CIA Director and Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

By Cathy Burke    |   Wednesday, 18 April 2018 07:08 AM 

Read Newsmax Article: Report: Mike Pompeo Met With North Korea's Kim Over Easter | Newsmax.com 

‘You sound like a political commentator,’ she says

IMAGE CREDITS: SCREENSHOT.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images/Joe Raedle/Getty Images

by KEN KLUKOWSKI15 Apr 2018Washington, DC77

WASHINGTON, DC – Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) announced on Friday that he will vote against CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s nomination to become secretary of state because of Pompeo’s beliefs on marriage and sexuality — beliefs consistent with Pompeo’s Christian faith. Conservative leaders are now denouncing Booker’s vote as a violation of the Constitution’s Religious Test Clause.

Booker sharply questioned Pompeo on Thursday during the nominee’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, referring to words Pompeo spoke at a church in his district when the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was still serving in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Pompeo has also supported efforts to defend marriage as the union between one man and one woman. Those beliefs are consistent with mainstream Christian beliefs.

Booker announced on Facebook late Friday that he will vote against Pompeo, saying that the former congressmen’s religious beliefs on these issues make him unfit to serve in federal office representing the United States. “I believe you can’t lead the people if you don’t love the people,” Booker wrote. The senator then quotes Bible verses that he thinks Pompeo is not living up to, including references to loving his neighbor.  (OH PALEEZE, YOU LITTLE JERK; I BET YOU COULDN'T WAIT TO GO LOOKING FOR SOMETHING)

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution provides, “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office of public Trust under the United States.”

Conservative and Christian leaders are appalled at Booker’s announcement, saying the Constitution forbids Booker’s voting against Pompeo because of the nominee’s religious beliefs.

“Demanding a loyalty oath to Sen. Booker’s determination of which beliefs are acceptable isn’t what this country is about; indeed, it’s what we fought for independence from,” Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council (FRC), tells Breitbart News. “We should celebrate that we are a nation that not only allows but encourages every American to hold and express their beliefs – including their religious beliefs – without fear of retribution by the government.”

Perkins, whose FRC has launched a petition protesting Booker’s violation of the Religious Test Clause that has 25,000 signatures at the time this article was filed, adds that this principle “is the essence of America and the Constitution.”

“Religious bigotry and discrimination is unacceptable in this country, much less from someone who takes an oath to our Constitution and who is supposed to serve the people of this country,” agrees Kelly Shackelford, president of First Liberty Institute, in an exclusive comment to Breitbart News.

“Sen. Cory Booker questioned Secretary of State-nominee Mike Pompeo for comments he made at his church, comments which reflected long-standing church doctrine regarding homosexual conduct and the biblical definition of marriage,” said Prof. John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). “And now Sen. Booker asserts that he will oppose Pompeo for those views.”

“This is essentially imposing a religious test on officers of the United States, something explicitly forbidden by Article VI of the Constitution,” added Eastman, whose NOM has likewise launcheda petition.

“The American people put President Trump in the White House in part because they refuse to be discriminated against for their long-held, mainstream beliefs,” Trump Transition Team leader Ken Blackwell offers to Breitbart News. “Whether on abortion, marriage, the Bible, the Second Amendment, or other issues, tens of millions of Americans who are wonderful people have been vilified for their beliefs by left-wing elites, and the American people chose a president who will stand up for them.”

Pompeo’s nomination is still pending in the Senate, with committee approval expected shortly but no final floor vote yet scheduled.

Ken Klukowski is senior legal editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski.

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Big Government, Faith, bigotry, Christianity, CIA, Constitution, Cory Booker, Mike Pompeo, Religious persecution, religious test, secretary of state

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Former FBI Director James Comey (AP)

By Newsmax Wires    |   Sunday, 15 April 2018 01:11 PM

 

 

 

 

 

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President Donald Trump is again calling former FBI Director James Comey a "slimeball" ahead of the publication of his new book.

Trump's morning tweets come ahead of Comey's interview with ABC to be broadcast in full on Sunday evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The interview will be shown Sunday night on ABC at 10 p.m. EST.

In an excerpt shown Saturday, Comey said his belief that Clinton would beat Trump in the 2016 presidential election was a factor in his decision to disclose the investigation into her emails. Trump seized on that, saying Comey "was making decisions based on the fact that he thought she was going to win, and he wanted a job. Slimeball!"

Comey's disclosure shortly before the election that the FBI had reopened its investigation into her email use enraged Democrats. After Clinton's loss, many Democrats blamed Comey and Clinton herself has said it hurt her election prospects.

Trump on Sunday pushed back again against the former FBI director's claims that Trump sought his loyalty, saying it was "Just another of his many lies." He questioned Comey's intelligence and place in history, writing, "Slippery James Comey, a man who always ends up badly and out of whack (he is not smart!), will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history, by far!"

He also suggested Comey should be imprisoned, saying, "how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail)." There is no indication Comey is under investigation for doing either.

Asked if the president wanted the Justice Department to investigate Comey, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that she was not aware of a specific request, but "if they feel there was any wrongdoing, they should certainly look into that just as they do on a number of other topics."

Comey came in for a mix of both criticism and praise on Sunday morning news talk shows.

House Speaker Paul Ryan suggested that he believes former FBI Director James Comey to be a man of integrity — a view that runs counter to that of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Sunday that if his and Comey’s roles had been reversed in the 2016 election, Comey would have fired him.

“When I worked for Jim, if I had said to him 11 days before an election that I was going to release information that could potentially affect the election, and one of the things that influenced me was polling, he would have fired me. He would have fired me on the spot,” Christie said on ABC's "This Week."

“And it is really disconcerting to me as a guy who worked with him in form and have defended him on this air and other places over the years to see this interview and what he was saying,” Christie said.

Comey is embarking on a public rollout of his book, "A Higher Loyalty," which comes out Tuesday. In the book, Comey compares Trump to a mafia don and calls his leadership of the country "ego driven and about personal loyalty."

Trump fired Comey in May 2017, setting off a scramble at the Justice Department that led to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation. Mueller's probe has expanded to include whether Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey, a claim the president denies.

Trump has said he fired Comey because of his handling of the FBI's investigation into Clinton's email practices. Trump used the investigation as a cudgel in the campaign and repeatedly said Clinton should be jailed for using a personal email system while serving as secretary of state. Democrats, on the other hand, have accused Comey of politicizing the investigation.

In the interview excerpt released Saturday, Comey said he did not remember "consciously thinking" about the election results as he decided to disclose that the FBI had reopened its investigation into candidate Clinton's email use, but he said, "I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump, and so I'm sure that it was a factor."

He added: "I don't remember spelling it out, but it had to have been that she's going to be elected president and if I hide this from the American people, she'll be illegitimate the moment she's elected, the moment this comes out."

The Republican National Committee has helped with the pushback effort against Comey for his book by launching a website and supplying surrogates with talking points that question his credibility.

 

 

 

 

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