Prosecutor Wants to Charge 14-Year-Old Girl with Sexual Exploitation for Taking PG-13 Pictures of Herself

When her parents found out she had sexted, they were horrified. When they saw the actual pictures, they were confused.
By Robby Soave | reason.com | October 4, 2016

A 14-year-old Iowa girl, "Nancy Doe," is facing sexual exploitation charges for taking two sexy pictures of a minor and texting them to a boy at school.

The minor in question is Doe, which means the Marion County prosecutor has essentially threatened to brand her a sex offender for taking and sending pictures of her own body.

Making matters significantly worse, the pictures in question can hardly be described as child pornography, Doe's family argues in its lawsuit against Marion County Attorney Ed Bull. In one photo, she was wearing boy shorts and a sports bra. In the other, she had removed the bra but her hair was fully covering her breasts.

Doe's own parents described the pictures as "less 'racy' than photographs they see in fashion magazines and on television every day." They wonder if she could have been prosecuted for taking a picture of herself in her swimsuit—such a picture would have probably been even more revealing than the alleged 'sexts.'

Doe's not waiting to be prosecuted for something that shouldn't even be a crime, and probably isn't in this specific case. She has filed a lawsuit against the county attorney for threatening to violate her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

"It is clearly a violation of the First Amendment for a prosecutor to credibly threaten to bring criminal charges for protected speech and expression," Rita Bettis, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, told The Des Moines Register. "While courts have held that child pornography is not protected under the First Amendment, in this case, there appears to be a real factual question about whether the image itself was child pornography."

The trouble began last March, when two boys at Knoxville High School were caught using the school printers to print inappropriate photos of their classmates, both male and female, which had been obtained via texts and Snapchat. Some of the teens in the photos were nude, though emojis were covering their private parts, according to the lawsuit. Doe's two photos were among them.

Schools doling out post-retirement bonuses: Same outrageous tune, new verse

By Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune | September 27, 2016

In 2005, Illinois lawmakers tried to rein in school districts that dole out lavish end-of-career pay raises to teachers and administrators in order to jack up their pensions. Springfield set limits and imposed penalties for districts that exceeded them. The aim: to cut pension costs and boost Illinois' dangerously underfunded teachers pension system.

But some school districts still resist. They rely on arcane (read: devious) ways to circumvent the intent of the law and reward outgoing educators with huge bonuses instead.

On Monday, the Tribune's Diane Rado exposed the latest outrage: Some Chicago-area school districts shell out tens of thousands of dollars in bonuses to teachers and administrators who are already retired. Those payouts can come on top of multiple late-career salary hikes handed to educators to boost their pensions as they exit.

For those keeping count at home: That's two ways that districts are spending someone else's money to weave lavish post-retirement golden parachutes for educators.

Why haven't you heard about this before? Because, as Rado writes, these bonuses are "tucked into teacher and administrator contracts, and school officials acknowledge that payouts to individual educators are not always transparent or publicized."

Not always transparent or publicized? Try: Cleverly obscured. The payouts are calculated in various ways — a flat amount, a set figure multiplied by an educator's years of service or a percentage of an educator's annual salary — all of which makes it harder for taxpayers to follow the money out the door and into the retired educator's pocket.

The payouts amount to big money:

•  In the Vernon Hills-based Community High School District 128, one principal reaped 30 percent of her $200,000-plus base salary, a post-retirement bonus of $64,228.

•  Deerfield Public School District 109 spent nearly $1 million in end-of-career "severance" payments in the last two years alone. One longtime teacher took home about $67,000 so far, and a final payment in 2017 will propel her total post-retirement bonus to about $78,000.

•  Libertyville School District 70 has dished out almost $600,000 in bonuses for 38 educators over the last five school years.

Walmart Workers Refuse to Make Cop’s Retirement Cake

By Todd Starnes | officer.com | September 26, 2016

Three Walmart workers in McDonough, Georgia refused to decorate a “thin blue line” cake for a police officer’s retirement party because they said it was racist.

A number of my Georgia readers alerted me to the story and on Saturday night I spoke directly with the police officer’s daughter. She asked that I not divulge her name and I’ve agreed to honor her request.

“I was so shocked,” she told me. “I didn’t know what to do or say or anything. I was trying not to lose my temper or make a scene.”

“The baker told me the blue line cake was racist”

— Police Officer's Daughter

For the record, Walmart has confessed that most of her allegations are true. I’ll have more on that a bit later in this column.

The police officer’s daughter went to the Walmart on Willow Drive on Sept. 22 to order a flag for her father’s retirement party. He was leaving the force after 25-years on the job.

She showed the bakers a photograph of the police officer’s flag - the black and white version of Old Glory with a blue line.

“One of the bakers told me the design could be perceived as racist and nobody feels comfortable decorating the cake,” the police officer’s daughter told me.

9 Financial Planning Tips for Responsible Living

By SimplySafeDividends.com | September 21, 2016

If you weren’t born into riches, chances are that you’ve had to grow up and get a job to earn the money you need to survive.

Particularly if you’ve formed a family along the way, it’s important to do what you can to protect the money you’re earning, the money you’re saving, and the people who have come to depend on you and your income.

Let’s take a look at some basic financial planning tips that can help you better secure your finances and build a solid foundation for your family’s future.

1. Build an emergency reserve fund

The first and most basic step toward improving your financial situation also happens to be the one that is most frequently overlooked or, worse, dismissed — establish an emergency reserve fund. This doesn’t have to be a monumental or complex account; an ordinary savings account at your local bank will work perfectly.

Your goal should be to accumulate a minimum of 3-6 months’ worth of expenses in this account. You’ll sleep a lot better at night knowing that, no matter what happens, you’ve got enough cash socked away to continue paying the bills and living in the same style to which you and your family have become accustomed.

Think of your emergency reserve fund as the foundation on which the rest of your investment endeavors will be built. You won’t be using that money to begin investing in bigger and better, more complex vehicles, but the fund’s existence is the cornerstone of a solid economic progression.

Plus, the dedication and discipline you will have to demonstrate in order to consistently set aside a portion of every paycheck will serve to condition your mindset for future opportunities and the rest of your financial planning journey.

2. Pay yourself first

Still on the topic of establishing an emergency reserve fund, there is a right way and wrong way to do it, believe it or not. When considering the generic concept of saving money, most people make the mistake of taking the position that, “I’ll save whatever money I have left over when I get my next paycheck.”

The problem with that, and the reason those people never end up with any real savings, is that there’s never any money left when the next paycheck arrives.

There is a reason why consumer spending accounts for 70% of GDP – Americans are prone to spending practically all of their income no matter how much money they make. A recent Bloomberg article reported that close to half of those making between $100,000 and $150,000 per year have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts.

If you’re serious about saving money, whether it be to continue building your emergency reserve fund, growing a retirement nest egg, or planning for a large purchase, the key is to set that money aside as soon as you get paid. Your savings goal should be a top priority — nay, a requirement — that’s no less important or mandatory than your mortgage payment, utility bills, car notes, and health insurance.

Treat it just like you do the rest of your monthly financial obligations and write out a check to pay the “bill” that is your savings goal. Even if the amount you set aside is small, over time those small deposits equal one big one. So, don’t get caught in the trap of trying to justify skipping out on a payment to your emergency reserve fund just because the amount wouldn’t be significant.

Investing Strategies: Your First Stock

By Motley Fool Staff | fool.com

You can go your whole life without ever buying a single stock. But until you do, you won't really understand the full potential of investing -- and the rewards that come with it.

For beginners, mutual funds give you a great way to get your feet wet. With just a few hundred dollars, you can invest in a mutual fund that will give you instant access to thousands of different stocks. The diversification that comes with broad-based mutual funds brings with it a measure of security. You may still lose a lot if the whole market goes down, but if one particular company gets hurt, it won't have a huge impact on your overall portfolio.

Conversely, though, buying individual stocks can be a lot more rewarding. You can earn far greater returns from individual stocks than you'll ever find from a diversified mutual fund -- if you pick the right stocks.

So how should you pick?
Investing, like most other things, requires that you have a general philosophy about how to do things in order to avoid careless errors. Would you make a souffle without a recipe? Would you play cello in the London Philharmonic Orchestra without sheet music? Would you aim a shuffleboard disk without figuring out whether you're trying to knock off your own color or your opponent's? We hope not.

So before you dig deeper into some specialized investing strategies, you should first understand the various methods people use to analyze stocks. While investing is not nearly as difficult as these other challenges (especially the souffle), you certainly need a considered plan before investing your hard-earned savings.

Fundamental Analysis -- Buying a Business (Value, Growth, Income, GARP, Quality)
Many people rightly believe that when you buy a share of stock you are buying a proportional share in a business. As a consequence, to figure out how much the stock is worth, you should determine how much the business is worth. Investors generally do this by assessing the company's financials in terms of per-share values in order to calculate how much the proportional share of the business is worth. This is known as "fundamental" analysis by some, and most who use it view it as the only kind of rational stock analysis.

Although analyzing a business might seem like a straightforward activity, there are many flavors of fundamental analysis. Investors often create oppositions and subcategories in order to better understand their specific investing philosophy. In the end, most investors come up with an approach that is a blend of a number of different approaches. Many of the distinctions are more academic inventions than actual practical differences. For instance, value and growth have been codified by economists who study the stock market even though market practitioners do not find these labels to be quite as useful. In the following descriptions, we will focus on what most investors mean when they use these labels, although you always have to be careful to double-check what someone using them really means.

Southern Command Warns Sunni Extremists Infiltrating From South

By Bill Gertz | Washington Free Beacon | August 22, 2016

Islamists freely cross U.S. border with help of S. American alien smugglers

Sunni extremists are infiltrating the United States with the help of alien smugglers in South America and are crossing U.S. borders with ease, according to a U.S. South Command intelligence report.

The Command’s J-2 intelligence directorate reported recently in internal channels that “special interest aliens” are working with a known alien smuggling network in Latin America to reach the United States. The smuggling network was not identified.

Army Col. Lisa A. Garcia, a Southcom spokeswoman, did not address the intelligence report directly but said Sunni terrorist infiltration is a security concern.

“Networks that specialize in smuggling individuals from regions of terrorist concern, mainly from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, the Middle East, and East Africa, are indeed a concern for Southcom and other interagency security partners who support our country’s national security,” Garcia told theWashington Free Beacon.

“There are major hubs that serve as entry points into the region for migrants from those areas of concern attempting to enter the U.S. along our border with Mexico,” she said.

The infiltrators from terrorist states and unstable regions exploit vulnerabilities in commercial transportation systems and immigration enforcement agencies in some of the countries used for transit, Garcia said.

“In 2015, we saw a total of 331,000 migrants enter the southwestern border between the U.S. and Mexico, of that we estimate more than 30,000 of those were from countries of terrorist concern,” she said.

Another problem in dealing with migrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia is a lack of information among the governments of the countries used by potential terrorists for transit.

The exploitation of alien smuggling networks by terrorists until recently had been dismissed by both American security officials and private security experts as largely an urban myth.

However, the Southcom intelligence report revealed that the threat of Islamist terror infiltration is no longer theoretical. “This makes the case for Trump’s wall,” said one American security official of the Southcom report. “These guys are doing whatever they want to get in the country.”

A Clash of Police Policies

By Dr. Thomas Sewell | Creators Syndicate | August 23, 2016

Amid the rioting in Milwaukee, there is also a clash between two leading lawmen there — Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and the city of Milwaukee's Chief of Police Edward Flynn. They have very different opinions about how law enforcement should be carried out.

Chief Edward Flynn expresses the view long prevalent among those who emphasize the social "root causes" of crime, such as income disparities and educational disparities, as well as the larger society's neglect of black communities.

Chief Flynn puts less emphasis on aggressive police action and more on community outreach and gun control.

Sheriff David Clarke represents an opposite tradition, in which the job of the police is to enforce the law, as forcefully as necessary, not to make excuses for law-breaking or to ease up on enforcing the law, in hopes that this will mollify rioters. Sheriff Clarke would also like to see law-abiding blacks be armed.

Differences of opinion on law enforcement are sharp and unmistakable — and have been for more than 50 years. However, as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to say, "You're entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts."

Unfortunately, facts seem to play a remarkably small role in clashes over law enforcement policies. And that too has been true for more than 50 years.

In his memoirs, the Supreme Court's Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that "all of us must assume a share of the responsibility" for rising crime rates in the 1960s because "for decades we have swept under the rug" the slum conditions that breed crime.

But the hard fact is that the murder rate in the country as a whole was going down during those very decades when social problems in the slums were supposedly being neglected.

In Eight Words Dr. Gorka Explains Why the DNC Ignores Isis

By S. Noble | Independent Sentinel | July 30, 2016

Isis was barely mentioned during the DNC convention. At the same time, FBI Director Jim Comey said Isis is the greatest threat to Americans. Dr. Gorka explained why Democrats downplay Isis in eight words during an interview last night – it “countermands their one-world moral relativism and multiculturalism.”

Dr. Gorka, author of Defeating Jihad, the Winnable War, was interviewed by Tucker Carlson, and said the DNC is now a radical left-wing machine and it controls part of the Democrat Party.

“I want to be careful here, Tucker,” he continued. “I don’t want to lambaste all Democratic voters in America. The DNC is really a function of the left-wing machine. It’s part of a Party that’s been captured by the radicals.”

Dr. Gorka pointed to the many indications that this is the case, leaving out the fact that the first day of the convention was minus any US flags. The left prefers to burn them and they did so repeatedly outside the venue.

“Just look at what happened. The convocation was booed. The serviceman with a Medal of Honor, trying to read the names of his fellow servicemen killed in combat was booed. The female police officer who asked for a moment of silence for fallen police officers was heckled by the Black Lives Matter. This is unbelievable, and clearly the thing that they’re most concerned about isn’t ISIS, it’s Donald Trump and global warming,” Gorka said.

The reason the left won’t recognize Isis is because it countermands their one-world moral relativism and multiculturalism.

“I think the trouble with ISIS, or with radical Islam, is that its existence, its bare existence, countermands the one-world kumbaya moral relativism and multiculturalism that the Democrat Party has been ramming down our throats for 30 years,” Gorka replied. “If all cultures are equal, if everybody has the same values, then how does this thing called jihadism exist, and why do people shout ‘Allahu akbar’ as they’re running out of the church in Normandy, having beheaded a Catholic priest in front of the altar?”

If these were Christians behaving this way would there be a different reaction, Carlson asked.

“It’s too much of a smoking gun that disproves the whole argument of cultural equivalency and moral relativism,” he said.“None of the narratives we see today, that actually make excuses for the perpetrators, none of those would be permitted if a Caucasian Christian was doing the same kind of horrific acts,” he asserted.

Full List of Hillary’s Planned Tax Hikes

By John Kartch and Alexander Hendrie | Americans for Tax Reform | July 28, 2016

Hillary Clinton has made clear she intends to dramatically raise taxes on the American people if elected. She has proposed an income tax increase, a business tax increase, a death tax increase, a capital gains tax increase, a tax on stock trading, an "Exit Tax" and more (see below). Her planned net tax increase on the American people is at least $1 trillion over ten years, based on her campaign’s own figures.

Hillary has endorsed several tax increases on middle income Americans, despite her pledge not to raise taxes on any American making less than $250,000. She has said she would be fine with a payroll tax hike on all Americans, she has endorsed a steep soda tax, endorsed a 25% national gun tax, and most recently, her campaign manager John Podesta said she would be open to a carbon tax. It’s no wonder that when asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos if her pledge was a "rock-solid" promise, she slipped and said the pledge was merely a “goal.” In other words, she's going to raise taxes on middle income Americans.

Hillary’s formally proposed $1 trillion net tax increase consists of the following:

Income Tax Increase – $350 Billion: Clinton has proposed a $350 billion income tax hike in the form of a 28 percent cap on itemized deductions.

Business Tax Increase -- $275 Billion: Clinton has called for a tax hike of at least $275 billion through undefined business tax reform, as described in a Clinton campaign document.

“Fairness” Tax Increase -- $400 Billion: According to her published plan, Clinton has called for a tax increase of “between $400 and $500 billion” by “restoring basic fairness to our tax code.” These proposals include a “fair share surcharge,” the taxing of carried interest capital gains as ordinary income, and a hike in the Death Tax.

But there are even more Clinton tax hike proposals not included in the tally above. Her campaign has failed to release specific details for many of her proposals. The true Clinton net tax hike figure is likely much higher than $1 trillion.

For instance:

Capital Gains Tax Increase -- Clinton has proposed an increase in the capital gains tax to counter the “tyranny of today’s earnings report.” Her plan calls for a byzantine capital gains tax regime with six rates. Her campaign has not put a dollar amount on this tax increase.

Tax on Stock Trading -- Clinton has proposed a new tax on stock trading. Costs associated with this new tax will be borne by millions of American families that hold 401(k)s, IRAs and other savings accounts. The tax increase would only further burden markets by discouraging trading and investment. Again, no dollar figure for this tax hike has been released by the Clinton campaign.

“Exit Tax” – Rather than reduce the extremely high, uncompetitive corporate tax rate, Clinton has proposed a series of measures aimed at inversions including an “exit tax” on income earned overseas. The term “exit tax” is used by the campaign itself. Her campaign document describing this proposal says it will raise $80 billion in tax revenue, but claims some of the $80 billion will be plowed into tax relief. How much? The campaign doesn't say.

This proposal completely fails to address the underlying causes behind inversions: The U.S. 39% corporate tax rate (35% federal rate plus an average state rate of 4%) and our "worldwide" system of taxation, which imposes tax on all American earnings worldwide. The average corporate rate in the developed world is 25%. Thirty-one of thirty-four developed countries have cut their corporate tax rate since 2000. The U.S. has not. Hillary's plan moves in the wrong direction.

ATR is tracking Clinton’s full tax record at its dedicated website, HighTaxHillary.com

Users Accuse Twitter Of Censoring WikiLeaks DNC Emails Leak

By Chsrlie Nash | Brietbart | July 23, 2016

“#DNCLeaks” was one of the top trending topics on Twitter this Friday with over 250,000 tweets reported to have been made under the hashtag since WikiLeaks released over 19,000 leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee.

Later on in the day, the hashtag was reported to have gone missing from the trending bar completely for around 20 minutes, before returning under the less popular hashtag “#DNCleak”. The change meant that those investigating the new trending hashtag would not see all of the other posts tagged under the previous version, effectively hiding over 250,000 tweets from the public.

“Twitter is still trying to censor this trend! Now #DNCleak is trending instead of original #DNCLeaks! Keep talking guys, expose corruption” commented one user on the change. “It seems @Twitter is now trying to push #DNCLeak instead of #DNCleaks in an effort to keep this from trending” posted another.

@wikileaks It seems @Twitter is now trying to push #DNCLeak instead of #DNCleaks in an effort to keep this from trending.
— KENT GUTSCHKE (@martiandeathray) July 23, 2016

twitter is trending #DNCLeak instead of#DNCLeaks
wow. i’m totally speechless at all this mass corruption
— sarah bellum (@zzzanthropology) July 23, 2016

Oh, right, now we’re supposed to hashtag#DNCLeak haha instead of #DNCLeaks — our bad, right? #feeltheBern
— Marie Myung-Ok Lee (@MarieMyungOkLee) July 23, 2016

Wary users have also brought up the fact that Twitter is now refusing people the ability to post links from “WikiLeaks.com”, only allowing those from “WikiLeaks.org” in what appears to be a further attempt to clamp down on WikiLeaks’ traffic flow during the DNC email leaks.

Another Obamacare insurer jumps ship

By Rick Moran | American Thinker | July 27, 2016

Will the last Obamacare insurer selling policies on the exchanges please turn off the lights before you leave?

One of the nation's largest health insurance companies is pulling out of the exchanges in all but a handful of states citing losses exceeding one billion dollars last year.

Humana says it will exit all but 11 states next year, further reducing the number of companies willing to sell policies in an environment that guarantees massive losses. The numbers are just not adding up, as younger, healthier consumers are staying away from the exchanges in droves.

The Hill:

Humana’s decision to exit “substantially all” of the state exchanges comes the same day that the Obama administration announced it would step in to block a multibillion-dollar merger between Humana and Aetna. Both are among the nation's five biggest health insurers.

Another of those top five, UnitedHealth Group, announced earlier this year that it would be pulling out of most ObamaCare marketplaces, citing its own financial losses.

Humana had already shown signs of its struggle with ObamaCare, announcing this year it would pull out of at least two states.

In the earnings report released Thursday, officials underscored the sharp declines in healthcare premiums from the exchanges. The company expects to pull in between $750 million and $1 billion in premiums this year, compared to $3.4 billion projected over the last year.

Humana officials said in a statement that the changes will help the company "retain a viable product for individual consumers and address persistent risk selection challenges.”

Where's the tipping point? About a dozen states have only two or three companies offering policies, reducing competition, and driving up rates. Even with the subsidy, many people simply can't afford double-digit increases in their policies, forcing them to drop coverage. I suspect that next year, there will be several states that will be unable to offer any insurance policies at all.

Humana will realize only about 30% of projected premiums this year, which is pretty much a catastrophe. Their merger with Aetna would not have helped them this year, if it would have helped at all. But the insurance companies deserve every drop of red ink they are bleeding, given their cheerleading for Obamacare back in 2020. They helped create this monster. And now, it's beginning to eat them.

Here's When Social Security and Medicare Will Officially Run Out of Spare Cash

By Sean Williams | The Motley Fool | July 17, 2016

Ask a person what they need to survive and they're liable to say air and water. Ask senior citizens what they'd need to be financially stable in retirement and they're probably going to respond with strong Social Security and Medicare programs.

Currently, Social Security is paying out benefits for more than 60 million people a month, two-thirds of whom are retired workers aged 62 and up. In 2016 alone, Congress set aside $944 billion, or a quarter of the approximately $3.8 trillion federal budget, just to cover Social Security benefits. When Gallup questioned current beneficiaries on the importance of Social Security income, nearly 6 in 10 responded that Social Security payments comprise a "major" part of their income.

There are also 56 million people enrolled in Medicare, with approximately 5 in 6 enrollees seniors aged 65 and up. Medicare helps protect seniors from potentially high medical costs during their golden years. On average, the program covers about 80% of eligible medical costs, with seniors picking up the tab for the remaining 20%. Medicare has been shown to be considerably cheaper than private insurance plans for seniors.

In plainer terms, Social Security and Medicare are vital to the financial well-being of today's retirees, and there's a good chance the same will hold true for baby boomers who are set to hang up their work gloves over the next two decades.

What's really wrong with Social Security and Medicare

Unfortunately, neither program is exactly on solid footing, at least based on the latest findings of the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees, which were released within the past couple of weeks. According to the Trustees, both Social Security and Medicare are on unsustainable paths that will soon see the two programs deplete their excess cash reserves. This excess cash is what both programs invest in special issue bonds and other guaranteed interest-bearing assets.

Liberal Censorship - Breaking out of the Echo Chamber

By Eric Metaxas | BreakPoint July 15, 2016

A few in the media and academia are finally recognizing that neither place is friendly to conservatives or evangelicals. That recognition is refreshing!

When liberal journalists come out and confess their bias, it’s tempting to say, “The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.” But don’t. This is good news.

Writing at the New York Times recently, columnist Nicholas Kristof took that hard first step. The title of his piece says it all: “A Confession of Liberal Intolerance.”

“We progressives,” he writes, “believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table, so long as they aren’t conservatives.” (Or, one might reasonably add, evangelical Christians).

Kristof and fellow liberals profess a love for tolerance and diversity. But when it comes to the most important kind—diversity of thought—he admits that the gatekeepers in academia and the media actively stigmatize those who hold views different from their own.

“We’re fine with people who don’t look like us,” he writes, “as long as they think like us.”

Universities, once recognized as bastions of tolerance and diversity, bear perhaps the greatest blame. Kristof cites studies showing that just 6 to 11 percent of humanities professors are conservatives. Fewer than one in ten social-studies professors call themselves conservative. For perspective, consider that twice that number identify as Marxists!

And lest anyone blame this on conservative self-selection, a third of academics openly admit that they would be less likely to hire a qualified candidate who voted Republican. Black, evangelical sociologist George Yancey says he faces more discrimination on campus for his Christian beliefs than he does off-campus for the color of his skin. This aggressive bias turns classrooms into hard-left “echo-chambers” where only one side of any debate is ever heard.

Kristof took his concerns to Facebook, where he asked his mostly liberal followers why those who pride themselves on tolerance can be so intolerant. The replies he got were stunning.

“Much of the ‘conservative’ worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false,” commented one fellow liberal.

Why stop with conservatives? asked another. “How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots?”

FBI Director Comey Obliterated These Hillary Talking Points

By Chuck Ross |The Daily Caller | July 5, 2016

While FBI Director James Comey announced in a surprise press conference on Tuesday that he will recommend that charges not be filed against Hillary Clinton and her aides for mishandling classified information, the Obama appointee torched talking points that the former secretary of state has used in defense of her email practices.

Clinton talking point No. 1: Her emails were not classified

Clinton has in the past said that her emails were not classified when they were sent and received. Her campaign has also questioned the integrity of the Intelligence Community’s inspector general, which assessed last year that some of Clinton’s emails were classified at the “Top Secret” level when they were originated.

But Comey settled the question in decisive fashion on Tuesday, demolishing Clinton’s claims.

“From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received,” Comey said.

“Top Secret” information was contained in eight of those email chains. “Secret” information was in 36 chains, and eight held “confidential” information.

Clinton talking point No. 2: She returned all work-related emails

Comey said that Clinton failed to turn over “several thousand” work-related emails to the State Department in December 2014.

[dcquiz] The undermines the former secretary of state’s repeated assertion that she did turn over all such records.

“The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014,” Comey said, adding that the additional emails were recovered “in a variety of ways.”

Clinton has claimed that she was over-inclusive in deciding which emails to return to the State Department.

“In providing these emails to the Department, Clinton included all she had that were even potentially work-related—including emails about using a fax machine or asking for iced tea during a meeting — erring on the side of over-inclusion,” her campaign website reads.

Comey said that some of Clinton’s missing work emails had been deleted. Traces of those records were found on devices that Clinton used over the years. Others were recovered from archived records of other government employees’ email accounts. Still more were found in the form of email fragments dumped into what Comey called the “slack space” of the server that Clinton decommissioned after she left office in 2013.

Three of the work-related emails that Clinton failed to turn over to State contained classified information, according to Comey.

One contained “Secret” information and two held confidential information.

Comey did say that investigators found no evidence that those additional emails were “intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.”

“Our assessment is that, like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed,” he said.

FBI Director Comey's Remarks on Hillary Clinton Email Probe

Dixon - My emphasis denoted by yellow highlights.

By U.S. News Staff | U.S, News & World Report | July 5, 2016

FBI Director James B. Comey announced Tuesday that, while the bureau determined Hillary Clinton and her staff were "extremely careless" in their handling emails while she was secretary of state, the bureau would not recommend criminal charges against the presumptive Democratic nominee. Here are Comey's prepared remarks, as released by the FBI:
Good morning. I'm here to give you an update on the FBI's investigation of Secretary Clinton's use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State.

After a tremendous amount of work over the last year, the FBI is completing its investigation and referring the case to the Department of Justice for a prosecutive decision. What I would like to do today is tell you three things: what we did; what we found; and what we are recommending to the Department of Justice.

This will be an unusual statement in at least a couple ways. First, I am going to include more detail about our process than I ordinarily would, because I think the American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest. Second, I have not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice or any other part of the government. They do not know what I am about to say.

I want to start by thanking the FBI employees who did remarkable work in this case. Once you have a better sense of how much we have done, you will understand why I am so grateful and proud of their efforts.

So, first, what we have done:

The investigation began as a referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General in connection with Secretary Clinton's use of a personal e-mail server during her time as Secretary of State. The referral focused on whether classified information was transmitted on that personal system.

Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way, or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities.

Forced diversity training backfires, claims Harvard study

By Michelle Leibowitz | FoxNews.com | June 30, 2016

Diversity might be a good thing, but forced training in tolerance not only fails in the business world, it backfires, according to a new Harvard study.

Managers sent to mandatory diversity training sessions often come away resenting the very groups they are being encouraged to accept, according to the study, entitled “Why Diversity Programs Fail,” and published in the latest edition of Harvard Business Review. It gets even worse when threats and punishments are imposed to ensure participation, the study found.

“People often respond to compulsory courses with anger and resistance,” wrote authors Frank Dobbin, a professor of sociology at Harvard and Alexandra Kalev, a professor of social sciences at Tel Aviv University. “Your organization will become less diverse, not more.”

The study looked at financial institutions, where in mandatory initiatives aimed at increasing diversity have not increased the number of white women and black men in managerial positions, the study claims. Five years after implementation of involuntary training, the proportion of minority managers either remained stagnant or declined — as much as 9 percent for black women.

“Mandatory diversity training sends exactly the message of control - and psychological research shows us time and time again [that] people resist control,” Kalev told FoxNews.com in an email.

On the other hand, the option to undergo voluntary training invoked the opposite effect- minority representation in management increased, around 4 percent for black men. The study found that when training is not forced on employees, as many as 80 percent take part – and the benefits are measurable.

Large banks and other big companies shell out millions of dollars every year for diversity training programs, in part to guard against discrimination lawsuits. Morgan Stanley budgeted an additional $7.5 million toward diversity programs in 2007 after getting hit hard with multiple discrimination lawsuits, Bloomberg News reported, in settlements that cost the company more than $100 million in the past few decades.

But ineffective training will not protect companies from legal exposure, said attorney Suzanne Bish, who litigated a discrimination suit against an investment bank.

‘The game is never over’: A letter from Pat Summitt to a young basketball player

By Sally Jenkins | The Washington Post | June 28, 2016

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — For more than two decades, I’ve been asked what Pat Summitt is really like, and failed to answer the question, for the simple reason that most words aren’t large enough to capture her. Paltry one-dimensional terms can’t describe the roiling, sparkling ocean of a person that Pat was. I know of just a few words that really summarize her, and it turns out they are deceptively simple, and they are her own. They follow below.

Pat’s loved ones, friends, colleagues, players, family members stood vigil in recent days as she fought on against Alzheimer’s disease, and they passed the time telling innumerable stories, punctuated alternately by wracking breakdowns and explosive shouts of laughter, attempting to parse just what it was about her that inspired such devotion. As loved as Pat was by the public, she was even more so privately. Her nearest ones will swear that her reputation hardly does justice to her — partly because Pat didn’t rest easy on the pedestal. She was a lot more interesting than that.

Behind all that statuesque eminence was a woman of high mischief and a love of cocktails, who once agreed that the best word to describe her was “subversive.” Pat married so many contradictory qualities in one slenderized figure. She had majesty and humility. Baffling naivete and genius. She was demanding and gentle. She never stayed still, and as a basketball coach was the single most discontented creature after a win that you ever saw. Winning wasn’t good enough: As soon as things were going well, Pat had to change it all up, create a new edge. Her former player Kara Lawson said, “She’s a kaleidoscope. She changes everything. If not for her, you’d still be looking at the same damn boring old picture.”

You will pardon me if I allow Pat to take over the rest of this space. I’ve prized her friendship for 20 years and co-written three books with her, but never managed to explain her as well as she explains herself below. It’s a simple document: a letter to a young University of Tennessee freshman named Shelia Collins, on the occasion of starting her first game. It illustrates exactly why more than 50 of her players, young and old, rushed to her bedside, drove all night, flew across the country, slept on floors, and sat in the hallways of a retirement home, where they passed the time playing bean bag games with seniors, just to see her and whisper a few words in her ear.

Obama Invites 18.7 Million Immigrants to Avoid Oath of Allegiance, Pledge to Defend America

By Tom Tancredo | Breitbart News | June 25, 2016

Under the Obama administration’s expansive interpretation of executive authority, legal immigrants seeking citizenship through the nation’s Naturalization process are now exempt from a key part of the Oath of Allegiance.

Immigrants seeking to become citizens no longer have to pledge to “bear arms on behalf of the United States.” They can opt out of that part of the Oath. Nor do they have to cite any specific religious belief that forbids them to perform military service.

According to the Naturalization Fact Sheet on the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) website, In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2015, the nation welcomed 729,995 Legal Permanent Residents into full citizenship.

• Over the past decade 6.6 million have been naturalized through a process that ends with the Oath of Allegiance.
• In the decade 1980-1990, the average number completing Naturalization was only 220,000 annually, but from 1990 to 2000 that number jumped to over 500,000 annually.
• 1,050,399 new citizens were welcomed in the year 2008.
• 18.7 million immigrants are eligible to eventually become citizens, and 8.8 million already meet the 5-year residency requirement.

The pledge to help defend America was good enough for the 6.6 million immigrants naturalized since 2005 and good enough for the over 15 million naturalized since 1980, but Obama’s appointees at the USCIS think that is too much to ask of the 18.7 million estimated legal immigrants eligible today for eventual naturalization or the 750,000 who will be naturalized in the coming year.

This radical change was announced a year ago, in July of 2015. Congress did not enact the change in new legislation. There was no congressional debate, no filibuster in the US Senate, and no sit-in in the House to demand that a bill to repeal the USCIS action be brought to a vote.

No, this radical change was implemented while Congress slept. Like other Obama actions to undermine our immigration laws, the Republican-controlled Congress has not used its constitutional powers to reverse the administrative action. Thank God many states are stepping up to fill that void.

This week, the US Supreme Court let stand a federal district court ruling invalidating Obama’s unconstitutional “DAPA” amnesty.

Deadlocked Supreme Court blocks Obama on immigration

By Richard Wolf | USA Today | June 23, 2016

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court dealt a likely fatal blow Thursday to President Obama's effort to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation and allow them to seek work permits, deadlocking 4-4 over a plan that had divided the nation as well as the justices.

The tie vote leaves intact a preliminary injunction that stopped the program in its tracks more than a year ago, after Texas and 25 other states claimed Obama lacked the authority to circumvent Congress. While the case now will return to Texas for further review, it's unlikely the lower federal courts that blocked the program will reverse themselves.

In practical terms, then, the 4-4 vote dooms for the remainder of Obama's presidency his goal of providing protection to more than 4 million undocumented parents whose children already have such protection. The justices likely split along ideological lines, though the vote was not revealed; the ruling carries no national precedent.

It was a sudden, crushing defeat for millions of parents who came to the country illegally and have lived in the shadows, often for decades. The administration had hoped that at least one of the more conservative justices — possibly Chief Justice John Roberts — would rule that the plan posed no financial threat to the states and therefore could not be challenged in court.

"Today’s decision is frustrating to those who seek to grow our economy and bring a rationality to our immigration system, and to allow people to come out of the shadows and lift this perpetual cloud on them," Obama said shortly after the ruling was announced by Chief Justice John Roberts. "It is heartbreaking for the millions of immigrants who’ve made their lives here, who’ve raised families here, who hoped for the opportunity to work, pay taxes, serve in our military, and more fully contribute to this country we all love in an open way."

But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the ruling shows that "even a president cannot unilaterally change the law." He called it "a major setback to President Obama’s attempts to expand executive power, and a victory for those who believe in the separation of powers and the rule of law.”

Like three other tie rulings since Justice Antonin Scalia's death in February left the court with only eight justices, the one-sentence opinion simply announced that the court was "equally divided" and unable to muster a majority for either side.

Remarks by President Obama in Address to the Parliament of Canada

Dixon - My emphasis denoted by yellow highlights.

By White House Press Release | whitehouse.gov | June 29, 2016

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you so much. Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you, everybody. (Applause.) Thank you so much. Thank you. Please, everyone have a seat. Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you so much.

Good evening. Bonjour. Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker, members of the House, members of the Senate, distinguished guests, people of Canada -- thank you for this extraordinary welcome, which temps me to just shut up and leave. (Laughter.) Because it can't get any better than this. (Laughter.) Obviously I'm grateful for the warm welcome. I'm extraordinarily grateful for the close working relationship and friendship with your outstanding Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and his extraordinary wife, Sophie.

But I think it's fair to say that much of this greeting is simply a reflection of the extraordinary alliance and deep friendship between Canadians and Americans.

Justin, thank you for your very kind words, and for the new energy and hope that your leadership has brought to your nation as well as to the alliance. My time in office may be nearing an end, but I know that Canada -- and the world -- will benefit from your leadership for years to come. (Applause.)

So Canada was the very first country that I visited as President. It was in February. (Laughter.) It was colder. (Laughter.) I was younger. (Laughter.) Michelle now refers to my hair as the Great White North. (Laughter.) And on that visit, I strolled around the ByWard Market, tried a “beaver tail” -- (laughter) -- which is better than it sounds. (Laughter.) And I was struck then, as I am again today, by the warmth of the Canadians. I could not be more honored to be joining you in this historic hall -- this cathedral of freedom. And we Americans can never say it enough -- we could not ask for a better friend or ally than Canada. (Applause.) We could not. It’s true. It is true. And we do not take it for granted.

That does not mean we don't have our differences. As I understand it, one of the reasons the Queen chose this site for Parliament was that it was a safe distance from America’s border. (Laughter.) And I admit, in the War of 1812, American troops did some damage to Toronto. I suspect that there were some people up here who didn’t mind when the British returned the favor and burned down the White House. (Laughter.)

In more recent times, however, the only forces crossing our borders are the armies of tourists and businesspeople and families who are shopping and doing business and visiting loved ones. Our only battles take place inside the hockey rink. Even there, there’s an uneasy peace that is maintained. As Americans, we, too, celebrate the life of Mr. Hockey himself, the late, great Gordie Howe. (Applause.) Just as Canadians can salute American teams for winning more Stanley Cups in the NHL. (Laughter.)

AUDIENCE: Ooooh --

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I told you I should have stopped after the applause. (Laughter.)

State Department seeks 27-month delay for release of Clinton Foundation emails

By FoxNews.com | July 1, 2016

The State Department has sought to delay the court-ordered release of emails between four of Hillary Clinton's top aides and officials at the Clinton Foundation and a closely associated public relations firm.

The motion, filed in federal court by the Justice Department late Wednesday, seeks to put off the release of the emails by 27 months. It was first reported on by The Daily Caller.

In the filing, the State Department says it originally estimated that approximately 6,000 emails and other documents were exchanged between the aides — identified as former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael Fuchs, former Ambassador-At-Large Melanne Verveer, Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin — and the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a communications shop that former President Bill Clinton helped launch.

However, the State Department said that due to errors in the initial document search, the number of "potentially responsive documents" was in fact more than 34,000. The department estimated that it had more than 13,000 pages still left to review.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras had previously ordered the State Department to release the requested documents by July 21.

If the State Department request is granted, the emails would not be released until October 2018, nearly halfway through the first term of a potential Hillary Clinton presidency. The documents are being sought by the conservative nonprofit group Citizens United.

"The American people have a right to see these emails before the election," Citizens United President David Bossie told The Daily Caller, adding that the delay was "totally unacceptable."

The motion was filed two days after Attorney General Loretta Lynch met Bill Clinton at the Phoenix airport. Lynch denied the meeting was anything other than a chance encounter, but Republicans and Democrats have criticized her for at least creating the appearance of a conflict of interest in the midst of a federal investigation into Hillary Clinton's time as America's top diplomat.

On Thursday, State Department spokesman John Kirby cited a surge in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in explaining the State Department extension request.

"The Department handles FOIA in an entirely nonpartisan manner," Kirby said.

The former secretary of state has come under scrutiny over whether she used her position to aid corporate and foreign government donors to the Clinton Foundation.

In addition, Abedin worked as an employee at Teneo while simultaneously working at the State Department while Mills held a position at the Clinton Foundation while also serving in the State Department. Both matters have been flagged by Congress as possible conflicts of interest.

Fox News' Jennifer Griffin and Matt Dean contributed to this report.

Cafe told to remove 'God Bless America' banner

By Todd Starnes | FoxNews.com | June 30, 2016

Whenever folks in Penfield, New York get a hankering for pancakes for lunch – they head over to the 5 Mile Café.

The family-owned restaurant is known in those parts for serving breakfast any time of the day (order their homemade corned beef hash).

They are also known for their patriotism.

“We are very patriotic here at the café – all year round –not just this time of year,” owner Jennifer Aquino told me. “We have American flags and patriotic things around the café.”

So Jennifer decided to ask the town for a permit so she could post a “God Bless America” banner on the front of her restaurant. She wanted to display the banner from Memorial Day through Independence Day.

There was just one significant problem.

Penfield has a strict banner allotment policy. Businesses are only allowed to post banners for a total of three weeks out of the year. And Jennifer had used up her allotment.

“At one point we had banners all over the town and the town just looked trashy and our residents said enough’s enough,” town supervisor Tony LaFountain told WHEC.

Jennifer’s request was denied.

Instead of posting the banner outside the restaurant, she posted it inside. And that was that – until the Orlando terrorist attack.

“I decided on my way to work that I was going to put it up regardless of the town telling me I couldn’t,” she said. “So I put it up.”

A bit later that day she received an email from the town telling her to remove the banner. They warned her that she could face a possible fine for violating the ordinance.

Woman verbally attacked for breastfeeding in Conn. Target store

By FoxNews.com | June 16, 2016

A man verbally attacked a mother for publicly breastfeeding her baby inside a Connecticut Target store, and video of the encounter went viral, Fox-61 reported Tuesday.

Video of the Monday outburst was posted online by Jessie Maher, who was sitting in the café section of the Torrington, Conn. store, feeding her young child around 11:30 a.m.

Before she began filming, a man stared at Maher and called the public breastfeeding “[expletive] disgusting,” Maher wrote on Facebook.

“Can’t you do that somewhere else?” the unidentified man angrily asked Maher, she wrote.

Maher, of Canton, Conn., said she told the man she had the right to breastfeed her child and that he should walk away.

In the video, the man asks a Target employee for a refund after witnessing Maher’s breastfeeding, later accusing the mother of being disrespectful.

“Because I’m feeding my baby, this man is going crazy—and I’m shaking,” Maher can be heard saying quietly.

Another customer soon comes to Maher’s aid, telling her that feeding her baby is a “beautiful moment.”

A line of Target employees later separate Maher from the man. One employee gestures toward the man, apparently asking him to leave.

Connecticut law protects women who choose to breastfeed in public. Target corporate policy also allows for breastfeeding in their stores.

The video recorded 2.5 million hits as of Tuesday morning.

Torrington is located 30 miles west of Hartford.

“Islamic Refugee” With Gas Pipeline Plans Arrested in New Mexico Border County

By Judicial Watch | judicialwatch.org | June 15, 2016

UPDATE 7/1/16—Despite official denials from authorities Judicial Watch stands by its reporting, which was subsequently corroborated by National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers Chairman Zack Taylor.

Police in a U.S. town bordering Mexico have apprehended an undocumented, Middle Eastern woman in possession of the region’s gas pipeline plans, law enforcement sources tell Judicial Watch. Authorities describe the woman as an “Islamic refugee” pulled over during a traffic stop by a deputy sheriff in Luna County, New Mexico which shares a 54-mile border with Mexico. County authorities alerted the U.S. Border Patrol and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) has been deployed to the area to investigate, sources with firsthand knowledge of the probe confirm.

The gas pipeline plans in the woman’s possession include the Deming region, law enforcement sources say. Deming is a Luna County city situated about 35 miles north of the Mexican border and 60 miles west of Las Cruces. It has a population of about 15,000. Last year one local publication listed Deming No. 1 on a list of the “ten worst places” to live in New Mexico due to high unemployment, poverty, crime and a horrible public education system. The entire region is a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), according to the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center due to the large amounts of methamphetamines, heroin, cocaine and marijuana smuggled through the state by Mexican traffickers. Specifically, the renowned Juárez and Sinaloa cartels operate in the area, the feds affirm in a report.

Judicial Watch has broken a number of stories in the last few years about Mexican drug traffickers smuggling Islamic terrorists into the United States through the porous southern border. Last summer high-level sources on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border offered alarming details about an operation in which cartels smuggle foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small Texas rural town near El Paso. Classified as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) by the U.S. government, the foreigners get transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. Once in the U.S., the SIAs wait for pick-up in the area’s sand hills just across Highway 20.

The Orlando Terrorist Attack Is The Price We Pay For Not Destroying ISIS

By John Daniel Davidson | thefederalist.com | June 13, 2016

President Obama thinks terror attacks like the Orlando nightclub massacre are an acceptable price to pay for American nonintervention in the Middle East.

In the wake of the Orlando terrorist attack, which left 50 dead and for which ISIS claimed responsibility on Sunday, there’s one question we probably will not debate seriously: whether we should return to the Bush doctrine and shut down terrorist safe havens overseas, and specifically whether we should deploy troops to the Middle East to destroy ISIS.

Instead, gun control and anti-gay bigotry will be the going concerns, especially among our liberal and media elite in the days ahead, just as they were in the hours after the attack. Partisans on the Left believe they can bend those aspects to their advantage in domestic political battles, and that’s what they’ll talk about.

Indeed, it only took President Barack Obama a few minutes in his remarks Sunday afternoon to suggest that one of the proper responses to Orlando would be to pass stricter gun-control measures. This is one of the president’s favorite talking points after a “mass shooting,” regardless of who does the shooting or why. It matters little that the shooter, Omar Mateen, was armed with firearms he appears to have acquired legally, or that he was a licensed security guard and thus wasn’t the type of person who would be denied a firearm even under a far stricter gun control regime.

Obama Doesn’t Think Terrorism Is A Big Deal

No matter. We will hear more about gun control. But we won’t hear the president announce a new foreign policy to defeat ISIS because on a fundamental level Obama think these kinds of terrorist attacks are an acceptable price to pay for American nonintervention in the Middle East.

A passage from Jeffery Goldberg’s lengthy piece in the April edition of The Atlantic, “The Obama Doctrine,” captures the essence of Obama’s thinking about ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism generally. In the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks last November, Obama, who had been on a globe-spanning presidential trip when the attacks occurred, was lambasted for failing to understand the fear among many Americans that something like that might happen here. But there was a reason Obama appeared to be unmoved, and it wasn’t just jet lag. Goldberg goes on to note that Obama

has never believed that terrorism poses a threat to America commensurate with the fear it generates. Even during the period in 2014 when ISIS was executing its American captives in Syria, his emotions were in check. Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s closest adviser, told him people were worried that the group would soon take its beheading campaign to the U.S. ‘They’re not coming here to chop our heads off,’ he reassured her. Obama frequently reminds his staff that terrorism takes far fewer lives in America than handguns, car accidents, and falls in bathtubs do.

Obama administration backs plan to relinquish Internet control

By FoxNews.com | June 9, 2016

The Obama administration is getting behind a plan that would have the U.S. government relinquish its last bit of control over the Internet – a move Republican lawmakers are fighting tooth-and-nail.

The transfer was set in motion two years ago when a Commerce Department agency said it would cede oversight over an obscure, but powerful, Los Angeles-based nonprofit called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

The agency, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, announced Thursday that the game plan they got back from ICANN – which would hand over the reins to a “multi-stakeholder” group, and not a single government – is now in line with what they want.

“The Internet’s multistakeholder community has risen to the challenge we gave them to develop a transition proposal that would ensure the Internet’s domain name system will continue to operate as seamlessly as it currently does,” NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling said in a statement. AFP first reported on the decision.

ICANN manages some of the most important elements of the Internet, including the domain name system and IP addressing. Domains include those tiny suffixes at the end of Internet addresses, like .com and .org; Internet Protocol addresses are the numerical sequences assigned to devices in a network.

Foreign governments had complained about the U.S. oversight, maintained through contracts with ICANN.

Yet the Obama administration has faced stiff resistance to a hand-off for months from vocal critics on Capitol Hill and in the tech community. One concern is that, in the void left by America's transfer of oversight, other nations that don't share the United States' commitment to free speech and expression could make a grab at Internet influence.

On Wednesday, Republican Texas Sen. Cruz and Republican Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy introduced legislation to prevent the transfer of functions related to the Internet Domain Name System unless specifically authorized by Congress.

The Protecting Internet Freedom Act also aims to ensure that the U.S. maintains sole ownership of the .gov and .mil top-level domains.

Commissioner says fraud from Obamaphone program approaching $500 million

By Rudy Takala | Washington Examiner | June 8, 2016

The federal subsidy known as the "Obamaphone" or "Obamanet" program could be losing nearly $500 million to fraud annually, according to a top Republican on the Federal Communications Commission.

Commissioner Ajit Pai made the accusation Wednesday in letter to the Universal Service Administrative Company, referring to the FCC's Universal Service Fund, which provides a monthly $9.95 subsidy for telecom service to low-income consumers.

The subsidy is limited to one per "independent economic household," or IEH, but telecom companies have the ability to override that restriction if applicants check a box stating they represent a separate household, even if they have the same address.

The Universal Service Administrative Company is a nonprofit organization designated by the FCC to administer the fund.

Pai wrote that data obtained by the FCC last month revealed carriers had enrolled nearly 4.3 million subscribers using the IEH override process between October 2014-April 2016, or 35.5 percent of total subscribers for the period. "It is alarming that over one-third of subscribers — costing taxpayers almost half a billion dollars a year — were registered through an IEH override.

"Just one year of service for these apparent duplicates costs taxpayers $476 million," added Pai, who now is asking the Universal Service Administrative Corporation for answers to several questions.

They include a list of any investigations or audits into the apparent fraud that USAC has conducted, and details about any process the company has in place to ensure that consumers who self-describe as being part of a separate household are being truthful.

"Given the hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds apparently lost to unscrupulous behavior in the Lifeline program, I hope you will agree that USAC's paramount task must be to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse from the Lifeline program," Pai wrote.

The program was originally established to help low-income consumers in rural areas obtain access to 911 services. It was expanded to include cellular devices in more recent years, and expanded in March to include Internet service.

Americans and Money

By Bill O'Reilly | billoreilly.com | May 24, 2016

Americans and money - That is the subject of this evening's Talking Points Memo.

There is no question that economic issues will be foremost in the upcoming presidential election. That's why Hillary Clinton's decision not to debate Bernie Sanders on Fox News is a major mistake for her. Sanders, as you know, wants to blow up capitalism because he says it's a corrupt system. The Vermont senator admires socialism whereby the government calls the shots in the private marketplace.

A debate with Sanders on Fox News would give Secretary Clinton a major opportunity to smash that theory to stick up for capitalism and perhaps persuade some voters she is not an ardent leftist. But again, Mrs. Clinton has refused the debate even though she said this back in 2008:

CLINTON: Honestly, I just believe this is the most important job in the world. It’s the toughest job in the world. You should be willing to campaign for every vote. You should be willing to debate anytime, anywhere.

Now on to you. A new poll by the Associated Press says that two thirds of American adults would have difficulty coming up with money to cover a one thousand dollar emergency expense.

75% of Americans making less than $50,000 dollars a year say they would have trouble with that.

67% of those making between $50-100,000 say the same thing.

Even for the country's wealthiest citizens households making more than $100,000 a year, 38% say they would have difficulty coming up with a thousand bucks to pay an emergency expense. Stunning.

And it all goes back to the change in how Americans view money.

In 1965 the poverty rate was 17% in America. In 2014, nearly 50 years later, the poverty rate was 15%. Obviously not a big improvement.

But here's the key - 50 years ago, personal disposable income, money you have on hand to spend, was just $14,000 dollars. In 2015 it was $38,000 dollars. A vast improvement in spending power.

The problem is that we spend it all. We don't save. We're not frugal. We want immediate gratification.

Alleged war criminal worked for TSA at Dulles Airport

By Andrea McCarren | USA Today | June 3, 2016

DULLES, Va. — An alleged Somali war criminal is on leave from his job at Dulles International Airport in Virginia after a CNN investigation discovered him working for the Transportation Security Administration there.

Yusuf Abdi Ali was dubbed Colonel Tukeh in the Somalian army, known for his violent acts during that country’s civil war.

Ali has been the subject of an investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation since 1992, when journalists discovered him working in Toronto as a security guard.

During the Somali Civil War, which began in 1991, Ali was commander of a region of Somalia where unspeakable violence unfolded. Tens of thousands of men, women and children were killed there by government forces.

The name Colonel Tukeh, which means crow, was a reference to his sharp features.

According to CNN, Ali is accused of terrorizing the Isaaq people. The actions included mass executions and burning villages, CNN reported.

Canada deported Ali, who eventually made it to the United States. After a series of security jobs, he ended up working for TSA as an unarmed security guard at Dulles International Airport.

Government contractor Master Security hired Ali and confirmed this week he’s now on administrative leave. His access to the airport has been withdrawn.

Master Security confirmed Ali passed a criminal background check by the FBI and a security threat assessment by the TSA.

According to ABC News, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which runs Dulles airport, said in a statement: "We have verified that all of these processes were followed and approved in this instance."

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Ali was trained in the United States in 1986, as part of a Pentagon program for foreign military officers.

Feds spend nearly $20,000 to settle every refugee

By Paul Bedard | Washington Examiner | June 8, 2016

Federal taxpayers are on the hook for nearly $20,000 just to settle each refugee and asylum seeker, who are then immediately eligible for cash welfare, food stamps, housing and medical aid, according to a new report on the "refugee industry."

The report provided federal budget figures showing that the government spends $19,884 on each refugee the U.S. takes in.

And that number is set to jump if President Obama gets his way and brings in an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees in this year.

The report from the Negative Population Growth Inc. said that the U.S. is currently accepting about 95,000 refugees and asylees. That is in addition to the over 500,000 legal and illegal immigrants coming to the U.S.

It focused on the industry created to accept the $1.8 billion in federal support to help refugees settle and sign up for further cash awards from Uncle Sam. The refugee agencies get a small portion, or about $1,875 per refugee they help. The rest goes to the United Nations, which helps to determine eligible refugees, and state agencies.

The State Department spends about $1.28 billion, and Health and Human Services another $609 million.

3rd time a charm? San Francisco to try yet again to give illegal immigrants voting rights

By Malia Zimmerman | FoxNews.com | June 13, 2016

After two failed bids to grant voting rights to illegal immigrants, some San Francisco officials believe they have found the man who can make it happen: Donald Trump.

A proposed charter amendment drafted by Board of Supervisors member Eric Mar would give illegal immigrants with kids in the public school system the right to vote in school elections. Voters have rejected two previous ballot proposals, but Mar is betting on anti-Trump sentiment to carry the pro-illegal immigrant proposal if he can get it on the November ballot.

“With Donald Trump’s racist and anti-immigrant sentiments, there is a reaction from many of us who are disgusted by those politics," Mar said. "I think that’s going to ensure there is strong Latino turnout as well as other immigrant turnout.”

A key promise in Trump's campaign for the Republican nomination for president has been to build a wall on the Mexican border. This week, Trump claimed a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit against Trump University wouldn’t be impartial because he is of Mexican heritage.

Mar staffers confirmed the measure will go before the rules committee within weeks, and could then be presented to the full board of supervisors. If a majority support it, the charter amendment will be on the ballot Nov. 8 when the city and nation votes for president.

“The time is right for San Francisco to make history, to pave the way for immigrant parents to have a say in the policy decisions that impact their child’s education and who gets to sit on the Board of Education,” Mar said in a written statement.

In 2004, voters narrowly rejected the same proposal. A similar measure, introduced by California Assemblymember David Chiu, D-San Francisco, failed in 2010 with just 46 percent of the vote.

Chiu believes Trump's presence on the ballot, and the fact that one of every three children in the system is now the child of an immigrant parent could make the third time a charm.

Hillary Clinton wavers on Second Amendment right to bear arms

By Callum Borchers | The Washington Post | June 5, 2016

Hillary Clinton declined to say Sunday whether she believes in a constitutional right to bear arms, possibly opening the door to a fresh round of attacks from Donald Trump, who has already accused the likely Democratic presidential nominee of wanting to "abolish" the Second Amendment.

In an interview on ABC's "This Week," Clinton deflected twice when asked whether she agrees with the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Second Amendment. The court ruled in 2008 that the Constitution affords private citizens the right to keep firearms in their homes and that such possession need not be connected to military service.

The wording of the Second Amendment has long made the extent of gun ownership rights a point of contention:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Questioned by George Stephanopoulos about her view of the amendment, Clinton talked about a "nuanced reading" and emphasized her belief in the rights of local, state and federal governments to regulate gun ownership. Stephanopoulos, formerly a top aide to President Bill Clinton, wasn't satisfied by the response.

"That's not what I asked," he replied.

Clinton then discussed the right to own a gun as a hypothetical. "If it is a constitutional right," she began her next answer, "then it - like every other constitutional right - is subject to reasonable regulations."

Socialism for the Uninformed

By Thomas Sewell  |  National Review  |  May 31, 2016

Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.

While throngs of young people are cheering loudly for avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, socialism has turned oil-rich Venezuela into a place where there are shortages of everything from toilet paper to beer, where electricity keeps shutting down, and where there are long lines of people hoping to get food, people complaining that they cannot feed their families.

With national income going down, and prices going up under triple-digit inflation in Venezuela, these complaints are by no means frivolous. But it is doubtful if the young people cheering for Bernie Sanders have even heard of such things, whether in Venezuela or in other countries around the world that have turned their economies over to politicians and bureaucrats to run.

The anti-capitalist policies in Venezuela have worked so well that the number of companies in Venezuela is now a fraction of what it once was. That should certainly reduce capitalist “exploitation,” shouldn’t it?

But people who attribute income inequality to capitalists’ exploiting workers, as Karl Marx claimed, never seem to get around to testing that belief against facts — such as the fact that none of the Marxist regimes around the world has ever had as high a standard of living for working people as there is in many capitalist countries.

Facts are seldom allowed to contaminate the beautiful vision of the Left. What matters to the true believers are the ringing slogans, endlessly repeated.

When Senator Sanders cries, “The system is rigged!” no one asks, “Just what specifically does that mean?” or “What facts do you have to back that up?”

In 2015, the 400 richest people in the world had net losses of $19 billion. If they had rigged the system, surely they could have rigged it better than that.

But the very idea of subjecting their pet notions to the test of hard facts will probably not even occur to those who are cheering for socialism and for other bright ideas of the political Left.

Secret Text in Senate Bill Would Give FBI Warrantless Access to Email Records

By Jenna McLaughlin | theintercept.com | May 26, 2016

A provision snuck into the still-secret text of the Senate’s annual intelligence authorization would give the FBI the ability to demand individuals’ email data and possibly web-surfing history from their service providers without a warrant and in complete secrecy.

If passed, the change would expand the reach of the FBI’s already highly controversial national security letters. The FBI is currently allowed to get certain types of information with NSLs — most commonly, information about the name, address, and call data associated with a phone number or details about a bank account.

Since a 2008 Justice Department legal opinion, the FBI has not been allowed to use NSLs to demand “electronic communication transactional records,” such as email subject lines and other metadata, or URLs visited.

The spy bill passed the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, with the provision in it. The lone no vote came from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who wrote in a statement that one of the bill’s provisions “would allow any FBI field office to demand email records without a court order, a major expansion of federal surveillance powers.”

Wyden did not disclose exactly what the provision would allow, but his spokesperson suggested it might go beyond email records to things like web-surfing histories and other information about online behavior. “Senator Wyden is concerned it could be read that way,” Keith Chu said.

It’s unclear how or when the provision was added, although Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., — the committee’s chairman — and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., have both offered bills in the past that would address what the FBI calls a gap and privacy advocates consider a serious threat to civil liberties.

“At this point, it should go without saying that the information the FBI wants to include in the statue is extremely revealing — URLs, for example, may reveal the content of a website that users have visited, their location, and so on,” Andrew Crocker, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in an email to The Intercept.

“And it’s particularly sneaky because this bill is debated behind closed doors,” Robyn Greene, policy counsel at the Open Technology Institute, said in an interview.

Socialism for the Uninformed

By Thomas Sowell | nationalreview.com | May 31, 2016

Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.

While throngs of young people are cheering loudly for avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, socialism has turned oil-rich Venezuela into a place where there are shortages of everything from toilet paper to beer, where electricity keeps shutting down, and where there are long lines of people hoping to get food, people complaining that they cannot feed their families.

With national income going down, and prices going up under triple-digit inflation in Venezuela, these complaints are by no means frivolous. But it is doubtful if the young people cheering for Bernie Sanders have even heard of such things, whether in Venezuela or in other countries around the world that have turned their economies over to politicians and bureaucrats to run.

The anti-capitalist policies in Venezuela have worked so well that the number of companies in Venezuela is now a fraction of what it once was. That should certainly reduce capitalist “exploitation,” shouldn’t it?

But people who attribute income inequality to capitalists’ exploiting workers, as Karl Marx claimed, never seem to get around to testing that belief against facts — such as the fact that none of the Marxist regimes around the world has ever had as high a standard of living for working people as there is in many capitalist countries.

Facts are seldom allowed to contaminate the beautiful vision of the Left. What matters to the true believers are the ringing slogans, endlessly repeated.

Intruders breach US airport fences every 10 days, report says

By Associated Press | FoxNews.com | May 26, 2016

Under pressure to prevent people from sneaking onto runways and planes at major U.S. airports, authorities are cracking down not on the intruders who slip through perimeter gates or jump over fences, but on the release of information about the breaches.

A year after an Associated Press investigation first revealed persistent problems with airports' outer defenses, breaches remain as frequent as ever about once every 10 days — despite some investments to fortify the nation's airfields. As Americans wait in ever-longer security screening lines inside terminals, new documents show dozens more incidents happening outside perimeters than airports have disclosed.

At the same time, leaders at some airports and the U.S. Transportation Security Administration are saying some of the 345 incidents AP found shouldn't count as security breaches, even when intruders got deep into secure areas.

Was it a perimeter security breach in March 2015 when a woman walked past a vehicle exit gate at San Francisco International Airport and onto the tarmac, where she tried to flag down a jet for a trip home to Guatemala? No it was not, said the airport and TSA officials, who also tried to suppress information about the case.

After discussing intrusions openly at first, officials at several airports and the TSA started withholding details, arguing the release could expose vulnerabilities.

Following a two-year legal struggle with the TSA, AP has now used newly released information to create the most comprehensive public tally of perimeter security breaches. The 345 incidents took place at 31 airports that handle three-quarters of U.S. passenger travel. And that's an undercount, because several airports refused to provide complete information.

The count shows that an intruder broke through the security surrounding one of those airports on average every 13 days from the beginning of 2004 through mid-February; starting in 2012, the average has been every 9.5 days. Many intruders scaled barbed wire-topped fences or walked past vehicle checkpoints. Others crashed cars into chain link and concrete barriers.

Government spending billions to keep antique computer systems running

By Associated Press | Fox News Politics | May 26, 2016

WASHINGTON – The government is squandering its technology budget maintaining museum-ready computer systems in critical areas from nuclear weapons to Social Security. They're still using floppy disks at the Pentagon.

In a report released Wednesday, nonpartisan congressional investigators found that about three-fourths of the $80 billion budget goes to keep aging technology running, and the increasing cost is shortchanging modernization.

The White House has been pushing to replace workhorse systems that date back more than 50 years in some cases. But the government is expected to spend $7 billion less on modernization in 2017 than in 2010, said the Government Accountability Office.

"Clearly, there are billions wasted," GAO information technology expert David Powner told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at a hearing.

Although lawmakers of both parties say they are frustrated, it's unclear whether Congress will act. Part of the problem is finding money to invest in a transition to new systems at agencies across the government.

Among the vintage computing platforms highlighted in the report:

The GOP Establishment Has Learned Nothing From Its Failure

By Kurt Schlichter | Townhall.com | May 19, 2016

You would think that after the complete repudiation of the mainstream GOP establishment by its own voters that it might do some soul-searching. You would think that it might ask itself what it did wrong to facilitate the rise of Donald Trump. And you might also believe in unicorns.

No, instead of learning the lessons from 2016 that might help it avoid pain in the future, the establishment has chosen to learn different lessons, lessons that – shockingly – reinforce the same pre-existing notions that got us into this mess in the first place.

Who in the Republican establishment has stood up and said, “Hey, you know, the base really doesn't want millions of illegal aliens flooding into this country, so we need to stop trying to make amnesty happen.” Is there anyone who doesn’t think we’d have Marco Rubio as our nominee today if he hadn’t decided to ignore the voters and cozy up to Chuck Schumer?

Who in the Republican establishment has stood up and said, “Gee, maybe all these trade deals are great for the giant corporations who write us checks, but our base is made up largely of people who see themselves getting a raw deal.” Don’t fool yourself – Donald’s Trump’s resonance has less to do with him being a reality TV star than with his addressing the economic issues the Chamber of Commerce groupies hand-waved away. Dismissing him as some idiot box novelty bedazzling the proles with his glittering glamour is super-convenient – you both get to feel superior while avoiding having to consider the possibility that you might have to change.

And who in the Republican establishment has stood up and said, “Gosh, maybe we should actually do what we promised our voters we’d do when they sent us to Washington.” Remember that stuff about defunding Obamacare? You didn’t defund Obamacare. And when you get annoyed at your voters for expecting you to do what you promise to do – “But everyone here in Washington knew we didn’t mean it!” – that annoys your voters even more.

The result? About 80% of Republicans supported an outsider, a Trump or a Cruz or a Carson – anyone but one of the squishes you trotted out. Jeb Bush – are you kidding me? This is a guy who supports amnesty, supports Common Core, and hung a medal around Hillary’s wrinkly wattle. And you establishment types seriously thought, “Well, he sounds like the perfect successor to Presidents McCain and Romney!”

House votes to restrict Confederate flag in national cemeteries

By Cristina Marcos | TheHill.com \ May 19, 2016

The House approved a Democratic proposal on Thursday to limit the display of the Confederate flag in national cemeteries.

The amendment to a spending bill for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and military construction projects passed 265-159. A total of 158 Republicans opposed the amendment from Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), while 84 Republicans joined all but one Democrat in supporting it.

Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), a centrist who is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, was the only Democrat to vote against the amendment. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) voted "present."

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) expressed support for allowing the vote despite opposition from a majority of his conference.

"Last year it stopped the appropriations process in its tracks," he told reporters at a Capitol news conference after the vote.

"What changed is we have to get through these things, and if we're going to have open rules and appropriations, which we have, which is regular order, people are going to have to take tough votes.

And I think people are acknowledging this — this is the kind of conversation we've had all along with our members, which is tough votes happen in open rules.

"People have to get used to that fact. That's the way regular order works," he added. "People realize the last thing we should do is derail our own appropriations process."

Shortly after midnight on Thursday, Huffman offered his amendment to prohibit the large-scale display of the Confederate flag in cemeteries run by the VA, such as flying the banner over mass graves. It would, however, still allow families to place small Confederate flags on individual graves on Memorial Day and Confederate Memorial Day.

Kerry slams Trump's wall, tells grads to prepare for 'borderless world'

By Pete Kasperowicz | the Washington Examiner | May 6, 2014

Secretary of State John Kerry took a shot at Donald Trump during his Friday commencement speech to Northeastern University graduates, by saying no wall is big enough to keep dangerous terrorists out of the United States.

"Many of you were in elementary school when you learned the toughest lesson of all on 9/11," he said in his speech at Boston Garden. "There are no walls big enough to stop people from anywhere, tens of thousands of miles away, who are determined to take their own lives while they target others."

"So I think that everything that we've lived and learn tells us that we will never come out on top if we accept advice from sound-bite salesmen and carnival barkers who pretend the most powerful country on Earth can remain great by looking inward," Kerry added. "And hiding behind walls at a time that technology has made that impossible to do and unwise to even attempt."

Kerry didn't mention Trump by name, but Trump has repeatedly called for a wall on the southern U.S. border, and many Democrats, and some Republicans, have taken to calling him a carnival barker.

Kerry also seemed to dismiss the importance of national borders, and said technology has reshaped the world into one that the U.S. must engage at the risk of being left behind. He said Trump and others who want to look inward are making a mistake, even in the face of rising tension and violence in the world.

"For some people, that is all they need simply to climb under the sheets, close their eyes and push the world away," Kerry said. "And shockingly, we even see this attitude from some who think they ought to be entrusted with the job of managing international affairs."

"The future demands from us something more than a nostalgia for some rose-tinted version of the past that did not really exist in any case," he said. "You're about to graduate into a complex and borderless world."

Simple Patriotism Trumps Ideology

"Then Mr. Trump comes and in his statements radiate the idea that he’s not at all interested in ideology, only in making America great again—through border security and tough trade policy, etc. He’s saying he’s on America’s side, period."

By Peggy Noonan | Wall Street Journal | April 28, 2016

The wind is at Donald Trump’s back, and it’s the kind that doesn’t lessen but build. Last week he won the New York primary with an astounding 60% of the vote to John Kasich’s 25% and Ted Cruz’s 15%. This week he swept the five-state Northeast regional primaries with numbers that neared or surpassed the New York results—54% in Maryland, 57% in Pennsylvania, 58% in Connecticut, 61% in Delaware and 64% in Rhode Island. He beat Mr. Kasich in Greenwich, Conn., the affluent enclave of the old moderate Republicanism. Amazingly, he carried every county in all five states, and every county in New York except Manhattan. With 10 million votes, Mr. Trump is on track to become the biggest primary vote-getter in GOP history. He did well with varied demographic groups, old and young, college graduates, rich and not.

This is the kind of political momentum that tends to grow. A political saying attributed to Haley Barbour is that in politics this is the dynamic: Good gets better and bad gets worse. Very smart analysts and reporters have been translating all these victories into delegate counts, which of course is the key question. But as I look at where we are I think: Get your mind off 1,237; get your mind on the wind at Donald Trump’s back. After all the missteps and embarrassments of the past few months, his support is building.

“I consider myself the presumptive nominee,” Mr. Trump said in his victory remarks. He is.