Displaying the most recent of 91396 posts written by

Ruth King

POLITICS Comments turned off

FBI Investigating whether Hillary Shared Secret Passwords with Aides for Access to Classified Material By Debra Heine

By on March 4th, 2016

In another exclusive for Fox News, intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge reports that the FBI is investigating whether Hillary Clinton shared computer passwords with her closest aides to allow sensitive intelligence to “jump the gap” between the classified systems and Clinton’s unsecured homebrew server. The government forbids sending or storing classified information outside secure, government-controlled channels, and has prosecuted employees for violations.

An intelligence source familiar with the Clinton probe told Fox News that “if [Clinton] was allowing other people to use her passwords, that is a big problem.” The sharing of passwords is strictly prohibited in the Foreign Service Officers Manual.

Such passwords are required to access each State Department network. This includes the network for highly classified intelligence — known as SCI or Sensitive Compartmented Information — and the unclassified system, known as SBU or Sensitive But Unclassified, according to former State Department employees.

According to Herridge, there are several potential ways classified information could have gotten onto Clinton’s server:

Reading intelligence reports or briefings, and then summarizing the findings in emails sent on Clinton’s unsecured personal server.
Accessing the classified intelligence computer network, and then lifting sections by typing them verbatim into a device such as an iPad or BlackBerry.
Taking pictures of a computer screen to capture the intelligence.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Trump Gives Another Hint About Abandoning Supporters on All Things Immigration By Stephen Kruiser

By on March 4th, 2016

Last week, I pointed out that Donald Trump is a bit too comfortable with standard Democrat talking points regarding illegal immigration.

In Thursday’s debate, he tip-toed to the left a little more.
Republican front-runner Donald Trump said Thursday he is softening his stance on visas for highly-skilled workers.

“I’m changing. We need highly-skilled people in this country,” Trump said during the Fox News Republican debate in Detroit. “If we can’t do it, we will get them in.”

Trump’s stance toward awarding H1-B visas is different from the one he takes on his campaign website, which argues that more visas for highly-skilled foreigners would “decimate American workers.”

“One of the biggest problems we have is people go to the best colleges … as soon as they’re finished, they get shoved out. They want to stay in this country,” Trump said at the debate. “They want to stay here desperately. They’re not able to stay here. For that purpose, we absolutely have to be able to keep the brainpower in this country.”

Trump said he was now in favor of the H1B-visa program – despite what his website still says.

“So you are abandoning the position on your website?” Fox News debate moderator Megyn Kelly asked.

“I’m changing it and I’m softening the position because we have to have talented people in this country,” Trump said.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

It Ain’t Even Close to Over By Joe Herring

By on March 4th, 2016

With Super Tuesday receding in the rearview mirror, it is prudent to turn our attention to the road ahead. This isn’t an ordinary election year – at least not in the fashion we have come to know in the post-WWII era – where primaries and caucuses easily winnow the field of candidates without upending the process itself.

This view, however, is a relatively recent phenomenon. For a far longer period, the nominating convention was much more consequential than the state events that preceded it. Yes, primaries and caucuses were held, but the real decisions were made behind the scenes, at the convention, where alliances were struck and deals were made to coalesce support behind the strongest (or best connected) candidate. Ever heard the phrase “smoky backroom deals”?

The states choose the candidate to whom their delegates (delegates to the nominating convention) will be pledged for the first floor vote. Typically, by the time of the convention, a candidate has amassed enough delegates to win the nomination on the first vote. However, if no single candidate has enough pledged delegates to claim the nomination on the first vote, all delegates are released from their obligations and can vote however they choose in each subsequent vote.

Here’s where the deals are made. Here’s where second- and third-place candidates jockey for position (cabinet posts, ambassadorships, etc.) in return for urging their pledged delegates to support someone else.

It is this moment where the frontrunner is naked and exposed, vulnerable in the extreme, and it is this moment where a popular but politically naïve or poorly organized candidate can see his presumed nomination dissipate like so much smoke.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

The Netanyahu Legacy vs. Obama Legacy By Jim Pettit

By on March 4th, 2016

U.S.-Israeli relations reached a low point one year ago yesterday as the White House scolded Congress over allowing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak directly to the American people through an address to a joint session. Nevertheless, from the well of the U.S. House of Representatives last March, the Prime Minister delivered his speech about the perils of the Iran nuclear deal, and now a recent poll suggests the message was received.

A Gallup poll released last month finds 30% of Americans approve, while 57% disapprove of the Iran nuclear deal. Along party lines, the difference is far more drastic, as a meager 9% of Republicans approve of the agreement compared to a slight majority of 51% of Democrats. Also telling is that only 30% of Independents support it. Gallup concludes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s disapproval may have helped “shape the sour national mood on this issue.”

Yes it is sour; a word defined in this context as “harsh in spirit, or temper.” But it was not Mr. Netanyahu who was sour, because at the beginning of his remarks the Prime Minister recounted longstanding ties between the two countries, citing specific instances where President Obama assisted Israel in recent years. It was U.S. politicians who shaped the sour national mood.

President Obama, who refused to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu while he was in Washington at that crucial moment, also made sure the world knew he wasn’t planning on watching the speech, dismissing it altogether afterwards. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she was “moved to tears” during Netanyahu’s address because the speech took place without the Obama Administration’s blessing, and nearly 60 Democrats in Congress refused to attend.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Muslims and the Maypole By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on March 4th, 2016

Since 2006, when Bruce Bawer wrote his illuminating book entitled While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, the situation has worsened tenfold. Not surprisingly, when his book was first published, Bawer was accused of Islamophobia. Yet as early as 1998, Bawer noted the widening divisions between the liberal and democratic policies of the Netherlands and the fact that “Dutch Muslims kept that society at arm’s length, despising its freedoms[.]”

In the late 1990s, Bawer and his male partner decided to live in Amsterdam because it seemed to him to be “the one place [he’d] ever been where homophobia really seemed to have disappeared.” He felt that the Netherlands had moved from the “foolishness of [American] fundamentalism,” and although he loved America “not because of its wealth or power, but because of its culture and values,” he wanted to really know what it meant to be an American by living elsewhere as a means of contrast.

Once in the Netherlands, Bawer began to appreciate “American virtues” that he’d always taken for granted – most importantly a “belief in the future.” He found that while he enjoyed the culture of Europe, he also saw that much of Western Europe was “bound up with a stifling conformity, a discomfort with excellence and an overt disapproval of those who strove too visibly to better their lot” – in short, “mediocrity.” He saw that France and Germany were “plagued by low growth and rising unemployment, a direct consequence of welfare state policies.” He also realized that Europeans “had been fed a zero-sum understanding of economics.”

In addition, he perceived that “fundamentalist Muslims were on the march and their numbers and power were large and growing rapidly – and the ultimate objective was far more than a ban on abortion or gay marriage.” A sea change was overtaking Europe that involved female genital mutilation, viewing women as property, and subsidies from the Dutch state as well as from Islamic governments that taught hatred of Jews, Israel, America, and the West. The very countries that these Muslims were living in were to be scorned, since they were meant to be replaced by a Muslim caliphate governed according to sharia law.

But surely, Bawer believed, this could not be permitted. He naively presumed that such contempt for pluralism, open-mindedness, democracy, and sexual equality would not be tolerated. Instead, political correctness, spineless leaders, and Islamic intimidation worked their magic so that in 1998, “Europeans were clueless” as to what was occurring under their very noses.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EU’s Tusk Tells Economic Migrants to Stop Coming to Europe European council president says countries cannot act as transit states any more By Nektaria Stamouli in Athens and Emre Peker in Istanbul

By on March 4th, 2016

European Council President Donald Tusk appealed to economic migrants to stop coming to Europe, saying they shouldn’t try to risk their lives at the hands of smugglers as the path into the European Union constricts.

He was meeting on Thursday with leaders in Greece and Turkey, two countries that are playing a key role in the bloc’s efforts to stem the tide of migrants.

“I want to appeal to all potential illegal economic migrants wherever you are from: Do not come to Europe. Do not believe the smugglers. Do not risk your lives and your money,” Mr. Tusk said after meeting with the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Athens. “It is all for nothing. Greece or any other European country will no longer be a transit country.”

Balkan countries and Austria are restricting their borders, moves that have left huge numbers stuck at the Greece-Macedonia border. In the Greek town of Idomeni, more than 10,000 people are stranded at a camp built for 1,500 and more than 30,000 are stuck throughout the country.

Mr. Tsipras said his country would continue to try to help migrants, just not at any cost.

“Greece will not leave anyone helpless,” he said. Greece would “create centers for temporary hospitality,” but the country won’t become “a warehouse of souls.”

Greek authorities are trying to reduce the crush at the border with Macedonia and prepare new camps further south with the aim to distribute those stranded all over Greece. But many migrants say they fear they may be detained indefinitely in the new camps. CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Trump a ‘Unifier’? Not Quite His favorable rating even within the Republican Party keeps dropping. Kimberley Strassel

By on March 4th, 2016

The Donald Trump that showed up at his Super Tuesday news conference was a different Donald Trump than we’ve seen before. We’ve witnessed angry Trump, flustered Trump, (at least once) gracious Trump, and exuberant Trump. This was presidential Trump. Kind of.

The presidential bit was Mr. Trump’s pivot toward the general election, and his promise that he is a “unifier” who is creating “a much bigger party” that can’t be “beat.” He then reverted to true Trump style to warn that if Republican power players succeeded in taking him out, they’d also take out his new loyalists, meaning the party would “lose everything” in November.

Both claims are worthy of some analysis. GOP turnout, no question, is epic. More than 8.5 million people turned out for Republican races on Super Tuesday, a stunning 81% higher than the 4.7 million in 2012. (The other side, by contrast, saw turnout fall 32% from 2008, the last contested Democratic primary.) Vermont aside, every single Republican primary and caucus has drawn record numbers.

Let’s stipulate that Mr. Trump is behind some of this. Both surveys and anecdotal evidence show that he is pulling new people to the polls. Yet let’s also stipulate that so, too, are the other Republican candidates. The reality is that a lot of Americans are rebelling against the Obama presidency. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich are inspiring their own droves. CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

The HillaryFiles Continue With More Israel Trash Talking From Blumenthal : Lori Lowenthal Marcus

By on March 4th, 2016

Blumenthal repeatedly told Clinton the U.S. must punish Israel for “wrongdoings.” Clinton’s response? ‘Pls print.’

On May 31, 2010, there was an historic confrontation between the Israeli Navy and six ships sailing from Turkey, seeking to blow up the internationally-recognized legal naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Starting the very morning of the incident, Sidney Blumenthal began emailing Hillary Clinton, haranguing her to treat this grave tragedy as a whip with which to lash Israel.

Blumenthal also sent screeds written by his unhinged son Max, who insisted that the entire incident was orchestrated in advance by a bloodthirsty Israel as a means to blow up the peace process.

But this confrontation, known as the Mavi Marmara raid – after the lead Turkish ship – or as the Gaza Flotilla built to a crescendo when the IHH-terrorists aboard the ship ignored repeated warnings to change course and steer towards the Israeli coastal town of Ashdod, just north of Gaza. When the ships refused to heed the directions, elite IDF naval commandos were lowered from helicopters by ropes, onto the ship’s deck.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Immunity for Witness in Hillary E-Mails Caper — So Is There a Grand Jury? We don’t know for sure, but signs suggest that the answer is probably yes. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on March 4th, 2016

The Washington Post reports that Bryan Pagliano, the former State Department staffer who may have set up and maintained Hillary Clinton’s “homebrew” server, has been “granted immunity” by the Justice Department. The Post describes its source as a single, senior law-enforcement official — though I assume the paper corroborated its source before running with the story (which Politico elaborates on).

This important development raises a question we have considered before: Is there an active grand-jury investigation of Mrs. Clinton and her aides over their mishandling of classified information? The question is critical because (with exceptions not relevant to this discussion) the convening of a grand jury is a necessary precondition to the filing of a felony indictment. And the answer to the question is . . . probably, though not necessarily.

The question arises because the Clinton camp continues to downplay what is actually a criminal investigation of Mrs. Clinton and other suspects. The Hillary campaign insists it is a mere “security inquiry,” focused only on the physical homebrew server. The FBI, of course, is in the criminal-investigation business. And as I pointed out when the New York Times reported that Mrs. Clinton was not the “subject” of an investigation, it makes no sense to talk about “subjects” (or “targets”) of an investigation unless there is a grand jury — the grand-jury investigation is what a “subject” is the subject of.

RELATED: Hillary’s E-Mail Recklessness Compromised Our National Security

Expressly relying on his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, Pagliano previously refused to testify before the House Benghazi Committee. Giving a witness immunity extinguishes that privilege, enabling the government to compel the witness’s testimony. There are two forms of witness immunity that commonly arise in federal criminal investigations: (1) the proffer agreement, which prosecutors and defense lawyers commonly call a “queen for a day” letter; and (2) statutory immunity.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

Hamas man killed as Gaza tunnel collapses

By on March 4th, 2016

Group blames Israel for cave-in, the seventh in recent months, amid redoubled efforts to dig across the border.

A tunnel being dug in Gaza under the aegis of the ruling Hamas group collapsed on Thursday, killing a member of the organization’s military wing, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas said.

The dead man was named as Muhammad Musa al Astal from Khan Younis.

The tunnel caved in near the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades confirmed. It was the latest in a spate of such collapses. Only five days ago, another tunnel caved in near the Zeitoun neighborhood in the eastern part of the Strip, injuring five members of Hamas’s military wing.

Members of Hamas accused Israel of collapsing the tunnel, saying they had seen soldiers on the Gaza border using liquid explosives and “causing small earthquakes” to bring down tunnels dug by the group.

The past two months have seen seven tunnels collapse, most of them in the Khan Younis area, and two in Zeitoun.

Around a month ago, the 23-year-old nephew of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar was killed in a tunnel accident.

Just before that, a tunnel collapsed in the area of Jabalia, in the north of the Palestinian enclave, after heavy rain and floods, killing seven excavators and injuring others.

Continue reading →