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.)