Trey Gowdy on Hillary Clinton's E-Mails

    Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC 4th), the Chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, responded to the Hillary E-Mail controversy on CBS's Face The Nation.



 Some cynics wonder why Chairman Gowdy is now in the forefront about Hillary's sui generis e-mails while heading the State Department, as the Select Committee had knowledge of this practice going back to last summer.  Gowdy is a former federal prosecutor so he is patiently building a case and did not want Ms. Clinton to testify before he had all of the information vetted.

While a litigator in an Article III court wants all relevant information, such a broad request could be framed as a witch hunt or a fishing expedition in the political realm.  So now that there is sufficient public pressure, the former Secretary of State may feel compelled (for continued electoral viability) to "step up" and completely surrender the cyber records and not just feign compliance.

 Chairman Gowdy, who first came to office as part of the 2010 Tea Party wave elections, may distinguish himself between the bluster and the brashness of the District of Calamity by building a compelling case to discern what happened in the Benghazi bungle of September 11, 2012.

But if Gowdy fails to impressively interrogate the former chief of Foggy Bottom, conservative cynics may echo Hillary's last Congressional testimony--"What difference, at this point, does it make?"  Combined with Speaker Boehner's capitulation on DHS funding with a rider excluding Executive Amnesty (which lost 167 Republican votes on final passage), conservatives might wonder if having friends like that in high office whether they need enemies.

Former Secretary of State Clinton claimed that we should strive to figure out why the Benghazi bungle happened.  Could it be due to insecure communications from hdr22@clintonemail.com (or mau-suit@clintonemail.com)?  Or a pattern in the Obama Administration to use backdoor, off official communications, to convey inconvenient truths? It does not seem that it was just Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder, as we should not forget the pseudonym Richard Windsor (a.k.a. EPA chief Lisa Jackson ).  So much for the Obama Administration being the most transparent regime ever, as they took their anti-secrecy award in 2011 in a closed door presentation. 

Barack Obama on DHS Funding

  

 During the lame duck session of the 112th Congress, House Republicans fully funded FY 2015 budget, with the exception of Department of Homeland Security, in which a short term continuing resolution was applied to allow for a rider which would not Congressionally fund President Obama's Executive Action on illegal immigration.

 In the new 113th Congress, Senate Democrats refused to allow cloture to debate the DHS bill, lest the funding bill pass on majority terms.  The Obama White House and lackeys in the Lamestream Media and Senate Democrats are striving to frame Republicans for being obstructionists for not rubber stamping Mr. Obama's extra-constitutional effective amnesty. 

 Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has suggested bifurcating the Executive Amnesty issue from DHS funding.  But this legislative legerdemain was acceptable to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) only if House Speaker John Boehner acceded to Obama's will.  So far, Speaker Boehner holds the attitude that Senate Democrats ought to "get off their asses" and vote on the House bill. 

The GOP opponents seek to claim that Republicans will endanger the nation due to not funding DHS's $38 Billion budget. Alas, 80% of DHS's 240,000 employees are essential workers, who are required to report to work without a guaranteed pay check (even though all workers have routinely been paid after a budget standoff).  So security should not be an issue, even though the Obama Administration has been hyping the Boko Haram and al Shabob threat on the Mall of America and other Jewish owned shopping centers (but this has nothing to do with certain religions). 

So now the Obama Administration's tact has shifted to hardball politics.  During a townhall meeting telecast on MSNBC and Telemundo, President Obama dared the Republicans to pass the House bill, which would merit another Obama veto.   

  

 May the majorities in Congress stick to their principles and not quickly fold to a passive aggressive bully chief executive.  No matter what, the Lamestream Media is ready to repudiate Republicans. But the shutdown is so targeted that the public won't shed tears over the World War II monument being shut down as during the Flying Flip shutdown of October 2013.

h/t: Bruce Plante

Boehner: Senate Democrats Must "Get off Their Asses"

Over the last four years, Republicans have been painted as obstructionists as House bills have been passed and died in the Democrat controlled Senate because Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) as Senate Majority Leader did not want votes which would embarrass the President and force a veto.  In the six years of the Obama Administration, the Senate only passed a budget from regular orders once, the rest being Continuing Resolutions.

 In the 113th Congress, the House passed a budget early in the cycle, but which contained a rider which prohibits the Department of Homeland Security from expending funds from the Obama Administration's extra legal Executive Amnesty program.  Senate Democrats refuse to allow debate on the budget, much less block a final vote, as they hope to pressure the Republican Majority to cave in order to avoid an entire shutdown of DHS at the end of February .  Of course, most of DHS are essential workers so a hypothetical shutdown would just involve 33,000 administrative workers.

 Judging from the tough talk from Speaker Boehner, the House majority won't back down. But the Lamestream Media will still find a way to frame Republicans as being dangerous obstructionists. 

   

Mike Lee on Immigration

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) railed against the Department of Homeland Security's rumored relaxation of deportations of illegal immigrants. At the same time, the Tea Party inspired Senator noted that conservatives are willing to address immigration but in a step-by-step rather than a collossal comprehensive immigration bill, which would be a monstrosity ala Obamacare. 

DHS Newspeak and National Security--Help Big Sis' Out

Mini-home malquoted doubleplusungood. Dayorder rectify goodthink for prolefeed bellyfull before Two Minute Hate.

There are times that it just seems apropos to use Newspeak from George Orwell’s seminal novel 1984 to cover the security issues in America, particularly regarding the Department of Homeland Security (Mini-home).

In the early days of the Obama Administration, Pentagon officials were warned not to refer to the Long War or the Global War on Terror but instead to bluster bureacratese “Overseas Contingency Operations”. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano tried to avoid refering to 9/11 or terrorism but preferred such euphemisms as “Man made disasters.” The Obama Administration considered what Major Nidal Hasan in the 2009 Fort Hood shootings, where 13 people were killed and 29 injured was not homegrown terrorism or domestic jihad (despite the shooter screaming “Allahu Akbar”) but was a workplace violence incident.

 Alas, this “nuanced” approach is not limited to Newspeak...

  READ MORE at the DCBarroco website.