LIGHTS ARE ON ALL OVER CAP, leadership aides/members in the building, chaos in the marble halls....
— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 11, 2014
READ: Cantor loss throws Congress into disarray http://t.co/oJVqPlbyUz
— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 11, 2014For 10 days, Americans have argued over the wisdom of trading five Taliban senior commanders for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.More.
President Obama handed the Taliban a victory, critics contend, and imperiled U.S. troops in Afghanistan when the five return to the battlefield. Moreover, he has inspired the Haqqani network and other Islamists to capture more Americans to trade.
But which represents the greater long-term threat to the safety and security of our people and nation: sending those five Taliban leaders to Doha, and perhaps back to Afghanistan, or releasing into the U.S. population last year 36,000 criminal illegal aliens with 88,000 convictions among them?
According to a May report of the Center for Immigration Studies, of the 36,000 criminal aliens who, while awaiting deportation, were set free by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 193 had been convicted of homicide, 426 of sexual assault, 303 of kidnaping, 1,075 of aggravated assault, 1,160 for stolen vehicles, 9,187 for possession or use of dangerous drugs, and 16,070 for driving drunk or drugged.
Those 36,000 criminal aliens are roughly equivalent to three-and-a-half divisions of felons and social misfits released into our midst. [ICE Document Details 36,000 Criminal Alien Releases in 2013, by Jessica Vaughan, CIS, May 2014.]
And this does not include the 68,000 illegal aliens against whom ICE declined to press criminal charges last year, but turned loose. How goes the Third World invasion of the United States?
Islamist sympathizers inside our military walk away, and the Obama White House turns a blind eye. The Fort Hood jihad attack by Nidal Hasan, who invoked Hassoun in PowerPoint presentations to his military supervisors, is “workplace violence.” Gitmo recidivist Abu Sufian bin Qumu, lead suspect in the Benghazi attack, roams free despite the president’s promise to make “justice” his “biggest priority.”
Our commander in chief empties Gitmo of the worst of the worst jihadists and shrugs at the recidivists targeting American soldiers and civilians. And in a desperate attempt to deflect from the rising death toll of the Veterans Affairs book-cooking scandal, Obama gave Bob Bergdahl a Rose Garden stage to invoke Allah in Arabic.
If you're not “whipped up” into Category 5 disgust, you're not paying attention.
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Previous coverage of Wassef Ali Hassoun.
Eric Cantor's primary challenger David Brat ripped the Majority Leader as “the number one Republican supporter of amnesty” in a dramatic press conference steps away from a rival event by a liberal Democrat intended to paint Cantor as the face of GOP intransigence on immigration.More.
The day after Cantor portrayed himself as an anti-amnesty warrior in campaign literature, Brat accused Cantor of coordinating with Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), the Democrat holding the rival press conference, to provide him political cover in his moment of greatest need.
Cantor, Brat noted, had previously visited sites with Gutierrez in a pro-immigration reform tour. "You would have to be pretty gullible not to see a link there," Brat said.
The long-shot challenge from Brat has improbably gained national attention after Cantor was booed and heckled by a crowd of Tea Party activists at a recent Republican party event. Cantor has had to go on air with attack ads fact-checkers have criticized as misleading and adopt the language of anti-amnesty hawks in his mailers, clashing with his “making life work” rebranding effort.
Typically, party leaders are able to win reelection easily, especially in primaries, so the concerted efforts by Cantor are seen as deeply embarrassing for the Virginia Republican considered Speaker John Boehner's heir apparent.
"This is the act of a desperate campaign," Brat said about the mailer.
LIVE FROM CANTOR HQ: The Cantor team appears to have shut off the projector screen showing the primary tally.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) June 10, 2014
RICHMOND, Va. — It wasn’t enough that Eric Cantor spent $1 million in the weeks leading up to the election, when his primary opponent hardly had $100,000 in his campaign coffers.More.
It didn’t matter that the House majority leader, 51, branded Dave Brat a liberal hack, and himself as the guardian of the Republican creed. On Tuesday night, Cantor, who was swept into the majority leader’s suite in a tea party wave, was swept out by the same movement.
Cantor conceded the race around 8:25 p.m. — shortly after the Associated Press pronounced Cantor’s 13-year political career at least temporarily over. With nearly 98 percent of precincts reporting, Brat had 55 percent of the vote, while Cantor had 44 percent. People close to Cantor said internal polls showed him hovering near 60 percent in the runup to the race.
It’s one of the most stunning losses in modern House politics, and completely upends the GOP hierarchy in both Virginia and Washington. Cantor enjoyed a meteoric rise that took him from chief deputy whip, to minority whip to majority leader in the span of 13 years. Cantor was seen by many as the next speaker of the House, biding his time until Ohio Rep. John Boehner wanted to retire.
But now, Cantor has just six months left in Congress. He is the second incumbent to lose this primary season: 91-year-old Texas Rep. Ralph Hall was the first. The loss will ripple across Washington, too: from political consultants who worked for Cantor to his aides who decamped for K Street, there will be reverberations...
In a stunning upset propelled by tea party activists, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) was defeated in Tuesday’s congressional primary, with insurgent David Brat delivering an unpredicted and devastating loss to the second most powerful Republican in the House who has widely been touted as a future speaker.Expect updates.
The race called shortly after 8 p.m. Eastern by the Associated Press.
Brat’s victory gives the GOP a volatile outlook for the rest of the campaign season, with the party establishment struggling late Tuesday to grapple with the news and tea party conservatives relishing a surprising win.
“This is an earthquake,” said former Minnesota congressman Vin Weber, a friend of Cantor’s. “No one thought he’d lose.” But Brat, tapping into conservative anger over Cantor’s role in supporting efforts to reform federal immigration laws, found a way to combat Cantor’s significant financial edge.
Brat, an economics professor, simply failed to show up to D.C. meetings with powerful conservative agitators last month, citing upcoming finals. He only had $40,000 in the bank at the end of March, according to first quarter filings. Cantor had $2 million.
Despite those shortcomings, Brat has exposed discontent with Cantor in the solidly Republican, suburban Richmond 7th Congressional District by attacking the lawmaker on his votes to raise the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown, as well as his support for some immigration reforms. At a May meeting of Republican activists in the district, Cantor was booed, and an ally he campaigned for was ousted as the local party chairman in favor of a tea party favorite.
Views differ by political party: most Republicans disapprove of the deal, while just over half of Democrats approve. Among those who have served in the military, 55 percent disapprove of the prisoner swap.At the video clip Major Garrett stresses the 56 percent finding of too high a price paid by the president.
Most Americans -- 56 percent -- say the U.S. paid too high a price to secure Bergdahl's release. Among veterans, that figure rises to 65 percent.
Old and busted: The Taliban 5 swap was a demonstration of authority by a Commander in Chief who isn't afraid to act and make the final decision. New hotness: Hey, Chuck Hagel had the final call on the swap! As criticism mounts on Barack Obama over the decision to release five high-ranking and dangerous Taliban commanders in exchange for an American soldier, the White House shifted gears last night in its first briefing to the House — and attempted to shift blame as well...Also at Legal Insurrection, "Taliban-Bergdahl swap unpopular, so … blame Hagel." (Via Memeorandum.)
A colonoscopy isn't just a diagnostic test — if they find polyps, they can remove them, making it virtually certain that you won't get colon cancer. If you skip that because of squeamishness, well, you're just an idiot. Luckily, I was clean and don't have to go back for five years. By then, they may have replaced them with swallowable cameras, with actual scoping only when there’s something that needs fixing. At any rate, though, there aren't many simple safe procedures that can absolutely prevent cancer, and this is one. Don't forego it because you're squeamish.I'm not sure why folks would be squeamish with the procedure; it was easy. After I was taken into the pre-op area, the nurses had me sign the final forms, hooked up my blood pressure monitor and chest nodes, and inserted the IV. The test itself took 10 minutes at most. The nurses gave me mild drug which was like a relaxant. I had no side effects and went out for a nice breakfast with my wife immediately after.
BAGHDAD—Al Qaeda-inspired militants seized control of Iraq's second-largest city on Tuesday in a brazen military operation that underscored the weakness of the Baghdad government across vast swaths of the country.More.
Hours after government forces fled Mosul in disarray following four days of fighting, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared a nationwide "state of maximum preparedness" but didn't indicate whether government forces were mobilizing to retake the Iraqi city, 220 miles north of the capital Baghdad.
The capture of Mosul by rebels linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, is the latest evidence of the weakness and disorganization that have beset Iraq's security forces since the U.S. forces withdrew from the country in December 2011. It also underlines the group's determination to establish an Islamic emirate encompassing the Iraqi-Syrian frontier, weaken the already fragile Iraqi state and expand the theater of the three-year-old civil war in neighboring Syria.
Residents of Mosul said they were shocked at the ease of the rebel takeover of government buildings, television stations and military installations where U.S.-supplied fighter airplanes, helicopters and other heavy weaponry are based.
"The whole of Mosul collapsed today. We've fled our homes and neighborhoods, and we're looking for God's mercy," said Mahmoud Al Taie, a dentist. "We are waiting to die."
Videos showed victorious insurgents waving black flags emblazoned with an Islamic script—the standard brandished by al Qaeda militants world-wide.
The Obama administration, responding to the fall of Mosul, said ISIS "is not only a threat to the stability of Iraq but a threat to the entire region."
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the group has drawn strength from the Syrian civil war, where it can acquire recruits, weapons and other resources for its fight in Iraq.
Jessica Lewis, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, said ISIS fighters won a notable victory in Mosul.
"ISIS is designing its campaign around the state that it believes it has already created," said Ms. Lewis, currently research director for the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C.
"I think that means that Iraq is going to start to look more like Syria. It's a gauge of the severity of the conflict and the trajectory that it's on. That's a very bad sign."
She's traveled the country mixing weighty policy pronouncements with joking references to her hair. She's reflected on gender bias and offered career advice to young women, gushed about becoming a grandma and raked in a fortune in speaking fees on the lecture circuit.Yeah, well. It's battlespace preparation.
After all that — and even having a shoe flung at her at a trash collectors' convention in Las Vegas — Hillary Rodham Clinton takes her flirtation with the 2016 presidential race to a new level this week, beginning a minutely orchestrated book tour that will whisk her coast to coast for a mix of book signings and carefully calibrated television interviews.
Since stepping down as secretary of State 16 months ago, Clinton has managed to effectively freeze out any Democratic competition for the presidential nomination, no small feat in a party with a history of upstarts and upsets — especially for someone who has yet to say whether she even plans to run.
Throughout, she's weathered a relentless degree of scrutiny, her daily travels exhaustively chronicled, her every utterance parsed for meaning. Even matters like her daughter Chelsea's pregnancy are put to the will-or-won't-she test.
"She's got the toughest job in American politics" being the prohibitive front-runner, said Stuart Spencer, a longtime Republican strategist who helped shepherd former California Gov. Ronald Reagan in a years-long trek from Sacramento to the White House. "And she's managed it just about as well as you can."
Clinton's months-long book tour, combined with other stops, appears unprecedented in the annals of both publishing and politics, bearing many of the trappings of a full-fledged presidential campaign. A strike team, to push back Clinton critics, has been stocked with family loyalists and others practiced in aggressive political communication. (Conservatives have set up a counter-operation to offer their interpretation of events recounted in Clinton's 600-plus-page memoir, "Hard Choices." An e-book, "Failed Choices," is being released to coincide with her travels.)
A busload of Clinton supporters, chartered by a friendly political action committee, will follow the non-candidate to events and seek to sign up new acolytes; one of her first book signings is scheduled for a Costco in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, the battleground portion of a battleground state. A Los Angeles stop is scheduled for June 19 at the Grove shopping center.
Her TV appearances, including a visit with the cheery crew on "Good Morning America" and a grilling on the less-amiable Fox News Channel, will allow Clinton a chance to spotlight two sides of her persona, warmth and toughness, in the same manner as the sneak previews doled out by her publisher: a gauzy Mother's Day tribute for Vogue magazine and her telling of the 2012 attack on U.S. diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, for Politico.
"It seems to me that the rollout of Hillary's book has been letter-perfect," Paul Begala, a campaign strategist who served in the White House under President Clinton and remains close to the family, said in an email. "Rather than wait for the inevitable leaks, Team Hillary has released select excerpts, both to satisfy the press and to build anticipation for the book's release."
Some suggest that it seems a bit too perfect...
