RUTHFULLY YOURS

There are conflicting reports this week on the question of whether the FBI is currently investigating possible corruption within the Clinton Foundation. CNN’s report that the DOJ quashed the FBI’s request to open an investigation has been contradicted by The Daily Caller, which is reporting that there is a joint FBI-U.S. Attorney probe currently being conducted. The FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s office and the FBI director himself have all declined to comment on the possibility of an ongoing investigation.
Report: DOJ Refused FBI’s Request to Investigate Clinton Foundation

CNN reported yesterday that there were discussions earlier this year between the FBI and DOJ about opening a public corruption case into the foundation, but the DOJ pushed back on the idea.

At the time, three field offices were in agreement an investigation should be launched after the FBI received notification from a bank of suspicious activity from a foreigner who had donated to the Clinton Foundation, according to the official.

FBI officials wanted to investigate whether there was a criminal conflict of interest with the State Department and the Clinton Foundation during Clinton’s tenure. The Department of Justice had looked into allegations surrounding the foundation a year earlier after the release of the controversial book “Clinton Cash,” but found them to be unsubstantiated and there was insufficient evidence to open a case.

As a result, DOJ officials pushed back against opening a case during the meeting earlier this year. Some also expressed concern the request seemed more political than substantive, especially given the timing of it coinciding with the investigation into the private email server and Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The FBI investigation into Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s ties to a Clinton Foundation donor was also reportedly discussed during the meeting, and that probe was allowed to continue.

It has been a dereliction of duty on the part of the media not to probe into Khan’s political connections.

As Gold Star parents, Khizr Khan and his wife, Ghazala Khan, were deserving of every respect from Americans for the loss of their son, Captain Humayun Khan (US Army, 1st Infantry Division), killed while on a tour of duty in Iraq in June 2004. But the controversy they ignited by appearing on stage at the 2016 DNC in Philadelphia was entirely of their making. The result should be Americans learning more about Khizr Khan that otherwise would remain unexamined.

Humayun Khan was an American patriot who happened to be a Muslim by birth. There are, and have been, many Muslims who serve in the United States armed forces as proud and dedicated Americans. There has also been countless number of Muslims of various ethnicities at different times and circumstances who bore arms and sacrificed alongside Americans in wars waged for the defense of freedom and democracy. In World War II, for instance, there were over two million Indians and among them many were Muslims who voluntarily joined British India’s armed forces and fought against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the North African, European and Asian theatres of that immense struggle against fascist totalitarianism. And during the Cold War decades a majority of Muslim countries were allies of the West against the Soviet Union and communism.

At a time in contemporary Muslim history when growing numbers of Muslims, especially those from the greater Middle East and North Africa, are waging an asymmetrical conflict ignited by Islamists (or radical extremist Muslims) against the West, Khizr Khan was presented with a rare opportunity as a Gold Star parent to speak about how gravely misguided, even perverted, are those among Muslims who have declared jihad (holy war) of Islam against the West. His son had made the highest sacrifice any individual can be called upon to make in defense of freedom and individual rights as an American soldier. The sacrifice of his son bestowed upon Khizr Khan the credibility to draw upon the best of both American culture and Muslim tradition in putting to rest the false notion that Islam as a religion calls upon Muslims to make war on the ideals that America represents; and to point out that while the conflict since 9/11 between a segment of the world’s Muslim population and the West is undeniable, yet this is an old conflict periodically renewed between freedom and totalitarianism in which present day Islamists are freedom’s most recent enemy.

But Khizr Khan also knew that the opportunity he was given to speak to a vast audience from the DNC stage came with a price tag. He had to know that Hillary’s campaign team was using him cynically to denounce Donald Trump as a bigot, and that he was chosen as a Gold Star parent to entrap the Republican nominee in a public furor that might further inflate Trump’s negative approval rating in the polls. Khizr Khan had a choice, however, to make between being a shill for the Democratic Party and remaining true to the memory of his soldier son, buried in the Arlington National Cemetery as an American patriot and not as a Democrat or a Republican. Khizr Khan chose to be a shill and in making that choice he should have known he was trading the public respect reserved for Gold Star parents to be above criticism for public scrutiny of his past and present.

Just about the only thing most Americans know about Benedict Arnold is that he was a traitor, the turncoat par excellence of America’s founding. Today, his name is synonymous with “traitor.”

Beyond that, we tend to know as little about Arnold as we do about the rest of the American Revolution. To the extent that it is still taught in schools, the War of Independence is presented as a rather tidy affair. The Founders issued the Declaration of Independence, George Washington and his army spent a hard winter at Valley Forge and then crossed the Delaware, there was an exchange of musket fire and cannonry at Yorktown, and that was that. A new nation was born: Happy Fourth of July.

The reality is of course more complicated — and vastly more compelling. The American Revolution was anything but tidy, and the war was unlike any previous military conflict. It was a world war that lasted more than eight years, spanned two oceans and three continents, involved four European powers, and saw the largest deployment of ships and troops ever assembled by the British Empire. From it emerged a wholly new form of government, proclaimed by a fledgling and fractious republic clinging to the edge of a vast unsettled wilderness.

In the middle of all this was Benedict Arnold, a war hero who earned the title “American Hannibal” for his daring but unsuccessful assault on Quebec early in the war. He went on to distinguish himself as a patriot and valiant battlefield commander willing to risk everything for victory. In the end, of course, he convinced himself that the real enemy wasn’t Britain but his fellow Americans, who were tearing the country apart. As far as Arnold was concerned, he betrayed his country to save it from itself.

No contemporary author is better suited to reintroduce readers to this high drama than Nathaniel Philbrick. Author of the award-winning books Mayflower and In the Heart of the Sea, Philbrick has a knack for cinematic depictions and dramatic pacing, and he uses these to great effect in his new book.

The Revolutionary War, writes Philbrick in his new book Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution, wasn’t just a rebellion against Great Britain; it was also a civil war “so widespread and destructive that an entire continent was seeded with the dark inevitability of even more devastating cataclysms to come.” Along the ragged edge of British-occupied New York, “where neither side held sway, neighbor preyed upon neighbor in a swirling cat-and-dog fight that transformed large swaths of the Hudson River Valley, Long Island, and New Jersey into lawless wastelands.” It was the same along stretches of the New England coast, where Viking-style raids by alternating boatloads of patriots and loyalists harassed towns and villages.

First they came after the oil producers, then manufacturers, and now they’re coming for the cows. Having mandated emissions reductions from fossil fuels, California’s relentless progressives are seeking to curb the natural gas emanating from dairy farms.

The California Air Resources Board has pumped out regulations to cut the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and the board worries that its climate agenda could be jeopardized by natural phenomena. To wit, cow manure and “enteric fermentation” (flatulence), which account for half of the state’s methane emissions. According to the board, methane is a “short-lived climate pollutant” with “an outsized impact on climate change in the near term.” Democratic lawmakers want to mandate a 40% reduction in methane by 2030, and the board is pondering ways to do it.

“If dairy farms in California were to manage manure in a way to further reduce methane emissions,” the board explains, “a gallon of California milk might be the least GHG intensive in the world.” And the most expensive. Many California dairy farms have already been converted into nut farms, which are more economical amid the state’s high regulatory costs.

The board suggests that dairy farms purchase technology to capture methane and then sell the biogas to consumers. Yet the regulators acknowledge that most ideas involve environmental trade-offs and are not cost-effective without substantial government subsidies and regulatory credits that can be sold to fossil-fuel producers.

For instance, “solid-scrape manure management may lead to air quality challenges.” Pasture management systems, which organic milk producers use, can eliminate methane emissions from anaerbobic decomposition of manure. But if implemented on large farms, such systems may raise “animal welfare concerns due to heat exposure.” Pasture production would also yield “higher enteric fermentation emissions per unit of milk.” Apparently, organic milk isn’t so sustainable after all.

Other brainstorms include breeding animals that belch less and testing “gut microbial interventions”—though no doubt Democrats will want to see if the anti-genetic-modification activists object. This all may be too much information for readers, but it shows that in their attempt to impose their climate religion there is no corner of the economy or life that progressives won’t try to control. CONTINUE AT SITE

Hillary Clinton admits she’s running to extend the Obama legacy, and so far she’s had a free ride in defending it. She hasn’t even had to explain the increasingly obvious failures of ObamaCare to deliver the affordable insurance that Democrats promised.

The Affordable Care Act is now rolling into its fourth year, and even liberals are starting to concede that the insurance exchanges are in distress and Congress may have to reopen the law. Premiums are high and soaring; insurers have booked multimillion-dollar losses and are terminating plans; and the customer pool is smaller, older and less healthy than the official projections.

The natural result is another round of rate shock for 2017. Insurers in 49 states have submitted their premium requests to regulators, and the average “enrollment-weighted” rate increase, which accounts for market share, is in the range of 18% to 23%. The Congressional Budget Office projected 8%.
Liberals call this evidence anecdotal and premature, and they’re right that bad anecdotes are easy to find: Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania, a model of the integrated care that ObamaCare attempts to promote, wants a 40% rate increase for its insurance arm. The other liberal claim is that insurance commissioners will approve rate increases somewhat smaller than the insurer requests (maybe) and that consumers can switch to cheaper plans (assuming any are left).

But consider New York, which last Friday became the second state to finalize rates for 2017. The 19.3% rate increase the insurers requested on average for the individual market came down to 16.6% after regulatory fly-specking. The New York political class is hailing this as a great victory, but overall health-care costs aren’t rising by near 16%, and middle-class incomes aren’t either.

Then there are such approved Empire State rates as high as 29.2% (Metro Plus and North Shore), 29% (UnitedHealthcare of New York) and even 89% (Crystal Run). And New York is one of the bright spots.

So is California, where 11 of the 12 health plans that sell coverage under the state’s ObamaCare’s rules turned a profit the last two years. Yet the state is now reporting a final average rate increase of 13.2%, up from 4.2% in 2015 and 4% in 2016. In states with is less competition, the exchanges are even worse off. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that as many as 664 U.S. counties (out of 3,007) may be served by only a single insurer in 2017, up from 225 in 2016.

A major problem is that more people are abusing the law’s lack of verification and undefined “special enrollment” periods. They wait to sign up until they need costly medical care like knee surgeries and then dump coverage again. CONTINUE AT SITE