State Dept to Wait Until After Election to Evaluate Hillary's Emails

By John Semmens – Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent NewsThe US State Department announced that it will be deferring further analysis of the security implications of former Secretary Clinton's unauthorized and illegal transfer of classified documents onto her private, unsecured computer until after this November's elections.Department of State spokesman John Kirby explained that “the upcoming elections are contentious and confusing enough already. Adding additional complicated material at this time will overtax voters' attention spans and divert them away from the themes candidates are trying to communicate. This could affect the outcome in ways that might be very detrimental to the greater good.”Kirby also added an efficiency argument to the case for delay. “Conducting such an analysis would be a tedious undertaking,” he alleged. “It's quite possible that the election outcome would render the effort unnecessary. I mean, if voters decide to put Mrs. Clinton in the White House we're pretty confident that the analysis wouldn't be wanted. So rather than spending taxpayer money on an investigation that could well be canceled, we feel it is more fiscally prudent to avoid a possibly unneeded expenditure.”Obama Says “Economy Is Pretty Darned Great” President Obama hailed the February jobs report as evidence that “the economy is pretty darn great.” The report estimated that more than 240,000 new jobs were created. Of those jobs, nearly 80% were minimum-wage.While some critics were disappointed that such a large percentage of the jobs were at the lower end of the pay scale, the President was more upbeat. “This is precisely the sector we wanted to expand,” Obama said. “The greater the number of people working for minimum wage, the greater will be the pressure on Congress to raise the minimum wage.”The President's gloating didn't stop there, though. He also tabbed the increasing ranks of low-wage workers as “a big plus for the Democratic Party. Aside from those subsisting on welfare, low-wage workers are the most reliably Democratic voters. The greater the proportion of our population that occupies these cohorts of our society, the more entrenched progressive politics and policies will become.”In related news, the President praised Obamacare as “my gift to an ailing nation” at a rally in Milwaukee this week. “Thanks to me, more people are insured than ever.” Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson contested Obama's claims saying that “millions of Americans were thrown off health plans that they liked and forced into Obamacare plans that simultaneously raised premiums and reduced coverage. The President's 'gift' could be more aptly characterized as a punch to the gut funded by a raid on Americans' bank accounts.” Obama Administration Declines to Condemn Islamist Massacre of Christians Presidential Press Secretary Josh Earnest told media representatives that “the Administration will not declare ISIL's practice of slaughtering Christians an act of genocide. From a technical perspective, genocide is the effort to exterminate a race or ethnic group. Most of the Christian victims have the same ethnic heritage as the killers. So we're not seeing the killings as having the requisite motivation to qualify as genocide, per se.”“On top of this, there is a genuine question of religious freedom that needs to be taken into account,” Earnest added. “According to Islamic faith, Muslims have an obligation to fight for the spread of the religion. The Quran instructs them to slay those who refuse to convert to Islam. Therefore, a blanket condemnation of acts carried out in the pursuance of the faith would trample on Muslims' Constitutional and, indeed, human right to freely practice their religion.”Earnest made a plea for “Americans to be more open-minded about beliefs that are different from theirs. I would hope that we could be more sophisticated and forgiving than the Christian crusaders who invaded Muslim lands 800 years ago. They were untrue to Jesus' admonition to turn the other cheek. We ought not follow their errant example. We need to be better than that.”Hillary Paid a Salary by Campaign Federal campaign finance records reveal that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has been drawing a salary from campaign funds. To-date, the amounts paid have exceeded $250,000 since April of 2015.Campaign manager Robbie Mook defended the payments as “a bargain. Normally, Hillary would receive $250,000 for a single speech. That the campaign has gotten hundreds of speeches from the candidate for the price of one has to be the greatest return on contributors' investment ever seen from a candidate.”“Campaigning is hard work,” Mook continued. “She's put in more hours on it than she ever did as Secretary of State. Surely, she merits the pittance she has been compensated thus far.”In related news, the Federal Election Commission has charged Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign with violating campaign finance laws. In a letter sent to the candidate the FEC cited over 3,000 “excessive, prohibited and impermissible contributions.” FRC Chairman Matthew Petersen dismissed contentions that others, including current President Barack Obama and rival Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton engaged in similar violations, labeling it “irrelevant. Two wrongs don't make a right. We've got to draw a line somewhere, sometime. We're drawing it here and now.”Islamic Values on the March Around the GlobeThe Punjab Province of Pakistan's efforts to criminalize violence against women was denounced as un-Islamic by the Council of Islamic Ideology. “The Quran explicitly grants men control over their women,” Muhammad Khan Sherani, head of the Council pointed out. “The secular authorities have no right to impede the laws given to us by Allah.” Fazlur Rehman, the chief of one of Pakistan's largest religious parties, the Jamiat-i-Ulema Islam, concurred. “This law makes every man insecure. If a husband is barred from beating his wife, if a father is prohibited from killing a wayward daughter we will descend into the same moral corruption that taints the West where females are permitted to walk the streets half naked and torment men.”In Saudi Arabia, Dr. Abd Al-Aziz Fawzan Al-Fawzan, Professor of Islamic Law, defended the molestation and rape of women by Muslims in Germany, saying that “if a woman gets raped walking in public alone, then she, herself, is at fault. She is only seducing men by her presence. She should have stayed home like a Muslim woman.” In Sweden, a TV crew from the Australian 60 Minutes TV program trying to make a video depicting the hardships suffered by migrants from the Middle East in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby was assaulted by the subjects of their video after local police withdrew so as not to provoke the refugees. Officer Olav Dunderskalle blandly explained “it's a 'no-go zone' for police. We told the TV people they enter at their own risk.”In Denmark, Imam Abu Bilal Ismail has stirred some controversy by calling for “the stoning of adulterers and the killing of apostates.” State authorities are in a dither, uncertain of what to do. Deputy Minister of Justice Kanker Sohr professed himself to be “paralyzed with doubt. Is this just a philosophical principle or is it meant to be carried into action? On the one hand, we don't want to stifle religious beliefs. On the other hand, can we afford to be caught asleep while violence is plotted against our citizens? I wish there were a clue as to what Muslim intentions really portend.”In Russia, a nanny beheaded a four year old girl left in her care and paraded the severed head around near a transit station for nearly a half hour shouting Allahu Akbar before authorities arrested her. Arresting officer Ivan Andropov admitted to being stunned and puzzled by the incident. “At first I thought this can't be real,” he said. “Murderers don't advertise their guilt so obviously. But sadly, it was real. The woman claimed Allah told her to commit this crime. My question is whether she or Allah is the one who is insane.”In France, Middle Eastern refugees attacked police who tried to move them out of their squalid, ramshackle tents into more commodious quarters. Rioter Idu Apu charged police and the French government with “trying to impose western lifestyles on us. Cleanliness is their fetish, not ours. We have a right to live as we did in our old country. To compel us to do otherwise is terrorism, pure and simple.”Finally, in the United States, U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt ruled that the Indiana state government's attempt to block Syrian refugees from coming to live in the state was unconstitutional. “President Obama is the supreme authority for this nation's foreign policy,” Pratt wrote. “No state has the right to oppose his actions.”Rubio Blames Trump for Vulgar CampaignCurrently in third place in the delegate count for the GOP presidential nomination, Sen. Marco Rubio lashed out at front runner Donald Trump, blaming him for “the descent into vulgarity that has characterized this race.”“He called me a 'loser' and a 'choke artist,'” Rubio complained. “I had to strike back and humiliate him in some way. Challenging the size of his penis was the obvious irrefutable barb. He can boast all he wants about his prowess with women, but if he doesn't drop trow and show the world, everyone will know I am right about his wee willy.”The Senator upped the ante by offering to fully bare himself at the next debate to show he is not bluffing. “I've been at plenty of foam parties and have been able to compare myself with hundreds of other guys,” he bragged. “I'm confident that Trump will be the lesser man in any head-to-head competition with me.”In related news, GOP establishment stiff, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney inadvertently bolstered Trump's candidacy by denouncing him as “outside the mainstream of the Republican Party. The American people need a GOP that puts aside partisan confrontation and works across-the-aisle with Democrats for the good of the country. Trump is not the man to lead our Party is this noble endeavor.”A Satirical Look at Recent NewsJohn Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect. Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.