About that Mosque that Barack Visited Today

Posted on February 3, 2016February 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

A deep investigation was performed on the Muslim Brotherhood and organizations in the United States under that umbrella. The full summary is here.

Mosque Obama Visiting Graduated Terrorist Who Targeted Federal Building

The Al-Rahmah School at Islamic Society of Baltimore as seen in 2007. The mosque is hosting President Obama on Wednesday. (AP) According to CIA Director John Brennan ‘jihad’ means struggle…..

InvestorsDaily: Islamophilia: President Obama is conferring legitimacy on a Baltimore mosque the FBI just a few years ago was monitoring as a breeding ground for terrorists, after arresting a member for plotting to blow up a federal building.

IBD has learned that the FBI had been conducting surveillance at the Islamic Society of Baltimore since at least 2010 when it collared one of its members for plotting to bomb an Army recruiting center not far from the mosque in Catonsville, Md.

Agents secretly recorded a number of conversations with a 25-year-old Muslim convert — Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain — and other Muslims who worshipped there. According to the criminal complaint, Martinez said he knew “brothers” who could supply him weapons and propane tanks.

“He indicated that if the military continued to kill their Muslim brothers and sisters, they would need to expand their operation by killing U.S. Army personnel where they live,” FBI special agent Keith Bender wrote. Martinez said that in studying the Quran he learned that Islam counsels Muslims to “fight those who fight against you.”

Sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2012, Martinez also stated in a social media posting that he wanted to join the ranks of the “mujahideen” in “Pakistan or Afghanistan (a country that struggle[sic] for the sake of allah).” Most of ISB’s board members are from Pakistan.

To help disrupt the plot, the FBI reportedly put an undercover agent in the mosque, which upset the leadership there. After protests, the FBI sent an official to ISB to take questions and mollify concerns the bureau was spying on Muslims.

Members of the mosque complained that the FBI tried to “entrap” Martinez and other Muslim terrorism suspects by sending “spies with Muslim names” into the mosque.

“If I was the president of the mosque, I would not let you come here without strip(-searching) you,” one member angrily told the FBI official, “because you might drop something (like a bug) to hear what’s going on here.” “The Muslim Link” newspaper described the questioner as Pakistani.

This is the mosque that will be honored with a visit from Obama on Wednesday, the first U.S. mosque visit of his presidency.

It’s now abundantly clear the White House failed to properly vet the venue. Reportedly, it let the Council on American-Islamic Relations choose the site, even though the FBI has banned CAIR from outreach because of known ties to the Hamas terrorist group.

“For a number of years we’ve been encouraging the president to go to an American mosque,” CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said. “With the tremendous rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in our country, we believe that it will send a message of inclusion and mutual respect.”

As we reported Tuesday, ISB is affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America — which federal prosecutors in 2007 named a radical Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front and an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator in a scheme to funnel more than $12 million to Hamas suicide bombers — and ISB has helped organize the terror-tied ISNA’s conferences.

The Shariah-compliant mosque was led for 15 years by a radical cleric — Imam Mohamad Adam el-Sheikh — who once represented a federally designated al-Qaida front group. El-Sheikh also has argued for the legitimacy of suicide bombings, according to the Washington Post.

We also first reported that ISB board member and vice president Muhammad Jameel has blamed American foreign policy — namely, U.S. support for Israel — for terrorism and the rise of Osama bin Laden.

“I hope (his death) does not camouflage the bigger picture, which is to look at what gave rise to OBL and what are the root causes of terror,” Jameel said in a local 2011 interview. “Just eliminating him does not resolve the longer-term problems, which I consider to be (U.S.) foreign policy.”

ISB board members are required to have “an in-depth understanding of the Shariah,” and “must take Islam as the way of life,” according to recently amended articles of incorporation papers filed with the state of Maryland.

We have also learned that ISB invited one of the imams of the Boston Marathon bombers’ mosque to headline a 2013 fundraiser for its Islamic school.

Then-Islamic Society of Boston imam Suhaib Webb spoke at the 25th anniversary banquet of ISB’s Al-Rahmah School — even though two days before 9/11, according to an FBI surveillance report, Webb was raising cash for a Muslim cop-killer together with al-Qaida cleric Anwar Awlaki, the hijackers’ spiritual leader.

So let’s recap. The mosque that is hosting the commander in chief, while receiving his historic benediction graduated a terrorist who plotted to blow up a local Army recruiting station, hired an imam who condoned suicide bombings and blames American “foreign policy” for terrorism.

Obama has to be willfully blind not to see all these ties to terror.

The Other Chapter of the Clinton’s and Chelsea’s Father-in-Law

Posted on February 3, 2016February 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

Clinton White House passed up pardon for Chelsea’s father-in-law

Ed Mezvinsky asked Bill Clinton to spare him ‘a long prison term,’ according to newly revealed records.

Politico: Encounters between potential in-laws can often be awkward, but this untold chapter in Clinton family history may take the cake.

President Bill Clinton once had the opportunity to save his daughter’s future father-in-law from spending five years behind bars, according to never-before-revealed White House files. But the asked-for reprieve never came.

In the waning days of Clinton’s presidency, federal prosecutors and the FBI were bearing down on former Rep. Ed Mezvinsky (D-Iowa), who had fallen for a series of Ponzi schemes and pulled in nearly $10 million money from other investors to cover his losses.

Mezvinsky would not be formally indicted until March of 2001, but records released last week by the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock and obtained by POLITICO show Mezvinsky and his then-wife — ex-Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (D-Pa.) — pleaded with the former president for a presidential pardon to head off the looming federal case.

“I have real reason to believe that without a pardon, charges will be brought against me in the very near future, and that I will then be faced with a long and difficult process of defending myself, and ultimately the prospect of a long prison term,” Mezvinsky wrote. “I am humbled and saddened at having sullied my reputation and that of my family, and having disappointed the many honorable and decent people who had confidence in me. I am prepared to try to make amends as best I can.”

Margolies-Mezvinsky’s missive to the president discusses her husband’s history of service in politics and for the community, but is vague about the nature of his alleged wrongdoing.

“He is a man who in public service and his private life has worked tirelessly as an advocate for the poor, the underprivileged, and underserved. But he is also a man who now finds himself in a precarious position, where a federal investigation has already blemished a stellar career, a life of high-minded public service dedication to humanitarian causes. It is for this reason that I write personally to you to seek clemency for Ed,” Margolies-Mezvinsky wrote.

It is unclear whether Clinton ever saw the letters, which turned up in the files of the White House’s counsel’s office.

Asked about the letters, Margolies-Mezvinsky — now Chelsea Clinton’s mother-in-law — said this week that she doesn’t believe the Clinton White House ever acted on the request.

“No action was taken … which is a matter of public record. To my knowledge, we never received any reply from the White House,” the former congresswoman said in an email to POLITICO.

A spokesman for the former president did not reply to a query Tuesday about whether the pardon request ever reached him.

Chelsea Clinton and the Mezvinskys’ son Marc married in 2010. However, their families had been friendly since at least the early 1990s. The future couple first met in 1993 when both families were attending the prestigious annual Renaissance Weekend gathering in South Carolina.

When Chelsea was touring colleges in 1997, Marc Mezvinsky, then a sophomore at Stanford, showed her around the campus. Their friendship developed over their college years, though they didn’t start formally dating until she moved to New York after graduation.

Congresswoman Margolies-Mezvinsky achieved national prominence in 1993 by providing what was seen as the critical vote for President Bill Clinton’s budget and tax bill. Republicans chanted, “Good-bye, Margie,” as she cast the high-profile vote.

Margolies-Mezvinsky’s first term indeed turned out to be her last. Despite significant efforts by Clinton to rescue her re-election bid, she lost to her GOP opponent by a 45-to-49 percent margin.

Bill Clinton has always seemed indebted to Margolies-Mezvinsky for the sacrifice she made. “I really didn’t want Margolies-Mezvinsky to have to vote with us,” the former president wrote in his 2004 memoir. “She was one of the very few Democrats who represented a district with more constituents who’d get tax hikes than tax cuts, and in her campaign she’d promised not to vote for any tax increases … She had earned an honored place in history, with a vote she shouldn’t have had to cast.”

After Mezvinsky’s defeat in 1994, Clinton named her as deputy chair of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. World Conference on Women in Beijing. First Lady Hillary Clinton wound up serving as head of the delegation, which made waves in China for its assertiveness.

The Clintons remained close to Margolies-Mezvinsky as she ran unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania in 1998 and for the U.S. House again in 2000. She dropped out of the latter race after filing for bankruptcy in the wake of the financial chaos resulting from her husband’s bizarre investment schemes, including one classic swindle that has been run out of Nigeria for decades. (In 2014, she again mounted a bid for Congress, but came up short in the Democratic primary despite strong backing from the former first couple.)

In the letters about the potential pardon, there are hints that Margolies-Mezvinsky was closer to the president than her husband was. His letter is signed, “Edward Mezvinsky,” while hers is signed, simply, “Marjorie.”

Whatever President Clinton’s inclinations towards the family, Mezvinsky’s pardon request may have simply come too late. A 22-page White House summary of pending pardon and commutation requests in early December 2000 makes no mention of Mezvinsky.

The pardon request reviewed by POLITICO is marked as received on January 12, 2001. The date, just eight days before Clinton left office, has been underlined.

Former White House officials say the pardon process descended into a degree of chaos in those final days. In his final hours in office, Clinton issued 176 pardons and commutations. Some went to individuals close to Clinton, like his brother Roger, and to people targeted in independent counsel investigations the president viewed as unfair. The most controversial pardons went to financiers Marc Rich and Pincus Green, who had been living in Switzerland for years to avoid facing a federal indictment.

Some of those pardons and commutations were issued even though individuals had never applied through the official process at the Justice Department.

It’s unclear whether Mezvinsky ever did so, but such an application would have been futile. Since he hadn’t even been charged, the Justice Department would have summarily rejected his application.

Clinton ultimately issued just one pre-trial pardon, blocking a prosecution of former CIA Director John Deutch for having classified information on his home computer. Deutch’s pardon also came on Clinton’s last day as president.

A federal prosecutor said in a 2007 interview that as Ed Mezvinsky swindled investors in the late 1990s he sometimes used his association with the Clintons as a talking point.

“When he thought it would help, he would call and say, ‘I’m spending the weekend with the Clintons,’ ” Robert Zauzmer told the New York Times.

The grand jury indictment filed in 2001 is a bit more vague, but hints at similar conduct. “Mezvinsky succeeded in defrauding others and gaining their confidence in part by stressing his lengthy experience in national and international affairs, and his acquaintance with prominent political figures,” the indictment says.

Zauzmer told POLITICO this week that he was unaware of Mezvinsky’s pre-trial pardon bid. “It wasn’t brought to my attention,” the prosecutor said. “I probably would not have any comment on it, even if it had been.”

Mezvinsky’s pardon request parallels an argument he attempted to make after his indictment: namely that his judgment was clouded by his extensive use of the anti-Malarial drug Lariam while traveling to Africa.

“The long-term cognitive effects of this medication were devastating in how they affected my cognitive ability to absorb and evaluate information in a formal way and how I exercised my reasoning powers” he wrote to President Clinton.

In court, Mezvinsky’s lawyers argued that his exposure to the medicine and his affliction with biploar disorder so affected his thinking that he should be allowed to mount a “mental health defense.” U.S. District Court Judge Stewart Dalzell, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, rejected that effort.

“No expert on Mezvinsky’s behalf was in a position to say that at any given time during the twelve-year history of the alleged schemes to defraud that Mezvinsky did not have a capacity to deceive,” the judge wrote. “People like Mezvinsky are not out of touch with reality.”

A few months later, Mezvinsky pled guilty.

“Ed had a very, very bona fide psychiatric condition,” said Bryant Welch, an attorney and psychologist on the defense team. “I had the head of Harvard bipolar disorder clinic and the head of the Penn bipolar disorder clinic who had both evaluated it and confirmed it and the judge just disallowed the defense.”

Margolies -Mezvinsky’s decision to back her then-husband’s request for a pardon seems generous in light of some of the facts of the case. Her elderly mother, Mildred Margolies, was one of those Mezvinsky was eventually charged with swindling. The indictment claims he transferred more than $300,000 from his mother-in-law’s brokerage accounts for his own use.

The Mezvinskys divorced in 2007 while he was serving his sentence. Some of the restitution he owes remains unpaid.

Efforts to reach Ed Mezvinsky for comment were unsuccessful. An attorney for the 79-year-old ex-congressman, Stephen LaCheen, said he was not aware of any pre-trial pardon request.

Press reports said Mezvinsky planned to attend the wedding of his son Marc to Chelsea Clinton in 2010. However, Margolies—who dropped her former husband’s name after the divorce—reportedly walked her son down the aisle alone at the wedding. In an interview just before the event, the groom’s father said he was trying to put his legal troubles behind him.

“It was a terrible time, and I was punished for that and I respect that and I accept responsibility for what happened, and now I’m trying to move on,” Ed Mezvinsky told the TV show “Inside Edition.”

Sid Told Hillary: Get a Grand Jury on Eric Cantor

Posted on February 3, 2016February 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

New State Department Emails Reveal Blumenthal Advised Clinton that former Rep. Eric Cantor Committed a Possible ‘Felony’ by Disclosing Petraeus Classified Information

‘Will a grand jury be empaneled by the Justice Department? When will Senator Patrick Leahy, chair of the Judiciary Committee… begin an investigation of this matter?’ – November 13, 2012

Blumenthal advised top Obama debate advisor that Romney would ‘falsify, distort, and mangle facts;’ advised Clinton on Libya turmoil disclosed in ‘internal govt discussions high level’

JW: (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that on January 7, 2016, it obtained a new batch of documents from the Department of State, including a “Confidential” memo from Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal to the former secretary of state suggesting that a grand jury and the Senate Judiciary Committee should investigate whether former Rep. Eric Cantor or his staff violated the Espionage Act by disclosing classified information related to the FBI investigation of former CIA Director David Petraeus.

According to the Blumenthal-to-Clinton email, if classified information was discussed by Cantor, his staff, or anyone “inside or outside the bureau,” it “is a felony” in violation of the Espionage Act. Many legal analysts now believe that if the FBI concludes that Clinton kept classified information on her non-state.gov server, that may be also be a criminal violation of the Espionage Act.

The documents also contain an email to Clinton in which Blumenthal sent a copy of a “Confidential” memo to top Obama 2012 presidential debate advisor Ron Klain warning that GOP candidate Mitt Romney would “falsify, distort, and mangle facts” in the final campaign debate. The Blumenthal memo was sent to Klain and copied to Clinton just four days before the final debate.

The documents include an email sent after the Benghazi attack in which Blumenthal informs Clinton of his “Latest Libya intel” regarding the turmoil in that country. Though barred by the Obama administration from being an official State Department advisor to Clinton, Blumenthal – who at the time was also employed by the Clinton Foundation – claimed to have “a very sensitive source” providing him “internal govt discussions high level” concerning Libyan internal security.

The new emails, also available on the State Department website, were obtained by Judicial Watch in response to a court order Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed on May 6, 2015, (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00692), seeking the following:

Communications between officials, officers, or employees of the Department of State and members of Congress, Congressional staff members, or Congressional members or staff members of the U.S. House of representatives Select Committee on Benghazi concerning the use of non-“state.gov” email addresses by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton regarding the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The timeframe for this request is September 11, 2012, to January 31, 2013.

The State Department’s records include a November 13, 2012, email from Blumenthal to Clinton in which he speculates about former Rep. Eric Cantor’s dealings with then FBI Director Robert Mueller concerning the agency’s investigation of former CIA director David Petraeus. In the email, Blumenthal raises the possible need for both a grand jury and a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation of possible violations of the Espionage Act by Cantor and his staff if classified information was made public:

From: Sidney Blumenthal
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2012 9:13 AM
Subject: More questions. Sid

Who else in the Congress besides congressmen Reichert and Cantor knew of the Petraeus investigation before it became public? How many congressional staffers were informed? What roles did they play in deciding who to inform about it? What were their communications among themselves and with others outside their offices if any? Did any of them discuss the matter with anyone in the Romney-Ryan campaign?

Why was Cantor intent on informing FBI Director Mueller of the existence of an FBI investigation that was already resolved?…

What were the internal discussions between Cantor and his staff on his referral to Mueller?…

***

Was the supposedly rogue FBI agent, described in the Washington Post as motivated by his “worldview,” acting alone? Did he discuss the investigation with any individual either inside or outside the bureau before he went to Reichert and Cantor?

Disclosure of an espionage investigation is a felony. Will a grand jury be empaneled by the Justice Department?

When will Senator Patrick Leahy, chair of the Judiciary Committee and a former FBI agent, begin an investigation of this matter?

From: H <HDR22@clintonemailcom>
To: ‘sbwhoeop [Redacted]
Sent: Tue,Nov 13, 2012 9:23 am
Subject: Re: More questions. Sid

What was his “worldview” and why would he think hurting P furthered it? Why would Cantor want to hurt P (beloved by Rs)?

The records obtained by Judicial Watch also include an October 19, 2012, email from Blumenthal to Clinton in which he sends a copy of a lengthy “Confidential” memo to Klain expounding upon how to defeat Mitt Romney in the third and final 2012 presidential debate:

From: Sidney Blumenthal
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2012 10:32 AM
To: H
Subject: H: fyi, see especially point about bush. Sid

Romney will inevitably falsify, distort and mangle facts on a range of subjects from Libya to the defense budget. But why is this debate different from all other debates? In the dedicated foreign policy debate, the stakes are higher—America’s role in the world. That makes Romney’s errors even more consequential and potentially threatening. And that must be an essential predicate of Obama’s point when he exposes Romney’s falsehoods. When Romney lies on domestic policy it’s shameful, but when he lies on foreign policy it’s dangerous.

***

Romney’s attack line on Libya is not only false, as exposed in the last debate. (Obama here can joke that Romney apparently wants to rerun the last debate but this time without Candy Crowley present to call him out. Romney will become angry and nonplussed.) His attack line is a reheated leftover of the Bush era attacks on Democrats designed by Karl Rove as weak on terrorism, which were themselves repackaged old Republican attacks from the Cold War. It’s all nostalgia….

***

Then, really stick in the shiv by having Obama say that he was somewhat surprised that Romney in the last debate did not give President George W. Bush credit where credit is due—for example, breaking with the neoconservatives around Vice President Cheney by adopting the surge in Iraq led by current CIA director David Petraeus that prepared the groundwork for Obama’s own policy in Iraq.

An email from Blumenthal to Clinton contains a lengthy “Confidential” memo in which he provides his “latest Libya intel” from “internal govt discussions high level.” The memo, later forwarded by Clinton to then-Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan, reveals that more than a year after the Obama/Clinton assisted overthrow of Qaddafi, ostensibly intended to bring about a peaceful transition, the country remained at the mercy of the same terrorist groups that attacked the Benghazi consulate. Claiming that his information comes from a “very sensitive source,” Blumenthal informed Clinton of the following:

From: Sidney Blumenthal
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 11:20 AM
To: H
Subject: H: latest Libya intel; internal govt discussions high level. Sid

On the morning of January 15, 2013 Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zidan was informed by Interior Minister Ashour Shuwail and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Mohamed Abdulaziz that Italy plan to close its consulate in Benghazi and reduce the size of its embassy in Tripoli following attacks on the consulate itself and the Italian consul general. Shuwail reported that the attacks were carried out by Eastern militia forces associated with Ansar al Islam, which, although put under pressure by the National Libyan Army (NLA) following the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in September 2012, continues to operate in and around that city.

***

According to a very sensitive source, General Hassi disagrees with the NLA analysis that the Sabha attack was not aimed at Magariaf specifically, noting that there were five prior assassination attempts against Magariaf in 2012, and that he is a target for a diverse collection of enemies, including former Qaddafi forces, groups like Ansar al Sharia, and even his political adversaries in the GNC. Accordingly, Hassi intends to establish new programs to train a detachment of presidential bodyguards, and his own anti-terrorism personnel.

“It is beyond ironic that Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal, her secret Clinton Foundation adviser at the State Department, discuss criminal prosecutions of Republicans for the handling of classified information over the Petraeus scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And it is disturbing that then-Secretary of State Clinton was involved in advising the Obama reelection campaign on how to continue lying about the Benghazi attack. No wonder Hillary Clinton tried to hide these email records rather than disclose them years ago as required by law.”

###

Obama to Evict Thousands, Julian and Hillary?

Posted on February 2, 2016February 2, 2016 by Denise Simon

Obama administration considering evictions of thousands from low-income housing

WashingtonTimes:The Department of Housing and Urban development announced Tuesday that it would consider evicting tens of thousands of public housing residents who earn too much money to qualify for public housing.

The announcement comes in response to a July audit from the department’s Office of Inspector General that revealed over 25,000 families had an income that exceeded the maximum level to qualify for government-assisted housing. At least one tenant had roughly nearly $1 million in assets.

Now the department will reexamine tenant’s public housing needs in an effort to root out “over-income” tenants occupying low-income housing that is desperately needed by poorer families.

“Some of those families significantly exceeded the income limits,” HUD wrote in the Federal Register, warning that “scarce public resources must be provided to those most in need of affordable housing.”

Currently, federal law does not prohibit over-income families from continuing to live in low-income housing as long as they met the income requirements when they moved in.

Now HUD is grappling with whether to evict over-income tenants and how long to give them to find new homes.

“An increase in income is a good and welcomed event for families, and when a family’s income steadily rises, it may be an indication that the family is on its way to self-sufficiency,” HUD wrote.

“Any changes that would require the termination of tenancy for over-income families should be enacted with caution so as not to impede a family’s progress,” the agency continued.

The department will seek comment from the public on what to do about over-income families over the next 30 days.

The House is expected to vote Tuesday on an Amendment proposed by Rep. Vern Buchanan, Florida Republican, to tighten income asset verification requirements for public housing applicants.

“It is outrageous that taxpayers are footing the bill for millionaires’ housing,” Mr. Buchanan said in a statement. “This type of abuse hurts truly needy families and erodes faith in government. Holding HUD to the same standards used for other federal benefits will provide much-needed oversight on taxpayer funds and help create consistency across the vast array of assistance programs.”

*** HUD is corrupt and the Secretary of HUD, Julian Castro is just as corrupt. But as a sidebar, he is earnestly jockeying for sharing the presidential ticket with Hillary Clinton.

HUD Secretary Julian Castro attends Maine fundraiser for Clinton

He headlines the private event at the law offices of Preti Flaherty in Portland.

Julian Castro, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development secretary and a rising star in the Democratic Party, was in Portland Monday morning for a private fundraiser for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The event at the law offices of Preti Flaherty in downtown Portland included U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree and longtime Maine lobbyist and attorney Tony Buxton.

According to an invitation provided by Hillary for America, Castro’s visit was billed as “coffee and conversation.” It was closed to the public and to the media.

Castro arrived at the fundraiser with Pingree and his twin brother, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas. After the event, Julian Castro said the crowd was enthusiastic and looking forward to seeing Clinton win the nomination.

When asked if he would accept if Clinton wins the nomination and asks him to run for vice president, he would say only that he is focused on his work with HUD and campaigning for Clinton.

“Both Joaquin and I are happy to help her out,” he said.

Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, was tabbed by President Obama in 2014 to serve as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. His ethnic background – Mexican American – makes him a powerful surrogate for Clinton, who will likely need strong support from Hispanic voters, both in the Democratic primaries and in the general election, if she becomes the nominee.

During an interview Monday morning on the “Ken & Mike” show on WGAN, the Castro brothers said they have long supported Clinton, whom they described as a tenacious and strong leader.

When asked by the radio hosts if he would accept an invitation to be Clinton’s running mate if she wins the nomination, Julian Castro said he feels “it’s not going to happen.”

“That’s flattering, but I doubt that,” he said. “I fully expect a year from now to be back in Texas.”

So you voters for Hillary, here is some more facts, Julian is a radical, a Marxist.

Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio, who will be giving the keynote address tonight, is, according to some, the next Obama. But while Obama’s radicalism may have escaped the notice of the DNC in 2004, Castro’s views are bit more transparent.

Indeed, he, along with his twin, Joaquin, currently running for Congress, learned their politics on their mother’s knee and in the streets of San Antonio. Their mother, Rosie helped found a radical, anti-white, socialist Chicano party called La Raza Unida (literally “The Race United”) that sought to create a separate country–Aztlan–in the Southwest.

Today she helps manage her sons’ political careers, after a storied career of her own as a community activist and a stint as San Antonio Housing Authority ombudsman.

Far from denouncing his mother’s controversial politics, Castro sees them as his inspiration. As a student at Stanford Castro penned an essay for Writing for Change: A Community Reader (1994) in which he praised his mother’s accomplishments and cited them as an inspiration for his own future political involvement.

“[My mother] sees political activism as an opportunity to change people’s lives for the better. Perhaps that is because of her outspoken nature or because Chicanos in the early 1970s (and, of course, for many years before) had no other option. To make themselves heard Chicanos needed the opportunity that the political system provided. In any event, my mother’s fervor for activism affected the first years of my life, as it touches it today.

Castro wrote fondly of those early days and basked in the slogans of the day. “‘Viva La Raza!’ ‘Black and Brown United!’ ‘Accept me for who I am–Chicano.’ These and many other powerful slogans rang in my ears like war cries.” These war cries, Castro believes, advanced the interests of their political community. He sees her rabble-rousing as the cause for Latino successes, not the individual successes of those hard-working men and women who persevered despite some wrinkles in the American meritocracy.

[My mother] insisted that things were changing because of political activism, participation in the system. Maria del Rosario Castro has never held a political office. Her name is seldom mentioned in a San Antonio newspaper. However, today, years later, I read the newspapers, and I see that more Valdezes are sitting on school boards, that a greater number of Garcias are now doctors, lawyers, engineers, and, of course, teachers. And I look around me and see a few other brown faces in the crowd at [Stanford]. I also see in me a product of my mother’s diligence and her friends’ hard work. Twenty years ago I would not have been here…. My opportunities are not the gift of the majority; they are the result of a lifetime of struggle and commitment by adetermined minority. My mother is one of these persons. And each year I realize more and more how much easier my life has been made by the toil of past generations. I wonder what form my service will take, since I am expected by those who know my mother to continue the family tradition. [Emphasis Castro’s]

Hillary Lawsuits, Her Lawyers, Back Channel Operations

Posted on February 2, 2016February 2, 2016 by Denise Simon

Text messages, dinners, dropping documents and negotiations. Ever wonder who is tied to whom and what goes on in DC? Here is a peek while lawsuits are flying.

Bill Press hired by Bernie Sanders: Press put together two dinners for Sanders with about a dozen people at his house on Capitol Hill. One was in April, the other in November.

Among those who attended one or both: Susan McCue, a former chief of staff for Senate Democratic leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.); Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.); Brad Woodhouse, a former Democratic National Committee spokesman who now heads the liberal super PAC American Bridge 21st Century; Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.); and Alyssa Mastromonaco, former deputy chief of staff in the Obama White House who had answered phones in Sanders’s congressional office back when she was a college student in Vermont.

At the first dinner, “Bernie gave his ideas. We all kicked it around,” Press said. “The main thing that came out of the first meeting was there was a possibility and a need for somebody to raise those issues, but if he ran, he should definitely run as a Democrat.”

Devine led the discussion at the second dinner, and “basically laid out a plan of how to get from here to there,” Press said. “It was much more focused and much more real. Bernie took that, and off he goes. It was only a matter of when, not if, he announced.”

As Hillary advances in her bid for president: The opening months of her presidential campaign were a deluge of bad news for Clinton.

First came the revelation that she had been using a private email account, rather than a government one, for conducting business as secretary of state. Then a spate of stories about the finances of the Clinton Foundation and her six-figure speaking fees. Then came the news that Vice President Biden was considering a late entry into the race — in part because some Democrats worried that Clinton was starting to look like a weak general election candidate.

In October, it was coming to a head, with the added tests of the first Democratic debate and her grilling before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

The day before she was to testify, Clinton and her aides were holding a prep session at her dining room table in Washington when communications direction Jennifer Palmieri got a text message telling her to turn on CNN. Biden was heading for the Rose Garden, with President Obama in tow. That choice of venue could mean only one thing, they knew: Biden was not running. One crisis was averted.

Hillary get ready for a daily crisis: Clinton was preparing to leave home for Capitol Hill, she got a jarring call from longtime aide Cheryl Mills. With just an hour to go before the start of the hearing, the Republicans had just dropped a binder full of hundreds of documents they intended to use in their questioning — documents that Clinton had not prepared for.

Among them, Clinton aides say, was an email she had sent to her daughter, Chelsea, on the night of the attacks in which the secretary blamed “an Al Q[a]eda-like group.” GOP lawmakers saw it as a smoking gun, evidence that the Obama administration knew the attack had been terrorism even though officials initially said the incident had been sparked by an anti-Muslim video.

Hillary, ‘where is David’?: Clinton lawyer David Kendall had negotiated to prevent something that could have been more damaging: a plan by committee Republicans to have Clinton raise her right hand and be sworn in at the opening of the hearing, which would have produced an image that would be a GOP admaker’s dream. Instead, Clinton signed an oath before the hearing started.

(The above snippets are from the Washington Post, to read the full article, click here).

Lawsuit Seeks Clinton Lawyer David Kendall’s Communications with State Dept.

Williams & Connolly lawyer represents Hillary Clinton.

NationalLawJournal: A government watchdog group is suing for emails and other communication between Hillary Clinton’s personal lawyer David Kendall and the U.S. Department of State about any confidential information stored on Clinton’s private email server.

Kendall, of counsel to Williams & Connolly, has served as the Clintons’ personal lawyer since the early 1990s. He is representing Hillary Clinton as she responds to demands for emails on the private server she used as secretary of State and for information about how the server was maintained.

In a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch on Jan. 29 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the group said it sent the State Department a request in September for all records of communications between Kendall and the State Department about confidential or potentially confidential information on Clinton’s server or any copies of the server.

The group filed suit after several months passed with no response besides a general acknowledgement that the State Department received the records request in October.

Kendall declined to comment Monday.

It’s not the first time that Kendall has been the subject of public-records requests related to the Clinton email controversy. In September, two lawsuits were filed in the D.C. federal district court—one by the James Madison Project and another by journalist David Brown—seeking records about the State Department’s decision to allow Kendall to keep a thumb drive in his office with copies of emails from Clinton’s server.

The James Madison Project, a government watchdog group, joined by journalist Shane Harris, explicitly asked for copies of communications between the State Department and Kendall about the thumb drive.

In both cases, the State Department told the court in December that it had identified thousands of pages of documents that might be responsive to the requests. The State Department was ordered to update the court on its progress by Feb. 12.

Kendall is also no stranger to Judicial Watch. Since the 1990s, court records show that he represented the Clintons as they defended against various lawsuits Judicial Watch filed.

The federal district court in Washington is handling dozens of public-records cases tied to Clinton’s email server. Some of the requests are for emails from the server, while others more broadly seek information about how Clinton and the State Department managed the server and the exchange of confidential information.

State Department officials have repeatedly told judges in these cases that they are understaffed and overwhelmed by the volume of requests, which has led to delays.

The State Department has been reviewing 55,000 pages of emails from Clinton’s server to release to the public under court order. The department was supposed to produce the last batch of emails—about 9,000 pages—by Jan. 29. The agency missed that deadline and instead produced 1,670 pages, according to news reports.