July 30, 2016

The GOP is becoming the party of exclusion. Who wants to be a part of that? By Kathleen Parker

PHILADELPHIA

A longtime Republican friend texted just as the Democratic National Convention was burying itself in balloons: “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m a Democrat.” Another Republican friend called after President Obama spoke Wednesday night: “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m a Democrat.”

No apologies necessary. But thanks surely go to Donald Trump and his spineless Republican enablers. The party of Lincoln, a sometimes laughable bragging point for diehards whose racial attitudes survived the Civil War intact, is long gone. Its dissolution began at least with Richard Nixon, who embraced a Southern strategy that pandered to racists and set the course for today’s GOP.

The party of angry men and patient women tried to add a little sugar and spice, plunging itself ever lower on the curve when it embraced a cute little winkin’, blinkin’ and noddin’ gal-gov from Alaska as vice-presidential running mate to John McCain — and a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Next came the tea party movement, to which Sarah Palin briefly attached her Winnebago, followed by the government shutdown, and culminating with the glittering, twittering Tower of Trump.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/conservative-but-not-republican/2016/07/29/a8941a8c-55cf-11e6-b7de-dfe509430c39_story.html

July 30, 2016

FBI gives thousands of Clinton documents to State

By Jesse Byrnes

The FBI has delivered "thousands of documents" to the State Department that it recovered during its investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server, CNN reports. Clinton turned over around 30,000 emails to the State Department from her tenure as secretary, which were then released in batches on a schedule ordered by a judge.

A court filing in a civil case related to Clinton's server from conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch said that the FBI plans to turn over more emails on Aug. 5, according to the news network.

The State Department will then again sort through the documents, determining which should be considered "agency records." They've been expected to release them publicly on a rolling basis. The FBI earlier this month said it would begin sending "several thousand" deleted work-related emails from Clinton's private server to the State Department.

"Just as we appropriately processed the material turned over to the Department by former Secretary Clinton, we will appropriately and with due diligence process any additional material we receive from the FBI to identify work-related agency records and make them available to the public consistent with our legal obligations," State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement reported by CNN.

-snip-

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/289828-fbi-gives-thousands-of-clinton-documents-to-state

July 30, 2016

Trump: Gloves are off in fight against Clinton

Donald Trump said Friday he's "taking the gloves off" in his general election fight against Hillary Clinton after she railed against him in her acceptance speech for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"You know, it's interesting, every time I mention her, everyone screams 'lock her up,' and you know what? I've been nice but after that performance last night, I don't have to be so nice anymore. I'm taking the gloves off," the Republican presidential nominee said at a rally in Colorado.

Trump notably didn't respond to chants of "lock her up" during his nomination speech at the Republican National Convention last week, causing onlookers to suggest he could be reining in his rough knee-jerk attacks on opponents. But at the Colorado Springs event, Trump said there will be "no more Mr. Nice Guy" in the contest against his Democratic rival.

"You know what I've been saying? I've been saying, let's just beat her in November. But you know what? You know what? I'm starting to agree with you," Trump said when the chants broke out at the rally.

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http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/289837-trump-says-the-gloves-are-off-in-general-election-fight

July 30, 2016

Most Americans Reject Trump’s Email Call

A new YouGov survey finds that 54% of Americans regard Donald Trump’s call for Russia to intervene in an election as inappropriate, while just 30% say that it was appropriate.

However, this conceals a significant partisan divide: 61% of Republicans thought it was acceptable and 80% of Democrats thought it was unacceptable.

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https://politicalwire.com/2016/07/29/most-americans-reject-trumps-email-call/

July 30, 2016

Khizr Khan Had No Written Speech

Politico: “That was the beginning of a 7-minute speech that became an instant sensation—eloquent, emotional and notably original, coming as it did at the end of four days of highly processed political cliche. Khan, a 66-year-old immigration lawyer from Charlottesville, told the story of his son’s death in combat in Iraq, but he turned that elegy into a viral rebuke of Donald Trump: ‘You have sacrificed nothing!'”

“And Khan delivered his broadside without using the teleprompter. There was nothing to put on it, because he had written nothing down.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2016/07/29/khizr-khan-had-no-written-speech/

July 30, 2016

Clinton Hopes to Rally Both Sides Against Trump

“Democrats marked a decisive turn in their campaign against Donald Trump this week, moving to recast the 2016 race not as a conventional battle between left and right but as a national emergency that requires voters of all stripes to band together against a singularly menacing candidate,” the New York Times reports.

“Abandoning their standard critique against conservative Republicans, allies of Hillary Clinton argued that Mr. Trump was not merely another champion of right-wing ideas, deserving of rejection for his views on the environment or health care.”

“Instead, in an onslaught of astonishing ferocity led by President Obama, they used their convention to portray Mr. Trump as a dangerously unstable figure and a friend of foreign despots like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Some Democrats suggested Mr. Trump might have authoritarian impulses of his own: Prominent in Mrs. Clinton’s acceptance speech Thursday night was a pointed reminder that the American system was designed to prevent the rise of a dictator.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2016/07/29/clinton-hopes-to-rally-both-sides-against-trump/

July 30, 2016

Libertarian candidates say Mitt Romney is considering endorsing them

By Theodore Schleifer, CNN
Updated 2:46 PM ET, Thu July 28, 2016

Washington (CNN)Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson told CNN Thursday that Mitt Romney was considering endorsing him for president this fall.

Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he and Romney had spoken in recent weeks. "I think he's considering the possibility of doing this," Johnson said, "of actually endorsing the two of us."

Romney has previously said that he would look at the ticket but has not publicly committed to supporting them.
CNN has reached out to Romney for comment.

William Weld, a Romney associate and Johnson's running mate, agreed with Johnson, especially if they meet the threshold in polling to make the general election debates.

more
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/28/politics/gary-johnson-libertarians-mitt-romney/

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June 10, 2016, 07:05 pm
Romney will consider voting Libertarian, praises VP candidate
By Jesse Byrnes

Mitt Romney said Friday he wouldn't rule out supporting the Libertarian White House ticket after pledging to not vote for either the Democratic or Republican presumptive nominees. "I'm going to look at what he has to say," Romney said of Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson during an interview in Park City, Utah, on CNN's "Situation Room."

"That's something that I'll evaluate over the coming weeks and months," Romney said of voting for Johnson. "I'm not ruling that out."

Romney acknowledged it would be "very hard" to support a candidate that is in favor of liberal social policies such as legalizing recreational marijuana, but said he'd "look carefully" at the Libertarian ticket.

Romney said Johnson's running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, "is someone who I respect enormously."

-snip-

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/283118-romney-will-look-into-libertarian-ticket

July 30, 2016

Infused with the spirit of the black church, the Democrats became the party of optimism

Bright Shining as the Sun

Infused with the spirit of the black church, the Democrats became the party of optimism.

By Jamelle Bouie

PHILADELPHIA—At first glance, the closing session of the Democratic National Convention looked a lot like a Republican National Convention. Throughout the night, delegates chanted “U-S-A” to drown out any hecklers and waved giant American flags, visible from every seat in the arena. Speakers praised police officers for their work while veterans took the stage to praise old comrades and stress the need for unity. The father of a fallen soldier waved an actual copy of the Constitution in the face of the party’s opponent, Donald Trump, and in her speech at the end of the night, Hillary Clinton was careful to give her unqualified praise and support to those public servants who “run into danger.”

But that first glance is misleading. Look at Thursday’s events again and you’ll see the qualities that made the convention a distinctly Democratic affair. In this celebration of American strength and greatness, the faces were overwhelmingly black and brown. The father representing his son to the world and rebuking Donald Trump’s attacks? A Muslim American immigrant. The Medal of Honor winner speaking for veterans who might lose out in a Trump administration? Another immigrant. The parents honoring their son, a police officer who died on duty in Cleveland? They were black.

From Monday to Thursday, each night of the Democratic National Convention was marked by incredible diversity, represented by a wide array of colors and creeds. They weren’t just voices of normalcy—people who represent the extent to which Democrats have claimed the mantle of “normal” America, where normal includes nonwhites, unauthorized immigrants, and the LGBTQ community. They were also voices for optimism.

It was the startling fact of this entire convention. On Monday alone there was Michelle Obama and her forceful defense of America’s “greatness” and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s attempt to raise his profile with a soaring national speech. All week long, if you craved a message of optimism, your best bet was a brown or black face. But that makes sense. Despite deep problems of discrimination and racial inequality, it’s nonwhites—blacks, Hispanics, and other groups—who have the most optimistic view of the United States and its future. For them, the country is closer than not to its self-conception as a city on the hill, and for good reason. If you’re black, if you’re Latino, if you’re gay—life is unquestionably better now than it was in the past.

more
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/07/how_the_black_church_transformed_the_democrats_into_the_party_of_optimism.html

July 30, 2016

Exclusive: Clinton campaign also hacked in attacks on Democrats

Source: Reuters

Fri Jul 29, 2016 10:54pm EDT

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO | BY MARK HOSENBALL, JOSEPH MENN AND JOHN WALCOTT

A computer network used by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign was hacked as part of a broad cyber attack on Democratic political organizations, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The latest attack, which was disclosed to Reuters on Friday, follows two other hacks on the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, and the party’s fundraising committee for candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives.

A Clinton campaign spokesman said in a statement late on Friday that an analytics data program maintained by the DNC and used by the campaign and a number of other entities "was accessed as part of the DNC hack."

"Our campaign computer system has been under review by outside cyber security experts. To date, they have found no evidence that our internal systems have been compromised," said Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-democrats-investigation-exc-idUSKCN1092HK?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social

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Clinton campaign part of DNC hack

Hillary Clinton's campaign had its computer network hacked as part of the cyberattack on Democratic organizations, Reuters reported Friday.

A federal law enforcement official told the New York Times that the hack appears to have come from Russia.

"An analytics data program maintained by the DNC, and used by our campaign and a number of other entities, was accessed as part of the DNC hack," Clinton press secretary Nick Merrill said in a statement. "Our campaign computer system has been under review by outside cyber security experts. To date, they have found no evidence that our internal systems have been compromised.”

The news comes hours after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) confirmed it was hacked as well.

-snip-

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/289831-clinton-campaign-hacked-in-broad-attack-on-dems-report

July 29, 2016

New feature: Trump’s ‘Baghdad Bob’ of the week - By Jennifer Rubin

Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.

-snip-

The examples are so numerous as to defy quantification. But there are some that stand out for their sheer sophistry and unintended hilarity. Not unlike the inadvertently comical Iraq information minister for Saddam Hussein during the initial stages of the Iraq War, Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf (fondly named “Baghdad Bob”) some Republicans will risk mockery for their defense of the indefensible. It seems appropriate that on each Friday before the November election we will pick the “Baghdad Bob” Republican of the week. As one conservative policy wonk observed, I will never run out of material.

Now, we must exclude figures such as Sean Hannity, Trump surrogates such as Jeffrey Lord and the outlets such as Breitbart that should be inducted into the hall of fame for intellectual corruption. They are without peer in their defense of Trump, incurring no small amount of ridicule and disdain from Republicans and Democrats alike. We will therefore focus on the less obvious Trump spinners.

With that background, the winner this week is Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who once worried about giving Trump the nuclear codes, slammed Hillary Clinton for the Russian reset and deplored the president’s lack of resolve in checking Russian aggression in Europe and meddling in the Middle East. Rubio has made his name as a GOP hawk, human rights advocate and severe critic of Obama administration appeasement of international bullies. However, when asked about Trump’s remarks about the possible Russian connection to the hack of DNC computers he replied:

I do not support encouraging the Russians to hack anyone in the United States. When I read those comments (Wednesday) I called the Trump campaign and they made it clear to me that what he said (Wednesday) was not a policy proposal. It was a use of sarcasm to draw attention to this issue of the emails and the fact that there are still thousands, tens of thousands, of missing emails from Hillary Clinton that the American people want to know about.

No, honestly, that’s what he said. It was fine because it was not a policy proposal to — what? — support Russian interference in our elections. Had Trump said this during the primary campaign or had a Democrat made the comment, Rubio would have roared in disapproval. It’s a particularly awful response in that he told us he called the Trump campaign to get its excuse. In other words, he’s acknowledging he is a mere conduit for Trump’s irresponsible, clueless rhetoric about Vladimir Putin, whom Rubio’s candidate Trump admires and with whom he wants to get along. All we can we say is: SAD!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/07/29/new-feature-trumps-baghdad-bob-of-the-week/