Sixty-two percent of voters said they favored making Guantanamo Bay a permanent facility for detaining, interrogating, and trying suspected terrorists, while 38 percent were opposed. Voters also favored trying suspected terrorists in military tribunals over civilian courts 65 percent to 35 percent.

Four hundred New Hampshire registered voters were surveyed June 2 to June 3 in a poll conducted by the Polling Company, Inc. on behalf of the Free Beacon. It used the same methodology as Democratic-leaning pollster Public Policy Polling.

Drawing support from 22 percent of respondents, Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) is the favored 2016 Republican presidential candidate among GOP primary voters in New Hampshire.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) is close behind Paul at 18 percent, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) both draw 17 percent. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker trails with 2 percent, and 24 percent remain undecided.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton holds an imposing lead among New Hampshire voters who plan to vote in the Democratic primary, with 61 percent support. Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick are under 10 percent. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.) are tied at just 1 percent, while 19 percent remain undecided.

When matched in an unlikely head-to-head against her husband, the former secretary of state would beat the former president in a landslide, 65 percent to 10 percent.

The Free Beacon poll found New Hampshire voters evenly split on President Barack Obama’s approval rating, with 50 percent approving of his performance and 49 percent disapproving, a drop from his approval rating in Public Policy Polling’s April poll.

New Hampshire voters were also divided on immigration policy. Forty-four percent favored a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, while 44 percent said illegal immigrants should return to their home country and then apply for legal status in the United States. Twelve percent said illegal immigrants should be granted legal status but without official citizenship.

The party breakdown in the Free Beacon poll was 41 percent Republican, 38 percent Democrat, and 21 percent unaffiliated. The poll was conducted using interactive voice recording, the same method used by PPP. The margin of error was 4.9 percent, and results were not weighted.

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s right-to-work law took effect at midnight, meaning workers who are not covered by long-term employment contracts now have the ability to withdraw from labor unions. The reforms also prevent employers from mandating union dues as a condition of employment.

State Sen. Pat Colbeck (R.), an architect of the law, said the law’s implementation would go a long way toward bringing economic development back to the struggling state.

“We want to give workers the opportunity to make a choice to financially support the union so they have the freedom of association,” he said. “We also want to do everything we can for economic development—this is a giant ‘open for business’ sign for our state.”

Terry Bowman, founder of Union Conservatives and a longtime member of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, pushed for the legislation for years because he said he was “fed up with my dues money being used to advance a political agenda I didn’t believe in.”

He said the implementation of the law would force unions to refocus their efforts on negotiating on behalf of union workers, rather than politicians.

“We are celebrating our independence day as union members,” Bowman told the Washington Free Beacon hours before the law went into effect. “[Union executives] knew workers were forced to financially support them, so there was no incentive for union officials to do a good job for their members; this will make unions accountable to their members.”

Not every worker will be affected by the bill’s implementation. For example, Bowman will remain a UAW member until his existing contract with Ford expires in 2015. Several Michigan unions spent the months following the bill’s passage pushing for long-term contracts to stave off implementation.

Some of the deals have been controversial.

The Taylor School District granted the local teachers union a five-year contract over employee wages and work conditions, but approved a separate agreement that would force all teachers to pay dues to the union for the next 10 years. National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorney Glenn Taubman said the contract is ripe for courtroom challenges.

“They don’t want wages and working conditions locked in for 10 years, but they want to keep the ability to force union dues [on teachers],” he said. “It’s very brazen.”

Linda Moore, president of the Taylor teachers union, received the “outstanding organizer” award from state American Federation of Teachers for shutting down the school system so that teachers could protest right-to-work.

Neither the district nor the union returned multiple calls for comment.

Bowman said lawmakers and activists would not have long to rest on their laurels. Unions have flooded more than just court dockets with challenges to the bill. Labor leaders have hinted at a 2014 ballot push to repeal the legislation.

That gives activists 18 months to maintain positive poll numbers regarding labor reforms.

Bowman has embarked on a multi-city town hall tour throughout the state with Americans For Prosperity’s Michigan chapter to extol the law’s virtues.

“This is not over by any means. We know the union going to spend tens of millions of dollars to defeat it,” Bowman said. “We’re never going to come up with that kind of money, but as long as we can educate the public that right-to-work is pro-union worker, we’re going to safely defend this.”

Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation that has spearheaded labor reforms in other states, said the law’s momentum would only build over time. He compared the law to Wisconsin’s labor reform, which inspired initial public opposition before winning over support after implementation.

The popularity of the reforms eventually helped Republican Gov. Scott Walker become the first governor to survive a recall election, he added.

“When it goes into effect, people will realize that the sun will rise in the morning, despite what union bosses have told them,” Mix said. “It will also repair the damage to economic that was done by 60 years of forced unionism. Voters will realize its benefits in creating jobs just like they did in Wisconsin.”

“@GovWalker had better lawyers than Jeffrey Dahmer in beating the rap. Clear that he committed crimes,” Zielinski wrote Friday.

Although the party has removed Graeme Zielinski as spokesman and docked his pay, he will remain on staff, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:

Late Friday, Zielinski removed the offensive tweets and apologized both to the families of Dahmer’s victims and to the first-term Republican governor.

One source close to the party said Zielinski, a former newspaper reporter, will stay on with the state Democratic Party as a “media adviser.” He will, however, no longer be permitted to post on Twitter, where he has been prolific in recent years.

Sources declined to comment on why the party will keep Zielinski on staff, according to the Journal Sentinel. This was not his first Twitter problem:

In May, he sent out a series of tweets suggesting Walker was using his criminal defense fund to help defend a man accused of child sexual enticement. A couple of months earlier he posted a bogus tweet in which Republicans supposedly said women “should get paid less and not be able to make health care decisions.”

Obama’s former chief of staff, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, has incurred the labor union’s ire because of his support for lengthening the school day and for teacher evaluations.

Emanuel is not Obama’s only link to Chicago’s ongoing crisis, which has left more than 300,000 students without a classroom. Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, was the chief executive officer for Chicago Public Schools and “has used federal funds to advocate tying teachers’ evaluations to student performance,” according to Bloomberg. The teachers’ union adamantly opposes these evaluations.

That puts Obama in a tough spot. Obama and the Democratic Party rely on labor unions for both votes and campaign efforts. The two major national teacher unions were quick to endorse Obama in 2012, noted Daniela Fairchild of the Fordham Institute, and he relied on teachers for door-to-door campaigning back in 2008.

Obama in return pledged support to labor unions: In 2007 he promised to “put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself” and “walk on that picket line with you as President” if workers were denied collective bargaining rights.

Obama has neither donned sneakers nor offered comment on his hometown’s crisis, however. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said on Monday, “His principle concern is for the students and families who are affected by the situation and we hope that both sides are able to come together to settle this quickly and in the best interest of Chicago’s students.”

President Obama “has not expressed any opinion or made any assessment about this particular incident,” Carney said.

Daniel DiSalvo, a political science professor at City College of New York, noted that the strike reveals a tension within the Democratic Party.

Vice President Joe Biden pledged White House support to the National Education Association just last year, saying the members “should have no doubt about my affection for you and the president’s commitment to you.”

Yet the reforms that Obama has pushed in his Race to the Top program have helped bring about the clashes with teachers unions, especially over support for teacher evaluations, DiSalvo said.

With budget crises across the country stressing state and local funds, public sector unions have been at the center of a fierce debate over pay and benefits. New Jersey governor Chris Christie has risen to national prominence by taking on his state’s powerful labor unions, going so far as to call New Jersey teacher union leaders “political thugs.” Wisconsin labor unions waged an epic battle against the state government, led by Scott Walker, over the right to bargain collectively—and ultimately lost.

The Chicago teachers strike, the first in a generation, comes as a major blow to the spirit of cooperation that emerged last year after teacher unions helped create an education reform act in the Illinois legislature.

DiSalvo expressed surprise that Emanuel did not push the unions harder. Chicago teachers are among the highest paid in the nation, he noted. Adjusting for cost of living, the Chicago teachers make the equivalent of about $95,000 in New York City.

Illinois is one of only a few states that permits public union strikes, DiSalvo said, which allows the conflict over what he described as a “fight over job security” to escalate.

The Chicago Teachers Union and Mayor Emanuel have what some describe as a “toxic relationship,” fanning the flames of conflict.

Even the liberal New York Times editorial board declared that the Chicago teacher strike “particularly senseless.”

While failing to disclose this possible conflict of interest, Pro-Publica also omitted any mention of these donors in its 6,000-word investigative report.

For example, Atlantic Philanthropies, a foundation that pours millions into left-wing groups and also underwrites ProPublica, has funded Health Care for America Now (HCAN), a liberal 501(c)4 that supported the Obama White House during the healthcare reform debate.

Through a quirk of tax law, the Bermuda-based Atlantic Philanthropies can donate without restraint to 501(c)4 organizations such as HCAN and the liberal Center for American Progress. Foreign money is otherwise barred from entering the American political system, including (c)4s.

The ProPublica story also neglected to mention that Jeffrey Katzenberg, the single largest donor to the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA, is a major contributor to ProPublica as well. Katzenberg is the CEO of Dreamworks, a movie studio currently under investigation by the SEC for the alleged bribery of Chinese officials.

ProPublica general manager Dick Tofel defended the article in an email to the Free Beacon.

“As our reporting indicates, conservative social welfare nonprofits very significantly outspent liberal groups of this sort in the 2010 election cycle, and are doing so to an even greater extent so far this cycle,” Tofel wrote in an email to the Free Beacon. “We think our story fairly reflected this.”

The author of the piece, Kim Barker, wrote that “Democrats and Republicans alike” engage in (c)4 advocacy campaigns, and that according to ProPublica’s investigation, six of the ten nonprofits that have the highest “percent spent on politics” are liberal. However, of the groups mentioned by the author, 21 are conservative—and just six are liberal.

For example, the ProPublica article mentions Crossroads GPS, the conservative organization tied to Karl Rove, no less than 17 times, and features a massive photo of libertarian philanthropist David Koch.

But Atlantic Philanthropies receives no mention at all.

ProPublica, Atlantic Philanthropies, and the Democracy Alliance

“Supporting Health Care for America Now was a risky investment, but it achieved a huge victory,” Atlantic Philanthropies’ Antha N. Williams told Politico in 2010.

“While some aspects of HCAN’s work were 501(c)4, there is a lot of 501(c)3 allowable (and fundable) work that organizations and foundations can engage in, and we’d encourage our colleagues to look to public policy advocacy as a way to make a big impact,” Williams added.

HCAN pledged to spend $40 million in grassroots organizing and media campaigns during the healthcare debate. It ran attack ads against Rick Scott, now governor of Florida, and helped then-speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) fill town hall meetings in 2009.

Both Atlantic Philanthropies and HCAN claim on their tax filings to not directly engage in political activity.

ProPublica has received at least $525,000 from Atlantic Philanthropies between 2008 and 2011. The publication has several board members with ties to the liberal charity and the shadowy group of wealthy liberals known as the Democracy Alliance.

“ProPublica received two grants from the Atlantic Philanthropies, in 2008 and 2010,” Tofel said in his email. “It is clear, after a change in leadership and strategic direction at Atlantic in 2011, that further grants are unlikely, and no requests for such grants are pending. We would note that it is well-known that Atlantic is incorporated in Bermuda not for reasons related to section 501(c)(4) but because of its unique relationship with its living donor.”

ProPublica board member Gara LaMarche was the president and CEO of Atlantic Philanthropies from 2007 to 2011. He also served as vice president and director of U.S. programs for the Open Society Institute, founded by liberal billionaire George Soros.

LaMarche is also a member of the Democracy Alliance. The invitation-only group, organized by Soros and other liberal billionaires, has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to an institutional network of progressive organizations.

LaMarche is not the only member of the Democracy Alliance on the ProPublica board. The chair of ProPublica’s governing board, Herb Sandler, is also a Democracy Alliance member.

The Sandler Foundation is ProPublica’s largest donor, giving five grants worth almost $25 million to the news outlet. Sandler co-founded the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure.”

Diane Feeney, the daughter of Atlantic Philanthropies founder Chuck Feeney, is also a Democracy Alliance member.

The Dyson Foundation, run by Democracy Alliance member Rob Dyson, awarded ProPublica two grants worth $300,000. Dyson is also listed among the initial contributors to David Brock’s American Bridge 21st Century Super PAC, a Democratic opposition research group.

When asked if ProPublica was a member organization of the Democracy Alliance, Tofel responded, “No.”

ProPublica, launched in 2008, has received $36 million in funding since 2007.

The Left’s Dark Money

As extensively reported by the Free Beacon, the left is littered with 501(c)4 organizations that engage in the exact same “dark money” activity they claim to abhor.

For example, Barker’s article cites Democracy 21, “a watchdog group that has filed repeated complaints about 501(c)(4)s to regulators.”

“The tax laws are being ripped off and the public is being denied information to which they are entitled—namely, who is financing ads that are being run to influence their votes,” Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, told ProPublica for the story.

Yet ProPublica did not mention that Democracy 21 is a 501(c)4 nonprofit that also has a 501(c)3 arm, the Democracy 21 Education Fund. The nonprofit discloses several of its major grants on its website, but keeps the identity of its individual donors secret.

When reached by phone, a Democracy 21 employee confirmed the group does not disclose identities of its individual donors.

Other liberal nonprofits such as People for the American Way, the ProgressNow network, and Color of Change—groups that collectively spend millions in grassroots organizing efforts—hide their donors and spending practices.

Why does the right’s undisclosed money garner so much more attention than the left’s? Barker writes in the ProPublica article that the majority of political spending by 501(c)4s comes from conservative nonprofits.

“Liberal groups accounted for only $1.6 million of the total spent by such organizations on TV ads for the presidential race,” Barker writes. “By contrast, the two leading conservative 501(c)4s, Crossroads GPS and Americans For Prosperity, founded by conservative billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, had spent about $60 million.”

However, while advertising is one of the few concrete ways to measure political spending by outside groups, it remains an incomplete and skewed metric. Progressives have tended to focus more of their resources on organizing and get-out-the-vote efforts than political advertising.

For example, during the Wisconsin recall incumbent GOP Gov. Scott Walker and outside conservative groups spent about $30 million, while their opponents spent about $4 million. This contributed to a popular media narrative that Walker had outspent his opponent 7 to 1.

What went largely unreported was the $21 million unions spent in their attempt to unseat Walker, which significantly narrowed any supposed “gap.”

Wasserman Schultz, who also serves as the chair of the Democratic National Committee, has been promulgating erroneous claims about the GOP-aligned Koch brothers, PolitiFact reports.

“Democrats were up against nothing short of an avalanche of secret, out-of-state and corporate special interest money amounting to a massive $31 million war chest for Governor Walker compared to just $4 million on our side,” Wasserman Schultz is reported to have said earlier this month. “In fact, the Koch brothers alone gave twice as much money to Scott Walker as the total amount of money raised by Tom Barrett.”

PolitiFact investigated Wasserman Schultz’s claim and found that she is a liar: “We asked Koch companies spokeswoman Melissa Cohlmia to respond to Wasserman Schultz’s claim. She said neither brother personally contributed any money to Walker.”

“Indeed, neither brother shows up as a donor to Walker’s campaign in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel searchable database of recall contributors.”

The site goes on to tear apart Wasserman Schultz’s lie, concluding:

The Koch brothers didn’t personally give any money to Walker’s campaign. There is no proof of how much Americans for Prosperity, which gets money from the Kochs but also other sources, spent on Walker’s behalf. And the leading campaign money tracker in Wisconsin estimates the AFP total as being in the $3 million range.

We rate Wasserman Schultz’s claim False.

The tweet-aggregating website Twitchy compiled many of the murderous outbursts that emanated from the liberal twitosphere soon after Walker won the Wisconsin recall election.

“KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER! Ole Bitch Ass Pig Ass N****!!!!” cried one troubled user.

“Somebody gone kill Scott Walker man” offered another.

One student of political history then tweeted: “They gone JFK Scott Walker. Shoot his mfn head off BANG BANG!!! *chief keef voice*”