Category Archives: national news

national news, political news

‘Damn e-mails’ return to center stage

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mails

Back in the old days, when Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Rodham Clinton actually were treating each other nicely, Sanders offered this often-quoted quip: “I am tired of hearing about your damn e-mails.”

I’ve got bad news for you, Sen. Sanders. We’re going to hear about those “damn e-mails” for a while longer.

The State Department’s inspector general has issued a report that says then-Secretary of State Clinton flouted department policy in her use of a personal e-mail server when communicating about State Department issues.

Does this doom Clinton’s assured nomination as the next Democratic Party presidential nominee? No. It’s going to damage her. Why? Republicans will make sure of it.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/281192-watchdog-agency-hits-clinton-top-aides-on-records-policy

I am not giving this report the short shrift. I get the concern about policy violations. What’s unclear to me, though, is whether any of the information Clinton passed on her personal server ever was captured by our nation’s enemies? Did any of them ever use that information to harm our national security?

What’s more, as Clinton has said in pushing back, other secretaries of state have used personal e-mail accounts. Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Madeleine Albright? They did, too.

Did they ever compromise national security? I haven’t heard evidence of it regarding those officials, either.

http://thehill.com/regulation/national-security/281220-clinton-campaign-insists-email-setup-not-unique

I was troubled when word came out about the use of personal e-mail servers to convey public information. My major concern then was whether information actually compromised our national security. All the congressional inquiries and probes haven’t yet made that determination.

However, that won’t stop the chatter and the intense criticism. It goes with the political territory.

Bernie Sanders’ wish won’t come true any time soon.

 

national news, political news

Targeting a female, Hispanic governor?

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You’ve got to hand it to Donald J. Trump.

The man has zero filter. His political antennae have been blown over.

Get a load of this.

He traveled to Albuquerque, the largest city — by far — in New Mexico and then for no obvious or apparent reason he launches into a rhetorical riff against Gov. Susana Martinez.

What makes this so, um, remarkable is that Trump’s comments seemed gratuitous. They had no foundation, nor did they contribute to whatever point he was trying to make.

He was talking about the increase in food stamps in New Mexico for the past dozen or so years. Then he dragged Martinez’s name into his remarks. The governor “has to do better,” he said.

OK, here’s another remarkable element.

New Mexico Governor Gov. Susana Martinez speaks to the delegation at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, Wednesday, August 29, 2012. (Harry E. Walker/MCT via Getty Images)

Trump is having trouble with two key voting blocs. He is looked at unfavorably among women and, uh, Hispanics. He’ll need both of those groups’ support if he has a prayer of being elected president of the United States.

Susana Martinez embodies both of them. All at once. At the same time.

She’s also a rising Republican Party star who, incidentally, had endorsed Marco Rubio in the GOP presidential primary campaign. She didn’t attend the rally at the Albuquerque assembly hall.

My hunch is that her star has risen a good bit higher in the wake of Trump’s ridiculous criticism.

national news, political news

Let ‘tradition’ stand regarding tax returns

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Call me a traditionalist.

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, wants Congress to enact legislation that requires presidential candidates to release their tax returns for public inspection.

With all due respect to my home boy, I think the bill is an overreach.

Wyden is responding to presumptive Republican presidential frontrunner Donald J. Trump’s refusal to release his returns. Trump contends his returns are under audit by the Internal Revenue Service, to which the IRS has responded “so what?”; an audit doesn’t preclude the release of the returns.

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/281194-dem-senator-offers-bill-to-require-candidates-to-release-tax-returns

The tradition has been for presidential candidates to release their returns. They’ve been doing it since 1976, the first election after the Watergate constitutional crisis that forced President Nixon to resign.

My own sense is that tradition ought to stand.

I believe candidates’ refusal to release those returns give voters a key gauge of their character. It gives voters a chance to determine a candidate’s trustworthiness. It enables voters to use such refusal as a measuring stick as to whether the candidate deserves their ballot-box endorsement.

To be sure, Wyden has a dog in this fight. He has endorsed Democratic frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton, who in turn has been blasting Trump to smithereens over his refusal to release his tax returns.

I get Sen. Wyden’s bias.

I also believe “tradition” ought to stand as a de facto rule. Let the presidential candidates decide whether to comply … and then let voters decide on the correctness of their refusal.

 

 

national news, political news

Another shameful accusation comes forth

vince-foster

Donald J. Trump keeps tossing accusations against the wall.

Some of them stick in the minds of those who’ve been supporting his Republican presidential campaign.

This one, though, belongs in the trash bin.

In his effort to smear Democratic Party frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton, Trump has thrown out the name of one Vincent Foster, a close friend of Hillary and Bill Clinton who in 1993 went to a park in Washington, D.C., and killed himself.

So, what did Trump do? He called Foster’s death “fishy.” He’s now resurrecting a long-debunked notion that the Clintons had somehow been parties to their dear friend’s death. Right-wing hatemongers dredged up conspiracy theories throughout most of Bill Clinton’s presidency.

CNN commentator Jake Tapper took note of Trump’s latest smear.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/05/24/cnns_jake_tapper_trumps_vince_foster_accusations_are_outrageous_and_long_ago_debunked.html

Tapper said: “The notion that this was a murder is a fiction born of delusion and untethered to reality and contradicted by evidence reviewed in at least six investigations, one of them by Ken Starr, hardly a Bill Clinton defender.”

Trump, though, has thrown out this ridiculous notion.

I am reminded of the scolding that Joseph Welch, special counsel to the Army, during those infamous Senate hearings in the 1950s when Sen. Joseph McCarthy was looking for communists operating within the federal government.

Welch asked McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency?”

Donald Trump long ago sunk to those depths. His latest outrageous accusation is despicable in the extreme.

medical news, military news, national news

Yes, Mr. Secretary, words do matter

mcdonald

Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald has just learned that words matter.

They matter a lot.

He recently tossed out a seemingly flippant comment about wait times at veterans medical clinics, comparing them to the wait times at Disneyland.

According to NBC News: “The days to an appointment is really not what we should be measuring. What we should be measuring is the veterans’ satisfaction,” McDonald had told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington on Monday. “When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? What’s important? What’s important is: What’s your satisfaction with the experience?”

OK, Mr. Secretary, let’s not go there.

A lot of veterans take their medical care quite seriously. Indeed, McDonald holds his current job because his predecessor, Eric Shinseki, was forced to resign because of issues relating to wait times and allegations that hospital officials were cooking the records to reflect that the wait times at clinics weren’t as long as had been reported.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/va-hospital-scandal/va-secretary-bob-mcdonald-slammed-tone-deaf-comparison-disneyland-n579241

McDonald also said: “If I was misunderstood, if I said the wrong thing, I’m glad that I have the opportunity to correct it,” he told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “I’m only focused on one thing, and that’s better caring for veterans. That’s my job, that’s why I’m here.”

This veteran accepts your correction, Mr. Secretary.

Just take greater care when discussing these things in public. A lot of veterans are listening carefully.

 

legal news, national news, political news, Sports news, State news

Is karma about to bite Kenneth Starr?

ken starr

Does anyone out there see the irony in reports that Kenneth Starr has been fired as president of Baylor University?

Baylor’s board of regents will announce soon whether reports of Starr’s dismissal are true.

Why all the fuss over Starr? Baylor University has been struggling with a sex scandal on campus and reports that school officials failed to take action when one of the school’s football players was accused of raping a female student. The athlete was convicted and other cases emerged in which Baylor officials allegedly failed to take proper action.

The incident and the ensuing scandal has swallowed up the school.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/24/amid-reports-starrs-firing-baylor-says-expect-anno/

The irony is this …

Kenneth Starr is the very same fellow who more than 20 years ago launched an investigation into President Bill Clinton’s real estate dealings. Congress appointed him as a special prosecutor to probe the Whitewater investment matter.

Then something happened. Starr got wind of an inappropriate relationship that the president was having with a young female White House intern. That scandal grew as well. The investigation into a real estate matter morphed into something quite different, more salacious.

The president was summoned before a federal grand jury, which asked him about the relationship. The president, who swore to tell the truth, didn’t tell the truth and he was impeached for lying under oath.

Sex has this way of engulfing things, if you know what I mean.

I get that the cases are far from similar. Starr hasn’t been accused of doing anything improper here. He might take the fall, though, for others’ actions or inaction. He does run the university and as President Truman’s famous White House desk sign pointed out: The Buck Stops Here.

Still, as the saying goes: Karma can be a real drag, man.

 

International news, national news, political news

Declare war against ISIS?

donald-trump

Donald J. Trump has this annoying habit of talking past whatever point he’s trying to sell.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly last night he’d be willing to consider asking Congress for a declaration of war against the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations.

I’ve talked already about that in this blog. It’s not an altogether nutty idea, unlike so many of the things that fly out of Trump’s mouth.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/09/time-for-a-declaration-of-war/

Then he goes on.

Trump told O’Reilly that the United States is letting “tens of thousands” of terrorists into the country.

Really? Tens of bleeping thousands of ’em, Donald?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/trump-terror-declaration-war-223497

There you have it. The candidate of fear strikes again.

He tosses out statements with no basis in fact. There is not a single shred of evidence that “tens of thousands” of terrorists have taken up residents in the United States. Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Border Patrol, state and local police agencies, Drug Enforcement Agency and the whole array of agencies charged with protecting us are rounding up bad guys every single day.

As for the war declaration, I don’t have a particular problem with that, either.

However, I see it more as a proactive approach to fighting terrorists rather than as a reactive one.

Will it ever occur? I doubt it, not even if Donald Trump were to (here comes that shudder again) become the next president.

legal news, national news, political news

GOP lawmaker: Wrong to block Garland

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Dan Donovan’s opinion on a critical judicial appointment might matter if he actually were to play a tangible role in determining its outcome.

It’s too bad the thoughts of a back-bench Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives will be relegated to the back of the closet.

Donovan is a New York member of Congress who said it is wrong for the Republican Senate leadership to block the appointment of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court. If Donovan were king of Capitol Hill, he’d let Garland have a hearing and a vote.

He’s right, of course. President Obama appointed Garland to the high court after the shocking death of conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia earlier this year.

Within hours of Scalia’s death, though, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared that the president’s nominee wouldn’t get a hearing. The president’s pick would be tossed aside. Why? Barack Obama is a lame duck, said McConnell, and the appointment should come from the next president of the United States.

It’s an absolute crock of crap.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/281000-gop-lawmaker-republicans-were-wrong-to-block-garland

“I’ve never thought that was a good idea,” Donovan told reporters in Staten Island. “I’ve always thought that the Republicans were wrong, that they should see who the nominee was — actually, the president nominated Judge Garland — and judge him on his abilities, his jurisprudence.”

Gosh. Do you think?

The irony of McConnell’s refusal is too rich to dismiss. He accuses the president of playing politics by seeking to force the Senate to hold hearings and then a vote. The ironic part is that McConnell’s obstruction of this appointment is the classic example of “playing politics” with a key provision in the constitutional authority of the legislative and executive branches of government.

The only reason McConnell is blocking this appointment process from going ahead is because the appointment might change the balance of power on the court, which was a narrowly conservative panel with Scalia. Garland is more of a mainstream moderate judge who, I should note, won overwhelming Senate approval to the D.C. Circuit Court.

Who’s playing politics, Mr. Majority Leader?

One of McConnell’s fellow GOP lawmakers is making some sense. It’s a shame his voice won’t be heard at the other end of the Capitol Building.

 

national news, political news

Is this election going to set a low-turnout record?

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Some months ago I mentioned to friends that I thought the 2016 election would produce a low-turnout result.

My friends laughed me out of the proverbial room. Why? They were certain that if the major-party presidential nominees were going to be Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald J. Trump that they would energize their parties’ respective bases like no other candidate could do.

Well, here we are. Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee; Clinton hasn’t quite achieved presumptive status yet, but she’s going to be the Democratic nominee, just as she boasted the other day to CNN’s Chris Cuomo.

What do I think now about the turnout?

It’s going to be low. How do I know that? I don’t know it.

But the talk all around Pundit World centers on the high negative feelings that both candidates engender among voters. Trump polls about 70 percent unfavorable; Clinton’s unfavorable rating sits at around 60 percent.

The previous low-turnout record belongs to President Bill Clinton and U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, who ran against each other in 1996. Clinton won re-election that year with just 49 percent of eligible Americans actually voting that year. Clinton, of course, didn’t collect a majority that year, winning a healthy plurality, just as he did four years earlier; third-party candidate Ross Perot sucked enough votes away to deny the president a majority.

I have to agree with those who say that Clinton and Trump both are deeply wounded frontrunners. Trump’s failings are too numerous to mention; at every level one can mention, Trump is the most unfit major-party candidate ever to seek the presidency. Clinton’s been scrutinized carefully for more than two decades and she continues to suffer from this perception that she’s shifty and untrustworthy.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people say — either to me directly or to others — that they’re going to sit this one out. Republicans cannot vote for Clinton, even though they cannot stomach the idea of Trump carrying their party’s banner into battle.

Democrats aren’t going to walk the plank in favor of Trump.

Where do they turn? A third-party candidate still might emerge to capture the imagination of voters who are disgusted with the major parties’ selections.

If no one emerges, well, this election is looking as though it will set a dubious record for non-involvement.

Is that a mandate the winner will embrace?

media news, national news, political news

Yep, this campaign is going to get real nasty

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melania-trump

DailyKos is a lefty website dedicated to promoting liberal causes and candidates.

There you go. I’ve stipulated that I understand where this outfit’s bias lies.

It posted a picture of Melania Trump, wife of the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump. Mrs. Trump is wearing a thong, she’s toting a pistol and is standing on the wing of her hubby’s airplane.

The picture is, shall we say, not very dignified.

Take a gander here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/5/21/1529429/-Trump-s-wife-posing-with-gun-Thong-and-Boots-And-they-had-a-problem-with-Michelle-s-bare-arms?detail=facebook

Is this what’s happening in this presidential campaign? We’re now going to be seeing more pictures of Melania Trump — a former model and beauty queen — posing in such a provocative manner?

Here’s the fascinating element of this picture: Trumpkins are giving Melania a pass. Imagine if, say, Michelle Obama were photographed in this manner. What might their response be to that?

True, liberals are using these kinds of images to suggest that Mrs. Trump’s history would stain her activities as first lady if she and her husband move into the White House.

I should point out that the picture was taken some years ago, I guess when Melania Trump was still earning an income striking these kinds of poses.

Her husband is making Hillary Clinton’s husband, the former president of the United States, an issue in his campaign. It might follow, then, that turnabout is fair play and that Melania’s past is fair game as well.

Sure, the former president got impeached because he lied about an affair he had with a White House intern. Does that worsen his wife’s credentials as a potential president.

My wish is for the candidates and their supporters to keep the spouses out of the argument.

If that wish isn’t to be granted, then I fear we’re going to see more pictures of Melania Trump striking poses not usually identified with first ladies.