A Judge Issued a Gag Order, Preventing Speech

Posted on April 27, 2016April 27, 2016 by Denise Simon

Oregon Bakers Continue Legal Fight, Challenging ‘Gag Order’

The Oregon bakers who were ordered to pay $135,000 for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding filed a brief with the Oregon Court of Appeals on Monday, arguing the ruling against them was biased and violates both the Oregon and U.S. constitutions.

“In America, you’re innocent until proven guilty,” said Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty Institute, the group representing Aaron and Melissa Klein in their legal fight. “Commissioner Brad Avakian decided the Kleins were guilty before he even heard their case. This is an egregious violation of the Kleins’ rights to due process. We hope the Oregon Court of Appeals will remedy this by dismissing the government’s case against the Kleins.”

Brad Avakian, commissioner of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, was responsible for issuing the final ruling on the case. On July 2, 2015, he ruled that in declining to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding due to their religious beliefs, the Kleins violated an Oregon law that prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation against people based on their sexual orientation.

Avakian ordered the Kleins to pay $135,000 in mental, physical, and emotional damages to the couple whom they denied service.

Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer (who have since married) filed a complaint against Sweet Cakes by Melissa in Gresham, Ore., in February 2013, a month after the Kleins refused to make a cake for the same-sex couple’s wedding.

The Bureau of Labor and Industries opened its investigation into Sweet Cakes by Melissa in August 2013, six months after the agency received the initial complaint from Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer alleging the bakery owners discriminated against them.

Yet, in the appeal brief filed Monday, lawyers for the Kleins argued that Avakian had publicly declared the Kleins guilty before even waiting for an investigation to take place, citing a Feb. 5, 2013, Facebook post.

In that post, Avakian writes, “Everyone has a right to their religious beliefs, but that doesn’t mean they can disobey laws that are already in place. Having one set of rules for everybody ensures that people are treated fairly as they go about their daily lives.”

In August 2013, after the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries announced it was opening an investigation to determine whether the Kleins had discriminated against the same-sex couple, Avakian also commented about the case, suggesting he had already decided that the Kleins were guilty. “Everybody is entitled to their own beliefs,” he said in an interview with The Oregonian, “but that doesn’t mean that folks have the right to discriminate.”

“The goal is never to shut down a business. The goal is to rehabilitate,” Avakian added.

Ken Klukowski, an attorney at First Liberty, told The Daily Signal that “it’s clear” Avakian demonstrated bias “that rises to the level of violating due process.”

In addition to ruling the Kleins must pay $135,000, Avakian also ordered the former bakery owners to “cease and desist” from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for same-sex weddings based on their Christian beliefs.

“The Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries hereby orders [Aaron and Melissa Klein] to cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published … any communication … to the effect that any of the accommodations … will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination be made against, any person on account of their sexual orientation,” Avakian wrote in the final order.

The justification for this part of his final order originates from an interview Aaron and Melissa Klein participated in with Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins in 2014. During the interview, Aaron said that they, “don’t do same-sex weddings,” and “This fight is not over. We will continue to stand strong.”

Avakian wrote those statements demonstrate a “prospective intent to discriminate.”

“This gag order that they’re under right now, where they have been ordered by the government that they can’t even discuss these things with the media,” Klukowski said, “is shockingly overbroad.”

“There are aspects of their beliefs and of this case, including aspects of their religious beliefs about marriage, that if they were to share these things publicly, that the government could punish them, saying that it amounts to the equivalent of advertising their intention to continue engaging in illegal discrimination,” Klukowski said.

“That censors so much protected speech.”

The punishment for violating the order is “notoriously unspecific,” Klukowski added. Because of that, lawyers for the Kleins are treading carefully on what they allow their clients to do and say in public.

“This is a couple with young children and where the law does not specify what the most severe penalty could be where as far as we know, the sky could be the limit, that’s where we owe it to our clients to err on the side of caution and try to shield them from additional exposure that could have consequences of unspecified severity,” he said.

In reviewing the appeal, the Oregon Appeal Court will determine whether or not the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries violated the Kleins’ constitutional rights to religious freedom, free speech, and due process.

The Kleins maintain that they did not decline the same-sex couple due to their sexual orientation—stating in the brief that they have served one of the women who filed the complaint against them in the past. Instead, they maintain they were only declining to participate in an event that they disagree with because of their Christian beliefs about marriage.

Avakian ruled there is “no distinction” between the two situations.

Klukowski said he expects oral arguments to take place later this year. If the Oregon Court of Appeals rules against the Kleins, the next step would be appealing to the Oregon Supreme Court.

General Dunford: No Fair Fight

Posted on April 27, 2016April 27, 2016 by Denise Simon

Secretary Carter’s Opening Remarks

No Fair Fights for U.S. Troops, Chairman Says

DefenseDept: WASHINGTON, April 27, 2016 — The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff repeated to the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee what has become a mantra to him: he doesn’t believe the United States should ever send American service members into a fair fight.

“Rather, we have to maintain a joint force that has the capability and credibility to assure our allies and partners, deter aggression and overmatch any potential adversary,” Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, who was joined by Defense Secretary Ash Carter, told the committee members.

Carter and Dunford provided testimony on Defense Department’s fiscal year 2017 budget request.

Improving current capabilities, restoring full-spectrum readiness and developing leaders for the future are key to maintaining the greatest advantage the U.S. military has over any rival — its people, the chairman said.

No Shortage of Challengers

The United States has no shortage of challengers from state adversaries to non-traditional foes. The five challenges the Defense Department’s fiscal year 2017 budget request focuses on are Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and violent extremism.

Russia, China, North Korea and Iran continue to invest in military capabilities that look for the soft spot in American defenses, Dunford said. “They are also advancing their interests through competition with a military dimension that falls short of traditional armed conflict and the threshold for a traditional military response,” he said.

The actions of Russia in Ukraine, China in the South China Sea and Iran throughout the Middle East are examples of the challenges the DoD must address, he said.

But the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and al-Qaida still pose dangers to the homeland, the American people and friends, allies and partners, the general said. “Given the opportunity, such extremist groups would fundamentally change our way of life,” he said.

Nuclear Capabilities

Added to these challenges is the priority to modernize the nuclear capabilities of the United States, Dunford said.

The nuclear triad underpins deterrence in the world, but new domains also must be considered, the chairman said. Space and cyberspace are now realms of combat, and the nation must develop and maintain credible capabilities in these realms as well, he said.

Underlying all these threats is the reality of the fiscal environment, Dunford added.

“Despite partial relief from Congress on sequester-level funding, the department has absorbed $800 billion in cuts and faces an additional $100 billion of sequestration-induced risk through fiscal 2021,” he said. “Absorbing significant cuts over the past five years has resulted in our under-investing in critical capabilities. Unless we reverse sequestration, we will be unable to execute the current defense strategy.”

Right Trajectory

Overall, he told the senators, DoD’s FY 17 budget request “puts us on the right trajectory, but it will require your support to ensure the joint force has the depth, flexibility, readiness and responsiveness that ensures our men and women will never face a fair fight.”

But, the chairman warned, a bow wave of requirements lie ahead, including those tied to the Ohio-class submarine replacement program, continued cyber and space investment programs and the B-21 long-range bomber program

A New Scheme for Syrian Refugees?

Posted on April 26, 2016April 26, 2016 by Denise Simon

Infographic: The screening process for refugee entry into the U.S.
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Refugees Welcome graphic — **By the numbers: What you need to know about Syrian refugees in the U.S.**
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“Alternative Safe Pathways” for Syrian Refugees – Resettlement in Disguise?

By Nayla Rush

CIS.org: With the Syrian crisis entering its sixth year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is thinking of “innovative approaches” to organize Syrian admissions, alongside the refugee resettlement program, to countries willing to welcome them. UNHCR’s target for resettlement is 480,000 places over the next three years; it is not sure how many additional admissions into the U.S. and elsewhere these new “alternative safe pathways” will ensure. Refugees who are not resettled could be “legally admitted” using various routes described below.

The legitimacy and transparency of these new “alternative pathways,” aimed at admitting increasing numbers of Syrian refugees into the United States without calling them “refugees,” remain to be seen. They might even amount to convenient admissions detours at a time when the U.S. refugee resettlement program is under tight scrutiny.

In a panel discussion on The Global Refugee Crisis: Moral Dimensions and Practical Solutions organized by the Brookings Institution earlier this year, Beth Ferris, Research Professor at Georgetown University and adviser to the United Nations Secretary General on humanitarian refugee policy, talked about the need to find different solutions to the ongoing humanitarian Syrian crisis. The refugee resettlement program was no longer sufficient to admit Syrian refugees she said; “alternative safe pathways” are needed:

Refugees and government officials are expecting this crisis to last 10 or 15 years. It’s time that we no longer work as business as usual … UNHCR next month [March 2016] is convening a meeting to look at what are being called “alternative safe pathways” for Syrian refugees. Maybe it’s hard for the U.S. to go from 2,000 to 200,000 refugees resettled in a year, but maybe there are ways we can ask our universities to offer scholarships to Syrian students. Maybe we can tweak some of our immigration policies to enable Syrian-Americans who have lived here to bring not only their kids and spouses but their uncles and their grandmothers. There may be ways that we could encourage Syrians to come to the U.S. without going through this laborious, time-consuming process of refugee resettlement.” (Emphasis added.)

The UNHCR conference Ferris was referring to took place in Geneva this March 30. It is one of a series of initiatives aimed at comprehensively addressing the Syrian crisis in 2016. The Geneva “High-level meeting on global responsibility sharing through pathways for admission of Syrian refugees” focused on the need for a substantial increase in resettlement numbers and for “innovative approaches” to admit Syrian refugees. It followed February’s London Conference on Syria, which stressed the financial aspect of this humanitarian crisis ($12 billion pledged in humanitarian aid) and precedes a September 2016 high-level plenary meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Worthy of note here, President Obama will host a global refugee summit this September 20 on the margins of this upcoming General Assembly meeting.

The focus of the Geneva meeting was to introduce “other forms of humanitarian admissions” since “[r]esettlement is not the only aim”, explained UNHCR’s spokesperson. UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi appealed to the international community in his opening statement, calling for “alternative avenues” for the admission of Syrian refugees:

These pathways can take many forms: not only resettlement, but also more flexible mechanisms for family reunification, including extended family members, labour mobility schemes, student visa and scholarships, as well as visa for medical reasons. Resettlement needs vastly outstrip the places that have been made available so far… But humanitarian and student visa, job permits and family reunification would represent safe avenues of admission for many other refugees as well.

At the end of the meeting, Grandi highlighted several commitments made by a number of participants in his closing remarks. Promises were made to:

Increase the number of resettlement and humanitarian admission places.

Ease family reunification and increase possibilities for family reunion.

Give scholarships and student visas for Syrian refugees.

Remove administrative barriers and simplify processes to facilitate and expedite the admission of Syrian refugees.

Use resources provided by the private sector in order to create labor mobility schemes for Syrian refugees.

The Geneva meeting was attended by representatives of 92 countries, including the United States. Heather Higginbottom, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, reiterated in her remarks the U.S. commitment to refugees: “President Obama has made assisting displaced people a top priority for the U.S. government.” Last year alone the U.S. contributed more than $6 billion to humanitarian causes. So far this year, the United States has provided nearly $2.3 billion in humanitarian assistance worldwide. She also announced additional measures: “We are further increasing our support of Syrian refugees, and we will make additional contributions to the global displacement effort through September, and beyond”, while reminding the participants of President Obama’s role in hosting a high-level refugee summit this September.

The U.S. State Department released a Media Note following the Geneva meeting. It confirmed the goal of resettling at least 10,000 Syrians in FY 2016 and of 100,000 refugees from around the world by the end of FY 2017 – an increase of more that 40 percent since FY 2015. It also announced the following:

“The United States pledged an additional $10 million to UNHCR to strengthen its efforts to identify and refer vulnerable refugees, including Syrians, for resettlement.”

“The United States joins UNHCR in calling for new ways nations, civil society, the private sector, and individuals can together address the global refugee challenge.”

“Additionally, the United States has created a program to allow U.S. citizens and permanent residents to file refugee applications for their Syrian family member.” [Emphasis added.]

On this last note, why create a family reunification program for Syrian refugees when refugees in the U.S. are already entitled to ask for their spouse and unmarried children under 21 to join them? Unless of course, the aim is to widen family circles to include aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, grandmothers and grandfathers.

Let’s see if we got this right: More Syrian refugees are to be resettled in the United States; administrative barriers (including security checks?) are to be removed to expedite admissions. Come to think of it, this is exactly what we witnessed with the “Surge Operation” in Jordan, where refugee resettlement processes were reduced from 18-24 months to three months in order to meet the target of 10,000 Syrian refugees this year.

Moreover, the United States government, by its own admission, “joins UNHCR in calling for new ways” to move more Syrians to other countries. With the U.S. Refugee Resettlement program under close scrutiny, other routes for “legal admissions” (not “resettlement”) of Syrian refugees into the United States seem more appropriate. Those routes may vary from private sponsorships, labor schemes, expanded family reunification programs, humanitarian visas, medical evacuation, to academic scholarships and apprenticeships, etc.

What remains to be determined is how transparent these “alternative pathways” will be. Will we be given details about numbers, profiles, locations, screening, or costs? Also, what additional measures are we to expect from this administration as it prepares to host a Global Refugee Summit this September 20?

Meanwhile, we are left to wonder: aren’t these “pathways” for refugees nothing more than disguised resettlement routes? Akin to “pathways to citizenship” in lieu of amnesty…

Documents Show Assad’s Oil Deals with ISIS

Posted on April 26, 2016April 26, 2016 by Denise Simon

ISIS’s Multimillion-Dollar Oil Deals With Assad Regime Uncovered in U.S. Special Forces Raid

Newsweek: The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has negotiated multimillion-dollar oil deals with the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), new documents retrieved from a U.S. raid against the radical Islamists’ oil chief have revealed.

A U.S. special forces raid on ISIS’s oil minister—known by his nom de guerre Abu Sayyaf—in May 2015 saw the extraction of thousands of documents implicating his oil operation with that of the Assad regime, with revenue from the sale of oil to Damascus helping the group to reach a peak of $40 million a month in oil revenue, according to documents seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Sayyaf led the group’s oil ministry, known as the Diwan of Natural Resources, and used deals with the Syrian regime to boost the division’s income, contributing 72 percent of $289.5 million the group earned in natural-resource revenues in the six months preceding February 2015.

A document identified as Memo No. 156, dated February 11, 2015, from the trove of documents extracted from Sayyaf’s Deir Ezzor hideout shows that the Tunisian national requested assistance from an unknown party on how to build investment links with businessmen allied to the Assad regime.

The document states that ISIS already had agreements in place with Damascus that permitted trucks to move from oil fields under the authority of the regime to travel through ISIS-controlled territory. Two former ISIS oil managers also told the The Wall Street Journal that the group had made deals with businessman connected to the Syrian regime.

In the raid, U.S. special forces traveled from Iraq to eastern Syria, where they killed ISIS militants guarding his compound before assassinating Sayyaf. The forces took his wife Umm Sayyaf into custody and transferred her to the hands of Kurdish control.

In their sweep across eastern Syria in late 2013 and early 2014, ISIS seized some of Syria’s key oil fields in the Deir Ezzor province, such as al-Tanak and al-Omar. The group lost its first major oil field in Syria, al-Jasbah, where it was producing 3,000 barrels of oil a day, to Syrian-Kurdish forces in January. The U.S.-led coalition is also targeting the group’s oil fields, significantly reducing its ability to refine lucrative oil and sell it to shadowy buyers.

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In 2014: Officials from the Iraqi oil industry have said that ISIS reaps $1 million per day in Iraq in oil profits and that if they get the Syrian fields in [areas where they’re advancing], the total would be $100 million per month for both Iraq and Syria combined. They sell it for $30 a barrel because it’s a black market. It’s not pegged to international standards for oil prices, which are over $100 a barrel. The oil is bought through Turkey from Syria, and it’s sold to black market traders who function throughout the Levant.

ISIS’s strategy seems to have evolved around generating income. ISIS raises money in several ways, but oil is certainly a part of that. For a long time, they avoided having much direct confrontation with the regime. They generally tended to turn their fire against other rebel groups. They had been selling to the regime, or basically anyone who’d pay for it. But recently it seems like they are taking a more aggressive approach, like with the attack on Shaar. Were they just attacking it to destroy it [to hit the regime], or to take it over and continue selling gas? It’s not clear what their intention was.

If ISIS truly has destroyed fields there, it means the [regime’s] gas supply will be cut off. It’s already down to half of pre-war levels, and this will cause more power cuts and electricity cuts in Damascus. It means the regime will have to use more expensive fuel from Iran. It means more suffering for [civilians], and this perhaps will undercut support there for the regime. And it makes it very hard to have any prospect of the economy recovering.

ISIS, which has an illegal oil export scheme that derives revenue. It seems now that [oil in Syria] is up for grabs and ISIS started this trend [of fighting for it]. It is likely that other groups such as Nusra will try to follow.

As the Islamic State is established, it’s clear that ISIS wants to have all parts of their government and revenue sources well organized, and that energy exports are part of this scheme. The scheme includes the collection of taxes, but also other black market activities like trade in other illegal goods the group plunders from the land it captures. Given the call by [ISIS leader Abu Bakr] Baghdadi on the first day of Ramadan –asking for consolidation of the state and the recruitment of individuals to help run that state – you have to figure that the energy sector figures into his planning. Read full interview in context here.

Classified Obamacare Documents?

Posted on April 26, 2016April 26, 2016 by Denise Simon

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, filed the subpoenas in 2013, see the announcement here. In part:

The Committee initially requested information on the CO-OP program in October 2012 and again in March 2013. A June 7, 2013 letter to Secretary Sebelius stated, “[T]his delay is unacceptable and your lack of transparency is troubling.”

The Obamacare CO-OP program used taxpayer money to loan $2 billion to companies establishing non-profit health insurance issuers. However, the Office of Management and Budget estimated the taxpayer losses for the loans at 43.2 percent. Moreover, several companies have experienced legal or financial troubles. For instance, the Vermont Health Co-op, which received a $34 million taxpayer-backed loan, was last month denied an insurance license by the state of Vermont. In letters to HHS, the Committee expressed concern that the process used to select loan recipients was flawed and lacked transparency.

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The Obamacare co-ops are tax-funded non-profit entities that were supposed to compete with private insurance companies. In this, they have failed spectacularly. In the last couple of years, 12 of the co-ops have shut their doors, costing doctors and hospitals million of dollars in losses. This year, some experts are predicting that up to 8 of the 11 remaining co-ops will go under as well. More here from AmericanThinker.
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IBD: Being the “most transparent administration” in history apparently doesn’t mean complying with a congressional subpoena to find out why more than half of the ObamaCare co-ops have failed.

That’s what the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is learning, at least. It has subpoenaed information relating to the 23 nonprofit co-op insurance companies that ObamaCare established with $2.5 billion in government loans.

The co-ops were supposed to provide price competition against commercial insurers, but last year many pushed for and got huge, double-digit rate hikes. Even so, more than half of the 23 set up have failed already, and it’s likely that eight more will collapse this year.

Given that taxpayers are on the hook for billions in loans that might never get repaid, it is only fitting that Congress should find out what went wrong and why.

But instead of providing answers, the Obama administration is stonewalling.

Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz said at a hearing this week, “Health and Human Services has not provided any valid legal reason for withholding information from this committee.”

The committee demanded documents back in November that would shed light on how the administration picked these co-ops, how much money has been spent and what plans the administration has to get federal loan money back from failed co-ops.

Chaffetz says that Obama officials merely “assert that if certain information was released publicly, it could cause consumers to think twice before enrolling in co-op insurance plans.”

That makes absolutely no sense. If other co-ops are likely to fail, then consumers should be aware of it, so they can avoid having their coverage disrupted midyear, which could mean changing doctors, paying higher out-of-pocket costs and so on.

This is hardly the first time that the administration has stonewalled congressional inquiries. If anything, it seems to be the unstated policy of the Obama administration.

In addition to the ObamaCare documents, for example, the Oversight Committee is battling to get documents related to the EPA’s massively expensive water regulations, the Department of Homeland Security’s policy on airport credentialing, the massive hack of government employee records and so on.

Obama officials get away with concealing anything and everything that might prove embarrassing or controversial because the “speaking truth to power” mainstream press largely ignores the stonewalling. So the White House doesn’t suffer any consequences or feel any pressure to change.

You can bet the media’s lackadaisical attitude about government transparency will suddenly change if a Republican ends up in the White House next year. But in the meantime, we may never get a clear answer to why the Obama administration flushed $2.5 billion in taxpayer money down the drain.