RUTHFULLY YOURS

The first Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday evening was an opportunity for the unknown challengers to Hillary Clinton to make an impression, and it’s fair to say they did. The four men on stage showed they lack the ability and will to take her on.

The most important moment of the debate came when CNN’s Anderson Cooper gingerly raised the issue of her private emails as Secretary of State. Bernie Sanders, who is leading in the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, replied by giving her a whitewash. Americans “are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,” he declared. The Democratic crowd loved it, and so did Mrs. Clinton, who shook Mr. Sanders’s hand in gratitude after having ducked Mr. Cooper’s question by dismissing the whole issue as a Republican attack.

Only Lincoln Chafee dared to suggest that her “credibility” might be an issue for voters, but he apologized for doing even that. If Democrats aren’t willing to raise the main reason that Mrs. Clinton is losing in head-to-head polls against most Republicans—her penchant for ethical corner-cutting and deceit—then they are essentially putting their nomination into a Clinton blind trust.

She registered her average-folks credentials by reminding listeners—twice—that she isn’t just the spouse of a former president but also the granddaughter of a factory worker. She had endorsed a higher minimum wage, higher taxes on the wealthy and more equality for gays and lesbians, and subtly reminded the nation television audience that if she were elected president, “fathers can say to their daughters, ‘You too can grow up to be president.’”

And then, when she encountered what may be her greatest current campaign vulnerability, which is the continuing controversy over her use of a private server for government work while secretary of state, she didn’t have to bail herself out. That instead was done for her by her principal foe for the nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who declared, to moderator Anderson Cooper and the audience, “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails…Enough of the emails. Let’s talk about the real issues.”

Right now, newly elected members of Congress — meaning anyone serving a first, second, or even third term — is powerless. Members lacking seniority are told to shut up and vote the way the Speaker dictates or be punished. Those who dare refuse are dumped from committees and threatened with a primary opponent (funded by the Speaker and his clique) at the next election. As Former Speaker Newt Gingrich observes, “in free societies, it’s very difficult to try to govern by punishment.” But that’s Boehner’s modus operandi.

The best way for liberals to advance their various causes would be to take a pledge to live the rather progressive lives that they advocate. Here are a modest Ten Commandments to lend them credibility in the eyes of the American people.

1. Climate Change. Perhaps the greatest carbon emission sin is jet travel. On an average London-to-New York flight each passenger emits well over 1 ton of C02 emissions, an indulgence that can nullify a year of recycling of other less-privileged Americans. All supporters of government-mandated reductions in fossil-fuel emissions could at least take the following pledge. “I will fly across the Atlantic no more than once every five years.” Private jet travel — the worst of the mortal carbon sins — of course would be banned [1], at least until we can transition into solar and wind aviation. Al Gore in the middle seat of Row 44, fighting to put his oversized carry-on into the overhead compartment, would be a symbolic act worth far more [2] than all his heated and well-paid rhetoric.
2. Schools. Most liberals oppose charter schools, support teachers’ unions, and encourage generous immigration, legal and illegal. To further diversity in the schools, create easier integration, and to nullify the insidiousness of white privilege, each liberal should pledge, “I will put at least one of my children in an inner-city public school, or in a school where the white enrollment is in a minority.” What better way to acculturate a young elite to the new world around him? Could not the Obama children attend a D.C. public school?
3. Guns. Gun control is an iconic liberal issue, specifically limitations on handguns and concealed weapons. Too many guns in too many places supposedly encourage violent crime. Again, what better way to make a statement than by having all liberal celebrities, business people, and politicians take the following pledge: “I will pledge that no one in my security detail will ever carry a concealed firearm of any sort”? Surely the pope, of all people, did not need armed guards [3], with lethal concealed weapons, surrounding his pope-mobile?

Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson urged Congress to pass legislation guaranteeing “religious rights” for all Americans in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage.

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, said the court “essentially” changed the definition of marriage, which has worked well for “thousands of years.”

“The legislative branch, however, I would have thought would have been already prepared with legislation in case the Supreme Court came down with that decision, to make sure we preserve the rights, the religious rights of everybody. Not everybody agrees with their new definition of marriage, and it’s a conviction and a religious conviction,” Carson said at the National Press Club.

“They need to make sure that they protect people’s religious rights. They bring Johnny-Come-Lately, but I call upon Congress to do that now, because there are people who are losing their jobs, their livelihood and it’s not fair. That’s not what America was supposed to be.”

Carson, who wrote a new book with his wife, Candy, titled, A More Perfect Union: What We the People can Do to Reclaim our Constitutional Liberties [2], said the legislative branch “acts more like a peanut gallery” instead of acting on issues such as religious freedom.

“They sort of sit there and watch what the others do, sometimes complain about it, but really don’t offer any resistance, because they’re afraid somebody might blame them. News flash, they’re going to get blamed anyway. So what they really ought to be thinking about is, how do they get involved and be more proactive?” he said.

Demographic, geographic and ideological shifts have remade the look of Republicans and Democrats.

Why can’t the two main political parties behave the way they’re supposed to?

Republicans, members of the party that is supposed to stand for orderly succession, are falling for presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson and won’t fall for the logical choices waiting in line to lead their majority in the House of Representatives. Democrats refuse to coronate Hillary Clinton according to plan, and instead flock to Bernie Sanders rallies.

Actually, there is an explanation for this kind of aberrant behavior. The two parties aren’t what they used to be, and what many of us persist in imagining them to be. Their composition—demographically, geographically and ideologically—has changed significantly in the past generation. Seen in this light, the behavior we’re seeing right now isn’t so aberrational at all.

The Republican Party has grown more conservative, more downscale economically, older and more Southern in character. In that light, its revolt against what is perceived as a Wall Street-led establishment and the polite, small-c conservatism that was personified by Gerald Ford is only natural.
The Democratic Party has grown more liberal, younger, more urban and demographically diverse, with a bigger overlay of upscale activists from the two coasts. The moderate-to-conservative Democrats in Southern states who helped put Bill Clinton in the White House then aren’t available for Hillary Clinton now. Seen through that lens, the picture of college students streaming to hear Bernie Sanders makes more sense.

With Washington’s attention on the struggle by House Republicans to find a new Speaker, another story slipped by that will surely have long-run implications for the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Clinton has come under fire this year for choosing to withhold her work emails from the State Department, and the public, for as many as five years after she began her employment as secretary of state. Clinton’s decision to conduct all work on a private server, and to keep the contents of that server to herself for more than a year after leaving office, was undertaken out of a false sense of entitlement to privacy.

It not only kept the public in the dark as to her communications in office but it also placed sensitive and classified information within reach of hackers, because the server was not properly secured.

Just how much sensitive or classified information are we talking about? The full extent remains unknown, but some of it was very highly classified — “Top Secret” and “Sensitive Compartmentalized.” And this week, it emerged that the name of a top CIA contact in Libya was contained in one of the emails she chose to keep in her unsafe computer.
Sid Blumenthal, a former Clinton-era White House staffer whom President Obama had forbidden Clinton to hire at State, nevertheless sent her periodic email updates on foreign affairs. She appears to have taken these seriously, encouraging him to send them and at times even forwarding his communiques to staff.

NEW YORK – The Clinton Foundation scandals form a centerpiece of investigative journalist Ed Klein’s new book on Hillary Clinton, “Unlikeable: The Problem with Hillary,” providing additional support to the series of articles published by WND reporting Wall Street analyst and investor Charles Ortel’s research alleging the Clinton Foundation is a “vast criminal conspiracy.”

Klein discloses that an FBI investigation regarding Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state also includes a probe into conflicts of interest in the Clinton Foundation’s acceptance of foreign donations while she was secretary of state.

Klein believes Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett were behind Obama’s decision to launch the FBI investigation.

“Both Michelle and Val thought that the FBI and the Justice Department should be ordered by the president to investigate the Clintons’ conflict of interest,” Klein wrote. “Valerie argued that Hillary had deliberately lied to the president about not taking foreign donations for the foundation while she was secretary of state, and that she had ignored warnings about the use of her private email account.”