15 States Have Moved to Defund Planned Parenthood Since Undercover Videos Were Released

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In the wake of a series of undercover videos that hit the abortion industry last year, 15 states have attempted to cut funding to Planned Parenthood.

After the Center for Medical Progress released undercover video footage that raised questions about whether Planned Parenthood was making a profit from selling aborted baby body parts (Planned Parenthood denies illegal activity), Republican lawmakers around the country called for cutting federal and state funding to the abortion provider.

Fifteen states—Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin—have moved to defund Planned Parenthood in wake of the videos.

A handful of states, some mentioned above, along with Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee, and New Jersey, already reduced taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood before the release of the undercover videos, according to the nonprofit Christian legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom.

In some states, such as Arkansas, defunding efforts have been caught up in legal challenges.

As The Daily Signal has previously reported, “Governors and other officials generally say their state has ‘defunded’ Planned Parenthood by taking one or more of these steps:

Ceased funding the organization through state family planning programs.

Diverted federal Title X family planning grants to other health clinics.

Terminated a Medicaid contract with the organization or barred it from participating in the Medicaid program.”

As Planned Parenthood celebrated its 100th anniversary on Sunday, many in the pro-life community say they reflect on the organization with heavy hearts.

“At Planned Parenthood’s 100-year anniversary, tens of millions of Americans have now seen the shocking and callous way that this abortion factory’s top-level leaders scheme to make an easy and illegal profit off of tiny baby organs,” David Daleiden, Center for Medical Progress founder and investigative lead, said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal. “Millions of Americans are becoming increasingly aware that Planned Parenthood, as the biggest abortion provider in the country, receives over half a billion taxpayer dollars annually.”

Daleiden added:

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Select Investigative Panel is the only official investigation taking a comprehensive, nationwide look at Planned Parenthood’s harvesting and sale of baby body parts. The panel has so far found probable cause that Planned Parenthood and its business partners profited off the sale of fetal organs, [and] used fraudulent and invalid consent forms to convince patients to give permission for harvesting …

Planned Parenthood has denied any illegal action.

“Planned Parenthood may be in a celebratory mood as it turns 100, but the nation’s largest abortion chain has many reasons to worry,” Ashley McGuire, senior fellow with the Catholic Association, said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal. “At the state level, the trends are clear: Americans want more protections for women and children, not less, and are increasingly skeptical of a for-profit company that places abortion profit ahead of safeguards for women.”

In total, at least 24 states have attempted to defund Planned Parenthood since July 2015, according to Live Action News.

“Planned Parenthood has always claimed to ‘care’ for women and their health, but the evidence shows it’s really an abortion business focused on making money,” said Lila Rose, president of Live Action, a pro-life advocacy group. “Planned Parenthood, which falsely claims that abortion makes up only 3 percent of its services, has become the largest abortion chain in the nation, committing over 320,000 abortions last year alone by starving pre-born children of nutrients until they die or dismembering them alive.”

Planned Parenthood receives roughly half a billion dollars every year from federal funding, mostly through Medicaid and Title X, a family funding program designed for low-income Americans. According to its most recent annual report, Planned Parenthood received $553.7 million in government health services grants and reimbursements for the organization’s fiscal year ending June 30, 2015.

Planned Parenthood claims it is “100 years strong.”

“We’ve made incredible gains during our first century and we’re just getting started,” Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement. “We will build on our proud legacy and launch our second century with as much passion, courage, and conviction as our first.”

The organization touts that nearly one in three women will have an abortion at some point in their lifetime.

“I am saddened that for eight years of my life, I worked for Planned Parenthood and played a role in their deceit,” said Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood director and founder of And Then There Were None, a nonprofit that helps abortion clinic workers leave the abortion industry. She added:

As I reflect on Planned Parenthood’s 100th anniversary, I am haunted by the fact that for 100 years this organization has treated women as second-class citizens and aborted nearly 8 million children.

As of September, 22 states have both Republican governors and Republican-controlled legislatures, Democrats control 8 states, 19 states are split, and one state has a unicameral and nonpartisan legislature, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The Obama administration has warned certain states that cutting off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood may be against the law. (For more from the author of “15 States Have Moved to Defund Planned Parenthood Since Undercover Videos Were Released” please click HERE)

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See How Much Premiums Will Increase Under Obamacare in These 14 States

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Consumers will be hit by increases in health insurance premiums averaging 10 percent or more in all but one of 14 states where regulators have approved higher rates.

In Vermont, insurance rates will rise by an average of 5.5 percent.

Insurance companies submitted their rate proposals for 2017 over the past few months. In the lead-up to Obamacare’s open enrollment period beginning Nov. 1, regulators have begun to approve or alter the requests.

Consumers purchasing health coverage both on and off of the Obamacare exchanges will see their rates increase by an average of at least 10 percent, according to the insurer filings in 14 states and the District of Columbia.

The Obama administration has stressed that many consumers, especially those who qualify for government subsidies to pay premiums, won’t feel the full effects of the higher payments.

More than 9 million Americans received subsidies to help pay premiums, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said earlier this month.

However, another 2.5 million who purchased plans off the Obamacare exchanges in the individual market may qualify for financial assistance if they instead buy plans on the exchanges. Those who receive subsidies could end up paying monthly premiums of less than $75, Burwell said.

But Burwell didn’t address the nearly 10 million Americans who purchase plans sold in the individual market and don’t qualify for a subsidy.

Rising premiums, experts warn, will directly affect those consumers.

In their filings with states, insurance companies point to the end of Obamacare’s reinsurance program as one reason they need to increase rates. The reinsurance program, which expires at the end of the year, was designed to mitigate risk among insurers.

Insurers also point to their customers’ high medical costs as contributing to rising premiums.

Here’s how rates in the District of Columbia and the 14 states—Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont—will increase next year:

161010_premium-hikes_v3

(For more from the author of “See How Much Premiums Will Increase Under Obamacare in These 14 States” please click HERE)

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Busted! Undercover Video Shows Democrat Operatives Admitting They Incited Violence at Trump Rallies

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Project Veritas has released “part one” in what will be a “multi-part” series exposing potentially criminal activity by Democratic operatives receiving “dark money” from the Hillary Clinton campaign for president.

Among the revelations in the video are non-profit organizations receiving money from the Clinton campaign and the DNC sending agitators to Donald Trump rallies to incite violence.

Scott Foval, the National Field Director for the non-profit group Americans United for Change explained on video that these left-wing operatives use what’s called “bird dogging” to plant individuals at Trump events to start incidents and grab media attention.

Project Veritas’ report indicates this is a new Democratic strategy:

Foval also references Shirley Teeter, a sixty-nine-year-old lady who claims that she was assaulted at a Trump rally in North Carolina.

“She was one of our activists,” he says while introducing the term bird dogging to the political lexicon.

The phrase bird dogging also appears in an email released by WikiLeaks where Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook suggests it might be a tactic to employ to shore up support with Hispanic voters.

“So the term bird dogging, you put people in the line, at the front which means that they have to get there at six in the morning because they have to get in front at the rally, so that when Trump comes down the rope line, they’re the ones asking him the question in front of the reporter, because they’re pre-placed there,” explains Foval. “To funnel that kind of operation, you have to start back with people two weeks ahead of time and train them how to ask questions. You have to train them to bird dog.”

Foval explains in the video that they target “mentally ill” people for recruitment to disrupt Trump events.

“I’m saying we have mentally ill people, that we pay to do shit, make no mistake. Over the last twenty years, I’ve paid off a few homeless guys to do some crazy stuff, and I’ve also taken them for dinner, and I’ve also made sure they had a hotel, and a shower. And I put them in a program. Like I’ve done that. But the reality is, a lot of people especially our union guys. A lot of our union guys…they’ll do whatever you want. They’re rock and roll. When I need to get something done in Arkansas, the first guy I call is the head of the AFL-CIO down there, because he will say, ‘What do you need?’ And I will say, I need a guy who will do this, this and this. And they find that guy. And that guy will be like, Hell yeah, let’s do it.”

Project Veritas Action President James O’Keefe says that the next installment of this year-long investigation will expose a voter fraud scheme that reaches the “highest levels” of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Will the mainstream media investigate these allegations and hold the Hillary Clinton campaign accountable? (For more from the author of “Busted! Undercover Video Shows Democrat Operatives Admitting They Incited Violence at Trump Rallies” please click HERE)

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Time for Conservative Intellectuals to Get Comfortable With the Right to Bear Arms

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The right to keep and bear arms is a vital element of the liberal order that our Founding Fathers handed down to us.

As I argue in a new essay for The Heritage Foundation, the founders understood that those who hold political power almost always will strive to reduce the freedom of those they rule and that many of the ruled always will be tempted to trade their liberty for empty promises of security. The causes of these political phenomena are sown in the nature of man.

The Constitution, including the Second Amendment, is a device designed to frustrate the domineering tendencies of the politically ambitious. The Second Amendment also plays an important role in fostering the kind of civic virtue that resists the cowardly urge to trade liberty for an illusion of safety.

Armed citizens take responsibility for their own security, thereby exhibiting and cultivating the self-reliance and vigorous spirit that ultimately are indispensable for genuine self-government.

While much has changed since the 18th century, for better and for worse, human nature has not changed. The fundamental principles of our regime and the understanding of human nature on which those principles are based can still be grasped today.

Once grasped, they can be defended. Such a defense, however, demands an appreciation of the right to arms that goes beyond the legalistic and narrowly political considerations that drive contemporary gun-control debates.

Regrettably, too many American opinion leaders, forgetting or rejecting the reasons that justify this right, have been extremely uncomfortable with the Second Amendment.

The progressive left, for example, largely has been united in promoting restrictions on civilian access to firearms. Lawyers as well, who Tocqueville famously thought could serve America as a kind of democratic aristocracy, have been hostile to gun rights.

Until 2008, federal judges—our most elite corps of attorneys—never once had sustained a Second Amendment challenge to a government regulation. State courts, for their part, generally had upheld gun regulations under legal tests that practically gave legislatures a blank check. And the organized bar has lobbied for decades in favor of more restrictive controls on firearms.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court finally rediscovered the Second Amendment, it so far has protected only a narrow right to keep a handgun in one’s home, and it did that much only by a narrow 5-4 vote. Especially after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, there is little reason to expect that the court will adopt doctrines that offer robust protection for the right to keep and bear arms.

Conservative intellectuals have offered little resistance to conventional elite opinion. Few of these pundits raise their voices against infringements of the right of self-defense, which is the core principle on which our liberal republic was founded. Some, including George Will and Charles Krauthammer, even advocate repeal of the Second Amendment so that the citizenry can be disarmed.

The principal sources of discomfort with the Second Amendment are the authoritarian impulse that comes so naturally to those who wield political power (either directly or through their influence over officeholders) and the cowardice that such people seek to instill in those they rule.

As a crime-control measure, restricting access to weapons by law-abiding citizens has been a proven failure, for reasons with which our Founders were quite familiar. Support for such policies is a sign either of ignorance about their effects or of disregard for the principles on which our republic was founded.

Conservatives constantly and rightly complain about the erosion of individual liberty by bureaucratic government, about the enervating effects of the nanny state, and about the suffocating atmosphere of euphemisms and repressed resentment imposed by the political correctness police. Whatever else has contributed to the decay of America’s republican spirit, forgetfulness or ignorance about the philosophy underlying our free institutions is among the least excusable failings that public intellectuals can display.

That philosophy was articulated by John Locke, William Blackstone, and every one of our Founding Fathers. If more pundits paid more attention to their views, fewer people would think that the right to arms is a product of romanticism about guns or an outmoded 18th-century mentality.

The American right to keep and bear arms, and its continuing value, reflect the reality of human nature and a reasoned response to that reality. The same cannot be said for the views of conservatives who would gut or even repeal the Second Amendment. (For more from the author of “Time for Conservative Intellectuals to Get Comfortable With the Right to Bear Arms” please click HERE)

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Joe Miller Wins Statewide Televised Senate Debate; Murkowski MIA

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Joe Miller dominated the field at the first statewide televised U.S. Senate debate in Alaska of the general election season; while Sen. Lisa Murkowski remained in hiding.

The Anchorage NBC affiliate KTUU (which garners 80 percent of the state’s local news audience) sponsored the prime time event, which Murkowski chose to duck in favor of forums sponsored largely by organizations that have already endorsed her candidacy, or did so in 2010.

Besides Miller, Democrat Ray Metcalfe and left-leaning Independent Margaret Stock also participated in the debate.

Each of the three candidates was asked who they are supporting for president. Stock and Metcalfe said they would be backing Hillary Clinton. Stock noted that both of Alaska’s Republican senators recently announced they will not be supporting Trump.

Miller said that he is supporting Donald Trump: “I think Hillary Clinton will be devastating to the state of Alaska. I don’t think it is a foregone conclusion that she’s going to get elected.”

“I find it very troubling that those who say they’re fighting for Alaska [like Murkowski] are aiding and abetting her campaign. She would be catastrophic for Alaska on resource development.”

Miller noted that she wants to continue to block development in ANWR.

The candidate concluded with a reference to Clinton’s support for greater gun control, stating, “By the way, I haven’t heard Trump say anything that would make me want to give up my guns.”

Other topics covered during the debate included Obamacare, which Miller stated must be repealed, while calling out Murkowski for saying it must be “fixed” in an op-ed earlier this year.

Miller also highlighted Murkowski’s sponsorship of, and vote for, a bill to raid the Permanent Fund Dividend to finance state government programs. She also made comments earlier this year suggesting those funds be available to address the state’s budget shortfall.

“Joe turned in a superior performance tonight,” said campaign spokesman Randy DeSoto. “Lisa Murkowski’s absence from what will be the most widely viewed debate shows she has a lack of respect for Alaskan voters.”

“They deserve to hear all the candidates make their case,” he added.

Joe Miller is a limited government Constitutionalist who believes government exists to protect our liberties, not to take them away. He supports free people, free markets, federalism, the Constitutional right to life, the 2nd Amendment, religious liberty, American sovereignty, and a strong national defense.

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Fox News Anchor Comes out of Closet as ‘Gay’

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After years of broadcasting on the most popular cable-news channel in the nation, Shepard Smith of the Fox News Channel is now reportedly revealing that he is homosexual, joining the likes of other “gay” journalists who have come out of the closet, including Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon of CNN as well as Rachel Maddow of MSNBC.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Smith went public with his homosexuality and defended former network CEO Roger Ailes’ treatment of him, saying Ailes never made homophobic remarks in his presence.

“He treated me with respect, just respect,” Smith said. “I wasn’t new in the business when I came here – I’d been doing reporting for 12 years – but I wasn’t old in it either, and he gave me every opportunity in the world and he never asked anything of me but that we get it right, try to get it right every day. It was a very warm and loving and comfortable place.”

Ailes himself stepped down from Fox News in July in the wake of sexual harassment claims against him by former host Gretchen Carlson.

Smith defended Ailes from claims the news boss had stopped him from coming out publicly during his tenure at Fox. (Read more from “Fox News Anchor Comes out of Closet as ‘Gay'” HERE)

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I Was Raped. But I Decided to Have My Baby Because, Like Me, She Was Innocent

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My name is Julia and I was raped at 14 years old by a friend of the family who we all thought was trustworthy.

I remember when I found out I was pregnant and that the baby was the product of the most horrible crime that a woman can undergo. I remember bursting in tears of despair, fear, because I was only 14. At that age I had had no boyfriend, knew nothing about babies or pregnancy, never got involved in anything about that.

But then the only social media I knew was Facebook and one day by chance I came across this Salvar El 1 page (Save The 1 Spanish Facebook page) and I read many testimonies that touched my heart in a very deep way. I had never thought of abortion but perhaps I had considered giving that baby up for adoption because I did not feel ready to face motherhood being so young. I remember a quote I read that made very clear that if I was a victim of a crime, I wouldn’t become guilty of another one and I decided to have my baby and be a mother forever.

Despise the fact of being just a child myself, I decided to have my baby because, like me, she was innocent and she didn’t have to carry the guilt of the aggressor who, eventually, is the one who deserves being punished.

My beautiful baby girl was born a few days after I turned 15. Her name is Mia Victoria and I love her more than anything else on earth. She is one month and a few days old, and being myself so young, I start learning how to be a mother. (Read more from “I Was Raped. But I Decided to Have My Baby Because, Like Me, She Was Innocent” HERE)

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New FBI Docs: FBI Official ‘Pressured’ to Change Classification of Hillary’s Email

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Documents released by the FBI Monday morning reveal that in 2015 Under Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy, a top aide to Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State, asked an FBI senior official to mark one of Clinton’s emails as unclassified before it was made public. In exchange, Kennedy allegedly offered a “quid pro quo” — agreeing to a long-standing FBI request for more agents at foreign posts.

The documents are the fourth set released by the FBI in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Congress. They contain interview summaries from the agency’s investigation of Democratic presidential nominee Clinton and her handling of classified information on a private email server.

Patrick Kennedy Barters With FBI Over Email Classification

According to one interview summary released by the FBI Monday morning, a senior FBI official stated that the State Department requested a classification review of five of Clinton’s emails sent on her private server. The emails were set to be released to the public in response to a FOIA request.

The official submitted one of the emails, marked classified, to the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division (CTD), which declined to change the classification since “the email was classified properly and accurately.”

But the official was contacted again, this time by the International Operations Division of the FBI, which “pressured” him to change the email’s classification, even though the CTD had already said no. He also claims that Kennedy contacted him personally, asking him to change the email’s classification. In exchange for marking the email unclassified, Kennedy said the State Department “would reciprocate by allowing the FBI to place more Agents in countries where they are presently forbidden.”

Kennedy later presided over an agency-wide meeting to discuss the classification review of Clinton’s emails that would be released in response to the FOIA request. The interview summary reports that “during the conversation, a participant specifically asked whether any of the emails in question were classified. Making eye contact with [the senior FBI official, name redacted], KENNEDY remarked, ‘Well, we’ll see.’”

The interview summary says that Kennedy continued to pressure the FBI to change the email’s classification, but to no avail. The official claims that shortly after a conversation between Kennedy and the Assistant Director of the CTD, who refused once more to change the classification, Clinton appeared before the press “to deny having sent classified emails on her private email server.”

According to the interview summary, the senior FBI official “believes STATE has an agenda which involves minimizing the classified nature of the CLINTON emails in order to protect STATE interests and those of CLINTON.”

Congress and the FBI Respond to ‘Quid Pro Quo’ Allegations

Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Devin Nunes (R-CA), Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, issued a joint statement calling Kennedy’s actions “extremely disturbing.” “Those who receive classified intelligence should not barter in it — that is reckless behavior with our nation’s secrets.” Chaffetz and Nunes also compiled a summary of key findings from the FBI documents.

In their joint statement, Chaffetz and Nunes call for Kennedy’s removal.

Someone who would try to get classified markings doctored should not continue serving in the State Department or retain access to classified information. Therefore, President Obama and Secretary Kerry should immediately remove Under Secretary Kennedy pending full investigation.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said that “a senior State Department official’s attempt to pressure the FBI to hide the extent of this mishandling bears all the signs of a cover-up.” Ryan criticized Clinton’s “complete disregard for properly handling classified information” evidenced in the documents, promising that the House’s “aggressive oversight work” would continue.

In a statement, the FBI claimed there “was never a quid pro quo:”

Prior to the initiation of the FBI’s investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s personal email server, the FBI was asked to review and make classification determinations on FBI emails and information which were being produced by the State Department pursuant to FOIA. The FBI determined that one such email was classified at the Secret level. A senior State Department official requested the FBI re-review that email to determine whether it was in fact classified or whether it might be protected from release under a different FOIA exemption. A now-retired FBI official, who was not part of the subsequent Clinton investigation, told the State Department official that they would look into the matter. Having been previously unsuccessful in attempts to speak with the senior State official, during the same conversation, the FBI official asked the State Department official if they would address a pending, unaddressed FBI request for space for additional FBI employees assigned abroad. Following the call, the FBI official consulted with a senior FBI executive responsible for determining the classification of the material and determined the email was in fact appropriately classified at the Secret level. The FBI official subsequently told the senior State official that the email was appropriately classified at the Secret level and that the FBI would not change the classification of the email. The classification of the email was not changed, and it remains classified today. Although there was never a quid pro quo, these allegations were nonetheless referred to the appropriate officials for review.

FOIA Requests Overseen by ‘Shadow Government’

The 100-page FBI document release includes interview summaries from people who claim that Clinton was “unwilling to abide by rules” regarding the security of electronic equipment containing sensitive and classified information.

Another interview summary states that FOIA requests regarding Clinton were screened by a “shadow government” — a “powerful group of very high-ranking STATE officials.”

In an off-record interview with The Weekly Standard prior to the release of the interview summaries, intelligence and congressional officials said that the new revelations would “bolster Donald Trump’s criticism of corruption at Clinton’s State Department, the FBI and Washington, D.C., with just more than three weeks until the 2016 presidential election.”

Trump is harshly critical of Clinton’s actions as secretary of state, asserting during the second presidential debate that she would be in jail if he were president.

The FBI’s investigation of Clinton and her email practices ended in July 2016 when FBI Director James Comey recommended that no charges be brought against the former secretary of state — a decision condemned by Republicans. (For more from the author of “New FBI Docs: FBI Official ‘Pressured’ to Change Classification of Hillary’s Email” please click HERE)

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Wikileaks’ Assange Loses Internet in Midst of Podesta Email Dump, Blames a ‘State Party’

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Wikileaks claims its founder, Julian Assange, has lost Internet service thanks to “a state party.”

No updates had been provided by the controversial group’s Twitter account at the time of this writing, and Russia-owned publication RT noted that Wikileaks’ claim is “unverified.” Wikileaks has been releasing e-mails damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for months, though the releases have been increasing in recent weeks. The latest e-mails show, among many other things, that Clinton’s senior advisers wanted to undermine and subvert the U.S. Catholic Church, that Clinton thought Wall Street received too much blame after the 2008 financial crash and that the Democratic nominee holds different positions privately than those she claims to voters.

Clinton’s campaign has also been show colluding with various high-ranking public officials at the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. State Department in regards to her own email scandal.

A release by Wikileaks over the summer led to the resignation of former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), after it was shown that she had colluded with the Clinton campaign against the insurgent candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Wasserman-Schultz’s replacement, former CNN commentator Donna Brazile, was caught in a more recent release allegedly providing a question to Clinton in advance of a debate against Sanders. Brazile has denied the accusation.

Assange has been living at the Ecuadorian embassy for four years to avoid extradition on a rape charge in Sweden that he claims is false and is an effort by the U.S. to extradite him on charges related to his years of leaking government documents and emails.

Clinton surrogates have for the most part ignored the most recent e-mail controversy, claiming the leaks’ validity is questionable because Wikileaks may be working with the Russian government to interfere with the U.S. presidential election. (For more from the author of “Wikileaks’ Assange Loses Internet in Midst of Podesta Email Dump, Blames a ‘State Party'” please click HERE)

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Pray for Hillary Clinton. Not as the Likely Next President, but as a Person

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Throughout the 2016 presidential election cycle, I’ve offered prayers for the nation, for the GOP, for the conservative movement, and other causes. I’ve added some prayers for Donald Trump, and asked God that Hillary Clinton, if elected, would govern differently than her record suggests she would.

But I’ve never offered a prayer for Clinton herself, for her soul. And I don’t think I’m alone.

Why Hillary?

First, we all need prayer. Remember such vivid dictums as “there but for the Grace of God go I,” and “all have fallen short of the Glory of God.” The Bible is full of them.

Second, Vox’s Emily Crockett was right when she said in an e-mailed comment to me that “Hillary was a victim of Bill’s affairs. He cheated on her. He humiliated her.”

I’ve never been married, and I was only 13 when Bill Clinton was impeached. It’s certainly possible that older conservatives are right that the Clintons’ marriage has been more about convenience than love.

But for a moment, I’m removing my political/conservative/reporter hat. Hillary Clinton had to stand by her husband on for a decade when he was hit with various accusations of infidelity as governor and president. Even if she married Bill for power, Hillary could not have been happy to be tied to the credible accusations against her husband. I cannot imagine it wasn’t shameful, embarrassing, etc.

On the flip side, let’s assume Clinton really is the power-hungry politician so many on the right, including myself, tend to think she is. Certainly, Wikileaks has confirmed that her political and policy principles are as up for grabs as her husband’s or Donald Trump’s marital vows. And she truly did enable Bill, attacking his accusers throughout the 1990s.

But that means she needs prayers even more. What sort of person would deal with the national embarrassment of her husband’s impeachment just to gain power? Who would be so cold-hearted so as to remove the modest protections of the Hyde Amendment in order to force taxpayers to fund more abortions? And, likewise, who would so willingly engage in a corrupt pay-for-play at her family’s foundation with dictatorships (such as Saudi Arabia) that kill over differences in religious beliefs?

And those are just her latest public policy sins.

Hillary is Not The Enemy

Hillary Clinton is not the enemy. Neither is Donald Trump or President Barack Obama. Their positions in U.S. politics say more about our national depravity than anything else — they are merely the logical conclusion of decades of abandonment of fiscal, moral and cultural principles by voters and others.

The enemy is whatever has brought us to this state of affairs — Satan, if you will. Hillary is a willing participant in his corruption of the world — we all have free will — and therefore she needs our prayers.

Over the last few years, I’ve seen a lot that has caused me to believe Hillary Clinton would do severe damage to this country. It’s not enough to convince me to vote for Trump, who was good friends with Bill and Hillary until he decided to switch parties and a host of his own political principles in order to make his own run for the White House.

But I noticed last week that I’ve almost stopped seeing Hillary as a person. As many on the Left see Trump, I’ve fallen into the trap of viewing the former First Lady and Secretary of State as the embodiment of the Democratic Party’s largely successful efforts to restructure the values and principles of our nation.

Hillary Clinton is a dishonest politician whose principles appear to be related to gaining power. Plain and simple. But she’s also a person. And it’s up to me to help her as best I can, if only for her soul — never mind the nation, and the hundreds of millions of lives a Hillary White House would affect.

Whether my prayers help her is up to God. But it’s the least I can do for her, and for myself. (For more from the author of “Pray for Hillary Clinton. Not as the Likely Next President, but as a Person” please click HERE)

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