A damning report authored by the Republican-led House committee probing the Benghazi terror attacks faulted the Obama administration for a range of missteps before, during and after the fatal 2012 attacks – saying top administration officials huddled to craft their public response while military assets waited hours to deploy to Libya.

The report released Tuesday pointedly blamed a “rusty bureaucratic process” for the slow-moving response the night of the attack. The report said despite orders from President Obama and then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to deploy, the first military force did not do so until more than 13 hours after the attack started.

The report said one anti-terrorism security team known as the FAST unit sat waiting for three hours in Rota, Spain, as Marines changed “in and out of their uniforms four times,” and even debated whether they should carry personal weapons, according to one witness. All together, the report said, “it would take nearly 18 hours” for that team to move.

The report described a web of internal debates and hold-ups, including apparent State Department guidance that “Libya must agree to any deployment,” though Panetta would later say Libya approval was not necessary.

While various officials debated how to proceed, U.S. personnel were under attack at two sites in Benghazi.

In the end, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans — foreign service officer Sean Smith and former Navy Seals Ty Woods and Glen Doherty — were killed in the attacks.

CLICK TO READ THE REPORT.

In a stunning detail, the report said the security force that helped evacuate U.S. personnel from the so-called “annex” in the end – “likely saving over two dozen lives,” according to the report – was a unit known as Libyan Military Intelligence composed of former military officers under the Qaddafi regime, which the U.S. helped topple.

The CIA did not know that unit existed. “In other words, some of the very individuals the United States had helped remove from power during the Libyan revolution were the only Libyans that came to the assistance of the United States on the night of the Benghazi attacks,” the report said.

The committee’s work itself was fiercely contested, with Democrats accusing Republican members of trying to politically harm presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the attacks.

Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., asked Americans to “read this report for themselves … and reach their own conclusions.”

At a press conference, Gowdy and other GOP lawmakers lamented that no forces were ordered to Benghazi.

“Nothing was ever coming to Benghazi,” Gowdy said.

Lawmakers contrasted the “heroism” of those on the ground with the discussions in Washington. Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., described the D.C. attitude as “near fecklessness.” He said, “They were more concerned about how they’re going to offend the Libyan government than how this rescue is going to take place.”

The findings about the military asset response the night of the attacks contrasted with the relatively robust internal debate over the public narrative regarding the attack – namely, claims that the attacks were sparked by an anti-Islam YouTube video.

Watch Benghazi Select Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and committee member Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Ind., Tuesday at 6 p.m. ET on Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier.”  

The committee report identified for the first time a White House meeting that was convened roughly three hours into the attack and included deputies to senior Cabinet members and Clinton.

Stevens was missing at the time. But the report found “much of the conversation focused on the video (which) is surprising given no direct link or solid evidence existed connecting the attacks in Benghazi and the video at the time.”

The report found that “five of the 10 action items from the rough notes of the 7:30 pm meeting reference the video.”

The report also showed that there were top-level calls to have the video removed from the Internet, before any of the forces that were ordered deployed “had actually moved.”

The report, meanwhile, found the video narrative was crafted in Washington by Obama administration appointees and reflected neither eyewitness nor real-time reports from the Americans under attack.

One U.S. agent at the American outpost in Benghazi, whose name was withheld for security reasons, told the committee he first heard “some kind of chanting.”

Then that sound was immediately followed by “explosions” and “gunfire, then roughly 70 people rushing into the compound with an assortment of “AK-47s, grenades, RPG’s … a couple of different assault rifles,” the agent said.

In addition, a senior watch officer at the State Department’s diplomatic security command described the Sept. 11, 2012, strikes as “a full on attack against our compound.”

When asked whether he saw or heard a protest prior to the attacks, the officer replied, “zip, nothing, nada,” according to the Republican majority report.

“None of the information coming directly from the agents on the ground in Benghazi during the attacks mentioned anything about a video or a protest. The firsthand accounts made their way to the office of the Secretary through multiple channels quickly,” the report concluded.

Five days later, then-United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice went on every national Sunday talk show. She told Fox News Sunday, “What sparked the recent violence was the airing on the Internet of a very hateful, very offensive video that has offended many people around the world.”

The report also said, “Security deficiencies plagued the Benghazi Mission compound in the lead-up to September 2012.”

Panetta bluntly told the committee “an intelligence failure” occurred with respect to Benghazi. Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell also acknowledged multiple times an intelligence failure did in fact occur prior to the Benghazi attacks.

The committee proposed 25 recommendations for the Pentagon, State Department, intelligence community and Congress aimed at strengthening security for American personnel overseas. Among them were: Figuring out who is in charge in such situations, holding joint training exercises, and improving communication.

The GOP report came after a report by the Democrats on the panel saying that security at the Benghazi, Libya facility was “woefully inadequate” but Clinton never personally denied any requests from diplomats for additional protection.

Democrats have long slammed the committee’s work as partisan, and Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon repeated that charge Tuesday.

“Far from honoring the four brave Americans who died, the Benghazi Committee has been a partisan sham since its start,” he tweeted.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner defended the department in a written statement issued shortly before the report’s formal release, while saying the “essential facts” surrounding the attacks have been known “for some time.”

“We have made great progress towards making our posts safer since 2012,” Toner said. “… Our implementation efforts include work to expand the corps of Diplomatic Security personnel, enhance interagency coordination to address threat information, expand the Marine Security Guard program, and accelerate projects to build and upgrade secure facilities.”

He said the department “cooperated extensively with the Select Committee,” providing over 50 current and former employees for interviews and over 100,000 pages of documents.

The report, though, said the department “withheld a number of documents from the Committee based on ‘executive branch confidentiality interests,’ an administration-constructed privilege not recognized by the Constitution.”

Fox News’ Catherine Herridge and Bret Baier contributed to this report. 

WASHINGTON –  A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the government’s “net neutrality” rules that require internet providers to treat all web traffic equally.

The 2-1 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is a win for the Obama administration, consumer groups and content companies such as Netflix that want to prevent online content from being blocked or channeled into fast and slow lanes.

The rules treat broadband service like a public utility and prevent internet service providers from offering preferential treatment to sites that pay for faster service.

The Federal Communications Commission argued that the rules are crucial for allowing customers to go anywhere on the internet without a provider favoring its own service over that of other competitors. The FCC’s move to reclassify broadband came after President Barack Obama publicly urged the commission to protect consumers by regulating internet service as it does other public utilities.

A former model who was featured at the center of a lengthy New York Times report that assailed Donald Trump’s treatment of women said Monday that her account was taken out of context, misquoted and “spun” by the Times in order to portray the Republican presidential candidate in a negative light.

“They spun it to where it appeared negative. I did not have a negative experience with Donald Trump,” Rowanne Brewer Lane told “Fox & Friends.”

Lane briefly dated Trump after the 1990 encounter described in the Times article. But the way she described their relationship and that encounter on Monday was much different than the way it was portrayed in the front-page weekend article that ran under the explosive headline, “Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved with Women in Private.”

The article opens by describing how Lane, then 26 years old, met Trump at a pool party at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., estate. According to the piece, Trump had barely met her “when he asked her to change out of her clothes.” He gave her a bikini, which she changed into. Lane is quoted as saying, “He brought me out to the pool and said, ‘That is a stunning Trump girl, isn’t it?’”

The Times goes on to describe the incident as “a debasing face-to-face encounter between Mr. Trump and a young woman he hardly knew.”

But Lane told Fox News that was not the case.

“He never made me feel like I was being demeaned in any way,” she said, calling the article “very upsetting.”

“The New York Times told us several times that they would make sure that my story that I was telling came across … that it would not be a hit piece,” she said. “That my story would come across the way that I was telling it … and it absolutely was not.”

Lane said she did in fact meet Trump at that pool party, but said he had simply offered her a swimsuit – she said “okay,” since she hadn’t brought one.

As for Trump’s comment about her being “stunning,” she said, “I was actually flattered” by that, not demeaned. “That’s what I told the Times and they spun it completely differently.”

She described the now-presumptive GOP presidential nominee as a “gentleman” and said she planned to support him in the election.

The Times reporters, meanwhile, defended their story on Monday.

“I think readers of the story can digest what happened to her at Mar-a-Lago,” reporter Michael Barbaro said on CBS’ “This Morning.”

He said, “Recall in my interview with her … she basically expressed that ‘I was taken aback by this.’ And I think that’s how we depicted it.”

“We gathered a variety of voices. And our story is not just Rowanne’s account. It’s the experience of many women,” reporter Megan Twohey said on the same program. According to the article, the reporters interviewed dozens of women who had worked for, dated or interacted with Trump.

In a written statement, a New York Times spokesperson also said: “Ms. Brewer Lane was quoted fairly, accurately and at length. The story provides context for the reader including that the swimsuit scene was the ‘start of a whirlwind romance’ between Ms. Brewer Lane and Mr. Trump.”

Trump, though, took to Twitter to hammer the Times over the piece, following Lane’s comments on Fox News. Trump initially misspelled Lane’s first name as “Roseanne,” before correcting himself.

FoxNews.com

We have so many opportunities in the workforce, yet women are often still told that we’ve got to run ourselves ragged and forego balance in order to break through the glass ceiling. Why?

Part of the reason work-life balance is difficult to achieve is because our society places so much weight on the financial success of one’s career.

For women, this has been particularly difficult because of the claim that we are underpaid compared with men and the notion that we have to work twice as hard to get to a level playing field. The ubiquitous statistic that women earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn is a compelling story that points to systemic discrimination against women.

The problem is that it’s untrue. In reality, in our 20s women are paid better than men—by 8 cents on the dollar. And overall, 72 percent of women say they have about the same opportunities to advance to top executive and professional positions in their companies as men. We are now as likely as men to be company managers.

We have so many opportunities in the workforce, yet women are often still told that we’ve got to run ourselves ragged and forego balance in order to break through the glass ceiling. Why?

Part of the reason work-life balance is difficult to achieve is because our society places so much weight on the financial success of one’s career.

For women, this has been particularly difficult because of the claim that we are underpaid compared with men and the notion that we have to work twice as hard to get to a level playing field. The ubiquitous statistic that women earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn is a compelling story that points to systemic discrimination against women.

The problem is that it’s untrue. In reality, in our 20s women are paid better than men—by 8 cents on the dollar. And overall, 72 percent of women say they have about the same opportunities to advance to top executive and professional positions in their companies as men. We are now as likely as men to be company managers.

Now, it is true that on average men earn more than women, and they also hold a greater number of executive positions. Yet this wage gap is usually not the product of workplace discrimination but rather is the product of the choices and needs of both women and men. Here’s a radical thought: Women are different than men, and our priorities, demands, and career paths differ in most cases because of our own choosing.

Rather than pitting men and women against each other and using simplistic numbers to suggest that women are victims, we ought to acknowledge these differences and embrace the choices we make

When we take into account things like education, hours worked, industry, experience, and career choice, the wage gap disappears.

Rather than pitting men and women against each other and using simplistic numbers to suggest that women are victims, we ought to acknowledge these differences and embrace the choices we make, understanding the different salaries that may result.

For instance, most women today prefer not to work full time while their children are growing up. This decision naturally slows our workplace trajectory and can decrease our wages when we do return, particularly when you take into account that only 40 percent of women who take time off for children re-enter full-time work.

Women also work fewer hours than men on average—thirty-five minutes less per day than men among full-time workers—often due to the fact that mothers voluntarily provide more time at home caring for children. I understand this desire to be home with our children; the bond of motherhood is the strongest emotion I have ever experienced. Feminism refuses to acknowledge and validate this option.

Additionally, women are more likely to be teachers and men are more likely to work in finance. Women also tend to choose jobs that offer more regular hours and greater flexibility—jobs that can accommodate the demands of raising children and managing other familial demands, but which may pay less.

We don’t all have to be on a path to the Fortune 500. I am so encouraged by the fact that as women gain greater opportunities in the workplace, they are choosing to enter careers that interest them, even if many of these careers have lower earnings over the long run. We absolutely should encourage girls in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In the past there has not been enough emphasis on this opportunity, and we can do better. I also believe that it should still be their choice.

Perhaps more opportunities for girls and boys at the elementary school level will orient more women toward these fields, but for now we must acknowledge that women’s career choice is a factor that affects the wage gap—and that giving women choice without guilt isn’t a bad thing.

As long as women recognize the financial implications of their career choices, I say, “Good for them!” No one should choose a career based on money alone. There’s not enough money in the world to compensate for a job you hate. I encourage women to choose a career they love, as long as it’s honest work and pays the bills. They should also look at all their options. We often limit ourselves.

Now, all of this is not to say that some fields are still difficult for women to break into or that there aren’t bad bosses. Humans are still sinful, and therefore discrimination against women does still exist.

However, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act have given us recourse in the courts and act as a deterrent to unfair employers. Concerned Women for America recently filed an amicus brief in support of a woman who was discriminated against by UPS because of her pregnancy, and she won. We have legal recourse, and we should use it if we are wronged—including and perhaps especially when it comes to sexual harassment.

I experienced sexual harassment in one job as a twentysomething, and it was disgusting and humiliating. I was highly employable and therefore sought and got another job, but sexual harassment is intolerable. Our daughters should never have to put up with that nonsense—and thankfully they don’t have to. We are blessed in this country by equal protection under the law, something women in much of the world can still only dream about.

Overall, the insistence on a wage gap and on widespread discrimination against women is sometimes used by feminists to perpetuate the notion that patriarchy prevents us from attaining career success and equity with men. Victim bating is politically profitable for feminists, but it simply doesn’t hold up. While choices we make about motherhood, work hours, and industry sectors may hinder our corporate-track momentum or stall our wages for a period of time, they are also opening up avenues to a work-life balance that is manageable and allows us to flourish.

By Penny Young Nance @PYNance

Ted Cruz told reporters Wednesday that he’ll be making a “major announcement” during a 4 p.m. ET rally in Indianapolis, where he’s expected to announce that ex-presidential hopeful and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina will be his running mate should he win the GOP nomination.

The New Hampshire television station WMUR reported that Cruz intended to announce Fiorina as his running mate. Politico subsequently reported that Cruz would make the announcement in an attempt to add a new jolt to a staggering campaign.

Fiorina was spotted in Indianapolis ahead of the announcement.

Fiorina endorsed Cruz not long after dropping out of the GOP race, and she has frequently appeared as a surrogate for the senator since.

Cruz is fresh off of a massive defeat during Tuesday’s East-Coast primaries. He dropped all five contests by large margins to GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, who has now defeated Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich in six straight contests.

The Texas senator is mathematically eliminated from reaching the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination ahead of the July convention. But he is hoping to stop Trump from reaching that number so that the convention can be opened up to a second ballot of voting.

In hopes of doing so, Cruz recently struck an agreement with Kasich that called for the Ohio governor to pull resources out of Indiana, clearing the way for Cruz to have a more favorable matchup with Trump.

For his part, Trump addressed the Fiorina speculation during a round of television appearances Wednesday. He brushed it off during a “Good Morning America” interview, saying Fiorina “did not resonate” when she was a candidate.

By Allan Smith

 

Smashing Pumpkins founder Billy Corgan blasted social justice warriors and spoke up for the American dream in a wide-ranging interview on the Alex Jones Infowars radio show on Tuesday.

The outspoken rocker told Jones in the hopes of making a documentary-style show for TV about America, he traveled across the country in an RV with a veteran friend, writing songs and interviewing people about their views.

He’s trying to find a partner to make the series, looking to the model of the multi-part Netflix smash hit “Making of a Murderer.”

During the road trip, Corgan said he tried to transcend politics in “trying to get people to talk about America from a heartfelt point of view…whether the America they grew up believing in or not believing in is real or was it ever real?

“And what I found– it was really fascinating because I talked to people from every type of background– most Americans have a very shared conception of what America means. Two things that I heard over and over again were opportunity and hard work. That’s something they learned from their ancestors…that is in the American DNA.”

Visiting radio host Jones in his Austin, Texas studio while on a concert tour, Corgan added, “Now we’ve reached another critical mass point where where is the line of expansion? Is it immigration, in terms of tolerance…in terms of welfare sustainability. Where are the lines?”

In his travels, the rock star discovered, “When you talk about what America means, there’s a lot of love left in people’s hearts for this country.”

Later in the interview with Jones, however, Corgan sounded off against Left-wing social justice warriors, believing they treat every word as a landmine.

“Once we give up free speech in this country it is over,” the Smashing Pumpkins singer sighed.

He considers social justice warriors “weaponized anti-free speech,” and added, “Watch the Clintons.”

“I am horrified to see young people who are coming from a variety of backgrounds…who feel they have a right…to feel that they’re victims…..”

Corgan, 49, hopes this ends but doesn’t think it will in his lifetime.

Meanwhile, he praised how Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump has shaken up the system: “One of the most positive aspects of the Trump campaign is that he connected the dots and those people who feel disenfranchised by the system,” he told Jones.

Corgan said even some people in his own family fall into that group who feel, “I paid my taxes, I’ve raised my kids, I’ve worked hard but why am I being asked to carry some additional burden here?…Why am I being guilted?

According to Corgan, the billionaire businessman has struck a chord: “Trump is known to most people because he was on a TV show….there’s not a smarter communicator on the business level that he is….When you watch his speeches, it’s like, it’s all sound bites so he’s understood.”

When Jones asked why the Republican establishment is so scared of Trump, Corgan commented, “He is a true outlier in the dangerous sense of, he won’t play by any particular rule.

“Let’s be real simple here…we all belong to a club, a clique of friends, a team, and here comes the newcomer and they say, we don’t if we want you on our team because you’re going to mess up our dynamic.

Corgan calls the Republican convention this July a “zeitgeist moment” and said he believes in peaceful political dissent there.

But he’s no fan of Twitter (which he quit recently) and other social media like Facebook which he feels is a form of mind control enslaving people.

“I don’t want to be anybody’s b–ch [or] pawn,” he said.

To Corgan, the press is part of the problem, “The media is presenting things, ‘oh, hey, your vote doesn’t count. Let’s move on.’ That is literally the next installment of the reality show….tune in next to find out whether or not your vote does matter.”

Though not singling anyone out in politics, Corgan decried the “brazen robbing of people’s ability to cast their votes.”

By Carole Glines

The three Democrats on the Federal Election Commission, in their latest and boldest move to regulate conservative media, voted in unison to punish a movie maker critical of President Obama after he distributed for free his latest work, Dreams of My Real Father: A Story of Reds and Deception.

Filmmaker Joel Gilbert, owner of Highway 61 films, has produced several independent politically-themed movies and sent Dreams out to millions of voters in key swing states prior to the 2012 election.

While he acted on his own, and with no ties to political groups or parties, an FEC complaint was filed claiming he violated reporting rules, prompting him to seek the standard media “exemption.”

But despite giving the same exemption to liberal movie makers like Michael Moore and Daily Kos, the Democrats recently voted against Gilbert in a February action, reviving their bid to punish conservative media, a campaign initially targeting online news outlets like the Drudge Report.

Lucky for Gilbert, the three Republicans on the FEC also united to vote to give him the exemption. The tie vote blocked any action, and was followed by a unanimous 6-0 vote to close the file. Had he lost, Gilbert would have been required to report who helped fund the anti-Obama movie.

The latest Democratic move on conservatives comes as some Democrats in Congress, and liberal publications, are pushing to end the even split between Democrats and Republicans on the FEC, a move conservatives have warned would lead to punishing new rules on right-leaning media and candidates.

By Paul Bedard

Chelsea Clinton, in an implicit swipe at the impact of President Obama’s health care law, recently told voters that many Americans still are facing “crushing costs” from health insurance even under the Affordable Care Act.

The comments were captured in a video posted this week. In her remarks, Clinton said her mother — presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — could use executive action to curb those costs.

“We can either do that directly or through tax credits. And, kind of figuring out whether she could do that through executive action, or she would need to do that through tax credits working with Congress. She thinks either of those will help solve the challenge of kind of the crushing costs that still exist for too many people who even are part of the Affordable Care Act,” she said in the video, initially flagged by The Weekly Standard.

The video appears to be from a Hillary Clinton town hall event this past Tuesday at the Advanced Technology Center at Bates Technical College in Tacoma, Wash.

It’s just the latest controversial comment from a member of the Clinton family; former President Bill Clinton lamented the “awful legacy of the last eight years” earlier this week while stumping for his wife, though a spokesman later said he was referring to Republicans during the Obama administration.

On health care, Hillary Clinton herself has staunchly defended the Affordable Care Act, while saying she would take any steps necessary to fix problems in the system.

In a January debate, she said, “As president, I’ll defend the Affordable Care Act, build on its successes, and go even further to reduce costs. My plan will crack down on drug companies charging excessive prices, slow the growth of out-of-pocket costs, and provide a new credit to those facing high health expenses.”

In December, Hillary Clinton was asked by a questioner at a town hall event why companies are favoring part-time employment over full-time employment. Clinton responded by saying, “the Affordable Care Act. You know, we got to change that because we have built in some unfortunate incentives that discourage full-time employment.”

A report from Freedom Partners released earlier this month states that the cost of health care premiums have outgrown both wages and normal inflation, resulting in an average rise of 28 percent from 2009 to 2014.

“With health care costs still rising faster than inflation six years after passage of the Affordable Care Act, it is clear that the law is not helping lower the burden of health care expenses for American families,” the report states.

FoxNews.com’s Danny Jativa contributed to this report.

Mitt Romney Goes Harry Reid On Donald Trump

Back during the 2012 election the Nation’s Backup Rain Man (Joe Biden, of course, is the primary Rain Man), One-Eyed Harry Reid claimed that Mitt Romney was a tax cheat.

“His poor father must be so embarrassed about his son,” Reid said, in reference to George Romney’s standard-setting decision to turn over 12 years of tax returns when he ran for president in the late 1960s.

Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office.

“Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying.

“He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” said Reid. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?

“You guys have said his wealth is $250 million,” Reid went on. “Not a chance in the world. It’s a lot more than that. I mean, you do pretty well if you don’t pay taxes for 10 years when you’re making millions and millions of dollars.”

Now Mitt Romney is doing basically the same thing to Donald Trump.Donald Trump’s tax returns may contain a “bombshell,” according to 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.Phoning into Fox News on Wednesday, Romney called for the top three Republican presidential candidates to release their tax documents — especially Trump.Romney accused Trump of “dodging and weaving” on the issue, noting that he had been vague about when he would make the records public.“We’re gonna select our nominee. We really ought to see from all three of these fellas what their taxes look like to see if there’s an issue there,” Romney said. “I think in Donald Trump’s case, it’s likely to be a bombshell.”

I have no doubt there will be revelations in Trump’s tax returns, there always are:In previous returns, when Mr. Clinton was the Governor of Arkansas and his wife was a partner in a Little Rock law firm, the Clintons had gone so far as to deduct $2 for underwear donated to charities. The deduction was ridiculed by comedians and pundits, and the White House did not itemize the Clintons’ $17,000 in charitable contributions on the 1993 return.

A $66 deduction for the personal property tax paid on the Clintons’ 1986 Oldsmobile prompted penetrating questions, like where was the car kept (somewhere in Arkansas) and who was driving it (the senior aides said they did not know).

Let’s clear away the underbrush. Donald Trump is a high income person who lives in New York State and New York City. His taxes are under a microscope. Whatever “bombshell” lurks in Trump’s tax returns it is not tax fraud. He is just too big of a target. Is he under a tax lien or similar instrument? Possible, but it is unlikely this would have escaped the notice of the NYC business press.

What might be in the returns that would approach “bombshell”? Trump is probably a lot less wealthy than he brags. Not to say that he isn’t extremely wealthy but there is no doubt he is lying about his net worth. Who cares? I don’t. Trump may even be underwater in his leveraging. Again, a lot of rich guys end up in that position and it really isn’t a problem until banks start to call the loans. You’re probably going to see that Trump’s charitable contributions make Clinton’s $2 underwear deduction look profligate. Surprised? Not me. Rich guys get and stay rich by spending other people’s money, not by spending their own. Does he have investments in unsavory places and with unsavory people? Probably, but I don’t see how this goes into “bombshell” country, especially given who his likely opponent will be if he wins the nomination. Moreover, I can’t see Romney having any specific knowledge that would have escaped the notice of the business or celebrity gossip press.

Rush claims that Romney may be trying to stop several major GOP figures from endorsing Trump by tossing this stink bomb. Plausible? Sure, if you believe anyone actually listens to Mitt Romney.

Quite honestly, Romney’s move is the worse sort of douchebaggery. It diminishes Romney by launching a bullsh** attack. It doesn’t hurt Trump. It makes Trump look picked on by the establishment encouraging them to go deeper into the bunker. It disguises the fact that the emerging establishment consensus candidate is Donald Trump.

By: streiff (Diary)  |

Months before the 1992 presidential election, Joe Biden urged fellow U.S. senators to shut down the nomination process and block President George H.W. Bush’s judicial picks from a confirmation vote.

Months before the 1992 presidential election, Joe Biden urged fellow U.S. senators to shut down the nomination process and block President George H.W. Bush’s judicial picks from a confirmation vote.

Today, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, called on the Senate to follow what he dubbed “the Biden Rules.”

The lawmakers should leave Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court empty until a new president nominates a successor, Grassley said.

“It’s the principle, not the person,” Grassley argued, quoting at length from remarks made 24 years ago by Biden when the vice president was a senator from Delaware.

Grassley said the Judiciary Committee should listen to Biden’s reminder “of the Senate’s constitutional authority to provide, or withhold, consent, as the circumstances require.”

In a floor speech June 25, 1992, Sen. Joe Biden, then chairman of the Judiciary Committee, argued that senators “should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on [any Bush] nomination until after the political campaign season is over.”

It wouldn’t be prudent, Biden said, for Bush to nominate someone to the Supreme Court during what he predicted would be “one of the bitterest, dirtiest presidential campaigns we have seen in modern times.”

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, a Democrat, would go on to  defeat Bush, a Republican, in the November general election. And during all of that election year, according to records of roll call votes, the Senate confirmed only one circuit court judge.

Biden told his colleagues in 1992:

It is my view that if a Supreme Court justice resigns tomorrow, or within the next several weeks, or resigns at the end of the summer, President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not—and not—name a nominee until after the November election is completed.

For Bush to make a Supreme Court nomination during an election year would turn a nominee into a political football and do harm to the court, Biden argued:

Once the political season is under way, and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over. That is what is fair to the nominee and is central to the process.

Later in 1992, The New York Times reported that Democrats were trying to preserve judicial vacancies for Clinton to fill if he were elected president.

Grassley argued today that the Judiciary Committee should heed Biden’s reminder “of the Senate’s constitutional authority to provide, or withhold, consent, as the circumstances require.”

According to what Grassley called “the Biden Rules,” the Supreme Court can function smoothly without a full bench.

And rather than get into a nomination fight during an election year, the Senate ought to wait for the next president to fill the seat vacated when Scalia died Feb. 13.

Democrats argue that with more than 10 months remaining in office, President Obama has a right and a duty to name a successor to Scalia.

Grassley said Biden “was and remains a friend.”

In a closing shot, Grassley said if Obama makes a nomination, as is expected, Biden, “the man who sat at a desk across the aisle and at the back of the chamber for more than 35 years, knows what the Senate should do.”

By Philip Wegmann

Why have liberals become so intolerant? They think nothing of denying someone as prominent as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from speaking on a college campus. They embrace activists who shut down speakers. They publicly shame people for the slightest deviation from liberal orthodoxy.

For them everything from science to the law is “settled” once they get into power. Progress is a one-way street. Their mindset is the very definition of closed-mindedness.

The easy answer would be “they are all bad people.” But frankly that’s a cop-out. Not all liberals are bad people, any more than all conservatives are angels. No doubt among the fevered minions of liberal activists there are people with, shall we say, psychological issues, but that doesn’t explain why so many otherwise reasonable people are so beholden to liberalism as an ideology.

The short answer is that it pays. A lot of people in and out of government benefit. Liberalism also makes people feel good. Whether you are politician dispensing government benefits or the citizen receiving them, liberalism hides the self-interest and sometimes even greed that motivate people.

But the devolution of liberalism into something now openly illiberal has causes far more complex than these familiar explanations provide.

For one thing, liberalism is no longer mainly about ideas. It is about power—as in who has it and who doesn’t. Believing they already know the answers to all questions, liberals view politics and governing as mopping up operations.

Academic research is about proving a point rather than discovering the truth. Science is treated as the private preserve of a certain ideology, not to mention a political weapon to justify preferred policy outcomes. Mistaking as they do their ideology for morality, they see no reason to shun the most cynical of political tactics to get their way. For them, the end justifies the means.

Second, liberalism today is not the liberalism of yesteryear. It’s not Franklin Roosevelt’s or John Kennedy’s liberalism. It’s not even the liberalism of Bill Clinton. It has become something much more radical. Bill Clinton talked about the “era of big government” being over.

Today, there is virtually no government program that liberals won’t embrace. Clinton had his Sister Souljah moment when he repudiated extremism in his party. Today liberals can’t get close enough to the “black lives matter” movement.

Third, liberals have surrendered to (some would say created) the nasty culture of intolerance that infuses our popular culture. To this extent, they are not at all different from some self-proclaimed right-wing people who do the same. But the difference is—or at least is supposed to be—that liberals profess to be the party of the open mind. They have become anything but.

Now that they control so many of our institutions—our universities, high-tech corporate board rooms, the entertainment industry, and increasingly even mainstream churches—they are closing the door behind them, making sure that no one, especially conservatives, will sneak in the back door.

Finally, liberalism has become hostile to open inquiry. Liberal intellectuals used to love open-ended debates because they thought they could win people over with their intelligence and wit. No more. Today’s liberal intellectuals are much more interested in stifling debates than having them. After all, who needs debates when all the big questions have been answered by their ideology? Liberals are no longer the scruffy radicals of Washington Square, but a tenured Mandarin class hotly competing for government research grants.

As I argue in my forthcoming book, “The Closing of the Liberal Mind,” to this Mandarin class:

Knowledge, like human progress, must be created and managed by state policy, bureaucratized and forced on all people equally despite the infinite differences that exist between individual human beings. It is a sad state of affairs, especially for intellectuals who are expected to know better.

There’s an old saying, he who controls knowledge controls power. Liberals get this adage instinctively. They treat truth not as wisdom—as something to be discovered—but as a will to power to be imposed by law and governmental fiat.

In this quest for power, they have become masters at controlling not only knowledge, but popular culture. For example, when Americans watch entertainers like Jon Stewart, they don’t see an ideologue channeling liberal clichés. They see just a really funny guy. The ideology is completely buried. Young people respond in lockstep not because they were indoctrinated by some boring Maoist, but because they think the whole thing is great fun.

What we have here is nothing less than a new and highly attractive form of illiberalism—an illiberal liberalism, if you will. Intolerance is championed in the name of tolerance, closed-mindedness in the name of open-mindedness, and hatred in the name of compassion. It’s classic double-think, and the deception is precisely the danger. Americans don’t expect liberals to be authoritarian wolves in sheep’s clothing. They are not prepared to be on guard all the time because liberals are supposed to be the good guys—the guardians of freedom of speech and the like.

Alas, they are not. Just ask Condi Rice or anyone else who has been denied the opportunity to speak on an American campus.

By Kim Holmes

Throughout the Bush years, liberals repeated “Bush lied, people died” like a mantra. That slander wasn’t true then and it’s not anymore true now that it has resurfaced. There are many legitimate criticisms of the way the Bush Administration conducted the war in Iraq and even more of the way Obama threw away all the blood and treasure we spent there for the sake of politics, but you have to be malicious or just an imbecile at this point to accuse Bush of lying about WMDs.

To begin with, numerous foreign intelligence agencies also believed that Saddam Hussein had an active WMD program. The “intelligence agencies of Germany, Israel, Russia, Britain, China and France“ all believed Saddam had WMDs. CIA Director George Tenet also rather famously said that it was a “slam dunk” that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Incidentally, it’s hard to fault the CIA for their conclusions when even, “In private conversations that were intercepted by U.S. intelligence, Iraqi officials spoke as if Saddam continued to possess WMD. Even Iraqi generals believed he did. In the fall of 2002, the Iraqi military conducted exercises in chemical protective gear – but not because they thought the U.S.-led coalition was going to use chemical weapons.”

Additionally, many prominent Democrats who had access to the same intelligence that George Bush did came to the same conclusion and said so publicly. If George W. Bush lied, then by default you have to also believe that Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards, Robert Byrd, Tom Daschle, Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders also lied. Some of them, like Hillary Clinton, even alleged that Saddam was working on nuclear weapons.

“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.” — Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002

Even Bernie Sanders, who opposed the war from the beginning, publicly said he believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Mr. Speaker, the front page of The Washington Post today reported that all relevant U.S. intelligence agencies now say, despite what we have heard from the White House, that “Saddam Hussein is unlikely to initiate a chemical or biological attack against the United States.” Even more importantly, our intelligence agencies say that should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he might at that point launch a chemical or biological counterattack. In other words, there is more danger of an attack on the United States if we launch a precipitous invasion.

You can’t blame Bernie and Hillary too much for thinking Iraq had WMDs because privately, even former weapons UN inspectors were saying the same thing.

Additional confirmation of this latter point comes from Kenneth Pollack, who served in the National Security Council under Clinton. “In the late spring of 2002,” Pollack has written,

I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraqi WMD. Those present included nearly twenty former inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the force established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq. One of the senior people put a question to the group: did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did.

Furthermore, as even the New York Times has been forced to admit, large numbers of pre-Gulf War WMDs have actually been found in Iraq.

From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule.

In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

One of the reasons Saddam Hussein went to such great lengths to hide what he was doing was because he did have thousands of old WMDS stockpiled.  However, that wasn’t all there was to it. Even though the ultimate conclusion of the Iraqi Survey Group was that Saddam didn’t have an active WMD program, his hands were far from clean on the WMD front.

As David Kay noted in his report back in 2003,

…When Saddam had asked a senior military official in either 2001 or 2002 how long it would take to produce new chemical agent and weapons, he told ISG that after he consulted with CW experts in OMI he responded it would take six months for mustard.

Another senior Iraqi chemical weapons expert in responding to a request in mid-2002 from Uday Husayn for CW for the Fedayeen Saddam estimated that it would take two months to produce mustard and two years for Sarin.”

— “…(O)ne scientist confirmed that the production line…..could be switched to produce anthrax in one week if the seed stock were available.”

…With regard to Iraq’s nuclear program, the testimony we have obtained from Iraqi scientists and senior government officials should clear up any doubts about whether Saddam still wanted to obtain nuclear weapons.

They have told ISG that Saddam… remained firmly committed to acquiring nuclear weapons. These officials assert that Saddam would have resumed nuclear weapons development at some future point. Some indicated a resumption after Iraq was free of sanctions.”

“1. Saddam, at least as judged by those scientists and other insiders who worked in his military-industrial programs, had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Even those senior officials we have interviewed who claim no direct knowledge of any on-going prohibited activities readily acknowledge that Saddam intended to resume these programs whenever the external restrictions were removed. Several of these officials acknowledge receiving inquiries since 2000 from Saddam or his sons about how long it would take to either restart CW production or make available chemical weapons.”

The Duelfer report also noted that Saddam had every intention of making more WMDs.

“(S)ources indicate that M16 was planning to produce several CW agents including sulfur mustard, nitrogen mustard, and Sarin.”

In other words, it is true that no stockpiles of new WMDS were found and the people in the best position to know didn’t conclude the weapons were moved to Syria. However, had Saddam Hussein not been taken out, he would have still had stockpiles of old WMDs available and he had every intention of making more.

Given all of that, it’s no surprise that everyone from the head of the CIA to Bernie Sanders to the British thought that Saddam had WMDs; yet George W. Bush is the one who is accused of deliberately sending American soldiers to their deaths over a lie.

No honest person can read all of this and STILL repeat the disgusting smear that George W. Bush lied about WMDs to get us into war in Iraq.

By John Hawkins

Two federal agencies put out misinformation and inconsistent explanations of the government’s role in the Gold King Mine blowout and water contamination in Colorado last summer, a congressional report says.

The report specifically faults the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Interior for their actions related to the Aug. 5 incident, in which 3 million gallons of water laced with mercury, arsenic, and other toxic metals spilled into a creek and rivers near Silverton, Colo., after EPA workers excavated a tunnel entrance to the mine.

“This report peels back one more layer in what many increasingly view as a pattern of deception on the part of the EPA and [Department of Interior],” Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, said in a formal statement.

The report, released Thursday by the House committee, evaluates the two agencies’ explanations of the incident, which contaminated Cement Creek and the San Juan and Animas rivers.

“After almost six months, we are still trying to get to the bottom of the catastrophic spill and find out who to hold accountable,” Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, chairman of the Natural Resources Committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee, said in the same statement.

According to the 74-page report, concerns about the Gold King Mine date to before 2009, when mine water began destabilizing waste rock dump, reducing water quality in Cement Creek and the Animas River.

The EPA reportedly monitored the mine for years, until September 2014, when it sent workers to investigate drainage problems. After a two-hour excavation, the agency postponed the project for lack of time and resources.

The House report notes that EPA workers incorrectly concluded that the floor of the adit, or tunnel entrance, was six feet below the surface of the accumulated waste rock. The EPA failed to confirm the conclusions, leading the agency to believe “the adit was not pressurized,” the report says.

Despite statements from Hays Griswold, an on-scene coordinator for the EPA, that he knew at least “some pressure” was in the mine, the agency didn’t test for pressure.

Testing “could have revealed that the mine was pressurized and prevented the blowout,” the report says.

Excavations began again last Aug. 4 and continued the next day, when the mine erupted.

The report concludes that explanations offered by the EPA and Interior “offer shifting accounts of the events leading up to the spill and contain numerous errors, omissions, and inconsistencies, some of which are not attributable to error or incompetence alone.”

“EPA must be held responsible for its actions, and this report is an important piece of that accountability,” Katie Tubb, a research associate for the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. Tubb added:

Good environmental policy is primarily an issue of who is best equipped to manage the environment well. As the committee’s report illustrates, the EPA and [Department of Interior] are massive black boxes—accountability is difficult. States and local communities simply can do a better job of reflecting the environmental interests of the people impacted most and can better be held responsible by their constituents.

Bill Gardner, town administrator of Silverton, Colo., told The Daily Signal that a “collection of shortfalls” probably caused the incident.

However, Gardner said, “what is clearly unproductive is to keep talking about whose fault the Gold King Mine blowout was.”

EPA spokeswoman Nancy Grantham told The Daily Signal on Friday that she is “reviewing the report.”

By Kristiana Mork

What a shock.

Now that he’s at the White House—and facing GOP opposition to appointing a new Supreme Court justice in the mere months before a new president is elected—President Barack Obama seems to have changed his tune a decade after serving as a U.S. senator.

As we detail in the above video, Obama used to think it was appropriate for senators (including himself) to block judicial nominees. In fact, he filibustered Justice Samuel Alito’s confirmation to the Supreme Court along with circuit court nominees Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor, and Leslie Southwick.

But White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that Obama sees things a little differently now. Speaking about filibustering Alito’s nomination, Earnest said, per The Hill, “That is an approach the president regrets.”

It took only 3,670 days for Obama to reach this conclusion. No doubt that doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that he’s now in the White House and the GOP controls the U.S. Senate.

Watch the video above to see then-Sen. Obama’s own words on judicial nominees. And then check out the one below of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., another liberal politician who was singing a different tune when George W. Bush was president.

By Katrina Trinko

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the judicial standard-bearer of the conservative movement and the court’s most provocative member, died Saturday. He was 79.

‎His death means President Obama could have an unprecedented chance to try to shift the balance of the court during his final year in office — setting up a Senate battle in the heat of an election year.

Obama said he planned “to fulfill my constitutional responsibility to nominate a successor in due time.”

The U.S. Marshals Service in Washington confirmed Scalia’s death at a private residence in the Big Bend area of south Texas.

The service’s spokeswoman, Donna Sellers, says Scalia had retired for the evening and was found dead Saturday morning when he did not appear for breakfast.

“He was an extraordinary individual and jurist, admired and treasured by his colleagues,” Chief Justice John Roberts said on behalf of the high court and retired justices. “We extend our deepest condolences to his wife, Maureen, and his family.”

Scalia used his keen intellect and missionary zeal in an unyielding attempt to move the court farther to the right and to get it to embrace his “originalist” view of judging after his 1986 appointment by President Ronald Reagan.

His 2008 opinion for the court in favor of gun rights was his crowning moment in more than 30 years on the bench.

“President (Obama) and first lady extend their deepest condolences to Justice Scalia’s family,” principal deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said in a statement.

Scalia was a strong advocate for privacy in favoring restrictions on police searches and protections for defendants’ rights.

But he also voted consistently to let states outlaw abortions, to allow a closer relationship between government and religion, to permit executions and to limit lawsuits.

Scalia advocated tirelessly in favor of originalism, the method of constitutional interpretation that looks to the meaning of words and concepts as they were understood by the Founding Fathers.

Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill honored Scalia and his contributions to America.

“Justice Scalia did more to advance originalism and judicial restraint than anyone in our time, and it all started with just two words: ‘I dissent,’ ” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. “I knew him. I respected him. I looked up to him. We all did.”

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the next likely Democratic Senate leader, tweeted: “While we disagreed on many issues, Justice Scalia was a brilliant man & a great son of Queens w/ a genuine joy for life.”

GOP presidential candidates, hours before their debate in South Carolina, also remembered Scalia.

“We have lost a great man and a great Supreme Court Justice,” said retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, a strong conservative. “For the past three decades, his towering intellect and trenchant wit has characterized the deliberations and decisions of the high court.”

Scalia’s impact on the court was muted by his seeming disregard for moderating his views to help build consensus.

His impact on the court was muted by his seeming disregard or moderating his views to help build consensus, though he was held in deep affection by his ideological opposites Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan.

Scalia and Ginsburg shared a love of opera. He persuaded Kagan to join him on hunting trips.

His 2008 opinion for the court in favor of gun rights drew heavily on the history of the Second Amendment and was his crowning moment on the bench.

He could be a strong supporter of privacy in cases involving police searches and defendants’ rights.

Indeed, Scalia often said he should be the “poster child” for the criminal defense bar.

But he also voted consistently to let states outlaw abortions, to allow a closer relationship between government and religion, to permit executions and to limit lawsuits.

He was in the court’s majority in the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision, which effectively decided the presidential election for Republican George W. Bush.

“Get over it,” Scalia would famously say at speaking engagements in the ensuing years whenever the topic arose.

Bush later named one of Scalia’s sons, Eugene, to an administration job, but the Senate refused to confirm him.

Eugene Scalia served as the Labor Department solicitor temporarily in a recess appointment.

A smoker of cigarettes and pipes, Scalia enjoyed baseball, poker, hunting and the piano.

He was an enthusiastic singer at court Christmas parties and other musical gatherings, and once appeared on stage with Ginsburg as a Washington Opera extra.

Ginsburg once said that Scalia was “an absolutely charming man, and he can make even the most sober judge laugh.” She said that she urged her friend to tone down his dissenting opinions “because he’ll be more effective if he is not so polemical. I’m not always successful.”

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