Archives for November 2015

ISIS can be defeated but it will take much greater will on the part of President Obama, an exponentially more robust air campaign with more reasonable rules of engagement and Arab ground forces to get the job done, according to retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney.

McInerney spent 35 years in uniform and rose to the role of assistant vice chief of staff, the number three position in the Air Force.  He also served as a combat pilot in Vietnam and as vice commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe.  He says the first step is for Obama to admit we currently have no strategy.

“He doesn’t have a strategy and that’s why, 16 months after we started the air campaign, we’re still at it,” said McInerney, who compared our current policy of a few sorties a day to what was accomplished back in the Gulf War in 1991.

“Desert Storm was 600,000 troops against Saddam Hussein’s forces.  We had a 43-day air campaign and a 100-hour ground campaign.  I don’t understand what the president’s strategy is,” said McInerney.  “I don’t know what the president’s purpose is.  He just has not exhibited any desire to take ISIS out.”

The U.S. campaign began after ISIS released videos showing the beheading of two American journalists.  But even then, McInerney says Obama started our policy off on the wrong foot.

“We are not trying to destroy ISIS.  The president talks about degrade and destroy.  No American president in our history has ever said degrade the enemy and then destroy them.  It’s always destroy them,” said McInerney.

So how can that be done?  In the military realm, McInerney says it starts with a relentless air campaign of 500-1,000 sorties a day, compared with recent statistics showing the U.S. drops eighteen bombs per day.  In comparison, the U.S. averaged 1,100 sorties per day during the Gulf War and 800 per day during major combat operations in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

But the general says the targets are just as important as the intensity.

“We need to have an air campaign that takes out all the lines of communication, meaning the highways.  So Highway 47 from Raqqa, the capital of ISIS in Syria, to Mosul, nothing should move on that.  Highway 1 from Mosul down to Baghdad, nothing should move on that.  In other words, you start starving out everybody in Raqqa and in Mosul,” said McInerney.

He says there should be two other areas high on the hit list.

“Number two, you want to get their command and control, headquarters, etc. which we know where they are.  Number three, we want to take out the petroleum and the vehicles that ship the oil,” said McInerney, who also listed the destruction of 60 terrorist training camps among the top priorities.

McInerney says concentrating that much air power on those valued targets would make an immediate difference.

“You’d see that their ability to move, to execute, to do anything, as the caliphate they can’t even protect their own people,” said McInerney.

Since Friday’s attacks in Paris, France has been launching highly publicized airstrikes on ISIS targets, but McInerney says that’s barely a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed.

“They’re flying ten sorties a day.  That’s not the template for anything,” he said, while admitting the French campaign is still more intense than the current U.S. effort.

The proof of our ineffectiveness, says McInerney, can be seen in satellite images of Raqqa.

“I’m looking at a [photo] right now of the city of Raqqa, the ISIS main headquarters, the Islamic court.  All these buildings are standing.  Why?  The fact is we are not executing air power,” said McInerney.

The next change McInerney wants to see is a loosening of the rules of engagement which he believes are preventing any meaningful action because our leaders are trying to avoid civilian casualties at all costs.

“Our humane rules of engagement are creating inhumane results.  You’ve got 300,000 people almost that are now dead, killed, or wounded in Syria.  You look at what’s happened in Iraq.  We’re just dragging something out and making it agonizing,” said McInerney.

While the general believes intense, targeted air power is vital to putting ISIS in the edge of extinction, he says Arab ground forces are needed to finish the job.

“People misunderstand.  Only Arabs, the Muslims, can destroy this radical Islamic ideology.  We’re infidels (in the minds of Muslims).  They won’t accept that,” said McInerney.  “They’ll have to do it and they’ll have to justify why this is such a failed ideology.”

This is the element of the fight where McInerney believes Obama is most sorely lacking.  But he says other important leaders are dropping the ball too.

“You have a president who talks about violent extremists.  I know not the ideology of violent extremists, but I know the ideology of radical Islam.  It’s the Quran.  It’s the Hadith, the sayings of the prophet and it’s Shariah law.  Those are their rules of engagement.  Until we understand that, we’ll not defeat this enemy,” said McInerney.

“They must defeat it themselves.  Where are the Fatwas from Mecca and Medina chastising people for killing westerners,” added McInerney.

McInerney has one final job for Middle East nations – for them to take in the tens of thousands of refugees he suspects cannot be properly vetted by the U.S. or other western nations.

“Saudi Arabia and the other Middle East countries ought to be taking them over there.  They have the space for them.  They have a whole host of things, and they can recycle them back into Syria when this is resolved.  That’s why I don’t think that we need to take them here,” said McInerney.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud the French for rooting out terrorists in their country and for an aggressive bombing campaign in Syria.  They also hammer Secretary of State John Kerry for saying the “rationale” for the ISIS attacks against Charlie Hebdo was easier to understand because it had published material offensive to Muslims.  And Jim laments Bobby Jindal’s withdrawal from the 2016 campaign and rips Republicans who turned on Jindal for actually cutting spending.

A longtime federal immigration agent confirms there is no good way to vet tens of thousands of refugees effectively for possible admission to the United States and he says history proves being wrong about just a tiny fraction of them can lead to calamity.

Michael Cutler served for 30 years with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, the forerunner to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.  During that time he worked as a senior special agent, and focused on matters ranging to refugee arrivals in New York City to combating narcotics trafficking.

Over the weekend, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes repeatedly assured Americans there were guaranteed ways of separating genuine refugees from those who might try to exploit the crisis to slip into the U.S. and attack our country.  President Obama echoed those comments on Monday at the G-20 Summit in Turkey.  Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra told us Monday that Rhodes lied to the American people and that no such system was in place.

Cutler says Hoekstra is exactly right.

“We do not know who these people are and that’s a big problem not only where the Syrian refugees are concerned.  How many times can you get burned by the same match?” asked Cutler.

He says the system is far from foolproof for a very simple reason.

“We know that terrorists and criminals use fraud in their applications for visas, fraud in their applications for immigration benefits to enter the country and hide themselves,” said Cutler.

Beyond that, Cutler says the U.S. would need to have a cooperative relationship with the Assad regime in Syria.  Not only do we not have that, he says Syria may not even have records on many of these refugee applicants.

“This is a very real threat.  We are in the middle of a war.  If our government is going to make mistakes, it better make mistakes on the side of America,” he added, suggesting our current policy would seem like lunacy in a previous generation.

“This is as absurd as thinking back to the Second World War and imagining FDR calling up Adolf Hitler’s people and asking if refugees coming to America through Germany posed a threat to our safety,” said Cutler.

What actually is happening is equally concerning, according to Cutler.  He says the current immigration system is doing little to weed out potential threats.

“The approval rate for the refugee applications from Syria by our government stands at more than 90 percent,” he said.  “It only takes minutes to approve an application but days or weeks to deny an application.  The pressure is on to clear the backlog.  Every time you hear people say, ‘Yay, the government’s going to work faster.’  Don’t get excited, folks.  What it means is they’re going to rubber-stamp approvals.”

Cutler says even a few mistakes in reviewing refugee applications could be disastrous for our country.

“Let’s say we admit 10,000 and only one percent are bad actors.  We’re talking about hundreds of terrorists potentially entering the United States,” said Cutler.

Cutler points out that 19 young terrorists killed more people on 9/11 than the Japanese Navy killed at Pearl Harbor.  He says we see the carnage inflicted by just a few radicals on a regular basis.

“Only 19 did what they did.  It took eight terrorists to carry out the attacks in Paris.  It took two terrorists to wreak havoc on the Boston Marathon just two years ago.  How many times.  How many times do we have to see history repeat itself and say there’s something terribly wrong with what we’re doing,” said Cutler.

He says the longer Obama insists there’s no threat posed by refugees, the more his credibility suffers.

“I am so tired of the misleading facts, if you want o call them facts, being paraded by this administration in particular.  I’m old enough to remember the (Lyndon) Johnson administration and his credibility gap when he talked about Vietnam.  Here we have more than a gap.  This is a chasm and it’s as big as the Grand Canyon,” said Cutler, a registered Democrat.

Cutler also pushed back against the notion that his opposition to refugee acceptance is rooted in xenophobia.  He says his early days at the INS prove that’s wrong as we welcomed refugees at JFK airport.

“For me it was a privilege, an absolute joy, to admit refugees into the United States.  These folks got off the airplane, walked into the international arrival building, fell to their knees and kissed the floor, I kid you not.  They hugged me.  They kissed me on the cheek.  They cried. I cried with them,” said Cutler.

“I have nothing against refugees but if and only if it doesn’t undermine national security and this would absolutely do inestimable damage to national security,” added Cutler.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein for stating that ISIS is not contained, is growing significantly and needs to be destroyed.  They also slam Pres. Obama for dismissing the ideas that American leadership and America winning are critical to defeating ISIS.  And they react to new emails from Huma Abedin telling a colleague that Hillary Clinton is “often confused.”

The former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence says President Obama has no coherent strategy to defeat ISIS and alleges one of Obama’s top advisers “lied to the American people” to perpetuate a misguided program allowing tens of thousands of refugees into the U.S.

On Sunday, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes appeared on multiples Sunday morning news shows.  When asked whether the news that one and possibly two of the Paris terrorists came to Europe as refugees would alter the Obama administration’s plan to accept tens of thousands of refugees, Rhodes said there would be no re-evaluation.

“No, Chuck,” said Rhodes to “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd.  “We have very extensive screening procedures for all Syrian refugees who would come to the United States.  There’s a very careful vetting process that includes our intelligence community, our National Counterterrorism Center, the Department of Homeland Security.  So we can make sure we’re carefully screening anybody who comes to the United States.”

Peter Hoekstra spent 18 years in Congress and spent much of his time focused on intelligence matters.  He is now with the Investigative Project on Terrorism and is the author of “Architects of Disaster,” which outlines the failure of the Obama administration’s policy in Libya.

“I think (Rhodes) basically lied to the American people.  He said we’ve got a good vetting process in place where we can vet those that are coming from Syria into the United States,” said Hoekstra.

“No we do not.  The records don’t exist in Syria, especially after you’ve had five years of civil war.  We don’t have a relationship with the regime.  It’s an ungoverned area.  We don’t know who these people are.  Ben, shame on you for even implying that we’ve got a good vetting system.  We’re lucky if can get the names right,” said Hoekstra.

In fact, even before the terrorist attacks in Paris, Hoekstra says the idea of bringing in tens of thousands of refugees was a fool’s errand. As such, he says the announcements from a growing number of governors that they won’t accept refugees is a good sign.

“I think it’s a good decision.  I wasn’t quite sure why we were ever welcoming these folks in.  We are a welcoming nation to refugees and to these kinds of individuals but only after they’ve been vetted,” he said.

Hoekstra says spreading all these refugees around the western world does nothing to solve the real problem.

“This problem is not solved by accepting refugees into Europe and the United States.  This problem is solved by eliminating ISIS and bringing some stability back into the Middle East.  You’ve got to wipe ISIS out,” said Hoekstra.

The issue is taking on additional scrutiny after the European Union revealed only one fifth of the refugees it has accepted (or about 44,000 of some 213,000 total) are actually from Syria.

But the refugee issue is just one element of the Obama administration’s approach to ISIS that baffles Hoekstra.  On Monday, Obama told reporters at the G-20 Summit in Turkey that the Paris attacks would not alter the U.S. strategy towards ISIS.  Hoekstra says the existing strategy is a proven disaster, as evidenced by Yemen and Libya turning into lawless wastelands and both Syria and Iraq getting increasingly unstable and deadly to Christians, Yazidis and others.

“I’m not sure what strategy this president is looking at that he believes it working.  When you’ve got at least four countries that are no longer governed and are failed nation-states and are home for the planning and training and preparation for attacks against the West, that is not my view of success,” said Hoekstra.

Another statement from Obama in Turkey is getting even more attention.  After announcing he was sticking with his existing strategy towards ISIS, Obama slammed those who want to America taking a more decisive role.

“What I’m not interested in doing is posing, or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with that has no relationship to what is actually going to work,” said Obama.

Hoekstra was stunned.

“This message is clear: when the president says, ‘I have no intention of following or implementing a strategy about America leading or whatever slogan they may come up with, it is clear that this president does not have a strategy in place for America leading in Northern Africa, the Middle East or, for that matter, any other place in the world,” said Hoekstra.

And he says America’s credibility is taking a beating as a result.

“I hate to be that critical of this president, but America is at risk.  We are in danger and we in danger of losing our influence in the world.  We’ve been a voice of stability, security, democracy and human rights.  We are just losing all credibility throughout significant portions of the world,” said Hoekstra.

In addition to his frustrations with the Obama administration, Hoekstra is alarmed at how unprepared the intelligence communities were for the Paris attacks.

“What I’m hearing is that there was some general awareness that there were some attacks or an attack was imminent in Europe.  That was out there, but again no tactical insight into exactly where the attack would take place or when it would take place,” said Hoekstra.

He says the truth is it’s really hard to find these small plots before they happen.

“It just tells you that ISIS and these radical jihadist groups in a country of 80 million people or in a country of 300-plus million people like the United States, it’s not that hard to hide and organize and prepare to carry out an attack like this,” said Hoekstra.

So what can be done to improve our odds of stopping future attacks?

“We need closer intelligence sharing between our agencies.  We need to push the technology envelope as quickly as we can and we need to improve our human intelligence,” said Hoekstra.

Intelligence experts say efforts to infiltrate ISIS have essentially “gone dark,” partly due to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden exposing tactics for tracking terrorist suspects.

Hoekstra says this confirms what we all should have known about Snowden from the outset.

“As I said at the time, this was not an American hero protecting American liberties.  This was an American traitor that was giving away some of America’s secrets that would make us more vulnerable to these kinds of groups and these kinds of individuals and these kinds of attacks,” said Hoekstra.

 

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review shudder at reports that ISIS communications have advanced to the point that intelligence efforts to infiltrate have “gone dark” thanks in part to the revelations from Edward Snowden.  They also slam President Obama for moving full steam ahead with his plan to bring in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees.  And they are glad to see University of Missouri police considering charges against the media professor who tried to stop the press from covering campus protests.

College students protesting alleged racism and hostile learning environments have no idea what hate or education even mean, according to a Vanderbilt professor who is herself the target of a petition from outraged students.

Over the past week, Yale administrators apologized to students for not providing a safe enough environment and for not speaking out in condemnation of offensive Halloween costumes or a possible racial bias in a fraternity’s invitation list.  University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe resigned and the school’s chancellor accepted a demotion after admitting they hadn’t responded effectively in the wake of multiple racial allegations.  The dean of Claremont-McKenna also resigned this week in the face of student protests.

Those demonstrations were rampant this week, as students coast to coast demanded free public tuition, student debt forgiveness and a $15 minimum wage on campus.

As administrators scramble, Dr. Carol Swain, professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University, says those same officials only have themselves to blame for the students’ behavior.

“This is not my words.  Someone else said it first, but they’ve created those little monsters and they can’t control them.  They make a serious mistake, I think, when they cave in,” said Swain.

“They need to stand and fight and the students need to realize  not only that ideas have consequences but actions have consequences.  They are adults and if they break the law, if they defame someone, if they slander someone or libel someone and it’s done with malicious intent, then they ought to be held accountable,” added Swain.

In additional to the racial and financial issues raised on campuses this week, a fierce debate over free speech is raging as well.  When MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts asked whether  the University of Missouri protesters were looking to make the school a place that censored or prohibited unpopular speech , Missouri Student Association Vice President Brenda Smith-Lezama stunned many first amendment advocates with her answer.

“I, personally, am tired of hearing that first amendment rights protect students when they are creating a hostile and unsafe learning environment for myself and other students.  I think it’s important for us to create that distinction and create a space where we can all learn from one another and start to create a place of healing, rather than a place where we are experiencing a lot of hate like we have in the past,” said Smith-Lezama.

Swain is appalled.

“That student has no idea what hate is.  It’s sad that they have been led to believe that that’s what an education is about, helping them feel better and helping them heal.  And as far as black students going to white schools and complaining that they feel uncomfortable, there’s plenty of historically black schools,” said Swain.

“If you don’t want to be around white people then, I don’t know, move to Africa, and there are white people there.  If you don’t want to be educated around them then go to a black school,” said Swain, who is black.

Swain is not some distant observer to this debate.  She is currently at the center of a firestorm at Vanderbilt, where students filled out a petition asking for her to be punished for views she expressed on radical Islam and same-sex marriage.

In January, after the terrorist attack against the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, Swain spoke out about the threat such actions and groups pose to western culture.

“Islam is not like other religions in the United States, that it poses an absolute danger to us and our children unless it is monitored better than it has been under the Obama administration,” wrote Swain at the time.

Her thoughts were met with howls of protest at the time.

“At that time the students protested me.  The university sent out a campus-wide email through the dean of students office, telling them that they could have counseling services if they were injured by my speech,” said Swain, who contends she suffered a “barrage of harassment” at the time.

She is currently on a long-scheduled sabbatical but had been planning to return to the classroom next semester.  But her status appears to be up in the air after students succeeded in gathering 1,000 signatures and turning the petition in to the chancellor’s office.

On Nov. 11, Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos issued a statement that largely seemed to sympathize with the students.

“I firmly believe that every member of our community—regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, religion, color, national or ethnic origin, age or disability—has the same right to participate fully in the Vanderbilt community and have access to all of the benefits and opportunities  that Vanderbilt offers,” wrote Zappos.

“I am saddened anytime I hear that any member of our community—in this case, as highlighted in the petition, our LGBTQIA community and our Muslim students, faculty and staff—feel excluded from our Vanderbilt community.  This university is home to all of us, and all of us are entitled to feel at home here,” he continued.

Later in the statement, Zappos appeared to defend Swain’s rights to speech and academic freedom but then took a sharp turn.

“Vanderbilt also has a deep and longstanding commitment to freedom of speech and academic freedom, which are the foundations of our university’s scholarly activities.  Such freedoms necessarily allow for the expression of unpopular and offensive views.  However, speech whose sole purpose or effect is to discriminate, stigmatize, retaliate, offend, foment hatred or violence, or cause harm has no place in this university,” wrote Zappos.

Swain is firing right back.

“Did you notice what he left out, which would be political views, conservative views?  That statement is not very accurate because Vanderbilt is the university that kicked about half of it’s Christian groups off campus because they would not sign a statement that they would open their leadership positions to persons who didn’t share their beliefs,” said Swain.

She says the more Vanderbilt scrutinizes her, the worse it looks.

“This university that has been so open has been very hypocritical about the way they’ve handled me and they way they’ve handled Christian students.  I was not happy with his statement because his statement implied that there was truth in that petition.  The petition was full of lies,” said Swain.

One allegation was that Swain revealed a student’s information.  She says that’s blatantly false, although she did share a nasty Facebook post someone made about her.  In addition, Swain says no student who actually took her classes is involved in the petition drive and the one leading the effort has largely recanted.

“The student who was the face of the petition has sent me a long letter apologizing and saying there were other people involved.  He heard me on a local radio program and realized that there was another perspective.  He had never thought of my perspective and what I had to say about the purpose of free speech and the university,” said Swain.

Swain says that student has also changed the demands on the petition multiple times.

“That same student has gone from having the petition say they wanted me fired to saying they wanted me to have permanent suspension, then temporary suspension, mandatory sensitivity training and now they are not requiring that I have mandatory sensitivity training.  Now they’re saying that all faculty have mandatory sensitivity training,” said Swain.

Would she accept such punishment?

“First I’m going to laugh and once I finish, once I get up off the floor, then I’ll decide what to do,” said Swain.

While she waits for her own case to be resolved, Swain has advice for college administrators around the country.

“You have to fight back.  You can’t just cave all the time,” she said, while also giving a stern warning to students.

“We hear a lot about diversity on campuses.  Diversity of opinion should be important.  Diversity of religion should be important.  We shouldn’t want an environment where there are bullies that are taking away everyone else’s liberties.  Somehow they think that what they feel matters more than other people’s rights,” said Swain.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud Neil Cavuto’s dismantling of the free college arguments of the Million Student March.  They also sigh as some Republicans are still trying to find a path for Mitt Romney to join the race and save the party from the likes of Donald Trump and Ben Carson.  And they react to Donald Trump calling Iowans and other Americans “stupid” for believing Ben Carson’s personal story.

One of the few issues drawing bipartisan collaboration in Congress is the pursuit of criminal justice reform and one of the leading advocates for change says the legislation seems to be developing along conservative principles.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is teaming up with Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, to push the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act.  Experts say the momentum at the federal level is due to successes witnessed in multiple states.

“At the state level, we’ve seen this brewing for quite some time, starting with Texas in 2007.  What was able to be accomplished there was simply improving public safety while also saving money.  These types of reforms, with conservative principles at play here, are now being used in other states.  You’re looking at South Carolina and Georgia and several others.  Folks in Washington have finally taken notice,” said Joe Luppino-Esposito of Right on Crime and the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

He says federal lawmakers are smart to follow the lead of the states that are proving this type of reform can be done effectively.

“It’s very important we look at how things are done in the states.  These are conservative states, red states, southern states that have been doing these reforms that really look at the whole system and don’t just say we’re going to move some numbers around and move some prisoners around,” said Luppino-Esposito.

Luppino-Esposito says effective reform must have a few key components.

“We want to ensure that public safety is there.  This is not just a release every other prisoner scheme and that’s not what’s been proposed luckily.  We also want to make sure that victims are supported here as well, that they are not left out of the process.  Finally, we want to make sure that there’s clear fiscal responsibility,” said Luppino-Esposito.

Public safety is the top goal and Luppino-Esposito says that should give reformers incentive to do everything possible to prevent prisoners from committing crimes once they’re free.

“This (Senate) legislation specifically focuses on recidivism rates as what is really most important.  We want to make sure people are doing their time for the crimes they’ve committed.  Once they are released, because most people that are incarcerated are eventually released, there has to be a way to ensure that they do not go back to a criminal life,” said Luppino-Esposito.

He says there are three critical areas to make recidivism an ugly option for ex-convicts.  First, he says the original sentencing process needs to be examined.

“We’re looking at people coming in and what they’re being sentenced for and to what levels.  What we’re trying to do here is figure out what the good number is for what people should be put away in prison for.  It’s not going to be some indefinite period of time.  It’s going to be a set amount of time and we need to understand where they fall in the organization if it’s a drug offense or whatever the case may be,” said Luppino-Esposito.

Next, he says, is making prisoners’ time in custody lead to a better life once they’re released.

“Once they’re behind the wall, they can earn good time credits, they can take GED classes, they can do things to help them not wind up committing crime again,” said Luppino-Esposito.

Then comes the all-important re-entry into public.

“Finally, we want to talk about how they are eventually released back into society once they’ve done their time.  Doing that, making sure there are halfway houses and proper programming for that will ensure public safety because we’re not just going to take someone who might have been in a cell for several hours a day and release them back into a neighborhood,” said Luppino-Esposito.

Luppino-Esposito stresses this approach is far different than with President Obama and the Justice Department are doing through retroactive changes to sentencing guidelines for what they call non-violent drug offenders.  He says that just amounts to shaving a couple of years off the average drug-related sentence.

While he likes the bulk of the Senate bill, Luppino-Esposito would like to see more provisions that protect Americans who are innocent or have no criminal intent, namely crackdowns against civil asset forfeiture and application of mens rea, which requires evidence of criminal motives.

Luppino-Esposito says civil asset forfeiture is a scourge against freedom.

“Based simply on suspicion of some sort of criminal activity, your money and assets can be seized, your car can be seized.  Mind you, this doesn’t even mean you need to be charged with a crime,” said Luppino-Esposito, who says that once police have your property it can be very expensive and time-consuming to get it back after being cleared.

As for mens rea, he believes motive is a critical factor for police and prosecutors to consider since some people have no idea they are breaking the law.

“You may be accused of a crime but you did not actually have the intent to commit a crime.  With somewhere around 5,500 or more criminal statutory offenses on the books plus a completely incalculable number of federal regulations that go back to criminal penalties, this is a major, major problem for a lot of people,” said Luppino-Esposito.

“They’re getting into the system for things other than drugs like fishing or some other quirks in the regulatory schemes.  That is something I hope can get into the federal legislation and fix that for the future,” he said.

 

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review discuss the FBI expanding its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails to probe whether she or any aides made false statements, which is a felony.  They also slam MSNBC’s Chris Matthews for suggesting Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio aren’t Hispanic and are actually Cuban nationals.  And they unload on the University of Missouri protesters for claiming the first amendment right to free speech creates a hostile learning environment for them.