‘She told him he didn’t get the picture, and he would always be a little hick town lawyer who was obviously not ready for the big time…’
Hillary Clinton/IMAGE: MSNBC via YouTube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Former independent counsel Kenneth Starr—the one-time nemesis of the Clinton family—has now revealed that Hillary Clintonwas behind the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster.
But contrary to the many conspiracy theories that have survived a quarter of a century later, Starr—whose investigation determined no evidence of foul play—still maintains that Hillary didn’t pull the trigger.
Instead, Starr acknowledged recently that the then-first lady berated and humiliated Foster, driving him to suicide, according to the Daily Mail.
Foster’s 1993 shooting death in a public park on the outskirts of Washington D.C. unleashed a wave of controversy that marked the arrival of the Clintons on the national stage, less than six months into Bill Clinton’s first presidential term.
As some questioned the forensic reports about where and how he was shot, Foster became one of the earliest entries on an ever-expanding list of Clinton associates who met their demise under suspicious circumstances.
There was speculation that Foster—a friend and colleague of then-First Lady Hillary Clinton from the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas—might have to testify against her as investigators probed the Whitewater real-estate scandal.
Starr’s was the last of several investigations, all of which ruled suicide, determining there was insufficient evidence to call it a murder. On his team was a young future Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh.
But as other scandals mounted, the need to investigate sexual harassment claims against Bill Clinton shifted Starr’s and the public’s focus from Foster’s death, and—out of consideration for his grieving family—the conspiracies went dormant.
The latest revelation comes from investigative journalist Ronald Kessler, who had previously published books about the Secret Service and FBI. It was while interviewing FBI sources for one of the books that he learned the truth.
The clash between Hillary Clinton and Foster occurred a week before his death, during a meeting to discuss the healthcare overhaul that Hillary was overseeing, according to Coy Copeland, one of the FBI agents Kessler interviewed.
Writing for the DailyMail, Kessler said, “Hillary violently disagreed with a legal objection Foster raised at the meeting and ridiculed him in front of his peers.”
Although Foster may already have been depressed—and was thinking about resigning and returning to Arkansas—the upbraiding, in which Hillary blamed Foster for all of the problems the Clintons were facing, was the final nail in the coffin.
His behavior changed dramatically in the intervening week leading up to his death.
“Hillary put him down really, really bad in a pretty good-size meeting,” Copeland said. “She told him he didn’t get the picture, and he would always be a little hick town lawyer who was obviously not ready for the big time.”
Although the FBI investigators learned about Hillary’s belittlement of Foster, Starr inexplicably kept this out of his final report.
Ken Starr / IMAGE: Face the Nation via Youtube
But Kessler met the former independent counsel at a recent book festival in Maryland and needled him about the undisclosed findings.
Detailing his encounter with Starr, Kessler said he reluctantly copped to not wanting to unnecessarily hurt Hillary Clinton’s feelings.
“At first, he beat around the bush, citing well-established facts indicating that Foster was already depressed before Hillary lashed into him at the White House meeting,” Kessler wrote.
“But when pressed, Starr admitted he ‘did not want to inflict further pain’ on Hillary by revealing that her humiliation of Foster a week before he took his own life pushed him over the edge.”
Kessler said that after Starr’s meticulous investigation into the circumstances and theories surrounding Foster’s death, his decision to leave out such a critical detail remains a mystery.
“No one can explain a suicide in rational terms,” he wrote. “But the FBI investigation concluded that it was Hillary’s vilification of Foster in front of other White House aides—coming on top of his ongoing depression—that triggered the White House official’s suicide.”
In the wake of many other scandals swirling around the Clintons, publicly disclosing that information about the quality of her character may well have shaped the course of history.
Or it at least might have saved a lot of money in costly investigations, Kessler said.
As one FBI supervisor noted, Starr’s one flaw may have been that he was too kind.
“If so, he should not have been a prosecutor and suppressed a key finding of an investigation that cost taxpayers $39.2 million,” Kessler said.
Democrats have called for a fully unredacted version of the report Mueller submitted to Attorney General William Barr, and they’re citing as precedent the 1998 release of Kenneth Starr’s report investigating the sexual misconduct of then-President Bill Clinton.
One of the most vocal in demanding transparency has been Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, who has threatened to use subpoena powers in a bid to obtain the full, unredacted Mueller Report.
But as noted by the NTK Network, Nadler inconveniently was on record arguing against the release of the Starr Report for precisely the reasons that a declassification of the entire Mueller Report seems unlikely.
In arguing against letting the public see the 445-page Starr Report—topping off at more roughly 2,200 pages with appendices—which read like a seedy erotica novel at times, Nadler argued:
“It is grossly unfair because, with respect to the 2,200 pages of evidence and the 17 boxes of other evidence, the entire committee on the Judiciary is going to see it, to decide what must be kept confidential and protecting privacy of third parties. That means 50 people are going to see it. It is going to leak out. Those privacy rights are going to be violated. That is ensured by this resolution.”
As the Starr Report’s findings made the impeachment of Clinton seem imminent, Nadler said its release—only two months before the 1998 midterm elections—was “doing everything it can to make the president’s defense as difficult as possible … because 50 people in this town cannot keep a secret.”
The conclusions of the two reports are, of course, one key difference. The prosecutor investigating Clinton’s case was recommending action be taken against the president for perjury and obstruction of justice—leading to only the first impeachment of a president in roughly 130 years. It was, therefore, in the public interest, to know the reasons behind it.
Ultimately, the bid for transparency harmed Congressional Republicans in the Clinton case. Voters, having the full details available, came to regard the impeachment as a political maneuver and punished the GOP in the November midterms.
In the case of Trump, despite repeated efforts by his opponents to file articles of impeachment and seek other ways to remove him from office, all have failed, with the investigation concluding there was no Russian collusion and an insufficient case for obstruction of justice.
Bill Clinton & Monica Lewinsky/IMAGE: YouTube
Another reason for providing less transparency in the Mueller report may be the subject matter.
While Clinton’s dalliances and lies to the American public may have been embarrassing, they did not relate to the sensitive issue of national security.
By contrast, one thing that both Trump supporters and critics have agreed on is that it details the efforts Russia took to undermine the U.S. election.
There is a compelling case for redacting information that could help Russia’s ongoing efforts to sow discord and undermine the democratic process.
There is also, simply enough, a different set of laws guiding the two separate circumstances.
Mueller, who was appointed special counsel through the Department of Justice, fell subject to DOJ oversight and regulations—including the release of his report to the attorney general.
Starr’s designation as an independent counsel followed a different set of statutes, the now expired Ethics in Government Act of 1978, which required that his report be submitted directly to Congress.
Notwithstanding, many Republicans in the current Congress—as well as President Trump himself—have publicly expressed support for a broader disclosure of the report.
Barr has previously said he hoped to release as much as possible, and on Tuesday the attorney general said a full version, after redactions, would be presented next week.
‘A woman’s life or death may be on the line and, you know, one doctor is as good as three…’
Terry McAuliffe/Photo by sharedferret (CC)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Long known for maintaining friendly ties with the Chinese government, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe tiptoed nearer to endorsing the U.S.’s own variation of a “one child” policy with a recent flip–flop on partial-birth abortions.
McAuliffe—a possible 2020 presidential aspirant closely aligned with the Clinton family—backpedaled recently on comments he made in January that repudiated the practice of infanticide, according to PolitiFact, which ruled his statements a “Full Flop.”
After a controversial bill, proposed by state Sen. Kathy Tran of Fairfax, was defeated by the state’s Republican-led General Assembly, McAuliffe’s successor, current Gov. Ralph Northam, defended the effort—and then some.
The proposed bill would have allowed a single doctor to approve a late-term abortion in the third trimester if the pregnancy was deemed detrimental to a mother’s health. The current standard requires that three physicians must determine “substantial and irremediable” harm to the mother.
Tran had acknowledged during discussion of the bill that it would apply to babies even as they were crowning.
In his defense—shortly before an even bigger scandal involving evidence of racism on his medical school yearbook page—Northam went even farther, implying that there would be justification for “aborting” an infant even after birth at the mother’s wishes.
McAuliffe then said on CNN’s “State of the Union” he thought Northam had misspoken.
“No Democrat I know is for infanticide, none, none,” he said. “I just don’t know of anyone who is for it.”
But after being pressed on the issue in an April 1 interview with a Portsmouth radio show, McAuliffe finally admitted that he, too, would have supported the bill.
Naturally, McAuliffe—a native of New York, which recently passed its own partial-birth law—tried to qualify his support by saying he was championing the rural women of the Old Dominion in places where only one doctor would be available.
“A woman’s life or death may be on the line and, you know, one doctor is as good as three,” said McAuliffe, conceding he had not read the actual bill. “Why do you need three if you’ve got a qualified doctor?”
PolitiFact said a request to McAuliffe’s spokesperson, Crystal Carson, for clarity did little to help. Rather, Carson attempted to deflect and blame Republicans for playing semantic games.
“The only people talking about ‘infanticide’ are anti-choice, anti-women Republicans,” Carson told PolitiFact in an email. “Of course Governor McAuliffe is against ‘infanticide’—any reasonable person would be.”
Carson added that the issue raised in the bill had “nothing to do with that—but instead reduces invasive, medically-unnecessary requirements put on women across the Commonwealth and enables them to make their own health care decisions in consultation with their doctors.”
The recent passage of the New York law invited comparisons with Chinese policies, both from its pro-life opponents and from Chinese immigrants who came to America seeking escape from a culture of forced abortions and other atrocities.
But for McAuliffe, a firm pro-Chinese stance, including his pledge to be a “brick wall” on pro-abortion issues, may help ingratiate him to a key source for funding his campaign.
McAuliffe was implicated as a key player in a Clinton-era scandal to swap nuclear secrets for campaign donations from Chinese donors, which the Independent Sentinel called the “most serious scandal in U.S. history.”
The former bundler and DNC chair also rented out the Lincoln bedroom in the White House to the Chinese and other wealthy donors.
During the Obama era McAuliffe—who also served on the board of the Clinton Foundation—went into business with Hillary Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, on a failed business to market green automobiles, but their enterprise was later investigated as a front for providing Chinese donors with permanent residency visas.
‘We should probably remove all Clinton files, folders, info off our servers etc. on an independent drive….’
Hillary Clinton/IMAGE: CBS News via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A new release of documents provided to government-accountability guardians Judicial Watch added further support to the long-held suspicions that a concerted cover-up effort occurred to wipe the contents of Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
The release of 422 pages of heavily redacted FBI materials, provided under the Freedom of Information Act, showed multiple references to cleaning up and deleting archives from the Clinton email accounts being hosted by Colorado-based Platte River Networks.
In an electronic correspondence dated Dec. 11, 2014, two company staffers appeared to joke about a “cover-up” while referencing the contents of a redacted message from a Chicago wealth management firm, Gresham Partners, LLC.
The message likely related to a change in Clinton’s e-mail retention policy.
“Its all part of the Hilary coverup operation,” it read, followed by a smiley face. “I’ll have to tell you about it at the party.”
It is unclear from the context what specific role Gresham played in managing the email servers. Other wealth-management companies also were involved in contracting with Platte River for the private server, including a New York-based tax attorney overseeing the Clinton Executive Services Corp.
The messages revealed a flurry of efforts, overseen by Hillary’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills—along with the Clintons’ personal tech advisor and aide, Justin Cooper—to lock down access and “clean up” files in early March 2015, around the time that the news broke publicly of Clinton’s private server.
One March 5 email reads, “[Redacted] going to send over a list of recommendations for us to apply for additional security against hackers. He did say we should probably remove all Clinton files, folders, info off our servers etc. on an independent drive.”
Cooper, known to have played a pivotal role in setting up the server, appeared to be the only male staffer directly associated with the Clinton server at that time, according to Platte River’s Active User lists, which indicated someone with the name “Justin” was an admin for the server.
He was later revealed to have overseen the task of destroying Clinton’s cellular and Blackberry devices by smashing them with a hammer.
“I think it’s practical to not just throw an old device into a garbage receptacle where someone might pick it up and try to use it,” Cooper said in later testimony before Congress.
In addition to the emails, the Judicial Watch release includes handwritten FBI notes from a Feb. 18, 2016 interview with an unidentified staffer at Platte River, pertaining to the bureau’s “Midyear Exam” investigation into the emails.
Two of the company’s tech specialists, Paul Combetta and Bill Thornton, subsequently declined to appear during the Congressional hearings, instead pleading the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.
The FBI notes referenced the Dec. 11 email about the “Hillary cover up operation” and a work ticket that involved a cleanup of the server’s archive account.
The notes suggested the “cover up” remark likely was related to a change in the email retention policy, which Clinton’s staff directed be switched to 60 days. The tech worker being interviewed did not recall the previous policy.
The Platte River specialists also revealed they had given someone with the Clinton staff live access to the archive account, which was on the server as of January 2015 but seemed to have vanished at some point before the February 2016 interview.
The March 2015 public revelations about the private server appeared to have triggered a cascade of mixed messages, with Clinton officials formally instructing the Platte River staff to preserve what was on the servers but advising them in a March 25 conference call not to answer questions in reference to a conversation with Clinton attorney David Kendall.
By August 2015, the pressure appeared to be mounting for Platte River to furnish the backups it had.
“So does this mean we don’t have offsite backups currently?” the staffers wrote. “That could be a problem if someone hacks this thing and jacks it up. We will have to be able to produce a copy of it somehow, or we’re in some deep shit.”
However, little remained on the servers themselves after a BleachBit program was used on March 31 to wipe them clean.
Clinton herself later claimed ignorance, responding to an August 2015 question about wiping the servers by saying, “What, like with a cloth or something?”
Mills, who appeared to have directly overseen much of the “cleanup” was not only present for Hillary Clinton’s deposition during the FBI investigation, but was given immunity from prosecution.
That decision widely questioned and criticized as attention turned more to scrutinizing the cover-up efforts within the FBI itself.
Tom Fitton/IMAGE: Fox 10 Phoenix via Youtube
Judicial Watch has led the charge in investigating Clinton’s role in Benghazi and in the email scandal, with several previous document releases available on its website.
The new release helped to “further demonstrate the sham nature of the FBI/DOJ ‘investigation’ of her,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement.
“These shocking new documents show that various Obama agencies were protecting Hillary Clinton from the consequences of her misconduct. It is well past time for the DOJ to stop shielding Hillary Clinton and hold her fully accountable to the rule of law.”
Following a court order that allowed discovery to include depositions of key figures, Judicial Watch has been in the process of interviewing both Clinton staffers and other officials within the Obama administration on the government role in helping cover up potentially criminal activity.
Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee also announced this week that he had recommended eight people to the office of Attorney General William Barr for possible prosecution related to the cover-up efforts of the FBI and other intelligence agencies that were investigating Clinton.
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen made it through the November midterm unscathed after speculation had swirled that she would be among several Cabinet-level officials needing to be replaced.
But while the whims of CEO-in-Chief Donald Trump may have contributed to Nielsen’s undoing following a 16-month tenure, it was the onslaught of women and children at the southern border that sealed it.
Trump announced Nielsen’s departure via Twitter over the weekend, elevating Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner Kevin McAleenan to the DHS secretary spot.
It was not immediately clear what the direct circumstances were for Nielsen’s exit—although some sources pointed to a possible behind-the-scenes “showdown” on Sunday between Nielsen and the president.
Trump had been critical and undermining of Nielsen in the past, intimating during a Fox News interview last November that replacing her was not entirely off the table.
“I like her very much, I respect her very much,” he said, but “I would like her to be much tougher on the border. Much tougher.”
The announcement came shortly after a trip the president made to survey the wall progress at Calexico, California last week.
During the visit, Trump called on migrants to “turn around” and said the U.S. no longer had room to accommodate them, while also backpedaling on an earlier threat to close the border.
Democrats in Congress were quick to snipe at both Nielsen and Trump in an effort to score political points while continuing to deny any sort of legitimate immigration crisis at the border.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., welcomed the departure and said it was past overdue.
Kirstjen Nielsen misled the American people and defended Trump’s inhumane policy of separating children from their parents.
Others also harped on Nielsen’s role in separating children and parents—a move that was intended to close the “catch-and-release” loophole created by the Flores settlement whereby minors may only be detained for a defined period of 20 days.
That means parents—whether legal or illegal—who are accompanying them may also be released into the U.S.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., criticized Nielsen as being “unqualified” for the job, which she had assumed not long after her DHS boss, John Kelly, became Trump’s chief of staff.
About time. @SecNielsen’s legacy of tearing innocent families apart will follow her for the rest of her life—and she should be ashamed of the role she played. She was completely unqualified to lead @DHS—and that’s why I voted against confirming her. https://t.co/17iglABdvC
It also seemed unlikely that the next nominee would win the support of Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii.
The bigoted misandrist—who previously attacked Nielsen and Press Secretary Sarah Sanders for having “sold their souls” in working for Trump—made clear, even before the president had furnished any names, that she considered every appointment of his to be a dud.
Sadly, we can expect @realDonaldTrump to nominate a permanent replacement who will also do his bidding as DHS Secretary. We must continue to speak out and remain organized and vigilant.
And while no longer politically relevant, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pounced on the opportunity to weigh in.
Let’s be clear: This administration’s dehumanization and cruelty toward migrants will not stop after Kirstjen Nielsen leaves office. It is their principal policy.
However, Clinton’s response invited ample calls over her duplicity. While serving as a U.S. senator, she previously voted in favor of policies very similar to Trump’s, such as funding for a physical barrier at the border.
Some on the right also celebrated Nielsen’s leaving—notably former Milwaukee Sheriff David Clark and Ann Coulter, a frequent Trump critic, who celebrated the news in a series of tweets while criticizing Nielsen and Trump for failing to build the long-promised border wall.
Exactly! Why didn’t she build a wall? Oh that’s right. She’s not the president. https://t.co/FnWraMS1Ha
“On Tuesday, there were 4,000 apprehensions,” he said. “I know that a thousand overwhelms the system. I cannot begin to imagine what 4,000 a day looks like, so we are truly in a crisis.”
Nielsen’s effective management drew praise from some Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, who worked closely with Nielsen.
I thank @SecNielsen for her leadership and dedicated public service at @DHSgov. She is a strong and thoughtful leader and was an excellent partner in supporting the department’s critical work.
Nielsen had been one of the most vocal critics of the political games whereby open-borders advocates have encouraged vulnerable refugees to storm the country en masse and take advantage of the existing legislative loopholes.
For the migrants themselves, this can lead to scenarios including health epidemics, rape, assault, or even being sold into slavery by coyotes and drug cartels along the perilous journey.
Even so, groups like Pueblo Sin Fronteras have pressed onward, organizing caravans of migrants for the express purpose of overwhelming border authorities, and then coaching them to falsely claim asylum to delay the deportation process.
Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants have been released in recent months due to the lack of adequate space in detention centers while processing the cases.
After Mexican officials announced last week that the “mother of all caravans” was beginning to form in Central America, Trump cut off funding to three of the worst-offending countries and also threatened to close down the entire border.
He later reversed on the border closure but warned Mexico that he might impose a tariff if it failed to address the illegal immigration problem.
‘We intend to find out how deep the Deep State roots go in their effort to discredit then-candidate Donald Trump…’
Victoria Nuland / IMAGE: RT America via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The aftermath of the Mueller investigation has led to a flurry of activity for government-accountability guardians Judicial Watch.
On Friday, Judicial Watch said in a press release that it was examining another piece of the puzzle: The sources that ex-British spy Christopher Steele used to compile and disseminate fraudulent accusations in his infamous dossier for the Hillary Clinton campaign.
While some believe the Kremlin itself may have been behind the misinformation, others point to the even more sinister possibility that it was generated by partisans within the U.S.’s own intelligence apparatus.
“We intend to find out how deep the Deep State roots go in their effort to discredit then-candidate Donald Trump,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It currently appears to be an Obama administration no-holds-barred attempt to clear the path for Hillary Clinton.”
The latest lawsuit seeks correspondence between Obama-era Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and a long list of likely role-players in the anti-Trump smear campaign that was driven by left-wing opposition-research firm Fusion GPS.
Steele’s reports for Fusion were subsequently funneled through back channels to the FBI, which used them as the basis to launch an investigation into Trump and eavesdrop on his campaign under false pretenses.
“Between 2014 and 2016, Steele authored more than a hundred reports on Russia and Ukraine,” said a 2018 Washington Examiner column by Byron York. “These were written for a private client but shared widely within the State Department and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of the U.S. response to the Ukraine crisis.”
Nuland acknowledged that she shared Steele’s information with the FBI and green-lighted their initial meetings.
Former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland tells that Christopher Steele, author of the Russia dossier, shared similar information with the State Department: pic.twitter.com/4QS32hAlQq
Judicial Watch seemed to suggest that Nuland’s vouching for Steele, despite his many conflicts of interest, helped lead the FBI to determine that he was a credible source of information.
A previous FOIA lawsuit revealed that the Obama administration passed on classified documents in the “Russiagate” conspiracy to several anti-Trump senators.
“Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuits have already shown the Obama State Department was corrupted to target President Trump,” Fitton said.
The nonprofit watchdog also released 339 pages of redacted correspondence involving Bruce and Nellie Ohr, who served as intermediaries between Fusion and the FBI after Steele was terminated by the agency for leaking classified information.
‘Don’t just see me as some wealthy guy, defending the free market. Instead see me as the son of a mother who dropped out of school in eighth grade…’
Foster Friess / IMAGE: Horatio Alger Association via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Conservative investor Foster Friess and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-NY, may have a lot to discuss if the congresswoman accepts Friess’s dinner invitation.
In an opinion piece published Thursday in USA Today, Friess said he wrote to the 29-year-old former bartender to invite her to be a guest at Friday’s Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans induction ceremony.
It honors those who came from humble beginnings and were able to translate it, through their own efforts, into a degree of eminence or success—i.e., the “American Dream.”
Among the nonpartisan association’s past member–honorees, Friess noted, were television personality Oprah Winfrey, former President Ronald Reagan, poet Maya Angelou and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Friess managed to transcend his own lot coming from a high-school-educated father who worked as a cattle-dealer and a mother with an seventh-grade education who helped her family pick cotton, according to his online biography. But he overcame early adversity to found an investment firm managing billions in assets.
While noting the association’s efforts to provide scholarships for disadvantaged youths, Friess called out AOC’s recent attacks on a free market economy, both with her policies—like the Green New Deal—and in her rhetoric.
In a March speech at the South by Southwest festival, she said capitalism was “irredeemable,” according to The Hill.
“Capitalism is an ideology of capital—the most important thing is the concentration of capital and to seek and maximize profit,” she said, adding that the success of one came at considerable expense to other people and to the environment.
But in his op-ed, Friess countered that it was simply the vehicle for opportunity through which individuals determined their own outcome.
“In achieving the American dream, ‘Income Inequality’ is an unavoidable result,” he said. “It’s created by the stunning success of companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, and their wealth creation should be applauded, not cursed. Why scorn their success?”
But the alternative, Friess said, was to punish success and de-incentivize the work needed to attain it.
“Socialism is not consistent with fundamental principles of human behavior,” he said. “It has one critical defect: it ignores incentives. The ‘free’ stuff government offers comes with a price.”
Friess said affluent people, rather than stepping on the backs of the poor, were in the best position to elevate others: “The spectacular American economy derives from a government which encourages private initiatives that achieve the wealth.”
By contrast, government-managed wealth-redistribution only created greater bureaucracy, inefficiency and corruption—as was evident in existing healthcare programs.
“In every other sector of the economy, when you allow the free market to work, prices drop and access improves,” Friess said.
Although some have questioned whether Ocasio–Cortez’s background was as humble as she claims—having grown up in the middle-class, suburban neighborhood of Yorktown Heights and attended the costly, private Boston College—Friess appealed to their common connection as individuals who knew the extremes of poverty and success.
“When we meet, I hope you will sense that I love this country as much as you do,” he said. “Don’t just see me as some wealthy guy, defending the free market. Instead see me as the son of a mother who dropped out of school in eighth grade or the $800 I had when I started my career.”
‘How sad is it that base politics and hatred have been allowed to creep into even this sphere of our national activity?’
Mike Pompeo / IMAGE: CBS This Morning via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The foundation honoring a journalist beheaded by ISIS was taken hostage this week by deranged left-wing media–activist, who demanded retraction of a reward to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The James W. Foley Legacy Foundation was set to commit a heinous act of bipartisanship by recognizing the achievements of America’s top diplomat in freeing political prisoners.
Most notably, that included the release of three hostages last May from North Korea—an accomplishment that Pompeo cited last September as his greatest highlight to date after taking over for Rex Tillerson in April 2018.
In October, Pompeo also helped secure the release of Pastor Andrew Brunson from Turkey after threatening Ankara with sanctions.
In addition to the Trump State Department’s global hostage-freeing efforts, the foundation noted its appointment of a special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, the Washington Examiner reported.
But after pressure from media partners—among whom CNN figured prominently—it rescinded Pompeo’s award and gave it instead to Brett McGurk, the Obama-appointed former special envoy to the anti-ISIS coalition.
In his December resignation, McGurk made a flashy point of criticizing President Donald Trump after Trump announced the withdrawal of troops from Syria, citing the near eradication of ISIS.
The president announced last month that the terrorist group was “100 percent” defeated with the last of its caliphates captured or dispersed.
The foundation said McGurk had assisted with the release of prisoners from Iran, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, another of the night’s honorees.
The move to withdraw Pompeo’s award and dis-invite him from the event followed boycott threats from the media, reportedly including notoriously biased CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour, who was set to be the keynote speaker.
Tables for the fundraising banquet cost between $5,000 and $50,000. The foundation’s main functions are providing grants and education programs in journalism schools, as well as publishing a journalism safety guide and advocating for release of hostages.
In a letter to Diane Foley, the mother of slain journalist Jim Foley, Pompeo detailed his successes in freeing hostages and lamented the partisan culture consuming mainstream media that would pit them against recognizing those achievements.
“How sad is it that base politics and hatred have been allowed to creep into even this sphere of our national activity?” Pompeo wrote.
“The safe recovery of Americans held hostage overseas should be beyond politics and must enjoy the support of all Americans. I regret that pressure of such a cynical and abominable nature was brought to bear,” he added.
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The controversy over Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam‘s use of blackface and likely public deception—along with scandals by his top two successors, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and Attorney General Mark Herring—has ended.
Or so decreed The New York Times.
In a recent postmortem analysis, a Times article puzzled over the fact that the defiant governor seemed to have outlasted any semblance of political resistance.
“It just went poof,” said the article, quoting a librarian that the journalist found sitting in a Richmond coffeehouse last week. “It’s like it never happened.”
The public Instagram feed of said librarian, Natalie Draper, leaves little mystery, though, about her own left-skewing political biases.
In fact, the shoddy reporting in the Times article may help to explain perfectly why the repulsive conduct of Virginia Democrats, antithetical to many of the Left’s self-declared core values, has fallen off the national radar.
It’s because the media tasked with reporting on it has willed it to vanish, with the guilty party more than happy to acquiesce.
The article quoted Democratic strategist Ben Tribbet, who said Northam’s refusal to accept accountability was the new normal in his party’s mindset.
“Don’t apologize, move on and everybody will talk about something else next week,” Tribbett said. “Maybe we’ve been doing it wrong over the last 100 years.”
Contrary to Tribbet’s claims, his party has been deploying the same strategy for at least half a century, since it helped Sen. Edward Kennedy ride out the negligent manslaughter of his young, female associate, Mary Jo Kopechne.
Kopechne’s 1969 drowning death at Chappaquiddick didn’t hinder the liberal Massachusetts icon from a lengthy Senate career and a bid for the presidency 11 years later.
The partisan double-standard again surfaced in the late 1990s, during the Bill Clinton impeachment, when the president’s sexual misconduct—and subsequent perjury—proved more of a political liability for Republicans.
But according to the Times version of events, it was President Donald Trump who initiated the political strategy of deflecting and stonewalling with his adamant insistence that he had not colluded with Russia.
Although Trump’s account was subsequently validated by the independent Mueller Report and congressional investigations, it flew counter to two years’ worth of Pulitzer-winning coverage from the leftist newspaper.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post also shilled for Northam and his stooges. Early in the developing scandal, it released a dubiously lopsided public opinion poll that disproportionately sampled Democrats, concluding that many voters—including a majority of blacks in the state—supported the embattled executives.
In its eulogy of the Northam scandal, the Times wrote:
“Some say the whole mess was so exhausting and embarrassing that by the time the Legislature adjourned Feb. 24, the outrage had burned itself out. Others point to polls that showed Virginia voters were considerably less hungry for resignations than their representatives were. Some political observers mused about more fundamental changes to the life span of scandal, describing President Donald Trump’s approach to bad press as if it were a revolutionary medical breakthrough.”
A Political Change of Course
Mark Warner/Photo by New America (CC)
On Monday, sensing political fallout had been neutralized, Virginia’s most senior Democratic politician, Sen. Mark Warner, also hopped on the absolution bandwagon.
Warner, who firmly said in February that Northam should step down, has since qualified that demand and now expresses total confidence in the governor.
“He’s been very clear that he’s going to continue his term, and I hope he can do so successfully,” Warner told the RichmondTimes–Dispatch.
“I think he’s going to be more successful when he lays out how he’s going to try to bring about a healing process here in Virginia,” Warner added.
Quoting a Democratic state legislator, the Times asserted that voters were eager to “move on” from the scandal. “They want positive things to happen, they’re concerned about the elections,” Del. Betsy Carr said.
But another Democrat it interviewed—in order to get both sides of the story, naturally—said that there needs to be more of a public reckoning.
“Winning is important,” said Taikein Cooper, chairman of the Prince Edward County Democratic Party, “but we also have to have some morals.”
Pandering and Extortion
Ralph Northam / IMAGE: Face the Nation via Youtube
Rather than accepting personal responsibility, to Northam and the Democrats, penance for the blasphemously un-woke conduct likely means three years of pandering to a radical leftist agenda—despite the governor’s having run as a moderate while, ironically, painting Republican opponent Ed Gillespie as a racist.
Northam acknowledged that part of his rehabilitation involved reading black liberation literature such as Ta-Nehisi Coates’s 2014 Atlantic article “The Case for Reparations.”
While some of the demands related directly to race-based issues—such as adding millions in funding to the state’s five historically black universities—others tied into things like environmental issues.
Another VBP demand was for the controversial ratification of the feminist/pro-abortionist-driven Equal Rights Amendment.
Prior to his racial controversy, Northam, a former pediatrician, already had generated negative headlines by embracing third-trimester, partial-birth abortions.
The governor shockingly said that even after birth it might be OK in some cases to kill an infant. However, Virginia Democrats’ infanticide bill was rejected by the Republican-led legislature.
Northam has made additional overtures pandering to some of the VBP radicals’ conditions, such as restoring voting rights of more than 10,000 convicted felons—which followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, Terry McAuliffe.
He also acceded to the VBP’s demands by vetoing a bill to fund additional school resource officers—following in the footsteps of former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who said school discipline disproportionately harmed students of color.
Should Northam, who is constitutionally limited to a single term as governor, pursue the more radical agenda items, there may be political fallout in this November’s elections of the Virginia General Assembly.
Currently, “Democrats have a chance to take back power in at least one chamber of the Legislature,” New York Times rosily said in its spin piece.
“That will be hard enough now, given the bales of fodder Republicans now have for attack ads,” said the Times. “But the idea of trying to raise money and hold rallies while spurning the three highest officeholders in the state came to be seen by many Democrats as just a needless handicap.”
Unless, of course, principles are a thing.
Hamstrung Opposition?
Justin Fairfax / IMAGE: WTVR CBS 6 via Youtube
Should the state’s top three Democrats all have been ousted by their scandals, the governorship would have fallen into the hands of Kirk Cox, the Republican speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates.
However, some were quick to note Cox’s own tenuous grip on power. His GOP majority followed a contentious recount of one race that was solved by drawing a name randomly from a bowl.
In that race, Democrat Shelly Simonds had initially been declared the victor by a single vote prior to the challenge by Republican incumbent David Yancey.
Facing the transfer of the state’s top office into Republican hands under such extraordinary circumstances—not to mention the inevitable muckraking it would entail into his own background and that of other GOP legislators—Cox quickly ruled out a House effort to remove Northam from office over the blackface scandal.
“I think groups are struggling with, ‘What do we do?'” Cox told the Times. “‘What do we do about inviting him? Do we want him the centerpiece of an announcement?’”
Cox said a recent bipartisan bill-signing was the first time he had spoken with the governor since February. “It’s going to be pretty hard to say we’re just going to have a normal governorship for the next three years.”
Likewise, although Cox and others in the House have called for public hearings on the lieutenant governor over a pair of credible rape allegations, Fairfax has defiantly pushed back.
Despite the obvious parallels between his case and last year’s hearing for then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Fairfax, who is black, invoked racial rhetoric by likening the accusations to a public lynching.
Rather, Fairfax has insisted that any investigation happen on his exclusive terms, recently releasing a polygraph test through his attorney that he claimed proved he was telling the truth.
But regardless of whether state officials attempt to hold the leaders to account, Republicans can rest assured that the scandals will resurface in next year’s presidential election.
A few days into the scandal President Donald Trump tweeted his condemnation, expressing confidence that the corruption would help put the once-conservative state back into the red category.
Democrat Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia just stated, “I believe that I am not either of the people in that photo.” This was 24 hours after apologizing for appearing in the picture and after making the most horrible statement on “super” late term abortion. Unforgivable!
‘We have turned over every stone we could find, and we’ve found much more that will keep us busy that’s unrelated to a campaign in the 2016 election…’
Richard Burr/IMAGE: YouTube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Sen. Richard Burr, R-NC, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Monday that he hopes his committee’s investigation will help the recently submitted Mueller Report to conclusively resolve any lingering questions of Russian collusion with the Donald Trump campaign.
Meanwhile, he hinted that the investigation might raise even more new questions about Russian meddling.
“We have turned over every stone we could find, and we’ve found much more that will keep us busy that’s unrelated to a campaign in the 2016 election,” Burr said in a speech at Duke University, reported WRAL.
The Senate Intelligence probe is expected to conclude in August. Burr said it had already interviewed more than 200 people on three continents, producing 30,000 pages of notes, and had reviewed more than 400,000 documents.
“We’re not going to allow anything in our report that doesn’t have facts to back it up,” he said.
Burr said that a comparison between the two separate reports should help ensure there isn’t “any room for anybody to make these wild accusations about collusion.”
The comments come shortly after Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, pledged last week to dig deeper into the “other side” of the story: whether the FBI and other Obama-era intelligence agencies may have colluded with the campaign of Hillary Clinton to absolve her of a criminal investigation while helping to spread false innuendo about Trump and Russia.
Meanwhile, Burr’s and Graham’s House counterparts—Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, have continued to cling to the Trump collusion myth despite indications that the Mueller Report said otherwise.
After Attorney General William Barr rejected a Tuesday deadline for providing them with a full, unredacted copy of the report, they hinted that they might issue subpoenas to get it. Barr has offered to release the full report—after legally mandated redactions are made—later this month and to discuss it before Congress in early May.
On both sides of the political schism, one thing is undisputed: Russians did indeed attempt to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election, whether to back a particular candidate or simply to sow discord and division.
Burr said the Senate Intelligence investigation was focused on ensuring that “Russia doesn’t have its hooks in anybody.”
Surprisingly, he also seemed to side with recent comments from Facebook and Twitter about the need to more thoroughly regulate free speech online in order to protect it.
As the social-media juggernauts have ratcheted up their censorship efforts, citing the need to safeguard the public against fake news and “hate speech,” they often have been criticized for their political bias and targeting of legitimate conservative opinions or organizations.
But Burr suggested that Vladimir Putin’s government may have weaponized our constitutionally protected cornerstone of democracy against us in order to undermine the electoral process.
“What Russia proved to us is that the First Amendment is a valuable tool to have,” he said, “and that it’s very dangerous if, in fact, people don’t police it and understand fact from fiction.”
