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On May 3, Desiree A. Fairooz, of Virginia, was convicted of disorderly conduct for laughing during the Jan. 10 confirmation hearing of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

On May 10, reporter Dan Heyman, of Public News Service, was arrested after questioning U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price at the Charleston, S.C., Capitol building. Police charged Heyman with misdemeanor willful disruption of state government processes after he repeatedly asked Price whether domestic abuse would qualify as a preexisting condition under President Donald Trump's health care reform bill. Heyman said he was simply being persistent after the secretary refused to answer.

Meanwhile, also on May 10, Trump met with top Russian officials in the Oval Office, but prohibited U.S. reporters from entering the room. Instead, a photographer from state-run Russian news agency TASS was permitted to serve as witness. Since Trump's closed-door chat with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, it has been reported Trump divulged sensitive intelligence information, further rocking his already tempest-tossed administration.

On May 14, in one of his customary crack-of-dawn Twitter meltdowns, Trump pooh-poohed the idea that his "surrogates" should be expected to speak to the press with "perfect accuracy," and suggested he may "cancel all future 'press briefings'" in favor of prepared, written statements.

If the events of the past two weeks or so have you feeling a little jittery about the safety of the First Amendment, it probably means you've been paying attention. In this edition of Boise Weekly, we have two stories that deal with free speech.

The first, on Page 6, digs into yet another lawsuit filed against Idaho State Police for busting a burlesque show, ostensibly because it mingled "obscenity" with alcohol. The second, on Page 8, highlights a recent legal victory over ISP for conducting just such a sting, and how artists will be celebrating with a risque cabaretfeaturing plenty of libations with which to toast the mighty First Amendment.

Zach Hagadone

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Toasting the First Amendment - Boise Weekly

Hillary Clinton says her newly launched political groupOnward Together takes its name from an old African proverb thats displayed prominently on the groups site: If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

But while Hillary may think shes enough of a liberal icon, schooled in diversity and adept at feeling the pain of disenfranchised minorities that shes allowed to pull freely from their historical wisdom,her followers dont feel the same way.

Using African sayings, is, of course, cultural appropriation, and Twitters social justice warriors were quick to pounce on Clintons faux worldliness.

But worse still, its not even clear the quote is actually an African proverb.

Both Clinton and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker have used the quote before, and actual experts on African history have stepped in to correct them. They note that while the conventional wisdom is that itoriginated somewhere on the continent, its not wholly accurate to call the quote a proverband its kind of weird to make assumptions about its history.

If someone starts an aphorism with theres an African saying, its probably a mythical quote misattributed to a whole continent, one social media user pointed out toNPR.

In other words, these types of quotes are a great way for progressives to depict precisely how in touch with their roots, and the marginalized and oppressed of the world they really are.

This particular quote may be a prime example. According to a history of the quote compiled byJezebel when Hillary Clinton used it the first time on the campaign trail, Clintons African proverb may have been made up by the whitest of all white men, Al Gore.

It appears in a few works of literature, but almost uniformly fiction books by white writers. Otherwise, it mysteriously appears on quote pagesbut mostly bysuccessful white businessmen, tech-types, and CEOs of socially conscious companies like TOMs (who, in turn, usually attribute it to being a mysterious, age-old African saying).

There are also an awful lot of artistic pull quotes with this particular proverb on it floating around Instagram and Tumblr, havens for educated, white social justice warriors.

Instead of making her look like shes off to represent the people, the quote makes Hillary Clinton looks a little like a fake.

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Hillary Clinton in Trouble for Using Fake 'African Proverb' on Her New Website - Heat Street

Hillary Clinton is returning to politics far from the national stage she exited in November 2016 but close to the issues she left behind backing grassroots groups intent on thwarting President Trump's agenda while championing women and minority causes.

Clinton announced earlier this week that her new political action committee, Onward Together, will fundraise for such groups as Color of Change, dedicated to improving the lives of black Americans, and the Indivisible Project, whose stated mission is to Resist Trumps Agenda.

The latter group tells newcomers that their first tasks should include learning their congressional representatives stances on the appointment of white supremacists, tax cuts for the rich, etc.

The organization may keep its distance from Clinton's new operation. The Indivisible Project reportedly is not planning to take the PAC money.

But others are.

Were thrilled to have Secretary Clintons support, Emerge America spokeswoman Allison Abney told Fox News on Tuesday. This is really about getting women to run. If youre not running, then youre not winning.

Emerge America, which trains female Democratic candidates, was among several groups that got a Clinton shout-out when the2016 Democratic nominee announced her PAC on Monday.

The group says 70 percent of its 214 candidates won races last November, and touts 151 candidates for next years midterm ballots.

On Twitter, Clinton praised Emerge America for "training diverse Democratic women candidates" and hinted there would be more groups to come that could benefit from her PAC's largess.

"Those are just a few of the groups Onward Together will support, working with @GovHowardDean and othersstay tuned for more to come," she wrote.

Onward Together is registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(4) group -- the kind of dark money groups Clinton and other candidates vowed during the 2016 White House race to remove from campaigns because they can hide the identity of donors.

Clinton, a former senator and secretary of State, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have for decades had enormous fundraising power.

Whether the Clinton name can continue to make it rain for allied groups, however, remains an open question.

The Clintons have a long history of successful fundraising for nonprofit organizations that bore some relation to their government service, attorney Caleb Burns, a partner at the firm Wiley Rein who specializes in campaign finance, told Fox News on Wednesday.The fact that future government service for either of them is likely foreclosed suggests that fundraising for this new effort will be a challenge.

The other groups to which Clinton pledged support are RunforSomething.com, which is recruiting young progressive Americans to run for office, and SwingLeft.com, dedicated to helping Democrats retake the House next year by winning swing districts that Republicans narrowly won last year.

Jennifer Victor, a politics professor at Virginias George Mason University, argues Clinton still has fundraising power, despite being less powerful than she was a year ago and damaged goods to those who think she botchedher campaign.

Shes still incredibly famous, Victor said Wednesday. And theres a lot of energy out there for women candidates and from those opposed to Trump. Who better to lead the charge than Hillary Clinton?

Link:
Clinton PAC aims to boost left-wing, anti-Trump groups will she still have clout? - Fox News

Editor's note: The following column originally appeared in The Hill newspaper and on TheHill.com.

When will Republicans drop the partisan games and apologize toHillary Clinton?

If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president, Clinton declared at a forum in New York City earlier this month.

Those words led Republicans to mock Clinton for refusing to accept responsibility for running a bad campaign that ended in defeat.

But Clinton then got backing of a kind from the man who beat her, President Trump.

The president fired FBI director James Comey last week, ostensibly for violating policy when, despite clearing Clinton of any crime, he still went on national television last summer to condemn her as a careless public official.

At that July 2016 press conference, Comey defamed Clinton to the point that Republicans criticized him for not recommending that she be charged with a crime.

Comeys impact on the campaign grew larger when, just 11 days before the November election, he sent a letter to Congress announcing that the FBI was reopening the investigation into Clintons use of a private email address and server.

Nothing came of the last-minute investigation, just as no charges resulted from the first investigation. But with Trump campaign surrogates, including retired Gen. Michael Flynn, shouting lock her up, Republicans and a supplicant press made a big issue out of the controversy.

How times change.

Last week Trump agreed with a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein which flatly stated that it is not possible to defend the directors handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clintons e-mails.

That memo was released a week after Comey gave testimony to Congress in which he wrongly claimed hundreds and thousands of emails, had been forwarded by Clinton aide Huma Abedin to her husbands non-secure computer.

In fact, most of the Clinton emails found on the non-government computer occurred as a result of a backup of personal electronic devices, according to the FBI. And only two email chains of classified information had been mistakenly sent to the private computer.

Trump found it convenient to use Comeys errors to get rid of the leader of the agency investigating charges that his campaign had treasonous ties to Russia.

But whatever the reason, Trump stood with Clinton at least for a while. In an interview broadcast Saturday with my Fox News Channel colleague Jeanine Pirro, Trump reverted to his earlier insistence that Comeygave Clinton "a free pass like nobody's ever, ever gotten a free pass."

Clinton, meanwhile, is refuting Republican claims that Russian interference did not swing votes to Trump.

I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comeys letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off and the evidence for that intervening event is, I think, compelling and persuasive, Clinton explained at the New York forum.

She specifically pointed to data coming from pollster Nate Silver. On his website FiveThirtyEight.com, Silver later noted that Comeys letter does not excuse every bad decision made by the Clinton campaign.

But Silver concluded: Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had notsent a letter to Congresson Oct. 28.

Silvers breakdown shows that Comeys letter hurt Clintons chances of victory in swing states key to winning the Electoral College such as Wisconsin and Michigan. Clinton lost in each of those states by less than one percentage point.

And keep in mind while Comey was maligning Clinton, he never mentioned the FBIs investigation into the Trump campaign.

But Republicans still refuse to accept the reality that Russia, a hostile foreign power, played a major role in electing Trump.

Comeys sudden dismissal is now part of a fire that threatens to burn down the GOPs House majority next year.

The firing came one day after Sally Yates, the former acting Attorney General, told the Senate she warned the White House Counsel about former National Security Adviser Flynns ties to Russia weeks before he was fired.Yates, too, was fired by Trump.

How quickly will Capitol Hill Republicans abandon their Republican president in order to save themselves before they are fired by voters?

The flight is beginning.

"I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination," said Senate Intelligence Committee ChairmanRichard Burr(R-N.C.).

Comeys removal at this particular time will raise questions," Senate Foreign Relations Committee ChairmanBob Corker(R-Tenn.) said.

Senate Armed Services Committee ChairmanJohn McCain, (R-Ariz.), who had previously called for an independent special prosecutor, expressed regret at Comeys firing.

All this comes at a time when a full 58 percent of Americans disapprove of Trumps job performance, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.

But it makes no sense to run slowly from an inferno. This conflagration is threatening to burn every Republican on the ballot in 2018.

The President's firing of Director Comey is a smoke signal. And where there's smoke, there's fire. And this is a bonfire, tweeted Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.).

How far will the fire have to spread before Republicans decide it is every GOP candidate for himself or herself whatever the consequences for Trump?

Juan Williams currently serves as a co-host of FOX News Channel's (FNC) "The Five" (weekdays, 9-10PM/ET) and also appears as a political analyst on "FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace" and "Special Report with Bret Baier."

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When will Republicans apologize to Hillary Clinton? - Fox News

Former first lady Laura Bush joined a push this week for the addition of a women's history museum on the National Mall.

Speaking at the annual Women Making History Awards gala on Tuesday night, Bush said being honored at the event highlighted the need to redouble our efforts to make sure theres a womens museum right here in our country, The Washington Post reported.

"It's really important to have a museum that focuses on women because half of the population is left out from American history," Bush said. "We need to figure out how we can encourage women to run for office and to run for president."

Bush was honored at the ceremony for advocacy work and contributions to inspiring women.

Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonTrump denies influencing FBI investigation Gowdy front-runner to be next Oversight chairman Poll: Majority believe Trump fired Comey to hinder Russia investigation MORE also paid tribute to Bush in a video featured at the event and reiterated a call for a museum in the nations capitol dedicated to women.

"I look forward to the day when both my granddaughter and grandson can visit the National Women's History Museum and come away feeling a little braver, walking a little taller, knowing they stand on the shoulders of generations of history makers and trailblazers."

The National Womens History Museum, which sponsored the gala, has spent two decades working to find a physical space on the mall.

The museum, which was founded in 1996, currently raises awareness and honors womens diverse experiences and achievements through its dynamic online museum, educational programs, scholarship and research, according to its website.

Once housed prominently among the other great museums of Washington, D.C., it will create better understanding and greater partnerships among men and women.

The website notes that the museum, which is currently privately funded, will plan to apply for affiliation with the Smithsonian once it has a physical building.

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Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton push for women's history museum in DC - The Hill