Morality is not determined by the church you attend nor the faith you embrace. It is determined by the quality of your character and the positive impact you have on those you meet along your journey
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz announced Wednesday he will not run for reelection to his House seat in 2018.
The Utah Republican said he won’t seek any political office in 2018, stirring speculation that he may run for governor in 2020. Last year, he told the Deseret News he would “take a serious, serious” look at a gubernatorial bid in Utah once his term as chairman of the House’s primary investigative committee had expired.
Okay so MAYBE Chaffetz is looking to throw his hat into the Utah Governor's race, and that is why he has suddenly decided to quit Congress while seemingly at the pinnacle of his power.
But then again maybe that is NOT the reason.
Now as I mentioned before I am still a little wary of the reporting by Louise Mensch.
However oddly enough she posted this about six days ago.
Yes it could be bullshit, but then again Mensch seems to be on a hot streak right now, so I am loathe to discount it completely.
And you have to admit that would make sense.
Also keep in mind that Chaffetz bragged just in February of this year about his desire to continue investigating Hillary Clinton even though she is now out of politics, so what exactly has changed since then?
Back in October, Representative Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight Committee, had big plans for 2017. After leading the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, he positioned himself to be President Clinton’s greatest foe in Congress, bragging to the Washington Post that he would spend the next four years probing her alleged misdeeds.
“It’s a target-rich environment,” Chaffetz said. “Even before we get to Day One, we’ve got two years’ worth of material already lined up. She has four years of history at the State Department, and it ain’t good.”
Even after the election, Chaffetz said he had a “duty and obligation” to continue investigating the former secretary of State. However, he claimed his committee would investigate President-elect Trump with equal fervor. “I am optimistic that a Trump administration would actually be cooperative,” Chaffetz said. “The Obama administration has given us the stiff arm every single step of the way. I think a new administration would actually work with us to quickly get to the truth, learn what we need to learn and then fix it.”
It’s unclear why Chaffetz thinks the candidate who refused Chaffetz’s call to release his tax returns will be more responsive as president, but so far the Utah congressman isn’t even asking for a response.
So the fact that Donald Trump plans to continue overseeing his business while President, does not raise any red flags?
How about the fact that there is overwhelming evidence that the Russian government hacked government computers in order to help him get elected?
Nothing?
Okay how about the fact that he is allowing his daughter to sit in on meetings with foreign heads of state?
Still nothing?
Well what about the fact that the House Democrats wrote a letter asking for an investigation in Trump's financial holdings to see if there were any potential conflicts of interest?
So that doesn't rise to the level of requiring an investigation either?
Would it help if Trump was caught using a private e-mail server?
Nah, it wouldn't would it?
No, unless Donald Trump changed his last name to "Clinton" and suddenly became a Democrat there is literally nothing he could do to convince the Republican led oversight committee to launch an investigation.
And that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about whether Donald Trump is likely to be impeached or not.
Bernie Sanders will be able to claim more sway over the convention in July after the Democratic National Committee partially gave in to his demand for more control over the committee that writes the party's platform.
While DNC rules allow the chair to pick all 15 members of the national convention drafting committee, the organization struck a deal with the two campaigns so that Hillary Clinton will pick six members, Sanders will pick five, and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz will appoint four, party officials confirmed
It's short of what Sanders lobbied for — he wrote to Wasserman Schultz suggesting that each campaign pick seven members and that the final member be picked jointly by both campaigns — it's still progress for Sanders, who has had an especially rocky relationship with Wasserman Schultz.
Awfully nice of Debbie Wasserman Schultz to negotiate with Sanders while he is actively working to get her primaried out of the House.
Don'tcha think?
Here are Sanders' picks:
Arab-American Institute President James Zogby; Cornel West; Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison; Deborah Parker, an activist on Native American rights; and Bill McKibben, an activist on environmental issues.
Got a couple of bomb throwers in there.
I am not at all convinced that Cornel West, a man who has been attacking President Obama virtually since he took office, is going to be much for negotiations.
Here are Hillary's picks:
Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden, former State Department official Wendy Sherman, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, former White House Energy and Climate Change Policy director Carol Browner, Ohio state Rep. Alicia Reece, and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union's Paul Booth.
And look Hillary picks a bunch of reasonable folks well versed in negotiating techniques, folks who have been through this kind of thing many times before.
Of course that does not include the four that Schultz will appoint, which I imagine will not be terribly interested in taking Sanders' side on too many issues.
I swear it looks more and more like this convention is going to be a damn free for all.
Former CIA Director David Petraeus faced questions on Wednesday from a House committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, as the inquiry entered its third calendar year — and a presidential election year. Petraeus was the first of four former Obama administration officials scheduled to appear before the Republican-led committee in the next week. The committee will question former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Friday. All four interviews were set to be conducted behind closed doors. The panel's chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., told reporters that about a dozen interviews remain, including sessions with national security adviser Susan Rice and Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes. The Benghazi committee hopes to release a report "within the next few months," said spokesman Matt Wolking.
Okay so I guess the strategy is to first attack Hillary's feminist credentials by accusing her of enabling Bill's affairs, second is to keep kicking the dead Benghazi horse in the hopes that it will finally fart out something useful, and then if that does not work I assume that somebody will heave a kitchen sink at her at some point.
If the GOP keeps scraping the bottom of the barrel like this they are likely to dig themselves all the way to China.
A second House Republican has now conceded that the overarching purpose of the House Select Committee on Benghazi has been to attack former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In September, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) argued that one of House Republicans’ successes has been using the Benghazi Committee to drive down Clinton’s poll numbers. Though McCarthy tried to walk back his controversial comments, Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) argued on Wednesday that the Majority Leader had it right to begin with.
“Sometimes the biggest sin you can commit in D.C. is to tell the truth,” Hanna said in an interview on Keeler in the Morning, a radio show in upstate New York. The third-term congressman paused for a moment, perhaps recognizing the importance of what he was about to say, before going on to agree with McCarthy’s original statement.
“This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton,” Hanna said.
He explained further why he believes the Benghazi Committee’s purpose has been in part to attack Clinton. “After what Kevin McCarthy said, it’s difficult to accept at least a part of it was not,” Hanna said. “I think that’s the way Washington works. But you’d like to expect more from a committee that’s spent millions of dollars and tons of time.”
Okay so I have changed my point of view slightly.
In the past as you know I have suggested that the Democrats remove themselves from this House Select Committee and that Hillary refuse to testify now that everybody knows for certain that it is nothing but a witch hunt.
But now I think perhaps Hillary SHOULD show up, as it demonstrates she has nothing to hide, and also because the committee members will literally be terrified to push too hard for fear of proving what we already know.
In the Democratic debate Hillary sounded almost anxious to start her testimony before the Benghazi Committee and I can understand why.
Currently she really holds all of the cards, and can use ANYTHING the Republicans do or say that seems partisan or unnecessarily aggressive to help her raise money for her campaign.
As a matter of fact at this point, if I were a Republican member of Congress, I would be telling everybody who would listen that it is time to abandon this investigation, count their losses, and move on to something else.
Of course considering the fact that these are the House Republicans that something else would probably be investigating Planned Parenthood some more.
A former investigator with the House Select Committee on Benghazi is accusing the Republican-led panel of carrying out a politically motivated investigation targeting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton instead of the thorough and objective fact-finding mission it was set up to pursue.
Major Bradley Podliska, an intelligence officer in the Air Force Reserve who describes himself as a conservative Republican, told CNN that the committee trained its sights almost exclusively on Clinton after the revelation last March that she used a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. That new focus flipped a broad-based probe of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, into what Podliska described as "a partisan investigation."
Podliska, who was fired after nearly 10 months as an investigator for the Republican majority, is now preparing to file a lawsuit against the select committee next month, alleging that he lost his job in part because he resisted pressure to focus his investigative efforts solely on the State Department and Clinton's role surrounding the Benghazi attack. He also alleges he was fired because he took leave from the committee to fulfill his military service obligations, which would be an unlawful firing.
"I knew that we needed to get to the truth to the victims' families. And the victims' families, they deserve the truth -- whether or not Hillary Clinton was involved, whether or not other individuals were involved," he told CNN in an exclusive TV interview that will air Sunday on "State of the Union." "The victims' families are not going to get the truth and that's the most unfortunate thing about this."
Okay I think that should be it. Adding this to what was admitted by Kevin McCarthy back in September seems to signal to me that it's game over for this charade.
In my opinion the Democrats involved with this fiasco should quit, and Hillary should ABSOLUTELY refuse to testify later this month.
At this point if you have any doubts about the legitimacy of this witch hunt you are either a dyed in the wool conservative, or you simply hate Hillary Clinton's guts.
And take a moment to consider this.
Currently the Republicans are spending in excess of 3 million dollars on this "investigation" and that is AFTER they have already spent multiple millions of dollars on past investigations and hearings.
And all of that is to stop ONE presidential candidate?
At this point you have to ask yourself, WHY are the Republicans so incredibly terrified of Hillary Clinton? I mean nobody is starting a House Select Committee to block the Bernie Sanders campaign, or the Martin O' Malley campaign, or the other guy whose name I can't remember's campaign.
And then the follow up question should be, if they are that afraid of Hillary then how can we NOT choose her as our nominee in 2016?
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wants Congress to establish a Select Committee on Gun Violence in the wake of the Oregon college shooting that left 10 dead on Thursday.
There's already a Select Committee on Benghazi, and there will likely be one to investigate Planned Parenthood. On Friday, Pelosi called on House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to create a committee to investigate the "crisis" of mass shootings.
"The epidemic of gun violence in our country challenges the conscience of our nation," Pelosi wrote to Boehner. "As we pray for those who lost their loved ones at Umpqua Community College, we must address the tidal wave of grief guns have caused to so many families."
"As Members of Congress, how can we in good conscience engage in moments of silence to honor these victims of gun violence, if we refuse to take action? We take a solemn oath to protect and defend the American people," she wrote. "We must not accept the horror of gun violence as routine."
Of course even if the Republicans agree to establish his select committee that is no guarantee that they will actually allow any progress to be made.
After all the majority of them are terrified of angering the NRA and having them unleash their letter writing minions upon them.
Instead they will more than likely throw up the straw man argument that the problem is mental health, and not guns, and then do nothing to actually address that either.
Here's just a reminder of what DOES motivate the Republicans in Congress.
As Republicans in Congress kicked off another effort to cut federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the organization's president told lawmakers that the firestorm of controversy is the result of fraudulent videos that distort the organization's work and tissue donation practices.
Cecile Richards said her group is being targeted because of "deceptively edited videos released by a group that is dedicated to making abortion illegal." The "outrageous accusations" based on those videos — that the organization is profiting from selling fetal tissue — are "offensive and categorically untrue."
.....
Richards said what the videos show are practitioners describing efforts to provide fetal tissue for medial research. Fetal tissue donation is "a minuscule part of the work of Planned Parenthood. Of the hundreds of health centers that are part of the Planned Parenthood network, currently just 1 percent facilitate their patients’ tissue donation in support of fetal tissue research." Nevertheless, she strongly defended the practice. "While our involvement with fetal tissue research is a small component of Planned Parenthood, it offers the potential of lifesaving research."
I watched quite a bit of this yesterday and once again found the behavior of the Republicans to be deplorable.
At one point the committee chairman Jason Chaffetz had the temerity to bring up Richards' annual salary and suggest that she was overpaid.
Just the very idea of a member of this do nothing Congress suggesting that some other person was overpaid is enough to make my head explode in rage. Not only that but to my ears it sounded more than a little sexist.
And that is also the way it sounded to Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who had this to say:
I'd like to register my opposition and my objection to the chairman beating up on a woman on our witness today for making a good salary. The entire time I've been in Congress I've never seen a witness beaten up and questioned about their salary. Ms. Richards heads a distinguished organization providing health care services to millions of Americans and I find it totally inappropriate and discriminatory.
Here here!
The committee threw a lot of BS at Richards during her testimony including a chart that they threw up on the screen to shame her.
Chaffetz claimed the chart was created from data supplied by Planned Parenthood, however right there on the spot attorneys for Planned Parenthood were able to debunk the chart and reveal that it came from an anti-abortion group called Americans United for Life.
And before you get too concerned about the jackals that salivated around Ms. Richards you should know that she had one very competent warrior fighting on her side.
None other than Elijah "Fuck you and your stupid Republican investigations" Cummings!
Rep. Cummings as we know has also been the voice of reason during the incredibly long Benghazi witch hunt as well.
I don't think the Republicans got much they can use from this inquisition yesterday.
However that does not mean they have any intention of giving up.
After all if they can keep that ridiculous Benghazi investigation going for 72 weeks there is no telling how long they can beat this dead horse.
Hillary Clinton permanently deleted all the emails on the private server she used to do official business as secretary of state, the Republican lawmaker who subpoenaed the emails said late Friday.
Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, chairman of the House committee investigating the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, said Clinton's lawyer informed him of the news.
"Secretary Clinton unilaterally decided to wipe her server clean and permanently delete all emails from her personal server," Gowdy said in a statement.
Gowdy had also asked that Clinton turn over her server to the State Department inspector general for an independent review.
Clinton's lawyer, David Kendall, said no.
In his letter to Gowdy, Kendall said the former secretary of state "chose not to keep her non-record personal emails."
"Thus, there are no ... e-mails from Secretary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state on the server for any review, even if such review were appropriate or legally authorized," he wrote.
Clinton's lawyer further maintained that all of work related, or potentially work related e-mails had all been turned over to the state department last year. Which in no way is going to satisfy the Republicans who are convinced that Clinton is hiding something from them.
Once again I find myself understanding both sides.
On the one side it seems perfectly reasonable for people to assume that if Clinton had nothing to hide she would have no problem turning over her private server to a trusted third party to have it examined for anything that might be of use to the House investigating committee.
On the other hand this is like the third committee to investigate Clinton over Benghazi and there is really little doubt that they would have found something, no matter how small, to use against her in 2016, eve if it had NOTHING to do with Benghazi or their investigation.
Hillary remembers all too well that it was the Whitewater investigation, which led to Monica Lewinsky, a stained blue dress, and the impeachment of her husband.
Let's face it Gowdy is under enormous pressure to find something, and it is almost certain that he would have. Whether it was really there or not.
I have to say that as much as this leaves a sour taste in my mouth I am not sure that Hillary had much of a choice.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, the new chairman of the select committee assigned to investigate the 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya — vowed Sunday the process would be fair, factual and nonpartisan.
“I have no friends to reward and no foes to punish,” the South Carolina Republican said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’re going to go wherever the facts take us. Facts are neither Republican nor Democratic, they are facts.”
“If we overplay our hand or we engage in a process that is not fair according to the American people, then we will be punished, as we should be,” Gowdy told Fox’s Chris Wallace.
Gowdy pushed back on the notion that he was treating the chairmanship like a judicial prosecution — walking back a comment earlier last week where he said: “I can’t end a trial simply because the defense won’t cooperate.”
“For 16 years, I spoke in trial metaphors and perhaps I need to get out of that habit,” the former prosecutor said Sunday.
Anybody who watched Gowdy embarrass South Carolina, and the rest of America during his previous Benghazi hearings, while he was questioning Kathleen Sebelius, and during the ridiculous IRS hearings, has no reason to believe that he will conduct himself in a reasonable and respectful manner during this latest witch hunt.
After enduring negative headlines that all of the House Republican committee chairmanships will be filled by men in the next Congress, Republicans have found their woman.
NBC News has learned that Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.) will be named chair of the House Administration Committee. Miller did not serve on the committee during the 112th Congress.
Well so what if she has no experience with the committee? An appointment is an appointment, right?
Just so long it's not some really embarrassing chairmanship that nobody ever really wants, or that involves something kind of sexist like, oh I don't know, house keeping or something like that.
The House Administration Committee deals with the pertinent administrative business of the House. The committee can decide such mundane things as whether or not the House cafeterias will use paper or Styrofoam plates -- or more serious matters such as benefit packages for congressional workers and how the Library of Congress operates. The Committee also monitors the expense accounts of House members.
Oh, so she's in charge of the kitchen, and managing the House money? Oh yeah, nothing sexist about THAT! House Speaker John Boehner issued this statement: “From ensuring the House runs efficiently and smoothly, to making Congress more open and accessible, Candice has a big job ahead as chairman of the House Administration Committee. In her new post, Candice will provide the leadership needed to keep operating costs down, save taxpayer dollars, and help lawmakers use new technology to better engage with their constituents. And her experience as Michigan secretary of state will be invaluable given the committee’s oversight of campaign finance and election laws.
By the way sources say that after those official remarks Boehner then whispered under his breath, "And besides I am pretty sure she has a vagina, so you liberals can just back the fuck off!" (Okay I made that part up, but you KNOW he was thinking it.)
Okay let's take us a look at this Rep. Candace Miller shall we?
Oh! Well, she's you know...holy crap!
Well nice try Republicans, I mean you work with what you've got right?
Okay I'm going to close this post because she kind of scares me. (So much for sleeping with the lights off tonight.)
