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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

FBI Gave Clinton Aide/Lawyer Cheryl Mills Immunity Deal in Clinton Email Probe By Debra Heine

A top Hillary Clinton aide and two other staff members were granted immunity deals in exchange for their cooperation in the now-closed FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) told the Associated Press on Friday.

Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that Clinton’s former chief of staff and counselor Cheryl Mills gave federal investigators access to her laptop only on the condition that the findings couldn’t be used against her.

“This is beyond explanation,” the exasperated congressman said in a statement. “The FBI was handing out immunity agreements like candy. I’ve lost confidence in this investigation and I question the genuine effort in which it was carried out. Immunity deals should not be a requirement for cooperating with the FBI.”

This arrangement brings the total number of publicly known immunity deals given in the Clinton case to five. With no prosecutions.

Chaffetz told the AP, “No wonder they couldn’t prosecute a case.”

Via Politico:

Chaffetz says the two others granted immunity were John Bentel, then-director of the State Department’s Office of Information Resources Management, and Clinton aide Heather Samuelson. Two other people were previously identified as receiving immunity deals.

Dangerous Plans Hatched by Obama and UN for Refugee Resettlement President Obama’s going away gift to the American people: an open door to more refugees from terrorist-infested countries. Joseph Klein

President Obama’s State Department finally admitted the obvious regarding ISIS terrorists embedding themselves in the refugee flow from the Middle East. “I wouldn’t debate the fact that there’s the potential for ISIS terrorists to try to insert themselves, and we see that in some of the refugee camps in Jordan and in Turkey, where they try to insert themselves into the population,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said on “Fox and Friends” on September 21st. Then Kirby tried to assure Americans that the “vetting process, while not perfect, is a very, very stringent.”

The Obama administration cannot even properly handle immigrants due for deportation who are already in the country. How can we possibly believe that it can reliably vet individuals from Syria and other terrorist infested countries where comprehensive accurate data regarding such individuals are sorely lacking?

For example, according to a report released on September 19th by the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general, hundreds of immigrants were improperly granted citizenship despite missing fingerprint records. They were from “special interest countries” – countries of particular concern for national security reasons.

Nevertheless, President Obama is making the admission of more refugees and migrants his going away gift to the American people. He has announced that the United States will welcome even more refugees from around the world, increasing the number of people the U.S. receives by 40 percent over the next two years, to 100,000 in 2017. He also wants to admit more Syrian refugees in particular, which Hillary Clinton has already announced she would do if elected president.

Protest Thugs and the Real Evil in Charlotte Nothing says “family man” like assaulting women and children. Daniel Greenfield

Keith Lamont Scott was scum.

He had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in two different states and convicted of assault in three states. He had been hit with “assault with intent to kill” charges in the 90s. His record of virtue included “assault on a child under 12” and “assault on a female.”

The media spin; “Family and neighbors call Scott a quiet ‘family man.’”

Nothing says “quiet” like “assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill” and nothing says “family man” like assaulting women and children.

Keith Lamont Scott, the latest martyr of Black Lives Matter and its media propaganda corps, was shot while waving a gun around. He had spent 7 years in jail for “aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.”

This vicious monster’s career of crime ended when he was shot by Brentley Vinson, an African-American police officer, protecting himself from the latest rampage by this “quiet family man.”

Brentley Vinson is everything that Scott isn’t. The son of a police officer, Brentley dreamed of following in his father’s footsteps. He used to organize his football team’s bible studies and mentored younger players. Former teammates describe him as a “great guy” with “good morals.” His former coach calls him a “natural leader” and says that, “We need more Brent Vinsons… in our communities.”

Except that Obama, Black Lives Matter, the media, the NAACP and everyone else going after this bright and decent African-American officer has decided that what we really need are more Keith Lamont Scotts. And the streets of Charlotte are full of “Scotts” throwing rocks at police, assaulting reporters and wrecking everything in sight in marches that are as “peaceful” as Scott was a “quiet family man.”

That’s what Hillary Clinton wanted when she tweeted that, “We have two names to add to a long list of African-Americans killed by police officers. It’s unbearable, and it needs to become intolerable.”

Muslim mayor of London to Americans: Get used to terrorism By Deborah C. Tyler

While visiting New York City on 9/21, London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan evidenced mild chagrin in saying terrorist attacks should be seen as “part and parcel of living in a big city.” He added, “It is a reality, I’m afraid, that London, New York, and other major cities around the world have got to be prepared for these sorts of things.”

Mayor Khan makes it clear that preparing for the sort of thing that causes streets to run with the blood of dozens of innocents should not involve a military response. He advocates police staying “in touch with communities” and “exchanging ideas and best practices.”

Two aspects of conditioned helplessness are being inflicted on the citizens of Europe and the USA, numbing and incapacitating them enough to surrender their national sovereignty and traditional ways of life to the deepening darkness of globalism. One aspect is the increasingly laughable harangue by left-wing politicians that patriotic people are racio/phobio/blah-blah-blahists suffering cases of blah-blah-blahism. Americans receive a new mental diagnosis every week, and they all indicate something very, very bad about us. President Obama doesn’t pass up a chance to insult the American people, preferably in front of an international audience. Hillary brought a bit of literary flair to her insults with the “basket of deplorables” remark. Shoulder to shoulder with the other prominent destroyers of great nation-states and proud developers of lawless tribal territories, Mayor Khan didn’t miss the chance to denigrate the tens of millions of Americans who support Donald Trump. Khan’s racist-shmacist in-your-face-ist shot was that the Trump movement is “driven by scapegoating.”

But there is a deeper, more psychologically crippling aspect to the mass psychology of globalist takeover then the vilification of patriots, and Khan has chosen to spearhead it. In his original learned helplessness experiments (now widely considered unethical), psychologist Martin Seligman electrically shocked dogs, which were divided into groups that could or could not do something to stop the shocks. The dogs for whom the shocks were inescapable developed what Seligman called learned helplessness. The most helpless dogs simply gave up, lay down, and whimpered.

The New York Bomber Was Not a Lone Wolf America’s latest terror attack shows why its preferred metaphor to describe terrorism is usually a contradiction in terms.By Matthew Levitt

It was no surprise that in the first hours after the New York and New Jersey bombing attacks, the culprit was widely suggested to be a “lone wolf.” The term, used to describe an individual inspired by others but acting on his or her own, has become the counterterrorism metaphor-of-choice in the age of the Islamic State.

It’s time, however, to put the lone-wolf metaphor, and its associated counterterrorism analysis, out to pasture.

It’s time, however, to put the lone-wolf metaphor, and its associated counterterrorism analysis, out to pasture. According to Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, we now live in a world where terrorism is “carried out by those who live among us in the homeland and self-radicalize, inspired by terrorist propaganda on the internet.”

But if that diagnosis isn’t wrong, it is incomplete. The New York bomber may have been “self-radicalized,” but it’s very unlikely he was merely “inspired” by terrorist groups.

There’s no doubt the Islamic State has been exceedingly explicit, and calculating, in its calls for lone-wolf attacks. In an online e-book titled How to Survive in the West: A Mujahid Guide (2015) the group argued: “With less attacks in the West being group (networked) attacks and an increasing amount of lone-wolf attacks, it will be more difficult for intelligence agencies to stop an increasing amount of violence and chaos from spreading in the West.” The group’s call to action has been amplified, first, by its talent at promoting it through social media (the Mujahid guide was distributed widely on Twitter); and second, the authority lent to the group by virtue of its participation in the Syrian war and its purported re-establishment of the caliphate.

Clearly, this has had some effect. In recent years, the pool of potential homegrown terrorists has expanded: Today there are open investigations on about 1,000 potential homegrown violent extremists in all 50 states. And yet, not all of America’s radicalized individuals have been motivated by the Islamic State’s appeals for lone wolves. Ahmad Khan Rahani, the suspect believed to have been behind the bombings in New York and New Jersey, reportedly was inspired by the U.S.-born al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — who was killed in 2011 by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen, but whose radical preaching lives on in online videos. He traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, areas where al Qaeda and the Taliban are more prevalent than the Islamic State. A note apparently left by the bomber referred to Awlaki and the Boston Marathon bombers, who were also inspired by Awlaki.

Obama Insults Blacks — Again Black American have not fared well in the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency. By Deroy Murdock

‘I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy, if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election,” a particularly hopped-up-looking President Obama shouted to the Congressional Black Caucus on Saturday night. “You wanna gimme a good sendoff? Go vote!”

First, just imagine the national burning and looting that would erupt, starting inside America’s newsrooms, if Donald J. Trump said he would consider it a “personal insult” if white people did not vote for him.

Second, how insulting!

Obama speaks about black people as if we were his servants, and he our master.

Black people owe Obama nothing. Au contraire, he owes black people plenty. Black voters turned out and backed him by 95 percent in 2008, according to the Roper Center. And then, in 2012, black support plunged — all the way down to 93 percent.

And in exchange for this blind loyalty, black folks got what from Obama? Very little. The promised land that many expected never arrived. In most cities, black neighborhoods still tend to be the go-to places for economic hardship, educational disadvantage, and crime.

Obama’s economic performance among black Americans has been highly mixed, at best, with recent bright spots overshadowed by years of abundant bad news. Since he became president, according to the latest-available data, here is how black Americans have fared on selected economic indicators:

Unemployment rate: Down 36.2 percent

Labor-force-participation rate: Down 2.1 percent

Proportion below the poverty line: Down 6.6 percent

Real median household income: Up 2.5 percent

Food Stamp participants: Up 58.2 percent

Home ownership: Down 9.5 percent

(For further details, please click here.)

The Sorry State of American Debate The upcoming face-off between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will just be a TV spectacle. Real debate takes place in governing (or at least used to) By Bryan Garsten

The first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is only days away. What can we hope for? A revealing gaffe, a zinger that hits home, a flash of true spontaneity or a glimpse of the real character of the candidates—these seem to be the most anyone is hoping for, and more than we are likely to get.

Debates, at their very best, are the diamonds of democratic politics—crystal clear in argument, sparkling with wit, free from the discolorations of petty self-interest and shaped to focus light on the great issues of the day. But diamonds are rare, and no one is expecting a jewel on Monday night. The problem isn’t only that our candidates are lackluster, tempting as that explanation may be. Nor does the fault lie mainly in the quality of the questions or the skill of the moderator. The forum itself is flawed. How many ways are there to say, “Vote for me”? That line will always be more advertisement than argument.

The first televised presidential debate, starring John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, aired 56 years ago on Sept. 26, 1960. People who listened on the radio thought Nixon won, but those who watched on TV thought Kennedy won, and the election was so close that the TV factor might have made a difference. But should it have? Did viewers learn something from the grainy, flickering black and white images on their tiny TVs that was really relevant to the question of which policy or person was best for the country?

The Kennedy-Nixon debate garnered mixed reviews, including severe criticism from establishment figures. The journalist Edward R. Murrow called it “a puny contribution, capsuled, homogenized, perhaps dangerous in its future implication.” The historian Henry Steele Commager responded with an essay entitled, “Washington Would Have Lost a TV Debate.” “The present formula of TV debate,” he remarked, “is designed to corrupt the public judgment and, eventually, the whole political process. The American Presidency is too great an office to be subjected to the indignity of this technique.” Though the televised debates returned and eventually became a regular part of the campaign, it is hard to think of even one that stands out as a model of informed and informative discourse.

During most campaign cycles, someone will write an essay comparing the disappointing pettiness of modern debates to the great Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, a series of daylong exchanges in various towns around Illinois during the contest between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas for a Senate seat. (Lincoln lost.) Whereas in modern televised debates, a candidate often has just 90 seconds for an answer, those debates gave each speaker 90 minutes for a single response. Audiences stood all day in the late summer sun to listen to intricate arguments about matters of national importance, such as the extension of slavery into the western territories. Our attention spans on the couch at home don’t compare very well.

Clinton’s 65% Killer Death Tax The Democrat heads further toward Bernie Sanders Nirvana.

Hillary Clinton says she wants the votes of Republicans who are troubled by Donald Trump, but you wouldn’t know it from her continued left turns on the economy. On Thursday she decided that her proposal to raise the death tax to 45% from 40% isn’t enough and endorsed even higher levies that would apply to thousands of estates.

Though she defeated Bernie Sanders in the primary, she is adopting the socialist’s death-tax rate structure. She’d tax all estates over $10 million at 50%, apply a 55% rate on estates over $50 million, and go to 65% on assets above $500 million. The 65% rate would be the highest since 1981 and is another example of how she is repudiating the more moderate policies of her husband and the Democrats of the 1990s.

The left claims only the super-wealthy will pay high rates, but the Sanders plan that Mrs. Clinton is copying did not index exemption levels for inflation. One reason a bipartisan movement emerged to reform the death tax in the 1990s was because the then 55% rate engulfed ever more taxpayers over time. Mrs. Clinton would also end the “step-up in basis” on stock valuations for many filers, triggering big capital gains taxes for a much broader population.

She also knows most of her rich friends will set up foundations, as she and Bill Clinton have, to shelter most of their riches from the estate tax. As Americans have learned, these supposed charities can be terrific vehicles for employing political operatives while they wait for Chelsea to run for the Senate.

George H.W. Bush and Hillary’s Fake Conservatives Bush gave us the Clintons. And now the Clintons may end the Bush legacy. Daniel Greenfield see note please

The author is absolutely right…..by naming the Saudis best American friend as vice president, Ronald Reagan paved the way for George Bush (1) and his buddy James Baker to destroy the real Reagan/Goldwater legacy…..even as they took spurious credit for “ending the cold war” as son Jeb stated…..rsk

Ronald Reagan’s worst mistake was named George H.W. Bush. Bush was the price that Reagan paid for the support of fake conservatives.

And the price ended up being his legacy.

Reagan had never felt good about naming Bush as his second, worrying about “turning the country over to him.” And he was right to worry. Once in office, Bush disavowed Reagan’s economic policies, which he had always hated, got deep into bed with the Saudis with disastrous results, and lost a winnable election to Bill Clinton. Reagan had handed Bush victory and Bush had brought Republicans utter defeat.

Bush was the ultimate political insider, with shaky popular appeal, but impeccable political connections. Loyal to party, rather than principles, he was trusted by the establishment in sensitive positions. His final task was to undermine the Reagan Revolution. It’s unsurprising to hear that he will vote for Hillary.

George H.W. Bush ran against Reagan as a left-leaning Republican. In Congress he had backed a plethora of destructive leftist programs. On his way to the White House, he was for abortion and the ERA and the FHA. Described by his wife as a social liberal and a fiscal conservative, he failed to live up to even that low bar in the White House.

Past party labels, George H.W. Bush has a great deal in common with Hillary Clinton. Both of them emphasize social welfare in domestic policy and Muslim appeasement in foreign policy. They both view the role of government as that of patron rather than representative. They see political leaders as wiser than the people they serve. They despise “religious fundamentalism” of the non-Islamic kind, hate Israel, cheer Planned Parenthood and want to fight as many wars for the Saudis as they can manage.

Bush is not unique in that regard. The latest Bush incarnation, Jeb, ran on that same noblesse oblige of an unwanted elite lecturing taxpayers on their obligations to the Democratic Party’s voter base. Bush I had no interest in what the people in his district thought of his social welfare votes at their expense. But this philanthropic contempt runs through much of the fake conservative class which incessantly lectures conservatives on the virtues of illegal immigration, freeing drug dealers and social welfare.

Weaponized Immigration Suicide is not an act of compassion. Michael Cutler

The United States is at war with international terrorists, who, as the 9/11 Commission noted, must first enter the United States in order to attack it.

Consider the preface of the official government report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel: Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States” that begins with the following paragraph:

It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.

Furthermore, although much has been made of the lack of integrity with respect to the U.S./Mexican border, the 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel observed that most terrorists had entered the United States through international airports and then committed visa fraud and immigration benefit fraud to embed themselves in the country.

Page 54 of the report contained this excerpt under the title “3.2 Terrorist Travel Tactics by Plot,” which makes these issues crystal clear:

Although there is evidence that some land and sea border entries (of terrorists) without inspection occurred, these conspirators mainly subverted the legal entry system by entering at airports.

In doing so, they relied on a wide variety of fraudulent documents, on aliases, and on government corruption. Because terrorist operations were not suicide missions in the early to mid-1990s, once in the United States terrorists and their supporters tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to remain here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud, by claiming political asylum, and by marrying Americans. Many of these tactics would remain largely unchanged and undetected throughout the 1990s and up to the 9/11 attack.

Thus, abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity. It would remain largely unknown, since no agency of the United States government analyzed terrorist travel patterns until after 9/11. This lack of attention meant that critical opportunities to disrupt terrorist travel and, therefore, deadly terrorist operations were missed.