House Speaker John Boehner told lawmakers Friday that he plans to resign at the end of October, in a stunning development that comes amid mounting friction with the conservative wing of the party.

He plans to step down as speaker, and resign from Congress.

The 13-term Ohio Republican shocked his GOP caucus early Friday morning when he informed them of his decision in a closed-door session. One lawmaker told Fox News he was “stunned,” and that there was “some anger” in the room “against the people who caused this to happen.”

The announcement came one day after the high point of Boehner’s congressional career, a historic speech by Pope Francis to Congress at Boehner’s request. To the backdrop of that day’s pageantry, though, Boehner was facing an internal battle in the House GOP caucus over Planned Parenthood funding and threats by some in the conservative wing to challenge his speakership.

Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., said Boehner “just does not want to become the issue. Some people have tried to make him the issue both in Congress and outside.”

Conservatives have demanded that any legislation to keep the government operating past Wednesday’s midnight deadline strip Planned Parenthood of his funds, a move rejected by more moderate lawmakers.

Boehner took over the speakership in January 2011. The decision to step down was closely held; Fox News is told House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was only informed of Boehner’s decision “one minute” before Boehner told the GOP conference.

McCarthy said in a statement Friday: “He will be missed because there is simply no one else like him. Now is the time for our conference to focus on healing and unifying to face the challenges ahead and always do what is best for the American people.”

A Boehner aide noted the speaker’s original plan was to serve “only through the end of last year,” yet former House GOP leader Eric Cantor’s primary loss last year “changed that calculation.” But the aide seemed to make clear reference to the internal turmoil.

“Speaker Boehner believes that the first job of any Speaker is to protect this institution and, as we saw yesterday with the Holy Father, it is the one thing that unites and inspires us all,” the aide said. “… The Speaker believes putting members through prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable damage to the institution.”

The aide added: “He is proud of what this majority has accomplished, and his Speakership, but for the good of the Republican Conference and the institution, he will resign the Speakership and his seat in Congress, effective October 30.”

The House will need to hold an election to select a new speaker. The last speaker to resign in the middle of a Congress was Jim Wright, D-Texas, amid an ethics scandal in 1989.

Boehner’s decision removes the possibility of a damaging vote to strip him of his speakership, a scenario that grew more likely amid the conservative clamor over a shutdown.

While the news Friday roiled Boehner allies, some conservatives welcomed his announcement.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas said “it’s time for new leadership,” and Rep. Tom Massie of Kentucky said the speaker “subverted our Republic.”

But more mainstream Republicans said it would be a pyrrhic victory for Tea Party-aligned lawmakers.

“The honor of John Boehner this morning stands in stark contrast to the idiocy of those members who seek to continually divide us,” said Rep. David Jolly of Florida.

Boehner was first elected to the House in 1990 and soon established a strongly conservative record. He was part of former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s leadership team when Republicans took over the House in 1995 for the first time in four decades but was ousted from his leadership role in the wake of the GOP’s disappointing performance in the 1998 midterms.

He won a 2006 race to succeed Tom DeLay as the House’s No. 2 Republican when DeLay stepped aside as majority leader. He took over as the top Republican in the House in 2007 after Democrats retook the chamber.

As speaker, his tenure has been defined by his early struggles to reach budget agreements with President Obama and his wrestling with the expectations of Tea Party conservatives who demanded a more confrontational approach.

In 2013, conservatives drove him to reluctantly embrace a partial government shutdown in hopes of delaying implementation of the new health care law.

Fox News’ Chad Pergram, Mike Emanuel and Rich Edson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

I can hear the howls from the left already, because they don’t believe that there is anything special about America. They don’t see America’s exceptionalism. They don’t even see that it is a particularly nice place to live.

They are wrong.

America is a “beacon on a hill,” as described by Ronald Reagan. Don’t like Ronald Reagan? How about Bono? “America is an idea. That’s how we see you around the world, as one of the greatest ideas in human history.”

The idea of America is based on its democratic-republic form of government, where all power lies in its citizens, and the states that they constitute, and only a certain limited number of powers are delegated to a “federal” system of government, and all other powers are retained by The People. This has provided the historically best, most successful fertile environment for lifting the masses out of poverty, and spreading democracy and higher standards of living throughout the world. Unchecked, much of the world could have been living in what futurists envision as a nearly Star Trek lifestyle, where people are fulfilled and have resources to pursue their dreams. Left unchecked.

Many of you may be laughing by now. I know. Leftists have done everything in their power to undermine our form of Constitutional government and turn it into just another two-bit European style semi-socialistic egalitarian nightmare. We’ve all stood by and watched as these enemies of personal liberty have twisted the Constitution until it no longer has much meaning or protection against burgeoning centralized government and bureaucratic excess. We have watched as leftists in our own ranks have reduced our economy and quality of life to international standards, and reduced our educational and health care systems to third-world, last-class standards, notwithstanding the heftiest price tags by far on the planet.

What’s next for America?

We are at a crossroads. Truly.

In the vacuum created by America’s withdrawal from the world stage, enemies of freedom are overrunning the “free world.” Islam is overtaking Europe, and is squeezing its deadly grip on the Middle East, Africa and Asia. With Islam at the helm, all of those leftists will find that they are the first to lose their heads, because Islam abhors everything that is near and dear to the Democratic Party–gays, abortionists, free speech, women’s rights, freedom from religion, etc. Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton can get themselves fitted for their burkas if America fails to stand up and flex its muscles–and very soon.

I am convinced by every indicator that as leftists soften everything that is right and good in our Western life based on Judaeo-Christian ethics, and undermine the family, and turn every group and denomination against one another, a monster is waiting in the wings, just beyond the curtain, ready to take its place on the stage.

Communists are making a comeback, in the vacuum created by America’s left. There are a couple of billion of them. Islam has expanded its borders and appetite, and is sweeping across Europe, devouring everything in its path. American leftists are flooding our own nation with poorly educated, big government supporting aliens, and are looking to the Middle East for backup aliens to take up the slack.

We are fast-approaching the point of no return. We must make a decision, and take a stand. In our efforts we will be assailed by enemies of our Constitution with epithets of Islamophobia, Xenophobia, Imperialism, Colonialism, etc. They will do everything in their considerable power to stop America from throwing off the shackles they have forged for us. They will attempt to thwart our every convulsion against the inevitable demise of America and the human dream of liberty.

We must act now. We must act decisively. Some Republican candidates for president are saying that we must close our borders against incursion, and a few even recognize the necessity of escorting interlopers to those borders and pushing them back through to where they came from. That is not enough.

The sad truth is that America and everything it stands for is under global attack–because the idea of America is completely incompatible with Islam, Communism and Socialism–the powers that are drawing a dark cloud over the world, and trying to destroy us from within. America is the last line of defense for the weak and poor in the world, the prime targets of Islam, Communism and Socialism. Without America, these totalitarian governments will finally have free reign in the world, unobstructed by the idea of personal liberty and individual rights.

It is no longer enough to stop despots at our borders. Because we allowed them to grow too much and grow too strong, we cannot now merely put up a No Vacancy sign. We will now have to wipe out the plague, the cancer, which is spreading its malignancy through the earth. There is no longer the option of surgical removal of small tumors, but the requirement of wholesale obliteration, through widespread fire.

Peace through strength has its opposite: War through weakness.

The left has made America weak in the world, leaving the masses vulnerable, and they are dying at the hands of savages by the thousands daily. Bullies are pushing their way around the world at a pace not seen since Hitler’s National Socialist Party (Nazi). There comes a point when you can no longer appease or negotiate. We are long past that point. So while Obama and his Keystone Cops are “negotiating” with our enemies around the world, emboldening them and empowering them, Americans are left with little choice than to prepare for a great conflict.

And when that conflict is over, assuming that America is victorious, how shall we rebuild the world? In our own image–this time. We must learn–from history and common sense–that not all creeds are worthy of inclusion. Savages and enemies of liberty have no more place in the modern world. Yes, it’s come to that.

PUBLIUS

Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told an audience at Liberty University that the United States was founded “on racist principles.” He added, “That’s a fact. We have come a long way as a nation.”

The principles on which on our country was established are articulated with clarity in the Declaration of Independence. On the matter of race, the Declaration has one simple but profound teaching: “all men are created equal.” That’s it. There are no qualifications or subtractions.

Nowhere does the Declaration or the Constitution, for that matter, classify human beings according to the color of their skin.

Far from the principle of equality being a product of racism, it actually struck at the heart of slavery. By making equality the defining principle of the nation, the Founders hoped to put slavery on the course of its ultimate extinction.

While some of the Founders held slaves, they all knew that blacks were human beings.

In a rough draft of the Declaration, Jefferson charged King George III with waging “cruel war against human nature itself” by keeping “open a market where men should be bought & sold.” By calling slaves men, Jefferson clearly recognized their humanity.

Not only did the Founders think that blacks were human beings, but they also acknowledged the wrongness of slavery in principle.

Benjamin Franklin succinctly stated his opinion on slavery: “Slavery is…an atrocious debasement of human nature.” George Washington argued that “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.”

The Founders knew that slavery was wrong in principle, because it violated the rights of slaves to enjoy their natural liberty—the very same liberty the colonists fought for in the American Revolution.

But a problem emerges: Why did the Founders not simply prohibit slavery in the Constitution? And didn’t the Constitution actually condone slavery?

The Founders were well aware that the institution of slavery blatantly violated the principles of the Declaration. But without a strong union that included the Southern states, which would have never ratified a constitution that abolished slavery, the new nation would not have existed.

Of the several compromises made over slavery in the original Constitution, perhaps the most egregious one from our vantage point is the three-fifths clause.

Contrary to common opinion, however, the three-fifths clause did not mean that the Founders thought that blacks were three-fifths of a human being. First of all, the text refers to “other persons”—the term persons meaning human beings. In fact, in 1790 there were approximately sixty-thousand free blacks, who possessed all the same rights as whites.

Secondly, the three-fifths clauses was a compromise between the North and South in which three-fifths of slaves were counted for purposes of taxation and representation. Southerners in fact wanted to count slaves as full persons, thus magnifying their political power. Northerners did not want slaves to be counted at all specifically because they thought it was wrong to further encourage the importation of more slaves.

Though arguments could be made that the Founders made too many compromises, their overall project was to set anti-slavery principles in place so that they could be enforced at some point in the future.

The anti-slavery character of the Declaration and Constitution was grasped by the great civil rights leaders of the past two centuries, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Douglass, a former slave, called the Constitution “a glorious liberty document.”

In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. King likened the “magnificent words” of the Declaration and Constitution to a “promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”

King continued: “This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’”

Our exceptionalism as a nation is not measured by how far we have separated ourselves from the principles laid out in the Declaration.

It instead derives from how closely we live up to those principles.

By Michael Sabo 

LIBERALS HATE IT.

One common criticism of billionaire businessman and presidential candidate Donald Trump is that he far too often speaks in vague generalities and rarely offers specifics about where he stands on the issues.

That is no longer the case, at least regarding his stance on gun rights and the Second Amendment, as Trump just released his official policy position on his campaign website.

“The Second Amendment to our Constitution is clear. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed upon. Period,” the position paper began.

Trump went on to explain that the right to keep and bear arms is a right that pre-exists both the government and the Constitution, noting that government didn’t create the right, nor can it take it away.

He also rightly denoted the Second Amendment as “America’s first freedom,” pointing out that it helps protect all of the other rights we hold dear.

In order to protect and defend that right, Trump proposed tougher enforcement of laws that are already on the books, rather than adding new gun control laws.

Citing a successful program in Richmond, Virginia, that sentenced gun criminals to mandatory minimum five-year sentences in federal prison, Trump noted that crime rates will fall dramatically when criminals are taken off the streets for lengthy periods of time.

Trump also proposed strengthening and expanding laws allowing law-abiding gun owners to defend themselves from criminals using their own guns, without fear of repercussion from the government.

Noting that many of the recent high-profile shooters had clear mental problems that should have been addressed, Trump proposed fixing our nation’s broken mental health system by increasing treatment opportunities for the non-violent mentally ill, but removing from the streets those people who pose a danger to themselves and others.

Trump would do away with pointless and ineffective gun and magazine bans and suggested fixing the current background check system already in place, rather than expanding a broken system.

Furthermore, Trump proposed a national right to carry, a national concealed carry reciprocity law that would compel states to recognize the concealed carry permits of any other state, exactly as drivers licenses from anywhere are accepted by all states today.

Finally, Trump would lift the prohibition on military members carrying weapons on military bases and in recruiting centers, allowing trained military members to carry weapons to protect themselves from attacks by terrorists, criminals and the mentally unstable, as we have seen recently.

This is great, and those who cherish our right to keep and bear arms should be pleased by Trump’s stated position on the Second Amendment.

Of course, liberal anti-gunners will hate this, but their opinion on the matter is of little concern to us “people of the gun,” of which Donald Trump is apparently one.

Conservative Tribune

The U.S. Census Bureau has released its annual poverty report. Conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. has a small social welfare system and far more poverty compared with other affluent nations. But noted liberal scholars Irwin Garfinkel, Lee Rainwater, and Timothy Smeeding challenge such simplistic ideas in their book “Wealth and Welfare States: Is America a Laggard or Leader?”

Garfinkel and his colleagues examine social welfare spending and poverty in rich nations. They define social welfare as having five components: health care spending, education spending, cash retirement benefits, other government cash transfers such as unemployment insurance and the earned-income tax credit (EITC), and non-cash aid such as food stamps and public housing.

The authors find that in the U.S., social welfare spending differs from that in other affluent countries because it draws heavily on both public and private resources. By contrast, in Europe, government controls most of the resources and benefits. For example, in the U.S., government health care spending is targeted to elderly and low-income persons; the American middle and working classes rely primarily on employer-provided health insurance. The U.S. government health care system is, therefore, more redistributive than the systems of most other developed nations.

Elderly middle-class Americans are also more likely to have private pensions than are Europeans. Middle-class parents in the U.S. pay for much of the cost of their children’s post-secondary education; in Europe, the government pays. Overall, in Europe, the upper middle class is heavily dependent on government benefits; in the U.S., it relies much more on its own resources.

But even setting aside the private sector, the U.S. still has a very large social welfare system. In fact, among affluent nations, the U.S. has the third highest level of per capita government social welfare spending. This is striking, given that government spending in the U.S.  is more tightly targeted to benefit the poor and elderly.

When private-sector contributions to retirement, health care, and education are added to the count, social welfare spending in the U.S. dwarfs that of other nations. In fact, social welfare spending per capita in the U.S. rises to nearly twice the European average. As Garfinkel, et al. conclude:

For those who believe the absolute size of the US welfare state is small, the data presented … [in the book] are shocking and constitute a wake up call. Once health and education benefits are counted, real per capita social welfare in the United States is larger than in almost all other countries!

Only one nation (Norway) spends more per person than the U.S. spends.

How much of this spending reaches the poor? The left often claims that the U.S has a far higher poverty rate than other developed nations have. These claims are based on a “relative poverty” standard, in which being “poor” is defined as having an income below 50 percent of the national median. Since the median income in the United States is substantially higher than the median income in most European countries, these comparisons establish a higher hurdle for escaping from “poverty” in the U.S. than is found elsewhere.

Measuring the poverty-fighting success of the United States versus Europe according to this uneven standard is like having a race in which the European sprinters run 100 meters and the American runner runs 125 meters. The Europeans reach the finish line first and are declared faster. Using such non-uniform standards to compare countries is obviously misleading.

A more meaningful analysis would compare countries against a uniform standard. To their credit, Garfinkel and his co-authors do exactly that. They measure the percentage of people in each country who fall below the poverty-income threshold in the U.S. ($24,008 per year for a family of four in 2014). The authors reasonably broaden the measure of income to include “non-cash” benefits such as food stamps, the earned-income tax credit, and equivalent programs in other nations. They also subtract taxes paid by low-income families, which are heavy in Europe. (Their poverty comparison does not include health care and education.)

By this uniform measure, the U.S. was found to have a poverty rate in 2000 that was lower than the United Kingdom’s but higher than the poverty rates of most other West European nations. But the differences in poverty according to this uniform standard were very small. For example, the poverty rate in the U.S. was 8.7 percent, while the average among other affluent countries was around 7.6 percent. The rate in Germany was 7.3 percent, and in Sweden, it was 7.5 percent. Using a slightly higher uniform standard set at 125 percent of the U.S. poverty-income thresholds, the authors find that the U.S. actually has a slightly lower poverty rate than other affluent countries.

Misperceptions about the extent and severity of U.S. poverty are, in part, driven by the Census Bureau’s consistently flawed poverty report. Census defines a family as poor if its income falls below certain thresholds. But in counting income, Census ignores almost all of the trillion dollars per year that government spends on means-tested welfare aid. Census pretends that programs such as food stamps, the refundable EITC, and housing vouchers do not exist. No surprise, then, that other government reports show that poor people spend $2.30 for every $1.00 of income Census claims they have.

The actual living standards of the poor differ greatly from conventional perceptions. The government’s own data show that the typical poor family in the U.S. has air-conditioning, a car, and cable or satellite TV. Half of the poor have computers, 43 percent have Internet, and 40 percent have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that only 4 percent of poor children were hungry for even a single day in the prior year because of a lack of funds for food.

Only 7 percent of poor households are over-crowded. The average poor American has more living space than the average, non-poor individual living in Sweden, France, Germany, or the United Kingdom. By his own report, the average poor person had sufficient funds to meet all essential needs and was able to obtain medical care for his family throughout the year whenever needed.

It is, of course, a good thing that left-wing claims of widespread deprivation in the U.S. are inaccurate. But government welfare policy should be about more than shoveling out a trillion dollars per year in “free” benefits. When President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, he sought to decrease welfare dependence and increase self-sufficiency: the ability of family to support itself above poverty without the need for government handouts. By that score, the War on Poverty has been a $24-trillion flop. While self-sufficiency improved dramatically in the decades before the War on Poverty started, for the last 45 years, it has been at a standstill.

A decent welfare system would return to Johnson’s original goal of reducing poverty by increasing self-sufficiency. It would require able-bodied recipients to work or prepare for work if they are to receive benefits. It would reward, not penalize, marriage. In other words, it would be the exact opposite of the welfare behemoth we currently have.

by Robert Rector 

 

A debate over Islam — first sparked by Donald Trump not correcting a town hall questioner who called President Obama a non-American Muslim, and now Ben Carson saying a Muslim should not be president — has unexpectedly shifted the conversation in the Republican presidential race.

So far, neither candidate at the center of the furor is backing down. Trump has said he had no obligation to correct the man who wrongly called Obama a Muslim. And Carson is doubling down on his remarks from Sunday.

Carson, a Christian and retired neurosurgeon, initially commented on whether a Muslim should be president on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation,” Carson said. “I absolutely would not agree with that.”

He later told The Hill that the next president should be “sworn in on a stack Bibles, not a Koran.” He explained, “I do not believe Sharia is consistent with the Constitution of this country.”

Carson’s comments were attacked by Democrats, while fellow Republicans gave a more careful answer to the same question. In a primary race that so far has been as unpredictable as it is unruly, the Muslim debate marks the latest sharp turn — after previous heated debates over illegal immigration and other issues.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Sunday, “It’s hard to understand what’s so difficult about supporting an American citizen’s right to run for president.

“But unsurprisingly, this left Republicans scratching their heads. Of course a Muslim, or any other American citizen, can run for president, end of story.”

In a separate appearance on NBC, fellow 2016 GOP candidate Ohio Gov. John Kasich, was asked whether he would have a problem with a Muslim in the White House.

“The answer is, at the end of the day, you’ve got to go through the rigors, and people will look at everything. But, for me, the most important thing about being president is you have leadership skills, you know what you’re doing and you can help fix this country and raise this country. Those are the qualifications that matter to me.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who taped Sunday an episode of Iowa Press, an Iowa Public Television program, was asked if he agreed with Carson’s statements on Muslims being president.

“The Constitution specifies that there shall be no religious test for public office, and I am a constitutionalist,” Cruz said.

Fellow GOP contender and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio suggested the entire matter is a distraction.

He told ABC News: “This has nothing to do with the future of our country. These issues have been discussed ad nauseam over the last few years. It’s a big waste of time. Barack Obama will not be president in a year and a half. It’s time to start talking about the future of America and the people that are at home.”

Carson, a top-tier 2016 candidate and popular among the GOP’s evangelical wing, made the statement Sunday after fellow Republican candidate Trump was addressed by a man during a rally Thursday in New Hampshire who said President Obama is a Muslim.

“We have a problem in this country,” the unidentified man said. “It’s called Muslim. … You know our current president is one.”

Obama is a Christian. But Trump has declined to address the issue, saying he is not “morally obligated” to set straight the record.

Carson also described the Islamic faith as inconsistent with the Constitution. However, he did not specify in what way Islam ran counter to constitutional principles.

Carson said he believes Obama is a Christian and has “no reason to doubt what he says.”

He also said he would consider voting for a Muslim running for Congress, depending on “who that Muslim is and what their policies are.”

Carson also made a distinction when it came to electing Muslims to Congress, calling it a “different story” from the presidency that “depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are, just as it depends on what anybody else says.”

Congress has two Muslim members, Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Andre Carson of Indiana.

“If there’s somebody who’s of any faith, but they say things, and their life has been consistent with things that will elevate this nation and make it possible for everybody to succeed, and bring peace and harmony, then I’m with them,” Carson said.

FOXNEW.COM/The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The survey, conducted in the three days after 23 million people tuned in to Wednesday night’s GOP debate on CNN, shows that Trump is still the party’s front-runner with 24% support. That, though, is an 8 percentage point decrease from earlier in the month when a similar poll had him at 32%.

Fiorina ranks second with 15% support — up from 3% in early September. She’s just ahead of Ben Carson’s 14%, though Carson’s support has also declined from 19% in the previous poll.

Driving Trump’s drop and Fiorina’s rise: a debate in which 31% of Republicans who watched said Trump was the loser, and 52% identified Fiorina as the winner.

During the CNN debate, Fiorina clashed with Trump over his personal attacks and their business records and scored points for her condemnation of Planned Parenthood.

The top three contenders underscore a key theme in the 2016 race: In a jampacked GOP presidential field, the leading candidates are the only ones who have never held political office.

But one established politician has seen his standing rise after flashing foreign policy chops on the debate stage. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — identified as Wednesday’s winner by 14% of Republicans, putting him second behind Fiorina — is now in fourth place with 11% support, up from 3% in a previous poll.

In fifth place is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, at 9%. He’s followed by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 6% each, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky at 4%, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 3%, Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 2% and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania at 1%.

Five other candidates received less than one-half of 1 percentage point support: former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former New York Gov. George Pataki and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

Walker’s collapse is especially stark.

Celebrated by conservatives — in the party’s base and its donor class alike — for his union-busting efforts in Wisconsin, Walker at one point led the field in the key early voting state of Iowa.

His support had already dropped to 5% in a CNN/ORC poll in early September, but the bottom appears to have fallen out completely since then — with a second flat debate performance coming after criticism of his disparate answers on issues like birthright citizenship.

Carson was a quiet presence in Wednesday’s debate, but he remains the most popular candidate in the GOP field, with 65% of Republican voters saying they view him favorably, compared with just 10% saying they have an unfavorable opinion of the retired neurosurgeon.

Rubio ranks second in the popularity contest, with 57% viewing him favorably and 16% unfavorably. He’s followed by Fiorina (54% favorable to 17% unfavorable), Huckabee (53% to 28% unfavorable), Cruz (52% to 22%) and Trump (52% to 40%).

The biggest positive movement was in favor of Fiorina, whose favorability rating has climbed by 9 percentage points since August. And the biggest drop hit Trump, who shed 6 percentage points in that same period.

But Trump still stands out on the issues.

About 44% of likely GOP voters say they see Trump as the candidate who could best handle the economy — well ahead of his nearest competitors: Fiorina at 11%, Rubio at 10% and Bush at 8%.

Trump also wins on immigration, with 47% saying he could best address the issue, ahead of second-place Rubio’s 15% and Bush’s 9%.

He even edges Rubio, 22% to 17%, on who could best handle foreign policy.

The poll offered some good overall news for Republicans: 65% of GOP voters said they are either “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic about voting in the 2016 presidential race, compared with 51% of Democrats.

The CNN/ORC poll was conducted September 17-19 and surveyed 1,006 adult Americans, including 924 registered voters — 444 of whom are Republicans and independents who lean toward the GOP. The margin of error with the Republican results is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

By Eric Bradner, CNN

In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

The recently concluded federal trial over North Carolina’s election rules proved one thing beyond a reasonable doubt: The Obama administration and its partisan, big-money, racial-interest-group allies will stop at nothing to win elections. And using the courts to change election rules is a key part of their strategy.

That was clearly evident in the federal courtroom in Winston-Salem. The plaintiffs, including the Justice Department, challenged a number of election reforms implemented in 2013 that were designed to reduce the cost and complexity of running elections and make it harder to commit voter fraud.

The administration pushed a novel legal argument. In its telling, if a change in election rules might statistically affect blacks more than whites, it constitutes illegal discrimination. For example, if 98 percent of whites have a voter ID but only 97.5 percent of blacks have one, then requiring voters to present ID violates federal law. Never mind the fact that getting an ID is free, easy, and open to everyone without regard to race. And never mind if a policy change is in line with the rules of many other states, or if it’s explicitly sanctioned by federal law. The mere act of changing the law in the wrong direction is discriminatory.

In other words, the Obama administration would turn the Voting Rights Act into a one-way ratchet to help Democrats. The court refused to go along.

None of the reforms had an obvious racial angle. For example, North Carolina required voters to vote in the precinct where they actually live. This commonsense reform—returning to the law the state had prior to 2003—prevents chaos on Election Day, from overcrowded polling places to precincts running out of ballots because election officials can’t predict how many voters will show up. Thirty-one states do not allow voting outside of your precinct. The Justice Department claims that North Carolina broke the law when it returned to this policy.

North Carolina was wrong to end same-day registration, too, according to Justice. North Carolina implemented same-day registration in 2007. Shortly thereafter, a local election in Pembroke, N.C., had to be done over because of voter fraud and unverified ballots. The problem with same-day registration is that people can register and cast a ballot simultaneously—leaving election officials unable to verify the accuracy of a voter’s registration information. So the state changed that. In North Carolina, you now have to register at least 25 days before the election, well within the voting standard set by federal law, which makes 30 days the maximum. Only about a dozen states today have same-day registration.

The state also shaved a few days off early voting to cut down costs, but North Carolina’s new ten-day period falls well within the norm. The number of early-voting days allowed by states varies from just four to 45, with the average being 19. At least 16 states don’t allow early voting at all. Additionally, more than 20 early-voting states do not allow either any weekend voting or Sunday voting, both of which are available in North Carolina. And yet, according the Justice Department, this reform was also illegal.

The rule in most states is that you can register to vote if you will be 18 prior to Election Day. In 2009, North Carolina changed the law to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register, apparently causing a logistics nightmare for election officials, who were forced to create two different voter-registration lists and integrate them when the pre-registered teenagers actually became eligible to vote. So the state went back to the prior rule, which the vast majority of states follow. Justice challenged this decision as well.

To no one’s surprise, given the current Justice Department’s partisan history on voting-related issues, North Carolina’s new voter-ID requirement was also challenged, although that law will not be in effect until 2016.

Incredibly, the Justice Department, the NAACP, and the other plaintiffs claimed that all of these changes were “discriminatory” and violated the Voting Rights Act—a law designed to break down racial barriers to the ballot box. Apparently, in 2015 North Carolina, not being able to register when you are 16, having to register 25 days ahead of time, having only ten days before the actual date of an election to vote, and being required to vote on Election Day in the precinct where you actually live are not only racist, but barriers to voting itself.  Contrast these “conditions” with the ugly discrimination of the early ’60s.

Times have certainly changed. When the racial interest groups sued North Carolina over its reforms, a swarm of lawyers from gigantic law firms donated their services. The Justice Department devoted hundreds of thousands of dollars and man-hours to attack the law. But no witnesses could be found to say they couldn’t vote because of the changes.

The Justice Department also pumped untold thousands of dollars into a database run by a company called Catalist. This database has been populated with data provided by the Democratic National Committee, unions, and other liberal organizations and is used to help them win elections. Catalist’s infrastructure and database are expensive to maintain, but fear not: the Justice Department, in the North Carolina trial and elsewhere, has provided federal tax dollars to its expert witnesses so that they could purchase Catalist’s proprietary data. Yes, federal dollars were used to fund a database that will be used next year to try to win the 2016 election for Democratic candidates.

For all the resources expended, the Justice Department’s entire case was built on speculative claims. Not able to produce a single eligible voter who was or would be unable to vote, the plaintiffs relied on hypothetical statistical arguments to claim that the turnout of black voters would be “suppressed” because they might use early voting and same-day registration slightly more than white voters, and because black voters are “less sophisticated voters.” DOJ experts actually made the borderline racist argument that “it’s less likely to imagine” that black voters could “figure out or would avail themselves of other forms of registering and voting.” That’s a shameful way to enforce a law that was used to protect real victims of real discrimination in the Deep South.

In the end, real statistics destroyed the Justice Department’s case. The reforms the plaintiffs claimed would disenfranchise “less sophisticated” black voters didn’t depress turnout at all. Indeed, in comparison with the 2010 primary, the turnout of black voters actually increased a whopping 29.5 percent in the May 2014 primary election, while the turnout of whites increased only 13.7 percent. The same thing happened in the general election. This knocked the stuffing out of the plaintiff’s discrimination claims.

The Justice Department still holds a thoroughly demeaning view of civil-rights law. It is a view that insists that blacks are incapable of performing basic societal functions, and therefore the law must step in any time they are asked to comply with a simple procedural step to participate in the electoral process. This is not only an abuse of the department’s authority; it’s a misuse of the Voting Rights Act. It should not be tolerated.

J. Christian Adams / Hans von Spakovsky / @HvonSpakovsky

In Denver, city council members are weighing whether Chick-fil-A will be allowed to open in the Denver International Airport.

Denver council member Paul Lopez “called opposition to the chain at DIA ‘really, truly a moral issue,’” according to the Denver Post, while council member Robin Kniech is alarmed about Chick-fil-A’s “corporate profits used to fund and fuel discrimination.”

“Ten of the 13 [Denver city council] members attended Tuesday’s meeting, and none rose to defend Chick-fil-A, although some didn’t weigh in,” reported the Post.

Chick-fil-A’s crime? Well, back in 2012—when 48 percent of Americans opposed gay marriage, according to Gallup—Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy spoke out about his opposition to gay marriage, setting off a firestorm. The fact that the CEO of a company so committed to Christian values that it’s not even open on Sundays opposed gay marriage was somehow shocking.

But Cathy, while not changing his views (at least publicly), has changed his tone in the ensuing years. “I’m going to leave it to politicians and others to discuss social issues,” Cathy told USA Today in 2014. Campus Pride executive director Shane Windmeyer told USA Today that he had a “friendship” with Cathy and was “appreciative for the common ground we have established in treating all people with dignity and respect — including LGBT people.”

What a hater.

If the Denver City Council is concerned about the morality of the businesses at the airport, they should take a closer look at two current occupants: Ben and Jerry’s and Starbucks.

According to 2nd Vote, Starbucks Foundation has donated to Planned Parenthood, while Starbucks has been “listed as a company that matches employees’ gifts to Planned Parenthood.” Ben and Jerry’s parent company, Unilever, has donated to Planned Parenthood. Neither Starbucks nor Ben and Jerry’s responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment in July when asked about their support for Planned Parenthood.

Maybe that’s because even the best PR whizzes are hard-pressed to explain why a corporation would donate to a company whose executives have been caught on camera cavalierly discussing the sale of fetal body parts. (Planned Parenthood has denied the organization profits from selling fetal body parts or tissue, and has said the organization follows all laws.)

Some of the videos’ highlights suggest that Planned Parenthood, which performs around a third of abortions in the United States, hardly represents American values:

–In  the first video, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services at Planned Parenthood, makes statements suggesting Planned Parenthood may perform partial-birth abortions, despite such procedures being illegal.

— Former StemExpress employee Holly O’Donnell told the Center for Medical Progress that it did not appear all women whose children’s fetal tissue was used gave consent: “If there was a higher gestation, and the technicians needed it, there were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don’t know. And there’s no way they would know.”

— In the second undercover video released by the Center for Medical Progress, Dr. Mary Gatter, president of the Medical Directors’ Council for Planned Parenthood, joked that “I want a Lamborghini” when discussing prices for fetal tissue.

Liberals, for all their talk about tolerance, have long shown they have no interest in coexistence with Chick-fil-A. In 2012, mayors of major cities across the country denounced Chick-fil-A. “Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values,” said Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel. San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee tweeted, “Closest #ChickFilA to San Francisco is 40 miles away & I strongly recommend that they not try to come any closer.” Then-Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent Gray wrote, “Given my long standing strong support for LGBT rights and marriage equality, I would not support #hatechicken.”

Just try to imagine what the reaction would be if say, a Texas town tried to ban Starbucks or Ben and Jerry’s.

Liberals are free to boycott Chick-fil-A, just as conservatives can boycott companies who support organizations who donate to groups advocating stances they find immoral or wrong.

But it’s another matter entirely to bring in the government to ban Chick-fil-A entirely. It should be consumers, not government officials, who decide which businesses thrive and which don’t.

Denver, it’s time to try a little tolerance.

bu Katrina Trinko / @KatrinaTrinko

A University of North Carolina English course on the 9/11 attacks comes with a lengthy reading list of works that critics say portray Americans as the bad guys and radical Islamists as sympathetic, but some of the professor’s former students warn those taking the class not to disagree with the professor.

According to a posting by a UNC student on higher education blog The College Fix, “Literature of 9/11” offers a syllabus of reading assignments that include poems, memoirs and graphic novels widely perceived as presenting terrorists in a sympathetic light and the U.S. as an imperialist nation. The course is taught by associate professor Neel Ahuja, and according to a review of his course syllabus, most of the reading focuses on justification. Required reading includes “Poems from Guantanamo: Detainees Speak,” a collection of poems written by terror detainees; “Reluctant Fundamentalist,” a work of fiction in which the protagonist is a successful Pakistani in the U.S. who eventually comes to believe America to be evil; and “Sirens of Baghdad,” the final installment in a trilogy of novels focusing on Islamic fundamentalism.

“Carolina offers academic courses to challenge students – not to advocate one viewpoint over another.” – Statement from University of North Carolina

“[The book] brings the reader inside the mind of an unnamed terrorist-to-be, an Iraqi Bedouin, radicalized by witnessing the death of innocents and the humiliation of the civilian population by the American forces in the Second Gulf War,” reads a review from Publisher’s Weekly. “Without apologizing for the carnage caused by either side in the conflict, the author [Yasmina Khadra] , a former officer in the Algerian army, manages to make the thoughts of a suicide bomber accessible to a Western readership, even as the scope of the terrorist’s intended target, meant to dwarf 9/11 in its impact, and the method’s plausibility will send a shiver down the spine of most readers.”

Ahuja did not respond to requests for comment but university officials defended the course.

“For any student, part of the college experience is the opportunity to grow by learning about yourself and how you engage with and learn from those who have different points of view,” the Chapel Hill school said in a statement. “Carolina’s first-year seminar program is part of that growth. The University isn’t forcing a set of beliefs on students; we’re asking them to prepare for and engage in every lesson, debate and conversation, and share what they think. Carolina offers academic courses to challenge students – not to advocate one viewpoint over another.”

However, online criticism of Ahuja’s teaching style says otherwise.

“He favors kids who share his own views, so learn to do that,” wrote one poster who took the class in 2010. “A very interesting guy, just don’t disagree with him.”

Another commenter agreed, writing last November, “AGREE WITH HIS STANCE IN YOUR PAPERS!!!!!”

“Portray yourself as a socialist who views USA as a horrible imperialist country squashing other countries- support illegal immigration and radical Islam,” wrote another commenter. “Then you will get an easy A.”

However, some former students took issue with The College Fix report.

“As someone who took this class at UNC, I strongly disagree with this article,” read a comment from one former student. “The class would be more aptly named, ‘The Cultural Impact of 9/11,’ and considering the class as I took it in 2011, much of this article is untrue. Course reading also included “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” a Jonahtan Safran Foer novel from the perspective of a young jewish boy whose father was lost in the event.”

Charles Stozier, founding director of the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College in New York and author of the 2011 book, “Until The Fires Stopped Burning: 9/11 and New York City in the Words and Experiences of Survivors and Witnesses,” said he understands what Ahuja is trying to do, but doesn’t necessarily agree with his methods.

“He’s obviously trying to convey that there’s literature from outside of the perspective of the survivor and witnesses,” Strozier said. “You could say that the course takes no account of the victims of 9/11, which is okay, but the course seems to privilege a different perspective.

Stozier, who is teaching three courses on terrorism this fall at John Jay, said that he would have devised a different syllabus.

“I would prefer a broader political approach by starting with a look at the effects through victim and survivor statements and then look at some of the other perspectives,” he said.

Officials from UNC say that the class is voluntary and that like many other seminar programs, students should use it as an opportunity for debate.

“More than 80 seminar courses on a wide variety of topics were available to incoming freshman this semester,” read the statement provided to FoxNews.com. “The ability to bring differing points of view goes beyond the classroom; each year, student organizations invite speakers representing their own platforms that, collectively, offer an array of diverse ideologies from the left and right that lead to intellectual debate and discovery.”

Perry Chiaramonte is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter at @perrych

An FBI “A-team” is leading the “extremely serious” investigation into Hillary Clinton’s server and the focus includes a provision of the law pertaining to “gathering, transmitting or losing defense information,” an intelligence source told Fox News.

The section of the Espionage Act is known as 18 US Code 793.

A separate source, who also was not authorized to speak on the record, said the FBI will further determine whether Clinton should have known, based on the quality and detail of the material, that emails passing through her server contained classified information regardless of the markings. The campaign’s standard defense and that of Clinton is that she “never sent nor received any email that was marked classified” at the time.

It is not clear how the FBI team’s findings will impact the probe itself. But the details offer a window into what investigators are looking for — as the Clinton campaign itself downplays the controversy.

The FBI offered no comment.

A leading national security attorney, who recently defended former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling in a leak investigation, told Fox News that violating the Espionage Act provision in question is a felony and pointed to a particular sub-section.

“Under [sub-section] F, the documents relate to the national defense, meaning very closely held information,” attorney Edward MacMahon Jr. explained. “Somebody in the government, with a clearance and need to know, then delivered the information to someone not entitled to receive it, or otherwise moved it from where it was supposed to be lawfully held.”

Additional federal regulations, reviewed by Fox News, also bring fresh scrutiny to Clinton’s defense.

The Code of Federal Regulations, or “CFR,” states: “Any person who has knowledge that classified information has been or may have been lost, possibly compromised or disclosed to an unauthorized person(s) shall immediately report the circumstances to an official designated for this purpose.”

A government legal source confirmed the regulations apply to all government employees holding a clearance, and the rules do not make the “send” or “receive” distinction.

Rather, all clearances holders have an affirmative obligation to report the possible compromise of classified information or use of unsecured data systems.

Current and former intelligence officers say the application of these federal regulations is very straightforward.

“Regardless of whether Mrs. Clinton sent or received this information, the obligations under the law are that she had to report any questions concerning this material being classified,” said Chris Farrell, a former Army counterintelligence officer who is now an investigator with Judicial Watch. “There is no wiggle room. There is no ability to go around it and say I passively received something — that’s not an excuse.”

The regulations also state there is an obligation to meet “safeguarding requirements prescribed by the agency.” Based on the regulations, the decision to use a personal email network and server for government business — and provide copies to Clinton attorney David Kendall — appear to be violations. According to a letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Kendall and his associate did not have sufficient security clearances to hold TS/SCI (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information) contained in two emails. Earlier this month, the FBI took physical custody of the server and thumb drives.

Fox News was first to report, Aug. 19, that two emails — from aides Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan — with classified information kick-started the FBI probe, a point not disputed by the Clinton campaign.

The CFR also require a damage assessment once a possible compromise has been identified “to conduct an inquiry/investigation of a loss, possible compromise or unauthorized disclosure of classified information.”

Farrell said, “There is no evidence there has been any assessment of Mrs. Clinton and her outlaw server.”

Citing the ongoing investigation, a State Department spokesman had no comment, but did confirm that Clinton’s immediate staff received regular training on classification issues.

Clinton told reporters Friday that she remains confident no violations were committed.

“I have said repeatedly that I did not send nor receive classified material and I’m very confident that when this entire process plays out that will be understood by everyone,” she said. “It will prove what I have been saying and it’s not possible for people to look back now some years in the past and draw different conclusions than the ones that were at work at the time. You can make different decisions because things have changed, circumstances have changed, but it doesn’t change the fact that I did not send or receive material marked classified.”

The Clinton campaign did not provide an on-the-record comment on the matter when given questions by Fox News.

By Catherine Herridge, Pamela Browne

 

IF YOU LIKE YOUR 401(k), YOU CAN KEEP YOUR 401(k)

In 2013, in a little-heralded case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected the Obama Labor Department’s attempt to punish voluntary retirement plan service providers. The DOL, under the direction of the controversial, radical leftist Tom Perez, had tried to force providers of 401(k), 403(b), IRA, and related services to adopt a massive new set of regulations known as “fidiculary” responsibilities.

The Seventh Circuit slammed the door shut on Labor and the Supreme Court thereafter declined to hear the appeal, which meant that the Obama administration had lost in the highest court in the land.

Of course for the “most transparent administration ever”, that step simply meant that the court’s opinion was to be rejected and that Obama would use his infamous pen to rule by executive fiat. After all, the ends justify the means, correct?

On August 24th, Perez and the Labor Department confirmed they are moving forward with new regulations that would repudiate the court’s opinion. Even Obama’s SEC Commissioner issued an ominous warning that the Labor Department’s new regulations would unleash havoc and create “a mess.”

Furthermore, financial services experts have cautioned that the new rule is “too complicated to [actually] put into practice.”

Earlier this month, the Labor Department held public hearings to discuss the input and concerns they have received from industry groups and other stakeholders that will be impacted by the department’s proposal to expand the definition of “fiduciary” under ERISA … In the debate over the DOL’s proposal — which, as written, [will] create a vast and costly new regulatory regime for independent firms and advisers across the country…

Barack Obama and Tom Perez don’t care about all of that. They’re on a mission to seize your retirement funds:

Labor Department officials are determined to produce a new standard of fiduciary duty for anyone giving retirement investment advice, once they process concerns raised in thousands of comment letters and four days of hearings on their proposal.

A SIMPLE PLAN

Like Obamacare, the idea is to drive small- and mid-size service providers out of the retirement business by ensuring that the costs of complying with regulations are unaffordable. And, to ensure a Republican president can’t easily unwind the Rube Goldberg machinery, the Labor Department has also promised an impossible eight month implementation timeline. Most providers believe it will take three years to follow all of the byzantine rules and regulations.

Their intent, in my view, is to force a consolidation of the retirement service industry, just as Obamacare drove mergers and acquisitions in the health care business, leaving only gigantic corporations in its wake. These companies have become intertwined and dependent upon legislators and lobbyists in Washington. They can’t make a move without the permission of the federal leviathan.

Many Democrats are open about the true goal of Obamacare: to end up with a single-payer health care system, modeled after the National Health Service in the U.K. You know, the system that was reported to have killed 120,000 seniors in 2012 alone.

SETTING THEIR SIGHTS ON TRILLIONS OF YOUR RETIREMENT DOLLARS

The Obama administration has its sights set on an incredible amount of your money. By some estimates, Americans are holding well over $10 trillion in private retirement accounts.

For a country with debt that is clearly “unsustainable” (source: the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office), that amount of money is akin to showing a kilo of heroin to a desperate junkie.

THE GOAL: FINANCIAL REPRESSION

One of the first steps the Obama administration took to signal its direction was to unveil its wildly unsuccessful “MyRA” program. This takes participants’ funds and invests them in “ultra-safe”, government-issued debt.

You can be sure that the future of the retirement services business will be to extend “fiduciary” responsibilities to require advisors to leverage federal debt instruments in their clients’ portfolios.

This is called “financial repression“, and it is the hallmark of a government on its way to bankruptcy. Essentially, a failing government forces investors to purchase its debt because it knows damn well that the instruments will ultimately never be repaid.

Argentina and other failed countries have embarked upon this strategy prior to a full-blown currency collapse.

You can be sure that the real goal of the Obama administration is to nationalize your retirement account and to invest it in debt that will become increasingly unsellable in the open market.

If you want to maintain control of your retirement funds, I’d recommend contacting your member of Congress today. Urge them to defund the Department of Labor until this rule is nuked from orbit.

by David Mills

Political commentator Ann Coulter believes that immigration is the most important issue facing America today. If we don’t get it right, she says, debates over economics, foreign policy, and other issues just won’t matter.

Coulter makes the case in her new book, “Adios, America,” that it has been the goal of liberals for decades to fundamentally transform America by bringing in millions of immigrants from third-world countries to build their voting base.

As those familiar with Coulter know, she speaks her mind. Watch the interview to find out what she told us.

Genevieve Wood / @genevievewood

Over the last week, the debate over birthright citizenship has divided the 2016 Republican presidential field and put the spotlight back on immigration.

Birthright citizenship allows children born in the United States to be granted automatic citizenship, including those born to illegal immigrants. So what are some of the issues surrounding birthright citizenship, and how are those opposed looking to end it? The Daily Signal explains.

UPDATE: Several commenters have raised questions about the 1898 Supreme Court case, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark. Professor Edward Erler addresses the case in “The Heritage Guide to the Constitution” and Heritage senior legal fellow Hans von Spakovsky said this about it in a Fox News op-ed:

Even in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, the 1898 case most often cited by “birthright” supporters due to its overbroad language, the Court only held that a child born of lawful, permanent residents was a U.S. citizen. That is a far cry from saying that a child born of individuals who are here illegally must be considered a U.S. citizen.

Melissa Quinn / @MelissaQuinn97

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Sunday that Hillary Clinton is indeed the focus of a Justice Department probe, calling the argument that the probe is about her private email network when she was secretary of state “ridiculous.”

“The FBI doesn’t investigate machines,” Mukasey, a Bush administration attorney general, told “Fox News Sunday.” “It investigates people.”

“It is not a political witch hunt,” he said.

For months, questions about the private email network Clinton used while secretary of state have nagged her 2016 Democratic presidential campaign.

In recent weeks, the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence community have asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether Clinton’s network received or sent classified emails.

Clinton and her campaign have repeatedly said that she neither sent nor received classified email. And they have argued the investigation is not a “criminal” probe and that government nomenclature is at the center of the issue.

“What’s going on here is something that happens all the time,” Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon recently argued. “You have a bureaucratic tangle over what counts as classified and what doesn’t.”

Mukasey, an adviser for Republican Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, said arguments about what information was either classified or unclassified is “at the margins” of the debate.

“It’s inconceivable that a great deal of the information was unclassified,” he told Fox.

However, Mukasey acknowledged that the issue of Clinton perhaps or eventually facing criminal charges like now-retired Gen. David Petraeus would depend on what she knew about the content of the exchanges.

Petraeus gave classified information to a female writer with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

Former California Democratic Rep. Ellen Tauscher, who is now a Clinton campaign surrogate, on Sunday largely dismissed the email controversy as a political attack.

“We can quibble about what [emails] should be re-classified when they go out to the public, but that’s dancing on the head of a pin,” she told Fox. “That’s partisan politics.”

Off-duty members of the U.S. military subdued a gunman “known to intelligence services” after he opened fire, injuring three aboard on a high-speed train en route to Paris from Amsterdam Friday.

Three U.S. servicemen were on board the train and overpowered the man when the train stopped in the northern French city of Arras, 115 miles north of Paris, French media reported. Some reports said the men were U.S. Marines but that could not be confirmed. 

Passengers on the train subdued the gunman and prevented further carnage, said Christophe Piednoel, spokesman for national railway operator SNCF. The train was then diverted to Arras, where police arrested the suspect, Piednoel said on French television i-Tele.

The suspect was arrested after the train stopped in Arras, 115 miles north of Paris, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henri Brandet said on French television BFM. Passengers were evacuated and police have secured the area.

The man was armed with an automatic rifle and a knife, Piednoel said.

The suspect is a 26-year-old Moroccan, Alliance police union official Sliman Hamzi said on French television i-Tele.

The victims were identified as an American, a Briton and a Frenchman. Earlier reports said two American service members were among the injured. Two of the victims were in critical condition, according to a statement from the office of President Francois Hollande.

“The situation is under control, the travelers are safe. The train stopped and the emergency services are on site,” Thalys, the train operator, tweeted.

The attack took place while the train was passing through Belgium, according to a statement from Hollande’s office. The statement said he spoke with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, and the two leaders pledged to cooperate closely on the investigation.

Two of the victims were considered to be seriously injured, the French state rail company SNCF said, according to French wire service AFP. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve is on his way to the scene. Passengers were evacuated and police have secured the area.

The motivation for the attack is unknown, officials said. AFP cited French officials saying the suspect is “known to intelligence services.”

Investigators from France’s special anti-terror police are leading the investigation, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

In the wake of the recent and ongoing Planned Parenthood scandal regarding the harvesting and sale of baby hearts, livers, lungs, and other organs, late last week a group of black pastors requested that a bust of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, be removed from a temporary Smithsonian exhibit named, ironically, “Struggle for Justice.”

The pastors are deeply offended at Sanger’s inclusion in the program because of her direct ties to eugenics and overall disdain for African-Americans.

Until now, many Americans have trustingly assumed that Planned Parenthood is a benevolent health care provider, but after watching the horrific videos, complete with senior employees’ casual disrespect for human life and dignity, the public is beginning to ask more probing questions about Planned Parenthood’s founding, mission, and ongoing work.

In doing so, they will likely learn very disturbing information about Sanger’s view of black Americans and how that influenced the founding of Planned Parenthood of America, the nation’s largest abortion provider.

In 1921, Margaret Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which in 1942 underwent a name change to become Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Many of the group’s founding directors were actively involved in the “eugenics” movement, which held that certain classes or colors of people were “lesser” and “unfit” for humanity and shockingly should be eliminated. Included in these targeted “unfit” groups were black Americans (another group included was people with disabilities).

In addition to eugenics involvement, one founding director, Dr. Lothrup Stoddard, wrote a book, “Rising Tide of Color against White Supremacy.”

Perhaps the hardest fact to take in is that under Margaret Sanger’s leadership, the organization created a program called the “Negro Project,” which involved strategically seeking to decrease the black population by convincing black community leaders to introduce birth control to their networks.

About the project, Margaret Sanger was once quoted as saying, “We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten that idea out if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

She also spoke at Ku Klux Klan meetings.

Fast-forwarding to 2015, sadly, today, black Americans are aborted at a highly disproportionate rate.

Making up only 13 percent of the population, this group makes up a staggering 36 percent of the nation’s abortions.

In certain areas such as New York City, a black baby is more likely to be aborted than carried to term.

In the words of the pastors:

Perhaps the gallery is unaware that Ms. Sanger supported black eugenics, a racist attitude toward black and other minority babies; an elitist attitude toward those she regarded as ‘the feeble minded;’ speaking at rallies of Ku Klux Klan women….Also the notorious ‘Negro Project’ which sought to limit, if not eliminate, black births, was her brainchild. Despite these well documented facts of history, her bust sits proudly in your gallery as a hero of justice.

As the undercover videos continue to be made public one after the other, it is likely that Americans will continue to discover many unseemly truths about Planned Parenthood’s origins.

By Jeanne Mancini