by Ishaan Tharoor
{ jewishworldreview.com } ~ The rumblings of an open conflict between Israel and Iran in Syria are growing louder. When President Donald Trump launched yet another one-off missile salvo against the Syrian regime, it came on the heels of a suspected April 9 Israeli strike on an Iranian facility at a Syrian air base, which drew howls of condemnation from the regime's patrons in Moscow and Tehran.
Though Israel didn't acknowledge responsibility for the attack, it fit a familiar pattern. Since 2012, the Israelis are believed to have launched more than 100 strikes on suspected Iranian-linked positions in Syria. Israeli officials privately argue that these measures are necessary to prevent a permanent Iranian threat on their borders and stymie the flow of weaponry to Iran's Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.
"No matter the price, we will not allow a noose to form around us," Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel Radio over the weekend. But he cautioned against talk of outright hostilities. "I hope not," he said when asked whether war was imminent. "I think that our primary role is to prevent war, and that requires concrete, real deterrence as well as readiness to act."
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif made similar appeals for calm in a Sunday interview with CBS News, though he accused the Israelis of escalating "tension by violating Syrian airspace."
"I do not believe that we are headed towards regional war. But I do believe that, unfortunately, Israel has continued its violations with international law, hoping to be able to do it with impunity because of the U.S. support and trying to find smokescreens to hide behind," Zarif said.
Still, Zarif warned that Israel was playing a risky game. "They should expect that if they continue to violate territorial integrity of other states, there'll be consequences," he said. "The easiest answer would be to stop - to stop these acts of aggression, to stop these incursions."
But the Israelis have made clear that an entrenched Iranian presence in Syria marks a new red line. They point to the new threat of Iranian drones, potentially armed with explosives, entering Israeli airspace, as well as the old threat of rockets launched from southern Lebanon. The April 9 strike, according to one account, was Israel's first direct attack on Iranian equipment and personnel and killed a senior Iranian drone commander.
Last week, the Israeli military leaked details and satellite images of the existence of an Iranian "air force" in Syria, including civilian planes they claimed were ferrying shipments of arms. The leak was supposed to signal to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the powerful military organization that dominates Iran's foreign policy decisions, that Israel had new targets already in sight should the Iranians or their proxies attack.
From the Iranian perspective, their presence in Syria is a legitimate defense of their beleaguered ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad. And they see their capacity to threaten Israel from next door as a potential deterrent against a long-standing regional foe.
"Israeli leaders frequently threaten to bomb Iran, so having strong military proxies near Israel's borders gives Iran some protection," wrote Ben Hubbard and David Halbfinger of the New York Times. "If Israel attacks Iran, the thinking goes, it knows it can expect a painful response from Hezbollah in Lebanon, and perhaps from other militias now operating in Syria."
The deepening tensions come at a time of growing discontent within the Islamic Republic. A tanking economy has blown the lid on popular frustration with the regime and even prompted Zarif's putative boss, President Hassan Rouhani, to complain about the costly war effort in Syria. But the prospect of broader confrontation with Israel - and the likely upcoming drama over Iran's nuclear deal with world powers - may persuade regime hard-liners that now is the time to circle the wagons.
"The shadow war has come to light after the decision by the Iranian leadership to proceed with the IRGC's plans to establish permanent bases in Syria. This was not a unanimous decision," wrote Anshel Pfeffer in the Times of London. "The faction in Tehran led by the country's president, Hassan Rouhani, is in favor of investing in Iran's domestic economy the huge amounts of money these bases will cost. But the IRGC has the ear of the nation's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and it is keen to capitalize on the investment it has made in propping up the Assad regime for the past seven years."
The way forward is treacherous. "Iran is determined to entrench its positions in Syria, and Israel is determined to prevent them," said Amos Yadlin, a former commander of Israeli military intelligence, to Pfeffer.
He suggested that Russia, whose forces help prop up the regime's air defenses and whose diplomats are key interlocutors to both the Iranians and the Israelis, will play a critical role. "Conflict is inevitable unless Putin steps in to prevent it," Yadlin said. But recent events suggest that the Russians have limited influence over Iran and are more concerned about reinforcing the Syrian regime.
At the same time, some foreign policy figures in Washington seem keen on letting Israel continue its covert campaign against the Iranians. They see Israeli strikes as necessary at a time when President Trump wants to disengage from the Syrian conflict and outsource the stabilization of the country to Iran's Sunni Arab rivals.
But other experts contend that this does not amount to a real strategy. "There is a pathway to containing and deterring Iran in Syria ... but it requires more than just Israel's itchy trigger finger and cheerleading from the sidelines by Arab autocracies," wrote Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution, who argued for more robust diplomatic engagement from the Trump administration and cautioned against alienating allies by pulling out of the nuclear deal.
In February, the International Crisis Group issued a report warning that the current atmosphere of tensions made "miscalculation more likely" in Syria. Since then, the risks of an escalation have only intensified.
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SCOTUS Appears to Lean Trump's Way on Travel Ban
Solicitor General Noel Francisco, representing the Trump administration, astutely noted that of the eight countries barred under the travel ban, only six of them are Muslim-majority nations. In fact, he said, “The vast majority of the world, including the vast majority of the Muslim world,” was not included in the ban. Francisco added, “It would be the most ineffective Muslim ban that one could possibly imagine, since not only does it exclude the vast majority of the Muslim world, it also omits three Muslim-majority countries that were covered by past orders.”
Justice Samuel Alito appeared to agree with Francisco and pointed out that Trump’s executive order affected only 8% of the world’s Muslim population. “If you look at what was done,” Alito said, “it does not look at all like a Muslim ban.”
Katyal repeatedly referenced Trump’s campaign rhetoric as evidence to support the charge that the ban was designed to target Muslims, but he also conceded that the actual language of the executive order instituting the travel ban did not specifically target Muslims. Francisco countered that campaign rhetoric was irrelevant and that the actual language of the executive order should be what is judged by the law. The statute that gives the president broad regulatory authority over alien entry into the U.S. states:
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
While the Left and much of the mainstream media have from the very beginning erroneously labeled Trump’s travel ban as a Muslim ban, it has done so not based upon the actual language of the EO but upon their anti-Trump bias. Recall the actual reason Trump ordered the travel ban was to protect American citizens, one of the primary responsibilities of the president. Due to the fact that several countries’ vetting standards did not meet U.S. safety standards, Trump acted. The good news is that it appears the majority of the SCOTUS justices are seeing through the partisan bias and are looking at the letter of the law. The judges that have so thoroughly undermined the Rule of Law in their rulings on DACA should learn a thing or two. ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55596-scotus-appears-to-lean-trumps-way-on-travel-ban
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Michael Goodwin: James Comey Is A Scam And Fraud
by Judge Andrew Napolitano
{ townhall.com } ~ A popular way to begin the first day of class in constitutional law in many American law schools is to ask the students what sets the U.S. Constitution apart from all others. Usually, they answer that it's the clauses that guarantee the freedom of speech, privacy and due process.
Yes, each of those guarantees -- if upheld -- is vital to restraining government, but the overarching and most important unique aspect of the Constitution is the separation of powers. The constitutions of many totalitarian countries pay lip service to free speech, privacy and due process, but none has the strict separation of powers that the U.S. does.
Under our Constitution, the Congress writes the laws, the president enforces them and the courts interpret them; and those powers and functions may not constitutionally be mixed or exchanged. The Congress also declares war. The president also wages war. The courts also invalidate the acts of the other two branches when they exceed their constitutional powers.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the separation of powers is integral to the Constitution not to preserve the prerogatives of each branch of government but to divide governmental powers among the branches so as to keep power diffused -- and thereby limited and protective of personal freedom.
James Madison, who wrote the Constitution, wanted not only this diffusion by separation but also tension -- even jealousy -- among the branches so as to keep each in check.
Thus, even if one branch of government consented to ceding an essential power to another branch, such a giveaway would be unconstitutional, the Supreme Court has ruled, because the core functions of each branch of the federal government may not be delegated away to either of the other two without violating the separation of powers.
I am writing about this not as a history or constitutional law mini-lesson but rather because it's necessary background information to address a real and contemporary problem. Two weeks ago, on the basis of evidence so flimsy that his own secretary of defense rejected it -- and without any legal or constitutional authority -- President Donald Trump dispatched 110 missiles to bomb certain military and civilian targets in Syria, where the president argued the Syrian government manufactured, stored or used chemical weapons.
Trump did not seek a congressional declaration of war, nor did he comply with the U.N. Charter, a treaty to which both the U.S. and Syria are signatories. Though Trump did not articulate any statutory basis for his use of the military, his predecessors often cited as legal support for their unconstitutional uses of military force two statutes -- one enacted in 2001 and the other in 2002, each known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF.
The AUMFs refer to either the Taliban or al-Qaida or their affiliated forces in Afghanistan or Iraq as targets or to pursuing those who caused the attacks in America on 9/11 or those who harbor weapons of mass destruction.
Can the president legally use military force to attack a foreign land without a serious threat or legal obligation or a declaration of war from Congress? In a word: No. Here is the back story.
The Constitution is clear that only Congress can declare war and only the president can wage it. Federal law and international treaties provide that -- short of defending the country against an actual attack -- without a congressional declaration of war, the president can only constitutionally use military force to repel an enemy whose attack on America is imminent or to defend U.S. citizens and property in foreign lands from foreign attack or in aid of an ally pursuant to a treaty with that ally.
In the case of Trump's bombing Syria earlier this month, none of those conditions was met.
Prior to the strike on Syria -- but no doubt prodded by the prospect of it -- a bipartisan group of senators offered legislation supported by the president that would rescind both AUMFs, which are now seriously outdated and of no useful moral or legal authority, in favor of an unconstitutional mishmash that would permit a president to strike whomever and wherever he pleases. The president would be restrained only by a vote of Congress -- after hostilities have commenced.
Such a statute would give the president far more powers than he has now, would directly violate Congress' war-making powers by ceding them away to the president, would defy the Supreme Court on the unconstitutionality of giving away core governmental functions, would commit the U.S. to foreign wars without congressional and thus popular support, and would invite dangerous mischief by any president wanting to attack any enemy -- real or imagined, old or new -- for foreign or domestic political purposes, whether American interests are at stake or not.
The proponents of this legislation will argue that Congress would retain its war-making powers by its ability to restrain the president. That is a naive contention because congressional restraint, which can come only in the form of prohibitory legislation or withdrawal of funds, would certainly be met by a presidential veto -- and a veto can be overridden only by a two-thirds vote of both the House and the Senate.
What's going on here? It is little more than the lust of the military-industrial complex and its allies in both major political parties in Congress for war. War unifies disparate politics, arouses deep patriotic instincts, enhances the government's success in obtaining the people's sacrifices, enriches arms-makers and kills innocents. War is the health of the state.
The Constitution, written in war's aftermath, strictly limits its offensive use only to when the people's representatives in Congress have recognized a broad national consensus behind it.
When Donald Trump ran for president, he condemned foreign wars that have served no real American purpose and he condemned presidential war-making; and he promised to end both. Where is that Donald Trump today?
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{ thehill.com { ~ The federal judge overseeing the case against President Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen... on Thursday appointed a former federal judge to review the documents seized in a raid of his office and hotel room, according to multiple reports. Judge Kimba Wood of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York appointed Barbara Jones — who served a 16-year term on the Manhattan’s federal court and is now a partner at law firm Bracewell — to serve as the “special master" and decide which of Cohen's materials are protected by attorney-client privilege and what can be reviewed by federal prosecutors, the The New York Post reported. The quick decision came after Wood received a letter Thursday morning from federal prosecutors in Manhattan withdrawing their objection to Cohen's request for a special master. Prosecutors had initially pushed for the use of a Justice Department "taint team" to perform the review, but cited new developments in changing their position... http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/385027-special-master-named-to-review-documents-in-michael-cohen-case.
by Marina Medvin
{ townhall.com } ~ Teachers and school administrators have been supporting and encouraging student walkouts in protest of “gun violence.”
I: “What are you protesting?”
Kid: “Gun violence.”
I: “Ok. No one disagrees with you. ‘Gun violence,’ an ambiguous term by which you mean gun crimes, is already prohibited by every state of these United States as either murder or brandishing or other type of criminal assault. Go back to class.”
What they are actually attempting to protest is the ability of anyone to possess a gun. Former Supreme Court Justice Stevens laid out a logical explanation for what the politics behind these school walkouts are really attempting to achieve: “a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment.”
But these kids are not being taught to understand, rationalize and articulate the problem. These kids are taught that ambiguous, nonsensical terms like “gun violence” are fine to use, instead of particularizing the problem and articulating the solution, like Justice Stevens had to point out. These kids are being taught that using their bodies in protest, as opposed to using their minds in intellectual discourse, is smarter. Teachers are encouraging kids to walk out of class in lieu of studying the psychological causes of the shootings, our legal processes, and the American government.
Even private schools have jumped on this political bandwagon of walkouts and have sent emails to paying parents saying that kids will be supported by teachers for the 4/20 walkout. Even though only 6% of school shootings take place in private school and private schools are disproportionately less likely to experience a school shooting, school administrators encouraged those kids to walk out instead of to sit-in and to discuss the disproportionality of public school shootings and the potential reasons behind the disparity.
It is worrisome to me as an American to see the political mockery that these students, encouraged by teachers and school administrators, have made of the tragic deaths of our innocent school kids. And the administrators’ role in this is significant: students are not being encouraged to think as individuals and to patiently debate without a physical component. Students are instead being taught that the physical component together with groupthink is the answer to their problems. This significantly diminishes their ability to rationalize in their own self interest. This significantly diminishes their ability to think objectively and to deeply understand the solutions they are supporting.
Go back to Justice Stevens’s proposition, for instance. The gun-ban position is very appealing to these kids, because is sounds so simple on its face - “No gun, no shoot! Problem solved!”
Right? Wrong. Keep thinking.
In the real world, humans do not always follow the rules. This is an inalienable attribute of humanity. People will break the rules, bad people will exist, and bad things will happen. There is nothing that we can do to stop them. The human race has not yet been able to uncover the secret to ridding the world of murder, larceny, and rape. Maybe because those crimes are not always cut and dry and I can tell you from a criminal defense attorney’s perspective that in fact most of these allegations are not ever so simple as acts that are right or wrong; that is why we have a jury system and a 12-person jury must take time to deliberate to reach a unanimous verdict.
There is no legislation that will prevent the inevitability of human nature.
Murder is illegal. Yet people commit murders. Drug possession is illegal but it does not stop drug possession.
Legislation of bad behavior does not eradicate the bad behavior. Legislation of gun possession will only eliminate possession rights for the law-abiding individuals who possessed weapons for personal security. For it is the law-abiding who abide by the law. And the law abiding are not the ones who you are worried about. More importantly to consider in this balance is that law-abiding Americans have used their firearms in self-defense 3.6 times as often as criminals have used them for “gun violence,” according to studies conducted by our the CDC. Moreover, many states already have increased penalties for committing crimes with a gun. These increased penalties have not stopped gun-related crimes.
We can safely assume that if someone has decided to break the law by intending to commit mass murder, then gun possession deterrence will not stop them. So what does punishing the law-abiding via gun prohibition actually achieve in the quest to stop school shootings?
And if we are to protect our schoolchildren against “gun violence,” then how do we do that disarmed? Instead, the only proactive rational response to defend against “gun violence” in schools can be to increase school security protocols restricted access, cameras, ALICE drills, etc and to add armed and trained guards. To guard our schools as preciously as we guard our banks, police departments and courthouses. Many schools agree and have implemented armed security measures.
So why are students not demanding armed guards and physical protection? After all, a law does not physically manifest itself and magically appear between a shooter and his victim to prevent the shooter from killing his victim. A law does not instantaneously defend - it simply creates deterrence. And we know the deference does not stop crime. Why are kids not demanding immediate protection, physical protection from an expectedly non-law-abiding shooter? Because they are being publicly encouraged not to think think via rational self-interest, but to support a groupthink cause.
As we know, some intelligent individuals disagree with this. Justice Stevens, for one, disagrees and articulates why. This is all natural and part of expected political discourse. But I am not seeing respectful discourse from most students who disagree.
Other than Donald Trump’s listening session, we are not hearing much of an intelligent discussion from the students. Instead we are seeking physical protests and their kid leader regurgitating Twitter politics.
There are some important exceptions to this generality, such as Kyle Kashuv, a free-thinker student who is knowledgeable about our rule of law and has found an intellectual way to discuss the problems. ”I truly believe this livestream -- learning about our Constitution and finding ways to save lives without infringing on our Constitution -- is the best way to sanctify the day and remember those who were lost in the Parkland shooting and in Columbine," Kashuv told CNN. "I created this event to do just that.” He does not have much public support from schools and school administrators.
These are all issues that need to be discussed and debated in class. Kids need to be taught how to rationalize and how to research, not how to regurgitate. Kids need to be taught individualism, not mob mentality and groupthink. Kids need to be taught to use their minds to affect politics, not their bodies. That’s the point of school. They can learn how to protest all on their own, I promise.
Without the teachers doing their jobs, even with strong at-home parental intervention attempts, individual thinkers like Kyle Kashuv will become more and more rare. As parents we need to strongly revaluate the roles of our public schools, private schools, and home schooling.
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liar-Hillary's $84M Campaign Money Laundering
This is a significant event and yet passed with almost no word from the mainstream media. As Margot Cleveland of The Federalist observes:
Yet even with the overwhelming evidence of tsunami-level campaign-finance criminality — more than $84 million — the media instead chases the cloud cast over President Trump because of the $130,000 payment his attorney, Michael Cohen, made to Stormy Daniels, and claims that payment constituted an illegal campaign contribution. One wonders what it will take to break through the mainstream media blackout. Maybe a few pointed unpresidential tweets from our commander-in-chief?
Cleveland’s point on the media’s reaction demonstrates just how in the tank the MSM was for liar-Clinton and essentially remains to this day. Partially, the Leftmedia ignores the story to maintain the illusion that the reason voters rejected liar-Clinton was due to sexism rather than the fact that she was a deeply flawed and compromised candidate, and secondly the media would rather focus negative attention on Trump.
Finally, and what is the most ironic aspect of this latest revelation, is the fact that Democrats have been the biggest driving force pushing for and creating campaign-finance laws for the express purpose of cleaning up the influence of “dark money” in politics. The sheer degree of hypocrisy displayed by both liar- Clinton and the DNC in seeking to undermine the essential “spirit,” if not the letter, of the law — their law — is deplorable. But as is often the case, politics breeds a class of elitists who view themselves as being above the law — laws they establish to control everyone else. ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55552-hillarys-$84m-campaign-money-laundering
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Facebook Publishes Removal Policies, but Bias Remains
In response, Facebook published its internal guidelines for how its 7,500 worldwide content reviewers determine what should be removed for violations of policies regarding “hate speech, violent threats, sexual exploitation and more.” Facebook also promised to review how data from its 2.2 billion users is accessed and used by third parties.
The data privacy issue distressed many Facebook users after the revelation that a company called Cambridge Analytica purchased personal information on 50 million people and used it to provide advice to Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 elections.
A couple of things should be noted about this revelation. First, the information was collected as a result of a personality quiz voluntarily downloaded by 270,000 users who agreed to allow the app to collect personal information on themselves and their friends. While those friends have a legitimate complaint regarding third-party use of their personal information, the reality is that this is the very basis of Facebook’s revenue model; namely, collecting user’s demographic information and personal preferences and selling it to marketers, who create targeted ads. Facebook is free to end users for a reason, and users should be aware that if you are not paying for the product, then you are the product.
Of course, any protests and hand-wringing from the Left here is entirely disingenuous. Barack liar-nObama employed a nearly identical method of gathering personal information during in 2012. When users downloaded hisliar-nObama 2012 Facebook app, his campaign collected mountains of personal data on more than 190 million people, almost four times that of the Trump campaign.
And far from being described in dark and conspiratorial terms, the Leftmedia celebrated liar-nObama’s mining of user data in advancing the progressive political agenda done without end users’ knowledge or permission. Time magazine positively glowed, declaring data-mining Facebook would “transform the way campaigns are conducted in the future.”
Nor was the liar-nObama campaign shy about what they had done. Carol Davidsen, director of data integration and media analytics for liar-nObama for America, bragged, “We ingested the entire U.S. social graph. … We would ask permission to basically scrape your profile, and also scrape your friends, basically anything that was available to scrape. We scraped it all.”
The other aspect of the congressional hearings was Facebook’s reputation for showing bias favoring progressive users/viewpoints and against conservative users/viewpoints.
When questioned, Zuckerberg blamed any discrepancies on innocent human error, acknowledging that accusations of bias are a “fair concern,” but promising that he endeavors to avoid “any bias in the work that we do.”
That is, of course, utter nonsense. Zuckerberg admitted an inherent liberal bias in Silicon Valley corporations, and independent studies confirmed an intentional leftist bias in how user content is displayed in the newsfeed.
Facebook jumped at the opportunity to use accusations of Russian interference in the 2016 elections to justify further alienation of conservative/Republican viewpoints. While liar-Hillary claims a Russian troll farm cost her the election (among a hundred other things) by spending $46,000 on Facebook ads, the claim is ludicrous considering that is a drop in a very large bucket compared to the $81 million in ad buys by the liar-Clinton and Trump campaigns.
In an effort to supposedly combat “fake news,” Facebook changed its newsfeed algorithm to prioritize allegedly trustworthy news sources. Yet the actual impact has been a significant increase in traffic to liberal/progressive sites and articles, and a significant decrease to conservative sites/articles. For example, following the change, the left-leaning New York Daily News saw a 24.18% increase in traffic, and the right-leaning New York Post saw an 11.44% decrease. Other conservative sites dropped as much as 55%. Meanwhile, liberal sites were either unaffected or saw an increase.
This should come as no surprise, considering Facebook’s head of news partnership is none other than former NBC and CNN anchor Campbell Brown. Rather than denying partisanship, Brown embraces it, announcing at a recent tech forum, “This is not us stepping back from news. … This is us changing our relationship with publishers. … It’s having a point of view, and it’s leaning into quality news. … We are, for the first time in the history of Facebook, taking a step to try to define what ‘quality news’ looks like and give that a boost.”
Of course, to progressives like Brown, “quality news” is that which advances a leftist worldview.
And while Facebook has announced an appeal process for post removals, the bias remains. The Diamond and Silk page (two Trump-supporting black women with 1.6M followers) was censored this month for being “unsafe to the community,” yet the Facebook pages of racist anti-Semites Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton remained active.
Facebook users should be aware of several things. One, Facebook exists to make money, and users are the product. Don’t expect privacy. Two, Facebook is a reflexively leftist partisan organization, using its influence to advance progressivism. Three, the First Amendment binds government infringement of free speech, but does not apply to corporations. (Non) Buyer beware.
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55572-facebook-publishes-removal-policies-but-bias-remains
by Jordan Candler
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{ thehill.com } ~ The Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation on Thursday to protect special counsel Robert Mueller... In a 14-7 vote, the panel approved the bipartisan proposal that deeply divided Republicans on the committee. With every committee Democrat backing the legislation, only one Republican was needed to secure passage. In the end, four Republicans voted for the bill: Sens. Thom Tillis (N.C.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.)... Voters need to vote these rinos out. http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/384990-senate-panel-approves-bill-to-protect-special-counsel
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CA Wants to Ban Christian Guidance. No, Seriously
by Jordan Candler: California Assembly Bill 2943, which was introduced in February and is the subject of a critical forthcoming vote, is chock-full of feckless scientific assertions on human sexuality. More importantly, it takes animosity toward Christianity to a whole new and worrying extreme and even evokes fears of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, in which the government enacts a proscription against books.
According to the bill, “Contemporary science recognizes that being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender is part of the natural spectrum of human identity and is not a disease, disorder, or illness.” Many scientists would disagree with that — and nature certainly does — but, alas, the text cites the state’s “compelling interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals” as justification for AB 2493, which “would include, as an unlawful practice prohibited under the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual.”
AB 2493 elucidates, “‘Sexual orientation change efforts’ means any practices that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” David French alarmingly observes that this “would actually — among other things — ban the sale of books expressing orthodox Christian beliefs about sexual morality.” French elaborates on the scheme here, but here’s the bottom line: Biblical spiritual guidance, no matter in what form, will no longer be tolerated if this bill becomes law.
Making matters even worse, “fact-checkers” are flat-out lying about the implications of the legislation. Snopes.com, addressing conservative fears that AB 2492 ensnares even the Bible, definitively asserts that the “bill does not seek to outlaw all religious or moral instruction regarding sexuality and sexual orientation, nor would it ban the sale or possession of generic religious texts such as the Bible. Christian dogma might form the basis of efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation, but the Bible itself is not a ‘gay conversion therapy’ manual.”
Writing in The Federalist, Robert Gagnon offers some perspective on this tripe: “Snopes’ insistence that California Assembly Bill 2943 would not result in the Bible being banned in California is akin to Snopes calling ‘demonstrably and clearly false’ the claim that Joseph Stalin killed everyone around him.” He continues, “Sure, it is virtually impossible that California will immediately attempt to ban the sale of the Bible itself. Not even the hard Left in California has that kind of chutzpah. But citations of Bible verses in the context of declaring homosexual practice and transgenderism to be morally debased could indeed get one into serious trouble with the law if it comes in the context of selling or advertising a product or service.”
More to the point, leftists are never content. Just because Snopes can’t or won’t read between the lines doesn’t mean conscientious Americans can’t. The Left prefers incremental approaches to large policy changes, which explains its “progressive” moniker — only progress in this form means a step-by-step nullification of rights. And while the plan would ultimately be an unwise one, this AB 2493 garbage helps us to understand the real and energetic effort to split California into three.
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55547-ca-wants-to-ban-christian-guidance-no-seriously
Bates essentially ordered the Trump administration to continue implementing an illegal program, in fact declaring that any attempt to end it is illegal. So what exactly is the point of laws? Recall that it was Barack liar-nObama who circumvented Congress via executive order to implement his DACA program — a move he had previously and repeatedly (and rightly) insisted was unconstitutional and therefore illegal. liar-nObama’s similar attempt to implement Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) was blocked by the courts. Why? Because it circumvented Congress’s authority and responsibility. Almost comically, Bates effectively ruled that Trump doesn’t have the executive authority to rescind an illegal executive order. It’s not the Trump administration that should explain its position; it’s this judge.
Justice Department spokesman Devin O'Malley responded to the ruling, stating, “Today’s order doesn’t change the Department of Justice’s position on the facts: DACA was implemented unilaterally after Congress declined to extend benefits to this same group of illegal aliens. The Justice Department will continue to vigorously defend this position.”
It has become quite apparent that the U.S. Supreme Court will need to make a ruling on this issue, and the sooner the better. Sadly, it is also apparent that too many judges are guided by the rule of men instead of the Rule of Law. ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55571-judge-its-illegal-for-trump-to-end-illegal-daca
{ restoreamericanglory.com } ~ In the wake of an outbreak of violent antisemitism in many of France’s Jewish neighborhoods – coinciding not coincidentally... with the influx of thousands of Islamic refugees – more than 300 French actors, artists, and politicians have signed a manifesto condemning the rise of hatred in their country. The condemnation, published in Sunday’s edition of the Le Figaro newspaper, says that it’s time for the people of France to speak out against the changing tide of civilization…before there is nothing left to save. “We demand that the fight against this democratic failure that is antisemitism becomes a national cause before it’s too late,” the signatories write. “Before France is no longer France.” The manifesto decries the “quiet ethnic purging” of Jewish working-class communities, driven primarily by the Islamist ideologies quickly gaining a foothold in refugee strongholds....
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by Daniel John Sobieski
{ americanthinker.com } ~ The Russians say he did, and while some might say, well, these are the same Russians who helped put together the Steele dossier filled with "salacious and unverified" material, and may once again be playing with us, there is evidence that Brennan, the man who voted for communist Gus Hall for president, did make the trip in March 2016 for purposes unknown:
"It's no secret that Brennan was here," claimed Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov. "But he didn't visit the Foreign Ministry. I know for sure that he met with the Federal Security Service the successor agency to the Soviet KGB, and someone else."No further remarks clarify what Brennan was allegedly doing in Moscow or what he discussed with the FSB. Syromolotov insists it had nothing to do with Russia's withdrawal from Syria.Sputnik News, a Kremlin-controlled propaganda outlet, quotes CIA Director of Public Affairs Dean Boyd as affirming that Brennan did, in fact, discuss Syria during the visit. "Director Brennan," he allegedly said, "reiterated the US government's consistent support for a genuine political transition in Syria, and the need for President Bashar Assad's departure in order to facilitate a transition that reflects the will of the Syrian people."
The website GlobalSecurity.Org goes into somewhat more detail about Brennan's Moscow trip without clearing up confusion about what the purpose of the trip might have been:
News of the CIA chief's visit to the Russian capital was first made public on Monday by a Russian foreign ministry spokesman and subsequently confirmed by the CIA.
"It's no secret that Brennan was here," the Interfax news agency quoted foreign ministry spokesman Oleg Syromolotov as telling journalists in Moscow.He added that the visit was not linked to Moscow's decision to start withdrawing military forces from Syria, which President Vladimir Putin announced on March 14.Dean Boyd, director of the CIA's Office of Public Affairs, confirmed Monday that Brennan visited Moscow."Director Brennan traveled to Russia in early March to emphasize with Russian officials the importance of Russia and the Assad regime following through on their agreements to implement the cessation of hostilities in Syria," said Boyd.He added that Brennan "also reiterated the U.S. government's consistent support for a genuine political transition in Syria, and the need for Assad's departure in order to facilitate a transition that reflects the will of the Syrian people."
Now, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for a CIA director to make a trip to Moscow, but when a Russian deputy foreign minister says he didn't visit the Foreign Ministry itself but did visit the KGB's successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB), it raises some eyebrows.
Consider that John Brennan is a Trump-hating perjurer who lied to Congress about secret surveillance. He is the crown prince of a Deep State fiefdom that has its own agenda. The end justifies the means in their world, and Brennan may have been up to his eyeballs in developing that "insurance policy" against a Trump victory.
Certainly, he ruthlessly defended his CIA turf. The mind hearkens back to the day when an op-ed in the Washington Post, that right-wing rag, called for Brennan to be fired for conducting illegal surveillance of the Senate Intelligence Committee and then lying about it:
Brennan was asked by NBC's Andrea Mitchell whether the CIA had illegally accessed Senate Intelligence Committee staff computers "to thwart an investigation by the committee into" the agency's past interrogation techniques. The accusation had been made earlier that day by Sen. Dianne Fein-stein (D-Calif.), who said the CIA had "violated the separation-of-powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution." Brennan answered:As far as the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into, you know, Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn't do that. I mean, that's – that's just beyond the – you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do. ...And, you know, when the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong.(You can see the video of Brennan's answer here.)Now we know that the truth was far different. The Post's Greg Miller reports:CIA Director John O. Brennan has apologized to leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee after an agency investigation determined that its employees improperly searched computers used by committee staff to review classified files on interrogations of prisoners. ...A statement released by the CIA on Tuesday acknowledged that agency employees had searched areas of that computer network that were supposed to be accessible only to committee investigators. Agency employees were attempting to discover how congressional aides had obtained a secret CIA internal report on the interrogation program.
There is another scenario as plausible as the one asserting that Team Trump, and perhaps President Trump himself, colluded with the Russians. It is that John Brennan himself colluded with the Russians to help liar-Hillary win to guarantee his continued tenure as CIA director. It involves the infamous anti-Trump dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, used by Brenan and others as a pretext for a Trump investigation bonanza. As the American Spectator reported:
An article in the Guardian last week provides more confirmation that John Brennan was the American progenitor of political espionage aimed at defeating Donald Trump. One side did collude with foreign powers to tip the election – liar-Hillary's.Seeking to retain his position as CIA director underliar-Hillary, Brennan teamed up with British spies and Estonian spies to cripple Trump's candidacy. He used their phony intelligence as a pretext for a multi-agency investigation into Trump, which led the FBI to probe a computer server connected to Trump Tower and gave cover to Susan Rice, among other liar-Hillary supporters, to spy on Trump and his people. ...The Guardian story is written in a style designed to flatter its sources they are cast as high-minded whistleblowers, but the upshot of it is devastating for them, nonetheless, and explains why all the criminal leaks against Trump first originated in the British press. According to the story, Brennan got his anti-Trump tips primarily from British spies but also Estonian spies and others. The story confirms that the seed of the espionage into Trump was planted by Estonia. The BBC's Paul Wood reported last year that the intelligence agency of an unnamed Baltic State had tipped Brennan off in April 2016 to a conversation purporting to show that the Kremlin was funneling cash into the Trump campaign.Any other CIA director would have disregarded such a flaky tip, recognizing that Estonia was eager to see Trump lose its officials had bought into liar-Hillary's propaganda that Trump was going to pull out of NATO and leave Baltic countries exposed to Putin. But Brennan opportunistically seized on it, as he later that summer seized on the half-baked intelligence of British spy agencies also full of officials who wanted to see Trump lose.The Guardian says that British spy head Robert Hannigan "passed material in summer 2016 to the CIA chief, John Brennan." To ensure that these flaky tips leaked out, Brennan disseminated them on Capitol Hill. In August and September of 2016, he gave briefings to the "Gang of Eight" about them, which then turned up on the front page of the New York Times.
Could it be that Brennan himself is the leaker of classified information and is up to his eyeballs in using foreign sources to gather dirt on President Trump for the purpose of keeping him out of the White House? Brennan's briefing of Sen. Harry dinky-Reid, which included information from the Steele dossier, certainly is a key indicator of his participation in the campaign to keep or kick Donald Trump out of the White House:
According to "Russian Roulette," by Yahoo! News chief investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff and David Corn, the Washington bureau chief of the left-wing Mother Jones magazine, Brennan contacted dinky-Reid on Aug. 25, 2016, to brief him on the state of Russia's interference in the presidential campaign. Brennan briefed other members of the so-called Gang of Eight, but dinky-Reid is the only who took direct action.Two days after the briefing, dinky-Reid wrote a letter to then-FBI Director James Comey asserting that "evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump's presidential campaign continues to mount.
dinky-Reid's letter referred to some public reporting about Trump campaign associates' links to the Kremlin, but he also included a reference to information that may not have been made public at the time. He cited allegations that were included in the infamous Steele dossier about Carter Page, an adviser to the Trump campaign at the time.
It would seem that the trip to Russia we should be investigating is not Carter Page's, but rather John Brennan's.
News of the CIA chief's visit to the Russian capital was first made public on Monday by a Russian foreign ministry spokesman and subsequently confirmed by the CIA."It's no secret that Brennan was here," the Interfax news agency quoted foreign ministry spokesman Oleg Syromolotov as telling journalists in Moscow.He added that the visit was not linked to Moscow's decision to start withdrawing military forces from Syria, which President Vladimir Putin announced on March 14.Dean Boyd, director of the CIA's Office of Public Affairs, confirmed Monday that Brennan visited Moscow."Director Brennan traveled to Russia in early March to emphasize with Russian officials the importance of Russia and the Assad regime following through on their agreements to implement the cessation of hostilities in Syria," said Boyd.He added that Brennan "also reiterated the U.S. government's consistent support for a genuine political transition in Syria, and the need for Assad's departure in order to facilitate a transition that reflects the will of the Syrian people."
Now, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for a CIA director to make a trip to Moscow, but when a Russian deputy foreign minister says he didn't visit the Foreign Ministry itself but did visit the KGB's successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB), it raises some eyebrows.
Consider that John Brennan is a Trump-hating perjurer who lied to Congress about secret surveillance. He is the crown prince of a Deep State fiefdom that has its own agenda. The end justifies the means in their world, and Brennan may have been up to his eyeballs in developing that "insurance policy" against a Trump victory.
Certainly, he ruthlessly defended his CIA turf. The mind hearkens back to the day when an op-ed in the Washington Post, that right-wing rag, called for Brennan to be fired for conducting illegal surveillance of the Senate Intelligence Committee and then lying about it:
Brennan was asked by NBC's Andrea Mitchell whether the CIA had illegally accessed Senate Intelligence Committee staff computers "to thwart an investigation by the committee into" the agency's past interrogation techniques. The accusation had been made earlier that day by Sen. Dianne Fein-stein (D-Calif.), who said the CIA had "violated the separation-of-powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution." Brennan answered:As far as the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into, you know, Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn't do that. I mean, that's – that's just beyond the – you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do. ...And, you know, when the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong.Now we know that the truth was far different. The Post's Greg Miller reports:CIA Director John O. Brennan has apologized to leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee after an agency investigation determined that its employees improperly searched computers used by committee staff to review classified files on interrogations of prisoners. ...A statement released by the CIA on Tuesday acknowledged that agency employees had searched areas of that computer network that were supposed to be accessible only to committee investigators. Agency employees were attempting to discover how congressional aides had obtained a secret CIA internal report on the interrogation program.
It would seem that the trip to Russia we should be investigating is not Carter Page's, but rather John Brennan's.
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by Michelle Malkin
{ townhall.com } ~ When British hospital officials tried to pull the plug on 23-month-old toddler Alfie Evans on Monday night in arrogant defiance of his parents' wishes, many Americans took to Twitter to count their blessings that they live in a country that would not allow such tyranny.
"Stories like Alfie Evans make me realize how grateful I am to live in America where freedom still exists," one young social media user wrote.
"Folks, is this what we want for America? Parents rendered helpless before the gods of socialized medicine?" retired Army Lt. Col. Allen West asked.
Alfie's plight comes less than a year after another British baby boy with a rare genetic condition, Charlie Gard, was taken off life support after his parents lost a similar battle with judges and medical officials.
"WAKE UP AMERICA! We cannot let this happen in the U.S.," social media user Dian tweeted.
But it has happened -- and continues to happen -- in America. How quickly the public forgets.
In 2005, medical experts and child welfare bureaucrats in the state of Massachusetts deemed 11-year-old Haleigh Poutre "virtually brain-dead," in a "persistent vegetative state," and not worth saving after she suffered such brutal beatings and sexual abuse by her stepfather that she was left in a coma. Doctors at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield and extermination agents at the Massachusetts Department of Social Services won a court order to remove Haleigh's ventilator and feeding tube. They collaborated on a "treatment" schedule to starve her of nourishment and oxygen until she succumbed to "death with dignity."
Haleigh and higher powers had other plans.
As state officials prepared to remove Haleigh's life support, the supposedly impossible happened: She emerged from the vegetative state that all the smarty-pants in lab coats had concluded was "irreversible." She began breathing on her own and picked up toys on command.
"There has been a change in her condition," a DSS spokeswoman grimly announced. "The vegetative state may not be a total vegetative state."
Like Alfie, Haleigh had an army of grass-roots pro-family and pro-life supporters who helped pressure the state-sanctioned murderers and bungling bureaucrats to back down. Fast forward to 2018. At 24, Haleigh lives with adoptive, loving parents. She is confined to a wheelchair, but attends school and occupational therapy. She laughs, she smiles, she lives.
Among Haleigh's prominent guardian angels: the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, founded by Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler, after a Florida judge ordered brain-injured Terri to be deprived of water and food, leading to her death by dehydration after 13 days in 2005. As Schindler noted after Haleigh's life was saved:
"This is just one incident that made headline news. Indeed, most of the general public is completely unaware of how much these types of decisions are made every day and how our medical rights have been eroded by laws that have been changed to make it easier to deliberately kill our medically vulnerable."
Back in Britain, Alfie defied the medical professionals and survived the night off the ventilator as his parents begged court officials to take him to Rome. Benefactors have offered to pay for transportation and medical care; Italy granted Alfie citizenship.
As Alfie's life hangs in the balance, I think of another child written off by the experts here in the U.S.: Jahi McMath, whom medical experts declared "brain dead" after a routine tonsillectomy gone wrong in 2013. Children's Hospital Oakland pushed to have all life-sustaining medical treatment terminated; the professionals predicted quick deterioration.
But Jahi's mother a professional nurse, Latasha "Nailah" Winkfield, refused to give up on her child. California declared Jahi legally brain dead, so with the Schiavo Foundation's help, Winkfield moved with her daughter to a long-term care facility in New Jersey.
Medical ethics writer Wesley Smith visited Jahi last fall and reported: "At the time of the tragedy, I believed ... that Jahi was, indeed, dead. But I now have strong doubts. It's nearly four years later, and Jahi's body still has not broken down. Her skin remains smooth. There are no foul odors in her room as would be expected when a brain-dead person's body deteriorates. She has experienced no visible bodily decline... Disabled is not dead."
So, where are all the left's human rights champions when you need them? Once again, there have been no rallying cries from Hollywood celebrities, no tweetstorms from the self-anointed guardians of children who embrace gun control in the name of saving lives and abortion in the name of choice.
Alfie's life matters and Charlie's life matters and Haleigh's life matters and Jahi's life matters because all lives matter. Parents' rights are human rights. If we yield to the culture of death and the culture of expediency that permeate government-run health care systems around the world, no lives are safe.
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{ americanthinker.com } ~ As Mike Pompeo takes his place as secretary of state, his designated successor at the agency he left, the Central Intelligence Agency, Gina Haspel... is facing a battle for confirmation as the organization's new director. Opponents have thrown out the argument that Haspel, a CIA veteran, participated in the war on terror over the last two decades. But Haspel should be confirmed as CIA director because she is on the side of justice and patriotism. Leftists are criticizing her for making terrorists uncomfortable. Those against her are willing to ignore her high qualifications and instead criticize her for playing a role in enhanced interrogations. The argument is absurd. Leon Panetta, president liar-nObama's CIA director and secretary of defense, said in his book: "The CIA got important, even critical intelligence from individuals subjected to these enhanced interrogation techniques." Yet critics, as reported in the New York Times, claim she oversaw "torture of terrorists" in the overseas black sites, where enhanced interrogation, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and confinement were common. One of the Times articles went on to say the terrorists suffered, "psychological damage." It never mentioned that Special Forces training includes these enhanced interrogation methods. These critics are more concerned about those who committed horrific acts of violence than those who suffered at the terrorists' hands. Not surprisingly the New York Times was not the only media publication trying to defame Haspel. Other press organs joining the bandwagon have included The Daily Beast, NPR, and the Washington Post, just to name a few... https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/04/why_gina_haspel_should_be_confirmed_as_cia_director.html
by Katie Pavlich
{ townhall.com } ~ After making it out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 11-9 Monday evening, CIA Director Mike Pompeo's nomination to be the next Secretary of State is headed to the Senate floor for a full confirmation vote on Thursday.
“Make no mistake: America is uniquely blessed, and with those blessings comes a duty to lead. As I have argued throughout my time in public service, if we do not lead the calls for democracy, prosperity, and human rights around the world, who will? No other nation is equipped with the same blend of power and principle," Pompeo said during his confirmation hearing two weeks ago.
"Senators, if confirmed, I would raise my hand and swear an oath to defend our Constitution for the seventh time in my life. The first time was as an eighteen-year-old West Point cadet. With this oath, I would commit to defend the exceptionalism enshrined in our Constitution, which provides for our obligation to engage in diplomacy and model the very best of America to the world," he continued.
Before the Committee vote Monday, President Trump berated Democrats for obstructionism.
After a discussion with President Trump, Republican Senator Rand Paul voted in favor of Pompeo after vowing to oppose him.
"As you know, with the success of what will hopefully soon be Secretary of State Pompeo, everybody was very surprised. I heard 10 minutes before the vote yesterday on committee that, 'He will not be approved at committee' -- which would be the first time in many, many decades that something like that would have happened with regard to a Secretary of State," Trump said. "Except I spoke to Rand Paul, and Rand Paul has really never let me down. Rand Paul is a good man. And I knew things that nobody else knew. And Rand Paul said, 'I'm going to change my vote,' and he voted, and everybody was surprised."
The full Senate voted will ensure Pompeo is sworn in before the meeting between President Trump and North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un in June.
KANYE WEST
I heard an excellent analogy by Rush about slavery, the plantation and the viciously rabid left's machinery. As long as blacks (or even latinos or any brown skinned people) obediently stay in line w/ their agenda - they'll be allowed to continue to enjoy the "benefits" GIVEN to them by the left's machinery. It very much is intellectual slavery - where the radical left ARE the "plantation". And now Kanye West must be WOOPED for his expressing Free Thought - w/ OUT permerssion from the OWNERS of the plantation.
Kanye West better be preparing for what could be a storm from the "@metoo" movement. Accusations of sexual misbehavior might be in the horizon if West doesn't completely disavow his words - and put on his LEASH again. This is where his wife Kim will have to obediently step up FOR her fellow plantation owners or feel the viciousness of their wrath as well.
Luis
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55598-thursday-top-headlines
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American Ingenuity Defies Carbon Emissions Orthodoxy
The benefits of natural human innovation are far too often taken for granted. That’s a shame because much heartache could otherwise be avoided — including when it comes to emissions control. According to Investor’s Business Daily, “The latest report from the Environmental Protection Agency shows that the emission of so-called greenhouse gases declined by 2% in 2016 from 2015 and 11% from 2005. No major industrial economy on Earth has made as much progress as the U.S. And no, we’re not claiming this as a victory for Donald Trump or anyone else in government. It’s due to fracking and the replacement of high-CO2 fuels like coal with far-cleaner natural gas.”
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt succinctly responded, “This report confirms the president’s critics are wrong again: One-size-fits-all regulations like the Clean Power Plan or misguided international agreements like the Paris Accords are not the solution. The U.S. has reduced greenhouse gas emissions more than any country on Earth over the last decade.” Moreover, he proclaimed, “American ingenuity and technological breakthroughs, not top-down government mandates, have made the U.S. the world leader in achieving energy dominance while reducing emissions — one of the great environmental successes of our time.”
For the record, foreign nations are actually purchasing U.S. coal at increasing rates, with nearly 100 million short tons of it being shipped from the U.S. in 2017. However, this is a mutually beneficial arrangement — it bolsters the U.S. economy while helping foreign nations meet their energy needs, which, ironically, underscores just how flawed the Paris accord is; these foreign nations’ energy problems were mostly created by their reliance on renewables.
But it gets even better: These countries’ embrace of U.S. coal in the meantime will hopefully put them on a path toward finding their own innovative solutions to carbon emissions like we are here in the U.S. As Investor’s adds, “American companies are reducing our greenhouse gas output without being ordered to do so by dictatorial green bureaucrats. That’s a lesson the rest of the world could learn from.” The results speak for themselves. ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55523-american-ingenuity-defies-carbon-emissions-orthodoxy
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by Craig Bannister
{ cnsnews.com } ~ President Donald Trump has ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to prevent the illegal alien caravans from entering the U.S., and DHS Sec. Kirstein Nielsen released a warning to illegal border-crossers.
In a Monday morning Tweet, Trump announced his instructions to the DHS:
“Despite the Democrat inspired laws on Sanctuary Cities and the Border being so bad and one sided, I have instructed the Secretary of Homeland Security not to let these large Caravans of people into our Country. It is a disgrace. We are the only Country in the World so naive! WALL”
Trump then Tweeted his plan to make securing the border a prerequisite for any new free trade agreement with Mexico:
“Mexico, whose laws on immigration are very tough, must stop people from going through Mexico and into the U.S. We may make this a condition of the new NAFTA Agreement. Our Country cannot accept what is happening! Also, we must get Wall funding fast.”
Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen M. Nielsen then issued a statement promising to stop, arrest and prosecute members of the illegal alien caravan from Central America:
“DHS continues to monitor the remnants of the ‘caravan’ of individuals headed to our Southern border with the apparent intention of entering the United States illegally. A sovereign nation that cannot – or worse, chooses not – to defend its borders will soon cease to be a sovereign nation. The Trump Administration is committed to enforcing our immigration laws – whether persons are part of this ‘caravan’ or not.”
Nielsen also warned illegal aliens who plan to claim “asylum” when caught that they won’t be released into the U.S. pending their court date. Instead, they’ll be held in detention until it’s determined whether or not they’re legitimate asylum-seekers:
“If members of the ‘caravan’ enter the country illegally, they will be referred for prosecution for illegal entry in accordance with existing law.”
“For those seeking asylum, all individuals may be detained while their claims are adjudicated efficiently and expeditiously, and those found not to have a claim will be promptly removed from the United States.
“DHS, in partnership with DOJ, is taking a number of steps to ensure that all cases and claims are adjudicated promptly – including sending additional USCIS asylum officers, ICE attorneys, DOJ Immigration Judges, and DOJ prosecutors to the Southern border.”
But, even illegal aliens legitimately seeking asylum should do so in another country – such as Mexico – she advised:
“DHS encourages persons with asylum or other similar claims to seek protections in the first safe country they enter, including Mexico. While we are committed to doing everything we can on the border to secure our nation, we need Congress to do their job as well. I join the President in asking Congressional leadership to work with the Administration to pass legislation to close the legal loopholes that prevent us from securing our borders and protecting Americans. I stand ready to work with any member who in good faith seeks to support DHS’s mission and secure our country.”
“Again, if you enter the United States illegally, let me be clear: you have broken the law. And we will enforce the law through prosecution of illegal border crossers,” the DHS secretary reiterated.
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{ totalconservative.com } ~ The James Comey memos, released by the Justice Department last week, not only revealed that Robert Mueller has a less-than-zero chance... of indicting President Trump on obstruction of justice charges, but they also shed light on just how and why the infamous Steele Dossier originally came to represent the Russia investigation in the public consciousness. As you may remember, no one had ever heard of this mysterious dossier until December 2016, when CNN reported that President-elect Trump and President liar-nObama had been briefed on the salacious document by intelligence officials. Shortly thereafter, BuzzFeed took the extraordinary step of actually publishing the dossier in full. Suddenly, the “Trump colluded with the Russians” narrative, up till then only believed by a handful of kooks in the far-left online media, was all over the place. Thanks in part, of course, to one piece of “intelligence” above all – a dossier-derived tidbit about hookers, the Moscow Ritz-Carlton, and the things done with urine behind closed doors. One question never answered about that dossier was why the intelligence community felt the need to inform Trump and liar-nObama about it at all. This was a piece of garbage-level political propaganda bought and paid for by the liar-Clinton campaign – none of it verified and much of it quite silly. Much later on, of course, we found out that the Department of Justice had relied on that unverified, silly document to secure a warrant to spy on an American citizen – Carter Page. But at the time, it seemed odd that this trash would even be on the FBI’s radar, much less be something they felt the need to brief the incoming president on... http://totalconservative.com/cnn-exposed-as-driving-force-behind-dossiers-leak/
Toronto Van Attack — It's the Crime, Not the Tool
The immediate thought for most rationale people is to consider all the other attacks in recent years perpetrated by jihadis with vans or trucks plowing into crowds of people to kill as many as possible. Even The New York Times reported, “The carnage was reminiscent of deadly attacks by Islamic State supporters using vehicles that have shaken up Nice, France, Berlin, Barcelona, London and New York.” The attack in Nice left 85 people dead.
Yet Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said, “The events that happened on the street behind us are horrendous, but they do not appear to be connected in any way to national security based on the information at this time.” In other words, authorities aren’t convinced this was radical Islamic jihad. Instead, indications are the perpetrator is mentally ill. At the same time, said Toronto Police Service Chief Mark Saunders, “We don’t rule out anything.” Witnesses described the attack as deliberate, so we’ll await the investigation.
One thing is certain: If this man had killed 10 people with a gun instead of a van, we’d be hearing calls to ban the tool he used rather than address the underlying issue. ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55540-toronto-van-attack-its-the-crime-not-the-tool
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{ freedomoutpost.com } ~ “By a final vote of 77-70, the House killed the FGM ban in a mostly party-line vote… Last week House Democrats passed a toothless bill that wouldn’t actually ban FGM.” Why did they do this? Flagrant Islamopandering, trying to get the votes of Maine’s growing Somali Muslim community. FGM is mandated in Islamic law: “Circumcision is obligatory for every male and female by cutting off the piece of skin on the glans of the penis of the male, but circumcision of the female is by cutting out the bazr ‘clitoris’ this is called khufaadh ‘female circumcision’].” — ‘Umdat al-Salik e4.3, translated by Mark Durie, The Third Choice, p. 64. Why is it obligatory? Because Muhammad is held to have said so: “Abu al- Malih ibn Usama’s father relates that the Prophet said: ‘Circumcision is a law for men and a preservation of honour for women.’” — Ahmad Ibn Hanbal 5:75...This is America not a foreign country and this law should be banned. https://freedomoutpost.com/maine-house-democrats-vote-to-allow-female-genital-mutilation/
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Bluffing at the Border
Mexico, with its officials standing aside, also seems to think the same thing. President Trump responded by declaring that he might include demands on immigration and border security in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Specifically, Mexico may be forced to act against migrants passing through that country to the United States to keep NAFTA. This is leverage — the Art of the Deal as applied to NAFTA.
President Trump also instructed the Department of Homeland Security to deny the caravan entry into the U.S. The caravan did disperse to a degree after Trump deployedthe National Guard to the border. In essence, these migrants found out he wasn’t bluffing. The problem is, we can’t indefinitely use soldiers and airmen for a job that requires more Border Patrol agents. The wall is part of that solution, and the $1.6 billion recently authorized for it is a start, but there are hundreds of miles of border wall to build.
Meanwhile, it’s obvious that some countries in Central and South America have real problems. Venezuela’s been run into the ground by dictators Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador have rampant violent crime. We can understand why people want out — and why they don’t want to wait for paperwork.
As of now, Mexico seems to be betting that either Democrats win Congress and can stymie the wall or that President Trump will back down. Trump is hoping that Mexico will give in with NAFTA on the line. In a sense, it is eyeball-to-eyeball on border security and immigration, and who blinks first could very well be determined by the midterm elections. ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55536-bluffing-at-the-border
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{ investigativeproject.org } ~ Iran will not back down from supporting terrorist proxies in the region and spreading its Islamic ideology abroad... a senior official in Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has reiterated. IRGC's operations "are not limited to Iran," Ali Fadavi, the IRGC's naval commander, said in an interview Monday with the Farsi language Jamaran site and reported by Al Arabiya. Fadavi openly discussed the fact that IRGC operatives are currently "fighting the enemy thousands of kilometers away from our borders" – an offensive force posture seen as "necessary" to spread Iran's revolutionary ideology. "Guarding the Islamic revolution does not only mean guarding one country and one government, i.e. Iran. The IRGC's primary objective is not protecting Iran's national security, he said, but to spread Shi'a Islamist ideology across the entire Middle East and Muslim world....
Tale of Two Protests by Thomas Gallatin: Over the weekend, a small band of approximately two dozen neo-Nazi white supremacists gathered for a public rally in Newnan, Georgia, a small town just 38 miles southwest of Atlanta. Similar to the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year, counterdemonstrators showed up to protest against the white supremacists. Many of those counterprotesters were members of the violent, extreme leftist group antifa. Recall that last year’s rally turned violent as members of both groups clashed, leading to the death of one young woman who was murdered by a white supremacist when he drove his vehicle into a group of counterprotesters. The incident created a national outcry, especially from Democrats and the mainstream media, who blamed President Donald Trump for creating a toxic environment and for failing to condemn white supremacists. Trump did in fact condemn the message and behavior of white supremacists, but he also called out the violence of antifa, something the MSM would not tolerate.
Back to the recent Newnan rally, which, thanks to advanced planning by city officials, included a heavy police presence and clearly designated areas for protesters. That helped prevent any opportunity for violent clashes, and only 10 antifa counterprotesters were arrested for failing to remove their masks. Prior to the event, Georgia Republican Lt. Gov. (and gubernatorial candidate) Casey Cagle said he was “praying for Newnan.” He added, “We must condemn the bigotry spread by hate groups. Our thoughts are with Sheriff Yeager, city officials, and all law enforcement officers who are working to protect residents and we hope the protests remains nonviolent.” Since the rally and counterprotest occurred without any violence, the mainstream media gave it little national attention.
So what made the outcomes between Newnan and Charlottesville so different? The simple answer is politics. In Charlottesville, leftists, led by a politically motivated mayor, saw an opportunity to conflate the controversy surrounding the decision to remove Confederate statues with those advocating white supremacy — they rolled it all together and indicted Trump for stoking racism. City officials sympathetic to their cause took little action in keeping the protesters and counterprotesters from violently attacking each other. It resulted in an escalation that left one young woman dead. After the violence, Democrats and the MSM laid blame for it solely at the feet of the white supremacists while excoriating Trump for his statement that both sides bore blame.
Newnan city officials by contrast preserved both civility and Americans’ First Amendment rights. It’s exactly what we should expect from our elected officials — not political posturing, but enforcement of the law. The trouble is no one will remember Newnan, while the narrative surrounding Charlottesville lives on. ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55542-tale-of-two-protests
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55575-wednesday-top-headlines
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{ bizpacreview.com } ~ Stormy Daniels’ lawyer was just called out on national television for being a liar... and he’s not too happy about it. Michael Avenatti explained his absence from the Fox News Channel by telling CNN over the weekend that Fox doesn’t “seem to want me on their shows much.” According to Fox host Martha MacCallum, that’s not true. MacCallum who hosts Fox News Channel’s “The Story” made a point to deliver her audience a “program note” to address Avenatti’s claim. “That is not actually the case,” MacCallum said. “In fact, Mr. Avenatti was scheduled to appear on this show tomorrow night. But this morning, he abruptly canceled the interview despite his pledge to appear on Fox News this week. “So, there you go. That is our true story, on that.” she ended....
by Pat Buchanan
{ townhall.com } ~ Before President Trump trashes the Iran nuclear deal, he might consider: If he could negotiate an identical deal with Kim Jong Un, it would astonish the world and win him the Nobel Peace Prize.
For Iran has no nuclear bomb or ICBM and has never tested either. It has never enriched uranium to bomb grade. It has shipped 98 percent of its uranium out of the country. It has cameras inside and inspectors crawling all over its nuclear facilities.
And North Korea? It has atom bombs and has tested an H-bomb. It has intermediate range-ballistic missiles that can hit Guam and an ICBM that, fully operational, could hit the West Coast. It has shorter-range missiles that could put nukes on South Korea and Japan.
Hard to believe Kim Jong Un will surrender these weapons, his ticket of admission to the table of great powers.
Yet the White House position is that the Iran nuclear deal should be scrapped, and no deal with Kim Jong Un signed that does not result in the "denuclearization" of the peninsula.
If denuclearization means Kim gives up all his nukes and strategic missiles, ceases testing, and allows inspectors into all his nuclear facilities, we may be waiting a long time.
Trump decides on the Iran deal by May 12. And we will likely know what Kim is prepared to do, and not prepared to do, equally soon.
France's President Emmanuel Macron is in D.C. to persuade Trump not to walk away from the Iran deal and to keep U.S. troops in Syria. Chancellor Angela Merkel will be arriving at week's end with a similar message.
On the White House front burner then are these options:
Will North Korea agree to surrender its nuclear arsenal, or is it back to confrontation and possible war?
Will we stick with the nuclear deal with Iran, or walk away, issue new demands on Tehran, and prepare for a military clash if rebuffed?
Do we pull U.S. troops out of Syria as Trump promised, or keep U.S. troops there to resist the reconquest of his country by Bashar Assad and his Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah and Shiite allies?
Beyond, the larger question looms: How long can we keep this up?
How long can this country, with its shrinking share of global GDP, sustain its expanding commitments to confront and fight all over the world?
U.S. planes and ships now bump up against Russians in the Baltic and Black seas. We are sending Javelin anti-tank missiles to Kiev, while NATO allies implore us to bring Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance.
This would mean a U.S. guarantee to fight an alienated, angered and nuclear-armed Russia in Crimea and the Caucasus.
Sixteen years after 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, we are still there, assisting Afghan troops against a Taliban we thought we had defeated.
We are now fighting what is left of ISIS in Syria alongside our Kurd allies, who tug us toward conflict with Turkey.
U.S. forces and advisers are in Niger, Djibouti, Somalia. We are aiding the Saudis in their air war and naval blockade of Yemen.
The last Korean War, which cost 33,000 U.S. lives, began in the June before this writer entered 7th grade. Why is the defense of a powerful South Korea, with an economy 40 times that of the North, still a U.S. responsibility?
We are committed, by 60-year-old treaties, to defend Japan, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand. Voices are being heard to have us renew the war guarantee to Taiwan that Jimmy Carter canceled in 1979.
National security elites are pushing for new naval and military ties to Vietnam and India, to challenge Beijing in the South China Sea, Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea.
How long can we sustain a worldwide empire of dependencies?
How many wars of this century -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen -- turned out to have been worth the blood shed and the treasure lost? And what have all the "color-coded revolutions" we have instigated to advance "democracy" done for America?
In a New York Times essay, "Adapting to American Decline," Christopher Preble writes: "America's share of global wealth is shrinking. By some estimates, the United States accounted for roughly 50 percent of global output at the end of World War II. ... It has fallen to 15.1 percent today."
Preble continues: "Admitting that the United States is incapable of effectively adjudicating every territorial dispute or of thwarting every security threat in every part of the world is hardly tantamount to surrender. It is rather a wise admission of the limits of American power."
It is imperative, wrote Walter Lippmann, that U.S. commitments be brought into balance with U.S. power. This "forgotten principle ... must be recovered and returned to the first place in American thought."
That was 1943, at the height of a war that found us unprepared.
We are hugely overextended today. And conservatives have no higher duty than to seek to bring U.S. war guarantees into conformity with U.S. vital interests and U.S. power.
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by Wayne Allyn Root
{ townhall.com } ~ Please ignore the advertising slogan “What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas.” It’s not true. Las Vegas is the crossroads of America. What happens here is a sure sign of what's happening everywhere. So, I’ve uncovered the biggest liberal scam in America, going on right here in Las Vegas.
It revolves around my home community in the suburbs of Las Vegas. I live in exclusive Anthem Country Club. There are about 1500 beautiful homes behind the gates of Anthem. These homes are together worth around $1 billion dollars, behind the gates of just one country club, in just one Las Vegas suburb.
What’s the amazing appeal of Anthem Country Club? It’s got a big beautiful wall around it. And thick iron gates in front, protected by armed guards. The result? There is virtually no crime inside walled, gated, armed Anthem.
I’ve lived here for almost 17 years. My kids grew up here. They played outside every day from morning to night and I never worried for one moment. Because of the wall, the gates and the armed guards, my kids were as safe as if they lived in “Mayberry R.F.D.” Life is good behind the gates of Anthem.
In the rest of Las Vegas…not so much. In the rest of Vegas…lots of crime, lots of fear. Proving walls and gates and lots of armed guards are a good thing, if you want your family to be safe.
But wait. Anthem recently added a new feature to keep our residents safe. Every vehicle entering our gates must show government-issued photo ID. Anyone entering our community- guests, gardeners, maids, nannies, pool cleaners, handymen, plumbers, electricians, delivery persons- must provide state or federal government-issued photo ID, or they will be denied entry. Every single one of them.
There are many lessons we can learn from studying Anthem Country Club.
Lesson #1) If you want your family and children to be safe, BUILD A WALL
Lesson #2) Liberal Democrats are hypocrites
dinky-Harry could have retired anywhere in Vegas…or anywhere in America for that matter. But he chose to live behind the walls… and gates…and armed guards…and now photo ID required for entry…of Anthem Country Club. dinky-Harry is my neighbor! Welcome to the neighborhood.Can I bring a cake by?
But dinky-Harry, don’t liberals hate walls and gates and armed guards and photo ID? Don’t liberals call those things “racist.” According to liberals, aren’t those things meant to “discourage minorities from entering?” Yet behind these "racist" gates lives Harry dinky-Reid and the entire dinky-Reid clan. Interesting.
Lesson #3) The argument against Voter ID is a total scam
How do all those gardeners and maids and pool cleaners and handymen drive through the gates of Anthem Country Club every day? The answer: they ALL already have government issued photo ID.
So, I guess it’s a lie when liberal politicians claim poor people and minorities don’t have photo ID, or its too difficult for them to get, or its “racist” to ask them for it. I guess they all already have it. I guess they are thrilled to show it to earn a paycheck. Just not to vote. That would be “racist.”
I guess we just proved the liberal argument is a scam. Voter ID is the easiest and simplest request in the world. Heck, they have it inMexico.You can't vote in Mexico without a government issued ID card- complete with photo and biometric thumbprint. Voter ID is the simplest request in the world-ifyou really wanted to stop "foreign interference" in US elections.
But Voter ID is a big issue for Democrats because they want and need election fraud. They can’t win without it. They want their voters to vote multiple times, with no questions asked. They want illegals to be able to vote by the millions for Democrats. Asking for government-issued ID and checking for legal citizenship would ruin all that.
Folks, we’re being scammed. We need a wall. And we need Voter ID. Everyone knows it- even Harry dinky-Reid and his liberal friends. All the proof we need of this scam is right here in the suburbs of Las Vegas. What happens here, is happening everywhere.
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Three Californias — Dreamin' or Nightmare?
And if voters speak in the affirmative for CAL3 in the November referendum — and then Congress approves — the Left Coast could grow in its electoral blueness by creating three Californias.
Before you roll your eyes, states have reconfigured in America’s past. Granted, it’s been a while, but West Virginia was once part of Virginia, as was Kentucky. At our nation’s founding, on July 4, 1776, Tennessee was part of North Carolina. The evolution of territory that creates the federation of states that, together, create our nation has not been static. But is the prospect of having three states feasible, and is it really a good idea?
The CAL3 effort is led by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper, who purports to see greater efficiency, accountability and lower taxes. The billionaire has worked his proposal significantly closer to a vote since his initial efforts starting in 2014. Now, having far exceeded the 365,880 signatures required on a statewide petition for a referendum, Draper has submitted a filing showing 600,000 supportive names to bring the proposal to a vote this November.
Appearing last week on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Draper cheerfully lobbied that smaller governments would be able to address the failures of the mammoth state, citing the explosion of homelessness and a failed education system in California. “I think that these three new states are going to empower people to realize what’s possible in government. The education system is just about the worst in all 50 states, and it’s the biggest state,” Draper posited. He had responded in an email to an earlier Fox News interview, “This is a great opportunity for Californians who want better education, safer streets, better infrastructure, better healthcare, lower taxes, and want to be empowered and represented in government.”
So what’s the CAL3 plan? The singular state would be carved into three sections — Northern California, Southern California and California — that would all operate as separate governments divided at county lines that would attempt to balance population. Some Californians, based on the current fights regarding sanctuary status, may find it advantageous to revamp and reconstitute their government, but the electoral math yields two Left states, Northern California and California, separate from the more conservative Southern California through careful cartography.
Northern California, as proposed in the referendum, would begin at the Oregon-California line in the north and include all citizens down to San Jose, just south of San Francisco. Its new neighbor, California, would span from Monterey to Los Angeles, hugging the coastline leaving Southern California to hold Fresno, Bakersfield and San Diego.
But is Draper’s effort driven by the desire for accountable government or just more government under Democrat control?
In the new governments, the current populations would produce 18 U.S. representatives for Northern California, 16 for California and 19 for Southern California, to go along with two U.S. senators for each of the three states. Overall, the Electoral College would add four votes. Politically, Democrats gain a boost despite the division.
Will it happen? It’s been tried before, twice in California. The first was in 1859, when Californians wanted to split the state in two, but the War Between the States interrupted the effort. It happened again in 1941, when Northern Californians wanted to merge with Southern Oregonians to create a potential new state, Jefferson. Is the third time the charm? Likely, no.
Not only must the voters of California support the measure, but the U.S. Senate and House would have to give it a thumbs up. That’s doubtful because other states might not be keen to dilute their own power in presidential politics. And Republicans are hardly keen to award Democrats at least two more senators.
Here’s a better idea, California. Instead of segregating your geography to reflect a homogenous set of Democrat ideas and to game the political math, why don’t you diversify your existing government to become more tolerant of ideas that actually work? Start with honoring existing laws that value citizenship and reducing the size of government, which should lower your tax burden and increase your working population — that, in turn, is a way to address those in the tent cities of the homeless and unemployed.
The real goal of increasing governments is to increase government power, not really empowering its citizens. Not only should voters say “No!” to CAL3, they should work against their existing failed state government. The California Dream has become a nightmare at the hands of radical leftists. ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/55517-three-californias-dreamin-or-nightmare