‘Critical Infrastructure’: Feds Plan Special Declaration to Takeover Elections, Nationwide

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Even before the FBI identified new cyber attacks on two separate state election boards, the Department of Homeland Security began considering declaring the election a “critical infrastructure,” giving it the same control over security it has over Wall Street and and the electric power grid.

The latest admissions of attacks could speed up that effort possibly including the upcoming presidential election, according to officials.

“We should carefully consider whether our election system, our election process, is critical infrastructure like the financial sector, like the power grid,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said.

“There’s a vital national interest in our election process, so I do think we need to consider whether it should be considered by my department and others critical infrastructure,” he said at media conference earlier this month hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

DHS describes it this way on their website: “There are 16 critical infrastructure sectors whose assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, are considered so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.” (Read more from “‘Critical Infrastructure’: Feds Plan Special Declaration to Takeover Elections, Nationwide” HERE)

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BOOM: Here Are the 25 Questions Hillary Clinton Must Answer — Under Oath — by Sept. 29th

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There are only a few groups dedicated to the tireless pursuit of corruption in Washington.

I’m not talking about the various Ethics or Oversight committees in Congress. Those feckless clowns seem more interested in protecting the status quo than in any real investigation. No, I refer, of course, to the patriots at Judicial Watch who have been pursuing Hillary Clinton’s criminal activities like a starving greyhound after five pounds of filet.

We’re at the point in various judicial activities that Hillary Clinton is now compelled to answer a series of 25 questions — under oath — related to her pernicious, illegal and outrageous use of a home-brew email server to intermingle official State Department business with that of the Clinton Global Graft Initiative. Annnd the questions are:

1. Describe the creation of the clintonemail.com system, including who decided to create the system, the date it was decided to create the system, why it was created, who set it up, and when it became operational.

2. Describe the creation of your clintonemail.com email account, including who decided to create it, when it was created, why it was created, and, if you did not set up the account yourself, who set it up for you.

3. When did you decide to use a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business and whom did you consult in making this decision?

4. Identify all communications in which you participated concerning or relating to your decision to use a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business and, for each communication, identify the time, date, place, manner (e.g., in person, in writing, by telephone, or by electronic or other means), persons present or participating, and content of the communication.

5. In a 60 Minutes interview aired on July 24, 2016, you stated that it was “recommended” you use a personal email account to conduct official State Department business. What recommendations were you given about using or not using a personal email account to conduct official State Department business, who made any such recommendations, and when were any such recommendations made?

6. Were you ever advised, cautioned, or warned, was it ever suggested, or did you ever participate in any communication, conversation, or meeting in which it was discussed that your use of a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business conflicted with or violated federal recordkeeping laws. For each instance in which you were so advised, cautioned or warned, in which such a suggestion was made, or in which such a discussion took place, identify the time, date, place, manner (e.g., in person, in writing, by telephone, or by electronic or other means), persons present or participating, and content of the advice, caution, warning, suggestion, or discussion.

7. Your campaign website states, “When Clinton got to the Department, she opted to use her personal email account as a matter of convenience.” What factors other than convenience did you consider in deciding to use a personal email account to conduct official State Department business? Include in your answer whether you considered federal records management and preservation requirements and how email you used to conduct official State Department business would be searched in response to FOIA requests.

8. After President Obama nominated you to be Secretary of State and during your tenure as secretary, did you expect the State Department to receive FOIA requests for or concerning your email?

9. During your tenure as Secretary of State, did you understand that email you sent or received in the course of conducting official State Department business was subject to FOIA?

10. During your tenure as Secretary of State, how did you manage and preserve emails in your clintonemail.com email account sent or received in the course of conducting official State Department business, and what, if anything, did you do to make those emails available to the Department for conducting searches in response to FOIA requests?

11. During your tenure as Secretary of State, what, if any, effort did you make to inform the State Department’s records management personnel (e.g., Clarence Finney or the Executive Secretariat’s Office of Correspondence and Records) about your use of a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business?

12. During your tenure as Secretary of State, did State Department personnel ever request access to your clintonemail.com email account to search for email responsive to a FOIA request? If so, identify the date access to your account was requested, the person or persons requesting access, and whether access was granted or denied.

13. At the time you decided to use your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business, or at any time thereafter during your tenure as Secretary of State, did you consider how emails you sent to or received from persons who did not have State Department email accounts (i.e., “state.gov” accounts) would be maintained and preserved by the Department or searched by the Department in response to FOIA requests? If so, what was your understanding about how such emails would be maintained, preserved, or searched by the Department in response to FOIA requests?

14. On March 6, 2009, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Eric J. Boswell wrote in an Information Memo to your Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills, that he “cannot stress too strongly, however, that any unclassified BlackBerry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving email, and exploiting calendars.” A March 11, 2009 email states that, in a management meeting with the assistant secretaries, you approached Assistant Secretary Boswell and mentioned that you had read the “IM” and that you “get it.” Did you review the March 6, 2009 Information Memo, and, if so, why did you continue using an unclassified BlackBerry to access your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business? Copies of the March 6, 2009 Information Memo and March 11, 2009 email are attached as Exhibit A for your review.

15. In a November 13, 2010 email exchange with Huma Abedin about problems with your clintonemail.com email account, you wrote to Ms. Abedin, in response to her suggestion that you use a State Department email account or release your email address to the Department, “Let’s get a separate address or device.” Why did you continue using your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business after agreeing on November 13, 2010 to “get a separate address or device?” Include in your answer whether by “address” you meant an official State Department email account (i.e., a “state.gov” account) and by “device” you meant a State Department-issued BlackBerry. A copy of the November 13, 2010 email exchange with Ms. Abedin is attached as Exhibit B for your review.

16. Email exchanges among your top aides and assistants in August 30, 2011 discuss providing you with a State Department-issued BlackBerry or State Department email address. In the course of these discussions, State Department Executive Secretary Stephen Mull wrote, “[W]e are working to provide the Secretary per her request a Department issued BlackBerry to replace her personal unit which is malfunctioning (possibly because of her personal email server is down). We will prepare two versions for her to use – one with an operating State Department email account (which would mask her identity, but which would also be subject to FOIA requests).” Similarly, John Bentel, the Director of Information and Records Management in the Executive Secretariat, wrote, “You should be aware that any email would go through the Department’s infrastructure and [be] subject to FOIA searches.” Did you request a State Department issued Blackberry or a State Department email account in or around August 2011, and, if so, why did you continue using your personal device and clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business instead of replacing your device and account with a State Department-issued BlackBerry or a State Department email account? Include in your answer whether the fact that a State Department-issued BlackBerry or a State Department email address would be subject to FOIA affected your decision. Copies of the email exchanges are attached as Exhibit C for your review.

17. In February 2011, Assistant Secretary Boswell sent you an Information Memo noting “a dramatic increase since January 2011 in attempts . . . to compromise the private home email accounts of senior Department officials.” Assistant Secretary Boswell “urge[d] Department users to minimize the use of personal web-email for business.” Did you review Assistant Secretary Boswell’s Information Memo in or after February 2011, and, if so, why did you continue using your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business? Include in your answer any steps you took to minimize use of your clintonemail.com email account after reviewing the memo. A copy of Assistant Secretary Boswell’s February 2011 Information Memo is attached as Exhibit D for your review.

18. On June 28, 2011, you sent a message to all State Department personnel about securing personal email accounts. In the message, you noted “recent targeting of personal email accounts by online adversaries” and directed all personnel to “[a]void conducting official Department business from your personal email accounts.” Why did you continue using your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business after June 28, 2011, when you were advising all State Department Personnel to avoid doing so? A copy of the June 28, 2011 message is attached as Exhibit E for your review.

19. Were you ever advised, cautioned, or warned about hacking or attempted hacking of your clintonemail.com email account or the server that hosted your clintonemail.com account and, if so, what did you do in response to the advice, caution, or warning?

20. When you were preparing to leave office, did you consider allowing the State Department access to your clintonemail.com email account to manage and preserve the official emails in your account and to search those emails in response to FOIA requests? If you considered allowing access to your email account, why did you decide against it? If you did not consider allowing access to your email account, why not?

21. After you left office, did you believe you could alter, destroy, disclose, or use email you sent or received concerning official State Department business as you saw fit? If not, why not?

22. In late 2014, the State Department asked that you make available to the Department copies of any federal records of which you were aware, “such as an email sent or received on a personal email account while serving as Secretary of State.” After you left office but before your attorneys reviewed the email in your clintonemail.com email account in response to the State Department’s request, did you alter, destroy, disclose, or use any of the email in the account or authorize or instruct that any email in the account be altered, destroyed, disclosed, or used? If so, describe any email that was altered, destroyed, disclosed, or used, when the alteration, destruction, disclosure, or use took place, and the circumstances under which the email was altered, destroyed, disclosed, or used? A copy of a November 12, 2014 letter from Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy regarding the State Department’s request is attached as Exhibit F for your review.

23. After your lawyers completed their review of the emails in your clintonemail.com email account in late 2014, were the electronic versions of your emails preserved, deleted, or destroyed? If they were deleted or destroyed, what tool or software was used to delete or destroy them, who deleted or destroyed them, and was the deletion or destruction done at your direction?

24. During your October 22, 2015 appearance before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi, you testified that 90 to 95 percent of your emails “were in the State’s system” and “if they wanted to see them, they would certainly have been able to do so.” Identify the basis for this statement, including all facts on which you relied in support of the statement, how and when you became aware of these facts, and, if you were made aware of these facts by or through another person, identify the person who made you aware of these facts.

25. Identify all communications between you and Brian Pagliano concerning or relating to the management, preservation, deletion, or destruction of any emails in your clintonemail.com email account, including any instruction or direction to Mr. Pagliano about the management, preservation, deletion, or destruction of emails in your account when transferring the clintonemail.com email system to any alternate or replacement server. For each communication, identify the time, date, place, manner (e.g., in person, in writing, by telephone, or by electronic or other means), persons present or participating, and content of the communication.

I just have two words for the Clinton Kamp.

Ruh.

Roh. (For more from the author of “BOOM: Here Are the 25 Questions Hillary Clinton Must Answer — Under Oath — by Sept. 29th” please click HERE)

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Trump Takes off From Campaign Trail to Honor 9/11 Victims

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will not be actively campaigning or placing campaign ads on the 15th anniversary of Sep. 11, 2001.

The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will likewise pause her campaign for the day.

The one-day pause from the intense campaigns of both politicians raised eyebrows from former President George W. Bush’s White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.

“It’s just so hard to take anybody who does that seriously when September 10 and September 12 are so chock full of juicy politics,” he said. “Taking September 11 off feels nothing but contrived.”

The political positives and negatives of taking off that day — which falls on a Sunday this year — have been debated by Republican figureheads.

“I’m not sure that pulling the ads or even avoiding politics on 9/11 needs to continue,” said Weekly Standard’s William Kristol. “What strikes me is how little either campaign has been serious in terms of debating the implications of 9/11 — a debate that was robust in 2004, 2008 and 2012.”

However, Josh Holmes, former chief of staff to Senate Major Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said even after 15 years, 9/11 is still a sacred day.

“Whatever a campaign may think it gains by plowing forward is erased by a story suggesting they are politicizing 9/11,” he said. “You’ll never lose a vote by taking the time to remember the day, the Americans who were lost, and our continued fight against terrorism.”

Taking off the day will result in both candidates losing envied television ad spots.

“…perhaps even more critically, it coincides with the first Sunday of a new NFL season and the largest captive audience available for ads since the Olympics,” Politico reported.

Although the day had been honored in past presidential campaigns with a day free from campaigning, this year saw a particular effort to keep the day politics-free through a petition drive led by the mother of a 9/11 victim.

“Instead of running campaign ads and posting ‘tweets,’ I ask each of them, and other candidates running for office, to observe a ‘political moment of silence’ for the day, pledging instead to dedicate time on 9/11 to helping others, and engaging in private moments of reflection and prayer, in the spirit of national unity and remembrance, and in observance of the federally recognized September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance,” wrote Alice Hoagland, mother of Mark Bingham, who was killed in the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa.

Trump, in his recollections of the attacks on New York City 15 years ago, recalled viewing the horrific sight of the the World Trade Center from his Trump Tower apartment.

“Many people jumped and I witnessed it, I watched that. I have a view — a view in my apartment that was specifically aimed at the World Trade Center,” Trump said during a rally in Columbus, Ohio.

“And I watched those people jump and I watched the second plane hit … I saw the second plane hit the building and I said, ‘Wow that’s unbelievable,’” Trump said. (For more from the author of “Trump Takes off From Campaign Trail to Honor 9/11 Victims” please click HERE)

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A Candidate’s Death Could Delay or Eliminate the Presidential Election

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The presidential election could be delayed or scrapped altogether if conspiracy theories become predictive and a candidate dies or drops out before Nov. 8. The perhaps equally startling alternative, if there’s enough time: Small groups of people hand-picking a replacement pursuant to obscure party rules.

The scenarios have been seriously considered by few outside of the legal community and likely are too morbid for polite discussion in politically mixed company. But prominent law professors have pondered the effects and possible ways to address a late-date vacancy.

“There’s nothing in the Constitution which requires a popular election for the electors serving in the Electoral College,” says John Nagle, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, meaning the body that officially elects presidents could convene without the general public voting.

“It’s up to each state legislature to decide how they want to choose the state’s electors,” Nagle says. “It may be a situation in which the fact that we have an Electoral College, rather than direct voting for presidential candidates, may prove to be helpful.”

Both major parties do have rules for presidential ticket replacements, however, and Congress has the power to change the election date under Article II of the Constitution, which allows federal lawmakers to set dates for the selection of presidential electors and when those electors will vote. (Read more from “A Candidate’s Death Could Delay or Eliminate the Presidential Election” HERE)

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15 Conspiracy Theories for Why Hillary’s September Schedule … Is Blank

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The folks over at The Last Refuge blog noticed something peculiar the other day: According to her schedule, Hillary Clinton has no campaign events on the calendar between now and the first presidential debate September 26 at Hofstra University. See for yourself.

If you check the website under “Hillary Clinton’s Events” you find this list for September:

Hillary-Schedule-Without-Hillary-

However, when you put in Hillary Clinton’s name in the filter of people who will actually be at those events, you get this:

Hillary-Schedule

Now, since Hillary Clinton has never struck anyone as the “Freebird, Go With The Wind, Schedules are for Repressed Spirits” type, we have to wonder what she’s up to … or not up to, as the case may be.

Naturally, given the illness rumors swirling around Hillary, which The Stream debated a few weeks back, it’s tempting to explain her absence from the campaign trail as evidence her health is too fragile for the rigors of a presidential contest. However, as both CNN and MSNBC have explained, questioning the potential commander-in-chief’s health and fitness is “sexist.”

So let’s consider some other possibilities.

15 Possible Reasons Hillary has Cleared Her September Schedule

15. Absence Makes the Voter Grow Fonder: Traditionally, Hillary Clinton polls better when nobody actually sees or listens to her. In other words, “generic Democratic candidate” does better than living-breathing-sounds-like-the-adults-in-Peanuts Hillary.

14. Running Out the Clock: Politico reported on this strategy last week. The idea is to simply ignore the email and Clinton Foundation scandals and see “a shrinking calendar as her friend.” That’s one reason you’re more likely to find Colin Kaepernick at a policeman’s ball than Hillary Clinton at a press conference.

13. The Known Commodity: Nothing Hillary can say or do will change people’s opinions of her, so why spend the steamy last weeks of summer huffing and puffing around the country?

12. It’s All About Trump Anyway: Either America buys a ticket for the roller coaster and buckles up, or it says “No Way, Jose” and ducks into the safety of the familiar ol’ Hillary-go-round.

11. It’s Her Job By Rights: Hillary’s been busting her buns to become president since her graduation speech at Wellesley. Nearly half a century of sweat and she’s supposed to compete head-to-head with a guy who suddenly wants the gig because he’s bored sitting in a fake TV boardroom?

10. Going Old School: Hillary’s returning to the days when it was thought unseemly for a presidential candidate to actually campaign for themselves.

9. Campaign Fundraising: She needs to raise hundreds of millions of dollars so she can spend hundreds of millions of dollars to convince Americans she’ll be more wise with their money than Trump. Besides that, hanging with Cher and Justin Timberlake is way more fun than mingling with the little people.

8. Double Downward Dog: Rebuilding all those yoga routines her people deleted from her server is no easy task.

7. Waiting for Assange: Hillary doesn’t want to be anywhere near a camera when the next WikiLeaks stash drops.

6. The Worker Deserves Her Wages: Normally, Hillary bags up to $250,000 a speech, and now she’s just supposed to keep doing it for free?!

5. Supergirl on CW: Who has time for campaigning when you’ve got the new fall TV season to tend to? Or perhaps she’s weighing replacing Thomas Gibson on Criminal Minds.

4. The Globalist Fix: Hillary doesn’t want to bother going through the motions. After all, her 2016 election was guaranteed on June 5, 2008 during a secret Bilderberg meeting with Obama in Northern Virginia. Sure, it’s crazy, but not much crazier than saying a video nobody saw inspired people thousands of miles away to carry out a planned, coordinated attack on our Benghazi consulate on what happened to be the anniversary of 9/11. And far less crazy than thinking a non-secured unclassified server could secure classified secrets.

3. Babysitter: Somebody has to look after the grandkids while Chelsea does the real family business of raising millions for the Clinton Foundation. It’s not like she’s going to hire Anthony Wiener to do it. Which gets to …

2. A Friend in Need: Pal Huma Abedin needs her right now more than the campaign trail does.

And… the number 1 one reason why Clinton may be taking a break:

1. Donald Trump — The Clubber Lange of Debaters: You’re not going to beat him unless you lock yourself away with Apollo Creed and regain the “Eye of the Tiger.” (Yes, I did a Rocky marathon while my wife was away last week.)

All fun and fanciful analysis aside, there could be a much simpler reason Hillary Clinton has no campaign events scheduled between now and the first debate September 26. The polling is so fluid, the election map so upended, the old rules so out the window, her able campaign strategists can’t know where her time would be best served more than a couple of days in advance.

And with polls showing a noticeable drop for Hillary Clinton in recent days, the day-to-day chess match with the Trump campaign will be growing even more crucial. So have no fear. Hillary likely will be coming soon to a town near you … assuming you live in a swing state. (For more from the author of “15 Conspiracy Theories for Why Hillary’s September Schedule … Is Blank” please click HERE)

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Hacking of Election Data Raises Concerns for States Without Voter ID

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Hacking incidents at voter registration systems in Arizona and Illinois could demonstrate the need for stronger voter identification laws and the flaw with pushing for online voting and registration, experts said.

“We can’t afford this vulnerability in our election systems,” Mark Meckler, president of Citizens for Self-Governance and a former internet technology lawyer, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

“We know it can disrupt the integrity of an election,” Meckler said. “There are so many states with no voter ID laws, that hacking into voter registration is a danger.”

The FBI is investigating the hacking of 200,000 voter records in Illinois and a hacking that forced Arizona to take its statewide voter registration system offline.

Illinois officials told news agencies that no information was changed. The Arizona hacking was perpetrated by Russian actors, according to news reports—although investigators have not said whether they believed it to be the work of Moscow or a private criminal enterprise.

As of June, 31 states and the District of Columbia allowed voter registration online, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. A total of 34 states had some form of voter ID laws in place. However, some states only request that voters present ID, rather than require it.

“It’s not just foreign hackers, but domestic hackers as well,” Meckler said. “All of us are vulnerable to hacking. No matter how good we get at preventing hacking, the hackers will always get better.”

The Obama administration is taking the threat seriously, but believes Americans should not lose confidence in the system, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

“People can have a lot of confidence in the election system in part because it’s not centralized,” Earnest told reporters during Tuesday’s press briefing, adding:

Elections are administered and conducted by state and local authorities, which means you have a patchwork of systems across the country that maintain the records of elections. Sometimes the consequences for that kind of that very system means that it’s hard to make reforms across the board. That also makes it harder to hack the system.

As The Daily Signal previously reported, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson last week had a conference call with election officials from across the country in which they discussed the possible protection of state election systems as “critical infrastructure.”

“The response from DHS is a pretty good indication of how seriously we take this,” Earnest told reporters. “There is an active discussion on the president’s national security team of designating election administration systems in the United States as critical infrastructure. If so, that would qualify those systems for enhanced protections and resources from the federal government.”

Election experts—including Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation—agree it’s highly improbable a national election could be hacked, because of the decentralized system.

However, von Spakovsky contends that a targeted hacking of certain states has the potential to shift an election.

“If it’s an organized effort, and someone hacks into a system and falsely registers bogus voters, you could hire a crew of people to vote multiple times under different names,” von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal. “That’s a problem for states with no voter ID laws. There is no way to prevent that.”

This should be a further lesson to states and localities to avoid online voter registration and especially online voting, which could be particularly vulnerable to hackers, he said.

Von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission, noted that the Republican Party of Utah “stupidly” allowed online voting for its presidential primary in March. That resulted in numerous problems, primarily with voters accessing the system.

Voting machines are not on a network, thus any tampering would have to take place with the individual machine using an available device that allows someone to reset the voting machine, then vote more than once.

Conversely, voter registration information typically is on a network at either the state or local level—making it available for hackers. If citizens can register to vote online, the information would become even more vulnerable, von Spakovsky said.

“Online voter registration would give hackers another point to access information online,” he said. (For more from the author of “Hacking of Election Data Raises Concerns for States Without Voter ID” please click HERE)

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After Double-Digit Win, Establishment McCain Will Face Establishment Democrat in November

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John McCain, R-Ariz. (F, 34%) fended off a primary challenge from Kelli Ward in the Arizona Senate Republican primary Tuesday night, leaving Grand Canyon state conservatives with a lose-lose situation going into November.

Multiple outlets called the race just after 8:30 p.m. local time, with initial returns showing McCain at a 20-point margin over Ward with a final breakdown of 55-35 percent of the vote.

Ward, a 47-year-old osteopathic physician and former state legislator, ran a hardline, anti-establishment campaign that tried to tap into the populist wave precipitated by the rise of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. However, her fiery rhetoric and supposed Tea Party street creds failed to pass the muster necessary to obtain key endorsements from national conservative groups like Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund.

Ward told Conservative Review in an interview earlier this year that she believed in many of the same “populist conservative values” as Donald Trump, hitting the incumbent senator on his record on the Armed Services Committee and his previous actions on immigration.

“[McCain] basically failed us [on immigration]. He lied; He said he wanted to build a [border] fence and then he ran right to the gang of eight amnesty bill, and the comprehensive immigration reform that we all know is code for amnesty,” she said in the interview. “So that on the ground here in Arizona is very, very important.”

“Stop holding hearings,” she added later, “Stop holding town halls, stop writing letters and actually do something for the veterans who served our country so honorably.”

In recent days, Ward even went after McCain’s age, saying that the 80-year-old establishment Republican could die on the job, if re-elected. “I’m a doctor. The life expectancy of the American male is not 86. It’s less,” she said in an interview with Politico.

According to a report at Politico Monday morning, McCain was already preparing for a narrow win, saying: “It’s not so much I think it’s close. I just don’t think you should heighten expectations … The one thing you never want to do in politics is heighten expectations. You always want to lowball it. That’s just the best way to handle it. Plan for the worst and hope for the best.”

Much like the case of Paul Nehlen’s failed campaign against Speaker Paul Ryan (F-53%) in Wisconsin, riding Donald Trump’s coattails did not translate into victory for a Republican primary challenger. Voters didn’t buy it and the establishment won.

Now, McCain is looking ahead to what is sure be the toughest general election fight of his political career against Arizona Rep. Anne Kirkpatrick, (F-13%) who is bringing the full force of the national Democratic Party, and will have to do so with almost no momentum from his own primary, in a state where he has a longstanding favorability problem, going back to a when he ranked as the least popular senator in the country in 2014, according to Public Policy Polling.

In November, Barry Goldwater’s senate seat will either go to an establishment Republican with an atrocious voting record across the board or an establishment Democrat who consistently votes along party lines.

For conservatives, Tuesday night’s results in Arizona present a no-win situation. (For more from the author of “After Double-Digit Win, Establishment McCain Will Face Establishment Democrat in November” please click HERE)

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Marco Rubio Crushes Opponents in Florida GOP Primary

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Incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. (C, 77%) claimed victory in Tuesday night’s Florida Republican primary for U.S. Senate, crushing challengers Carlos Beruff, Ernie Rivera, and Dwight Young.

The Orlando Sentinel called the race for Rubio with just over half of all precincts reporting. Rubio claimed upwards of 70 percent of the vote.

After his unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Rubio initially insisted he would not seek reelection to the United States Senate and, come January, he would be a “private citizen.”

But as a cluttered primary field battled each other without a clear frontrunner emerging, Republican party officials, including GOP nominee for president Donald Trump, began to push for Rubio to enter the race and clear the field.

When it became clear Rubio was set to enter the race, Rep. David Jolly (F, 29%) dropped out to focus on his congressional seat in Florida’s 13th District.

Rubio announced his change of heart and candidacy in June, claiming the stakes were too high for him to sit out.

“Control of the Senate may very well come down to the race in Florida,” he said. “That means the future of the Supreme Court will be determined by the Florida Senate seat. It means the future of the disastrous Iran nuclear deal will be determined by the Florida Senate seat. It means the direction of our country’s fiscal and economic policies will be determined by this Senate seat. The stakes for our nation could not be higher.”

After Rubio’s announcement, Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ron DeSantis (A, 90%) also ended his senate candidacy to seek reelection in Florida’s 6th District.

Fresh off his presidential campaign, Rubio entered the senate primary with a massive fundraising advantage, spending nearly $50 million. His next closest opponent, businessman Carlos Beruff, spent approximately $8 million during his campaign.

Rubio will face Democratic nominee Patrick Murphy in November. (For more from the author of “Marco Rubio Crushes Opponents in Florida GOP Primary” please click HERE)

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As Obama Promised, 10,000 Syrian Refugees Have Been Admitted to the US

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Surprise, surprise: The State Department announced Monday that the Obama administration is not only going to meet President Obama’s goal of 10,000 Syrian refugees before day’s end, but that the actual number by the end of the year may actually be closer to 12,000, according to Joel Gehrke of the Washington Examiner.

“We will meet the 10,000 figure today, and I would fully expect that you will see additional Syrian refugees admitted into the United States between now and the end of the fiscal year,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby on Monday.

Kirby told reporters he “couldn’t predict” how many more refugees would be coming into the United States, but that the influx “would be roughly on the same pace that we have achieved over the course of the late spring and summer, which has been about 2,000 per month.”

Furthermore, according to CNS News, it is likely that fewer than 50 of the incoming refugees will come from Syria’s Christian population, which has experienced an internationally-recognized genocide at the hand of the Islamic State.

As Conservative Review noted in April, this milestone for the president’s unconstitutional refugee program was achieved thanks in large part to the “surge operation” processing center in Amman, Jordan, which allowed the administration to process thousands of applications every single month — meaning that the majority of the 10,000 were processed in the last few months alone.

This, naturally, has been happening in direct contradiction to the 18- to 24-month vetting process that the American people were promised when the crisis became major international news last year. If you like your national security and public order, you can keep it, right?

This points to one of the biggest problems with Obama’s refugee program — namely that it predicates itself on abuse of statute by treating people who aren’t persecuted religious or ethnic minorities as such (like the administration has also done with Central America), at the detriment to victims who have actually been targeted for their beliefs and/or ethnicity. While Christians made up about 10 percent of pre-war Syria, they’ve made up less than one half of 1 percent of the Obama administration’s admissions.

According to data from the administration’s illegal center in in Amman, just 47 of the 9,902 admitted to the U.S. before Monday were Christians. Members of other faiths include 14 displaced Yazidis (also genocide victims), four Jehovah’s Witnesses, and five listed as “other.”

Aside from the sweeping security concerns posed by bringing in migrants from a war-torn region with a known threat of infiltration — and the fact that it is virtually impossible to screen anyone coming out of the camps specifically for jihadist sympathies — this is simply a program that the American people never voted for and that President Obama has gone well outside of his constitutional authority to enforce. But even though the program has hit its first major benchmark, it isn’t too late to stop it going forward.

Congress currently has the opportunity to stop this by the end of September, when House Speaker Paul Ryan’s failure to bring the budget process back to regular order will once again necessitate a continuing resolution. In effect, the legislative branch will then be able to prohibit the State Department from operating the program.

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely, given that it’s a difficult election year. And while stalwart conservatives will be willing to go to bat against this refugee program, most Republicans are going to try to hide from anything that might even remotely resemble controversy until after election day in November. (For more from the author of “As Obama Promised, 10,000 Syrian Refugees Have Been Admitted to the US” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

EX-CLINTON STAFFER: Hillary Very Ill; Sleeping up to 18 Hours a Day; Health Records Will NEVER Be Released

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The Clinton 2016 campaign machine consists of around 1,000 people.

The pace and expectations are unforgiving. A single mistake can get you booted in a nanosecond. According to a report at TruePundit, one well-placed staff who worked with Clinton on a daily basis made just such an error and came forward to reveal what’s really going on in the campaign:

Only a small group of people running her campaign know the specifics of Hillary’s health issues. But she is suffering from something. She sleeps approximately 18 hours a day. And some days, she sleeps more.

I’m serious. This is why no one sees her.

The campaign will never release her medical files to the public. In contrast, they feel if the opposition continues to hammer the issue, it will create a backlash of sympathy…

…That press conference everyone is waiting for? It’s been 270 days since she gave a press conference or 280 days. Whatever it is. Hillary will not be giving any press conferences before the election.

Why? She doesn’t have to, according to campaign handlers. Her poll numbers have not suffered from not talking to the press but more importantly, Hillary acknowledges that the media has become more of a wild card amid all her scandals and campaign staffers agree it is highly unlikely she could field questions competently without giving Trump fodder to boost his campaign. Think of Clinton in her orange pants suit making wipe-the-server jokes…

It would therefore appear that the Democrats have nominated a very sickly woman who won’t speak to the press for fear of putting her foot in her mouth. Not to mention a person who is as crooked as a corkscrew.

But that’s the Democrat Party for you, ain’t it? (For more from the author of “EX-CLINTON STAFFER: Hillary Very Ill; Sleeping up to 18 Hours a Day; Health Records Will NEVER Be Released” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.