Report: Hillary Keeping Bill off the Campaign Trail to Limit Talk of His Affairs

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Fearing that the taint of sexual scandals would overshadow any positive impact, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton reportedly is minimizing the role of former President Bill Clinton in her campaign.

According to the Daily Mail, author Joe Conasaon, who wrote the new book Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton, said the issue is not merely whether Republican nominee Donald Trump might mine the Clintons’ past for juicy tidbits, but what might surface about Bill Clinton’s more recent activity.

“Much more troubling to Hillary and her closest associates was the constant chatter concerning her husband’s alleged extramarital romances,” he wrote.

“If he appeared anywhere with an attractive and unattached woman, even in a group photo leaving a restaurant, her name would be ‘linked’ to him in tabloid columns, as occurred regularly for a while with Belinda Stronach, a divorced Canadian heiress in her forties who held a seat in Parliament,” Conason wrote.

There was fire behind the smoke, Conason noted, referring to Julie Tauber McMahon, who was dubbed “the energizer” because of her frequent private meetings with Bill Clinton.

Conason also names actress Gina Gershon as a rumored Clinton paramour, a claim Gershon has denied.

As for Trump, who said after Monday’s debate he had planned to bring up Bill Clinton’s affairs but then thought better of it, a comment he made this week suggests Clinton’s past may be front and center in the coming days.

“The American people have had it with years and decades of Clinton corruption and scandal,” Trump said in New Hampshire on Thursday. “And impeachment for lying. … Remember that?”

Trump’s reference was to the scandal caused by Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

“The American people have had it with years and decades of Clinton corruption and scandal,” Trump said in New Hampshire on Thursday. “And impeachment for lying. … Remember that?”

Trump’s reference was to the scandal caused by Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. (For more from the author of “Report: Hillary Keeping Bill off the Campaign Trail to Limit Talk of His Affairs” please click HERE)

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Clinton and Obama’s Brazen Lie About the Iraq Withdrawal

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In the first presidential debate of the 2016 general election, Donald Trump blamed Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the rise of ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. According to Trump, Obama and Clinton created a “disaster” by “the way they got out of Iraq.” This refers to the tragedy that occurred after the U.S. pulled out of Iraq, and ISIS swept through the nation while imposing Sharia law and executing, raping and enslaving the Iraqi people.

Clinton responded to Trump that she hopes “the fact-checkers are turning up the volume and really working hard,” because “George W. Bush made the agreement about when American troops would leave Iraq, not Barack Obama.” She then asserted that “the only way that American troops could have stayed in Iraq is to get an agreement from the then-Iraqi government that would have protected our troops, and the Iraqi government would not give that.”

This protection was a legal immunity that would prevent Iraqi courts from prosecuting U.S. soldiers. Obama has made the same claim, and many media outlets have published stories saying he is correct, such as the Washington Post, Salon, FactCheck.org, and PolitiFact, the last two of which are “fact checkers” often invoked by the Clinton campaign.

In reality, news reports that were published when the U.S. troops were withdrawn prove that Clinton and Obama are being deceitful. As documented below, the articles show that:

the “agreement” Clinton spoke of was not intended to determine a hard date but to provide a soft placeholder.

“everyone” expected that this date would be extended.

the date was not extended because the Obama administration poisoned the negotiations and refused to use a simple and sure process to provide immunity to U.S. troops.

the U.S. State Department led by Hillary Clinton was a primary actor that destroyed these negotiations.

after the troops were pulled, Obama took credit for this and insisted that it was the right thing to do.

These articles also show that after this decision looked disastrous in hindsight, Obama and Clinton began falsely accusing Bush of forcing them to withdraw the U.S. troops.

The Status of Forces Agreement

The “agreement” Clinton spoke of was called the Status of Forces Agreement or SOFA. It stated that U.S. forces “shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory” by the end of 2011.

Contrary to what Clinton led the debate audience to believe, the SOFA merely provided a placeholder to satisfy Iraqis who opposed an indefinite U.S. military presence in Iraq. When Obama announced in October 2011 that all U.S. troops would leave Iraq by the end of the year, the New York Times reported:

And for the negotiators who labored all year to avoid that outcome, it represented the triumph of politics over the reality of Iraq’s fragile security’s requiring some troops to stay, a fact everyone had assumed would prevail. …

At the end of the Bush administration, when the Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, was negotiated, setting 2011 as the end of the United States’ military role, officials had said the deadline was set for political reasons, to put a symbolic end to the occupation and establish Iraq’s sovereignty. But there was an understanding, a senior official here said, that a sizable American force would stay in Iraq beyond that date.

The same article explained that the troops did not stay because the Obama administration “pressed the Iraqi leadership” to take a “controversial” public stand on immunity for troops “that ended any possibility of keeping American troops here past December.”

On the same day of the Times article, The Cable, a publication of the influential magazine Foreign Policy, revealed that Obama’s State Department, led by Hillary Clinton, refused to employ an easy and straightforward process to keep the U.S. troops in Iraq:

Administration sources and Hill staffers also tell The Cable that the demand that the troop immunity go through the [Iraqi] Council of Representatives was a decision made by the State Department lawyers and there were other options available to the administration, such as putting the remaining troops on the embassy’s diplomatic rolls, which would automatically give them immunity.

“An obvious fix for troop immunity is to put them all on the diplomatic list; that’s done by notification to the Iraqi foreign ministry,” said one former senior Hill staffer. “If State says that this requires a treaty or a specific agreement by the Iraqi parliament as opposed to a statement by the Iraqi foreign ministry, it has its head up its a**.”

These claims that Obama and Clinton could have used this option were proven true in 2014, when Obama employed the same process to provide immunity for 300 U.S. troops sent back into Iraq after ISIS rose to power and began wreaking havoc. As reported in a 2014 New York Times article:

The Obama administration said on Monday that it has accepted from the Iraqi government the same sort of immunity agreement for newly dispatched Special Operations troops that it refused to accept in 2011, when it opted to withdraw all American troops from Iraq rather than keep a residual force behind.

The Times related that the White House defended these conflicting positions by claiming that “this situation is different because Mr. Obama is sending only 300 troops in an advisory role, rather than keeping 5,000 there, as was discussed in 2011.” However, the article presented no evidence that any relevant law or agreement made distinctions based on the number or role of the troops. Nor has any member of the Obama administration or media presented such evidence in dozens of articles reviewed for this research.

Obama Took Credit Until It Went Wrong

On the day the troop withdrawal was announced, Obama gave a White House press conference in which he stated:

“As a candidate for President, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end….”

“After taking office, I announced a new strategy that would end our combat mission in Iraq and remove all of our troops by the end of 2011.”

Contrary to the notion that Obama wanted to keep U.S. forces in Iraq but was prevented by Bush’s agreement, the above-mentioned article by The Cable contains a note at the end of it that states:

This article was amended after a White House official called in to say that it was not the “White House” that was pushing for an extension of U.S. troops.

“The White House has always seen the president’s pledge to get all troops out of Iraq as a core commitment, period,” the White House official said.

A few days after the troop withdrawal was announced, Obama’s presidential campaign produced an ad stating: “Because of Barack Obama the mission in Iraq ended.”

A few months later, Obama boasted before soldiers in Fort Bragg, NC that “we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.” At the same event, Michelle Obama said to the troops that Obama “has kept his promise to responsibly bring you home from Iraq.”

In a 2012 debate with Mitt Romney, Obama said to Romney, “Every time you’ve offered an opinion, you’ve been wrong.” As an example of such, Obama said “You said that we should still have troops in Iraq to this day.”

Yet, in an August 2014 press conference, after Iraq was in the midst of what Obama called a “growing humanitarian crisis” and potential “genocide,” a reporter asked him if he had “second thoughts about pulling all ground troops out of Iraq.” Obama responded, “What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision.” Obama then gave the same explanation that Hillary used at the debate, which is that Bush’s agreement forced him to do this.

In sum, Obama campaigned on a promise to pull the troops from Iraq, which he and Clinton proceeded to do against the advice of Iraq’s top army officer and U.S. military officials. Obama then took credit for this, bragged about it, and defended it as the right thing to do — up until the point when it went wrong. Then he and Clinton began saying that Bush did it. (For more from the author of “Clinton and Obama’s Brazen Lie About the Iraq Withdrawal” please click HERE)

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AfterBern: Trump’s Socialist Policies Aren’t Working on the ‘Bernie or Bust’ Crowd

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It’s been a few months since Hillary Clinton clinched the Democratic party nomination, and it might be high time for the Trump campaign to realize that trying to siphon off her former intraparty opponent’s supporters might be a fruitless endeavor to say the least.

On Thursday, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump once again attempted to court socialists on the campaign trail, saying that his economic policies should appeal to supporters of former Democrat candidate and unabashed ‘democratic’ socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. (F, 16%), making the latest in months-long string of appeals to bring the disaffected aboard the Trump train.

Trump has been trying to win over the ‘after Berners,’ disaffected Sanders supporters, for a few months now, but his approach recently has shifted from personality to policy.

Trump’s initial line of appeal to former Sanders supporters was based primarily off similarities on trade and their respective anti-establishment narratives.

In an April interview with Fortune magazine, Trump pointed to a short list of areas on which he and the socialist senator overlapped: “One thing we have in common is trade. We both know the US is getting ripped off by trade,” he said. “The difference is I can do something about it and he can’t.”

“We’re talking about free markets but the problem is, we’re open, but the rest of the world isn’t open,” he continued, further outlining the two’s similarities on issues of keeping corporations in the U.S. and their views of currency manipulation.

“The only way you’re going to get jobs back into this country is, number one, [China and Mexico] cannot devalue their currencies, which they’re killing us with. Number two—and very importantly—we’re going to have to use the threat of taxation in order to keep jobs here and also in order to get jobs back.”

In June, Trump said that he and his camp would welcome “Bernie or bust” voters who had “been left out in the cold” after Clinton’s primary victory “with open arms.”

The use of this common narrative of a “rigged system” common to supporters of both candidates would be bolstered a month later by foul play allegations at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, which was punctuated by the DNC email hack.

The thousands of leaked emails revealed a conspiratorial effort among party officials to sabotage Sanders’ underdog campaign during the primary, leading to the resignation of then-party chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, R-Fla. (F, 8%) and giving Trump another avenue to make his case to the former Sanders camp.

“The system’s rigged and [Wasserman Schultz] was rigging the system for Hillary,” said Trump at a rally in North Carolina, in the wake of the developments. He also made note of his and Sanders’ similar protectionist agendas on trade policy.

“[Sanders] and I are similar in trade,” he told the supporters. “The difference is I can do something about it. I’m going to bring jobs back to North Carolina … The trade agreements we have are one-sided agreements for other countries, and it’s disgraceful.”

In fact, for all of the first presidential debate’s bluster and personality squabbling, government-funded child care was one of the multiple policy points upon which Trump and Democrat Party nominee Hillary Clinton publicly agreed on stage.

Trump also made his case to Sanders’ supporters based on the Clinton campaign’s choice of Tim Kaine as running mate, due to the Virginia senator’s support for NAFTA and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership.

And Trump does have some of the shared policies to make the case. In addition to his anti-free-market stances on the minimum wage and international trade, Trump has also added Big Government child care to his portfolio of promises.

A few weeks ago, ostensibly at his daughter Ivanka’s behest, Trump rolled out a policy proposal that, among its other provisions, includes a socialist, taxpayer-funded maternity leave program.

Unfortunately for the Trump campaign, the months-long effort isn’t working at all. As it turns out, running to the left on economic policies isn’t buy the candidate the socialist defectors that they’d hoped for. Rather, what it actually appears to be doing is turning Republicans away from the free market.

According to August data analysis at FiveThirtyEight, most of those Bernie supporters ended up falling along the Democratic Party line. But, even if the remaining holdouts could all find their way to become nose-holders, they don’t have the numbers to do much for Trump anyway.

“The Sanders holdouts aren’t that large a group. If they were forced to choose only between Clinton and Trump, the vast majority would choose Clinton and yet they would add only about 1 percentage point to her overall margin over Trump, according to [August] polls,” explains FiveThirtyEight’s Harry Enten. “That could matter in a close election, but the election isn’t looking all that close at the moment.”

Some factors, however, have changed. Thanks to pneumonia-gate, ongoing email releases, and a list of other things working against Clinton, the polls have tightened, and — at the time of this writing — the RealClearPolitics spread has Clinton up a mere 2.9 points.

But still, it doesn’t look like Bernie holdouts are going to line up behind the New York billionaire anytime soon. If it hasn’t happened by this point, it’s probably not going to happen.

Meanwhile, the GOP candidate’s protectionist rhetoric and departure from free trade seems to brought an alarming number of Republicans along for the ride. A recent Politico-Harvard poll found that 85 percent of GOP voters believe that free trade policies have cost more jobs than they have created … contrasted against a mere 54 percent of Democrats.

But, who knows? This could really be the start of something. After all, if Donald Trump’s efforts could turn such a significant swath of the former free market, small government party against the concept of free trade, who knows what a majority of Republican voters will think about socialist maternity leave in a few weeks? (For more from the author of “AfterBern: Trump’s Socialist Policies Aren’t Working on the ‘Bernie or Bust’ Crowd” please click HERE)

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Judicial Amnesty? Federal Judge Indicates He Might Revive Obama’s DAPA Amnesty

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Could a federal judge pave the road to reviving Obama’s DAPA amnesty in most of the country? Are we about to see a mass judicial amnesty on top of Obama’s existing executive amnesties that are still in operation?

As we reported in August, an illegal alien recipient of Obama’s DACA status sued in federal court to have Obama’s DAPA amnesty (which renewed DACA applications for three years) reinstated. The illegal alien, represented by the Soros-funded National Immigration Law Center (NILC), is asking the U.S District Court for the Eastern District of New York to ignore the Fifth Circuit’s injunction on Obama’s amnesty because, in their estimation, the injunction should not apply outside of the 26 states that sued the administration, given that the Supreme Court was deadlocked at a national level. The consequence of this decision would open up DAPA for New York City and potentially in many other states.

At the time, we suggested that it would be absurd for a judge to grant standing to an illegal alien to sue for affirmative citizen privileges on an illegal executive amnesty that even the administration is no longer pursuing. It’s bad enough to rule that Obama has the authority to override the sovereignty of the nation and the plenary power of inviolable congressional statutes. But to proactively order the administration to revive its executive amnesty — at the behest of an illegal alien — would be mind-blowing to even liberal justices of previous generations, as I demonstrate in chapter 4 of Stolen Sovereignty.

Sadly, the men in robes on the federal bench ain’t your grandfather’s judicial activists. They literally believe that the Constitution and statutes are amendable to their geopolitical world view. It now appears that Judge Nicholas Garaufis, a Clinton appointee, is not only willing to grant Martin Jonathan Batalla Vidal, an illegal alien from Mexico, standing to sue for citizen rights, but he indicated his personal sympathies and inclination to rule in Vidal’s favor.

Here is the report from Law360 (subscription required) on the initial hearing:

A New York federal judge has indicated a willingness to break from a Texas court on Thursday in a case seeking to exempt certain New York residents from the block against the president’s executive actions on immigration, saying he had “no intention” of “marching behind in the parade,” according to a transcript. […]

“I don’t know what’s going on out there [in] Texas on the border, but I know what’s going on in New York,” said Judge Garaufis, according to a transcript of an initial hearing held Thursday. “And I’m very concerned about it, and I have absolutely no intention of simply marching behind in the parade that’s going on out there in Texas, if this person has rights here.”

What right does a judge have to be concerned with illegal aliens? Ironically, the plaintiff is actually suing the Obama administration for NOT following through with its own egregious executive action in the other states. Yet, when the lawyer for the DOJ complained to Judge Garaufis about their untenable situation, the judicial tyrant responded, “I sympathize with your problem, but I do not sympathize with the idea that I am hamstrung in dealing with an issue involving individual rights and including the right to go make a living and have a life as an immigrant in the United States.”

Freeze frame right there!

This is the constitutional crisis we face. Courts think that they have the power to not only change the Constitution and statutes, but force an executive to enact a revolutionary executive action and grant standing to an illegal in order to tickle their social sensibilities. Who are we to “hamstring” them from getting what they want by any means?!

t would be scandalous enough for a judge to grant standing to a plaintiff in order to force the Executive Branch to enact any executive action, even as it relates to American citizens. But to grant such standing to an illegal alien to sue for affirmative benefits who, under the most settled aspect of American law and sovereignty must be deported, is beyond comprehension. Yet, this judge believes this man has individual rights and calls him an “immigrant” as if he’s here with the consent of the citizenry. If transgenderism could be applied to jurisprudence, it would look something like this.

Moreover, as Dale Wilcox of the Immigration Reform Law Institute points out, the injunction has to be applied nationwide because “nothing would stop the millions of illegal aliens in Texas (and Louisiana and Alabama) going out of state to apply for and receive DAPA-benefits” in a state like New York (if the judge reinstates the program). That alien could then return home and force one of the state’s that received injunctive relief to issue a driver’s license.

To make matters worse, consider the following warped juxtaposition: sovereign states, law enforcement, and individual taxpayers are denied standing to sue the administration when it manifestly violates Congressional immigration statutes. States, towns, communities, civil services, and the criminal justice system are then flooded with illegal aliens, often violent ones. Yet, individuals in this country without the consent of the people can obtain standing to sue the administration for NOT taking action to violate Congress’ plenary power over immigration.

Stolen Sovereignty, indeed!

As I warn in my book, if the courts are not stripped of their power to adjudicate cases granting illegal aliens rights, there are already enough lower court judges who would create an affirmative right to immigrate and nullify our national sovereignty — the most profound manifestation of what Justice Scalia called “social transformation without representation.”

The courts are engaging in nullification and civil disobedience. That Congress sits idly while lower court judges, which are created and controlled by Congress, subvert our system of governance, enlarge their role, nullify congressional statutes, ignore 200 years of case law, and shred the preamble of the Declaration of Independence — which calls for governance by the consent of the government (citizenship by consent) — is something our Founders could never have envisioned in their worst nightmares.

If Congress refuses to use Article III Sec. 2 to take immigration away from the courts or use the power of the purse to defund adjudication that violates our sovereignty, the people and the states must rise up and ignore the courts. As Robert Bork said 20 years ago, “[T]o the objection that a rejection of a court’s authority would be civil disobedience, the answer is that a court that issues orders without authority engages in an equally dangerous form of civil disobedience.” And at the time, Bork wasn’t even confronted with the stolen sovereignty and mandated transgenderism we face today. (For more from the author of “Judicial Amnesty? Federal Judge Indicates He Might Revive Obama’s DAPA Amnesty” please click HERE)

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Busted: Chelsea Clinton Spotted Boarding Private Jet Headed to ‘Clean Energy’ Event

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When you think of “clean energy” in the context of travel, what comes to mind? Public transportation? Carpooling? Flying commercially for long-distance trips?

For Chelsea Clinton, it’s a private jet. This week, Hillary Clinton’s equally liberal, but slightly more charming daughter attended a series of campaign events in North Carolina on behalf of the Democratic presidential nominee, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

After making two separate appearances Wednesday at events in Greenville, N.C., one of Clinton’s last stops was a “clean energy roundtable” … to which she rode in her private jet. The roundtable discussion was held in Asheville — just a five-hour drive from Greenville, according to the Free Beacon, who cited video footage of Clinton boarding the gas-guzzling aircraft.

Based on this latest episode, it would appear as if the Clinton Campaign is doing next to nothing to fulfill its goal of becoming “carbon neutral.” Last year, the campaign announced its commitment to “offsetting the carbon footprint of the campaign and that includes travel.” The pledge came after the former secretary of state was criticized for … yup, flying to an event in a private jet.

But please, Hillary, tell us more about your commitment to “clean energy.” (For more from the author of “Busted: Chelsea Clinton Spotted Boarding Private Jet Headed to ‘Clean Energy’ Event” please click HERE)

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What Top Senators Want to Know About Obama’s Push to OK New Citizens to Vote

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The branch manager for the Houston office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services seemed clear about the reason and timing for asking staff to work overtime to push through more citizenship applications.

“The field office due to the election year needs to process as many of their N-400 cases as possible between now and FY 2016,” the manager said in an email to staff dated July 21, 2016, and referring to applications for citizenship called N-400 forms.

The email message from the Customs and Immigration Services supervisor offered overtime, including weekends, as an incentive to process more applications:

If you have cases in this category or other pending, you are encouraged to take advantage of the OT if you can. This will be an opportunity to move your pending naturalization cases. If you have not volunteered for OT, please consider and let me know if you are interested.

In Congress, Republican lawmakers are concerned this is a rerun from 20 years ago. In 1996, congressional Republicans accused the Clinton administration of rushing through the citizenship process to register new voters, many likely to vote Democrat, as part of a program called Citizenship USA.

The manager’s email to Customs and Immigration Services employees was made public by the offices of Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis.

Such an apparent rush to citizenship is a particular concern to the senators because of a report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general that found Customs and Immigration Services granted citizenship to almost 900 individuals with deportation orders who used false names.

Politics has nothing to do with increased processing of citizenship applications, according to Obama administration officials.

“USCIS’s goal is to process applications for naturalization within five to seven months, regardless of external events such as elections,” Department of Homeland Security spokesman Shin Inouye told The Daily Signal in an email, referring to U.S. Customs and Immigration Services. Inouye added:

USCIS uses statistical forecasting models to plan for the potential increased volume of work. USCIS anticipated that there would be a spike in applications this year, as we usually see in an election year, but the increase in N-400 applications has exceeded expectations.

The agency “certainly encourages our naturalized citizens to be active participants in our democracy,” Inouye said. “However, like other citizens, no new U.S. citizen is required to register to vote, or participate in any election.”

More evidence is needed than a single email, but the matter warrants investigation, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Study, which advocates strong enforcement of immigration law.

“If you look at the whole country, these are not many votes,” Krikorian told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “But a few thousand can make a lot of difference.” He said:

[George W.] Bush won Florida with 500 votes [in 2000]. Al Franken won his Minnesota Senate seat by just a few hundred votes. If it’s close, a really small number of improper voters can make a big difference. Apart from that, there is the principle that there should be higher standards for citizenship.

The two Senate committee chairmen sent a letter Sept. 21 to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to inquire about what appeared to be a rush. Grassley and Johnson write:

We write to express serious concern about an apparent push by your department to rush the adjudication of naturalization applications before the upcoming presidential election, presumably in an attempt to create as many new citizen voters as possible. …

Your department seems intent on approving as many naturalization cases as quickly as possible at a time when it should instead be putting on the brakes and reviewing past adjudications, especially in light of this week’s Office of Inspector General report that found USCIS granted U.S. citizenship to at least 858 individuals from “special interest” countries (i.e. countries that are of concern to the national security of the United States) or countries with high rates of immigration fraud, who had final deportation orders under another identity.

“We sincerely hope history is not repeating itself,” Grassley and Johnson write, noting the Clinton administration’s actions 20 years ago.

In 1996, congressional investigators found a letter from a Chicago alderman to the White House, saying its Citizenship USA program could “provide the Democrats with a strategic advantage” and that “people stuck in Chicago’s naturalization bottleneck represent thousands of potential voters.”

Helle Dale, an immigrant from Denmark, won her approval for citizenship in 1996, that same year. Dale recalls the time between her application and an interview was “insanely fast” under the Citizenship USA initiative overseen by then-Vice President Al Gore, and says she believes history is repeating itself.

Dale, a former journalist who is now a senior fellow for public diplomacy at The Heritage Foundation, says that politicizing the citizenship process would be highly unethical.

“It may not be illegal, but it is a national security concern,” Dale told The Daily Signal. “I really think, because of an election campaign, to rush through the citizenship process is unconscionable.”

It seems obvious that the Obama administration is trying to register more Democrats, said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, which advocates stronger enforcement of immigration laws.

“Naturalization as a U.S. citizen is not supposed to be used as a political tool,” Mehlman told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Obviously, the administration wouldn’t be doing this if they didn’t think it could make a positive difference for their party in some states.” (For more from the author of “What Top Senators Want to Know About Obama’s Push to OK New Citizens to Vote” please click HERE)

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No Budget? This Senator Says That Should Mean Pay Cuts for Politicians, Staff

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After less than two years in Congress, Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., thinks he’s figured out what’s needed to fix the cumbersome way lawmakers fund the federal government: teeth.

More specifically, the freshman senator from Georgia wants members of both the Senate and the House and their staff to suffer “severe consequences” if Congress fails to pass a budget. He proposes mandatory pay cuts and canceled recesses as a way to keep the lawmakers on track.

A successful businessman, Perdue admitted that a smaller paycheck probably wouldn’t hurt him or many of his wealthy Senate colleagues. But he told reporters Thursday that lawmakers “don’t want to see their staff blown up.”

That’s a harsh but necessary consequence for Congress as the nation faces a looming debt crisis, Perdue said as he released the broad strokes of his plan to overhaul the budget process.

A member of the Senate Budget Committee, Perdue says his proposal is more of a prerequisite than prescription for dealing with the nation’s $19 trillion in debt.

“Right now, we have a budget crisis,” he said. “Fixing the budget process will not solve the debt crisis, but we will not solve the debt crisis unless and until we address the dysfunction in our budget process.”

Perdue would scrap the 1974 Budget Act—which he says has worked correctly only four times in over 42 years—by breaking down the wall between authorizing and appropriations committees.

That would mean merging appropriations subcommittees, which allocate funds, with committees that work on the policy.

Other proposed big changes include transforming the budget into a piece of legislation that must be signed into law. Currently the budget serves as a sort of spending blueprint that Congress agrees to but never sends to the president for his signature. As a result, the budget isn’t binding.

And Perdue’s plan would require Congress to add nondiscretionary spending—such as Social Security and Medicare—to the budget.

To deal with the increased workload, the plan would give lawmakers more time by moving the start of the fiscal year from Oct. 1 to Jan. 1.

The Daily Signal obtained a fact sheet of the proposed plan, though the text of the coming bill hasn’t been finalized.

Perdue’s office said the senator has been working on the plan for months with the blessing of Senate Budget Chairman Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., and the cooperation of House Budget Chairman Tom Price, R-Ga.

But the initial details were met with skepticism from some budget experts on personnel and policy grounds.

“I think Sen. Purdue is exactly right to call for reform and shift focus to the major spending categories on autopilot,” said Paul Winfree, director of the Thomas Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

“However, I worry that moving the budget year to coincide with the calendar year will only reduce transparency by shifting the annual appropriations debates to between Thanksgiving and Christmas for a procrastinating Congress,” Winfree said.

“It’s a terrible, terrible, terrible idea to think that you can somehow produce legislation by docking the pay of staff,” Jim Dyer, formerly the top Republican aide on the House Appropriations Committee, told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. “What you will do is send the staff off looking for other jobs.”

Shortly after the Senate passed a stopgap spending measure known as a continuing resolution Wednesday afternoon, Perdue previewed the plan from the floor, followed by eight senators including Enzi and Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn.

“We really don’t have a budget process. I mean, to even call what we do a budget, per most human beings’ understanding of what a budget is, is obviously not realistic,” Corker said. “We have to, in essence, get a process in place that actually works. It’s impossible for the process we have today to work. Today is a perfect example of that, right?”

In the Senate, Perdue has tried to leverage his business acumen during the legislative process, regularly mentioning his commercial background.

A former Fortune 500 executive at Reebok and Dollar General, Perdue said that when developing the plan he looked to the examples of businesses, states, and foreign countries.

In a floor speech, Enzi said of Perdue:

I remember introducing him the first time we had a Budget Committee meeting, and I said, ‘Sen. Perdue knows how to balance a budget, he’s been working in the private sector.’ And he said, ‘No, in the private sector you have to show a little bit of a profit.’ Well, we’re going to have to show a little bit of profit around here if we’re ever going to get rid of the debt.

(For more from the author of “No Budget? This Senator Says That Should Mean Pay Cuts for Politicians, Staff” please click HERE)

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Did Jeb Bush Just Let Slip Who He’s Voting for in Presidential Election?

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When asked who he will vote for in the November presidential election, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has intimated on several occasions that he may cast his vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

At a luncheon hosted by the Manhattan Institute on Wednesday, Bush suggested he may choose Johnson over Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

A source at the luncheon told the New York Daily News, “There was an old man talking to Jeb across the table and said, ‘I can’t bring myself to vote for Hillary and Trump,’ and Jeb looked at him and mouthed the word ‘Johnson,’ silently.”

During his speech at the event, Bush reportedly made a comment referring to Johnson as the president.

According to a source, Bush jokingly said, “If I did get a call several weeks after the election, what would I tell President Johnson — I mean, President whoever.”

In an email to the Daily News, Kristy Campbell, spokesperson for Bush, made it clear he had not chosen a candidate to support.

“Nothing has changed since the Governor wrote [a Washington Post] op-ed a couple months ago saying he couldn’t support Hillary or Trump. He has said he would consider voting for the Libertarian ticket. No decision/update though,” Campbell wrote.

Johnson, who according to the latest Real Clear Politics analysis is drawing about 7 percent support in the most recent presidential polls, has been in the news recently for his responses to questions on foreign issues.

The former governor of New Mexico recently appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” where he was asked, “What would you do if you were elected about Aleppo?”

Johnson responded, “And what is Aleppo?”

The host asked if he was joking to which Johnson answered, “No.”

In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Wednesday, Johnson was asked to name his favorite foreign leader.

Johnson wanted to name the former Mexican President Vicente Fox, but was unable to grasp the name.

“I guess I’m having an Aleppo moment,” Johnson told Matthews. (For more from the author of “Did Jeb Bush Just Let Slip Who He’s Voting for in Presidential Election?” please click HERE)

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City Obama Buried in Refugees Is Fighting Back

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The latest flashpoint in the growing backlash against refugee resettlement is Fargo, North Dakota, where the city commission is demanding a full accounting of the program’s costs.

“Surprisingly, that’s never been done before,” said a Fargo city commissioner, Dave Piepkorn, who spoke with WND this week and can be seen discussing his plan in the video above.

Fargo, like many other small cities that have received large numbers of refugees, has been divided by the issue. There have been protests against refugees and counter protests in favor of them, followed by biting blogs and news reports on both sides.

Fargo was thrust into the spotlight on Sept. 18 when it was revealed that the Somali refugee who attacked mall shoppers in St. Cloud, Minnesota, was originally resettled here.

“When we have one Muslim terrorist who tries to kill innocent people in St. Cloud, which is two hours from here, that raised my alarm,” said Piepkorn, who is leading the fight to expose the costs of refugee resettlement on his community. (Read more from “City Obama Buried in Refugees Is Fighting Back” HERE)

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New York City Begins Ad Campaign to Muzzle Hateful Speech Towards Muslims

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In the wake of terrorist bombings in New York City and New Jersey conducted by an Afghanistan native obsessed with Osama bin Laden, New York City has begun a campaign to chide those targeting Muslims with hateful speech.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has a digital ad campaign that features pictures of Muslims with captions that read, “I am Muslim. I am NYC.”

“New Yorkers of all faiths deserve to live safely and free from discrimination. In NYC, it’s illegal to discriminate against or harass someone based on their religion or creed. #IAmMuslimNYC,” the ads proclaim.

A press release said the effort to protect Muslims was necessary to counterbalance recent events.

“Across the country, hateful speech has made Muslim residents the target of misguided attacks and threats, especially in the aftermath of terrorist incidents,” the press release said.

“According to researchers and law enforcement officials, reports of attacks and threats against Muslims have surged nationally, most likely fueled by national and international terrorist attacks and political vitriol,” it added.

The “I Am Muslim” campaign is just the beginning.

Next year, the Commission on Human Rights plans a “city-wide public information and integrated multi-platform marketing campaign on combating xenophobia and embracing religious diversity in New York City.”

“Now more than ever, it is important for every New Yorker to stand united as one city and reject hate and violence,” de Blasio said.

“Bill de Blasio has made it pretty clear he isn’t very interested in aggressively fighting against radical Islam,” commented Andrew Mark Miller on Young Conservatives.

“Nice to see that Bill has his priorities straight. De Blasio is part of the problem,” he added.

“Words aren’t killing people. Radical Islam is,” he concluded.

Readers of The Daily Caller were underwhelmed by the ad campaign.

“BS ad campaigns — none of them are as effective as a terrorist attack in motivating people in the opposite direction. DeBlasio must think that his fellow leftist morons will respond to idiot propaganda. Maybe he’s right about them, but not about anyone with a brain. Nevertheless, he skrews EVERYONE over with his waste of tax money,” wrote Time_4A_Change.

“I swear, de Blasio is the kind of PC clown who, if he’d lived during World War II, would have watched news footage of the Holocaust and thought to himself, “Oh my, that’s just awful. Not the gas chambers — the possibility that because of them, Nazis in America could experience animosity from everyday citizens,” commented a writer using the name Media Bladders. (For more from the author of “New York City Begins Ad Campaign to Muzzle Hateful Speech Towards Muslims” please click HERE)

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