It seems to be the question Democratic Party figureheads don’t want to answer: What’s the difference between a Democrat and a socialist?

Hillary Clinton, in an otherwise friendly interview on MSNBC, struggled to answer that question Tuesday when asked by host Chris Matthews.

At first, the Democratic presidential front-runner seemed to suggest the question should be directed at her rival in the race, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.

“You see, I’m asking you,” Matthews countered.

Clinton simply replied, “I’m not one.”

Beyond that, she declined to explain the differences between the two.

“I can tell you what I am, I am a progressive Democrat … who likes to get things done,” Clinton said. “And who believes that we’re better off in this country when we’re trying to solve problems together. Getting people to work together. There will always be strong feelings and I respect that, from, you know, the far right, the far left, libertarians, whoever it might be, we need to get people working together.”

The awkward exchange was reminiscent of an interview the same host had in July with Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who also struggled to explain the Democrat-socialist distinction.

Clinton and Schultz’ reluctance to answer the question could reflect a reluctance to rile the millions of Democrats supporting Sanders’ socialist-tinged campaign.

Matthews spoke to this undercurrent in the interview Tuesday, saying he understands Clinton wants to keep the left and center-left united.

Despite conservative charges of socialism against the Obama administration, there are still significant differences between the policies espoused by the Democratic Party and the massive welfare programs enacted in social democracies in places like Scandinavia.

But Clinton’s interview nevertheless fueled allegations that the distinctions are narrowing. “It is obvious Secretary Clinton didn’t want to get into the differences between a Democrat and a socialist, and the reason is simple: there aren’t any,” Jeff Bechdel, spokesman for the conservative America Rising PAC, said in a statement.

Foxnews.com

President Obama is set to use his White House powers to tighten gun control next week, including placing more restrictions on gun sellers, according to a new report.

Obama will use executive actions to expand licensing requirements for small-scale sellers, Politico reported.

Such a change would result in more sellers having to conduct background checks but wouldn’t completely close the so-called “gun show loophole,” which allows for firearm purchases at such venues without a check.

The White House declined a request by Fox News late Thursday to comment on the story.

However, principal deputy press secretary Eric Schultz acknowledged that the president has asked his team to “scrub existing legal authorities” to see whether he can take additional administrative action” and that Obama expects the work to be completed soon.

Schultz also essentially repeated what the White House has previously said about trying to end gun violence in the absence of action on Capitol Hill.

“The president has made clear the most impactful way to address the crisis of gun violence in our country is for Congress to pass some common sense, gun-safety measures,” Schultz told Fox News. “The president has made clear he’s not satisfied with where we are.”

The proposed action follows a recent flurry of gun violence including an allegedly racially-motivated June 2015 incident in which a 21-year-old gunman killed nine people inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, S.C., and last month a husband-wife Muslim couple fatally shooting 14 people at a holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif.

The most recent efforts to tighten gun-ownership laws were largely sparked by a 2012 incident in which a gunman killed 20 children and six adults inside Sandy Hook elementary school, in Newtown, Conn.

Politico reports the president is trying to make changes before his presidency ends in January 2017 and before the 2016 White House race further dominates the news and Americans’ attention.

The administration is also expected to impose tighter rules for reporting guns that get lost or stolen on their way to a buyer, according to Politico.

Obama also reportedly will tighten the definition of being “engaged in the business” of selling guns.

Existing law states those who sell guns with the “principal objective of livelihood and profit” have to get a dealer’s license through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That means they also have to conduct a background check on buyers no matter where they sell, including online or at a gun show.

Everytown, the pro-gun control group led by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has reportedly recommended adding to the definition the selling guns in their original packaging and reselling a gun shortly after acquiring it.

Another new, likely requirement is that licensed dealers and manufacturers will have to report to federal authorities guns that are stolen in transit to a buyer.

ATF first proposed the new regulation in August 2014, but the gun industry successfully argued that voluntary reporting program was sufficient.

FoxNew.com

Trigger warning! This story and video may be unsuitable viewing for the “safe space” crowd.

Looking to understand just how controversial the debate over free speech on our college campuses really is, filmmaker and satirist Ami Horowitz recently traveled to Yale University, one of our nation’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, to speak directly to students.

“I decided to take this campus free speech debate to its logical conclusion,” said Horowitz, who asked students if they’d sign a petition calling for an outright repeal of the First Amendment. “The result was this unbelievable display of total stupidity.”

In fact, Horowitz discovered a solid majority of the students asked willingly signed the petition, with several expressing their enthusiastic approval for his anti-First Amendment efforts.

“I think it’s really awesome that you’re out here,” said one student.

Watch the video to find out just how many supported the petition, and how willing many students were to sign away their more basic rights of free speech and expression.

FoxNews.com

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz convened a subcommittee hearing Tuesday to dispute the validity of research from climate “alarmists,” whose findings have become central to crafting environmental policy.

Cruz used his opening remarks to detail the 2013 expedition where a ship of 74 people sent into Antarctica to research climate change got stuck in ice, forcing an airlift rescue a week later.

“This expedition was there to document how the ice was vanishing in the Antarctic, but the ship became stuck,” Cruz said before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness. “It had run into an inconvenient truth, as Al Gore might put it.”

Cruz, who chairs the subcommittee, also noted Secretary of State John Kerry’s 2009 claim that the Arctic would be “ice-free” by the summer of 2013—which was the same year the researchers became trapped in ice.

Republicans on the committee said the hearing was intended to shed light on “opposing viewpoints in the field of climate science,” which Cruz said are “reflexively” brushed aside by policymakers.

He repeatedly pointed to satellite data that found no significant global warming during the past 18 years, a slowdown often referred to as the warming “pause.”

“Global warming alarmists don’t like these data. They are inconvenient to their narrative,” Cruz said. “But facts and evidence matter.”

Judith Curry, former chair of Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, testified that while climate scientists uniformly agree that surface temperatures have increased during the past century, there is “considerable” disagreement about whether humans drive global warming and if warming is dangerous to the planet.

Curry’s research led her to findings that natural causes could be playing a larger role in warming than human activity, challenging what many consider “settled” conclusions in the climate debate.

But instead of leading to reignited deliberation, Curry said the science community quickly branded her a “heretic” for challenging the status quo.

“In their efforts to promote their ‘cause,’ the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem,” she said, adding: “This behavior risks destroying science’s reputation for honesty and objectivity. Without this objectivity and honesty, scientists become regarded as merely another lobbyist group.”

Democrats denounced the four witnesses Republicans called to testify as climate change “deniers” in a press conference held prior to the hearing.

“This hearing doesn’t make a lot of sense, given the challenges we are facing,” said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the subcommittee. “When it comes to climate change, the science is pretty clear. It is basically settled.”

As reason to close debate on the issue, Democrats routinely float the statistic that 97 percent of scientists agree that human activity causes climate change. But those on the right have pushed back on the number, arguing it’s contrived from vague surveys.

“Any time you hear people say scientists should not question the conventional wisdom, you are hearing someone advocating essentially for the abolition of science,” Cruz said.

The hearing took place days before diplomats in Paris are expected to finalize an international climate pact as the United Nations summit comes to a close Friday.

U.S. diplomats have been working with representatives from nearly 200 other nations for the past week to broker an agreement aimed at cutting global carbon emissions.

Kerry told The New York Times Cruz’s hearing would not deter negotiations.

“One professor is not going to negate peer-reviewed science.”

Natalie Johnson / @nataliejohnsonn /

‘Spinning up as we speak’: Email shows Pentagon was ready to roll as Benghazi attack occurred

As the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was unfolding, a high-ranking Pentagon official urgently messaged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top deputies to offer military help, according to an email obtained by Judicial Watch.

The revelation appears to contradict testimony Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave lawmakers in 2013, when he said there was no time to get forces to the scene in Libya, where four Americans were killed, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.

“I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S [apparent reference to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton],” reads the email, from Panetta’s chief of staff Jeremy Bash. “After consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham and the Joint Staff, we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.”

” … we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.” – Jeremy Bash, Pentagon chief of staff

The email was sent out at 7:19 p.m. ET on Sept. 11, 2012, in the early stages of the eight-hour siege that also claimed the lives of Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALs, Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, private CIA contractors who raced to the aid of embattled State Department workers.

Although the email came after the first wave of the attack at the consulate, it occurred before a mortar strike on the CIA annex killed Woods and Doherty.

“This leaves no doubt military assets were offered and ready to go, and awaiting State Department signoff, which did not come,” Judicial Watch, a nonprofit government watchdog said in a statement.

Parts of the email from Bash were redacted before release, including details on what military forces were available.

In defending the Obama administration’s lack of a military response to the attack, Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee nearly two years ago that “time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response.”

The first assault occurred at the consulate at 3:40 p.m. ET. The second attack on the CIA annex a little over a mile away began three hours later. Bash’s email was sent approximately 40 minutes after that attack began.

Bash’s email, which bore the subject line “Libya,” was sent to Clinton’s then-deputy chief of staff Jacob Sullivan, Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Thomas Nides.

The attack came in three waves at two locations. It began when a handful of attackers scaled the wall of the diplomatic post at dusk and opened a gate, allowing dozens of armed men inside who then set the building on fire. Stevens and Smith died after breathing in smoke while hiding in a safe room, and later died.

Hours later, a nearby CIA annex was attacked twice. Woods and Doherty died there while defending the annex from the rooftop. A team of six security officials summoned from Tripoli and a Libyan military unit helped evacuate the remaining U.S. personnel who were taken to an airport and flown out of Benghazi.

The Obama administration later falsely claimed that the attack was triggered by an Internet video that insulted Islam.

Lawmakers investigating the events surrounding Benghazi already had acquired the e-mail, along with tens of thousands of others related to the probe, according to Matt Wolking, spokesman for the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

“The Select Committee has obtained and reviewed tens of thousands of documents in the course of its thorough, fact-centered investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attacks, and this information will be detailed in the final report the Committee hopes to release within the next few months,” Wolking told FoxNews.com. “While the Committee does not rush to release or comment on every document it uncovers, I can confirm that we obtained the unredacted version of this email last year, in addition to Jake Sullivan’s response.”

FoxNews.com/

Law enforcement authorities are concluding terrorism as a motive for an attack in Southern California that left 14 dead and was carried out with cold precision by a “devout” Muslim and his wife, who were killed hours later in a shootout with police.

Dressed in tactical gear and toting assault rifles, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, burst into a San Bernardino social services facility and shot up a conference room where Farook’s employer, the county health department, was hosting a holiday party. The pair escaped in a black SUV after the attack, which authorities said was over within minutes, only to resurface four hours later and less than 2 miles away in a fierce gun battle on the city’s main drag.

“They came prepared to do what they did, as if they were on a mission,” San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said.

Farook, who Burguan said was born in the U.S. and had worked at the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health for five years, was described by co-workers as a “devout” Muslim, who is believed to have lived in nearby Redlands. The nationality of Malik, who reportedly recently had a baby with Farook, was not identified. Family members told The Associated Press the couple was married.

Law enforcement officials said late Wednesday they could not rule out terrorism as a possible motive. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force was aiding in the investigation.

A law enforcement source told Fox News that the couple were each carrying an AR-15 rifle and a pistol when they were shot and killed by police after a brief chase in their black SUV about 2 miles from the initial shooting site. The source said the vehicle also contained so-called “rollout bags” with multiple pipe bombs, as well as additional ammunition. The couple also had GoPro cameras strapped to their body armor and wore tactical clothing, including vests stuffed with ammunition magazines.

“That’s a military tactic for a sustained fight,” the source told Fox News of the rollout bags.

In addition to the explosives found at the SUV, authorities discovered and detonated three pipe bombs late Wednesday at the Inland Regional Center, the complex where the initial shooting took place about 60 miles east of Los Angeles.

Another source described a house in Redlands that was being searched in connection with the shooting as “an IED facility.” The source said investigators discovered multiple pipe bombs in the house, as well as small explosives that were strapped to remote-controlled cars.

The initial shooting happened shortly before 11 a.m. local time at the state-run center, which includes three buildings where developmentally disabled people of all ages are treated. The conference area had been rented out by Farook’s colleagues for a holiday banquet, according to authorities. The chief said that Farook had angrily left the party before returning with Malik. However, other investigators doubted the alleged dispute had taken place or whether the shooting could solely be chalked up to a workplace dispute due to the apparent planning behind the attack as well as the heavy weaponry used.

Patrick Baccari, a co-worker of Farook who suffered minor wounds from shrapnel slicing through the building’s bathroom walls, told the Associated Press he had been sitting at the same table as Farook at the banquet before his colleague suddenly disappeared, leaving his coat on his chair.

Baccari also said that Farook had traveled to Saudi Arabia for about a month this past spring. When Farook came back, word spread that he had gotten married and the woman he described as a pharmacist joined him shortly afterward. The couple had a baby later this year. Baccari added that the reserved Farook showed no signs of unusual behavior, although he grew out his beard several months ago.

The couple dropped off their 6-month-old daughter with relatives Wednesday morning, saying they had a doctor’s appointment, Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said after talking with family. Farhan Khan, who is married to Farook’s sister, told reporters he last spoke to his brother-in-law about a week ago. He said he was in shock, condemned the violence, and had “absolutely no idea why he would do this.”

“They came prepared to do what they did as if on a mission.” – San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan

FBI spokesman David Bowdich acknowledged that “adjustments” had been made in the investigation with an eye on the possibility terrorism was involved.

“It’s a possibility, but we are not willing to go down that road yet,” Bowdich said.

About four hours after the shooting, with police looking for a dark SUV, officers staking out the Redlands home saw a vehicle matching that description. Authorities pursued the SUV, and a gun battle broke out around 3 p.m., authorities said. One officer suffered a minor injury.

The aftermath of the shootout was captured live by television news helicopters.

It was unclear where the suspects may have been during the nearly four hours following the lightning-quick attack, but they did not get far. A police spokeswoman said police came across the SUV while “doing follow-up work,” and several reports said the car was at a nearby home police were staking out when the suspects got in and tried to flee. It was not immediately clear if that home was the one searched later in Redlands.

Word that police were hot on their trail came even as emergency responders were treating the wounded on the scene, and sparked a flurry of law enforcement racing to the scene just blocks away. The gunfight, caught on cellphone video by a bystander, was a furious exchange of bullets in which a passenger in the SUV blasted at police through the shattered rear windshield before the vehicle was disabled in a hail of return fire.

Center employees, who undergo monthly training drills to prepare for active shooter situations, initially thought the incident was a drill, according to the Los Angeles Times. But when real bullets flew, several hid in closets, barricaded themselves in rooms or fled for their lives.

The Inland Regional Center is one of 21 facilities serving people with developmental disabilities run by the state, said Nancy Lungren, spokeswoman for the California Department of Developmental Services. The social services agency administers, authorizes and pays for assistance to people with disabilities such as autism and mental retardation. On an average day, doctors at the regional centers would be evaluating toddlers whose parents have concerns and case workers meeting with developmentally disabled adults.

The San Bernardino facility consists of three buildings, and employs approximately 600 workers. Inland Regional Center Executive Director Lavinia Johnson told Reuters the shooting happened at a conference center her group rented out for a San Bernardino Health Department county personnel holiday party.

Glenn Willwerth, who was near enough to the scene to hear shots being fired, told Fox News after the massacre that he saw a black SUV that matched the description of the one in the subsequent shootout leaving afterward, driving slowly and deliberately. He later told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren that vehicle was “identical” to the one involved in the shootout.

Witnesses described passing bodies on the ground as they fled, and a makeshift triage center was set up outside the facility. A local NBC videographer reported there were not enough ambulances to transport victims, and that people were using pickup trucks to carry victims to triage areas. Hours later, busloads of employees from the center were taken to a nearby church where authorities planned to interview them.

At nearby Loma Linda Medical Center, a spokeswoman said the hospital was treating five adult patients, two of whom were in critical, but stable condition; two in fair condition and one still being assessed.

Other victims were being treated at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, where Kathy Hotetz waited for information about her sister, Denise Peraza, 27, who was shot in the leg.

“She’s alive. That’s all I know,” said Hotetz, 37. “Not knowing any more than that is the scariest part.”

Kevin Ortiz, 24, was shot twice in the leg and once in the shoulder during the attack, but managed to call both his wife of two weeks and his father to tell them he was alive.

“Kevin said he had been shot three times and that he was in pain but he was all right,” his wife, Dyana Ortiz, 23, said. ” Then he said ‘I love you’ and I said ‘I love you.'”

Wednesday’s bloodshed was the nation’s deadliest mass shooting since the attack at a school in Newtown, Conn., three years ago that left 26 children and adults dead.

President Obama was briefed on the situation by his Homeland Security Adviser Lisa Monaco and asked to be updated on the situation as it develops. In Washington, House Speaker Paul Ryan called for a moment of silence before that city’s annual tree lighting.

Fox News’ Adam Housley and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Paris under siege: Dozens killed and injured in series of coordinated terrorist attacks after Kalashnikov-wielding gunman goes on the rampage in the capital, 100 hostages are killed at concert hall and explosions are heard near national stadium

• 118 people said to have been killed in terror attacks in central Paris tonight
• Two attackers reportedly had suicide vests near Stade de France stadium
• Hostages taken from rock metal concert at Bataclan music hall, police said

What initially looked like a disaster for Ben Carson is now a major black eye for Politico.

On Friday, Politico reported that Carson had “fabricated” his application and acceptance into West Point, and that his campaign had acknowledged as much in an interview.

That story was initially headlined “EXCLUSIVE: Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship.” It seemed like the sort of story that had the potential to ruin Carson’s ambitions for the presidency.

But the Politico story was not accurate on some key points.

And in the wake of pushback from the Carson campaign — which called the story an “outright lie” — Politico softened its headline, removed the “fabrication” language, and changed some key details — even as it said it was “standing by its story.”

Politico’s updated story does not include an editors note or correction.

In a statement, Politico said, “We stand by our story which is a powerful debunking of a key aspect of Ben Carson’s personal narrative. The story online includes additional details now as well that bolster this account.”

But Carson’s campaign sees the matter differently: “It’s clear that what the Politico writer, with what he was trying to gain with the headline, did not substantiate it with his article,” Armstrong Williams, Carson’s business manager, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Politico’s initial story began by stating that Carson’s campaign had admitted “that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated: his application and acceptance into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.”

In fact, there is no evidence in Politico’s story that Carson ever claimed to have applied to West Point.

The Politico story does show that Carson said several times that he was “offered a full scholarship to West Point.” He made that claim in his book, “Gifted Hands,” and in several media interviews, including during an appearance on Charlie Rose last month.

Carson acknowledged Friday that he was never offered a full scholarship to West Point, and sought to clarify that he had instead been given an informal offer or “nomination” to attend West Point.

“Because I had done so extraordinarily well you know I was told that someone like me — they could get a scholarship to West Point. But I made it clear I was going to pursue a career in medicine,” Carson told The New York Times. “It was, you know, an informal ‘with a record like yours we could easily get you a scholarship to West Point.”

Politico also claims that West Point “has no record of Carson applying, much less being extended admission.” But West Point told CNN on Friday that it does not keep records of decades-old applications, and would not be able to know if Carson was offered an appointment because he did not attend.

Finally, Politico’s story seeks to cast doubt on Carson’s claim that he was introduced to General William Westmoreland during Memorial Day of his senior year at high school.

In “Gifted Hands,” Carson writes that his high school ROTC director “introduced me to General Westmoreland, and I had dinner with him and the Congressional Medal winners.”

Politico says official U.S. Army records show Westmoreland did not visit Detroit around Memorial Day in 1969 or have dinner with Carson. “In fact,” Politico reports, “the general’s records suggest he was in Washington that day and played tennis at 6:45 p.m.”

But Politico goes on to note that there was a similar banquet event in Detroit in February of that year that the General did attend, and that “Carson, a leader of the city’s ROTC program at the time, may have been among the invited guests at the $10-a-plate event.”

Following pushback from the Carson campaign, Politico softened its headline and changed its lead and various details in the story. The story is now headlined, “Exclusive: Carson claimed West Point ‘scholarship’ but never applied.”

A Politico spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment regarding the absence of an editor’s note or correction on the story.

Carson’s campaign, meanwhile, seemed unfazed by the report. Barry Bennett, Carson’s campaign manager, said in an email to CNN that the story had been “debunked.”

“Ben was offered a nomination which he declined,” Bennet wrote.

Editor’s note: The author of this story was a reporter for Politico from 2011 until September 2015.

Faisal Mohammed, an 18-year-old male University of California Merced student stabbed four people with a large hunting knife on the campus Wednesday morning before he was shot and killed by university police, authorities said.

A construction worker who ran into the California university classroom to break up what he thought was a fight is being hailed as a hero for preventing a student armed with a hunting knife from possibly killing his intended target.

Byron Price, 31, was working on remodeling a waiting room at the University of California, Merced campus when he heard a commotion Wednesday and rushed to check on it.

The violence left Price and three others badly injured, but all are expected to survive. The assailant, described as a college student in his 20s, was shot and killed by campus police as he fled the scene.

Authorities are investigating a motive. Warnke said the knife blade was eight to 10 inches long.

Incidents of campus violence are becoming rampant. Stabbings involving multiple victims on college campuses have not raised as much alarm as mass shootings, although several U.S. colleges have been the site of violent attacks involving bladed weapons.

A student at Morgan State University in Maryland was charged in March with slashing two other students with a pocket knife outside a campus dining hall. In 2013, a 20-year-old student at a Texas community college wounded at least 14 people during a building-to-building attack.

Speaking from the oval office, a visibly shaken and obviously disturbed President Obama decried the escalating violence with knives in the nation as “public enemy number one,” adding that “We should not rest until we’ve rounded up every sharp blade in this nation and melted it down into a spoon.”

Amen, Mr. President. Amen.

PUBLIUS ;~}

Citizens of Houston overwhelmingly voted down a controversial measure that would have created legal protections in 15 categories, including sexual orientation and gender identity.

For months, opponents waged a war on the so-called “bathroom ordinance” that would allow transgender individuals use the bathroom of their choice. On Tuesday, their work paid off, with more than 60 percent of voters rejecting the measure.

“We are very pleased, obviously, with the incredible results,” said Dave Welch, executive director of the Houston Area Pastor Council, a group that’s been fighting against the ordinance since 2014.

“From the very beginning, this really was our position that this was not a good fit for Houston—this was not something that was consistent with what the the people [wanted]. It took eight months to get here and half a million dollars in legal fees—it was a very expensive campaign—but we are very pleased with the outcome.”

In a joint statement to press, supporters of the legislation, including the Houston Unites campaign, the ACLU of Texas and the Human Rights Campaign, said in light of Tuesday’s results, they won’t back down from the fight.

“We’ve learned some important lessons,” the statement said. “We have to continue sharing our stories so that more Houstonians know what HERO is really about and aren’t susceptible to the ugliest of smear campaigns run by the opposition.”

The ordinance, named the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), originally passed 11-6 last year in the Houston City Council, but opponents forced the measure to a public vote by obtaining 55,000 signatures, well beyond the 17,269 needed to force a referendum.

Yet, the city claimed that only 15,000 of the signatures they obtained were valid and refused to place the issue on the ballot.

That’s when Welch and his fellow pastors fought back, filing a lawsuit against the city of Houston.

As the dispute played out, Welch and four other local pastors had their sermons and other communications subpoenaed by the city’s attorney.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who first introduced HERO, eventually withdrew the subpoena. This summer, the Texas Supreme Court ruled the city must either bring the initiative to a vote or withdraw it completely.

HERO applies to city employment and city services, city contracts, public accommodations, private employment and housing.

In addition to sexual orientation and gender identity, the ordinance protects 13 other classes including sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, familial status, marital status, military status, religion, disability, genetic information, and pregnancy.

The drawn-out dispute pit Houston at the center of the latest battle between LGBT and religious liberty advocates.

Supporters of the ordinance call it “sensible” and say it’s a good policy for Houston businesses. More than 60 local companies came out in support of the measure, along with seven big businesses.

HERO advocates also accused opponents of running a “fearmongering” campaign by arguing the measure could allow sexual predators into women’s restrooms.

“Houston residents should not succumb to that ugly fearmongering,” wrote the New York Times editorial board. “Those who vote ‘yes’ to retaining the ordinance will be affirming the city’s most valuable asset: its longstanding culture of inclusiveness.”

But opponents of HERO say they have legitimate concerns about its implications for bathrooms, locker-rooms and other sex-specific facilities.

“The proposed law defines gender identity as ‘innate identification, appearance, expression, or behavior as either male or female, although the same may not correspond to the individual’s body or gender assigned at birth,’” wrote Ryan T. Anderson, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation and author of the new book “Truth Overruled.” “No legal change of name or gender, and no surgery or hormone treatment is required to identity as transgender—simply one’s self-professed and chosen identity, appearance, mannerisms, or behavior.”

Furthermore, critics cite concerns about HERO threatening the freedom of citizens to carry out their religious or moral beliefs about marriage and human biology.

At the polls, more than 60 percent of voters rejected the measure.

“Thankfully, it was a strong turnout and the results were very decisive,” Welch said.

By Kelsey Harkness / @kelseyjharkness

As we wrote in our article NEA Report Card: F, the education problem has been growing in America for decades, as the costs of educating our children skyrocket and students are churned out of the public education system and universities with less and less actual education.

Man-on-the-street interviews reveal that college age Americans have little or no understanding of American history or the political process. They appear to be focused on leftist political issues, like man-made global warming, and if any of them question their leftist professors or the nonsense they spew in classrooms, they are automatically flunked from the course.

A decades-long growing battle between liberals and conservatives over education is culminating in conservative calls to either get the government and unions out of education altogether, or to entirely overhaul the system.

Of course, Democrat Party presidential candidates are upping the ante in votes-for-handouts campaigning, offering free college educations to all young Americans in exchange for making them president. None of the Democrats inform the electorate who will pay for all of that free education in the face of a $20 trillion debt, and it fails to solve the problem of churning armies of knuckleheads out of our universities.

The major problems with the current system are:

1) costs have artificially skyrocketed and the taxpayer is left holding the bag for much of it while students incur decades of debt; and

2) Anti-American leftists dominate the university system and classrooms, leaving indoctrinated students with little usable education and mush for brains.

The Federalist Press editors propose a new higher education option, patterned somewhat after the current online degree or CLEP and DANTES higher education programs being utilized by a handful of students.

In this age of digital access it is feasible to launch a program that provides students with online classes, with lectures by top experts in every field and stunning graphics, videos and demonstrations of the principles and concepts being taught. A basic 2 year core curriculum will ensure that all students receive across-the-board instruction in math, science, English, history, American politics, etc. Then specialization will occur in 3^rd and 4^th year online courses. This is essentially how colleges and universities are supposed to offer classes now, but they have strayed far from their mandate, with tragic results.

Third and fourth year specialization courses in the government-offered online university should emphasize productive degree programs initially; science, engineering, language, history, chemistry, education, pre-medicine, pre-law, etc., with some liberal arts programs being added as the system is more fully developed to accommodate their greater need for interactivity.

To help reduce cheating on exams, a major problem in the current system as well, testing centers should be established for this online university system with certified proctors to administer standardized, computerized tests.

Students can take online courses at their own pace, and show up to take the exams at proctored centers as soon as they have completed each course.

Costs, which will be only a fraction of the current $500 billion, can be shared by students and the taxpayers. Students can pay a low flat fee for each course, and the federal government can dramatically cut its higher education budget and finance the remaining cost of the online university system.

This will replace the current Student Loan program, which essentially supports a bloated, ineffective higher education system that is little more than a propaganda arm of the global leftist movement. It will also eliminate the current hurdle of student debt, hanged around the neck of most graduating students in America.

This proposal will provide higher education for anyone who wants it, and anyone who is self-motivated enough to do the work. It doesn’t get any easier, cheaper or better than this.

PUBLIUS

BREAKING: House Republicans are huddling on Capitol Hill to nominate the next speaker, as Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy grapples with an 11th-hour challenge to his bid to succeed John Boehner — after a conservative bloc threw their support elsewhere.

In a stunning turn of events, McCarthy just announced he will withdraw from the race for House Speaker.

The story is developing.

PUBLIUS

In an article in Politico, Mark Rozell, acting dean of the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs at George Mason University, and Paul Goldman, a weekly columnist for the Washington Post, point out a fact that should greatly concern all Americans: that the presence of millions of noncitizens, both legal and illegal, could tilt the presidential election toward the Democrat Party and decide the election in favor of the eventual Democratic nominee.

Voter Fraud Happens

As I have outlined in many different articles and a recent book on voter fraud, illegal voting by noncitizens is a growing problem. Most election officials are not taking the steps necessary to detect or stop it, and many prosecutors including the current Justice Department seem reluctant to prosecute it.

A study released in 2014 by three professors at Old Dominion and George Mason Universities in Virginia concluded that 6.4 percent of the noncitizen population voted illegally in the 2008 election, enough to have changed the outcome of various contests in a number of states.

That includes the winner of North Carolina’s electoral votes, which went to Barack Obama by a relatively small margin, since a majority of foreign-born residents favor the Democratic Party. That may also be why Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the governor of a battleground state, vetoed a bill that would have required jury commissioners to provide local election officials with the names of individuals called for jury duty from the state’s voter registration list who were excused for not being U.S. citizens.

Some States Have Congressional Districts They Shouldn’t Have

But as Rozel and Goldman accurately point out, noncitizens may be changing the outcome of presidential elections even without voting illegally. This is related to the problem of some states having more representatives in Congress than they should, and others being shortchanged unfairly due to the huge—and growing—population of illegal aliens whom the Obama administration and its political allies want to provide permanent amnesty.

All of this stems from the way apportionment is conducted. There are 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Under Sec. 2 of Article I of the Constitution and Sec. 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, every ten years, after the “Enumeration” (the Census), we redistribute those 435 seats based on the “whole number of persons in each State.” In other words, the number of members of the House that each state gets is based on the total population of each state relative to the total population of the U.S., which includes noncitizens. Thus, the upwards of 12 million illegal aliens present in the U.S., combined with other aliens who are here legally but are not citizens and have no right to vote, distort representation in the House.

Various studies have been done on the effects of this distortion, including by Leonard Steinhorn of American University and scholars at Texas A&M University and the Center for Immigration Studies. If you calculate the results based on the latest Census numbers, according to Steinhorn, ten states each are short a congressional seat that they would otherwise have if apportionment were based on citizen population: Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania.

States with large numbers of illegal aliens and other noncitizens have congressional seats they otherwise would not have (and should not be entitled to): California (five seats), Florida (one seat), New York (one seat), Texas (two seats), and Washington State (one seat).

This is fundamentally unfair, because these states are benefiting from illegal conduct and gaining political representation for individuals who have no entitlement to such representation or to even be present in the country.

How Noncitizens Affect The Electoral College

This also twists our presidential election process. Under our Electoral College system as laid out in Article II, Sec. 1, the number of electors that each state receives is a combination of its two senators and the number of representatives it has in the House (the one exception is the District of Columbia, which gets three votes courtesy of the Twenty-Third Amendment). Thus, states like California have more Electoral College votes than they should, while other states like Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio are shorted in their Electoral College votes.

As Goldman and Rozell say, this “math gives strongly Democratic states an unfair edge in the Electoral College.” When you look at the makeup of the states that have lost/gained Electoral College votes and what would happen if apportionment were based on citizen population, then:

[T]hree of the states that would gain electoral votes are Democratic. The remaining seven are fairly put in the GOP column. Combining the two halves of the citizens-only population reapportionment, states likely in the Democratic column suffer a net loss of four electoral votes. Conversely the must-win Republican leaning states total a net gain of four electoral votes. These are the four electoral votes statistically cast by noncitizens.

Four electoral votes may seem minimal, but we have had a number of presidential elections in our history decided by a very small margin, such as the 1876 race between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden, which was decided by one electoral vote: 185 to 184. The 2000 race was decided by only a slightly higher margin: Bush (271) vs. Gore (266).

Goldman and Rozell point out that Romney won 24 states in 2012. Three battleground states important to Obama’s victory were Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, which have 60 combined electoral votes. If Romney had won these states, too, he would still have had only 266 electoral votes, four short of the 270 needed to win. But according to Goldman and Rozell, if the Electoral College were apportioned according to citizens, then if Romney had won Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, the electoral votes of those states combined with the other 24 Romney won would have given him the 270 votes needed to be president.

The misallocation of electoral votes in apportionment gives Democrats a clear advantage. “This is why counting illegal immigrants and noncitizens significantly reduces the chances of the GOP winning the presidency.”

No one doubts that we should count noncitizens, whether they are here legally or illegally, in the Census, so that we have an accurate count of the population of the U.S. for a myriad of sound public policy reasons. But as Goldman and Rozell say, there is no “persuasive reason to allow the presence of illegal immigrants, unlawfully in the country, or noncitizens generally, to play such a crucial role in picking a president.”

It is a felony under federal law for a noncitizen to vote in our elections because voting is a right given only to American citizens. It is a precious right that must be earned by becoming a citizen. Giving aliens, particularly those whose first act was to break our laws to illegally enter the country, political power in Congress and allowing them to help choose our president strike at the very heart of our republic and what it means to be an American.

By Hans von Spakovsky / @HvonSpakovsky