Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are encouraged to see the Hillary email scandal costing her points in a new poll. They also cheer Rand Paul for flipping the abortion issue back onto Democrats. And Jim solves the dilemma at the University of Michigan over whether to watch “American Sniper” or “Paddington.”
Hillary’s National Security Nightmare
The Russians did hack into the U.S. government and so did any foreign intelligence worth its salt, most likely through former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server.
That’s the conclusion of Dr. J. Michael Waller, a longtime consultant to government entities ranging from the Secretary of Defense to the U.S. Senate to the U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Labratory. During his career, Waller also worked extensively to thwart Soviet and Russian front organizations in the U.S. and Europe while attacking Russian intelligence efforts. He is now an investigative reporter at the American Media Institute.
Waller is not swayed from his conclusion by Wednesday’s assertion from White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest that the government is not prepared to definitively accuse the Russians of the hacking.
“It was the Russians. It was not only through that State Department system,” said Waller. “All the intelligence authorities that I interviewed say that the Russians, the Chinese and the Iranians almost certainly got all of Hillary Clinton’s emails through her private server. While she destroyed the contents for Congress to look at, the Russians, the Iranians and the Chinese still have them.”
Waller thinks Clinton deserves prison time for insisting on an email system that clearly left the nation vulnerable to attack.
“This is the national security equivalent of drunk driving. She should go to prison for this. When you drink and drive, you know in advance that you’re putting other people in danger. Yet, you think because you’re so smart or so clever or just don’t care, that nothing’s going to happen and then something does, so it’s your fault. This is precisely what she did on the national security sphere,” said Waller.
How did Clinton get permission to install a server that Waller says every cyber-security expert is like a welcome mat to steal sensitive information?
“She was the Secretary of State and she had the approval of the president. As we know from hearing people in the State Department and people who had ever worked with Hillary, everyone’s afraid to contradict her because she’ll yell and scream and destroy your career,” said Waller.
Since Clinton wiped the server clean, the chances of American lawmakers and media finding out what her emails contained is very remote. So if she was hacked, how will we ever get a picture of what other nations now know? Waller says we probably won’t unless some awkward assistance comes our way.
“We’ll never know unless maybe one of our allies who also spies on us like the Israelis or the French or somebody like that, maybe they might decide to help us with the backups that they might happen to have,” said Waller.
While Waller says Clinton is an egregious example of tossing caution to the wind for the sake of convenience, and says something like this demands accountability.
“You have to hold people here responsible who committed the criminal negligence that allowed that to happen. It’s not the technical people. The technical people know what they’re doing. They give the warnings to the policymakers,” said Waller.
However, he says it’s a big problem for lawmakers and bureaucrats in both parties.
“A lot of policymakers are simply too lazy to go through the security protocols. It’s like how a lot of people prefer a simple password because they can’t remember a really complicated one, so they go for the simple ones which are the easiest ones to hack. It’s that type of mentality throughout our government,” said Waller.
Waller says the State Department has secret and top secret networks that do not appear to be compromised by the Russian hacking. He says that means any stolen data came from less secure networks, which personnel should not have been using for any official business involving sensitive information.
Does this mean anyone who exchanged emails with Secretary Clinton through her private server is ripe for international hacking?
“Yes, and friends of friends. You can burrow into different email networks simply by knowing an email address. You can get into that person’s email and then find out who their networks are and so forth,” said Waller.
In addition to bringing Hillary Clinton and other alleged flouters of national security protocols, Waller says we need to act in another direction as well.
“We have to go on an all-out attack against the Russians and against their systems. We’re not doing that. We have the capability to do that, but the fact that the administration doesn’t even want to reveal it was the Russians shows the White House is helping the Russians cover up for them,” said Waller.
How does this episode help Waller conclude we are not aggressively spying on the Russians?
“If we were it would be known. I know just through the people I work with and listening to their years of lamenting that we’re not doing anything substantively on a strategic scale to serve as a deterrence to what the Russians are doing, tells us that we’re not doing much,” said Waller.
Three Martini Lunch 4/8/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review generally welcome the 2016 candidacy of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. We also shudder as we learn the Russians hacked President Obama’s private schedule through the State Department. And they shake their heads as some women suggest referring to Hillary Clinton only as ‘Hillary’ is sexist.
‘Hollywood Traitors’
Communists were running rampant in Hollywood during the Soviet rule of Joseph Stalin. They sympathized with the Nazis until Hitler turned on Stalin and the effort is still underway to mislead the American people about the depth and goals of the movement.
Later this year, Trumbo will hit theaters. It stars Bryan Cranston, Helen Mirren, John Goodman and Diane Lane. The film tells the story of Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and how his great success in the movies came to a crashing halt after he was identified as a communist. Trumbo is one of the infamous Hollywood Ten, who were outed in testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947. The movie will portray Trumbo as a champion of the first amendment.
Trumbo and his fellow communists in Hollywood’s golden era are the subject of “Hollywood Traitors: Blacklisted Screenwriters, Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler” by longtime Human Events editor Allan Ryskind. Ryskind’s father, Morrie, was a longtime Hollywood screenwriter, with more than 50 titles to his credit.. Morrie Ryskind was among those who named Hollywood communists in congressional testimony.
Nearly 70 years later, the conventional wisdom suggests that the communist infiltration of Hollywood in and around World War II was either overblown or insignificant. However, the facts on Trumbo and others found to be communists are quite clear.
“The Screenwriter’s Guild, which my dad had belonged to, the flagship publication, was being edited by Dalton Trumbo, who was a famous communist, no question about it. He later acknowledged his was a communist. He turned the major publication into a communist publication,” said Ryskind.
Even after being exposed, Trumbo was unabashed in his support for communist figures and ideas. Ryskind says Trumbo even told a biographer that he joined the Communist Party in 1943 and should have done it a decade sooner.
“He said he never regretted, never regretted it,” said Ryskind, who says the association was just as obvious with the rest of the Hollywood Ten.
“The Hollywood Ten that Hollywood weeps over, but each and every member of the Hollywood Ten were members of the Communist Party and were loyal to Stalin,” said Ryskind.
And the list didn’t stop there.
“There were lots of communists in Hollywood and I’m talking about hard core communists, people whose allegiance was to the Soviet Union and Joe Stalin. There isn’t any question about it,” he said.
According to Ryskind’s research, even the most left-leaning estimates admit there were over 200 communists in Hollywood during that time.
But one area of great disagreement is over whether communists in Hollywood ever found solidarity with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Defenders of the Hollywood Ten and other communists strongly deny any affinity for Hitler. Ryskind says the attitude toward Hitler was directly related to their appreciation of Stalin.
“They switched sides. They had been anti-Hitler. Suddenly, with the pact, they became pro-Hitler. These communists in Hollywood always like to portray themselves, and Hollywood likes to portray them as anti-fascist. They were on the side of Hitler when he invaded Poland, in the next year when he conquered western Europe and when he was bombing England,” said Ryskind.
“The only reason they changed, they only reason they became anti-Hitler was because Hitler double-crossed Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941,” he said.
These communists were not mere sympathizers. Ryskind says they saw them as actively involved in bringing down the American government and economy.
“When the League of American Writers was formed, their purpose was to use their art as a weapon,” said Ryskind. “The purpose was to destroy the American government as it existed, get rid of the capitalist system and impose a communist system. I’m not making this up. I got this from communist documents.”
Did the communist ideology of Trumbo and other screenwriters influence the content on the silver screen? Ryskind says it absolutely did.
“All these films were being made that were saying how wonderful Joe Stalin was,” he said. “There were all these various films, Song of Russia, Mission to Moscow. You had Action in the North Atlantic. You had Blockade.”
One of the most famous screenwriters of the era was Howard Koch, who wrote the screenplay for Casablanca. But he also wrote Mission to Moscow.
“The fact is Koch was a fellow traveler. You’d call him a communist without a party card. He was married to a communist,” said Ryskind, who says a man who may well have been a Soviet agent was a technical adviser for the film.
“It’s probably the most pro-Moscow, pro-Soviet film ever made. It made Stalin into the wisest statesman on the planet and that everything Stalin did was wonderful. It was so bad that even The Nation magazine, which was pro-Soviet, sid it was a whitewash,” said Ryskind.
As the communists grew in number and influence, patriotic Americans in Hollywood fought back.
“In 1944, my dad and Walt Disney and Sam Wood, who was a famous director, formed the Motion Picture Alliance. The reason they did that was because the commies looked at that time like they had taken over Hollywood. They were embedded in the guilds and the unions,” said Ryskind.
Why were so many Hollywood figures enamored with communism?
“What makes people join ISIS? There was an ideology there that people believed in. They believed that capitalism was terrible, It had to be overthrown and they wanted to actually see it overthrown,” said Ryskind.
It’s not just Trumbo who Hollywood liberals lionize from that era.
“You have John Howard Lawson. He was being memorialized in some fashion in The Majestic. Jim Carrey is in there. They name a wonderful town after John Howard Lawson, who was head of the Communist Party in Hollywood and was the enforcer of the Stalinist line and died a Stalinist,” said Ryskind.
Despite the deep leftist sympathies remaining in Hollywood today, Ryskind does not see as great a threat now as during the Stalin era.
“in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s, these people were agents of a foreign government designed to destroy us. There’s a little bit of difference between that and popping off and saying, ‘I’m a left-winger,'” he said.
Three Martini Lunch 4/7/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleasantly surprised to see a a big early lead for Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey in his bid for re-election. We also discuss why Ohio’s Rob Portman is down nine points early in his bid for re-election. And we discuss Arizona Sen. John McCain’s decision to run for a sixth term.
Americans Demand Tougher Immigration Enforcement
A new Rasmussen Reports survey shows the American people are getting increasingly frustrated with what they see as the government’s lax enforcement of immigration laws, but a defiant administration and deep-pocked lobbyists on the other side of the debate make major changes very unlikely anytime soon.
On Monday, Rasmussen released a new survey on on immigration and a solid majority of Americans disagree with the president on virtually all the critical questions. Eighty-three percent believe one should have to prove they are in the country legally before receiving any federal, state or local services. Sixty-two percent say deportation is not aggressive enough in the U.S., ten points higher than a year ago. Just 16 percent think it’s too aggressive. Fifteen percent think it’s just right.
Birthright citizenship is also unpopular. Fifty-four percent of those polled oppose automatic citizenship for any baby born in the U.S. to parents who are here illegally, while 38 percent like the current policy. In a direct slap at President Obama’s November actions, 51 percent of those surveyed say illegals should not be immune from deportation just because they have a child with legal standing in the U.S.
Border security advocates are not surprised by the results.
“The real reason you see this increase in hawkishness on immigration is that this administration has been so bad,” said Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian, noting the Obama administration has released tens of thousands of criminal illegal aliens back onto American streets and made life much tougher for local authorities to enforce immigration laws.
He also says Obama is soft on issue and is “not committed to American sovereignty.”
“So when you have that kind of situation, even people who have kind of ambivalent or a little bit squishy views, are going to harden their views,” said Krikorian.
He says American attitudes towards Obama on immigration all come down to one critical issue.
“If you want a way to resolve our immigration mess…you need an administration that can earn the trust of the people on this issue. This administration has made it clear it cannot be trusted,” said Krikorian.
So do the lopsided poll numbers mean a major push is coming soon to address benefits, birthright citizenship, deportations and more?
Don’t bet on it.
When you get down to brass tacks, the people willing to pay lobbyists to deliver the giant bags of money to congressmen to sway their votes, those people are all on the side of looser enforcement and more immigration,” said Krikorian.
“[Eighty-three] percent of Americans who don’t want illegal immigrants to get welfare don’t have lobbyists but the National Council of La Raza has lobbyists. People who want better enforcement don’t have lobbyists, but the farmers and the corporate interests that don’t want more enforcement, they do have lobbyists and give giant, giant amounts of money to influence policy,” said Krikorian.
Krikorian also believes the numbers prove the Republicans in Congress could have been far more aggressive in opposing funding for Obama’s unilateral efforts to legalize more than five million illegal immigrants in the recent appropriations fight over the Department of Homeland Security.
He says the key to winning the fight is to not sound “fringy.” Krikorian thinks leaders just needed to look to their most passionate member for a winning argument.
“Senator Jeff Sessions, for instance, from Alabama, has done a phenomenal job over the past several years of framing the message in a non-scary, constructive but pro-American worker fashion that the Republican leadership has just not taken advantage of,” said Krikorian.
“The old joke is that the Democrats are the evil party and the Republicans are the stupid party. Unfortunately, the leadership of the Republican Party is proving that joke to be true,” he said.
Krikorian believes immigration enforcement is actually better than it was at the time of the 9/11 attacks. He says even the Obama administration has done better work at the border while internal enforcement has been horrible, but he is hopeful things will get better if the right person is elected to succeed Obama.
“Two steps forward and one step back is still moving in the right direction. What we need to do is keep pushing and try to push for better outcomes from the next administration,” said Krikorian.
Three Martini Lunch 4/6/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleasantly surprised to see former presidential hopeful Gary Hart criticizing the Clinton campaign and suggesting Democrats need new leaders. They unload on Rolling Stone after the magazine decided to take no action in the wake of the debunked University of Virginia rape story. And they scratch their heads over Jeb Bush’s 2009 voting document, on which he identified himself as an Hispanic.
Pro-Family Groups: Pence Must Veto RFRA Changes
The changes proposed by state lawmakers to Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) would erode the freedom of conscience for most small business owners in the state and would mark the largest step towards special gay rights there in history, according to pro-family activists who have studied the language.
“Nothing in this law would enable a small business to refuse to offer or provide services, facilities, use of a public accommodation, goods, etc.,” said Americans for Truth About Homosexuality President Peter LaBarbera, reading in part from the proposed changes.
“It looks like it would preclude a small business owner from using the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” he said.
LaBarbera says the changes gut protections for Indiana residents of all faiths and he is joining a “chorus” of activists urging Gov. Mike Pence to veto the changes.
“This language is unacceptable. It actually reverses the progress of the religious freedom law. I think Gov. Pence needs to veto this language if it comes forth, and he needs to stand strong,” said LaBarbera. “No law would be better than eviscerating this religious freedom bill as it was with the new language.”
The Indiana chapter of the American Family Association is also urging a Pence veto.
“The actions taken by the Indiana General Assembly do not clarify our Religious Freedom Restoration Act’s purposes or goals. Our legal advisors tell us that it actually changes our law in a way that could now erode religious freedom across Indiana. If this revised law does not adequately protect religious liberty for all, it is not really a religious freedom act,” said AFA of Indiana Executive Director Micah Clark in a statement.
The scenario most often referred to in this debate centers on vendors of deep faith who welcome all customers into their businesses but don’t feel comfortable servicing a same-sex wedding. LaBarbera says those people may have no recourse if the proposed changes become law.
“Let’s take the example of the wedding cake baker. They have a wedding cake. They sell wedding cakes to everybody, including homosexuals, but they don’t want to make, create or use their talents to create a gay marriage wedding cake. So if someone comes in and says, ‘I would like a gay marriage wedding cake, according to this language they would not be able to dent that service,” said LaBarbera.
“That’s the exact opposite of religious freedom, which is why pro-family activists are urging a veto of this new language,” he said, noting there would still be protections for houses of worship and non-profit organizations.
Thursday, legislative leaders in Indiana stressed that nothing in the proposed changes extends special protected class status to homosexuals, but LaBarbera says it comes pretty close.
This would be the largest step Indiana ever took towards gay rights. Effectively, you’re saying nobody can be denied any good or service. Well, if someone comes up and wants a pro-homosexual or pro-abortion message, and the person does business with the entire public, he could not refuse that,” said LaBarbera.
While LaBarbera brings a Christian worldview to the debate, he says the protections at stake are for the benefit of everyone.
“This is the equivalent of asking a Jewish guy to make a cake for (former Ku Klux Klan official) David Duke, right? You would never expect a Jewish photographer, for example, to have to take pictures at a Ku Klux Klan rally or a neo-Nazi rally. You should not expect people of faith to endorse a pro-homosexual marriage if they believe that homosexual marriage is sinful,” said LaBarbera.
Critics of the original Indiana law liken the right of business owners to refuse to endorse messages contrary to their faith to the fight to enact civil rights legislation and integrate the public square. LaBarbera says it’s an apples and oranges comparison.
“Homosexuals are not being denied service in the way that blacks were denied service, you can’t eat at the lunch counter, etc. That’s unreasonable to most people, but what people do find reasonable is that a person should not have to create a message, which violates his belief,” said LaBarbera.
LaBarbera says a great deal of the blame for the hysteria in Indiana belongs at the feet of the news media, which he says are not even pretending to cover this story objectively.
“This is a media-generated crisis, the media working with gay activists. The mainstream media has become part of the gay lobby almost. An incredible hysteria has been whipped up against Indiana. Gov. Pence needs to stay strong and he must make sure that he doesn’t adopt a pro-homosexual agenda as the compromise, so-called, that would allegedly save this measure,” said LaBarbera.
One of the media’s most well-publicized moments in the past week was to spotlight the owners of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana. The owners say they’ve never been asked to cater a same-sex wedding but would refuse based on their beliefs. Death and arson threats poured in. Activists hacked the Google page of Memories Pizza and left a litany of foul comments on their Yelp page.
LaBarbera says that type of harassment is not representative of all gay activists, but he says it a consistent practice of a belligerent portion of them.
“There is an element of the gay rights movement which has acted recklessly for decades and tried to intimidate people, sometimes using force. We had it happen at one of our banquets in Illinois. I would hope people would keep the argument civil. There’s no need to get into these extremes,” said LaBarbera.
Both sides of the debate are waiting on Gov. Pence and to see what changes Arkansas lawmakers make to their RFRA bill after Gov. Asa Hutchinson refused to sign it and ordered that it mirror the federal version passed in 1993. LaBarbera hopes Arkansas will now follow the changes proposed in Indiana.
“I hope they don’t back down or do a change that will backfire in Arkansas like apparently they’re almost doing here in Indiana,” said LaBarbera
Three Martini Lunch 4/2/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review are glad to see officials in Washington, D.C., giving up on their attempts to ban concealed carry. They also shudder as Islamic radicals in El Shabab massacre scores of Kenyan Christians. And they unload on the intolerant media and gay activists for persecuting the Christian owners of an Indiana pizza parlor.
‘If They Do Anything, They’ve Caved’
Liberty Counsel Chairman is urging Republican governors in the cross hairs of the religious freedom debate to stop being “wimps” and let the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts in their states to stand as they are.
On Tuesday, Gov. Mike Pence, R-Ind., ordered members of legislature to “clarify” and “change” the law he signed last week to make it clear that no discrimination against homosexuals would be tolerated. Wednesday, Gov. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., refused to sign the bill passed Thursday by the legislature until it mirrors the federal law passed in 1993.
What would constitute minor clarifications and what would represent their surrenders on religious freedom?
Staver, who authored Florida’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the 1990s, says he has a simple litmus test.
“If they do anything, they’ve caved. There is nothing to clarify. If they can’t read my lips and understand religious freedom that’s been in these statutes for two-plus decades and that has been in case law since the beginning of our history, then they should not be worthy of any of our votes. Any so-called clarification is caving into the homosexual agenda,” said Staver, who believes Pence and Hutchinson are simply responding to political bullying.
“People are looking for a strong leader. They’re not looking for wimps. They’re not looking for people who backpedal. They’re looking for people who are strong leaders. Pence needs to be a strong leader and not buckle. Hutchinson needs to be a strong leader,” said Staver. “They need to stand up to these bullies.”
While Staver fears the governors may essentially surrender in the religious freedom fight, he’s more worried about what they may try to do to satisfy the gay right movement.
“What I’m ultimately concerned about is Pence or Hutchinson or different governors elsewhere may now want to say,’ Well, let’s go ahead and pass special protection for homosexuals.’ That’s what these homosexual activists are wanting,” said Staver, who says the current protests are largely a mirage.
“They’re not wanting clarification. They know [religious freedom laws] have never been used in the way they said. They can’t point you to a single case. What they want to intimidate the opposition so that you’ll react and then add into the statutes a special, protected, preferred status for homosexuality,” said Staver.
“If they get that, boy are they going to come and hammer you hard with it,” he added.
Staver says there can never be a truce in this debate.
“These are two trains on the same track going in opposite directions. There is a collision that is taking place. One will win and one will lose. There’s no navigating around this and there’s no coexistence because they will coexist. That’s why you’re starting to see this vitriol, this hatred, this intolerance becoming manifest that we knew was there all the time,” said Staver.
He likens the standoff to the quest for Middle East peace.
“This is an intolerant agenda. This is like dealing with terrorists, negotiating with people who simply have a zero-sum game and they don’t want you to exist,” said Staver.
“It’s like the Palestinians and the Israelis. The Palestinians in Gaza don’t want the Jews to exist in the land. No matter how much land you give them for so-called peace, it doesn’t really satisfy them. There is no satisfying this radical agenda. They don’t want you to exist. If you do exist, they want you to promote and applaud their sinful lifestyle,” said Staver.
As for the content of the new law in Indiana and the legislation passed in Arkansas, Staver says the most common complaints about what they would do are simply not true.
“They have this parade of horribles that is just simply untrue. ‘It’s going to allow someone not to serve a meal to an individual in a restaurant solely because they’re homosexual.’ Absolutely nonsense. ‘You’re going to be able to say to someone you can’t sleep in this hotel room and rent it just like anyone else. Why? Because you’re homosexual.’ Absolutely not true,” said Staver.
So what would the laws do?
“What we have here is a religious freedom bill. People of faith don’t want to be put in any situation where they’re coerced against their faith to support or affirm something. That’s been the historic basis for our freedom of religion from the very founding of this country,” said Staver.
Staver says there is a rich legal history of these and other religious freedom statutes not being abused.
“There’s been litigation all over the country on a wide variety of issues from zoning to other kinds of issues involving religious freedom,” said Staver. “We’ve got a track record with these statutes of twenty-plus. They can’t point you to one case that supports their allegation that these are discriminatory,” said Staver.
Staver also dismisses the litany of threatened boycotts of Indiana by companies and groups. In fact, he is cancelling his Angie’s List membership, after the website slammed the Indiana law. Staver says Angie’s List promises to refund 110 percent of your fees if you cancel. He urges religious freedom supporters to cancel their memberships with Angie’s List and donate the money to an organization fighting for religious freedom and traditional marriage.
He says one of the great ironies in this debate is that the groups demanding tolerance are the least likely to practice it towards those who disagree with them.
“They use the word tolerant. It’s absolutely intolerant. They do not want anything to coexist that does not affirm and promote their lifestyle of same-sex activity or same-sex unions,” said Staver.
Thus far, some likely 2016 Republican presidential candidates have sided with the religious freedom laws, while others have largely stayed quiet. Staver says their words and actions in the face of fierce protest will be remembered by voters.
“I think we need to hold all of our elected or would-be elected politicians accountable. This is a defining moment and they should not, better not flinch,” said Staver.