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~ Featuring ~

Mixed Messages for Saudi Arabia and Yemen

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by Harold Hutchison

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Wednesday Top Headlines

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by Media Editors: Trump retreats on government shutdown (The Hill)

Senate to vote on funding bill, easing shutdown threat (Associated Press)

Sarah Sanders: Trump asked every agency to see if they have money for the wall (CNS News)

Trump says he’s eager to sign sweeping criminal justice bill (Associated Press)

Michael Flynn’s sentencing delayed so he can keep cooperating with dirty cop-Robert Mueller (Washington Examiner)

scumbag-Comey misled Congress on dossier in closed-door testimony (The Washington Times)

Trump administration moves to ban bump stocks; possession illegal by March (Associated Press)

DC court dismisses lawsuit seeking Trump’s tax returns (The Hill)

Betsy DeVos rolls out new report on school safety (Townhall)

Five takeaways from the school safety report (The Daily Signal)

Seventy-three percent of top U.S. universities do not guarantee the presumption of innocence in Title IX sexual misconduct trials (Reason)

U.S. pledges $10.6 billion in aid for Central America and southern Mexico (Associated Press)

Trump administration plans to pull U.S. troops from Syria immediately (The Washington Post)

Nation of Islam receiving federal cash to teach prisoners (Washington Examiner)

Humor: Death panel orders life support removed from scumbag/liar-nObamaCare (The Babylon Bee)

Policy: Senate’s conservative prison reform advances Trump’s public safety and economic growth agendas (The Daily Signal)

Policy: scumbag/liar-nObama’s school discipline guidance could be doomed — here’s why that’s great news (The Daily Signal)

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/60145?mailing_id=3962&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3962&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

Sentencing delayed for ex-national security

adviser Michael Flynn after dramatic hearing

by Alex Pappas

{foxnews.com} ~ A federal judge delayed sentencing once again for former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Tuesday... pushing off the case after a dramatic hearing. Flynn pleaded guilty more than a year ago to making false statements to the FBI. During the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan tore into the defendant for his other alleged misdeeds. Sullivan called Flynn and his attorneys to the stand and asked a series of questions to ensure Flynn did in fact want to plead guilty. Flynn said he did not want to withdraw his plea. Later in the hearing, though, Sullivan ripped into Flynn, calling his plea "very serious." The judge even asked prosecutors if Flynn could have been charged with treason, which they hesitated to answer. "Arguably, you sold your country out," Sullivan told Flynn, saying he would not hide his "disgust" or "disdain" for the offense. The court then went into a brief recess. After returning, Flynn's lawyers took up the judge on an offer to delay proceedings. Sullivan set a conference hearing for March 13...

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/former-national-security-adviser-michael-flynn-sentenced

VIDEO: https://video.foxnews.com/v/5981086606001/

If China Can Ever Bully The United States Like

It Is Canada, We’re In Serious Trouble

by Helen Raleigh

{thefederalist.com} ~ The United States started a trade war with China. The Justice Department requested Canadian authorities to arrest Meng Wanzhou... the chief financial officer of China’s telecom giant Huawei, on allegations that she had violated sanctions against Iran by committing financial fraud. China hasn’t taken Meng’s arrest very well. It viewed Meng’s arrest as a politically driven “kidnapping” aimed at curbing China’s technological ambition and forcing China to make trade concessions. Beijing feels it has lost face internationally and in front of its domestic, nationalistic audience. Therefore, Beijing has been in revenge mode. However, its main target so far has been not the United States, but Canada. Since Meng’s arrest, China’s foreign minister has summoned the Canadian ambassador to China, John McCallum, multiple times, to lodge a “strong protest” and tell him Meng’s arrest caused “serious damage to Sino-Canada relations.” Beijing demanded the immediate release of Meng, or Canada would face “grave consequences” for Meng’s arrest. The same Chinese foreign ministry also summoned the U.S. ambassador to China, Terry Branstad, a day after meeting the Canadian ambassador, to protest Meng’s arrest as being “unreasonable.” In diplomatic language, the U.S. ambassador was treated with kid gloves. The Canadian government has tried very hard to explain to Beijing that Meng’s arrest was not politically driven and its timing, which took place on the same day as the President Trump and Chinese President Xi Xinping’s meeting at the G20 in Argentina, was pure coincidence. The Justice Department launched a criminal probe into Huawei’s dealings in Iran in April 2017. The arrest warrant for Meng was issued in August by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and Meng was charged with “conspiracy to defraud multiple international institutions.” To U.S. authorities, arresting Meng in Canada was a natural choice, because Meng stopped traveling to the United States in 2017, but she does travel to Canada regularly as a legal resident there... http://thefederalist.com/2018/12/18/china-can-ever-bully-united-states-like-canada-serious-trouble/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=f64acbdb1b-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-f64acbdb1b-83771801

Federal Judge Releases Benghazi Evidence –

Sends scumbag/liar-Hillary Into Total Sweating Panic

by Gregg Re

{foxnews.com} ~ In a combative exchange at a hearing Friday in Washington, D.C., a federal judge unabashedly accused career State Department officials of lying and signing “clearly false” affidavits... to derail a series of lawsuits seeking information about former Secretary of State scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton’s private email server and her handling of the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth also said he was “shocked” and “dumbfounded” when he learned that FBI had granted immunity to former scumbag/liar-Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills during its investigation into the use of scumbag/liar-Clinton’s server, according to a court transcript of his remarks. “I had myself found that Cheryl Mills had committed perjury and lied under oath in a published opinion I had issued in a Judicial Watch case where I found her unworthy of belief, and I was quite shocked to find out she had been given immunity in — by the Justice Department in the scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton email case,” Lamberth said during the hearing. The Department of Justice’s Inspector General (IG), Michael Horowitz, noted in a bombshell report in June that it was “inconsistent with typical investigative strategy” for the FBI to allow Mills to sit in during the agency’s interview of scumbag/liar-Clinton during the email probe, given that classified information traveled through Mills’ personal email account. “There are serious potential ramifications when one witness attends another witness’ interview,” the IG wrote... https://www.foxnews.com/politics/state-department-provided-clearly-false-statements-to-derail-hillary-clinton-doc-requests-federal-judge-says

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/j6PWTNHySSg via @YouTube

Judge's ruling could make government

shutdown even more costly

by Stephen Dinan and David Sherfinski

{washingtontimes.com} ~ More than 400,000 essential government employees could be forced to stay on the job throughout a government shutdown — even if they’d already planned to take holiday vacations... A quirk of federal law says paid leave is considered government spending, and since no unauthorized spending can happen during a funding lapse, no one can take vacation. The silver lining, though, is that government workers could be eligible for double pay should the shutdown last long enough to make them miss a paycheck, thanks to a federal judge’s ruling earlier this decade. Those are just some of the factors in what could be one of the weirder government shutdowns in memory. With as much as 75 percent of the government already paid for through fiscal year 2019, the number of workers affected by the funding deadline looming Friday is relatively small — about 800,000 people. Of those, 380,000 will be furloughed, while the rest, including almost all of the Homeland Security Department and much of the Justice Department, will be kept on the job, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee — though with vacations canceled. The short answer is, employees cannot take leave during a shutdown, whether they’re excepted from the shutdown or not...

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/dec/17/government-shutdown-threatens-federal-employees-ho/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual&utm_campaign=20171227&utm_term=newsletter&utm_content=morning&bt_ee=xqo9BejM6KDWRZFD3MVL19fxmd3iipJRi2OT6stvxgv2A%2BHd5P8qHSzTuk4vKUiF&bt_ts=1545133631032

By Democrats’ Own Standard, We

Have a Judicial Vacancy Crisis

by Thomas Jipping

{dailysignal.com} ~ Words like “crisis” are in the eye of the political beholder. But it’s hard to pick a better one to describe the current state of vacancies in the federal courts... Today, 126 positions on the U.S. District Court and U.S. Court of Appeals are vacant. In fact, we’re in the longest period of triple-digit vacancies in 25 years. But the raw numbers don’t tell the full story, so, since the partisan environment is so bitter, let’s apply some standards advocated by Democrats to put these numbers in perspective. Vacancies today are 52 percent higher than when Sen. scumbag-Cory Booker, D-N.J., declared a “vacancy crisis” in July 2016. They are 88 percent higher than in September 2015, when then-Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., warned that “we are heading into a judicial vacancy crisis.” In April 2014, Leahy also said it was fair to compare vacancies today with vacancies at the same point in previous administrations. Vacancies are 16 percent higher than at this point under President Barack scumbag/liar-nObama, 110 percent higher than under President George W. Bush, and 103 percent higher than under President scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton...

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/12/14/by-democrats-own-standard-we-have-a-judicial-vacancy-crisis/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWmpRd1pHSTBaakE0TldabCIsInQiOiJwQWdsZ0pwMldscHFmN3NXYkNEdmM3bFRkcmFrQWd5cFFHNks4djI3XC90UkJuWVNKY09EU1wvTWN6STJRUW0zUFlRK0RNSVZGUjJWZFNYWlwvWjhNWUFRT1o4TkE3TlwvMmdaUjlHQXUrZ1EzRFwva1M3bHVoeGFTdGFnSDNZZjg1Uis3In0%3D

Mixed Messages for Saudi Arabia and Yemen

by Harold Hutchison: There has been a push in Congress to halt America’s involvement in Yemen, and to somehow “hold Saudi Arabia accountable” because Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the gruesome murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was also a cheerleader for Hamas and supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood. While the extra-judicial killing of Khashoggi was deplorable, America needs an ally in the Muslim world, and the Saudis are still arguably one of the least bad options.

Cutting off support for Saudi Arabia’s anti-Iranian operations in Yemen would just be another in a pattern of America abandoning allies. Should senators like Chris Murphy, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul get their way, the Saudis would join the Hmong and Montagnard tribes who fought alongside American special forces in Southeast Asia, the Shah of Iran (which got us the present genocidal Islamist regime in Tehran), Carlos Castano (who helped take down Pablo Escobar), and the Kurds as American allies who had the rug pulled out from under them (this list is not exclusive, but you get the idea).
But either Saudi Arabia, Turkey, or Iran will be the primary Muslim power in the Middle East. Two decades ago, it would have been little problem to just balance between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. But Erdogan has changed that calculus, as Turkey has trended away from respecting human rights and democracy. He’s no good guy and America has needed to thus reevaluate the relationship. Cutting off F-35 deliveries was also a smart call. By contrast, the crown prince at least is spearheading some reforms in Saudi Arabia — and that country, while no exemplar of religious freedom, freedom of speech, or equal rights for women, is trending in the right direction.
What about Iran? The track record of the theocratic regime, which has routinely sponsored terrorism and which routinely calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, should dispel any notions that it would be in America’s interest to allow it to become the primary Muslim power in the Middle East. This was tried before, and Iran only continued its bad behavior.
Furthermore, in Yemen, the Saudis are fighting Iranian stooges in the Houthi. Which brings us to another important note long forgotten by our media: The Houthi fired missiles at one of our ships on multiple occasions. Thankfully, the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mason (DDG 87) wasn’t hit, but it’s in the interests of our overstretched Navy to ensure that taking potshots at our ships is seen as being very hazardous to one’s existence.
Yes, what is going on in Yemen is horrible, and yes, civilians are caught in the middle of the conflict — as has been the case in just about all the world’s wars throughout history. But, dude, the Houthi fired missiles at one of our ships on multiple occasions. If Iran’s allies get Yemen, then we will see more potshots at our ships, and the outcome may not be as good as what happened with USS Mason.
The fact is, right now, Congress is on the verge of pulling off a very dubious feat. Not only could they give Iran a foothold in Yemen, but they could also screw up America’s relationship with a crucial ally.

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/60072?mailing_id=3951&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3951&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

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