ACTION

“HE DIED … WHIMPERING AND CRYING”: Trump confirms death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in U.S. raid (Agence France-Presse)

OUT OF OPTIONS: Rep. Katie Hill resigns amid allegations of sexual relationships with staffers (The Hill)

Government & Politics

END OF AN ERA: Longest-serving black congressman John Conyers dies at 90 (Washington Examiner)

JUDICIAL ACTIVISM: scumbag/liar-nObama judge orders DOJ to turn over Mueller grand-jury material for Democrats’ impeachment probe (The Washington Times)

NEWS FROM THE SWAMP: Trump showered with boos, chants of “lock him up” at World Series game in Washington, DC (NBC News)

MORE NEWS FROM THE SWAMP: Federal deficit increases 26% to $984 billion for fiscal 2019 — the highest in seven years (CNBC)

THINNING OF THE HERD: DNC raises thresholds for candidates to qualify for December debate (The Federalist)

Culture & Heartland

“ENORMOUSLY DISAPPOINTED”: Chicago teachers’ strike enters another week after talks fail (Reuters)

TOPSY-TURVY: Biologically male NCAA runner named conference “female” athlete of the week (The Daily Caller)

INFERNO: California declares state of emergency as wildfires spread (National Review)

Closing Arguments

POLICY: Missile defense needs Trump’s attention (Hudson Institute)

POLICY: Why commie-Bernie Sanders’ universal jobs guarantee is not a worthy goal (Foundation for Economic Education)

HUMOR: Motorcyclist who identifies as a bicyclist sets cycling world record (The Babylon Bee)  

He was the commie-Bernie Sanders of his day.

Charlie Chaplin, the iconic actor and at the time a well-known political leftist (some said communist), delivered a speech in San Francisco in 1941 prior to America’s entry into World War II. As recounted in the biography of her parents, actress Fay Wray and screenwriter Robert Riskin, Victoria Riskin quotes from a letter her father, who heard the speech, sent to her mother: “(Chaplin) plunged into a speech extolling the Russians — their ideology (by saying that if communism produces men of such heroic stature, he’ll take communism, etc.). He resented the organized efforts for the last 20 years to present Russians as ogres both here and in England — and by God, if any man can’t get along on $25,000 a year, he is a cockeyed liar and a traitor to his country.”

According to the website celebritynetworth.com. “Chaplin had a net worth equal to $400 million dollars at the time of his death in 1977 (after adjusting for inflation).” Never mind.

At the latest Democratic presidential debate, millionaire commie-Bernie Sanders and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer had an exchange that came from a question about Sanders saying billionaires should be taxed out of existence to help close the “wealth gap.”

Sanders responded by ticking off his familiar litany of misery — half a million people living on the streets (he didn’t mention that many are in cities and states run by Democrats), the cost of education and student debt (he didn’t mention the many options for receiving an education that would substantially reduce student debt), 87 million uninsured, or underinsured (wasn’t scumbag/liar-nObamacare supposed to fix that?), adding, “you also have three people owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society.”

commie-Sanders called that a “moral outrage,” though on his moral scale, abortion on demand is not a problem.

For his part, Steyer sought some moral cover for his wealth, agreeing with commie-Sanders and adding that corporations have “bought this government for the last 40 years.” Don’t those four decades include the scumbag/liar-Clinton and scumbag/liar-nObama administrations? Steyer said he would undo every tax cut for rich people and wealthy corporations.

We’ve heard it all before. The Left would take from the prosperous and do what? Past welfare and redistribution programs haven’t liberated the poor. If they had, there should be fewer poor people. Wasn’t that the stated goal? Why didn’t it happen? The reason is government is a bad charity.

What astounds is that younger people who buy into the “wealth gap” nonsense (because that is what they have had drummed into them by teachers and Democrat politicians) have little understanding of economics. There is no fixed amount of money from which all must draw. If there were it would be unfair for some to take (earn?) more than others. Wealth is a bottomless well. No one is destined to live permanently in the lower class.

The reason envy, greed and entitlement continue to surface in most election cycles is that it appeals to human emotions. Charging the rich with not paying their “fair share” in taxes is a distraction from the real issue: government spends too much.

In the letter to his wife, Robert Riskin wrote, “The Charlie (Chaplin) you once knew has been buried with honors — and a new one has been born. Let’s hope the new one has everlasting life — for he will cling to it as long as that political philosophy remains popular…”

commie-Sanders and Steyer seem to believe the Chaplin philosophy remains popular among some voters. Don’t include them, though, because they’re rich and you won’t see them sending a check to the Treasury.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/66281?mailing_id=4606&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4606&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Impeachment Secrecy

https://patriot.imgix.net/55326433c596be6ebfa88eae6c1b41ffbd7d9147ccb6e53f355eaa0c5b522d7f.jpg?auto=format" width="452" height="295" />

Thomas Gallatin:  In a move aimed at highlighting the secretive nature of House Democrats’ politically orchestrated “impeachment inquiry,” several House Republicans stormed the Intelligence Committee’s Secure Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), where Pentagon official Laura Cooper was scheduled to testify regarding President Donald Trump and Ukraine.

Prior to storming the SCIF, House Republicans held a press conference explaining their intentions. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) stated, “We’re going to try and go in there, and we’re going to try and figure out what’s going on, on behalf of the millions of Americans that we represent that want to see this Congress working for them and not obsess with attacking a president who we believe has not done anything to deserve impeachment.”

“What is scumbag-Adam Schiff trying to hide?” Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) asked. “I think that’s the question so many people have, so many of my colleagues have, so many people in the press should have. Voting members of Congress are being denied access from being able to see what’s happening behind these closed doors where they’re trying to impeach the president of the United States with a one-sided set of rules. They call the witnesses. They don’t let anybody else call the witnesses.”

Not surprisingly, after Republicans entered the room, committee chairman scumbag-Adam Schiff (D-Whistleblower) quickly stopped the hearing. That provoked Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-AL) to assert, “scumbag-Adam Schiff just SHUT DOWN his secret underground impeachment hearing after I led a group of Republicans into the room. Now he’s threatening me with an Ethics complaint! I’m on the Armed Services [Committee] but being blocked from the Dept. Asst. SecDef’s testimony. This is a SHAM!”

Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS) also called out scumbag-Schiff, stating, “He just got up and left. He doesn’t have the guts to tell us why we can’t come in the room, why he doesn’t want this to be transparent. It’s … the biggest farce I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Predictably, the Leftmedia derided Republicans for a political stunt designed to protect President Trump and obstruct the Democrats’ “legitimate” impeachment inquiry. There’s no question that these Republicans intentionally engaged in theatrics, but they did so to shine a spotlight on the dubious, secretive, and unprecedented manner in which House Democrats have conducted this not-yet-voted-on impeachment inquiry. And the more Republicans can expose the Democrats’ intentional lack of transparency in running this impeachment charade, the better it will be for the American people. Keep in mind that the Democrats’ favorite paper of record, The Washington Post, decided Trump’s presidency was sufficient cause to create a new motto: “Democracy dies in darkness.”

Finally, PowerLine’s Scott Johnson cogently sums it up: “I can’t take anything that leaks out of the closed-door impeachment ‘inquiry’ conducted by Intelligence Committee Chairman scumbag-Adam Schiff at face value. scumbag-Schiff is conducting an impeachment campaign by orchestrated leaks. I decline to follow the leaked testimony until I can take a look at the full record with my own eyes.”   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66325?mailing_id=4606&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4606&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Several reports have appeared recently in the anti-Trump media that seem to suggest nervousness about the probe being led by U.S. Attorney John Durham. As you know, Durham was appointed by Attorney General William Barr to investigate the origins of the Russia collusion hoax in the 2016 elections.

The stories indicate that people at the CIA have lawyered up. Other reports suggest that Durham “found something” that led him to request additional resources for his investigation. And there are reports that former CIA Director scumbag/commie-John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence scumbag-James Clapper are now under scrutiny.

That sounds encouraging. But as I wrote before, unless Durham’s report is concluded in the next eight to 10 months, we may never know the results if the left succeeds in lying its way back into the White House.

Meanwhile, my expectations for the Justice Department inspector general’s report are fading fast. That report is about potential Deep State abuse of the FISA court to enable wiretapping of the Trump campaign. Every couple of weeks we’re told that the report is ready to be released, but then it gets delayed.

The delays are reportedly due to redactions to protect national security. At this point, I suspect they are trying to strip the report of anything that could expose the Deep State’s abuse of power.

It seems Sen. Charles Grassley agrees. Monday night Grassley tweeted his concerns that the Deep State might be trying to “deep six” the FISA abuse report.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66297?mailing_id=4603&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4603&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

There are times when Trump takes to social media with reactionary, vindictive, and petty things. This is not one of those times.

We’re going to go out on a limb and speculate that, before Trump began typing his tweet, his communications team knew that Leftmedia outlets would be forced to file follow-up reports, conceding that a slew of Democrats — led by loose lips liar-Joe Biden — used the word “lynching” to describe scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998. We don’t recall a flood of Leftmedia stories back then slamming Democrats for that deliberate word choice or giving historical lectures about the awful history of lynching. But here we are, swamped with such stories now. Of course, these sanctimonious lectures leave out the inconvenient truth that actual lynchings were perpetrated mostly by Democrats.

loose lips liar-Biden provided the most humorous “gotcha” for Trump. “Impeachment is not ‘lynching,’ it is part of our Constitution,” loose lips liar-Biden huffed. “Our country has a dark, shameful history with lynching, and to even think about making this comparison is abhorrent. It’s despicable.” But then CNN grudgingly went to the 1998 tape of loose lips liar-Biden telling Wolf Blitzer, “Even if the president should be impeached, history will question whether or not this was a partisan lynching.”

Confronted with his own words, loose lips liar-Biden was forced to apologize, saying, “This wasn’t the right word to use and I’m sorry about that.” But, he insisted, Trump is the real sinner because he “chose his words deliberately” (as if loose lips liar-Biden hadn’t) and “continues to stoke racial divides in this country daily.”

Poppycock. Trump isn’t “stoking racial divides”; Democrats are.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board argues, “No President should use the word in the off-hand and self-indulgent way that Mr. Trump did in his tweet.” The Journal adds, “The more he forces Republicans to defend words or actions that don’t deserve defending, the more their resentment will build and the more political trouble he will be in.”

That may be true, but it’s also Beltway-New York media echo-chamber pablum. Trump was elected precisely because he wouldn’t behave like other presidents and because voters were fed up with other Republicans refusing to stand up to Democrats. In any case, his “trolling” consistently provides one important service to the country: revealing the shameless hypocrisy of Democrats and the Leftmedia.

From today’s Short Cuts:

A trip down memory lane…

“Even if [scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton] should be impeached, history is going to question whether or not this was just a partisan lynching or whether or not it was something that in fact met the standard.” —loose lips liar-Joe Biden, 1998

“We’re taking a step down the road to becoming a political lynch mob. … We are going to find a rope find a tree and ask a bunch of questions later.” —Rep. Jim McDermott, 1998

“In pushing the process, in pushing the arguments of fairness and due process, the Republicans so far have been running a lynch mob.” —Rep. scumbag liar-Jerry Nadler, 1998

“The lynch mob … now has a new leader.” —Sen. Harry dinky-Reid, 1998

“It is a verbal political lynching on the floor of the Senate.” —Sen. hanoi-John Kerry, 1998   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66298?mailing_id=4603&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4603&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

However, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) hit the brakes on the Democrats’ impeachment train. “In 90 seconds,” he said, “we had [Rep.] John Ratcliffe destroy Taylor’s whole argument.” He then pivoted to highlight the fact that this not-yet-voted-on impeachment inquiry is still nothing more than a Democrat-orchestrated show trial. It’s a trial in which a dishonest “scumbag-Adam Schiff won’t let us talk about what happened,” McCarthy noted, though he added, “There is no quid pro quo.”

Until Democrats actually vote on impeachment and hold public hearings, this whole affair is nothing more than political theater designed to damage Trump’s reelection bid and, if possible, see him removed from office. This is the Democrats’ impeachment 2.0 strategy. After the tale of Russian collusion blew up in their faces following the failure of Robert Mueller’s investigation to pin an impeachable offense on Trump, Democrats opted for Ukraine-gate.

Democrats, supported by their Leftmedia cohorts, declared Trump guilty of engaging in an impeachable quid pro quo based upon a dubiously produced “whistleblower” complaint. But the complaint’s primary allegation that Trump pressured Ukraine into digging up dirt on his political rivals was proven wrong by the transcript of the phone call. No matter — Democrats and the Leftmedia insisted that there was reason to initiate an impeachment inquiry, which House Speaker liar-Nancy Pelosi announced but while unilaterally breaking with past precedent to hold a vote to initiate such a serious decision. liar-Pelosi did that to prevent Republicans from interfering in the charade and to make sure that Democrats controlled the narrative. To that end, liar-Pelosi and company have ridiculously asserted that in order to get the “truth” of what happened, everything must be done in secret. Thus, the American public is left dependent upon learning of the progress of the “impeachment inquiry” via the mouths of Democrats. And we’re to believe this is a serious investigation.

Meanwhile, back to Trump and Ukraine. It does appear that Trump was engaged in seeking to find out who was behind the collusion hoax, a problem that clearly had ties to the U.S. intelligence community. Trump obviously doesn’t trust the intel community, and who could blame him? So while on the one hand the State Department was officially engaged in investigating corruption related to the 2016 election, it also appears that Trump tapped his trusted personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to spearhead a second investigation somewhat independent of the State Department. And given Giuliani’s reputation, it is entirely possible that he pressured Ukraine to investigate.

Trump wants to get those who were responsible for unleashing the whole Russia-collusion hoax. It also seems clear that he fears both the intelligence community and the State Department are still full of members of the deep-state cabal who are out to get him. And the Ukraine “whistleblower” complaint only serves to further support Trump’s suspicions.

Finally, there’s the question of motive. Why would Trump care about loose lips liar-Biden if there wasn’t the obvious suspicion of potential corruption related to loose lips ;lioar-Biden’s own quid pro quo in 2015 in shutting down the investigation into Burisma? If loose lips liar-Biden had not been involved in any significant manner with Ukraine, then Democrats might have an argument. But the fact is loose lips liar-Biden was involved, and Trump has every right to find out if loosev lips liar-Biden’s actions were tainted.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66300?mailing_id=4603&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4603&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Alex Trebek, the host of Jeopardy!, was fired after scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton accused him of being a Russian asset. Well, no, not really. But, hey, the day is not over yet!

Of course, I’m referring to scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton’s bizarre accusation that Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is being groomed by Russia. This is a particularly despicable smear against someone who serves in the U.S. military. As you may recall, Gabbard had to leave the campaign trail for two weeks this summer because she serves as a major in the Army National Guard.

Gabbard hit back hard, calling scumbag/liar-Clinton “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.”

It is extraordinarily disturbing that the default position of some major figures on the progressive left is to accuse anyone they don’t like of being a Russian asset. 

They came up with an elaborate Russian-collusion conspiracy theory to smear Donald Trump. But now they don’t even need the conspiracy theory.  If someone crosses scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton, they must be working for the Russians.

The irony is that decades ago, Sen. Joseph McCarthy started identifying real communists in America. Unfortunately, he became reckless and started throwing the accusation at all kinds of people. In the process, he destroyed himself, and “McCarthyism” became a war cry that the left used against anyone who attacked liberals for being soft on communism. 

By the way, a progressive hero, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, actually tried to get the Soviets to intervene in the 1984 election.

But today, the progressive movement is the only political force in America engaged in raw McCarthyism.

“commie-Bernie’s Back”

Vermont Sen. commie-Bernie Sanders drew 25,000 people to a rally in New York over the weekend. The aging socialist received the endorsement of the rising socialist, Rep. commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, much to the delight of the crowd. 

I doubt if anyone of them saw the irony of this rally, which took place very near the site where Amazon had planned to open a new facility that coincidentally would have created 25,000 new jobs. But commie-AOC blew it up.

State’s Hate

Rep. scumbag-Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has been bringing a lot of witnesses from the State Department up to Capitol Hill to testify behind closed doors in liar-Nancy Pelosi’s fake impeachment proceeding. Afterward, cherry-picked portions of their testimonies have been leaked to left-wing media outlets in a steady drip, drip, drip of news reports that are damaging to the president.

Allow me to make a personal observation. The State Department is well-known in Washington as a bastion of left-wing progressives. It went to the mat to prevent the Trump administration from moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. It is also likely the source of many leaks regarding the president’s previous calls with foreign leaders.  

No one will be surprised to learn that government employees overwhelmingly preferred scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. But it may surprise some to learn that nearly all — 99% — of 2016 political donations from State Department employees went to scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton. That speaks volumes about the mindset at Foggy Bottom and the challenge any conservative administration faces.

But let me offer this personal vignette. Last year, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the first annual Ministerial on Religious Freedom. I was invited to attend with several hundred other people and multiple heads of state from other countries. 

As you can imagine, security was tight. Even State Department employees had to go through the extra security precautions during the ministerial in order to get into the building where they regularly worked. That meant I was standing in line with hundreds of those employees, and I could hear their conversations as we were all waiting to get into the building. 

What I heard was raw, obsessive hatred for Donald Trump and Mike Pence. I heard one bureaucrat referring to Pence, who was speaking that day, say, “I can’t believe we’re allowing that bigot into the building!" 

These are public servants paid by you. But they hate and despise any conservative administration that takes office.

Gantz Gets His Chance

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today reportedly informed Israeli President Reuven Rivlin that he is unable to form a government. Rivlin is expected to give the mandate to form a coalition government to Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz later this week. 

According to the Jerusalem Post, Gantz will have 28 days to try to form a government. If he cannot, there will be a 21-day period in which any member of the Knesset can attempt to cobble together a coalition of 61 votes. If no one succeeds at the end of that 21-day period, then new elections will be called.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/66250?mailing_id=4601&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4601&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

DEEP-STATE SHENANIGANS, PART I: U.S. Attorney John Durham opens criminal inquiry in DOJ’s probe of the Trump-Russia investigators (Washington Examiner)

DEEP-STATE SHENANIGANS, PART II: FBI agents manipulated Michael Flynn file, as scumbag-James Clapper allegedly urged “kill shot,” court filing suggests (Fox News)

Government & Politics

ALL OR NOTHING: “Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard announced Friday that she will not seek re-election to Congress — declaring that she remains ‘fully committed to my offer to serve’ in the White House.” (New York Post)

NEPOTISM: loose lips liar-Joe Biden twice used his position as senator to intervene to boost son Hunter’s lobbying (Washington Examiner)

ET TU, BRUTE? Another House Democrat is under investigation for allegedly sleeping with staffer (The Daily Caller)

DEVOS REPRIMANDED: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos held in contempt for violating judge’s order on student-loan collections (Politico)

Heartland & Economy

CHILD-ABUSE UPDATE: Judge in Texas rules parents must make joint decision in gender-transition case (Fox News)

IP CONCESSION: China gives in on key U.S. trade-war demand regarding intellectual-property rights (Fox Business)

World

A NEVER-ENDING SAGA: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to call for elections after Brexit failure (National Review)

SYRIA SAFEGUARDS: U.S. has a plan to send tanks and troops to “secure” Syria oil fields amid withdrawal (Newsweek)

Closing Arguments

POLICY: The empty absurdity of the Democrats’ dangerous foreign policy (Issues & Insights)

POLICY: Facebook isn’t broken. Government shouldn’t “fix” it. (The Daily Signal)

HUMOR: Trump nixes carbon offsets; demands Californians buy Stupidity Offset Credits instead (Genesius Times)  

Maduro’s government is no longer recognized as legitimate by the United States and close to 50 other countries. With this large and international group aligned against it, it seems hard to believe that Venezuela would win a seat on the HRC. But Libya and Sudan also received enough votes to join the Council this go-round, so it appears anything is possible — except common sense.

Venezuela received heavy support from Russia, China, and Cuba in its HRC bid, partly because it’s a fellow socialist state that is allied against the United States. Venezuela is also in deep to these countries to keep it on life support — they’re all taking discounted oil from Venezuela in exchange for medical supplies and food.

While on the HRC, Venezuela can be counted on to do everything it can to hide its government’s abuses of human rights. Venezuela, Sudan, and Libya all have horrible human-rights records. If the UN were even remotely a respectable organization, it would be completely against the rules for such a nation to sit on the Human Rights Council. It’s this hypocrisy that led President Donald Trump to withdraw America from the HRC last year. It’s also why the same group of rogue states prove themselves a menace year in, year out.

Another way to clean up the HRC is to change the voting procedure to an open ballot. Members of the UN General Assembly voted by secret ballot in this most recent HRC election, meaning no nation is accountable or answerable for its vote. When choosing the members of a world body that is tasked with protecting those who cannot protect themselves, voting parties should be required to vote publicly.

Yet finding support for even these basic reforms is next to impossible. Venezuela is one of a group of developing nations called the Non-Aligned Movement, which comprises a comfortable majority of the total UN membership. They may be called “non-aligned,” but these nations definitely act with a single voice when it comes to advancing their own causes, no matter how undemocratic they may be.

The United Nations clearly does not represent the best interests of the world. This is evident in the fact that Israel is considered a perpetual threat to human rights, while nations that are a proven threat to their own people (and Israel) serve on the HRC. It is evident in the crimes committed by UN peacekeepers whose crimes against neighboring states are buried in the press. It is also evident in sweeping UN treaties like the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) that seek to strip sovereign rights from U.S. citizens while turning a blind eye to the nations that actually are breaking international laws.

President Trump has refused to play along with the UN’s anti-American, anti-freedom agenda. He has pulled out of the ATT, and he has pulled out of the HRC, but what’s next? Could America pull out of the UN altogether? And what would happen if we did? It certainly wouldn’t make the UN a better organization. And it arguably wouldn’t make our country safer.

It seems that the only reason for staying in the UN is to provide a counterbalance of sanity to keep it from going completely down the drain. But is that argument really all that compelling?   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66258?mailing_id=4601&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4601&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

“WHAT IS scumbag-ADAM SCHIFF TRYING TO HIDE?” GOP lawmakers storm closed-door impeachment session, as scumbag-Schiff walks out (Fox News)

DECEMBER TARGET: Democrats set December impeachment target, but obstacles abound — like the fact the whole thing’s a charade (Reuters)

Government & Politics

#METOO: Katie Hill becomes first female lawmaker to face House ethics inquiry over sexual relationship with subordinate (Washington Examiner)

ADVERSE SOCIETY: scumbag-Soros-funded group Open Society Policy Center eclipses $70 million spent on lobbying since Trump took office (The Washington Free Beacon)

COMMON GROUND, PART I: Bipartisan bill would streamline path to citizenship for children of U.S. military (The Washington Times)

COMMON GROUND, PART II: House unanimously passes bipartisan bill to make animal cruelty a federal crime (USA Today)

National Security

NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK: State Department says 100+ ISIS prisoners missing after Turkish invasion of Syria (National Review)

Culture & Heartland

AND NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON: Texas governor announces investigation into case of mother transitioning seven-year-old against father’s wishes (The Daily Caller)

IDIOCRACY: Majority of Americans want First Amendment rewritten; 51% of Millennials want fines or jail time for “hate speech” (The Washington Free Beacon)

GOOD RIDDANCE: Florida Senate votes to permanently oust Broward Sheriff Scott Israel (Fox News)

Closing Arguments

POLICY: Securing the Internet starts with planning and awareness (American Enterprise Institute)

POLICY: Refugee policy reforms — enduring or ephemeral? (National Review)

HUMOR: Walls of Congress dissolve into endless blue void as Zuckerberg informs lawmakers there’s no way to escape Facebook (The Onion)  

Furthermore, Toobin lamented, “scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton likely lost the election because of it, and I think I should have been talking about other issues, not about emails.” It appears Toobin has an outsized view of his own political influence, but more significant is Toobin’s ridiculous assertion that scumbag/liar-Clinton’s email scandal was “a big nothing.” While the State Department couldn’t seem to find a deliberate intention to mishandle classified information (give us a break), that didn’t mean the investigation found no wrongdoing. In fact, the investigation found more than 600 security violations by 38 State Department employees during scumbag/liar-Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. Moreover, the entire point of her email secrecy was to hide the way she used the State Department as a pay-to-play arm of the scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation.

This was a massive story as the evidence of violations demonstrates, and Toobin’s notion that the story should have been ignored by the news media only highlights the fact that he’s committed not to practicing good journalism but to political activism. The Washington Examiner’s Becket Adams observes, “A real journalist would not apologize for covering a legitimate news story, including one that involves an FBI investigation and a secretary of state-turned-presidential candidate who had been ‘extremely careless’ with classified intelligence.”

So, does Toobin offer a similar apology for CNN’s fake news on the Trump/Russia collusion hoax? Nope. In fact, Toobin claims, “Comparing Donald Trump’s record of ethical problems with scumbag/liar-Hillary’s emails lent a misleading impression. And I have to say, I am determined not to do that again to the extent that I can. I am going to try to look at corruption and ethics issues each on their own rather than trying to create some sort of equivalence that isn’t there.” Toobin’s statements serve to cement the fact that CNN has become the de facto propaganda wing of the Democrat Party.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66265?mailing_id=4601&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4601&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

RUDY GIULIANI MOST IMPLICATED: Diplomat Bill Taylor, testifying in House impeachment probe, raises concern about possible quid pro quo over investigations seen as aiding Trump (The Wall Street Journal)

SANCTIONS LIFTED: Trump announces “permanent ceasefire” in Syria between Turkey and Kurds; lifts sanctions on Ankara (Fox News)

WICKED BEDFELLOWS: “Russia and Turkey have agreed to ensure Kurdish forces withdraw from areas close to Syria’s border with Turkey and to launch joint patrols, in a deal hailed as ‘historic’ by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.” (Agence France-Presse)

Government & Politics

IDENTITY SOCIALISM: Fake Indian Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren is running out of fake money to pay for her terrible ideas (Reason)

COLLUSION DELUSION: “Do-nothing Congress”: liar-Pelosi, Democrats produce more subpoenas than laws (The Washington Times)

NINTH CIRCUS: Ninth Circuit upholds block on birth-control exemption for religious employers (National Review)

Business & Technology

NURTURING COMPETITION: Senate Republican Josh Hawley introduces bipartisan bill empowering users to withdraw their data from social-media giants (National Review)

OFF TO MORE FRIENDLY ENVIRONMENTS: Tech companies are accelerating their exodus from China (The New American)

MEANWHILE… For the first time, there are fewer wealthy Americans than Chinese (CBS News)

Other Notables

HOT AIR: California governor who wanted higher gas prices wants investigation of high gas prices (Associated Press)

CONCESSION: “The Hong Kong government on Wednesday withdrew the controversial extradition bill that sparked months of violent protests, but that is only one of the five demands that continue to drive protesters to the streets.” (Fox News)

Closing Arguments

POLICY: Is it time for America to begin decoupling from communist China? (The Federalist)

POLICY: Breathe free: Capitalism helps protect the environment (The Daily Signal)

HUMOR: scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton sells out tour for new book, Everyone I Don’t Like Is a Russian Agent (Genesius Times)