Rudy Tirre's Posts (5090)

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Monday PM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
At the Direction of the President
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by Judge Andrew Napolitano  
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FBI And CIA Sources Say They Doubt 
Major Dossier Allegation  
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by Chuck Ross
{dailycaller.com} ~ One of the most prominent allegations in the Steele dossier is that Michael Cohen visited Prague during the 2016 campaign... to pay off Russia-linked hackers who stole emails from Democrats — the claim fueled speculation ever since the dossier was published that the Trump campaign actively colluded with Russians to influence the election. But according to a top national security reporter for The Washington Post, FBI and CIA sources told reporters for the newspaper they doubt the allegations, which British spy  Christopher Steele leveled. “We’ve talked to sources at the FBI and the CIA and elsewhere — they don’t believe that ever happened,” Greg Miller, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, said at an event in October that aired Saturday on C-SPAN. WaPo has not reported that bombshell information, and Miller himself did not reveal the detail in his recent book, “The Apprentice: Trump, Russia, and the Subversion of American Democracy.” It is unclear why...  https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/16/fbi-cia-doubted-dossier/?utm_medium=email
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Two ex-associates of Michael Flynn 
charged with illegal lobbying for Turkey
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by Brooke Singman  
{foxnews.com} ~ Two ex-business associates of former national security adviser Michael Flynn have been charged over alleged illegal lobbying on behalf of the Turkish government... in the United States and making false statements to the FBI, according to an indictment unsealed Monday. Bijan Rafiekian, also known as Bijan Kian, and Kamil Ekim Alptekin of Istanbul were charged after allegedly being involved in a conspiracy to “covertly influence U.S. politicians and public opinion” against a Turkish citizen living in the U.S. whose extradition had been requested by the Turkish government, according to the Justice Department. That Turkish citizen is Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused of directing a failed coup. The alleged plot detailed Monday included using a company founded by Rafiekian, referred to in the indictment as “Company A,” based upon “Person A’s” national security expertise. Person A reportedly is Flynn.  According to the indictment, the purpose of the conspiracy was to use Company A to “delegitimize the Turkish citizen in the eyes of the American public and United States politicians, with the goal of obtaining his extradition, which was meeting resistance at the U.S. Department of Justice.”... This has nothing to do with Flynn its all about Turkey getting Gulen extradited.  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/two-ex-associates-of-michael-flynn-charged-with-lobbying-for-turkey
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Elite Universities Hide Information On Funding 
From Ultraconservative Nation Of Qatar  
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by Luke Rosiak
{dailycaller.com} ~ The nation of Qatar, a Sharia-law monarchy that has been accused of trying to influence other countries’ governments... gave $1 billion to elite American universities since 2011, according to Department of Education data. Some universities have refused to discuss where strings are attached to that money. The Qatar Foundation, for example, filed a lawsuit against the Texas attorney general Oct. 12 to hide information about the  $225 million Qatar has awarded to Texas A&M University since 2011. The Qatar Foundation hired the politically connected powerhouse law firm Squire Patton Boggs for the suit, which was filed in response to a researcher’s public information request regarding the foreign funding. The biggest recipient of Qatar’s educational funding, Georgetown University, repeatedly ignored requests from The Daily Caller News Foundation for basic information about the funding and whether it implicates academic independence...  https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/16/qatar-georgetown-texas-university/?utm_medium=email
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Gun Confiscation Begins in New Jersey
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{americanthinker.com} ~ President scumbag/liar-nObama and President Trump were both right,  scumbag/liar-nObama when he told us elections have consequences... and Trump in his 2018 stump speech that a consequence of Democrat victories would be renewed attacks on the Second Amendment. New Jersey’s ban on high-capacity magazines has been upheld by a federal court, opening the door to door knock gun confiscation and making off-duty police officers subject to criminal prosecution. The inmates are officially running the asylum. This law is one of those “sensible restrictions” on gun ownership that liberals like to talk about but that criminals will ignore as the judge who ruled the law constitutional says that despite the asterisk put next to the Second Amendment by the court assures us there is nothing to worry about: The law, signed by Gov. Phil Murphy in June along with five other new gun laws, gave New Jersey gun owners who currently possess the magazines in question 180 days to either surrender them, permanently modify them to only accept up to 10 rounds, or transfer them to somebody who is allowed to legally own them. The deadline is set to expire on Monday.  A lawsuit brought by the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs and supported by the National Rifle Association failed on Thursday as the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals declared the confiscation law constitutional. Any civilian caught in possession of a magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds may be arrested and prosecuted. Possession of such magazines after the deadline will be considered a crime of the fourth degree under state law and carry up to 18 months in prison and up to $10,000 in fines or both. Nearly all modern full-size or compact handguns and rifles sold in the United States come standard with magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition… Is this rewriting the constitution without congress.
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Why Did Michael Cohen Plead Guilty to 
Campaign Finance Crimes That Aren't 
Campaign Finance Crimes?
by Jeremiah L. Morgan
 
{americanthinker.com} ~ On Wednesday, a district court judge in Manhattan accepted Michael Cohen's guilty plea to political crimes and sentenced him to three years in the American gulag... But if the two campaign finance crimes to which he pleaded guilty are not really crimes, why did he plead guilty to them? And what precedents does this case establish that can be used against political enemies in the future? On Monday, the president tweeted that the Democrats are shifting their focus from Russian collusion "to a simple private transaction, wrongly calling it a campaign contribution." Then, on Thursday morning, Trump refined his messages: "Cohen was guilty on many charges unrelated to me, but he plead [sic] to two campaign charges which were not criminal." As usual, either Trump is right or he's crazy. Did Cohen plead guilty to a non-crime? The liberal media and law professors automatically assume anyone who would work with Trump is guilty, even referring to the president as an "unindicted coconspirator." But their conclusions are based more on wishful thinking than on critical analysis of federal election law. Cohen, as President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, has pleaded guilty to two campaign finance violations, claiming he did so at the direction of Donald Trump. Assuming that the facts of what Cohen has admitted to are true, do they actually constitute a violation of federal campaign finance law? Professor Laurence Tribe thinks so, having sacrificed his critical thinking when he tweeted:  Some Trump-supporters argue that Trump did not know that the action he supposedly directed Cohen to take was a federal crime, therefore he himself cannot be convicted because he did not possess the requisite mental state for a campaign finance crime – "knowingly and willfully." But few have shown the desire or spent the time to take a critical, objective look at federal election law to see how it applies to Cohen's actions...  https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/why_did_michael_cohen_plead_guilty_to_campaign_finance_crimes_that_arent_campaign_finance_crimes.html
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At the Direction of the President
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by Judge Andrew Napolitano

{townhall.com} ~ Last week, federal prosecutors in Washington and New York filed sentencing memorandums with federal judges in advance of the sentencings of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. President Donald Trump's former campaign manager and his former personal lawyer had pleaded guilty to federal crimes, and the memorandums, which are required by the federal rules of criminal procedure, set forth the prosecutors' desired prison sentences for them.

Judges rely on these submissions, as well as on those of defense counsel, before making the mathematical calculations that the law requires. Sadly, sentencing today is largely an algorithmic function, dictated by federal sentencing guidelines, with some room for judicial deviation based on the facts of the crimes and the personal backgrounds of the defendants. In my career as a judge in New Jersey, I sentenced more than 1,000 people using state guidelines that were substantially similar to the present federal guidelines.

When the federal prosecutors made their submissions for the most part public, they revealed two disturbing facts. Special counsel dirty cop-Robert Mueller in Washington revealed that in the government's view, Manafort had reneged on his plea agreement by lying to FBI agents who were sent to debrief him about his contacts with the White House. And federal prosecutors in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York revealed that some of Cohen's crimes had been committed with the knowledge of and at the direction of Trump or to shield him.

Then all hell broke loose. Here is the back story.

Manafort, who has been convicted of federal financial crimes in Virginia, opted to avoid a second trial in Washington, D.C., on another set of alleged federal crimes by pleading guilty and agreeing to cooperate with the special counsel's office by truthfully telling its FBI agents what they sought to learn about ongoing investigations of President Trump.

The FBI agents wanted to know whether Manafort knew whether Trump committed any federal crimes -- such as conspiracy namely, agreeing to receive foreign assistance during his campaign, obstruction of justice interfering with the FBI in order to keep it from investigating him and bank and tax fraud before he was president.

When the special counsel announced that Manafort had declined to be truthful to its FBI agents and Manafort's lawyers claimed he had been truthful, that conflict set up a dispute that must be resolved by a federal judge -- after a public hearing -- before she can sentence Manafort. That hearing will most likely reveal what prosecutors wanted to learn about Trump and what they claim Manafort lied about. Even though the hearing -- which has not been held as of this writing -- could be explosive about Trump, the president claimed he was exonerated by this turn of events.

At the same time, career prosecutors in New York -- whose chief, a Trump appointee, has removed himself from the case -- asked a federal judge to sentence Cohen to substantial prison time for the crimes to which he pleaded guilty, notwithstanding the substantial assistance he had provided them in their investigations of the president. Of the president? Yes. The feds in New York City, as well as the special counsel in Washington, are investigating the president? Yes.

How do we know this? We know that Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations. According to the submission of the special counsel, Cohen lied to Congress -- about candidate Trump's efforts to build a hotel in Moscow by cutting a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the presidential campaign -- to protect the president, who had publicly denied any campaign-time communications with Russians.

But the most damning thing we learned from the submission of the New York federal prosecutors was that they have evidence that Cohen's deceptive and criminal payments of hush money to women alleging to have experienced sexual intimacy with Trump before he was an active candidate were made "in coordination with and at the direction of" the president.

Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York enjoy the highest reputation for excellence in the legal, judicial and law enforcement communities. They know that they cannot ethically make a charge in federal court without corroborated evidence to support it. In their Cohen sentencing memorandum, they chose to reveal the existence, but not the substance, of their evidence against the president.

Think about the significance of this. The Department of Justice has accused President Trump of coordinating with, ordering and paying Cohen to commit a federal crime for which Cohen has pleaded guilty. Stated differently, career federal prosecutors who are not in the office of special counsel 
dirty cop-Mueller have told a federal judge that they have corroborated evidence that the president committed felonies.

Let's be clear. If A pays B to shoot someone and B does the shooting, A is as criminally liable as he would be if he had pulled the trigger.

Nevertheless, when the president learned of all this, the revelation of which had been authorized by his chosen but unconfirmed acting attorney general, he claimed that this submission, too, exonerated him. I was sorry to learn that.

These submissions place the president directly in the legal crosshairs of federal prosecutors -- closer to knowing about a campaign-time agreement for something of value with Russians than we have heretofore been. And they show a more direct procurer of criminal behavior than we have heretofore had.

The president may want the public to think that none of this troubles him. Yet the evidence of the falsity of his publicly denied proximity to Putin during the campaign and the possession of evidence by the Department of Justice of his pre-presidential criminal behavior are gravely serious, and he cannot reasonably pretend that they are not.

He can try to avoid reality, to paraphrase Ayn Rand, but he cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. Those consequences may be fatal to his presidency and to his liberty.
Read more…

Mon Med/PM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Mohammad bin Salman screwed up … big time
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by Joe Gilbertson    
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HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes Discusses Flynn Case
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{theconservativetreehouse.com} ~ House Permanent Sub Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) Chairman Devin Nunes appears on with Maria Bartiromo... to discuss the current state of issues with Michael Flynn. Chairman Nunes draws attention to the latest documents released Friday. One of the documents is written by Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe who noted that Flynn was aware the FBI had the content of a phone call between himself and Russian Ambassador Kislyak, prior to the FBI interview. Therefore it is highly unlikely Flynn would lie about the content of that Kislyak phone call. Most people forget the background of how the dirty cop-Mueller probe was constructed. FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and FBI chief legal counsel James Baker selected most of the special counsel investigators; those two then recommended to Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein that he hire dirty cop-Robert Mueller as special counsel lead. scumbag-Comey was fired. The remaining ‘at-risk’ corrupt FBI leadership McCabe and Baker, positioning to defend their own interests, selected the “small group”; then dirty cop-Mueller was selected and brought on his additional team members. The entire  purpose of the special counsel operation was to cover-up the DOJ/FBI activity... Thats why anything that is released by the FBI I question.
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Trump To Review Case Of Green Beret 
Charged With Killing Taliban  
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by Saagar Enjeti
{dailycaller.com} ~ The case centers around former U.S. Army Major Matt Golsteyn, who captured a suspected Taliban bomb-maker in 2010... Golsteyn and his men said the captured bomb-maker refused to cooperate with interrogators and that under their rules of engagement they had to release him.  Golsteyn said that he and his men suspected the Taliban bomb-maker of masterminding the deaths of U.S. Marines killed the day prior and that a local tribal elder had identified him as a known militant. The former U.S. Army Major later told investigators that he conspired with one of his men to kill the bomb-maker and bury his body.  Golsteyn admitted in a 2016 Fox News interview that he killed the bomb-maker, prompting renewed interest in the case. Following the interview and subsequent re-opening of the investigation the Army charged him with premeditated murder earlier this week. Golysten’s commander “has determined that sufficient evidence exists to warrant the preferral of charges against him,” a U.S. Army spokesman said Friday, adding “Major Golsteyn is being charged with the murder of an Afghan male during his 2010 deployment to Afghanistan.” I stand by Major Golsteyn.
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Darryl Issa Discusses Flynn Case, FISA Abuse and
Upcoming scumbag-James Comey Testimony
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{theconservativetreehouse.com} ~ Congressman Darryl Issa appears for an interview with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the sketchy dirty cop-Mueller case against Michael Flynn; the likelihood that someone in the administration is going to have to talk to the FISA court about likely DOJ abuse; and the second round of questions for scumbag-James Comey scheduled for tomorrow.  
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Congress Just Made a Dangerous Move
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{clarionproject.org} ~ Clarion Project’s National Security Analyst and head of Clarion’s intelligence network Ryan Mauro discusses... the recent dangerous move by Congress to stop military funds used to help Saudi Arabia in their fight against Iran in the proxy war being fought by the two countries in Yemen. Mauro argues that the move emboldens the Iranian regime, who will have the possibility of cutting off vital shipping lanes as a result:  https://clarionproject.org/dangerous-move-made-by-congress/
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Michael Mukasey Discusses Current State of DOJ
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{theconservativetreehouse.com} ~ Former U.S. Attorney General under President George W. Bush Michael Mukasey weighs in on Trump’s appointment of William Barr to U.S. attorney general.  
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Mohammad bin Salman screwed up … big time
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by Joe Gilbertson  

{punchingbagpost.com} ~ When it was only reports in the newspapers that the CIA had sufficient evidence to confirm that Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman was complicit in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump may have been prudent in initially holding off his final judgment on the role played by the heir apparent to the Saudi throne.

Now that a group of bipartisan Senators – including Republicans supportive of President Trump – have been briefed by the CIA and have all concluded that bin Salman is guilty beyond any doubt, we have an entirely different situation.  None of the senators equivocated on their unanimous guilty verdict.  Whether the Prince ordered it or approved of it at the suggestion of others is a distinction without a difference.  In this “who done it,” he done it.

One of the more bothersome questions is why Trump did not know all the facts long before the senators got their briefing?  One would have expected that the President would have had CIA Director Gina Haspel in his office as soon as she returned from Turkey, where the Turkish government provided a detailed account and apparently conclusive evidence pointing to the Prince.

One also wonders why two of the administration’s most important and most credible Cabinet members – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense James Mattis – had also stated that there was no “direct link” to the Prince.  That may be technically true – and maybe not – but there appears to be sufficient circumstantial evidence to establish bin Salman’s guilt beyond any reasonable doubt.

Republican senators Bob Corker (a critic of the President) and Lindsey Graham (an ally of the President) were unequivocal in their statements that the Prince was personally responsible.  Corker said that any jury would convict bin Salman of murder “after thirty minutes” of deliberation.  Lindsey seemed to be addressing not only Trump, but Pompeo and Mattis, when he said that one would have to be “intentionally blind“ not to see bin Salman’s complicity.

Trump has no choice but to accept the conclusion of the CIA and now the majority of the Senate.  The Congress is poised to pass tough sanctions against Saudi Arabia by a majority that could and would overrule any presidential veto.  The legislators may take over the relationship by terminating arms sales and withdrawing support for the war in Yemen.

Trump’s resistance to blame the Prince seems largely due to a desire not to destroy our critical – and yes, it IS critical — working relationship with Saudi Arabia.  They are a key player in the strategy to keep Iran – and indirectly, Russia and China – from dominating the Middle East.  Democrats’ claim that it has to do with business interests between the Saudi royal family and the Trump organization – including son-in-law Jared Kushner.  That is nothing more than political garbage.

That bogus theory would not explain the comments of Pompeo and Mattis.  They clearly understand the strategic importance of Saudi Arabia – as does Israel and most of the European Union.  The EU heads-of-state have been no harsher on bin Salman than has Trump.  There were a large number of those heads-of-state in Argentina for the G20 confab – and they all seemed pretty friendly in their dealings with bin Salman.  Whatever the resolution to l’affaire Khashoggi, the alliance between Saudi Arabia and the western world needs to be preserved.  That is the dilemma.

Editor’s note: The big question is, does this make any difference? Trump has been trying to give MBS the benefit of the doubt because he knows that MBS is not going anywhere either way, and better to just go with the flow. Saudi Arabia is an important ally and the stability of the Middle East currently depends on that alliance. At some point, however, this becomes an issue for Trump (ironically less so for MBS), since demands to terminate our relationship with him will grow louder.

It is the nature of governments that when the stakes are large, people die. In some countries, people die when the stakes are small. As a former inteligence officer, I can tell you that if we broke off relations with countries who might be willing to do what MBS purportedly did, then we would have relationships with no one. The big mistake was getting caught.

This is, of course, a mistake that scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton has never made, even though from Vince Foster to Seth Rich, fingers have been pointed.
Read more…

Monday Noon ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
What Lies Behind the Malaise of the West?
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by Pat Buchanan  
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Outraged Democrats vow to challenge court ruling undercutting scumbag/liar-nObamacare
SK7fkNbCLDx-T7r5uAjnHV2uBS-BEmVup9nBpVloVBxrBLhd8oW3HAv54-IMO9q5sWY8ypeq3wrLEVtNhxWxXRG6v8htK-kUslR70A-B20oqD7JB8p6IMmoXLPi16mI=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=300by Elodie CUZIN
{yahoo.com} ~ Outraged Democrats vowed to appeal a federal judge's ruling that could undo the US health care law known as scumbag/liar-nObamacare... saying on Saturday that they will use their new power in Congress to hold Republicans responsible and "expose their lies."  US District Judge Reed O'Connor ruled late Friday that the health insurance reform, officially known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), is unconstitutional. The White House said it expects the ruling to be appealed to the Supreme Court. For now, it said in a statement, "the law remains in place." But Democrats, who have seen the law survive scores of legal and legislative attacks, vowed to fight back, saying the health coverage of millions of Americans is at stake. Senate Democratic leader Chuck scumbag/clown-Schumer tweeted that Republicans had pretended to care about those protected by scumbag/liar-nObamacare "while quietly trying to remove that support in the courts. Next year, we will force votes to expose their lies." Democrats see the law as a signature achievement of former president Barack scumbag/liar-nObama, while Republicans dismiss it as governmental overreach. Donald Trump made abolishing and replacing the program a central pledge of his presidential campaign...
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Corsi sues dirty cop-Mueller over alleged grand 
jury leaks, seeks $350M in damages
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by Edmund DeMarche  
{foxnews.com} ~ Jerome Corsi, the conservative author accused of lying under oath to Special Counsel dirty cop-Robert Mueller’s investigators... filed a federal lawsuit late Sunday accusing dirty cop-Mueller of leaking grand jury items and various constitutional violations, including illegal surveillance, reports said. Politico reported that the newly filed suit claims that dirty cop-Mueller tried to get Corsi to give testimony that Corsi said is false. He is reportedly seeking $100 million in actual damages and $250 million in damages due to injury to his reputation. The CIA, FBI, and the National Security Agency were also named in the suit. The author has theorized that investigators hoped that he would admit to a connection with WikiLeaks' Julian Assange. The connection would bolster their Russian collusion investigation, he said. A link between Corsi and Assange would make it easy to tie in President Trump's former adviser Roger Stone, he said. American intelligence agencies have assessed that Russia was the source of hacked material released by WikiLeaks during the 2016 election that damaged scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton’s campaign. dirty cop-Mueller’s office is trying to determine whether Stone and other associates of President Trump had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans...  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/corsi-sues-mueller-over-alleged-grand-jury-leaks-seeks-350m-in-damages-report
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Top Republican predicts Flynn guilty plea 
will be thrown out, citing FBI 'misconduct'
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by Gregg Re  
{foxnews.com} ~ A day before fired FBI Director scumbag-James Comey is set to again testify behind closed doors with House Republicans... a party leader is predicting that Special Counsel dirty cop-Robert Mueller's case against ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn will soon be thrown out of court. California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" that the FBI had "tricked" Flynn into not having a lawyer and had improperly "post-dated" documents to "morph" them into critical evidence against him. He promised scumbag-Comey would face tough questioning about the episode. "Tomorrow is going to be a very different day for scumbag-Comey, particularly in light of what we've learned -- the misconduct during the Flynn investigation was all about, thanks to a judge that demanded to understand what had happened," Issa told host Maria Bartiromo, referring to U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan's order last week that led dirty cop-Mueller to turn over key documents in the case. He continued: "I would not be surprised a bit if the conviction of Flynn is overturned, because of the Justice Department and FBI's misconduct -- and that in fact, we go potentially all the way to the Supreme Court, with new protections -- when the FBI and the Department of Justice lies to someone and tricks them into making statements, and then charges them with a lie they entrapped them in. ... This kind of conduct we haven't seen in a long time."...  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/comey-issues-moral-rebuke-of-trump-for-criticizing-cohen-raid-shame-on-republicans
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House conservatives back Trump on 
call for vote on border wall funding
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by David Sherfinski 
{washingtontimes.com} ~ House conservatives are cheering President Trump on in his desire for a government shutdown, saying they have his back in the standoff over border wall money... Though party leaders have been reluctant to test the GOP’s strength, the conservatives insist they should vote on a bill containing $5 billion for wall funding in the House. “Heck yeah — and I think it’ll pass,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican. “We’re going to have the money for the wall — exactly what the president talked about.” That optimism stands in contrast to other Republicans, who say they don’t think such a bill could pass — and point out that little has changed, votes-wise, from the summer, when they ducked holding a vote on the Homeland Security spending bill for fiscal 2019. That bill is the key hurdle in a funding deal to avoid a partial government shutdown looming this weekend. Current funding for Homeland Security, the Justice Department and dozens of other departments and agencies is slated to expire Friday. Congress left town last week without any discernible plan on how to avoid it, with both parties saying the ball is in Mr. Trump’s court... No the ball in Congress' hands.  https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/dec/16/house-conservatives-support-trump-on-border-wall-f/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual&utm_campaign=20180326&utm_term=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&bt_ee=0hB9efk6SwnDgcdmrZZWuM89Jk6QfCuJQPN9eJ76PySzUz2XCajB9SevZxQiz4yQ&bt_ts=1545014570889 
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 Why You Should Be a Nationalist
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{prageru.com} ~ It’s undeniable: Around the world, nationalism is on the march... and the media and reigning political elites would have you believe this is a dangerous disaster in the making. So, why is Yoram Hazony, author of The Virtue of Nationalism, unafraid? Watch to understand.
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What Lies Behind the Malaise of the West?
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by Pat Buchanan

{townhall.com} ~ Is it coincidence or contagion, this malady that seems to have suddenly induced paralysis in the leading nations of the West?

With lawyer-fixer Michael Cohen's confession that he colluded with Donald Trump in making hush money payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, America's stage is set for a play that will run two years.

As Democrats test the waters for a presidential run by savaging Trump, the establishment Trump detests and defeated in 2016 will use every weapon in its considerable arsenal to break and bring him down, as it did half a century ago to Richard Nixon.

By spring 2019, Americans will be unable to escape the vitriol on cable and social media. And the outside world will see America again as a house divided. Our politics will be even more poisonous than now, and it is not easy to see what would bring our warring tribes together again.

Consider, then, the situation of our old ally Great Britain.

Prime Minister Theresa May was just forced to pledge that she would not lead her party in the next election -- to survive a no-confidence vote in Parliament. A third of all Tory members voted to throw her out.

The no-confidence vote was called after May had to cancel a vote on the Brexit plan she had negotiated with the EU, when it was evident that a coalition of Tories and Labor would vote to kill her plan.

May has been humiliated. Yet her humiliation solves nothing. The clock is running toward a March deadline for concluding a Brexit deal. And no plan acceptable to both Parliament and the EU is on the table.

The possibility exists that Britain could simply crash out of the EU, causing severe economic damage to both.

Realizing this, Brussels has left the door open if Britain should vote in a second referendum to remain in the EU. But calling and carrying out that referendum would be a betrayal of the 52 percent of the British people that voted to restore full national independence.

While London wanted to stay in the EU in 2016, England voted to leave. Northern Ireland wanted to stay, as did Scotland, though 45 percent of Scots had earlier voted to declare their own independence from Great Britain.

In France, after four Saturdays of anarchy, arson, looting and vandalism of her national monuments, President Emmanuel Macron capitulated to the rioters. He withdrew the fuel tax that triggered the uprisings. He agreed to have his government add $113 a month to those earning the minimum wage, and to let workers get overtime pay and Christmas bonuses tax-free, and to revoke higher social charges on modest pensions.

The cost of Macron's retreat is estimated at $11 billion, 0.4 percent of France's GDP. Saturday will tell us if his appeasement bought peace.

The political collapse of Macron has been extraordinary.

In 2017, he won almost two-thirds of the national vote, and his La Republique en Marche! won an absolute majority of the National Assembly.

Today, one poll puts Macron's approval at 21 percent. The idea that he can replace Angela Merkel as the recognized leader of the EU seems ridiculous.

As for Merkel herself, hailed as leader of the West in the time of Trump, her party and coalition lost so much support in the recent election that she stepped down as leader of the CDU and pledged not to run for another term as chancellor.

Europe's fourth-largest economy, Italy, is now led by a coalition of the populist-left Five Star Movement and populist-right Lega party. The coalition seeks greater freedom on spending than Brussels is willing to allow, and a halt to migration from across the Med.

With Poland and Hungary at odds with Brussels over alterations in their political systems, the EU has never seemed less united.

What are the underlying causes of these 21st-century crises of Western democracies?

Certainly, globalization, with its creation of ties among transnational elites at the expense of nation-states and their indigenous peoples is one. Capitals -- Washington, London, Paris, Berlin -- seem ever more distant from the countries they rule.

Then there is demography. The native-born of almost all Western nations are aging, shrinking and dying. Death rates exceed birth rates. While peoples of the West are living longer, they are producing fewer children to replace them.

At the same time, Western elites have welcomed foreign workers and left borders unsecured against mass migration. And the people coming in, almost all now from the Third World, are not assimilating as the children of 19th- and 20th-century European immigrants to the USA had largely done by 1960.

A consequence and related cause is the rise of tribalism, or ethno-nationalism, the search for identity and community with one's own. Loyalties to family, tribe, neighborhood, culture and country appear paramount, rising above intellectual and political alignments.

The heart has reasons of which reason knows nothing, said Pascal. And so it does.
Read more…

Mon Med/AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
There's a Word for the Democrats' 
Negotiating Strategy: Insanity
by Marc A. Thiessen  
fYhHLkJDI2yvon4s6zFOhNh8lx7PjKsKI1eHkOxgMDK9HASp-j1B4jJftdBsa0sJ4MWGUNqyxJbJTlfRo7kCbLWMXX-R2uk1rvb0zUIwWismElA8gtmBSL5w0puPIKdG2H6YfSsQnc87wgOiYqsTqY4icMU4kLYfRMiZl9GA6ro=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=150.
Monday Top Headlines
O03QNjauN_KV-k8yKPcyN0So_Rw5PFToKE9tm09_ldwmaWClAgthC3Ruz6PsIXkisuMki_SQaZf56YN4nz1XY8-3papxkke0lhTrQy5OGGJSB3zuy2ZFh4iCJnjhOn4qCGPw53mtTIxDLE_Affc4nYFZO1UMLzKkglTpE-Y=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=400
by Media Editors:  scumbag/liar-nObamaCare ruled unconstitutional by Texas judge (Fox News)
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White House shake-up a retooling effort ahead of Democrats’ House takeover (The Washington Times)
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dirty cop-Mueller memo says Flynn’s lies were “voluntary and intentional” (NBC News)
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dirty cop-Mueller investigation cost tops $25 million (ABC News)
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scumbag-Comey, dubbed “amnesiac with incredible hubris,” back on Hill for new round of grilling (Fox News)
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Trump picks OMB Director Mick Mulvaney as acting chief of staff (The Daily Wire)
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Democrats defy Trump shutdown threat: “He is not going to get the wall in any form” (The Washington Times)
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Government can’t shut down — because 75% is already funded (CNS News)
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Migrant girl’s relatives dispute official story on her death (Fox News)
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Nations at UN climate talks back universal emissions rules (NBC News)
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Gun-related deaths reached 40-year peak in 2017, CDC study finds (Fox News)
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Top secret report: North Korea keeps busting sanctions, evading sea patrols (NBC News)
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U.S. makes great strides to help Iraqi Christians, though more remains to be done (The Washington Free Beacon)
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Jon Kyl will resign on Dec. 31, setting up another appointment to rino-John McCain’s seat (AZ Central)
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Humor: Ninth Circuit Court rules border wall must be “short enough that a pregnant woman carrying a child in each arm could be expected to scale it without difficulty” (The Babylon Bee)
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Policy: Why a judge ruled scumbag/liar-nObamaCare unconstitutional, and what policymakers should do next (The Daily Signal)
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Policy: The right way to overhaul our health care system (The Daily Signal)  
 
~The Patriot Post  
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scumbag/liar-nObamacare 
ruled unconstitutional by Texas judge 
WY5WO9gFnSGSkdgErw1q9FUI3ndxP456_OYb4EfpUtCucviuVtG4f_n9y8hZfkr8r-iVQ9g7W25qlg=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=300by theblaze.com  
{theblaze.com} ~ A judge in Texas ruled scumbag/liar-nObamacare  unconstitutional in light of Congress passing a budget that excised the mandate from the original legislation... U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor in Fort Worth said that the Affordable Care Act passed under the aegis of former President Barack scumbag/liar-nObama became unconstitutional after the budget passed by Republicans that cut out the tax penalty for not purchasing insurance. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra decried the ruling and indicated that he intends to file an appeal immediately. "Today's ruling is an assault on 133 million Americans with preexisting conditions," said Becerra, "on the 20 million Americans who rely on the ACA's consumer protections for health care, and on America's faithful progress toward affordable health care for all Americans." Texas and nineteen other states argued that the U.S. Supreme Court had found the healthcare legislation constitutional on the basis of the existence of the mandate. Once the mandate was eradicated by Congress, they claimed, that completely undermined the constitutionality of the bill. Judge O'Connor agreed with that reasoning  Friday."if this ruling stands, the ACA is gone, toast."...
scumbag-James Comey, Menace to Society
oX2VtYIcT-1iHqqOdOpal80SKjSjLEBa03iUHOF0pIeBOnmVz1Vl_gBVDdLGgfPtNwjlIpSwaVgrTkYYBx-I3D7onKYiDEdxEEXPevz90lspgiIB6qo=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=200by Patricia McCarthy
{americanthinker.com} ~ Is there a person on earth more oleaginous than scumbag-James Comey? The man known for his phonogenic and photogenic memory suddenly can hardly remember anything at all... In short, he lied, over and over again while being  questioned by members of Congress recently. Given his memory deficits, he was most assuredly too incompetent and unaware to be head of the FBI. Yeah, right. He has a good memory and he's a practiced but bad liar. He thinks he is a cover-up artist. If there is any justice left in America, he will be charged with a panoply of crimes.  He obviously should have been fired long ago, certainly on the first day of the Trump administration.  Like his pal dirty cop-Robert Mueller, scumbag-Comey has long pretended to be non-partisan when in fact he is a vicious and supremely arrogant anti-Trump zealot.  In the talk he gave at the 92nd Street Y a week ago, he bragged about flaunting the process and took advantage of the "chaos" of an administration four days old. In collusion with scumbag/commie-John Brennan, scumbag-James Clapper, Andrew McCabe, the scumbag/liar-Clinton campaign and the scumbag/liar-nObama administration, scumbag-Comey orchestrated the agreed-upon plan to take Trump down and out before the election with their fake "dossier" and then, once Trump won, to see that he would not be inaugurated or would be removed from office posthaste. These are very dangerous people, these self-appointed guardians of their own radical agenda and the power they've attained to protect it. Not one of them cares about the citizens of this nation; we are a constant thorn in their sides. They hate that we have the right to vote and that our votes count. And when our votes don't go their way?  They will find a way to reverse our decision. They will lie, cheat and steal any election they can, and they get away with it, year after year. Which is why they remain so stunned that they did not, could not, guarantee the election of  scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton.  They are full of rage that their carefully -calculated and well-coordinated scheme failed...
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FBI Releases Key Steele Dossier Document  
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by Chuck Ross
{dailycaller.com} ~ The FBI on Friday released a two-page document that sheds some light on what former FBI Director scumbag-James Comey briefed to President-Elect Donald Trump... and President scumbag/liar-nObama regarding the infamous Steele dossier. The document, first reported by Politico, asserts that Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the dossier, was working “on behalf of private clients” in his investigation of Trump’s possible ties to Russia. His dossier contained “highly politically sensitive information,” according to the summary. Steele, who is not identified by name in the heavily-redacted document, is also described as collecting information “from a layered network of identified and unidentified subsources, some of which has been corroborated in the past.” Those characterizations are likely to draw the attention of Republicans, many of whom have accused the FBI of relying too heavily on Steele’s unverified reporting in its investigation of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government...  https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/15/fbi-steele-dossier-trump-comey/?utm_medium=email
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Rudy Giuliani -vs- Chris Wallace
hzXhAgw2R44XYDgRVh4f5AVkPl7qQnvfkDGXcAt0lxGKwcNhL71bKsY99OjFIib7-AWU6kmFmUgmI3uW62yh4NtaBNoKnLpNMjrh601ItZDEYqvHrBpQmvXiYocsEYx36HYB1ftYoIBzDPAecJbvGZcxIjW6dmo65qjhe-VIPw=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=400by sundance
{theconservativetreehouse.com} ~ Former New York Mayor and current lawyer for President Trump appears on Fox News as swamp guardian Chris Wallace constructs the opposing argument for dirty cop-Robert Mueller.  https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/12/16/sunday-talks-rudy-giuliani-vs-chris-wallace-2/
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scumbag/mad-Maxine Waters Calls for Trump Impeachment:
'He Is Dangerous,' Aligned With Putin
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{insider.foxnews.com} ~ Rep. scumbag/mad-Maxine Waters said late Wednesday that Democrats who are acting sheepish... about impeaching President Trump may be doing so out of fear of a "revolt." MSNBC host Chris Hayes said Trump was "all but accused of committing a federal felony" in the Michael Cohen case before the U.S. Attorney's Office in Lower Manhattan. scumbag/mad-Waters, the potential incoming House Financial Services Committee chairwoman, nodded and said Trump is "a criminal" and "deserves to be impeached." She blasted several Republican senators, including John Thune of South Dakota and Orrin Hatch of Utah, for continuing to support the president in the wake of what she considered impeachable offenses relating to the Cohen case. "Just watching those members of the Senate basically make excuses... is pathetic," she said. "They don't care about the rule of law." scumbag/mad-Waters said Trump "created this hush money" that was used to pay off women he allegedly had affairs with prior to being elected president. "Trump would like to redefine the law," she said, adding that many Democrats are afraid of being seen as "overstepping" their bounds and "causing backlash." "Maybe they don't want to fail at impeachment. They believe Trump will cause a revolt, you talk about violence."... Its ok to give taxpayer money to your daughter. Is that being honest.
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fYhHLkJDI2yvon4s6zFOhNh8lx7PjKsKI1eHkOxgMDK9HASp-j1B4jJftdBsa0sJ4MWGUNqyxJbJTlfRo7kCbLWMXX-R2uk1rvb0zUIwWismElA8gtmBSL5w0puPIKdG2H6YfSsQnc87wgOiYqsTqY4icMU4kLYfRMiZl9GA6ro=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=150
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There's a Word for the Democrats' Negotiating Strategy: Insanity

by Marc A. Thiessen
 

{patriotpost.us} ~ Good news for the incoming House Democratic majority! They have something President Trump really, really wants: money to build a border wall. Trump is desperate for this money. Mexico won’t give it to him. Only congressional Democrats can. Without their consent, he can’t deliver on one of the key campaign promises he made during the 2016 election.
               There’s a name for this in classic negotiating strategy. It’s called “leverage.” Good negotiators use leverage (something they have, which their adversary wants) to obtain what are called “concessions” (something their adversary has, which they want). The result is what experts call “compromise.” This is how the civilized world gets things done.
               But in a fit of pique, Democrats are throwing away their leverage, insisting that they will never — under any circumstances — give Trump the wall he so desperately wants. The reason? Because he wants it and they despise him.
               There is a name for this in negotiating strategy as well. It’s called “insanity.
               It would be one thing if Trump was demanding that Democrats make some great moral compromise. But he is not. Democrats say they are for border security. They may think that a wall is a costly and inefficient way to secure the border, but there is nothing inherently wrong with a wall. In 2006, 26 Senate Democrats — including Sens. Charles scumbag/clown-Schumer, Barack scumbag/liar-nObama and scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton — voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which required the Department of Homeland Security to build two layers of reinforced fencing along 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. Is there some profound moral difference between a fence and a wall? No.
               So why not give Trump his wall in exchange for something they want? They could give Trump the $5 billion he is asking for to begin construction of the wall, in exchange for a path to citizenship for the nearly 2 million “dreamers” — illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children through no fault of their own. Trump would negotiate on this basis in a heartbeat.
               Then, when Democrats take the majority next year, they could offer him the remaining $15 billion to $20 billion he needs to finish the wall, in exchange for legal status for the other 11 million people here in the country illegally. The wall could buy legal status for every illegal immigrant living in the shadows — a longtime Democratic priority.
               Again, Trump would likely be willing to cut such a deal. He is on record repeatedly saying that he wants to find a way for the vast majority of illegal immigrants (the “good ones,” he calls them) to get right with the law and secure legal status, so long as we get rid of the rapists, murderers and drug dealers (aka the “bad ones”) and secure the border. That is what Democrats claim they want to do as well. So take him up on it.
               Or, if they don’t want to use their leverage to solve the illegal immigration problem, then Democrats could use the wall as leverage to win concessions from Trump on something else. Democrats have laid out an ambitious agenda — from shoring up scumbag/liar-nObamacare, lowering the cost of prescription drugs and Medicare-for-all to modifying Trump’s tax cuts, increasing the minimum wage, strengthening environmental rules, tackling global climate change and enacting paid family leave. The possibilities are endless. If Democrats don’t use the wall as leverage, they won’t get any of this.
               In their Oval Office meeting, scumbag/clown-Schumer told Trump that “elections have consequences” — echoing the infamous words spoken by scumbag/liar-nObama to congressional Republicans in 2009 when they presented him with their ideas for a stimulus package. Back then, however, Democrats controlled not just the House but the Senate and White House, too. Today, Republicans control the executive branch and have an expanded Senate majority. So if Democrats want to get anything done, they can’t ram it through over GOP objections, because Trump has leverage, too — in the form of a pen he can use to sign or veto legislation. To get anything done, Democrats have to negotiate — and compromise.
               The answer for Democrats is simple: Don’t refuse the wall; use the wall.  ~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/60050?mailing_id=3947&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3947&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body
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Monday AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
The Myth of Capitalism-Caused Inequity
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by Political Editors  
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scumbag/liar-nObama Was Hand-Picked, NOT a Natural
Born Citizen, Congress Knew 
& Tried to Protect Him
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by DEAN GARRISON 
{freedomoutpost.com} ~ Let’s kick a dead horse. The debate is settled and the damage is done. But who thinks scumbag/liar-nObama was eligible to be president?... Even President Donald Trump questioned scumbag/liar-nObama’s citizenship in 2014 by offering $50 Million to see his college records, but scumbag/liar-nObama never responded to his offer. Nothing has been done to this point. And sadly, nothing ever will. Let me show you today how Congress protected him from both sides of the aisle and guaranteed the debate would never go too far. In 1975 a representative named Joe Bingham introduced an amendment to remove the “natural born citizen” constitutional  requirement to become President. Why is that important? Because it was not until almost 30 years later that the issue would be addressed again. And it was not addressed only once, but multiple times. This is all part of congressional record.  Remarkably, it just so happened to coincide with the meteoric rise of a man named Barack scumbag/liar-nObama who would benefit greatly from the happenings by gaining his spot in the Oval Office. I am about to share with you a brilliant piece of research from the Article II Political Action Committee. After reading it the foremost question on my mind is, “If the natural born citizen definition only requires one citizen parent then why did they seemingly try so hard to change the law for Barack scumbag/liar-nObama?”...
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'Russiagate' spread by 'highest levels'
of scumbag/liar-nObama admin
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{wnd.com} ~ The scumbag/liar-nObama administration was frantically distributing to Democratic senators classified information in support of claims of Trump campaign collusion with Russia... even as Donald Trump was preparing to be inaugurated, according to newly obtained emails. Two sets of emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and released Friday by Washington watchdog Judicial Watch revealed that the scumbag/liar-nObama State Department was trying to spread the collusion narrative before Trump was inaugurated. “These documents show remarkable evidence of the non-stop, unethical effort in the scumbag/liar-nObama State Department to gather and send its own dossier of classified information on Russia in an effort to discredit the incoming Trump administration,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  One of the emails quoted from an scumbag/liar-nObama official who said, “We made the deadline! Thank you everyone for what was truly a Department-wide effort!” The email batches, 38 pages and 48 pages, show “classified information was researched and disseminated to multiple U.S. senators by the  scumbag/liar-nObama administration immediately prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration,” Judicial Watch said. Some were distributed on the day before the inauguration...Why isn't scumbag/liar-nObama charged with linking classified information?  https://www.wnd.com/2018/12/russiagate-spread-by-highest-levels-of-obama-admin/
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'The Weekly Standard' Died Today 
Here's What That Means
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by BEN SHAPIRO  
{dailywire.com} ~ On Friday, conservative mainstay magazine The Weekly Standard was shuttered after 23 years of weekly publication... The ownership of the magazine, Clarity Media, held a meeting with staffers at the magazine in which they announced that everyone was to clear out their offices by 5 p.m., then released this statement: For more than twenty years The Weekly Standard has provided a valued and important perspective on political, literary and cultural issues of the day. The magazine has been home to some of the industry’s most dedicated and talented staff and I thank them for their hard work and contributions, not just to the publication, but the field of journalism. Despite investing significant resources into the publication, the financial performance of the publication over the last five years — with double-digit declines in its subscriber base all but one year since 2013 — made it clear that a decision had to be made. After careful consideration of all possible options for its future, it became clear that this was the step we needed to take. Editor-in-Chief Stephen Hayes told staff, “To put it simply: I’m proud that we’ve remained both conservative and independent, providing substantive reporting and analysis based on facts, logic and reason.” As John Podhoretz, a co-founder of the magazine, has noted, Clarity made no effort to sell the brand. Instead, they sought to integrate the subscribers of the Standard into the subscriber base of their new Washington Examiner weekly magazine. The death of The Weekly Standard has spurred accusations that the magazine was shuttered for its anti-Trump position. But that neglects the fact that the new editor of the Washington Examiner magazine is Seth Mandel, another Trump-skeptical conservative. While the Standard may have taken a more stridently anti-Trump position than any other conservative outlet, it was far from the only outlet to oppose many of President Trump’s policies as well as critiquing his lack of moral fiber. The biggest problem for the Standard, at least in the mainstream conservative mind, was the consistently anti-Trump tone taken by many of its leading voices, even when Trump was accomplishing conservative goals. To a large extent, this was due to the ideological shadow cast by longtime Standard editor-in-chief Bill Kristol, who has been loudly proclaiming that he is seeking a primary alternative to Trump in 2020... Can you say 'Good-bye'.  https://www.dailywire.com/news/39376/weekly-standard-died-today-heres-what-means-ben-shapiro?utm_source=shapironewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=121518-news&utm_campaign=position1
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When scumbag/liar-nObama Was Accused Of 
Pre-Election Hush Money Payoff Media Was Silent
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{lidblog.com} ~ Those who have followed the news over recent days know that the 24-hour cable media seems to be covering the Michael Cohen story almost exclusively...  Yet the same press was quiet when the Barack scumbag/liar-nObama campaign was accused of offering someone six-figures to shut up. Cohen claims President Trump told him to arrange hush-money payments to cover-up two payments to women who claimed to have had affairs with the future president, a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels and a $150,000 payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal. The president counters that any such payments were not illegal because they came out of his pocket, not from campaign funds. In May 2012 Ed Klien wrote in the New York Post about an scumbag/liar-nObama campaign’s offer of $150,000 to Jeremiah Wright with the request he stops preaching until after the 2008 election.In an interview on Sean Hannity’s radio show, Klein said Wright named Dr. Eric Whitaker as the person who emailed the congregant who passed the offer to scumbag/liar-nObama’s former preacher. Dr. Whitaker, at the time, was the vice president of the University of Chicago Medical Center and a  member of scumbag/liar-nObama’s inner circle. Interestingly Michele scumbag/liar-nObama had worked at the University of Chicago Medical Center, and per the Washington Times in 2012,  the scumbag/liar-nObama administration awarded a $6 million grant to the University of Chicago Medical Center’s Urban Health Initiative, a program run by the same, Dr. Whitaker...
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Farm Bill Socialism in Senate
by CHRIS EDWARDS

{cato.org} ~ Republicans have criticized the socialism of Democrats such as Rep. commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but they should reflect on their own party’s socialist vote in the Senate yesterday... The upper chamber voted 87-13 for the bloated monstrosity known as the farm bill, which funds farm subsidies and food stamps. Republicans in the Senate voted in favor 38-13. It is not hyperbole to call the farm bill “socialism.” It will spend $867 billion over the next decade, thus pushing up government debt and taxes. It includes large-scale wealth redistribution in the form of food stamps. At its core is central planning, which is obvious when you consider that the bill is 807 pages of legalese laying out excruciating details on crop prices, acres, yields, and other micromanagement. Furthermore, the bill lines the pockets of wealthy elites landowners, which is a central feature of socialism in practice around the world. The bill does not represent incremental reform toward smaller government. It is an extension and expansion of big government programs. Many Republican senators who claim to be conservative voted for farm bill socialism yesterday. They voted for wealth redistribution, central planning, and ultimately higher taxes. Yet on their official Senate websites, these members who approved socialism yesterday nonetheless claim to favor conservative budget policies...  https://www.cato.org/blog/farm-bill-socialism-senate?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWVRJNU5EaGlOR1ExWW1NMiIsInQiOiJNcmp3ZlZ0S0pxQ0hWTkZucHpqb0pkNEcyUVltK3RhRnh3NVR3YnZBXC9pQnJNazl3dk91b2J0YjVLdkNnU2x1RUlvdjNZWkd6Y2h6NDlnQzk1UTcxUllMMktYZDBST25qVWJic2FvRkhDMjY3Nm85Rlo0Y0tqVWFoUVFpbFwvQUNLIn0%3D
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The Myth of Capitalism-Caused Inequity

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by Political Editors:  The expressions of greed and envy can be present in both the poor and rich alike. Or to put it another way, wealth does not make one greedy any more than poverty makes one envious. Both of these negative attitudes are manifestations of a deeper condition — that of selfishness. It is this deeper condition that politicians have made a profession of preying upon. And no political movement does this more so than socialism, which preaches that any inequality anywhere is a sure sign of injustice.

             This is why leftists continuously point to differences, especially those involving income, and loudly declare, “Injustice!” “Not fair!” Rather than soberly considering the fact that within a free-market economy various income differences exist due to a multitude of social and economic factors, including one of the largest — personal choice — these socialists only play the politics of envy and resentment.
               Like the infamous gender-pay-gap trope, which proponents tirelessly claim is evidence of some fictional unjust social order steeped in patriarchal misogyny, socialists dubiously misuse statistics to further their crusade against capitalism by maintaining that it only serves the greedy and the rich. And for “evidence,” they point to the supposed “explosion of income inequality” and blame capitalism for making the rich richer while making the poor poorer.
               This was clearly the message of French economist Thomas Piketty in his 2014 bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century. In the book, Piketty contended that there was a skyrocketing income-inequality gap within Western societies and that capitalism was to blame. It’s unfortunate that Piketty’s book wasn’t classified under fiction, for it was little else.
               Phil Magness of the American Institute for Economic Research notes Piketty’s errors, writing, “In short, the widely reported explosion of inequality in the past three decades is likely a myth, built upon outdated and flawed statistics. … Whereas Piketty … [shows] a massive century-long swing of almost 20 percentage points in the income share of the top 10 percent, the adjusted figures show a much flatter curve with a little over half the variation. Inequality still falls and rises under the revised numbers, but at a comparatively subdued rate. Under the adjustments, the top 10 percent income share seldom strays more than 5 percentage points away from a century-long average of about 35 percent.
               Magness adds, “Perhaps instead of assuming that we’re in the midst of a surging inequality crisis, we should first settle more fundamental issues affecting the accuracy of our measurements over the past century.” Or as James Freeman of The Wall Street Journal observes, “Perhaps we should also focus on ensuring an abundance of opportunity, rather than regarding it as a problem when some people inevitably make more than others.
               Greed and envy are not caused by and are not exclusive to capitalism; rather they are manifestations of the selfishness residing within the human heart. But no other economic system in history has allowed for more economic growth, created more wealth, or raised up more people out of poverty than capitalism. To suggest otherwise is to entertain an economic fiction rooted in resentment of the wealthy rather than concern for the poor.  ~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/articles/60036?mailing_id=3947&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3947&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=b

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Saturday PM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Google's BIG Lie: 'Without Political Bias'
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by Jordan Candler  
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We Could Add Obstruction Of Justice To dirty 
cop-Robert Mueller’s 4 Current Criminal Complaints
jkPkCQNzrEOI3rgIDXDXuCz1KH5yIHbko2uxPUTOLJ20WmP8ykaqsMqkPUL9s-aXkuiUz0Sovueo9VIJMyfskqjPAQB-ilbBOC7eaQKoY-97Z4cB6QGS3oKemPuqAulp2phh=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=300by Tim Brown
{thewashingtonstandard.com} ~ Well, it looks like we’re discovering more and more of the corruption of dirty cop-Robert Mueller... It is being reported that the Office of the Special Counsel deleted text messages from the iPhone of fired FBI agent Peter Strzok before turning it over to the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Yes, these are those infamous text messages between Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page. There are literally thousands of text messages that were wiped from the phones by dirty cop-Mueller’s team. Can you say obstruction of justice? The reason the investigation began was that the DOJ/OIG was notified that there was a significant gap in text messaging data from mid-December 2016 through mid-May 2017 from Strzok and Page’s phones. Meanwhile, both of them walk free while the dirty cop-Mueller probe continues to cost the American people $22 million and he still hasn’t discovered one thing the investigation was supposed to be about...  https://thewashingtonstandard.com/latest-revelation-we-could-add-obstruction-of-justice-to-robert-muellers-4-current-criminal-complaints/
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scumbag/clown-Schumer welcomes departure 
of 'toxic' Zinke from Trump's 'swamp cabinet'
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by Adam Shaw  
{foxnews.com} ~ Senate Democratic Leader Chuck scumbag/clown-Schumer, D-NY, welcomed the news of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's upcoming departure from the Trump cabinet... calling him "toxic" and declaring that the "swamp cabinet will be a little less foul without him.” “Ryan Zinke was one of the most toxic members of the cabinet in the way he treated our environment, our precious public lands, and the way he treated the government like it was his personal honey pot. The swamp cabinet will be a little less foul without him,” scumbag/clown-Schumer said in a statement. President Trump announced Saturday that Zinke will be stepping down from his post at the end of the year, amid a number of ethics controversies. “Secretary of the Interior @RyanZinke will be leaving the Administration at the end of the year after having served for a period of almost two years,” he tweeted. “Ryan has accomplished much during his tenure and I want to thank him for his service to our Nation.” Trump added that he would announce Zinke’s replacement by the end of next week...  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ryan-zinke-secretary-of-the-interior-will-leave-his-post-at-end-of-year-trump-says
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The Feminist Life Script Has Made Many 
Women Miserable. Don’t Let It Sucker You  
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by Joy Pullmann  
{thefederalist.com} ~ Our culture is so saturated with feminism that even conservatives and devoutly religious people like me think inside its wheel ruts... This wouldn’t be a problem, except that feminism is antithetical to human flourishing, both individually and corporately, because it has a false view of human nature. No matter how the evidence piles up in heartbreak after heartbreak, many women continue to give themselves cognitive dissonance. We all want to believe that we’re exceptional, that patterns of human behavior don’t apply to us. That while bad things happened to other people who did the same things we are or want to, those bad things won’t happen to us, too. We’re special. We’re different. Refusing to learn from history and experience only hardens people against the feedback from reality they need to make their lives better through smarter decisions. Thinking that the experience and wisdom of humans across time has a claim on our present behavior allows a form of troubleshooting and decision making using billions of accumulated data points. Yes, it requires humility to consider whether your presuppositions and behavior are wrong, but what you may lose in feminist score keeping you reap a hundredfold in a richly happy life. How do I know? It’s happened to me. I got lucky, with an unintended and unwanted pregnancy. We were married, but I was devastated, because I had wanted to do what everyone says you should, and focus on my career right out of college. My husband and I called the baby our “fruitcake”: that present you get that nobody knows exactly what to do with. A finicky baby, he kept that nickname deservedly for his first two years. Now, it no longer fits him...  http://thefederalist.com/2018/12/11/the-feminist-life-script-has-made-many-women-miserable-dont-let-it-sucker-you/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=b1a9906944-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_14_08_39&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-b1a9906944-83771801
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scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton Files New Answers
Under Oath About Illegal Email System
5AheuTooSFUPkwgiklGXcR214Rudn5YoFzJQ9zoh-D3XM2UBNVnOSonHNeknWZEhBM9uizH-fj8sH0896-pQx6_1yubrM2GgN-EoLmRSL5xAW_SOkJ5u9ODfvjVddxqbO2xuncUTpd0tM9CspXc_fQb-2w=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=300by Tim Brown
{thewashingtonstandard.com} ~ A US District Court Judge ordered scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton to answer questions last month regarding her implementation and use of her illegal email server while she was Secretary of State...  She initially rejected providing answers, but ultimately submitted them. In her answers, scumbag/liar-Clinton said she disregarded the law against her unlawful server for the “purpose of convenience.” In 2016, scumbag/liar-Clinton was required to submit under oath written answers to Judicial Watch’s questions. She refused to do so. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled on November 15 that within 30 days scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton must answer under oath two additional questions about her illegal email server. Those two questions she had to answer were:  Describe the creation of the scumbag/liar-clintonemail.com system, including who decided to create the system, the date it was decided to create the system, why it was created, who set it up, and when it became operational. - During your October 22, 2015 appearance before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi, you testified that 90 to 95 percent of your emails “were in the State’s system” and “if they wanted to see them, they would certainly have been able to do so.” Identify the basis for this statement, including all facts on which you relied in support of the statement, how and when you became aware of these facts, and, if you were made aware of these facts by or through another person, identify the person who made you aware of these facts. At the time of the judge’s ruling, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said, “A federal court ordered scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton to answer more questions about her illicit email system – which is good news.  It is shameful that Judicial Watch attorneys must continue to battle the State and Justice Departments, which still defend scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton, for basic answers to our questions about scumbag/liar-Clinton’s email misconduct.”... Why are the Justice Depart still protecting her?  https://thewashingtonstandard.com/purpose-of-convenience-hillary-clinton-files-new-answers-under-oath-about-illegal-email-system/
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scumbag-Schiff Calls on DOJ to Rewrite Rules Prohibiting
a Sitting President From Being Indicted
by Rusty

{thepoliticalinsider.com} ~ Democrat Rep. scumbag-Adam Schiff is requesting that the Department of Justice change guidelines that prohibit a sitting President from being indicted... The call comes as President Trump’s former lawyer has been sentenced to three years in prison for tax evasion, lying to Congress, and other crimes. Michael Cohen arranged payment on behalf of Trump to cover up an affair he allegedly. The implication by Democrats is that he did so at the direction of the President himself, something that remains to be proven. scumbag-Schiff believes the DOJ needs to rewrite the rules, established during the Nixon administration, as a means to prevent Trump from allegedly ‘escaping justice.’ “I think the Justice Department needs to re-examine that OLC opinion, the Office of Legal Counsel opinion,” scumbag-Schiff told CNN, “that you cannot indict a sitting president under circumstances in which the failure to do so may mean that person escapes justice.” While many in the mainstream media scoffed at the notion, President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has already revealed that dirty cop-Mueller has no intention of indicting Trump, as per the DOJ guidelines. “They, the special counsel’s office acknowledge the fact that they can’t indict us,” Giuliani told NBC News in May. “They know they don’t have that power.”...scumbag-Schiff has been against President Trump from day one.  https://thepoliticalinsider.com/schiff-president-indicted/?utm_campaign=TPI_breaking_newsletter_12_14_2018&utm_source=criticalimpact&utm_medium=email&utm_content=4b4ea4948726422aa6473c7b9fa19141&source=CI
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Google's BIG Lie: 'Without Political Bias'
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by Jordan Candler:  It’s no secret that Google has already crossed “The Creepy Line.” A lot of sketchy conduct is happening behind the scenes, which implicates not just consumers and privacy but also politics and policy. Not that the tech giant will admit to such deleterious behavior, of course.

             This week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai faced the House Judiciary Committee, where he laughably asserted, “I lead this company without political bias and work to ensure that our products continue to operate that way. To do otherwise would go against our core principles and our business interests.
               Actually, to do otherwise would reinforce Google’s core principles, and that’s exactly what the company has done. Last year, our Thomas Gallatin reported, “Robert Epstein of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology … ran an experiment to determine just how biased toward leftist politics were the nation’s leading social media giants. … Epstein found that Google searches returned twice as many pro-scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton news articles as did Yahoo. Even more disturbing was Google’s targeting tactic. Men in blue states saw more than double the pro-scumbag/liar-Clinton articles than did women in red states.”
               Gallatin continued, “Another study conducted by Nicholas Diakopoulos, a professor at Northwestern University, found that in December 2015 Google search results of presidential candidates showed seven out of every 10 articles were positive toward Democrats, whereas less than six out of 10 were positive for Republican candidates. … On election night, only 1% of 113 featured Google election-related searches produced articles from conservative news sources.” Furthermore, “Conservative media outlets began to see more of their content limited on leading social media sites, such as Prager University witnessing much of its content on Google-owned YouTube being labeled as restricted for no apparent reason other than the fact that it promotes conservative ideology.
               There are other machinations as well. Earlier this year, our Louis DeBroux reportedthat “Google finds itself the subject of a lawsuit for discriminatory practices, targeting conservative and white male employees for harassment and mistreatment simply because of their appearance and beliefs.” Google also listed the California Republican Party’s ideology as “Nazism,” censored the word “gun,” and utilizes the Southern Poverty Law Center to police YouTube.
               More recently, The Daily Caller reported, “Google employees debated whether to bury conservative media outlets in the company’s search function as a response to President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, internal Google communications … reveal.
               We’d like to know what Pichai’s definition of “political bias” actually is. Because none of these functions appear to be without it.
               Sadly, Democrats couldn’t care less. In fact, during Tuesday’s testimony, they basically blessed Google with carte blanche. According to Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), “Even if Google were deliberately discriminating against conservative viewpoints, just as Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting and conservative talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh discriminate against liberal points of view, that would be its right as a private company to do so, not to be questioned by government.”
               Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) chimed in, “You’ve got a right to have whatever politics you have. We could subpoena Fox News and bring them in here and beat them up about how 90% of the references on Fox News to Barack scumbag/liar-nObama or scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton are negative, but they’ve got that right under the First Amendment, and you’ve got a right under the First Amendment to have whatever political views you’ve got.
               While technically true, these aren’t fair comparisons. Unlike some of these other big names, Google — whose consumer base is substantially more sizable — isn’t a political entity. Yet its influence is second to none. As Tony Perkins observes, Pichai has “90 percent of the world’s online searches at his fingertips,” and those searches in some cases are being used as a tool for promotion and/or censorship, depending on the circumstance. Furthermore, guys like Rush Limbaugh are distinguished becausethey brand themselves as politically biased. If the circumstances were flipped and it was conservatives being aggrandized by Google, Nadler and Raskin would argue just the opposite.
               Pichai should be ashamed for doubling down with such an egregious lie. And Democrats should be ashamed for cultivating it.  

~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/articles/60035?mailing_id=3947&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3947&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  
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Sat Med/PM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Challenging the Bureaucratic State
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by Brian Mark Weber  
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Huawei Is the Doorway to China's Police State
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by Dan Blumenthal 
{nationalinterest.org} ~ The arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou was apparently a long time coming... U.S. investigators began looking into Huawei’s dealings when Iran’s once Chinese-backed ZTE was identified as a sanctions-breaker. U.S. prosecutors now appear to have substantial evidence of the Chinese Communist Party’s state-backed mobile and technology company’s violations of the sanctions regime against Iran. The arrest and call for extradition spotlights just how concerned the free world should be about Huawei. The stakes are high, as the company is positioned to be the dominant player in 5G mobile networks. If Huawei wins this competition against U.S. companies, much of the world’s data will pass through the mobile networks of a CCP-backed company that does business with the world’s most troubling regimes.  Huawei is also the critical player in CCP General-Secretary Xi Jinping’s bid to establish a high-tech police state and to leapfrog the United States in critical technologies that will enable a host of military capabilities. The CCP is already collecting enough data from Chinese citizens who use mobile networks, search engines, and online purchasing systems to establish a “Social Credit System.” To say that this system is Orwellian is an understatement. Even George Orwell could not have imagined the new technology of totalitarianism. The Chinese government plan is to have a database on Chinese citizens’ consumer preferences, personal activities, and habits to give each one a “score” based on loyalty to the party and other behaviors deemed by party leaders to make for good citizens. This score will determine if Chinese citizens are accepted to colleges, can get good jobs, buy a house, and so much more. It is nothing less than an attempt to perfect the world’s first ever high-tech police state...
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Electoral Fraud: the Real Record
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{americanthinker.com} ~ When Donald Trump was running for office, he raised the issue of fraudulent votes. As with everything else Trump has said, it was instantly attacked and ridiculed by the media... Since then, the idea has been dismissed by MSM journalists who have insisted that there have not been any cases of illegal voting.  Recently, though, the novel possibility of fraudulent votes in favor of a  Republican candidate has made the MSM do a 180o while reiterating that such things have never happened favoring Democratic candidates. As with many other topics, MSM journalists have blatantly lied. Here are a few recent instances of illegal voting:
*In November 2016, there were 6,540 same-day registrants in New Hampshire who registered to vote in New Hampshire using out-of-state driver’s licenses to prove their identity.
+In Sacramento, California, two illegal aliens voted five times in 2016.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation found over a thousand persons who voted illegally in Virginia.
*In Cincinnati, a poll worker found her dead neighbor's name on an active voter registry.
*In Maryland, several Democratic city governments are allowing noncitizens to fraudulently vote in elections.
*In Ft. Worth, Leticia Sanchez formed a mail-in voter fraud ring, which included helping a blind voter. Just prior to being arrested, she warned her minions that a group of “malicious people” were investigating.
*Broward County Election Supervisor Brenda Snipes refused to turn over voting records on the counting and collection of ballots, despite the law saying she had to. There were many irregularities in that 2018 election, such as there being more voters on rolls than actual citizens. s Some 80,000 individuals filled out blank voting forms. Broward County has seen past instances of voter fraud, always in favor of Democrats, the key being absentee ballots. “Irregularities” also occurred in Santa Rosa, Citrus, and Okaloosa counties. To date, no one has been arrested...(the list goes on) Keep in mind also that these are just a tiny portion of detected transgressions. How many more illegal acts have occurred that have gone unnoticed? After all, voting illegally is child’s play, with no checks and balances and a minimum of negative repercussions. Since Republican voters are almost always the victim and the Republican Party is without doubt the Stupid Party, this stomach-churning travesty will continue...
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Russia-Ukraine Conflict Could Spark WW III
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{americanlibertyreport.com} ~ The war drums are pounding in Ukraine as Russia ramps up its military presence for an impending fight that could draw NATO allies into a bloody World War III conflict... The Russian Navy fired on and seized Ukrainian spy vessels in what many consider an aggressive violation of international law at the direction of President Vladimir Putin. Russian forces have already effectively annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula through military force while NATO countries and ex-Pres. scumbag/liar-nObama sat on their hands. The message is clear to Russian strongman Putin that the West remains politically and militarily unwilling to go head-to-head with Russia. “Russia will likely escalate militarily against Ukraine imminently,” the Institute for the Study of War’s research team members Catherine Harris and Mason Clark reportedly said. “Russia likely perceives the lack of a unified NATO response to Moscow’s aggression in the Sea of Azov as an opportunity to escalate against Ukraine and elsewhere in the future. None of the responses are likely sufficient to deter Putin, whereas the disagreement itself will likely embolden him.” The recent arrest of the sailors in international waters has amped up tension between politically divided Ukraine and Russia. President Putin has directed an escalation in military presence along the Russia-Ukraine border. An increased naval presence in the Black Sea has also been reported as propaganda efforts to sway Ukraine sentiments that Russia is poised to repel a Western assault. Other reports indicate that Putin has grown frustrated and anxious about the forceful diplomatic pushback over the Ukraine sailors who were arrested. His inclinations appear to be that a pre-emptive military incursion may be the best course to secure long-term control over Ukraine...
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The Flynn Investigation: 
McCabe's Personal Retaliation?
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{americanthinker.com} ~ As I noted here on June 30, 2017 Michael Flynn and Andrew McCabe have a past that predates the Trump presidency... one that provides ample motivation for the perjury trap that McCabe and scumbag-James Comey set up after Flynn’s illegal unmasking. McCabe had a personal grudge against Flynn and the perjury trap was his revenge. It explains why McCabe would entrap Flynn in a seemingly harmless interview about contacts with Flynn’s Russian counterparts, advising Flynn he didn’t need to bring a lawyer along to complicate things: The federal judge who will sentence Lt.-Gen. Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI has ordered the FBI to give him, by today, the notes written by the two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn in January 2017. Judge Emmet Sullivan also wants to see a January 24 memo that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe wrote about his own telephone conversation with Flynn, a conversation that happened just two hours before the FBI agents arrived at Flynn's West Wing office. This follows information in Flynn's sentencing memo to the court, which suggests that Flynn was deliberately set up: The sentencing memo says at 12:35 p.m. on January 24, 2017, McCabe called Flynn at his West Wing office to discuss a security training session the FBI had recently conducted at the white [sic] House. McCabe's written memo detailing that phone conversation says McCabe told Flynn "that we needed to have two of our agents sit down" with Flynn to talk about his communications with Russian officials. McCabe wrote: "I explained that I thought the quickest way to get this done was to have a conversation between General Flynn and the agents only...
JW Videos of the Week
‘Whole Point of dirty cop-Mueller Probe to Destroy Trump’s Legitimacy’
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Tom Fitton’s Weekly Update – December 14, 2018
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Ballot Harvesting Provides ‘Opportunities for Fraud’
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Tom Fitton Delivers Opening Remarks on the scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation & Uranium One Scandals
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DOJ Suppressed Investigation into scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation
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scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation was an ‘Influence Factory’
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Challenging the Bureaucratic State

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by Brian Mark Weber:  One of President Donald Trump’s core pledges during the 2016 campaign was to drain the Swamp, but taking on the Washington bureaucracy will require far more than cutting back on spending or making government more efficient.

            For well over 100 years, our nation operated without a monarchical executive. Then along came Woodrow Wilson, an academic and a “progressive” who believed that an enlightened administrative state was superior to government “by the people.” Franklin D. Roosevelt then “perfected” this bureaucratic governance with his “New Deal” programs, which resulted in soaring deficits, a tripling of the federal budget between 1933 and 1941, and a needlessly prolonged Great Depression.           
               Thus, modern presidents, including Trump, and their executive agencies have enjoyed carte blanche without having to worry too much about that pesky separation of powers. Ironically, Trump’s conservative appointments to the Supreme Court may be just what’s needed to finally curb the power of the executive branch and its myriad agencies that have run roughshod over the Constitution.
               Here’s the good news: Just this week, The Wall Street Journal opined, “The Supreme Court announced that it will hear a legal challenge to two of its precedents that defer to agency interpretations of ambiguous regulations.
               Defer to agencies may not sound as threatening as the border caravan, ISIS, or a turbulent stock market, but for those of us who still believe in the quaint constitutional principles of separation of powers and limited government, it’s right up there with the most pressing issues of our time. And these agencies have had a detrimental impact on Liberty for far too long.
               For the monster of bureaucratic overreach, we can partially thank the Supreme Court, which in 1984 reached a decision in Chevron U.S.A vs. Natural Resources Defense Council that the judiciary will defer to an agency as long as Congress has not “directly spoken” to the issue and the agency has engaged in a “permissible construction” of the statute.
               The result of this seemingly innocuous ruling is that the president and his executive branch agencies now have tremendous power to operate as an autonomous government. In other words, they can make, interpret, and execute their own policies without deferring to Congress or the Supreme Court. In fact, it’s Congress and the Supreme Court that now defer to the agencies, thanks to the Chevron ruling. The Constitution is pretty clear about the separation of powers, and how those powers should function. But when one branch of government tells another that it’s basically free to act without oversight from the other branches, it’s no wonder we have the Swamp.
               The late Justice Antonin Scalia did not participate in Chevron, but he did seem to throw up his hands and give in to the growing power of the federal government when he stated not long after the ruling that “broad delegation to the executive is the hallmark of the modern administrative state.”
               Compare this to Justice Neil Gorsuch, who, in 2016 as a member of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, stated in reference to Chevron, “There’s an elephant in the room with us today. We have studiously attempted to work our way around it and even left it unremarked. But the fact is Chevron … permit[s] executive bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power and concentrate federal power in a way that seems more than a little difficult to square with the Constitution of the framers’ design. Maybe the time has come to face the behemoth.”
               National Review’s David French writes, “This Supreme Court … has the opportunity to begin the arduous process of paring back the powers of the president. The Court can’t, however, work miracles. It can push the president back a bit and reassert its own authority, but it can’t make Congress step forward and reassert its rightful lawmaking primacy. If the presidency recedes, the legislative branch must step forward.”
               Despite many attempts to erode its relevancy and authority, the Constitution of the United States is the single most important document we have to protect and defend Liberty. We can only hope that President Trump’s Supreme Court appointments of Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh will begin to push back against the Court’s previous ruling in Chevron and restore the important constitutional balance among the legislative, judicial, and executive branches.  ~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/articles/60038?mailing_id=3947&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3947&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=b

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Saturday Noon ~ TheFrontPageCpver

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Did the FBI Set Up Michael Flynn?
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by Thomas Gallatin  
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Congress Moves to Blacklist Iranian Banks
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by Adam Kredo
{freebeacon.com} ~ Iran hawks in Congress are in the early stages of planning an all-out campaign to blacklist, sanction, and isolate Iranian banks tied to the funding of terrorism and money laundering... according to sources and legislation obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. New legislation spearheaded by Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and allies in both the House and Senate would disconnect from the global financial system every Iranian bank identified as playing a part in the funding of Iran's global terror operations, sources told the Free Beacon. The legislation, which was viewed by the Free Beacon, would also treat all Iranian banks as a terrorism and money laundering threat, a massive escalation in the American sanctions regime that goes even further than the Trump administration has, a sign that Iran hawks on Capitol Hill are growing weary with what they view as an effort by the administration to slow roll the sanctions in a bid to appease European allies still working with Tehran. The new legislation also would address alternate financing methods used by Iran and European allies to skirt new U.S. sanctions, such as the use of cryptocurrency...
Democrats’ Border-Barrier Flip-Flop
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{nationalreview.com} ~ Is steel more moral than concrete? House Democratic leader Nancy Pulosi of California said last week that she and other Democrats consider a border wall “immoral.”... But some of the same Democrats who decry President Donald J. Trump’s proposed concrete wall as a 30-foot-tall human-rights violation actually approved 700 miles of steel barriers under the Secure Fence Act of 2006 (SFA). Give Pulosi this: She is consistent. She voted against SFA. Maybe, deep down, she wants an America without borders. Perhaps she also has removed the front and back doors of her five homes, the better to welcome everyone. It’s tough to question the hospitality of the woman who said last spring that each member of MS-13 — the barbaric, pro-decapitation street gang — twinkles with “a spark of divinity.” Meanwhile, these current, former, and then-ascendant Senate Democrats all voted for SFA, which President George W. Bush signed into law. On September 26, 2006, the Senate passed SFA 80–19, with 26 Democrats voting Yea. Among them: Joseph loose lip-Biden of Delaware, Sherrod Brown of Ohio,  Tom Carper of Delaware, scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton of New York, Dianne Fein-stein of California, scumbag-Bill Nelson of Florida, Barack scumbag/liar-nObama of Illinois, Chuck scumbag/clown-Schumer of New York,  Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and scumbag-Ron Wyden of Oregon. Illegal aliens from the so-called caravan lately have been caught on camera burrowing under and vaulting over the steel fence. One of these barricade climbers, Honduran Maryury Elizabeth Serrano-Hernandez, 19, soon went into labor and delivered an American-citizen anchor baby in a San Diego hospital on November 27. Border Patrol officers told Fox News that the mother, the father age 20, their newborn son, and another boy age 2 all were “placed into immigration proceedings and released on their own recognizance on December 2.” Let’s see if they eventually attend their asylum hearing or simply dissolve into the American landscape...
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Jerry Brown Tells UN That Trump Does 
Not Represent the People of the USA
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by Michael Bastasch
{dailycaller.com} ~ California Gov. Jerry Brown excoriated the Trump administration’s “behavior” at the United Nations climate summit in Poland... arguing it did “not represent the people of the United States.” “The United States, I’m sorry to say, does not represent the people of the United States,” Brown said in a video address Thursday to U.N. delegates gathered in Katowice for the summit, called COP24. “California, Washington, New York, Vermont and many, many other states representing tens of millions of people believe in the science of climate change, believe and demand we reduce our carbon emissions,” the Democrat said. Brown was reacting to news the U.S. joined with Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait in blocking the conference from “welcoming” a U.N. report on limiting future global to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100 — a report called for in the 2015 Paris Agreement. President Donald Trump promised to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris accord in 2020. Brown is one of Trump’s staunchest critics when it comes to the planned Paris withdrawal... Brown is a complete ass, but is welling to except government money to help in his Caliif fire.  https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/14/jerry-brown-un-climate-actions/
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dirty cop-Mueller Team Scrubbed Peter Strzok’s 
Texts Before Giving Phone to Inspector General
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by Joshua Caplan
{breitbart.com} ~ The Office of the Special Counsel deleted text messages from the iPhone of fired FBI agent Peter Strzok before turning it over to the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG)... according to a report released by the federal watchdog. On Thursday, the Justice Department’s inspector general released a report stating thousands of text messages  exchanged between Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page could not be recovered after dirty cop-Mueller’s team wiped clean the phones it had issued them.“SCO’s Records Officer told the OIG that as part of the office’s records retention procedure, the officer reviewed Strzok’s DOJ issued iPhone after he returned it to the SCO and determined it contained no substantive text messages,” the watchdog report reads. As Conservative Review national security reporter Jordan Schachtel first discovered, the OIG said Strzok’s cell phone was “reset to factory settings,” deleting all data stored on the device. The federal watchdog said in the report it found “no discernible patterns” about the content of thousands of messages the FBI was able to recover between Strzok and Page. Both have been part of dirty cop-Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia...
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Coaxing Reluctant States to Take on Health Reform
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{realclearpolicy.com} ~ Last month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released waiver concepts to give states examples of reforms they could pursue under section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)... The concepts are a good start, but CMS will need to go much further, with more detailed templates, to get states to take on the risks associated with running their own health reform programs. Sen. Ron Wyden and the late Sen. Bob Bennett championed giving states the option to pursue their own reform concepts under the ACA. Their efforts led to the inclusion of section 1332 in the final legislation. Section 1332 allows states to apply to the Departments of Health and Human Services and Treasury for waivers of ACA provisions. In particular, states can ask to receive the federal funds provided for insurance enrollment in the ACA in a manner that differs from what the law specifies. The law stipulated that 1332 waivers could be approved only if they stayed within certain “guardrails.” States’ reform plans must provide levels of insurance coverage to their citizens comparable to what is offered under the ACA, with comparable levels of benefits and premiums, and without increasing the federal government’s budget deficit above the level that would have occurred without the waiver so-called “deficit neutrality”. Approved waiver programs can last up to five years before they have to be renewed or terminated...
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Did the FBI Set Up Michael Flynn?
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by Thomas Gallatin:  Did the FBI mistreat former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn by intentionally setting up a perjury trap and pressing him to walk into it unaware? That appears to be what U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan is seeking to determine after he surprisingly demanded that dirty cop-Robert Mueller and the Justice Department provide additional documents related to the FBI’s January 2017 interview of Flynn.

             Flynn’s legal team’s argument is that the FBI failed to alert Flynn to the criminality of lying to investigators and that then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe pressured agents to set up an interview that precluded Flynn from having an attorney present. That was enough to prompt Sullivan to seek answers before sentencing Flynn for lying to the FBI.
               The actors in this whole event should raise a few eyebrows. The now-fired anti-Trump FBI agent Peter Strzok was one of the two agents in the interview that the also now-fired McCabe set up. Clearly, Flynn believed the meeting was not intended as an interrogation of any sort, as he quickly agreed to meet with the agents the same day as he received the call from McCabe. Flynn even gave them a tour of the West Wing. And, of note, those agents described Flynn as “unguarded,” “relaxed and jocular,” as well as saying they “didn’t think he was lying” and that he “clearly saw the FBI agents as allies.
               Importantly, Flynn was never found to have committed any crime related to collusion with Russians. Instead, as Mark Alexander notesdirty cop-Mueller has only “accumulated some ‘process crimes,’ most notably perjury charges related to the testimony of George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. … There is nothing that remotely establishes Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. Nothing.
               Of most significance is the different treatment Flynn received to that of scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton, who showed up with nine lawyers to her interview with FBI agents. Or consider George Papadopoulos, who was given explicit warnings by agents of the criminality of perjury and was allowed to have attorneys present.
               Interestingly, The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland points out, “The most recent iteration of Sullivan’s standing entered in the Flynn case required dirty cop-Mueller’s office to produce ‘any evidence in its possession that is favorable to defendant and material either to defendant’s guilt or punishment.’ The order further required the government to submit to the court any information ‘which is favorable to the defendant but which the government believes not to be material.’” Sullivan may smell a rat.
               dirty cop-Mueller and the DOJ have until 3:00 p.m. today to produce for the court the requested documents. Hopefully, those documents will shed a little more light on this twisted web of legal gotcha. And for Flynn, who has lost almost everything in this politically motivated witch hunt, there could be at least a little redemption in the end.  

~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/articles/60054?mailing_id=3947&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3947&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  
Read more…

Sat Med/AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Interesting Alignment – Trump Makes 
The UniParty More Visible Than Ever
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by sundance  
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Pacific Life pulls ads from Tucker Carlson's show after '
poorer and dirtier' immigration comment
by OWEN DAUGHERTY

{thehill.com} ~ Insurance company Pacific Life announced Friday that it is pulling its advertisements from Fox News's “Tucker Carlson Tonight”... after the host said the “immigration crisis” in America makes the country “poorer and dirtier and more divided.” The action came after an advertisement from the company was shown on-screen right after Carlson made the comment on his opening monologue. The ad promoted the company as having been “protecting generations of families for 150 years.” The company quickly received backlash on social media calling for it to distance itself from Carlson’s program. Pacific Life said it would pull all ads from the show "in the coming weeks as we reevaluate our relationship with his program,” according to a statement posted to Twitter. “One of our ads appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show last night following a segment where Mr. Carlson made a number of statements regarding immigration,” the company said. “As a company, we strongly disagree with Mr. Carlson’s statements. Our customer base and our workforce reflect the diversity of our great nation, something we take great pride in,” the statement also read. "We will not be advertising on Mr. Carlson's show in the coming weeks as we reevaluate our relationship with his program."...
Trump names Mick Mulvaney as 
acting White House chief of staff
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{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ President Trump has named Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, as his new chief of staff... In a pair of tweets Friday afternoon, Trump announced Mulvaney, 51, a former South Carolina congressman, to the post in an acting capacity. It was unclear whether Mulvaney's appointment was a just temporary measure pending another person being picked for the role. Trump tweeted: "I am pleased to announce that Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management & Budget, will be named Acting White House Chief of Staff, replacing General John Kelly, who has served our Country with distinction. Mick has done an outstanding job while in the Administration."He added: "...I look forward to working with him in this new capacity as we continue to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! John will be staying until the end of the year. He is a GREAT PATRIOT and I want to personally thank him for his service!" The White House did not immediately clarify how long Trump expected Mulvaney to serve in an "acting" capacity. One Republican source told the Washington Examiner they believe Mulvaney is Trump's pick to permanently serve as chief of staff, but that the acting title is "probably semantics in case there’s a blow-up."...  https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-names-mick-mulvaney-as-acting-white-house-chief-of-staff?utm_source=WEX_Breaking%20News%20Alert_12/14/2018&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WEX_Breaking%20News
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Liberalism Bankrupts the Boy Scouts
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{spectator.org} ~ The other day President Trump called Rex Tillerson “dumb as a rock.”... That was payback for an interview in which his former Secretary of State called Trump undisciplined and a poor study. Trump had selected Tillerson for the job based in part on the recommendation of Robert Gates, scumbag/liar-nObama’s Secretary of Defense, according to press reports. Gates and Tillerson knew each other largely from the Boy Scouts, where they both held leadership positions during its transition from a traditional organization to a politically correct one. As president of the Boy Scouts, Gates had endorsed the adoption of the LGBT agenda, urging the organization to succumb to the demands of its critics. He cast adherence to Christian principles, not their betrayal, as the real threat to the organization’s future. “The status quo in our movement’s membership standards cannot be sustained,” he said. Don’t resist “the social, political and judicial changes taking place in our country,” he argued. Shamefully, Gates presented his counsel of capitulation under the guise of dutifulness, putting a perverse spin on the Boy Scouts code: “Our oath calls upon us to do our duty to God and country. The country is changing, and we are increasingly at odds with the legal landscape at both the state and federal levels. And, as a movement, we find ourselves with a policy more than a few of our church sponsors reject, thus placing Scouting between a boy and his church.” Tillerson, who served as president of the Boy Scouts a couple of years before Gates, laid the groundwork for this capitulation. He said that embracing the new PC morality would allow the Boy Scouts to “serve more youth.” What did it profit the Boy Scouts to gain the PC world and lose its soul? Judges may have to put a figure on it. According to press reports this week, the Boy Scouts organization, reeling from costly homosexual abuse lawsuits, is “considering” bankruptcy. Adding to its woes is that membership has “dwindled.”...
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Why Our Country Needs the Wall, and Now
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{dailysignal.com} ~ The United States is the most generous, pro-immigrant country in the world. Annually, we take in more immigrants than any other country on the planet... Couple that with the fact that immigration has been a driving issue in the last two campaign cycles, and it is more than reasonable to demand that the next funding bill include commonsense border security measures. With only days left before Congress gavels out and the power in the House of Representatives shifts from Republicans to Democrats, we, as members of Congress, must fulfill the promises we made to the American people to uphold the rule of law and secure our borders. Congress must fund President Donald Trump’s border wall and close the “catch and release” loopholes in the upcoming must-pass spending bill. We must do it now. The statistics are frightening. This fall, Border Patrol arrested a massive number of people coming across the border, as loopholes in our immigration laws continue to pull illegal aliens into the United States—more than 100,000 people in October and November alone...  https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/12/13/why-our-country-needs-the-wall-and-now/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWldSbE1qZGpObVl3WW1SaCIsInQiOiJxbzdPM0liUEtoTHlhd2N2WlVJSmF6enJybnU4Z29SOXQ3dTg0MnRRZHBZc0ZhRDBSNmpBeFUzc0RjbWRcL0VnUE51RDVlUVdNXC8xMldlMG1GRjlTMUZSaXZXeDZyNFVjcDdtbnJSR1wvSkxLbmM4cTRMRlFMdmtidThqYmkzbEs3YSJ9
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dirty cop-Mueller probe is costing 
taxpayers $25M: DOJ
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by Jeff Mordock
{washingtontimes.com} ~ Special counsel dirty cop-Robert Mueller’s Russia probe has cost taxpayers nearly $25 million, according to a Justice Department report Friday... Nearly $4.6 million of that was shelled out in the six months between April 1 and Oct. 31. That’s a slight uptick from the $4.5 million the dirty cop-Mueller probe cost between Oct. 1, 2017, and March 31. President Trump, who has dismissed the dirty cop-Mueller probe as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt,” has blasted its cost. In June, he wrote on Twitter “the Russian Hoax Investigation has now cost our government over $17 million and going up fast.” The figures were part of the Justice Department’s six-month expense tally that details the special counsel’s spending. Another six-month total from Nov. 1, 2018, through March 31, 2019 will be released next year. dirty cop-Mueller’s team has spent nearly $12 million on items such as staff salaries and travel. The latest report shows that expenses remained roughly the same in the past six months. During the past six months, about $2.9 million was spent on salaries and benefits for dirty cop-Mueller and his team, compared to $2.7 million during the prior six-month period. Travel costs ran about $580,000, up 9 percent from $532,000, according to the previous report... Where is this final dirty cop-Mueller report the media has been reporting about.  https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/dec/14/robert-muellers-probe-costs-taxpayers-22m/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual&utm_campaign=20180326&utm_term=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&bt_ee=GLn7N7pXr2lo0FVebLWHYC6rgLGnheWWAqWZumTypTwsi9Ey1wCSUqwAkD6RhN9S&bt_ts=1544821634210 
GOP Leadership Crumbling On Wall Funding
by George Rasley
 
{conservativehq.com} ~ So much for working around the clock until the Wall is funded. The vote schedule issued by the out-going House Republican leadership shows the House is not expected to resume business until next Wednesday... just two days before a deadline for funding the government. Please lend your voice to our “Don’t Waste The Lame Duck, Build The Wall” campaign.The border wall funding is at the center of a fight that could shut down parts of the government if Congress doesn't approve a measure to keep it open by Dec. 21. President Trump wants the bill to include $5 billion in funding for a security wall on the Mexican border, but Democrats have rejected that amount. Scott Wong and Niv Elis of The Hill report it's not clear the bill can win a majority of the House with Democrats rejecting it, and it would be dead on arrival in the Senate. House GOP leaders this week said they thought they could muscle it through the House after House Minority Leader Nancy Pulosi (D-Calif.), who is expected to be the Speaker in the next Congress, publicly dared Trump to try at a contentious White House meeting this week. After first saying the votes are there to pass wall funding, support from the House GOP leadership seems to be waning...  http://www.conservativehq.com/node/29312
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Interesting Alignment – Trump Makes 
The UniParty More Visible Than Ever
_tGYG4-rZZDnZEtRiAavpz24qJXtl_SZsELDbMJv3HK-kGklS60ckPxT4jRXLbpT-31S37sg7BIagkwgbxJUjY8QgY0hTrB7Kr9JTcvzufGU5gMkTYbogtgaK2ibDo9cVQ=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=400

by sundance

{theconservativetreehouse.com} ~ An interesting pattern of seemingly disconnected political stories is beginning to show signs of a common continuity. In the bigger of the big pictures seven words continue to set the baseline: “There are trillions of dollars at stake”.

When the common sense Tea Party movement formed in 2009 and 2010 it contained a monumentally frustrated grassroots electorate, and the scale of the movement caught the professional republican party off-guard. When Donald Trump ran for the office of the presidency he essentially did the same thing; he disrupted the apparatus of the professional republican party.

The difference between those two examples is one was from the bottom up, and the second was from the top down. However, the commonality in the two forces resulted in the 2016 victory.

It took a few years for the heavily armored old guard of GOP to formulate a plan to retain their control. In the example of the Tea Party, the republican power structures moved in 2011 through 2014 to co-opt the vulgarian movement and impede their disruptive influence. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was at the forefront of those power moves. {Go Deep} and {Go Deep} The basic issue for the GOP was retention of power.

McConnell and crew tamped down the fire. A few years pass and the issues that spurred the Tea Party movement remained unresolved. In 2015 Donald Trump taps in to that exact same Tea Party frustration toward the control authority within one-half of the DC UniParty; again, the professional republican apparatus was disrupted. The movement rebranded and now the MAGA movement wins the presidency.

So it should not come as a surprise to see an eerily similar response from within the GOP toward the new threat; the Trump presidency. After all, there are two constants in an ever changing universe: (1) “NeverTrump” didn’t go away; and (2) the Bush-clan, or GOP old guard, will never accept losing power.

The professional republicans and the professional democrats, ie. “the uniparty”, have a common enemy in President Trump. The vulgarian leader of the deplorable coalition never asked for permission; never paid the indulgency fees; never attended the necessary cloistered club meetings paying homage; and never offered the indulgent team of political elites terms for his takeover.

Thus Donald Trump, just like the Tea Party, would never be accepted.

Why is this important now?

Current events highlight the resurgence of a never disassembled GOP Bush clan influence. For the past two years it’s been a never-ending game of whac-a-mole as each of the establishment minded embeds surfaces at different times. Within the dynamic, the one commonality within the internecine conflict inside the Trump administration is the establishment GOP -vs- Trump MAGA.

Establishment GOP consultant Alex Castellanos was very open about the best design to getting rid of Donald Trump back in 2015 when he discussed an almost identical strategy for how Mitch McConnell destroyed the threat from the Tea Party a year earlier:

[…]  “The best way to do it is how Brutus killed Caesar. Get real close, snuggle up, and shiv him in the ribs”… 

Forgive me for mixing my metaphors here; but as each of the shiv-bearers appears, that’s when Trump is forced to deliver the whac-a-mole hammer. It’s like having an administration filled with establishment terror cells. Each cell acts independently, but each cell also acts based on a common objective: retain the UniParty.

The latest whac-a-mole example was Condi Rice’s embed plant and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson popping his head up. But there are many more examples all around in various forms; including the self-serving GOP exit of U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

When you think about the actual structure of the Republican state party machines; it’s enough to make you wonder if the mid-term outcome and lack of structural fight was not part of this dynamic. After all, “their” party was taken over by a new base and a new leader.

The same UniParty dynamic is visible in the way the FBI/DOJ and aggregate intelligence community were weaponized against Donald Trump – with Democrats and Republicans participating in the unlawful processes.   Now, in the downstream consequence phase, we see a UniParty defense approach to block Trump from revealing what happened.

I’m not sure people fully completely understand this dynamic within “spygate”. It was not a targeting operation by democrats; republicans were just as complicit. The ongoing goal to eliminate candidate and president Trump is *not* partisan.

Which brings me to the current state of the advisers around the executive. Remember, there are trillions at stake here – and the downstream benefactors are both Republicans and Democrats who make up the UniParty.

Within the UniParty dynamic, in order to retain full financial benefit, the political class need to align with Wall Street priorities. That alignment means the UniParty needs to eliminate Main Street priorities that are adverse to their interests.

Border controls and immigration enforcement are adverse interests to the UniParty. Additional cross party alignment to benefit Wall Street surrounds: •budgets and massive government spending; •government controlled healthcare retention; •government controlled education (common core); •and most importantly the removal of any national economic and trade policy that would threaten the structure of the multinationals.

On all of these issues the Democrats and Republicans have an identical outlooks, common interests and mirrored legislative priorities. It is not coincidental that US Chamber of Commerce President Tom Dohonue also outlined these issues as primary priorities for his massive lobbyist spending.

There are trillions of dollars at stake; and we must never discount how far the Big Club participants will go to ensure the White House counselors are shaping their advice toward those objectives.

There are no MAGA lobbying groups in Washington DC advocating for policies that benefit economic nationalism. On this objective President Donald Trump stands alone.

We don’t need a third party in Washington DC, we actually need a second one.
Read more…

Saturday AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Trump's Ex-Lawyer Didn't Violate Campaign Finance Laws, and Neither Did the President
by Hans von Spakovsky  
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dirty cop-Mueller releases key documents on 
FBI interview with Michael Flynn
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by Alex Pappas  
{foxnews.com} ~ Special Counsel dirty cop-Robert Mueller’s team on Friday released key documents relating to the FBI’s questioning of former national security adviser Michael Flynn... The documents – some of which are heavily redacted -- were released in response to U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordering prosecutors to hand over the government's files and "memoranda" related to the FBI’s questioning of Flynn by Friday afternoon. The documents include then-FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe’s notes after talking with Flynn to arrange his interview with the FBI. It also includes a so-called "302" report documenting what Flynn told anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok and one other agent during their conversation at the White House. That July 2017 report, though, specifically came from an interview with Strzok in which the Flynn encounter was discussed -- and not the original Flynn interview. The 302 report states that Strzok and the other agent “both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying.” It also states that several unnamed people back at FBI headquarters “later argued about the FBI’s decision to interview Flynn.”...
The New Way To Steal An Election  
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by Eric Eggers  
{thefederalist.com} ~ America’s electoral obsession isn’t Russian meddling anymore. It’s ballot-harvesting... a long-disputed practice implicated in fraud that’s come to the fore with the nationwide embrace of absentee voting in recent years — and especially in last month’s midterms. With ballot-harvesting, paper votes are collected by intermediaries who deliver them to polling officials, presumably increasing voter turnout but also creating opportunities for mischief. The latter is suspected in North Carolina, where uncharacteristic Democratic charges of vote fraud prompted an investigation into whether Republican-paid political operatives illegally collected and possibly stole absentee ballots in a still-undecided congressional race. A national spotlight was shone by The New York Times, which, like Democrats, often minimizes vote fraud; it flooded the zone in this case, assigning five reporters to a single story. In California, by contrast, Democrats exulted as they credited a quietly passed 2016 law legalizing ballot-harvesting with their recent sweep of House seats in the former Republican stronghold of Orange County, thereby helping them win control of the House. In that case, it was Republican eyebrows that were arched. House Speaker Paul Ryan   said what happened in California “defies logic.” In Orange County, an estimated 250,000 harvested ballots were reportedly dropped off on Election Day alone. County Republican Chairman Fred Whitaker claimed the 2016 law “directly caused the switch from being ahead on election night to losing two weeks later.”...
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Forensic Investigators Reveal scumbag/liar-Clinton
Foundation Should Have Been Registered 
as Foreign Agent
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by Jim E
{thepoliticalinsider.com} ~ According to two experts, the scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation should have never been a registered non-profit and should have been seen as a foreign agent... This testimony was given before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which was convened by Rep. Mark Meadows. The scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation operated as a foreign agent ‘early in its life’ and ‘throughout it’s existence’ and did not operate as a 501c3 charitable foundation as required by its and is not entitled to its status as a nonprofit, alleged two highly qualified forensic investigators, accompanied by three other investigators, said in explosive testimony Thursday to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee...  https://thepoliticalinsider.com/clinton-foundation-foreign-agent/?utm_campaign=TPI_Afternoon_Newsletter_12_14_2018&utm_source=criticalimpact&utm_medium=email&utm_content=4b4ea4948726422aa6473c7b9fa19141&source=CI
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Trump Defends Flynn – ‘He Didn’t Lie, 
dirty cop-Mueller Pushed That Claim’
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by Rusty
{thepoliticalinsider.com} ~ President Trump, responding to new allegations that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was coerced into forgoing a lawyer during an interview with the FBI... claims “he didn’t lie” and it was Special Counsel dirty cop-Robert Mueller who pushed the claim. “Well, the FBI said Michael Flynn, a general and a great person, they said he didn’t lie,” Trump said at a White House meeting with governors-elect. “And dirty cop-Mueller said: ‘Well, maybe he did,'” he continued. “And now they’re all having a big dispute, so I think it’s a great thing that the judge is looking into that situation. It’s an honor for a lot of terrific people.” It is the strongest defense of Flynn coming from the President since new court filings have forced people to look at the handling of the case with fresh eyes. Trump stated last year that he had to fire Flynn for lying to the FBI, but new revelations suggest the general wasn’t afforded a right to counsel and wasn’t aware that he was being officially interviewed. The President also noted special counsel dirty cop-Robert Mueller has recommended no prison time for Flynn, suggesting this was a sign they couldn’t recommend jail after the way they treated him – or that he didn’t really commit any crimes...
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Infuriated by Deadly Terror Attacks, Israelis 
Demand Netanyahu Act, or Resign
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{israeltoday.co.il} ~ Hundreds gathered in Paris Square opposite the official Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem this week... in protest following a string of deadly Palestinian terror attacks in Samaria. Many of demonstrators demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu either act forcefully to bring an end to Palestinian terrorism, or resign his post, having failed to live up to his title of "Mr. Security."
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Trump's Ex-Lawyer Didn't Violate Campaign Finance Laws, and Neither Did the President

by Hans von Spakovsky
 

President Donald Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, may have been convinced by the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York to plead guilty to a supposed violation of campaign finance law, but that doesn’t mean that what happened is actually a federal crime.
               In fact, neither the Federal Election Commission — which is the independent agency tasked with enforcing the Federal Election Campaign Act — nor its former commissioners would likely agree with the overaggressive view that the Southern District is taking. Indeed, the Southern District’s aggressive stance on this issue might have violated the Justice Department’s own policy.
               Robert Khuzami, the acting U.S. attorney standing in for Geoffrey Berman, who has recused himself from the Cohen case, says in the government’s sentencing memorandum that Cohen committed a campaign finance violation by arranging payments from corporations to two women — Woman-1 and Woman-2 (Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, respectively), who claimed they had affairs with Trump — in order to buy their silence. Cohen eventually invoiced the Trump Organization for the Daniels payment.
               Khuzami asserts these were illegal corporate contributions to the Trump campaign because they were made with “the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election.” Thus, he claims, they were campaign-related expenses and all of the rules governing federal campaigns apply to the payments. But there are numerous problems with Khuzami’s claim.
               First, his theory that anything intended to “influence” an election is a campaign-related expense fails to take into account the statutory limitation on this definition. FECA (52 U.S.C. 30114 (b)(2)) specifically says that campaign-related expenses do not include any expenditures “used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.
               These payments were relatively small given Trump’s net worth — the kind of nuisance settlement that celebrities often make to protect their reputations, especially when faced with claims that will cost far more to defend than making a quick payoff without all of the bad publicity that usually accompanies such cases. Given Trump’s celebrity status, the potential liability to these women existed “irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.
               As Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has said, the payment to Daniels was made “to resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the president’s family” and “it would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not.
               On the one previous occasion that the Justice Department tried to argue that hush money payments to a mistress were a “campaign-related” expense, a jury also did not appear to buy the government’s theory. In the unsuccessful prosecution of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, campaign donors made payments to Edwards’ mistress, Rielle Hunter, a videographer who was actually working on his presidential campaign.
               Unlike Daniels and McDougal, Hunter was paid $1 million while directly working for the campaign and Edwards. Her payments did not go through the Edwards campaign’s account, but the government tried to claim they were campaign expenditures because they were intended to protect Edwards’ reputation during his presidential run and thus “influence” the election.
               Yet a jury acquitted Edwards on the charge of accepting an illegal campaign donation and failed to reach a verdict — resulting in a mistrial — on the other charges, which included filing false reports with the Federal Election Commission for not listing the payments to his mistress.
               The fact that a jury did not convict Edwards would not ordinarily mean that the government did not have a viable claim that a defendant violated the law. But consider this. Edwards had two former chairmen of the Federal Election Commission on retainer — Scott Thomas and Robert Lenhard — who were prepared to testify that, in their opinion, such payments to a mistress are not campaign-related expenses. Brad Smith, another former chairman of the commission, has similarly said that the hush money paid by Cohen is not a campaign-related expense.
               So the government in the Edwards prosecution was unable to convince the jury that these were campaign-related expenses covered by federal campaign finance law. The Justice Department subsequently dropped its prosecution and never retried Edwards — in part, no doubt, because many other campaign finance experts called the case “legally flawed,” according to a Politico report in 2012.
               And this wasn’t just their opinion — it was also the opinion of the Federal Election Commission. How do we know? Because as the chief financial officer for the Edwards campaign testified, when the Federal Election Commission audited the campaign, it determined that these payments were not campaign-related expenses that needed to be reported or run through the campaign. Thus, the commission said the federal rules governing campaign contributions and expenditures did not apply.
               It is true that Justice Department prosecutors are not necessarily bound by the commissioners’ interpretation of the Federal Election Campaign Act. But according to the Justice Department handbook on election crimes, “Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses,” the prosecution of all campaign finance crimes must be coordinated with the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division in Washington, D.C.
               No investigation or indictment can occur without a U.S. attorney first consulting with the Public Integrity Section, according to the handbook. In fact, this rule is set forth in the U.S. Attorneys’ Manual of DOJ (Sec. 9.85.210).
               The long-time head of the Election Crimes Unit within the Public Integrity Section, who was the final word on all campaign finance prosecutions at the Justice Department before he retired, was Craig Donsanto. He wrote the handbook still used by federal prosecutors.
               In a letter on Jan. 16, 2009, from Donsanto to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Donsanto explained why the Justice Department would not be opening an investigation of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over accusations that it had made illegal corporate contributions.
               As Donsanto said, the role of the Justice Department in prosecuting cases under the Federal Election Campaign Act is “confined to prosecuting violations of the act’s provisions that are committed ‘knowingly and willfully.’” For a criminal violation to occur, “the application of the law to the facts of a matter must at the very least be clear, and there must be no doubt that the [Federal Election] Commission considers that the underlying conduct presents a [Federal Election Campaign Act] offense. That is not the case here.”
               That is also not the case here regarding Cohen. As the Edwards case shows, the Federal Election Commission does not consider payments made to a mistress to be expenditures covered by the federal campaign law, and there is nothing in the public record to suggest that the commission has changed its mind since then. It is therefore unlikely that the prosecutors in this case followed the Justice Department’s own policy with respect to charging decisions in this area.
               Just as important is Donsanto’s point about a “knowing and willful” violation of the law. That requires proof that a defendant clearly intended to violate the law.
               How can Cohen or anyone else involved in these payments be charged with a “knowing and willful” violation of the law by facilitating these payments when numerous campaign finance lawyers, federal election commissioners, and the Federal Election Commission itself have all publicly opined that such payments do not violate the law in the first place?
               Some Democrats such as Rep. scumbag-Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., are claiming that these supposed violations of campaign finance law are an impeachable offense. Apparently, they didn’t believe that the $375,000 civil penalty paid by Barack  scumbag/lar-nObama’s 2008 campaign for campaign finance violations — one of the largest in the commission’s history — was an impeachable offense.
               Some are saying that what the scumbag/lar-nObama campaign did was a civil violation, not a criminal violation. But as I have just explained, there is a strong argument that the payments made by Cohen were not violations of the law at all, civil or criminal.
               By the way, if Khuzami’s legal theory is correct — that any payments made to settle such a claim are campaign-related expenditures because they are intended to protect the reputation of a candidate and thus influence the election — a lot of members of Congress are in potential trouble. Last year, it was reported that Congress has secretly paid out over $17 million to settle close to 300 cases by staffers claiming sexual and other forms of harassment and discrimination.
               Such payments are obviously being made — in secret — to protect the reputations of senators and congressmen, many of whom will and have run for re-election. Does this mean that they are using taxpayer funds to pay campaign expenses? Is Khuzami going to open up investigations of all these settlements and all these members of Congress?
                It seems pretty clear that the Federal Election Campaign Act wasn’t meant to cover what Cohen has pleaded guilty to, which is why the Edwards prosecution failed. It is also highly doubtful that if this case had been presented to the Federal Election Commission, where I used to serve as a commissioner, it would find a violation of the law.
               No one can excuse the tax evasion and financial fraud charges to which Cohen has pleaded guilty. And as former Federal Election Commission Chairman Brad Smith recently said, we can probably all agree that these “payments to women were unseemly.
               But “that doesn’t mean they were illegal,” says Smith, regardless of the fact that the Southern District of New York convinced Cohen to plead guilty.  ~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/60018?mailing_id=3945&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3945&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body
Read more…

Friday PM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Trump EPA Rolls Back Another 
scumbag/liar-nObama Power Grab

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by Thomas Gallatin  
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Andrew McCarthy rebukes Judge Napolitano 
over Trump campaign finance assumptions
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{dailychristiannews.com} ~ When the dirty cop-Robert Mueller-led special counsel investigation submitted a sentencing report against former Trump attorney Michael Cohen... so too did the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York, including in their report allegations of campaign finance fraud related to “hush money” payments to women who intended to sell their stories of alleged affairs with then-businessman Donald Trump.  Many in the liberal media — and even some at Fox News, including senior legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano — took Cohen’s guilty plea toward those charges as evidence that President Trump was guilty as well, an assumption with which another Fox contributor disagreed. Andrew McCarthy, National Review editor and former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, explained to Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs on Wednesday just how wrong Napolitano was in assuming that Cohen’s guilty plea was evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Trump.  “What they are saying here is there is a conspiratorial relationship in violation of a criminal law between Cohen and Trump,” said McCarthy. “And what I am saying is, it remains to be seen whether this was actually a crime or not, even if it happened the way Cohen did.” “I was quite surprised just a few minutes ago watching Judge Napolitano on the program right before yours say a federal judge had found, had ruled, that this was a campaign finance violation,” he said. “That’s not what happened at all,” McCarthy continued...
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Federal judge says Trump travel 
ban lawsuit will proceed
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by Sudhin Thanawala 
{washingtontimes.com} ~ A lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of denying nearly all visa applicants from countries under President Donald Trump’s travel ban will move forward, a U.S. judge said Thursday... Judge James Donato heard arguments on the administration’s request that he dismiss the lawsuit. The case was “not going away at this stage,” he said at the close of the hearing. The plaintiffs say the administration is not honoring a waiver provision in the president’s ban on travelers from five mostly Muslim countries - Iran, Lybia, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban in a 5-4 ruling in June. The waiver provision allows a case-by-case exemption for people who can show entry to the U.S. is in the national interest, is needed to prevent undue hardship and would not pose a security risk. The 36 plaintiffs named in the lawsuit include people who have had waiver applications denied or stalled despite chronic medical conditions, prolonged family separations, or significant business interests, according to their attorneys...
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'Genius' Rats Are Flooding DC and 
Adapting Too Fast to Control
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{gizmodo.com} ~ Washington, DC, has a serious rat problem on its hands, and it has little to do with the shady goings-on at some of the highest levels of government... No, we’re talking real, honest to god rat kings who are wreaking havoc on the nation’s capital. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the DC region is facing a serious problem with Rattus Norvegicus, or the brown rat, an infestation that’s being exacerbated by both a population spike as well as mild winters. With their numbers on the rise, DC now trails New York and Los Angeles for its rat population, the Associated Press reported: The pest control company Orkin ranks Washington as America’s fourth “Rattiest City,” based on the number of new service calls per year. That’s up one spot from the previous year and just behind Los Angeles and New York; Chicago has been ranked No. 1 for four consecutive years. While Washington doesn’t boast New York’s famous subway monsters, anecdotal evidence is piling up that the rodents are on the march. In September, a viral video showed security camera footage of a rat pulling a fire alarm, forcing the evacuation of an apartment building...  https://gizmodo.com/genius-rats-are-flooding-dc-and-adapting-too-fast-to-co-1831062999
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Charging Trump Over Hush Money Payouts
Implicates Congress In The Same Behavior  
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by Elad Hakim  
{thefederalist.com} ~ Michael Cohen was sentenced to 36 months in prison on Wednesday for various crimes the dirty cop-Robert Mueller investigation found he had committed... As CNN recently reported, prosecutors from the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office alleged he admitted to paying off two women hush money and that he did so in coordination with and at the direction of President Trump, thereby violating one or more campaign finance laws. On the day of Cohen’s sentencing, the Gateway Pundit reported that prosecutors for the Southern District of New York announced that they had reached a non-prosecution agreement with American Media, Inc., the company that paid $150,000 to one of the women. As part of the non-prosecution agreement, American Media reportedly admitted that it made the payment in concert with the Trump campaign in order to bury the story so that it would not influence the election. Not surprisingly, and as if on cue, this has led to renewed calls for impeachment and possibly criminal charges against the president by some Democrats. However, such action, if successful, could create bad precedent and have far-reaching implications. Despite American Media’s reported admission, there are expenditures that might “influence an election,” yet not constitute campaign-related expenses. According to an article in The Daily Signal, the Federal Election Campaign Act (52 U.S.C. 30114 (b)(2)) specifically says that campaign-related expenses do not include any expenditures “used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.” Although some legal scholars have openly stated that the payments in Trump’s case do not appear to have violated campaign finance rules, dirty cop-Mueller, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and congressional Democrats should think long and hard about the precedent they are attempting to set. While their eyes are set on one particular person, the potential impact could end up netting many others who have engaged in similar or worse conduct...
The GOP Needs to Stop Being the Stupid Party
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{americanthinker.com} ~ There is a popular saying among libertarians: “Liberals are evil and conservatives are stupid.” Needless to say that both sides strongly object to this characterization... The totalitarian aspects of leftism should be evident to all by now, though they insist that their goals and tactics are for our own good. The GOP is known as the Stupid Party, and with very good reason. In the two years that they have controlled the White House and the Congress, Republicans could have eliminated the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, HUD, withdrawn troops from Afghanistan, built the wall, defunded sanctuary cities, eliminated all foreign aid one trillion dollars, and used the money for infrastructure. In fact, the economic turnaround in this country came from one source: the White House. In a flurry of deregulation, Donald Trump alone has improved the economy. Now consider this: the Republican Party’s files were hacked when the Republican establishment used the very same outfit that the DNC used when its files were hacked. Now, is that not stupid?...  https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/the_gop_needs_to_stop_being_the_stupid_party.html
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Trump EPA Rolls Back Another 
scumbag/liar-nObama Power Grab
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by Thomas Gallatin:  Once again under President Donald Trump, some semblance of common sense and sane definitional language returned to the U.S. government. On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced its proposal for replacing Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s 2015 power-grabbing redefinition of the Waters of the United States rule.

             Under scumbag/liar-nObama, the EPA widely expanded the Clean Water Act’s definition of navigable waters to include pretty much every conceivable form of surface water — even irrigation ditches and rain-filled potholes. It was a clear and outrageous case of government overreach.
               In announcing the change, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler explained, “Our proposal would replace the Obama EPA’s 2015 definition with one that respects the limits of the Clean Water Act and provides states and landowners the certainty they need to manage their natural resources and grow local economies. For the first time, we are clearly defining the difference between federally protected waterways and state protected waterways. Our simpler and clearer definition would help landowners understand whether a project on their property will require a federal permit or not, without spending thousands of dollars on engineering and legal professionals.”
               Predictably, Democrats and environmentalists were quick to misrepresent the definitional change, calling it a “sickening gift to polluters,” the “dirty water rule,” or as Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) laughably insisted, “nothing short of senseless.” In reality, it was the 2015 EPA’s redefinition of “navigable waters” that was senseless.
               The announcement garnered high praise from Republicans, however. “The 2015 rule was an expansion of federal power that used bureaucrat-speak to strip landowners of their rights and local governments of their ability to manage waters within their borders,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA). “This new approach is the product of doing it the right way — openly, with the input of the American people.”
               It should be normal to have clearly written rules with consistently limited definitions that any member of the public can understand without a lawyer. Regulations that are so overly broad that they prevent individuals from knowing if they are in compliance or not are bad, as they have the potential for abuse of power written all over them. Thankfully, the Trump EPA is seeking to clean things up.  ~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/articles/60002?mailing_id=3945&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3945&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  
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Friday Med/PM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
New Jersey Turns Law-Abiding 
Citizens Into Felons
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by Arnold Ahlert  
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New Bill Makes Congress Members Responsible 
for Sexual Harassment Settlements
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{legalinsurrection.com} ~ In December 2017, The Washington Post reported how the Office of Compliance for Congress paid over $17 million for 264 settlements and awards over various violations... including sexual harassment. Now Congress has agreed on a bill that members of Congress will be responsible for their own settlements instead of the tax payer. As of now, “settlements are paid through taxpayer-funded accounts members use to pay for office salaries and expenses.” The legislation would hold members of Congress personally liable for awards and settlements that stem from acts of harassment and related retaliation they personally commit. There would also be a preliminary review of the merits of the claim by a hearing officer. Those elements, some of which already apply to House members, would also apply to members who have left Congress. “We are shifting the balance of power to more clearly protect the victim and create a more level operating place,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D., Calif.), who has been one of the biggest advocates for the reforms on Capitol Hill. The bill leaves out some provisions sought by Republicans and Democrats in the House, including one that would hold members personally liable for discrimination in their offices. House lawmakers plan to take up that issue and others in the next Congress, but lawmakers of both parties cheered the compromise brokered Wednesday...  https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/12/new-bill-makes-congress-members-responsible-for-sexual-harassment-settlements/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29
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Iran's European Hit Men
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{investigativeproject.org} ~ It is just before dusk when gunshots sound on a quiet, residential street in November 2017. A man falls to the sidewalk. A dark BMW races off, into the growing darkness of the night... The victim, Ahmad Mola Nissi, dies that night of his wounds – including several shots to the head. He leaves a family grieving, but not surprised; there have been threats against him for some time, and efforts by the police to protect him. Those who know Nissi know who he is: the founder of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA), an Iranian separatist group which seeks independence for the Arab people of the Iranian province of Ahwazi, or Khuzestan. Iran calls it a terrorist group. Yet this murder occurred not in Iran, but in Europe, in the Netherlands, where Nissi has lived since 2006; and although a year later the killer still has not been found, Dutch authorities were quick to pinpoint the one who was responsible: the Iranian regime. It was also not the first time an Iranian dissident was murdered in the Netherlands. In 2015, Reza Kolahi, was killed in Almere. Kolahi was a member of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, or MEK, considered the regime's largest opposition group. Iran and Iraq both list the MEK as a terrorist group, though Europe, Canada, and the United States all had dropped that designation by 2012. The U.S. now classifies it as a "cult." In fact, many of Donald Trump's supporters, including Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton, have expressed their support of the group in its efforts to overthrow the ayatollahs, despite its Islamist-Socialist roots...  https://www.investigativeproject.org/7737/iran-european-hit-men
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VA Whistleblower Visited By FBI, Sent To Psych Ward,
Set To Be Terminated From Job  
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by Michael Volpe
{dailycaller.com} ~ A Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) whistleblower said she is living in her own real-life Twilight Zone... Jamie Fox is currently a social worker at the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC). Since late October, she’s been visited by federal agents who told her that the memes she had shared on Twitter months ago suddenly made her dangerous. Fox was involuntarily committed to a psych ward hours after these agents visited her home. Even though she has since been released, her Second Amendment rights have been terminated, and now she is on leave from work and being investigated. “I feel violated,” Fox said of the entire affair. “The VA knows my vulnerabilities, and they use them against  me.” Fox said she first became a VA whistleblower in 2008 when she insisted on testifying on behalf of a co-worker she thought was being harassed because of sexual orientation. She insisted on moving forward even after being told by multiple managers to let it go. Fox said she worked on the benefits side of the VA at the time; she left in lieu of termination and had to wait two years before getting a job at the SFVAMC...  https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/14/veterans-affairs-whistleblower-fbi-visited-fired/?utm_medium=email
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Green New Deal Is Bad Deal for All Americans
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{americanthinker.com} ~ For close to a decade, the Left has looked at a “Green New Deal” as the only  solution to supposed manmade climate change... According to the eco-Left, the Green New Deal -- a massive federal government stimulus program coupled with a rapid and total transformation from fossil fuels to renewable energy -- is the only way to avert environmental doom. Just last month, shortly after winning election to the U.S. House of Representatives, commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said, “We have 10 years left to plan and implement a Green New Deal before cataclysmic climate disaster.” Although the Green New Deal would be a sweeping piece of legislation that reshapes all sectors of the U.S. economy, it primarily focuses on climate change. Here’s a taste of what the Green New Deal would do: “Invest in green business by providing grants and low-interest loans to grow green businesses and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the community rather than being drained off to enrich absentee investors.”  Unfortunately, this federal funding fantasy would stifle the free market, which is the driving force behind most great innovations and technological revolutions. Not only is this plan subject to rampant corruption, it eliminates profit incentives and puts our economic future in the hands of federal bureaucrats. “Prioritize green research by redirecting research funds from fossil fuels and other dead-end industries toward research in wind, solar and geothermal. We will invest in research in sustainable, nontoxic materials, closed-loop cycles that eliminate waste and pollution, as well as organic agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry.”... The people will lose and pay for it.
scumbag/mad-Maxine Waters’s Campaign 
Debt to Daughter Jumps $90,000
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by Joe Schoffstall
{freebeacon.com} ~ The amount of reported debt owed from Rep. scumbag/mad-Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) to her daughter for running a lucrative campaign operation shot up $90,000 in a matter of weeks... according to new filings to the Federal Election Commission. Karen Waters, the daughter of Rep. scumbag/mad-Waters, is in charge of a slate mailer—or endorsement mailer—operation for her mother's campaign committee that has pulled in generous payments from other political committees. In order to appear on the mailers, which contain a sample ballot and quote of support from  scumbag/mad-Waters, a politician must pay scumbag/mad-Waters' campaign from their own committee. Oftentimes these payments range  anywhere between $2,000 and $30,000. The mailers are sent to residents in South Central Los Angeles. The operation has proved profitable for Karen Waters, who has collected $800,000 since 2004 when the Federal Election Commission granted scumbag/mad-Waters permission to run the mailers from her federal campaign committee. Prior to 2004,  scumbag/mad-Waters ran the slate mailer operation from LA Vote, a state committee in California... Umm, is this one of the reason Calif has the high rates of taxes?  https://freebeacon.com/politics/maxine-waters-campaign-debt-daughter-jumps-90000/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=967ae0c0ee-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_13_11_40_COPY_134&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-967ae0c0ee-45611665
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New Jersey Turns Law-Abiding Citizens Into Felons
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by Arnold Ahlert:  “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” —Article 1, Section 9, U.S. Constitution, pertaining to Congress

             “No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.” —Article 1, Section 10, U.S. Constitution, pertaining to the states.
               As of Tuesday, the Constitution was suspended in the state of New Jersey. Last June, one of six new gun-control laws  signed by Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy banned the possession of any magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Moreover, state residents have 180 days to give them up, permanently modify them to hold 10 rounds or less, or transfer them to someone legally allowed to own them. Active-duty military and law enforcement officers “authorized to possess and carry a handgun,” as well retired police officers, are exempted.
               New Jerseyans who fail to comply can be charged with a fourth-degree felony, subjected to a prison sentence of up to 18 months, up to a $10,000 fine, or both.
               It gets worse. On Dec. 5 in a 2-1 ruling, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law, rejecting a lawsuit filed shortly aft the law’s passage by the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs and supported by the NRA. U.S. Circuit Judges Patty Shwartz and Joseph A. Greenaway Jr., both appointed by Barack scumbag/liar-nObama, insisted the law did not violate the Second Amendment because it reasonably advanced New Jersey’s interest in preventing mass shootings and does not “severely burden” the Second Amendment rights of the state’s law-abiding citizens.
               That would be former law-abiding citizens turned potential felons as of Tuesday.
               Dissenting Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Donald Trump appointee, forcefully disagreed, insisting the Court “watered down” those rights. “The Second Amendment is an equal part of the Bill of Rights. We must treat the right to keep and bear arms like other enumerated rights,” he declared, referring to the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller.
               In fact, Bibas echoed the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion when he wrote for the majority’s ruling in Heller. “We know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding ‘interest-balancing’ approach,” Scalia declared. “The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government — even the Third Branch of Government — the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all.”
               Unfortunately, New Jersey and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals are working toward the Second Amendment’s incremental elimination. And as columnist Daniel Horowitz reveals, both entities are hardly outliers. “Since the Heller ruling, five circuit courts have essentially abolished the ruling by allowing states to ban common weapons, common magazines, and any ability to carry any firearms outside the home,” he explains.
               Horowitz further notes the same Supreme Court with a penchant for upholding constitutionally dubious interests has been rather sanguine when it comes to clamping down on courts that defy the “plain meaning” of the Constitution.
               And no one made the meaning of “ex post facto” with regard to criminal law plainerthan Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase in Calder v. Bull, a case adjudicated in 1798:
               1st. Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action. 2d. Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed. 3d. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed. 4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offense, in order to convict the offender.
               So where is SCOTUS? As of now sitting on the sidelines. But maybe not for long. The Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs has promised to appeal the decision that turns “one million honest citizens into felons for keeping property obtained legally that could be used for defending their lives,” stated the group’s executive director Scott Bach.
               In the meantime, New Jersey plans to act. “We will enforce the law of the state,” Lt. Theodore Schafer of the New Jersey State Police said. “That’s our plan.” When asked for details, Schafer referred questioners to the attorney general’s office.
               Leland Moore, a public information officer for the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General, was equally obstinate, refusing to answer any questions regarding how the state would deal with as many as one million gun owners who currently possess such magazines, including whether or not police would be conducting door to door searches. “We have no comment,” Moore said in response to numerous questions.
               Ominously, New Jersey is hardly through with its efforts to eviscerate the Second Amendment. In October, Murphy  announced a package of laws he wants the legislature to address in 2019, including one that would require ID from customers, and reports from retailers, for ammunition purchases.
               In other words, a de facto gun-registry scheme. “When I took office this past January, New Jersey’s gun-safety laws were among the strongest in the nation,” Murphy declared. “But there is still significant action needed to address our nation’s gun-violence epidemic. As we close out 2018 and move into the new year, we will continue to be proactive in our efforts to save lives and prevent needless tragedies.”
               Utter nonsense. Needless tragedies are not committed by law-abiding citizens looking to defend themselves, their families and their homes. Just as more and more Americans, marinated in a stew of progressive ignorance, are growing comfortable with banning “hate speech,” so too are they buying into the idea that targeting law-abiding gun owners will reduce violence committed by maniacs and felons.
               Nothing reveals the utter bankruptcy of their “logic” more than so-called “gun-free zones.” Gun-free zones turned classrooms into killing fields at Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and Parkland, where the only thing more egregious than the extermination of utterly defenseless people was the reality that each shooter had ample time to reload — and reload — in the midst of perpetrating each atrocity, precisely because of that codified defenselessness.
               If gun-control laws were the answer, Chicago would be the safest city in the nation. A total of 528 homicides so far this year suggests otherwise. So does the reality that cities with the highest homicide rates in the nation are overwhelmingly  Democrat Party strongholds.
               The same Democrat Party yearning to repeal the Second Amendment. Maybe banning Democrats would be a more effective strategy.  ~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/articles/60008?mailing_id=3945&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3945&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  
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Friday Noon ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Trump's Campaign-Finance Problems
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by Political Editors  
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John Solomon Drops a Tick-Tock Bombshell –
DIA Holds Documents That Can Exonerate Flynn
by sundance

{theconservativetreehouse.com} ~ Tick-tock-bombshell club member John Solomon drops an explosive statement on Sean Hannity... Oddly, there’s a factual part of his statement CTH agrees with; and a structural part of the background that is almost certain never to reach sunlight.  First, the substance:  […] “In May of 2017 there was a document identified to a small number of people in the United States government. It’s in the possession of the Defense Intelligence Agency. For eighteen months there’s been an effort to resist declassifying that document; I know that that document contains extraordinary exculpatory information about General Flynn. I don’t believe the president has ever been told about the existence of this document. One lawmaker discovered it, but was thwarted by the Defense Intelligence Agency in his efforts to disclose it. I think we should all ask for that declassification; get that out; it may enlighten the judge; it will certainly enlighten the American public.” From the time-frame disclosed we can reasonably infer what this document is; at least what background surrounds it. ♦“In May of 2017”… The document is likely part of an intelligence product that was produced for President scumbag/liar-nObama’s Daily Briefing (PDB), and contains unmasking information likely done by Susan Rice on Michael Flynn as a surveillance target. ♦“One Lawmaker discovered it”… You might remember way back in March 2017 when HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes was taken to the White House SCIF by then white house official Ezra Cohen-Watnick; and that began a series of cascading events...  https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/12/14/john-solomon-drops-a-tick-tock-bombshell-dia-holds-documents-that-can-exonerate-flynn/
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Millions in taxes support scumbag-Soros 
agenda 'fomenting racial disharmony'
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by wnd.com  
{wnd.com} ~ Hundreds of millions of tax dollars are being given to organizations run by billionaire scumbag-George Soros to pursue a “radical leftist agenda” that is undermining American values... according to Washington watchdog Judicial Watch. The organization’s special report documents the financial link between U.S.-funded entities and scumbag-Soros’ Open Society Foundations, which is “seeking to destabilize legitimate governments, erase national borders, target conservative politicians, finance civil unrest, subvert institutions of higher education and orchestrate refugee crises for political gain.” Judicial Watch said that in 2018, the Open Society Foundations “projected expending more than $530 million to promote scumbag-Soros’ radical globalist agenda in every corner of the world under the guise of supporting democratically elected governments, strengthening the rule of law and promoting fairness in political, legal and economic systems.” “The reality is far different, the report shows.  scumbag-Soros, with the help of American taxpayer dollars, bolsters a radical leftwing agenda that in the United States has included: promoting an open border with Mexico and fighting immigration enforcement efforts; fomenting racial disharmony by funding anti-capitalist racialist organizations; financing the Black Lives Matter movement and other organizations involved in the riots in Ferguson, Missouri; weakening the integrity of our electoral systems; promoting taxpayer funded abortion-on-demand; advocating a government-run health care system; opposing U.S. counterterrorism efforts; promoting dubious transnational climate change agreements that threaten American sovereignty; and working to advance gun control and erode Second Amendment protections.”... Why is this happening. This need to stop NOW!  https://www.wnd.com/2018/12/millions-in-taxes-support-soros-agenda-fomenting-racial-disharmony/
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Iran Promises to Restart Nuclear Weapons Work 
as Tehran Identified as Top Global Threat
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by Adam Kredo
{freebeacon.com} ~ Senior Iranian leaders on Thursday signaled the country is on the brink of restarting its contested nuclear weapons program... disclosing the Islamic Republic is prepared to restart the full-scale enrichment of uranium, the key component in a nuclear weapon, if it does not continue to receive cash windfalls from European countries still committed to the landmark nuclear agreement. Iran's warning represents a further escalation of its threats as the U.S. intelligence and security community identified Tehran as one of the top emerging global threats that could shake the international balance and arm the region with nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, according to a new U.S. threat assessment. Iran's nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, disclosed Thursday that Iran is working to enrich uranium to extreme levels prohibited under the current accord. This work would enable Iran to stockpile large quantities of highly enriched uranium that are required to fuel a nuclear weapon. "I would like to warn that this is not a bluff; I have kept my word whenever I've said something," Salehi was quoted as saying during a tour of Iran's Fordow nuclear facility, a contested military site that still has not be subjected to full international inspections. "Now I'm emphasizing once again that if the establishment wants, we can easily return to the 20-percent enrichment, and meet the country's needs at any level and volume."...  https://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-promises-restart-nuclear-work-tehran-identified-top-global-threat/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=967ae0c0ee-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_13_11_40_COPY_134&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-967ae0c0ee-45611665 
Trey Gowdy Shreds James Comey – 
An Amnesiac Only Protecting Himself
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by Rusty
{thepoliticalinsider.com} ~ In an interview with Fox News, South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy slammed scumbag-James Comey as an “an amnesiac with incredible hubris”... who is only out to protect himself. Gowdy spoke with host Martha MacCallum to discuss the former FBI Director, who recently testified in a closed-door interview with congressional lawmakers. scumbag-Comey was questioned about a series of controversies, including his department’s handling of the scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton  private email server investigation and the subsequent Russian collusion probe.“scumbag-Comey just thinks he’s always right, and … it doesn’t matter if everyone else concludes he did wrong,” Gowdy said. “He knows better. So, that’s what it’s like to interview an amnesiac with incredible hubris.” MacCallum asked if he thought scumbag-Comey had operated in a political manner when it came to dealing with investigations involving former Secretary of State scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton and President Donald Trump. “I think scumbag-Jim Comey was primarily motivated by a desire to protect the brand of scumbag-Jim Comey,” Gowdy responded. “But he has been so overtly partisan since he left, not just with the president, but he wants people to vote Democrat, he wants a Democrat House. He’s just become a political flunky.”...
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The Great Wall of Democracy
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by Matthew Continetti
{freebeacon.com} ~ I've had to wait on the tarmac for planes ahead of mine to take off before, but never F-15s... Naha airport here shares a runway with Japan's Air Self Defense Forces, leading to delays whenever Japanese fighters scramble to counter Chinese incursions into the airspace above the Senkaku Island Chain in the East China Sea. The pace of such incursions has accelerated over the last half decade. The Japanese scrambled a high of 1,168 times in 2016, mostly in response to Chinese activity. The sight of active afterburners on a U.S. commercial runway would be shocking. In Okinawa, it's everyday life. More than 1 million Okinawans share the southernmost prefecture of Japan with some 25,000 U.S. air, ground, naval, and marine forces. More than half of U.S. bases in Japan are located within these 463 square miles. The crowded space has long been a site of tension. A brutal crime committed against a local girl by American soldiers in 1996 precipitated negotiations between the United States and Japan over the consolidation and relocation of our forces. The process has been delayed by local and national Japanese politics. Opposition to the expansion of Camp Schwab in the less densely populated northern part of the island to replace Futenma airbase became a rallying cry for opposition lawmakers. The prefectural governor, Denny Tamaki, was elected on an anti-expansion platform last October. Tamaki defeated the candidate backed by Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party by a surprisingly large margin. His father was a U.S. Marine. The national interests of the United States, Japan, and China meet in Okinawa. The island has been essential to the forward deployment of U.S. forces in Asia since World War II. The base is the keystone of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Our presence signifies America's guarantee of Japanese security and helps sustain the economy of Japan's poorest prefecture...  https://freebeacon.com/columns/great-wall-democracy/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=967ae0c0ee-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_13_11_40_COPY_134&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-967ae0c0ee-45611665 
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Trump's Campaign-Finance Problems
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by Political Editors:  Unable to establish “Russian collusion” to influence Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, prosecutors have turned their attention to another unrelated matter — potential campaign-finance violations.

             The Justice Department announced an agreement with America Media Inc. (AMI), the parent company of National Inquirer, in which AMI claims it worked “in concert with” Trump’s campaign to kill a story about one of Trump’s now-infamous affairs], in order to conceal “damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election.”
               The problem for Trump is that prosecutors now have two witnesses — both his former attorney Michael Cohen and AMI — claiming he knew the payoffs would support his campaign. If Trump directed and paid Cohen to make payments for the specific purpose of supporting his campaign and did not report the payment, that would constitute a felony. Notably, such felonious knowledge related to unreported campaign benefits are common in federal campaigns, and it is rarely prosecuted.
               In his defense, Trump declared, “I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law,” and proving he did is a high bar for prosecutors.
               Regarding the question of illegality, Hans von Spakovsky argues, “FECA (52 U.S.C. 30114 (b)(2)) specifically says that campaign-related expenses do not include any expenditures ‘used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.’” He further adds, “These payments were relatively small given Trump’s net worth — the kind of nuisance settlement that celebrities often make to protect their reputations, especially when faced with claims that will cost far more to defend than making a quick payoff without all of the bad publicity that usually accompanies such cases. Given Trump’s celebrity status, the potential liability to these women existed ‘irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.’”
               There are two glaring examples that prove beneficial for Trump’s defense should charges be filed.
               First, Recall, that the Justice Department failed to convict former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards on campaign finance violations when he ran for president in 2008, and that case is instructive. Edwards was tried on six felony charges after taking $1 million from two wealthy donors and using it to conceal his relationship with his mistress, Rielle Hunter. He faced up to 30 years in prison if he was convicted on all counts.
               Regarding Edwards’ acquittal of those charges, Melanie Sloan, executive director for a campaign finance watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, declared, “As noted by nearly every campaign finance lawyer who considered the matter, this was a lousy case.”
               And how did the Leftmedia respond at the time? The New York Times noted it was “a case that had no precedent.” The Washington Post observed: “At the time, an array of legal experts, including former prosecutors, questioned the wisdom of bringing the charges against Edwards, saying it was an aggressive interpretation of campaign finance laws.” The Los Angeles Times reported, “The case was unprecedented; no major political candidate has been charged with campaign finance corruption for attempts to hide a mistress…” Even MSNBC’s Chris Matthews insisted, “This John Edwards trial, this was a waste of time, money and public attention.”
               And Barack scumbag/liar-nObama was fined $375,000 for almost $2 million in campaign contribution “irregularities.” No demand for felony convictions or his impeachment.
               But there is no chance that Trump will be exonerated of wrongdoing, as Democrats and their hostile Leftmedia propagandists are anxious for impeachment fodder. They will pull out every stop to advance these charges.  ~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/articles/60026?mailing_id=3945&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3945&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  
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Friday Med/AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
On Saudi Arabia, Trump Is Channeling
His Inner George H.W. Bush
by Marc A. Thiessen  

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Friday Top Headlines
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by Media Editors:  Senate votes to end American military assistance for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen (Washington Examiner)
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Prosecutors probing Trump inauguration spending (The Hill)
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China suspends tariff hikes on $126 billion of U.S. cars, auto parts (Associated Press)
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Budget deficit hits widest on record for month of November (Bloomberg)
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Republicans examine accusations of “pay to play” at scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation (Fox News)
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The DOJ inspector general found 19,000 “lost” Strzok and Page texts (Townhall)
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North Carolina congressional candidate sought out aide despite warnings over tactics (The Washington Post)
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Tipster thwarts potential mass shooting at Indiana middle school (ABC News)
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Teachers need guns, schools need security, Parkland shooting panel concludes (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
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Jihadi who opened fire at French Christmas market is dead (Fox News)
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Iran promises to restart nuclear-weapons work (The Washington Free Beacon)
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Gender & Women’s Studies department endorses a platform calling “for the Abolition of the Police, ICE, Borders, and the Judicial System” (National Review)
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Humor: U.S. military honors sacrifices of NFL players by wearing jerseys throughout December (The Onion)
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Policy: Why our country needs the wall, and now (The Daily Signal)
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Policy: Coaxing reluctant states to take on health reform (RealClearPolicy)  
 
~The Patriot Post  
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scumbag/liar-nObama’s War is Upon Us
genkCMSXnd3Zn3q86hgDdd2-NVrcT0boCzcjlQy6TL6c8dpxYwEt-JdNNEeIg4n4Vvgw_i2yT-lGfb5Jxzw9cF29n-jopNBiaCnWssC-LVkBjZ9wYoENIk4j9KSZ3k67Zb4J_NocMDBL1oypvkWUDDfkjau3GRrawC6W8FKJSMOxB-aWNRyyk-g=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=300by Kenneth R. Timmerman
{frontpagemag.com} ~ Donald Trump has a name for everything and everyone, from Crooked scumbag/liar-Hillary to Little Rocket Man, who for a time became his best friend... Will he call the next region-wide conflagration in the Middle East, when it breaks out, scumbag/liar-nObama’s War? If he hasn’t thought of that already, he should start considering it now. Because the catastrophic policies of our former president have emboldened the Islamic state of Iran and enabled it to threaten the United States and our allies militarily in ways never before possible. When scumbag/liar-nObama took office in January 2009, he inherited a strong U.S. military and diplomatic posture across the Middle East. The U.S.-Israel strategic relationship was at its peak, with the Bush White House openly supporting Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s latest attempt to stop Hamas terror in Gaza. The U.S. enjoyed a close relationship with a secular Turkey, that itself had strong ties to Israel. Egypt was at peace, Qaddafi had come into the Western camp and abandoned terrorism and its nuclear weapons program, and the insurgency in Iraq had been crushed. Al Qaeda truly was “on the run,” while Iran was beginning to feel the crunch of international sanctions over its previously covert nuclear weapons program. scumbag/liar-nObama succeeded in reversing every one of these strong U.S. positions, treating Islamic Iran as a friend and Israel as an enemy while promoting the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist spawn...  https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272206/obamas-war-upon-us-kenneth-r-timmerman
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Senate votes to stop US military 
aid to Saudis in Yemen
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{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ The U.S. Senate voted Thursday to check the executive branch's war powers authority by voting to end U.S. support of the Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen... Senators voted 56-41 in favor of the resolution, which passed after lawmakers agreed to a series of amendments, including on by Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., to block the U.S. military from in-flight refueling of Saudi jets. Support for the measure was fueled by a growing disdain for the Yemeni civil war, which has created a humanitarian crisis and has killed more than 10,000 people. Senators were also eager to punish the Saudi government over its involvement in the brutal murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi, who was also a columnist at the Washington Post. Opponents said the measure was worded too broadly and endangered the executive branch authority to conduct military operations abroad. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., urged lawmakers to instead back a “more responsible” resolution by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., that encodes the Senate’s belief that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman orchestrated Khashoggi’s death. The Corker resolution also calls for a peaceful end to the Yemen war and an end to in-flight refueling of Saudi planes conducting the deadly airstrikes...
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Pentagon Echoes Trump, Says 
DOD Could Fund Border Wall
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by Randy DeSoto 
{westernjournal.com} ~ The Department of Defense backed up President Donald Trump’s assertion that he could have the military build a border wall... if Congress failed to fund further construction of one. During a contentious discussion at the White House on Tuesday, Trump told Senate Minority Leader Chuck scumbag/clown-Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pulosi, “If we don’t get what we want, one way or the other, whether it’s through you, through military, through anything you want to call, I will shut down the government.” The chief executive is requesting $5 billion for wall construction, while scumbag/clown-Schumer has agreed to $1.6 billion for border security. While Trump argued he could garner support to get the funding in the Republican-controlled House, he needs 10 votes in the Senate in order to overcome a likely filibuster. The Defense Department confirmed in a statement that the president has the legal authority to direct the DoD to build a border wall. “To date, there is no plan to build sections of the wall. However, Congress has provided options under Title 10 U.S. Code that could permit the Department of Defense to fund border barrier projects, such as in support of counter drug operations or national emergencies,”  Pentagon spokesman  Lt. Col. Jamie Davis said in a statement on Tuesday. Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning, “People do not yet realize how much of the Wall, including really effective renovation, has already been built. If the Democrats do not give us the votes to secure our Country, the Military will build the remaining sections of the Wall. They know how important it is!”...
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Strzok, Page messages from dirty 
cop-Mueller probe lost after phone resets: IG
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by Stephen Dinan 
{washingtontimes.com} ~ Investigators weren’t able to find any text messages between fired agent Peter Strzok and former bureau lawyer Lisa Page from their time on the dikrty cop-Mueller probe... because by the time their phones were recovered, they’d been reset for others’ use, an inspector general said Thursday. The report also said the FBI still isn’t reliably collecting text messages of all of its employees — despite the black eye the bureau has suffered from Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page. The revelations came in a report Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released to detail the efforts his team made to try to recover the texts between the two, who traded anti-Trump messages during the course of an affair they were having. Investigators have already released many of the controversial messages, including one in which Mr. Strzok promised they would “stop” Mr. Trump from winning the White House. But there was a gap in the text messages, or what the inspector general dubbed a “collection tool failure,” and the new report detailed investigators’ efforts to try to recover those messages directly from the Samsung Galaxy phones issued to both Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page. While messages were recovered from some phones, the inspector general said that wasn’t the case for the phones assigned to the two during their time on the special counsel’s probe.
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Republicans Take Bold Tack Against Democratic
Gerrymander In The Supreme Court  
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by Kevin Daley
{dailycaller.com} ~ A coalition of Republican voters made a pair of bold requests while asking the Supreme Court to uphold a lower court ruling striking down... a Democratic gerrymander in Maryland. Their case, one of several pending before the justices on this topic, could clear the way for greater judicial scrutiny over redistricting. The Supreme Court has yet to find partisan line-drawing, called gerrymandering, unlawful. “The practice of partisan gerrymandering — aided in modern times by sophisticated software and the most detailed troves of data imaginable — is at war with our system of government,” the Republican motion  reads. “It aims to insulate those in power — those whom the public has taken into their trust — from being held to account. Its purpose is to reduce the franchise to a charade — a meaningless exercise, the outcome of which is preordained by computer scientists and political consultants turned cartographers.” In an aggressive move, the plaintiffs are asking the Court to summarily affirm the lower court, meaning they want the justices to uphold the lower court decision without briefing and oral arguments...  https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/13/maryland-gerrymander-supreme-court/?utm_medium=email
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On Saudi Arabia, Trump Is Channeling His Inner George H.W. Bush

by Marc A. Thiessen

 

In recent days, many have sought to contrast President Trump with President George H.W. Bush. But there is one area where Trump is channeling his inner George H.W. Bush — and not in a good way. His response to the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate echoes Bush’s handling of China’s crackdown on peaceful democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
               We only recently learned how ruthless that Chinese crackdown really was, when a secret 1989 cable by Britain’s then-ambassador to China, Sir Alan Donald, was declassified. Student protesters were crushed by armored personnel carriers, which rolled over their bodies repeatedly until their pulverized remains were collected by bulldozer, incinerated and hosed down drains, the document said. “Wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted,” Donald wrote. “A three-year-old girl was injured, but her mother was shot as she went to her aid, as were six others.” One thousand survivors of the initial assault were told they could leave “but were then mown down by specially prepared MG [machine gun] positions.
               The cable ends with this chilling sentence: “Minimum estimate of civilian dead 10,000.”
               China’s murderous brutality put Bush in an impossible position: He had to uphold American values while at the same time preserving a critical relationship with the men who carried out these horrific crimes. It is much the same quandary that Trump has faced in the wake of Khashoggi’s murder. Like Bush, Trump was faced with an inhuman act of violence that shocked the conscience of the nation. Like Bush, Trump had to impose consequences on the regime while balancing U.S. national interests in a critical part of the world. And like Bush, Trump has handled the situation poorly.
               Bush was unapologetic about his outreach to Chinese leaders after the massacre in June 1989. “What I certainly did not want to do was completely break the relationship we had worked so hard to build since 1972,” Bush later wrote. “While angry rhetoric might be temporarily satisfying to some, I believed it would deeply hurt our efforts in the long term.” At the time, Bush lashed out in his diary at congressional leaders who wanted him to take a harder line, including Rep. Stephen Solarz, D-N.Y., whom he called “the kind of guy that was delighted about the overthrow of the Shah, not worrying about what follows on.” He sent a cringeworthy letter to Deng Xiaoping, in which he called the Chinese leader his “genuine ‘lao pengyou’” (old friend) and apologized for the punitive measures his administration had taken. “The actions that I took as President of the United States could not be avoided,” Bush wrote, “as you know, the clamor for stronger action remains intense. I have resisted that clamor, making clear that I did not want to see destroyed this relationship that you and I have worked hard to build.” Worse, Bush sent national security adviser Brent Scowcroft to Beijing, where he was photographed cordially clinking wine glasses with Chinese leaders at a state banquet.
               Bush was right that the relationship had to be preserved. The opening to China was critical to peacefully ending the Cold War. But his eagerness to placate Chinese leaders, and his reticence in condemning those who committed such horrific crimes, harmed America’s moral standing in the world.
               Today, when it comes to Saudi Arabia, Trump is — like Bush — in an impossible position. The United States must stand for human rights. But it must also preserve its relationship with Saudi Arabia, the only nation in the Middle East that can serve as a bulwark against Iran, the main strategic threat to U.S. interests in the region. Trump has tried to balance these conflicting responsibilities by imposing sanctions on 17 Saudis under the Global Magnitsky Act and declaring Khashoggi’s murder “an unacceptable and horrible crime” — while refusing to publicly blame Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for ordering it. He has correctly determined that the crown prince is not going anywhere and that a permanent breach with Riyadh is unacceptable. But the unapologetic way in which he has gone about it — touting how much we make from Saudi arms purchases while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo castigates critics in Congress and the media for “caterwauling” — has been unseemly.
               One of the toughest challenges of the presidency is upholding American values while dealing with pro-American tyrants. Few presidents have done it well. In this sense, Trump is no different from his predecessors. We don’t know what Trump’s back-channel communications with the Saudi leadership have been like — perhaps he has been tougher in private than public. But we do know this much: They can’t be any worse than Bush’s plaintive entreaties to the butchers of Beijing.  

~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/59988?mailing_id=3937&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3937&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body
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Friday AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~

Another Bloated Farm Bill

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by Nate Jackson

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Philadelphia’s Perverse Civil Asset Forfeiture
Machine Has Finally Come to An End
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by Brittany Hunter
{activistpost.com} ~ Philadelphia may be the birthplace of our Constitution, but its civil asset forfeiture program is anything but constitutional... The program has become so corrupt and far-reaching it is often referred to as a “perverse machine.” Luckily, after a four-year legal battle brought by the nonprofit law firm the Institute for Justice (IJ), the city has agreed to a settlement that will give its abusive forfeiture program a major overhaul and protect the rights of Philadelphia property owners. In Philadelphia alone, 25,000 people have been victimized by the practice of asset forfeiture. Property confiscated by law enforcement includes 1,200 homes, 3,500 vehicles, and $50 million from residents. And the majority of these property owners were never actually convicted of a crime. But now, due to the diligent efforts of IJ, many of these individuals will finally see justice served. Darpana Sheth, a senior attorney at IJ and director of its Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse, commented: For too long, Philadelphia treated its citizens like ATMs, ensnaring thousands of people in a system designed to strip people of their property and their rights. No more. Today’s groundbreaking agreement will end years of abuse and create a fund to compensate innocent owners...
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Nancy Pulosi Announces Democrat Plan 
to Go After Trump’s Tax Returns
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by Jim E
{thepoliticalinsider.com} ~ During her weekly press conference, Nancy Pulosi announced a plan for congressional Democrats to target President Trump’s tax returns... Democrats are set to take power in January, taking over the House of Representatives and, essentially, grinding all congressional work to a halt. There are rumors floating around Capitol Hill that Democrats will immediately push for impeaching the President with what little power they hold in the House. Pulosi is feeling empowered and she let her confidence show by announcing the Democrats’ first target upon taking power: Trump’s tax returns. Here’s what she said: Yes, there is popular demand for the Congress to request the president’s tax returns. Ways and Means will have their path as we go forward. I’m sure the White House will resist, and so the question is, where do we go from there?...  https://thepoliticalinsider.com/nancy-pelosi-trump-tax-returns/?utm_campaign=TPI_Afternoon_Newsletter_12_13_2018&utm_source=critcalimpact&utm_medium=email&utm_content=4b4ea4948726422aa6473c7b9fa19141&source=CI
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After two-month manhunt, IDF finds 
and kills terrorist who killed two in Barkan
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{timesofisrael.com} ~ After a two-month manhunt, Israeli forces found and killed a Palestinian man suspected of carrying out a brutal terror attack... in which he shot dead two Israeli coworkers in a West Bank factory, the Shin Bet security service said early Thursday. According to the Israel Defense Forces, the suspect opened fire at the Israeli security officers who came to arrest him. The troops shot back, killing him.On October 7, Ashraf Na’alowa, 23, allegedly killed his coworkers Kim Levengrond Yehezkel and Ziv Hajbi at a factory where all three worked in the Barkan Industrial Zone. Another Israeli woman was also injured in the attack. According to the Shin Bet, Na’alowa appeared to be planning to conduct a second terror attack, “which was prevented with the thwarting of the assailant.” The security service said when the troops arrived he shot toward them with the same Carlo-style submachine gun used in the Barkan attack...
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scumbag-Comey Continues 
to Display His Lack of Credibility
IN5IS5pgSNNysRTfQMU_Bys3_Elq9jKCwUtv-rGa9NALzH85ozLBsqkJd6ujr8Lbk-oBkq99tdyzCel3-oppCU8IcwbX9bmHGiw3zR2lJLgh6kCdG-TiE39OhZZMstqNFPdtZg=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=300by Victor Davis Hanson
{dailysignal.com} ~ Fired former FBI Director scumbag-James Comey is at it again. Last week, scumbag-Comey testified before members of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee... In a single appearance, scumbag-Comey, on 245 separate occasions, while under oath, stonewalled questions with “I don’t know,” “I don’t remember,” or “I don’t recall,” according to a congressional interrogator, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. If any private citizen tried scumbag-Comey’s gambit with federal IRS auditors or FBI investigators, he would likely be indicted for perjury or obstruction. Why did scumbag-Comey, the nation’s former top-ranking federal investigator, avoid telling “the whole truth and nothing but the truth” while under oath? The answer is, unfortunately, obvious. scumbag-Comey has been called to testify before members of Congress on numerous occasions. He has written a long book and gone on an extensive book tour, and his paper trail is long. He tweets almost daily and is often on television—and in those venues never seems to admit to any memory lapse. And  scumbag-Comey has been at the center of every major scandal involving the 2016 election...  https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/12/13/comey-continues-to-display-his-lack-of-credibility/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTkRsak9EWmtNemhtTmpkayIsInQiOiJCd25TZkNSSHpcL1JBMm95ZUtHV3Q3aG5YYXRpSEdnUWMxK2J6TWowMFlFXC9wdnJoYWdyc1dZSEZNc0hmeWp5RjJ2YXdrZXFWbzBTQXV6WklLbnlmblV5SkF4M2JnSDZrS1U0WnFYVHpmcWJtRGlWZTJLNmZ5RGZDaUNMSzNlcEFUIn0%3D
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OMG! California Wants To Tax Text Messages (SMH)
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{lidblog.com} ~ I know what you are thinking, AYKMWTS? But no this is true. California will tax anything, and to prove it they are looking at taxing text messages... to help pay for cell phone service for poor folks. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is looking to vote on the proposal as early as late December, but until then the wireless industry is working hard to defeat the proposed tax a copy of the tax proposal document is embedded below. “It’s a dumb idea,” said Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council business-sponsored advocacy group. “This is how conversations take place in this day and age, and it’s almost like saying there should be a tax on the conversations we have.”It’s unclear how many individual consumers would be asked to pay their wireless carrier for texting services under the proposal. But it likely would be billed as a flat surcharge per customer — one of those irksome fees at the bottom of your wireless bill — not a fee per text. Business groups, including the Bay Area Council, California Chamber of Commerce and Silicon Valley Leadership Group and others opposing the idea, calculated the new charges for wireless consumers could total about $44.5 million a year. But they add that under the regulators’ proposal the charge could be applied retroactively for five years — which they call “an alarming precedent” — and could amount to a bill of more than $220 million for California consumers...  https://lidblog.com/california-tax-texting/
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Another Bloated Farm Bill

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by Nate Jackson:  The Republican record over the last two years includes a few big wins — tax cuts and court nominations are among the best. It also includes some major failures, such as scumbag/liar-nObamaCare repeal and now the latest farm bill. Earlier this year, we pointed out how bad the farm bill was. It’s gotten worse. Nevertheless, the Senate passed it 87-13, and it now heads to the House.

             For reasons known only to members of Congress, the farm bill is where food stamps are allocated, and that welfare roll takes up 80% of the bill’s dollars. Despite an economic boom spurred in large part by GOP tax cuts, some 40 million Americans still receive food stamps. That’s double the number from 20 years ago, and, while it’s fallen a bit from the Barack scumbag/liar-nObama highs, it hasn’t fallen enough. Yet many Republicans seemingly have no interest in real reform, even as the specter of Democrats taking over the House in January looms.
               With employers desperate for Americans to fill a near-record seven million job openings, there has hardly been a better time to stiffen work requirements for food stamps and truly reform the program. But breaking the cycle of dependence is hard — both for able-bodied adults who’d rather get a government check for nothing and for the politicians who want their votes. Thanks to the Senate, this farm bill is extremely light on those work requirements and makes virtually no effort to shrink the welfare rolls.
               Food stamps aren’t the only problem, however. The farm bill is also larded up with income redistribution that benefits mainly wealthy corporate farmers. A 2017 Congressional Research Service report found that “farms with market revenue equal to or greater than $250,000 accounted for 12 percent of farm households, but received 60 percent of federal farm program payments.” Meanwhile, the smallest 80% of farms account for just 10% of the subsidies.
               And you don’t even have to be a farmer to qualify. National Review notes, “For example, despite efforts to close a loophole that allows family members of farmers to receive subsidies even if they do not live or work on a farm, the final version of the bill expands that loophole to allow distant relatives such as cousins, nieces, and nephews to qualify for subsidies. That subsidy is worth up to $125,000 a year, about twice 2017’s national median household income.” All you have to do is claim “management” responsibility in the proper paper work, and you too can cash in. Subsidies are politically helpful, however, in part because President Donald Trump’s tariffs have been so painful for farmers.
               If anything typifies the swamp, it’s big spending legislation like the farm bill. And, for now at least, it’s business as usual.  

~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/articles/59978?mailing_id=3937&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3937&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

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Thursday PM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Waves of Bogus Asylum Seekers 
Overwhelm Immigration System
w3dXUMuk0gjxO6L0UHsZI7Xb_RXzseztHEctNLgdbb9aZyAkxDMphfuoj0aqUfH3o8zBtY6hEoXsSx1dnYIyCSUNWRRz-7YXBfjZFPYADeG4TUTfxEiRB-UrRrmya1WS_csR-b-uHwah9D1dpFxAuQs2DJX-ueMbCpyZXCA=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=450
by Louis DeBroux  
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In Memoriam: Admiral James
“Ace” Lyons (USN Ret.)
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by George Rasley
{conservativehq.com} ~ Yesterday, with the death of Admiral James “Ace” Lyons America lost a warrior of uncommon clarity of thought and directness of speech and action... Admiral Lyons’ career in the Navy spanned thirty-six years, from his days as a midshipman at Annapolis to service as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at that time the largest single military command in the world, Senior U.S. Military Representative to the United Nations and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations. Although his interests and post-service commentary spanned the gamut of national security and defense issues, I became acquainted with Admiral Lyons through our mutual interest in motivating American policy makers to recognize, fight and win the war Islam has declared on the West. One of the great moments of clarity Lyons shared with me, and anyone else who would listen, was this: “You must understand,” said Lyons, “Islam is a totalitarian ideology bent on world domination masquerading as a religion.” And Admiral Lyons wasn’t bashful about explaining exactly how Islam would affect that world domination:…it’s an insidious thing that has gone on here, and as we see over the years the penetration of the Muslim Brotherhood, their front organization, has increased, increased, increased, and it’s at the pit, really, of the stupid restricted rules of engagement that we imposed on our wonderful military, sacrificing their lives in the failed hope of winning the hearts and minds of a tribal society. This is nuts. But, again, who ruled the day? Political correctness... The Admiral has been and always been right.  http://www.conservativehq.com/node/29302 
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scumbag/liar-Clinton Whistleblowers: Thursday’s
Public Hearing to Reveal “Explosive” Information
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{saraacarter.com} ~ A trove of documents on the scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation alleging possible pay for play and tax evasion have been turned over to the FBI and IRS by several investigative whistleblowers... who will be testifying in an open hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Thursday, according to the committee and lawmakers. Roughly 6,000 documents that are expected to reveal the nearly two-year investigation by the whistleblowers with a private firm called MDA Analytics LLC, which allegedly turned over the documents more than a year and a half ago to the IRS, according to John Solomon, who first published the report last week in The Hill. The whistleblowers are former federal criminal investigators, who allege that the  scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation was “engaged in illegal activities and may be liable for millions of dollars in delinquent taxes and penalties,” according to Solomon. The Department of Justice and the FBI’s Little Rock, Ark. field office, which is believed to be investigating the foundation, have allegedly obtained the documentation from the whistleblowers as well, according to lawmakers who’ve spoken with the whistleblowers. scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation officials could not be immediately reached for comment. However, a former whistleblower, who has spoken with agents from the Little Rock FBI field office last year and worked for years as an undercover informant collecting information on Russia’s nuclear energy industry for the bureau, noted his enormous frustration with the DOJ and FBI. He describes as a two-tiered justice system that failed to actively investigate the information he provided years ago on the  scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation and Russia’s dangerous meddling with the U.S. nuclear industry and energy industry during the scumbag/liar-nObama administration...
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Israel's New Strategy in the War Against Iran
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{israeltoday.co.il} ~ With “Operation Northern Shield” entering its second week and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) working to destroy a third Hezbollah attack tunnel underneath the border with Lebanon... it has become increasingly clear Israel is waging a psychological war against Iran and its proxies. This is done by using cutting edge technology, exact intelligence gathering and by developing out-of-the-box solutions which give the Israeli military a decisive edge over its opponents and which aim to demoralize the enemy as we will see. Take, for example, what happened on the first day of “Operation Northern Shield” when the IDF released a video which showed how two Hezbollah terrorists wanted to inspect a robot which was brought into a Hezbollah attack tunnel near the northern Israeli city of Metulla. The camera of the robot recorded how one of the Hezbollah men was approaching the device after which a small explosive device exploded causing the terrorist to flee. The publication of the video was clearly meant to humiliate Hezbollah that had just suffered a devastating blow when the IDF started to destroy its attack tunnels... My, is that a wall I see.
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Conservatives Launch All 
Out Battle For Trump Border Wall
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{conservativehq.com} ~ Since President Trump threw down the gauntlet to Democratic Party leaders Rep. Nancy Pulosi and Sen. Charles scumbag/clown-Schumer... all we’ve heard from the Republican Party’s Capitol Hill leadership is a deafening silence. However, grassroots conservatives are not waiting around for the Republican establishment to finally figure out Trump is right about the necessity of building a wall on our southern border. CHQ has launched our “Don’t Waste The Lame Duck, Build The Wall” campaign aimed at giving spine transplants to squishy Republican legislators, especially in the House where some 40 Republicans are retiring or were defeated in the November midterm election. The Conservative Action Project, representing hundreds of grassroots conservative leaders and organizations, sent a letter to GOP congressional leaders outlining a three-part program of action to be taken in the year-end funding bill: Provide a minimum of $5 billion for President Trump’s border wall. Unlike the $1.6 billion that Congress passed in March, these funds must allow the president to actually engage in new construction and planning. To be clear, funds that merely allow for repairs, planning or pedestrian fencing—and do not allow for new construction of President Trump’s wall prototypes—do not constitute funding a border wall...  http://www.conservativehq.com/node/29303
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Fox News Host Harris Faulkner S
lams Pulosi Over Hypocrisy
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by Rusty
{thepoliticalinsider.com} ~ Fox News host Harris Faulkner took a few verbal jabs at House Minority Leader Nancy Pulosi after she attacked Fox... noting the Democrat’s hypocrisy following a tense debate with the President. Pulosi was discussing a meeting she and Chuck scumbag/clown-Schumer had with President Trump, in which the pair were challenged to hold a debate on border wall funding in front of the press.Trump encouraged the debate in front of the cameras, while scumbag/clown-Schumer and Pulosi encouraged him to hold talks behind closed doors instead. “So I don’t think we should have a debate in front of the press on this,” Pulosi admitted. Pundits openly wondered why the Democrats wouldn’t engage, transparency being one of their pet political keywords. In a press conference right after the meeting with Trump, Pulosi inexplicably took a shot at Fox News. “I hear some of the reporters saying — Well, Fox reporters saying — why do we not want transparency in this discussion?” she said. “We don’t want to contradict the president when he was putting forth things that had no reality to them. No basis in fact.”...
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Waves of Bogus Asylum Seekers Overwhelm Immigration System
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by Louis DeBroux:  A tense exchange at the White House on Tuesday between President Donald Trump and the two leading congressional Democrats — recycled incoming House Speaker Nancy Pulosi, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck scumbag/clown-Schumer — provided additional evidence that a chasm remains when it comes to achieving immigration reform.

             While President Trump’s desire to secure the border and prioritize America’s needs when determining who to allow to enter our borders has the strong support of the American people, Democrats have abandoned long-held, sensible immigration positions in favor of a radical open-borders policy that allows violent criminals, and drug and sex traffickers to pour into our nation.
               In recent months, Americans witnessed waves of thousands of migrants pushing their way up from Central America to the U.S., demanding to be let in while claiming a right to enter. When attempts were made to stop them, they rioted, tearing down border fences and attacking U.S. border agents. Or Trump was foiled by the courts in his efforts to limit the invasion. He’s filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court after the Ninth Circuit Court blocked his effort to prevent illegals from entering the U.S. and then seeking asylum.
               The real immigration crisis is with asylum seekers. As President Trump has kept his promise to strengthen border security, the number of illegal aliens able to sneak into the U.S. has slowed.
               However, those seeking entry have not changed their goals, just their tactics. In 2018 alone, the number of migrants demanding asylum at the U.S. border rose a staggering 67% according to Homeland Security, to nearly 93,000 people. Roughly a third arrived at ports of entry without permission, and another 14% were caught jumping the border illegally before filing for asylum.
               Migrants know the immigration system is overwhelmed with existing applications for asylum, and they know there is a good chance they will be processed and released into the U.S. while waiting for immigration hearings sometimes years later that most will never come back for, choosing instead to disappear inside the U.S.
               Laughably, one group of migrants is now demanding that the Trump administration either let them into the U.S. or pay them $50,000 each to return home. Points for creativity, we suppose, but good luck with that.
               It’s difficult to qualify for asylum; only about 20% of applications are approved. To qualify, the migrant must face a “credible fear” of violence or serious discrimination due to race, religion, or political affiliation. Asylum is broken down into two broad categories: “affirmative” (not yet subjected to deportation proceedings) and “defensive” (fighting deportation).
               Affirmative asylum seekers are far fewer in number but much likelier to be granted asylum; roughly 70% get approved. Defensive asylum seekers, on the other hand, are rolling the dice, hoping a friendly judge gives them a last-second reprieve; about 75-95% are rejected.
               To increase their chances of gaining asylum, the recent migrant wave from Central America took the longest possible route through Mexico to the U.S. Part of this was to avoid the drug cartels that control the region between southern Mexico and the Texas border, but even more relevant, the migrants are fully aware that California is a “sanctuary” state, and immigration judges in San Diego are far more likely to grant asylum than judges in Texas.
               While the migrant/open borders proponents argue these waves of migrants truly fear persecution in their home countries, that fallacy is exposed by the fact that, while defensive asylum applications have skyrocketed (the vast majority coming from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico), affirmative asylum applications have stayed roughly constant. It’s also noteworthy that these so-called asylum seekers have received significant financial and logistical support from leftist organizations as they try to force their way into the U.S.
               In order to get the situation under control and discourage waves of questionable asylum seekers, the Trump administration has begun “metering” — claiming that detention and processing facilities are overcrowded (they are), so they can’t accept new claims until the backlog of existing claims are processed. Would-be asylum seekers are directed to wait in Mexico until they can be seen.
               This has put pressure on Mexico to secure its own southern border so it’s not forced to accommodate and pay for feeding, housing, and securing tens of thousands of migrants.
               Last year, the Trump administration received wide condemnation for its wise refusal to sign onto the United Nations’ Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration, which would have given international treaties and laws primacy over U.S. immigration laws. In explaining that refusal UN Ambassador Nikki Haley declared, “No country has done more than the United States, and our generosity will continue. But our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone. We will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter our country. The global approach in the New York Declaration is simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty.”
               Despite the faux outrage of world leaders, nearly a dozen countries — including Australia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Israel, and Poland — have followed America’s lead in rejecting the treaty, and pressure is building in formerly pro-migrant countries like Belgium, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands to spurn it as they face significant difficulties dealing with crime and cultural conflicts after absorbing massive waves of migrants.
               As for the showdown with the Democrats, President Trump declared this week that he will get the U.S. border secured one way or another, even if he has to use the U.S. military to build the border wall.
               And despite the propensity of Democrats to use immigrant children as political cannon fodder, the American people support Trump’s agenda of securing our borders.  ~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/articles/59992?mailing_id=3937&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3937&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  
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Thurs Med/PM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~

The Oval Office Wall Brawl

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by Nate Jackson

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Former FEC Commissioner: Trump Did 
Not Violate Campaign Finance Laws  
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by Mike Brest
{dailycaller.com} ~ Former FEC Commissioner Hans Von Spakovsky debunked the argument that President Donald Trump broke campaign finance laws... by paying women he allegedly had affairs with prior to becoming president. The president’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to three years in jail on Wednesday for a litany of crimes, including making an illegal campaign contribution amounting to $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, who alleges she slept with Trump in 2006, so she would keep quiet about the affair. Despite the guilty plea, Spakovsky said that Trump should not be worried because it would have to be a “campaign-related expense” for the contribution break any campaign finance laws. He also pointed out that the only other time the Justice Department tried to say payments like these were campaign-related expenses was with John Edwards. Donations to Edwards’ campaign actually went to paying his mistress, a woman who worked for the campaign and ended up having his child. A jury, however, ruled that Edwards’ donations were not a campaign-related expense...
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The Federal Judge Overseeing Michael Flynn’s
Sentencing Just Dropped A Major Bombshell  
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by Margot Cleveland  
{thefederalist.com} ~ On Tuesday, attorneys for Michael Flynn filed a sentencing memorandum and letters of support for the former Army lieutenant general in federal court... The sentencing memorandum reveals for the first time concrete evidence that the FBI created multiple 302 interview summaries of Flynn’s questioning by now-former FBI agent Peter Strzok and a second unnamed agent, reported to be FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka. Further revelations may be forthcoming soon following an order entered late yesterday by presiding judge Emmet Sullivan, directing the special counsel’s office to file with the court any 302s or memorandum relevant to Flynn’s interview. Flynn, who served briefly as President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, pleaded guilty more than a year ago to making false statements to federal investigators during a January 24, 2017 interview. During that interview, Strzok and presumably Pientka questioned Flynn about a telephone conversation the Trump advisor had with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. While Flynn’s sentencing memorandum methodically laid out the case for a low-level sentence of one-year probation, footnote 23 dropped a bomb, revealing that the agents’ 302 summary of his interview was dated August 22, 2017. As others have already noted, the August 22, 2017 date is a “striking detail” because that puts the 302 report “nearly seven months after the Flynn interview.” When added to facts already known, this revelation takes on a much greater significance...  http://thefederalist.com/2018/12/13/federal-judge-overseeing-michael-flynns-sentencing-just-dropped-major-bombshell/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=482cb9eac8-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-482cb9eac8-83771801
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Testimony: Mexico’s ‘narco’ crisis
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by Roger F. Noriega
{aei.org} ~ Thank you, very much, Mr. Chairman for the opportunity for me to offer my views on the high stakes involved in the US-Mexico relationship... particularly regarding the threat posed by Mexican organized crime organizations that are a part of an aggressive and sophisticated global crime network. This hearing is particularly timely because Mexico has a new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who assumed power on December 1st with a clear mandate to fight corruption but whose thoughts of subduing narcoviolence with an “amnesty” and antipoverty programs are not reassuring.  For the last 20 years, the percentage of cocaine entering the United States transiting Mexico has never dipped below 90 percent—sustaining a public health and criminal justice crisis that has a $200 billion annual impact on US society. The Mexican people see the problem another way: The demand for cocaine, heroin, and other drugs by US consumers sustains criminal groups that have attacked the rule of law, weakened institutions, and caused terror and death since the “war on drugs” began 50 years ago. We must face this threat as partners. The United States could not begin to stop illicit drug trafficking without Mexico’s help. And, Mexico would pay a very dear price if it gave way to criminals who do much more damage than traffic drugs northward. Worse yet, if the rule of law in Mexico were any weaker than it is today, the negative impact on economic growth and social stability would be felt in both countries. We share robust trade, financial and commercial ties, integrated supply chains, and cultural ties. The border is where we are joined, not divided. Over one million legal border crossings between the two countries occur each day, while $1 million worth of trade takes place each minute between the US and Mexico...
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Suspected Terrorist Leading 
Migrant Group Demanding Entry Into US  
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by Peter Hasson
{dailycaller.com} ~ A suspect in a 1987 bombing that wounded six American soldiers in Honduras is leading a group of migrants... demanding entry into the United States. Alfonso Guerrero Ulloa organized a march of approximately 100 migrants to the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana, Mexico, on Tuesday, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Ulloa delivered a letter to the consulate on behalf of the migrants, asking for either entry into the U.S. or a payment of $50,000 per person. “It may seem like a lot of money to you,” Ulloa told the Union-Tribune. “But it is a small sum compared to everything the United States has stolen from Honduras.” Ulloa has lived in Mexico since 1987 after fleeing Honduras in the wake of a bombing that wounded six soldiers. Ulloa was suspected of planting a bomb in a Chinese restaurant, but received asylum from Mexico, whose government described the suspected terrorist as a “freedom fighter.”...
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Double Standard: Only scumbag/liar-nObama 
Can Obliterate His Own Citizens
by Mark Christian and Joe Herring

{americanthinker.com} ~ Anwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen who chose to advocate terrorism and built a career on orchestrating activities intended to weaken, injure, and ultimately overthrow the government of the United States... He was a member of numerous subversive groups, dating back to his college days. He was an avowed Islamist, who pledged to do all in his power to subjugate the world, and everyone in it, under Islam, by any means necessary. As an able propagandist, Awlaki became a valuable recruiter for terror groups. By any objective measure, the man was an enemy of his own nation. Awlaki was a fiery Islamic preacher. His words were unreservedly anti-American. They inflamed Islamic passions. Awlaki wielded words as weapons. He met his demise in 2011, on the receiving end of an American drone strike in Yemen ordered by then-president Barack scumbag/liar-nObama. That strike also killed Awlaki's American-born 16-year-old son. While there were a few bleats and squawks from various civil libertarians on the left and right over the assassination of not one, but two American citizens without due process of law, the issue grew stale quickly as the media sensed that their favorite son (scumbag/liar-nObama) might be harmed politically with further reporting.  Fast-forward to the present day, and while keeping the circumstances of Awlaki's death in the forefront of your mind, ask yourself why so many on both sides of the aisle are now exercised over Saudi Arabia allegedly doing the exact same thing to a Saudi national, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi national guilty of every crime and a few more! for which Awlaki paid with his life...
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The Oval Office Wall Brawl

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by Nate Jackson:  “It’s like a manhood thing for him,” incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of President Donald Trump and the border wall. “As if manhood could ever be associated with him. I was trying to be the mom. I can’t explain it to you. It was so wild. It goes to show you: You get into a tinkle contest with a skunk, you get tinkle all over you.” Pulosi’s schoolyard taunts were in response to a testy Oval Office meeting with the president, Vice President Mike Pence, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck scumbag/clown-Schumer. Before we dissect that meeting, however, just imagine for a moment if Trump had insulted Pulosi’s womanhood…

             The meeting was televised, and it was certainly quintessential reality TV — a genre in which the president thrives. To mix metaphors, it was also a New Yorker-style rhetorical brawl, and Trump holds his own in those too.
               Trump was savvy to bring in the TV cameras. “It’s called transparency,” he explained when Pulosi complained and asked that they be removed. Trump wanted the American people to see that he and his party are serious about border security, while Democrats would rather fling the door open wide for millions of illegals.
               Trump wants $5 billion for the border wall, which the House gave him earlier this year. Senate Democrats were willing to give only $1.6 billion; now they’re apparently pulling back to $1.3 billion, and none of that is even for an actual wall. Yet Pulosi had the gall to insist they were negotiating “in good faith.” We’d hate to see bad faith.
               scumbag/clown-Schumer blamed Trump for any coming shutdown, even though, as Trump repeatedly noted, it is 10 Senate Democrats who are the roadblock to a compromise. Nevertheless, unlike most Republicans who are afraid of their own shadows, Trump owned it. “I am proud to shut down the government for border security, scumbag/clown-Chuck,” he declared. “People in this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I won’t blame you for it.
               Once upon a time, Democrats like scumbag/clown-Schumer and Pulosi, as well as scumbag/liar-Bill and scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton and Barack scumbag/liar-nObama, thought building a wall along the southern border was the responsible thing to do for a sane immigration policy. In the last few years, however, Democrats have done a 180, and Pulosi now calls the wall “immoral.” Demo Party leaders shamelessly exploit immigrants and their children for political gain, while Trump and his supporters actually want to solve the problem of illegal immigration.
               As the White House email “1600 Daily” put it, “The Democrats’ priority is clear: They would rather keep the U.S. border open to illegal immigrants than keep the Government open to serve American citizens.” Of course, it remains to be seen if either side sticks with their ultimatums, or if this was just partisan showmanship for the cameras.  

~The Patriot Post  

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wX-bpohpAg

https://patriotpost.us/articles/59999?mailing_id=3937&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3937&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

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Thursday Noon

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Why the US Is Right to Refuse to 
Sign UN Migration Compact
by Hans von Spakovsky  
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With Democrats in Power, 2019 Will 
Be the Year of Gun Confiscation
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{lidblog.com} ~ A court recently upheld New Jersey’s ban on firearm magazines that hold more than ten rounds... but state officials have steadfastly refused to inform the citizens just how they intend to enforce that law. But the fact that it was upheld and coupled with news in a growing list of other states — not to mention the noise from Washington DC proves that the Democrats intend to make 2019 the year of gun confiscation and ending the Second Amendment in every way without saying it openly. As to New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy signed the ban on extended magazines in June, but it immediately underwent an appeal by gun supporters. But it looks like supporters of the Constitution lost that battle. So far, the state imagines it has the right to ban these common ammunition magazines. But, just how do officials plan to prosecute people who simply refuse to voluntarily hand over their magazines? No one is saying. “We will enforce the law of the state,” Lieutenant Theodore Schafer of the New Jersey State Police said. “That’s our plan.”That is a statement, not a plan. The only real way to enforce this law is mass confiscation via home inspection. But will they do this. Again, no one is saying. New Jersey is not alone.  Democrats in Florida have already started their effort to confiscate your guns, America, in the first taste of what Democrats are going to try when they take full control of the House of Representatives in Washington...
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House Democrats Change Rules 
to Make It Easier to Raise Taxes
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by Haris Alic   
{freebeacon.com} ~ Democratic Rep. Nancy Pulosi (Calif.) has yet to take the speaker's gavel of the U.S. House of Representatives, but Democrats are already laboring to make it easier to dismantle the achievements of the Trump presidency... The incoming chairman of the House Rules Committee, Rep. Jim McGovern (D., Mass.), confirmed to colleagues on Wednesday that he would not honor the three-fifths supermajority requirement to raise income taxes, as reported by the Washington Post. McGovern's decision  overturns a rule implemented under outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) that mandated a three-fifths majority approve any proposed hike to the income tax. The change comes after a standoff between Pulosi and her moderate allies in the Democratic conference, such as incoming Ways and Means Committee chairman Richard Neal (Mass.), and younger, more progressive members like Rep.-elect commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.)...
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Nancy Pulosi, Speaker of the House - the 
Sequel (Worse Than the Original)
l6DI-GdYeuMGET_5Dk0ugCUwIvM0HYORV1CJGI7SJW3i7lv4ZGX6_82v2fqCbMBXlxLPh0Dq3LZHif9EQspPLgT1DYB-6TDrX-qRSflpD1Nx5WHdtFMe8QbB3gVIFiFYaRHE-gwyqe7fl5SMaTb1WuCWbcJAL6hJ7zJgSu6H9zPQ50vrpwjH=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=350by Michael Cutler
{frontpagemag.com} ~ In the movies sequels are usually worse than the original. Since Washington has often been referred to as “Hollywood for ugly people,”... it is perhaps appropriate to consider another sequel in the making, not in film but in politics. Nancy Pulosi, the former Speaker of the House and soon-to-be Speaker of the House of Representatives, once again was the subject of a video posted on December 7, 2018 by Fox News, in which she rejected the notion of constructing a wall along the highly porous U.S./ Mexican border to prevent the entry of illegal aliens, narcotics and other contraband. Her outrageous statements and positions on immigration law enforcement and border security seemed to strike a new low during her first stint as Speaker. She has yet to resume that position and is already providing a disturbing peek into what America and Americans are in for with her in the position that provides her with a “leadership” role in the Congress and puts her in the chain of succession to the U.S. Presidency. As my dad used to say, “Nothing is so good it could not be better or be so bad it could not get worse.” As hard as it might be to imagine, bad as Pulosi was the last time she held the position of Speaker, she may actually prove my dad was right. It is unfathomable how Pulosi could declare that protecting the United States from threats posed by international terrorists, transnational gangs and the flow of narcotics into the United States is “immoral.” It is similarly impossible to understand how Pulosi could determine that it is immoral to prevent the illegal entry of foreign workers who all too frequently displace American and lawful immigrant workers and drive down wages and working conditions of American and lawful immigrant workers who are similarly employed...  https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272183/nancy-pelosi-speaker-house-sequel-worse-original-michael-cutler
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Pence Breaks Tie After rino-Flake Refuses 
To Confirm Judicial Pick
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by Randy DeSoto   
{westernjournal.com} ~ Vice President Mike Pence stepped in to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate on Tuesday, confirming Jonathan Kobes... as a judge on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Pence’s move came after Arizona Republican Sen. rino-Jeff Flake joined with Democrats to oppose Kobes’ nomination, The Hill reported. The retiring lawmaker announced last month that he would not support any nominees going forward until his bill shielding special counsel dirty cop-Robert Mueller from being removed by President Donald Trump or the attorney general received a full Senate vote. In light of rino-Flake’s refusal to support Trump’s nominees, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley announced the cancellation of a meeting scheduled for the last week of November during which the senators were slated to consider six nominees to the federal circuit courts and 15 federal district courts around the country. However, more than 30 nominees have already passed out of committee with rino-Flake’s support and can be confirmed by the full Senate without him. But confirmation will require Pence to break the tie, assuming all remaining GOP senators vote to confirm and all Democratic senators vote against confirmation. rino-Flake joined with Democrats late last month to filibuster judicial nominee Thomas Farr to serve on the federal bench for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Pence broke the 50-50 tie in the procedural vote, allowing the nominee to be eligible for a full Senate vote...  
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Incoming Lawmakers Briefed by Netanyahu, 
Tour Hamas Tunnels Into Israel
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by Brent Scher
{freebeacon.com} ~ A bipartisan group of incoming members of Congress were given a security briefing by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a trip to the Jewish state... Republican congressman-elect Denver Riggleman, an Air Force veteran, says the visit served as "Israeli history basic training." Riggleman, a Republican who ran against a vocal anti-Israel activist in Virginia's fifth district, says there's been a good balance to the information presented to the group thus far on the trip, which is sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)-affiliated nonprofit group. In addition to their briefing on security from Netanyahu, they met with Tzipi Livni, a prominent politician who leads the opposition party in the Knesset. The group also traveled to the West Bank city of Ramallah to meet with Saeb Erekat, a top Palestinian official. "They are directing us to learn in a nonjudgmental way," Riggleman said during a phone call from Tel Aviv. "It's been fantastic to hear from people who will forget more about Israel in a day than most Americans will know in a lifetime."...
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Why the US Is Right to Refuse to Sign UN Migration Compact

by Hans von Spakovsky
 

On Dec. 10-11 in Morocco, most of the world’s nations will sign on to the United Nations’ Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.
               The U.S. will not be signing the migration compact — and that’s the correct decision from public policy, national security, and national sovereignty standpoints.
               The migration compact was initiated when the U.N. General Assembly unanimously adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants in September 2016.
               While the scumbag/liar-nObama administration enthusiastically supported the New York declaration and the migration compact, the Trump administration has had serious concerns about its provisions and requirements that are inconsistent and contrary to our immigration policy.
               On Dec. 2, 2017, the United States announced that it would not participate in the migration compact, as explained by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley:
               America is proud of our immigrant heritage and our long-standing moral leadership in providing support to migrant and refugee populations across the globe.
               No country has done more than the United States, and our generosity will continue. But our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone. We will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter our country.
               The global approach in the New York Declaration is simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty.
               The decision to end U.S. participation was controversial and unfairly criticized by U.N. officials and human rights groups.
               Since the U.S. decision, however, other nations have likewise signaled that they would not sign the migration compact because of concerns that “it tramples on national sovereignty” and “does not distinguish sufficiently between economic migrants and people in genuine need of international protection.
               At least 10 other nations are expected to join the U.S. in not signing the migration compact, including Australia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Israel, and Poland.
               In addition, the compact is causing political controversy and turmoil in some places that its supporters might consider unlikely, such as Belgium, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
               The concerns voiced in these countries mirror those of U.S. officials. For example, while the migration compact says that it is the sovereign right of states to “govern migration within their jurisdiction,” they can only do so to the extent it is “in conformity with international law.
               That’s a direct limitation on the constitutional authority of our government to determine our immigration policy regardless of international law.
               Similarly, the migration compact says that the due process rights and access to justice provided to migrants must be “consistent with international law.” That imposes another limitation on the authority of the U.S. to determine its immigration policy and the extent of the due process procedures that will be provided to illegal aliens.
               There are other, similar caveats contained throughout the migration compact, such as a requirement that a country’s migration policy be consistent with the U.N.‘s nonbinding 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
               It directs that detention of illegal aliens should only be “a measure of last resort,” a policy that would release large numbers of illegal aliens into the interior of the U.S., where they could disappear and defy our immigration laws.
               The migration compact has many other provisions that would extend asylum rights and provide access to a variety of government benefits far beyond what U.S. immigration law provides.
               In general, it is in accord with the push by liberal advocacy groups to extinguish the line between legal and illegal immigration to the greatest extent possible.
               In addition, the migration compact states that it rests on a number of international agreements, which is important, considering the compact’s frequent references to international law.
               Strangely, it makes no distinction between commitments that are legally binding and those that are not — citing, for example, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, alongside the Paris accord and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
               The compact fails to note that not all states have ratified the treaties listed. The United States, for example, has declined to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, and other treaties referenced in the compact.
               The U.S. should avoid even implying that agreements and treaties that it has not ratified constitute binding commitments on this country.
               Defenders of the migration compact argue that U.S. concerns are misguided because country commitments under it are nonbinding. Indeed, supporters of the compact lament the lack of a binding treaty on migration.
               The purpose of the compact, however, is to be a steppingstone to that goal. To that end, it lays out common commitments and practices on “all aspects of international migration” that signatories will be pressured to honor.
               States that fall short of expectations or interpretations of those commitments by the U.N. and nongovernmental organizations will be accused of bad faith and of abandoning their commitments.
               We witnessed such criticism when the U.S. pulled out of the similarly nonbinding Paris accord on climate change. Yet, at the recent Group of 20 meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the other governments insisted that the nonbinding Paris accord is “irreversible.”
               It is important to note that not signing the migration compact would in no way undermine or reverse America’s generous policy on migration.
               The U.S. should work with the International Organization for Migration and other relevant entities to implement the migration compact’s sensible provisions, but it is right to protect jealously its discretion and sovereign authority to set its own migration policies that further U.S. interests.
               Signing on to the compact provides no additional authority or ability to adjust U.S. migration policy to meet urgent or ongoing needs. It does, however, serve as an invitation for politically motivated criticism and international pressure.
               The U.S. is right to weigh the costs and benefits of this approach and find it wanting. The costs far outweigh the benefits.  

~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/59950?mailing_id=3935&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3935&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body
Read more…

Thurs Med/AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
The Long Road to Energy Independence
L5ntEoxtoQj-rmIanppBhjcknWFcyC4DNA9FXm2Ox6GJViNDJRt14V1NqepiGDCcJTYS2kjxeNQsEWkQaaS5wYvtuMqvYnOSqdNM6jE9fcBG9sMd4UhOe27hRW5lLPFqDbOzmGxHw9VmMPXFfEohGQwcLRM5r7oWOuU2T1k=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=?width=450
by Lewis Morris  
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Thursday Top Headlines
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by Media Editors:  Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen gets three years in prison, blames Trump for his “path of darkness” (ABC News)
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Cohen pleaded guilty to something that is not a crime (National Review)
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FBI created multiple summaries of Michael Flynn’s questioning — what are they hiding? (The Federalist)
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House sends compromise farm bill to Trump’s desk (National Review)
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House, Senate agree on sexual-harassment bill after months-long struggle to resolve differences (The Washington Post)
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Pulosi reaches deal to be speaker by agreeing to stay only four years (NBC News)
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Trump gets win as Xi makes good on pledge to buy U.S. soybeans (Bloomberg)
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House Democrats change rules to make it easier to raise taxes (The Washington Free Beacon)
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Return of pork-barrel politics? Democrats plot to revive earmarks (Washington Examiner)
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Theresa May survives confidence vote (BBC)
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Third-ranking Vatican official convicted of sexually abusing choir boys (National Review)
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Boy Scouts of America may file for bankruptcy protection amid sex-abuse lawsuits (Fox Business)
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Fentanyl now America’s deadliest drug with more than 18,000 overdose deaths in 2016 (USA Today)
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Strasbourg terrorist had been on French terrorist watch list for three years (The Daily Wire)
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ISIS spends most of its time and energy killing Muslims, and its mass graves tell the tale (Washington Examiner)
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Humor: Woke parents refuse to assume newborn baby’s nutrition preferences (The Babylon Bee)
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Policy: Huawei is the doorway to China’s police state (The National Interest)
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Policy: It’s time to reform food-stamp policy (National Review)  
 
~The Patriot Post  
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Punishing the Saudi prince
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by Clifford D. May 
{washingtontimes.com} ~ Consult a map of the Middle East. Locate the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow sea passage separating the Arabian Peninsula from Iran, and connecting the Gulf... whether you call it the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf is a thorny question — to the open oceans beyond. The Strait of Hormuz is among the world’s most strategic waterways, essential to the health of the global economy. More than a third of seaborne oil shipments and 20 percent of the oil traded internationally pass through it. The U.S. Navy — specifically the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet — keeps this sea lane open, frustrating Iran’s rulers who claim it as their private lap pool. They menace American vessels there — though less frequently since Donald Trump replaced Barack scumbag/liar-nObama in the White House. Look at the map again. Locate the Bab-el-Mandeb, another strategic strait. It separates Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula from Africa, and guards the entrance to the Red Sea at the northern end of which is the Suez Canal, also a vital chokepoint. Iran’s rulers covet the Bab-el-Mandeb as well. Their maritime goals support their hegemonic ambitions. The last thing American leaders should do is help them. Yet a bipartisan majority of senators is working on a resolution that would do exactly that by withdrawing U.S. military assistance to the Saudi-led coalition fighting Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen...
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'This has spiraled downward': Trump, top 
Democrats put raw partisan divide on full display
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by Dave Boyer and S.A. Miller 
{washingtontimes.com} ~ President Trump and congressional Democratic leaders ripped off the bandage over their raw, partisan disagreements Tuesday... in open bickering that offered a glimpse of the divided government to come in the next two years. During a White House meeting intended to seek common ground to avoid a partial government shutdown next week, the president and incoming House Speaker Nancy Pulosi and Senate Democratic leader Charles E. scumbag/clown-Schumer instead squabbled over funding for the border wall, traded blame for the last shutdown and jousted over which party commands the stronger political hand since the midterm elections.“Unfortunately, this has spiraled downward,” Mrs. Pulosi told the president as their quarreling grew more intense in the Oval Office, which was adorned incongruously with festive holiday decorations. Most of the feuding played out on camera in front of reporters who were invited by the president to cover the meeting. The Democrats pleaded with Mr. Trump several times to kick out the press. “Let’s debate in private,” Mr. scumbag/clown-Schumer urged as cameras continued to roll. The stormy session ended — at least the public portion of it — with the president declaring he would be “proud” to shut down parts of the government if he doesn’t get more funding for the wall.
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Media Conventional Wisdom On The Russia
Investigation Is Uninformed And Idiotic  
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by Mollie Hemingway  
{thefederalist.com} ~ Jim VandeHei of Axios claimed to sum up on Sunday “what we already now know” about dirty cop-Robert Mueller’s findings in the Russia probe... His next claim was even more robust. “What we already now know is highly damning and highly detailed.” If you want to — and I quote — “go deeper,” you can click a button that gives you “460 words” of how what we know is highly damning and highly detailed. It is, of course, not even close to either of those things. But it’s worth looking at to see how some D.C. figures are easily spun into thinking — or claiming to think — that things for which there is no evidence have “highly detailed” evidence. Here’s the first allegedly “highly detailed” and “highly damning” assertion from VandeHei: “We now know several Russian officials reached out to a half-dozen Republicans very close to Trump and his campaign, including his eldest son, his closest adviser, his lawyer and his campaign manager. We now know they took the meetings, often enthusiastically, during and after the campaign.” You will note the details aren’t robust enough for us to have a strong idea of what VandeHei is claiming, much less what in the world is damning about it. It’s almost comical. It is true that foreigners reach out to American campaigns, and that Russia is a foreign country. Presumably dirty cop-Mueller isn’t investigating whether Russia exists or has officials who reach out to campaigns, but rather whether there was any treasonous collusion to steal the 2016 election from its rightful owner scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton. Perhaps this is a reference to a meeting with Russians that involved no collusion to steal an election, but an unsuccessful attempt to convince Trump affiliates to oppose Magnitsky Act sanctions against Russia. If taking a meeting with foreign individuals is de facto proof of a crime, then how would these people characterize the hiring of a foreign spy to work with Russian officials to spread misinformation about an opposing  campaign? After all, it was the scumbag/liar-Clinton campaign that funneled money to hire foreign ex-spy Christopher Steele...
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False statement charges abound in dirty cop-Mueller probe,
in contrast to scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton 
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by Brooke Singman   
{foxnews.com} ~ Nearly every Trump campaign associate indicted in Special Counsel dirty cop-Robert Mueller’s sprawling Russia probe has been charged with making false statements... But in a striking contrast, raising questions about a possible double standard, not a single person interviewed during the FBI’s scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton email investigation was hit with false statement charges – even though investigators believed some witnesses were untruthful. “Somebody needs to be resolving how they exercise discretion, because a whole bunch of people are facing jail time, or flipping in one probe, and the agents openly discussed how other people in the scumbag/liar-Clinton probe could have been charged with the same offense,” former Justice Department senior official James Trusty told Fox News. Of the six Trump campaign associates charged in dirty cop-Mueller’s long investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, five have been charged with violating U.S.C. 1001 — making false statements to FBI agents. Those charged include: former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos; former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn; former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen; and former associates of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort—Alex van der Zwaan and Rick Gates. But according to the report released in June by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on the FBI’s handling of the scumbag/liar-Clinton email investigation, federal prosecutors and FBI agents told the independent watchdog that witnesses in the probe lied during interviews, but that agents and prosecutors did not pursue false statements charges...  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/false-statement-charges-abound-in-mueller-probe-discouraged-in-clinton-case
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Climatologist Dr.Judith Curry Hits BS Button 
On Sea Level Rise Fear Mongering
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{lidblog.com} ~ Good News! We’re not going to drown. At least not from the sea level rising... That’s what the scare tactics of those pushing the climate change hypothesis keep telling us. Writing on her website, Dr. Judith Curry hit the BS button on the sea level rise claims pushed by the scaremongers. The available evidence shows the following: Sea level was apparently higher than present at the time of the Holocene Climate Optimum (~ 5000 years ago), at least in some regions. Tide gauges show that sea levels began to rise during the 19th century, after several centuries associated with cooling and sea level decline. Tide gauges also show that rates of global mean sea level rise between 1920 and 1950 were comparable to recent rates. Recent research has concluded that there is no consistent or compelling evidence that recent rates of sea level rise are abnormal in the context of the historical records back to the 19th century that are available across Europe. She adds that any sea level rises we’ve seen have had nothing to do with mankind, The slow emergence of fossil fuel emissions prior to 1950 did not contribute significantly to sea level rise observed in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The recent acceleration in mean global sea level rise (since 1995) is caused by mass loss from Greenland that appears to have been larger during the 1930’s, with both periods associated with the warm phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. She reminds us to remember that the real reason for predicting the sea level rises is “providing support for the hypothesis of human-caused climate change.”  So when they come up with computer models, suggests Dr. Curry, they ignore the natural sea level variations. Or to put it another way, they are saying it’s raining without looking out the window...  https://lidblog.com/sea-level-rise/
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The Long Road to Energy Independence
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by Lewis Morris:  America’s energy outlook is changing significantly for the better, which is obviously welcome news … that you’re unlikely to hear from the mainstream media.

             Last week, the United States officially became a net oil exporter, a dramatic shift for the country’s energy sector. It’s been 75 years since we could say that we ship out more oil than we take in.
               Increased oil production in Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania are responsible in part for this new state of affairs. And a recently discovered oil and natural gas reserve in Texas and New Mexico should keep the pumps going for years to come. The massive reservoir contains 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 46.3 billion barrels of oil. It’s the largest such resource ever assessed and is enough to fuel the United States alone for up to seven years.
               President Donald Trump campaigned on American energy independence, and since taking office, Trump has initiated several steps to move toward that goal. Those include relaxed federal restrictions on oil and natural gas exploration and drilling, and lifting draconian Barack scumbag/liar-nObama-era restrictions designed to bring an end to coal production in the U.S.
               True energy independence has been a stated goal of every president since Richard Nixon, but no one ever went about it correctly or whole-heartedly. Several Republican and Democrat presidents embraced a policy concoction of more regulation, a reliance on “alternative” energy sources, and austerity measures to manage America’s energy needs. Not surprisingly, all fell short of energy independence.
               Meeting America’s energy needs means producing more energy (a.k.a. supply-side economics) — it’s as simple as that. Our last president, who laughably insists he is responsible for America’s current energy boom, was in favor of driving up energy costs for consumers to force less usage (a.k.a. demand-side economics.) The scumbag/liar-nObama administration was also in favor of betting the ranch on unproven clean-energy technologies that were prohibitively expensive and not all that efficient or clean.
               The energy boom that we are currently experiencing makes us less reliant on foreign energy producers, which in turn improves our national security. It also means more jobs to produce energy here at home, and that means a strengthened economy. Good news all around. Well, except for the climate doomsayers.
               At the recent climate conference in Poland, alarmists continued their tirade against CO2 emissions, claiming that the world has just 10 years to lower those emissions before we reach the point of no return on rising surface temperatures. They also literally mocked the Trump administration’s efforts to tout fossil fuels.
               Many nations at the conference unquestioningly accepted the UN’s latest report, which calls for unspecified drastic changes to industrial emissions. The United States, joined by Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, challenged the report’s findings, with each nation saying they would only note the report rather than accept it.
               The U.S. also refused to reaffirm the Paris climate deal at November’s G20 summit, much to the consternation of ecofascists. Yet by following its own policies, the U.S. has lowered emissions during seven out of the last 10 years — something that none of the nations supporting the Paris accords can say. That proves as much as anything that Paris emissions-control standards are about control, not emissions.
               Climate change is a ruse to hide a leftist takeover of the economy. America’s rising energy production, and the vigorous economy that comes with it, stands in the way of that goal. So expect leftists to continue targeting Trump’s energy policy and to continue screaming hyperbolic claims that he is destroying the Earth.  ~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/articles/59956?mailing_id=3935&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3935&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  
Read more…

Thursday AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Thought Police Target 'Homophobic' Athletes
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by Nate Jackson
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Trump’s ‘Great Wall’ Isn’t What’s Being Built
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{nationalreview.com} ~ Making the click-through worthwhile: what you’re not hearing about the slowly spreading wall or bollard fence along our southern border... trying to make sense of President Trump’s negotiating strategy in the funding fight, an ugly scene in France, and some kind words for the Three Martini Lunch podcast.  Trump in yesterday’s meeting with Chuck scumbag/clown-Schumer and Nancy Pulosi: “One thing that I do have to say is, tremendous amounts of wall have already been built, and a lot of — a lot of wall. When you include the renovation of existing fences and walls, we’ve renovated a tremendous amount and we’ve done a lot of work.” As I’ve detailed in two  articles for NRO, it is more accurate to say that under previously passed legislation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection continues to pay contractors to replace sections of spotty or insufficient fencing with 18-foot-tall bollard walls — tall steel bars with gaps in between them so that Border Patrol officers can see what’s happening on the other side. A border-wall contractor argued in March, “If your wall is see-through, you’re basically a fence.” For what it’s worth, the Border Patrol prefers the slats because it’s easier to see migrants approaching, attempting to climb the wall, or trying to evade authorities. You can get a sense of the bollard wall in this CBP photo of Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan touring the San Ysidro port of entry with Rodney S. Scott, the chief patrol agent for San Diego Sector, and CNN reporter Chris Cuomo...  https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/trumps-great-wall-isnt-whats-being-built/  
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Was Cyntoia Brown sentenced 
to life in prison for self-defense? Nope.
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{legalinsurrection.com} ~ A lot of people have been forwarding me articles about Cyntoia Brown, who was convicted of first-degree murder and aggravated robbery when she was a 16-year-old prostitute... Recent news coverage includes this very sympathetic piece from CNN and another from NPR, as well as a deluge of similarly sympathetic coverage from a variety of other sources. Brown unsuccessfully argued self-defense at her trail. The court sentenced her to life in prison. She will first be eligible for parole after serving 51 years of her sentence. It seems Ms. Brown has been getting a great deal of attention in recent years, arguing that she deserves clemency because of her status as a victim of sex trafficking. This attention includes a full-blown documentary, a social media campaign (#FreeCyntoiaBrown), and support from such people I guess I’m supposed to know as Rihanna, Snoop Dogg, and Kim Kardashian: This attention reached a crescendo last week when the Tennessee supreme court unanimously affirmed Ms. Brown’s conviction and life sentence in this decision (embedded below). The case is a combination of arguably legitimate public policy issues should a 16-year-old be subject to a life sentence, even for murder? and social hysteria nonsense victims of sex trafficking, which I guess means prostitutes should be immunized not just against minor offenses such as truancy and underage drinking, but also murder. I’m sure reasonable people could take opposing positions on all those issues...
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Ted Cruz Criticizes Pulosi For Wanting To Turn
Cameras Off During White House Meeting
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by Scott Morefield
{dailycaller.com} ~ Texas Senator Ted Cruz lauded President Trump’s performance during Tuesday’s Oval Office exchange with Democratic leaders... During Tuesday night’s edition of Fox News’ “Hannity,” Cruz also criticized Rep Nancy Pulosi, calling her stated desire to take the discussion off-camera a result of being “scared” because she’s on the “losing end of the argument.”Fox News host Sean Hannity began the segment by comparing Cruz’s own 2013 filibuster on healthcare to Trump’s “fighting on borders now.” “Why don’t we see more of this in the Republican Party?” he asked. “I think you are exactly right,” Cruz responded. “The American people have for a long time been frustrated with Washington, frustrated that too many elected officials don’t follow through on their promises, and they want us to do what we said we would do.” Cruz called the president’s Oval Office debate with Democratic leaders “terrific.”...
VIDEO at the site.
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Now That The Supreme Court Isn’t Their Puppet,
Liberals Want To Destroy It  
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by Ryan Fazio
{thefederalist.com} ~ Concerted opposition to the independent judiciary has begun to percolate on the left with little scrutiny... Last week, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton’s former spokesman Brian Fallon, and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna rallied activists seeking to enervate judicial independence through proposals like court-packing and term limits for justices. Left-wing influencers like Democratic Rep.-Elect commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attorney Michael Avenatti have endorsed the former propositions already. Progressive websites like Vox.com have repeatedly challenged the notion of judicial review. And dozens of leading lawyers on the left are organizing academic support for such ideas. The list goes on. Yes, the proximate cause of the movement is the most contentious Supreme Court confirmation in history. But while it appears to be mostly a reaction to a single nominee’s confirmation to a single seat, the fever pitch is really 60 years in the making. For most of that time, progressive jurists circumvented the normal constitutional amendment process by reading into the law meanings that were never there to impose desired social policies on the nation, exceed the enumerated powers, and traverse protections of individual rights. Their jurisprudence was innocuously rationalized by the existence of a “living Constitution.” Sometimes such decisions were characterized by activism of the court imposing its preferred policies on legislatures, like in the Miranda, Roe, and Obergefell decisions. Other times they were characterized by restraint, permitting the political branches to act contrary to statute or the Constitution, like in Chevron, Gonzales, and Sebelius cases. Often they were joined by liberal justices appointed by Republicans. They might have been earnest and well-meaning, but their rulings were also offensive to the rule of law and to millions of informed and motivated voters...
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.Reveal the Congressional Hush Fund Hypocrites
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{americanthinker.com} ~ Which is worse: candidate, businessman, and then still private citizen Donald Trump using his own money to make what scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton might call "bimbo eruptions"... go away to protect his brand and himself from personal embarrassment, or Congress using taxpayer money in a slush fund to pay off those sexually harassed by sitting officeholders? As Penny Nance, president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, notes in USA Today: Literally a year ago – as the #MeToo era was erupting – the nation was waking up to news that a secret congressional "hush fund" had been used by Members of Congress to pay off accusers of sexual misconduct. Taxpayer money – yours and mine – was used to pay off these alleged victims. ...Nobody knows how many congressmen and Senators are involved, and if  Pulosi is a willing participant to keep all of this a secret she will forfeit credibility on every other issue. ...What we know already is devastating. We know congressmen John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Blake Fahrentold (R-Tex.) used this "hush fund" to settle with alleged victims. Both men have already left Congress. We also know that none of the beneficiaries of this slush fund has been threatened with indictment and incarceration for campaign finance violations since suppressing such information, as Rep. Nadler puts it, amounts to committing a fraud on the American people using their own money...
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Thought Police Target 'Homophobic' Athletes
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by Nate Jackson:  Celebrities and athletes are enlightened philosophers who can pontificate from on high to impart their profound wisdom upon the unwashed masses. Unless they deviate from leftist groupthink, that is. A recent spate of rhetorical assaults upon rogue celebrities and athletes by the Rainbow Mafia reminds us again that some Americans seem to think freedom of speech and individual liberty are things to be mercilessly crushed under the jackboots of the thought police.

             The man getting the most attention is University of Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray, who won the Heisman Trophy Saturday night only to be dragged through the mud by USA Today’s Scott Gleeson over “homophobic” tweets Murray made … when he was 15. Murray went from what should have been one of the greatest moments of his life to a perfunctory apology for his “poor choice of word that doesn’t reflect who I am or what I believe.” And it was all thanks to a vindictive Leftmedia eager to punish “wrongthink” about any favored group such as homosexuals.
               Murray, who was drafted to play baseball for the Oakland A’s, is hardly alone, however. Gleeson wrote (as if he were merely an innocent observer), “Murray, 21 now, joins several other famous athletes to find themselves thrust in a negative spotlight as a result of their old tweets resurfacing in the midst of big accomplishments. The Milwaukee Brewers’ Josh Hader had racist, homophobic and misogynistic tweets resurface from when he was 17 years old this past summer. Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen saw racist tweets resurface from his teenage years ahead of the NFL draft. And Villanova Final Four Most Outstanding Player Donte DiVincenzo had a profane tweet with racist rap lyrics surface on the Internet right after he helped the Wildcats win a national title.”
               Gleeson is part of the problem, waiting for a moment of accomplishment to destroy a target. Baltimore Ravens lineman Patrick Ricard, Portland Trail Blazers forward Al-Farouq Aminu, and Atlanta Braves pitcher Sean Newcomb are also recent victims of media-generated outrage over using the “wrong” words. And then there’s comedian Kevin Hart, who will no longer host the Oscars after “homophobic” comments just happened to surface after the Academy Awards organizers asked him to host. The list could — and unfortunately will — go on.
               To be clear, we’re not defending some of the words in question, which are indeed crass and offensive and aren’t part of what should be a better response to gender dysphoria. But humans have always had a knack for saying awful things about one another. In this case, it’s the rabid heterophobic gender deniers who ought to apologize for aiming to destroy accomplished people over offhand teenage snark.  

~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/articles/59970?mailing_id=3935&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3935&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  
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