Monday, February 18, 2019
EXCLUSIVE: Audit Finds Signs of Fraud in New Mexico House Race
An audit of absentee ballots suggests fraud may have occurred in one of the closest House races in the country, The Daily Signal has learned.
Democrat Xochitl Torres Small squeaked by Republican Yvette Herrell in the final results of the Nov. 6 election.
On election night, Herrell declared victory in the race to represent New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District. But as more votes were counted, Torres Small secured the win.
The roughly 3,500-vote victory for Torres Small—out of about 200,000 cast in the southern New Mexico district—relied heavily on absentee ballots from Doña Ana County, the largest county in the district, including the Las Cruces area.
A new audit report obtained by The Daily Signal alleges a “concerted effort” to push for absentee votes where New Mexico voter ID laws are not enforced. It also points to potential fraud in applying for absentee ballots, and says a significant number of absentee ballots were time-stamped after the 7 p.m. deadline election night.
The report was prepared for the losing Herrell campaign by Full Compliance Consulting LLC and Herrell campaign lawyer Carter B. Harrison.
Herrell’s campaign is not contesting the outcome of the 2018 contest, but sought the review based on its concerns that extra votes appeared to pour in.
Torres Small spokeswoman Jennifer Lee did not respond to phone and email inquiries from The Daily Signal for this story.
Torres Small, 34, who was sworn in Jan. 3, replaced retiring Rep. Steve Pearce, a Republican who was re-elected by 26 points in 2016.
The House seat has been held by a Republican for all but one term since 1968.
Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, won the district by 10 points over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The report says the consulting firm reviewed about 12,000 requests for absentee ballots, 8,577 outer envelopes for absentee ballots, and hundreds of rejected applications from Doña Ana County.
“There were not enough irregularities in Dona Ana County alone to alter our race (though local races could have been altered),” Harrison, the Herrell campaign lawyer, told The Daily Signal in a written response. “But if other counties were to be found to have similar irregularities, the race certainly could have been altered by them.”
On election night, media outlets called the race for Herrell, 54, who has been a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives since 2011.
But well after midnight, Harrison said, the office of New Mexico’s secretary of state informed the Herrell campaign of 4,000 absentee ballots in Doña Ana County still to be counted, which would not have flipped the race to Torres Small, who previously had not held elective office.
However, the state informed the campaign of another 4,000 absentee votes that had been counted but not tabulated, which was enough to change the outcome.
The report says nongovernmental groups “are almost certainly engaging in at best aggressive—and at worst fraudulent—procurement of absentee ballot applications.”
This would have involved an outside group that requested a large quantity of absentee ballots on behalf of others, possibly without their knowledge.
Fully 25 percent of the people who purportedly requested absentee ballots from the Doña Ana County clerk didn’t mail them back, according to the report.
That is more than twice the statewide average for unreturned absentee ballots. To receive an absentee ballot for mailing back, a voter first must send in...
Chinese and Iranian Hackers Renew Their Attacks on U.S. Companies
SAN FRANCISCO — Businesses and government agencies in the United States have been targeted in aggressive attacks by Iranian and Chinese hackers who security experts believe have been energized by President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal last year and his trade conflicts with China.
Recent Iranian attacks on American banks, businesses and government agencies have been more extensive than previously reported. Dozens of corporations and multiple United States agencies have been hit, according to seven people briefed on the episodes who were not authorized to discuss them publicly.
The attacks, attributed to Iran by analysts at the National Security Agency and the private security firm FireEye, prompted an emergency order by the Department of Homeland Security during the government shutdown last month.
The Iranian attacks coincide with a renewed Chinese offensive geared toward stealing trade and military secrets from American military contractors and technology companies, according to nine intelligence officials, private security researchers and lawyers familiar with the attacks who discussed them on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements.
A summary of an intelligence briefing read to The New York Times said that Boeing, General Electric Aviation and T-Mobile were among the recent targets of Chinese industrial-espionage efforts. The companies all declined to discuss the threats, and it is not clear if any of the hacks were successful.
Chinese cyberespionage cooled four years ago after President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping of China reached a landmark deal to stop hacks meant to steal trade secrets.
A 2015 deal between President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping of China that curtailed hacking intended to steal trade secrets appears to have been unofficially canceled.
But the 2015 agreement appears to have been unofficially canceled amid the continuing trade tension between the United States and China, the intelligence officials and private security researchers said. Chinese hacks have returned to earlier levels, although they are now stealthier and more sophisticated.
“Cyber is one of the ways adversaries can attack us and retaliate in effective and nasty ways that are well below the threshold of an armed attack or laws of war,” said Joel Brenner, a former leader of United States counterintelligence under the director of national intelligence.
Federal agencies and private companies are back to where they were five years ago: battling increasingly sophisticated, government-affiliated hackers from China and Iran — in addition to fighting constant efforts out of Russia — who hope to steal trade and military secrets and sow...
Six Illegal Aliens Arrested in North Carolina, Had Ties to Mexican Drug Cartel
Six illegal immigrants with ties to a Mexican drug cartel — a rival of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, whose notorious leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was convicted last week — were arrested in an elaborate drug trafficking operation in North Carolina, according to reports.
The massive drug operation included transporting large amounts of cocaine and methamphetamine across state lines — for instance, from Texas to Georgia and North Carolina, WSOC reported.
The feds identified the suspects as Oscar Rangel-Gutierrez, Regulo Rangel-Gutierrez, Francisco Garcia-Martinez, Rodolfo Martinez, Raul Rangel-Gutierrez and Rigoberto Rangel-Gutierrez.
“Members of the investigative team believe — based on wire intercepts, surveillance and other facts discovered from the investigation — that Oscar and Regulo transport illicit proceeds, derived from the sales of narcotics, when they travel from...
Why We Should Celebrate Washington’s Birthday, Not Presidents Day
America’s greatest statesmen did not think that national holidays were merely about family dinners, watching fireworks, or getting a three-day weekend.
These occasions, to the contrary, were needed to encourage all citizens to together raise their gaze above the enthrallment of their private lives, so as to see or imagine something greater than themselves and worthy of their admiration.
Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, first conceived by our Founders, are illustrative.
Thanksgiving, as George Washington writes in his Thanksgiving Day proclamation, should instill in citizens gratitude to our nation and our creator, thereby asking citizens for a moment to acknowledge our frailty, our dependence on higher powers, and the imperfection of our understanding.
Thanksgiving, therefore, is a holiday that restrains democratic self-satisfaction and pride.
The Fourth of July, by contrast, celebrates courage and manliness, the kind required to defeat a great empire and to found a community devoted to political liberty. It reminds citizens of public spiritedness on behalf of our ideals, and that our ideals require of us sacrifice and courage.
Thus, these two holidays celebrate starkly contrasting spirits—that of subordination and that of assertion, both healthy aspects of the republican character.
What we today call “Presidents Day” is in fact Washington’s birthday. Just like a republican people must on occasion be reminded of the need for manly assertiveness and modest gratitude, so too must they be reminded of examples of human greatness.
First instituted as a federal holiday in 1879, this day ought to celebrate Washington, not an abstraction called “presidents.” There is no meaning in celebrating “presidents” generally, and for this reason, the holiday today has no real content, being viewed as merely another day off work.
To confuse James Buchanan for Washington is to conflate copper and gold.
During Washington’s life, he deservedly became one of the most famous men in the world. His remarkable courage and prudence had, despite great odds and at great peril, carried to victory our 13 colonies against the most powerful empire on earth. The weight of this task fell upon his shoulders.
In times of peace, moreover, Washington’s self-possession and equanimity—by contrast to the brilliant but somewhat impulsive advisers surrounding him—meant that the country’s fate could be responsibly entrusted to him. The example of his control over his passions, his judgement, and devotion to the common good made him the new model of republican greatness, which until recently filled the American imagination for generations.
Indeed, so clear were his virtues that both Federalists and Anti-Federalists reached unanimous agreement about Washington’s worthiness to be president, despite their immense disagreements on almost everything else.
Today, examples of human greatness are needed perhaps more than ever. In the hurly-burly of the crass and silly images in popular culture, film, and music, such examples are absent.
In our books and textbooks, individual greatness is often tacitly denied by teaching that vast cosmic forces—like economic forces, or technological advancement—rather than individuals, cause events. And when individuals are the cause, they are often characterized merely as oppressors.
Our experiences of these things combine to instruct us in vulgar aspirations, enervating fatalism, or hatred of greatness.
Revering Washington and living with his example is not just a matter of arbitrary, antiquarian taste. In fact, reverence for human greatness, as Tocqueville observes, is among the things most needed in democracy.
One of the many reasons for this is to counterbalance the overwhelming power of a democratic majority. Tocqueville writes:
The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #536
You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,
from the beautiful to the repugnant,
from the mysterious to the familiar.
If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,
you could be inspired, you could be appalled.
This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
You have been warned.
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