Obama's blatant defense of Hillarious!
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Several years ago an abandoned German Shepherd jumped into the car of a very dear friend and from that point forward, until this past weekend, an unbreakable bond developed between Big Russ and his new family.
They lovingly nursed him through his medical issues but this past weekend Big Russ was beyond their ability to bring him comfort so they did what most all dog owners eventually face - they allowed him to go in peace.
Our Bichon, Hairy, lived for seventeen years. He was blind and deaf but he still had spirit. When we arranged for his final sleep it was one of the saddest days in my life. I still keep his sheepskin rug by my desk to remind me that a dog is truly man's greatest friend. No family should experience life without having a pet and no better pet was ever created than a fluffy ball of fur called a dog - ask my oldest daughter about her Lhasa, Bristles, my second daughter about her Bichons, Babe and Ellie , my number four daughter about their mixed breeds Metro and Coda or our son about Theo and Tate (named after Thelonious Monk and Art Tatum.)
www.youtube.com/embed/5I_QzPLEjM4?rel=0
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I have not verified. (See 1 below.)
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Scalia law! (See 2 below.)
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In comparable matters Obama has always refused to comment citing an on going investigation. Yet, when Hillarious is involved he decided it was acceptable to enter the brier patch of hypocrisy.
Has Obama laid the predicate for allowing Hillarious to walk by claiming it was not her purposeful intent, to be sloppy just pure thoughtless unintentional unadulterated sloppiness?
It is amazing how the Clinton's are always allowed to get off the hook for their actions, indiscretions, screw ups etc. If you think WD 40 is slick have you ever sprayed "Clinton 40" on something?
Obama just portrayed his outstanding Sec. of State as someone who never intended to endanger American security. Nor, I am sure, did Chamberlain intend to cause WW 2 by encouraging Hitler to believe he could roll through Europe, which, of course, Der Fuehrer eventually did.
If hell is paved with good intentions what is paved with thoughtless, careless unintentional ones? Must be the walkway leading to The State Department. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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I have read much of what Bernard Lewis has written: http://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/freedom-and-justice-in-islam/
It was obvious that when the Saudi Ambassador and other staff were allowed to fly on 9/11 back to their country it was evident there was a connection between the Saudis and 9/11.
Wahabbism continues to this day and continues to support and build Mosques throughout the world where much solicitation and enlistment for terrorism takes place.
How many dark secrets are kept from the American public? Not even God knows.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/
The Saudis know the continuance of their Kingdom is tenuous at best and Obama's actions vis a vis Iran has to have them scared to death because they have Hillary's diplomatic blunders to see what happened to Ghadafi to get an idea of their own fate.
Thus, I would venture to say their recent economic aid to Egypt is driven by frightened self interest. It would not surprise me if one day the Saudis create some kind of more open relationship with Israel. In psychiatry it is known as association with the aggressor. Building relations with the strong brings comfort even if it flies in the face and reverses years of discord. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)Cuba’s Vietnam War Involvement
Research by John Lowery
Whatever one thinks of President Barack Obama’s overtures to Cuba and the accompanying prisoner exchange, an important consideration in need of immediate attention is an accounting of our servicemen captured in the Vietnam War and imprisoned in Cuban-operated POW camps. Of
utmost importance is an accounting of the 17 American airmen captured in North Vietnam and then taken to Cuba for medical experiments in torture techniques.
utmost importance is an accounting of the 17 American airmen captured in North Vietnam and then taken to Cuba for medical experiments in torture techniques.
Most Americans are unaware that Cuba was deeply involved in the Vietnam War.
In fact they had an engineering battalion called the “Girón Brigade,” that was maintaining Route Nine, a major enemy supply line into South Vietnam. Their facilities included a POW camp and field hospital very near the DMZ, just inside North Vietnam. Meanwhile Cuban interrogators worked in Hanoi at a prison known as the Zoo. We know of these
operations and some of what happened to our servicemen after some managed to survive and be repatriated in the winter of 1973, during Operation Homecoming.
operations and some of what happened to our servicemen after some managed to survive and be repatriated in the winter of 1973, during Operation Homecoming.
Following his release Major Jack Bomar, a Zoo survivor, described the brutal beating of Captain Earl G. Cobeil, an F-105F electronics warfare officer, by Cuban Major Fernando Vecino Alegret, known by the POWs as “Fidel.” Regarding Captain Cobeil, Bomar related, “he was completely
catatonic. … His body was ripped and torn everywhere…Hell cuffs appeared almost to have severed his wrists…Slivers of bamboo were imbedded in his bloodied shins, he was bleeding from everywhere, terribly swollen, a dirty yellowish black and purple [countenance] from head to toe.”
catatonic. … His body was ripped and torn everywhere…Hell cuffs appeared almost to have severed his wrists…Slivers of bamboo were imbedded in his bloodied shins, he was bleeding from everywhere, terribly swollen, a dirty yellowish black and purple [countenance] from head to toe.”
In an effort to force Cobeil to talk “Fidel smashed a fist into the man’s face, driving him against the wall. Then he was brought to the center of the room and made to get down onto his knees. Screaming in rage, Fidel took a length of rubber hose from a guard and lashed it as hard as he could
into the man’s face. The prisoner did not react; he did not cry out or even blink an eye. Again and again, a dozen times, [Fidel] smashed the man’s face with the hose.”
into the man’s face. The prisoner did not react; he did not cry out or even blink an eye. Again and again, a dozen times, [Fidel] smashed the man’s face with the hose.”
Because of his grotesque physical condition Captain Cobeil was not repatriated but instead was listed as “died in captivity,” with his remains returned in 1974. (Miami Herald, August, 22 1999, and Benge, Michael D. “The Cuban
Torture Program, Testimony before the House International Relations Committee, Chaired by the Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman, November 4, 1999.) Incredibly, Fidel’s torture of Major James Kasler is well known as he somehow managed to survive the Cuban’s torture.
Torture Program, Testimony before the House International Relations Committee, Chaired by the Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman, November 4, 1999.) Incredibly, Fidel’s torture of Major James Kasler is well known as he somehow managed to survive the Cuban’s torture.
Much less is known about our 17 captured airmen taken to Cuba for “experimentation in torture techniques.” They were held in Havana’s Los Maristas, a secret Cuban prison run by Castro’s G-2 Intelligence service. A few were held in the Mazorra (Psychiatric) Hospital and served as human
guinea pigs used to develop improved methods of extracting information through “torture and drugs to induce [American] prisoners to cooperate.”
guinea pigs used to develop improved methods of extracting information through “torture and drugs to induce [American] prisoners to cooperate.”
After being shot down in April of 1972, U.S. Navy F-4 pilot, Lt. Clemmie McKinney, an African-American, was imprisoned near the Cuban compound called Work Site Five. His capture occurred while then-Cuban president Fidel Castro was visiting the nearby Cuban field hospital. Although listed as killed in the crash by DOD, his photograph standing with Castro, was later published in a classified CIA document.
More than 13 years later, on August 14, 1985, the North Vietnamese returned Lt. McKinney’s remains, reporting that he died in November 1972. However, a U.S, Army forensic anthropologist established the “time of death as not
earlier than 1975 and probably several years later.” The report speculated that he had been a guest at Havana’s Los Maristas prison, with his remains returned to Vietnam for repatriation. (We also paid big money for the remains—delivered in stacks of green dollars to Hanoi aboard an AF C-141 from Travis AFB, California.) Unfortunately, our servicemen held in the Cuban POW camp near Work Site Five (Cong Truong Five), along with those in two other Cuban run camps were never acknowledged nor accounted for and the prisoners simply disappeared.
earlier than 1975 and probably several years later.” The report speculated that he had been a guest at Havana’s Los Maristas prison, with his remains returned to Vietnam for repatriation. (We also paid big money for the remains—delivered in stacks of green dollars to Hanoi aboard an AF C-141 from Travis AFB, California.) Unfortunately, our servicemen held in the Cuban POW camp near Work Site Five (Cong Truong Five), along with those in two other Cuban run camps were never acknowledged nor accounted for and the prisoners simply disappeared.
If our honor code of “Duty, Honor, Country,” and our national policy of “No man left behind,” are more than meaningless slogans, then before our relations with Cuba can be normalized, their murderous leadership must account
for our POWs—especially the 17 airmen taken to Cuba. The civilized world and American veterans demand it.
for our POWs—especially the 17 airmen taken to Cuba. The civilized world and American veterans demand it.
Best Regards,
Elmer Davis
LtCol USMC (Ret)
Director, C-130 Product Line
Kellstrom Defense, a Merex Company
15501 SW 29th Street, Suite 101
Miramar, FL 33027Tell: 954-538-2509
Cell: 954-658-7267
Fax: 954-538-3013
E-Mail: Elmer.Davis@Kellstromdefense.com
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2) Scalia's Warning!
Our teacher was none other than Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia. “You are not going to learn anything that will make you any money,” he told us as we convened. “You’re here to be good lawyers. You’re here to be learned in the law.”
After talk of Montesquieu and Madison, Hamilton and Tocqueville, we got down to cases: Supreme Court cases, to be exact, each one relating to the relationship between freedom and the structural constitution. But when we got to U.S. v. Windsor, the controversial 2013 case in which a 5-4 majority struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the room tensed. Justice Scalia had written a blistering dissent in the case, taking the majority to task for agreeing to hear the matter in the first place. “The Court is eager—hungry—to tell everyone its view of the legal question at the heart of this case,” he had written.
Standing in the way is an obstacle, a technicality of little interest to anyone but the people of We the People, who created it as a barrier against judges’ intrusion into their lives. They gave judges, in Article III, only the “judicial Power,” a power to decide not abstract questions but real, concrete “Cases” and “Controversies.” Yet the plaintiff and the Government agree entirely on what should happen in this lawsuit. They agree that the court below got it right; and they agreed in the court below that the court below that one got it right as well. What, then, are we doing here?
It was a good question. The procedural history of the case was utterly bizarre. President Obama had instructed the Department of Justice not to defend DOMA from constitutional challenges because he believed that the statute was unconstitutional. Yet at the same time, the president had instructed other executive agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, to continue enforcing DOMA’s provisions. It was at this point that a small group within the House of Representatives—the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, or BLAG—filed an amicus brief attempting to defend the constitutionality of the law.
According to the majority, this brief enabled the BLAG to adopt the very cause the executive branch had abandoned on the steps of the courthouse. It was an unprecedented procedural move that enabled the majority to inject the high court into a volatile and sensitive political debate. But, Scalia assured the seminar’s participants, we need not worry too much about the long-term implications of Windsor. The holding was of limited precedential value. The majority got what it wanted—it killed DOMA—and there was little by way of a rule of law that emerged from the case.
From the back of the room, I asked Justice Scalia whether, notwithstanding Windsor’s limited precedential value, the threat to the separation of powers from “executive non-enforcement” had grown critical. In the wake of Windsor, had it become easier for the president not only to decline to defend laws that he found objectionable, but to decline to enforce laws that he found objectionable? It is, after all, one thing for the president to refuse to defend a law because he considers it unconstitutional. It is quite another for the president to refuse to enforce a law because he considers it bad policy—which is precisely what President Obama has tried to do with respect to federal immigration and drug law. Was there any basis, I asked, upon which the Supreme Court might rule on the constitutionality of executive non-enforcement?
It all depends on Congress, Justice Scalia responded—and “if Congress doesn’t do its job and challenge the president,” he said, “what we have is a failed democracy.” The blow landed. The room fell silent. The moderator called for a break.
Justice Scalia’s remark has haunted me since last August. One’s blood runs cold at the thought that the American experiment might well be failing. And with Antonin Scalia’s sudden passing last month, one wonders whether one of the republic’s last lines of defense, the separation-of-powers doctrine, will be overcome by a Court that is growing increasingly unmoored from the text of the Constitution. For the originalism he espoused is more than just an interpretive method: it is a philosophy of government. And Justice Scalia was one of its leading proponents, practitioners, and defenders.
Originalism is preoccupied with what it means to live in a government of laws and not of men. It asks who, precisely, is doing the governing and by what constitutional authority. The Constitution is the most fundamental of our laws. It is also a fundamental law over which the governed exert substantial control. It was framed in a closed room in Philadelphia, but it was ratified by We the People and has been amended 27 times. In this important respect, We the People are the architects of the frame of government within which we live. Through its political branches, we create the laws by which we are ruled. In the United States, constitutional government is the very essence of self-government.
Originalism privileges the will of the people over the will of individual judges on the ground that there is no higher expression of the popular will than the text of the Constitution itself.If our frame of government has a fundamental design principle, it is the separation of powers. Dividing power among three separate branches ensures that the various forms of government authority (legislative, executive, and judicial) cannot be accumulated in either a single person or in a group of people, the very essence of tyranny. Checks and balances support the structural constitution by enabling each branch to guard its powers against encroachments by the other branches. As James Madison explained in Federalist48, the legislative branch, whose powers are “less susceptible of precise limits” than the others, cannot draw “all power into its impetuous vortex” because it is restrained by the executive. The executive, in turn, is restrained by the legislative branch, which holds the power of the purse. And the judiciary? It is, according to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 78, to act as “an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority.”
To Hamilton, the legislature posed the greatest threat to liberty while the judiciary was “the least dangerous” branch. For this reason, he wrote:
The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority; such, for instance, as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex-post facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void….It is not otherwise to be supposed, that the Constitution could intend to enable the representatives of the people to substitute their WILL to that of their constituents.
Nor, for that matter, could judges substitute their will for the act of judging—that is, interpreting the laws—without encroaching upon the lawmaking function.
The trouble, of course, is that judges may be tempted to construe the law not as it is, but as they wish it to be. The interpretive enterprise invites abuses of discretion, and so the manner in which judges decide cases is essential to preserving the separation of powers. “To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts,” Hamilton wrote, “it is indispensable that [judges] should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them.”
As a judicial philosophy, originalism seeks to bind judges to strict rules of interpretation. As a philosophy of government, it privileges the will of the people over the will of individual judges on the ground that there is no higher expression of the popular will than the text of the Constitution itself. To the originalist, this text should not be interpreted in light of changing times and changing circumstances. Rather, it should be interpreted in accordance with the original meaning of the text.
The trouble, of course, is that judges may be tempted to construe the law not as it is, but as they wish it to be. The interpretive enterprise invites abuses of discretion, and so the manner in which judges decide cases is essential to preserving the separation of powers. “To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts,” Hamilton wrote, “it is indispensable that [judges] should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them.”
As a judicial philosophy, originalism seeks to bind judges to strict rules of interpretation. As a philosophy of government, it privileges the will of the people over the will of individual judges on the ground that there is no higher expression of the popular will than the text of the Constitution itself. To the originalist, this text should not be interpreted in light of changing times and changing circumstances. Rather, it should be interpreted in accordance with the original meaning of the text.
Originalism is committed to the proposition that the Constitution means what it says and says what it meant when it was written. The Constitution is neither a dead letter nor a living document. It is an enduring frame of government. It is the function of the judge to recover, interpret, and apply the original meaning of the text of the Constitution no matter what novel situations arise. This is no semantic game. It is an enterprise that cuts to the very essence of political legitimacy.
As Justice Scalia explained in Reading the Law,
Originalism is the only approach to text that is compatible with democracy. When government-adopted texts are given a new meaning, the law is changed; and changing a written law, like adopting written law in the first place, is the function of the first two branches of government—elected legislators and (in the case of authorized prescriptions by the executive branch) elected executive officials and their delegates.1
The approach is not perfect, but it offers something that no other interpretive approach can offer: a fixed criterion by which to interpret laws and judge cases.
The only alternative to this approach is to invite judges to rule us—and in the realm of equal-protection jurisprudence, they do. Scalia once called the area “an embarrassment to teach,” filled with decisions “tied together by threads of social preference and predisposition.”2 This is particularly evident, Scalia wrote, in the Court’s affirmative-action jurisprudence, where judges effectively designate “debtor races” and “creditor races” in the interest of restorative justice. From college admissions to government contracts, the courts have allowed entire groups of people to be treated differently on the sole basis of their race. Here, judges have created an Orwellian line of decisions that tortures the very notion of equal protection of laws in order to secure preferred societal outcomes. Their logic is, in essence, this: All people are entitled to equal protection, but some groups are entitled to protection that is more equal than others.
It is by constitutional design that federal judges are neither representative of nor accountable to the electorate. The political appointment of life-tenured judges is meant to preserve the independence of the judiciary from the political branches, not to render the federal judiciary a governing committee in black robes. Originalism demands that judges be mindful of this. It demands judicial restraint because the integrity of the structural constitution can be maintained only by the scrupulous preservation of the separation of powers. A flexible approach to the separation of powers is as hazardous to liberty as a flexible approach to the structure of a house is to the safety of its inhabitants.
The very text of the Constitution carves out a limited role for the federal judiciary. Article III confers upon it jurisdiction over cases or controversies—that is, authority to provide injured parties with judicial remedies against the person or authority responsible. Sometimes, in the course of exercising this power, the Court must determine the constitutionality of a law. Oftentimes the Court does this only incidentally. For example, in Marbury v. Madison, which recognized the very power of judicial review essential to Hamilton’s characterization of the judicial branch, the question of whether Congress could pass a law that violated the Constitution was secondary to the question of whether the plaintiff, William Marbury, had a right to the particular court order he sought.
The Constitution does not confer upon the federal judiciary a free-roaming charter to police the executive and legislative branches. The judiciary is neither a babysitter to the president nor a homework checker to Congress. The Constitution’s grant of power to the courts is modest and determinate: It grants them the authority to decide cases or controversies that exist only when litigants possess “standing” to make the claim that they have been harmed.
Some injuries, however, are neither direct nor personal. A law that allows people to eat their pets, for example, may strike people as morally repugnant, but moral repugnance does not give rise to standing no matter how irked the claimant is. To these injuries, the separation of powers offers a different remedy: participation in the political process. Other injuries may arise because the Constitution is insufficient to the task, which is inevitable in a system of limited government. In these cases, the separation of powers demands that the people alter the text of the Constitution by amendment, not the judiciary by interpretive fiat.
Standing is thus a powerful doctrine that restricts the power of judges to the limits of their constitutional authority. However, when judges ride over the standing requirement in cases such as Windsor, they breach the separation of powers. And as judges expand the courts’ power to decide general questions of law as opposed to cases or controversies, they also alter the delicate equilibrium of federal power, arrogating unto themselves the authority to decide matters properly left to the political branches.
Judicial restraint cuts all ways, though. The standing doctrine may well prevent the Supreme Court from deciding the merits of a current challenge to President Obama’s refusal to enforce federal immigration law. In United States v. Texas, which the Supreme Court will likely decide this spring, 26 states are challenging the constitutionality of the president’s proposed deferred-action program. The program would allow more than 4 million illegal immigrants to remain in the country and work here legally. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that of the 26 claimants, at least one—the state of Texas—had standing because it demonstrated it would have to issue drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants within the state at a financial loss. The court barred the president from implementing his policy pending the final disposition of the case. The executive branch, the same branch that played fast and loose with the doctrine of standing in Windsor, has appealed the Fifth Circuit’s ruling on the ground that the claimants lack standing.
It is unclear how the Court will rule on the standing question in U.S. v. Texas, but in a sense it does not matter. The states should not be in this alone. The Constitution provides clear recourse in such a situation: Congress must rouse itself and defend its legislative authority against nullification by the executive. History reveals the frailty of the executive branch whenever Congress calls it to task. It was Congress, not the president, that designed and implemented Radical Reconstruction in the post-bellum South. And it was Congress, not the courts, that brought the Nixon administration to its knees during the Watergate scandal. Congress has the constitutional authority to sue the president over his refusal to uphold his responsibility under the Constitution’s Article II to take care that the laws of the United States be faithfully executed—but Congress is not exercising that authority.
This is why Justice Scalia’s lifework remains so vitally important. By abdicating its constitutional interest in defending its laws, Congress is also abdicating its political responsibility to the people who elected its members. And as the electorate grows increasingly frustrated with the ineffectuality of Congress, it grows more acquiescent in allowing courts to fill the vacuum. Political leaders are taken off the hook, and judges are allowed greater freedom to decide cases not in accordance with the text of the law but in accordance with the discretion of the judge. Judicial power is transformed into something quasi-legislative.
This is, I believe, what Justice Scalia meant when he said, “If Congress doesn’t do its job and challenge the president, what we have is a failed democracy.”
With Justice Scalia’s passing during an election year, the nation finds itself face to face with a choice of historic proportions. The Senate is unlikely to approve a successor to Scalia until after the election; and when it does, that justice will likely shift the balance of ideological power on the deeply divided court. Not since 1788 has the nation faced an election in which all three branches of government were on the line. Voters will decide who controls the presidency, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. If ever there was a time for a renewed commitment to original principles, it is now. Otherwise, Antonin Scalia’s warning will become prophecy, and we will have a failed democracy.
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3) Obama on Hillary’s Email Intent
The President offers a public defense with legal implications.
This file photo taken on April 07, 2016 shows US President Barack Obama takes part in a discussion on the Supreme Court and the country's judicial system at the University of Chicago Law School, in Chicago. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
President Obama chooses his words carefully, so it was startling on Sunday when he
chose to opine on the Justice Department’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private
email server. All the more so in the way that he phrased his defense of the Democrat he
wants to succeed him as President in January.
On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace rolled a clip from October of Mr. Obama saying
that “I can tell you this is not a situation in which America’s national security was
endangered.” Mr. Wallace then cited the 2,000 or so emails we have since learned
contained classified information, including 22 that included “top secret” information, and
he asked: “Can you still say flatly that she did not jeopardize America’s secrets?”
Mr. Obama replied: “I’ve got to be careful because, as you know, there have been
investigations, there are hearings, Congress is looking at this. And I haven’t been sorting
through each and every aspect of this. Here’s what I know: Hillary Clinton was an
outstanding Secretary of State. She would never intentionally put America in any kind
of jeopardy.”
Mr. Wallace pressed further on the jeopardy angle, and Mr. Obama responded again: “I
continue to believe that she has not jeopardized America’s national security. Now what
I’ve also said is that—and she has acknowledged—that there’s a carelessness, in terms of managing emails, that she has owned, and she recognizes.”
Hold on there, big fella. That is one loaded apologia. A more scrupulous President would
have begged off the question by claiming that he can’t comment on an ongoing
investigation in a department he supervises. So saying anything was bad enough.
But even more notable was Mr. Obama’s use of the word “intentionally” regarding Mrs.
Clinton’s actions. As a lawyer, the President knows that intent is often crucial to
determining criminal liability. And he went out of his way—twice—to suggest that what
Mrs. Clinton did wasn’t intentional but was mere “carelessness, in terms of managing
emails.”
Why would Mr. Obama discuss the emails in those terms? He certainly isn’t helping
Attorney General Loretta Lynch or FBI Director James Comey, who must decide how to
assess Mrs. Clinton’s actions. If they now decide not to prosecute based on a judgment
that Mrs. Clinton was merely careless, President Obama has opened them up to reasonable criticism that they were publicly steered by his comments.
Mr. Obama was at pains to “guarantee” to Fox’s Mr. Wallace that there will be “no political influence” from the White House over the email probe. But if you’re trying to send a
message to the FBI or Justice, it’s probably shrewder to do it publicly by apologizing for
Mrs. Clinton’s “carelessness” than it is to say something specific in a private meeting that
could leak to the press. Mr. Obama can say he never said a word to either one, while those
two take the heat if they give Mrs. Clinton a legal pass.
Our own view of the public email evidence is that Mrs. Clinton’s actions go far beyond
mere “carelessness.” She knew she was setting up a private server in violation of State
Department policy, she did it deliberately to prevent her emails from becoming public if
she ran for President, and she knew classified information was bound to travel over that
server.
As former Attorney General Michael Mukasey has written on these pages, “gross
negligence” in handling classified information related to national defense is enough for
criminal liability. That Mr. Obama would issue such a public defense, and use such legally
potent words, suggests that there’s more culpability than he cares to admit.
3a)
A Vast Email Conspiracy
Hillary’s biggest problem isn’t Bernie. It’s the Freedom of
Information Act.
Hillary Clinton campaigning in Pittsburgh, April 6. PHOTO: REUTERS
Hillary Clinton is good at imagining partisan plots, and to listen to her team,
no less than several inspectors general, the intelligence community, and the
entire Republican ecosphere are colluding to turn her home-brew email
system into a fake scandal. To this conspiracy, she must now add the federal
judiciary.
In recent weeks, not one, but two, esteemed federal judges have granted an
outside group—Judicial Watch—the right to conduct discovery into the
origins and handling of her private email system. It’s a reminder that Mrs.
Clinton’s biggest problem this election isn’t Bernie Sanders or Donald
Trump. Her problem is a 1966 statute known as the Freedom of Information
Act, and the judges who enforce it.
The judges have taken unprecedented steps to resolve this case. It is
exceedingly rare—almost unheard of—for a judge to allow discovery in a
FOIA proceeding. This is a testament to how grave Mrs. Clinton’s email
problem is. In the usual course of things, an outside group demands
documents, a judge requires a federal department to hand them over, and the public learns something.
In this case—as we all know—the problem is that the State Department
doesn’t have the documents. Or rather, it can’t confirm that it has them all,
because State left it to Mrs. Clinton and her aides to possess them, and then
to unilaterally decide what to hand over. To Judge Royce Lamberth, this is
cut and dry “evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith,” and the
law demands a full accounting of how this situation came to be, what
records exist, and where they are now.
Speaking of the judge’s words, they too are a testament to Mrs. Clinton’s
mess. Judge Lamberth was unplugged in his order, calling the former
secretary of state’s email set up “extraordinary,” and slamming “constantly
shifting admissions by the government and former government officials”
about the setup. Judge Emmet Sullivan, the first to allow discovery, referred
in his own hearing to Mrs. Clinton’s “totally atypical system” and noted that
it “boggles the mind that the State Department allowed this circumstance to
arise in the first place. It’s just very, very, very troubling.”
Fueling the judges’ suspicions has been new evidence that Mrs. Clinton
didn’t turn everything over. Judicial Watch recently obtained emails showing
that State Department and National Security Agency personnel had big
concerns with Mrs. Clinton’s early demands that she be allowed to use a
BlackBerry for secure correspondence. They wanted her to sit at a computer
in a secure facility—as everyone else does. These documents include a
February 2009 email from then-Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills to her
boss, crowing that State was coming around to Mrs. Clinton’s demands, and
a return email the same day from Mrs. Clinton saying, “That’s good news.”
These are clearly work-related emails. They speak to the question of Mrs.
Clinton’s communications while at the State Department. They aren’t about
yoga routines. And yet, guess what? That email chain was not included in
the 55,000 pages of documents Mrs. Clinton turned over. Perhaps it was an
oversight, but far more likely, the Clinton team—knowing the firestorm over
a home-brew system—chose to withhold documents showing that State and
NSA considered Mrs. Clinton’s email demands unsafe and unreasonable.
What else did Mrs. Clinton choose to withhold from the public?
One other aspect of these new emails: Mrs. Clinton sent her “good news”
email to Ms. Mills via her private hdr22@clintonemail.com account in
February 2009. And yet the former secretary of state has publicly claimed
she didn’t start using that address until March 2009, well after she was
sworn in as secretary of state.
Judicial Watch is hoping to use discovery to interview eight current and
former State Department officials, including Ms. Mills, Clinton aide Huma
Abedin, top State Department official Patrick Kennedy, and former State IT
employees Bryan Pagliano (who is reported to have recently been granted
immunity by the FBI). And yet in a hearing this week in Judge Sullivan’s
court, State Department officials were already moving to limit or shut down
what questions Judicial Watch could ask—including those pertaining to
how classified information was handled on the system.
Put another way, State wants to put off-limits the questions that are at the
heart of the Clinton email scandal. And no surprise. The Judicial Watch
discovery holds the potential to expose the many and varied ways Mrs.
Clinton may have skirted the rules, and in turn to put enormous pressure on
the FBI to act. These depositions meanwhile are currently set to happen this
summer, right before the Democratic convention.
The beauty of FOIA is that it is designed to bring things to light. Mrs.
Clinton has grown talented at outfoxing investigators, Congress, inspectors
general, the press. But she made the error this time of playing games with a
law that federal judges take seriously, and that gives outside watchdogs real
leverage.
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4)
4)
| Details of Egypt-Saudi $24 bil financial deals, future investments |
Breakdown of Egypt-Saudi financial deals, future investments Saudi King Salman, on a five-day first official visit, has signed a number of economic and financial deals, announcing also the establishment of a free trade zone covering Sinai Ahram Online , Sunday 10 Apr 2016 http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/3/12/199238/Business/Economy/Breakdown-of-EgyptSaudi-financial-deals,-future-in.aspx Egypt and Saudi Arabia have signed final loan agreements worth over $24 billion during King’s Salman official visit to Cairo, Egyptian Minister of International Cooperation Sahar Nasr confirmed to Ahram Online Sunday. According to Al-Ahram Arabic news website, citing Nasr, the accords include: — $22 billion finance for Egypt’s five-year petroleum needs. — $1.5 billion concessional loan and $200 million grant from the Saudi Fund for Development (SFD) to upgrade Egypt’s Sinai infrastructure and to finance transportation, housing and agricultural projects. Sinai will also witness a resumption of construction of King Salman University in the peninsula. — $120 million concessional loan from SFD to renovate Cairo's historical Kasr El-Aini Hospital. — $100 million loan, approved by the SDF, to finance the expansion of the West Cairo power station to generate an additional 650 megawatts. The two Arab nations also signed a memorandum of understandings (MoU) on future investment agreements, Nasr said. These agreements include establishing an Egyptian-Saudi investment fund worth some $16 billion, in addition to Josur Al-Mahabba Company developing the Suez Canal area to an amount worth EGP 3 billion (roughly $337 million). MoU's also covered establishing a company to develop an industrial zone at the Suez Canal with a total sum of $3.3 billion, read a statement on the Ministry of International Cooperation’s website. King Salman said Sunday during a "historic" address before the Egyptian parliament that Riyadh and Cairo have agreed to set up a "free trade zone" in the Sinai Peninsula. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
