"The scenario that we are preparing for is a multi-pronged terror threat directed against our forces and civilians in the Eilat area," Col. Arik Chen, deputy commander of Division 80 (the Red Division) said Thursday. Division 80 controls Israel's longest expanse of border, across from both Egypt and Jordan. His comments take on added relevance amid the preparations for the Passover holiday, when tens of thousands of visitors and tourists are expected to hit the beaches of Eilat and the Dead Sea area.
"In the past, we have seen incidents in this area," he told military corespondents. "The scenario is a multi-pronged attack, not just at one site, and we will likely have to deal with this challenge without prior warning."
He said that "our mission as a division is to ensure a feeling of security and routine in the area. Whether it is in Eilat or Nitzana. The operational challenges are very complicated, because on the one hand you have here a peaceful border, and on the other hand a frontier area in Sinai has developed that enables terrorist groups to grow like Ansar Bayit al-Maqdis which became an ISIS affiliate. This organization, as we have seen recently, creates a number of terror attacks against the Egyptian army, and this is one of the more bothersome challenges which we are preparing for."
The mission of the Division, in addition to maintaining quiet on the border and the prevention of terror attacks, is also to combat drug smuggling form Sinai. There have been past instances in which smuggling attempts that were thwarted became attacks when smugglers opened fire at both Egyptian and IDF soldiers.
Another senior commander praised the Egyptian efforts to fight terror in Sinai that have been intensified in the wake of the massive terror attack in October 2014against an Egyptian base near El-Arish which cost dozens of Egyptian soldiers and officers their lives. He said that the Egyptian leadership is determined in its battle against terror and has had some successes as of late. The group that carried out the attack, and is responsible for most of the terror events in Sinai, including firing rockets at Eilat, is Ansar Bayit al-Maqdis. A few months ago the organization announced that it was pledging allegiance to, and accepting the authority of, Islamic State (ISIS). The group changed its name to The Province of Sinai of the Islamic State. The group consists of several hundred fighters who were enlisted from among the Beduin tribes in Sinai. There is no information on foreign fighters having joined the group. Despite the fact that the group is relatively small, it has caused serious losses to the Egyptian army. In the past year some 350 Egyptian soldiers, officers, police officers and intelligence personnel have been killed in the fight against the group.
The main difficulty in fighting this terrorist group stems from the fact that in Israel and Egypt very little is know about the group, its members or commanders and the organization is difficult to penetrate from an intelligence stand point. However, in the past year, the efforts to learn about, know and understand the group haven been intensified and improved.
2a)
Yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and condemned the letter signed by 47 Republican senators warning that any agreement with Iran that was not ratified by Congress would not be legally binding. But despite all of the secretary’s huffing and puffing that was cheered and echoed in the mainstream liberal press, his statement in which he conceded that the deal would not be legally binding confirmed the truth of what the letter asserted. Yet the arguments about the Senate letter and even the brazen plans of the administration to refuse to submit any nuclear agreement with Iran to Congress for ratification have sidelined the necessary debate that we are not currently having about the merits of Kerry’s efforts. Fortunately, Foreign Policy has now published a piece that is a good deal more honest about the administration’s efforts than Kerry or President Obama has been. Jeffrey Lewis writes to say that contrary to the assertions of the secretary and the president, a “bad deal with Iran is better than no deal at all.” Though he’s dead wrong, this is exactly the discussion we should be having about Iran right now.
Throughout the last two years of negotiations with Iran, both Obama and Kerry have specified that they will walk away from the talks rather than sign a bad deal that won’t accomplish America’s goal of stopping the Islamist regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Considering that they have extended the current talks with Iran three times after deadlines expired as Iran refused to make concessions shows this promise to be nothing more than rhetoric. But their hypocrisy nevertheless pays tribute to what they understand to be the imperatives of U.S. security policy. Even though the president is clearly intent on not only signing a deal at any cost but also using it as a springboard for a new era of détente with Iran, he understands that open advocacy of appeasement is not something the American public will tolerate. So they are obligated to treat the endless series of concessions and retreats from U.S. security principles as actually great victories for the cause of non-proliferation even if these are transparent deceptions.
This is, after all, the same President Barack Obama who promised in his foreign-policy debate with Mitt Romney that any deal struck with Iran would obligate the regime to close down its nuclear program. But in the subsequent two years, he has not only recognized Iran’s right to enrich uranium but also demonstrated a willingness to let it keep thousands of centrifuges and even offered to sunset any restrictions on their efforts after a decade. Given the lack of transparency about Iran’s current efforts and the dynamic of any such deal in which the U.S. and its allies will be doing everything to pretend that the agreement is a success, not only will Iran be able to cheat its way to a bomb; it may also be able to get one even by complying with the deal.
That is, by virtually any diplomatic definition, a bad deal in that it will mean that Iran must immediately be considered a threshold nuclear power and that its possession of what even the president called a “game changing” weapon is inevitable. That will immeasurably aid Tehran’s quest for regional hegemony and give its terrorist auxiliaries (Hezbollah) and allies (Hamas) even more confidence to continue attacks on Israel. It will also destabilize moderate Arab countries that must, as Saudi Arabia has demonstrated, look to get their own nuclear program to defend themselves.
But Lewis is not constrained by the same political boundaries that require Obama, Kerry, and their apologists to pretend that what is happening will be a good deal.
Lewis admits that the deal is bad by the criteria the administration has established. The deal will not end the danger Iran poses to its neighbors. At best, it will slow down Iran’s progress toward a bomb, not eliminate or foreclose such a possibility as we’ve been told. But he says that such a bad deal will be preferable to walking away from the talks because the West has neither the will nor the ability to stop Iran by means short of war. He wrongly mocks the Senate Republicans for their criticism by saying that they have no definition of what a good deal would be. Even worse, he blames North Korea’s march to a bomb as being somehow the fault of the Bush administration for its belated efforts to get tough with Pyongyang.
He’s right that the Bush administration failed miserably with respect to North Korea as it first depended on diplomacy and concessions to end the threat and then watched different tactics also fail. But the problem didn’t start with Bush. Instead, it began earlier when Obama’s current chief negotiator with Iran, Wendy Sherman, was crafting another bad deal with North Korea while working in the Clinton administration. The moment the West started making concessions to the West and bribing the North Koreans to stop working toward a bomb, the mad Communist dictatorship knew it had won.
The same test applies to the current negotiations.
In classic Obama administration style, Lewis offers us false choices about Iran saying the choice is between a bad deal that might retard their progress and walking away which will mean an Iranian race to a bomb. To the contrary, what the Obama administration could have done—and could still do if it had the wisdom and the guts—was to pursue the policy that led Iran to return to the talks in 2013. Tough sanctions (that the Obama administration opposed when Congress debated them) should have been kept in place and then strengthened. With oil prices declining, Iran’s economy might be brought to its knees. U.S. leadership might have imposed a true economic blockade of Iran that could have weakened the Islamist leadership to the point where it might have given up its nuclear toys. That could still happen even though every passing year that Obama has wasted in his vain pursuit of an entente with a regime that despises the West and seeks only regional hegemony makes such a result harder to achieve.
Appeasement of Iran will not slow its path to a nuclear weapon; it will merely guarantee what the president repeatedly vowed would never happen becomes a reality.
But at least Lewis is telling us what we are getting as a result of Kerry’s diplomacy: a bad deal. Congress should oppose it and insist that it be given a chance to vote on this disaster in the making.
Top Iranian Negotiator: ‘We are the winner’
BY: Adam Kredo
Iran’s foreign minister and chief negotiator in nuclear talks with the West declared victory for his country, stating that no matter how the negotiations end, Tehran has come out “the winner,” according to remarks made on Tuesday and presented in the country’s state-run press.
Javad Zarif, the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister, stated in remarks before the country’s powerful Assembly of Experts, which recently installed a hardline new cleric as its leader, that the nuclear negotiations have established Tehran as a global power broker.
“We are the winner whether the [nuclear] negotiations yield results or not,” Zarif was quoted as saying before the assembly by the Tasnim News Agency. “The capital we have obtained over the years is dignity and self-esteem, a capital that could not be retaken.”
Zarif’s comments were accompanied by a host of bold military displays by Tehran in recent weeks, including the announcement of one new weapon that Iranian military leaders have described as a “very special” missile.
As the United States and Iran rush to hash out a final nuclear agreement ahead of a self-imposed July deadline, Zarif also lashed out at congressional Republicans who have expressed skepticism over the Obama administration’s diplomacy and have fought to exert control over the implementation of any deal.
Zarif dismissed as a “propaganda ploy” a recent letter signed by 47 Senate Republicans that warned Tehran against placing too much stock in a weak deal agreed to by the Obama administration.
Meanwhile, Iran’s military continues to unveil a range of new strategic missiles and advanced weapons meant to project strength throughout the region.
Iran disclosed during military drills late in February that it is developing a missile capable of being fired from a submerged submarine. Top Iranian military leaders have described the missile as a “very special weapon,” according to IHS Jane’s, a defense industry news source.
“I believe that this weapon is a strategic weapon,”Admiral Ali Fadavi, the naval commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said on state television, according to Jane’s. “It has special characteristics.”
Fadavi declined to provide additional details about the missile. “I would like to keep this information for the future. It is a very special weapon and the Americans cannot even surmise how strong and effective this weapon is.”
On Tuesday morning, the commander of Iran’s navy previewed the unveiling of “advanced surface and subsurface vessels” that will soon be incorporated into the country’s fleet, according to the state-run Fars News Agency.
Iran has put great stock in its navy, investing significant resources to bolster the force and make it a principal player in key global shipping lanes, including around the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman, and the Caspian Sea.
Sea-based weapons were a major focus of recent high-level meetings between Iranian and Russian officials, who agreed to a new arms pact.
Earlier this week, Iran initiated into its fleet a new destroyer ship that is “armed with advanced anti-surface and anti-subsurface weapons and air defense systems,” according to military leaders quoted by Fars.
The ship was immediately deployed to the Caspian Sea, an area Iran views as critical to its interests.
Admiral Kordad Hakimi, a top Iranian navy official, told the country’s press that Iran is prepared to use force in the region.
“We have no security problem in the Caspian Sea today, [but] … the Navy is fully prepared to confront any threat,” he was quoted as saying.
Iranian officials have also bragged about being in full control of five out of nine major international waterways.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)
Early Onset Clinton Fatigue
By Charles Krauthammer
She burned the tapes.
Had Richard Nixon burned his tapes, he would have survived Watergate. Sure, there would have been a major firestorm, but no smoking gun. Hillary Rodham was a young staffer on the House Judiciary Committee investigating Nixon. She saw. She learned.
Today you don’t burn tapes. You delete e-mails. Hillary Clinton deleted 30,000, dismissing their destruction with the brilliantly casual: “I didn’t see any reason to keep them.” After all, they were private and personal, she assured everyone.
How do we know that? She says so. Were, say, Clinton Foundation contributions considered personal? No one asked. It’s unlikely we’ll ever know. We have to trust her.
That’s not easy. Not just because of her history — William Safire wrote in 1996 that “Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our first lady . . . is a congenital liar” — but because of what she said in her emergency news conference on Tuesday. Among the things she listed as private were “personal communications from my husband and me.” Except that, as the Wall Street Journal reported the very same day, Bill Clinton’s spokesman said the former president has sent exactly two e-mails in his life, one to John Glenn, the other to U.S. troops in the Adriatic.
Mrs. Clinton’s other major declaration was that the server containing the e-mails — owned, controlled and housed by her — “will remain private.” Meaning: No one will get near them.
This she learned not from Watergate but from Whitewater. Her husband acquiesced to the appointment of a Whitewater special prosecutor. Hillary objected strenuously. Her fear was that once someone is empowered to search, the searcher can roam freely. In the Clintons’ case, it led to impeachment because when the Lewinsky scandal broke, the special prosecutor added that to his portfolio.
Hillary was determined never to permit another open-ended investigation. Which is why she decided even before being confirmed as secretary of state that only she would control her e-mail.
Her pretense for keeping just a single private e-mail account was “convenience.” She doesn’t like to carry around two devices.
But two weeks ago she said she now carries two phones and a total of four devices. Moreover, it takes about a minute to create two accounts on one device. Ray LaHood, while transportation secretary, did exactly that.
Her answers are farcical. Everyone knows she kept the e-mail private for purposes of concealment and, above all, control. For other State Department employees, their e-mails belong to the government. The records officers decide to return to you what’s personal. For Hillary Clinton, she decides.
The point of regulations is to ensure government transparency. The point of owning the server is to ensure opacity. Because she holds the e-mails, all document requests by Congress, by subpoena, by Freedom of Information Act inquiries have ultimately to go through her lawyers, who will stonewall until the end of time — or Election Day 2016, whichever comes first.
It’s a smart political calculation. Taking a few weeks of heat now — it’s only March 2015 — is far less risky than being blown up by some future e-mail discovery. Moreover, around April 1, the Clinton apologists will begin dismissing the whole story as “old news.”
But even if nothing further is found, the damage is done. After all, what is Hillary running on? Her experience and record, say her supporters.
What record? She’s had three major jobs. Secretary of state: Can you name a single achievement in four years? U.S. senator: Can you name a single achievement in eight years? First lady: her one achievement in eight years? Hillarycare, a shipwreck.
In reality, Hillary Clinton is running on two things: gender and name. Gender is not to be underestimated. It will make her the Democratic nominee. The name is equally valuable. It evokes the warm memory of the golden 1990s, a decade of peace and prosperity during our holiday from history.
Now breaking through, however, is a stark reminder of the underside of that Clinton decade: the chicanery, the sleaze, the dodging, the parsing, the wordplay. It’s a dual legacy that Hillary Clinton cannot escape and that will be a permanent drag on her candidacy.
You can feel it. It’s a recurrence of an old ailment. It was bound to set in, but not this soon. What you’re feeling now is Early Onset Clinton Fatigue. The CDC is recommending elaborate precautions. Forget it. The only known cure is Elizabeth Warren.
3a)
WASHINGTON — SINCE open letters to secretive and duplicitous regimes are in fashion, we would like to post an Open Letter to the Leaders of the Clinton Republic of Chappaqua:
It has come to our attention while observing your machinations during your attempted restoration that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our democracy: The importance of preserving historical records and the ill-advised gluttony of an American feminist icon wallowing in regressive Middle Eastern states’ payola.
You should seriously consider these characteristics of our nation as the Campaign-That-Must-Not-Be-Named progresses.
If you, Hillary Rodham Clinton, are willing to cite your mother’s funeral to get sympathy for ill-advisedly deleting 30,000 emails, it just makes us want to sigh: O.K., just take it. If you want it that bad, go ahead and be president and leave us in peace. (Or war, if you have your hawkish way.) You’re still idling on the runway, but we’re already jet-lagged. It’s all so drearily familiar that I know we’re only moments away from James Carville writing a column in David Brock’s Media Matters, headlined, “In Private, Hillary’s Really a Hoot.”
When you grin and call out to your supporters, like at the Emily’s List anniversary gala, “Don’t you someday want to see a woman president of the United States of America?” the answer is: Yes, it would be thrilling.
But therein lies the rub.
What is the trade-off that will be exacted by the Chappaqua Republic for that yearned-for moment? When the Rogue State of Bill began demonizing Monica Lewinsky as a troubled stalker, you knew you could count on the complicity of feminists and Democratic women in Congress. Bill’s female cabinet members and feminist supporters had no choice but to accept the unappetizing quid pro quo: The Clintons would give women progressive public policies as long as the women didn’t assail Bill for his regressive private behavior with women.
Now you, Hillary, are following the same disheartening “We’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse” pattern. You started the “Guernica” press conference defending your indefensible droit du seigneur over your State Department emails by referring to women’s rights and denouncing the letter to Iran from Republican senators as “out of step with the best traditions of American leadership.”
None of what you said made any sense. Keeping a single account mingling business and personal with your own server wasn’t about “convenience.” It was about expedience. You became judge and jury on what’s relevant because you didn’t want to leave digital fingerprints for others to retrace. You could have had Huma carry two devices if you really couldn’t hoist an extra few ounces. You insisted on piggybacking on Bill’s server, even though his aides were worried about hackers, because you were gaming the system for 2016. (Or even 2012.)
Suffused with paranoia and pre-emptive defensiveness, you shrugged off The One’s high-minded call for the Most Transparent Administration in History.
It depends upon what the meaning of @ is.
The subtext of your news conference cut through the flimsy rationales like a dagger: “You can have the first woman president. You can get rid of those epically awful Republicans who have vandalized Congress, marginalized the president and jeopardized our Iran policy. You can get a more progressive American society. But, in return, you must accept our foibles and protect us.”
You exploit our better angels and our desire for a finer country and our fear of the anarchists and haters in Congress.
Because you assume that if it’s good for the Clintons, it’s good for the world, you’re always tangling up government policy with your own needs, desires, deceptions, marital bargains and gremlins.
Instead of raising us up by behaving like exemplary, sterling people, you bring us down to your own level, a place of blurred lines and fungible ethics and sleazy associates. Your family’s foundation gobbles tens of millions from Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes, whose unspoken message is: “We’re going to give you money to go improve the world. Now leave us alone to go persecute women.”
That’s an uncomfortable echo of a Clintonian trade-off, which goes: “We’re going to give you the first woman president who will improve the country. Now leave us alone to break any rules we please.”
Bill, your pathology is more human and interesting. It’s almost like you need to create messes to see if your extraordinary political gifts can get you out of them. It’s a fatherless boy’s “How Much Do You Love Me?” syndrome. Do you love me enough to let me get away with this?
Hillary, your syndrome is less mortal, more regal, a matter of “What Is Hillary Owed?” Ronald Reagan seemed like an ancient king, as one aide put it, gliding across the landscape. You seem like an annoyed queen, radiating irritation at anyone who tries to hold you accountable. You’re less rhetorically talented than Bill but more controlling, so it’s harder for you to navigate out of tough spots.
No Drama Obama and his advisers are clearly appalled to be drawn into your shadowy shenanigans, just as Al Gore once was. Whatever else you say about this president, he has no shadows.
3b) The Democrat knights protecting Queen Hillary tell us there is nothing to the allegations concerning the former Secretary of State. We should take her at her word because she is who she is and we know from her husband Bill, " is is is."
"
It is because we know what and who Hillary is that that alone should scare the hell out of us. She is a pathological liar who makes documents disappear and then reappear, a person who has proven time and again she is above the law, instinctively feels entitled and is incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. She is a person who has accomplished nothing of note and would have you believe otherwise but provides no believable evidence other than she is a woman.. I did forget two accomplishments. She became a fabulous overnight cattle trader and can raise more money than you can shake a stick out even wile holding down a heavy job using only one cell phone.
I cannot name one thing she did as Secretary of State beyond pressing some reset button with Russia and then got the meaning of the word, in Russian, wrong. Show me legislation with her name on it while a Senator.
Apparently Hillary wants to be our first female president I believe she stands a decent chance because after 8 years of Obama, we have become comfortable with incompetence, lying and feckless leadership that has perfected creating vacuums while standing aside and observing how they become filled by unnamed radical Jihadists. thuggish Russians and Ayatollahs bent on achieving nuclear status..
It is a sad commentary when a major political party cannot flush up a viable candidate beyond an aged yesteryear paranoid penniless grandmother but then, as I noted above, this is the same party who flushed up a community organizer and packaged him as being presidential material.
God save us from the Queen!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4) Senate Investigates V -15!
A powerful U.S. Senate investigatory committee has launched a bipartisan probe into an American nonprofit’s funding of efforts to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the Obama administration’s State Department gave the nonprofit taxpayer-funded grants, a source with knowledge of the panel's activities told FoxNews.com. The fact that both Democratic and Republican sides of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations have signed off on the probe could be seen as a rebuke to President Obama, who has had a well-documented adversarial relationship with the Israeli leader. The development comes as Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel Two television station this week that there were “governments” that wanted to help with the “Just Not Bibi” campaigning -- Bibi being the Israeli leader’s nickname. It also follows a FoxNews.com report on claims the Obama administration has been meddling in the Israeli election on behalf of groups hostile to Netanyahu. A spokesperson for Sen. Rob Portman, Ohio Republican and chairman of the committee, declined comment, and aides to ranking Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, did not immediately return calls. The Senate subcommittee, which has subpoena power, is the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ chief investigative body with jurisdiction over all branches of government operations and compliance with laws. “The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations does not comment on ongoing investigations,” Portman spokeswoman Caitlin Conant told Foxnews.com.
But a source familiar with the matter confirmed for FoxNews.com that the probe -- undisclosed until now -- was both underway and bipartisan in nature. According to the source, the probe is looking into “funding” by OneVoice Movement – a Washington-based group that has received $350,000 in recent State Department grants, and until last November was headed by a veteran diplomat from the Clinton administrations. A subsidiary of OneVoice is the Israel-based Victory 15 campaign, itself guided by top operatives of Obama’s White House runs, which seeks to “replace the government” of Israel. “It’s confirmed that there is a bipartisan Permanent Subcommittee inquiry into OneVoice’s funding of V15,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity about the American group, which bills itself as working for a two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his television interview, Netanyahu said the coalition seeking to oust him is generously funded by foreign donors who are also encouraging a high voter turnout among Israel's Arab and left-wing voters in a bid to replace the existing leadership. He characterized the campaign against him as "unprecedented." While Netanyahu pointed the finger at “European countries and left-wing people abroad,” some observers note that he held back from openly criticizing Obama during his recent trip to the U.S. to address Congress on problems his government sees with administration-backed efforts to reach a nuclear weapons inspection deal with Iran. “We appreciate all that President Obama has done for Israel,” Netanyahu told lawmakers -- while Obama refused to meet with the Israeli leader, and later criticized his speech as “nothing new.” No direct link has been confirmed between Obama and the anti-Netanyahu campaign in Israel, but polls have shown that a large majority of Israelis believe the administration has been interfering in the election, set for March 17. One expert told FoxNews.com earlier this month the State Department grants constituted indirect administration funding of the anti-
Netanyahu campaign by providing OneVoice with the $350,000 -- even though State Department officials said the funding stopped in November, ahead of the announcement of the Israeli election. Gerald Steinberg, founder and president of NGO Monitor, which tracks money flows to unmask non-governmental organizations that deviate from their stated human rights or humanitarian agendas, said even ostensibly unrelated grants keep an organization going during periods it is not engaged in political activity
4a).
Ed Klein: Obama Administration Looking to Stop Hillary's WH Bid
By Todd Beamon
Veteran journalist Ed Klein said on Saturday that the Obama administration "is up to its eyebrows in efforts to stop" Hillary Clinton from running for the White House — including six investigations launched by longtime presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett involving Clinton's years as Secretary of State.
"This administration, the Obama administration, will do virtually anything to prevent Hillary from becoming president," Klein told renowned economist Larry Kudlow on his WABC radio show. Kudlow is also a Newsmax columnist and works for NBC's business channel, CNBC.
"It's their view that if she does become president — like her husband, Bill — she will govern from the left of center and not be a true liberal," Klein said, "and will, therefore, compromise with Republicans like Bill did when he was in office, and will undo a lot of the Obama legacy.
"They are determined to stop her — and, of course, it's not going to be easy," he said.
Klein, who worked as the editor of The New York Times Magazine from 1977 to 1987 and as an editor for Newsweek, has written several books critical of Bill and Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama
His most recent book, "Blood Feud," was released last year and detailed the longstanding rift between the Obamas and the Clintons. It topped No. 1 on the Times' best-seller list.
Klein's previous work, "The Amateur," was about Obama's first term in office. It was released during the 2012 presidential election and remained at the top of the Times' list for six weeks.
He told Kudlow that Jarrett, who is a close Obama family friend, began six investigations of Clinton's years at the State Department — and that his reporting had discovered that the White House was behind the leak of Clinton's use of emails to The Times, though he is not sure of Jarrett's role in the leak.
The inquiries surrounded "the use of her expense account," Klein said, "the disbursement of funds, her contact with foreign leaders, her possible collusion with the Clinton Foundation — and of course, first and foremost — her use of emails."
He added that "the White House knew, from the time Hillary became Secretary of State, that she was using these private emails and warned her against them.
"We find it hard to pin down Valerie Jarrett per se as the person who leaked this story," Klein told Kudlow. "It was, in fact, the White House behind this leak — and they used six degrees of separation so that they couldn't be identified between them and the person who actually leaked the story to The New York Times."
The Times reported March 3 that Clinton had used the private email account during her entire term as the nation’s top diplomat. Other reports later surfaced that the account was hosted from a private server at the Clinton home in Chappaqua, N.Y.
Clinton admitted on Tuesday that she should have used a government email account for her official emails, as well as a separate mobile device for her personal correspondence.
She said that most of her correspondence went to employees using government addresses — and those were automatically preserved. She told reporters that she provided the State Department with all of her emails that could possibly be work related for archiving purposes.
"I saw it as a matter of convenience," Clinton said at a news conference that came more than a week after The Times’ original report. "I now, looking back, think that it might have been smarter to have those two devices from the very beginning."
Republicans and Internet experts have raised security concerns and have attacked Clinton for possibly shielding important facts about her tenure from the public. Democrats are also wary that the party's likely presidential front-runner could be tarnished.
Klein said that investigations spearheaded by Jarrett are "still informal" at this point. "My understanding is that tons and tons of papers are being taken from the archives of the State Department and are being examined as far as Hillary's conduct is concerned."
He told Kudlow that Jarrett also has been holding "secret meetings" with two likely Democratic presidential challengers, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley — "both of whom, I think, are going to have a hard time taking the nomination away from Hillary."
Regarding Clinton's news conference, Klein told Kudlow that "Hillary did not carry it off very well at all. She looked defensive. She looked uncertain about how to answer the questions. She had to read from the talking points. She had trouble looking people in the eye.
"This is a woman who has been in the public eye … for 30 and more years and is still not able to connect well with her audience.
"I think she is a very vulnerable candidate — and it's now up to the Republicans to put somebody up who can beat her," Klein said. "I think she's very beatable."
4b) Douglas Schoen: Hillary Needs to Launch Campaign Now
"
There is little time to waste" for Hillary Clinton to raise the $2 billion she will need to run a competitive presidential campaign in 2016, according to political analyst and author Douglas Schoen.
"With the last major New York event now complete — a [March 4] benefit featuring all three Clintons and singer/songwriter Carole King — the time to turn to presidential politics, and presidential politics alone, has come for the putative Democratic front-runner," Schoen observes in an article co-written by Jessica Tarlov and published in The Daily Beast.
"And not a moment too soon."
T
he challenges Clinton faces have become "more substantial" with the disclosure that she apparently used her private email account exclusively while Secretary of State, Schoen, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, points out.
He opines that Hillary needs to offer "something different from what we've seen from President Obama these past six years. His approval rating hovers around 45 percent."
Schoen, whose books include "Hopelessly Divided: The New Crisis in American Politics and What it Means for 2012 and Beyond," insists that Clinton can't run on the platform of the left wing of the Democratic Party and must "position herself as a convincing centrist for what will be a very competitive general election, making a clear break with the Obama administration's approach."
To that end, Schoen urges Clinton to broaden her appeal by embracing several practical policies that show a clear break with Obama, including:
- Articulate a pro-growth agenda that creates jobs and provides competitive wages for young people
- Address income inequality through policies that emphasize economic mobility
- Push for debt and deficit reduction
- Support big-bank regulation
- Reform Obamacare
- Support two-part immigration reform — secure the borders and then create a pathway for citizenship
"Given the prospect of raising close to $2 billion for her campaign," the article concludes, "it shouldn't be surprising that the former secretary has changed direction again and decided she needs to announce her candidacy expeditiously, as early as next month, to blunt the threats and obstacles to her candidacy."
4c)
REQUEST FOR DONATION
I have the distinguished honor of being on the Committee to raise $50,000,000 for a monument to Hillary R. Clinton.
We originally wanted to put her on Mt. Rushmore until we discovered there was not enough room for two more faces.
We then decided to erect a statue of Hillary in the Washington, D.C.
Hall of Fame. We were in a quandary as to where the statue should be
placed. It was not proper to place it beside the statue of George
Washington, who never told a lie, or beside Barack Hussein Obama,
who never told the truth, since Hillary could never tell the difference.
We finally decided to place it beside Christopher Columbus,
the greatest Democrat of them all. He left not knowing where he was
going, and when he got there he did not know where he was.
He returned not knowing where he had been, and did it all on someone else's money.
Thank you,
Hillary R. Clinton Monument Committee
P.S. The Committee has raised $ 0.16 so far.
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment