FORMER JUDGE: James Comey Was Determined “To Exonerate Hillary Clinton” and Shred the Rule of Law

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Former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can’t remember certain details on her emails and on many issues she remains evasive. On the other hand, for some observers, FBI director James Comey has clarified recent actions in regard to the Democrats’ presidential candidate.

Comey released documents concerning Hillary Clinton’s emails on September 2, the afternoon before the Labor Day weekend, as Paul Ryan observed, the time when they were least likely to command attention. Comey defended the action and told reporters the FBI released the documents when they were ready. Those suggesting the FBI was being “political” or part of “some fix,” he wrote in a memo, “either don’t know us, or they are full of baloney (and maybe some of both).”

The FBI director also said that the decision not to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton was “not a cliff-hanger” and “there really wasn’t a prosecutable case.” Comey referred disparagingly to “all the chest-beating by people no longer in government.” That may be a reference to former Superior Court judge Andrew Napolitano, who described the FBI interview with Clinton as “very troubling.”

Napolitano counted five times in the report where the FBI lamented that it did not have the material it needed. “This is the FBI’s own fault,” Napolitano wrote. “This tepid FBI behavior is novel in modern federal law enforcement. It is inimical to public safety and the rule of law. It is close to misconduct in office by high-ranking FBI officials. Someone restrained the FBI.”

Further, “the FBI did not ask Clinton aggressive follow-up questions. Her interrogators just blithely accepted her answers. They failed to present her with documents she had signed that would have contradicted what she was telling them – particularly, an oath she signed on her first day in office promising to recognize state secrets when she came upon them and to keep them in secure venues. And agents violated Department of Justice policy by not recording her interrogation when her lawyers told them she would not answer questions if her answers were recorded.”

For the judge, “it is apparent that some in FBI management blindly followed what they were told to do – exonerate Hillary Clinton. There is no other explanation for the FBI’s failure from the outset to use ordinary law enforcement tools available to it.”

The FBI’s release of the document on the Friday before Labor Day did not escape media coverage. On the other hand, the old-line establishment media has been slow to recognize James Comey’s history with the Clintons.

As Christopher Andersen noted in American Evita: Hillary Clinton’s Path to Power, after Bill Clinton left the White House, the goal was to get Hillary back in. The road led through New York, where Hillary took aim at the Senate seat vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Hillary was not from New York and had never spent more than a few days there, so she needed creative ways to attract votes.

New Square, a Hasidic enclave 30 miles northwest of Manhattan, had voted as a bloc in previous elections and campaign workers urged Hillary urged to stop there. In New Square, four members of the Skver sect had been convicted in 1999 of bilking government aid programs for some $30 million. During her visit, Hillary denied that she discussed any pardon.

The day before the election, in a letter to New Square’s main synagogue, president Bill Clinton said he looked forward to visiting the village. As Andersen noted, New Square delivered Hillary’s biggest victory margin of any community in New York state, 1,359 votes to only 10 for her opponent Rick Lazio.

During the final days of his presidency, Bill Clinton opted to reduce the prison terms of the New Square offenders, and after 9/11 that sparked an investigation. As Anderson noted, “Hillary received an unexpected gift in late June when, without explanation, U.S. Attorney James B. Comey closed the New Square clemency case.” Clinton’s pardon of fugitive Marc Rich also drew an investigation and Andersen found it odd that the Bush administration would “help the Clinton’s out” by refusing to release documents related to the pardons. And “in accordance with his boss’s wishes, U.S Attorney James Comey gave Bill and Hillary a pass.”

Hillary’s cleanup hitter is stepping up to the plate again, according to Andrew Napolitano. By his count, Hillary Clinton told the FBI she couldn’t remember a full thirty-nine times. She claimed she used a single electronic device but she actually used thirteen. When Congress began requesting information, her staffers smashed the devices with a hammer and a critical laptop was supposedly lost in the mail.

For Napolitano, destruction of the thirteen Blackberries was “obstruction of justice,” but nobody was charged. The only explanation, as the judge sees it, is that FBI bosses “blindly followed what they were told to do – exonerate Hillary Clinton.” (For more from the author of “FORMER JUDGE: James Comey Was Determined “To Exonerate Hillary Clinton” and Shred the Rule of Law” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Parting Gift to Planned Parenthood

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What do you give to a cash-flush abortion business and political ally that has everything? More taxpayer dollars, of course.

In his remaining few months in the Oval Office, President Barack Obama has found a new way to direct more taxpayer money to his friends at Planned Parenthood.

The Department of Health and Human Services has announced a new regulation that would force states to give federal family planning funds to Planned Parenthood and other abortionists. The move could mean millions more in taxpayer dollars for the nation’s abortion market leader at the expense of women’s health.

Title X is a federal program designed to fund “family planning” for low-income individuals. Created in 1970, it was only authorized through 1985. But Congress just keeps appropriating hundreds of millions of dollars anyway, and a large share of that goes to Planned Parenthood every year.

The Office of Population Affairs, which runs Title X, grants funds for “family planning services” (like contraceptives and sterilizations) and “education and information” for low-income individuals. While the common understanding is that Title X-paid counselors must inform a woman of all her options, the Clinton-era regulations actually make adoption counseling optional, perhaps explaining Planned Parenthood’s sometimes over 300-1 ratio of abortions over adoptions.

Grants are available to both public entities (like state health departments) and private networks. Where a state health department chooses not to apply, private entities often receive and distribute Title X funds. Among states that receive Title X funds, some have wisely chosen to prioritize the funds to more comprehensive health care providers than Planned Parenthood, thereby avoiding state entanglement with abortion. That’s why the Obama administration is upset.

Consider Kansas.

Recognizing that it made little public health sense to have women go to one location for birth control pills and another for other health needs, Kansas chose to prioritize the Title X funds it received to public health departments and clinics, nonpublic hospitals, and federally qualified health centers.

This would mean that any woman receiving Title X services would also be connected to a provider that could meet the primary care needs for her and her family, including preventive services, immunizations, diagnostic and radiological services (often including mammograms), and pediatric care.

She would have one primary care provider who knows her medical needs and history and wouldn’t need to travel to multiple sites for services that can be provided at one location more cost-effectively. Planned Parenthood is simply not equipped to provide these primary care services.

Kansas’ desire to consolidate public health funding to encourage primary care and preventive services rather than discrete “family planning” boutiques that detach patients from the broader health care system is shared by other states like Texas, Utah, Arizona, Wisconsin, Indiana, and others that have passed similar laws.

The Obama administration itself recognizes that “primary care providers are critical for ensuring better coordinated care and better health outcomes for all Americans.” So there should be common ground here on directing Title X funds to places where these primary care providers can be found, better coordinating an individual’s health care.

Alas, Planned Parenthood sued Kansas. Kansas won. But rather than allowing Kansas to meet women’s health care needs better through other providers, the Obama administration cut Title X funds to Kansas, hurting women in retaliation for the perceived slight to its ally.

A similar pattern has played out in Tennessee, New Hampshire, and other states where the Obama administration has directly granted money to Planned Parenthood, ignoring the judgment of states that Title X services should be provided where patients can connect to providers able to meet their comprehensive health care needs.

In New Hampshire, the administration even refused to disclose information about its direct Planned Parenthood grant, claiming disclosure would harm the nonprofit’s “competitive position.” But in just a few months, Obama won’t be around to help his friends at Planned Parenthood anymore, so the administration is trying to make it official before Obama is gone.

In the three decades since Title X’s authorization lapsed, many other government programs have served the purpose it was once intended to serve.

Federally qualified health centers serve at least eight times as many patients than Planned Parenthood. Medicaid has expanded, and many states employ federally approved Medicaid waiver programs to provide the same services covered under Title X to many more people. And, of course, Obamacare now mandates coverage of contraceptives on virtually every health plan.

In 2016 there would seem to be little need for a program that was supposed to end in 1985. Certainly, there is no need for that program’s more recent use to direct patients away from preventive services and primary care providers—unless, of course, the aim is actually to reward an industry that has been one of the president’s chief supporters, even at the expense of public health.

It’s difficult to read the president’s new regulation as anything other than a parting taxpayer-funded gift to a loyal crony. “For more from the author of “Obama’s Parting Gift to Planned Parenthood” please click HERE)

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Katie Couric Sued for $12 Million for Defamation in Anti-Gun Documentary

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Film producer Katie Couric and her director Stephanie Soechtig edited their anti-gun documentary Under the Gun in order to make a gun rights group in Virginia look as if they couldn’t answer a simple question.

They’re now facing a $12 million defamation lawsuit, according to documents provided to Bearing Arms.

Second Amendment rights advocacy organization the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL), along with two of its members, today filed a $12 million defamation lawsuit against Katie Couric, director Stephanie Soechtig, Atlas Films, and Studio 3 Partners LLC d/b/a Epix for false and defamatory footage featured in the 2016 documentary film Under the Gun. The film portrays a fictional exchange in which members of the VCDL appear silent, stumped, and avoiding eye contact for nearly nine seconds after Katie Couric asks a question about background checks. An unedited audio recording of the interview reveals that—contrary to the portrayal in the film—the VCDL members had immediately begun responding to Couric’s question.

In the filing, the VCDL, Daniel L. Hawes, Esq., and Patricia Webb allege that the filmmakers knowingly and maliciously manufactured the fictional exchange by splicing in footage that the filmmakers took surreptitiously after telling the interviewees to be silent for ten seconds so that recording equipment could be calibrated. The filing also contains side-by-side screenshots of the film’s footage of the VCDL members and anti-gun advocates, alleging that the filmmakers manipulated lighting to cast shadows on the VCDL members and to make them appear sinister and untrustworthy. “We were horrified to see how Couric and her team manipulated us and the video footage to make us look like fools who didn’t stand up for the Second Amendment,” said Mr. Philip Van Cleave, President of the VCDL. “We want to set the record straight and hold them accountable for what they’ve done. You shouldn’t intentionally misrepresent someone’s views just because you disagree with them.”

The lawsuit, filed in federal court (United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia– Richmond Division), seeks $12 million in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages. The VCDL, Mr. Hawes, and Ms. Webb are represented by Tom Clare, Libby Locke, and Megan Meier of Clare Locke LLP, a boutique law firm specializing in defamation litigation.

(Read more from “Katie Couric Sued for $12 Million for Defamation in Anti-Gun Documentary” HERE)

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How Ted Cruz’s Internet Offensive Could Change Spending Strategy in the House

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Sen. Ted Cruz’s latest showdown with the Obama administration over the White House plan to give up control of the internet could help bring wayward conservatives back to Republican leadership’s heel on a stopgap spending measure.

Arguments about internet freedom and federal spending have become intertwined on Capitol Hill, affecting how some House conservatives say they’ll vote on a short-term continuing resolution to fund the government after the fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

On Oct. 1, the Obama administration plans to relinquish control of ICANN—the global, nonprofit organization that functions as the phonebook of the internet by curating website domain names.

That’s the same day that the federal government’s spending authority ends.

Multiple members of the House Freedom Caucus told The Daily Signal that a policy rider stopping the internet handoff could sweeten a short-term continuing resolution that, so far, they’ve been loath to swallow.

Conservatives have sparred with members of the House Appropriations Committee for weeks over the length of a stopgap spending measure.

Appropriators want a three-month continuing resolution that would put government spending on autopilot until December. Conservatives balk at that option because it allows outgoing lawmakers to legislate during the lame-duck session, the period after the election but before the next Congress convenes.

Members of the Freedom Caucus have pushed for a longer, six-month continuing resolution. But if they secure policy guarantees from leadership, that could change.

A founding Freedom Caucus member, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said conservatives are open to supporting a short continuing resolution if two provisions are added: one pausing immigration from Syria and another “stopping the transfer of ICANN to an international entity.”

Cruz is spearheading the effort to craft the policy rider on internet control in the Senate’s version of the short-term budget measure.

The Texas senator has launched a website blasting President Barack Obama for “giving away the internet.” And he has scheduled a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing Wednesday to push Republicans to make good on their promise not to allow the Obama administration to surrender control of ICANN.

“In 22 short days, if Congress fails to act, the Obama administration intends to give away the internet to an international body akin to the United Nations,” Cruz said during a Sept. 8 floor speech. “I rise today to discuss the significant, irreparable damage this proposed internet giveaway could wreak, not only on our nation but on free speech across the world.”

Support for a policy rider to halt the transfer has been building among Senate leadership. Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., told Politico that he’d back the effort to add an internet policy rider to a short-term measure to fund the government.

Opposition to the transfer has been widespread in the past. In April 2014, 34 Senate Republicans, including then-Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, called on the White House to keep ICANN out of the hands of the United Nations or any other international agency.

When asked if McConnell, now majority leader, would support Cruz’s proposal, an aide to the Kentucky Republican declined to comment.

In the House, Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., is quarterbacking a coordinating effort. A GOP aide told The Daily Signal that the Cruz counterpart “has been in talks with the speaker’s office and is optimistic.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office declined to comment on ongoing negotiations. But members of the Freedom Caucus already were warming to that idea Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s popular with the American people to maintain sovereignty over our own country and some control over the internet,” said Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, who supports adding the measure to a three-month continuing resolution.

The Freedom Caucus has not taken a formal position, although several members are interested. Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., told The Daily Signal that adding a policy rider on internet control “would be most helpful” in persuading conservatives to rethink their opposition to a short-term budget measure.

For Freedom Caucus members who have been fighting with GOP leadership over spending levels all year. Stopping the transfer of ICANN could be a good consolation prize, Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., told The Daily Signal.

“If you’re locked into a bad [budget] package,” Brat said, “we will try to get what we can out of it.”

At least one key member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee is already on board.

Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees internet issues, told The Daily Signal he will use “every legislative tool available” to make sure the internet remains under U.S control.

“I’ll push for language in the [continuing resolution] that would prevent the Obama administration from moving forward with this irresponsible internet giveaway,” Culberson said.

But this isn’t the first time Republicans have tried this strategy to block Obama from making the transfer.

“There has been a longstanding appropriation rider to prevent funds from being used to hand over the internet that the administration is ignoring,” a Cruz aide told The Daily Signal.

“The senator thinks that language should be strengthened. He is hopeful that before the Sept. 30 deadline Congress will show leadership and protect freedom on the internet.”

Asked about Cruz’s latest effort, White House press secretary Josh Earnest projected confidence Monday that the president’s ICANN transition would go as planned.

The administration sees the handoff as “the right thing for the long-term security and well being of the internet,” Earnest told reporters.

“So that’s the approach that we’re intending to pursue,” he said. “We’ll see what kind of tricks Sen. Cruz has up his sleeve.” (For more from the author of “How Ted Cruz’s Internet Offensive Could Change Spending Strategy in the House” please click HERE)

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$9 Million. That’s How Much John Kerry’s State Department Gave His Daughter’s Nonprofit

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Here we go again, folks. It looks like Hillary Clinton was not the only secretary of state in the Obama administration to use the State Department for personal gain or special favors.

According to an exclusive report from the Daily Caller, “more than $9 million of Department of State money has been funneled through the Peace Corps to a nonprofit foundation started and run by Secretary of State John Kerry’s daughter.”

Specifically, a Peace Corps program called the Global Health Service Partnership (GHSP) received the funds from the Department of State. The program, which “sends volunteer physicians and nurses to medical and nursing schools in Malawi, Tanzania” was created by Dr. Vanessa Kerry. The Peace Corps then “awarded the money without competition to a nonprofit Kerry created for the program”:

Initially, the Peace Corps awarded Kerry’s group — now called Seed Global Health — with a three-year contract worth $2 million of State Department money on Sept. 10, 2012, documents show. Her father was then the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which oversees both the Department of State and the Peace Corps.

Seed secured a four-year extension in September 2015, again without competition. This time, the Peace Corps gave the nonprofit $6.4 million provided by the Department of State while John Kerry was secretary of state.

Seed also received almost $1 million from a modification to the first award, as well as from Department of State funds the group secured outside the Peace Corps.

Memos obtained by the Daily Caller indicate that Dr. Kerry worked with government officials to ensure these funds would be “fast tracked and non-completed” to her organization without competition.

Peace corps officials, State Department officials, and a spokesman for Dr. Kerry’s organization all denied any conflicts of interest or other untoward behavior. So John Kerry’s State Department helped secure $9 million for his daughter’s non-profit, and that was just coincidence?

Does anyone really believe that? (For more from the author of “$9 Million. That’s How Much John Kerry’s State Department Gave His Daughter’s Nonprofit” please click HERE)

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Obama and Hillary’s Deplorable Sanctuary Nation Policies Endangering Our Security, sovereignty

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If you want to know what it means to put the citizenry first in immigration policy and why it’s so absurd to focus on “what to do with peaceful illegals already living here,” given our nation’s current state of affairs, consider the following stories just from this past week:

Oscar Delgado-Perez, an MS-13 gang member, was charged with stabbing a teenager 40 times in a Montgomery County, MD park several months ago. Thank God the local police finally caught him last week, but this individual was already deported twice to El Salvador in just the past two years. How did he reenter and who is to say he won’t be let out again? Remember, when the open-border crowd talks about “unaccompanied minors” crossing the border, it includes people like Delgado-Perez who originally crossed over as a minor. The illegal who killed Sarah Root earlier this year also fit this description.

A serial rapist was arrested in the Austin area and was found to have been deported five separate times!

A Brazilian national was arrested in New Bedford, Massachusetts for killing his own daughter. He had previously been deported twice, on one occasion for attempting to murder his wife.

Last week, ICE apprehended a Guatemalan illegal alien who had been convicted on two counts of indecent exposure to minors, but was released by local police outside of Philadelphia. Being a sanctuary jurisdiction, the local police declined to honor the ICE detainer. Thankfully, this is one of the few instances in which the individual was later successfully tracked down by ICE.

Francisco Javier Rosas-Molina, an illegal alien from Mexico, served 11 years in prison for killing a border patrol agent in 2003, yet he was let go and deported. It didn’t take long for him to re-enter the country. Thankfully, he was apprehended last week by the Tucson Sector Border Patrol.

Last week, Fox News did an expose on rampant fraud in U Visas, whereby illegal alien women stalk American men and allege abuse at their hands in order to obtain eligibility for a visa under the guise of an abused partner. The number of U visa applications rose from 24,768 applicants in 2012 to over 58,000 this year. Unless there has been a rash epidemic of domestic violence, it seems an awful lot of scam artists will remain in the country.

Why are so many criminal aliens in this country and how are they allowed to commit multiple crimes, get released, and re-offend? Who is prioritizing the interests of the citizenry and why is Congress not doing everything in its power to make the election about this violation of our security and sovereignty? And if our border is more secure than ever, as Democrats suggest, how is it that so many violent criminal aliens are able to return almost immediately and re-offend?

The point is immigration is an elective policy. While we invariably have to deal with violence among our own citizenry, due to the collapse of family values, we don’t have to tolerate criminal aliens for a minute, even if they are here legally. Yet, there are so many criminal aliens, fraudsters, murderers, and rapists running lose or re-entering the country after being deported. And these are the people who are eventually caught and deported. Most concerning, the Obama administration and immigration judges are ensuring that many deportations are overturned and that these people are released into our communities with their whereabouts unknown.

Take Massachusetts, for example. Last week, the Boston Herald reported that “Massachusetts last year deported the lowest percentage of illegal aliens of any state in the nation — and had the third highest rate of granting asylum.” Who is the culprit for this policy? Liberal immigration judges working for the DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). As the Herald reports, the Bay State’s immigration court “deported just 26.9 percent of illegals who came before it, the country’s lowest average rate — and well below the national average of 46.4 percent.” Just 10 years ago, they were deporting 80 percent of the illegal aliens in the state.

And remember, national deportation rates have plummeted. According to recent data from the Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), nearly six in ten illegal aliens during the first ten months of FY 2016 were set free by immigration judges. At this pace, over 100,000 illegal aliens will be allowed to remain in the country because of immigration judges.

Keep in mind, it’s pretty hard to get apprehended these days, given sanctuary city policies and sanctuary nation policies put in place by Obama’s PEP (Priority Enforcement Program), which replaced the effective Secure Communities detainers. Thus, those appearing in immigration court are often similar to those criminals mentioned above. And most of them are being released and are committing more crimes! Of those released last year, there were “10,731 convictions for assault; 890 for sexual assault, including rape; 473 for homicide-related offenses; and 375 for kidnapping.” ICE estimates that there are 1.2 million criminal aliens at large in this country, and that is a conservative estimate.

Meanwhile, as deportations plummet, border crossings continue to climb back to the levels we saw in 2014 at the height of the surge from Central America, according to new data from the border patrol. And that doesn’t even begin to factor in the hundreds of thousands who overstay their visas and the countless number of Mexicans who overstay their Border Crossing Cards (BCCs). Over one million BCCs were issued to Mexican nationals in 2014 alone, making it an easy way for them to enter our front-door and disappear into the population.

It is simply astounding that this issue has become so partisan. Why should any American politician of any ideological persuasion not prioritize the security and sovereignty of the American citizenry in light of the criminal alien crisis in this country? This is why it’s downright reprehensible –—“deplorable,” to quote Hillary Clinton — that liberals in both parties would hold interior enforcement and border security hostage for amnesty.

Sadly, it is also deplorable that Republicans are about to give Obama everything he wants on a government-funding bill without addressing their most sacred responsibility as federal legislators. (For more from the author of “Obama and Hillary’s Deplorable Sanctuary Nation Policies Endangering Our Security, sovereignty” please click HERE)

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McConnell’s Feckless ‘Leadership’ May Cost the GOP the Senate

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This week, Senate Republicans are preparing to wrap up their work and head back on the campaign trail — a full two weeks before they were scheduled to leave. Since returning from a seven-week August recess, the Senate has put in a grand total of three weeks of work. Now, Republicans plan to bust out of Washington to protect their Senate majority.

In their wake, they leave a year of pandering to K Street, funding Planned Parenthood, and largely failing to fight on any conservative priority. But this is primarily the fault of one man: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (F, 42%).

As conservatives, we are repeatedly bashed over the head with the idea that we must sit down and shut up to “protect the Senate majority.” But what has this majority — led by Senator McConnell — won for conservatives?

The answer is a big, fat nothing.

McConnell’s legacy of leadership for conservatives is marked by combativeness, deception, and brute force — all in the name of “party unity.”

Just consider the major accomplishments of this Republican Senate. McConnell crows about passing the Keystone pipeline, a major transportation bill stuffed with earmarks, and a tax bill with blatant handouts to special interests. How about that $500 billion Medicare bailout? None of these are victories for conservatives. Not even close.

What happened to their priorities?

Well, let’s see. McConnell refused to fight President Obama’s executive amnesty. McConnell caved on conservative calls to end the Export-Import Bank. He negotiated away the biggest conservative spending accomplishment in decades, set up Republican amendment votes so that they would fail, considered ending the Senate filibuster, and, even worse, excoriated his own members for trying to have meaningful votes to repeal Obamacare.

Just last week, McConnell flat out ignored pleas from conservatives in the House and Senate to introduce a spending bill that will keep the government running into early 2017 — thereby avoiding passing significant and controversial legislation during the most unaccountable period of government.

As if to stick it to conservatives on the way out the door, McConnell dropped the fight to prevent federal Zika funds from going to Planned Parenthood clinics — a position that even Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. (F, 53%) has declared he cannot support.

Aside from barely standing for anything remotely Republican, it is clear that Mitch McConnell doesn’t care about conservatives.

Over the last year, conservatives have been told their ideas are too divisive and too controversial to be given any air time — much less an opportunity for a vote. All this, despite the fact that in the Senate every Senator has equal authority, and thus equal opportunity, to have their concerns heard. Instead of focusing on representing all factions of his party, McConnell has made it his special mission to shut down conservatives, relegating them to the back bench of “unfavorables” where they (not to mention their constituents) linger in obscurity.

When pressed, McConnell’s office stammers defensively, “but… but… we have a Democratic president, we could never pass their ideas! We have a Democratic minority that will block us!”

Somehow, the threat of disagreement from Democrats has become an acceptable excuse for not fighting at all.

So as the Senate hightails it out of town to “protect the majority” — pushing all their major work into the lame duck — it seems worth asking: what’s the point of having a majority if it refuses to fight for its principles?

It seems that conservatives aren’t the only ones asking this question. In a recent national poll conducted by Morning Consult, McConnell ranked dead last, with over half of the respondents responding negatively. That poll seems coincide with his Conservative Review score, a pathetic 42%.

It seems that it’s not just conservatives who are upset with McConnell’s failure to lead the Senate toward anything resembling a transparent process that draws a principled line in the sand against his Democratic counterpart. Voters are tired of not being able to distinguish between the parties. They’re tired of having politicians promise to repeal Obamacare root and branch, and then try to back out of it because it’s too hard.

McConnell’s fecklessness may indeed cost the Republicans its Senate majority. Sadly, the question must be percolating on the minds of most conservatives: What the point of having a Senate majority if it’s subject to the whims of only one man? A man who is nothing more than an aristocrat who silences conservatives within his own party; or too inept in his own obligations to fight on principle?

While the outcome of this election is uncertain, one thing is clear. Conservatives deserve far better than Mitch McConnell. (For more from the author of “McConnell’s Feckless ‘Leadership’ May Cost the GOP the Senate” HERE)

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SHOCK: Clinton Email Tech Assistant Had No Security Clearance

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The aide who set up former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private servers and email apparently had no security clearance, according to the findings of a congressional committee Tuesday.

Clinton aide Justin Cooper turned heads concerning the Department of State records preservation practices during a hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Cooper is the same aide who also sometimes destroyed Clinton’s BlackBerry phones, “breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer,” the FBI investigative summary report said.

Cooper was a longtime aide of former president Bill Clinton when he helped install Hillary Clinton’s system in 2008 during her first bid for the presidency. (Read more from “SHOCK: Clinton Email Tech Assistant Had No Security Clearance” HERE)

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Government Watchdog: Obamacare Can’t Detect Fake Enrollees

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Republicans are slamming the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) lack of accountability in light of two new reports showing the health care law is vulnerable to fraud.

“This report unfortunately tells us more of what we already know — that the Obamacare federal exchanges have been riddled with problems since day one,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) in a statement issued with several other GOP Committee Chairmen.

Brady and the other top GOP policymakers say they are concerned by the fact that undercover operations by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2015 and 2016 got through the ACA’s fraud prevention measures. For its 2015 analysis, the federal investigative agency successfully used “fictitious applications for subsidized health plans” ten times, and was approved for Medicaid coverage in seven of eight other fake applications.

Four states were targeted for investigation — New Jersey, North Dakota, California and Kentucky.

The 2016 investigation found that in addition to approving eight fraudulent applications, four applications were approved despite lacking proof of eligibility from prior years’ investigations. The applications were submitted through federal exchanges in West Virginia and Virginia, and California’s state marketplace.

Federal and some state officials agreed to create systems for better oversight, according to the GAO.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said in a statement that “Continuing to leave taxpayers vulnerable, years after the system was implemented, is a disgraceful way for the administration to leave our healthcare system. That the administration has been aware of this since 2014, and has failed to employ proper safeguards, is just the latest incompetence in the health law’s implementation.”

The law has faced other criticisms of late, as insurers are pulling out of many states and a majority of state-run healthcare exchanges have collapsed. (For more from the author of “Government Watchdog: Obamacare Can’t Detect Fake Enrollees” please click HERE)

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Obama Eyes Hacking Threat as Rationale to ‘Protect’ Elections

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The federal government is mulling a decision to protect state election systems on par with national defense and the power grid, citing recent hacking efforts. But state officials and other critics worry this move, under the guise of thwarting cyberterrorists, would be a back-door means of nationalizing local election functions.

Neither the Constitution nor Congress has granted the Department of Homeland Security the authority to provide special protection to locally administered election systems, said Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

“States regulate elections, this is different from highways or communication systems that can be legitimately regulated by the commerce clause,” he told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Where would they have the authority to do this?”

The commerce clause of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to regulate commerce between states and with other countries.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told state elections officials in August that he would consider designating election systems as “critical infrastructure” amid concerns that malevolent cyberagents could hack local election systems.

The FBI recently found that someone, possibly Russians, hacked voter registration information in both Arizona and Illinois. However, most security experts and elections officials contend that hacking actual voting machines is unlikely.

After 9/11, both the USA Patriot Act of 2001 and the Homeland Security Act of 2002 established definitions of critical infrastructure as “systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.”

A presidential directive from President George W. Bush in 2003, later superseded by one from President Barack Obama, elaborated on critical systems for maintaining the country.

The Department of Homeland Security designated 16 sectors of American society as critical infrastructure, including the energy sector, including the power grid; information technology, including maintaining the internet; and the the nation’s food and agriculture system.

But election problems would not prevent the country from functioning, said Brad Smith, a law professor at Capital University.

“It’s not really a catastrophe if we are down a couple of members of the House or the Senate. Even presidential races, [such as in] 2000, 1876, were resolved,” Smith told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “For people in Washington, it’s hard to accept that a delayed election result wouldn’t be like the power grid failing and people dying because they can’t get medical care, or the internet going down and no one can do business and access funds.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman said the agency doesn’t plan an announcement on whether it will designate election systems as critical infrastructure. The spokesman referred to comments Johnson made Thursday at an Atlantic forum, when he said:

It would be very difficult to alter the [vote] count, but we are concerned about bad cyberactors, general state actors, hacktivists, criminals that intrude into [the] internet presence of state election officials generally, and so, we’re offering assistance to these officials. … It does not mean a federal takeover of state election systems or state elections, or even national elections. We don’t have the authority to do that. What we can do in homeland security, in cybersecurity, is offer assistance when people ask for it.

Other state election officials concur that elections won’t likely be electronically rigged.

“It’s highly improbable at best that a national election could be hacked,” Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, president of the national group, said last month during a press conference. “First of all, there is no national system of elections. Our election system is extremely decentralized. It is run [individually] by all 50 states and within those states, the counties are really responsible.”

That virtue, Cato Institute’s Shapiro said, keeps American elections secure from hacking.

“There are 9,000 different election jurisdictions,” he said. “Voting machines are not connected to a network.”

Shapiro said he suspects the Obama administration has another motivation.

“Jeh Johnson floated this and senior administration officials don’t float things haphazardly,” Shapiro said in a phone interview with The Daily Signal. “This could be a way for the federal government to work around the Shelby County decision. It could be about cybersecurity, but also about [what the administration considers] protecting the right to vote.”

Shapiro was referring to the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Shelby County vs. Holder. That ruling came after the Justice Department took numerous actions to block state voter ID laws, such as requiring persons to show a driver’s license before they can vote.

The high court’s decision left in place bans on impediments to voting such as literacy tests. But it also determined some of the four-decade-old voting rights law—in which the federal government evaluated a state’s compliance based on minority voter turnout—is not applicable today.

Federal officials could try to use a critical infrastructure designation for election systems to try to convince Congress that elections should be centralized, said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation who studies election issues. Von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal:

Homeland Security doesn’t have the legal authority to regulate whatever it designates as critical infrastructure, but it could be used as an excuse to say to local jurisdictions: You should do this or you shouldn’t do this. For a county election official to stand up to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official and say no would be tough.

On Sept. 1, Investor’s Business Daily editorialized that such a designation by the federal government would be “nationalizing” elections:

This is not just a bad idea; it is dangerous. America’s polling functions have long been managed at the state and local level, to ensure that our mammoth federal government doesn’t get involved. It should stay that way. This government has stood by as an unprecedented series of cyberattacks have stolen our secrets and endangered our security. We should give them more power?

Letting our elephantine government get its giant proboscis under the tent flap for reasons of ‘national interest’ is opening up the possibility of political meddling in elections by government officials—either through actual intervention in the running and management of polling places, or by clever regulation that favors one party over another.

(For more from the author of “Obama Eyes Hacking Threat as Rationale to ‘Protect’ Elections” please click HERE)

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