Archives for July 2016

A conservative Republican congressman is once again fighting to save his political career while leaders in his own party try to oust him for what he says is simply honoring his promises to the voters.

Four states head to the polls in congressional primaries on August 2, but the most intriguing – and expensive – of those races is in the first congressional district of Kansas.  Known as “The Big First,” the sprawling district takes up a majority of  the land in the state.  Rep. Tim Huelskamp is seeking a fourth term in the House but is facing a well-funded challenge from hospital executive Dr. Roger Marshall.

The congressman says his internal polling is encouraging but that the infusion of money and messages in the home stretch of this primary campaign shows nothing should be taken for granted.

“Since then the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has jumped in.  This Super PAC out of Chicago owned by uber billionaires has jumped in as well.  This could be the most expensive primary in the country when it’s all done,” said Huelskamp, noting the money is coming from New York and New Jersey as well but apparently not from Kansas.

“Why would folks in Chicago be pumping money into Kansas, or folks in New Jersey or folks in London.  One guy wrote a $100,000 check with a corporate office in London.  They’re trying to buy this election,” he added.

The people of the first district may soon be dizzy from all the attention.  Huelskamp says supporters of Marshall have spent over a million dollars in just the past three weeks.

And he has a pretty good idea why some of those people and groups don’t want him back in Congress.

“I think the U.S. Chamber is in for one reason: because I won’t vote for amnesty.  I won’t vote to raise the debt ceiling.  Some of these Super PACs want to borrow more money and spend more money,” said Huelskamp.

Huelskamp says the mailers and other ads he’s seen from the outside groups are trying to deceive people about his record, especially the Chicago-based group that the congressman says also supported Hillary Clinton in Iowa earlier this year.  Marshall also leads the campaign fundraising race.

“They’ve done at least 33 different mailers in different parts of the district just slamming us and lying about us.  That’s actually a good sign because they understand that if you want to win in America as a Republican, you at least have to claim you’re a conservative,” said Huelskamp.

He says it’s governing as a conservative that too many in the party cannot tolerate.

“They like to campaign as conservatives but when you actually vote that way and fight that way and try to do what we promised to do as Republicans, it upsets the insiders,” said Huelskamp.

Huelskamp says the past few years of GOP control in the House is proof the party has not kept its campaign promises.

“Under John Boehner, they added five trillion dollars of new debt.  You can’t blame it all on Obama because that all went through the U.S. House.  In many cases under John Boehner, a minority of Republicans teamed up with Nancy Pelosi to pass increases in the debt ceiling and massive increases in spending but not do anything about Obamacare,” said Huelskamp, who labels himself a “proven conservative.”

The congressman says his defeat would not only please party leaders but also serve as a warning to other conservatives.

“If they can take out a conservative in the heartland of America, then they send a message to my 40 or 50 or 60 conservative colleagues in the House and say it’s time to do exactly what leadership tells them to do,” said Huelskamp.

Huelskamp became headline news in late 2012, when he and two other GOP members were stripped of their top committee assignments for bucking leadership too much.  Huelskamp lost his seat on the House Agriculture Committee, a hugely important position for his rural farm district.  He survived a tough primary fight in 2014 but he’s facing even more ammunition now.

Marshall and some of the outside groups have said Huelskamp needs to go because the first district in Kansas needs their congressman on the House Agriculture Committee and having Huelskamp banned deprives the region of power and influence on policies vital to the area.

The congressman says that line of attack is no longer relevant thanks to new rules in the House.

“When we got rid of John Boehner, we got rid of rules in the House so one speaker couldn’t run everything.  Paul Ryan agreed we were going to diffuse power and take it out of the speaker’s hands and distribute it,” said Huelskamp.  “I was elected to the Steering Committee that makes those decisions as a representative of conservatives in the House.”

“We’re going to get back on the ag committee after we win this race,” he added.

Huelskamp says he is the true conservative in the race, while Marshall has is a center-left Republican.  He cites his pro-life record as being much stronger than Marshall’s and touts his endorsements from multiple gun rights groups, including the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America.  He also has the backing of Sen. Pat Roberts, and the conservative free-market Club for Growth is now on the air in the district with ads designed to boost Huelskamp.

In addition to the politics of the race, he identifies much better with the people of “The Big First” because he’s one of them.

“Most importantly, I’m a fifth-generation farmer.  I go back and forth to Washington every week.  I go to church in Kansas.  My kids go to school in Kansas.  Our farm is in Kansas,” said Huelskamp.  “The last thing we need is more insiders who are going to make a home in Washington instead of a home back in their district,” said Huelskamp.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Mark Wright of National Review serve up three very sour martinis in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s convention speech. They groan at her standard liberal economic plan of more spending and big tax increases.  They rip her for making it clear she won’t be any tougher on terrorism or illegal immigration than Pres. Obama.  And they are discouraged at the realization many of the attacks Hillary aimed at Donald Trump are true.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Mark Wright of National Review groan as President Obama used his convention speech to extol the power of American unity after eight years of dividing Americans in every conceivable way.  They’re also stunned as Nancy Pelosi says working class whites are too distracted by guns, abortion and gay issues to know what’s good for them and vote for Democrats.  And they sigh as both the Trump and Clinton campaigns botch their handling of the DNC email scandal.

Former President Bill Clinton told Americans Tuesday night about Hillary Clinton’s lifetime of fighting for people in the context of a 45-year love story, but the account fails to ring true for Dolly Kyle.

Kyle was a childhood friend of Bill Clinton and later carried on a years-long affair with him after Clinton was engaged and married to Hillary.  Kyle is also the author of recently published book, “Hillary: The Other Woman.”  Kyle and Clinton remained intimate until Clinton’s 1992 White House bid, at which point he cut off contact when he mistakenly thought she was about to go public with their affair.

On Tuesday, the former president began his speech with a description of how he and Hillary met at Yale Law School.

“In the spring of 1971, I met a girl,” said Clinton, noting that they were both taking a political and civil rights class together.

“After the class, I followed her out, intending to introduce myself.  I got close enough to touch her back, but I couldn’t do it.  Somehow I knew this would not be just another tap on the shoulder and I might be starting something I couldn’t stop,” added Clinton.

Kyle could not believe Clinton used that terminology.

“The first thing I thought when he thought about touching a female in front of him was the number of women he’s raped and sexually assaulted,” said Kyle.

Clinton went on to explain he finally met Hillary in the law library at Yale because she made the long walk over to him and said they might as well know each other’s names if they going to keep staring at each other.

“I’ve heard the story repeated ad nauseum about how they met in the law library and the law library got bigger and the stairs became greater and there became more and more of a romantic element the more times they told the story.  However, considering that Billy and Hillary are both pathological liars, it’s hard to say how much of that story is true,” said Kyle.

Bill Clinton told his friend about meeting Hillary but her version of the story is a bit different.

“Oh sure, he told me about Hillary.  And he told me in the fall of 1972 that he was moving in with her at Yale.  He made it sound like it was no big deal, which apparently to him it wasn’t because he was seeing plenty of other women at the time as he always did, including throughout their engagement and their marriage,” said Kyle.

According to Kyle, Hillary was well aware of Bill infidelities even then.

“He was dating women – and me – at the University of Arkansas in 1974.  Hillary knew that.  She sent her father and one of her brothers to Arkansas to spy on him while she was still in Washington trying to establish herself on her own.  She realized with her personality and all that she couldn’t possibly (do it) so she had to ride his coattails,” said Kyle.

In his speech, Clinton also described how the birth of Chelsea in 1980 transformed their lives for the better and how after his failed bid for re-election as governor of Arkansas in 1982 that they could focus all of their attention on their young daughter.

Kyle says Americans shouldn’t believe that either.  She contends Chelsea’s exists because of political calculations.

“The whole idea of having that baby was a political ploy to take attention away from what Billy called ‘the warden’s’ lifestyle’ and to make them appear to be a normal couple,” said Kyle, referring to the name Clinton allegedly used to refer to his wife.

“Every single thing they’ve done has had a political agenda attached to it, including the birth of Chelsea,” said Kyle.

Despite her many frustrations with the Clintons, Kyle insists there’s nothing bitter about her criticism of them.

“This is not a scorned woman or, ‘Gee, he’s the one who got away.’  Thank God I wasn’t married to a rapist,” she said.

In his speech Tuesday, Clinton also referred to Hillary as the greatest “change-maker” he’s ever seen.  Kyle begs to differ.

“Talk about fighting for women and children.  She doesn’t talk about representing a rapist who raped a 12-year-old girl and Hillary lied about the girl and made up stories.  The man deserved a constitutional defense but he did not deserve someone lying about the victim,” said Kyle.

Kyle says there was nothing in Bill Clinton’s speech that surprised her and probably could have written much of it herself.  However, she says voters need to think long and hard before casting a ballot for Hillary Clinton.

“I don’t think anyone can have information and integrity and support Hillary Clinton.  You just can’t.  There’s something wrong if you know about her and can vote for her,” said Kyle.

 

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Mark Wright of National Review are pleased that Bill Clinton’s convention speech was seen by many as underwhelming and a largely fictionalized version of his relationship with Hillary.  They also sigh as the Democrats honor moms of young black people killed in police incidents but do nothing to honor slain police officers.  And they slam the mainstream media for completely ignoring major protests at the Democratic National Convention.

Pro-life activists are cheering the decision of Texas prosecutors to drop felony charges against two reporters who exposed the practices of Planned Parenthood in undercover videos last year, but the attorney for one says the only reason they ever faced criminal allegations was due to politics.

On Tuesday, Harris County, Texas, prosecutors dismissed one felony count against Center for Medical Progress Founder David Daleiden and his colleague, Sandra Merritt.  The felony charge was for “tampering with a government record for using false identification.”  Daleiden and Merritt each faced up to 20 years in prison if convicted.  Earlier this year, a judge threw out misdemeanor charges against the pair.

Merritt attorney Mathew Staver says the decision was a relief and brings an end to a very frustrating case.

“Sandra’s pleased that this is now behind her, but it never should have been filed in the first place,” said Staver, who is founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel.

The Center for Medical Progress produced a series of videos showing top Planned Parenthood officials casually discussing the killing of unborn children in ways that best preserved the body parts that were most valuable to reasearchers.

Staver says the grand jury that indicted Daleiden and Merritt was tasked with investigating possible crimes by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.  Instead politics rendered a different decision.

“They never should have indicted them.  They didn’t do anything wrong.  There was no criminal activity or criminal intent in this case.  There is, I think, a real target that they ought to go after.  That’s Planned Parenthood,” said Staver.

There are two issues of legal malpractice in this case, according to Staver.  First, prosecutors kept the grand jury impaneled longer than expected in order to pursue the charges.  Second, one of the top lawyers in the district attorney’s office sits on the Planned Parenthood Board in the Houston area.

Without Liberty Counsel’s help, Staver says his client would be financially ruined.

“We provided our legal counsel at no cost, but had we not been there, Sandra would have had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this kind of representation over a bogus indictment to begin with.  That’s the problem when the system becomes politically charged and politically motivated as in this particular case,” said Staver.

Harris County prosecutors began offering the defendants deals even before the first hearing in the case, which Daleiden and Merritt instantly rejected.  Staver says that was another glaring sign that the case had no legs.

“They’ve got to be held accountable.  I think there has to be some sort of investigation of the district attorney’s office for what went on when they exceeded their authority in bringing these charges in the first place,” said Staver.

He says there have to be consequences for reckless prosecutions given the upheaval the experience brings to innocent people.

“They can do a lot of abuse.  While the person who’s being indicted can ultimately be victorious at the end of the day, look what they have been drug through: financial ruin, financial harm, and harm to their well being and reputation,” said Staver.

While he and Merritt were always confident no crime was committed, Staver says facing a felony indictment, especially in a high-profile case, is very stressful.

“It is quite startling to wake up and find out the rest of the country is now reading about you.  Your name’s plastered everywhere.  People want to get to your house.  They want to photograph you.  You lose some of your privacy, because now you are indicted as a criminal.  Think of that.  That is the startling reality of what Sandra had to face,” said Staver.

Staver, who also represented Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk Kim Davis in her fight against having to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in her name, says he has been very impressed at how his high-profile clients handle this sort of challenge.

“They are both amazing people.  They both love the Lord.  That’s where they got their strength.  This is a time where lots of people would buckle, but Sandra and Kim, never once thought about buckling.  They never once thought they should do something else.  They knew they were doing the right thing,” said Staver.

“It was their faith in Jesus Christ that got them through these situations.  Both of them have that in common and both of them have in common that they have out the other side victorious,” he added.

The legal battles are not quite over for Merritt.  While the criminal charges are a thing of the past, Planned Parenthood is suing her in federal court on racketeering charges, in a move that Staver says could bankrupt Merritt if she loses.

He says the fact that Daleiden and Merritt are somehow perceived as villains for exposing the for-profit harvesting of baby parts during and after abortions shows America is in a bad place.

“I think it shows how messed up this nation is right now and how much we need to get back to Jesus, get grounded and understand that our rights come from God, not from government,” said Staver.

“Instead of indicting the criminal enterprise that is killing babies, hurting people, and selling baby body parts, they went after the person who was exercising their first amendment right to freedom of speech to get this information out to the rest of the public,” he added.

 

Greg Corombos of Radio America and David French of National Review enjoy the massive upheaval on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in the wake of the DNC email scandal.  They also discuss the ISIS-inspired attack in France that killed an 84-year-old priest and wonder of ISIS is pursuing a strategy similar to the Palestinian Intifada.  And they wonder what young Sanders supporters will do now that their hero has been defeated and discuss the recent phenomenon of politicians being seen as messiahs by their followers.

Democrats planned to make this week a show of strong unity in contrast to the divisions that appeared among Republicans last week, but instead they opened their national convention Monday afternoon with their national chairwoman resigning in scandal, Bernie Sanders supporters refusing to back the nominee and a litany of embarrassing correspondence.

The upheaval stems from from nearly 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee that were hacked and released Friday by Wikileaks.

While the emails are being examined, the exchanges already reveal the DNC actively supporting Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries and even hiring young people to argue with Bernie Sanders supporters on social media.  The emails also show the DNC demanding things from liberal media outlets and personalities, referring to Latino outreach as “taco bowl outreach”, belittling donors behind their backs and orchestrating anti-Trump protests.

In response, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced she would step down after the convention, but that timing got moved up after she was roundly booed by her own Florida delegation Monday morning in Philadelphia.

It’s exactly the start to the convention that the Democrats didn’t want.

“Given the cracks that appeared in the Republican convention last week, one of the things that the Democrats wanted to do in Philadelphia would be to contrast what they would say was Republican disarray with a smooth-running convention in Philadelphia,” said former Republican National Committee Deputy Chairman Frank Donatelli, who also served as political director in the Reagan administration.

“What we’ve seen is, before the convention actually begins is that that has not occurred,” he said.

Donatelli says this is a massive setback for Hillary Clinton after working feverishly to secure a Sanders endorsement and reach out to his voters.

“The Clinton folks have worked very, very hard to get the Sanders people in the tent.  They finally get Sanders’ endorsement, so they thought that everything was put to bed.  Low and behold, this comes up and inflames all the Sanders delegates,” said Donatelli.

Other than Wasserman Schultz falling on her sword, Democrats have tried to deflect from the scandal by blaming Russia for the hacking and that it was done to help Donald Trump.

Donatelli says damage control for the Democrats will be very difficult.

“You just don’t know what’s coming.  Normally, you can try to inoculate against bad stories by leaking them yourself and explaining them and trying to get ahead of the story.  You don’t know what that’s going to be right now because you don’t know what the Wikileaks people have,” said Donatelli.

Donatelli admits one benefit for Democrats might ridding itself of Wasserman Schultz at a critical time.

“You ask virtually any Democrat in the know and they will tell you the DNC has been vastly under-performing for five or six years now, the time she’s been chairman of the DNC.  She’s not been an effective chairman of the DNC.  The Obama folks didn’t want to fire her so they basically went around her,” said Donatelli.

But the changes at the national party level are peanuts compared to the problem the Clinton campaign now has to reach out to Sanders supporters who are so angry they booed Sanders Monday when he told his delegates to back Clinton and Kaine.

“The much bigger problem they have is the Bernie Sanders left-leaning Democrats, who were suspicious of Hillary Clinton.  Now that she’s picked another moderate within the Democratic context in Tim Kaine, they’re doubly suspicious of her,” said Donatelli.

Donatelli says there should be no surprise that Republicans immediately seized on the story as a way to revive Clinton’s email and server scandal.

“If they could hack the Democratic National Committee, why couldn’t they hack her server.  There is no real answer to that but it does put the issue back front and center,” said Donatelli.

 

Greg Corombos of Radio America and David French of National Review enjoy watching the Democrats get caught in their own lies after Wikileaks reveals the DNC actively backed Clinton over Sanders, manipulated the media and manufactured protests at Trump events.  They also shudder as four terrorist attacks strike Germany in less than a week and German authorities bend over backwards to avoid linking them to radical Islam.  And they react to Secretary of State John Kerry’s ludicrous contention that air conditioners and refrigerators pose just as much of a threat to human life as ISIS and other terrorist groups.