Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America appreciate at least one prominent Democrat facing justice as former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane is sentenced to jail. They also wince as the Cook Political Report predicts Democrats will win back the U.S. Senate. And we unload on a new PSA showing schoolkids berating a classmate because his dad didn’t vote.
When Jena Jones opened up her absentee ballot last week, there was a lot more in the envelope than she expected. In addition to the actual ballot, she and her husband, David, noticed multiple pieces of advocacy from the Democrats.
Jones, who resides in Fairfax County, will be out of town on Election Day and requested an absentee ballot from the Virginia Department of Elections. She was surprised to discover what else came with her ballot.
“I found a letter from the governor of Virginia asking me to please vote Democrat and ‘help keep Virginia blue’ this year. Then I got a letter from the Fairfax County Democratic Committee, giving me a step-by-step, yes-and-no what I should vote for as far as the meal tax and all those other things on the ballot,” said Jena.
The latter document is known as a sample ballot and is often handed out on the sidewalks outside of polling places on Election Day. But there are strict rules which forbid those sample ballots from being handed out in the polling stations.
There was no material provided in the absentee package highlighting Republican candidates or positions on various proposals. Jones did not request the ballot through the Democratic Party, she has not voted in any recent Democratic primaries and she is not a registered Democrat.
Although not a political junkie of any sort, the inclusion of fliers from Democrats but nothing from Republicans struck her as odd.
“I was a little confused as to why we didn’t get anything Republican at all, and I wasn’t sure why that was included in my ballot at all,” said Jena.
On the back of the letter from McAuliffe were lengthy, glowing biographies of Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine and her local congressman, Rep, Gerry Connolly.
Her husband, David, was serving as a witness to Jena’s vote. He was even more frustrated by all the pro-Democrat literature while no GOP materials were included.
“I also was a little befuddled because I figured that this would be a time that you wouldn’t want to encourage voters to go one way or the other, It’s just like when you walk into the precinct or the polls, they can’t be within a certain amount of feet from the voting booths and I figure they shouldn’t be able to put a piece of paper in the envelope with your ballot,” said David Jones.
David was particularly surprised by the letter from Gov. McAuliffe, which was not some simple statement thanking absentee voters for taking part in the process. Instead, it was a full-page letter, imploring Virginia voters to choose Democrats for president and Congress. It also slams Republicans and Donald Trump on issues ranging from immigration to taxes.
“If it was just a letter saying, ‘Hey we appreciate you voting. Every vote counts,’ that would make sense and I would totally back that. But when there’s a specific flier that says ‘Hillary Clinton for President’ and ‘Tim Kaine for Vice President’ laying out their platform, to me it was just biased. It was one side,” said David.
He is also worried about how others might look at the letters and sample ballot.
“I just think of the people that don’t have social media or television access, that are confined to a house, that just can’t get out, or are overseas and they’re relying on this information to cast their vote,” said David.
As a result, David took to Facebook on Oct. 20 with the photos you see in this article.
“So… in what world is this ok? Jena will be out of town for the election so we are completing her absentee ballot tonight. We open the envelope and there are two flyers from the Democrats telling her how to vote. They can’t go inside the voting places but they can put check list in this envelope??? Ridiculous!” read his Facebook post.
“It upset me I guess, because there was nothing in there that represented the Republican Party. And I knew if we were getting it then someone else also was getting it,” said David.
His post has been shared dozens of times. He says even Democratic friends and longtime poll workers have expressed shock and disgust at the Democratic Party tactics. He has reached out to several different state officials looking for an explanation. Thus far, he has received no response.
Our calls and emails to the Virginia Department of Elections have also gone unanswered.
A top House Republican expert on health care policy calls President Obama’s blame of insurers, employers and Republicans for the problems in a health care system that Obama insists is working very well evidence that Obama is “delusional” and “living in a parallel universe” and says Republicans are ready to implement patient-centered reforms.
On Thursday, President Obama visited Miami, Florida, to stump for Hillary Clinton but also to defend his signature health care law and call for some changes to improve the system. The speech came on the heels of insurance companies announcing significant premium hikes for 2017.
On Monday, the White House confirmed that premiums would skyrocket for the coming year.
House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price, R-Georgia, says the soaring costs of health care are crippling and were completely foreseeable.
“It looks like the average premium increase for 2017 is going to be around 30 percent nationwide. This was all predictable and was predicted by us. The fact of the matter is you can’t set up a health care system the way that the president the way that the president and his administration and his partners have done and expect that these costs aren’t going to rise significantly,” said Price.
On Thursday in Florida, Obama insisted the system was great for 90 percent of Americans. He says those who get their coverage through their employers or through Medicaid are fine. He believes action only needs to be taken for the ten percent who buy their insurance through the health care exchanges.
Obama launched a three-pronged offensive of blame, first saying anyone who is frustrated with their coverage and gets it privately through the workplace should point the finger at their bosses.
“Some people may say, ‘Well, I’ve seen my co-pays go up or my networks have changed.’ But these are decisions that are made by your employers. It’s not because of Obamacare,” said Obama Thursday.
Price immediately fired back on Obama pinning the blame on employers.
“What the president says just isn’t true. Employers have changed what they’re providing in terms of health coverage because they’re being required to change, with the employer mandate, what they have to offer their employees for health coverage. This is a direct result of Obamacare, or the ACA, contrary to what the president says. He’s living in a parallel universe,” said Price.
Next, Obama blamed soaring premiums in the individual marketplace on insurance companies.
“Although the marketplaces are working well in most of the states, there are some states where there’s still not enough competition between insurers. So if you only have one insurer, they may decide, ‘We’re going to jack up rates because we can because nobody else is offering a better price,'” said Obama on Thursday.
Again, Price is left shaking his head.
“Obamacare, the ACA, has virtually destroyed the individual and small group market. We’ve now got a third of the counties in this country, where there’s only one choice on the exchange. That’s not a choice if you only have one health coverage plan that you can select. These consequences are a direct result of the rules and the regulations and the requirements put forward in Obamacare,” said Price.
Price says it’s not just Republicans who Obama isn’t dealing it straight to the American people.
“He’s living in a fantasy world if he doesn’t believe that there are fundamental, foundational problems with this law. Many, many individuals in Washington understand and appreciate this, including some on his side of the aisle, who I’ve spoken with and they’ve been reluctant to change any of this while he’s in office,” said Price.
Perhaps the part of Obama’s speech that’s most galling for Obamacare opponents is the president ascribing sinister motives to those who continue to oppose his law.
“So what’s the problem? Why is there still such a fuss? Well, part of the problem is the fact that a Democratic president named Barack Obama passed the law. And that’s just the truth. I mean I worked really, really hard to engage Republicans,” said Obama.
Price says nothing could be farther from the truth.
“He’s just delusional and it’s so very, very sad,” said Price. “When he was putting forth his bill, I was chairman of the Republican Study Committee at that time. We came forward with our alternative even before Obamacare was introduced.”
“We reached out to the administration and the White House every single week for over a year. Every single week, simply asking for a meeting to talk about the kinds of solutions that we believe would be helpful for the plan that he was working on. We never got any response from the administration,” added Price.
“It’s just so deceitful for him to lay that line out before the American people,” said Price. “It’s not because it’s a Democrat plan. It’s not because he was put forward by Barack Obama. We oppose the plan because it doesn’t work for people. It doesn’t work for patients.”
Price points to directly to the House Republican plan to reform the health care system. He notes there are one-page, three-page and 40-page versions of the plan, depending on the amount of detail Americans want to dig into.
Among the core principles in the Republican approach, Price first points to the need for flexibility.
“We must absolutely provide flexibility for patients all across this land so that they’re the ones who are choosing who treats them, where they’re treated, when and how and the like. That flexibility does not exist now,” said Price. “We need flexibility for the folks providing the care, for the doctors. They need to be the ones that are working with their patients and deciding what kind of treatment is needed for a specific diagnosis.”
He also says Washington needs to help Americans afford health coverage.
“We believe everybody ought to gain health coverage but we believe they ought to gain the kind of coverage that they want to purchase for themselves and their family, not that the government forces you to buy,” said Price.
“We have a very specific proposal for tax credits or refundable credits or advanceable refundable credits based on age for every single American that would it so that there’s financial feasibility for every single American,” said Price.
He also calls for expanded options with Health Savings Accounts, or HSA’s, allowing more high-deductible catastrophic plans so young people will have incentive to get coverage, and “lawsuit abuse reform” that will protect the medical community and drive down costs.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud for grilling Clinton Campaign Manager Robby Mook and pointing out the Democrats had no problem discussing Donald Trump’s stolen tax returns but now say Russia stole John Podesta’s emails and no one should read them. They also groan as the Wall Street Journal reveals Clinton confidante and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe directed $675,000 to the 2015 campaign of a woman whose husband ended up overseeing part of the Hillary Clinton investigation. And they wretch as the Pentagon discovers it overpaid bonuses to Americans who did extra combat time in Iraq and Afghanistan – and now wants some of the money back.
Democrats are engaged in damage control in the wake of undercover videos from Project Veritas showing party operatives admitting to stoking violence at Trump rallies and being open to engaging in mass voter fraud, and the group says these videos are just the tip of the iceberg.
On Monday, Project Veritas released a video depicting the recently-fired Scott Foval of the Democrat-linked Americans United for Change admitting to inciting violence at Trump events, including a riot in Chicago that injured police officers and another that shut down a road near a Trump rally in Arizona. Foval was quickly fired.
Tuesday, a follow-up video depicted Foval bragging about Democrats busing in voters from other precincts to influence elections and at least entertaining other forms of voter fraud this year. Longtime Democratic operative Robert Creamer resigned as head of Democracy Partners that same day. Creamer, who is married to Chicago-area Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., also served time years ago on a felony fraud conviction.
“In the first video, we see that they’re actually doing the things that are despicable. In the second video, we have them talking prospectively about what they’re going to do on Election Day. We have to be vigilant, go out and see if we can catch them on Election Day doing those things,” said Project Veritas Executive Director Russ Verney.
“But since they’ve already delivered on their violence at rallies, we have no reason to believe that they don’t intend to bus people around and commit other voter fraud,” added Verney.
In addition to dismissing Foval and Creamer, Democrats have pointed the finger of blame at Project Veritas and founder James O’Keefe. Media, such as the New York Times, usually refer to Project Veritas as “a conservative group led by the activist James O’Keefe that has been heavily criticized as using deceptive editing.”
Verney rejects the left’s effort to dismiss the videos by attacking Project Veritas and O’Keefe.
“Nobody has pointed to anything in either of the videos that’s untrue or that they challenge the veracity of. We’ve got them in their own words admitting to their own underhanded acts to subvert the Trump campaign and to commit voter fraud,” said Verney.
As for the suggestion that “deceptive editing” created this controversy, Verney says that is patently false.
“They attack the messenger instead of the message. You say that it’s heavily edited and imply that we’ve done something nefarious with the editing, but they can’t point to anything within the videos that are nefarious. They are the actual words of the targets in their own context. We allow the people to fully hang themselves in these videos,” said Verney.
Verney especially gets a kick out of broadcast media promoting the “deceptive editing” defense.
“Every video you watch on ABC, Fox, whatever, is edited. We would have to post hundreds of hours of video if you want it unedited,” he said.
But while Democrats try to wash their hands of the controversy by kicking Creamer and Foval to the curb this cycle, Verney doesn’t necessarily buy that they’re really off the stage.
“As they say in the video, ‘We don’t talk about things that we talk about.’ All this is a wink and a nod. So whether or not they’re actually fired or just moved to another company is yet to be seen,” said Verney.
Even if the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton campaign and private groups really did cut ties with Creamer and Foval, Verney is confident the tactics aren’t changing.
“Regardless of whether or not those individuals are still in their positions, the organizations that they’re with are still in position and still carrying on, still committing the same kind of tactics as when Bob Creamer was the head of the operation or Scott Foval. They’ve still got plenty of other replacements out there doing the same things,” said Verney.
However, Verney warns Democrats that there damage control efforts are not over yet.
“They’ve fired two of the top people so far. The only thing that the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary campaign can do is try to attack the messenger. They can’t deal with the message. And believe me, this is going to get worse,” said Verney, referring to more Project Veritas videos that are on the way.
He didn’t say exactly what the forthcoming videos would show, but he did mention that as many as eight undercover reporters infiltrated various parts of the Democratic Party apparatus and discovered more evidence of illegal communicating and collaborating between organizations that are forbidden by law from working together.
“They gained the confidence of the highest level of Democratic operatives in multiple organizations: Americans United for Change, the Foval Group, Democracy Partners. They sat in and listened to conference calls where the campaign, the White House, the Democratic National Committee and the Super PAC were all on the conference call with these operatives making their plans,” said Verney.
He says that’s proof of the Democrats flagrantly violating the law.
“The Hillary Super PAC is involved in this coordination, which makes the whole thing totally illegal. This is a dark money conspiracy, where these organizations are prohibited from prior coordination with each other if they’re spending money to promote the Hillary election or the Trump defeat. They cannot coordinate. We’ve exposed exactly how they coordinate with each other in violation of the law,” said Verney.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are pleased to see Pat Toomey and Marco Rubio in stronger positions in their key Senate races. They also shred Pres. Obama’s patently dishonest speech calling Obamacare a great success, proposing more government involvement, and demonizing Republicans. And they groan as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump can’t even do humor well at the Al Smith dinner.
Gun rights advocates and other experts are firing back at Hillary Clinton’s assertion in Wednesday’s presidential debate that she opposed the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision on gun rights because the court failed to protect toddlers from getting access to firearms.
The issue was raised early in the debate as part of a wider discussion on how Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump view the Supreme Court. Moderator Chris Wallace asked pointed questions of both candidates on the second amendment, and he specifically asked Clinton about why she was critical of the 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller.
“Secretary Clinton, you said last year, let me quote, “The Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment.” And now, in fact, in the 2008 Heller case, the court ruled that there is a constitutional right to bear arms, but a right that is reasonably limited. Those were the words of the Judge Antonin Scalia who wrote the decision. What’s wrong with that?” asked Wallace.
After stating he respected the right of individuals to own firearms, Clinton addressed the Heller decision.
“You mentioned the Heller decision. And what I was saying that you referenced, Chris, was that I disagreed with the way the court applied the Second Amendment in that case, because what the District of Columbia was trying to do was to protect toddlers from guns and so they wanted people with guns to safely store them,” said Clinton.
Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt was stunned by that answer.
“That was pretty surprising to me but then Hillary Clinton is kind of known for saying lots of things that are surprising to those who who have an idea of what the truth actually is,” said Pratt.
He says nothing in the Heller case dealt with toddlers.
“Heller made no reference to toddlers. Toddlers were not really the problem. Heller was addressing the fact that your safety, your gun was locked up and unavailable for self-defense and that the District of Columbia couldn’t require that anymore, nor could they ban whole classes of guns, which in effect they had done,” said Pratt.
He says Heller was one of two critical cases that affirmed the intent of the second amendment.
“Heller laid a real marker down for the subsequent McDonald case out of Chicago, which together made it clear to judges who apparently hadn’t been able to understand heretofore, that the second amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms and you can’t just go and ban whole classes of guns. That’s what Heller was about,” said Pratt.
Pratt says he also isn’t buying Clinton’s passion for protecting toddlers in general, since just minutes later she vigorously defended partial birth abortions.
“Hillary Clinton is worried about toddlers when she is okay, as Donald Trump in the same debate pointed out, she’s okay pulling a baby out of the womb and hour before it’s born and tearing it apart. So her concern about toddlers strikes me as somewhat academic,” said Pratt.
While asserting her respect for the second amendment, Clinton also listed some “common sense” restrictions she would like to see enacted.
“I think we need comprehensive background checks, need to close the online loophole, close the gun show loophole. There’s other matters that I think are sensible that are the kind of reforms that would make a difference that are not in any way conflicting with the Second Amendment,” said Clinton.
Pratt offers a few different warnings on those proposals, starting with his skepticism that the government needs to have its nose in every single gun sale.
“She’s saying that if a father gives a gun to a son that he’s known for, say, 30 years, that somehow a background check is going to tell us more?” asked Pratt.
He also says recent shootings prove background checks do not necessarily stop horrific shootings.
“Many, many of the mass murders that have been accomplished in our time have been carried out by folks that either could have passed a background check or actually did pass a background check,” said Pratt, who also fears Clinton’s “other matters” will include an expansion of gun-free zones, which Pratt points out are the scenes of the vast majority of mass shootings.
As for Trump, Pratt was thrilled that the GOP nominee not only spoke in defense of the second amendment but wanted justices on the Supreme Court who see the Constitution the way the founders did.
“He actually used the word original or originalist, justices who would view the second amendment as it was intended to be understood. That’s a big deal. That’s quite the opposite from the ‘living, breathing’ Constitution, which means any bloody thing a judge puts into his cockamamie head,” said Pratt.
Pratt, who endorsed Ted Cruz, during the GOP primary, admits Trump still seems a bit lacking in the details of the Heller case and other aspects of the gun policy debate. But Pratt says he is encouraged by the addition of Gov. Mike Pence to the GOP ticket, noting Gun Owners of America only disagreed once with Pence on gun issues during the 12 years Pence was in the House of Representatives.
In the end, Pratt backs Trump mostly because of what Clinton has promised elsewhere on gun policy.
“Hillary Clinton is capable of energizing a lot of gun owners because her statement about her model that she would have in mind, where to go in pursuing gun legislation, was that of Australia. Well, Australia banned every single semi-automatic handgun, shotgun, and rifle,” said Pratt.
He firmly believes that would be Clinton’s goal if elected president.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America evaluate the third presidential debate. They give Donald Trump credit for his best performance on the issues and putting Hillary Clinton on the defensive but allowed the takeaway to be his refusal to accept the election results. They also hammer Hillary Clinton for her pure fiction that the landmark Heller decision was about toddlers getting access to guns, her dodging on open borders and the Clinton Foundation and letting the world know how soon we can launch nuclear weapons. And we applaud moderator Chris Wallace for picking good topics, asking tough questions of both candidates and keeping everyone in line.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are pleased to see millennials far less excited about Hillary Clinton than they were about Barack Obama. They also shudder as many states reveal the massive Obamacare premium hikes in store for the coming year. They react to a DNC bus pouring human waste into a Georgia storm sewer. And they mark six years of the Three Martini Lunch with a look back at two of this year’s funniest moments.
A federal appeals court has upheld a California law requiring pro-life pregnancy centers to post and verbally share information with patients on how to obtain an abortion, a ruling that abortion foes call an infringement on free speech and freedom of religion.
On Friday, The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld AB 775, also known as the Reproductive FACT Act, which requires all pregnancy centers to “advise each patient at the time of her visit of the various publicly funded family planning and pregnancy-related resources available in California, and the manner in which to directly and efficiently access those resources.”
In other words, even pro-life pregnancy centers must give patients information on how and where to obtain an abortion, complete with a phone number for those services. The information must also be posted in such facilities.
The three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, rejected efforts to overturn the law on free speech grounds or even impose a preliminary injunction, saying the case by pro-life groups did not have strong odds of succeeding even though such laws have been ruled unconstitutional multiple times in the past.
The pro-life community is outraged.
“It’s forcing these centers, whose whole existence is to help protect women from the dangers of abortion, it’s forcing them to promote abortion in their own facilities,” said Arina Grossu, director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council.
“This is a complete disruption and break of first amendment rights, first of all free speech, second of all to freedom of religion and the right to moral objection since this involves the killing of human beings,” she added.
Grossu says the law is officially designed to inform all California women of their “right to an abortion” but she says the real goal is to put these pregnancy centers out of business.
“It’s trying to drive out pregnancy care centers from California, because if a pregnancy care center is going to have to promote abortion, a lot of them may close their doors. This is a tragedy for women in California, who are looking for help, who are looking for answers, who are looking for the truth.” said Grossu.
“Here’s where it’s getting to: either you do what the state of California tells you or we’re going to force you to close your doors,” said Grossu.
She says this policy will add confusion to the women facing an unplanned pregnancy and visit a pregnancy center because they want to keep their baby, only to hear the opposite message.
“If she’s going to a pregnancy care center, she’s going there because she wants to find solutions for keeping a baby. And then seeing these signs is very confusing. But I think what it does for the workers in these centers is that it forces them to participate in the very thing that they’re fighting,” said Grossu.
Grossu likens the state law to forcing a vegan store owner to inform customers where they can go buy meats or other animal products. She is also quick to point out that the law does not force abortion providers to deliver messages contrary to their mission.
“I would ask this court, would you require the same of Planned Parenthood facilities to say, ‘If you would like to keep your child, please send them to this pregnancy care center?'” said Grossu.
Not only are Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers not forced to deliver that message, Grossu says former Planned Partenthood employee Abby Johnson says Planned Parenthood is known to refuse to let women change their minds about abortion.
“She talked about how women, once they’re in the Planned Parenthood room about to get the abortion, if a woman changes her mind, Planned Parenthood trains their staff on how to keep her in the room. How is that choice?” asked Grossu.
While those previous court cases give Grossu and her allies hope this decision will be struck down, Grossu notes that other recent laws infringing on religious liberty are being upheld, most notably the example of the Washington state pharmacy that refused to sell abortion-inducing drugs. Even though 30 other pharmacies existed within a five-mile radius, the courts rejected the challenge and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
Grossu says Americans must wake up to our freedoms being under attack.
“We’re going to be asked to stand up for our religious freedom in a time of persecution and civil and criminal prosecution, although we’re not there yet,” said Grossu. “We need to respect the rights of religious freedom and moral objection. If not, we’re going to see a completely different country.”
