The GOP Screws It Up Again: Makes Big Omission From Benghazi Report

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In the 800 or so pages of the draft House Select Committee on Benghazi report, there is no mention of the reasons for the attack, save a critique of falsely blaming it on a video. Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-SC, (B,87%) responded to a question about whether or not the Benghazi compound was being used for covert weapon sales by stating he asked the president but had not gotten an answer as of yet.

We asked questions about covert weapons operations. We made some progress. The lawyers intervened when we were beginning to make a lot of progress. And among the questions I asked the president included that one specifically. I have not heard back from him yet. I have heard from his lawyer and am not holding my breath that I’m going to get an answer to that.

Gowdy continued:

I think it was important because the House asked us to examine policies that lead to the attack. But that is not the focus of our committee.

Gowdy should be given credit for asking the president the question, but he contradicts himself in the reasoning for not digging further. Gowdy said the committee was charged with examining “policies that lead to the attack.” In the next breath he said it was “not the focus of our committee.” In light of the Obama administration blaming the attack on a video, the American people deserve to know the real reason for the attack. The report does not delve into this, only the aftermath.

Back in 2013, Jim Gehraty, writing at National Review, went through what Reuters reported about Benghazi and weapons being supplied to possible jihadists.

Remember my story about the smuggling of shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft missiles in and out of Libya during that country’s civil war? Public reports indicate U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was working on tracking those missiles when he was attacked and murdered in Benghazi. While the most lurid allegations of U.S. arms smuggling to Libya are not yet proven, the Obama administration did give its blessing to Qatar’s smuggling of arms to the Libyan rebels in 2011 — and later realized that the weapons were ending up in the hands of Islamist militants. The quiet approval of the arms smuggling violated a United Nations arms embargo — and probably ended up exacerbating a problem that would eventually require Stevens to be in that city at that time — when the danger was so considerable.

Andrew McCarthy, also writing at National Review, connected the dots later in August of 2015.

As Obama next called for the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and reports surfaced of covert American support for the Syrian “rebels,” arms used by jihadists in Libya were shipped to jihadists in Syria by way of Turkey. Was that why we needed a “diplomatic facility” with a CIA annex in Benghazi, which was a transit point for some of these weapons? Was that why Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi meeting with Turkey’s ambassador on September 11 despite the obvious peril? The Obama administration refuses to say.

Chairman Gowdy tried to get answers and was stonewalled by the president himself. Americans deserve to know why “4 brave Americans”—as Gowdy called them—died. We now know it wasn’t over a video. Why is the Obama administration not revealing the why, even as they obfuscate the how? (For more from the author of “The One Big Thing Missing From the Benghazi Report” please click HERE)

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Justice Alito: ‘Those Who Value Religious Freedom Have Cause for Great Concern’

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The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear a case challenging a Washington state law that forces a family-owned pharmacy to dispense emergency contraceptives is an “ominous sign” for those who value religious freedom, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said.

“If this is a sign of how religious liberty claims will be treated in the years ahead, those who value religious freedom have cause for great concern,” Alito said Tuesday in a critical dissent.

Alito was joined in his dissent by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Clarence Thomas, falling one justice short of the four needed for the court to accept a case.

The case involves the Storman family, owners of Ralph’s Thriftway, a small, family-run grocery store and pharmacy in Olympia, Wash. In 2007, after Washington state passed a law that requires all pharmacies to dispense “all lawfully prescribed drugs or devices” in a timely manner to all customers, the Stormans found themselves in the cultural crosshairs.

Because of their Christian belief that life begins at conception, the Stormans objected to dispensing drugs such as Plan B that they believe aid in the destruction of human life.

Under the state law, denying Plan B could result in the Stormans losing their pharmacy license.

The Stormans then entered a long legal battle. In February 2012, a federal court struck down the law as unconstitutional. The court found “abundant evidence” that the law was designed to force religious pharmacists and pharmacy owners to violate their faith.

But last July, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, upholding the law mandating pharmacists to dispense legal drugs and devices. The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case today allows the 9th Circuit’s ruling—and the law—to stand.

If a customer at Ralph’s Thriftway requests a drug such as Plan B, employees refer customers to other local pharmacies that do carry the drug. According to court documents, over 30 pharmacies and drug stores within five miles of Ralph’s carry Plan B, and none of Ralph’s customers has ever been denied timely access to Plan B or other emergency contraceptives.

Alito, in his dissent, suggested the 2007 law, which is unique to Washington state, was designed specifically to target Christian believers.

“There are strong reasons to doubt whether the regulations were adopted for—or that they actually serve—any legitimate purpose,” Alito wrote, adding:

And there is much evidence that the impetus for the adoption of the regulations was hostility to pharmacists whose religious beliefs regarding abortion and contraception are out of step with prevailing opinion in the State. Yet the 9th Circuit held that the regulations do not violate the First Amendment, and this court does not deem the case worthy of our time.

Kristen Waggoner, a senior attorney at Alliance Defending Freedom who has defended the Stormans for a decade, expressed disappointment that the high court opted not to take the case.

“All Americans should be free to peacefully live and work consistent with their faith without fear of unjust punishment, and no one should be forced to participate in the taking of human life,” Waggoner said in a prepared statement. “We had hoped that the U.S. Supreme Court would take this opportunity to reaffirm these long-held principles.”

The Daily Signal last week interviewed Greg Storman about why the family-run pharmacy objects to dispensing Plan B.

“Our company revolves around faith, family, and community,” Storman said. “We serve every customer that comes to our pharmacy, but where we draw the line in the sand is we will not sell any drug that takes a human life, and we will not sell any drug that results in an abortion.”

While the Stormans were the public face of this case, two other pharmacists facing a similar dilemma were a part of the challenge.

Margo Thelen is one of them. Earlier this year, during an interview with The Daily Signal, Thelen said she would not dispense Plan B even if it meant losing her pharmacist’s license. Now, her future is unclear.

In his 15-page dissent, Alito confronted her dilemma head-on: “Violate your sincerely held religious beliefs or get out of the pharmacy business.” (For more from the author of “Justice Alito: ‘Those Who Value Religious Freedom Have Cause for Great Concern'” please click HERE)

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Horrendous SCOTUS Ruling Deprives Average Citizens of Gun Rights for Minor Offenses

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The Supreme Court has just issued what could become a landmark ruling against gun rights advocates.

The case, Stephen Voisine vs. The United States, “involves two plaintiffs who were convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence crimes and were subsequently denied their rights to own a firearm, although no one was seriously injured during the commission of the crimes. The case seeks to answer the question, what kind of domestic abuse does one have to be convicted of in order to have constitutionally protected gun rights taken away?” wrote Western Journalism in February.

According to the SCOTUS ruling, even texting while driving can fall under the crimes resulting in a person’s forfeiture of their rights to own a firearm.

The SCOTUS concluded individuals convicted of “reckless domestic assault,” a misdemeanor, can now have their gun rights revoked and receive a lifetime ban on ownership of firearms.

States like Connecticut have already passed laws banning individuals from gun ownership who have been convicted of one crime of domestic assault.

The ruling passed with a 6-2 vote, with Justice Elena Kagan writing the opinion of the court. “In sum, Congress’s definition of a ‘misdemeanor crime of violence’ contains no exclusion for convictions based on reckless behavior. A person who assaults another recklessly ‘use[s]’ force, no less than one who carries out that same action knowingly or intentionally.”

Justice Thomas offered the dissenting opinion. He argued that a person who texts while driving could “lose his right to bear arms forever if his wife or child suffers the slightest injury from the crash.”

Thomas wrote, “And while it may be true that such incidents are rarely prosecuted, this decision leaves the right to keep and bear arms up to the discretion of federal, state and local prosecutors.”

Those who may have recently been convicted of the crime, or received a conviction years, or even decades ago, may now be in jeopardy of losing their right to own a weapon, and conceivably, having their weapons confiscated. (For more from the author of “Gun Rights SCOTUS Ruling Has Far Reaching Implications” please click HERE)

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Dems Shift Blame to Protect Clinton in Benghazi Report

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Democrats on the House Benghazi Committee released their own report Monday excusing Hillary Clinton ahead of the full committee report which is expected to be sharply critical of the Democratic nominee.

In the report, Democrats says that while the State Department’s security measures were “woefully inadequate,” Clinton herself never personally denied requests for increased security. Thus even in admitting to the existence of a serious systemic failure and offering 12 recommendations to alleviate it, Democrats were unwilling to assign blame to the former secretary of state.

The goal of the preemptive separate release is to cast doubt on the majority report in the coming days or weeks, again showing the Democrats to be more concerned with blame-shifting and political maneuvering than with exposing the truth.

According to CNN, the report also excused the Obama administration’s inaction in deploying military personnel to rescue the Americans, saying “the Pentagon could not have done anything on the night of the attacks that would have saved the lives of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans.”

Democrats have consistently labeled the investigation a political witch hunt and “conspiracy theory,” a claim which they reiterated again in their final report.

The Associated Press reports that the panel’s five Democrats called the two-year investigation “one of the most partisan congressional investigations in history.”

A much different tone can be expected in the House Benghazi Committee’s upcoming majority report. (For more from the author of “Dems Shift Blame to Protect Clinton in Benghazi Report” please click HERE)

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Keystone XL Company Sues Obama and US for $15 Billion Under NAFTA

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The company behind the Keystone XL pipeline filed a $15 billion lawsuit Friday against the Obama administration under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

TransCanada claimed that Obama spent seven years using “arbitrary and contrived” analyses and justifications to delay the pipeline for political reasons. TransCanada’s suit also says that the company had reason to believe that the pipeline would be approved before it was rejected by the Obama administration in November.

“None of that technical analysis or legal wrangling was material to the administration’s final decision,” TransCanada said in its lawsuit. “Instead, the rejection was symbolic and based merely on the desire to make the U.S. appear strong on climate change, even though the State Department had itself concluded that denial would have no significant impact on the environment.”

President Barack Obama rejected the pipeline due to the perception among environmentalists that it would increase global warming. The Keystone XL pipeline would have increased America’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by less than three-tenths of one percent of the country’s total annual CO2 emissions, according to analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Obama’s own U.S. State Department found that the pipeline wouldn’t make global warming worse, would reduce the risk of an oil spill and create more than 42,000 new jobs. If it had been approved by the Obama administration, Keystone would have sent oil sands from Alberta, Canada to American oil refineries on the Gulf Coast. Republicans pushed Obama to approve the pipeline as it would create jobs.

Despite the State Department and EPA’s findings, Obama vetoed legislation early last to approve Keystone XL as well. Obama’s critics say he was pressured by environmentalist billionaire Tom Steyer, who spent $73 million in the 2014 election supporting Democratic candidates, to veto the project.

Environmental groups heavily pressured Obama to block Keystone as well and immediately used the lawsuit to attack NAFTA and the very idea of free trade agreements, due to their alleged negative impacts on global warming.

“TransCanada’s attempt to make American taxpayers hand over more than $15 billion because the company’s dirty Keystone XL pipeline was rejected shows exactly why NAFTA was wrong and why the even more dangerous and far-reaching Trans-Pacific Partnership must be stopped in its tracks,” Michael Brune, the executive director of The Sierra Club, wrote in a Saturday press statement. “The TPP would empower thousands of new firms operating in the U.S, including major polluters, to follow in TransCanada’s footsteps and undermine our critical climate safeguards in private trade tribunals. Today, we have a prime example of how polluter-friendly trade deals threaten our efforts to tackle the climate crisis.”

Other environmental groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Wildlife Fund, have also spoken out against TPP.

A civil war has erupted between environmentalists and President Barack Obama and other Democrats over TPP and free trade. The full text of TPP noticeably does not directly address global warming and contains only a token mention of “clean energy.” The green groups say that free trade agreements such as TPP and NAFTA lack environmental protections and will benefit corporations, which will ultimately make global warming worse.

The green pressure against free trade has been so intense that even presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has felt it. Clinton helped negotiate TPP and called it “the gold standard” of trade agreements before dramatically changing her position to oppose it during the Democratic primaries. (For more from the author of “Keystone XL Company Sues Obama and US for $15 Billion Under NAFTA” please click HERE)

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More Clinton Emails Released, Including Some She Deleted

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An additional 165 pages of emails from Hillary Clinton’s time at the State Department surfaced Monday, including nearly three dozen that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee failed to hand over last year that were sent through her private server.

The latest emails were released under court order by the State Department to the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch. The batch includes 34 new emails Clinton exchanged through her private account with her deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin. The aide, who also had a private email account on Clinton’s home server, later gave her copies to the government.

The emails were not among the 55,000 pages of work-related messages that Clinton turned over to the agency in response to public records lawsuits seeking copies of her official correspondence. They include a March 2009 message where the then-secretary of state discusses how her official records would be kept. (Read more from “More Clinton Emails Released, Including Some She Deleted” HERE)

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Top Democrat Announces Resignation Following Fraud Conviction

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Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., who was convicted earlier this week of charges including racketeering, bank fraud, mail fraud and wire fraud, has announced his resignation, effective on Thursday, Politico reported.

Responding to the news of the conviction Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan issued a statement Wednesday calling for Fattah to step down immediately. “Mr. Fattah has betrayed the trust of this institution and the people of Pennsylvania, and for that he should resign immediately from the House of Representatives,” Ryan said. “We must hold members to the highest ethical standard, and I hope that Democratic leaders will join me in seeking his immediate resignation.”

Fattah had previously stated he would resign in October; however, in a letter on Thursday to the speaker, Fattah wrote, “In my previous letter I indicated a later resignation date in order to provide for an orderly transition of my office after 21 years of service in the House. However, out of respect for the entire House Leadership, and so as not to cause a distraction from the House’s work for the people, I have changed my effective date.”

In a Philadelphia courthouse on Tuesday, a jury found Fattah guilty of numerous federal charges, including bribery and money laundering.

Since several of the charges carry a 20-year sentence, Fattah could face life in prison. Sentencing is set to take place in October.

In a statement shortly after his conviction, Fattah said, “Today’s decision notwithstanding, it has been my privilege to serve the constituents of the Second Congressional District for over 20 years.”

It is reported that Fattah, along with some of his co-defendants, illegally obtained a $1 million loan in 2007, which they helped repay by using federal and charitable funds.

At the time of his indictment in July 2015, Fattah was the top Democratic representative on the Appropriations Committee.

Included in the indictment were Herbert Vederman, Robert Brand, Karen Nicholas and Bonnie Bowser.

Fattah’s son, Chaka Fattah Jr., is currently serving a five-year prison sentence for bank fraud and tax fraud. (For more from the author of “Top Democrat Announces Resignation Following Fraud Conviction” please click HERE)

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2016 Presidential Candidate Found Dead at Cleveland Motel

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A “fearless advocate for liberty” who sought the Libertarian Party’s nomination for president has been found dead.

Dr. Marc A. Feldman, 56, of Cleveland, was found dead Wednesday at the Americas Best Value Inn near the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. No official cause of death has been released.

Feldman lost the Libertarian nomination in May to former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson.

“How do you make a miracle happen?” he said once. “Start by asking for what you want, and see what you get. Sometimes you’re not given what you ask for, you’re given what you need.” He called himself the “No fear” candidate.

At the Libertarian convention, he rapped his concluding statement.

“I’m that be what you want to be Libertarian,” he began. “That Muslim Libertarian, that Jew Libertarian, the Christian, Atheist, Hin-DU Libertarian.”

“We will miss his dedication as a member of the national committee and candidate for public office, but most of all, I will miss a good friend. He was a delightful, spirited, and dedicated Libertarian who inspired and won the hearts of many. Our deepest condolences to his family on their loss,” said Nicholas Sarwark, chairman of the party’s national committee.

“Dr. Feldman was truly a beacon of unity and empowerment within the party. His campaign website was www.votesnotforsale.com – during his campaign he refused to accept supporting donations higher than $5. His campaign slogan was ‘Empower Yourself,’ and focused on encouraging individuals to achieve greater power and control over their own lives,” Avens O’Brien wrote on The Libertarian Republic. (For more from the author of “2016 Presidential Candidate Found Dead at Cleveland Motel” please click HERE)

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REVEALED: Clinton Held Secret Meetings With Billionaire Foundation Donors and Scrubbed Official Records of Them

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The American people have overwhelmingly shown this year they do not find Hillary Clinton to be trustworthy. Two key reasons why Clinton is dogged by distrust are her private email scandal and the shadiness surrounding the Clinton Foundation and its donors. Two breaking stories by the Associated Press only deepen Clinton’s trust deficit.

First, the AP reported that, contrary to what Clinton has claimed, key emails held on her private server were never turned over to the State Department. They also reported that Clinton went as far as declining a State Department Blackberry. An email discovered from November 2010 also raises new questions about what other State Department emails Clinton is hiding from the American people:

“Former Secretary Hillary Clinton failed to turn over a copy of a key message involving problems caused by her use of a private homebrew email server, the State Department confirmed Thursday. The disclosure makes it unclear what other work-related emails may have been deleted by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.”

The second story was just as explosive. It documented that Clinton’s official State Department schedule has been scrubbed of at least 75 meetings Clinton held as Secretary of State with “longtime political donors and loyalists, Clinton Foundation contributors and corporate and other outside interests”:

“The AP review of Clinton’s calendar — her after-the-fact, official chronology of the events of her four-year term — identified at least 75 meetings with longtime political donors and loyalists, Clinton Foundation contributors and corporate and other outside interests that were either not recorded or listed with identifying details scrubbed. The AP found the omissions by comparing the 1,500-page document with separate planning schedules supplied to Clinton by aides in advance of each day’s events. The names of at least 114 outsiders who met with Clinton were missing from her calendar, the records show.”

This new development also raises new and damaging questions for the FBI criminal investigation into Clinton’s illicit, private server set-up:

“At a time when Clinton’s private email system is under scrutiny by an FBI criminal investigation, the calendar omissions reinforce concerns that she sought to eliminate the ‘risk of the personal being accessible’ — as she wrote in an email exchange that she failed to turn over to the government but was subsequently uncovered elsewhere.”

Since Clinton’s email scandal broke it has been overwhelmingly obvious that the reason Clinton used a private server as Secretary of State was to shield less-than-flattering correspondence from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process and, by extension, the American people. These two stories show that even after she was caught, Clinton never provided a full accounting of her work emails to the State Department, and that she spent a significant time as Secretary of State hobnobbing with her cronies and wanted to prevent the country from knowing it. This was a cover-up, plain and simple. (For more from the author of “REVEALED: Clinton Held Secret Meetings With Billionaire Foundation Donors and Scrubbed Official Records of Them” please click HERE)

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George Will Quits GOP Over Trump’s Judge Comments, Paul Ryan’s Trump Endorsement

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Conservative writer George Will is no longer a Republican, and he says it’s all Paul Ryan’s fault.

During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Will said the last straw for him was that Ryan, the Speaker of the House, was willing to endorse Trump even after his statements attacking judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is handling the Trump University case. Trump has suggested Curiel is biased against him because he has Mexican heritage.

“After Trump went after the ‘Mexican’ judge from northern Indiana, then Paul Ryan endorsed him, I decided that in fact this was not my party anymore,” Will said during his appearance. “I changed my registration to unaffiliated 23 days ago.”

Will compared his defection to Ronald Reagan’s decision to leave the Democratic Party, saying that it was Republicans who had changed, not him.

“I left [the party] for the same reason I joined it in 1964, when I voted for Barry Goldwater,” he said. “I joined it because I was a conservative, and I leave it for the same reason: I’m a conservative,.”

Will first said he was leaving the Republican Party Friday, during a Federalist Society luncheon, but his comments Sunday add further context to his decision. Will has been heavily critical of Trump throughout the nomination process, and he has even written that it would be advantageous for Trump to lose in a 50-state landslide.

Trump himself said Sunday morning that Will would not be missed via Twitter:

Will responded on Fox News Sunday by calling Trump clueless on every topic.

“He has an advantage on me, because he can say everything he knows about any subject in 140 characters and I can’t,” he said. (For more from the author of “George Will Quits GOP Over Trump’s Judge Comments, Paul Ryan’s Trump Endorsement” please click HERE)

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