Monthly Archives: November 2016

It’s Time To Shrink The Government

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As of 2012, four of the five top per capita earnings counties in America were suburbs of Washington, D.C. Working in government or lobbying the government has become very profitable. On Monday, CNS News reported that the number of people employed by the United States government is now higher than the number of people employed in manufacturing in America.

The article reports:

Government employment grew from 22,216,000 in September to 22,235,000 in October, according to BLS, while manufacturing jobs dropped from 12,267,000 to 12,258,000.

The 22,235,000 employed by government in the United States now outnumber the 12,258,000 employed in manufacturing by 9,977,000.

Over the past year—from October 2015 to October 2016—manufacturing employment fell by 53,000, declining from 12,311,000 to 12,258,000. During the same period, government employment climbed 208,000, rising from 22,027,000 to 22,235,000.

This is the picture:

governmentemployeesIt is time for a change in Washington. Hopefully, we have elected that change.

Where The Real Money In Politics Lives

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Yesterday PJ Media posted an article explaining the role George Soros‘ money has played and is playing in America’s electoral process. The article lists the specifics in detail. I will only highlight a few.

The article reports:

Below are some highlights of this expansive Soros-funded campaign to alter the legal environment and rules of American elections.

Litigation

  • Soros funded multiple attacks on state voter identification laws in places such as Wisconsin, North Carolina and Virginia. While not successful at the trial court in North Carolina and Virginia, the Soros litigation won a victory in the appeals courts resulting in North Carolina election integrity laws being suspended for the presidential election.  Worse, the litigation resulted in opinions by federal appeals courts which could potentially turn the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into a one-way political ratchet that helps Democrats, as long as Democrats can enforce racially polarized voting patterns.
  • Soros documents show funding for the League of Women Voters and their effort “to catalyze greater participation from Black and Latino youth in advocacy both before and after elections.” The LWV is currently in federal court trying to stop efforts by Kansas, Georgia, and Alabama to verify that only citizens are registering to vote. The same organization intervened in a lawsuit by the Public Interest Legal Foundation to clean voter rolls in a Virginia jurisdiction with more registered voters than eligible citizens.
  • Soros documents show funding of $250,000 for the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP before the group then sued to stop the use of voter ID in North Carolina.  Other groups in North Carolina that were on the funding documents include: “Action Institute NC – $75,000 over one year . . . North Carolina Latino Coalition – $75,000  . . .  New World Foundation – $300,000 over one year . . . North Carolina Fair Share Education Fund – $75,000 . . . School for Creative Activism – $75,000.”
  • Soros documents show that it funded efforts to attack the efforts of Tea Party organizations such as True the Vote to promote election integrity and triggered Department of Justice action. One funding document states that the Campaign Legal Center, [former John McCain lawyer] Trevor Potter, and the Brennan Center worked on “voter registration reform” and efforts to attack Tea Party groups. “CLC is focusing most of its efforts on the threat posed by these private ‘challenger’ groups and, to that end, has been gathering information on the activities of such groups, including Houston-based True the Vote. Working in partnership with Transparency Fund grantee Project Vote, CLC has pieced together a narrative that strongly suggests a widespread effort by True the Vote to suppress minority voting. CLC made Open Records Requests to officials in Houston to obtain all communications between True the Vote and Houston election offices, obtained and analyzed these documents and presented their findings to the United States Department of Justice last month. Following this meeting, the Justice Department sent federal officials to Houston to monitor the May primary elections. One other aspect of CLC’s work in this area is its Executive Director, J. Gerald Hebert’s role as chief counsel to a group of intervenors in State of Texas v. Holder.”
  • The funding documents name groups which received in excess of $500,000 each year from Soros. They include: “Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Center for American Progress, Advancement Project, Center for Community Change, Brennan Center.” Three of the largest recipients are engaged in litigation and strategic communications denying voter fraud and seeking to transform the rules of elections.
  • Soros money is moving away from pressing for “campaign finance reform” and speech regulations, and instead into election process areas.  The funding documents state “We do recommend shifts in a significant area of previous strategy. Historically, OSI played a leading role in promoting campaign finance reform models at the national and state levels. In recent years, changed conditions caused us to re-examine our approach, and our analysis led us to begin discontinuing our support to campaign finance reform groups.”
  • Soros money fought voter ID, everywhere.  The leaked documents state: “The 2012 elections proved that momentum is with the voting rights and civil rights community rather than their detractors. Not only was this field successful at blocking restrictive laws from being implemented in Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin and South Carolina, but a strong coalition in Minnesota came from behind to achieve the first victory against photo ID on the ballot.”
  • Soros money was directed at the Advancement Project and Brennan Center to influence media coverage on election integrity issues and provide voter fraud denial propaganda.  Leaked funding documents state: “In a specific grant update, the U.S. Programs board-funded communications and messaging project was successfully led by the Brennan Center and the Advancement Project, and played an important role in the spike in media attention on voting rights this year. The groups developed affirmative voting rights messages and shared them widely in and beyond the field. The messages were used verbatim hundreds of times in sources ranging from The New York Times to the Philadelphia Inquirer, quickly and fully working their way into the media, national and local, and across social networking sites.”  Verbatim.
  • Soros funding documents reveal that the Brennan Center and Advancement Project, two organizations regularly opposing election integrity measures in court, were among the largest Soros funding recipients for the entire Soros program.
  • ERIC, the program seeded by PEW to allow states to verify voter identity which many states now use, was started with Soros money and an “anonymous” donor.

Please follow the link above and read the entire article. It is chilling. George Soros made his money by destroying the currency of various countries and betting on that failure. We don’t need to give him an opportunity to do that in America. He does not have the interests of America in mind at all–he is a globalist with a one-world government agenda. America needs to find a way to keep him from meddling in our political affairs.

Protecting Our Elections

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The only real way to protect our elections is to elect people to office who will uphold the U.S. Constitution.  A recent incident in Virginia illustrates why that is important.

Breitbart posted an article yesterday about the recent actions of Virginia Governor Terry MacAuliffe.

The article reports:

Gov. Terry McAuliffe has illegally granted voting rights to 60,000 convicted felons in the key swing state of Virginia, a move that could give Hillary Clinton a victory in that state—and possibly the White House—unless supporters of Donald Trump get out to the polls on Election Day.

Like many states, the Virginia Constitution provides that if a person commits a felony, with their lawbreaking, they forfeit the right to vote for candidates who will make and enforce those laws. But it also grants the Virginia governor clemency power to pardon criminals and commute sentences, including the power to restore voting rights.

…Virginia lawmakers sued, and the Virginia Supreme Court held in Howell v. McAuliffe that the Clinton ally’s political move was an unprecedented power grab that previous governors of both parties had acknowledged was illegal.

Among other things, Virginia Chief Justice Donald Lemons wrote that “power could be exercised only in particular cases to named individuals for whom a specific grant of executive clemency is sought,” and only after an individualized assessment of the felon’s case and character.

There are a few interesting aspects of this story. Statistically convicted felons vote Democrat. Why? Also, I understand that this is a hard-fought campaign, but this is disgusting. How many of these convicted felons will be contacted and paid money for their votes? Why did the Virginia courts refuse to uphold the law?

It really is time to drain the swamp. The Clinton crime syndicate needs to go. The American voters are responsible for the character and morality of their leaders. Politicians who put party above the good of the nation need to be voted out of office.

Voter Fraud Is A Problem

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One of the easiest ways to commit voter fraud is through the use of absentee ballots–numbers of people can be registered at one address and their ballots mailed in–whether they actually live there or not. In Florida absentee ballots were stolen, voted, and returned without having ever reached the people they were supposed to go to.

On Thursday, Breitbart posted a story about a problem with absentee ballots in California.

The article reported:

California resident Jerry Mosna found 83 unused 2016 voter ballots at his home over the weekend — each ballot had a different name but were all addressed to his neighbor’s two-bedroom apartment — causing concern and serious suspicion of voter fraud.

The office of the Registrar stated that they believe this is an isolated incident caused by a system error that issued duplicate ballots. They are working to correct the problem and have stated that the U.S. Postal Service has returned all improperly addressed ballots to the Registrar’s office.

When True the Vote investigated voter fraud in Texas (story here), one of the things they did was check for duplicate addresses. In one case, they found forty people registered at an eight-bed halfway house.

In 2011, I reported some of the results of their investigation:

“Most of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Sean Caddle, who formerly worked for the Service Employees International Union. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. The other registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597 registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with different signatures.”

There were 22,000 plus invalid registrations. That’s enough to change an election result. It’s time to make sure our election process is secure.

 

 

What Does The Law Actually Say?

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According to the Legal Resource Library, these are the requirements to vote in a federal election in America:

  • You are a U.S. citizen (either by birth or naturalization)
  • You meet your state’s residency requirements
  • You are 18 year old. (Some states allow 17-year-olds to vote in primaries or register to vote if they will be 18 before the general election).
You must be legally registered to vote in your jurisdiction in order to be able to vote in federal elections. State laws vary on voter requirements.

The U.S. Constitution gives citizens have the right to vote in elections. It does not give that right to non-citizens.

The following video was posted on YouTube on November 6:

This is the response to that video from Senator Jeff Sessions:

WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) issued the following statement after President Obama‘s comments on illegal immigrants voting in U.S. elections:  

“I am shocked that the President of the United States—who is the chief law enforcement officer for the nation and to whom all federal law enforcement officers report—failed to strongly and immediately object to a statement by an interviewer that unlawful immigrants can and should vote in U.S. elections. The interviewer proposed a radical and illegal action, which the President had a duty to condemn.

The President must immediately issue a statement to make crystal clear that only citizens of the United States have the right to vote, and that any noncitizen who votes, and anyone who assists noncitizens to vote, does so illegally and is subject to prosecution. The failure to clarify this statement will only add further credibility to the public’s concerns about the integrity of this election.” 

For those of you who may argue that President Obama was not referring to illegal aliens, why then was he discussing the fear of being deported? American citizens do not have to fear deportation.

How Much Does It Cost?

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Charity is a wonderful thing when it is voluntary–not so much when it is coerced. Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article that illustrates how charity can be coerced.

The article reports:

Amnesty for illegal immigrants like a program proposed by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton would require an immediate tax hike of $1.2 trillion, a $15,000 hit on every household in America, according to a new analysis of immigration reform.

…”The findings in the report indicate that if amnesty for illegal immigrants were enacted, the government would have to raise taxes immediately by $1.29 trillion and put that sum into a high-yield bank account to cover future fiscal losses generated by the amnesty recipients and their children,” said Robert Rector, Heritage’s senior domestic research fellow.

“To cover the future cost, each U.S. household currently paying federal income tax would have to pay, on average, an immediate lump sum of over $15,000,” he added.

So why is the Democratic Party so intent on amnesty? There are a number of reasons. The most obvious is to create an underclass of Democratic voters. The demographics of the Democratic voter have changed in recent years as the party has moved dramatically to the left. People in the working middle class are no longer willing to blindly follow the Democrats–they have watched Democratic politicians take bigger and bigger chunks of money out of their paychecks to support social programs that do not reduce poverty and do destroy families. The legalization of unskilled illegal aliens would create a permanent underclass to replace the middle class voters.

But there is also another reason. Our politicians in Washington have not always represented us well. They have avoided the hard decisions in order to be re-elected. One of those hard decisions is the reform of Social Security, which is rapidly going bankrupt. One reason for that bankruptcy is the lack of new workers coming into the workforce to support the payments to retirees. One of the reasons for the lack of new workers is the number of babies that have been aborted since 1973. According to the Guttmacher Institute, more than one million babies have been aborted every year since 1975. Some years the number has been as high as 1,500,000, some years it has been about 1,000,000. These are workers who would have been entering the workforce over the past twenty years that would have kept Social Security solvent. An influx of workers that were formerly under the table would fund Social Security for a few more years. By the time the new workers retire, the current members of Congress may no longer be in Washington to be held accountable. Congress would rather kick the can down the road than solve the Social Security funding problem. Amnesty is one way to do that.

Perspective

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The National Review posted an article today about all the gnashing of teeth on the Democratic side of the aisle about the letter FBI Director James Comey sent to Congress (sent to Republicans and Democrats–not just Republicans as the Clinton campaign claimed). The article reminds us that Director Comey is not the person actually responsible for the problems of the Democratic Presidential Candidate.

The article reports:

In July, the same James Comey contorted himself into rhetorical pretzels to avoid recommending Hillary Clinton be prosecuted for exposing classified information, despite laying out a compelling case that she would be facing serious charges were she possessed of any surname besides the one she has. He settled on saying that while she was “extremely reckless,” her actions did not constitute “gross negligence,” a distinction that remains unclear.

Democrats were miffed that Comey had the audacity to go even that far, but, all in all, he was praised as a fine public servant. As my colleague Andy McCarthy has explained at length, Comey’s press conference was an extravagant departure from Justice Department protocol, but Democrats were more than comfortable pardoning Comey’s excesses then, since he had acted in the service of helpful ends. He just wanted to “stay out” of the election, they explained.

The feeling among Democrats is that when Director Comey wrote the letter to Congress, his actions aided the Trump campaign.

The article reminds us of the root of the problem:

This is the type of ends-justifies-means thinking that has guided Democrats since the beginning of this process, conveniently occluding their ability to recall that this whole problem is entirely of their own making. It was Hillary Clinton who set up a private e-mail server, almost certainly to evade federal transparency laws. It was Hillary Clinton who, in violation of the law, sent dozens of classified e-mails from the unsecured private account run through that server. It was Hillary Clinton who swore under oath that she had surrendered to investigators all work-related e-mails. It was Democrats who then went and nominated the woman under FBI investigation. And it was Loretta Lynch, a Democratic attorney general, who met with Bill Clinton behind closed doors on an airport tarmac in Phoenix and compromised any possibility of her trustworthiness when it came to this investigation.

It is already becoming obvious to those of us old enough to remember the 1990’s that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be nothing more than Hillary Clinton operating under a veil of secrecy and covering up any of her actions that Americans became aware of. That is not a recipe for a successful presidency.

 

 

The Number Behind The Low Unemployment Rate

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A good statistician can make numbers say anything he wants them to say. The people currently working for the government are not good statisticians–they are great statisticians! We have all been told that the unemployment rate for Americans has dropped to 4.9 percent. Wow! That is wonderful. But wait a minute–let’s look a little more closely.

The Washington Free Beacon posted a story today about the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Their reporter does a good job of putting the numbers in context.

The article reports:

There were 94,609,000 Americans not participating in the labor force in October, an increase of 425,000 people from the previous month, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday.

The bureau counts those not in the labor force as people who do not have a job and did not actively seek one in the past four weeks.

The labor force participation rate, which is the percentage of the population that has a job or actively looked for one in the past month, declined from 62.9 percent in September to 62.8 percent in October.

The unemployment rate for all Americans declined to 4.9 percent from 5.0 percent in the previous month. This measure does not account for those individuals who have dropped out of the labor force and simply measures the percent of those who did not have a job but actively sought one over the month.

The economic recovery under President Obama has been very weak.

The article concludes:

“This so-called-recovery has been extremely weak,” said National Federation of Independent Business president Juanita Duggan. “Small business, which represents 99.7 percent of all U.S. employers and employs 58 million Americans, is the engine of job creation. Until small business owners have a clearer sense of what the future will bring, they’ll keep their foot on the brakes.”

“Small business owners are paralyzed by uncertainty,” she said. “The combination of record uncertainty, rising labor costs, and a shortage of qualified workers is depressing small business job creation.”

This is America under President Obama. President Hillary Clinton will bring more of the same. I would like to note that the people cramming Common Core down our throats are not helping the shortage of qualified workers. Standardized test scores of American students under Common Core have gone down–not up. It is time to clean the swamp in Washington and begin again.

 

Money For Access

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The Daily Caller posted a story today that included more revelations from the Wikileaks memos. It seems that the Clinton Foundations was a clearing house for buying access to Bill Clinton as well as the State Department.

The article reports:

The Dec. 7, 2012 memo is included in a batch of documents prepared in advance for a Clinton Foundation board meeting held several days later in New York City.

It shows that Joe Kiani, the founder of medical device maker Masimo, and Alex Karp, the CEO of software company Palantir Technologies, paid $140,000 and $100,000, respectively, for a “Meeting with WJC.”

WJC is William Jefferson Clinton. Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary of state when the memo was written.

…”The Foundation’s long-term sustainability cannot be possible without a significant and well-managed endowment,” the memo reads. “Earlier this year, we began the critical first steps towards crafting a detailed and well-informed endowment campaign plan.”

The document lists dozens of donors. The individuals and organizations shaded in blue were new contributors, the memo states. It also lists “reason for gift” for each donor.

Please follow the link to the story to see the detailed list of donors.

The Global Establishment Will Not Go Gently Into The Night

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Breitbart posted an article today about a new wrinkle in Britain‘s attempt to leave the European Union.

The article reports:

The government must consult parliament before invoking Article 50, the High Court has ruled.

The court ruled that Prime Minister Theresa May does not have the authority to use the Royal Prerogative to invoke the EU divorce process.

It is noteworthy that the people of Britain voted to leave the European Union. Has the High Court decided that the vote of the British citizens does not mean anything?

The article further reports:

However, the government has said it will appeal the decision.

A spokesman said: “The Government is disappointed by the decision.

“The country voted to leave the European Union in a referendum approved by Act of Parliament. And the Government is determined to respect the result of the referendum.”

The Supreme Court will likely hear the case on 7 December.

UKIP’s interim leader Nigel Farage said:

“I worry that a betrayal may be near at hand. Last night at the Spectator Parliamentary Awards I had a distinct feeling that our political class, who were out in force, do not accept the 23rd of June Referendum result.

“I now fear that every attempt will be made to block or delay the triggering of Article 50. If this is so, they have no idea of the level of public anger they will provoke.”

Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, he added that he feared Britain was heading for a “half Brexit”, and warned he would return to frontline politics if Britain had not left the EU by 2019.

“We are heading for a half Brexit….  I’m becoming increasingly worried.

“I see MPs from all parties saying, oh well, actually we should stay part of the single market, we should continue with our daily financial contributions.

“I think we could be at the beginning, with this ruling, of a process where there is  deliberate, wilful attempt by our political class to betray 17.4 million voters.”

The political elite is entrenched worldwide. They have become a class of people dedicated to increasing their own wealth. In Britain, they have tied their fortunes to staying in the European Union; in America, they have tied their fortunes to the election of Hillary Clinton. The names are different, but the actions and goals are the same. Brexit was one of the few opportunities to put the brakes on their plans, and the British are going to have to fight to have their voices heard. In America, November 8 will determine whether Americans are ready to toss out the political elite.

I wish the Brits (and the Americans) luck.

Ignoring The News While Claiming To Report It

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Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about the recent New York Times reporting on allegations by the Clinton campaign that Donald Trump has a connection to Russia. This connection is being used to bolster the claim that Russia hacking is behind the Wikileaks emails.

The article reminds us that The New York Times has recently chosen to ignore some of the Clinton’s connections to Russia. That has not always been the case.

The article cites some older reporting on that connection:

If we go back to April 24, 2015, a New York Times investigative report illustrates why the Clinton campaign should think twice about accusing the Trump campaign of cozying up to Russia. The Times’ “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal”  reveals in depth the ethically-challenged relationship among the Clintons, the Foundation’s top donor, Canadian mining magnate, Frank Guistra ( $31.3 million in donations), and Russia’s state-owned Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom).

…The Times concludes: “The episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president ….even as his wife … presided over decisions (such as approval of the Russian purchase of Uranium One) with the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors.”

The article concludes:

The Clinton team should remember that people who live in glass houses should not throw the first stone. If the American public knew the unsavory clients of K-Street law and PR firms, they might pull out their pitchforks. If so, our political class would lose their plush lifestyle of life after politics. Be careful. A cooperative media cannot protect you forever.

It is time for term limits and rules that make lobbying less profitable. It is really time to drain the swamp.

 

Didn’t We Sign Some Sort Of Treaty With Iran?

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The Washington Free Beacon posted a story today about a recent statement by an Iranian military leader. When dealing with Iran, we need to remember a lesson many people in the west learned when dealing with Yasser Arafat when he was alive. Mr. Arafat would say one thing in English when talking to an audience of western countries and another thing in Arabic when dealing with Arabs. Generally speaking, the speeches totally contradicted each other.

The article reports:

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the country’s elite military force, is sending assets to infiltrate the United States and Europe at the direction of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to recent Farsi-language comments from an Iranian military leader.

The IRGC “will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,” according to the Iranian military commander, who said that these forces would operate with the goal of bolstering Iran’s hardline regime and thwarting potential plots against the Islamic Republic.

Notice that the comments were in the Farsi language. I would also like to know why the leader believes that there are plots against the Islamic Republic.

The article concludes:

Another source who advises congressional leaders on Iran sanctions issues told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration is blocking Congress from taking action to stop this type of infiltration by Iranian forces.

“Iran is ideologically, politically, and militarily committed to exporting the Islamic revolution through terrorism, which is why even the Obama administration says they’re the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism,” the source said. “Congress wants to act, but Obama officials keep saying that new laws are unnecessary because the U.S. has enough tools to block Iranian terror expansion. Instead of using those tools, though, they’re sending Iran billions of dollars in cash while Iran plants terror cells in Europe and here at home.”

As I have said, I think it’s time to clean house in Washington.

Sometimes You Have To Go Across The Pond To Find Out What Is Going On Here

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On Sunday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about the re-opening of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

The article reports the following:

James Comey‘s decision to revive the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server and her handling of classified material came after he could no longer resist mounting pressure by mutinous agents in the FBI, including some of his top deputies, according to a source close to the embattled FBI director.

‘The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,’ said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades, shares family outings with him, and accompanies him to Catholic mass every week.

…According to the source, Comey fretted over the problem for months and discussed it at great length with his wife, Patrice. 

He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents. The letters reminded him every day that morale in the FBI had hit rock bottom.

There is also another theory as to why the investigation was re-opened–we are still awaiting more emails from Wikileaks. It would be embarrassing (to say the least) if the Wikileaks emails made the case for charging Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information. It seems to me that based on Director Comey’s original statement, we already have that case, but having Wikileaks confirm it would further create the appearance of a compromised FBI.

The thing to remember here is that the person ultimately responsible for this mess is Hillary Clinton. The personal server was set up to avoid scrutiny of the symbiotic relationship between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s State Department. It has become obvious that President Obama and other officials sent emails to addresses on that server and were aware of it. The fact that the issue of the personal server was never confronted during Mrs. Clinton’s term as Secretary of State raises the question of complicity. That might explain why the Executive Branch of our government is having so much trouble getting to the truth of this matter.

All I Want Is An Honest Election

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Hot Air posted a story today about a problem in Florida with voter fraud.

The article reports:

By mid-October, Susan Halperin became concerned that she and her husband hadn’t received their absentee ballots in the mail.

So Lawrence Halperin called the Seminole County Supervisor of Elections Office to find out what was going on. He was stunned to learn their ballots had already been cast. Someone had stolen the Halperins’ ballots, faked their signatures and voted.

“He was just floored,” said Susan Halperin, a registered Democrat. “To think that someone would actually steal my ballot and fill it out is creepy.”

The Halperins, who live in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Altamonte Springs just south of State Road 436, weren’t the only victims. Supervisor of Elections Mike Ertel said they were among five voters in three homes in Spring Valley whose absentee ballots were stolen and then fraudulently submitted with votes cast by someone else.

Voter fraud is a problem. It was discovered in this instance because someone inquired about their absentee ballots. The article points out that local officials have found five instances of voter fraud in this area because of voter complaints. There is no general checking of absentee ballots, so officials really have no idea how many absentee ballots have been stolen.

The article concludes:

For a problem which I’m regularly assured doesn’t exist, it certainly does a good job of acting like it exists on a regular basis. Early voting leads to problems. A lack of voter ID leads to problems. And absentee ballots need to be monitored far more closely.

At this point, all I want is an honest election.