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Hillary Clinton is scheduled to give a speech on Iran this afternoon and her plans to enforce the provisions of the deal recently negotiated by the Obama administration.

Hillary, taking a page out of Ronald Reagan’s book, calls the strategy “distrust but verify.” This because, according to Bloomberg View, “she will break somewhat with the Obama administration by predicting that Iran will not change its bad behavior.”

Apparently it’s so easy to be more grounded in reality that Obama and John Kerry that even Hillary Clinton can do it.

Read the rest of the story here.

(Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

After a relatively quiet August recess, Congress returned to the Hill this week amid the specter of a multi-front battle that promises plenty of ink for headlines in the coming weeks.

With threats from Sen. Ted Cruz to shutdown the federal government over funding for Planned Parenthood, the intra-party fight between conservative hardliners and GOP leadership is almost certain to boil over.

On the foreign policy front, Republicans are pressing forward with plans to vote on a resolution condemning the Iran nuclear deal despite that President Obama has secured enough support to sustain his veto.

At present, only 21% of American voters support the deal, which means that Republican leadership intend to score a political victory by forcing Obama to openly oppose public sentiment.

Amid all the furor, Pope Francis’ visit to DC later this month is expected to stoke the fires of partisanship with both parties publicly anticipating a tongue-lashing for the other in the pontiff’s address to a joint-house gathering at the capitol.

Obama has secured the votes for the Iran nuclear deal, Politico reports.

Support from Sens. Gary Peters, Ron Wyden and Richard Blumenthal means Obama has yes votes from 41 Democrats, enough to deny the GOP a filibuster-proof majority of 60 votes…

The Washington Post reported that Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) will break from his party and oppose the deal, but it appears to be too little, too late.

Read more here.

A week after one of three close aides pleaded the fifth in the ongoing investigation by the FBI, Hillary Clinton’s email woes continued with a second confirmation of classified email material.

The confirmation came after a ‘special review’ by officials from the CIA and NGIA of two emails that were received by Hillary on her personal address which were deemed to be ‘top secret’.

Spokesmen both for the campaign and for the State Department argued that classification of information can vary depending on which source the material came from, but critics argue that the content in these emails — one of which includes details of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities — is indisputably sensitive.

The revelation comes as the latest in an unending train of bruises to Hillary’s former inevitability in the race for the Democrat nomination which has become anything but certain in recent weeks.

When Joe Biden is included among the options, Hillary’s national polling numbers dip well below the 50% mark and continue the negative direction as rumors of Biden’s entrance into the race continue.

According to campaign aides, Hillary will be executing another pivot in strategy this week in which she will strive to appear more affable and happy with voters in hopes that the incessant negative from the scandal will roll off.

 

RadarOnline.com claims to have an exclusive scoop on a self-described computer specialist who says he has 32,000 Hillary Clinton emails and is willing to sell them for $500,000.

Reportedly, the outbox containing Hillary’s emails was deleted, but not the emails in her sent box. This is apparently what has been obtained.

According to the story, the hacker has provided subject lines from a number of emails in order to prove their legitimacy. Some of the subject lines imply that they contain information on such events as Benghazi and the Algerian hostage crisis – subject lines such as the following:

“H Libya security latest. Sid” (with attachment)

“H FYI, best analysis so far of hearing Sid,’ about the latest security in Libya”

“H Algeria latest French Intel on Algeria hostage Sid”

“H Latest French Intel in Algeria hostage Sid” (with attachment)

“H Latest Libya intel internal govt discussions high level” (with attachment)

“H HIGHLY IMPORTANT! Comprehensive Intel Report on (with attachment)”

If they do prove to be real Clinton emails, her campaign is done, based on what the hacker implies is contained in the emails.

For weeks since the conclusion of a multinational agreement on the Iran nuclear deal, President Obama has been urging Senate Democrats to rally behind him.

After Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell promised a resolution that would invalidate the deal, Obama assured them that he would swiftly veto the measure.

The problem was that Democrats, led first by Chuck Schumer (D-NY), began to defect on the deal, leading to concern about whether Republicans could muster enough numbers to override the veto.

With the goal of 34 votes in favor of the measure to prevent the 67 needed for an override, Obama had to convince a handful of holdouts to jump onboard.

At the close of last week, it appeared that Republicans had the upper hand on pulling the remaining votes into their coalition.

But this week the tide turned with a number of Democrats joining their colleagues. Wednesday’s announcement by Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) that she will support the deal became the 34th vote in Obama’s pocket.

Reports circulated that, should this eventuality come to pass, McConnell would abandon efforts to pass the resolution once Obama’s veto became secure.

(AP Photo/Brendon Smialowski, Pool)

The latest release of Hillary Clinton’s emails has revealed a number containing classified information, including some written by Hillary herself. Another frightening revelation is that some of the information included the movement of North Korean nuclear assets, which had been attained by U.S. spy satellites.

The Washington Times’ John Solomon reported that there are two concerns about that information being on Hillary’s unsecured server, the first being that intelligence gathered from spy satellites is often classified as top-secret, being among the most sensitive intelligence the U.S. obtains.

Second and perhaps more important is the fact that the North Koreans have a cyberhacking army that could very well have taken advantage of the unsecured server to learn valuable information about U.S. intelligence gathering methods and assets.

The story goes on to note that because the sender of the email ought to have recognized the sensitive nature of the material in the email, marked it as classified and even sanitized the nonpublic information, he or she could be in legal trouble.

So far at least 188 emails sent to Hillary’s server contained classified information. Another half dozen she herself wrote also contained material that should have been classified. These continued revelations will only worsen the already low level of trust the public has in her.

Lt. General William "Jerry" Boykin (AP Photo by Ed Andrieski)

Almost 200 retired generals from every branch of the service have signed a letter urging Congress to reject Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, according to the Washington Post.

Written in response to a letter supporting the agreement signed by a comparatively paltry three dozen generals, this letter argues, “The agreement will enable Iran to become far more dangerous, render the Mideast still more unstable and introduce new threats to American interests as well as our allies.”

Specifically, it is problematic because it will be “unverifiable,” the generals say.

Additionally, they argue that the agreement will not prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Instead, it “actually provides Iran with a legitimate path to doing that simply by abiding by the deal.”

The letter goes on to criticize the deal’s lifting of sanctions on Iran.

“The agreement provides by some estimates $150 billion dollars or more to Iran in the form of sanctions relief… we find it unconscionable that such a windfall could be given to a regime that even the Obama administration has acknowledged will use a portion of such funds to continue to support terrorism in Israel, throughout the Middle East and globally, whether directly or through proxies.”

Hopefully, members of Congress will be more willing to listen to the generals than Obama has been.

Robert Menendez (Photo by Glyn Lowe)

By all measures, it appears Senate Republicans will be unable to muster enough Democrat dissenters to override President Obama’s veto on the resolution to oppose the nuclear deal with Iran.

Authors of that resolution, which is expected to pass in both houses of Congress with overwhelming Republican support, had hopes that the public opposition from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) would invite fellow Democrats to join efforts to kill the deal.

But in the days following Schumer’s announcement, only Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) has publicly joined him.

Even with those votes added to a unanimous move by the Republican caucus in both houses will fall from the two-thirds requirement for an override of a presidential veto.

Photo by Senate Democrats

Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) long-awaited decision on whether he will support the president’s nuclear deal with Iran came in the late hourson Thursday just as the GOP debate was beginning.

After “deep study” Schumer announced he “must oppose the agreement and vote yes on a motion of disapproval.”

Schumer, the third ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate, has long been seen as a cheerleader for Barack Obama’s policies, which makes this decision a political thorn in the side of the White House.

Many analysts have predicted that this eventuality may clear the way for Schumer’s colleagues in the Democrat caucus to join him in opposing the nuclear deal.

If that additional opposition materializes, the GOP will have more than enough votes to push through a vote to reject the deal.

Should the president exercise his veto as expected, however, the challenge for Senate Republican leaders will be a steep hill toward mustering enough votes to override the veto, an unlikely prospect.

Nevertheless, that the president is already notably at odds with the leaders of his own party in Congress and with a supermajority of the American people adds stumbling blocks to the Democrat presidential candidates who are already being forced to choose between voter sentiments and their president’s policies.

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