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Park-View-School-UK

Park View School in Birmingham (Photo: JOE GIDDENS/PA)

(July 30, 2015 Birmingham, UK) — On July 26, the Telegraph made the public aware that teachers who had been banned from interacting with students as a result of the Trojan Horse investigation into Birmingham schools in England, are now back teaching. This act of “emboldened rebellion” to return to the way things were occurred one month after a very public visit by Sharik Raif, the U.S. State Department Envoy to Muslim Communities on June 29.

According to Emma McKinney of the Birmingham Mail in the UK, “Shaarik Zafar, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s special representative to Muslim Communities, met with pupils and staff at Park View – one of the five schools plunged in special measures by education watchdog Ofsted.” The Ofstead investigation of April 2014, revealed that there was indeed an infiltration in Birmingham schools. The BBC published some of the most notorious actions happening at the schools, when the report was released June 2014.

  • An organized campaign to alter “character and ethos” of school. The breakdown of trust between governors and staff, with teachers “bullied” and “intimidated” and fearing loss of their jobs
  • Female staff complaining of unfair treatment
  • Family members being appointed to unadvertised senior leadership posts
  • The phrase “white prostitute” being used in class assemblies
  • Private investigators being hired to check staff email
  • A teacher who was so afraid that a meeting had to be arranged in supermarket car park[1]

In addition to this review the United Kingdom’s Educational Funding Agency completed a review of Park View, which it published on June 9, 2014. The review specifically noted the following at Park View School:

  1. “It is not faith designated, but has an apparent Islamic focus and collective acts of worship are delivered at Park View School…”
  2. “Some elements of the curriculum, including the social, moral, spiritual and cultural provision at Park View School … are restricted to a conservative Islamic perspective.”
  3. “An inappropriate external speaker has been allowed to address students at the school. Sheikh Shady Al-Suleiman has spoken at the school (on 28 November 2013) and he is known to have previously extolled extremist views. Staff advised us in interview that external speakers are regularly invited into Park View School and this is aimed at developing pupils as individuals rather than promoting any particular view. Staff also said that external visitors are invited based on the needs of the students and gave the police as an example of this.”

One month after Shaarik Zafar’s visit to the “poster child school” for the attempted Islamic take over of public education in the United Kingdom, the new principal of Park View School, Waheed Saleem, was said to have “denied there were any problems in Birmingham’s schools, stating that extremism ‘didn’t exist’.”

Mr. Saleem announced his resignation after the Telegraph contacted him about reinstating the previously banned teachers. However, Mr. Saleem did not resign, he was replaced by Fuzel Choudhury as far back as June 25th according to Sophie Scott of Schools Week.

The two teachers who had been banned had taken an active part in the “Park View Brotherhood” a group supervised by the previous principal which served as a “hardline private online discussion group where thousands of extremist bigoted and anti-Western messages were exchanged.” The Mirror reported that Mr. Clarke, the counter-terrorism expert assigned to investigate the “Trojan Horse Scandal” had surmised:

“The only possible conclusion” from an analysis of the participants in “particularly inappropriate” discussions “is that intolerant attitudes are deeply embedded within a significant number of staff at the Park View Educational Trust”.

The only sensible and appropriate conclusion is that Mr Hussain and his associates who display such intolerant attitudes are not representative of the communities whose children they teach.

Mr Hussain confirmed that he set up the forum but said the purpose was solely to discuss items that could be included in school assemblies.

The two teachers returned to teaching are Shakeed Akhtar, the Assistant Principal of Park View, and Saqib Malik, the Director of Student Progress. According to the Telegraph, ten teachers await disqualification hearings at the National College of Teaching and Leadership. Those 10 teachers have received payments totaling £300,000 — the equivalent of $467,557.25 — which works out to roughly $46,755 per person for NOT teaching for an entire year!

Park View School has one saving grace that it may have learned from Shaarik Zafar, the U.S. State Department Envoy to Muslim Communities – it is changing its name to Rockwood. This is a standard ploy in the U.S. public schools when one fails. It is “reorganized and renamed,” along with a new principal. Park View’s new principal was planned before.

[1] Coughlan, S. (2014, June 9). Trojan Horse: Ofsted says schools were targeted. Retrieved July 1, 2015, from BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/education-27763113

[mybooktable book=”civilization-jihad-and-the-myth-of-moderate-islam” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Teachers who had been banned from interacting

Video

[brid video=”12471″ player=”1929″ title=”Planned Parenthood VP Caught Negotiating Baby Body Parts Sale”]

New undercover video shows Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains’ Vice President and Medical Director, Dr. Savita Ginde, negotiating a fetal body parts deal, agreeing multiple times to illicit pricing per body part harvested, and suggesting ways to avoid legal consequences. The video, the latest in a string of videos exposing PPFA and others, comes as Los Angeles Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order blocking the release of further videos revealing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in aborted baby body parts.

“Sometimes, if we get, if someone delivers before we get to see them for a procedure, then we are intact,” Dr. Savita Ginde said to actors posing as representatives from a human biologics company, who were meeting with Ginde at the abortion-clinic headquarters of PPRM in Denver to discuss a potential partnership to harvest fetal organs. “We’d have to do a little bit of training with the providers or something to make sure that they don’t crush.”

Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM) is a well-funded, multi-state Planned Parenthood affiliate that performs more than 10,000 abortions each year. PPRM has a contract to supply aborted fetal tissue to Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

“I think a per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it,” Ginde says in the video after agreeing that “compensation could be specific to the specimen?”

The order issued Tuesday prohibits the Center for Medical Progress from releasing any video of three high-ranking StemExpress officials taken at a restaurant in May. The judges ruling is the first legal action prohibiting the release of a video from the organization, which has said there will be a grand total of 12 videos released.

“Elected officials need to listen to the public outcry for an immediate moratorium on Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding while the 10 state investigations and 3 Congressional committees determine the full extent of Planned Parenthood’s sale of baby parts.” David Daleiden, the Center for Medical Progress project lead said. “Planned Parenthood’s recent call for the NIH to convene an expert panel to ‘study’ fetal experimentation is absurd after suggestions from Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Ginde that ‘research’ can be used as a catch-all to cover-up baby parts sales.”

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has ordered an investigation into Planned Parenthood following the release of a third grizzly video revealing their traffic in aborted baby body parts. Scott, a Republican, said Wednesday the state will take quick legal and regulatory action if any of the 16 facilities in Florida are found in violation of the law. Scott’s decision means the Sunshine State joins seven other state governments — as well as three House committees — currently investigating the largest abortion provider in the nation.

“Putting it under ‘research’ gives us a little bit of an overhang over the whole thing,” Ginde says regarding ways PPFA conspires to skirt the law and avoid public outrage. “If you have someone in a really anti state who’s going to be doing this for you, they’re probably going to get caught.”

Ginde reveals that PPRM’s lawyer, Kevin Paul, is helping the affiliate skirt under the fetal tissue law.

“He’s got it figured out that he knows that even if, because we talked to him in the beginning, you know, we were like, ‘We don’t want to get called on,’ you know, ‘selling fetal parts across states,'” Ginde says. When the believed-to-be buyers ask, “And you feel confident that they’re building those layers?” Ginde replies, “I’m confident that our Legal will make sure we’re not put in that situation.”

At one point in the video, the buyers and Planned Parenthood workers are working to identify body parts from the last fetus in the path lab when a Planned Parenthood medical assistant declares: “Another boy!”

Last Friday, Sen. Paul fast-tracked his defund Planned Parenthood legislation by invoking Rule 14, which resulted in a Senate vote next week. Rule 14 allows the legislation to “skip the committee process and be placed on the Senate calendar so it can be brought up for a floor vote.

The Center for Medical Progress has released three undercover videos revealing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in aborted baby body parts and fetal tissue. Using ultrasound guidance to manipulate the fetus from vertex to breech orientation before intact extraction is the hallmark of the illegal partial-birth abortion procedure (18 U.S.C. 1531), according to the Center for Medical Progress. But it also happens to be illegal. Further, the sale or purchase of human fetal tissue is a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000 (42 U.S.C. 289g-2).

According to its 2013-2014 annual report, Planned Parenthood received $528.4 million dollars in taxpayer federal funding for the year ending June 30, 2014. During the same year, the organization performed 327,653 abortions, which they have repeatedly claimed does not result in the harvest of body parts for sale or other illegal use. In fact, when they were first caught harvesting baby body parts 15 years ago, Planned Parenthood claimed it was the action of a rogue affiliate, or franchise-like location.

“The biggest problem is bad actors like Planned Parenthood who hold themselves above the law in order to harvest and make money off of aborted fetal brains, hearts, and livers,” Daleidan said.

New undercover video shows Planned Parenthood of

Economy

GDP-Shipping-Cranes-Trade-Portland-Oregon

File photo: Shipping-cranes-in move containers at a port in Portland, Oregon. (Photo: REUTERS)

Each time the government changes GDP calculation methods, it alters the data that should in reality show a recession. The Commerce Department said Thursday that U.S. economic growth bounced back in the second quarter to bring gross domestic product (GDP) to a 2.3 percent annual rate.

The report cited strong consumer spending as the offset to the drag from weak business spending on equipment. First-quarter GDP, previously reported to have shrunk at a 0.2 percent pace, was revised up to show it rising at a 0.6 percent rate. The data could bring the Federal Reserve closer to hiking interest rates this year, largely believed to be in September.

Don’t believe it for a second.

In a blog post published in May, which PPD and very few others covered, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced a number of “alterations” it planned to make in seasonally adjusting data used to calculate economic growth. These changes, which were implemented with the release of the initial second-quarter GDP estimate Thursday, on July 30, were pushed by the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank to mask a potential recession in light of first-quarter contraction.

They argued the so-called seasonal adjustment is leaving “residual” seasonality, which didn’t factor leftover biases that exist within its current methodology. However, the agency has always adjusted its figures for seasonal variations, as growth in any given first quarter tends to be weaker than in the remaining three. Of course, this is not a new argument, nor was it ever intended to be used to continuously alter how the government calculates GDP.

That is, until the Obama administration.

The revision marks the second time the government has changed the previously long-standing methodology. In July 2013, the U.S. government made a significant change in the gross investment number (I), which now includes research and development (R&D) spending, art, music, film royalties, books and theatre. In the entertainment industry, for instance, much of those numbers are expected projections, such as how much they believe a movie will make at the Box Office.

This change in the method to gauge GDP — or, rewriting the GDP number — was first implemented by the United States, and India was quick to express an interest. Yet, unlike the U.S., India has made a reasonable case for revising their long-plagued methodologies. In the U.S., changing the method to boost investment measures has no real benefit to the truth and no other purpose but to make “GDP growth happy,” as Bloomberg correctly critiqued. Let’s take a look at the government’s claims.

The alleged growth in the second quarter was fueled by Americans reversing their savings rate trend. Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, supposedly grew at a 2.9 percent rate from a downwardly revised 1.8 percent pace in the first quarter. Consumer spending was previously reported to have increased at a 2.1 percent rate at the start of the year.

So how is GDP really calculated?

GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports), or

GDP = C + I + G + (X – M)

Yet, despite the government’s rosy outlook, surveys on consumer spending and sentiment leading up to the report simply do not comport with their claims. Thomson Reuters and the University of Michigan said their gauge on consumer sentiment fell in July to 93.3 from a June reading of 96.1. Wall Street expected the gauge to at least hold steady.

The privately run Consumer Conference Board said their gauge found Americans are less optimistic about current and future job growth in June, falling to its lowest level since September 2014. The index of consumer confidence plunged to 90.9 in July from a revised 99.8 in June, which was initially reported at 101.4.

According to a July report, U.S. retail sales fell in June as Americans broadly cut back on purchases of automobiles and other goods. The report, taken along with trade data to be discussed momentarily, was a clear indicator the economy is slowing again. Retail sales, which were expected to rise by 0.2 percent, fell by 0.3 percent and was the weakest reading since February. Further, retail sales for the month of May — also broadly weak — were revised down to show a gain of 1.0 percent instead of the initially reported 1.2 percent.

Yet, the new report claimed the savings rate fell to 4.8 percent from 5.2 percent. The personal consumption expenditures price index increased to 2.2 percent after falling at a 1.9 percent rate in the first quarter, the fastest since the first quarter of 2012. Excluding food and energy, prices increased at a 1.8 percent pace. Statistically speaking, it doesn’t get any more believable if we go back two or three months. Nevertheless, here are some more tidbits the government is claiming in the new GDP report.

Despite a strong dollar, exports allegedly rebounded in the second quarter while imports increased more than expected, resulting in a smaller trade deficit that added 0.13 percentage point to GDP growth. This is highly suspect, as U.S. import prices unexpectedly fell in June by 0.1 percent, marking yet another decline during 11 of the previous 12 months. Import prices in May were also downwardly revised to just a 1.2 percent increase.

Further, if domestic demand was as strong as the report claimed, and imports truly did increase, then much of those sales for mentioned manufactured goods would’ve presented some indication in the preceding surveys. But the Philadelphia Federal Reserve reported its Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey fell from 15.2 to 5.7 in July, with employment contracting to -0.4. The reading on new orders slipped to 7.1 in July from the June reading of 15.2. The New York Federal Reserve’s Empire State Manufacturing Survey did increase 6 points to 3.86 in July, up from -1.98 in June, but the new orders index was little changed at -3.5, a sign that orders continued to decline. Further, the shipments index fell four points to 7.9.

While the National Association of Realtors and the government report both tout existing home sales, which were recently reported to be at the highest level since 2007, other data suggest the housing market could not have been the offsetting source of strength in GDP. Juxtaposed to existing home sales, which the National Mortgage Risk Index suggests are being fueled by risky lending practices, new home sales tumbled by 6.8 percent in June from the prior month to 482,000, the lowest reading since November.

The S&P/Case Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas found U.S. single-family home prices rose less than the median economist forecast had expected in May. David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, cited first-time homebuyers as “the weak spot” behind the price plateau. It is true the Commerce Department said housing starts surged to a near 8-year high in June to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 1.17 million units, but the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market index said homebuilder sentiment was sideways. The report issued a stern warning regarding higher interest rates.

According to a new CNN/Opinion Research Poll, nearly 60 percent of Americans say the economy is in “poor” condition. Apparently, Americans aren’t on the same page as the government as to how they see the state of the economy. Perhaps that is because the government keeps changing the text on the page?

Each time the government changes GDP calculation

Economy

Job-seekers-interview

Job seekers wait on a line to interview with jobs fair and Labor Department officials in NYC. (Photo: REUTERS)

The firing rate, or the number of Americans filing new claims for state unemployment benefits unexpectedly increased for the week ended July 25. Weekly jobless claims increased 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 267,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Claims for the prior week were unrevised at 255,000, which was the lowest level since November 1973.

A Labor Department analyst said there were no special factors influencing the data and that only claims for Puerto Rico had been estimated. The four-week moving average of claims — which is widely considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility — decreased by 3,750 to 274,750. The government has made a series of changes to how claims are calculated, and this week’s data reflects all four weeks of the new change.

Thursday’s claims report showed the number of people still receiving benefits after an initial week of aid rose 46,000 to 2.26 million in the week ended July 18. The so-called continuing claims covered the week during which the government surveyed households for July’s unemployment rate.

The firing rate, or the number of

Politics

Gov-Rick-Scott-Bright-Future-Electric-Ocoee-6-11-2015

Gov. Rick Scott at Bright Future Electric in Ocoee on June 11, 2015. (Photo: Carolyn Allen)

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has ordered an investigation into Planned Parenthood following the release of a third grizzly video revealing their traffic in aborted baby body parts. Scott, a Republican, said Wednesday the state will take quick legal and regulatory action if any of the 16 facilities in Florida are found in violation of the law.

“The videos coming out about Planned Parenthood are deeply troubling to say the least. It is against the law for any organization to sell body parts,” Gov. Scott said in a statement. “I have asked AHCA Secretary Liz Dudek to begin immediately dispatching staff from their licensure office to evaluate the 16 Planned Parenthood offices in Florida that perform abortion procedures to ensure they are in full compliance with the law.”

Planned Parenthood’s President Cecile Richards has said the group has done nothing illegal and will cooperate with the investigation, though they have not cooperated with Congress. The Florida head of the organization has echoed Richards in the wake of the announcement.

“These political attacks claiming that Planned Parenthood profits in any way from tissue donation are simply not true. While we do not have donations programs in Florida, some Planned Parenthood organizations in other states do, and they follow all laws and ethical guidelines,” Planned Parenthood Affiliates Executive Director Laura Goodhue said in a statement.

In the wake of the videos, seven state governments and three House committees have opened investigations into Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted fetal body parts. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has called PPFA’s Senior Director of Medical Services to testify this month about the organization’s fetal tissue harvesting.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kty., a physician by profession, vowed to defund Planned Parenthood by any means necessary after the shocking videos were released. Friday, Sen. Paul fast-tracked his defund Planned Parenthood legislation by invoking Rule 14, which could allow for a Senate vote as early as next week.

“If a Planned Parenthood office is not following the law, we will move quickly to take legal and regulatory action against them,” Scott added. “We hold our healthcare organizations in Florida to the highest standards of safety and we expect them to fully comply with the law at all times.”

BACKSTORY

A video released by the Center for Medical Progress captured PPFA Senior Director of Medical Services Dr. Deborah Nucatola admitting to using partial-birth abortions to get intact parts — as she slurped down big glasses of red wine and chomped on a salad — suggesting a price range of $30 to $100 per specimen.

Then, a second undercover video shows Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Medical Directors’ Council President, Dr. Mary Gatter, haggling over payments for intact baby parts. Further, and more disturbing, Dr. Gatter offers to use a “less crunchy technique” to get more intact body parts during a practice the group has repeatedly claimed they do not engage in.

In “Human Capital,” a documentary web series produced by The Center for Medical Progress, features a former employee who was hired under false pretenses to harvest the body parts of aborted babies. Holly O’Donnell, a licensed phlebotomist who unsuspectingly took a job as a “procurement technician” at the fetal tissue company and biotech start-up StemExpress in late 2012. O’Donnell and others reveal the real-life interactions inside Planned Parenthood’s commercial exploitation of aborted fetal tissue.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has order an

Opinion

NPS-graphic

Our presidents are good at praising America’s magnificent national park system, but they’re lousy at maintaining it. Bill Clinton-the-candidate, for example, spoke of how lucky he was to have Hot Springs National Park as a childhood playground. Yet Clinton-the-president sat idle as that park’s natural wonders and facilities deteriorated — and as the National Park Service’s maintenance backlog soared to $5 billion.

Likewise, in his 2000 campaign, a khaki-clad George W. posed in the majestic Cascade Range. He wailed that parks were “at the breaking point” and vowed to eliminate Clinton’s backlog. Instead, he slashed the Park Service budget (including a 40 percent cut in needed repair funds for the Cascade parklands he’d used as a political prop). The maintenance backlog ballooned to nearly $9 billion under his presidency.

Ranger George did make one fix, however — a PR fix. Bush operatives instructed park superintendents to make budget cuts in “areas that won’t cause public or political controversy.” When discussing park deterioration, they were to avoid the phrase “budget cutbacks” and say instead that parks were undergoing “service level adjustments.”

Under Obama, who speaks movingly of a childhood Greyhound bus trip with his family to see some of our parks, another 12 percent has been chopped from the Park Service budget — bumping the deferred maintenance bill to a staggering $11.5 billion!

To his credit, Obama has proposed a 2016 “Centennial Budget” for Park Service, mitigating years of destructive underfunding and calling for $1 billion to address the backlog. Good for him. But that still leaves a $10 billion shortfall, and the sour duo of Sen. Mitch McConnell and Speaker John Boehner will oppose even that increase for the maintenance of these invaluable public assets.

Hidebound by their twisted corporate ideology, they dismiss public parks as government intrusion into the private realms of Disneyland and SeaWorld.

So, while we Americans celebrate the 100th anniversary of our National Park Service, Washington is literally stripping “service” out of the National Park Service. And, by refusing to fund essential upkeep year after year, America’s so-called “leaders” are guaranteeing that this invaluable national asset — deemed America’s “best idea” by novelist and historian Wallace Stegner — will fall into acute disrepair. The only solution, they say, is to commercialize, industrialize and privatize our parks, converting these jewels of the common good into just another corporate cash cow.

The corporatization process started with “co-branding” agreements, rationalized by Park Service officials as “aligning the economic and historical legacies” of parks with advertisers. In other words, they’re selling the Park Service’s proud public brand — as well as its soul.

First in line was Coca-Cola. In 2007, the multibillion-dollar colossus became a “Proud Partner” with Park Service by donating a mere $2.5 million (tax-deductible, meaning we taxpayers subsidized the deal) to the Park Service fundraising arm. In return, not only did Coke get exclusive rights to use park logos in its ads, but it was allowed to veto a Park Service plan to ban sales of bottled water in the Grand Canyon park. Disposable plastic bottles are that park’s biggest source of trash, but Coke owns Dasani, the top-selling water, so bye-bye, ban. Public outrage forced officials to reverse this crass move, but the Park Service’s integrity has yet to recover.

Then this April, Park Service abandoned its longstanding policy of disallowing any links to alcohol or tobacco products when it entered a partnership with Anheuser-Busch after the company donated a $2.5 million tax-deductible “gift.” In turn, its Budweiser brand was given the Statue of Liberty. Not literally, but symbolically — Bud now has the right to plaster Lady Liberty, the iconic symbol of the USA itself, on its cans.

Never mind that Busch is now Belgian-owned; the real hypocrisy is the claim that such co-branding is a philanthropic service to the commons. Creeping commercialization of our public parks no longer creeps: it’s running rampant, with brands such as Disney, L.L. Bean and Subaru buying their pieces of Park Service integrity.

And get a whiff of this: Air Wick has also paid to become a Park Service partner, so it’s now marketing a new fragrance collection that’s advertised as being “uniquely inspired by America’s national parks.”

Our presidents are good at praising America's

Opinion

Hillary-Clinton-Newscom

Hillary Clinton at a campaign event in Iowa. (Photo: Keiko Hiromi/Polaris/Newscom)

In a column I wrote in early July, based on research by my colleagues and my own analysis of government documents and eyewitness statements, I argued that in 2011 and 2012 then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton waged a secret war on the governments of Libya and Syria, with the approval of President Obama and the consent of congressional leadership from both parties and in both houses of Congress.

I did err in that column with respect to an arms dealer named Marc Turi. I regret the error and apologize for it. I wrote that Turi sold arms to Qatar as part of Clinton’s scheme to get them into the hands of rebels. A further review of the documents makes it clear that he applied to do so but was denied permission, and so he did not sell arms to Qatar. Other arms dealers did.

I also erred when referring to Qatar as beholden to Washington. In fact, Qatar is in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood and is one of the biggest supporters of global jihad in the world — and Clinton, who approved the sales of arms to Qatar expecting them to make their way to Syrian and Libyan rebels, as they did, knew that. She and her State Department caused American arms to come into the possession of known al-Qaida operatives, a few of whom assassinated U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

When Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., asked Clinton in January 2013 at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing whether she knew of any weapons coming from the U.S. and going to rebels in the Middle East, she denied such knowledge. She either has a memory so faulty that she should not be entrusted with any governmental powers, or she knowingly lied.

It gets worse.

It now appears that Clinton was managing her war using emails that she diverted through a computer server owned by her husband’s charitable foundation, even though some of her emails contained sensitive and classified materials. This was in direct violation of federal law, which requires all in government who possess classified or sensitive materials to secure them in a government-approved venue.

The inspector general of the intelligence community and the inspector general of the State Department each have reviewed a limited sampling of her emails that were sent or received via the Clinton Foundation server, and both have concluded that materials contained in some of them were of such gravity that they were obliged under federal law to refer their findings to the FBI for further investigation.

The FBI does not investigate for civil wrongdoing or ethical lapses. It investigates behavior that may be criminal or that may expose the nation’s security to jeopardy. It then recommends either that indictments be sought or the matter be addressed through non-prosecutorial means. Given Clinton’s unique present position — as the president’s first secretary of state and one who seeks to succeed him, as well as being the wife of one of his predecessors — it is inconceivable that she could be prosecuted as Gen. David Petraeus was (for the crime of failing to secure classified materials) without the personal approval of the president himself.

Let’s be realistic and blunt: If the president wants Clinton prosecuted for failing to secure classified materials, then she will be, no matter the exculpatory evidence or any political fallout. If he does not want her prosecuted, then she won’t be, no matter what the FBI finds or any political fallout.

I have not seen the emails the inspectors general sent to the FBI, but I have seen the Clinton emails, which are now in the public domain. They show Clinton sending or receiving emails to and from her confidante Sid Blumenthal and one of her State Department colleagues using her husband’s foundation’s server, and not a secure government server. These emails address the location of French jets approaching Libya, the location of no-fly zones over Libya and the location of Stevens in Libya. It is inconceivable that an American secretary of state failed to protect and secure this information.

But it is not inconceivable that she would lie about it.

Federal statutes provide for three categories of classified information. “Top secret” is data that, if revealed, could likely cause grave damage to national security. “Secret” is data that, if revealed, could likely cause serious damage to national security. “Confidential” is data that, if revealed, could likely cause some damage to national security. Her own daily calendars, which she regularly emailed about, are considered confidential.

Clinton has repeatedly denied ever sending or receiving data in any of these categories. She probably will argue that an email that fails to use the terminology of the statute cannot be deemed classified. Here the inspectors general have corrected her. It is the essence of the data in an email — its potential for harm if revealed — that makes its contents classified and the failure to protect it a crime — not the use of a magic word or phrase in the subject line.

She is no doubt lying again, just as she did to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Yet the question remains: Why did she use her husband’s foundation’s computer server instead of a government server, as the law requires? She did that so she could obscure what the server recorded and thus be made to appear different according to history from how she was in reality. Why did she lie about all this? Because she thinks she can get away with it.

Will American voters let her?

Judge Andrew Napolitano says in 2012 then-Secretary

Politics

Planned-Parenthood

Planned Parenthood Federation of America HQ.

LOS ANGELES – LA Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order blocking the release of further videos revealing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in aborted baby body parts. The order issued Tuesday prohibits the Center for Medical Progress from releasing any video of three high-ranking StemExpress officials taken at a restaurant in May. The judges ruling is the first legal action prohibiting the release of a video from the organization, which has said there will be a grand total of 12 videos released.

The Center for Medical Progress released three undercover videos revealing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in aborted baby body parts and tissue. Since their release, three House committees and eight state government — the latest of which, Florida — have opened investigations into the illegal sale and altering of abortion procedures for the purpose of harvesting human organa and tissue specimens. Friday, Sen. Paul fast-tracked his defund Planned Parenthood legislation by invoking Rule 14, which resulted in a Senate vote next week.

“StemExpress, a for-profit company partnered with over 30 abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood, to harvest and sell aborted baby parts and provide a ‘financial benefit’ to Planned Parenthood clinics, is attempting to use meritless litigation to cover-up this illegal baby parts trade, suppress free speech, and silence the citizen press reporting on issues of burning concern to the American public,” the Center said in a statement. “They are not succeeding—their initial petition was rejected by the court, and their second petition was eviscerated to a narrow and contingent order about an alleged recording pending CMP’s opportunity to respond. The Center for Medical Progress follows all applicable laws in the course of our investigative journalism work and will contest all attempts from Planned Parenthood and their allies to silence our First Amendment rights and suppress investigative journalism.”

StemExpress is a Placerville-based company started in 2010 that provides human tissue, blood and other specimens to researchers. Planned Parenthood is one of the company’s providers of fetal tissue, as well as intact specimens. A company spokesman said StemExpress is “grateful its rights have been vindicated in a court of law.”

The first video released by the Center for Medical Progress captured PPFA Senior Director of Medical Services Dr. Deborah Nucatola admitting to using partial-birth abortions to get intact parts — as she slurped down big glasses of red wine and chomped on a salad — suggesting a price range of $30 to $100 per specimen.

Then, a second undercover video shows Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Medical Directors’ Council President, Dr. Mary Gatter, haggling over payments for intact baby parts. Further, and more disturbing, Dr. Gatter offers to use a “less crunchy technique” to get more intact body parts during a practice the group has repeatedly claimed they do not engage in.

In “Human Capital,” a documentary web series produced by The Center for Medical Progress, features a former employee who was hired under false pretenses to harvest the body parts of aborted babies. Holly O’Donnell, a licensed phlebotomist who unsuspectingly took a job as a “procurement technician” at the fetal tissue company and biotech start-up StemExpress in late 2012. O’Donnell and others reveal the real-life interactions inside Planned Parenthood’s commercial exploitation of aborted fetal tissue.

LA Superior Court issued a temporary restraining

World

“High Degree of Confidence” Boeing 777 Wreckage in Indian Ocean

flight-MH370-wreckage-map

The map shows the intended route of MH370 and the area that plane debris was found in on Wednesday. MH370 was less than an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it disappeared from radar. Investigators believe it veered off course and went missing somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean.

U.S. officials said Wednesday there is a “high degree of confidence” that the photo of aircraft debris washed up on a remote Indian Ocean island is from a Boeing 777. The wreckage, specifically believed to be a wing component unique to the Boeing 777, fueled speculation it could be from Malaysian Air Flight MH370, which vanished in March 2014.

The official told The Associated that investigators — including a Boeing air safety investigator — had have identified the component as a “flaperon” from the trailing edge of a Boeing 777 wing. A French official also confirmed to AP that French law enforcement was on site to examine the piece found on the French island of Reunion, which is located in the western Indian Ocean. PPD could not confirm the report and The AP claimed U.S. and French officials spoke on condition because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Reunion, a volcanic French island with a population of nearly 850,000, is about 39 miles long and 28 miles wide. It is located about 500 miles east of Madagascar.

The sheer number of barnacles collected on the plane debris indicates that it had been in the ocean for a significant period of time. The discovery was made by employees of a company responsible for cleaning the shoreline of the island, which is located near Madagascar, or thousands of miles west of the MH370 search area. But officially, the search area for Flight MH370 still covers some 75,000 square miles.

“I’m not so sure that those parts belong to the MH370 flight,” said David Cenciotti, editor at TheAviationist.com. “The Malaysia Airlines B777 is not the only plane that went missing, and there are some mysteriously disappeared in Africa. It could even be one of those aircraft. I’m not saying that one is not the MH370, just that it’s weird that debris appeared over there.”

MH370, which was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members, was due to fly from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on the morning of March 8 when it disappeared somewhere over the South China Sea. Officials believe it disappeared less than an hour after takeoff and investigators confirmed the plane flew south toward the southern Indian Ocean.

A massive search effort that to date has cost more than $100 million and was fraught with bad weather and difficult oceanic conditions. Currently, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau is leading the effort.

“Our work will continue to be thorough and methodical, so sometimes weekly progress may seem slow,” the ATSB posted to its MH370 search website early Wednesday in a strangely timed update. “Please be assured that work is continuing and is aimed at finding MH370 as quickly as possible.”

The cause of MH370’s disappearance is not yet understood, with some suspicion has fallen on the 53-year-old pilot of the plane. Malaysian government officials said that they definitely decided the pilot was the one who spoke the last words to air traffic control, “Good night, Malaysian three-seven-zero,” and that his voice by all measures was normal. It was initially thought to be the co-pilot who spoke the last words before the system was manually shutdown.

After MH370 turned off its transponder, investigators found that the plane appeared to execute evasive maneuvers that experts have said could only have been accomplished if a skilled pilot was in control. Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, who had extensive experience in the cockpit, also had a flight simulator in his home. Meanwhile, Shah was reported to be having relationship issues.

U.S. officials said there is a “high

Policy

regulations

When writing about the burden of regulation, I often share big numbers about aggregate cost, job losses, time wasted, and foregone growth. But I sometimes wonder if such data is effective in the battle for good policy.

Maybe it’s better, at least in some cases, to focus on regulations that affect quality of life for regular people. Lots of ordinary citizens, for instance, are irked that they’re now forced to use inferior light bulbs, substandard toilets, and inadequate washing machines because of regulatory silliness from Washington.

And it looks like we’ll now be forced to use dishwashers that don’t clean dishes thanks to proposed regulations that will reduce water use (which is in addition to a 2012 regulation that already restricted water use).

The Hill reports on the Nanny State’s latest salvo in the war against modern civilization.

The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers is accusing the Department of Energy (DOE) of a politically motivated drive to increase dishwasher efficiency standards, which are so bad that they would cause consumers to re-wash dishes, erasing any efficiency gains. Rob McAver, the group’s head lobbyist, said regulators are going too far and the new rules will allow only 3.1 gallons to be used to wash each load of dishes. …They then ran standard tests with food stuck to dishes. “They found some stuff that was pretty disgusting,” McAver said. …“The poor performance that would result would totally undercut and go backwards in terms of energy and water use, because of the need for running the dishwasher again, or pre-rinsing or hand-washing, which uses a lot of water,” he said.

Great, another bone-headed step by the government that will make life less enjoyable. I’m already one of those people who rinse my dishes before putting them in the dishwasher because I hate the idea that they won’t be fully clean afterwards.

So I can only imagine how bad it will be if this absurd example of red tape is imposed and I have to buy a new dishwasher. I guess I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that my current dishwasher doesn’t break down.

Especially since the rules make new dishwashers more expensive.

Ernest Istook, former Republican congressman from Oklahoma, wrote in a Washington Times piece that complying with the 2012 rule, based on DOE estimates, added roughly $44 to the cost of each machine. “Now their 2015 proposal will add another $99 to the price tag, even by DOE’s own admission,” he wrote.

Julie Borowski has the right assessment. Her column for Freedom Works is from 2012, but it’s very appropriate still today.

Are you disappointed in every shower head that you purchase? Does your toilet have trouble flushing? Have you noticed that your dishes are still dirty after the dishwasher cycle is completed? …Some of us may be quick to blame the manufacturer of these home appliances. But the manufacturers are just abiding by the costly regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy.

What’s really frustrating is that these regulations reduce the quality of life without even reducing water usage.

…it has only led to people hacking their shower heads to remove the intrusion that is blocking water flow in order to have a more relaxing shower that actually gets them clean. There is no proof that the water restrictions have actually saved water because many people just end up taking longer showers than they otherwise would.

Amen. Every so often I wind up at a hotel with restricted-flow showerheads and it’s a hassle because I probably spend twice as long in the shower.

Not to mention problems government has created elsewhere in bathrooms.

…water restrictions are also the reason that our toilets have trouble flushing. Many of us have become accustomed to flushing the toilet multiple times before the toilet bowl is clear. The 1992 Energy Policy Act states that all toilets sold in the United States use no more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush. These water restrictions are the reason why we have to use plungers far more often than we used to.

I won’t torment readers with a TMI moment, but I will say that I now routinely flush at the halfway point when seated on a toilet. And even that doesn’t necessarily preclude a third flush at the end of the process.

The only good news is that this gives me a daily reminder that government has far too much power to micro-manage our lives.

Speaking of excessive government, here’s another example of the regulatory state run amok.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the federal milk police? Well, now we’ll have the federal pizza police, as explained by The Manhattan Institute.

Pizza makers could face fines and prison time under a new Food and Drug Administration rule for failing to provide calorie counts for their billions of combinations of pizza orders. …FDA’s menu labeling rule will go into effect on December 1st, 2016… If a company does not perfectly comply with the mandate, food may be rendered “misbranded” under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, a violation that carries criminal penalties. Failure to comply with the regulation could lead to government seizure of food, a maximum $1,000 fine, and a one-year prison sentence. …Revising systems under strict compliance with the regulation’s guidelines is expected to cost Domino’s $1,600 to $4,700 per restaurant annually. In general, the rule is expected to cost businesses $537 million, losses that necessarily must be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

And I doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that all this coercion and red tape will have no positive effect.

Several studies on the effectiveness of calorie displays suggest the mandate will have little to no effect on the public’s choices. In one study on menu-labeling in New York City, Brian Elbel, a professor at New York University, found that only 28 percent of people who saw calorie labels said that the information influenced their choices. There was no statistically significant change in calories purchased. Inanother study, Lisa Harnack of the University of Minnesota examined whether knowledge about calorie counts of menu items would influence how much a person ate, even if the information did not change ordering habits. A lab study revealed that, overall, consumers did not change how much they ate after receiving information about their food’s caloric content.

Which is why, when writing about this topic last year, I predicted “If this regulation is implemented, it will have zero measurable impact on American waistlines.”

P.S. Keep in mind we already have the federal bagpipe police, the federal pond police, and the federal don’t-whistle-at-whales police.

P.P.S. As I repeatedly warn, if the answer is more government, someone’s asked a very silly question.

CATO economist Dan Mitchell analyzes how the

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