State Department clears Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing in her use of private e-mail while serving as Secretary of State.

"What's that you say? I was right all along?"

Courtesy of Daily News Bin: 

The State Department publicly confirmed today that Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email while serving as Secretary of State violated no laws or policies that were in place at the time, bringing an end to the substantive side of the “email scandal” if certainly not the political side. Clinton’s opponents in the 2016 election and their followers have been hoping the issue would force her out of the election, but now they’ll be reduced to simply trying to create a scandal where none exists, after the department’s official words today. 

State Department official spokesperson John Kirby appeared live on CNN today and flat out stated that “she was not violating policy.” Like many other high ranking officials who came before and during her tenure, Hillary Clinton opted to bypass the wonky email servers provided by the department due to the fact that they couldn’t, for instance, properly work with mobile email apps on smartphones. Previous Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice have acknowledged having done the same. The news comes as a disappointment to those in politics who viewed the controversy as their best shot at catching up to Clinton, who has a massive lead in national polls both within her own party and across party lines.

This of course is what the Clinton campaign has been saying all along, but that has not stopped the Republicans from attacking her over her decision to use a private server rather than an e-mail address issued by the State Department. 

Which, let me remind everybody again, was forced to completely shut down their e-mail system due to being hacked.

Of course even this will not keep Hillary[s detractors from making this nothing burger into an entire seven course meal of imagined corruption and illegalities. 

(If you want to see the video of Kirby's appearance on CNN you can do so here.)

Oklahoma Supreme Court orders the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from the state capitol.

Courtesy of News OK: 

The Ten Commandments monument must be removed from the grounds of the state Capitol, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. 

Justices ruled 7-2 the monument must go because the state constitution prohibits the use of public property to directly or indirectly benefit a “church denomination or system of religion.” 

The decision touched off a furor at the Capitol with several lawmakers calling for impeachment of the seven justices who voted in the majority. 

Attorney General Scott Pruitt said he believes the court "got it wrong" and filed a petition for rehearing — a move that will at least delay removal of the monument. 

If that fails, Pruitt called for changing the state constitution.

Boy religious zealots can certainly get all....zealotry now can't they? (Did I use that word right?)

In my opinion this is just part of the new direction this country is going which includes embracing the idea of gay marriage, rejecting hateful icons like the Confederate battle flag, and eschewing any co-mingling of religion and government.

And may I just say it is all about damn time.

Hey remember back to "Obama's Summer of Scandals?" Yeah, me neither. Update!

"You have a new idea for a scandal? Proceed."

Courtesy of  New York Magazine:  

The IRS scandal is instructive. The most damning moment of the episode was the first day, when the IRS disclosed that it applied one-sided scrutiny to conservative political organizations seeking tax-exempt status. 

But then the IRS inspector general, a Republican, reported that the entire program came from within the agency, with no direction at all from Obama or any members of his team. It was just an agency scandal. Subsequent revelations have made the matter look even more benign. Apparently, the agency also targeted liberal groups for possible violations, using terms like progressive to flag political groups. In other words, there may be no scandal here at all. The IRS was looking to make sure political groups weren’t abusing the tax code by pretending to be nonpolitical, and it tried to search for such abuses by using terms like tea party and progressive that would signal partisanship. 

Why did we think the agency was targeting only conservatives? Because apparently Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, ordered the agency to audit its treatment of tea-party groups, and only tea-party groups. The IRS dutifully reported it was indeed targeting tea-party groups; everybody assumed it was doing no such thing to liberal groups. The IRS inspector general is defending its probe, but the IRS's flagging of conservative groups seems, at worst, to be marginally stricter than its flagging of liberal groups, not the one-sided political witch hunt potrayed by early reports. 

What about the rest of the scandals? Well, there aren’t any, and there never were. Benghazi is a case of a bunch of confused agencies caught up in a fast-moving story trying to coordinate talking points. The ever-shifting third leg of the Obama scandal trifecta — Obama’s prosecution of leaks, or use of the National Security Agency — is not a scandal at all. It’s a policy controversy. One can argue that Obama’s policy stance is wrong, or dangerous, or a threat to democracy. But when the president is carrying out duly passed laws and acting at every stage with judicial approval, then the issue is the laws themselves, not misconduct. 

The whole Obama scandal episode is a classic creation of a “narrative” — the stitching together of unrelated data points into a story. 

You know I think it must literally drives the Republicans crazy that Obama is so squeaky clean.

No graft, no philandering, no huge gaffes, virtually nothing for the Republicans to work with in order to destroy his credibility or halt the political ground being gained by the Democrats.

Almost makes you wonder if there is a 12 step program for conservatives to help them deal with the withdrawal symptoms they are suffering after coming up empty so many times?

I have a suggestion for them. They could always investigate each other.

After all you KNOW there is no lack of Republican scandals just WAITING to be uncovered.

Perhaps they even could start with Darrell Issa? There is no way that a guy who acts like him, and looks like an extra from "Goodfellas," could be clean. No way!

Update: While we are on this topic, do you remember how Fox News, Right Wing radio, and Teabaggers, like Sarah Palin, claimed that Ambassador Stephens and three others were killed because there was a "stand down" order given preventing them from being rescued?

Yeah, not so much:

The former commander of a four-member Army Special Forces unit in Tripoli, Libya, denied Wednesday that he was told to stand down during last year's deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. 

In a closed-door session with the House Armed Services Committee, Lt. Col. S.E. Gibson said his commanders told him to remain in the capital of Tripoli to defend Americans in the event of additional attacks and to help survivors being evacuated from Benghazi. 

"Contrary to news reports, Gibson was not ordered to 'stand down' by higher command authorities in response to his understandable desire to lead a group of three other special forces soldiers to Benghazi," the Republican-led committee said in a summary of its classified briefing with military officials, including Gibson.

So Palin's sing song refrain of "The President lied, and people died" is complete bullshit. 

Surprised right?

Participant in local Fox News story about the impact of marijuana use on driving ability reveals hidden agenda and manipulative editing.

Here is the description from the YouTube site:

Fox News created a news story with a test they designed to measure the accuracy of stoned drivers. One of the participants knew they would skew the truth of the test, so this video shows the undercover footage Max provides, to show how Fox News created this test to fail and reported false news to the state of Colorado on Medicated drivers.

What? Fox News manipulating data to present a false case in support of their conservative agenda? Say it ain't so!

You know THIS is how we do it. We constantly publicize the erroneous reporting and  blatant propagandizing until Fox News has lost ever single bit of its credibility.  THAT is how we eventually make them irrelevant.

To that end what Max has done is amazing job, and if more people who are involved with these Fox "news" reports start telling the truth about what they are editing in or editing out, that will go a long toward discrediting them completely.

Supreme Court upholds the Affordable Care Act! Update!

Pete Williams of MSNBC reported that the Supreme Court has upheld Obamacare!

This takes away one of the Republicans BIGGEST weapons to use against the President, and is going to be devastating to the Romeny campaign.

This is incredibly good news!

Update: Here is what the Washington Post has to way:

The Supreme Court just upheld the Affordable Care Act as constitutional, affirming Congress’ authority to require Americans to purchase health insurance coverage. 

It’s no doubt an understatement to describe this as a huge victory for the law, and the Obama administration. The Affordable Care Act – after spending two years in legal limbo – now has the court’s backing to move forward. That does not, however, mean the law has smooth sailing ahead. Many obstacles still stand in the law’s way, ones that could derail its success nearly as much as an adverse legal ruling.

That may be true, but this ruling is a monster victory for the President, and one that simply CANNOT be overstated.

I found some Ron Paul supporters. Can you say, awkward?

I have to admit that I kind of agree with Ron Paul on this.

I am not somebody who thinks that what these women do should be against the law, though I have great concerns for their mental well being.

I once worked as a bouncer in a strip club and I know that certain lifestyles can really play havoc with your self esteem and ability to resist falling prey to substance abuse and predatory relationships.

But having said that I am not at all convinced that a profession that is as old as human kind itself should continue to be against the law in this day and age. After all is this not the very definition of capitalism?

Your thoughts?