GOP Lawmakers Pressure Administration Over Obamacare ‘Bailout’ for Insurers

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GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate are pressuring the Obama administration for additional information on whether it plans to settle with insurance companies suing the government over a program written into Obamacare, which they warn would serve as a “multibillion dollar bailout” of those insurers.

Republicans in the House and Senate sent separate letters to top officials with the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Justice, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services raising concerns over the possibility of the Justice Department tapping into the Judgment Fund to settle lawsuits filed by insurance companies over Obamacare’s risk corridor program.

The risk corridor program was written into the Affordable Care Act and designed to provide insurers with stability during the first few years of the law’s implementation.

“This program was originally intended to be implemented in a budget neutral manner,” Republican Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Mike Lee of Utah, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Ben Sasse of Nebraska wrote in a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, and Acting Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Andy Slavitt.

“This intention was confirmed when Congress passed, with presidential approval, two separate provisions of appropriations law confirming its budget neutrality,” the letter continued. “It now appears the administration is preparing to circumvent these actions.”

The Republican senators said they have “grave concerns” about the potential for settlements with insurers.

Insurance companies filed lawsuits earlier this year after learning they would receive a small fraction of the money requested from the risk corridor program.

But Rubio and Senate Republicans included an amendment in 2015 and 2016 government spending bills prohibiting the government from using any taxpayer dollars to fund payments requested by insurers through the program. Under Rubio’s provision, the federal government could only use money collected from insurers to make those payments.

Because of those restrictions, insurance companies participating in Obamacare’s exchanges received just 12.6 percent of the money they intended to get from the risk corridor program—a collective $2.5 billion less than originally anticipated.

Many smaller insurers, including at least four of 23 consumer operated and oriented plans, ended up closing their doors because of lower-than-expected risk corridor payments.

Congressional Republicans began to sound the alarm over use of the Judgment Fund after insurers filed the lawsuit. Settling with insurers, they warned, would give the White House a way to provide the companies with their full risk corridor payments, effectively circumventing Congress.

“Any attempt to settle these cases out of court as a backdoor way to direct taxpayer dollars to insurance companies through the Judgment Fund will be met with the strictest scrutiny from Congress,” more than 40 GOP lawmakers wrote in one of the letters, sent to Burwell last week.

The Republicans go on to signal they would be willing to file their own lawsuit against the administration.

“Should the administration seek to make settlements in any pending lawsuit regarding risk corridor payments, we remain committed to exhausting all legislative and judicial options to ensure the power of the purse vested in Congress under the Constitution is respected and maintained,” the letter continues.

Republicans further stepped up their pressure on the Obama administration regarding potential use of the Judgment Fund following the release of a Sept. 9 memo from the Department of Health and Human Services on risk corridor payments for the 2015 benefit year.

In its memo, the agency addressed the lawsuit filed by insurers over the risk corridor payments for 2014 and said it would be “open to discussing resolution of those claims.”

Then, in a hearing before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee earlier this month, Slavitt indicated officials from his agency had discussed with the Justice Department a potential settlement with insurers over the risk corridor program.

Nicole Navas, spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the agency declines to comment because of pending litigation.

Health Republic Insurance of Oregon, a co-op, filed the first lawsuit against the Obama administration over the risk corridor program in February. The nonprofit is seeking class-action status.

Highmark Inc. and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina followed, filing their own individual lawsuits in May and June, respectively.

The insurers allege that the federal government violated the Affordable Care Act and the risk corridor payment obligations outlined in the health care law.

Though the Obama administration has signaled it would be willing to use the Judgment Fund to settle insurers lawsuits against the government, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service issued two separate memorandums to Rubio and Barrasso on the legality of the use of the Judgment Fund.

In a memo sent to Rubio in January, the Congressional Research Service said the administration wouldn’t be able to use the Judgment Fund to award payments to insurers who filed suit.

Congress, the memo concluded, would have to appropriate additional funds for “any payment to satisfy a judgment secured by plaintiffs seeking recovery of amounts owed under the risk corridors program.”

In a separate memo to Barrasso, the Congressional Research Service said that even if the insurance companies won their case, either insurers would need to pay additional money into the risk corridor program or Congress would need to appropriate additional money for companies involved in the litigation to recover additional funds.

“Consequently, it would be inappropriate for the Judgment Fund to be used to settle any litigation stemming from the risk corridor program,” the letter from Barrasso, Lee, Rubio, and Sasse continues. (For more from the author of “GOP Lawmakers Pressure Administration Over Obamacare ‘Bailout’ for Insurers” please click HERE)

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3 Reasons New Flint Spending Will Make Things Worse

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Liberal lawmakers held a liberal spending bill hostage this week until the Republican-controlled Congress agreed to even more big government priorities.

Here’s what happened: For the past few weeks, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., worked with Democrats to propose a 10-week government funding bill, commonly referred to as a continuing resolution.

That bill failed to include countless conservative priorities. It failed to keep spending levels within the reasonable levels set by the Budget Control Act. It failed to protect life by opening the door for more taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood. And it failed to do anything positive through the addition of conservative policy riders like stopping the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers transfer in the interest of protecting internet freedom, requiring a more stringent vetting process for refugees, or blocking the Labor Department’s new overtime rule.

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and his fellow Senate Democrats defeated a key procedural vote on this continuing resolution because it was not liberal enough—it did not include federal taxpayer money for the water problems in the city of Flint, Michigan.

With government funding set to expire at midnight Friday, House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi agreed to add $170 million in federal aid for Flint’s water issues in a water infrastructure bill that was under consideration in the House.

There are three major problems with the Flint spending bill:

1. It uses federal tax dollars for something that should be appropriated at the state level.

2. It authorizes federal dollars at a time when the nation is nearly $20 trillion in debt.

3. It sets the precedent of allowing liberal lawmakers to take bad spending bills hostage until they receive even more.

State, Not Federal Funding

State, not federal, funds and resources should be used to solve Flint’s crisis. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, made this point repeatedly when objecting to the inclusion of Flint spending in an earlier version of the Senate version of the Water Resources Development Act, speaking to The Daily Signal:

If we create a precedent that suggests any time there’s a significant problem with a locally operated utility that operates entirely intrastate, I would ask, where’s the stopping point? What’s the limit?

Unnecessarily Additions to National Debt

America’s spending is out of control. Every penny counts when our nation is nearly $20 trillion in debt. Earlier this year President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency for Flint, authorizing more than $80 million in aid to help in the cleanup effort.

There are additional funds built into the state budget to help provide for local clean up and rehabilitation. Flint has already squandered federal funding sources, as The Daily Signal reported earlier this year: “Michigan has squirreled away $386 million in an emergency fund and collected a $575 million surplus in 2015. Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, has already requested $200 million in relief funds from the state legislature for Flint.”

Bad Precedent for Capitulation

After Senate Democrats blocked the liberal continuing resolution, the Republican-controlled Congress could have moved forward with a conservative bill. Instead, Republican leaders looked at Reid, Pelosi, and Obama and asked which additional bad funding provisions should be added.

If these lawmakers won’t stand up for the principles of their constituents before an election, we shouldn’t expect them to in a post-election lame-duck session, either. (For more from the author of “3 Reasons New Flint Spending Will Make Things Worse” please click HERE)

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Why This Virginia Tech Student Went on a Hunger Strike for Gun Rights

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A Virginia Tech student, currently on a hunger strike advocating for the allowance of concealed weapons on campus, wants the right of self-defense abided by on his college campus.

“I am advocating for Virginia concealed gun permit holders to be able to carry concealed on campus and in buildings and in the classrooms,” Ryan James Martin, a fifth-year senior studying English and biological sciences at the Virginia university, told The Daily Signal in a phone conversation. “The hunger strike aspect of it was really designed to call attention to the issue.”

Martin, 22, started his hunger strike Sept. 25 at 11:59 p.m. and plans to carry the strike through Friday, Sept. 30, at the conclusion of University President Timothy Sands’ first State of the University Address set to start at 3 p.m. Eastern time.

The Virginia Tech campus is a gun-free zone.

Martin, a concealed carry permit holder in the state of Virginia, said that on his campus no one is allowed to carry Nerf guns or even pepper spray.

“The only legal weapon we’re really allowed to have is a less than four-inch pocket knife and our fists,” he said.

Martin said he has graduated from Virginia Tech’s student police academy, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office’s citizen’s police academy, and is currently in the Blacksburg Police Department’s citizens police academy program.

“Just because I have a gun on me does not make me an evil assailant,” Martin said.

“Just because I have a gun on me does not make me an evil assailant.” —Ryan James Martin, a Virginia Tech student

Martin said he has had his concealed carry permit for a little over a year and said he has passed state and federal background checks multiple times and is also a firearms instructor.

“I take [students] to our local firearm range free of charge and teach them how to shoot safely and effectively,” Martin said.

Martin said that in January he requested a meeting with Sands, the university president, and the university’s Board of Visitors to discuss concealed carry on campus. The meeting was never granted, he said.

Martin sent an email on Sept. 23 to Sands, college deans, community leaders, and local media explaining the hunger strike.

“Our campus is not immune to the ever-increasing acts of violence and terror that happen every day,” Martin wrote in the email to The Daily Signal. “We should know best—it has been 3,447 days since we inherited the title of deadliest college campus in the nation, yet students are still forbidden from even carrying pepper spray as per university regulation.” His email added:

Further, I will be on the steps of Burruss Hall every morning, and every other chance I am able next week, to read aloud the Constitution and Bill of Rights which seem to be ignored on my campus.

“Virginia Tech respects any student’s right to civil protest, provided that person abides by our Principles of Community and incurs no harm to self or others,” Mark Owczarski, assistant vice president for university relations at Virginia Tech, wrote in an email to The Daily Signal.

The university did not comment as to why Sands and the Board of Visitors did not meet with Martin.

In April 2007, 32 students and staff were killed by a gunman in the Virginia Tech massacre in Blacksburg, Virginia.

“What we saw on April 16, 2007, almost 10 years ago, is that 32 students and faculty members were killed, many others shot while they waited for a little over 10 minutes for law enforcement to arrive and the threat was neutralized,” Martin said.

“I truly believe that if one of those individuals had legally possessed a concealed firearm, we’d have less than 32 memorial stones on the Drillfield today,” he said, adding:

I’ve been called many names for claiming that, but in all honestly we’ll never know because they weren’t allowed self-defense that day and we saw what happened. It’s a tough issue. It is sensitive, but we need to talk about it. We need to find some solutions to the problems we face as a campus of 30,000 students.

In Virginia, along with 22 other states, a college or university makes the decision whether to ban or allow concealed carry on campus, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Eight states—Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin—have provisions allowing concealed weapons to be carried by students on public higher education campuses.

To obtain a concealed carry handgun permit in Virginia, a person must be 21 years of age or older or a member of the military.

Employees, students, volunteers, and visitors at Virginia Tech “reported or discovered to possess a firearm or weapon on university property will be asked to remove it immediately,” the university’s policy on weapons states. “Failure to comply may result in a student conduct referral and/or arrest, or an employee disciplinary action and/or arrest.”

Exemptions from the policy include certified and sworn police officers or when participating in programs sponsored by the on-campus police department such as the police academy.

This week, Martin said he has limited his hunger strike diet to consist of liquid intake and regular medicine and multivitamins.

Over 34 hours into his strike, “at this point, I’m surprisingly not even hungry,” Martin told The Daily Signal Tuesday morning.

Martin said he possibly will strike longer than Friday if Sands does not contact him, but already considers the hunger strike a success because he’s “got the conversation on campus going.” (For more from the author of “Why This Virginia Tech Student Went on a Hunger Strike for Gun Rights” please click HERE)

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Police Chopper Catches UFO on Thermal Camera

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South Wales police are still scratching their heads over the UFO that appeared on one of their cameras last Saturday, reports the Daily Mail in Britain.

Officers flying in a helicopter across the Bristol Channel around 9:30 p.m. local time became aware of the mystery object when it showed up on the aircraft’s thermal camera. It was not visible to the eye, nor did air-traffic control detect the unidentified object.

The helicopter’s altitude at the time was 1,000 feet.

“It’s difficult to judge the size but we filmed it for just over seven minutes,” the police tweeted, while requesting suggestions from the public as to the object’s identity.

Some have suggested the UFO is a Chinese lantern or balloon, but those ideas have been rejected since the object was flying against the wind. (Read more from “Police Chopper Catches UFO on Thermal Camera” HERE)

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New Poll Shows Miller Within Single Digits Of Murkowski

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Anchorage, Alaska. September 28, 2016 — A new poll released this week finds Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller within single digits of incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska.

The People’s Pundit Daily tracking poll surveyed 317 likely Alaskan voters and found Murkowski with 38 percent, to Miller’s 30 percent, while Democrat Ray Metcalfe garnered 13 percent and 19 percent remained undecided.

Not included in the poll was left-leaning Independent senate candidate Margaret Stock.

A poll conducted in late August, prior to Miller’s entry into race, had Murkowski at 56 percent to Metcalfe’s 12 percent and Margaret Stock’s 5 percent. In other words, the senator has seen a significant drop-off since Miller entered the field.

Though Alaska is notoriously difficult to poll, Metcalfe’s consistent numbers in both surveys bolster the results as giving at least a rough picture of where the race stands.

It should be noted that Alaska has a strong conservative base, as evidenced by the Republican presidential primary results in March.

Sen. Ted Cruz, won the state taking 36 percent of the vote, followed by Donald Trump with 33.5 percent, Sen. Marco Rubio with 15 percent and Dr. Ben Carson with 11 percent. In other words, non-establishment Republicans accounted for at least 80 percent of the primary vote total in the state.

Miller’s insurgent candidacy would appear best poised to benefit from the popular anti-establishment sentiment in the country.

“We like where we stand right now,” said Miller campaign spokesman Randy DeSoto. “We are three weeks into this race, and Joe is within single digits of an incumbent U.S. senator who spent millions billing her herself as ‘The Conservative Voice For Alaska’ but having a record of voting with Obama more than any other ‘Republican’ senator up for re-election (72 percent of the time during the last Congress).”

“I believe when Alaskans learn that record, many of those undecided voters will move into the Joe Miller column,” 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.

Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jerry Boykin Endorses Joe Miller For U.S. Senate

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Fairbanks, Alaska. September 28, 2016 — Family Research Council Executive Vice President and former Delta Force Commander Lieutenant General (Ret.) William G. “Jerry” Boykin announced his endorsement of Joe Miller for U.S. Senate on Wednesday, describing the Alaskan as a “rock solid” conservative with whom he is “100 percent” in alignment.

“I am supporting Joe Miller. I believe in Joe,” Boykin stated, adding he is “a strong conservative on issues of national security, smaller government and fiscal constraint, and social issues like life and family. On all the core issues that conservatives hold dear, Joe is rock solid.”

“A West Point graduate, Joe has served his nation in the uniform of a United States Army officer, making him one of a dwindling number of leaders in America to have done so,” the retired three-star general said. “As a dedicated father and devoted husband, Joe embraces the family values that will help keep America strong.”

Miller responded to the backing of the renowned military and conservative leader saying, “I am deeply honored and humbled to receive the endorsement of a man whom I respect so deeply and who has served our country with such distinction.”

He added, “I share the general’s assessment that our nation is at a critical juncture, and new leadership is desperately needed in Washington, grounded in America’s founding constitutional principles, in order to restore the security, prosperity and liberty that have been the birthright of all Americans.”

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.

Hillary’s Sickening Gun Control Fetish Exposed

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At last night’s debate, there was one issue that Hillary Clinton really exposed herself on: gun control. With her talk of the “no fly list,” discussion of a “gun epidemic,” and a “plague of gun violence,” it became evident that Hillary has many ideas of how to impose comprehensive gun control.

According to the Washington Post transcript of the first presidential debate, Hillary said of guns:

The gun epidemic is the leading cause of death of young African-American men, more than the next nine causes put together. So we have to do two things, as I said. We have to restore trust. We have to work with the police. We have to make sure they respect the communities and the communities respect them. And we have to tackle the plague of gun violence, which is a big contributor to a lot of the problems that we’re seeing today.

The term “epidemic” and “plague” are medical terms used to describe illnesses. This is language intended to communicate the idea that gun violence is a health problem like cancer or the Zika virus. When one makes the ownership of guns akin to a sickness, it becomes easier to sell the American people the idea of mandatory gun confiscation.

Violence isn’t caused by guns, it is caused by people with guns, and knives and bombs. An issue that receives far less attention is the fact the violence is a societal problem made worse by rampant glorification in movies, cable shows, music, and violent video games. In other words, guns are not the problem. The people holding the guns are the problem because we, as a society, have been desensitized to violence through entertainment that glorifies violence.

Movies like Hostel to Reservoir Dogs to Natural Born Killers all glorify violence and make it acceptable to see death. Video games like Grand Theft Auto and the many military style games teach kids how to kill and allow kids to go on killing rampages. Violence in entertainment impacts the attitudes of people towards real life situations.

No liberal would dare to call these movies and video games an “epidemic” or a “plague” because that might lead to a chipping away of what many consider a First Amendment right. Yet, no similar treatment is given to the Second Amendment that resides in that same Bill of Rights.

According to the Washington Post transcript, Hillary argued:

And I believe strongly that commonsense gun safety measures would assist us. Right now — and this is something Donald has supported, along with the gun lobby — right now, we’ve got too many military- style weapons on the streets. In a lot of places, our police are outgunned. We need comprehensive background checks, and we need to keep guns out of the hands of those who will do harm.

Here Hillary called for a widespread gun confiscation, the closing of gun shows, and ending face-to-face sales of guns by requiring background checks on private sales. Hillary is an anti-gun extremist who does not respect the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution.

Clinton closed that segment with a false equivalency:

And we finally need to pass a prohibition on anyone who’s on the terrorist watch list from being able to buy a gun in our country. If you’re too dangerous to fly, you are too dangerous to buy a gun. So there are things we can do, and we ought to do it in a bipartisan way.

Trump, along with the NRA, supports the idea of imposing some due process when somebody is pinged as being on a watch list so they can challenge the removal of the right to purchase a gun. The NRA position is that if somebody tries to purchase a gun and they are on the “no fly list” then they have the opportunity to go into court and challenge the action.

Hillary supports legislation that process rights from those that end up, intentionally or unintentionally, on the no fly list. Trump and Clinton do not support the same idea on how to treat individuals who are on the “no fly list” who try to purchase a gun, because Hillary does not support due process protections in the legislation being supported by Trump, the NRA, and other Republicans.

The noise of “who won and who lost the debate,” Obama’s birth certificate, Trump’s tax returns, and Rosie O’Donnell don’t really matter to most voters. Having their guns confiscated and does matter.

On the issue of guns, Hillary lost the debate with Donald Trump. (For more from the author of “Hillary’s Sickening Gun Control Fetish Exposed” please click HERE)

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Fake Food Fight: A Debate That Reflects Our Political System

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Last night’s debate was a reflection of the Kim Kardashian culture and the fake two-party system that has destroyed our Constitution.

There were sharp rhetorical barbs tossed at one another in this reality TV show, but over what exactly did they debate? Where was the major point of contention on the actual issues that matter?

For all of the talk about how this election is so new, exciting, and consequential, this debate merely reflected a typical day in Washington. Harry Reid, D-Nev. (F, 2%) and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (F, 42%) toss rhetorical barbs at one another every day, but they fundamentally agree on so many issues. They engage in confrontation just to entertain the political class with a fake WWE-style bout.

Many of us have been pining for years to watch a general election debate in which the GOP candidate would deracinate the entire premise of socialism and pin the high cost of living, loss of jobs, and lethargic growth on the Democrats’ liberal policies. Yet, the beginning of the first presidential debate was an astounding display of “me too” socialism whereby Trump made his entire plan for economic growth centered around protectionism. Even if one subscribes to some degree of protectionism, the notion that this is a proactive tool for growth is absurd. Trump didn’t pitch his tax plan until Hillary brought it up and when she did, Trump spent more time focusing on “preventing” companies from leaving the country — whatever that means.

Trump got back on message for a few minutes when he finally defended his tax plan and spoke about onerous regulations. But fundamentally, the economic side of this debate sounded more one-sided than any presidential debate in memory, and that includes the debates with liberals like John McCain, R-Ariz. (F, 34%) and Bob Dole. It was further astounding that Trump did not mention the 800-pound gorilla on fiscal policy —Obamacare —a single time. Then again, for someone who loves expansion of Medicaid, it’s hard to articulate what exactly is wrong with Obama’s signature legislation.

The most disappointing part of the debate was when Trump enthusiastically agreed with Hillary on universal child care and maternity leave. Trump uttered a line that embodies the pale-pastel nature of the oligarchy since 1988. He asserted that while he agrees with Hillary’s program, they “probably disagree a little bit as to numbers and amounts.”

Freeze frame right there.

This is the perfect summation of the GOP since 1988, excepting for the brief aberration of the 1995 House Republicans. They agree with whatever Democrats are doing at any given time, albeit disagree over the numbers and amounts. Trump should have retorted by listing all of the Democrat policies that make it impossible for women to stay home with their children if they choose to do so because the cost of living through socialism forces both parents to work every year of their lives. Of the 14 winning issues we’ve outlined, he barely touched on a few of them and none of them in a meaningful way.

Somehow Donald Trump managed to (finally) hit Hillary on the debt, but never explained how he will end deficit spending given that he will not repeal a single program, will continue to add programs, and sign a massive stimulus bill on infrastructure projects, an idea that should be pursued by state governments.

When Hillary asserted that Trump referred to global warming as a hoax, instead of embracing the opportunity to discuss how this hoax is decimating the economy in swing states, he retreated by denying he ever said it. I think we all remember a candidate in the primary who would have relished a debate over global warming.

And while fiscal conservatism was dead in this debate, social conservatism — even social libertarianism, private property rights, religious liberty, and inalienable rights — never made an appearance.

But most of the debate wasn’t about issues — liberal or otherwise. To debate moderator Lester Holt’s credit, he let the candidates banter back and forth for most of the debate — you might even call it a debate for once. But that is the point. Given the nature of these two candidates — a tired, old Great Society culture warrior at one podium and her donor at the other — the meat of the debate was about personality. At the beginning, it was Trump’s personality who knocked Hillary off her game, but over time Hillary engaged in jujitsu by leading Trump into his own rabbit holes and in a defensive posture about his personal life and prior statements.

We already know Trump is a social and fiscal liberal on many issues, but the one saving grace has long been his strong views on immigration and national security. Yet, when given a fast-ball up the plate to talk about his solution to homegrown terror, Trump didn’t mention immigration or the Muslim Brotherhood once or body slam Hillary for increasing refugees by 550 percent. Rather, he went off on a tangent about NATO, got caught on his past statements on Iraq, and was ensnared in a lengthy discussion about birtherism.

When Hillary brought up the issue of gun control and the terror watch list, Trump could have destroyed her on bringing in assault people while foolishly focusing on the inanimate object. He could have exposed her hypocrisy of confiscating guns from innocent people on the list (a prominent journalist wound up on the list) while vigorously clamoring to let violent gun felons out of jail. He could have demonstrated how Hillary wants to go after guns without due process but opposes stripping individuals of citizenship after being convicted through due process of joining a terror group. Instead, he chose the age-old milquetoast GOP approach, the same strategy he employs on so many fiscal issues; he “strongly” agreed with Hillary, thereby throwing the NRA under the bus.

The one area of strength for Trump, however, was the discussion on law and order and how Hillary’s pro criminal policies will hurt inner cities. Trump was also on message when discussing Hillary’s failures in the Middle East, but that line of attack was overshadowed when he got trapped in his past statements on Iraq and his support for the Libya intervention. Furthermore, his answer to the question on nuclear weapons and North Korea was literally incomprehensible…as in weapons-grade stupid.

I couldn’t help but reflect with sorrow of how 52 years after Phyllis Schlafly called for “a choice, not an echo” in our political system. Today, we still hear the faint echo on policy from Republicans — yes, even this new and exciting one — drowned out by the raucous noise of the personal insults. When you strip away the WWE smack-down, there is no choice there.

For those who still desire to beat Hillary at all costs, I don’t blame you. But don’t kid yourselves: if Trump wins on November 8, the work would have only begun. We will have his incoherent luggage piled on top of the existing GOP establishment, which is more empowered than ever before. Blindly cheering everything we fought against for years – without immediately charting a new path for conservatism – won’t end well.

Until Americans return to the values that made this country great in the first place and seize the monopoly away from the oligarchy, we will continue to get the same failed leadership and the same indistinguishable choices every four years. And we deserve it. (For more from the author of “Fake Food Fight: A Debate That Reflects Our Political System” please click HERE)

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NEW STAFFER DETAILS: Docs Reveal Role of ‘Confidential’ Clinton Aide

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When Romanian hacker “Guccifer” breached Hillary Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal’s email account in 2013, it set off an explosive chain of events among a tight circle of Clinton family aides – including one “confidential assistant” whose extensive role in managing some of the former secretary’s mobile devices and computer security requests is only now becoming clear.

The details were contained in the latest document dump of FBI files on Clinton’s personal email use. The FBI chose late Friday afternoon to release nearly 200 highly redacted pages of so-called “302” files from the bureau’s investigation, a release that quickly became overshadowed by the impending presidential debate Monday.

But the files included new details of the tech intervention by Clinton aide Huma Abedin and Clinton Foundation official Justin Cooper – and a third individual, a Hillary Clinton aide named Monica Hanley.

Hanley was interviewed twice by the FBI, on Jan. 11 and June 23. Working for Hillary Clinton as a “confidential assistant,” Hanley joined the State Department in 2009 as Hillary Clinton began her job as secretary of state. Previously, the 35-year-old worked as an intern for Clinton while she served as a U.S. senator for New York.

In the released documents, Hanley emerged as the go-to staffer often tasked with finding replacements to satisfy Clinton’s chosen use of non-secure BlackBerries. Hanley stated she tried to find BlackBerries for sale on eBay and admitted that she made a trip to a mall in Virginia to try to find devices for sale. (Read more from “NEW STAFFER DETAILS: Docs Reveal Role of ‘Confidential’ Clinton Aide” HERE)

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Satanism Rise Fresh Sign of U.S. Fall From God

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Elementary schools forced by the government to allow “Satan Clubs” on school grounds. Statues of Baphomet are erected in major American cities. And a national headquarters for the “Satanic Temple” in Salem, Massachusetts, famous for its “witch trials” during colonial times.

Has America gone to the devil? Christian leaders are speaking out – and they are reluctantly saying it has.

Karl Payne, pastor of leadership development at Antioch Bible Church and the former chaplain of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, said the rise of devil worship is an ominous development.

“Historian Arnold Toynbee famously declared countries crumble from within,” he said. “I believe we are nearing the end of that same course in our country that once represented a light of hope and freedom to the world.”

Payne, the author of “Spiritual Warfare: Christians, Demonization and Deliverance,” said America is no longer a Christian nation. And Christians need to wake up. (Read more from “Satanism Rise Fresh Sign of U.S. Fall From God” HERE)

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