A Year After Ferguson Rioters Damaged Her Shop, Woman Rebuilding With Tea Party’s Help Is Robbed Again

This week, on the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death, a familiar image came out of Ferguson, Mo., as protesters faced off against police in the city just as they did 12 months ago.

For one business owner, a night of rioting and looting disrupted a year of rebuilding not just her business, but a community.

Over the course of last year, Dellena Jones, owner of 911 Hair Salon on West Florissant Avenue, found an ally eager to help her rebuild: the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition.

But on Sunday, a group of young men shattered the left window of her beauty salon as protests flared once again in the St. Louis suburb.

Jones’ shop is located in the epicenter of where the protests occurred last year in Ferguson after Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black man, was killed by former police officer Darren Wilson.

The looters, who robbed the store after police shot and injured a young black man who allegedly fired several shots at officers, took beauty supplies such as scissors and curling irons and flipped over one of Jones’s hair dryers. It will likely cost hundreds of dollars to purchase a new hair dryer.

“I was hoping for the best and believing for the best,” Jones said in an interview with The Daily Signal of her expectations for the anniversary of Brown’s death. “We were expecting for things to be good, and if it weren’t, not [this] bad.”

For Jones, who worked for more than a decade at the salon before taking over as owner in 2012, the burglary came after a year of struggling to get her business back on its feet.

“It’s been very challenging,” Jones said. “I’ve been trying to keep up the bills here and at home. It’s proven to be very difficult and challenging and almost impossible.”

One year ago, as the nation turned to watch Ferguson following Brown’s death, Jones became a victim of the riots and looting that took place in its wake. Her store was one of more than 30 businesses looted and damaged. One business, a QuikTrip convenience store, was burned to the ground.

Jones estimated that in the last 12 months, the protests have caused her to lose roughly $75,000—a combination of lost revenue from a decrease in foot traffic along West Florissant Avenue and the cost of repairing her shop.

“You have all of these different protesters. They don’t pop into your business and say, ‘Hey, what do you need?’ or ‘Hey, are you all OK?’” Jones said. “It just seems like with the protests, it seems very selfish.”

After last year’s protests, the St. Louis Tea Party Coalitionrallied volunteers to participate in “buycotts” of Ferguson businesses to show people that yes, the stores in the town were open for business, and yes, it’s safe to shop in the city.

And over the last few months, the group has also been helping Jones put her store back together.

Via: Daily Signal

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Why Liberals are Dangerous

The Left (liberal mainstream media) practically had a ticker tape parade for Ohio Gov. John Kasich for answers he gave on two issues during the GOP debate. Liberals' praise of Kasich shows they have chosen emotion over logical, reasoned thinking. This makes liberals irresponsible and dangerous. These people must never be in charge.

The Left praised Kasich for his entitlement program that is $1.4 billion in the red, thus far -- in only 18 months. Kasich defended his program saying it was the Christian thing to do.

First of all, the Bible does not support stupid business practices and irresponsible spending of other people's money. Proverbs 22:29 “Have you seen a man who is expert in his business? He will take his place before kings; his place will not be among low persons.”

In 1972, Hurricane Agnes flooded our small black Baltimore suburban community. Dad and my brother rescued residents from the roofs of their homes in a rowboat. As a community leader, my dad, Rev. Marcus, assisted residents in acquiring relief checks from the Red Cross. My parents were among those who lost everything in the flood. What if Dad took his family's relief check and distributed it among needy neighbors? Liberals would praise Dad for his compassion for the poor. The reality is Dad's behavior, though well-intended, would be irresponsible to my mom and younger siblings living at home. Such common-sense adult thinking seems to escape liberals.

Gov. Kasich is furthering an entitlement program that is void of economic sense is irresponsible to taxpayers, no matter how well-intended. Feelings trump common sense these days in America. Liberals will call me a mean Republican who does not care about people for suggesting that politicians spend responsibly. Most liberals are brain-dead emotion-driven fools.

Kasich's answer regarding gay marriage was the second issue that won him great praise from liberals. Kasich said while he is a traditional guy, the courts made gay marriage law and he will comply. Kasich added that he attended a friend's gay wedding because we must love people. I am sorry, Gov. Kasich and Leftists, but it is absurd to suggest that loving someone means embracing everything they do. Once again, more brain-dead emotion-driven liberal reasoning. Sometimes, love means rejecting a friend or family member's behavior.

My daughter married a woman. I explained to my daughter why as a Christian, I could not support their union. She understood. We still have a great loving relationship, though we differ when the Patriots play the Broncos. Go Manning!

Here is an interesting observation. Like many youths, a handful of Dad's adult grandkids have gone through a rebellious stage; straying from their Christian upbringing like the prodigal son. Each of them hid their sinful behaviors from my dad. They hold Dad's opinion in high regard with a desire to make him proud. Even my daughter seems to care more about my dad's opinion of her than mine.

I asked myself, why? Dad is not a tyrant in any way. He is loving and easygoing. So why do the millennials in our family care so much about their granddad's opinion of them?

The answer is all of their lives, they have witnessed the consistency in Dad's Christian walk and his commitment to biblical standards. The grandkids know Dad loves each of them dearly, but is faithful to his commitment to Christ. My daughter and the other grandkids love Dad greatly and give him their utmost respect.

Perhaps, millennials are looking for trustworthy leaders/politicians who stand for something. GOP presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz comes to mind. Too many wimpy baby-boomers embrace every Leftist anti-Christian and anti-American socialist/progressive agenda item; desiring to be thought of as modern and enlightened.

People in positions of power who place feelings above common sense, responsibility and reasoned thinking are dangerous. They (liberals) must never be in charge.

Take sanctuary cities. These are liberal-governed U.S. cities that have officially decided to disobey federal law by sheltering illegal aliens.

Liberalism has been described as a “mental disease.” For whatever reasons, liberals who run sanctuary cities feel it is unfair that we in America have so much. Consequently, they roll out the red carpet to illegals; gifting them welfare, college tuition, and benefits unavailable to legal American citizens.

Years ago, a businessman friend moved to California. He made more money than ever. And yet, he had to move back to the east coast because the cost of living was too high. Amazingly, my friend said if he had been an illegal alien, he and his family could have survived just fine in California. Does that make sense? Of course not. I wrote a satirical song about his experience titled, “Can't Afford the Sunshine.”

Talk about crazy brain-dead thinking – even with epidemic high numbers of murders, rapes, and assaults on Americans by repeat criminal illegals, nothing seems to soften sanctuary cities' commitment to welcome and protect illegals. Wacko liberals in charge are dangerous, folks.

Liberals wrongfully get high marks for compassion. The truth is real compassionate leadership makes wise responsible decisions. Liberals define a compassionate nation as how long that line is of people showing up for their daily allotment of free fish. In America today, 94 million Americans are unemployed. And yet, they have all the necessities and many of the luxuries of working Americans. Forty-seven million Americans are on food stamps. Millions of capable Americans are receiving disability. 

Conservatives define compassion as liberating citizens from government. Government handouts are always accompanied with government dictates and controls. There ain't no free lunch.

Conservative government says, we will gladly give you fish for the short term. However, our greater goal is to help you experience the dignity, pride, and independence of catching your own fish. We will get rid of the overreaching government controls on catching fish and help you acquire a fishing rod.

Who do you want running the show (your county) folks -- brain-dead emotion-driven liberals or adult conservatives?

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American

Via: American Thinker

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[VIDEO] Hillary Clinton to turn over private email server to Justice Department

Washington (CNN)Hillary Clinton agreed to turn over her private email server to authorities on Tuesday, the same day an intelligence community inspector general told congressional committees that at least five emails from the server did contain classified information.

The decision to hand over the server, as well as a thumb drive of all her work-related emails to the Justice Department, represents an effort to blunt an expanding probe into her use of a private email account.

Clinton, now the Democratic presidential front-runner, "directed her team to give her email server that was used during her tenure as (secretary of state) to the Department of Justice, as well as a thumb drive containing copies of her emails already provided to the State Department," her spokesman, Nick Merrill, told CNN early Tuesday evening. "She pledged to cooperate with the government's security inquiry, and if there are more questions, we will continue to address them."

Merrill said in the meantime, Clinton's team "has worked with the State Department to ensure her emails are stored in a safe and secure manner."

The FBI, which is handling the matter, declined to comment Tuesday evening. David E. Kendall, Clinton's lawyer, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

A senior Clinton campaign aide said the server hadn't yet changed hands as of Tuesday evening and Clinton's team is working with the Justice Department to arrange the logistics of the handover. The thumb drive, meanwhile, has been turned over. And Kendall, the aide said, has followed State Department guidance on safekeeping.

Clinton's campaign believes there are no emails from her State Department tenure on the server, since it was wiped clean after she turned over her work-related emails to the State Department, the aide said.

The aide said it's the Clinton campaign's understanding that the Justice Department isn't looking to reconstruct the server's history, but is instead concerned about the security of the emails today, since some are now classified, though they weren't classified or labeled as such at the time.

Clinton certifies she has turned over work-related emails

Boehner: 'It's about time'

For Clinton, the move -- which Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner have urged for months -- indicates her campaign sees a growing risk in the issue of her use of a private email server, which has stoked concerns about her trustworthiness.

"It's about time," Boehner said in a statement Tuesday night.

Since news broke in March of her use of a personal email address on a server kept in her Chappaqua, New York, home, Clinton has insisted that she's turned over all of her work-related emails to the State Department and deleted all others -- but wouldn't turn over her server to the government.

Clinton has been dogged by poll numbers showing that more Americans, by a margin of about 20 percentage points, say she's not trustworthy rather than trustworthy. A late July CNN/ORC poll found that 58% of all registered voters say it is extremely important that the next president be honest and trustworthy.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, who chairs the House Select Committee on Benghazi and has pushed for Clinton's emails for months, claimed credit for her decision to turn over the server.

"The revelation that Secretary Clinton exclusively used private email for official public business, and the multitude of issues that emanated from her decision, including this most recent one, demonstrates what can happen when Congress and those equally committed to exposing the truth, doggedly pursue facts and follow them," he said in a statement.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Clinton waited "a long time" 

Via: CNN Politics

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LOIS LERNER’S IRS GRANTED ONLY ONE CONSERVATIVE GROUP NON-PROFIT STATUS IN THREE YEARS

Lois Lerner’s political beliefs led to tea party and conservative groups receiving disparate and unfair treatment when applying for non-profit status, according to a detailed report compiled by the Senate Finance Committee.

Because of Lerner’s bias, only one conservative political advocacy organization was granted tax exempt status over a period of more than three years:

“Due to the circuitous process implemented by Lerner, only one conservative political advocacy organization was granted tax-exempt status between February 2009 and May 2012. Lerner’s bias against these applicants unquestionably led to these delays, and is particularly evident when compared to the IRS’s treatment of other applications, discussed immediately below.”

As the report notes, Lois Lerner became aware in April or May of 2010 that the IRS Exempt Organizations (EO) division had begun receiving a high number of applications from Tea Party organizations. But as the backlog of applicants increased, Lerner added “more layers of review and raised hurdles for applicants to clear.”

This “rigid and unorthodox process” meant that over the three year period, tea party and conservative groups waited a total of 621 years for the IRS to make a decision about their applications for tax-exempt status. As the report notes, many of these applications could have been decided far earlier, but were not due to decisions by Lerner. As the report notes:

“The unfortunate consequence of imposing this highly rigid and unorthodox process on EO Determinations was that many Tea Party applications that could have been decided in 2010 were not. Rather, those Tea Party applications unnecessarily languished for several more years, while the IRS mismanaged its way through a series of failed initiatives designed to bring the applications to decision.”

In contrast, progressive or non-affiliated applicants faced a timely review process. Indeed, the IRS was willing and able to quickly approve high profile non-tea party applicants:

“Although applications from the Tea Party and conservative organizations languished at the IRS, this was not the case for all groups that applied. In cases where the IRS wanted to act quickly, it did – particularly for other high-profile applications that attracted political attention.”

As the Finance Committee concludes, the process by which EO approved applications for tax-exempt status was clearly based on how closely an organization aligned with Lerner’s liberal views:

“The IRS’s treatment of these organizations was almost universally consistent with Lerner’s personal political views – this is, supporting Democratic candidates and opposing conservative tax-exempt organizations that engaged in political speech. Conservative organizations that sought to participate in the nation’s political discourse, such as the Tea Party, drew the strongest ire from Lerner.”

Via: Infowars

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What Washington Has Wrought on Illegal Immigration

About five hours south of San Francisco, where Kate Steinle was murdered in broad daylight by an illegal immigrant, another illegal immigrant has been charged with raping and savagely beating an Air Force veteran to death with a hammer.  According to police, Marilyn Pharis, 64, was sleeping in her Santa Maria, California home in the late morning — after having worked the night shift as a satellite tracker at nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base — when an illegal immigrant named Victor Aureliano Martinez and his accomplice Jose Fernando Villagomez broke into her house, raped her, strangled her, and bludgeoned her “mercilessly” with a hammer.  She died eight days later. 

The commander of the Air Force’s 50th Space Wing, where Pharis worked, called her death a “tragic loss.”

Martinez — originally from Durango, Mexico — had been arrested six times in the past 15 months.  But he was roaming free, thanks in part to the Obama administration’s lax view of deportation, its refusal to enforce federal drug laws, and its determination to reduce prison sentences for nonviolent crimes.  California’s parallel efforts contributed as well.

Santa Maria police chief Ralph Martin says, “I believe there’s a blood trail from Washington, D.C. to Sacramento into the bedroom of Marilyn.” 

Santa Maria, population 102,000, is exactly the sort of place where the I-95 open-borders crowd ought to spend some time before they continue to conspire, Gang of Eight-like, to make our immigration problems even worse.  Perhaps they would then finally start to appreciate the ill-effects of illegal immigration (much of which starts out as legal) and the lack of assimilation that inevitably results when immigration is both lawless and excessive. 

Steve LeBard is a business owner in Santa Maria who lives in the town of Orcutt, which borders Santa Maria to the south.  With some help from THE WEEKLY STANDARD, he fought and won a battle against the California Department of Transportation to hang an American flag near the entrance to charming Old Town Orcutt, but he has yet to prevail in his effort to build a privately funded memorial to veterans on that same site.  LeBard emailed a few thoughts in the wake of this brutal murder of an innocent Air Force veteran:

“Most people that live in the Santa Maria area believe that Santa Maria is an unofficial ‘sanctuary city.’  I disagree.  I believe Santa Maria is a Mexican city — of sorts.  A large part of the city speaks Spanish and has no interest in learning English — with many businesses advertising in Spanish only.  These people speak of returning to Mexico someday — bringing their new-found prosperity with them — they don’t want to be Americans….

“What does this have to do with this vicious murder?  It’s simple — if you’re here illegally you don't rock the panga — you don’t cooperate with the police and you don’t report crime.  You create a haven for criminals — gangs that prey on the mostly good people that are here working the farms….

“Santa Maria is the perfect storm when it comes to illegal immigration.  It is a community that has it resources overwhelmed by people coming here with knowledge of how to work the system.  They have it down pat, from taxes to social services to free buses to the fields.  They use the local hospital emergency room as their primary-care physician.  (I'm a Vietnam veteran; if I go to the VA Clinic and there is something wrong with me, they put me on a four-hour bus to Los Angeles.  If I'm a Mexican (as in Mexican citizen), I go to the emergency room and the hospital negates the bill — passes it on to me...a U.S. taxpayer.)

Via: Weekly Standard

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Oath Keepers arrival at Ferguson protest ‘inflammatory,’ top cop says

Four white men armed with rifles who arrived early Tuesday at protests in Ferguson, Mo., said they were there to protect journalists, but they were not welcomed by police, who fear their presence could prove "inflammatory" amid demonstrations marking the one-year anniversary of the racially charged police shooting of a black man.

Members of the group "Oath Keepers," an association of current and former soldiers or law enforcement and self-professed guardians of the Constitution, told Reuters they were there to provide protection for journalists from the conservative website Infowars.com. But like the police, the mostly African-American protesters seemed to find their presence provocative.

"I hope some black "oath keepers" show up tonight," read one tweet. Another user tweeted, "If oath keepers were black, they would have been killed by the trigger happy white cops."

Meanwhile, authorities arrested nearly two dozen people during a protest that stretched into early Tuesday, marking the anniversary of the Aug. 9, 2014, fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, although there was no repeat of the violence that scarred weekend demonstrations. Police and community leaders are desperately hoping to avoid a replay of the rioting that occurred after Brown was shot and again in November, after a grand jury declined to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson.

"Their presence was both unnecessary and inflammatory"

- Jon Belmar, the St. Louis County police chief

On Tuesday, there were no shots fired and no burglaries, looting or property damage during the protest along West Florissant Avenue, St. Louis County police spokesman Shawn McGuire said. That thoroughfare was the focus of months of massive protests and sometimes violent unrest last summer after the killing of Brown by a Ferguson police officer. McGuire said approximately 23 arrests were made, though police were still confirming official totals.Four white men armed with rifles who arrived early Tuesday at protests in Ferguson, Mo., said they were there to protect journalists, but they were not welcomed by police, who fear their presence could prove "inflammatory" amid demonstrations marking the one-year anniversary of the racially charged police shooting of a black man.

Members of the group "Oath Keepers," an association of current and former soldiers or law enforcement and self-professed guardians of the Constitution, told Reuters they were there to provide protection for journalists from the conservative website Infowars.com. But like the police, the mostly African-American protesters seemed to find their presence provocative.

"I hope some black "oath keepers" show up tonight," read one tweet. Another user tweeted, "If oath keepers were black, they would have been killed by the trigger happy white cops."

Meanwhile, authorities arrested nearly two dozen people during a protest that stretched into early Tuesday, marking the anniversary of the Aug. 9, 2014, fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, although there was no repeat of the violence that scarred weekend demonstrations. Police and community leaders are desperately hoping to avoid a replay of the rioting that occurred after Brown was shot and again in November, after a grand jury declined to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson.

"Their presence was both unnecessary and inflammatory"

- Jon Belmar, the St. Louis County police chief

On Tuesday, there were no shots fired and no burglaries, looting or property damage during the protest along West Florissant Avenue, St. Louis County police spokesman Shawn McGuire said. That thoroughfare was the focus of months of massive protests and sometimes violent unrest last summer after the killing of Brown by a Ferguson police officer. McGuire said approximately 23 arrests were made, though police were still confirming official totals.

Via: Fox News

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5 Things We Learned From Claire McCaskill’s Memoir

McCaskill’s new book, “Plenty Ladylike: A Memoir,” was released on Tuesday. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill’s new memoir, “Plenty Ladylike: A Memoir,” dropped on Tuesday, revealing anecdotes from her career in politics in Missouri’s state capitol and the nation’s.

Aside from deeply personal anecdotes and some local intrigue, McCaskill shed light on the inner workings of two nationally watched U.S. Senate campaigns and her dealings with other women in politics.

1. McCaskill used more than just ads to prop up Todd Akin: McCaskill’s behind-the-scenes support for Rep. Todd Akin in advance of the 2012 Missouri Republican primary has been well documented. In her book, McCaskill writes that with the $1.7 million her campaign spent in the four weeks before the primary on a dog-whistle campaign to help Akin, she actually spent more than Akin’s campaign did during his entire primary campaign.

But, McCaskill’s support ran much deeper than that.

When Akin’s campaign swapped out a successful campaign commercial that featured former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and replaced it with one featuring Akin talking to the camera about “flames of freedom,” his numbers started to dive.

Akin ran against McCaskill in 2012. (File Photo by Whitney Curtis/Getty Images)

“What were they thinking?” McCaskill wrote. “He’d be in trouble if he didn’t get the Huckabee ad back up.”

To get that message to Akin, McCaskill writes that she used a back channel through Michael Kelley, a St. Louis Democratic and labor activist, to get the message to a top Akin campaign official. She was able to put the Akin campaign in touch with her own pollster, Boston-based Tom Kiley, who she allowed “to speak in broad generalities” about his numbers on the ad’s success.

“There hours later the Huckabee ad was back up,” McCaskill wrote.

When asked by someone else later about her help in the primary and then when she helped keep him stay in the race amid pressure to get out after his infamous “legitimate rape” comment, McCaskill writes that Akin said, “sometimes God uses the devil in his plans.”

2. McCaskill chatted with Obama about not even running for re-election: Before Akin, McCaskill was seen as one of the most vulnerable incumbents in 2012. In the summer of 2011, McCaskill writes that she went to lunch with President Barack Obama at a private dining room in White House where she told him, “I’m thinking about not running.”

Obama promised not to repeat the mistake he made in 2010. (File Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Obama, whom McCaskill had endorsed in 2008, talked her out of it, she wrote — adding that the president pledged to avoid the Missouri misstep he made in 2010 while campaigning for Democratic Senate candidate Robin Carnahan in saying, “I need another vote,” which Republican Roy Bluntsuccessfully used to paint her as “Rubber-stamp Robin” for the president.

Despite Obama’s personal support for her, McCaskill writes that his campaign, through campaign manager Jim Messina, informed her at a meeting of the Senate Democratic Caucus that the Obama campaign would not be spending money on a Missouri ground game in 2012, prompting her to walk out of the meeting, “my eyes welling up, as frustration overwhelmed me.”

“I stuck my neck way out, I took huge risks, I have been loyal… and you guys are not going to lift a finger in Missouri,” she writes that she asked Messina. According to her account, he responded, “Claire, can we win in Missouri?”

“Point made,” she wrote.

3. Reid, Schumer relentlessly courted her to run in 2005: Just a couple months after McCaskill lost her 2004 election for governor against Republican Matt Blunt, McCaskill writes that she started getting call from Senate Democratic leaders like Harry Reid and Charles E. Schumer. They wanted her to run against Republican Sen. Jim Talent in 2006.

Schumer told McCaskill that she negotiated “like you’re from Brooklyn.” (File Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)

“My first reaction to all the calls? Out of question. No way. Not happening,” she wrote.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee conducted a poll that summer that found McCaskill on top. She writes that her husband, Joseph Shepard, was convinced she should run. By then, Reid himself started calling Shepard to plead his case.

McCaskill and her husband went first to the DSCC’s annual retreat in Nantucket, Mass., (where she says Shumer paid her a compliment, “Claire, you negotiate like you’re from Brooklyn”) and then to Washington, where they met with then-Sen. Barack Obama.

The two were sold.

4. McCaskill has clashed with Ann Wagner before: Rep. Ann Wagner — the Missouri Republican elected in 2012 who is considering a campaign next cycle for McCaskill’s seat — has clashed repeatedly with her throughout the last two decades.

Wagner is considering a run for McCaskill’s seat. (File Photo by Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

The two crossed paths very publicly in 2000, when Wagner was the chair of the Missouri Republican Party. At the time, she writes, a party spokesman penned a press release in which he said McCaskill let “Democrats parade her around like a cheap hooker” to help the party’s nominee for governor at the time. Wagner, she writes, said the spokesman’s “remark was wrong but that they had no plans to fire him.”

The tables were turned four years later, when it was McCaskill’s successful primary election challenge to the state’s sitting governor that was controversial, and Wagner used the party’s divide to help Matt Blunt get elected governor.

5. McCaskill reveals private meals with women senators: McCaskill praises her female colleagues as the Senate’s top compromisers, and notes that all of them meet regularly for “civility dinners.”

Mikulski started the women senators’ meals in 1992 . (File Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

“There is no fancy menu and no long cocktail hour. They’re a chance for us to talk about the issues of the day,” she writes, adding that in that room is where compromises have been discussed on human trafficking legislation, foreign adoption reform and efforts to avoid a government shutdown.

The dinners, founded by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski in 1992, were attended by Hillary Clinton when she was in the Senate.

“She was the only one of us who had a Secret Service detail, the only ones who had been first lady of the country, who had traveled places with a much more rarefied atmosphere than even the U.S. Senate. But she never put on airs,” McCaskill wrote. “She was kind and personable, and she was one of us.”

While spouses and staff members are not invited to the dinners, McCaskill writes that the women of the Supreme Court are invited to attend once a year.

Via: Roll Call

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Lois Lerner: Lincoln Should’ve Let the South Go Instead of Civil War

Most Americans tend to agree that Abraham Lincoln was one of this country’s better presidents, having saved the nation from imploding on itself with the Civil War. Former IRS chief Lois Lerner, however, does not apparently have the same thoughts about keeping the South in the union.

“Look my view is that Lincoln was our worst president not our best,” Lerner wrote in 2014. “He should (have) let the south go. We really do seem to have 2 totally different mindsets.”

The Senate Finance Committee released a report yesterday that examined 1.5 million pages of IRS emails. A significant focus has gone to the fact that Lerner had a pattern of deriding conservatives as “crazies” and “assholes,” as well as the allegations that her leadership mismanaged the applications of Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status

“The report clearly shows that conservative groups were singled out because of their political beliefs, and gross mismanagement at the IRS allowed this practice to continue for years,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch.

Lerner is still reeling from renewed backlash after yesterday’s reports suggested that she once targeted an organization that once paid a fee to Bristol Palin.

Via: Mediaite

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Obama Signed Off on Iran’s Right to Nuclear Program in Secret 2011 Talks

President Barack Obama approved of Iran’s right to operate a nuclear program in 2011 during secret meetings with Iranian officials, according to new disclosures by Iran’s Supreme Leader.

The comments, made earlier this year by Ali Khamenei, dispute claims by the Obama administration that it only began talking to Iran after the election of President Hassan Rouhani.

Khamenei revealed in a recent speech that talks began in secret with anti-Semitic, Holocaust denying former President Mahmoud Ahmadenejad. At this time, Obama told the Iranians he endorses Iran’s right to have a nuclear program.

“The issue of negotiating with the Americans is related to the term of the previous [Ahmadinejad] government, and to the dispatching of a mediator to Tehran to request talks,” Khamenei said in a recent speech translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

“At the time, a respected regional figure came to me as a mediator and explicitly said that U.S. President [Obama] had asked him to come to Tehran and present an American request for negotiations,” Khamenei disclosed. “The Americans told this mediator: ‘We want to solve the nuclear issue and lift sanctions within six months, while recognizing Iran as a nuclear power.’”

“I told that mediator that I did not trust the Americans and their words, but after he insisted, I agreed to reexamine this topic, and negotiations began,” Khamenei added.

Other Iranian officials also have admitted that Obama’s goal from the get-go was to endorse Iran’s nuclear program and then lift economic sanctions on the country’s economy.

Secretary of State John Kerry sent a letter to Iran stating that the United States “recognizes Iran’s rights regarding” nuclear enrichment, according to another senior Iranian official, Hossein Sheikh Al-Islam.

“We came to the [secret] negotiations [with the United States] after Kerry wrote a letter and sent it to us via [mediator Omani Sultan Qaboos], stating that America officially recognizes Iran’s rights regarding the [nuclear fuel] enrichment cycle,” Al-Islam said in a recent interview with Iran’s Tasnim news agency, according to MEMRI.

“Then there were two meetings in Oman between the [Iranian and U.S.] deputy foreign ministers, and after those, Sultan Qaboos was dispatched by Obama to Khamenei with Kerry’s letter,” the official added.

Khamenei went on to tell him at the time: “‘I don’t trust them.’ Sultan Qaboos said: ‘Trust them one more time.’ On this basis the negotiations began, and not on the basis of sanctions, as they [the Americans] claim in their propaganda.”

This information has been confirmed by other senior Iranian officials, according to MEMRI.

Ali Akbar Salahi, the Iranian vice president and head of its Atomic Energy Organization, claimed in separate interviews this year that “the Americans initiated the secret talks with Iran in 2011-2012, and stressed his role in jumpstarting the process from the Iranian side,” according to MEMRI.

Via: WFB

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Chicago Schools Demand $500 Million Bailout From State

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Chicago’s public schools have released a budget that relies on nearly $500 million in funding the state has not yet voted to provide. The official budget essentially demands that the state hand over money or risk throwing the school district into chaos. Even Chicago’s teacher union is critical of the move.

With a total budget of $5.7 billion, the $480 million Chicago Public Schools (CPS) expects the state to provide is more than 8 percent of their budget. The money is needed to fulfill pension obligations the city has to current and retired teachers. If the money isn’t forthcoming by the end of the year, the district says it will have to lay off thousands of current teachers to meet those pension obligations. (RELATED: Chicago Fires 1400 Teachers To Fund Extravagant Pensions)

The district is already preparing itself for the blow, as Monday’s budget also came with an announcement of over 400 layoffs. Chicago’s schools have repeatedly had to shed jobs the last few years as they descend further and further into a pension-induced budget crisis.

While CPS is looking to the state government to bail it out, it may not want to hold its breath. Illinois’ Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, says that Chicago’s pension crisis is the fault of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the “dictatorial” power they wield. Rauner said CTU needs to bear the burden of a fiscal crunch they created and that it isn’t the government’s job to swoop in to the rescue.

"The power of the Chicago Teachers Union is overwhelming,” Rauner said in a press conference Monday. “Chicago has given and given and given. It’s created the financial crisis that the Chicago schools face now.”

Rauner wants to alter Illinois state law to give cities most power to determine what is collectively bargained and what isn’t, with an eye towards rolling back the generous benefits Chicago teachers have that have helped create the crisis. Rauner says that providing a financial bailout to CPS would be contingent on making such long-term reforms, but the Democrat-controlled legislature has refused to budge on the issue.

CPS leaders, meanwhile, have proposed reducing their budget gap by making teachers finance their own pension contributions. Currently, the government puts an equivalent of 7 percent of teachers’ salary into pension plans; CPS head Forrest Claypool has proposed taking some or all of this 7 percent out of teachers’ current salaries instead.

Teachers, led by CTU president Karen Lewis, have blasted this proposal as a massive pay cut and on Monday warned they would likely strike if the city tried to implement it.

“If they insist on a 7 percent all at once like a pay cut — a 7 percent pay cut — I don’t have to call for a strike,” Lewis said in a press conference Monday. “I think our members will do that themselves.”

Lewis was also critical of CPS for its budgetary jujitsu, saying it was relying on funds that “aren’t really there.”

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Via: Daily Caller

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Black Lives Matter Racists Strike Again

Ferguson, MO turned once again into a scene of violent race hatred when a man police authorities say opened fire on them on the anniversary of Michael Brown’s death was critically wounded when police returned fire. He released a “remarkable amount of gunfire” against the officers using a stolen handgun, explained St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar. That incident occurred shortly after “an exchange of gunfire between two groups” Belmar described as criminals, not protesters. “There is a small group of people out there that are intent on making sure that peace doesn’t prevail,” he said.

So-called “peaceful” protests in Ferguson on Sunday descended into shootings, as well as protesters pelting cops with rocks and bottles. Protestors marking the one-year anniversary of the confrontation between Michael Brown and officer Darren Wilson that resulted in Brown’s death roasted and ate a pig with a policeman’s hat on its head and the words #Darren Wilson scrawled on its body. Make no mistake, the roasted, consumed pig represented more than Darren Wilson, but was a representation of “white” police forces, whom #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) activist view as the enforcers of the white power structure that deliberately oppresses black people. As the protest worn on in Ferguson, people once again engaged in looting a beauty store, police were injured by debris tossed at them, and members of the mob chanted, “We’re ready for what? We’re ready for war.”

On Saturday at Westlake Park in Seattle, WA Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was ultimately driven from the stage when a group of BLM protestors stepped on the podium and took control of the microphone. Sanders was on hand to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Social Security and Medicare. He had begun to deliver his address thanking Seattle for being “one of the most progressive cities in the United States of America.” That was as far as he got before two women strolled onto the stage and grabbed the microphone. One of the two made their intentions clear. “If you do not listen to her, your event will be shut down now,” Sanders was told. After an exchange ensued with screaming protesters, event organizers relented and allowed the demonstrators to proceed.

The largely white crowd was not particularly appreciative, showering the protesters with boos and chants about allowing Sanders to speak. A few urged the police to take control. That was too much for protester Marissa Johnson. “I was going to tell Bernie how racist this city is, filled with its progressives, but you did it for me,” she declared. And true to the racist underpinnings of BLM movement Johnson further insisted the audience was guilty of “white supremacist liberalism.”

Via: Canada Free Press

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