Conservatives to flex muscles in House leadership races

The most conservative faction of House Republicans plans to unify behind a single candidate for House speaker, a move they say will increase their leverage in the election to succeed John Boehner when he resigns next month.

"Clearly, conservatives are in the driver's seat," Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., told the Washington Examiner. "We are working together. I presume we'll be voting together."

Huelskamp, along with a few dozen other GOP lawmakers, belong to the newly formed House Freedom Caucus, which espouses the conservative political philosophy of the Tea Party movement that got many of them elected to Congress.

Members of that group admit they do not wield enough influence for one of their own members to win the speaker's gavel, which will require 218 GOP votes. But their bloc is large enough to potentially stop House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., the frontrunner to succeed Boehner.

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Pope’s World and the Real World

Pope Francis’s four-day visit to the United States was by any measure a personal and political triumph.

The crowds were immense, and coverage of the Holy Father on television and in the print press swamped the state visit of Xi Jinping, the leader of the world’s second-greatest power.

But how enduring, and how relevant, was the pope’s celebration of diversity, multiculturalism, inclusiveness, open borders, and a world of forgiveness, peace, harmony and love is another question.

The day the pope departed Philadelphia, 48 percent of Catalonia, in a record turnout of 78 percent, voted to deliver a parliamentary majority to two parties that advocate seceding from Spain.

Like the Scots in Britain, the Walloons in Belgium and the Italians of Veneto, they want to live apart, not together.

While the pope called on America and Europe to welcome the migrant millions of the Third World, Bishop Laszlo Kiss-Rigo, whose diocese stretches across the southern reaches of Catholic Hungary, says of those pouring into Europe: “They’re not refugees. This is an invasion. They come here with cries of ‘Allahu Akbar.’ They want to take over.”

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Whistleblower Fired And Barred From VA Facility Which Allegedly Torches Bagfuls Of Loose Drugs

A pharmacist who was fired from a VA medical facility earlier this year for exposing horrendous patient safety problems has now been barred from entering the premises altogether.

Andrew Carmichael was publicly escorted out of the Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center by three police officers Feb. 3, despite receiving a performance review of “excellent” two months earlier.

Carmichael, who talked exclusively with The Daily Caller News Foundation, is a whistleblower and wasn’t given any advance warning of his termination. He claims management fabricated conduct issues based only on hearsay and drove him out for reporting problems first to hospital leadership, and then to federal agencies, when his initial efforts were either rebuked or completely ignored.

Carmichael raised several issues starting with poor IV management.

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Senate Votes Against Continuing Resolution That Freezes Planned Parenthood Funding

In a 47 to 53 vote, the Senate failed to pass a continuing resolution Thursday that would have temporarily funded the government while freezing Planned Parenthood funding for a year.

House Majority Leader Mitch McConnell chose to bring the legislation to the floor in an attempt to prevent a government shutdown while placating conservatives who won’t vote for a bill that provides the women’s health organization with federal dollars.

Shortly before the vote, the White House threatened to veto the measure, which would have kept the government running until Dec. 11.

McConnell is expected to introduce a “clean” version of the bill which will likely to come to a vote Monday.

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Top Hillary Clinton Adviser Did Private Clinton Business On State Department Email

Hillary Clinton’s right-hand aide Huma Abedin did private business for a Clinton-linked company on her State Department email account, Breitbart News has learned.

Abedin was helping to recruit executives for the private corporate advisory firm Teneo Holdings, founded by former Bill Clinton right-hand man Doug Band, while she was on an official State Department trip with Hillary Clinton by her side.

Ken Miller, former vice chairman of Merrill Lynch and Viacom board member, is now a senior advisor at Teneo Holdings. When Miller was considering taking the Teneo job, he reached out to Huma Abedin. Why would Abedin, a staffer for Hillary Clinton at the State Department, need to be consulted on new Teneo hires?

The conflict of interest, according to emails obtained by Breitbart News, is staggering.

Miller’s executive assistant Shannon Nacey emailed Huma Abedin directly on July 2, 2012 with the subject line “Ken Miller call re: Teneo.”

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Hillary Clinton Email Company Was Hacked By Foreign Attackers

The company that Hillary Clinton paid to manage her private email network was the victim of a massive international hack during the period in which Clinton was employing it, Breitbart News has learned.

Hillary Clinton used the company Internap as the internet service provider for her private email account during her tenure as Secretary of State. Internap, based in Atlanta, has a facility in Manhattan, near the the physical location of the IP address for clintonemail.com.

In March 2011, the security company RSA was hacked. The hackers got into the company’s system through a malware-infested email sent to an employee, then installed a “backdoor” and stole data. RSA called it “an extremely sophisticated cyber attack.”

RSA was not the only victim of the attack. A victim list showed that more than 760 other organizations were also “compromised.” Internap appeared five times on the full victim list.

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House GOP has seen enough: 'Abandon the modern filibuster'

Several House Republicans have seen enough of Democratic filibusters in the Senate, and have introduced a resolution calling on Senate Republicans to do away with it so the chamber can take up legislation supported by the majority.

Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., and seven other House members say the GOP needs to "abandon the modern filibuster rule and return to the historical filibuster rule."

That call came just hours after the Senate tried and failed for the third time to advance a resolution disapproving of the Iran nuclear agreement. Sixty votes were needed to move the resolution to a final vote, but 42 Democrats voted against it and blocked it.

"[T]he Founding Fathers never intended for a significant portion of the Senate's business to be able to be blocked by a minority," the resolution reads.

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Federal Investigative Agency: VA Has Ignored Whistleblowers And Failed To Protect Them

The Department of Veterans Affairs is entirely lackluster in listening to whistleblowers and protecting their rights, a new letter from the Office of Special Counsel sent Thursday said.

Long-due, the letter from the independent federal investigative agency supported allegations made by whistleblowers back in 2014 about problems at certain VA facilities, most notably the Carl T. Hayden Medical Center in Phoenix, Ariz., CNN reports.

Rather than taking steps to address the issues, the letter noted that VA officials often targeted whistleblowers with harassment and intimidation in locations like Maryland, Alabama and West Virginia, among others. In the vast majority of these cases, VA officials took no steps to punish wrongdoers or protect whistleblowers who put themselves on the line when coming forward.

In one case highlighted by the OSC, the VA refused to take any action whatsoever on disclosures from Dr. Katherine Mitchell, who reported delays in health care stemming from a dangerously low number of triage nurses in the Phoenix VA emergency room. This dragged on for five years and created at minimum 110 cases of hazardous delays.

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Valerie Jarrett, White House Meet With ‘Black Lives’ Activists During GOP Debate

White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett and other Obama administration officials spent Wednesday evening meeting with several #BlackLivesMatter activists, including Brittney Packnett and DeRay McKesson.

According to Buzzfeed, the discussion centered on “law enforcement and community policing with an emphasis on how to increase public safety,” with Jarrett emphasizing, “the implementation of its recommendations from the 21st Century Task Force on Policing as a priority for reducing violence.”

This was Packnett’s seventh visit to the White House, Breitbart claims. She was among the group of Ferguson protestors invited to meet with President Obama back in December 2014, and has previously referred to herself as the “bridge” between activists and the White House.

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Trump is runaway favorite in Drudge poll

Drudge posted a poll at the top of its site at the start of the debate, which was hosted by CNN and lasted three hours, for visitors to vote on "who won."

By the end of the event, Trump, who is number one in the Washington Examiner's presidential power rankings, received 61 percent of votes. At a distant second place with 14 percent was Carly Fiorina. In third, Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul tied with 6 percent.

The poll is not scientific and visitors to the website can vote multiple times. Still, it offers some indication of the popularity for the candidates among a large swath of conservative readers across the country.

This was the second major debate of the GOP primary. Trump was also the favorite in the Drudge poll that ran during Fox News's GOP debate, hosted in early August.

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BATTLESHIP DONALD TRUMP: ‘THE SILENT MAJORITY’ IS A ‘MOVEMENT’

Americans are pushing back against failed government, he said. “We’re doing something special. This is a movement—we are going to make our country great again.”

“I don’t think we have to call it a silent majority anymore… they’re not silent,” Trump stated.

Trump also rolled out a series of policy commitments.

He said he’ll soon release his plan to rebuild the military after years of budget cuts. “We’re going to be building up our military,” he declared at the fundraiser for veterans, which was held on the World War II warship, which has played host to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and President Bush Sr.

“We’re going to make our military so big and so strong and so great,” he vowed. “It will be so powerful that I don’t think we’re ever going to have to use it. Nobody is going to mess with us.”

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GOP Push Against Boehner Leadership Reaches Critical Number

Twenty-nine Republican legislators now oppose House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) re-election, so Breitbart News can confirm he can only continue as the leader if Democrats vote for him or if he pulls some spectacular maneuver.

Before this report, there were 28 GOP members publicly opposed to Boehner’s re-election. Twenty-five of them voted against Boehner at the beginning of the Congress, and three more have come out in public since.

The additional conservative House member—who at this time wishes not to be publicly named for leverage purposes in forthcoming negotiations with leadership—has confirmed that if and when a vote on Boehner’s future comes up this fall, he will vote against Boehner’s retention.

The number of votes against Boehner “is easily into the 30s, and could well be into the 40s or even up to 50,” the GOP member said. “I think the votes are there.”

“I stand with virtually everyone in the Freedom Caucus and many outside the Freedom Caucus, which is if a vote to vacate the chair ever came up I’d have to vote for it,” the Republican member, who is very connected in the conference and will probably bring several more votes with him, told Breitbart News in an interview.

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Hillary Email Storage Company: The Emails Could Be Recovered

The Denver-based company that stored Hillary Clinton’s private email server said that the emails might still be recoverable, because there’s no evidence that the server was properly wiped clean.

“Platte River has no knowledge of the server being wiped,” Platte River representative Andy Boian told The Washington Post. “All the information we have is that the server wasn’t wiped.”

If the server was not wiped clean, and investigators can still get all of the information off it, then Clinton-World’s attempts to stonewall the investigation could be rendered null and void.

Clinton did, in fact, delete all of her emails earlier this year, but it is possible that she never managed to physically damage the server itself to the degree that all of the information on it would be lost forever. Thus, the server, which is now in the possession of the FBI and Department of Justice investigators, could still pull up some of the confidential emails that Clinton thought would never see the light of day.

But Platte River’s statement to The Post might also be an example of the company running interference for the Clintons.

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Is The Postal Service Declaring War On Religion?

Don’t expect new Christmas stamps this year because for the first time in decades the U.S. Postal Service won’t issue a new stamp depicting any Christian religious figure or symbol. No baby Jesus. No Mary. And none of the three wise men.

Those of other faiths will be disappointed, too.  There will be no printing of new stamps for the Jewish holiday of Chanukah, the African-American celebration of Kwanzaa or the Muslim Ramadan holiday of EID, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

The Chinese, however, will be cheered to know there will be a new postage stamp for the Chinese New Year.

In 45 of the last 50 years, the postal service has printed new images for each Christmas season, including Mary, angels, wise men, Nativity scenes, the Star of David and even Santa Claus. But this year, all of them have been banished from the production presses.

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Law Enforcement Agencies On Alert For ‘Black Lives Matter’ Attacks On 9/11

Law enforcement agencies are on high alert this week due to violent threats coming from the Black Lives Matter movement.

According to several Be On Look Out (BOLO) alerts sent from several law enforcement agencies and exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller, some members of the “#blacklivesmatter and #fyf911 are calling for the murder of more police officers on a site called blog radio.”

One caller on the show says, “When those mother f**kers are by themselves, that’s when when we should start f***ing them up. Like they do us, when a bunch of them ni**ers takin’ one of us out, that’s how we should roll up.” That caller goes on, “Cause we already roll up in gangs anyway. There should be six or seven black mother f**ckers, see that white person, and then lynch their ass. Let’s turn the tables.”

One BOLO says, “The narrator known as ‘King Noble’ on Facebook states: ‘It’s open season on killing whites and police officers and probably killing cops period. It’s open season. Picking them off. Today we live in a time when the white man will be picked off,” he goes on to claim “the predators are now the prey.’”

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Firms helped by Ex-Im bank have shipped thousands of U.S. jobs overseas

In June, General Electric Co. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt threatened to move company jobs overseas if Congress didn’t reauthorize the Export-Import Bank.

“We’re not going to lose this business,” Mr. Immelt said in a June 17 speech to The Economic Club of Washington. “We’ll build these products in places where export credit financing is available, because we have to.”

But even with Ex-Im Bank loan and financing guarantees, GE and 130 other U.S. companies are still terminating or shipping thousands of jobs overseas, a Watchdog.org investigation found, indicating the elimination of the taxpayer-subsidized agency isn’t the be-all and end-all for corporations making offshore employment and investment decisions.

The Export-Import Bank Act of 1945, which established the bank, specifically required it to guarantee loans that “contribute to the employment of United States workers.” But Watchdog.org’s analysis of the Ex-Im Bank and U.S. Department of Labor databases show the companies who benefited from about 45 percent of all the bank’s guarantees since 2006 eliminated or exported at least some jobs to other countries.

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How this man is reshaping the 2016 presidential election

No other Republican can match the role Trey Gowdy is playing in shaping the Democratic presidential race.

As the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, his investigation is altering the public's perception of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state just as voters prepare to cast their ballots in next year's primaries. The House formed Gowdy's committee in 2014 to investigate the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The revelation of Clinton's exclusive use of a personal email address and private server(s) as secretary of state originated from Gowdy's investigation. Now the FBI and inspectors general of multiple executive branch agencies have launched their own inquiries.

In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Gowdy eschewed recognition for anything other than his own investigation.

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Democrat Who Wants To Disband Benghazi Committee Has Attended Just One Of 45 Interviews

A Democratic member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi is calling for an end to the investigative body, but Republicans are hitting back hard, pointing out that the lawmaker, Adam Schiff, has largely served “in absentia,” attending only one of 45 interviews the committee has conducted.

Schiff, from California, issued the call to disband the committee in a New York Times op-ed published on Friday. He claimed that the panel has lost sight of it purpose of investigating the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and is now focused only on taking down former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“The committee is solely concerned with damaging her candidacy, searching for something, anything, that can be insinuated against her,” Schiff wrote in the op-ed.

But Republicans questioned how Schiff could make such a plea given that he’s rarely around to observe the committee’s work.

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The Deciding Vote for Obama’s Iran Deal Was Bob Corker, Not Barbara Mikulski

The Beltway press tried to make the passage of President Obama’s nuclear sellout to Iran look like a moment of high political drama, but you could tell their hearts weren’t really in it. Everyone knew this was a done deal from the very beginning, thanks to the efforts of the true “deciding vote,” Republican Senator Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN)

Democrat Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) might have been the 34th vote from her party that made it impossible for the Senate majority to stop the deal, but Corker was the key figure in turning Congressional rules upside-down and rendering the majority powerless.

Everything since Corker’s deal has been mere theater, with Corker himself an occasional star performer. “From my perspective, Mr. Secretary, I’m sorry. Not unlike a hotel guest that leaves only with a hotel bathrobe on his back, I believe you’ve been fleeced,” he drawled at Secretary of State John Kerry during a congressional appearance, knowing, as he spoke, that his objections were meaningless, his criticism pure posturing.  

Even more hammy were Corker’s hilariously inaccurate predictions that his rules could actually halt the Iran sellout. “Look, I don’t ever want to overcommit and under-deliver,” he said in April. “We are moving in a very positive direction, and we’ve worked through some issues that I think have given me a lot of hope… I feel like were going to present a bill tomorrow that keeps 100 percent of the integrity of the process relevant to the nuclear agreement in place.”  

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Planned Parenthood Would Still Receive Federal Funds During A Government Shutdown

A memo circulated throughout Congress Wednesday states that since the majority of Planned Parenthood’s federal funding comes through Medicaid, the organization would still receive money from the government in the event of a government shutdown in 2016.

The major source of federal funding provided to PPFA in the past (Medicaid) would likely be available to PPFA during a short-term government shutdown at the start of FY2016. Medicaid is a joint federal-state program which provides health coverage for certain low-income individuals. Under Medicaid, health care expenses of eligible individuals are covered pursuant to a federally approved state plan, and the state is subsequently reimbursed by the federal government of a portion of these expenses. Medicaid an annually appropriated entitlement (i.e. mandatory funding to Medicaid is provided through the annual appropriations process, rather than directly appropriated in authorizing law).

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Fox Correspondent: State Dept In ‘Clear Violation Of The Law’ By Not Investigating Hillary

Fox News’ chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge said by not following proper investigation protocol in investigating Hillary Clinton’s email server, the State Department is in “clear violation of the law and the regulations, and critics would say another example of the double standard.”

HERRIDGE: Look, it’s clear that once a possible compromise of national security defense information — it doesn’t even have to be classified information — is made, it has to be reported. In this case, the State Department would do a damage assessment… Fox News checked with the State Department independently, and there was no confirmation that a damage assessment is being done. On its face, this is a clear violation of the law and the regulations, and critics would say another example of the double standard, Martha, that’s at play here.

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Air Force Shrugs Off $25 Billion Accounting Error

Air Force leaders didn’t seem fazed recently when lawmakers pointed out that the service completely miscalculated the cost of its secretive Long-Range Strike Bomber program to the tune of $27 billion.

In 2014, Air Force leadership estimated that the bomber, likely to be labeled the B-3, would cost approximately $33.1 billion from 2015 to 2024. That estimate was totally wrong. This year, the new figure, for fiscal years 2016 to 2026, jumped to $58.2 billion. That’s an increase of 76 percent.

But in fact, the real cost for both fiscal periods, the Air Force noted, is $41.7 billion.

“There has been no change in the costing factors over the last two years … it was a mistake. It was a regrettable mistake,” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said, according to Fiscal Times.

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