Leid Stories

President Barack Obama met for more than four hours at the White House with a diverse group of leaders yesterday—the same day he spoke at the funeral of five police officers killed by an ex-soldier in a sniper attack July 7 in Dallas. The Unifier-in-Chief said he wanted their ideas and input on how to build “trust” between police and the communities they serve, the main focus of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing he created by executive order in December 2014.

The task force in May last year delivered a 116-page report, with recommendations for nationwide changes in six key areas—building trust and legitimacy; policy and oversight; technology and social media; community policing and crime reduction; training and education; and officer wellness and safety. Yet, Obama continues to plead for deeper understanding of, and solutions for, the “trust problem.”

It’s not as if there’s a dearth of information about law-enforcement (and especially its problems); the task force’s report pales in comparison to books, articles and scholarly papers on the subject. Why, then, is Obama stalling on implementing his own task force’s—and other credible--recommendations? 

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is calling for a federal investigation into the operations of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation—a “lawless, pay-to-play enterprise that has been operating under a cloak of philanthropy for years,” she alleges in written requests to FBI Director James Comey, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, and Federal Trade Commission chairperson Edith Ramirez. The federal agencies’ “public-corruption” probes should focus on the relationships between big-money donors to the foundation and U.S. foreign-policy decisions made during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, says Blackburn.

Charles Ortel, a former Wall Street investor who exposed General Electric’s multibillion-dollar stock fraud in 2007-2008, since February last year has been examining the Clinton Foundation’s global labyrinth of nonprofit subsidiaries. In an exclusive Leid Stories series, Ortel has charged that the Clinton Foundation is “complete and total fraud.” Ortel discusses Rep. Blackburn’s three-tiered probe request and his most recent forensic findings about the Clinton Foundation.

Well, we saw it coming quite a ways back and you were warned: Bernie Sanders will cave to Hillary and the Democratic Party, trading in the 13 million-plus popular votes he got during the primaries for the illusion of more clout when he goes back to the Senate and within the ranks of the increasingly irrelevant Democratic Party. His full-throated endorsement of Clinton yesterday was a fait accompli.

VIDEO: 

Bernie Sanders Endorses Hillary Clinton [FULL SPEECH]

Leid Stories concludes a two-part discussion on how The System is managing the current crisis in law enforcement, brought to national attention once again in the back-to-back killings of two African American men by white police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and an African American ex-soldier’s revenge shooting of white police officers in Dallas, Texas, that killed five and wounded seven of them, and also wounded two civilians.

The System pleads for national “unity” and “healing.” Leid Stories pleads for clarity about The System—the kind of clarity that would help the historically disfranchised and oppressed people it targets change the power equation.

Officials and “responsible” leaders of almost every stripe are calling for unity in the aftermath of a gruesome week that sparked national outrage over back-to-back killings of two African American men by white police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and an African American ex-soldier’s revenge shooting of white police officers in Dallas, Texas, that killed five and wounded seven of them, and also wounded two civilians.

It is customary for leaders to sing rousing choruses of the “We-Are-One-America” anthem at times like this—when public thought and action must be managed and controlled. The “unity” plea achieves this through distraction—by changing both the nature and dimension of the national crisis and limiting the people’s power to do anything about it.

Leid Stories discusses why, amid the clamor for unity, clarity about the current crisis is taking a lethal hit.

It’s been a heck of a week. A bumper crop of major wrongs. We

surely need perspective.

Help set us right. Let’s hear your thoughts on Leid Stories’ “Free

Your Mind Friday.” Call 888-874-4888 and add your voice to the collective.

Within minutes of FBI Director James Comey’s announcement yesterday that the agency’s probe of Hillary Clinton’s email/private server/classified information debacle found no evidence of criminal conduct, the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee was back on campaign schedule, keynoting a National Education Association event in Washington, D.C., touting her pro-education policies and tearing into Donald Trump’s education agenda.

Trump University, the real estate mogul’s unaccredited, lawsuit-plagued for-profit education company that went belly up in 2010 after five years, came in for blistering attack by Clinton as a harbinger of what a Trump presidency would mean for education: the ultra privatization of education, the end of “education as we know it.”

Clinton and her husband Bill have traveled this path and have made millions of dollars from it, says our guest, journalist and author Dady Chery, who has chronicledthe Clintons’ sordid history of plunder in Haiti. She adds yet another chapter to the Leid Stories series on the Clinton Foundation and its interconnected global subsidiaries that Charles Ortel, the whistle blower who brought down GE in2007-2008 over the overvaluation of its stock, maintains are engaged in “massive fraud.”

Chery explains the Clintons’ role in one of the biggest scams in higher education—a Wall Street-backed company called Laureate Education.

FBI Director James Comey did

his best yesterday to convince the nation that the agency’s probe of Hillary

Clinton’s e-mail debacle was thorough, transparent and completely free of

political interference and contamination. We can all rest assured that the

matter has been looked into exhaustively, everyone potentially in the prosecutorial cross hairs was completely open and cooperative, and as director of the agency

he couldn’t be more proud of the job of the way the investigation was handled

and, more importantly, brought to a close.

Clinton got a few slaps on

the wrist from Comey for mishandling classified information and for inspiring

similar recklessness by staff and, generally, throughout the State Department

(when she was secretary of state). But there was no evidence of criminal

conduct, and no “reasonable” prosecutor would seek indictments, Comey said.

The FBI director might have

been hoping to put the whole sordid matter to rest with his explanatory news conference

yesterday—just as President Barack Obama and the presumptive nominee were

making their first campaign appearance together in Charlotte, N.C. Instead, Comey

unleashed a firestorm, directly contradicting several claims Clinton previously

had made about her private server and emails.

Click on this to watch FBI director James Comey press conference.

Leid Stories discusses Comey’s

statements yesterday, and how and why President Obama, his administration and

the Democratic Party are all shielding Hillary Clinton.

Starting with Uganda—where, 40 years ago, his older brother Yonatan

was killed in an Israeli Defense Forces-led commando raid on the airport

at Entebbe to free hostages being held by pro-Palestinian

hijackers–Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday

began a foray into East Africa that also will include scheduled trips

to Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia and include summit meetings with leaders

from South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia.

Netanyahu said that his

trip to the region, the first in 30 years by an Israeli prime minister,

is meant to indicate a renewed interest in forging bilateral economic

and strategic ties with old friends. But new fears and suspicions abound

in the African world about Israel’s ramped-up foreign-policy push on

the continent. Abayomi Azikiwe, editor in chief of Pan-African Newswire,

discusses Netanyahu’s historic visit to East Africa.

Watch Video Here: Benjamin Netanyahu talks about Israel's new engagement with Africa

Both

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are hitting the

road this week as pitchmen for Hillary Clinton. Obama makes his debut

today at a rally in Charlotte, N.C.; Biden goes a-stumping Friday in Scranton, Pa., his hometown.

Leid

Stories explains says that it isn’t so much a testament of Clinton’s

clout and firepower that the Top Two are campaigning for her, but yet

another indication of her political vulnerability as a distrusted

candidate who will be the party’s nominee later this month.

It’s our freewheeling open forum, and listeners’ opinions and ideas aren’t just part of the program; they are the program, the entire show. Bring your unique perspectives on the issues of the day—or any subject you think warrants further discussion and/or debate—to our gathering place, Leid Stories’ “Free Your Mind Friday.” Call 888-874-4888 and declare your own independence … of thought!

Seven years into a counteroffensive against a campaign of terror that

claimed the lives of 15,000 people and caused the displacement of about

2 million more in Nigeria and neighboring Chad, Niger and Cameroon,

Nigeria’s army declared just four days ago that it had freed more than

5,000 people held hostage by the terrorist group Boko Haram in raids on

15 villages. The militant Islamist group, claiming affiliation with

ISIS, riled the country and the world two years ago when it kidnapped

276 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in Borno state; the search

continues for them.

Hillary Clinton, secretary of state when Boko

Haram emerged as Africa’s ISIS affiliate, repeatedly refused to

designate the militants as terrorists—even at congressional urging and

pleas from African leaders, including the Nigerian president, for

support in combating terrorism. Meanwhile, Boko Haram was able to

escalate its terror campaign and atrocities.

Mindy Belz, senior

editor of WORLD Magazine, discusses Clinton’s “troubling ties” to

Nigerian big money, the role of the Clinton Foundation and former

President Bill Clinton, and their connection to her inaction on Boko

Haram.