'Screw the next generation': Anonymous congressman writes tell-all

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'My main job is to keep my job, to get reelected. It takes precedence over everything,' an anonymous member of Congress writes in a new book'Voters are incredibly ignorant and know little about our form of government and how it works,' he writes'It's far easier than you think to manipulate a nation of naive, self-absorbed sheep who crave instant gratification'One liberal news blogger claims the author is a Democrat'The Confessions of Congressman X' will be released May 24 by a small Minnesota-based 'vanity press' publisher 

GUESSING GAME: 'The Confessions of Congressman X' is due on bookshelves May 24 and Washington is abuzz with speculation about who wrote it

A new book threatens to blow the lid off of Congress as a legislator has penned a tell-all about the worst parts of serving in the House of Representatives – saying that his main job is to raise money for re-election and that leaves little time for reading the bills he votes on.

Mill City Press, a small Minnesota-based 'vanity press' publisher describes 'The Confessions of Congressman X' as  'a devastating inside look at the dark side of Congress as revealed by one of its own.'

'No wonder Congressman X wants to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. His admissions are deeply disturbing.' 

The 84-page exposé is due in bookstores in two weeks, and Washington is abuzz with speculation about who may have written it.

Political Wire, a liberal news blog, disclosed on Thursday that the author is a 'Democratic congressman.'

Most of the excerpts that appear on the book jacket will come as little surprise to Americans who are cynical about the political process.

'Most of my colleagues are dishonest career politicians who revel in the power and special-interest money that's lavished upon them,' the author writes.

'My main job is to keep my job, to get reelected. It takes precedence over everything.'

'Fundraising is so time consuming I seldom read any bills I vote on. Like many of my colleagues, I don't know how the legislation will be implemented, or what it'll cost.'

The book also takes shots at voters as disconnected idiots who let Congress abuse its power through sheer incompetence.

CALM BEFORE THE STORM: The new congressional tell-all is likely to cause controversy on Capitol Hill

'Voters are incredibly ignorant and know little about our form of government and how it works,' the anonymous writer claims.

'It's far easier than you think to manipulate a nation of naive, self-absorbed sheep who crave instant gratification.'

And the take-away message is one of resigned depression about how Congress sacrifices America's future on the altar of its collective ego.

'We spend money we don't have and blithely mortgage the future with a wink and a nod. Screw the next generation,' the author writes. 

'It's about getting credit now, lookin' good for the upcoming election.'

COMMENTS

Federal judge rules Obamacare is being funded unconstitutionally

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www.latimes.com

A federal judge ruled for House Republicans on Thursday in their suit against President Obama and declared his administration is unconstitutionally spending money to reimburse health insurers without obtaining an appropriation fromCongress.

The judge's ruling, though a setback for the administration, was put on hold immediately and stands a good chance of being overturned on appeal.

But the 38-page opinion highlights the repeated complaint from Republicans that Obama and his administration have ignored constitutional limits on their authority.

The Constitution says "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law," said Judge Rosemary Collyer, yet the administration has continued to pay billions to insurers for their extra cost of providing coverage for low-income Americans.

"Paying out Sec. 1402 reimbursements without an appropriation thus violates the Constitution," she wrote. "Congress is the only source for such an appropriation, and no public money can be spent without one."

House Republicans sued Obama under then-Speaker John Boehner and claimed the president had violated the law by delaying the enforcement of several provisions of the Affordable Care Act. But lawyers later focused on the reimbursements for health insurers that received little attention before. They said these payment would come to $175 billion over a decade.

In their defense, administration lawyers said the suit should be dismissed because the House had no legal standing to sue. And they argued the reimbursements were authorized by law.

The House argues that Congress never specifically appropriated that money and has denied an administration request for it, but that the administration is spending the money anyway.

Collyer issued an order stopping further reimbursements, but delayed its implementation while the case is appealed.

Collyer is a George W. Bush appointee nominated in 2002.

This post was updated with a staff-written account replacing wire service reporting.

This was first posted at 10:20 a.m. 

COMMENTS

Texas Republicans Inch Closer to Secession

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If the nationalists get their way, this November might be the last time Texans vote for a US president.

On Wednesday, the Platform Committee of the Texas Republican Party voted to put a Texas independence resolution up for a vote at this week's GOP convention, according to a press release from the pro-secession Texas Nationalist Movement. The resolution calls for allowing voters to decide whether the Lone Star State should become an independent nation.

Texas was, in fact, its own country for nine years before joining the United States in 1845, and while the idea of returning to independence has never been taken seriously by most people, it remains popular as a romantic notion and marketing hook. Lone Star beer is the "national beer of Texas." Texas Monthly is the "national magazine of Texas." In a 2009 rally, then-Governor Rick Perry hinted that the state could secede if "Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people." He later backed off of the idea. (Representatives of the state GOP and Texas Nationalist Movement could not be reached for comment.)

The Texas Nationalist Movement, once considered a quixotic fringe group, has added hundreds of members in the years since the election of Barack Obama. According to the Houston Chronicle's Dylan Baddour, at least 10 county GOP chapters are coming to the convention supporting independence resolutions. But this will be the first time in the state's 171-year history that they will actually vote on one. It's very unlikely to win. Then again, that's what people said about Donald Trump.

COMMENTS

New Jersey Man Sentenced to 15 Years for Supporting Islamic State

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by JOHN HAYWARD11 May 20169

Alaa Saadeh, a New Jersey man who pled guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to the Islamic State in October, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Tuesday.

“The 24-year-old West New York resident, a former supervisor at a Staples store, planned to travel overseas to join the Islamic State group and allowed his brother to buy a plane ticket with Saadeh’s credit card to fly there to join the organization, federal prosecutors said. The government also alleged Saadeh sought to erase evidence of his brother’s trip by tampering with a cellphone, and counseled an associate to lie to the FBI if questioned,” reports theAssociated Press.

NBC News adds that Saadeh was accused of helping to organize a “small army” of ISIS fighters in New Jersey and New York, allowing the cell to meet at his apartment.

Another member of the group, Samuel Rahamin Topaz, has previously entered a guilty plea. His lawyer said that if they could not get to Syria to join the Islamic State, they considered “buying guns inside the US and targeting the White House and other landmarks for an attack.”

The AP adds that at Saadeh’s plea hearing in December, he admitted to looking at diagrams for bombs and discussing Times Square, the World Trade Center, and Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in Queens as possible targets with his terror cell.

NBC notes that Saadeh’s parents were deported over a decade ago due to allegations of credit card fraud, but their children were “allowed to stay with custodians in New Jersey because they were US citizens.”

During his sentencing hearing, Saadeh admitted to smoking a lot of weed before he became radicalized and said his friends misled him when they talked about Islam and ISIS.

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“These people are not who they claim they are,” he said. “They are making it worse for Muslim people.”

“I feel I could have taken so many different routes concerning this situation,” Saadeh added. “It saddens me that I had any part in even a little of this.”

The AP reports that U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton was skeptical of Saadeh’s apology, as was Assistant U.S. Attorney L. Judson Welle, who noted that Saadeh could easily have blown the whistle on the terrorist cell, but instead he “planned it, facilitated it, and agreed to help cover it up.”

Prior to this case, Saadeh reportedly had no criminal record. He was employed as the supervisor at a Staples office-supply store.

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Convention Delegates are the only hope!

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Brian,

I wanted to reach out to all of you and let you know where the campaign and the election process stands today. As you all know Senator Cruz suspended his campaign. All this means is he is not actively campaigning but he technically is still able to be voteor, nominated and so forth.

Now as the campaigns have worked to obtain delegates and reach the magic 1237 all of this never has meant anything more than a predictor of what would happen at the convention. For the candidate is selected there and only there through the delegates voting ‘your interests’. Some are bound and others are not. We could go into all the various challenges to binding delegates but that argument really has no merit in this email. What you need to understand is once there is a second vote all delegates are unbound.

So these delegates show up at the convention and they vote on plank issues, future convention rules and a myriad of other items all to promote the republican cause. This is why it is still so important to have Cruz minded delegates at the convention. Eventually they come to the ‘main event’, the voting for the presidential nominee. Now it is this first vote that is telling and also what the media has reported the delegate count to predict this outcome. As each state usually verbally declares their votes for each candidate they are tallied. Once the first rounds of votes are declared if the total for any single candidate is greater than 1237 the place goes nuts and the nominee is declared.

If a candidate only gets 1236 or less then delegates get together through some process and try to change or exchange votes for round two. This process is repeated until a candidate has more than 1237.
Now some people keep mentioning rule 40b. Rule 40b applied form the 2012 convention requires any nominee for the Republican Party to have at least a majority of delegates in at least 8 states. Today there is only two that qualify to be nominated, that being Trump and Cruz. Again if the vote is not won by Trump in round 1 there is a potential for a Cruz victory.

This week we will forgo a conference call. Also know we have been asked to hold on to the barn signs until there is a better feeling for what may happen at the convention. I imagine we may work on collecting them to distribute to the local area for a last minute delegate push, but I am just guessing at this point.
Thank you for all your hard work and prays. Julie and I will be in touch as we are discussing another project once more formalized we will invite you to help out. Until then ‘our lips are sealed’.

So proud of all of you and what we accomplished. We will be in touch!

Julie and James

Exclusive: Trump surges in support, almost even with Clinton in national U.S. poll

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www.reuters.com

Donald Trump's support has surged and he is now running nearly even with Democrat Hillary Clinton among likely U.S. voters, a dramatic turnaround since he became the Republican party's presumptive presidential nominee, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.

The results could signal a close fight between the two likely White House rivals as Americans make up their minds ahead of the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama. As recently as last week, Clinton led Trump by around 13 points in the poll.

In the most recent survey, 41 percent of likely voters supported Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, and 40 percent backed Trump, with 19 percent not decided on either yet, according to the online poll of 1,289 people conducted from Friday to Tuesday. The poll had a credibility interval of about 3 percentage points.

The results reflect a big increase in support for Trump since he knocked out U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich last week to become the last Republican in the White House race.

There was no immediate comment from the Clinton or Trump campaigns.

Clinton, who has all but clinched the Democratic nomination over rival Bernie Sanders, has mostly led Trump in the head-to-head poll this year. Trump briefly matched her support a few times in 2016, most recently in mid-March, after U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a favorite of the Republican establishment, dropped out.

Presidential elections are not decided by the national popular vote but by the Electoral College, which is based on state-by-state results.

Opinions are likely to change over the next six months as American voters become inundated with hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign advertising, highly publicized debates and a pair of party conventions.

Trump and Clinton both have much to prove to the American electorate. The Reuters/Ipsos poll found earlier this month that a majority of voters did not trust either candidate with key presidential responsibilities such as managing the U.S. economy, handling the role of U.S. commander in chief, and conducting themselves according to a “high moral standard.”

The candidates' choice of running mates could also be important. Voters surveyed in the poll said they would be more likely to support Clinton if her choice for vice president was a liberal, while Trump would help his chances if he picked someone experienced in politics and someone who is “consistently” conservative.

Trump’s rise in the polls coincides with his attempt to take over the reins of the Republican Party from leaders who clashed with him during a bruising and blustery primary fight.

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, the country's top elected Republican, said he would not immediately endorse Trump, and party elders including former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush and the last two presidential nominees, Mitt Romney and John McCain, said they would not attend the Republican convention in Cleveland in July.

(Reporting by Chris Kahn; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Peter Cooney)

COMMENTS

Obama: Crime Created by ‘System,’ Successful People ‘Just Lucky,’ ‘Wasn’t Nothin’ You Did’

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by WARNER TODD HUSTON10 May 2016Washington D.C.3,476

In his commencement speech to the graduating class at Howard University last weekend, President Obama excused crime in the African American community as something fostered by an “unfair and unjust” system.

He also said successful people were “just lucky” and hinted they didn’t make their success; “It wasn’t nothin’ you did,” he insisted.

Obama appeared at the historically African American Howard University on May 7 to send the graduates off into the world with some inspiring words. But much of what the president said was less inspirational and more conspiratorial.

The president spent a large portion of the first 15 minutes of his speech properly impressing upon the minority students in attendance that they are living in an era of unprecedented opportunity. But even as he noted how far African Americans have come in America today, he said he would be speaking to the inequities blacks face.

Still, in the first half of his speech Obama did mention how far African Americans have come since he was a child. For instance, Obama praised pop queen Beyoncé and TV showrunner Shonda Rhimes as examples of how far African Americans have progressed since the Civil Rights movement began in the U.S. He also noted that blacks have come a long way in business and the law.

But finally, about twenty minutes into his speech, he did, indeed, get to the usual victim mentality all too often seen on the political scene today.

At one point Obama excused crime as a result of an “unfair and unjust” system and noted that success is all just “luck.”

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The president decried the judicial system and insisted blacks are being imprisoned unfairly.

“We can’t just lock up a low-level dealer without asking why this boy, barely out of childhood, felt he had no other options,” Obama said.

He went on to claim crime was a result of the system, not the actions of criminals.

“We have cousins and uncles and brothers and sisters who we remember were just as smart and just as talented as we were, but somehow got ground down by structures that are unfair and unjust,” he said.

That brought the President to his thoughts on success being more a result of luck than hard work.

“And that means we have to not only question the world as it is,” Obama intoned, “and stand up for those African Americans who haven’t been so lucky–because, yes, you’ve worked hard, but you’ve also been lucky.”

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As an aside, the President of the United States then told his audience of his “pet peeve.”

“That’s a pet peeve of mine — people who have been successful and don’t realize they’ve been lucky. That God may have blessed them; it wuddn’t nothin’ you did. So don’t have an attitude.”

This line invokes his “you didn’t build that” gaffe from 2012 when Obama insisted that people with a successful business “didn’t build that” on their own and that government was really the catalyst for success.

The President’s commencement message is essentially that if you are black in the U.S. and you are successful, it was just luck and most blacks are held down by an “unfair and unjust” system that won’t allow them to succeed.

Obama also raised eyebrows when he insisted that he never intended to create a “post-racial society” with his presidency.

“My election did not create a post-racial society,” Obama told the graduating class “I don’t know who was propagating that notion. That was not mine.”

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It was a speech that talkshow host Rush Limbaugh called “hideous.”

The President’s speech comes on the heels of years of releasing into the public tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who have been apprehended and convicted of committing violent criminal offensesincluding rape, drug dealing, drunk driving, and even murder.

Further, with his “national reentry” policy, Obama has also worked to soften or eliminate the consequences of committing serious crimes and ensure ex-cons are given the same advantages as lifelong, law-abiding citizens.

Obama’s own efforts are only emboldened by the efforts of the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives in pushing asentencing reform bill that some senators charge will release violent felons and drug traffickers back into the public.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter@warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com

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