RUTHFULLY YOURS

Hillary Clinton has said for more than a year that her use of a private email server as Secretary of State violated no federal rules and posed no security risk. Only the gullible believed that, and now everyone has proof of her deceptions in a scathing report from State Department Inspector General Steve Linick.

The report obtained by news outlets Wednesday is ostensibly an audit of the email practices of five secretaries of State. But the majority of the report, and the most withering criticism, focuses on Mrs. Clinton. The IG concludes that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee broke federal record-keeping rules, never received permission for her off-grid server, ignored security concerns raised by other officials, and employed a staff that flouted the rules with the same disdain she did.

“Secretary Clinton should have preserved any Federal records she created and received on her personal account by printing and filing those records with the related files in the Office of the Secretary,” says the report. “At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.”

State still has never received emails from her private account for the first six weeks after she became Secretary, and the IG notes that it found (by other means) business-related emails that Mrs. Clinton did not include among the emails she has turned over.

The report says she has also stonewalled requests to obtain her server. And “through her counsel, Secretary Clinton declined [the IG’s] request for an interview.” Former Secretaries Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and current Secretary John Kerry all sat for interviews. CONTINUE AT SITE

If you have not ever done so, I urge you to program into your next trip abroad a visit to an American military cemetery. There are quite a few in Europe, and some in Asia. You can find a list online.

These cemeteries are settings of an awesome serenity and beauty, immaculately kept by the American Battle Monuments Commission. As Americans, we must thank the architects who designed these settings and the workers who over the decades and to this day have kept them in their immaculate condition.

My wife, born in China and reared in Taiwan, and I, born in Germany and a longtime U.S. citizen, first visited the World War II cemeteries when our American-born children were young. We would tell them: Here rest some of the warriors who sacrificed their lives so that your parents and people in many parts of the world would be free from tyranny and could pursue their dreams in freedom. We made it clear to our children that this was not just a grown-up talk—that it was real and part of their proud heritage.

The lesson must have stuck. Last year our eldest child, now a fully grown man, urged me to come along to visit the battlegrounds in Germany, near the Belgian border, where U.S. troops fought so bravely and where so many of them—too many—met their early death.

This time we visited the large American cemetery near the Belgian town of Henri-Chapelle, about 20 miles west of the German city of Aachen. There rest the warriors who fell in the brutal, four-month-long battle of the Hürtgen Forest, followed by the Battle of the Bulge and the eventual push of American forces all the way to the Rhine River.

You can walk along the gravel paths of these cemeteries, and among the thousands of markers—crosses and Stars of David—beneath which the warriors rest. Pick a marker at random and adopt the soldier whose name is chiseled into that marker. Make him your father, or brother, or cousin, or a friend. Imagine him alive, and how you might have hugged him as he shipped out to the distant front. CONTINUE AT SITE

Today, nearly half a million veterans still wait to see a VA doctor.

So, we opened the books on the VA. Here’s just a sample of our findings:

The VA spent $1.7 million on ’employee engagement’ and other satisfaction surveys with Gallup (2010-2014). There is no indication these polls found, flagged or identified the most egregious scandal in VA history.

The VA paid $303 million in salaries to non-essential positions: Painters ($185 million), Interior Designers ($64 million), and Gardeners ($54 million). While veterans were dying, the VA managers were rewarding the efficiency of these positions with bonuses (2012-2015.)

$751.1 million spent on ‘household’ and ‘office’ furniture including furniture rental, draperies, curtains, carpeting, modification, repair and maintenance (2010-2015). Much of from luxury, upscale manufacturers.

While the veterans wait weeks to see a doctor, we found:

The VA lawyered up and added 175 attorneys.

Dramatically increased their spending on public relations (PR).

‘Reformed bonuses’ so millions of dollars continued to flow to many of the same employees who gamed-the-system during the scandal.

and much more…

Read our Forbes column, It’s Not Disney World – The VA Scandal Two Years Later.

This is the season of college Commencement speeches — an art form that has seldom been memorable, but has increasingly become toxic in recent times.

Two themes seem to dominate Commencement speeches. One is shameless self-advertising by people in government, or in related organizations supported by the taxpayers or donors, saying how nobler it is to be in “public service” than working in business or other “selfish” activities.

In other words, the message is that it is morally superior to be in organizations consuming output produced by others than to be in organizations which produce that output. Moreover, being morally one-up is where it’s at.

The second theme of many Commencement speakers, besides flattering themselves that they are in morally superior careers, is to flatter the graduates that they are now equipped to go out into the world as “leaders” who can prescribe how other people should live.

In other words, young people, who in most cases have never had either the sobering responsibility and experience of being self-supporting adults, are to tell other people — who have had that responsibility and that experience for years — how they should live their lives.

In so far as the graduates go into “public service” in government, whether as bureaucrats or as aides to politicians or judges, they are to help order other people around.

It might never occur to many Commencement speakers, or to their audiences, that what the speakers are suggesting is that inexperienced young graduates are to prescribe, or help to dictate, to vast numbers of other people who have the real world experience that the graduates themselves lack.

I’ve been fortunate to have had two professional careers, the first one in the courtroom as a trial lawyer and the second in journalism. I did not need the latter experience, though, to notice the stark difference between these two worlds.

When I prosecuted the “Blind Sheikh” (Omar Abdel Rahman) and the jihadist cell that bombed the World Trade Center and then plotted a simultaneous attack on several New York City landmarks, the organs of government that speak to the public through the media were making like irresponsible journalists. That is, they were eschewing facts and evidence, obsessively peddling a counterfactual narrative, to wit:

There is only one “true” Islam, and it is resolutely peaceful (indeed, being a “religion of peace” is apparently its only identifiable attribute). Therefore, the terrorist acts plotted and committed by a cabal of men who just happened to be Muslim had utterly nothing to do with Islam, notwithstanding the jihadists’ proclamations to the contrary.

By contrast, in the courtroom, criminal allegations cannot be proved absent convincing factual evidence — beyond a reasonable doubt — that unanimously persuades jurors of the suspects’ guilt.

Thus, though we prosecutors were formally part of the government, it was as if we were inhabiting a cocoon insulated from the fictional government narrative. Indeed, the judge repeatedly reminded the jurors of their oath to decide the case solely based on the facts proved and the controlling law, not bias, fear or favor — which was a 1990s way of saying “not narrative.”

The upshot of all this? No matter what “religion of peace” blather was coming out of Main Justice in Washington or the White House press apparatus, in our New York City federal courtroom a short distance from the Twin Towers, we were not only permitted but obliged as government attorneys to prove the truth:

(a) There are mainstream interpretations of Islam that endorse war against non-Muslims to establish Allah’s law (sharia);

(b) these are literalist interpretations that draw directly on Islamic scripture;

(c) the interpretations (Salafism, Wahhabism, Islamic supremacism — collectively, what we hopefully refer to as “radical” Islam) are urged on young Muslims (mostly men) by influential sharia scholars like the Blind Sheikh, whose powerful influence owes solely and only to their mastery of the doctrine;

(d) based on those incitements, these young men are radicalized into jihadism, plotting and committing acts of terrorism.

Those were the facts. Our evidence proved them incontestably. That is the only way we were able to convict jihadists — not only in my prosecution, but in case after terrorism case.

A 22-year-old Bronx, N.Y., resident was arrested Tuesday and accused of sympathizing with Islamic State, part of a continuing effort by the U.S. to catch the terrorist group’s supporters before they travel overseas or commit violence.

Sajmir Alimehmeti was charged by Manhattan federal prosecutors with providing material support to Islamic State and with passport fraud.

He is accused of facilitating the travel of an individual he believed was heading to Syria to fight for Islamic State. He allegedly gave the individual advice, downloaded encrypted apps onto the individual’s phone, helped purchase supplies and accompanied the individual to the airport. That individual turned out to be an undercover law-enforcement agent, one of four used in the case against Mr. Alimehmeti.

A lawyer for Mr. Alimehmeti hasn’t yet been identified.
Since early 2014, more than 80 individuals have been charged by the U.S. on similar allegations related to the terrorist group. They tend to be in their mid-20s.

The use of undercover agents and paid informants to catch Islamic State supporters has sparked criticism from defense lawyers, who say the government is luring young people into committing crimes. Officials say they target dangerous individuals who would have been predisposed to commit a crime and are careful not to entrap a suspect. CONTINUE AT SITE

From economist David Malpass’s statement to the House Financial Services Committee’s subcommittee on monetary policy and trade, May 17:

I think the Fed has been hurting growth and causing income inequality by misallocating capital to bond issuers. By constantly replenishing its giant long-maturity bond portfolio, it biases the credit system in favor of bond issuers at the expense of smaller borrowers, notably the small new businesses that are critical to U.S. dynamism. The Fed should change direction, including downsizing its balance sheet, reducing its $2.4 trillion in bank debt, reducing the interest rate it pays banks, and shortening the maturity of its $4.2 trillion bond portfolio. These steps would increase growth and income, especially for the middle class which has seen an unprecedented decline in real income during the recovery. . . .

Though I’m critical of Fed policy due to its negative impact on growth and median income, I want to make clear that I support the Fed as an institution. The problem is that Fed policies aren’t working. Its concept of its mission has grown way too large and is not sufficiently focused on maintaining a strong and stable dollar. It has created a huge balance sheet and regulatory apparatus that hurt growth, and it is allowing itself to house inappropriate executive branch functions such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The evidence keeps mounting: Six years after being signed into law, ObamaCare is a costly and unsustainable disaster.

Look at what has happened in the past month alone. A federal court ruled that the Obama administration violated the law by spending money on ObamaCare subsidies without an appropriation from Congress.

In Florida, 15 health insurers are seeking an average increase in premiums of 17.7% for 2017. The continued raiding of Medicare Advantage—ObamaCare was projected in 2012 to cut $156 billion from the program over a decade—hurts many seniors in my home state and nationwide.

The health law’s sweeping mandates continue to target faith-based organizations like the nuns of the Little Sisters of the Poor. These nuns remain tied up in litigation because they rightfully believe that God and the Constitution’s religious-freedom protections are higher authorities than President Obama and his administration’s unconstitutional and liberal agenda.

ObamaCare is also bringing out corporate America’s worst crony-capitalist impulses. The health-insurance lobby has teamed up with trial lawyers to sue the federal government—through individual lawsuits and a $5 billion class action—for not following through on a sweetheart bailout deal buried in the law. This provision of ObamaCare would have required taxpayers to bail out insurers for losing money on the health-care exchanges.

I was the first person in Congress to take action to stop these bailouts. In late 2013 I introduced legislation to repeal this provision entirely and later another bill to make this so-called “risk corridors” program “budget neutral.” My conservative colleagues and I sounded the alarm about the likelihood of a taxpayer-funded bailout of health insurers (and were mocked as Chicken Littles for it). But we built a coalition to stop the bailouts.

When it came time to pass a spending bill at the end of 2014, we succeeded in making it the law of the land that the ObamaCare bailout program could not cost taxpayers a single cent—which ended up saving taxpayers $2.5 billion. In December of last year, we came back and repeated the feat. Now I am urging leaders in both the House and Senate to make this a priority and stop the bailout a third time.

That the health-insurance companies are suing to try to get their bailout is disgusting. The law—not to mention corresponding legal opinions issued by the federal government—makes clear that Congress must appropriate any net spending by the risk-corridor program.

In fact, one reason it was important to make clear in the law that the risk-corridor program must be budget-neutral was to protect the federal government from this exact kind of lawsuit that insurers have now filed against it. Because payments are being made only using fees paid by the insurance companies, the program is fulfilling its statutory obligation. CONTINUE AT SITE