More Information On Common Core

The Common Core Diva is a friend. Her blog is informative and detailed. I have attended Common Core meetings, but do not have the knowledge of how the program works that the Diva does. The following is directly taken from her blog (with her permission).

Tech Thursday: CCSS Workforce Pushing Labor Reform

Post secondary ed reform is set to be 'reauthorized'. You can bet your sweet backside CCSS will be there in the form of CTE.
Post secondary ed reform is set to be ‘reauthorized’. You can bet your sweet backside CCSS will be there in the form of CTE.

Common Core for the Workforce is present through Career Tech Education. This isn’t new news for those of us fighting the CCSS. However, were you aware that there’s a push to reauthorize the Higher Education Act? By doing so, you can bet CCSS via CTE will be there.

The Higher Ed Act:

Originally written in 1965, under Pres. Johnson domestic agenda for America called “The Great Society”. It was to increase amounts of federal aid universities and colleges received. The Act was to also increase student aid to get into institutions of higher education. It also established a national teacher corps program.
The HEA (as the Higher Education Act can be referred to) has been reauthorized several times. The updates to the law have been many and wide reaching. Much of what your students and mine fill out on their FASFA forms is tied up in this law.

Most notable in what I’ve been able to find in researching is the 1998 versrion known as “Gear Up”  If reauthorized, this would be the 3rd time. As always, the CCSS is buried. Where would it be found? Perkins funding, those Titles funding programs, work study programs, apprenticeships, and probably more. We’ll get to the particulars in a bit. But first, what does “Gear Up” stand for? “Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs”. Remember, this was started in 1998. Before CCSS. But how ironic that we have so much ‘readiness’ rhetoric in modern education.

The 2008 Workforce/Education ‘Marriage’:

According to the Center for Law and Social Policy’s document highlighting the changes to HEA, here’s the one that joined education and businesses (think P3s, or public-private partnerships), “Creates Business Workforce Partnerships for Job Skill Training in High Growth Occupations or Industries. Colleges often lack the “venture capital” to start up new, credit-bearing programs that can respond to business workforce needs because state funding and federal financial aid typically only flow after students are enrolled in programs. This grant program funds partnerships of colleges, employers, and, where applicable, labor representatives to expand or create credit-bearing college programs responsive to business workforce needs, adapt college offerings to workers’ schedules, expand worksite learning opportunities, and purchase equipment related to such academic or job training programs. The grants are targeted toward programs serving nontraditional students, such as working adults, and can be used to create for-credit career pathways (Section 803).” 

Other items which supported this ‘marriage’? TRIO and Bridges from Jobs to Careers. If you don’t know much about TRIO, here’s what the U.S. Dept. of Ed. has to say about it, “The history of TRIO is progressive. It began with Upward Bound, which emerged out of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 in response to the administration’s War on Poverty. In 1965, Talent Search, the second outreach program, was created as part of the Higher Education Act. In 1968, Student Support Services, which was originally known as Special Services for Disadvantaged Students, was authorized by the Higher Education Amendments and became the third in a series of educational opportunity programs. By the late 1960’s, the term “TRIO” was coined to describe these federal programs. If you don’t know much about Bridges from Jobs to Careers, it basically was a federal program which awarded competing higher education institutions grant money. There were mandatory requirements for use of the funding. In our current educational panaroma, each state appears to have some sort of bridge/work program. I didn’t find all 50 states in my general search, but I did find several states which are proudly open for business, so to speak.

To find out more about TRIO: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/trio/index.html#references (*Note: at least one of the TRIO programs will begin its overreach as early as middle school)

To read the entire law from Congress back in the day, https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/house-bill/4067/text

To see CLASP’s information (including the key senators involved), http://www.clasp.org/resources-and-publications/publication-1/0430.pdf

A Jump Ahead to 2014:

While CLASP is still somewhat fresh on our minds, let’s see what more current ed/jobs efforts they’ve been up to.

Here’s a screen shot from their website that plainly has “Career Pathways” displayed. It also states ‘low income’ and ‘disadvantaged’. With some of the sweeping changes embedded in HR5, who is classified as ‘disadvantaged’ and ‘low income’ could drastically change to include almost every student!
You definitely will want to enlarge this screen shot.

The Gates Foundation has a firm grasp on CLASP.
The Gates Foundation has a firm grasp on CLASP.

There’s no question in my mind how much CLASP is tied into the Gates Foundation and is helping direct the policies of this nation. How utterly disgusting. If you want more information about them, see: http://www.clasp.org/issues/postsecondary Oh, and one more nugget of truth the WIOA (Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act) which has 21 embedded CCSS, CTE, and/or Career Pathways in it will take effect July 2015.

The 2015 Push:

If you’ve not already had to run away from your computer screaming after the bombshells from above, know that Washington is hard at work as we speak plotting even more reform. To this end, refer back to the opening screen shot you saw. It’s at the very top of the page. What I want you to find is the phrase about the 4 pillars of action to be taken in reauthorizing HEA. I’ll include the PDF file, but here’s a quick summary:
Point #1: empowering family decision making; Point #2: Simplifying and improving student aid; Point #3: promoting innovation, access, and completion (of what isn’t clarified upfront); and Point #4: insuring strong accountability and a limited federal role.

Drawbacks to the points include more data tracking/mining via the Integrated PostSecondary Education Data System (IPEDS); the federal agencies streamlining information families can access to cause less confusion; more robust financial literacy; having the U.S. Dept. of Ed create a higher education rating system; strengthening federal financial aid; streamlining student debt repayment plans to better serve taxpayers; making the Pell Grant flexible; possible federal interference in the ‘innovation, access, and completion’ point ( I strongly believe you should read and assimilate the information directly from the source); increasing the push for more digital learning; increasing the competency-based outcomes for students; more federal assistance for those with the lowest incomes; ramping up teaching preparedness via federal programs and/or influence; and, a possible move to make accreditation entities become more rigorous when it comes to post secondary education institutions. For all the details and for your research: hea_whitepaper


To learn more about IPEDS from the U.S. Dept. of Ed: http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/about/

To learn more about the government entity overseeing all interested parties into post-secondary education and data collection, see: https://nces.ed.gov/npec/ (*Note: be sure to look at the Research/Development Board Members. Note which institutions or organizations they represent)

To learn more about the NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) which oversees all types of assessments (includes post secondary ones), see: http://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/commissioner/index.asp

*Note: The NCES commissioner oversees all the assessments you see below and then some.

To access the entire list/graphic of he assessments, visit: http://nces.ed.gov/about/
To access the entire list/graphic of he assessments, visit:
http://nces.ed.gov/about/

To access the National Post Secondary Education Policy Cooperative’s “Student Success” pdf (which includes public policy, alignment, and more), ewell_report

More You May Want to Know:

The original screen shot showed that an upcoming hearing would be taking place to discuss not only all I’ve shared with you, but even more. Involved in the hearing will be federal budget, plans, and workforce. You’ll want to listen to the entire thing. This hearing actually took place yesterday, March 18th. I can tell you from the opening remarks, at least one U.S. Congress member wasn’t a fan. Here’s a screen shot from Twitter taken from the Ed/Workforce feed:

Link to the hearing as it is on You Tube:
Link to the hearing as it is on You Tube:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kOf2UeClzg%5D

For Further Related Info:
Articles I’ve previously published on this subject include (not limited to)
11/16/14, CTE, labor unions, federal funding, and more: https://commoncorediva.wordpress.com/2014/11/16/rmt-vp-unions-career-tech-and-common-core/

11/18/14, Gear Up, College and Career Ready Consortium, and more: https://commoncorediva.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/ftf-tuesday-ccrec-college-and-career-readiness-evaluation-consortium/

Petulant Children Do Not Belong In The White House

PJ Media posted two stories today about the Israeli election. The first notes that leaders of other countries are congratulating Benjamin Netanyahu on his election victory, but President Obama has not commented. The second article notes exactly how the Obama Administration has handled the Netanyahu victory.

The second article reports:

On CNN this morning, White House aide David Simas avoided congratulating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the Israeli elections. Instead, he would only congratulate the Israeli people on having an election.

“We want to congratulate the Israeli people for the democratic process for the election that they just engaged in with all the parties that engaged in that election. As you know now, the hard work of coalition building begins. Sometimes that takes a couple of weeks. And we’re going to give space to the formation of that coalition government and we’re not going to weigh in one way or another except to say that the United States and Israel have a historic and close relationship and that will continue going forward,” Simas said.

The article then goes on to list the leaders that President Obama congratulated on their election victories in recent years. The list includes leaders elected in Russia, Iran, Turkey, and Egypt. There seems to be a double standard here. Oddly enough, as the Obama Administration pulls away from Israel as an ally, Middle Eastern countries are quietly forming alliances with Israel. The countries in the Middle East realize the threat that Iran poses, and also realize that President Obama will not be willing to deal with it. Prime Minister Netanyahu will deal with the threat, and since other countries share the threat, alliances are quietly forming. The rest of the world recognizes that there is an empty suit occupying the White House. I just wish more Americans would wake up to that fact.

Do We Really Want To Do This?

Yesterday Breitbart.com posted a story about the cost of President Obama’s executive order on amnesty. This executive order has major consequences.

The article reports:

The lifetime costs of Social Security and Medicare benefits of illegal immigrant beneficiaries of President Obama’s executive amnesty would be well over a trillion dollars, according to Heritage Foundation expert Robert Rector’s prepared testimony for a House panel obtained in advance by Breitbart News.

Rector, a senior research fellow at Heritage, is slated to speak on the costs of Obama’s executive amnesty Tuesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He will testify to the high entitlement costs of granting legal status to millions of illegal immigrants.

Based on Rector’s calculations, which assume that at least 3.97 illegal immigrants would apply for and receive legal status under Deferred Action for Parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents (DAPA), and that the average DAPA beneficiary would have a 10th grade education, the costs would be immense.

Specifically, in 2010 dollars, the lifetime costs of Social Security benefits to DAPA beneficiaries would be about $1.3 trillion.

This would be a problem for the federal government.

The article also calculates the cost of welfare benefits to the new immigrants.

The article explains:

“On average, the combined cost of means-tested welfare benefits currently received, the EITC and ACTC cash, and potential Obamacare benefits would come to $17,800 per year per DAPA family,” Rector’s testimony reads. “The aggregate cost would be over $35 billion per year.”

In terms of what DAPA eligible individuals would contribute in tax payments once they are “on the books,” Rector estimates that “Federal Insurance Contribution Act (FICA) and federal income tax revenues would increase by about $7.2 billion per year.”

As you watch the fight for executive amnesty unfold, you might want to add the Cloward Piven Strategy to your list of possible explanations for this fight.

TeaPartyInTheHills defines Cloward Piven as follows:

The strategy was first proposed in 1966 by Columbia University political scientists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven as a plan to bankrupt the welfare system and produce radical change. Sometimes known as the “crisis strategy” or the the “flood-the-rolls, bankrupt-the-cities strategy,” the Cloward-Piven approach called for swamping the welfare rolls with new applicants – more than the system could bear. It was hoped that the resulting economic collapse would lead to political turmoil and ultimately socialism.

The National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), founded by African-American militant George Alvin Wiley, put the Cloward-Piven strategy to work in the streets. Its activities led directly to the welfare crisis that bankrupted New York City in 1975.

Veterans of NWRO went on to found the Living Wage Movement and the Voting Rights Movement, both of which rely on the Cloward-Piven strategy and both of which are spear-headed by the radical cult ACORN.

Both the Living Wage and Voting Rights movements depend heavily on financial support from George Soros‘s Open Society Institute.

 Something to consider.

 

 

Removed From The Terrorist Threat List

I am not sure how a group goes about getting removed from the Terrorist Threat List put out by the National Intelligence Agency, but Iran and Hezbollah have done it.

The Times of Israel reported yesterday:

An annual report delivered recently to the US Senate by James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, removed Iran and Hezbollah from its list of terrorism threats, after years in which they featured in similar reports.

The unclassified version of the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Communities, dated February 26, 2015 (PDF), noted Iran’s efforts to combat Sunni extremists, including those of the ultra-radical Islamic State group, who were perceived to constitute the preeminent terrorist threat to American interests worldwide.

Iran has been funding terrorism in the Middle East since the 1978 revolution. They have provided IED’s to Iraq and Afghanistan, killing and maiming American troops. Hezbollah has never made any secret of the fact that they are terrorists.

The National Intelligence report states:

We believe that this results from a combination of diplomatic interests (the United States’ talks with Iran about a nuclear deal) with the idea that Iran could assist in the battle against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and maybe even in the battle against jihadist terrorism in other countries,” the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center said in an analysis of the report (Hebrew PDF). It also noted the Iran and Hezbollah were both listed as terrorism threats in the assessment of another American body, the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and Lebanese Hezbollah are instruments of Iran’s foreign policy and its ability to project power in Iraq, Syria, and beyond,” that assessment, also submitted to the Senate of February 26, said in its section on terrorism. “Hezbollah continues to support the Syrian regime, pro-regime militants and Iraqi Shia militants in Syria. Hezbollah trainers and advisors in Iraq assist Iranian and Iraqi Shia militias fighting Sunni extremists there. Select Iraqi Shia militant groups also warned of their willingness to fight US forces returning to Iraq.”

Israel, as well as Sunni allies of the US, has often warned that Iran, through Hezbollah and other proxies, has been sowing instability in the region. An escalating dispute between Jerusalem and Washington over the terms of an eventual agreement on Iran’s nuclear program has seen Israeli official rail against the relatively conciliatory tone adopted by US officials toward Iran, in light of the shared interest in combating the Islamic State.

When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

One Answer To Federal Government Overreach

According to the IJReview, the Arizona House of Representatives passed a bill last Wednesday that had only two provisions.

The article lists the provisions:

  1. Prohibits this state or any of its political subdivisions from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with a policy directive issued by the U.S. DOJ to law enforcement agencies in this state that has not been affirmed by a vote of Congress and signed into law as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.
  2. Prohibits this state or any of its political subdivisions from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with an executive order issued by the President of the U.S. that has not been affirmed by a vote of Congress and signed into law as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.

Simply stated, unless Congress passes the law, Arizona is not going to follow it. That is the way our government is supposed to work. Thank you, Arizona.

 

Lied To Again

I am running out of patience with supposed leaders who lie. It seems that in both local and national politics Americans have lost respect for each other. Our leaders don’t respect us and we don’t respect our leaders. This is understandable, however, when you consider that our leaders have not always been truthful with us.

Yesterday Andrew McCarthy posted an article at PJ Media about recent claims by members of the Obama Administration that Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran had issued a fatwa against Iran having nuclear weapons.

The facts, as reported in the story, are somewhat different:

Indeed, as MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) elaborates, Khamenei was directly asked about the purported fatwa in a 2012 Facebook exchange:

[I]s it also forbidden to obtain nuclear weapons, as per your ruling that their use is prohibited?

He refused to answer the question:

Your question has no jurisprudential aspect. When it has a jurisprudent [sic] position, then it will be possible to answer it.

The notion that Khamenei actually believes nuclear weapons violate Islamic law and would issue a credible fatwa to that effect should be seen as absurd on its face. Put aside that Pakistan, which incorporates sharia in its law, has long had nuclear weapons. For over two decades, al-Qaeda has been trying to acquire nuclear weapons and has enjoyed essential support from the regime in Tehran.

The article concludes:

But even if you were inclined to such self-delusion, the fact is: Khamenei has not forbidden nuclear weapons.

As Breitbart’s Joel Pollak has observed, Kenneth Pollack, a serious national security expert who is particularly influential among Democrats, discussed the purported Khamenei fatwa in his book Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy. Pollack notes not only that the fatwa has never been formally issued but also that Iran disregards fatwas when they prove inconvenient to perceived national interests. Thus did the founder of the Iranian jihadist state, Ayatollah Khomeini, ignore his own fatwa against weapons of mass destruction during the long war with Iraq in the 1980s.

It would be lunacy, in a matter crucial to American national security, to rely on a fatwa from the head of a jihadist-terror state even if such a fatwa actually existed. But it doesn’t.

Lied to again.

Watch This Space

I firmly believe that at some time in the future, Senator John Thune will run for President. I’m not saying I would vote for him (or that I would not) and I am not commenting on the candidate he would be, I’m just saying that I believe that he will run someday. Just for the record, I also believe that if I were a Hollywood casting agent, I would cast him for the part. I just think there is something about him that looks presidential. He is now in the process of doing something that desperately needs to be done.

The Washington Examiner is reporting today that Senator Thune is going to fight back on the Obama Administration’s limits they are planning to place on ground-level ozone.

The article reports:

The South Dakota Republican’s bill would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing a more stringent standard until 85 percent of the more than 200 counties that have yet to comply with the current regulation do so. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., is lined up to co-sponsor the bill, said Thune spokeswoman Rachel Millard.

The move comes as the comment period for the proposed EPA rule closes Tuesday. The House Science, Space and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on the subject Tuesday.

The EPA in November floated lowering the tolerable limit for ozone, or smog, to between 65 and 70 parts per billion, down from the level of 75 ppb set under former President George W. Bush in 2008. The agency also is taking comment on whether to set the standard at 60 ppb, though it wasn’t part of the official proposal.

I need to make it very clear that I am not in favor of pollution. What I am in favor of is fairness and practicality. It makes total sense to wait for the majority of our worldwide neighbors to comply with the current regulations before we make ours tougher. We are not a major part of the problem, and until our neighbors also take steps to cut their pollution, our efforts will not actually amount to much.

The article reports:

Industry groups and Republicans contend the updated standard would be one of the most expensive ever. They say it would throw dozens more counties into “non-attainment” zones that would restrict permitting for expanding or adding industrial emitters such as factories, refineries and other manufacturing facilities.

A National Association of Manufacturers-commissioned study by NERA Economic Consulting put the price tag for a 60 ppb level at $140 billion annually from 2017 through 2040. The study did not weigh potential benefits.

We need balance. We also need everyone to participate. Right now the move by the Obama Administration is overkill. Senator Thune is right to fight it.

Changing The Law For Political Convenience

USA Today posted an article today about White House plans to remove a federal regulation that subjects its Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act.

The article reports:

The White House said the cleanup of FOIA regulations is consistent with court rulings that hold that the office is not subject to the transparency law. The office handles, among other things, White House record-keeping duties like the archiving of e-mails.

But the timing of the move raised eyebrows among transparency advocates, coming on National Freedom of Information Day and during a national debate over the preservation of Obama administration records. It’s also Sunshine Week, an effort by news organizations and watchdog groups to highlight issues of government transparency.

Amazing. Historically, the Office of Administration has responded to FOIA requests.

The article reports:

In 2009, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that the Office of Administration was not subject to the FOIA, “because it performs only operational and administrative tasks in support of the president and his staff and therefore, under our precedent, lacks substantial independent authority.”

The appeals court ruled that the White House was required to archive the e-mails, but not release them under the FOIA. Instead, White House e-mails must be released under the Presidential Records Act — but not until at least five years after the end of the administration.

In a notice to be published in Tuesday’s Federal Register, the White House says it’s removing regulations on how the Office of Administration complies with Freedom of Information Act Requests based on “well-settled legal interpretations.”

The White House has stated that there will be no 30-day comment period on this change, and thus the change will be final.

I understand that sometimes security needs require that information be kept from the public. However, we live in a representative republic. The government represents us. The American people have every right to know the details of what is going on in our government. We need more sunshine in our government–not more secrecy.

One Set Of Rules For Thee, One Set Of Rules For Me

Oh, the outrage! There were many Democrats recently screaming, “Logan Act” or “Treason” because 47 Republicans signed an open letter reminding everyone how the U.S. Constitution is supposed to work. Oh, the horror of it all. Well, sometimes you need to check your own closet for skeletons before you start hauling out someone else’s skeletons.

On August 29, 2014, PJ Media posted an article about President Obama’s Iran policy.

That article contains the following:

During his first presidential campaign in 2008, Mr. Obama used a secret back channel to Tehran to assure the mullahs that he was a friend of the Islamic Republic, and that they would be very happy with his policies. The secret channel was Ambassador William G. Miller, who served in Iran during the shah’s rule, as chief of staff for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and as ambassador to Ukraine. Ambassador Miller has confirmed to me his conversations with Iranian leaders during the 2008 campaign.

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article that included the following:

According to Pajamas Media columnist Michael Ledeen, in 2008, a Democratic senator sent a personal emissary to Tehran encouraging the mullahs not to sign an agreement with the outgoing Bush Administration as negotiations would take on a much friendlier tone following President Bush’s departure from office.

That senator was a presidential candidate at the time. His name was Barack Obama. (read more)

Politics used to end at the water’s edge, but I guess Democrats don’t think that way. Quite frankly, this is a disgrace.

I would suggest that you read the entire PJ Media article linked above to see President Obama’s plans for Iran.

Who We Help And Who We Don’t Help

Yahoo News posted an article today about U.S. military aid to Egypt. The U.S. suspended aid to Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood government was ousted by the Egyptian military.

The article reports:

“With respect to aid and assistance, I really expect a decision very soon,” Kerry told reporters in response to a question on when Washington planned to release the $650 million in military aid it froze after Morsi’s overthrow.

Washington annually offers about $1.5 billion in aid to Egypt, including $1.3 billion in military aid.

A part of it was frozen at the height of a deadly crackdown on Morsi’s followers after his overthrow and arrest.

Think about this for a minute. We give money to Saudi Arabia–one of the richest Gulf States and one of the least free. We give foreign aid to the Gaza Strip, which routinely burns and stomps on American flags and pays tribute to terrorists. So why are we setting another standard for Egypt?

The article reports:

Mubarak was toppled after an 18-day uprising in early 2011, leading to years of unrest. Islamists revile Sisi, but he is popular among Egyptians who say the country needs a firm hand.

Washington like several Western capitals remains critical of the crackdown, but realises that Sisi, who leads the biggest Arab military force, cannot be ignored in the fight against the Islamic State group.

Sisi has called for a unified Arab military force to fight the jihadists who are also present in the Egypt’s Sinai, and he ordered air strikes against the militants in Libya last month.

We need to remember that America encouraged the fall of Mubarak. The ‘revolution’ was to be part of an ‘Arab Spring’ that would bring democracy to the Middle East. This was part of President Obama’s foreign policy. Instead, in Egypt, the revolution brought in the Muslim Brotherhood and an attempt to institute Sharia Law.

We have not been on the side of the everyday people in the Middle East who have wanted freedom. In Iraq we left the country and diluted our influence so that the old sectarianism could take hold and allow Iraq to become a satellite state of Iran. This encouraged the rise of ISIS. We have intentionally or otherwise taken the side of the Muslim Brotherhood and allowed Iran to become a major player in the area. Had we supported the changes in Egypt after the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood government, we might have had a chance for peace in the region. The Egyptians are willing to fight terrorists, but they are not inclined to take over the whole region. Unfortunately, President Obama has put his money on the wrong horse.

These People Have Way Too Much Time On Their Hands

Have you ever wondered about the country we will leave our children? They will never know the smell of burning leaves in autumn or the experience of walking to the corner store to get penny candy (penny candy causes obesity and one Maryland couple is being investigated for letting their two children walk home from the neighborhood park). Now the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a new target–backyard barbeque grills.

The Washington Examiner posted an article yesterday about the latest meddling by the EPA into our everyday lives.

The article reports:

The agency announced that it is funding a University of California project to limit emissions resulting in grease drippings with a special tray to catch them and a “catalytic” filtration system.

The $15,000 project has the “potential for global application,” said the school.

The school said that the technology they will study with the EPA grant is intended to reduce air pollution and cut the health hazards to BBQ “pit masters” from propane-fueled cookers.

Charged with keeping America‘s air, water and soil clean, the EPA has been increasingly looking at homeowners, especially their use of pollution emitting tools like lawn mowers.

I wonder how much the addition of a catalytic converter will add to the price of a barbeque grill, making cook outs a luxury only the rich can afford.

The article explains:

But, total capture isn’t “practical,” so a filter and fan are proposed for installation. “The secondary air filtration system is composed of a single pipe duct system which contains a specialized metal filter, a metal fan blade, a drive shaft, and an accompanying power system with either a motorized or manual method. This system can be powered by either an exterior electric motor with a chain-driven drive shaft, directly spinning the fan blade, or a hand-powered crank,” said the project write-up.

The grant is part of the EPA’s “National Student Design Competition for Sustainability Focusing on People, Prosperity and the Planet (2014).”

Good grief!

She Obviously Just Got To Congress And Doesn’t Know How It Works

The Daily Signal posted an article yesterday about legislation introduced by freshman Congresswomen Gwen Graham, D-Florida. The bill is called Travel Perks Elimination Act.

The article reports:

Nine months ago, I pledged I would work to end wasteful Congressional perks. Today, I’m following through on that promise,” Graham said. “It’s a common sense idea that Republicans and Democrats can both agree on: members of Congress shouldn’t be able to charge taxpayers for first-class airfare or long-term personal car leases.”

According to her statement, the legislation would also ban the use of taxpayer funds for personal car leases, some of which are “as high as $825 a month.”

It is very obvious that she is new to Congress. It is also very obvious that she has the right idea.

The article further reports:

Rep. Rod Blum, R-Iowa, is the cosponsor of the bill.

“This is not a partisan issue,” Blum said in a statement. “Members of Congress don’t need taxpayer funded perks like first class travel and long term car leases to do their job. America’s founders never intended for public servants to live a life of luxury paid for by everyday Americans. That’s why I’ve made it a high priority to back legislation which reforms Congress and ensures good stewardship of U.S. taxpayer dollars.”

Romina Boccia, the Grover M. Hermann fellow in federal budgetary affairs at The Heritage Foundation, supports the measure as an appropriate way to reduce government waste.

Note to those people in Congress who say they have no place they can cut the budget–this might be a place to start.

The Importance Of Preventing A Nuclear Iran

The 47 Republican Senators who signed the open letter stating that the Senate needs to ratify any treaties that will be binding on the next administration are not the only people worried about Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. On Wednesday The Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Arabia has signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with South Korea.

The article explains the consequences of Iran going nuclear:

That agreement, along with recent comments from Saudi officials and royals, is raising concerns on Capitol Hill and among U.S. allies that a deal with Iran, rather than stanching the spread of nuclear technologies, risks fueling it.

Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a member of the royal family, has publicly warned in recent months that Riyadh will seek to match the nuclear capabilities Iran is allowed to maintain as part of any final agreement reached with world powers. This could include the ability to enrich uranium and to harvest the weapons-grade plutonium discharged in a nuclear reactor’s spent fuel.

Several U.S. and Arab officials have voiced concerns about a possible nuclear-arms race erupting in the Middle East, spurred on by Saudi Arabia’s regional rivalry with Iran, which has been playing out in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen in recent months.

Essentially, if the Shiite Muslims have a bomb, the Sunni Muslims also want a bomb.

The article further reports:

A U.S. diplomatic cable from December 2007, published by WikiLeaks, quoted Pakistan officials saying it was “logical for the Saudis to step in as the physical ‘protector’ ” of Sunni countries in response to the threat posed by Iran, a Shiite-majority nation. Saudi Arabia, unlike Egypt, another Arab power, has the finances to develop a nuclear-weapons arsenal, the Pakistanis argue.

Evidently the Saudis have no more confidence in the Obama Administration’s ability to negotiate a treaty with Iran that will actually stop their nuclear program than the 47 Senators who signed the letter. I think the fact that the Saudis are pursuing an atomic bomb of their own tells us all we need to know about the treaty President Obama is negotiating.

The Techie Take On The Clinton Email Server

James Rosen posted an article at Fox News yesterday about some technical people who decided to investigate some of Hillary Clinton’s claims about her private, secure email server.

Some findings from the article:

Now, working with publicly available tools that map network connectivity, experts have established that the last “hop” before the mail server’s Internet Protocol, or IP, address (listed as 64.94.172.146) is Internap’s aggregator in Manhattan (listed as 216.52.95.10). 

 “This is a very strong indication that the clintonemail.com server is in Manhattan,” the source told Fox News.  

 Obviously the server is not in Chappaqua being guarded by the Secret Service–most likely it is in President Clinton’s Manhattan office. Not that physically guarding a server is worth anything anyway unless someone is going to steal the server itself.

The ‘good hackers’ also discovered:

  Perhaps most concerning, private analysts determined that clintonemail.com has been running an older model of Microsoft Internet Information Services, or IIS – specifically version 7.5, which has been documented to leave users exposed on multiple fronts. The website CVEDetails.com, which bills itself as “the ultimate security vulnerability datasource,” is awash with descriptions of serious security vulnerabilities associated with version 7.5, including “memory corruption,” “password disclosure vulnerability,” and the enabling of “remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service.”  

The cyberlab technician who discovered the Clintons’ use of version 7.5 marveled at “the vulnerabilities the Clintons are ignoring” in an email to Fox News. “This is a big deal and just the thing real-world hackers look for in a target and will exploit to the max,” the source said.  

“Several of these vulnerabilities have been known since 2010 and yet HRC is running official State comms through it.”  

The article concludes:

Just the original decision to use a private email account, with Clinton’s own surname embedded in it, has baffled the hacker community. The analyst with experience in the intelligence community, a “white hat” hacker — the kind corporate firms retain to conduct “penetration testing” that exposes businesses’ cybersecurity lapses — told Fox News: “If we learned that the foreign minister of a major foreign country was using her own private server to send and receive emails, and was relying on outdated commercial software to operate and protect it, that’d be a hallelujah moment for us.”

As you read this article, please understand a few things. It sounds as if the people who set up the server for the Clintons lacked some of the knowledge they needed to make the server totally secure. Making a server totally secure is nearly impossible and you need really good technical people to do it. If the server was hacked during Mrs. Clinton’s time as Secretary of State, there is no reason to believe that the Clintons or anyone else would know about it. That is a serious problem. The other thing I would appreciate anyone reading this article to be aware of is that I have very little knowledge of how this all works. I have a husband and a daughter that hopefully keep me (and my computer) out of trouble. I do know, however, from being around serious techies that computer security is an issue, particularly in our government. Foreign countries that do not love America are constantly attempting to hack into military, commercial, and government computers. The last thing we need to do is to make it easy for them.

 

A Reasonable Evaluation Of The Letter

There has been a ridiculous amount of fuss about the open letter signed by 47 Republican Senators regarding the White House negotiations with Iran. The most balanced reporting of the letter and its significance was posted at USA Today yesterday. In case you missed it, the text of the letter is posted here.

The article cites a brief history of other letters and activities of Senators:

The White House of course objects to members of Congress getting involved in foreign policy, which it sees as the president’s exclusive domain. But the Cotton letter is part of the normal give and take of American politics, driven by the shared powers enshrined in the Constitution.

This is hardly unprecedented. Recall the “Dear Commandante” letter sent by Rep. Stephen J. Solarz, D-NY and nine other senior Democrats to Sandinista junta leader Daniel Ortega.The letter was a not-so-subtle critique of Reagan administration policy towards Nicaragua. At the time, Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. said the letter ”clearly violates the executive branch’s exclusive prerogative of negotiating with a foreign government.” The Obama administration could recycle Gingrich’s talking points today.

Members of Congress have gone farther than simply sending letters to try to influence foreign affairs. “Fact finding missions” to countries with sensitive relationships with the United States are a Congressional staple. Then Senator Hillary Clinton went to Iraq in January 2007 — her third trip to that country since the 2003 invasion — as a means of establishing a platform for criticizing Bush policies for her upcoming run for the White House. She joined then Sen. Obama in championing Congressional action to limit the “surge” policy that they quickly declared a failure.

Regardless of how you feel about the letter, this behavior happens on both sides of the aisle and it is part of the give and take of the American political system. It really is not a big deal that 47 Senators signed a letter which briefly outlined how two of the three branches of the American government are supposed to interact with each other.

How Crony Capitalism In North Carolina Impacts Medical Costs To Patients

I am a member of an organization called the Coastal Carolina Taxpayers Association (CCTA). The CCTA is essentially a watchdog organization that supports the U.S. Constitution and the concept of free markets. One of the things that has come across the radar of the CCTA lately is the requirement for a Certificate of Need (CON) to build a heath care facility in North Carolina. The bureaucracy surrounding the requirement for a CON prevents competition, innovation, and results in high health care costs for North Carolina residents.

Forbes Magazine posted an article on this subject in December 2014.

The article reported:

Under the existing statute, medical providers often times must ask permission from “The SHCC,” the governor-appointed State Health Coordinating Council, to build or expand an existing health care facility, offer new services, or update major medical equipment. For more on the history and flawed reasoning behind CON laws, see my previous post on the issue here.

The article also reported the state legislature’s desire to change the status quo:

As 2015 approaches, North Carolina legislators have plans to disrupt the health care status quo. Reforming the state’s Certificate of Need (CON) law will hopefully ignite some competition within the health care sector and help to reduce costs for patients.

Approval for another ambulatory surgery center (ASC), a gamma knife, or even a hospital bed is determined in part by a data-driven formula that produces the annual state Medical Facilities Plan, a 450-page inventory that accounts for all types of health care settings and services delivered across the state. North Carolina has one of the most micromanaged CON programs in the country. The SHCC regulates over 25 services, and it can take years for new and established health facilities to break ground. My colleague, economist Dr. Roy Cordato, compares the entire CON with Chinese restaurants:

The commission might have a formula that would look at data regarding how many Chinese restaurants exist per 100,000 or 50,000 or 25,000 in population; how many of those are strictly take-out restaurants and how many are eat-in or ‘sit-down’ restaurants…if it is determined that the community does ‘need’ one more Chinese restaurant…it may not be able to offer take-out service if there are already ‘enough’ take-out restaurants in the area.

The methodology behind the State Medical Facilities Plan may have good intentions, such as preventing underused facilities and incentivize better health care access in underserved areas, but unhealthy limits on competition lets incumbent providers inflate health care costs.

The free market works. Competition lowers prices and promotes innovation. I hope that the North Carolina legislature will follow through on its desire to do away with the Certificate of Need. The Certificate of Need is another example of government interference in the free market that hurts the consumer.

This Is Just Strange

The Washington Examiner posted a story today with the following quote from Secretary of State John Kerry:

“We’ve been clear from the beginning we’re not negotiating a legally binding plan. We’re negotiating a plan that will have a capacity for enforcement,” he (John Kerry) told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“We don’t even have diplomatic relations with Iran right now.”

I have a few questions. Legally binding for whom? If it is not legally binding for Iran, why are we bothering to negotiate? If it is not legally binding for us, why is Iran bothering to negotiate? Why in the world is everyone wasting time on something that is not legally binding?

The article reminds us:

Kerry, who was visibly irritated by what he called misconceptions by lawmakers about the ongoing talks, was criticizing an open letter to Iran’s leaders signed by 47 Republican senators. The letter has angered Democrats, but appears not to have slowed bipartisan efforts to force congressional approval of a deal, in spite of stiff opposition by the Obama administration.

As he spoke, committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who did not sign the letter but is a sponsor of legislation to require approval of any deal, cut him off.

Corker later noted that as a senator, Kerry had demanded congressional approval of a proposed agreement with Iraq on the status of U.S. troops there.

It is amazing how John Kerry’s opinions change according to the position he holds.

The Text Of The Letter

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal posted the text of the open letter that 47 Senators signed about negotiations with Iran.

This is the text:

An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran:

It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system.  Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution — the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices — which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress.

First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them.  In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote.  A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate).  Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.

Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics.

For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms.  As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then — perhaps decades.

What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei.  The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.

We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress.

Sincerely,

Senator Tom Cotton, R-AR
Senator Orrin Hatch, R-UT
Senator Charles Grassley, R-IA
Senator Mitch McConnell, R-KY
Senator Richard Shelby, R-AL
Senator John McCain, R-AZ
Senator James Inhofe, R-OK
Senator Pat Roberts, R-KS
Senator Jeff Sessions, R-AL
Senator Michael Enzi, R-WY
Senator Michael Crapo, R-ID
Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC
Senator John Cornyn, R-TX
Senator Richard Burr, R-NC
Senator John Thune, R-SD
Senator Johnny Isakson, R-GA
Senator David Vitter, R-LA
Senator John A. Barrasso, R-WY
Senator Roger Wicker, R-MS
Senator Jim Risch, R-ID
Senator Mark Kirk, R-IL
Senator Roy Blunt, R-MO
Senator Jerry Moran, R-KS
Senator Rob Portman, R-OH
Senator John Boozman, R-AR
Senator Pat Toomey, R-PA
Senator John Hoeven, R-ND
Senator Marco Rubio, R-FL
Senator Ron Johnson, R-WI
Senator Rand Paul, R-KY
Senator Mike Lee, R-UT
Senator Kelly Ayotte, R-NH
Senator Dean Heller, R-NV
Senator Tim Scott, R-SC
Senator Ted Cruz, R-TX
Senator Deb Fischer, R-NE
Senator Shelley Moore Capito, R-WV
Senator Bill Cassidy, R-LA
Senator Cory Gardner, R-CO
Senator James Lankford, R-OK
Senator Steve Daines, R-MT
Senator Mike Rounds, R-SD
Senator David Perdue, R-GA
Senator Thom Tillis, R-NC
Senator Joni Ernst, R-IA
Senator Ben Sasse, R-NE
Senator Dan Sullivan, R-AK

Please read the letter carefully, and then draw your own conclusions as to whether the Senators were justified in sending it.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

A website called rare.us posted a story today reporting that according to an audit by the Inspector General the Social Security Administration has 6.5 million active Social Security numbers for people 112 or older.

The article notes that worldwide there are only thirty-five people who have lived past the age of 112.

The article reports:

Perhaps even more concerning, several thousand of those 6.5 million records are for people born before the Civil War.

About 3,800 of those numbers have been involved in fraudulent activity. As Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin commented, “It is incredible that the Social Security Administration in 2015 does not have the technical sophistication to ensure that people they know to be deceased are actually noted as dead.”

Are you willing to guess how many of these people are actually receiving Social Security benefits?

 

If You Don’t Like The Data–Change It!

The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday about the latest numbers released (make that changed) by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) about temperatures in America’s corn belt last summer.

The article includes two charts–one of the actual temperature data and one of the data after NOAA ‘adjusted’ the numbers:

These are the charts:

Source: NCDC climate data presented by Roy Spencer on www.drroyspencer.com.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

The article reports:

Meteorologist Anthony Watts has also caught NOAA changing the temperature record. For two years, NOAA claimed that July 2012 was the hottest month on record — that is, until it quietly adjusted the data so that July 1936 was the hottest month on record.

“Two years ago during the scorching summer of 2012, July 1936 lost its place on the leaderboard and July 2012 became the hottest month on record in the United States,” Watts wrote. “Now, as if by magic, and according to NOAA’s own data, July 1936 is now the hottest month on record again. The past, present, and future all seems to be ‘adjustable’ in NOAA’s world.”

Generally speaking it is very easy to lie with statistics–you can make them say anything you want them to say. However, it is really easy to lie with statistics when you arbitrarily change the numbers. That seems to be what is going on with NOAA.

The Double Standard At Work

Unfortunately the mainstream media in America has become the spokesperson for the Democrat Party. Things are reported or not reported according to the impact they will have on the success of that party.

On March 8, New York Magazine posted a story about the problems at NBC that led to the dismissal of Brian Williams.

The story reports:

Others complained about Williams’s unwillingness to go after hard-hitting stories. Multiple sources told me that former NBC investigative reporters Michael Isikoff and Lisa Myers battled with Williams over stories. In February 2013, Isikoff failed to interest Williams in a piece about a confidential Justice Department memo that justified killing American citizens with drones. He instead broke the story on Rachel Maddow. That October, Myers couldn’t get Williams to air a segment about how the White House knew as far back as 2010 that some people would lose their insurance policies under Obama­care. Frustrated, Myers posted the article on NBC’s website, where it immediately went viral. Williams relented and ran it the next night. “He didn’t want to put stories on the air that would be divisive,” a senior NBC journalist told me. According to a source, Myers wrote a series of scathing memos to then–NBC senior vice-president Antoine Sanfuentes documenting how Williams suppressed her stories. ­Myers and Isikoff eventually left the network (and both declined to comment).

The actual definition of divisive is having a negative impact on a Democrat.

Today Newsbusters posted another example of how the American mainstream media works.

Newsbusters explains:

Despite the networks’ eagerness to tout Democratic opposition to the GOP letter (the letter stating that the Senate should weigh in on any agreement with Iran), on two separate occasions the “big three” completely ignored a letter penned by former Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) written to the Soviet Union in 1983 aimed at undermining President Ronald Reagan’s nuclear negotiations with the Communist regime.
…Kennedy’s message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. “The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations,” the memorandum stated. “These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign.”

The Republicans who signed the letter are reminding the President of the Senate’s role in approving treaties. They are asking the President to respect the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution. Ted Kennedy was asking the Russians to get involved in an American election. It seems to me that the latter is much more significant than a reminder of how the U.S. Constitution works.

 

An Astute Observation

The Daily Caller posted an article today about a statement made by Bob Ross, president of the Maryland Prince George’s County NAACP, about the impact of President Obama’s amnesty program.

The article reports his comments on the impact of illegal immigrants:

“67 million — almost 68 million when you round it — spent on illegal immigrants children’s education [in Maryland],” Ingraham (Laura Ingraham) noted. “What is your reaction to that?”

“It’s a lot of money, and our resources can’t handle it here in Prince George’s County,” Ross said. “We’re fixing to lose about $68 million statewide, on the local level we’re losing about $10 million of school funding. So, I don’t know how we’re going to handle this, the cost factor.”

…“You have to stand up for what’s right,” he continued. “After the Selma March and what we went through as a people, we have to continue the fight. Like I said before, we’re not going to the back of the bus again. We already been on that route.”

“Do you think they should be sent back home?” asked Ingraham. “Or should they just be educated in all these communities, despite the cost?”

“If they follow the process and go through the legality to remain in the country, they should remain,” Ross said. “But if the process says they have to return, then they have to return.”

“Our kids have dreams too,” he pointed out. “I want to be real clear about that. They keep saying: the DREAMers, DREAMers, DREAMers. We have dreams also. Every child that is native-born in this country has a dream. We should not have to sacrifice for newcomers that are coming in and not followed the process.”

The bottom line here is simple. The influx of illegal aliens into America is going to overload our federal programs. Adding five million Americans at one time puts a tremendous burden on our schools, labor market, and other resources. It also makes it more difficult for Americans who are here legally to find jobs and support their families. Bob Ross has figured that out. Hopefully, more Americans will realize that very quickly.

The Neighborhood Bully Meets His Match

One of the unpleasant outcomes of the financial crisis of 2008 is the way the Obama Administration has treated many of the banks who wrote some of the bad mortgages. Never mind that many of the bad mortgages were required to be written because of government regulations regarding discrimination or that some of the leading Democrats in Congress were making sure that bad loans were continually being made, the Obama Administration is going to make the big banks pay for bad policy on the part of the government. Well, one bank has decided to stand up to the bully that the federal government has become.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the Japanese bank Nomura is refusing to settle out of court in a case brought against them by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).

The article reports:

The claim is that Fan and Fred—the government-created dominators of the mortgage market—were unwitting victims of the banks. To believe this fairy tale, you have to ignore the findings of a bipartisan congressional inquiry, as well as separate federal lawsuits in which the government is arguing that Fan and Fred did the misleading.

Yet regulators figured that the banks would probably cave to avoid unpleasant publicity and a juror pool angry about bank bailouts. And 17 banks did cave, paying the Beltway bandits nearly $18 billion to make these Little Orphan Fannie claims disappear. Firms like Bank of America , Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan all wrote checks to buy peace with the politicos.

Nomura did not settle out of court and the trial is set for March 16. This is causing the government lawyers to lose no small amount of sleep.

The article reports:

In January the feds dropped their claims for damages. The government claims it can recover as much or more from the “equitable” claims, in which Nomura would merely be required to buy back the securities it sold to Fan and Fred. But Nomura says the damage claims were the most lucrative part of the case.

Why would the government want to limit its potential winnings shortly before the trial? Well, because abandoning damage claims lets the government avoid a jury trial. That means leaving it all to federal Judge Denise Cote, who is well known for tilting toward the government against business and has been siding with the feds in pre-trial rulings.

FHFA’s lawyer explained in a recent filing that a “bench trial clearly would conserve time and assets.” That may be true. But when the defendant is a large multinational bank and the government doesn’t want to face a jury in this era of public anger at big banks, that tells you how much confidence the feds have in their case.

This trial could be very interesting. Last fall, Nomura Bank offered evidence to show that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went shopping for sub-prime mortgages in order to align themselves with their political partners.

It would be nice to see this go before a jury that would get a chance to see the true facts of the case. The Obama Administration has engaged in shakedowns of anyone they think they can get money from or anyone they consider a political enemy. It would be nice to see that practice end.

Rewriting History

Gateway Pundit posted an article yesterday about the 65th anniversary of the march in Selma, Alabama.

The article reminds us:

On this day in 1965, state police under the command of the Democrat Governor, George Wallace, attacked African-Americans who were demonstrating for voting rights in Selma, Alabama. The rampaging Democrats used billy clubs and tear gas and dogs in their “Bloody Sunday” assault.

A Republican-appointed federal judge, Frank Johnson, soon ruled in favor of the demonstrators, enabling them to complete their march two weeks later.

Meanwhile, the Daily Caller reported yesterday:

A civil rights leader refused to march across the historic bridge in Selma during the 50th anniversary celebration Saturday because former President George W. Bush was also marching.

Diane Nash, described as a lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr., said she did not wish to march across the bridge in Alabama because she said Bush represented violence — something she claimed was at odds with the Selma legacy.

History has been rewritten to erase the role the political parties played in the civil rights movement–the Southern Democrats opposed civil rights laws and the northern Republicans supported them. It is a shame Ms. Nash decided not to march instead of taking a stand for unity.

 

Gaps In The E-mails–Say It Isn’t So!

Yahoo News posted a story today about gaps in the emails Hillary Clinton provided to the congressional committee investigating the 2012 attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The article reports:

Republican Representative Trey Gowdy said his committee lacked documentation from Clinton’s trip to Libya after the attack despite a popular photo image of her using a handheld device during a flight to that country.

“We have no emails from that day. In fact we have no emails from that trip,” said Gowdy, who heads the committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. “There are huge gaps.”

The article reports that Hillary Clinton has asked the State Department to release her emails, but it does not explain why Mrs. Clinton does not simply release them herself.

The investigation into the attack in Benghazi is what shed light on the problem of the unofficial emails, but I believe the controversy over the gaps in the emails regarding Benghazi is misleading. As I reported last Thursday (rightwinggranny.com), Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking any and all communications – including emails – from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Chief of Staff Huma Abedin with Nagla Mahmoud, wife of ousted Egyptian president Mohammad Morsi, from January 21, 2009 to January 31, 2013 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00321)).   This latest lawsuit will require the State Department to answer questions about and conduct thorough searches of Hillary Clinton’s newly discovered hidden email accounts.  Judicial Watch also has nearly a dozen other active FOIA lawsuits that may require the State Department to search these email accounts.  Huma Abedin is also alleged to have a secret account as well.

Secret email accounts are unacceptable–even for the Clintons. The law needs to apply to the Clintons as well as everyone else. It is ironic that Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State fired United States ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration for using a private email account.