Hillary Caught Wearing Earpiece to Get Instructions From Handlers; Mediaite Wrong Again

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Hillary Clinton was spotted wearing a nearly invisible earpiece yesterday during the NBC TV Town Hall event.

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True to form, the dimwits at Mediaite are claiming this is all a conspiracy, first with urgent missives like “Fox News Now Reporting Anonymously Sourced Theory About Clinton’s ‘Earpiece’” and “Donald Trump Jr. Spreads Hillary Clinton Earpiece Conspiracy Theory on Twitter”, to name but a few.

Well, it turns out that Wikileaks actually captured an email from Huma Abedin to Hillary Clinton asking whether the elderly, infirm, and oft-injured catlady had remembered her “earpiece”.

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Josh Feldman, usually one of the few voices of sanity at the far left media-watching website, was quick to react to the Wikileaks revelation, offering up the ludicrous explanation that — not only are you imagining that earpiece in the photo, but — Hillary simply needed her “earpiece” for the United Nations General Assembly.

Pity Josh never bothered to actually look up what UN General Assemblies actually look like.

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Psst, Joshie: do an image search for united nations translation or un translation service and you’ll see what the headsets look like.

They’re not teeny earpieces that your Abuela forgets to bring to the UN. (For more from the author of “MEDIAITE WRONG AGAIN: Yes, Granny Catlady Wears an Earpiece to Get Instructions From Handlers” please click HERE)

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5,300 Wells Fargo Employees Fired Over 2 Million Phony Accounts

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On Thursday, federal regulators said Wells Fargo employees secretly created millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts — without their customers knowing it — since 2011.

The phony accounts earned the bank unwarranted fees and allowed Wells Fargo employees to boost their sales figures and make more money.

“Wells Fargo employees secretly opened unauthorized accounts to hit sales targets and receive bonuses,” Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said in a statement.

Wells Fargo confirmed to CNNMoney that it had fired 5,300 employees over the last few years related to the shady behavior. Employees went so far as to create phony PIN numbers and fake email addresses to enroll customers in online banking services, the CFPB said. (Read more from “5,300 Wells Fargo Employees Fired Over 2 Million Phony Accounts” HERE)

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SANCTUARY STATE: New Mexico State Police Refuse to Ask for Cop Killer’s Citizenship Status!

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The Alamogordo, New Mexico Alamogordo Daily News reported on September 2, 2016 that 33-year-old Police Officer Clint Corvinus was fatally shot on September 3, 2016 by 38-yr-old wanted fugitive Joseph Moreno.

In the shootout, following a routine traffic stop, involving Moreno, Officer Corvinus, and a second Police Officer, Christopher Welch, Moreno was also fatally shot.

The report of the investigation of the shooting conducted by the New Mexico Department of Public Safety (NMDPS), updated on September 5, states:

“Forensic evidence at the scene, Officer Welch’s lapel camera video providing footage of the incident, and officer interviews, reveal the following information. During the course of the foot pursuit, Mr. Moreno had in his possession a bag he was carrying. As Mr. Moreno was running away from officers, he reached inside the bag and removed a .357 caliber revolver (later revealed to have had the serial number unlawfully removed).

Mr. Moreno turned toward officers and pointed his firearm at officers. Officer Welch fired at Mr. Moreno after Mr. Moreno pointed his firearm at the officers. At this time Mr. Moreno fell to the ground. While Mr. Moreno was on the ground, Mr. Moreno fired multiple shots at officers. Evidence at the scene indicates Officer Corvinus was struck with one round fired by Mr. Moreno.

Mr. Moreno then got up off the ground and briefly continued to flee on foot. Officer Welch continued to pursue Mr. Moreno and fired additional shots at Mr. Moreno near 602 South Florida Street. Mr. Moreno sustained a fatal shot to the head and fell to the ground a second time. During the time Officer Welch fired rounds at Mr. Moreno, Officer Corvinus was behind Officer Welch and never in his direct line of fire. Officer Welch was unaware Officer Corvinus had been struck by gunfire until after Mr. Moreno had been subdued.

Officer Welch secured Mr. Moreno and the firearm in Mr. Moreno’s possession. Officers later discovered inside the bag in Mr. Moreno’s possession were ten unfired hollow point bullets and a pair of handcuffs. A pistol holster was also found next to Mr. Moreno. Evidence obtained by investigators at the scene will be further analyzed by the state crime laboratory for additional examination.”

Furthermore, the NMDPS report states that:

“At the time of the incident, Mr. Moreno had three outstanding warrants for charges of possession of a controlled substance, two counts of burglary – third degree felonies, and driving with a suspended license. Mr. Moreno had an extensive criminal history and involvement with law enforcement. His criminal history includes arrests for armed robbery, aggravated burglary, multiple counts of possession of controlled substance, multiple counts of possession of firearm by felon, and contributing to the delinquency of minor.”

When queried via emails as to the citizenship status of Joseph Moreno at the time of his death, the report’s author, Sergeant Elizabeth Armijo, New Mexico State Police (NMSP), Public Information Officer stated:

“I don’t have any information regarding the citizenship of Joseph Moreno. There is no indication he is anything other than a US citizen” (September 7, 2016)

In response to a further query as to if the NMSP “assume US citizenship on the basis of his {Moreno’s} residence in Alamogordo, NM,” Sergeant Armijo responded:

“The New Mexico State Police is not assuming anything regarding the citizenship of Joseph Moreno. Our investigation is pertaining to the incident surrounding his death and that of an Alamogordo police officer. His citizenship has nothing to do with our investigation.” (September 8, 2016)

On January 31, 2011, a press release from the Office of New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez entitled “GOVERNOR SUSANA MARTINEZ RESCINDS NEW MEXICO SANCTUARY STATUS,” states that, according to Executive Order 2011-009:

“SANTA FE – Governor Susana Martinez announced today that she has signed an executive order rescinding sanctuary status for illegal immigrants who commit crimes in New Mexico while protecting victims and witnesses of criminal acts. The order signed by Governor Martinez directs law enforcement officers to inquire about the immigration status of those who are arrested for committing crimes.

‘This order takes the handcuffs off of New Mexico’s law enforcement officers in their omission to keep our communities safe,’ said Governor Martinez. ‘The criminal justice system should have the authority to determine the immigration status of all criminals,

regardless of race or ethnicity, and report illegal immigrants who commit crimes to federal authorities. Meanwhile, it is important that we safeguard the ability of victims and witnesses to report crimes to law enforcement officers without fear of repercussion.”

So is New Mexico still a de facto sanctuary state? (For more from the author of “SANCTUARY STATE: New Mexico State Police Refuse to Ask for Cop Killer’s Citizenship Status!” please click HERE)

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Virginia Dems Blocking the Truth About 100s of Non-Citizens Engaged in Voter Fraud

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Election integrity foes mistakenly tell us voter fraud is a myth. So when legitimate voter fraud is actually discovered, these foes pretend it didn’t happen, fail to take any steps to investigate or prosecute such cases, or, even worse, try to cover it up. Take Virginia, where the State Board of Elections and some local election officials want to hide a blatant case of voter fraud involving noncitizens.

Penalties for voting as a non-citizen

When non-citizens register or actually vote, they violate both state and federal statutes because citizenship is a requirement to vote in both state and federal elections. Falsely claiming to be a citizen on a voter registration form is a felony that violates three different federal statutes. Voting by a non-citizen under 18 U.S.C. §611 is a strict liability offense. In other words, it “does not require proof that the offender was aware that citizenship is a prerequisite to voting.” Article II, Section 1 of the Virginia constitution requires a voter to be a citizen, and §24.2-1004 of the Virginia Code makes it a felony to vote when you are “not qualified to vote” in the state.

So you would think state and local election officials would treat these crimes with appropriate seriousness. Guess again.

When I was a member of the Fairfax County Electoral Board in Virginia, we discovered close to 300 non-citizens who had illegally registered in our county, about half of whom had also illegally voted in prior elections. We removed those individuals from the voter rolls and forwarded their files to both the Commonwealth Attorney (Virginia’s equivalent of the county district attorney) and the U.S. Justice Department for investigation and prosecution. Neither took any action to enforce the law against these non-citizens.

Voter Fraud in Virginia

Fast forward to April of this year when the Virginia Voters Alliance and a Virginia voter (David Norcross) filed a lawsuit against the city of Alexandria, Va., claiming that the general registrar, Anna Leider, was violating the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).The lawsuit charged that Leider failed to make her records related to the city’s voter-list maintenance procedures available for public inspection, which would obviously include all information about the removal of ineligible voters.

The Alliance also claimed Leider was not conducting the reasonable list-maintenance procedures mandated by the NVRA to clean up the rolls by removing the names of registered voters who are deceased, have moved, or are otherwise ineligible to vote (like non-citizens). As a result of the lawsuit, the Alliance was finally able to get into Leider’s office and inspect the voter registration records. Among the items they discovered was a list containing several hundred registrants who had been removed from the voter rolls because they were not U.S. citizens.

Leider stonewalls the Alliance

When the Alliance asked to photocopy this document, Leider refused. Her attorney later told the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which is representing the Alliance and David Norcross, that the state election board was telling her she could not release that information.

The Alliance was not able to determine exactly how many of those non-citizens had illegally voted before being dropped from the voter list. In a letter to the Public Interest Legal Foundation, the city’s attorney subsequently claimed that the voter history of non-citizens who are removed from the voter rolls is not subject to the public records inspection provision of the NVRA. In other words, they are trying to hide whether non-citizens illegally voted.

Whether Alexandria notified law-enforcement officials is unclear. The city’s attorney says there were some “communications to and from the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office,” but no records concerning those communications have been released. That response indicates that the city did not turn over any records to federal authorities.

What we have here are several hundred cases of voter fraud in just one Virginia city that won’t appear in any public reports when there are discussions and debates about voter fraud.

Fraud elsewhere in Virginia

As a result of the discovery of all of these non-citizens in Alexandria, the Alliance decided to send information requests under the NVRA to several other Virginia counties requesting information on registered voters who were not U.S. citizens. Prince William County produced a list of more than 400 non-citizens who had been removed from the county’s voter rolls. There is no indication that Prince William (or the state election board) forwarded information to local or federal prosecutors on these 400 potential felons for investigation and possible prosecution either. So here we have another 400 likely cases of voter fraud that won’t appear in any records.

Bedford County, a relatively small rural county in Virginia with only about 60,000 individuals of voting age, actually provided the Alliance with a list of several dozen non-citizens who had been removed from the voter rolls. After the Alliance received the list, the Public Interest Legal Foundation received a telephone call from the Bedford County registrar asking the Alliance to either return or delete the list. She said that Virginia state election officials had contacted her and informed her that she shouldn’t have sent the Alliance the list of removed non-citizens. There is also no evidence that Bedford County forwarded information on these non-citizens who had broken the law to law enforcement officials for possible prosecution.

Numerous other Virginia counties have refused to provide this information to the Public Interest Legal Foundation, apparently based on instructions from the State Board of Elections and individuals working for the state Department of Elections, which the Board supervises. This is what a cover-up directed by state election officials looks like. They are trying to hide hundreds, if not thousands, of instances of voter fraud that occurred on their watch.

If thousands of aliens are registered or actually voting, it would obviously undermine the national narrative that voter fraud is a myth. This would be particularly disturbing in a state like Virginia, in which statewide elections for attorney general have been decided by fewer than 1,000 votes in the last decade.

Nonchalant attitude rampant in Virginia politics

This should come as no surprise. After all, it was Gov. McAuliffe who in April 2015 vetoed a bill that would have required jury commissioners to forward information to election officials on individuals who were excused from jury duty for not being a citizen. And last year, I criticized James Alcorn, one of the two Democratic appointees on the Virginia Board of Elections, after he proposed that the election board change its rules so that individuals leaving the citizenship question unanswered on the voter registration form would still be allowed to register.

Alcorn stated at the time that the focus shouldn’t be on “whether the voter is able to complete the form,” which totally discounted the fact that ignoring this omission would make it incredibly easy for non-citizens to get away with illegally registering to vote. Although the proposal was apparently supported by the other Democratic appointee, Singleton McAlister, Clara Belle Wheeler, the sole Republican member of the State Board of Elections, objected to the proposal which, after a public outcry, was tabled.

Blocked investigation

By instructing the counties not to provide the requested information to the Virginia Voters Alliance, these state officials appear to be violating federal law, specifically the provision in NVRA covering “Public disclosure of voter registration activities” (52 U.S.C. §20507(i)) which mandates that election officials “make available for public inspection and, where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters.” Another provision of federal law, 52 U.S.C. §20702, makes it a misdemeanor for any individual to “conceal” any such “records and papers” relating to voter registrations and other election documents. Violation can result in a fine of $1,000 or imprisonment of not more than a year.

So the next time someone tells you that we shouldn’t be concerned about voter fraud, think about the hundreds of non-citizens who have apparently illegally registered and who may have even voted in elections in the Commonwealth of Virginia. They may have been removed from the voter rolls but so far none of them has been prosecuted for violating the law. Worse, these aliens were only detected because they sought to renew their driver’s licenses and told the truth the second time when they admitted to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles that they were not citizens.

We have no idea how many other non-citizens remain undetected in the voter rolls of Virginia, a purple state where the outcome of the November election is still in doubt, and where the state takes no steps of any kind to verify the citizenship status of voter registrants. It is a state where the controlling members of the State Board of Elections obviously see nothing wrong with violating federal public records law, attempting to conceal illegal registration and voting, and seem to have no interest in taking any steps to prosecute those who have violated some of our most fundamental protections intended to preserve the integrity of our election process. (For more from the author of “Virginia Dems Blocking the Truth About 100s of Non-Citizens Engaged in Voter Fraud” please click HERE)

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McConnell’s Double Budget Betrayal Begins

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The annual budget is the most powerful tool given over to the party that controls Congress. It is a tool that can be used to express the priorities and worldview of that party, and can be used as a platform to present their case for a White House win.

In a sane world, Republicans would have immediately presented their budget this week, funded every agency and department (even the bad ones and functions like Obamacare that will have to wait for future leverage points), albeit prohibited funding for some of the most damaging and imminent problems facing this country. Obama’s refugee increase, the internet giveaway, and payments to Iran, to name a few. The bill would include emergency funding for Zika, but stipulate that leftover funds from Ebola must be used first and that no funding can go to Planned Parenthood.

Republicans could have spoken with moral clarity to the American people that Democrats, who refused to pass a budget when they controlled Congress, better not shut down the government in order to fund Iran, turn America into Europe’s security nightmare, and hand off America’s greatest invention to a tribunal influenced by Russia and China. If Democrats want to shut down the government and not fight Zika because they want funding for a private entity under criminal investigation for harvesting baby parts, let them have at it.

When you actually believe in something, especially regarding popular issues that resonate with voters, it’s not too hard to message it. But alas, these GOP leaders believe in nothing beyond pursuing the path to least resistance. Democrats embrace confrontation as a means of promoting their agenda, even when it’s unpopular; Republicans abjure confrontation even when it is politically advantageous for them.

In comes Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (F, 42%). Instead of throwing a touchdown, he actually plans to toss an interception and use the GOP-control of the Senate to undermine conservatives in the House. Yes, this is another example of why it was actually worse to win back the Senate with RINOs in 2014 than to have Democrats control that body. McConnell is preemptively undermining House conservatives by openly calling for Harry Reid’s plan of a continuing resolution (CR) that fully funds Obama’s agenda with no significant expression of American priorities, much less conservative ones.

There are also late reports indicating that McConnell plans to capitulate and drop the prohibition on funding Planned Parenthood in the Zika bill, as suggested as suggested by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. (C, 77%) and Mark Kirk, R-Ill. (F 17%) earlier this week. This runs counter to the House bill passed earlier this year. It’s essentially a fight with Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, and Obama on one side and House conservatives on another side. House leadership is pretending to fight for conservatives while allowing McConnell to orchestrate the sabotage for them.

What’s worse, McConnell is also siding with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. (D, 2%) against conservatives by demanding that the budget bill expire in December, during the lame duck session, instead of some time in 2017. If Republicans plan to surrender and not go for a touchdown by harnessing the budget leverage to force good policy, at the very least they should be prevented from tossing an interception and tacking on bad policy to the “must-pass” budget bill. By having this iteration of the CR expire during the lame duck session, history has shown that retiring members act out as political suicide bombers and use the must-pass vehicle as a conduit for extraneous liberal bills. All sorts of bad bill could potential hitch a ride on a budget bill in December.

This is why I believe there is no utility to conservatives rewarding liberal Republican senators by voting for them in November. It’s one thing to vote for a presidential candidate or a GOP House, even when the candidates in the general elections aren’t conservative because there is more at stake in preventing a bad Democrat agenda. But once Republicans have control of the House, there is no utility to having a “Republican” Senate with the current cast of characters. And in fact, they make matters worse by lending the GOP name to Democrat priorities and marginalizing House Republicans. The only difference they would make if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency (if Trump wins, on the other hand, it’s hard to see Republicans losing the Senate) is the ability to block judicial nominees. But if you think these people would block any Hillary nominee after having won the presidency you have not been paying attention.

Despite McConnell’s betrayal, the House Freedom Caucus must hold their ground and demand, at the very least, that A) any budget bill not expire during the lame duck session and B) Obama’s refugee program must be defunded (no gimmick provisions like the one the House passed last year). If they don’t stand firm and do so quickly, McConnell will have the ball in the wrong end-zone within days. (For more from the author of “McConnell’s Double Budget Betrayal Begins” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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Votes of Thousands Who Haven’t Proven Citizenship Could ‘Swing’ Kansas Elections

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With the presidential election two months away, a Kansas law requiring voters to show proof of citizenship remains in legal limbo.

Late last month, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach asked a U.S. appeals court to reinstate a provision of a law requiring Kansans to prove their citizenship when registering to vote while obtaining driver’s licenses.

Kobach, a conservative crusader in a movement in Republican-led states to toughen voting laws, wants the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a ruling by a federal judge in May. The judge’s decision temporarily restored voting rights to about 18,000 individuals who, as of the ruling, had registered to vote at motor vehicle offices without providing citizenship paperwork.

Kobach estimates that 18,000 will swell by November to about 50,000 potential voters who haven’t proven citizenship, so the appeals court decision will determine the fate of their votes.

He views the Kansas law as a guard against illegal immigrants voting.

“There is a huge potential for aliens’ votes to swing a close election,” Kobach told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Even if it’s just a handful of votes, it’s still a huge injustice. Every time an alien votes, it effectively cancels out a vote of a U.S. citizen.”

Since 2013, Kansas has required voters to provide proof of citizenship when voting—whether they are applying at a motor vehicle office or elsewhere in the state—by showing birth certificates, passports, or naturalization papers.

Kansas is one of four states—the others are Alabama, Arizona and Georgia—to have adopted laws requiring proof of citizenship during voter registration.

In February, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of the League of Women Voters and individual Kansans who said they were left off the voter rolls after registering at the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles.

The ACLU lawsuit specifically targets the issue of Kansas’ requiring proof of citizenship from those registering to vote at the DMV.

The plaintiffs argue that the Kansas law violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, particularly a provision that requires states to offer people the opportunity to register to vote when they get a driver’s license. That section says that those who register to vote in this way can be asked only for “minimal information,” allowing them to simply affirm that they are citizens—under the threat of perjury if they lie.

The federal law does not require registrants to bring more documentation than they would need to get a driver’s license.

Kobach says that motor vehicle clerks sometimes accidently offer noncitizens the option to register to vote.

He argues that federal law doesn’t expressly bar states from asking for documentation proving citizenship for people registering to vote at the DMV.

“If a state wants to ask for proof of citizenship, nothing in the law prevents it,” Kobach said. “The absurdity of the legal argument that the ACLU is advancing is this notion that Congress intended to present a special privilege for people registering to vote at the DMV that other people don’t get to enjoy.”

But the ACLU counters that, under the Kansas proof of citizenship law, people who register to vote at the DMV are not always told that they have to provide additional paperwork to get on the voter rolls. These people only learn later on—after they thought they had registered successfully—that they actually were blocked from voting.

Critics also note that Kansas identified to the court only three cases of noncitizens who voted between 2003 and the implementation of the law in 2013.

“We do not have proof of fraud in Kansas,” Marge Ahrens, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Kansas, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview, adding:

We do not have illegal persons who want to vote. It’s the last thing illegal people would want to do. I do think it appeals to our sense of fear, but we just can’t find the evidence to support these laws.

Like other opponents of tougher voter identification laws, Ahrens contends that such requirements disenfranchise poor citizens who may not have the money or means to obtain documentation easily.

The League of Women Voters generally focuses its voter registration efforts on people 60 years or older. Ahrens says the elderly encounter similar challenges in trying to meet the requirements of Kansas’ proof of citizenship law.

“Older people can be stymied just by the idea of trying to pull together documents that may or may not exist,” Ahrens said. “Under this law, the complexity of the voting process has become so difficult that we really cannot do our work in a way that is effective.”

In response to these concerns, Kobach notes that Kansas eases the registration process by allowing voters to fax, email, or text a copy of their birth certificate to the DMV.

Kobach said he expects a decision from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals before the Nov. 8 presidential election. Even if a decision comes close to the election, he says, his state has contingency plans no matter the ruling.

Voters subject to U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson’s May 17 ruling—those who registered at the DMV since 2013 but haven’t provided proof of citizenship—will vote with provisional ballots and whether they’re counted won’t be decided until after Election Day.

While he acknowledged a wave of recent court rulings against voter identification laws in the states, Kobach said he intends to continue his push for stronger legal provisions, and will appeal to the Supreme Court if he loses.

“This about the rule of law,” Kobach said. “We have law-breaking when it comes to elections, and solving the problem is not difficult.” (For more from the author of “Votes of Thousands Who Haven’t Proven Citizenship Could ‘Swing’ Kansas Elections” please click HERE)

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Oregon Bakers’ Legal Battle Continues, as Same-Sex Couple Speaks Out

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Aaron and Melissa Klein, the Oregon bakers who refused to make a cake for the wedding of two women, filed new documents Thursday with the Oregon Court of Appeals in response to the same-sex couple’s arguments that the Kleins had no legal right to refuse them service.

“We are hopeful that these judges will understand that [Oregon officials] violated Aaron and Melissa’s rights, including rights of free speech and due process that judges tend to respect regardless of judicial philosophy,” Ken Klukowski, a lawyer for the bakers, said.

In the new brief, the Kleins’ lawyers challenge the argument that the government can force citizens to create art and engage in speech that goes against their religious beliefs.

“None of this would have happened had everyone simply lived in peace according to their own beliefs,” Klukowski, senior counsel for First Liberty Institute, a conservative legal group representing the Kleins, told The Daily Signal.

The Kleins initially filed their appeal in April, challenging the July 2015 decision by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries that they had discriminated against Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, the lesbian couple who the Kleins declined to serve.

An administrative judge for the state agency ordered the Kleins to pay the Bowman-Cryers $135,000 for physical, emotional, and mental damages.

The Bowman-Cryers, responding to the appeal to Oregon’s second-highest court, argued the agency’s ruling should stand.

The Kleins’ new legal brief was the last step before both parties head to the appeals court for oral arguments.

The Kleins paid the ordered $135,000 in damages—plus interest—in December. The Bowman-Cryers have not received the money, which is being held in a separate account by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries until the appeals process plays out.

The dispute began in January 2013, when Aaron Klein told Rachel Cryer that the Kleins’ bakery, Sweet Cakes by Melissa, would not make the wedding cake after learning it was for two women.

The Kleins are Christians and say they believe marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

The Bowman-Cryers, now married, filed a complaint with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries under the state’s public accommodation law, which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The Oregon agency pursued charges against the Kleins on behalf of the same-sex couple.

Up until recently, the Bowman-Cryers had not spoken publicly about their case, and declined multiple interview requests from The Daily Signal through their lawyers.

But on Tuesday, the couple broke their silence.

“In recent months we’ve decided to speak out for one primary reason,” Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer wrote in The Advocate, a publication focused on LGBT issues. “We don’t want any person or family to go what we’ve gone through. Every family deserves respect, dignity, and a life free from discrimination and harassment.”

The couple also shared why they got married:

Part of the reason we decided to get married in the first place was to provide stability for our daughters. Before we became engaged, we became foster parents for two very high-needs girls after their mother, a close friend of ours, died suddenly. Lizzy, now 9, has cerebral palsy, autism, and a chromosomal disorder that causes developmental delays. Anastasia, now 7, has Asperger’s and stopped speaking when her mother died.

While the case wound its way through the courts, we won full adoptive custody of Lizzy and Anastasia, and they are the light of our lives.

For their part, Aaron and Melissa Klein chose to participate in some media interviews, including with The Daily Signal. The couple also launched a fundraising account that has brought in close to $500,000.

In their article, the Bowman-Cryers described the Kleins’ as “media darlings of the right wing.”

In interviews with The Daily Signal, Melissa Klein became emotional describing the hardships the family of seven also has faced because of the case, including closure of the bakery. (The Daily Signal documented some of the backlash here.)

Klukowski, the lawyer who represents the Kleins, said the couple “never wanted to have to go through this ordeal” and had sought only “to run their little bakery consistent with their Christian faith as their ministry to their neighborhood.”

He said in an email to The Daily Signal:

Leftist media outlets have grossly and irresponsibly exaggerated the amount the Kleins received when generous Americans heard that the Kleins’ business was being driven into the ground due to this case, and $135,000 from that generosity had to be turned over to the [Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries] to hold in escrow in order for this appeal to be pursued.

Aaron and Melissa continue to suffer from lack of good job opportunities, and lack of educational opportunities for their children, because of the government’s draconian pursuit of them and their family, aided by the relentless mocking and derision of liberal media outlets and intolerant activists, fueling ongoing hurtful attacks on their family.

Lawyers for the Kleins said the case likely will go on regardless of the decision by the Oregon Court of Appeals, perhaps all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. (For more from the author of “Oregon Bakers’ Legal Battle Continues, as Same-Sex Couple Speaks Out” please click HERE)

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Has Trump Pulled Even With Hillary? Two Experts Weigh the Evidence

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If you’re a Donald Trump supporter, this week’s CNN poll showing him leading Hillary Clinton gave some joy. But if you’re a Clinton supporter, you just had to wait five minutes for another poll to show her with a six-point lead.

In keeping with a political season that’s kept professional politicos on their toes and found them often wrong, the polls have swung wildly between Trump and Clinton as they fight for the White House. When the best pollsters in the country disagree, how can people who aren’t in politics read the polls?

RCP v. Huffington

Yesterday, The Stream interviewed a top polling analyst and a professor of polling about how to read the wild swings in the polling. Both Sean Trende of RealClear Politics (RCP) and Philip Harold of Robert Morris University told The Stream that a poll’s accuracy depends on the way it collects its information — which is why different polls give different results, and confound pundits and other observers.

So is it safe to average out the polls to get the collective best guess, the way RCP does? The media frequently cite RCP’s poll averages, but Natalie Jackson of The Huffington Post (HuffPost) said there’s a problem with averaging the polls that way. “The HuffPost Pollster charts calculate trend lines rather than traditional arithmetic mean, so the numbers will differ from simple averages used by sites like RealClearPolitics,” she said. “The reason for this is that a simple average will be very susceptible to individual polls’ deviations — one outlier poll could pull the average in a completely different direction than the rest of the polls indicate.”

In deciding what counts as a real trend, HuffPost looks at the dates the different polls were conducted, the days between the polls and the difference in what they found. In general, Jackson said, 4 or 5 polls have to change within a week to change the HP results.

Jackson said that HuffPost’s way of reading the different polls avoids RCP‘s problem by requiring that the polls in general change before it revises the direction the collected results are moving. HuffPost “looks for trends in the polls and downplays data that deviates significantly from what most data show.” The technical term for their technique is “a Bayesian model called a Kalman filter,” a technique engineers developed to distinguish between actual “signals” (real data) and “noise.”

Jackson argues that polling averages that don’t take trends into account over-estimate temporary results. “Currently, we show a wider race between Trump and Clinton than simple averages because the trend has favored Clinton, and the polls showing Trump ahead — or within a couple of points — appear to be deviations from the trend for now. However, we do have the gap closing, since it’s become clear that Trump is gaining support.”

HuffPost‘s poll tracker finds Clinton’s lead is more than two points larger than RCP‘s 3.3 points.

RCP‘s Trende said that both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. The HuffPost method “does filter out short-term aberrations, but can make it slower to pick up ‘real’ shifts when we have infrequent polling.” Without what he called HuffPost’s “smoothing function,” he said, “there isn’t a lot of difference between their findings and ours.”

Misleading Assumptions

As the argument between Trende and Jackson shows, accurate polling is hard to do. Conservatives found this out the hard way in 2012.

As Hot Air blogger and Going Red author Ed Morrissey told The Stream earlier this year, conservative pollsters — and the Romney campaign’s pollsters as well — thought the electorate had changed and that the polls showing Obama’s comfortable lead were based on “an outdated model.”

“We weren’t trying to be dishonest, we weren’t lying about this, we were just really wrong in our assumptions,” he said. “We weren’t taking the time to find out who these voters were, where they were at, what Barack Obama was doing with his organizing and media strategy in 2012. And those errors compounded on each other to give a completely false impression of what we were going to see that night.”

The same problem affected pollsters in the 2016 presidential primaries. In the Democratic primary, no one gave Bernie Sanders a chance of winning as many votes as he did and staying in the race so long.

Likewise no one expected Donald Trump to do so well, much less win the nomination. As Harold told The Stream yesterday, “Trump won the Republican primaries by bringing in new voters to the ballot box. That makes it very, very difficult for pollsters, who are relying on the statistics from previous elections, to filter out those who do not plan to vote and to weigh their samples.”

The Polls This Week

The objective versus subjective argument came up again this week with CNN’s poll that showed Trump in the lead. MSNBC determined that CNN oversampled lower-educated whites, and using 2012 voting data determined that the poll should have shown Clinton leading by four points. MSNBC assumed minorities will vote for Clinton at the same rates they backed Obama in 2012 and that lower-educated whites don’t come out in unforeseen numbers for Trump. The network could be right — but they could be wrong.

By the way: this article was drafted on September 6. Clinton had a 3.3-point lead, according to the RCP head-to-head matchup. Today, it’s just three points, according to RCP, (and just 2.1 points when the Libertarian and Green Party candidates are counted). HuffPost’s tracker likewise shows Clinton’s lead has shrunk. Who knows what it’ll look like tomorrow? (For more from the author of “Has Trump Pulled Even With Hillary? Two Experts Weigh the Evidence” please click HERE)

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Obama Picks 1st Muslim to Sit on Federal Court

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Muslim-American groups are applauding President Barack Obama’s nomination of a Washington lawyer to serve in U.S. District Court — a move that could make him the first ever Muslim-American federal judge, according to advocates.

If confirmed, Abid Riaz Qureshi would sit on the District of Columbia’s federal bench, the White House announced Tuesday. Qureshi, who graduated Harvard Law School in 1997, is a partner in the D.C. office of Latham & Watkins LLP, specializing in healthcare fraud, securities violations, and cases involving the False Claims Act, according to a White House statement.

“I am confident he will serve the American people with integrity and a steadfast commitment to justice,” Obama said.

Muslim-American organizations hailed the historic announcement.

“The nomination of Abid Qureshi to fill a seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia sends a message of inclusion that is welcomed by the American Muslim community and by all Americans who value diversity and mutual respect at a time when some seek division and discord,” Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group, said in a statement.

(Read more from “Obama Picks 1st Muslim to Sit on Federal Court” HERE)

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Feds Running ‘Illegal’ Experiments on Humans

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been arguing for years that the presence of small particulates, things like diesel engine emissions and the smokestack vapor from coal-fired power plants, is killing Americans . . .

But now a team of scientists is calling for the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences to punish the “scientific misconduct” by the EPA in its research on the issue . . .

Officials with the Heartland Institute discussed the EPA’s new and troubling dilemma in an email.

“EPA has been sponsoring experiments on human subjects involving exposures to small particle air pollution that EPA has declared publicly and repeatedly to be toxic, lethal, and carcinogenic,” the organization said. “This creates a dilemma for EPA: Either it broke the law by sponsoring human experiments forbidden under law and medical ethics, or its repeated claims to Congress and the American people about the health threat of exposure to low levels of particulate matter were a lie.”

Several of the scientists and physicians from the institute, a national nonprofit headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and dedicated to discovering, developing and promoting free-market solutions to social and economic problems, recently addressed a NRC meeting on the issue. (Read more from “Feds Running ‘Illegal’ Experiments on Humans” HERE)

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