details of its money transfer to Iran. He hopes the bill gets a vote before the full Senate later this year.

“Many Americans, including myself, have been very suspicious of the transfer of $1.7 billion dollars to Iran, just hours after American prisoners are released and the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal,” Lankford told The Daily Signal in a statement. “I have worked to bring more transparency to all of the Obama administration’s reckless actions with Iran, especially any type of cash payment which helps fund the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to wreak havoc and work directly against American interests in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Yemen.”

When Obama announced the settlement, he described it as savings for taxpayers, arguing that the U.S. ultimately was going to have to give Iran the money it was owed. He argued the government would likely have had to pay even more if the claim went through the normal arbitration process at an international claims tribunal court in Hague.

When the hostage crisis of 1979 was resolved two years later, the governments of Iran and the U.S. established the arbitration court in Hague to settle financial disputes between the two countries. Some of the outstanding issues were resolved, but the legal status of the failed arms deal was not.

“Iran will be returned its own funds, including appropriate interest, but much less than the amount Iran sought,” Obama said in January.

Speaking to reporters last week, Obama said the administration delivered the $400 million in foreign cash because U.S. sanctions law prevented the government from using dollars in transactions with Iran. (For more from the author of “GOP Lawmaker Suggests Obama Administration Employees Should Face Jail Time for Iran Cash Deal” please click HERE)

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50 Prominent GOP Officials Warn Trump is Unfit for Office

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The Establishment is continuing its attack on Trump using tactics that are almost identical to those used against other populist candidates such as Joe Miller in Alaska. Just like in Miller’s race, prominent GOP officials are attacking a member of their own party, worried that the candidate will upset the corrupt system they’ve worked decades to erect. As reported earlier today:

Fifty former Republican national security advisers, intelligence chiefs and trade representatives have signed a letter saying, “None of us will vote for Donald Trump.”

They have served every U.S. Republican president from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush, and include former CIA Director Michael Hayden, former Homeland Security Directors Michael Chertoff and Tom Ridge, former Trade Representative Carla Hills and a number of ex-deputy secretaries of state.

It is some of the bitterest commentary on the Trump campaign by members of his own party to date.

The strongly worded letter not only says Trump is unqualified to be president, but that he would be a dangerous commander-in-chief and “the most reckless president in American history.”

“He lacks the character, values and experience … he weakens U.S. moral authority … he lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate personal criticism. He has alarmed our closest allies with his erratic behavior.”

How Evan McMullin Could Cost Trump the Presidency

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It’s unlikely that Evan McMullin, the former CIA staffer who just announced his bid for the presidency, can swipe votes from Republican nominee Donald Trump in any state — except one.

Utah is a state that has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1964, and yet it has taken on a distinct dislike for the GOP nominee: June polls showed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump tied with 35 percent each, with Libertarian Gary Johnson drawing in 13 percent. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, this unique aversion to Trump is due to his “brash swagger” and “outlandish behavior” in a state full of Mormons.

“It’s interesting that Libertarian Gary Johnson is polling in double digits,” Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute, told the Tribune. “Clearly, there is a segment of the Utah population that is still willing to consider a third-party candidate.”

That third-party candidate may very well be Evan McMullin come November.

A Mormon himself, McMullin was born in Provo, Utah and studied at Brigham Young University, a private university owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It would not be so surprising if McMullin gained the support of fellow Mormons Mitt Romney and Mike Lee, two of the most outspoken anti-Trump politicians in the GOP. (Read more from “How Evan McMullin Could Cost Trump the Presidency” HERE)

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INSANITY: Navy Announces Sailors and Academy Midshipmen May Openly Be Transgender, Receive Medical Treatment for “Transitioning”

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Following the Defense Department’s lifting of the ban on transgender service members in June, the Navy Department is preparing to provide medical and administrative support for transitioning sailors and Marines, train personnel on the particulars of serving in a transgender-inclusive force and, by next summer, accept transgender recruits into boot camp. . .

Starting this fall, sailors and Marines with a diagnosis who are beginning, in the process of, or have completed transitioning will be able to petition to have their gender markers changed in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System.

And next summer, boot camps will begin accepting transgender prospects at boot camp, officer candidate schools, ROTC and the Naval Academy

“These policies and procedures are premised on the conclusion that open service by transgender Sailors and Marines, while being subject to the same standards and procedures as other members with regard to their medical fitness for duty, physical fitness, uniform and grooming, deployability, and retention, is consistent with military readiness,” [insane] Navy Secretary Ray Mabus wrote in the message. (Read more about how the military is allowing service members to be openly transgender in uniform HERE)

Irish High Court Judge Rules: ‘Unborn’ Is ‘Clearly a Child’ With ‘Significant’ Rights

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By Steve Weatherbe. An Irish High Court judge has ruled that unborn children have all the rights of “born” children under the Irish constitution and law.

Justice Richard Humphries made the ruling during a tangled deportation case made more complex by the unborn child fathered by the Nigerian man whom the Irish government is seeking to expel.

“The ruling is vitally important at a time when the status of unborn babies in Ireland is once again under grave threat from pro-abortion organizations and the media,” Patrick Buckley of the Dublin office of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said.

The state secured a deportation order in 2008, but the Nigerian, who was claiming refugee status, delayed implementation with various appeals and then sought a judicial review of the original order on the basis of having fathered the child, unborn at the time of his application, by an Irish woman with whom he is still partnered. (Read more from “Irish High Court Judge Rules: ‘Unborn’ Is ‘Clearly a Child’ With ‘Significant’ Rights” HERE)

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GOP Governor Sued for Forcing Doctors to Promote Abortion

By Bob Unruh. The governor of Illinois on Friday got sued for signing into law a plan that includes provisions to force doctors to promote abortion – even if they have religious objections to the procedure.

The lawsuit was filed by officials with the Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of the Pregnancy Care Center of Rockford, Area Pregnancy Care Center, Dr. Anthony Caruso and others.

It names Gov. Bruce Rauner and the state’s secretary of its Department of Financial & Professional Regulation, Bryan Schneider.

“No state should attempt to rob women of the right to choose a pro-life doctor by forcing pro-life physicians and entities to make or arrange abortion referrals. What’s even worse is that Illinois did this by amending a law designed specifically to protect freedom of conscience,” ADF Senior Counsel Matt Bowman said in a prepared statement.

“The governor should have vetoed this bill for many reasons, including its incompatibility with Illinois law and the state constitution, which specifically protects freedom of conscience and free speech,” he said. (Read more from “GOP Governor Sued for Forcing Doctors to Promote Abortion” HERE)

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The Government’s Finances Are Much Worse Than Expected…

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Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revised their 2016 budget deficit figures and concluded that, in fact, this year’s deficit will be far worse than expected.

By a lot.

A $590 billion lot — $55 billion more than originally assumed.

This revised total comes after Obama perpetually attempts to sell the nation a narrative that he’s a fiscal champion and that his policies have reduced the deficit.

During a 2015 speech at a Michigan assembly plant, Obama bellows,

[ask] ordinary folks on the street, are the deficits going up or are they coming down, everybody automatically assumes, well, government spending and deficits must be going up. Deficits have come down by two-thirds since I took office – by two-thirds. They’re going down. [applause]

(Yes, the “applause” notation was included in the White House transcript of the speech.)

Obama’s firsts four years in office included deficits that were more than $1 trillion. Adjusted for inflation, those deficits are the largest in history — even compared to the deficits we ran during World War II. So, naturally, those deficits came down after the economy rebounded from the financial crisis. But as the chart below demonstrates, the decline in deficits is merely a hiccup — they are simply temporary. The deficit did drop (although, not even low enough to get to Bush era deficits) but will soon skyrocket.

Things are not looking much better for Obama’s fiscal record this year, either, where CBO has already had to revise this year’s budget deficit by $55 billion, for a total of $590 billion.

Sure, you might, say, what’s a $55 billion larger deficit for a government that is projected to spend nearly $4 trillion? Well, quite a bit actually. A $55 billion tab, levied on the American taxpayer, is equivalent to $450 more that you now owe, per household.

Do you have an extra $450 you’d like to send the government? Me neither.

For the most part, the increasing deficit is the result of spending. Yes, revenues are lower than CBO expected. In particular, corporate income taxes failed to meet their expected levels by $36 billion – and lagging corporate income taxes can be a sign of slowing profits and a slowing economy (more on that another time).

Meanwhile, programs like Social Security and Medicare, continue to grow faster than expected. The two combined added $35 billion more in spending that predicted. Of course, the U.S. debt isn’t helping much, either. CBO now predicts that net interest spending will be $23 billion larger than expected.

Well, you tell me: Do you think Obama’s deficits are going down? Who is applauding now?

Federal Deficits under Obama cleaned up

(For more from the author of “The Government’s Finances Are Much Worse Than Expected…” please click HERE)

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Princeton Vote Fraud Study: US Elections Can Be Easily Hacked

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When Princeton professor Andrew Appel decided to hack into a voting machine, he didn’t try to mimic the Russian attackers who hacked into the Democratic National Committee’s database last month. He didn’t write malicious code, or linger near a polling place where the machines can go unguarded for days.

Instead, he bought one online.

With a few cursory clicks of a mouse, Appel parted with $82 and became the owner of an ungainly metallic giant called the Sequoia AVC Advantage, one of the oldest and vulnerable, electronic voting machines in the United States (among other places it’s deployed in Louisiana, New Jersey, Virginia and Pennsylvania). No sooner did a team of bewildered deliverymen roll the 250-pound device into a conference room near Appel’s cramped, third-floor office than the professor set to work. He summoned a graduate student named Alex Halderman, who could pick the machine’s lock in seven seconds. Clutching a screwdriver, he deftly wedged out the four ROM chips—they weren’t soldered into the circuit board, as sense might dictate—making it simple to replace them with one of his own: A version of modified firmware that could throw off the machine’s results, subtly altering the tally of votes, never to betray a hint to the voter. The attack was concluded in minutes. To mark the achievement, his student snapped a photo of Appel—oblong features, messy black locks and a salt-and-pepper beard—grinning for the camera, fists still on the circuit board, as if to look directly into the eyes of the American taxpayer: Don’t look at me—you’re the one who paid for this thing.

Appel’s mischief might be called an occupational asset: He is part of a diligent corps of so-called cyber-academics—professors who have spent the past decade serving their country by relentlessly hacking it. Electronic voting machines—particularly a design called Direct Recording Electronic, or DRE’s—took off in 2002, in the wake of Bush v. Gore. For the ensuing 15 years, Appel and his colleagues have deployed every manner of stunt to convince the public that the system is pervasively unsecure and vulnerable. (Read more from “Princeton Vote Fraud Study: US Elections Can Be Easily Hacked” HERE)

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