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May 2017

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 12, 2017 12 Comments
As you may be aware, Rasmieh (Rasmea) Odeh pleaded guilty on April 25, 2017 to one count of unlawfully obtaining naturalization. In the plea agreement, Rasmea admitted she knowingly had lied, among other ways, by denying ever having been convicted or imprisoned. In fact, Rasmea was convicted in Israel in 1970 of the bombing of the Supersol supermarket, which killed Hebrew University students Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner. She served 10 years before being released in a prisoner exchange. Rasmea concocted a defense that she falsely answered the questions because she was suffering from PTSD, which made her "filter" the plain wording. At multiple levels that defense was as big a lie as her lies on her immigration forms, and in the plea agreement she admitted her false statements were not the result of PTSD or any other mental condition.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on May 12, 2017 3 Comments
Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff will square off against Republican Karen Handel in the June 20th election for the seat formerly held by Rep. Tom Price who now serves as HHS Secretary. As the runoff special election in Georgia's sixth Congressional district nears the one-month-away mark, national Republican groups are running a slew of anti-Ossoff ads.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on May 12, 2017 8 Comments
Aetna, one of the nation's largest health insurers announced Wednesday it would completely withdraw from Obamacare marketplaces in 2018. Nebraska, Delaware, Virginia, and Iowa are the only Obamacare exchanges where Aetna currently participates. A month ago Aetna announced plans to leave the Iowa market, followed by yet another announcement of a Virginia marketplace exit. With Aetna's withdrawal, Delawareans and Nebraskans will be left with one insurer on the exchange.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on May 12, 2017 5 Comments
Talk about your doomsday predictions . . . on today's Morning Joe, Donny Deutsch said "I believe this is the beginning of the end" for President Trump, whom he called an "accidental dictator." Here's the full Donny.
DONNY DEUTSCH: The optics I see is the guy who's the accidental dictator. When I say accidental dictator, he never thought he'd be in office, now he's in office. Doesn't know how to behave any differently. When you contextualize this, versus, the press is the enemy of the state, let's blow up the Ninth Circuit. I don't know, the Senate and the Congress, I don't know if that works any more. Alternative facts. Let's ban the press from the White House, ban the press from the campaign, the press is enemy of the state. Let's give states the right to round up immigrants. On and on and on. And his love for thugs. This is a man that genuinely has behaved for 70 years one way, does not understand the office he has and actually behaves as a dictator. We can't call it any other way at this point. Oh by the way, let's imprison Hillary Clinton. We are in very, very, very dangerous territory here. In every way. You feel it. I think everybody right now feels what's happening. There's a man sitting in that chair that is frighteningly ill-equipped to understand the office he's in, to behave within the framework, and this is just the latest example. You can feel the thread being pulled. You can feel the clothes starting to come off the emperor. I believe this is the beginning of the end. MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yeah. I do, too.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 12, 2017 17 Comments
Earlier this week, U.S. officials began discussions over banning electronics larger than a cell phone on flights to America from Europe as a way to deter terrorism. Our officials have already placed this ban on flights from ten airports in the Middle East and North Africa. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly discussed this ban today after many European officials expressed worry about the ban and want to persuade Kelly to change his mind.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 12, 2017 10 Comments
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has issued a memo to all 94 U.S. attorneys to advise them of a new charging and sentencing policy within the Department of Justice. This policy demands that the federal prosecutors "charge defendants with the most serious crime possible." He wrote:
First, it is a core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense. " This policy affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency. This policy utilizes the tools Congress has given us. By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on May 12, 2017 24 Comments
Earlier this month, DNC chair Tom Perez famously declared that every Democrat should be pro-abortion, and apparently a garbled version of this memo seeped down to one Fresno State professor as "every person should be pro-abortion . . . or be silenced." Assistant professor of public health Gregory Thatcher directed his class to erase pro-life messages that Students for Life had written in chalk on the sidewalks at Fresno State, a public university. The interaction between Thatcher and the student reporter resulted in a jaw-dropping exchange in which Thatcher condescendingly explains that such messages are only appropriate in "free speech areas." He further notes, "College campuses are not free speech areas."

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 12, 2017 7 Comments
The FBI raided the Strategic Campaign Group (SCG) in Annapolis, MD Thursday, but refused to specify why it issued search warrants. Because SCG is connected to some of President  Trump's advisors, there's widespread speculation that the raid was related to the FBI's investigation into Russian associates. SCG's president Kelley Rogers told the Capital Gazette that the search pertained to work "the firm performed during the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial campaign of former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on May 12, 2017 23 Comments
Three months ago, as we reported here, Mika Brzezinski barred Kellyanne Conway from Morning Joe, accusing Conway of propagating "fake news." Continuing her war on Kellyanne, Mika is now trying to keep Conway off the air on a rival network. Said Brzezinski on Morning Joe today: "note to CNN, sorry, I love CNN, but you've got to stop putting Kellyanne on the air. It's politics porn. You're just getting your little ratings crack, okay? But it's disgusting.

Posted by Mike LaChance on May 12, 2017 35 Comments
Now that James Comey is out at the FBI, a growing chorus is suggesting that the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email scandal should be reopened. Professor Jacobson said in a recent post:
James Comey now is fired. Loretta Lynch no longer is Attorney General. This seems to open up the possibility of a renewed investigation and potential prosecution.
Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch is now making a similar point. Cheryl K. Chumley writes at the Washington Times:
Hillary Clinton’s email scandal — the hit that keeps on coming Once again, Hillary Clinton’s email scandal is rocking national news. It truly is the news hit that just keeps on coming, isn’t it?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 11, 2017 19 Comments
I was a guest on the Crane Durham Nothing But Truth  radio show on Wednesday night, May 10, 2017, talking about the firing of James Comey the prior Tuesday. My interview is almost 30 minutes, and is embedded at the bottom of this post. In the day since the interview there have been further developments which support many of the points I made. In particular, Donald Trump has been interviewed on NBC and focused heavily on Comey's media presence: "He’s a showboat, he’s a grandstander." That's a point I made in the interview in similar (but not identical) terms.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on May 11, 2017 22 Comments
President Trump has scored significant successes undoing the toxic eco-activist legacy of his predecessor, including the executive orders moving the signing of Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines forward. However, it seems that he cannot rely on certain establishment Republicans to continue his efforts. Before reading this piece further, pause for a moment and ask yourself which 3 GOP Senators would, when given a chance to vote to repeal Obama's drilling rules, would just say "NO".

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on May 11, 2017 17 Comments
Democrats have gone from demanding former FBI Director James' Comey's resignation or dismissal to being puffed up with such outrage that the president has fired Comey they have decided to grind Senate work to a halt by cancelling or postponing meetings  . . . for a whole day.  This is their way of protesting the "lack of an independent investigation" into Russia's alleged election meddling. The Washington Post reports:
Democrats on Capitol Hill slowed committee business in the Senate to protest the lack of an independent investigation into Russia’s election meddling, and a growing number of Republicans questioned Trump’s decision.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on May 11, 2017 15 Comments
Last summer, we blogged about former Florida Rep. Corrine Brown's legal woes. Brown faced, "24 counts ranging fraud, conspiracy to commit mail fraud, making false statements, wire fraud, and more," reported First Coast News in July of 2016. Brown was accused of creating a fake charity called One Door, raising over $800,000, and then using the cash as her own personal slush fund. The charity only dished out $1,200 in donations, according to the prosecutor. Thursday, Brown was convicted on eighteen federal fraud charges.
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