FBI urged to probe death threats on Trump electors

President-elect Donald Trump giving his victory speech Wednesday morning, Nov. 9, 2016

With death threats for presidential electors who plan to vote for Donald Trump continuing to be reported across America, the FBI is now being urged to investigate the rampant voter intimidation.

“Why isn’t the FBI investigating this? I’m serious,” radio host Rush Limbaugh said on his national broadcast Wednesday. “Why isn’t the FBI investigating all of these threats, these emails, these phone calls, this intimidation effort that’s under way against these electors?”

“I know who runs the FBI. [President] Obama runs the FBI,” he continued. “But still, why isn’t somebody demanding it or calling for it? … This is the kind of stuff the left does … they laugh at it, they shrug it off, they shove it way out to the extreme, [suggesting] ‘nothing’s gonna come of this,’ and something always does.”

Rush Limbaugh

Limbaugh noted, “This is a sleazebag effort if there ever was one. These are the kind of people that need to be pounded into the ground. They need to be defeated to the point that they’re demoralized and don’t ever try this again. I’m thinking sign surrender papers on the deck of the USS Missouri.”

The broadcaster believes not enough people are paying close enough attention to the matter, but hopes those in the president-elect’s inner circle are keeping a close watch.

“I’d keep a sharper eye on this if I were in the Trump team and maybe they are. I don’t know,” Limbaugh said.

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The Electoral College is set to vote Dec. 19 to make Trump’s presidential victory official, but as WND reported, many of the electors are being bombarded with “dozens and dozens of death threats” from Hillary Clinton supporters urging them to switch their votes to Clinton.

More than a dozen states have no laws making it illegal for the electors to change their vote while others have only a minor penalty such as a fine for doing so. If Clinton’s supporters can get enough of the 163 electors from states where Trump both won and votes can be legally switched on Dec. 19, Hillary Clinton becomes the next president of the United States.

Michael Banerian, 22, of Oakland County, Michigan, is one of that state’s 16 official electors who will meet in the state capital of Lansing on Dec. 19 to cast their votes for Trump. He told the Detroit News he has received threatening emails, lots of them, from people telling him to vote for Democrat Clinton instead of the GOP victor he is pledged to support. Trump won Michigan’s popular vote and should be able to count on the 16 electoral votes in that state.

Watch Michael Banerian, one of Michigan’s 16 electors, talk about the threats he has received on his life if he doesn’t switch his vote from Trump to Clinton:

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But Clinton supporters have “deluged Banerian and other GOP electors with pleas and nasty emails to reverse course and cast their ballots for Clinton,” the Michigan Republican Party is reporting.

“You have people saying ‘you’re a hateful bigot, I hope you die,’” he told the News in a 6-minute video interview. “I’ve had people talk about shoving a gun in my mouth and blowing my brains out. And I’ve received dozens and dozens of those emails. Even the non-threatening-my-life emails are very aggressive.”

He said that while many of the emails are clearly death threats, others would fall into the category of “death wishes.”

Things like, “do society a favor and throw yourself in front of a bus.”

“I’ve just gotten a lot of ‘you’re a hateful bigot and I hope you die,’ which is kind of ironic,” Banerian said, “that they’re calling me hateful and yet wishing for my death. They don’t even know me.”

The Detroit News verified one message containing a death wish and another containing a death threat, in which the person told Banerian he would “put a bullet” in his mouth. Banerian said he deleted the rest of the emails and messages “because as you can imagine they’re clogging up my email.”

An online petition on Change.org signed by more than 4.6 million people is calling on the nation’s 538 electors to vote for Clinton instead of Trump.

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Georgia official issues warning: Stop harassing electors

While it is not legal to change one’s electoral vote in Michigan it can be done in other states, such as Georgia.

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp issued a statement urging Georgians and others to refrain from using threatening and disparaging language to manipulate electors:

“The Presidential election is over but, unfortunately, the vitriol remains,” stated Secretary of State Brian Kemp. “Our office has received numerous reports of individuals hurling insults and threats at Georgia’s Electors because they are unsettled with America’s choice for President of the United States. This is absolutely unacceptable and those participating in or encouraging these efforts should stop. The electoral process in America has worked, and everyone – Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and others – should respect the will of Georgia’s voters and the Electors who represent them.”

Arizona reports threats against its electors

Fox News reported that Arizona electors are also being harassing and threatened by Clinton supporters.

“Arizona’s presidential electors are reportedly being hit by a flood of emails and phone calls demanding they defy the voters in their state and choose Hillary Clinton instead of President-elect Donald Trump – as part of a last-gasp bid to overturn the election,” Fox reported.

Clinton-backers are targeting roughly 160 Republican electorates in the 15 states that Trump won and don’t have laws bounding the electorates to the winner: Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

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Meanwhile in Michigan, Banerijan says he will not be intimidated and has no plans of changing his vote.

“Even if I could, I wouldn’t be remotely interested in changing my vote,” Banerian, a political-science student in his senior year at Oakland University and youth vice chair of the Michigan Republican Party, told the News. “The people of Michigan spoke, and it’s our job to deliver that message.”

He says even if he could change his vote, it’s not allowed. “That’s a misconception that I wish people knew about. It’s just a Google search away,” he said.

He will be in the Michigan capital of Lansing on Dec. 19 to proudly cast his vote for Trump.

Attending a liberal university in a state that has voted for Democrat presidents in the previous two elections, he said he doesn’t get many chances to celebrate a political victory. So he is especially proud to be taking part in the democratic process in Michigan that helped elect a Republican president.

He participated in a counter protest recently in which a Trump supporter was assaulted by a Clinton supporter, who came running toward him and other who had to “dodge out of the way.”

“What I would ask Michiganders and Americans to do is act like Americans,” he said.

“Americans don’t assault each other for political differences,” he added. “Americans don’t get in each other’s faces, spit on people, try to throw them to the ground. That’s not what Americans are all about. In many ways both sides have contributed to a lot of anger, and much of it well founded, but, I just ask everyone to act like an American. Americans’ don’t do this stuff. We don’t send death threats, we don’t beat each other up for political differences, that’s not what Americans are about, and Americans that have done that throughout history have been cast out of our society, and rightfully so. We don’t act like that so I just ask that we all live up to the responsibility of being Americans.”

Although critics have complained that the people’s will is being thwarted because Clinton narrowly leads in the national popular vote, Banerian said the system will be vindicated when he and other electors go to Lansing on Dec. 19. Electoral College defenders have argued that America’s founding fathers designed the system to protect small states from being dominated by states with large urban populations.

Another Michigan elector, Kenneth Crider, told the News he hasn’t received any death threats but has gotten more than 300 emails from people in other states asking him to vote for Clinton instead of Trump in December.

The 51-year-old heating and air-conditioning technician said many of the emails were from teachers and professors trying to explain to him the gravity of the situation, urging him to change his mind.

But he said there’s no swaying his vote.

“I’m 100 percent behind Donald Trump,” Crider told the local newspaper.

Even if Banerian, Crider or one of the other electors had a change of heart, Michigan law says their votes would become null and void and another elector would be put in their place to cast a vote for Trump.

But not all states are that strict. Some electors could change their minds and cast votes for Clinton, a prospect that political analysts say is unlikely since candidates tend to recruit the most loyal supporters to be electors.

But that doesn’t stop the Clinton supporters from trying.

“We are calling on the electors to ignore their states’ votes and cast their ballots for Secretary Clinton,” the Change.org petition said. “Mr. Trump is unfit to serve. His scapegoating of so many Americans, and his impulsivity, bullying, lying, admitted history of sexual assault, and utter lack of experience make him a danger to the Republic.”

While some lobbying is peaceful, other electors report receiving intimidating emails or messages, while to possibility of bribery is also feared.

“Hearing from them that they are also receiving threats, I’m interested in getting a consensus from the group … and seeing if it’s something that we should report to the police,” Sarah Anderson, the Michigan Republican Party spokeswoman, told the News. “It’s obviously something that we’re taking very seriously.”

Banerian said he has not yet reported any threats to the police but is considering doing so.

BuzzFeed reported Thursday that the #NotMyPresident Alliance, a national anti-Donald Trump protest group, has released the personal information of dozens of Electoral College members in states that voted Republican.

A spreadsheet distributed to supporters included the electors’ personal phone numbers, addresses, religions, races, genders and candidate preference.

The group hopes its members and citizens around the country will contact electors and pressure them to change their vote from Trump to another candidate before Dec. 19.

Follow Joe Kovacs on Twitter @JoeKovacsNews

Congress drops plans to make women register for draft

(Military Times) Lawmakers have officially dropped plans to make women register for the draft, instead opting for a review of the ongoing need for the Selective Service System.

The controversial provision had been part of early drafts of the annual defense authorization bill, and narrowly passed a House Armed Services Committee vote last spring. A Senate panel followed suit a few months later.

But conservatives in both chambers objected to the provision and stripped it out of the final legislative draft unveiled Tuesday.

Under current law, men ages 18 to 26 are required to register for possible involuntary military service with the Selective Service System. Women have been exempt, and past legal challenges have pointed to combat restrictions placed on their military service as a reason for their exclusion.

Obama blames conservative news for Democrats being out of touch

In his exit interview with the former counterculture magazine Rolling Stone, President Barack Obama insisted that Democrats’ failure to reach voters is not his party’s fault.

Who is to blame? Fake news, social media, Fox…

The president said: “In this election, [white blue collar workers] turned out in huge numbers for Trump. And I think that part of it has to do with our inability, our failure, to reach those voters effectively. Part of it is Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country, but part of it is also Democrats not working at a grassroots level, being in there, showing up, making arguments. That part of the critique of the Democratic Party is accurate. We spend a lot of time focused on international policy and national policy and less time being on the ground. And when we’re on the ground, we do well.”

Many Americans who rejected Hillary Clinton have about the same amount of use for Fox as they do MSNBC. That’s because thinking Americans have come to recognize the mainstream media providers as the propaganda wings of the establishment parties.

Instead, many Americans get a majority of their information from a network of grassroots alternative media sources. That, according to the president, is also part of the problem.

He said: “If you look at minimum-wage laws or family-leave policy or the investments that we made in community colleges or, for that matter, the Affordable Care Act, these are all big investments for working families, white, black and Hispanic. The challenge we had is not that we’ve neglected these communities from a policy perspective. That is, I think, an incorrect interpretation. You start reading folks saying, “Oh, you know, working-class families have been neglected,” or “Working-class white families have not been paid attention to by Democrats.” Actually, they have. What is true, though, is that whatever policy prescriptions that we’ve been proposing don’t reach, are not heard, by the folks in these communities. And what they do hear is Obama or Hillary are trying to take away their guns or they disrespect you.”

So when Americans get something other than the sugarcoated MSM version of big government’s plans, it makes it harder for federal officials to impose their will on the people?

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Wine-sipping city attorney nabbed for anti-Trump vandalism

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Police are investigating an assistant city attorney in connection with anti-Donald Trump graffiti spray-painted on the side of an upscale grocery store in Philadelphia.

Duncan Lloyd is one of two men seen seen in security-camera video of the incident. Police say the vandalism happened shortly after midnight on Friday, Nov. 25, outside the Fresh Market.

Duncan Lloyd

The video, released Tuesday by police, shows Lloyd strolling along the sidewalk while holding a glass of wine. He then uses his cell phone to take a photo or video while the other man spray paints “F–k Trump” on the front wall of the building.

Lloyd has contacted police and is cooperating with the investigation, according to First Deputy City Solicitor Craig Straw.

“We do not condone this type of behavior from our employees,” Straw said in a statement. “We will decide on a course of action once we obtain more information about the investigation.”

In the surveillance video, Lloyd is wearing a blue blazer, tan pants, blue scarf and black shoes.

Joe DeFelice, the chairman of the city’s Republican Party, issued a statement demanding Lloyd’s employment be terminated immediately:

If the image of an upper-middle class city attorney clad in a blazer and sipping wine while vandalizing an upscale grocery store with an anti-Trump message strikes you as perhaps the most bourgeois sight imaginable, that’s because it is. Nothing can better represent the hysterical pearl-clutching of the ‘progressive’ elite in response to this earth-shattering election, when residents of Chestnut Hill and similar neighborhoods across the country discovered – gasp – that other people have a voice too. The assistant city solicitor in question had ostensibly taken the law into his own hands, since a democratic election didn’t yield his preferred outcome.

For somebody with extensive legal training to feel entitled to vandalize a newly opened super-market strikes us at the Philadelphia Republican Party as an astonishing feat of idiocy. Did the extra glass of Shiraz give him some sort of delusional confidence that there are no cameras on Germantown Ave? The taxpayers should be entrusting exactly none of our faith into this man. He should be fired from our city’s law department immediately.

Video surveillance captured two men participating in an act of anti-Trump graffiti vandalism.

Police said Wednesday morning the investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made. The other man in the video has not been publicly identified.

Damage to the stone facade of the building is estimated at between $3,000 and $10,000.

Lloyd has worked for the city’s law department since 2011. He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania – as does President-elect Trump – and is a Temple University law school graduate, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Trump announces he will leave his business ‘in total’

(London Independent) Donald Trump has announced that he will “leave his business in total”.

The President-elect will give up his interests to focus on leading the US, he said. He didn’t give any further detail about what would happen to the Trump Organization, though it is expected that it will pass on t his children in an arrangement that is still likely to draw criticism.

The billionaire businessman has received sustained criticism for holding onto his business interests even as he worked on becoming President. Doing so even threatened to make his administration in breach of the constitution from its first day, lawyers have suggested.

‘Hamilton’ boycott ‘fail’? Tickets actually sold months in advance

The cast of “Hamilton”

While a number of media outlets are gleefully declaring the record-breaking box office last week of “Hamilton” is an indication a boycott by Donald Trump supporters against the hit Broadway play is backfiring, the simple fact is that the show has been sold out for six or seven months in advance, and the premium ticket prices also were set long before the high-demand Thanksgiving week.

That means, ill-advised or not, any impact of the boycott on ticket sales launched in response to the crowd booing and cast-member lecturing of Mike Pence when the vice president-elect attended the play Nov. 18 wouldn’t be seen until well into next year.

Nevertheless, Esquire magazine blared in response to the box-office news, “It should come as no surprise that #BoycottHamilton did not work!”

“In fact, it did the exact opposite,” the magazine said.

Marie Claire, the women’s fashion magazine, headlined a story on its website “‘Hamilton’ Breaks an Epic Record Following That Mike Pence Drama.”

“So…#BoycottHamilton was a fail,” it said.

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USA Today said “audiences did the opposite of boycotting the hit Broadway production.”

And the news portal The Grio said, “The increased sales seem to indicate that boycott isn’t going so well.”

We’re ‘alarmed and anxious’

The New York Times didn’t note the unwarranted boasting, but the paper pointed out that because “Hamilton” is a sold-out show, attendance does not fluctuate from week to week, and its grosses vary because of pricing changes.

The prices charged at the box office for Thanksgiving-week tickets were set months ago, the Times reported.

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“Hamilton” grossed a Broadway a record $3.3 million in an eight-performance week and also set a record for the highest premium ticket price ever charged by a Broadway box office, $998.

When Pence attended, cast member Brandon Victor Dixon addressed him from the stage immediately after the show, with the rest of the casting standing behind.

“We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights,” Dixon said. “But we hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values, and work on behalf of all of us.”

In response to the upbraiding, Trump supporters created the hashtag #BoycottHamilton.

In two tweets sent out the following morning, Trump demanded that the cast apologize.

“Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing. This should not happen!,” Trump wrote.

“The Theater must always be a safe and special place,” Trump said. “The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!”

Ultimately, a boycott of a hit Broadway play drawing an audience from across the nation in a theater with only 1,319 seats is a long-shot effort.

And Vanity Fair saw the advanced ticket-sale issue as a problem for the Trump side.

“Most theater aficionados noted the flaw in Trump supporters’ plan from the beginning: tickets to the show were already sold out through next year when his supporters began calling for Hamilton’s head,” it said.

With last week’s results, Vanity Fair said, “it seems safe to say the show will keep passionately smashin’ every expectation for months to come.”

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The secretary of state pick who’d be a dream for true conservatives

Top Republican officials said Wednesday that the incoming Trump administration had narrowed its search for a new secretary of state down to a handful of candidates. Some of the names being thrown around are truly frightening— but there’s a better choice.

A huge part of president-elect Donald Trump’s populist appeal to U.S. voters was the firm America-first message he pushed on issues of trade and international relations. With regard to the U.S.’s foreign policy, for many voters America-first means a reversal of the overseas adventurism carried out by both the Bush and Obama administrations.

Trump very successfully distinguished himself from Hillary Clinton, whose State Department tenure was an exercise in interventionism, by talking up a foreign policy approach that would place diplomacy over military action in every possible circumstance. And the president-elect repeatedly pummeled Clinton over her support for the failed Iraq War and her doctrine of destabilization in the Middle East to underscore the very kind of mistakes he wouldn’t allow his administration to make.

But judging by names being floated to head the State Department, Trump is likely about to make the first of what will become a series of overseas blunders under his watch.

Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller confirmed to reporters Wednesday that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani are currently being considered for the spot. Miller reportedly wouldn’t confirm who the other contenders are, but media reports suggest that Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Corker, former CIA Director David Petraeus and retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly are also under consideration.

If these are these are the names on the list, America’s in for more of the same overseas adventurism and incompetence under President Trump.

Let’s start with Romney.

Remember all of Clinton’s Cold War scaremongering about Russia during the election? Well, that’s classic Romney. He’s also, like Clinton, interested in aggravating tensions with Russia by launching a full military intervention to overthrow Syria’s leader.

It’s also worth noting that Romney’s harsh opposition to Trump during the election and his intense desire for Trump’s job make it likely that a Romney State Department would have other parallels to Clinton’s version of State. That is, Romney— who fancies himself a “foreign policy prophet” and who called Trump a “phony” and a “fraud”— is likely to buck the president at every turn and focus more on his own political brand than what’s right for the U.S.

Many people who don’t like Romney for the position suggest that Giuliani is a good bet.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who opposes Romney for State, said Giuliani has the “right temperament” for the job.

He also has virtually no foreign policy record beyond having been mayor of NYC when it was attacked by Islamic terrorists. And that shouldn’t be discounted because it at least means Giuliani wouldn’t hesitate to name Islamic terror as a problem like members of the Obama cabinet.

But it also shouldn’t be enough, especially considering the few things we do know about Giuliani’s foreign policy views based on his past comments.

Here’s a good one from 2006 wherein the former mayor suggests that continued intervention throughout the Middle East will end Islamic terror:

Bush got the big decision of his presidency right: the big decision that he made on September 20th, 2001, when he put us on offense against Islamic terrorism. I give him great credit for that. Because we had been dealing with Islamic terrorism incorrectly up until then. We had been on defense. We had been responding. Bush set a whole different mindset. It was: Let’s anticipate, let’s see if we can prevent another attack. That led to Afghanistan, it led to Iraq, it’s led to the Patriot Act, it’s led to electronic surveillance, it’s led to changing our intelligence services. All that is very, very good. Mistakes have also been made. Mistakes were made particularly in the period of time after the capture of Saddam Hussein and, now, a year ago, when we got to the surge policy.

That’s only good for folks who appreciate massive intrusions on American citizens’ privacy and the longest running military engagement in U.S. history.

But Giuliani, you see, subscribes to the wrongheaded belief that the U.S. can somehow spread democracy and appreciation for Western values like wildflowers. Thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans happen to disagree. So do the ISIS terrorists using the nation’s the U.S. destabilized over the past decade and a half staging grounds for attacks.

Corker, meanwhile, is just a good old fashioned fan of massive government. As Obama ironed out his Iran deal, the lawmaker was instrumental in securing its passage by giving the White House a virtual override of Congress via manipulation of the Treaty Clause.

Petraeus’s former position at the CIA means he has deep ties to the deep state. He also holds many of the same foreign policy positions as Clinton— Petraeus, in fact, was likely headed for a cabinet position had she won.  He also has in common with Clinton a penchant for putting state secrets at risk.

Kelly, at a glance, is less horrible than the other candidates mentioned— but given his tough positions on securing the nation’s borders, perhaps he’d be a better pick to head DHS.

Anyone named for the secretary of state position is going to come with potential drawbacks. But Trump’s current roster of candidate’s is shockingly full of adherents to the same Bush-Obama-Clinton foreign policy style that set the world on fire.

Sen. Rand Paul, a perpetual critic of that style of foreign policy, noted in a recent op-ed that Trump’s best bet is a pick who recognizes those failures as well as the foreign policy changes that will help the incoming president achieve his domestic agenda.

He wrote:

The U.S. has spent over $100 billion on infrastructure in Afghanistan, including $80 million on a Clinton disaster of an embassy in Mazar-e Sharif that will never be occupied because the State Department ignored every security restriction and built a facility so unsafe that personnel refused to move in. The Obama Pentagon also spent $45 million building a natural gas fueling station in Afghanistan, a country that did not have a single vehicle that runs on natural gas.

Donald Trump needs a secretary of state who understands that we can’t build nations abroad and have enough money to rebuild our own nation. Both Trump’s foreign policy and domestic policy depend on him picking someone who has fully learned the historic lesson of the Iraq War: regime change and nation building don’t work and cost too much.

Later, congressional conservative Rep. Justin Amash tweeted Paul’s piece with the note: “Trump should pick Rand Paul.”

And that sounds like a damn good idea.

Not only was Paul the only candidate during the presidential primary to offer a plan for defeating ISIS without engaging in a war based on overreaction to terror threats, his is also the only brand of foreign policy that the U.S. hasn’t actually tried in since 9/11. Paul has called for a Middle Eastern foreign policy that focuses on choking off ISIS resources while requiring more from U.S. allies in the region.

And why not try it? Has anything else the U.S. done in the region aided in stability?

As Paul noted during his failed campaign for president: “There is often variations of evil on both sides of a war. What we have to decide is whether or not regime change is a good idea. It’s what the neoconservatives have wanted. It’s what the vast majority of those on the stage want. They still want regime change. They want it in Syria. They wanted it in Iraq. They wanted it in Libya. It has not worked. Out of regime change you get chaos. From the chaos you have seen repeatedly the rise of radical Islam. So we get this profession of, oh, my goodness, they want to do something about terrorism. And yet they’re the problem, because they allow terrorism to arise out of that chaos.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s the kind of stuff Trump was also talking about before he began considering a bunch of Clinton clones to head the State Department.

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Top 8 facts you don’t know about David Petraeus

Retired U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus

The political world is abuzz with speculation about President-elect Donald Trump’s consideration of former CIA Director David Petraeus as his choice for secretary of state – but Petraeus’ positions on a variety of issues, including gun control, could upset conservatives if he is indeed selected for the slot.

Trump met Monday with the retired Army four-star general at his offices in Trump Tower in Manhattan. In a Twitter post minutes after the meeting, Trump tweeted: “Just met with General Petraeus – very impressed!”

But if Trump selects Petraeus to be his chief foreign affairs adviser, he runs the risk of upsetting his conservative base. Petraeus is a fervent advocate of gun control and expansive government. He supported the program to resettle Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the United States. Petraeus has pressed for shutting down Guantanamo Bay prison, backed Obama’s Iran policy, decried U.S. favoritism toward Israel and even advocated reconciliation with the Taliban.

The Trump transition team did not respond to WND’s request for comment regarding why Petraeus is being considered for the post.

In December 2015, Petraeus signed a letter urging Congress to allow resettlement of Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the U.S. 

“Refugees are victims, not perpetrators, of terrorism,” the letter stated. “Categorically refusing to take them only feeds the narrative of ISIS that there is a war between Islam and the West, that Muslims are not welcome in the United States and Europe, and that the ISIS caliphate is their true home.”

WND recently listed eight terror attacks in the last 18 months that were carried out by Muslim immigrants or sons of Muslim immigrants. At least four of the attacks on the list were carried out by Muslims who came to America through the United Nations refugee resettlement program overseen by the U.S. State Department.

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Petraeus also helped launch a gun-control group this summer. In June of this year, he and retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, husband of former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, teamed up to launch Veterans Coalition for Common Sense to encourage legislators to toughen gun laws, “close the loopholes in our background check laws” and “do more to prevent gun tragedies.”

If he were to be chosen as secretary of state, Petraeus would play a pivotal role in determining whether to remove the U.S. from the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, an agreement that Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt told WND could result in “a national gun registration and licensing scheme” inside the U.S.

He also led the charge to allow gay troops to serve openly in the military – more than a year before the Obama administration repealed the armed forces’ “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

In March 2010, Petraeus declared “the time has come” for the military to reconsider the rule. In the same month, Petraeus told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria he served with homosexuals in the CIA and didn’t believe troops would have difficulty adjusting to working with openly gay service members.

Petraeus has expressed support for Obama’s calls for shutting down Guantanamo Bay prison and condemned American use of interrogation strategies such as waterboarding.

“With respect to Guantanamo,” Petraeus told Radio Free Europe, “I think that the closure in a responsible manner, obviously one that is certainly being worked out now by the Department of Justice … But doing that in a responsible manner, I think, sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees.”

President Obama and Gen. David Petraeus at the White House on April 28, 2011. Also visible are Vice President Joe Biden and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates (official White House photo by Pete Souza).

Petraeus testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March of 2010, saying the perception of U.S. favoritism toward Israel has fomented anti-Americanism. He told the committee, “enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the area of responsibility.

“Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples [in the region].”

Petraeus’ remarks came after a week of stressed U.S.-Israel relations following Israel’s announcement of plans to build 1,600 homes in East Jerusalem.

His critics have blasted him for being soft on crime, reconciling with the Taliban and supporting Sunni militias in Iraq’s Sunni Awakening.

“I think that you have to have at least an open mind about this because this is historically the way counterinsurgency efforts ultimately have been concluded,” he told CBS News’ Katie Couric in 2010 prior to the Obama administration’s drawdown of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

Asked what the U.S. and Afghanistan have to offer the Taliban, he replied, “They can live is No. 1. No. 2, perhaps they could return to their country of origin. A lot of them are tired of, again, living their life on the run, of being pursued, of living outside the country and so forth. And so I think that those are all fairly powerful incentives for them.”

On the issue of Iran going nuclear, Petraeus told “Meet the Press” on Feb. 21, 2010, that he believed Iran is “a ways” away from obtaining a nuclear weapon and agreed with continuing the “pressure track” the Obama administration was on at the time. But in 2015, he told the Senate Armed Service Committee the Obama administration’s nuclear agreement with Iran had some key weaknesses.

“The nuclear agreement negotiated by the Obama administration contains many positive elements,” he said. “It also contains some problematic elements.”

While he said the deal would apply restrictions to the regime for the next decade, he warned of providing new resources to Iran “to pursue maligned activities,” causing the risk of nuclear proliferation to increase.

As of this date, Petraeus’ name is also on the membership roster of the Council on Foreign Relations, a U.S. foreign-policy think tank that, critics say, promotes world government.

Many of Petraeus’ views on fiscal policy and social issues are unknown. Several pundits have questioned his political positions. Much like retired four-star Army Gen. Colin Powell, who served under President W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, Petraeus is often seen as a moderate who sometimes supports centrist or Democrat-backed causes.

A 2008 report in the New Yorker stated, “Petraeus is registered to vote as a Republican in New Hampshire – he once described himself to a friend as a northeastern Republican, in the tradition of Nelson Rockefeller – but he said that around 2002, after he became a two-star general, he stopped voting.”

But Max Fisher, associate editor at The Atlantic, argued in 2010 that Petraeus has “big-government” views.

Worst of all, he’s a big-government liberal: His strategy in Iraq relied on numerous population-centric strategies that are called counterinsurgency when deployed inside a war zone but, if implemented in the U.S., would be called social welfare programs on the scale of FDR’s Works Progress Administration or Johnson’s Great Society. Petraeus uses government resources to put unemployed locals to work on massive infrastructure projects, he works hard to secure fair political representation for aggrieved minorities, and he builds strong, public social services like hospitals and schools. President Reagan’s edict, “government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem,” doesn’t seem to hold for Petraeus in Iraq. Would it hold for Petraeus in Washington?

Petraeus’ wife, Holly, works in the Obama administration as the assistant director for servicemember affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency founded as a part of the Dodd-Frank Act. The administration named her to the $187,605-per-year job in 2012 after Petraeus resigned his position as CIA director in the wake of news he had an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadway. He later pleaded guilty to mishandling classified information, which he provided to his mistress. In April 2015, a federal judge sentenced him to two years probation and a $100,000 fine.

Through the years, Petraeus has repeatedly insisted he has no political ambitions.

In August 2012, in reaction to media buzz that GOP nominee Mitt Romney was considering Petraeus as his vice-presidential running mate, CIA spokesman Preston Golson said, “Director Petraeus feels very privileged to be able to continue to serve our country in his current position, and as he has stated clearly numerous times before, he will not seek elected office.”

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Sarah Palin to head Veterans Affairs?

(NYDAILYNEWS) — President-elect Donald Trump is considering naming Sarah Palin his secretary of veterans affairs, ABC News reported Wednesday.

Palin endorsed Trump early in the presidential race and campaigned for the mogul frequently – an effort that Trump has previously said he would like to reward.

Before he was elected, Trump indicated he would be interested in giving the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee a cabinet position.

Petition to ban Trump from Twitter has 22,000 names

(DAILYCALLER) — An online petition to ban President-elect Donald Trump from Twitter has generated more than 22,000 signatures.

The petition at Care2 Petitions has been around for a few months but it gained steam on Tuesday when Trump took to Twitter to suggest that people who burn the American flag should permanently lose their citizenship — or maybe go to jail for a year.

Shirley Burns, the author of the Care2 petition to rid Twitter of Trump, says that Trump “has crossed a line by attacking people on Twitter based on their race, religion, gender and more.”