If Hillary’s Server Was ‘Blank,’ Why Was It Kept At A Data Center In New Jersey?

The new revelation that Hillary Clinton’s private server was made “blank” in June 2013 — but nonetheless stored at a data center in New Jersey — raises a slew of new questions about the former secretary of state’s handling of her emails.

The attorney for Platte River Networks, the Denver-based cybersecurity company Clinton hired shortly after leaving office to handle the server, says that she does not know why the hardware would have been stored in a New Jersey data center if it was “blank.”

“The server that was turned over to the FBI voluntarily yesterday to our knowledge has no information on it,” the attorney, Barbara Wells, told The Daily Caller in a brief phone interview.

On Wednesday, after Platte River Networks gave the server to the FBI, Wells told The Washington Post that the information from it “had been migrated over to a different server for purposes of transition” in June 2013.

“To my knowledge the data on the old server is not available now on any servers or devices in Platte River Network’s control,” Wells told the paper.

That revelation is significant because until now, most observers have assumed that Clinton wiped her server clean sometime after October, when the State Department sent a letter requesting that she hand over all of her emails. Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, informed the House Select Committee on Benghazi in late March that the server had been wiped clean.

But the new claim that the server has been useless for more than two years indicates that when Clinton finally did produce her emails in December — 55,000 pages worth — they were drawn from a different device.

Kendall recently gave the FBI three thumb drives that held Clinton’s emails, but Wells said she had no information on whether the data from Clinton’s old server was transferred directly to lawyer’s thumb drives. Neither the Clinton campaign nor Kendall responded to questions from TheDC.

Asked why the server would have been stored in New Jersey if it did not have any useful information on it, Wells said, “I have no information on that.”

Asked if Clinton or anyone associated with her campaign is still paying Platte River Networks for its services, Wells said, “I can’t comment on that.”

Clinton hired Platte River Networks to handle her server shortly after she left the State Department in Feb. 2013. Prior to that, the server resided in the basement of Clinton’s Chappaqua, N.Y. home. When Hillary Clinton was tapped to head the State Department, she hired one of her presidential campaign’s IT department staffers to beef up the system so she could use it in an unprecedented manner at the agency.

Via: Daily Caller

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EPA Contractor Behind CO Mine Spill Got $381 Million From Taxpayers

PHOTO: The Animas River flows through the center of Durango, Colo. on Aug. 7, 2015. Source: Brian Lewis/The Denver Post/Getty Images

The EPA may have been trying to hide the identity of the contracting company responsible for causing a major wastewater spill in southern Colorado, but the Wall Street Journal has revealed the company’s identity.

Environmental Restoration (ER) LLC, a Missouri-based firm, was the “contractor whose work caused a mine spill in Colorado that released an estimated 3 million gallons of toxic sludge into a major river system,” the WSJ was told by a source familiar with the matter. The paper also found government documents to corroborate what their source told them.

So far, the EPA has refused to publicly name the contracting company used to plug abandoned mines in southern Colorado, despite numerous attempts by The Daily Caller News Foundation and other media outlets to obtain the information. It’s unclear why the agency chose not to reveal the contractor’s name.

What is clear, however, is that ER has gotten $381 million in government contracts since October 2007, according to a WSJ review of data from USAspending.gov. About $364 million of that funding came from the EPA, but only $37 million was given to ER for work they had done in Colorado.

When contacted by phone, The DCNF had been informed ER’s offices had closed for the day. The EPA did not return a request for comment on the WSJ’s story revealing the identity of the agency’s contractor.

ER contractors reportedly caused a massive wastewater spill from the Gold King Mine in southern Colorado last week. EPA-supervised workers breached a debris dam while using heavy equipment and unleashed 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater into Cement Creek. The toxic plume eventually reached the Animas River where it’s been able to spread even further, forcing Colorado and New Mexico to declare a state of emergency.

The EPA has taken responsibility for the spill and has officials on the ground working with local officials to remedy the situation. Still, local officials and Native Americans are furious with the EPA over the spill, and have not ruled out legal action to make sure the agency remains accountable.

“No agency could be more upset about the incident happening, and more dedicated in doing our job to get this right,” EPA Chief Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a press conference in Durango, Colorado Wednesday. “We couldn’t be more sorry. Our mission is to protect human health and the environment. We will hold ourselves to a higher standard than anyone else.”

Via: Daily Caller

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The Daily Caller’s Official Rundown Of The Worst, Looniest, Most Leftist Professors In America

This mild summer is winding down. Professors across the fruited plain are preparing for another fall semester of spewing half-baked progressive ideologies at gullible undergrads.

It’s time, then, for The Daily Caller’s second annual, highly definitive list of the worst professors in America. All the professors on the first annual definitive list remain terrible, of course. But we won’t bore you with some rehash. (RELATED: Last Year’s List Of The Worst Professors In America)

Instead, here are a dozen professors from this past school year who stole the headlines for being the most leftist, goofy and downright absurd.

Former University of Memphis sociology professor Zandria Robinson came under scrutiny in July when tweets she tweeted revealed her beliefs that “whiteness” is “terror” and that the Confederate flag represents “capitalism.” Robinson, who took a job at Rhodes College this summer, also claimed that her very serious premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) might be triggered by “severe trauma from microaggressive whiteness.” Robinson set her Twitter account as private when the news broke about her radical opinions, but she has since made her account public again. She continues to comment on race and gender issues. (RELATED: ‘Whiteness’ Is ‘Terror’ Professor Lands At Fancypants College That’s 77 PERCENT WHITE)

In January, TheDC awarded Shimer College humanities professor Adam Kotsko the title of America’s Stupidest College Professor because he tweeted that the horrific terrorist attack on the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo was foreseeable because the writers spewed “hate speech.” He later apologized profusely when he realized that Charlie Hebdo was not some exclusively anti-Islam pamphlet. He begged Salondotcom to remove screenshots of his hilariously idiotic tweets. You’d think Kotsko would slink away from social media, embarrassed for life. But, no. In a now-deleted tweet from June 2015, Kotsko suggested that white people alive right now are complicit in slavery even though they obviously have no involvement in it and even if their ancestors were never involved in it. “I know it sucks having a racial identity that exists solely to legitimate the subordination and exploitation of other races. #whiteness,” he wrote.  (RELATED: White Professor Informs White People They Are All Currently ‘COMPLICIT IN’ Slavery)

Via: Daily Caller

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Mandatory Common Core tests in New York just happen to be full of corporate brand names

Across the state of New York, this year’s Common Core English tests have reportedly featured a slew of brand-name products including iPod, Barbie, Mug Root Beer and Life Savers. For Nike, the tests even conveniently included the shoe company’s ubiquitous slogan: “Just Do It.”

The brands – and apparently even some of their familiar trademark symbols – appeared in tests questions for students ranging from third to eighth grades, reports The Post-Standard of Syracuse.

Over one million students were required to take the tests.

Parents, teachers and school administrators have speculated that the kid-friendly brand names are a new form of product placement.

Education materials behemoth Pearson, which has a $32 million five-year contract to develop New York’s Common Core-related tests, has barred teachers and school officials from disclosing the contents of the tests.

Students and parents are not so barred, though, and many have complained.

“‘Why are they trying to sell me something during the test?'” Long Island mother Deborah Poppe quoted her son as saying, according to Fox News. “He’s bright enough to realize that it was almost like a commercial.”

Poppe said her eighth-grade son was talking about a question about a busboy who didn’t clean up a root beer spill. It wasn’t just any root beer, though. No sir! It was Mug Root Beer, a registered trademark of PepsiCo (current market cap: $129.7 billion).

Another question about the value of taking risks featured the now-hackneyed Nike slogan “Just Do It.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Judge: NY Teacher Exam Not Discriminatory Just Because Minorities Score Lower

A federal judge in New York has deigned to allow a teacher licensing exam which tests rudimentary academic skills and knowledge.

Judge Kimba M. Wood issued her ruling Friday, reports The New York Times.

In June, Wood had struck down another test of basic knowledge used by New York City to vet potential teachers. Wood concluded that the test illegally discriminated against racial minorities because members of racial minorities scored lower on it.

Members of racial minorities also score lower on the test Wood has allowed but, she reasoned, the low scores on the new test of basic knowledge are totally different than the low scores on the old test of basic knowledge.

Wood, a judge in the Southern District of New York, ruled that the two tests are different because the new one more accurately evaluates the skills needs for teaching successfully.

The teaching licensure exam Wood has allowed is called the Academic Literacy Skills Test (ALST). It focuses on reading and writing skills and is aligned with the national Common Core standards for English.

Education materials behemoth Pearson, which has a $32 million five-year contract to develop New York’s Common Core-related tests, developed the literacy skills test. (RELATED: Mandatory Common Core Tests In New York Just Happen To Be Full Of Corporate Brand Names)

Prospective teachers seeking certification in the state of New York must take the literacy test as well as three others.

The Academic Literacy Skills Test first appeared in the 2013-14 school year.

In education departments are universities, would-be black and Hispanic teachers have failed New York’s Academic Literacy Skills Test at a considerable clip. Just 41 percent of black teacher candidates passed the test on the first attempt. Just 46 percent of Hispanic teacher candidates passed on their first try.

The first-time pass rate for white teacher candidates on the test has been 64 percent.

Over 80 percent of America’s current teacher workforce is white.

In a court filing, former New York State deputy commissioner of education Ken Wagner asserted that the literacy test and the other three teacher licensing tests “ensure that each newly certified teacher entered the classroom with certain minimum knowledge, skills and abilities.”

New York State Education Department spokesman David Tompkins lauded Wood’s ruling.

“Our students need and deserve the best qualified teachers possible, and the ALST helps make sure they get those teachers,” Tompkins said, according to the Times.

Critics of testing academic skills as a way to license teachers argue that tests of basic literacy can only measure how well someone can speak and write.

“The question is, is that one of the criterion for determining who will be a good teacher?” Alfred S. Posamentier, former education dean at Mercy College in the swanky suburbs north of Manhattan, told the Times. “My sense is that the answer is no.”

Due to complaints from professors and officials in university education departments, soon-to-be teachers don’t actually need to pass the literacy exam until June 30, 2016. If they fail the literacy test, they can display their English language prowess through coursework.

At issue in Wood’s Friday ruling and her previous ruling is the concept of disparate racial impact. The basic rule when disparate racial impact occurs as the result of an employment test is that proponents of the test must show that the test assesses skills specifically necessary for the job.

Via: Daily Caller

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Dash Cam Footage Undermines Texas State Rep’s Claim He Was Treated ‘Like A Boy’ During Traffic Stop

A Texas state representative’s recent claim that he was mistreated by a sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop last month because of his race is coming under scrutiny after the release of dash cam video from the incident.

During a House committee hearing last week to discuss the recent arrest of Sandra Bland in Waller County, Texas, Democrat chairman Garnet Coleman shared a story about a recent encounter with police in which he said the officer treated him “like a boy.”

“He talked to me like I was a child,” Coleman said, describing the July 14 traffic stop on Interstate 10 in Austin County. “He was so rude and nasty. Even when he found out I was a legislator, he became more rude and nasty. And I didn’t understand why this guy was continuing to go on and on and treat me like a child. And basically like I’m saying is treat me like a boy. I want to be very clear about that.”

Coleman, who is black and represents a district in Houston, said he was stopped while speeding while driving from Austin, the state capital, to his hometown.

But what he did not say is that not only did the officer who pulled him over treat him cordially, but he even let the lawmaker off with a mere warning, even though he was driving 94 miles per hour in a 75 mph speed zone.

The Austin County sheriff’s department released video of the traffic stop Tuesday. Houston’s KHOU first reported the footage from the stop.

The nine-minute video shows a sheriff’s deputy pulling Coleman over on the highway and approaching the politician’s vehicle from the passenger side.

“How you doing?” the deputy asks.

“All right. How are you?” Coleman responds.

“Pretty good. What’s the rush?” the deputy asks.

“I’m just trying to go home,” Coleman says.

“You can’t do 94 miles an hour, though,” the deputy tells Coleman, who responds, saying he didn’t realize he was going that fast.

Coleman then informed the deputy that he is a state representative. The deputy politely said he already knew that because of the vehicle’s state representative license plates. The deputy also said that Coleman had a previous speeding violation in Wharton County.

“Mr. Coleman, I’ll let you go with a warning,” the deputy tells Coleman. “This is the same thing Wharton County did with you last year.”

“Yeah, like I said. They didn’t give me a ticket,” Coleman responds.

“If Wharton County had given you a ticket and I gave you a ticket today you’d lose your driver’s license on points,” the deputy says.

He added: “Stop speeding in a state car, OK? You got state plates on here, man. It’s a state official plate. You realize how bad that looks?”

Coleman said that he understood but that “the speed got away” from him.

According to KHOU, part of the exchange after that is inaudible, though Coleman can be heard telling the deputy, “but I’m not a child.”

“I didn’t say you were a child,” the deputy responds. “I’m just trying to make you understand.”

“I appreciate what you’re doing,” Coleman replies.

“OK, just slow down some, OK?” the deputy says.

“I just wasn’t paying attention,” Coleman responds.

“Well, pay attention,” the deputy says while chuckling.

Austin County sheriff Jack Brandes said that the video “shows exactly what happened.”

“I saw nothing that indicated that he put forth any disrespect whatsoever,” Brandes said of the sheriff’s deputy.

Austin County borders Waller County on the west. That’s where 28-year-old Sandra Bland was stopped last month by a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper. Bland was arrested on charges of assaulting an officer after a scuffle with the trooper. Dash cam video from that stop indicated that in that case, the trooper mistreated Bland. She died in Waller County jail three days later after she allegedly hanged herself in her jail cell.

Via: Daily Caller

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#GOPDEBATE: 27 Questions For The First GOP Presidential Debate

• 
  On Thursday, 10 of the 17 Republican presidential contenders will take the stage in Cleveland for the first GOP debate, hosted by Fox News. What follows are 27 questions for the debate: Seven general question for all the candidates and two specific queries for each of 10 participants.
  General Questions For Everyone
  • Name a figure outside of politics who you would consider nominating to your Cabinet. What would you nominate them for and why?
  • President Barack Obama is often criticized for playing too much golf. What is appropriate amount of leisure time for an American president?
  • Who is the smartest liberal writer you read?
  • Libertarian tech billionaire Peter Thiel says he always asks potential hires, “What is one thing you believe to be true that most do not?” How would you respond?
  • What policy does another country get right that we would be well served to adopt in our country?
  • Do you believe President Obama is a bad person, or just politically misguided?
  • What three books most influenced your political worldview?
  Questions For Donald Trump
  
  
  Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/05/27-questions-for-the-first-gop-presidential-debate/#ixzz3hxiot9gEYou’ve explained that you donated campaign funds to liberal Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi in order to get them to do business-related favors for you. As you put it recently, “when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.” What, specifically, did Clinton and Pelosi do for you in exchange for your donations?

• Your plan for defeating ISIS consists mainly of “bomb[ing] the hell” out of the oil fields the terror group controls. Considering you have no military experience, what military experts or former military officers did you consult on your plan? What did they say?

Questions For Jeb Bush

• Some conservatives criticize you for being MIA during the major political battles of the Obama years. Why were you so silent? Why didn’t you, for instance, forcefully speak out against Obamacare at the time it was being debated?

• Some Republican foreign policy thinkers have criticized you for your association with former Secretary of State James Baker. What is the best piece of foreign policy advice he has given you? Is there any advice he has given you that you profoundly disagree with?

Questions For Scott Walker

• Governor, you have been all over the board on immigration. At one point you favored a pathway to citizenship for America’s illegal immigrant population, then this year you came out against it, then we hear you may have told donors that you still support it, which your campaign then denied. Let’s try to get some clarity: Could you ever imagine supporting a pathway to citizenship for any portion of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing in this country? If not a pathway to citizenship, what about any type of pathway to legalization that would allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country, albeit without the possibility of obtaining citizenship?

• How do you distinguish yourself on foreign policy from some of your rivals, particularly Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio?

Questions For Marco Rubio

• One criticism of you is that while you are an impressive orator, you really haven’t accomplished all that much besides getting elected to various political offices at a young age. What are your top three professional accomplishments?

• Do you regret supporting the intervention in Libya? If you think America’s intervention in Libya was merely a failure of implementation, what exactly would you have done differently to ensure that Libya became a flourishing liberal democracy instead of a failed state and a terrorist safe haven?

Questions For Rand Paul

• People are still uncertain whether you are all that different from your father on foreign policy. Since World War II, do you believe American actions abroad, on balance, have ultimately been a force for good or a force for ill?

• In 2013, you told Breitbart News that if you were president, “any attack on Israel will be treated as an attack on the United States.” I imagine that struck some of your more libertarian supporters as a strange position for you to take, to put it nicely. So explain to them why an attack on Israel should be considered an attack on the United States.

Questions For Ted Cruz

• On July 25, 2013, you — not a staff member, you — appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show and said that those who didn’t support your Defund Obamacare strategy were part of the Republican “surrender caucus.” Do you really consider someone like former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn an enabler of Obamacare because he opposed your strategy, which he and many others viewed as quixotic, on efficacy grounds?

• If reports are to be believed, you are not very well liked by most of your Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle. While you might say this is a good thing — i.e. you are standing up to the Washington establishment — how could you possibly get anything accomplished as president if you are unable to work effectively with Congress?

Via: The Daily Caller

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POLITICS Jeb Bush Sat On Board Of Philanthropy That Gave Millions To Planned Parenthood

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush was one of the directors of a charity that gave tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood, LifeSiteNews first reported.

Named a founding director to the tax-exempt Bloomberg Family Foundation in 2010, Bush sat on the board until the end of 2014 when he began to prepare for his presidential run.

Bloomberg Philanthropies announced in March of 2014, while Bush was still on the board, it was giving $50 million to strengthen “reproductive health rights in Burkina Faso, Nicaragua, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda.

According to a Bloomberg Family Foundation statement, the philanthropy teamed up with Planned Parenthood to send abortion activists into these countries to “help augment their capacity for effective advocacy.”

“In 2014, we started supporting local nonprofit organizations in Burkina Faso, Senegal, Uganda, and Nicaragua to advocate for better policies in their countries that will expand access to comprehensive reproductive health services,” said the foundation.

“These organizations will receive technical assistance from Planned Parenthood Federation of America – Global Division to help augment their capacity for effective advocacy.”

Mike Bloomberg himself, Life Site News notes, discussed how his family foundation’s partnership would function with Planned Parenthood.

“I am happy to say our major partner in this project will be Planned Parenthood – Global,” Bloomberg said. “In some countries, our funding will help advocates work towards better sexual health policies for teens and better access to contraceptives. In others, we’ll help push for less restrictive abortion laws and more government funding for high-quality, accessible services.”

The Bush campaign responded to a Daily Caller inquiry with the following email statement:

“Governor Bush’s strong record of fostering a culture of life is clear, and he has called on Congress to investigate and defund Planned Parenthood in light of the recent alarming revelations about its practices. During his eight years in office, Governor Bush took measures to protect innocent life by passing a partial-birth abortion ban, fighting for a constitutional amendment requiring parental notifications and doing everything possible to promote adoption.

Via: Daily Caller

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Ann Coulter: Trump Could Win The Election

In a D.C.-based radio interview, best-selling author Ann Coulter Friday defended GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump and believes he could be a “nominee who could win” the election.

“Trump is different. We have been lied to for thirty years about immigration. That’s why Trump is striking this chord. He’s attractive. He’s tall. He’s hilariously funny. I think he could be not only a nominee who could win but a third party candidate who could win,” Coulter told WMAL Friday.

She admitted in the interview she has reversed her stance on opposing candidates who were not governors.

“The more I see Trump talk, the more it diminishes the other candidates,” Coulter said.

The “Adios, America!” author told WMAL a third party candidate would “be fantastic” considering the current Republican field for president.

“I promise you that if the nominee is Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry or really any of those midgets, our fate is sealed,” Coulter said. “The Republican isn’t winning if it’s Marco or Jeb Bush. It’s absolute madness… The polls show Donald Trump is way ahead.”

Coulter dismissed Trump’s “war hero” comments about Sen. John McCain in comparison to what other presidential candidates have done.

“Marco Rubio spent three years trying to push amnesty on the country. I think that’s a bigger mistake than some flip remark that was he was instantly retracting. And Jeb Bush who campaigned for about five years to give illegal aliens driver’s licenses and 13 of the 19 hijackers on 911 had Florida driver licenses. He calls illegal immigration an ‘act of love’ and those are rather more important mistakes,” Coulter told WMAL host Brian Wilson.

Via: Daily Caller

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New York Times Edits Clinton Email Story At Her Request

The New York Times altered its story about two inspectors general calling for an investigation into whether Democratic Party front-runner Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information on her secret private email server.

The change to the lede paragraph came at the request of the Clinton campaign, Politico reports.

“It was a response to complaints we received from the Clinton camp that we thought were reasonable, and we made them,” Times reporter Michael Schmidt said, according to Politico.

The current version of the Times story starts:

WASHINGTON — Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday.

But the original lede, as captured by NewsDiffs, which tracks changes to posted news stories, implicated Clinton as a target of the probe:

WASHINGTON — Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday.

The original version highlighted the accusation that Clinton was the reason for and subject of the call for a criminal investigation, that “Clinton mishandled” classified information. The edited version leaves the impression that the information may have been handled, but only “in connection” to Clinton’s actions.

This was discovered by the left-wing DailyKos Elections Twitter feed.

 

Daily Kos Elections‏@DKElections

"Clinton mishandled" & "mishandled in connecttion" w/Clinton's email acct = huge, huge difference

• RETWEETS7
• FAVORITES9
• 

10:18 PM - 23 Jul 2015

 

Daily Kos Elections‏@DKElections

"Clinton mishandled" & "mishandled in connecttion" w/Clinton's email acct = huge, huge difference

• RETWEETS7
• FAVORITES9
• 

10:18 PM - 23 Jul 2015

Via: Daily Caller

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