[VIDEO] Hillary’s 2016 DNC Video–Fixed!
Posted: August 2, 2016 Filed under: Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Democratic National Convention, Democratic Party (United States), Hillary Clinton, media, Morgan Freeman, Reason (magazine), Reason.tv, The Pantsuit Report, video 1 Comment
We fixed Hillary’s DNC video with a little help from Morgan Freeman.
Produced by Austin Bragg
[VIDEO] Watch Democrats Try to Convince a Libertarian to Vote for Hillary
Posted: July 28, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Reading Room, Think Tank, White House | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Democratic National Committee, Democratic National Convention, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Philadelphia, Republican National Convention, Republican Party (United States), USA TODAY 1 Comment
With the growing dissatisfaction of the two-party system, more and more Americans are ditching their party identification and turning independent. A 2015 Gallup Governance survey found that 27 percent of the electorate can be characterized as libertarian—outnumbering conservatives (26 percent) and liberals (23 percent).
This makes them a highly coveted voting bloc, and one that Hillary Clinton needs to win over in order to prevent a Donald Trump presidency.
Reason editor-in-chief Nick Gillespie found delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, PA to see if they could convince him why libertarians should vote for Clinton in November or if they’re better off with a third option.
Approximately 3 minutes. Read the rest of this entry »
What Happens If Hillary Is Indicted?
Posted: July 2, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Politics, White House | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Delegate, Democratic National Committee, Democratic National Convention, Democratic Party (United States), Federal Bureau of Investigation, George McGovern, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Superdelegate, United States Naval Observatory Leave a commentSomeone else could step in to grab the nomination.
Alex Pfeiffer writes: The FBI is reportedly ready to interview Hillary Clinton Saturday, which brings up the question of who will be the Democratic nominee for president if the former secretary of state is indicted.
Clinton could always stay in the race and maintain her innocence. Clinton was asked in a March debate whether she will drop out if indicted. “Oh, for goodness — that’s not going to happen. I’m not even answering that question,” the former secretary of state responded.
Superdelegates who have pledged support to Clinton would be free to switch allegiance over to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sanders has remained in the Democratic nomination and still has 1,831 pledged delegates.
To win the Democratic nomination one needs to get the support of 2,383 total delegates, including the superdelegates already supporting him Sanders would have to get the backing of 504 of Clinton’s superdelegates.
But what if someone like Vice President Joe Biden would step into the Democrat race? Read the rest of this entry »
BREAKING: Clinton Tech Aide Bryan Pagliano Plans to Take the Fifth at Deposition
Posted: June 1, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, White House | Tags: Associated Press, Bill Clinton, Cheryl Mills, Democratic National Convention, Emmet G. Sullivan, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Judicial Watch, United States Department of State Leave a comment“Mr. Pagliano will invoke his right under the Fifth Amendment and decline to testify at the deposition. Given the constitutional implications, the absence of any proper purpose for video recording the deposition, and the considerable risk of abuse, the Court should preclude Judicial Watch, Inc. … from creating an audiovisual recording of Mr. Pagliano’s deposition.”
Josh Gerstein reports: A former information technology adviser to Hillary Clinton plans to exercise his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at a deposition next week and wants to prevent any video recording being made of the session. Lawyers for former State Department tech specialist Bryan Pagliano said in a court filing Wednesday that there’s no valid reason to make an audio or video recording of the session since Pagliano doesn’t plan to answer any of the questions he’s asked by the conservative group Judicial Watch, which is pursuing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit related to Clinton’s private email server. The group is scheduled to take Pagliano’s deposition on Monday.
“Judicial Watch may move to unseal the materials at any time. Furthermore, in the event of a leak or data breach at the court reporting company, Mr. Pagliano would be hard-pressed to prevent further dissemination and republication of the video.”
“Mr. Pagliano will invoke his right under the Fifth Amendment and decline to testify at the deposition,” Pagliano’s lawyers Mark MacDougall and Connor Mullin wrote. “Given the constitutional implications, the absence of any proper purpose for video recording the deposition, and the considerable risk of abuse, the Court should preclude Judicial Watch, Inc. … from creating an audiovisual recording of Mr. Pagliano’s deposition.”
“Given that there is no proper purpose for videotaping the deposition in the first place, Judicial Watch’s preference should yield to the significant constitutional interests at stake.”
[Read the full story here, at POLITICO]
Acting on a request from another former aide to Clinton, Cheryl Mills, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan already ruled that videos of the sessions should be put under seal. However, Pagliano’s lawyers say there’s still a chance the video could emerge later either with or without permission from the court. Read the rest of this entry »
OH YES HE DID: Judge Emmet Sullivan Seals All Video Interviews in Clinton Email Case
Posted: May 26, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics | Tags: Cheryl Mills, Democratic National Convention, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Judicial Watch, Republican National Committee, United States Department of Justice, United States Department of State 2 CommentsJulian Hattem reports: A federal judge is preventing the distribution of videotaped depositions as part of a lawsuit connected to Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
“The public has a right to know details related to the creation, purpose and use of the clintonemail.com system.”
— Judge Emmet Sullivan
In an order on Thursday evening, Judge Emmet Sullivan granted the request oflawyers for Clinton’s ex-chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, who had worried that video clips of her interview could be used for political purposes.
And Sullivan went further, ordering all videotaped depositions to remain sealed until he ordered otherwise. The move, he said in a brief order, was to “avoid unnecessary briefing” going forward.
Transcripts of the interviews, however, will be released.
[read the full text here, at TheHill]
“The public has a right to know details related to the creation, purpose and use of the clintonemail.com system,” Sullivan ruled. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] REWIND 1977: Ronald Reagan’s Speech at the 4th Annual CPAC Convention
Posted: March 3, 2016 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank, White House | Tags: 1970s, Bernie Sanders, Chris Christie, Conservatism, Conservatism in the United States, Conservative, CPAC, Democratic National Convention, Donald Trump, Florida, Iowa, Marco Rubio, New Hampshire, Political action committee, Presidential nominee, Republican Party (United States), Ronald Reagan, South Carolina, Ted Cruz 1 CommentI’m happy to be back with you in this annual event after missing last year’s meeting. I had some business in New Hampshire that wouldn’t wait.
Three weeks ago here in our nation’s capital I told a group of conservative scholars that we are currently in the midst of a re-ordering of the political realities that have shaped our time. We know today that the principles and values that lie at the heart of conservatism are shared by the majority.
Despite what some in the press may say, we who are proud to call ourselves “conservative” are not a minority of a minority party; we are part of the great majority of Americans of both major parties and of most of the independents as well.
A Harris poll released September 7, l975 showed 18 percent identifying themselves as liberal and 31 per- cent as conservative, with 41 percent as middle of the road; a few months later, on January 5, 1976, by a 43-19 plurality those polled by Harris said they would “prefer to see the country move in a more conservative direction than a liberal one.”
Last October 24th, the Gallup organization released the result of a poll taken right in the midst of the presidential campaign.
Respondents were asked to state where they would place themselves on a scale ranging from “right-of-center” (which was defined as “conservative”) to left-of-center (which was defined as “liberal”).
- Thirty-seven percent viewed themselves as left-of-center or liberal
- Twelve percent placed themselves in the middle
- Fifty-one percent said they were right-of-center, that is, conservative.
What I find interesting about this particular poll is that it offered those polled a range of choices on a left-right continuum. This seems to me to be a more realistic approach than dividing the world into strict left and rights. Most of us, I guess, like to think of ourselves as avoiding both extremes, and the fact that a majority of Americans chose one or the other position on the right end of the spectrum is really impressive.
Those polls confirm that most Americans are basically conservative in their outlook. But once we have said this, we conservatives have not solved our problems, we have merely stated them clearly. Yes, conservatism can and does mean different things to those who call themselves conservatives.
You know, as I do, that most commentators make a distinction between they call “social” conservatism and “economic” conservatism. The so-called social issues—law and order, abortion, busing, quota systems—are usually associated with blue-collar, ethnic and religious groups themselves traditionally associated with the Democratic Party. The economic issues—inflation, deficit spending and big government—are usually associated with Republican Party members and independents who concentrate their attention on economic matters.
Now I am willing to accept this view of two major kinds of conservatism—or, better still, two different conservative constituencies. But at the same time let me say that the old lines that once clearly divided these two kinds of conservatism are disappearing.
In fact, the time has come to see if it is possible to present a program of action based on political principle that can attract those interested in the so-called “social” issues and those interested in “economic” issues. In short, isn’t it possible to combine the two major segments of contemporary American conservatism into one politically effective whole?
I believe the answer is: Yes, it is possible to create a political entity that will reflect the views of the great, hitherto, conservative majority. We went a long way toward doing it in California. We can do it in America. This is not a dream, a wistful hope. It is and has been a reality. I have seen the conservative future and it works.
Let me say again what I said to our conservative friends from the academic world: What I envision is not simply a melding together of the two branches of American conservatism into a temporary uneasy alliance, but the creation of a new, lasting majority.
This will mean compromise. But not a compromise of basic principle. What will emerge will be something new: something open and vital and dynamic, something the great conservative majority will recognize as its own, because at the heart of this undertaking is principled politics.
I have always been puzzled by the inability of some political and media types to understand exactly what is meant by adherence to political principle. All too often in the press and the television evening news it is treated as a call for “ideological purity.” Whatever ideology may mean—and it seems to mean a variety of things, depending upon who is using it—it always conjures up in my mind a picture of a rigid, irrational clinging to abstract theory in the face of reality. We have to recognize that in this country “ideology” is a scare word. And for good reason. Marxist-Leninism is, to give but one example, an ideology. All the facts of the real world have to be fitted to the Procrustean bed of Marx and Lenin. If the facts don’t happen to fit the ideology, the facts are chopped off and discarded.
I consider this to be the complete opposite to principled conservatism. If there is any political viewpoint in this world which is free for slavish adherence to abstraction, it is American conservatism.
When a conservative states that the free market is the best mechanism ever devised by the mind of man to meet material needs, he is merely stating what a careful examination of the real world has told him is the truth.
When a conservative says that totalitarian Communism is an absolute enemy of human freedom he is not theorizing—he is reporting the ugly reality captured so unforgettably in the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
When a conservative says it is bad for the government to spend more than it takes in, he is simply showing the same common sense that tells him to come in out of the rain.
When a conservative says that busing does not work, he is not appealing to some theory of education—he is merely reporting what he has seen down at the local school.
When a conservative quotes Jefferson that government that is closest to the people is best, it is because he knows that Jefferson risked his life, his fortune and his sacred honor to make certain that what he and his fellow patriots learned from experience was not crushed by an ideology of empire.
Conservatism is the antithesis of the kind of ideological fanatacism that has brought so much horror and destruction to the world. The common sense and common decency of ordinary men and women, working out their own lives in their own way—this is the heart of American conservatism today. Conservative wisdom and principles are derived from willingness to learn, not just from what is going on now, but from what has happened before.
The principles of conservatism are sound because they are based on what men and women have discovered through experience in not just one generation or a dozen, but in all the combined experience of mankind. When we conservatives say that we know something about political affairs, and that we know can be stated as principles, we are saying that the principles we hold dear are those that have been found, through experience, to be ultimately beneficial for individuals, for families, for communities and for nations—found through the often bitter testing of pain, or sacrifice and sorrow.
One thing that must be made clear in post-Watergate is this: The American new conservative majority we represent is not based on abstract theorizing of the kind that turns off the American people, but on common sense, intelligence, reason, hard work, faith in God, and the guts to say: “Yes, there are things we do strongly believe in, that we are willing to live for, and yes, if necessary, to die for.” That is not “ideological purity.” It is simply what built this country and kept it great.
Let us lay to rest, once and for all, the myth of a small group of ideological purists trying to capture a majority. Replace it with the reality of a majority trying to assert its rights against the tyranny of powerful academics, fashionable left-revolutionaries, some economic illiterates who happen to hold elective office and the social engineers who dominate the dialogue and set the format in political and social affairs. If there is any ideological fanaticism in American political life, it is to be found among the enemies of freedom on the left or right—those who would sacrifice principle to theory, those who worship only the god of political, social and economic abstractions, ignoring the realities of everyday life. They are not conservatives.
Our first job is to get this message across to those who share most of our principles. If we allow ourselves to be portrayed as ideological shock troops without correcting this error we are doing ourselves and our cause a disservice. Wherever and whenever we can, we should gently but firmly correct our political and media friends who have been perpetuating the myth of conservatism as a narrow ideology. Whatever the word may have meant in the past, today conservatism means principles evolving from experience and a belief in change when necessary, but not just for the sake of change.
Once we have established this, the next question is: What will be the political vehicle by which the majority can assert its rights?
I have to say I cannot agree with some of my friends—perhaps including some of you here tonight—who have answered that question by saying this nation needs a new political party. Read the rest of this entry »