PrairiePundit

Washington Examiner: A dozen military and veterans groups are asking for the right to defend a law in court that makes it easier to fire corrupt and negligent officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs, because the VA is refusing to defend the law on its own. The groups filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit asking for the right to defend the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act. The dramatic move comes after the VA said in June that it would no longer apply the law, which Congress passed in 2014 in order to help the agency fire officials after the healthcare wait list scandal. That decision shut down the avenue Congress created in order to help clean up the broken VA. It may also allow Sharon Helman, the former director of the Phoenix VA, to escape her own firing. The notorious official sued after the VA decided to fire her, and because the VA and the Justice Department won't defend the law, there's no one to step in to ar...

streiff: BREAKING. Hillary Clinton Steals Donald Trump’s Economic Policy The unions don't like so now she doesn't either.  As I have noted before NAFTA  was a net plus for Texas.  It has actually led to the creation of around a million jobs in Texas.  It has probably had more of a negative effect on blue state economies particularly if they do not have right to work laws.

Her rather poor answer did not make it into 60 Minutes.  It was not an answer that was helpful to her cause, and that could be one of the reasons.

Fuel Fix: ... Texas continues to lead the nation in wind farm construction. Close to 200 megawatts worth of wind turbines were installed in Texas in the second quarter of 2016, more than twice as much as the next leading state, Kansas. Texas now counts close to 18,000 megawatts of wind capacity, about a quarter of the country’s total. ... The US as a whole saw installations drop.  I think Texas has an advantage not only of a large area where the wind is relatively dependable but also its built up infrastructure, means the new turbines can get their output to market easier

Telegraph: ... Neighbours told the Telegraph last night that Kermiche did not attend the local mosque. His uncle Akin Dendani was last night[tue] tearful and shaking as he told the Telegraph that his son had been "manipulated" by "extremists." He said he had become "serene" before the attack. "I don't know who they are. But when I find out I will go and find them myself. With any luck," he said, stood near the family dormer bungalow in a suburb near Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray. "He was normal. He was good. He went to school, he was like you and me. He had friends, male and female," he said. "He was manipulated by extremists, they told him rubbish: this person is good, this person is bad". "He was 19, just emerging from adolescence." He confirmed he had been tagged with an electronic bracelet after doing jail time and had to report to the police station twice a week, and said he had last seen the boy about...

Foreign Desk News: ISIS is increasingly turning to encryption-based technology as it continues to elude Western counterterrorism agencies desperate to breakdown the terror group’s digital footprint. Despite jihadi groups’ widespread and persistent online presence on social media platforms, a complex ‘toolbox’ of encryption instruments are being used by ISIS and other terror organizations to obscure their online communications with one another in the Islamic State’s Caliphate and in the West, according to a report by tech security analysts Flashpoint Intel. The report notes a list of 36 different online tools, identified as “only a small sampling of the technologies required to overcome security challenges,” that are being employed by jihadis to stay under the radar and operate secretly beneath the surface on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The list includes mobile security applications, virtual private networks (VPNs), programs used to generate fake phone numb...

Washington Times: The pro-life activists behind the undercover videos into Planned Parenthood ’s alleged fetal body parts trafficking operation have been cleared of all charges brought forward in the wake of the investigation. Prosecutors on Tuesday dropped the final indictment against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, whose Center for Medical Progress video series prompted a congressional and several state-level investigations into the nation’s largest abortion provider. The charge, a second-degree felony for tampering with a governmental record, stemmed from the use of a fake ID in order to gain access to a Houston-area Planned Parenthood clinic. In a joint statement, Mr. Daleiden and Ms. Merritt called the charges “bogus” and “politically motivated,” accusing the Harris County District Attorney’s office of carrying water for Planned Parenthood . ...  This case looked like a miscarriage of justice from the beginning.  It does indicate how committed some people are to ...

NY Times: U.S. Agrees to Admit More Refugees From Central America In  making the revisions, President Obama was bowing to bitter complaints that he has turned a blind eye to the southern border even as he has welcomed people fleeing Syria. He is trying to flood the country with Democrats to replace all of those being aborted.  Obama has the most irresponsible immigration policy of any president in history.  Why bringing uneducated and dependents when intelligent people are vying to get in and help make the country stronger.

Washington Post: Democrats were told their party was divided. They just proved that wrong. Why do some try to avoid the obvious with a meme that is obviously wrong?  Ignores the booes and act like "All is well."

NY Times: To Democrats, Hack Hints Trump Has New Backer: Putin A breach tied to Russia has raised questions about whether President Vladimir V. Putin is supporting Donald J. Trump. This is about Hillary and not about Trump. He has never forgiven her for what he saw as interference with his run for reelection back in 2011. ... “She set the tone for certain actors inside the country; she gave the signal,” Putin said of Clinton at the time , accusing her of ordering the opposition movement into action like some kind of revolutionary sleeper cell. “They heard this signal and, with the support of the U.S. State Department, started actively doing their work.” ... It is also how he can justify in his own mind the interference with the US election process.   What makes it even better for him, is that he is able to use the Democrats' own words to harm their political chances.  At some point, she must have turned off the reset button. The Democrats are running ...

Fuel Fix: Exxon Mobil Corp. and Saudi Arabia’s largest chemical company are considering a partnership to build a major petrochemical complex in either Texas or Louisiana along the Gulf Coast. Exxon and the Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corp., known as SABIC, announced they’re weighing the venture to take advantage of cheap and abundant natural gas supplies in Texas and other parts of the country. Natural gas is used as the primary feedstock for most petrochemical plants along the Gulf Coast. Exxon is considering sites in Victoria, Texas, as well as the Corpus Christi area, specifically San Patricio County, among other locations, Exxon spokeswoman Margaret Ross said. In Louisiana, talks continue with officials in Ascension and St. James parishes, both of which are between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The port access along the Gulf Coast would allow them to produce chemicals and plastics locally and ship them to developing countries in Asia and elsewhere. “That is vitally impor...

Michael Rameriz, probably the best political cartoonist in the country right now has his own site where you can see his great work. It is worth checking out some of his great work.

Carolyn Glick: ... Hezbollah's assault was not the opening salvo of the war. That happened two and a half weeks earlier along the border with Gaza. The July 12 attack was a carbon copy of Hamas's June 25 assault. At dawn that day, Hamas forces opened a salvo of mortar fire on IDF positions along the border with Gaza. Under cover of the fire, a Hamas cell penetrated Israel through an underground tunnel. The terrorists attacked a tank, killing two soldiers and abducting IDF corporal Gilad Shalit. Following the opening assault, Hamas maintained its mortar, missile and rocket offensive against Israel for weeks. In 2006, Hamas acted as a wholly-owned and operated Iranian proxy. Iran began massively funding the Muslim Brotherhood group in 2005. Hamas operatives, like their Hezbollah counterparts and colleagues from the Muslim Brotherhood in Sinai, were brought to Iran for training. Iran smuggled massive quantities of weaponry to Gaza, through Egypt. In other words, the mi...

Politico: Bernie Sanders built a movement around challenging the Democratic machine, but it may not be his to lead anymore. Now into a second day of protests in hot, sweaty Pennsylvania, agitated Sanders backers are infuriated with the Democratic Party after leaked emails show the establishment putting its finger on the scale for Hillary Clinton and damaging Sanders during this year's highly-contested primaries. The resignation of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has done little to ease their anger. Indeed, Sanders supporters described it as the least of their demands now. "Getting thrown crumbs is not change," said Amy Kaplan, a 60-year national park ranger and Sanders backer from Sausalito, California. "And the last 48 hours have been crumbs. It's very patronizing. Like, are we idiots? That's how they're treating us. Like we're idiots." While Sanders may think he has extracted his largest piece of flesh with Wasserman Schultz’s oust...

Washington Examiner: Hillary Clinton's image has plummeted to its lowest level in the two decades Gallup has tracked her standing with the public. Her favorability rating has dropped from 59 percent in 2015 to 38 percent this month, a record low. Clinton's unfavorability score has skyrocketed from 36 percent early last year to 57 percent now, the July 16-23 survey found. Even at the height of investigations into the former secretary of state's actions during the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Clinton had a 55 percent approval rate. Clinton had been on a downward spiral since last year's email scandal surfaced. Her tenure with majority approval slipped early this year. By mid-June, only 41 percent of voters had a positive view of her. ... Trump is one of the few people with a lower approval rating.  He will have a difficult time outrunning his reputation as a jerk, and Hillary will have a tough time getting past the feelings of many that ...

Sydney Morning Herald: Police have 'neutralised' two men who reportedly cut the throat of a priest and took a congregation hostage on Tuesday morning, according to early reports from a town in northern France. Le Point identified the slain priest as Father Jacques Hamel, 86, who was ordained in 1958. One other parishioner was killed, and a third person in the church injured along with a policeman, Le Point reported. Anti-terrorism prosecutors have been assigned to the investigation. Eyewitnesses told the newspaper that two men entered the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray during mass, which was celebrated by a priest and attended by four worshippers including two nuns. The pair were armed with knives, one was bearded and one said to wear a chachia, a traditional woolen north African hat. They shouted "Daesh" as they entered the church, according to "corroborated sources" quoted by Le Point . The assailants were 'neutralised' by pol...

Jon Ward: ... The RNC’s argument to the D.C. delegates boiled down to this: A vote for the rules reset would open the door to Ted Cruz becoming the GOP’s nominee four years from now. Cruz is already laying the groundwork for another run for president in 2020, but a top RNC official told Yahoo News that they expect him to run even if Donald Trump becomes president this fall. That would represent the first major challenge of an incumbent president from inside his own party since Teddy Kennedy ran against President Jimmy Carter in 1980. “If Trump wins, you better bet your ass Cruz is going to primary him,” the RNC official told Yahoo News. And so the RNC officials told D.C. delegates that a rules reset would open the door to an effort by a key Cruz ally, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, to close primary contests in several states to independent and Democratic voters. Cuccinelli and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, pushed for the closed primary in the convention rules commit...

Michael Brendan Dougherty: Why Ted Cruz's huge convention gamble will pay off in the end ... Historically, I am not a Ted Cruz fan. But it is hard not to admire a man who stands by his wife's honor, and his father's name, in a moment when he was under the heaviest political pressure to cave to the man who defamed them. Yes, this dramatic move carries significant risks. Cruz may have a very tough time for the foreseeable future. He has seemingly volunteered to take the blame for Trump's loss, to be the face of conservative disloyalty. But look at it this way: The Trump-compliant Republicans have made a bet that the party can contain and shape the damage of the Trump candidacy. Cruz, on the other hand, is betting that it cannot, and knows that Donald Trump will commit fresh, unanticipated outrages that will make it clear Trump authored his own demise. In the long run, Cruz made the winning bet. Trump is a disaster for the country whether he is elected or not.

Thomas Sowell: Republican party leaders may have worried that Donald Trump would not only lose the general election for the presidency, but would so poison the image of the party as to cause Republican candidates for Congress and for state and local offices to also lose. Now they seem to be trying to patch things up, in order to present an image of unity before the general elections this fall. Regardless of how that attempt at patching up an image turns out, Trump's candidacy could be not only a current political setback for Republicans, but an enduring affliction in future elections. For decades after Republican President Herbert Hoover was demonized because the Great Depression of the 1930s began on his watch, Democrats warned repeatedly, in a series of later presidential elections, that a vote for the Republican candidate was a vote to return to the days of Herbert Hoover. It was 20 years before another Republican was elected president. As late as the 1980s, President Ro...

Bloomberg: Half of America’s Gas Exports Claimed by Asia in Next 3 Years I assume that the other half will be divided among Latin America and Europe.  For strategic reasons in dealing with Russia, Europe needs it most.   The expansion of the Panama canal is aiding the exports to Asia.