The Truth Continues To Seep Out

Yesterday The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) posted the following on its website:

The ACLJ has just obtained previously unreleased documents related to the Clinton investigation and immunity agreements given to top Clinton aids. These agreements reveal that James Comey’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Loretta Lynch’s Department of Justice (DOJ) granted immunity to Hillary Clinton’s aids and lawyers, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, from prosecution for anything found on their laptops violating multiple felony criminal statutes governing the mishandling of classified information and/or the removal or destruction of records, including Espionage Act provisions. Further, the DOJ and FBI also agreed to evade the statutory requirements of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by purporting to deem the contents of the laptops as not under DOJ or FBI “custody or control.”

These laptops were critical to any meaningful investigation of Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified emails and records. According to the DOJ Inspector General, who identified these as the “culling laptops,” “[a]ll 62,320 emails pulled from the Clinton servers were stored at one time on these laptops.” Having taken control of these laptops, agreeing to severely limit its searches, agreeing to unlawfully shield the laptops from FOIA, then agreeing to dispose of the laptops, it appears the Comey FBI and Lynch DOJ did everything in their power to protect Clinton’s senior aids and lawyers from both criminal liability and public scrutiny.

While these immunity agreements and related news have been publicly discussed to some extent, the ACLJ has now obtained the actual documents so the public may see and judge them accordingly.

The article also states:

According to the DOJ’s immunity agreement with Mills:

As we have advised you, we consider Cheryl Mills to be a witness based on the information gathered to date in this investigation. We understand that Cheryl Mills is willing to voluntarily provide the Mills Laptop to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, if the United States agrees not to use any information directly obtained from the Mills Laptop in any prosecution of Cheryl Mills for the mishandling of classified information and/or the removal or destruction of records as described below.

And, according to the immunity agreement:

To that end, it is hereby agreed as follows:

    1. That, subject to the terms of consent set forth in a separate letter to the Department of Justice dated June 10, 2016, Cheryl Mills will voluntarily produce the Mills Laptop to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for its review and analysis.
    2. That no information directly obtained from the Mills Laptop will be used against your client in any prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) and/or (f); 18 U.S.C. § 1924; and/or 18 U.S.C. § 2071.
    1. That no other promises, agreements, or understandings exist between the parties except as set forth in this agreement, and no modification of this agreement shall have effect unless executed in writing by the parties.

The agreement was then executed by Cheryl Mills. The immunity agreement with Samuelson reads the same.

Mills and Samuelson Were Granted Immunity From Prosecution Under Multiple Felony Statutes for Anything Found on Their Laptops.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Unfortunately this is a glaring example of unequal justice under the law.

Spending Money Where It Is Needed–Not For Political Purposes

The Washington Examiner posted an article today about ending the federal funding for abortion.

The article reports:

President Trump’s action last week, barring Title X family planning funds from programs and facilities that perform abortions, is thus entirely right and reasonable. For all Planned Parenthood’s gnashing of teeth, the only thing to suffer will be its own profits and the rewards of its senior executives. The public good and women’s health will, at a minimum, remain completely unaffected and, depending on your perspective, will be improved.

Trump’s decision will not reduce Title X funding at all. Rather, his policy guarantees that the limited funds available from that source will go to comprehensive community health centers all over America that provide health services Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer. There are 20 such community health centers for every Planned Parenthood affiliate. Most provide services such as mammograms that Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer. Most are also not so heavily involved and invested in partisan politics.

According to opensecrets.org, in the 2016 election cycle, Planned Parenthood (through its PAC) donated $671,048 to federal candidates (98% to Democrats, 1% to Republicans).

According to the ACLJ (American Center for Law and Justice):

Planned Parenthood just released their 2016–2017 annual report. The findings are clear: over 320,000 abortions committed in the last year; over half a billion in government funding; nearly $100 million in profit (a staggering 27% increase over the prior year). Big Abortion is big business.

Regardless of where you stand on protecting the unborn, abortion should not be a million dollar business.

It is obvious from the above numbers that Planned Parenthood does not actually need federal money–they are making a substantial profit on their own and they are supporting political candidates.

It has been my belief for a long time that entities that make political contributions should not be eligible for federal funds. This should include any political action committees (PACS) set up by those entities. This seems rather obvious to me, but evidently Congress has not yet figured it out (I guess Congress likes its donations from these entities). The idea of taking federal money and making political donations seems like money laundering to me.

 

Watching The Spin

President Trump has ended the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate that required employers to provide birth control for their employees even if birth control conflicts with their moral or religious objections. Before ObamaCare, employers were allowed to follow their conscience. If you worked for a Catholic organization, your medical plan did not cover birth control, and if you had a baby in a Catholic hospital, the doctors were not going to instruct you in birth control. It was simply the way things were, and most Americans got along fine under that system. ObamaCare changed that system. Now President Trump is changing it back to what it was, giving people the right to follow their conscience. Based on the outcry from the political left, you would think he was slaughtering women on live television. He is not depriving anyone of birth control–he is merely saying he is not going to force employers to pay for it if it violates their conscience.

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about the controversy.

The article reports:

The new rule provides full protection for Americans with religious beliefs and moral convictions and acknowledges that the contraceptive mandate concerns serious issues of moral concern, including those involving human life.

Though left-wing groups claim President Donald Trump is taking away women’s birth control – which can be purchased for relatively little expense – the Obama administration itself actually exempted at least 25 million Americans, through various exemption allowances, from its own rule.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the Little Sisters of the Poor in its case against the HHS mandatenoted the Obama administration had exempted large corporations such as Chevron, Exxon, Visa, and Pepsi Bottling from the rule, as well as the U.S. military and large cities like New York City.

The headline for the story covered at NBC News reads, “Trump Just Made It So Employers Can Refuse to Pay for Birth Control.”

Just for the record, this isn’t really about birth control–it’s about abortion. Under ObamaCare, the morning-after pill, which causes an abortion was included in birth control. This was the first step toward government funding of abortions.

Here are a few facts on abortion from the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ):

The fact of the matter is that 51 percent of Planned Parenthood’s yearly clinic income – their only self-sustaining revenue source – comes from abortion, 329,445 abortions.

40 percent of all reported abortions committed in the United States occur at a Planned Parenthood clinic, making it by far the largest abortion provider in America.

…Planned Parenthood’s latest report states that it performed “11 million services during nearly five million clinical visits.” So, now their abortion number jumps to 6.6 percent of clinic visits were for abortions. That’s right 6.6 percent of all visits to Planned Parenthood result in an abortion.

Digging a little deeper, Planned Parenthood claims that all those “services” it provides only go to 3 million women. So by it’s own admission, 11 percent of the women that visit a Planned Parenthood clinic in any given year obtain an abortion there.

What about some of the other “services” Planned Parenthood claims it provides? Prenatal services (those services provided to women who choose to keep their baby) account for a measly 0.28 percent off all services provided. Moreover, the 841 adoption referrals made by Planned Parenthood in their last reported year amount to a whopping 0.0076 percent of services rendered.

The outcry over the change in the HHS Mandate is born out of fear that the abortion industry will eventually be threatened by the Trump Administration. I need to explain here that I don’t want to see abortion made illegal. However, if an abortion is medically necessary, it needs to be done in a hospital. It does not need to be part of a multi-million dollar industry.

Countering The Move To Push Christians Back Behind The Doors Of Their Churches

If you listen to the debate that took place last week about same-sex marriage, you realize that those who hold a Biblical view of marriage will be protected–as long as they stay within the walls of their churches. Christian business owners who hold that belief will not be protected–the ‘free exercise of religion’ clause in the Constitution has been quietly changed (in the mind of much of the public) to the ‘freedom to believe what you want to believe inside your church.’ There was another recent example of that in our military.

Yesterday the America Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) posted an article on its website about a recent incident in the U.S. Air Force.

The article reports:

Recently, I told you about Major General Craig Olson, USAF, and how he was attacked by the anti-Christian Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) and its founder “Mikey” Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein claimed that because General Olson publicly shared that he was a Christian believer who valued prayer and gave God the credit for his successes at a National Day of Prayer event, he should be court martialed. Yes, court martialed for expressing his Christian faith.

To Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF, General Olson’s publicly giving God credit for personal successes crossed the line.  Yet, they were flat wrong, and the Air Force fully agreed with us that “Maj Gen Olson did not violate Air Force policy . . . .”

In response to Mr. Weinstein’s demands that General Olson should be “aggressively and visibly brought to justice for his unforgiveable crimes and transgressions,” the ACLJ took action.

We immediately sent a letter to General Mark A. Welsh III, Air Force Chief of Staff, pointing out the outlandish tactics employed by Mr. Weinstein (and the MRFF) when he is offended by the religious sentiments expressed by those with whom he disagrees.

As founder of the Christian Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF),  Mikey Weinstein has fought to keep the Christian faith out of the military. He is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and claims that the Air Force Academy and the military are hostile to Judaism. I have no idea whether or not his claims are true, but he has definitely declared war on letting Christians express their faith. The message the charges sent to General Olson is that he was not legally allowed to talk about his faith–it was okay to be a Christian in the church, but not in the public square.

The article continues with the content of the letter that the ACLJ wrote:

Mr. Weinstein’s allegations that General Olson violated the Establishment Clause is ludicrous on its face. General Olson gave a personal testimony about the importance of prayer in his life. No one was required to do or believe anything. The coercive force of the United States Government was not behind his remarks, and no one was compelled to accede to his beliefs or change theirs. . . .

General Olson’s own words indicated without a doubt that he was giving his personal story. He was not acting as a government official when he made his remarks. Hence, it would be unreasonable for anyone to draw the conclusion that he was “officially” endorsing anything.

The article reports that the Director of the Administrative Law Directorate (Office of the Judge Advocate General), Conrad M. Von Wald, responded with the following:

We have thoroughly reviewed the facts and circumstances involving Maj Gen Olson’s participation at the National Day of Prayer Observance held on May 7, 2015, at the Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC.  Maj Gen Olson did not violate Air Force policy by participating in this Congressionally-supported event.  His remarks were his own personal opinions and did not represent the views of the United States Air Force.

Our military used to allow people of all faiths to express their faith. I think we got along better when people listened instead of deciding to be offended. We were founded as a Christian country with a legal system based on a Judeo-Christian ethic. Unfortunately, we have forgotten that and as a result have wandered down a lot of paths that have damaged our legal system and our nation. We would be a better nation if all of us realized that we were accountable to something bigger than ourselves–regardless of what we believe that something is.

Hoping That The American Voters Are Either Stupid Or Forgetful

Yesterday the Daily Caller posted a story about the interview that Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly did with President Obama.

The interview included the following exchange:

The president also refused to acknowledge that the IRS illegally targeted tea party groups in the run-up to the 2012 election. “Absolutely wrong,” he said when O’Reilly broached the subject. “These kinds of things keep on surfacing, in part, because you and your TV station will promote them… We’ve had multiple hearings on it!”

“So you’re saying there was no corruption there at all?” O’Reilly asked.

“Absolutely not,” the president replied. “There were some bone-headed decisions out of a local office.”

“But no mass corruption?” O’Reilly persisted.

“Not even mass corruption,” a visibly-annoyed Obama replied. “Not even a smidgen of corruption.”

This is a very interesting contrast to a story filed by NBC News on May 13, 2013, which stated:

A partial draft report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration — obtained by NBC News — shows that top officials knew about the targeting nearly a year before then-IRS Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, testified to Congress in March 2012 that no singling out of conservative groups ever occurred.

The House Ways and Means Committee announced after the president’s remarks that it will hold a hearing on the alleged targeting on Friday, May 17. Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller and J. Russell George, the Inspector General who headed up the IRS report, are expected to testify.

And the IRS confirmed Monday night that Miller was informed in May of last year that “some specific applications were improperly identified by name and sent to the [IRS] Exempt Organizations centralized processing unit for further review.”

In a statement earlier Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the president is “concerned” about the reported conduct of “a small number of Internal Revenue Service employees.”

The investigation into the IRS is being done by a major Democrat party campaign donor.

On January 17 2014, Fox News reported:

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI did not expect to file any criminal charges in connection with the IRS’s admitted, systemic, multi-year targeting of conservative nonprofits for improper scrutiny.

To be clear, the FBI made this decision without interviewing even a single one of the American Center for Law and Justice’s 41 targeted clients. And we’re not alone. Other Tea Party attorneys report their clients weren’t interviewed either.

Put simply, the FBI leaked its conclusions in a criminal investigation without even interviewing the victims of the potential crime.

So there was no crime. That conclusion was reached without interviewing any of the people who were targeted. This is the equivalent of refusing to interview a robbery victim and then claiming that since you did not interview the victim, there was no robbery.

Is the American voter that stupid? We will find out in November.

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