Conservative Happenings

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Classic Trey Gowdy cross-examination: Does President Obama have a private email server?

The State Department is taking Hillary Clinton’s word for it.

That was the message Wednesday when a State Department employee testified in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, telling lawmakers she relied on former Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton’s assurances that all relevant emails had been turned over, just as they do with all other employees.

“Like we do with other federal employees we have to depend on them to provide that information to us,” Chief State Department Freedom of Information Act Officer Joyce Barr said.

Rep. Trey Gowdy pounced.

Gently, but with assurance of what the answers would be, the South Carolina Republican led Barr through questions to show no other high-ranking official in the Obama administration was in a position to provide such assurances.

“Well, you mentioned other federal employees which got me wondering… Attorney General Holder — did he have his own server?” Gowdy asked.

Her answer was no.

“How about new Attorney General Lynch? Does she have a personal server?”

No again.

“What about President Obama — is there any indication — because if you’re going to pursue the theory of convenience, I can’t really imagine a busier person on the globe than President Obama,” Gowdy said, recalling Clinton’s excuse that she used a private server as a matter of convenience. “Did he have his own personal server?”

Via: BizPac Review

Continue Reading....

States Perplexed by White House Silence On Obamacare Contingencies

With the fate of President Barack Obama’s top legislative accomplishment hanging in the balance, state officials are increasingly concerned by the administration’s refusal to discuss contingency plans for insurance markets, should the Supreme Court later this month strike down 2010 health care law subsidies for 6.4 million low- and middle-income people.

Officials in a variety of states, including many led by Republicans, say they are panicked by the uncertainty a ruling against the government in King v. Burwell could unleash. Justices are weighing whether the health care overhaul allows federal subsidies for coverage to be offered in all states, or just in those that, as the law states, are “established by the state.” Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have created their own state-run health insurance exchanges; the others that rely on the federal Healthcare.gov website to enroll people could see aid disappear.

State officials expected the administration to be publicly tight-lipped about the prospect of a ruling against the law. But some say they are surprised that, so far, the administration does not appear to be holding private discussions about how to address potential fallout. Affected states would have to address unique technical and legal quirks associated with covering their residents, as well as political obstacles.

“Whatever the administration might be doing in terms of backup planning, they are not talking to the states about it, and groups like us are not privy to it,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of the advocacy group Families USA, which supports the law. “The administration — and I really want to emphasize this — is confident that it will prevail in court and it doesn’t want to do anything to undermine that possibility.”

Governors would face enormous pressure to promptly respond should justices rule against the existing system for distributing subsidies. Although Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. has suggested the court might carve out a grace period, health coverage for 2016 plan years must kick in on Jan. 1. State officials and health plans would have to scramble to come up with alternative coverage frameworks or risk letting people who lose subsidies become uninsured.

“For the governors, it’s a tough situation for all of them,” said Seema Verma, a consultant who advises seven states. “No one wants to see people lose coverage. ... What’s ironic is that there’s no discussion from the federal government to say, ‘Here’s our plan.’ Especially in the short-term situation, people are going to look to them to outline their plan and they have yet to do that.”

Via: Roll Call

The Disappearance of Jonathan Gruber

No one lectures the United States Supreme Court quite like the New York Times. Their penchant for talking down to (face it) the conservative members of the court has transcended numerous personnel changes at the paper. And when it comes to the issues that define the twilight of modern liberalism, the Times does not obsess (as other, lesser news organizations might) about the distinction between news and opinion pages

A recent article by Robert Pear in the Politics section provides a priceless example. TheTimes recognizes, of course, that Obamacare represents the high water mark of statist ideology in the past 100 years of the U.S. Congress and that, should the law be forced back to Capitol Hill for repair of one sort or another, it has no chance at survival. As I have written elsewhere, the liberal cognoscenti view their task as pushing forward the great ratchet of history to lift us, the barbarians, out of chaos and onto the plateau of utopia.

Nothing is more agonizing to them than to see the ratchet slip a hard-won notch.

So the Times does what is necessary to inform the Court of how and why the correct decision in King v. Burwell, the latest challenge to Obamacare, is to preserve the law untouched.

In this case, as most everyone knows by now, the challenge to the law is actually directed at the IRS and their policy of providing subsidies to purchasers of health insurance in states where the government has decided not to set up an insurance exchange (leaving the task to the feds). As presented in Reason Magazine:

One section of the Affordable Care Act stipulates that insurance subsidies shall be provided in any exchange “established by the State.” Federal exchanges are not established by the state. Therefore, the federal government cannot subsidize policies bought on exchanges in the two-thirds of states that did not set up their own exchange. Washington has been doing just that up to now, thanks to the IRS’ contested interpretation of the law.

Via: Ricochet

Continue Reading....

Unions Are Utterly Shameless. Here’s the Real Story Behind Their Minimum Wage Campaign.

Utterly shameless. There really is no other way to describe what some unions are trying to pull when it comes to the minimum wage.

The issue, of course, has been in the news quite a bit lately, especially in Los Angeles, with supposedly incensed workers waving their “Fight for 15” placards. It’s all perfectly packaged for the media, an alleged David versus Goliath fight. Will those mean ol’ fast-food joints and other stingy employers finally start paying a “living wage”? Tune in for the dramatic video.

Never mind that a substantial hike in the minimum wage would price many unskilled workers right out of the market. Goodbye, entry-level jobs for men and women who will later become workers making a much better wage at a job with more responsibilities.

And never mind how this minimum wage hike would make the price of fast food soar. A huge part of the draw for fast food, after all, is the fact that it’s relatively cheap. Take that away, and now it’s goodbye to the industry, which, of course, will hardly help the workers who are supposed to benefit from the wage increase.

Employers, after all, don’t have a bottomless safe in the backroom from which to pull vast reserves of cash for these salaries. They’ll react by cutting hours, for one thing. Labor expert James Sherk, for example, found that raising the minimum wage to $15 would cause a 36 percent drop in hours worked in fast food.

Think of what such a hike would mean for a major city such as Los Angeles. “If the effects are the same for all low-wage food-service occupations,” writes economist Salim Furth, “the ‘Fight for 15’ will cost more than 20,000 Angelenos their jobs in those occupations alone.” We can expect the same type of effect everywhere if such a drastic hike is enacted.

Of course, we don’t hear about any negative effects from much of the media or from breathless proponents of such “wage equality.” Or if we do, the effects are shrugged off as the scaremongering tactics of employers who just don’t want to pay up.

But it’s harder to ignore the fact that the same Los Angeles unions who campaigned so hard and so successfully for a $15 minimum wage want unionized companies to be exempted from the new requirement.

As Rusty Hicks, head of the Los Angeles Federation of Labor, told the Los Angeles Times: “With a collective bargaining agreement, a business owner and the employees negotiate an agreement that works for them both. The agreement allows each party to prioritize what is important to them. This provision gives the parties the option, the freedom, to negotiate that agreement. And that is a good thing.”

A new low in hypocrisy? Oh, no. It’s even worse than that.

Via: The Daily Signal

Latino Police Officers Assn. Rep: Media Are Playing Role in Rising Murder Rates

The negative consequences of months of relentless anti-police reporting in the news media caught the attention of MundoFox, a major national Spanish-language television network. Commenting on the spike in New York City’s murder rate, the Chairman of the National Latino Officers Association, NYPD veteran Anthony Miranda, told MundoFox that “many officers are confused” and “don’t know whether to follow the media or the law.”

PEGGY CARRANZA: Mayor Bill de Blasio blames gangs. Others say that after being criticized, the Police are afraid to do their jobs.

JULIO VALENZUELA, RESIDENT OF NYC: The Police are, I would say, the most valuable institution there can be on Earth, but at times they get carried away. Like everywhere, there are good ones and bad ones.

PEGGY CARRANZA: The President of the National Association of Latino Police says that following recent racial tensions, agents don’t know whether to follow the media or the law.

ANTHONY MIRANDA, NATIONAL LATINO OFFICERS ASSOCIATION: Many officers are confused at this time. The leadership of any department at this time has to tell them: these are the rules. This is going to be the way we are going to work

While MundoFox rivals Univision and Telemundo also reported on the latest 20% increase in New York City’s murder rate, MundoFox alone included in its coverage the perspective of law enforcement professionals like Miranda, and the toll anti-Police media coverage appears to be taking on officers’ job performance.

In the case of Univision and Telemundo, their reporting on the rising number of shootings and murders in the Big Apple focused on the extent to which this deterioration of security in the city is related to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s abandonment of the aggressive “Stop and Frisk” policy implemented by his predecessors.

Unlike counterparts at Univision and Telemundo, MundoFox’s Peggy Carranza also noted that murders are also up in Chicago and Baltimore, where murders during the month of May broke a 40-year record.

The relevant portions of the referenced Noticias MundoFox segment are below.

Noticias MundoFox

June 3, 2015 5:30 P.M. ET

English Translation:

ROLANDO NICHOLS: Murders are up in various U.S. cities. Some authorities attribute this to gang activity, but others believe that after being criticized, the Police are doing their job with extreme caution. Peggy Carranza has the information for us this afternoon.

PEGGY CARRANZA: More people shot and killed would be the tough reality that confronts cities such as Baltimore, Chicago and New York. According to the Baltimore Sun, May was the month with the most murders in that city during the last 40 years. Meanwhile, in New York, its Police Department revealed that so far this year, murders are up almost 20%.

…

Mayor Bill de Blasio blames gangs. Others say that after being criticized, the Police are afraid to do their jobs.

JULIO VALENZUELA, RESIDENT OF NYC: The Police are, I would say, the most valuable institution there can be on Earth, but at times they get carried away. Like everywhere, there are good ones and bad ones.

PEGGY CARRANZA: The President of the National Association of Latino Police says that following recent racial tensions, agents don’t know whether to follow the media or the law.

ANTHONY MIRANDA, NATIONAL LATINO OFFICERS ASSOCIATION: Many officers are confused at this time. The leadership of any department at this time has to tell them: these are the rules. This is going to be the way we are going to work and the officers are going to have the power and have the Department behind them.

Español Original:

Via: NewsBusters
Continue Reading.....

Officers shot at in North County neighborhood early Friday morning

NORTH ST. LOUIS COUNTY (KMOV.com) -

Police swarmed a North County neighborhood early Friday morning after there were reports of officers being shot at.

Around 1:30 a.m. officers were in the 10000 block of Count Drive for a disturbance call when they heard gunshots and believed they were under fire, police said. The on scene officers then issued a call for aid.

The officers spent several hours searching the neighborhood but it appears they have not come up with any leads.

According to police, nobody was injured during the gunfire.

No other information has been released.

Via: KMOV.com

[CARTOON] The Clinton Zapper

Via: California Political Review

Fan hit by broken bat at Fenway Park has life-threatening injuries, police say

Police say a woman who was hit in the head with a broken bat and was bleeding from the head as she was being carried out of Fenway Park Friday has life threatening injuries.

Boston police spokesman David Estrada said all or part of the bat hit her during the game between the Boston Red Sox and Oakland Athletics.

The spectator was carried out of the stadium after the top of the second inning. She was hit by Oakland’s Brett Lawrie’s bat that broke on a groundout to second base for the second out of the inning. The game was halted in the middle of the second inning as emergency crews tended to the woman and wheeled her off the field on a stretcher.

The woman's name was not immediately released and more details on her condition were not available.

Alex Merlis, of Brookline, Massachusetts, told The Associated Press said he was sitting behind the woman when the broken bat flew into the seats just a few rows from the field between home plate and the third base dugout.

"It was violent," he said of the impact to her forehead and top of her head. "She bled a lot. A lot. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that."

Merlis said the woman was sitting with a small child and a man. After she was injured, the man was tending to her and other people were trying to console the child.

The woman was taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a hospital worker said early Saturday she has no information for her condition.

"You try to keep her in your thoughts and, hopefully, everything's all right and try to get back to the task at hand," Lawrie said when asked how he was able to refocus after what happened. "Hopefully everything's OK and she's doing all right.

"I've seen bats fly out of guys' hands in(to) the stands and everyone's OK, but when one breaks like that, has jagged edges on it, anything can happen."

Major League Baseball expressed its concerns with flying broken bats and the danger they posed in 2008. A study issued by the league prompted it to implement a series of changes to bat regulations for the following season.

Via: Fox News

Sean Hannity plays conservative kingmaker

Presidential candidates launch their bids in different cities -- from Louisville to Lynchburg, Miami to Addison -- but, for many Republicans, the first stop on the campaign trail is the same: "Hannity."

In the last two months, four GOP hopefuls have given Sean Hannity dibs on their first interviews as candidates and been rewarded with hour-long "special events" on his primetime Fox News program. Others have tried to land an interview with the conservative host, campaign sources said, only to be turned down -- either because they had given their first interview to another media outlet, or because they weren't popular enough.

On Thursday, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry will become the fourth Republican to get an hour-long special on Hannity's program. Senators Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were all given the same hour-long special the night after they formally announced their bids.

For Republicans, Hannity provides instant access to the highly coveted conservative base. His show averaged more than 1.5 million viewers a night in May, according to the network's most recent ratings report. While that's lower than the viewership for "The O'Reilly Factor" or "The Kelly File," the bulk of Hannity's viewers are, like the host, reliably conservative. He also hosts a daily talk radio program that is second only to Rush Limbaugh in terms of listenership.

"Sean Hannity has a loyal following among the viewership of Fox News," Sergio Gor, a spokesperson for Paul, told the On Media blog. "He is one of the most influential voices among republican primary voters, and it doesn't hurt that with every year he's becoming an even greater lover of liberty."

Rick Tyler, a spokesperson for Cruz, said Hannity "has a big target audience and his questions are from a center-right perspective. In other words, he brings up the issues Republican primary voters are interested in."

Via: Politico

June 6, 1944: D Day Operation Overlord Begins…

General Eisenhower D Day Order:

Via: Weasel Zippers

[VIDEO] House Moves to Stop Operation Choke Point

Making clear its official stance against Operation Choke Point, the House passed a measure that prohibits the Justice Department from using any funds to carry out the controversial program. Critics say it unfairly targets legal businesses like pawn shops, gun dealers and payday lenders.

On Wednesday, lawmakers approved the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, which allocates funding to a range of agencies and also includes a provision to defund Operation Choke Point.

“While I had hoped that the unprecedented Operation Choke Point would have been far behind us by now, it was once again necessary to offer an amendment to the annual Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations legislation to prohibit funding for it,” said Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., who sponsored the amendment.

My colleagues and I will continue to ensure [the Justice Department] and FDIC enforcement actions are focused on actual threats and risks and not politics and ideology as we continue to move forward with the fight to end this illegal program once and for all.

After failed past attempts by Congress to end Operation Choke Point, members this time are “hopeful” this strategy will work.

“The House has done its job and now we hope the second legislative branch and the executive branch will join us on behalf of standing up for the American people,” Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., a member of the House Financial Services Committee, which has been critical of Operation Choke Point, told The Daily Signal.

Operation Choke Point was launched by the Justice Department in 2013 as a way to combat consumer fraud by working with multiple government agencies—among them, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation—to discourage banks from doing business with “high risk” industries.

Since its inception, critics say the program is being used to drive industries that are politically unpopular out of business.

Via: The Daily Signal

McConnell: No more Obama judicial confirmations?

That’s not quite what Mitch McConnell proposes here in his interview last night with Hugh Hewitt, but functionally it will likely amount to the same thing. Hugh wants an end to judicial confirmations as a payback for Harry Reid’s “nuclear option” last session in removing filibusters from the process, and asks whether McConnell will follow through on it. McConnell tells Hugh that the Senate has only confirmed those judges Barack Obama has appointed that pass muster with the Republican caucus, and that’s how he sees the rest of the session going:

HH: And my last question goes to judicial nominations. I am one of those people who wouldn’t confirm another judge given the antics they pulled last year. But what is the situation vis-à-vis federal judicial nominations and the process in the Senate right now?

MM: Well, so far, the only judges we’ve confirmed have been federal district judges that have been signed off on by Republican Senators.

HH: And so you expect that that will continue to be the case for the balance of this session?

MM: I think that’s highly likely, yeah.

In other words, McConnell leaves the door open for Obama to nominate judges that the Republican majority find acceptable. It’s a formula that arguably enforces the “advice” part of “advice and consent” in the Constitution (Article II, Section 2), but with the operational wrinkle that flexes McConnell’s muscle. Normally, a President would have some leeway to gain majority approval from the Senate as a whole, but the attempt to derail minority input in the last session means McConnell wants to play hardball in this session, especially after Obama and Reid used it to pack the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

Via: Hot Air

[VIDEO] CBS NEW: CHINESE HACK IS REALLY BAD, CAN’T PUT LIPSTICK ON THIS PIG

CBS News reported on the hack by the Chinese government, saying it’s an embarrassment for an administration that has made cyber security a top priority. One official told CBS News that the hack is really bad and there is no way to put lipstick on this pig.

Watch:

Via: The Right Scoop

Are We In for Another High-Crime Era After the Response to Ferguson and Baltimore?

Are we seeing a reversal of the 20-year decline in violent crime in America? A new nationwide crime wave?

Heather Mac Donald fears we are, and as a premier advocate and analyst of the policing strategy pioneered by Rudy Giuliani in New York City and copied and adapted throughout the country, she is to be taken seriously. And the statistics she presented in an article in last weekend's Wall Street Journal are truly alarming.

Gun violence is up 60 percent in Baltimore so far this year compared to 2014. Homicides are up 180 percent in Milwaukee, 25 percent in St. Louis, 32 percent in Atlanta and 13 percent in New York in the same period.

Why is this happening? Mac Donald writes, "The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months."

That's a reference to the reactions to the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., last summer, and to the death this spring of Freddie Gray in Baltimore.

The narrative propagated by mainstream media, the Eric Holder Justice Department and the Barack Obama White House was that unarmed innocent blacks were being slaughtered by racist police. "Black lives matter," read the hashtag, as if most cops believed the opposite.

The facts of these cases, as revealed through competent investigations, did not support the meme. In one case in which video evidence did, in South Carolina, the policeman was quickly charged with murder by local authorities.

But the propagation of the racist-cops narrative was followed by days of rioting in Ferguson last year and Baltimore last month. The (perhaps misspoken) response of Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: "We also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well."

Another response: Across the country, Mac Donald notes, "offices scale back on proactive policing under the onslaught of anti-cop rhetoric." Proactive "broken windows" policing is being replaced by non-benign neglect. The victims of the increased numbers of homicides are almost all black.

Via: Real Clear Politics

Benghazi Panel to Hear from Clinton Friend Blumenthal in Private Testimony

Long-time Hillary Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal is set to be interviewed on June 16 by the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

The committee, in announcing Blumenthal's appearance Friday, said his deposition will be conducted in a closed session. The media will be barred from coverage.

Blumenthal has become a focus of the House Select Committee on Benghazi since revelations he has been sending Clinton what she called "unsolicited" memos about Libya, where he was trying to arrange business deal, while she was secretary of state.

Special: Simple Trick Eliminates Up to 15 Years of Mortgage Payments..

[VIDEO] Industry on edge as EPA prepares to regulate airline emissions

The Environmental Protection Agency will soon announce it plans to regulate airline emissions, asserting they contribute to global warming and endanger public health, according to industry and environmental groups.

Those findings will prompt a regulatory process for the EPA to determine and enforce aircraft emissions limits, following a similar effort to limit emissions by cars, trucks and power plants.

But conservatives say higher airplane efficiency standards will only force airlines to raise ticket prices or install more seats on already cramped flights.

"Airlines already have a tremendous incentive to reduce fuel burn, and reduce CO2 emissions right now," said Sam Batkins, the director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum. "Airplanes themselves are already efficient and are already getting more efficient each year."

Airlines are among the most efficiency-minded transportation industries. Normally tight-margin companies, the less fuel airlines burn, the more money they make.

"There's not a market failure in airline efficiency," said Batkins.

However, environmental groups contend airlines are failing to realize their full fuel-efficiency potential.

"They can be doing things a lot more efficiently than they are now. And they've reached the peak of their incentive -- now they need a little push from the federal government to extract increased reductions," said S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. "If the president is serious about hitting his climate target, which is reducing greenhouse gases by 28 percent in 2025, below 2005 levels, he can't ignore imposing additional greenhouse gas reductions on this uncontrolled industry."

Becker said the industry could use lower-carbon fuels, idle engines less and further upgrade its systems.

Via: Fox News

Friday, June 5, 2015

Trouble in Dem-land as unions freeze cash contributions

For decades, labor unions have floated the Democratic Party with massive contributions (based on money taken out of the paychecks of members who are forced to join as a condition of employment) and donations of manpower, expecially useful in get-out-the-vote efforts. And for decades, private-sector unions have shrunk in the face of competition from overseas, as the Democrats court fat-cat donors from Wall Street.

Is that era coming to an end? Emily Cahn and Emma Dumain of Roll Call report:

The AFL-CIO, along with some public sector unions, announced a campaign finance freeze in March. Unions hoped the threat of withholding contributions would scare Democratic lawmakers out of supporting President Barack Obama’s Trade Promotion Authority, or “fast track,” to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a trade agreement labor groups say would hurt manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

The freeze is across the board, intended to punish the party as a whole, not individual members. This must reflect frustration over being taken for granted and withering on the vine. Naturally, there are howls of protest:

“I could understand withholding money from people who are on the fence — sure, great,” said one House Democratic chief of staff who asked not to be identified. “But for the people who are with them who also really need the help, I just don’t know that’s a smart strategy. I think that there’s plenty of people who they trust to be with them who could really use their help in deterring an opponent by showing some strength at this point in the cycle, and they’re not helping with that.”
Other Democrats are beginning to lose trust in unions coming through with campaign contributions at all, as House Democrats look to make inroads into a historic House majority.

Opposition to the TPP cuts across party lines.

Via: American Thinker

Continue Reading....

CA Senate Passes Bill to Raise Legal Smoking Age to 21

Adding another bill to its reputation as a trend-setting Legislature, Sacramento has taken a big step toward raising the statewide smoking age to 21. By an overwhelming tally of 26 to 8, the state Senate voted to prohibit sales of tobacco products to those aged 18-20.

By the numbers

According to the bill’s supporters, the ban would be instrumental in dramatically reducing not only teen smoking but smoking in general. “Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, said he introduced the bill, SB151, out of concern that an estimated 90 percent of tobacco users start before age 21,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

That statistic emerged from a recent Institute of Medicine study making the rounds in policy circles. Researchers suggested that “teen smoking could be curbed by 12 percent if the age limit was raised to 21,” as LA ist noted, “making it harder for minors to find somebody to buy cigarettes for them.” In real numbers, the study concluded, the age-21 limit would ensure “more than 200,000 fewer premature deaths nationally for those born between 2000 and 2019.”

Although critics have pointed out that people older than 18 are adults eligible to be drafted and bound to signed contracts, the Times observed, momentum has gathered to raise the legal smoking age for reasons unrelated to consistency in the treatment of individual rights and responsibilities.

Via: California Political Review

Lincoln Chafee May Be Hillary's Biggest Problem

In a field of Democratic presidential long shots, former Rhode Island senator and governor Lincoln Chafee, who announced his candidacy on Wednesday, may be the longest shot of all. As an authentic, uncompromising progressive, Bernie Sanders is poised to grab the bulk of those Elizabeth Warren enthusiasts who can’t reconcile themselves to Hillary Clinton. As the handsome, articulate, two-term governor of a mid-size state, Martin O’Malley at least looks like a plausible contender one day. Chafee, by contrast, in the words of Quinnipiac University’s Monica Bauer, “has the charisma of Walter Mondale wrapped in the political instincts of a small town city councilman, which he once was, and perhaps would have remained, if he hadn’t been the son of a famous political dynasty. He is George W. Bush with more intelligence but far less political talent.” And like Bush, Chafee was, until very recently, a Republican.

But Chafee could prove Hillary’s most intriguing challenger. It’s not because he’ll garner enough support to give her a scare. If anyone does that, it will likely beSanders, who according to the New York Times is already “gain[ing] momentum in Iowa.” What makes Chafee’s candidacy intriguing is that he’s attacking Hillary on the issue on which she may be most vulnerable: her vote to authorize war with Iraq.

“I don’t think anybody should be president of the United States that made that mistake,” Chafee told The Washington Post in April. “It’s a huge mistake, and we live with broad, broad ramifications today—of instability not only in the Middle East but far beyond and the loss of American credibility.”

A version of this attack helped Barack Obama topple Hillary in 2008. That’s not likely to happen again, since Democrats care far less about Iraq this time.

But Republicans do. While foreign policy has been largely absent from the Democratic presidential campaign thus far, it’s been central to the Republican debate. And this reflects a divide in the country as a whole. A May Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that “national security/terrorism,” which was the top concern of only eight percent of likely GOP primary voters three years ago, now ranks first, at 27 percent. Among likely Democratic primary voters, by contrast, it’s less than half that.

Via: The Atlantic

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Friday, June 5, 2015

By the numbers

Popular Posts