Obama's "Strong Disapproval" Double His "Strong Approval"

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Americans are more than twice as likely to say they “strongly disapprove” (39%) of President Barack Obama’s job performance as they are to say they “strongly approve” (17%). The percentage of Americans who strongly disapprove of Obama has increased over time, while the percentage who strongly approve has dropped by almost half.

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In the first year of Obama’s presidency, the percentages of Americans who had strong views about the job he was doing were essentially tied, but the strongly negative responses now significantly outweigh the strongly positive ones. The largest segment of Americans today, 39%, strongly disapprove of Obama’s job performance, while 14% moderately disapprove. Another 27% moderately approve, while 17% strongly approve.

Strong disapproval of the president’s job performance has been within 30% to 39% the four times Gallup has asked the question — in 2009, 2010, 2011, and now this year — but has risen by five percentage points since 2011, and by nine points since the first month Obama was in office. At the same time, strong approval has fallen by nine points in the last three years, and by 15 points since January 2009.

The overall changes reflect larger shifts in opinion within the president’s own Democratic base, as well as among Republicans, whose already widespread strong disapproval of Obama has expanded.

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IRS: By the Way, We Destroyed Lois Lerner's BlackBerry After Targeting Questions Started

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

If you missed my piece yesterday on Lerner’s reportedly not missing emails, click through and spend five minutes catching up on the evolving timeline. The “official” story keeps shifting, so it’s important to track the changes. This week’s previous development was that a Justice Department attorney informed a watchdog group that all government emails are, in fact, archived, but that retrieving the messages “destroyed” by Lerner’s hard drive crash/scratch would be more trouble than it’s worth. Now we have another drip of damning information, courtesy of Fox News:

Lois Lerner’s Blackberry was intentionally destroyed after Congress had begun its probe into IRS targeting of conservative groups, a senior IRS lawyer acknowledged in a sworn declaration. Thomas Kane, Deputy Assistant Chief Counsel for the IRS, wrote in the declaration, part of a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch against the IRS, that the Blackberry was “removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.” That date – June 2012 – is significant because by that time, ex-IRS official Lerner had already been summoned before congressional staffers who interviewed her about reports of the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups. “We had already talked to her. Our personal staff and Oversight Committee staff had sat down with Ms. Lerner and confronted her about information we were getting from conservative groups in the state of Ohio and around the country,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pew Survey: 1/3 of Mexicans Want to Move to America: 60% Disapprove of Peña Nieto's Economy

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

As Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto travels across California and declares America to be “the other Mexico,” a Pew Research survey has found that 60% of Mexicans disapprove of Peña Nieto on the economy. Perhaps as a result, a plurality of Mexicans think that life is better across the border, and a third want to move to America.

In addition, the Pew survey found that “two-thirds are dissatisfied with the way things are going in Mexico today” while “only 30% are satisfied with the country’s direction.” That may be why “a plurality of Mexicans (44%) believe life is better north of the border for those who migrated from Mexico” and “roughly a third (34%) still say they would move to the U.S. if they had the opportunity, including 17% of Mexicans who would do so” illegally. Fewer Mexicans, though, said they had close friends and family in the United States than in years past.

On Monday, Peña Nieto scolded governors who did not embrace open borders. California Gov. Jerry Brown was not one of them. The liberal Democrat who has turned California into a sanctuary state and given illegal immigrants driver’s licenses said that illegal immigrants from Mexico are “all welcome in California.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Rand Paul: Hillary's 'War Hawk' Policies Led to Benghazi Attack, Rise of ISIS

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) certainly has a knack for boldness. On Sunday’s Meet the Press, he dubbed U.S. military engagement in Libya “Hillary’s war” and stated the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) is not a result of President Obama’s inaction in the Middle East but the unintended consequence of the U.S. military engagement in Libya.

The comments predictably caused heads in the GOP’s foreign policy establishment to explode. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin called the rhetorical gambit “ludicrous” and said Paul holds the same views as his father, the libertarian former-Rep. Ron Paul. In an email to me, John Yoo, the former top Justice Department official in the Bush administration, said Paul is the Republicans’ “own version of George McGovern.”

In a phone interview, Paul expanded on his remarks and offered a detailed rendering of his views on foreign policy that, regardless of their merits, are undoubtedly innovative for a man likely to seek the GOP’s presidential nomination in 2016. Paul told Breitbart News:

I would say the objective evidence shows that Libya is a less safe place and less secure place, a more chaotic place with more jihadist groups—and really, we’ve had two really bad things happen because of Hillary’s push for this war. One is that our ambassador was killed as a consequence of not having adequate security and really as a consequence of having a really unstable situation there because of the Libyan war, and then most recently our embassy having to flee by land because they couldn’t leave via the airport because of such a disaster in Libya. So I think it’s hard to argue that the Libyan war was a success in any way. From my perspective, the first mistake they made was not asking the American people and Congress for authority to go to war.

While Muammar Gaddafi, or Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad, or Iraq’s Saddam Hussein—deposed during the George W. Bush administration—were certainly bad actors, Paul wants to know: who takes their place?

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Unbelievable: With 5 Simple Words The Governor Of California Just Totally Undermined U.S. Law

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Photo Credit: Amadscientist (Creative Commons)

Photo Credit: Amadscientist (Creative Commons)

Question: What should be done about the governor of the most populous state in the union throwing open the doors to any and all Mexican immigrants, legal or illegal? Is this sort of “come one, come all” policy the new normal in Obama’s America?…

From the LATimes.com article:

In introducing Peña Nieto on Monday, Brown spoke about the interwoven histories of Mexico and California and nodded to the immigrants in the room, saying it didn’t matter whether they had permission to be in the United States.

“You’re all welcome in California,” he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Why It Makes Sense for Burger King to Become a Canadian Company

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Photo Credit: Mike Mozart / Creative Commons

Photo Credit: Mike Mozart / Creative Commons

How many iconic American companies have to leave or threaten to leave these shores for foreign lands before Washington acts to fix our anti-growth tax system and keep firms, profits, and jobs here in the U.S.?

Burger King became the latest Fortune 100 company to announce it is looking to leave. The company is considering a deal to merge with Canadian restaurant chain Tim Hortons and move its headquarters north across the border. The multi-billion dollar deal would make the $11.4 billion hamburger company now based in Miami a Canadian firm valued at more than $21 billion. The technical term for this transaction is an “inversion.”

Why is it happening? The combined federal and state corporate income tax rate in Florida is 38.6 percent, near the highest in the world and more than a third higher than the combined national and provincial rate of 28.0 percent in Ontario, Canada. This is costing American workers jobs and the U.S. capital investment.

Read more from this story HERE.

Former HHS Cyber Security Director Convicted For Child Porn

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Photo Credit: SAUL LOEB / AFP / Getty Images

Photo Credit: SAUL LOEB / AFP / Getty Images

Former acting director of cyber security for the Department of Health and Human Services Timothy DeFoggi was convicted for a myriad of gruesome child pornography charges Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced.

DeFoggi, who had top security clearance in his capacity as cyber security director, first joined the child pornography website PedoBook in March 2012. The Omaha World-Herald reported that he was arrested in April of last year, when law enforcement officials serving a search warrant found him downloading child pornography in his home.

In addition to viewing and soliciting child pornography, reportedly asking another member of the site whether he’d share pictures of his son, he suggested meeting a fellow pedophile in person to violently rape and murder children together.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Lawyer: Lois Lerner's Blackberry Deliberately Destroyed after Start of Congressional Probe

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Photo Credit: Mast Irham / EPA

Photo Credit: Mast Irham / EPA

Lois Lerner’s Blackberry was intentionally destroyed after Congress had begun its probe into IRS targeting of conservative groups, a senior IRS lawyer acknowledged in a sworn declaration.

Thomas Kane, Deputy Assistant Chief Counsel for the IRS, wrote in the declaration, part of a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch against the IRS, that the Blackberry was “removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.”

That date – June 2012 – is significant because by that time, ex-IRS official Lerner had already been summoned before congressional staffers who interviewed her about reports of the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups.

“We had already talked to her. Our personal staff and Oversight Committee staff had sat down with Ms. Lerner and confronted her about information we were getting from conservative groups in the state of Ohio and around the country,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Justice Department Admits that the Federal Government Has ALL of Lois Lerner’s Emails

By Bryan Preston.

Judicial Watch just dropped a bombshell in the IRS targeting investigation.

Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe. The Obama administration attorneys said that this back-up system would be too onerous to search. The DOJ attorneys also acknowledged that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) is investigating this back-up system.

We obviously disagree that disclosing the emails as required would be onerous, and plan to raise this new development with Judge Sullivan.

Read more from this story HERE.

Unprecedented: Food Stamp Enrollments Top 45 Million, 3 Years in a Row

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

President Barack Obama and vulnerable Democrats facing tough midterm elections in 71 days are scrambling to prop up the moribund U.S. economy in the minds of disgruntled voters. However, one of the quickest shorthand economic measurements–food stamp enrollments–paints a startling portrait of the “new normal” in the Obama economy.

According to the Department of Agriculture’s most recently released data, the number of individuals enrolled in the food stamp program (known officially as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) has remained above 45 million every single month for three years straight.

In May 2011, 45,410,683 individuals received food stamps. As of May 2014 (the most recent date for which data are available), 46,225,054 people were on food stamps. At no point between the two dates did the number of food stamp enrollments ever fall below the 45 million mark.

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Florida School District Replaces Football Chaplains with "Life Coaches"

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Photo Credit: FNC/AP

Photo Credit: FNC/AP

Troy Schmidt’s jaw dropped.

A few minutes before, he had been preparing to start his seventh year as chaplain for the Olympia High School football team in Florida. But now, those plans had been changed – radically changed.

“I received a call from the coach,” Schmidt told me. “He said Orange County Public Schools is no longer allowed to have chaplains as a part of the football program.”

Schmidt, who is a campus pastor of the First Baptist Church of Windermere, Florida, listened as the football coach explained the district’s decision to cleanse Christianity from its ranks.

“I could no longer open the Bible, talk about the Bible, talk about God or pray with the team in any capacity,” he told me. “It was heartbreaking.”

Read more from this story HERE.