Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - September 5, 2015, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A26
A 26 WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2015 WORLD winnipegfreepress. com
MOREHEAD, Ky. — A jailed Kentucky
clerk asserted marriage licenses
issued without her authority
Friday to gay couples in Rowan
County are void and “ not worth the
paper they are written on” because
she didn’t authorize them, her attorney
said.
Kim Davis now wears an orange
jumpsuit and “ has already been doing
Bible studies with herself” in jail,
her attorney Mat Staver of Liberty
Counsel told reporters after meeting
with her behind bars. He said
Davis is in very good spirits, and is
prepared to stay as long as it takes to
uphold her religious freedoms.
“ She’s not going to resign, she’s not
going to sacrifice her conscience, so
she’s doing what Martin Luther King
Jr. wrote about in his Letter from
the Birmingham Jail, which is to pay
the consequences for her decision,”
Staver said.
Meanwhile, Staver said he’s preparing
to appeal U. S. District Judge
David Bunning’s contempt finding
as one of several legal challenges on
her behalf.
The vast majority of officials
across the U. S. have agreed to issue
licences since the U. S. Supreme
Court legalized gay marriage in
June. But Davis had turned away
couples again and again in defiance
of a series of federal court orders,
citing her religious beliefs.
At least three gay couples received
marriage licences Friday from one
of Davis’ deputies, celebrating after
repeatedly being turned away before
Davis was jailed Thursday.
Marriage licences in Kentucky
usually have the elected clerk’s signature
on them; those handed out
Friday lacked any signature. The
Rowan County attorney
and lawyers for the gay
couples said they are
legal and valid nevertheless.
When the judge was
asked if the licences will
be considered valid without
Davis’s authorization,
he said it was up to the
gay couples to take that
chance.
William Smith Jr. and James Yates,
a couple for nearly a decade, were
the first through the door. Deputy
clerk Brian Mason congratulated
the couple, shook their hands and accepted
their fee of $ 35.50.
Yates then rushed across the courthouse
steps to hug his mom.
“ Civil rights are civil rights, and
they are not subject to belief,” said
Yates, who had been denied a license
five times previously.
A crowd of supporters cheered and
a street preacher rained down words
of condemnation as they left. Yates
and Smith said they are trying to
choose between two wedding dates
and plan a small ceremony.
Davis had refused to issue any
marriage licences rather than comply
with the U. S. Supreme Court’s
ruling in June legalizing gay marriage
nationwide.
After ordering her to jail, the
judge told her six deputy clerks they
too faced potential fines or jail time
if they similarly refused. All but
one — the clerk’s son, Nathan Davis
— agreed to end her church- state
standoff.
A second couple, Timothy and Michael
Long, got their licence later
Friday, enduring a taunt of “ More
sodomites getting married?” from a
man inside the office. The
Longs did not respond,
and a worker told the man
to leave.
A third couple, April
Miller and Karen Roberts,
got their licence
around midday.
“ Now we can breathe.
I’m still ecstatic and
happy. I just can’t wait to get married
now,” Roberts said.
The judge offered to release Davis
if she promises not to interfere with
issuing of licences, but she refused.
Davis’s husband, Joe Davis, was
at the courthouse Friday, holding a
sign saying “ Welcome to Sodom and
Gomorrah.”
He said his wife was in good spirits
after her first night in jail. Asked
if she would resign, he said, “ Oh,
God no. She’s not going to resign at
all. It’s a matter of telling Bunning
he ain’t the boss.”
The judge warned Davis’s son, who
said he supports his mother, not to
interfere with fellow employees. The
judge said he did not want “ any shenanigans,”
such as closing the office
for computer upgrades as they did
briefly last week. “ That would show
a level of disrespect for the court’s
order,” Bunning said.
— The Associated Press
W ASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham
Clinton said Friday her
use of a private email system
at the State Department wasn’t the
“ best choice” and acknowledged she
didn’t “ stop and think” about her email
set- up when she became U. S. President
Barack Obama’s secretary of state in
2009.
The Democratic presidential frontrunner
said in an interview with NBC
News she was immediately confronted
by a number of global hot spots after
joining the new Obama administration
as its top diplomat and didn’t think
much about her email after arriving at
her new job.
“ You know, I was not thinking a lot
when I got in. There was so much work
to be done. We had so many problems
around the world,” Clinton said. “ I
didn’t really stop and think what kind
of email system will there be?”
But Clinton did not apologize for her
decision when asked directly, “ Are
you sorry?” Instead, she again said
she wishes she had “ made a different
choice” and that she takes responsibility
for the decision to use a private
email account and server based at her
home in suburban New York.
She added it was a choice that should
not raise questions about her judgment.
“ I am very confident that by the time
this campaign has run its course, people
will know that what I’ve been saying is
accurate,” Clinton said, adding: “ They
may disagree, as I now disagree, with
the choice that I made. But the facts
that I have put forth have remained the
same.”
Republicans criticized Clinton’s unwillingness
to apologize for the decision
and said it underscored polls that
have shown large numbers of people
questioning her trustworthiness.
“ What’s clear is Hillary Clinton regrets
that she got caught and is paying
a political price, not the fact her secret
email server put our national security
at risk,” said Michael Short, a spokesman
for the Republican National Committee.
The conversation about emails led off
a wide- ranging interview that included
Vice- President Joe Biden’s interest in
a potential Democratic primary bid,
Clinton’s plans to address the Iran nuclear
deal and her views of Republican
front- runner Donald Trump.
Following a summer in which both
Trump and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders,
Clinton’s chief rival for the Democratic
nomination, drew large campaign
audiences, Clinton sought to cast
her candidacy as one rooted in tackling
the problems “ that keep families up at
night.”
“ Because I think you can come with
your own ideas and you can, you know,
wave your arms and give a speech, but
at the end of the day, are you connecting
with and really hearing what people are
either saying to you or wishing that you
would say to them?” she said.
Clinton’s interview comes as current
and former aides are testifying before
a congressional panel investigating
the deadly 2012 Benghazi attacks. The
committee has also delved into Clinton’s
email practices at the State Department.
She is scheduled to testify
publicly before the panel next month.
Clinton in August handed over to the
FBI her private server, which she used
to send, receive and store emails during
her four years as secretary of state.
Clinton has said she set up her own
system instead of using a State Department
account for the convenience of
using a single BlackBerry device.
But her comments that she didn’t stop
to think about setting up a private email
server in her home belied the careful
planning and technical sophistication
required to set up, operate, maintain
and protect a private server effectively
— especially one responsible for
the confidential communications of the
U. S. government’s top diplomat as she
travelled the globe.
Even homebrew servers typically
require careful configuration, Internet
registration, data backups, regular
security audits and a secondary power
supply in case of electrical problems.
In the interview, Clinton said, as she
has in the past, that she “ should have
had two accounts, one for personal and
one for work- related.”
Thousands of pages of her emails
publicly released in recent months
have shown Clinton received messages
that were later determined to contain
classified information, including some
that contained material regarding the
production and dissemination of U. S.
intelligence.
But Clinton reiterated that she did not
“ send or receive any material marked
classified. We dealt with classified material
on a totally different system. I
dealt with it in person.”
Clinton also addressed other topics.
On Iran, Clinton noted her support
for an Obama- backed agreement to
curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions and said
she would address what she would do as
president to enforce the deal, hold Iran
accountable and “ make clear that no options
were off the table. That they can
never ever have a nuclear weapon.”
On Trump, Clinton suggested Trump,
the leading GOP candidate at this juncture,
did not have the temperament to
lead the nation and conduct foreign
policy.
“ Loose talk, threats, insults, they
have consequences. So I’m going to
conduct myself as I believe is appropriate
for someone seeking the highest office
in our country,” she said.
On Biden, Clinton declined to offer a
comparison to the vice- president and
fellow Democrat, saying he had a “ really
difficult decision” to make.
— The Associated Press
‘ I didn’t stop and think’
Clinton too busy working to ponder use of private email
By Ken Thomas
CHARLIE NEIBERGALL / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES
Republicans have seized upon the email controversy to attack Hillary Clinton.
TIMOTHY D. EASLEY / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
James Yates ( left) hugs his partner, William Smith Jr., after getting their marriage licence in Rowan County Friday.
Marriage licences issued
as anti- gay clerk sent to jail
Vows to tell judge
‘ he ain’t the boss’
By Adam Beam
WASHINGTON — A top conservative
group is trying to coax wealthy Republican
donors to help fund a multimillion-
dollar ad campaign and other
efforts against Donald Trump — the
latest sign of growing anxiety within
GOP circles over the businessman’s
dominance in the 2016 race.
But some GOP funders are skeptical
of the plan, fearing it will only
fuel Trump’s outsider pitch. The lack
of consensus illustrates how Trump,
for the moment, is a problem without a
clear solution in the eyes of party leaders
worried his controversial rhetoric
and tactics are hurting the Republican
brand.
Officials with the Club for Growth
— a prominent anti- tax group that frequently
targets Republicans it deems
insufficiently conservative — said Friday
the organization began reaching
out to its network of donors in recent
weeks to help pay for an anti- Trump TV
ad blitz. The organization’s super PAC,
Club for Growth Action, would run the
ads, the group said.
“ What we’ve said to our members is
that ‘ Trump is a liability to the future
of the nation,’ and we’ve asked them
for support for Club for Growth Action
to get that message out,”
Club for Growth president
David McIntosh said in a
statement to the Washington
Post . “ We’re also doing
research, like we do
on candidates, into his economic
policy positions. At
this point, we haven’t taken
anything off the table —
be it TV ads or any other
means — to expose Trump
as not being an economic
conservative, and as actually
being the worst kind
of politician.”
Trump bashed the Club for Growth
for its decision and said, as he has
previously, that McIntosh asked him
in June to donate $ 1 million to the
group.
“ They’re critical of me because I
wouldn’t give them a million dollars,”
Trump said in the Post interview.
“ They came to my office, the president
of the Club for Growth came to my office;
he asked for a million dollars. He
asked for it in writing, just to show you
how truly stupid he is. I said, ‘ You must
be kidding.’ I had no interest in doing
it. … We told them no, and immediately
thereafter, he came after Trump.”
Some top GOP donors pitched on the
idea of attacking Trump think that any
effort to go after the real estate developer
and former celebrity TV host
could backfire, said a person familiar
with the conversations who spoke on
the condition of anonymity to comment
frankly.
Mary Beth Weiss — a longtime Club
for Growth donor with her husband,
money manager Richard Weiss — said
Trump has tapped into the kind of
outsider sentiment the group has long
sought to harness.
“ Honestly, ‘ The Donald’ is doing
them a favour and sending a message
to Washington,” Mary Beth Weiss said.
“ Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina and
Trump are leading the field, and they’re
all Washington outsiders.”
Weiss said she likes candidates
Fiorina, a former
chief executive of Hewlett-
Packard; Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker; and Florida
Sen. Marco Rubio but
would support Trump if he
were the nominee.
“ I would be happier
writing a cheque to Donald
Trump than ( to former
Florida governor Jeb)
Bush, honestly,” she said.
While there is acute anxiety
in the GOP about Trump’s rise, no
organized effort to undercut him has
emerged.
Among those staying out of the fray
are donors allied with billionaire brothers
Charles and David Koch, who are
sticking with plans to avoid involvement
in the primary process, according
to people familiar with internal
discussions and who also spoke on the
condition of anonymity.
McIntosh said most of the feedback
he has received to his plan has been on
strategy.
“ The questions I’ve heard are more
in the realm of how to expose Trump,”
he said. “ And that’s where we’re looking
for the best approach.”
The effort comes as Bush, a frequent
target of Trump’s taunts, has ramped
up his attacks against the real estate
mogul, on the trail and in online advertising.
Trump has shot to the top of
early state and national polls over the
past two months with his brash pitch to
deport illegal immigrants and to “ make
America great again.”
— Washington Post
GOP faction
wants to hold
the Trump card
Embarks on bid to oust The Donald from race
By Sean Sullivan and Matea Gold
‘ Civil rights are
civil rights,
and they are
not subject to
belief’
RICHARD SHIRO / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES
Donald Trump claims the Club for
Growth is angered by his refusal to
donate $ 1 million.
‘ What we’ve said
to our members
is that “ Trump
is a liability to
the future of the
nation” ’
— Club for Growth
president
David McIntosh
A_ 26_ Sep- 05- 15_ FP_ 01. indd A26 9/ 4/ 15 9: 10: 20 PM