Senator Wonders If Hillary Is Covering Legal Expenses For Tech Firm That Managed Her Email Server

Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley , the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is questioning whether Hillary Clinton paid legal and public relations expenses for a former State Department aide and a tech company that worked on her private email system.

“As you are aware, such arrangements can pose conflict-of-interest issues,” Grassley wrote in a letter he sent on Tuesday to attorneys representing Clinton and several of her State Department aides, including Bryan Pagliano, the IT staffer who managed Clinton’s email system while she was secretary of state.

Grassley appears concerned that Clinton’s former aides and the tech companies she has hired to manage her mysterious email system would continue to work on her behalf rather than provide information on the email arrangement to investigators.

“It is important for the Committee to know whether Secretary Clinton and her attorneys are providing financial support, legal support, or other coordination to those associates of hers who are involved in congressional committee and federal law enforcement inquiries relating to her email server,” Grassley wrote.

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Obama’s EPA Spending MILLIONS Overseas

President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has doled out nearly $25 million to foreign nations and entities — including many countries with terrible environmental track records through 135 separate grants.

Officials at the EPA defend the awards to international organizations and foreign governments since 2009.

“Our limited international investments are focused where we can have the biggest environmental protection return,” EPA spokeswoman Melissa Harrison tells The Daily Caller News Foundation. “International grants allow the U.S. to engage internationally and address serious trans-boundary and global environmental problems affecting the public health and environmental quality of the US and its citizens.”

International grants represent less than one percent of the agency’s annual grant-making total, she says.

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The New Stop-Trump Campaign: He’s a Nazi!

In their desperate quest to end the candidacy of Donald Trump, the media, Democrats, and even fellow Republican candidates have gone Full Godwin on the richly-coiffed real estate mogul: they’re saying he’s a Nazi.

Republican presidential longshot Ohio Governor John Kasich – did you know his father was a mailman? – has now released an ad starring retired Air Force Colonel Tom Moe. The ad for Screamy McShoutypants features Moe paraphrasing a quote from pastor Martin Niemoller after World War II:

You might not care if Donald Trump says Muslims should register with their government, because you’re not one. And you might not care if Donald Trump says he’s going to round up all the Hispanic immigrants, because you’re not one. And you might not care if Donald Trump says it’s okay to rough up black protesters, because you’re not one. And you might not care if Donald Trump wants to suppress journalists, because you’re not one. But think about this: If he keeps going, and he actually becomes president, he might just get around to you. And you better hope there’s someone left to help you.

This is absurd on every level. Trump did not say that all Muslims must register with the government, contrary to the media’s manufactured narrative; he said that foreign Muslims entering the United States ought to be kept in a database, as indeed they already are. Trump didn’t say it was okay to rough up black protesters, he said it was okay to rough up protesters at his events regardless of race – an idiotic viewpoint, surely, but not a racist one. The suggestion that Trump uniquely suppresses journalists is a laugh: Barack Obama has actually attempted to wiretap journalists, and Hillary Clinton ropes them off at events.

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Sen. Sessions Reveals 12 Refugee-Jihadis Charged this Year, Hopes to Shrink Obama’s 2016 Refugee Budget

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is out with a list of 12 vetted refugees who quickly joined jihad plots to attack the United States.

He’s spotlighting the refugees-turned-jihadis because he’s trying to prod GOP leaders into halting Congress’ normal practice of giving the president huge leeway to import foreign migrants and refugees into the United States.

This year, Obama is promising to bring in an extra 10,000 low-skill, potentially difficult-to-integrate Syrian migrants into the United States. Sessions and other critics fear he’ll use his many powers — and Congress’ autopilot funding for refugee programs — to bring in far more than 10,000 migrants.

In fact, from 2010 to 2015, Obama has allowed more than 200,000 low-skill migrants from Central American to enter the United States, and then disappear into the nation’s growing population of at least 11 million illegal immigrants.

Obama says the new refugees will be vetted. But top security officials say the Syrians can’t be vetted because the U.S doesn’t know what they were doing in Syria before they applied for refugee status.

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Obama Quietly Releases Plans For 2,224 Regulations Ahead Of Turkey Day

While millions of Americans prepare to stuff themselves with Turkey and pie, the Obama administration quietly released its plans for 2,224 federal rules Friday — a preview of just how many more regulations the president is attempting to issue before he leaves office.

President Barack Obama’s Unified Agenda for Fall 2015 is his administration’s regulatory road map and lays out thousands of regulations being finalized in the coming months. Obama has developed a habit of releasing the agenda late on Friday before a major holiday.

Indeed, Obama’s Spring 2015 agenda detailing the status of more than 2,300 regulations was released the eve of Memorial Day weekend. Obama’s Fall 2014 agenda featuring more than 3,400 regulations was also released the Friday before Thanksgiving.

While Obama’s latest release features fewer regulations than the last two, it shows the administration is determined to churn out as many rules as it can before the end of 2016. This includes major energy and environmental regulations coming down the pipe, like new rules for coal mines and rules banning common pesticides.

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Glenn Greenwald: Press is hungry for war

Glenn Greenwald, the advocate-journalist who broke the story of the Edward Snowden leaks in 2013, argues the press is steering the American public toward supporting another Middle Eastern war in the wake of the Nov. 13 Paris terrorist attacks that killed 130.

"The lesson that the American media supposedly learned after the 9/11 attacks was allowing political, military, and intelligence officials to make all kinds of claims without scrutinizing and questioning and pushing them is a really destructive thing to do," Greenwald said Sunday on CNN's "Reliable Sources."

"It propagandizes the population. It leads to things like torture, Guantanamo, the attack on Iraq. I think you've seen that exact behavior but even worse from the overwhelming majority of the media since the Paris attack," Greenwald said.

Greenwald specifically targeted the station he was appearing on.

"I think that CNN has unfortunately led the way in this," Greenwald said. "You've had one intelligence official with the CIA or formerly with the CIA after the next, gone on air and made all kinds of extremely dubious claims that print journalists have repeatedly documented ... are totally false."

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IRS: You Can’t Sue Us Unless We Say You Can

Department of Justice lawyers claimed Wednesday the IRS cannot be sued for damages by the estimated 330,000 taxpayers victimized by hackers who earlier this year breached the federal tax agency’s computer files.

Plaintiffs Becky Welborn and Wendy Windrich’s claim of damage under the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedures Act cannot be pursued because the doctrine of Sovereign Immunity, which holds the federal government immune to damage claims unless it agrees to such litigation.

Without such an agreement from the IRS, the federal courts have no jurisdiction over the damage claim filed by Welborn and Windrich, according to Justice Department lawyers.

The government’s lawyers also argued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that the tax agency can only be sued on claims involving alleged violations of the IRS tax code’s privacy provisions to protect the confidentiality of documents submitted by taxpayers.

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PAUL RYAN, HOUSE GOP LEADERS SET THE STAGE FOR COMING CAVE TO OBAMA’S SYRIAN REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT PROGRAM

Newly elected House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is setting the stage this week to cave to President Barack Obama’s efforts to resettle thousands of Syrian refugees across America, even in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks.

On Wednesday afternoon at 4 p.m. ET, the House Rules Committee will meet to prepare a bill from House Homeland Security Committee chairman Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX) that doesn’t end up stopping Syrian refugee resettlement in America. Sources Congress-wide confirm to Breitbart News that McCaul’s bill leaves the entire refugee program unchanged and doesn’t affect funding for the program.

The bill number is H.R. 4038 and its title is the American SAFE Act of 2015. “SAFE” stands for “Security Against Foreign Enemies,” and McCaul has billed the legislation in the headline of a House Homeland Security Committee press release as an act that would “Protect Americans from ISIS.”

“America has a proud tradition of welcoming refugees into our country, and we lead the world in humanitarian assistance. However, we also must put proper measures in place to ensure our country’s safety,” McCaul said.

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No Answer For Senators On Immigration History Of US Terror Suspects

The Obama administration has not responded to a demand from senators for details on the immigration history of dozens of U.S. residents arrested on terror-related charges.

Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Jeff Sessions  identified 72 U.S. residents charged with terror-related crimes in the past year and sent the Obama administration a letter in August requesting details on their immigration histories. They provided an incomplete chart with the letter, and asked the Obama administration to fill it in by Sept. 4, but have received no response.

“It is quite telling that this Administration — which seems to have unlimited resources to circumvent our immigration laws and further its executive amnesties — cannot find the time or resources to provide timely answers to these simple questions,” Sessions and Cruz wrote in a joint statement Tuesday.

“Moreover, after this past weekend’s barbaric attacks in Paris, the Administration’s continued insistence on pursuing the massive resettlement of countless individuals from unstable areas of the world reveals a flagrant disregard for the safety and security of the American people,” they continued.

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Blowback—–The Washington War Party’s Folly Comes Home To Roost

Exactly 26 years ago last week, peace was breaking out in a manner that the world had not experienced since June 1914. The Berlin Wall—-the symbol of a century of state tyranny, grotesque mass warfare and the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over the planet—-had come tumbling down on November 9, 1989.

It was only a matter of time before the economically decrepit Soviet regime would be no more, and that the world’s vast arsenal of weapons and nuclear bombs could be dismantled.

Indeed, shortly thereafter according to Gorbachev, President George H.W. Bush and Secretary Baker promised that NATO would not be expanded by “as much as a thumb’s width further to the East” in return for acquiescing to the reunification of Germany.

So with its “mission accomplished” there was no logical reason why NATO should not have been disbanded in parallel with the Warsaw Pact’s demise, and for an obvious and overpowering reason: On November 9, 1989 there were no material military threats to US security anywhere on the planet outside of the suddenly vanishing front line of the Cold War.

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Ryan: I support a 'pathway to legal status'

House Speaker Paul Ryan iterated his support for a "pathway to legal status" for illegal immigrants Sunday, but opposed a pathway to citizenship, and also rejected the much more harsh immigration plan of GOP presidential primary front-runner Donald Trump.

"I think you could have a pathway to legal status… it's a way to make amends with the law, effectively go on probation, and earn your way to legal status, but not to citizenship," Ryan said on "60 Minutes."

When asked whether the U.S. would be deporting millions of illegal immigrants under Paul's watch, Ryan said, "I don't see how it could happen."

"I take it you don't advocate 11 million illegal immigrants and deporting them?" reporter Scott Pelley asked.

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Government adds record $339 billion to debt in first day after budget deal

The federal government has piled up debt since the latest budget deal was signed into law, tacking $462 billion onto the national credit card since Nov. 2 as the Treasury Department replenished its funds and began another round of borrowing to take it all the way into 2017.

A staggering $339 billion in total debt was added on just the first day after President Obama signed the budget agreement — the single largest hike in history.

The debt has continued to rise, albeit more slowly, in the days since, putting the president on track to come close to the $20 trillion mark by the time he leaves office in January 2017.

Meanwhile, the early deficit numbers for fiscal year 2016, which began Oct. 1, are already looking more grim.

The government ran a deficit of $136 billion last month, up 12 percent compared with the previous October, as spending ballooned and taxes remained nearly flat. It was the worst October since 2010, when the government was still spending on the stimulus and was on pace for a deficit of more than $1 trillion that year.

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Feds rule in favor of snooping by tech giants

Google, Facebook and other tech giants should remain free to spy on you, regulators ruled on Friday.

A petition filed with the Federal Communications Commission by the privacy group Consumer Watchdog asked that such websites be forced to respect consumer requests not to have their online activity tracked. The FCC dismissed the petition, stating that it has been "unequivocal in declaring that it has no intent to regulate edge providers."

The FCC voted to reclassify Internet service providers as Title II utilities this year, placing them under laws codified by the Communications Act of 1934 and Telecommunications Act of 1996. Petitioners cited privacy provisions applicable under those laws in making their case, but the FCC suggested it was not ready to apply those provisions to websites until it held a separate rulemaking process.

In a statement, Consumer Watchdog said the privacy provisions "apply to companies like Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T and other ISPs." However, the group said, "much of the personal data gathered by those companies, which will be regulated, is the same information gathered by companies like Google, and Facebook, whose privacy invasive practices won't be covered."

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Rand After Debate: I ‘Separated Myself From The Field’

Rand Paul thinks his debate performance set him completely apart from the rest of the Republican field Tuesday night.

Speaking to reporters in the “Spin Room” after the Fox Business debate, the Kentucky senator said his call to scale back the American military makes him the only fiscal conservative in the race.

“I thought it was a good debate. I thought I got more time,” Paul said. “I got to express my opinion, and I have a few opinions that I want to express.”

“And I think also separated myself from the field, in that, I’m the only fiscal conservative on the stage. I’m the only one who says, you know what, you can’t be for a trillion dollars in new military spending and call yourself a conservative.”

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Government blows $3 billion to digitize one immigration form

The federal government's project to digitize paper immigration forms was scheduled to conclude two years ago, but is now expected to finish in 2019, $2.5 billion over budget, according to a report by the Washington Post.

The Office of Transformation Coordination was given nearly half a billion dollars in 2005 to convert 95 immigration application documents into electronic, downloadable forms.

A decade later, officials charged with overseeing the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' Electronic Immigration System have just one digitized form to show for the $3.1 billion endeavor.

"Aside from the incompetence associated with the expensive failure to bring the management of the immigration process into the 21st century, this waste of taxpayers' money demonstrates that the federal bureaucracy cannot manage to effectively carry out our existing immigration policies in the public interest," Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told the Washington Examiner.

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World bank wants 'social safety net' in global climate fight

The World Bank wants nations to adopt something akin to a global "social safety net" to address the effects of climate change on the world's poor, providing universal healthcare and other subsidies as a way to protect millions from becoming impoverished from increasing floods, droughts and disease.

The World Bank made its recommendations Sunday in a report titled, "Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty."

The study is being issued ahead of a major climate change conference in Paris at the end of the month, where all nations will attempt to hash out a global agreement on emissions reductions.

Critics of President Obama's plan to endorse the deal say it will raise prices for the U.S. by codifying regulations that will increase energy costs. Critics also say the deal aims to shift the wealth of developed nations, like the U.S., to poorer developing countries through the creation of a "green" climate fund.

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JEFF SESSIONS: KILL THE ‘ANTI-DEMOCRATIC’ TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP IN THE CRIB, REPEAL FAST-TRACK AUTHORITY NOW

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, is calling for the immediate destruction of the 5,554-page Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trans-global trade deal introduced on Thursday.

“The text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership runs 5,554 pages,” Sessions said in a statement provided to Breitbart News.

This is, by definition, anti-democratic. No individual American has the resources to ensure his or her economic and political interests are safeguarded within this vast global regulatory structure. The predictable and surely desired result of the TPP is to put greater distance between the governed and those who govern. It puts those who make the rules out of reach of those who live under them, empowering unelected regulators who cannot be recalled or voted out of office. In turn, it diminishes the power of the people’s bulwark: their constitutionally-formed Congress.

In the next part of the detailed statement calling for the TPP’s annihilation, Sessions walks through several troubling rules and regulations contained throughout its thousands of pages.

Among the TPP’s endless pages are rules for labor, environment, immigration and every aspect of global commerce – and a new international regulatory structure to promulgate, implement, and enforce these rules,” Sessions said. “This new structure is known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission – a Pacific Union – which meets, appoints unelected bureaucrats, adopts rules, and changes the agreement after adoption.

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Contractors Who Allegedly Let Russians Write PENTAGON CODE Pay Up

The U.S. Department of Justice hit two contractors with multi-million dollar fines this week, after an investigation concluded Russian computer scientists were writing software code for U.S. military systems.

Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and its subcontractor NetCracker agreed to pay more than $12 million in a settlement with DoJ, which alleged the contractors’ negligence allowed Russian programmers to infect the Department of Defense with several viruses, reported the Center for Public Integrity.

“From 2008 through 2013, NetCracker allegedly used employees without security clearances to perform work when it knew the [Defense Information Systems Agency] contract required those individuals to have security clearances, resulting in CSC recklessly submitting false claims for payment to DISA,” DoJ said in a statement Monday.

The settlement came as a result of a civil suit brought by former NetCracker employee and whistleblower John Kingsley on behalf of the United States, in which he confirmed Russian involvement in U.S. military software production. He’ll receive a $2.4 million payout, and the DoJ reserves the right to press criminal charges.

“On at least one occasion, numerous viruses were loaded onto the DISA network as a result of code written by the Russian programmers and installed on servers in the DISA secure system,” Kingsley’s complaint read.

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Justice Department Puts Federal Watchdogs On Short Leash

Seventy-two federal government watchdogs’ ability to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse is “under attack,” Department of Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth told Congress Tuesday.

Roth, testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said the memorandum circulated by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel earlier this year claiming IGs aren’t entitled to all records of the agency or department they oversee damages IGs’ ability to do their jobs.

The 1978 Inspector General Act explicitly grants IGs access to “all” agency or department records, but the OLC claimed in its memorandum that the law doesn’t include records like grand jury testimony or records concerning wiretapped communications.

“The Department of Justice apparently believes that it is up to those being audited to determine what information gets disclosed,” Roth said in a hearing on recent Transportation Security Administration security gaps.

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Two Senior VA Officials Plead The Fifth Amendment At Hearing

Two senior officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs have pleaded the Fifth Amendment in front of a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on relocation bonus corruption.

Philadelphia and Wilmington VA regional offices director Diana Rubens and St. Paul VA regional office director Kimberly Graves pleaded the Fifth and refused to answer any of the numerous questions put forward by HVAC chairman GOP Rep. Jeff Miller

“Sir, I’ve been advised by counsel not to answer that question to protect my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution,” Rubens repeated multiple times.

The five employees from the VA involved in the incident appeared Monday evening before HVAC under subpoena. The subpoena to appear — the first ever issued in the committee’s history — was deemed necessary because the VA did not allow the witnesses to show up to the first hearing on the subject.

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SCIENTISTS QUESTION JERRY BROWN’S CLAIMS AGAIN

Scientists are questioning California Gov. Jerry Brown’s judgment on the environment–for the second time in as many weeks.

California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency on Saturday regarding millions of “dead and dying trees,” according to a statement released by his office.

“Four years of drought have made trees in many regions of California susceptible to infestation by native bark beetles, which are normally constrained by the defense mechanisms of healthy trees,” the statement said. “The United States Forest Service recently estimated that more than 22 million trees have already died in California due to current conditions.”

Brown had written to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to request aid for what he called “the worst epidemic of tree mortality in its modern history,” requiring “action on all fronts.”

Brown said that the proliferation of dead trees could pose additional danger for California wildfires.

However, some environmentalists disputed the governor’s scientific assertions. The New York Times reports:

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