Voter intimidation by design not a crime - Eric Holder
According to Eric Holder, Attorney General for Mr Ogbjma, voter intimidation is okay as long as it's against any opposition to the party line, he said. The department of justice will not investigate any allegation of voter intimidation or fraud by black operatives.
Here's a good reason to vote for progressive democrats, right?
Surprise! Surprise! The Ogbjma administration is ignoring the law placing their political soldiers in plumb jobs so they can continue their party's agenda for a life time, throwing qualified veterans under the bus. Who knew!
To actually hire individuals that are qualified and veterans is not acceptable when a political hack can be placed in a top job to make sure they have people in place that can follow orders from party leaders when necessary.
And it doesn't come as a surprise that Mr Ogbjma and his people do not like the military and have for the last seven and half years decimated military programs by cutting the military budget by more then 25%. Bill Clinton did the same thing as he and Hillary have no fondness for the military as well.
Actually they hate the Constitutional military as they stand in the way of the progressives final solution for ultimate control. Remember Mr Ogbjma's solution to replace our military with what he called his ''Civil Defense Corp''. An armed domestic force similar to the regular military but responsible only to the president and him alone, that would be called up to keep order in domestic disputes.
Wonder no longer why Mr Ogbjma has a reason to keep military people out of his jihad for civil transformation of the population. Veterans understand when leadership is corrupted.
‘Clear Bias’ Against Hiring Veterans Under Obama Administration, Says Former VA Official Fred Lucas / @FredLucasWH /
Veterans must be given preference in securing federal jobs, according to long-standing laws, but hiring hasn’t always worked out in their favor. A federal audit found that on numerous occasions, agencies placed Obama administration political appointees into career government jobs with civil service protections—bypassing veterans.
Much of the federal bureaucracy has turned against men and women who served the country in the military, said Darin Selnick, a retired Air Force captain and former official at the Department of Veterans Affairs. “There is a clear bias against veterans. They think veterans should start at the bottom like everyone else,” Selnick told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “The government culture wants everyone to start from the bottom in government. But it’s not as if veterans never worked for the government. They worked for the Department of Defense.”
Selnick, the senior veterans affairs adviser for the advocacy group Concerned Veterans for America, was also the special assistant to the secretary of Veterans Affairs and the director for the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives during the George W. Bush administration, said the preference is most helpful for lower-level jobs. “The country realizes it has a debt,” Selnick said. “Without the military, we would be in terrible shape. They put their lives on the line and are willing to die.”
Under federal law, veterans who are disabled or served active duty get preference over other applicants on the condition they are qualified for the job. If a veteran scores 70 percent or higher on the civil service exam, the applicant will have an extra five to 10 points added to their rankings for the job. Some form of veterans’ preference for federal jobs has been in place since the Civil War, according to the Office of Personnel Management. This policy was established to help disabled veterans especially. Congress updated the law with the Veterans’ Preference Act of 1944 in the midst of World War II. President Franklin Roosevelt, in supporting the law, stated:
I believe that the federal government, functioning in its capacity as an employer, should take the lead in assuring those who are in the armed forces that, when they return, special consideration will be given to them in their efforts to get employment.
The post-Civil War law specified disabled veterans, recognizing that economic damage that could result from injuries in service to the country. After World War I, executive orders expanded preference to all honorably discharged war veterans. The World War II-era law largely codified existing executive orders. The Office of Personnel Management website states:
Recognizing their sacrifice, Congress enacted laws to prevent veterans seeking federal employment from being penalized for their time in military service. Veterans’ preference recognizes the economic loss suffered by citizens who have served their country in uniform, restores veterans to a favorable competitive position for government employment, and acknowledges the larger obligation owed to disabled veterans.
The Government Accountability Office reported last month that federal agencies didn’t follow procedures to avoid favoritism in hiring a quarter of President Barack Obama’s political appointees that transitioned into career positions. The report sampled the actions of 30 federal agencies in such “conversions” from Jan. 1, 2010, to Oct. 1, 2015. In cases with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Department of Health and Human Services, this meant bypassing past qualified veterans despite that statutory preference.
Unlike political appointees, federal workers in the civil service system are hired through a merit system, are difficult to fire, and carry over in changes of administrations, Republican or Democrat.
In 1883, Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act to replace a “spoils system” with a merit system of hiring. Under the merit system, employees would be specifically hired based on scores and tests rather than the preference of the political party in power. The new system also made it more difficult for a new administration to fire workers. Agencies and employees face consequences when procedures are not followed, said Office of Personnel Management spokesman Sandy Day.
“In such cases, [Office of Personnel Management] conducts a post-appointment review,” Day told The Daily Signal. “When we cannot conclude the hiring action was free from political influence, we require the agency to take corrective action and hold the agency accountable for carrying it out.”
If there was a violation, Day said, “The individual would either have to be placed back in his or her political position or, if that was not possible, have his or her employment terminated.”
Veterans’ preference has been scrutinized, even under Senate Armed Service Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., as the Senate voted to make changes in its version of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. Congress has since removed the changes from the bill. Defense Department officials reportedly pressed for the change in June, concerned that some of the senior positions weren’t going to the most experienced applicants.
The change would have limited veterans’ preference to “single use,” which means, it could only be used to get one job. So, veterans already working in government civilian jobs who are applying for higher positions, would not have preference. However, McCain scrapped the idea in October, after veteran groups objected. In a letter to the American Legion, McCain said, “Given your and others’ concerns, I will ensure that this provision, which is not included in the House bill, is not included in the NDAA conference report.”
“We appreciate Sen. McCain’s stalwart defense of an important benefit for all veterans who’ve served and sacrificed for their country,” American Legion National Commander Charles E. Schmidt said in a statement. “We look forward to working with the chairman to ensure the final NDAA properly protects this earned benefit.”
To suggest that there can be a debate on military spending increases with a progressive liberal is non-sense on it's face. First of all, there can be no debate on anything other then what the progressive social liberals want to spend money on, and your input is not required, needed or wanted. It's not about you, it's about them and only them.
This isn't about logic or common sense or anything that has to do national security as the bad actors increase their destruction across the world. This is about an ideology of transformation from individual freedom to chose, and it's force in our civil society to become a third world nation that believes we must all be more inclusive, tolerant and responsive to other cultures and religions.
Standing down our military is a great way for the progressives to prove to the larger world we are serious in our actions to change our past history of intervention where it wasn't needed or wanted.
It's beyond comprehension to believe one can debate the Syrian problem that has resulted in 500,000 dead and millions of refugees fleeing the conflict and the destruction of the entire country could have been prevented if we would have intervened at the outset as many said we should have.
But to discuss Mr Ogbjma's Iran deal which is assuring a middle east nuclear war and a middle east completely controlled by a terrorist nation let along the rise in Chinese aggression in the south China sea and North Korea moving to produce a missile that strike western nations, has nothing to do with a discussion or debate in a common sense way with facts boarders on the insane.
Progressive liberal democrats don't debate or discuss, they demand.
How to Talk About Defense Spending and ‘Rebuilding the Military’ Beverly Hallberg /@bevhallberg/
Hardly a day passes without one (or seven) news reports highlighting conflicts abroad. What this reality means for America and our safety under the current budget isn’t great.
As violence has increased, defense spending has decreased by about 25 percent since 2011. And now there is a legitimate question about whether slashing the budget has weakened our military as outlined in The Heritage Foundation’s 2016 Index of U.S. Military Strength. Most signs point to yes, just in time for a changing of the guard in the District of Columbia. This will be a major topic of discussion in the coming months as it involves our safety, the safety of our men and women in uniform, and a (potential) increase in cash money as a line item in an already bloated budget.
Here’s how to talk defense spending with someone who thinks the current level is more than sufficient.
Common Ground
Good news, the common ground is pretty easy to find. We can all agree that keeping America safe is priority No. 1. But also, it’d be great to equip our men and women in uniform with the resources they need to get the job done. Doing so will only better ensure our protection at home and theirs in combat. Sure, we can have a discussion about the rightness or wrongness of our involvement overseas, but that’s for another time. Once the decision has been made to deploy our men and women, it’s important they are properly trained and equipped.
Also, most people realize that the growing threats abroad are a problem. Mention Russia, North Korea, China, and most countries in the Middle East that are struggling with terrorism, and you’ll find agreement that these are scary times. Mission accomplished.
Examples
Though it’s important to establish common ground, the examples and statistics you provide will make or break your point. The naysayers will argue for a stripped-down military that reflects an isolationist perspective or that more funds be spent at home (domestic spending). The examples you choose should combat (pun intended) both perspectives.
To speak against the “we should be spending more on domestic issues” argument, first acknowledge that it’s a reasonable discussion to have. But then consider that the men and women who defend us every day shouldn’t be ill-equipped either. The unpreparedness of our military as a result of cuts to the budget are neatly outlined in this Daily Signal article. All five points are worth citing when making your case for an increase in defense spending, but here’s a preview:
1. “The Air Force is short 4,000 maintainers and more than 700 pilots today.” It doesn’t matter how many planes the Air Force has, or how modern they may be, if they can’t fly. Without qualified mechanics to maintain the aircraft and properly train pilots to fly them, the Air Force will struggle to accomplish its mission.
2. “In 2015 the Navy had a backlog of 11 planes in depot, next year in [20]17 they are going to have a backlog of 278.” Readiness levels for the entire fleet have fallen as the Navy’s maintenance crews are being asked to work longer hours with less funding. More planes in maintenance mean fewer are available to meet mission requirements.
3. “Marine Corps aviation requires on average 10 hours of flight time a month and they are getting about four.” Like any skill, practice is essential. Pilots without practice make more mistakes, which become deadly when flying complex aircraft, especially when in combat. The lives of Marines are at greater risk because of these funding cuts.
And what about the Army? This Daily Signal article covers it, but one shocking statistic to remember: “Years of budget cuts have rapidly shrunk the Army to a size unseen since before World War II.”
There is an inverse relationship between the rise in violence and the readiness of our military. Someone might try to argue that America is involved in wars it shouldn’t be, that “we can’t be the world’s policeman.” But again, pivot back to safety as our No. 1 concern. With increased violence, it seems foolish to continue weakening our defenses. We just want to be ready. We just want to be safe.
Words
The obvious choice is to drop “safety” throughout your conversation. It’s hard to deny anyone’s wish to be kept safe and it brings you back to that common ground established at the outset. And rather than an “increase in defense spending,” talk about “rebuilding our military” for the reasons outlined above. Money is a sensitive topic, and you’ll cite great examples and statistics to make your case for an increase in money spent, but refrain from explicitly talking about spending more money.
The bottom line? You can’t put a price on safety.
Defense spending is a tricky topic, but you’re not unprepared to address it. Have this discussion knowing that common ground will disarm, your examples will illustrate, and the words you use will help seal the deal.
Well done. Interesting insight to how immigrants from extreme environments assimilate and become productive members of the civil society. The only caveat of course is just how will this work out when the bad actors move into this society like they have in Minneapolis and St Paul Minnesota?
I'm sure many citizens are holding the breath waiting for the first signs of dissatisfaction within the Muslim community. Hopefully these working communities will be spared the systematic rot and destruction of Islamic religious demands.
How This Red State Is Grappling With Influx of Refugees Josh Siegel /@SiegelScribe/
Greg Haney is able to capture the change happening in the largest city of this small state better than most. Haney shoots school photographs for his father’s 39-year-old local company, chronicling increasingly diverse student bodies that span Fargo, North Dakota, and Moorhead, Minnesota, twin cities in bordering states separated only by the Red River.
Haney is a Republican-leaning, Breitbart-reading veteran of the Navy, born and raised in Moorhead, but residing since 2003 in a house he owns in Fargo. He came to appreciate cultural differences during his tours in the Navy, and he can just as easily translate “how are you” into Arabic as he can exclaim the uniquely folksy word “jeepers” in everyday conversation.
“This area seems to act together as cities and states first, and that goes to both sides of the river,” Haney, 43, tells The Daily Signal in a recent phone interview, adding:
We don’t concern ourselves as much with what the rest of the country is doing. So when I see refugees and immigrants coming to this area, I don’t get caught up in the rhetoric. I think of them as equals because they have the same freedoms I do. You have to live, you have to work, you bear children, and your child will have the same rights as mine.
Haney’s pictures serve as a lens through which to see the diversification happening over time here—and accelerating since the oil boom—in a place that is far from the nation’s borders, but intimately a part of the nationwide debate occurring over immigration—both legal and illegal—and refugees. From 2010 to 2014, North Dakota’s population of immigrants, including legal and illegal, increased at a larger percentage rate—45 percent—than any other state in the country.
Over the fiscal years 2014 and 2015, no other state took in more refugees per capita than North Dakota, with about 80 percent of those making their home in the state’s largest county, Cass, which includes the state’s most populous city, Fargo.
While the absolute number of immigrants and refugees moving to North Dakota—a state with less than 1 million residents—is far less than bigger, more traditionally diverse states such as California and Texas, the change occurring is significant. And, according to local officials, not by accident.
Though North Dakota has a long history of resettling refugees, the pace of that effort, and of immigration through other means, promises to increase in the coming years, especially in a city like Fargo that’s starving for workers to serve its booming job market. “In order for our economy to survive in the 21st century, we have to become a multidimensional city,” Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney says in an interview with The Daily Signal, ticking off job opportunities in health care, hospitality, and technology—including at Fargo’s Microsoft campus, the company’s second-largest hub in the country. “Millennials who are increasingly working in these jobs like to have a multicultural area that has differences in people,” Mahoney says. “We really need a diverse population to be more like a normal American city.”
Tensions Rise
During its transition to “normal,” Fargo has experienced tensions that have defined the national conversation, especially surrounding the issue of refugee resettlement.
North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple, a Republican, is one of more than half of the nation’s governors who have called for the Obama administration to halt the resettlement of refugees from war-torn Syria until the government improves vetting procedures to their liking. The state’s at-large member of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin Cramer, co-sponsored legislation that would give Congress final approval over the number of refugees the executive branch decides to resettle each year.
“To me, this is about good old Midwestern common sense,” Cramer tells The Daily Signal in an interview. “There are two main things we ought to be concerned about. One is the cost, and the fact that regardless of how compassionate states and local communities may be, the local residents don’t get a say in that. And the other concern is public safety. The congressman adds:
I am not advocating Fargo, and North Dakota, stop taking refugees. By and large refugee resettlement has been a real success story here. But as the demand grows, we should be more diligent, and someone in government ought to have something to say about the numbers.
Meanwhile, more than 3,000 people have signed on to a Change.org petition asking for a moratorium on refugee resettlement to Fargo. And a Fargo city councilman, Dave Piepkorn, has demanded the city’s leaders reveal the financial cost of resettling refugees.
Piepkorn, in an interview with The Daily Signal, declares himself a supporter of robust immigration and a product of immigrant grandparents from Norway. But he says he’s worried that terrorists will try to infiltrate the nation’s refugee resettlement system. Piepkorn notes that a 20-year-old Somali man suspected in a September stabbing attack at a mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, originally settled in Fargo with his family in the mid-1990s before they moved to Minnesota. He says elected officials—and local taxpayers—like himself should have a say in determining the city’s commitment to resettling refugees. “We have a shortage of workers, and from that side we love having immigrants come here,” Piepkorn says, adding:
The majority are very productive and help out the city. But as a fiscally conservative commissioner, my job is to make sure the city is spending its money carefully. We want to know how much [refugee resettlement] costs us, and it should be up to us, as elected officials, to determine who is coming. To have us not know what is going on here is unacceptable.
‘Being There for Your Neighbor’
A nonprofit faith group, Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, is the driver of the state’s rich legacy of helping refugees. Assisting foreign-born individuals escaping persecution is only a part of the mission of this “social ministry,” which also helps locals find affordable housing and assists in providing services from disaster recovery to therapy.
Yet the refugee component of its work has drawn the most attention, especially because Lutheran Social Services is the only resettlement agency in North Dakota. Working with national volunteer agencies, the ministry determines the capacity of North Dakota and its cities to absorb refugees.
Jessica Thomasson, the CEO of Lutheran Social Services, says her organization’s outreach to refugees is born from generosity, and an understanding that North Dakota, especially Fargo, has the infrastructure—jobs, family ties, and a diverse Muslim population—to accommodate immigrants and be a place where they can thrive.
“Certainty we live in a complicated time, and there’s a lot of information to take in nationally and around the world that is causing a lot of people to self-examine and ask questions,” Thomasson tells The Daily Signal in an interview. “But I really believe helping people in need, and being there for your neighbor, are American values and part of who we are as a country.” Thomasson says North Dakota’s dedication to assisting refugees is nothing new, and its success in integrating them into wider society is relatively seamless. She says her nonprofit aims to resettle about 450 refugees annually, but that number has neared 500 in recent years. Since January 2002, a total of 3,677 refugees have come to live in Fargo as of Oct. 6, most of them from Bhutan, a small Buddhist kingdom in South Asia.
Fargo also has resettled large numbers of refugees from Somalia and Iraq, two countries plagued by terrorism. Thomasson says only one Syrian family has found refuge in North Dakota, but she expects more to come from that Middle East country as the war there continues.
About 90 percent of refugees arriving in North Dakota already have family living in the state, Thomasson says, providing a support structure that helps fulfill the ultimate goal of her agency—to facilitate self-sufficiency.
Lutheran Social Services distributes two forms of grant money from the federal government to refugees in North Dakota. Each individual refugee gets a one-time startup grant of $1,125 to fund initial needs such as a deposit for housing, clothing, kitchen supplies, and furniture. The refugees, for a maximum of eight months, also receive monthly cash assistance—$335 for an individual or $685 per four-person family. Once a refugee finds work and can cover expenses, the monthly payments stop, even if that occurs in less than eight months. Thomasson says most refugees in North Dakota can support themselves after three to four months.
Refugees emigrate to the U.S. with varying skill sets, and North Dakota’s economy caters to both the low- and high-skilled ends of the spectrum. Thomasson says refugees tend to work in the hospitality, restaurant, retail, and manufacturing industries. A June 2015 study conducted by TIP Strategies and cited by city staff found that the number of new jobs in the Fargo-Moorhead region increased by 24 percent from 2004 to 2014. The region has more than 5,000 job openings, and is projected to have more than 30,000 in the next five years.
Opportunities exist for whoever wants to work hard, city officials say, no matter if they are native- or foreign-born. In fact, international migration to Fargo—and wider North Dakota—pales in comparison to domestic immigration. The trend accelerated in 2008 as part of the oil boom, when people from other states arrived to work in that industry and in supporting jobs in hospitality, homebuilding, and food services.
Kevin Iverson, manager of North Dakota’s Census Office, says 1 in 6 jobs in 2014 were held by people from other states—or countries. “The reality is people come to North Dakota for work,” Iverson says in an interview with The Daily Signal. “The motivating factors to be here are the right ones.”
A Refugee’s Story
Maryam Mohammed, a recent arrival in Fargo-Moorhead from Iraqi Kurdistan, is eager for her piece of the American dream. In February, Mohammed, 23, was the first in her immediate family to arrive as a refugee, leaving behind her parents and four younger brothers, who are awaiting action on their own applications. Though Mohammed was not directly threatened by terrorists of the Islamic State, or ISIS, in the city of Zakho where she lived, she says their destruction wasn’t far away, and she personally knew some of their victims. Home also offered few job opportunities for a young woman like herself.
So Mohammed lives in the Fargo-Moorhead area with an aunt. Her father’s sister moved there with her husband and children as refugees from Iraqi Kurdistan 18 years ago. Mohammed speaks with The Daily Signal in her native Kurdish language through a translator, her 22-year-old first cousin Fatima Amedi.
Amedi is an American citizen and has known Fargo-Moorhead to be her home since she was 3 years old. She is trying to assist Mohammed in navigating all that is new—helping her cousin to purchase a winter coat for the first time, to appreciate the pop music of Adele, and to apply for jobs.
Mohammed, who graduated high school before leaving Iraq, aspires to be a teacher. For now, while she takes English classes, she figures she can work at Wal-Mart, stocking shelves in the back until she has the skills to interact with customers. She has applied to work there but has not heard back.
“I don’t think refugees should be seen as different than anybody else,” Mohammed says. “They come here to make a better life for themselves. They don’t cheat. They just try to make an honest living like anybody else.”
If Mohammed got the Wal-Mart job, or one similar to it, she would be following the path of Amedi, who worked her way up to become a manager of a grocery store and no longer endures curious comments about the hijab she wears over her hair.
‘We Have the Same Problems’
To adjust to a new culture and city—Mohammed had never heard of Moorhead before she arrived there—she relies on things that make her comfortable, like her Muslim faith.
Mohammed, staying with her aunt, and Amedi, married and residing with her husband, live in Moorhead but spend much of their time across the Minnesota border in Fargo. There they find the familiar in the region’s only mosque, the Islamic Center of Fargo-Moorhead. Mohammed is teaching Sunday school there, among many worshipers who came to the region as refugees from different parts of the world. “It’s nice to know I am not alone,” Mohammed says.
Dr. Mohammed Sanaullah is one of the mosque’s trustees. A physician and American citizen living in Fargo who emigrated to America from India 13 years ago, Sanaullah seeks to help refugees like Mohammed reconcile their dedication to faith with their new culture.
Sanaullah, in an interview with The Daily Signal, says of the 4,000 to 5,000 Muslims who attend his mosque, the majority arrived in the region as refugees. He acknowledges some of the local skepticism about new arrivals from overseas, and says the mosque is hosting more interfaith events, so people of other religions can learn about Islam and interact with refugees. “We have the same problems like any other church or community would have,” Sanaullah says. “The same problems affect our children, like them getting too much into video games, and we worry about maintaining our family values.” He adds:
What we are telling people who attend the mosque is, city leadership is on our side, the police is on our side, and if you work harder, and do what you are doing better, that will reflect on you and your boss will say, ‘Thank God we took in a refugee.’ People will see you for your value and your work and appreciate you for that. You can live the American dream—even in a small town like Fargo, North Dakota.
Everything is okay, nothing to see here says the federal government. Really? Just remember the saying that should scare the hell out of anyone that comes to your door and says, ''I'm from the federal government and I'm here to help''.
Goodness! The Ogbjma administration says it's the Russians that are hacking into our systems, but there isn't any real proof, just a statement from Mr Ogbjma and his people behind the curtain pulling the levers. What reason do we have to believe anything Mr Ogbjma says?
The question is why should we believe anything the comes from the Ogbjma administration that has lied to the population on everything, not just the routine things about government corruption, but everything and anything to deflect and deceive the people on what they are actually doing.
Our nations is at risk now from foreign powers and from our own government that seeks to bring chaos and disruption to the civil society. The progressives know how to use the system to their advantage, divide the people into warring camps ensures victory. Divide and conquer.
Is our voting system secure remains to be seen. But given the history of the Ogbjma administration, the media and the democrat collective to deceive and lie, we will probably never know the full extent of just how corrupt the system really is.
Remember as well how the IRS, the DOJ and the FBI and many other agencies and federal departments all worked together before the 2012 election to ensure victory for the progressives socialist democrats!
What Recent Hacking Attack Reveals About Election Security Josh Siegel /@SiegelScribe/
A hacking attack last Friday that disrupted major U.S. websites is an example of a new era of cybersecurity vulnerability in today’s interconnected world. The Oct. 21 cyberattack also furthered anxiety about the integrity of next month’s election, which has already been fraught with controversy over voting rights, and foreign interference.
While the attack alarmed—but did not surprise—cybersecurity observers who have been sounding alarms about the potential for the internet’s infrastructure to be harmed, these experts say the election system is largely secure from the threat of hacking. “I have heard a few people worry that this is a practice run for Election Day or around Election Day to gum up networks and mess it up, but as far as election equipment being vulnerable, I don’t see that being too big of a deal,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall of the Center for Democracy & Technology. “Luckily, we do not attach that stuff to the public internet.”
Hall, in an interview with The Daily Signal, said the U.S. election system is unique in a few ways.
The system is decentralized, meaning state, county, and local governments all manage their own voting—so everything isn’t connected. Many precincts use traditional voting machines, but they are not connected to the internet or with each other. “An attack against election systems would have to individually target many different systems, which limits the ability to mount large-scale damage,” said Susan Hennessey, a cybersecurity expert at the Brookings Institution, in response to emailed questions from The Daily Signal.
Though hackers will struggle to manipulate actual voting results, Hall warns that bad actors could disrupt Election Day—and throw off voters—by hacking into websites listing the locations and hours of polling places, and changing the listed information. Many registration databases—serving as a way for voters to register or check their status—are also connected to the internet.
The government has reported that hackers have targeted the voting registration systems of more than 20 states in recent months, including in Arizona and Illinois, but those systems have nothing to do with vote casting or counting. “If anything, I would worry about disruption or chaos rather than something that actually is affecting votes or attacking the election infrastructure,” Hall said.
Still, during an election season in which the Obama administration has accused Russia of hacking U.S. political organizations, the government is taking extra precautions to secure the voting process.
The Department of Homeland Security has assigned more than 100 specialists around the country to help state and local election officials maintain their voting systems. According to Bloomberg Politics, 42 states and 29 county or local election agencies have sought cybersecurity assistance from the federal government.
Despite the confidence from the government and cybersecurity experts that Election Day will go on unscathed, observers acknowledge the broader danger of cyberattacks—specifically targeting the internet—is increasingly urgent. The Oct. 21 attack involved the hacking of a company, Dyn, whose servers monitor and reroute internet traffic.
Companies like Dyn host the core parts of the internet’s infrastructure, so websites that connect to it like Twitter, Netflix, Airbnb, and Reddit were affected by the attack, and saw their websites slowed or inaccessible for periods of time in certain areas.
Because more and more devices, such as security cameras, are connected to the internet, experts say the chance of this type of centralized hacking—known as a distributed denial of service attack—is especially great. “We’ve known about the possibility of DDoS attacks for a long time, so the episode this weekend was more a question of scale than a new threat,” Hennessey said. “The attack was targeted against a single entity on which many different websites rely, so the centralization amplified the consequences of the threat.”
Hall and Hennessey say it’s important to reassure citizens of the integrity of the U.S. election system.
“My biggest concern is any activity which could cause citizens to doubt the outcome of an election,” Hennessey said. “We know it is highly unlikely that any kind of hacking or attack could alter vote counts or the outcome of an election. But the mere fact of confirmed nation state intrusions have caused a level of anxiety regarding trust in the outcome. That is deeply troubling in a democracy.”
But they say the new threat of internet attacks is real, and will carry impact beyond Election Day.
“This is a brave new world and it’s kind of scary,” Hall said.
It would take one of those ''a suspension of disbelief '' Clintons statements to describe a Republican controlled Senate that wouldn't vote to approve a progressive socialist liberal as the ninth member of the Supreme Court.
The progressive socialist liberal democrats know, without a doubt, there are enough Republicans willing to fold in the end and vote to approve a socialist liberal just to avoid the acknowledged media harassment and intimidation that they will have to suffer for abstaining or voting to deny a socialist liberal to the high court.
The dark history of Republicans voting to avoid controversy for standing on the Conservative principle of believing the Constitution is actually the law of the land is remarkably embarrassing and foreboding. Given how important it is to have a court that believes in Constitutional law rather then progressive socialists making up the law as needed to support their personal ideology, it leaves little to the imagination as to just how dysfunctional our justice system will be in the future, to say nothing about how bad it already is.
Then to, Breyer is no fool as a progressive jurist. He knows more then 70% of federal judges are progressive socialists, and any high court decisions that end in a 4-4 tie will leave the lower court decision stand. A win-win situation for the socialists.
A vote to seat a progressive socialist liberal democrat to the court will be disastrous to the nations well being, destructive to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and creating a risk to national security.
This Liberal Justice Isn’t Concerned About an 8-Member Supreme Court Rachel del Guidice /@LRacheldG/
One of the U.S. Supreme Court’s liberal justices says an evenly divided court is functioning just fine—and would continue to do so if it faced another Bush v. Gore case. “The court, when it began at the time of the Constitution’s writing, had six members. They had six members for several years,” said Justice Stephen Breyer in an interview on MSNBC. “They had 10 members for several years after the Civil War. They functioned with an even number of members.”
The court currently has eight sitting justices following the death of Antonin Scalia in February. Senate Republicans have not held hearings for President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, currently a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
When asked what a case like Bush v. Gore might mean for an evenly split court, Breyer said he preferred not to talk about hypotheticals but also dismissed any potential adverse effects. Bush v. Gore was decided in 2000 in a 5-4 decision.
“Half of our cases are unanimous,” Breyer said. “The 5-4 cases are probably 20 percent, and it isn’t the same five and the same four.” Breyer added that even when a decision is unanimous, it is still significant for the court. “I would say that a lot of those unanimous cases are also very important,” Breyer said.
In regard to the functioning of the court, Breyer said that it is business as usual. “When a case comes to the court, people file a brief, they write briefs, we read them, we have oral arguments, and we make up our minds,” Breyer said. He emphasized that proceedings would remain the same.
“The inside story of a court is normally no inside story. What you see is what you get,” Breyer said.
The Heritage Foundation’s John Malcolm was wary about what a high-profile case such as Bush v. Gore might mean for the eight-member court. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Malcolm said. “Justice Breyer is correct that only 20 percent, roughly, of the cases that come before the Supreme Court end up in 5-4 decisions, but it would certainly be bad for the country if a case involving a national election became one of those cases.” “We have been down that road before, and it was an extremely bumpy ride,” added Malcolm, who is the director of Heritage’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and the Ed Gilbertson and Sherry Lindberg Gilbertson senior legal fellow.
Breyer isn’t the first sitting justice to weigh in on the court’s current makeup of eight justices.
Justice Samuel Alito had a similar outlook in February. “We will deal with it,” Alito told an audience at Georgetown University Law Center.
But not all justices are alike in their thinking. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in August that eight justices “was not good enough” for the court to make rulings on several cases, including a stalemate on Obama’s contentious immigration plan. “When we are evenly divided, it is equivalent to denying review,” Ginsburg said. “There were important issues in these four cases that we were unable to decide, and they will come back again and one of them was the president’s immigration policy.”
The U.S. Constitution does not specify the number of justices for the court, and two Republican senators have recently suggested the vacancy could remain even after a new president takes office.
As this week progresses into something resembling a dumpster fire, I can't help wonder how things have gotten so bad? But then I realize that maybe this is just the 'new normal' that the progressives socialist talk about where life as we knew it just 8 years ago is no longer are a viable solution to the demands for solving todays problems. crowded
But what's the most troubling is so many among us have no clue how things work in the real world and don't care to find out.
As the election comes nearer, and the person that has no idea what it takes for earn a dollar, all they know is how to steal dollars , a lot of dollars. As a result corporations and business of all sizes will have to make adjustments in their inventory and personal to stay profitable. This is one way to start by cutting corners. Start at the top.
I wonder what Comey did to anger the progressive socialist liberal democrats that he was able to sell his soul and compromise the integrity of a stellar organization like the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI)?
Worse, it appeared it wasn't difficult. Maybe he never was an incorruptible person. Maybe for years he was the inside guy for the socialist democrats waiting to be called to duty?
And how is it that so many believed he was or couldn't be compromised? No one ever knew for years he was just a good soldier?
But why do the courts and many legislators believe it is a good thing to give instate tution to illegals? And why do so many in the justice system believe everyone is eligible to tap into taxpayer dollars?
Can we believe that those in the legislative bodies truly represent the peoples wishes for granting privileges to illegal immigrants that are not available to citizens?
Can the people of California be that unaware, uninformed or much worse to not understand that unearned privileges soon become rights? Justice? What justice!! There is no justice in California, or for that matter where ever progressive liberals are in control.
The next front in the battle over in-state tuition rates for illegal immigrants will play out in a California appeals court on Nov. 3 in a lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch on behalf of California resident and taxpayer Earl De Vries.
The issue there is not whether the California Legislature can authorize in-state tuition to illegal immigrants—courts have held that they can—but whether the University of California Board of Regents, an independent body from the state Legislature, can lawfully authorize in-state tuition for illegal immigrants at all University of California campuses in direct violation of federal law.
As we wrote a few years ago, states violate federal law (8 U.S.C. § 1623) if they give illegal immigrants in-state tuition yet refuse to give the same break to students from other states.
That provision, which is in Section 505 of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, prohibits state colleges and universities from providing in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants “on the basis of residence within the state” unless the same in-state rates are offered to all citizens of the United States.
But that hasn’t stopped many states or the courts that have ruled in their favor and against some parents and their college-bound children who object to the states using their hard-earned tax dollars to subsidize the college education of illegal immigrants.
Courts’ Legal Gymnastics
To get around the “residence within the state” language, states “maneuver around the [§1623] requirements … [and] have worded the legislation so that it is contingent on high school attendance and graduation, and not based on residency within the state,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. How, you ask, does someone attend a high school and/or graduate from a high school yet not be a “resident” of the state? The courts have engaged in legal gymnastics to get to their desired policy outcome and avoid enforcing this federal requirement.
Other courts have simply found that Section 1623 does not create a private right of action. For example, in Day v. Bond, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit brought by nonresident citizen university students and their parents against the state of Kansas. The court held that Section 1623 does not create a private right of action and the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring an equal protection claim. We highlighted other cases that ruled against taxpayers and the intent behind Section 1623 in a Heritage Foundation study here. We encouraged Congress to include a private right of action in subsequent legislation to give taxpayers from other states the standing to sue. That didn’t happen.
We encouraged the U.S. Department of Justice, where we both formerly worked, to sue states that were brazenly violating Section 1632 since only the Justice Department can supposedly enforce this requirement of federal law. That didn’t happen either since the Obama administration has no interest in enforcing federal immigration law.
What’s Different About This Lawsuit
The litigation this November involves another section of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, Section 1621. That federal immigration law makes illegal immigrants eligible for state or local public benefits “only through the enactment of a state law … which affirmatively provides for such eligibility.” (8 U.S.C. § 1621(d)).
The California Legislature passed three laws extending college-related public benefits to unlawfully present immigrants: AB 540 (in-state tuition benefits), AB 131 (state-administered financial aid benefits), and SB 1210 (student loan benefits). But there is a twist, which is at the core of the pending lawsuit. The three state statutes apply only to unlawfully present immigrants attending California State Universities and California Community Colleges.
Why not University of California students?
Because under the California Constitution (Article IX, Section 9(a)), the regents of the University of California are “subject only to such legislative control as may be necessary to insure the security of its funds and compliance with the terms of the endowments of the university … ” In other words, according to the lawsuit, the regents are “not subject to legislative control except on the limited matters of insolvency, endowment, and the awarding of contracts, none of which are relevant to this lawsuit.”
Earl De Vries, the plaintiff in this lawsuit, is a resident and taxpayer in the state of California. He claims that the regents are spending his tax dollars in violation of federal law, specifically Section 1621. As the appellant’s opening brief states, “No state law affirmatively provides unlawfully present aliens enrolled at UC [University of California] schools with eligibility for the benefits at issue, and yet UC’s Board of Regents is providing these benefits to the students.”
But of course that did not stop the regents from doing what they wanted to do. They adopted Policy 3106.1.C, which, according to page 4 of the brief, “purportedly [makes] unlawfully present aliens attending UC [University of California] schools eligible to apply for and receive the same in-state tuition benefits that AB 540 extends to CSU [California State University] and CCC [California Community College] students.” And at the time of the lawsuit, the “regents are now illegally providing all three public benefits (in-state tuition, financial aid, and student loans) to unlawfully present aliens attending UC schools.”
The Fiscal Consequences of California’s Current Policy
The fiscal ramifications of these actions are staggering. According to the University of California website, the system includes more than 238,000 students and more than 190,000 faculty and staff.
In comparison, the California State University system includes 23 campuses and educates approximately 474,000 students every year. And the California Community College system is the largest system of higher education in the nation according to its website, with 2.1 million students attending 113 colleges.
We don’t know, based on available data, how many illegal (or “unlawfully present,” which is the euphemism used in the lawsuit) immigrants are attending any of the three California systems, or, of those, how many have applied for in-state tuition, financial aid, or student loans. But given that California has the largest population of illegal immigrants of any state in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, there is no question that taxpayers like De Vries are paying a very large amount of money due to the illegitimate actions of the University of California regents.
What is clear is that this case turns on the proper construction of the statutory language of 8 U.S.C. 1621(d), which is unequivocal and unambiguous. The state Legislature did not authorize college-related public benefits for illegal immigrants in the University of California system.
Indeed, the Legislature could not do so, given the unique, constitutionally independent role the University of California regents play in the state. And since the regents are not a legislative body capable of enacting state law, they do not have the constitutional or legal authority to provide benefits to “unlawfully present” immigrants, and federal law prohibits such benefits being extended to illegal immigrants absent a legislative body’s affirmative act.
The regents argue that their policies alone are sufficient to provide such benefits and that the California state Assembly “invited” the regents to provide the benefits. They also claim that Section 1621 violates principles of federalism. They argue that their policies are consistent with the holding in the California Supreme Court decision in Martinez v. Regents of the University of California.
We criticized the Martinez decision here, but note, in this context, that Martinez only held that the state Assembly could provide benefits to illegal immigrants attending California State University and California Community College schools, not University of California students. De Vries’ reply brief effectively dismantles each and every one of the regents’ arguments and shows how and why they lack merit.
This should not be a challenging case for an appeals court to decide if it simply applies the plain text of a federal statute as it is written. But, of course, the problem is that applying this unambiguous federal restriction to the undisputed facts of the case would negate the politically correct policy implemented by the University of California regents: providing in-state tuition for illegal immigrants at the expense of California taxpayers.
Unfortunately, we know that some California courts are filled with liberal, activist judges who are willing to rewrite, change, or otherwise ignore laws they don’t like or agree with, as happened in the Martinez case. There, the California Supreme Court ignored the similarly straightforward, unambiguous text of Section 1623 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. It held that California did not have to extend in-state tuition benefits to students from other states as required in Section 1623 even though it was now providing in-state tuition to illegal immigrants attending California State and California Community College schools.
The Martinez case was an out-and-out, unapologetic refusal by a court to enforce federal law by adopting a series of illogical legal arguments that defied common sense. Hopefully, the appeals court in the De Vries case will not indulge in the same type of legal chicanery.
I'm an American citizen and I love this country that has given me everything. I believe that America is the last hope in this world for Democracy and Freedom. She must be defended at all costs!
