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Jeb Bush Says His Amnesty Plan Is ‘the Grown-up Plan’ [+video]

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By Jon Ward. Jeb Bush said on Friday that his plan for reforming the nation’s immigration system is “the grown-up plan.”

Bush kicked off his first pre-2016 trip to New Hampshire with a visit to the Integra Biosciences manufacturing plant in Hudson, where he took questions from local business leaders. The former Florida governor, whose position on immigration reform has come under criticism from members of his party, once again endorsed “earned legal status” for immigrants who entered the country illegally.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Well, anything you can propose is amnesty.’ But that’s not a plan,” Bush said. “That’s a sentiment perhaps.”

Bush also faced questions about Common Core, the national educational standards that he’s supported despite widespread opposition from conservative politicians. (Read more from “Jeb Bush Says His Amnesty Plan Is ‘the Grown-up Plan'” HERE)


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Obama’s Clash with Venezuelan Leader Backfires; Latin Americans Unite against U.S.

By Andre F. Radzischewski. President Obama largely shrugged off the provocations of Hugo Chavez, but a clash with the late Venezuelan leader’s hand-picked successor may be backfiring.

Latin American leaders have rallied around embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as relations between Washington and Caracas have plunged to a new low.

Governments from Havana to Buenos Aires have denounced Mr. Obama’s executive order labeling Venezuela as a national security threat as unwelcome U.S. meddling in regional affairs. Analysts say the move may do little to improve the volatile situation in Venezuela and could well worsen it. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Wannabe King Bush III Explains Why He Supports Amnesty [+video]

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By Jonathan Easley. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush offered a strenuous defense for a pathway to legalization for immigrants in the country illegally at a summit in Iowa on Saturday.

“Immigrants that are here need to have a path to legal status,” Bush said. “Nobody I know has a plan to deal with illegal immigration other than to just say they’re going to be rounded up and taken away.”

Bush said those in the country illegally should be given the opportunity to earn legal status if they work, don’t break the law and learn English.

“This is the only serious thoughtful way to deal with this,” Bush said.

Immigration reform is one of Bush’s biggest liabilities with the base. But in his first political trip to the early-voting state since moving towards a presidential run, Bush forcefully stood his ground on the hot-button issue. (Read more about wannabe King Bush explaining why he supports amnesty HERE)

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America Has a Problem with Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush

By Hunter Walker. A new poll of the 2016 presidential race contains a frightening figure for two of the top candidates, Republican Jeb Bush and Democrat Hillary Clinton.


According to the poll, which was released Monday and was conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, 39% of voters would prefer a president who wasn’t from the Bush or Clinton political dynasties.

That’s scary for Bush and Clinton as it is a problem with no obvious fix. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Laura Ingraham Rips Apart Bush Family Before Jeb’s Speech at CPAC; Later, Jeb Bush Booed

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One of America’s most prominent conservative commentators took the stage at a massive gathering of Republican voters — and used the platform to tear down a GOP frontrunner.

“How many of you guys are skeptical of another Bush term?” Laura Ingraham asked the crowd at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference Friday morning, eliciting cheers from her audience.

She spent the next 20 minutes tearing apart the “elites” that she said have propelled former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to the forefront of the Republicans’ 2016 presidential pool.

“Why don’t we just call it quits, Jeb and Hillary [Clinton] can run on the same ticket,” Ingraham said, rattling off the similarities between the Democratic frontrunner and Bush.

Saying the candidates agree on everything from Common Core to widespread surveillance, Ingraham proposed a slogan for the bipartisan ticket: “Clush 2016: What difference does it make?” (Read more from this story HERE)

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Jeb Bush Booed at CPAC

When Fox News’ Sean Hannity took the stage at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference, he had a question for the audience: “Who are you excited about?”

. . . At the mention of Dr. Ben Carson, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and dark horse candidate Carly Fiorina, the audience clapped.

But the clear winners were Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, both of whose name’s elicited massive cheers.

A few candidates, on the other hand, were shunned by the CPAC crowd.

At the mention of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the clapping of supporters was drowned out by the boos of those opposed. (Read more from “Jeb Bush Booed at CPAC” HERE)

Documents Show the Expensive Tastes of Jeb Bush’s “Low-Key” Wife

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In 1999, Columba Bush, the famously private wife of then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, was detained and fined by federal customs officials for misrepresenting the amount of clothing and jewelry she had bought while on a solo five-day shopping spree in Paris.

The incident left the Florida first lady deeply mortified and her husband politically chagrined. Jeb Bush said the first lady had misled customs officials because she did not want him to know that she had spent about $19,000 on the trip.

“The embarrassment I felt made me ashamed to face my family and friends,” Columba Bush said in a July 1999 speech to the Central Florida Make-a-Wish Foundation, not long after the incident. “It was the worst feeling I’ve ever had in my life.”

The ordeal did not stop her from spending freely, however. Less than a year later, she took out a loan to buy $42,311.70 worth of jewelry on a single day, according to records filed with the state of Florida by Mayors Jewelers.


That purchase was part of a pattern by Columba Bush of borrowing to buy tens of thousands of dollars of jewelry at a time from the South Florida store over a 14-year period. Documentation available online, which does not include the details of two transactions made less than six weeks apart in 1995, shows that she spent a total of more than $90,000 at the store. (Read more about the expensive tastes of Jeb Bush’s wife HERE)

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Jeb Bush is Unelectable According to This Conservative Group [+video]

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Photo Credit: Daily Signal By Ken McIntyre. A conservative group’s new online ad portrays Jeb Bush as “unelectable” to the presidency because the Republican presented a public service award to the Democratic favorite, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Clinton received the award, the video emphasizes, on Sept. 10, 2013 – one day short of the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead and stained her legacy as secretary of state.

(Read more about the conservative group saying Jeb Bush is unelectable HERE)

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Hotline’s GOP Presidential Power Rankings

By National Journal Staff. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and a surging Scott Walker top Hotline’s new GOP Presidential Power Rankings – in part because they’re that good, and in part because the competition has been so bad.

If you’re going to make mistakes in the presidential race, it’s better to make them early. But Rand Paul and Chris Christie have stumbled so often they’ve slipped from the top-tier slots they occupied in the first round of the Power Rankings we released last month. Walker is moving hard in the opposite direction.

We rank would-be candidates’ chances of winning the Republican nomination based on their individual strengths and weaknesses, political organizations, poll numbers – and on the odds that they even decide to run. No serious candidates are officially running yet. Here’s how it looks if they do:

1. Jeb Bush (Previous ranking: 1)

The former Florida governor stays on top for now, if only because his fundraising prowess — charging $100,000 per ticket at a recent Wall Street event — is unrivaled among his Republican peers. But the past few weeks have revealed chinks in Bush’s armor. For starters, his first major policy speech in Detroit was flat and uninspiring; it wasn’t until the Q&A section that Bush came to life and spoke with energy and urgency about his candidacy. Worse was Bush’s failure to properly vet CTO Ethan Czahor, who was pushed out after reporters found a history of offensive remarks on social media and elsewhere. Bush aspires to be a hip, 21st-century campaigner. But his team’s failure to investigate the background of a major hire — whose 177 tweets could have been reviewed in a matter of minutes — raises serious doubts about the agility and tech savvy of the emerging Bush operation. Remember: His last winning campaign was in 2002, before Twitter even existed.

(Read more from this story HERE)

New Jeb Bush Hire Couldn’t Remove ‘Slut’ Tweets Fast Enough, but Bush Still Wanted Him as Staff

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Photo Credit: TelegraphBy Breitbart News. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Monday decried messages posted to Twitter by a top technology aide as “inappropriate,” but a spokeswoman said the recent hire would remain with Bush’s nascent presidential campaign.

The distraction came on the same day Bush told supporters and former aides he is “singularly focused” on weighing a presidential bid, and as he prepared to release thousands of emails from his time as Florida’s chief executive and the first chapter of a related e-book to highlight what he called a compassionate leadership style with deep conservative credentials.

A Bush spokeswoman said he was disappointed to learn that Ethan Czahor – hired in January as chief technology officer of Bush’s Right to Rise political action committee – had posted messages on his personal Twitter account that referred to women as “sluts” and made remarks about gay men.

Within an hour, Czahor posted a new tweet, his first in months: “i deleted some old jokes i made years ago that i no longer find funny or appropriate. (hash)learning (hash)maturing”

Bush spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said Czahor, 31, the founder of Hipster.com, will stay in the role. (Read more about the new Jeb Bush hire’s tweets HERE)

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Despite Recent Comments Saying Jeb Bush’s New Hire Would Stay on Staff After ‘Slut’ Tweets, the New Hire Was Forced to Resign

By Rob Crilly. The tech whizz hired by Jeb Bush to oversee the digital side of an expected run for the White House has been forced to resign – for a series of offensive online posts.

The appointment of Ethan Czahor, who co-founded Hipster.com, as chief technology officer was only announced on Monday . . .

“While Ethan has apologised for regrettable and insensitive comments, they do not reflect the views of Governor Bush or his organisation, and it is appropriate for him to step aside,” said Kristy Campbell, a spokeswoman for Mr Bush.

American media reported that Mr Bush knew about the comments before his organising team hired Mr Czahor. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Jeb Bush Releases Emails Including Social Security Numbers of Florida Residents

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By T.C. Sottek. Jeb Bush, a rumored 2016 Republican presidential candidate, just decided to publish hundreds of thousands of emails sent to him during his time as governor of Florida. On its face it seems like a great idea in the name of transparency, but there’s one huge problem: neither Bush nor those who facilitated the publication of the records, including the state government, decided to redact potentially sensitive personal information from them.

“In the spirit of transparency, I am posting the emails of my governorship here,” a note on Bush’s website says. “Some are funny; some are serious; some I wrote in frustration.” Some also contain the email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers of Florida residents. The emails are available in Outlook format, and can be searched on the web at Bush’s website.

The Verge did not receive a response from Mr. Bush or his Political Action Committee’s office at the time of publication. (Read more from “Jeb Bush Releases Emails” HERE)

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Will Jeb Bush’s Foreign Policy Lean More Towards His Brother’s or Father’s?

By Patrick O’ Connor. Jeb Bush faces a unique dilemma as he builds a Republican presidential campaign—whether to follow in the foreign-policy footsteps of his father or his brother.

One early indication suggests he is leaning toward his father’s more pragmatic and restrained philosophy. The former Florida governor is considering naming Meghan O’Sullivan as his top foreign-policy aide; several people familiar with the deliberations describe her as the front-runner for the post.

In many ways, the 45-year-old Ms. O’Sullivan, who now teaches at Harvard, bridges the two Bush worlds. She served as deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan for much of George W. Bush ’s second term and was heavily involved in carrying out his Iraq policies. But she wasn’t among the neoconservative advisers who drove the initial decision to invade Iraq, and she is more closely aligned with—and is being promoted by—the kind of pragmatists who dominated George H.W. Bush ’s presidency.

All candidates running for president in 2016 will be asked to articulate what factors would drive them to send U.S. troops into battle. The question would be more delicate for Mr. Bush, should he run, because he would have to navigate the legacies of his father and his brother, whose public image was marred by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Jeb Bush: We Need to Dramatically Expand Immigrants Coming to Work (+video)

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By Pam Key. Wednesday at the Detroit Economic Club, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) said to “create high, sustained economic growth,” we need to “dramatically expand immigrants that are coming to work.”

Bush said, “It seems to me we ought to be strategic about this about how do we create high, sustained economic growth. And that is to shift away from family reunification being almost the sole driver of illegal immigration to narrowing that do what every other country has, spouse and minor children. And dramatically expanding immigrants that are coming to work. A guest worker program to deal in the areas where there are shortages.”

(Read more about Bush saying we need to expand immigrants coming to work HERE)

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Jeb Bush: Opportunity Gap is ‘Defining Issue of Our Time’

By Benjy Sarlin. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called America’s opportunity gap “the defining issue of our time” Wednesday in Detroit, where he delivered one of his first major speeches since announcing in December that he may run for president.

Speaking at the Detroit Economic Club, Bush took aim at the slow pace of economic recovery since the 2008 financial crisis. “More Americans are stuck at their income levels than ever before,” Bush said.

He blamed Washington politicians for not understanding the needs of millions around the country still looking for work. Bush took aim at what he called a federal bureaucracy that creates a “spider web that traps people in perpetual dependence” on government. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Rand Paul: Audit the Federal Reserve (and Reject the Clinton-Bush Dynasty)

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By Ben Smith. Sen. Rand Paul is reviving his push to audit the Federal Reserve.

The Kentucky Republican and presumptive 2016 presidential candidate said he wants to bring several of the Fed’s monetary activities under congressional oversight.

In a statement released Monday, Paul said it was time to end the secrecy behind the Fed. He believes an audit is the best way to do it.

“[An] audit of the Fed will finally allow the American people to know exactly how their money is being spent by Washington.” Paul said.

He slammed the Fed’s current operating practices, saying it works “under a cloak of secrecy and it has gone on for too long.” (Read more about Rand Paul saying to audit the federal reserve HERE)

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Rand Paul Releases ‘Secret Tape’ of a Fake Phone Call Between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush

By Mike Allen. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the 2016 field’s most prolific adopter of social media, has posted what aides wryly call a “secret tape” of a fake phone call between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.

RAND PAC, Paul’s political organization, used actors to portray the conversation, which hits both rivals on the dynasty issue.

“Bush” tells her he’s thinking about running for president: “I just wanted to call and give you a heads-up in hopes we could work something out.”

“Clinton” says: “We both agree on so many issues: bigger government, Common Core, and amnesty for illegal immigrants.”

[Listen to the “secret” conversation HERE]

Paul, who this week gave an interview to CNN via Snapchat, plans to distribute the audio via Twitter and other social platforms. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Establishment Conspiracy Brewing: Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush to Meet in Utah

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Photo Credit: NY Times
Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney are scheduled to meet privately this week in Utah, raising the possibility that the two former governors will find a way to avoid competing presidential campaigns that would split the Republican establishment next year, two prominent party members said Wednesday night.

The meeting was planned before Mr. Romney’s surprise announcement two weeks ago to donors in New York that he was considering a third run for the White House.

Mr. Bush proposed the meeting, according to one of the party members familiar with the planning, who did not want to be quoted by name in discussing a secret meeting.

The original idea was for Mr. Bush, who announced his presidential ambitions in December, to show his respect for Mr. Romney, the Republican Party’s 2012 nominee. The meeting stayed on both men’s calendars even as Mr. Romney took steps to test the presidential waters, moves that could make the meeting awkward. (Read more about Romney and Bush going to meet in Utah HERE)

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