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October 2016

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 07, 2016 5 Comments
The State Department caused waves earlier today when it announced it would release the first batch of emails from Hillary Clinton that the FBI discovered AFTER the agents finished their investigation. Turns out its a bunch of almost nothing. On its website, the State Department published 75 emails consisting of 270 pages. The majority belong to previously published email chains, but the new additions are from Hillary asking her aides to print the chains.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 07, 2016 44 Comments
As we are learning that the FBI files reveal "missing bankers' boxes filled with the former secretary of state’s emails.," veteran FBI agents are expressing their concern that Comey's approach to the Hillary case has "damaged the reputation" of the FBI due to his insistence that the agency politicize the investigation and its results. Fox News reports:
Buried in the 189 pages of heavily redacted FBI witness interviews from the Hillary Clinton email investigation are details of yet another mystery -- about two missing “bankers boxes” filled with the former secretary of state’s emails. The interviews released earlier this month, known as 302s, also reveal the serious allegation that senior State Department official Patrick Kennedy applied pressure to subordinates to change the classified email codes so they would be shielded from Congress and the public.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 07, 2016 13 Comments
It seems every time a cop shoots someone it becomes a national story with charges of racism and excessive force against them. Now the situation has cops deciding not to defend themselves. Chicago Superintendent Eddie Johnson said one of his officers didn't defend herself against the man who beat her unconscious because of the backlash she and the department might receive:
“As I was at the hospital last night, visiting with her, she looked at me and said she thought she was gonna die, and she knew that she should shoot this guy, but she chose not to because she didn’t want her family or the department to go through the scrutiny the next day on national news,” Johnson said while attending a public ceremony honoring heroic officers and firefighters.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 07, 2016 7 Comments
Omar Barghouti is the co-founder of the BDS movement. He lives in Israel because he married an Israeli woman and is a Ph.D. student at Tel Aviv University. [*] Yet he supports the academic boycott of Israel. Contrary to Barghouti's narrative, the BDS movement was founded at the anti-Semitic 2001 Durban Conference, not by a gathering of Palestinian civil society groups in 2005. The 2005 boycott call, co-founded by Barghouti, was simply window dressing designed to trick naive Western liberals into thinking BDS is about social justice and equal rights. In fact, BDS is about destroying Israel and, in their minds, reclaiming not just the territory re-captured by Israel in 1967, but all of Israel. BDS in its literature, again to fool naive liberals, plays coy with what it means when it says it wants an end to Israeli occupation of "Palestinian lands." That allows groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and the U.S. Campaign to End to Israeli Occupation to claim that BDS only is about liberating the post-1967 territories. But that vagueness also allows BDS to appeal to those who do not accept the existence of Israel within any border.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 07, 2016 19 Comments
Nothing is safe from race-based drama! This week started with Aleister reporting on Penn State's costume-shaming campaign targeting Halloween garb. However, despite the fact that a Muslim leader originally commissioned the work and the opera has been performed over 1,000 times since its debut in 1886, a British university is shutting down a musical based on Giuseppi Verdi's Aida due amid charges of...cultural appropriation.

Posted by Mike LaChance on October 07, 2016 19 Comments
You'll be relieved to learn that through his ultimate wisdom and expert diplomacy skills, President Obama may have saved the planet. You don't have to take my word for it, Obama said it himself. NBC News reports:
Obama: Paris Climate Accord Best Possible Shot to 'Save' Planet A sweeping global agreement to combat climate change by shifting the world economy away from fossil fuels will take force next month after passing a threshold for ratification on Wednesday with support from European nations.

Posted by Mike LaChance on October 07, 2016 31 Comments
Obamacare has faced some new problems, including the rising cost of premiums and the shrinking pool of providers participating in the program. Additionally, not enough young healthy people have enrolled to offset the costs created by less healthy older people. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the chief architects of Obamacare and the center of controversy over the "death panel," knows who's to blame... Republicans. You know, the party the Democrats excluded from the law's creation and had nothing to do with its passage. He appeared on the Kelly File and made his case. Real Clear Politics reports:
Architect Of Obamacare Blames Republicans For Law's Problems Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), joins Fox News Channel's Megyn Kelly to discuss some of the problems with the law.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 07, 2016 11 Comments
The Republican National Committee (RNC) provided a few documents to The Wall Street Journal that shows the White House worked with Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign over her private email server when she served as secretary of state:
Their discussion included a request from the White House communications director to her counterpart at the State Department to see if it was possible to arrange for Secretary of State John Kerry to avoid questions during media appearances about Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement. In another instance, a top State Department official assured an attorney for Mrs. Clinton that, contrary to media reports, a department official hadn’t told Congress that Mrs. Clinton erred in using a private email account.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 06, 2016 29 Comments
I was a guest on The Michael Koolidge Show on 1440 WROK in Rockford, Illinois and numerous other stations. The discussion started with my take on the VP debate.
"I was left with the feeling wondering why Mike Pence wasn't the presidential nominee because he was so much better on his feet than Donald Trump. And I wonder if Trump had given the performance that Pence gave, I think the polling would be very different nowadays. Trump was rising in the polls as we approached the presidential debate, it was not a good night for him by any account, and he has sunk pretty significantly, several percentage points, since then. And I just think that if he were as prepared as Pence was prepared, if he was on message as much, if he didn't take the bait the way Pence never took the bait, I think we could be in a very different spot here.

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 06, 2016 1 Comment
The Democrats salivated when Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) called GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump a role model. Her opponent Gov. Maggie Hassan held a press call and released a web ad over it. Pollsters even said the comment and Ayotte's attempt to walk back hurt her chances for re-election. But did it? From The Boston Globe:
Ayotte, a Republican, leads her challenger, Governor Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, 47 percent to 41 percent, in poll of the high-stakes race for US Senate. The poll was performed on Monday to Wednesday this week, surveying voters before and after the US Senate debate earlier this week during which Ayotte said “absolutely” Trump is a role model for her children. Hours later Ayotte said she misspoke. In any case, the poll did not show any erosion of support for Ayotte following her comment. But Hassan’s campaign will begin airing a one minute-long television advertisement Friday that highlights her debate mishap.
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