Posts on Tuesday, December 17, 2019
Dem Senator vows impeachment
trial won’t be ‘showcase for wild,
right-wing conspiracy theories’ replies
trial won’t be ‘showcase for wild,
right-wing conspiracy theories’ replies
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy warned that his party will not allow the Senate impeachment trial to devolve into a “showcase for wild, right-wing conspiracies.” Murphy made the ironic remarks while speaking to CNN opinion host Wolf Blitzer yesterday.
When Blitzer asked Murphy whether Democrats will consider allowing Republicans to call Hunter Biden and the left-wing “whistleblower” as witnesses, Murphy said no.
Blitzer said: “You know your leader, the Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, wants these four current and former White House officials to testify: Robert Blair, John Bolton, Michael Duffey, and Mick Mulvaney. If the Republicans say, ‘Yes, they can testify,’ would you be willing to go along
Kaysville, Utah—For decades, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was one of Boy Scouts of America’s greatest allies and the largest sponsor of troops. But on Jan. 1, the Utah-based faith will deliver the latest blow to the struggling organization when it pulls out more than 400,000 young people and moves them into a new global program of its own. The change brings excitement and some melancholy for members of the faith and may push the Boy Scouts closer to the brink of bankruptcy as it faces a new wave of sex abuse lawsuits. Losing the church will mean
The House passed two spending bills totaling $1.4 trillion Tuesday to fund the federal government through the remainder of fiscal year 2020, which began Oct. 1.
Although the first bill would provide much-needed funding and budget certainty to core constitutional responsibilities, such as national defense, the second “minibus” is a Christmas tree of bloated spending and add-ons that have no place being voted on through an appropriations bill.
This week, just days before Christmas, Democrats are going to take the radical step of impeaching President Trump despite the lack of evidence of any wrongdoing – a crooked process run by Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler amid opposition from a majority of the American people.It’s clear that this entire process isn’t about following the law, but rather about partisan politics and undoing the 2016 election.Democrats know they cannot defeat President Trump at the ballot box in November 2020, so they created a sham process to try to smear him. Ultimately, this whole impeachment hoax is a carefully orchestrated operation to stage a coup against
Two House Democrats — one of whom is flirting with switching to the Republican Party — are on the record as against the impeachment of President Donald Trump.The rest of the 31 House Dems who represent districts that President Donald Trump won in the 2016 presidential election have either come out for impeachment or are thought to be leaning toward impeachment.As of yet, there is not a single Republican in the House or Senate who has publicly backed impeachment and/or the removal from office of President Trump.
So — an almost straight party-line process is in the cards.The Dems can only lose 16 more members of their House caucus to lose
As some Democratic candidates – most notably self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders – advocate for fundamental change to the country’s economic system, the latest Fox News poll finds an uptick in favorable views of socialism. Capitalism, however, remains far more popular.The poll, released Tuesday, finds 31 percent of voters view socialism favorably, up 6 percentage points since February (the first time the question was asked). Despite the rise, a 53 percent majority views socialism negatively, down from 59 percent earlier.
For all the attention the Democratic 2020 hopefuls garner, many on Wall Street are preparing for a second term for President Donald Trump and what that might mean for economic policy. A second term would see the administration go after the globe’s multilateral trade institutions, multiple Wall Street policy analysts said. It would also allow Trump to further pressure Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and eventually replace him when his term expires in 2022 with a more amenable monetary policy head, according to analysts. Cowen policy analyst Chris Krueger said a reelection victory could also embolden
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is not being bashful about his feelings towards impeachment, openly telling reporters Tuesday that he is not “impartial.” “I’m not an impartial juror. This is a political process,” he said. “I’m not impartial about this at all.” (Tweet) McConnell kicked off Tuesday by publicly rejecting Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s witness requests. “The Senate Democratic leader would apparently like our chamber to do House Democrats’ homework for them.
President Donald Trump and Republican Party reportedly engaged in a six-week campaign to convince Rep. Jeff Van Drew (D-NJ) to leave the Democratic Party and to become a Republican and also attempted to get a second Democrat to leave the party.After Van Drew voted against the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry in October, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, approached Van Drew and told him that Trump wanted him to become a Republican.“But McCarthy also had a threat for Van Drew — Republicans ‘were going to beat you anyway,’ he warned,” Politico reported. “
A Minnesota Muslim woman has received $120,000 to settle her lawsuit alleging she was forced to strip in jail and remove her hijab for a booking photo over a traffic offense, the woman and her attorneys said Tuesday.
Aida Shyef Al-Kadi, of St. Louis Park, appeared with her attorneys at the Minneapolis headquarters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations to announce the settlement approved last month by U.S. District Judge John Tunheim.
Al-Kadi, 57, said her treatment at the Ramsey County jail in August 2013 was "one of the most humiliating and harmful experiences"of her life.
Cleveland, Ohio—A Cleveland police officer who urinated on a 12-year-old girl and tried to abduct her from a Euclid bus stop this summer pleaded guilty on Monday to felony charges. Solomon Nhiwatiwa, 34, now faces a prison sentence of up to 7 1/2 years after he pleaded guilty to charges of attempted kidnapping, pandering obscenity, disseminating matter harmful to juveniles and endangering children in the Aug. 16 attack.(Snip) Nhiwatiwa was off-duty when he drove up to the girl as she waited for the bus and asked her if she needed a ride to school, prosecutors said.
The woman who sued Robert De Niro for workplace gender discrimination has filed a motion seeking to have "The Irishman” star’s lawsuit against her dismissed, court papers show.
Graham Chase Robinson is asking a New York Supreme Court judge to drop a lawsuit filed by one of de Niro’s production companies, Canal Productions, Inc., in August, or to put the case on hold until her own case against the longtime actor and political firebrand is handled.
In court papers filed late Monday, Robinson’s legal team argued “that Canal’s preemptive strike was an act of unlawful retaliation” and called the film
Texas students protest outside
professor's home over research
exploring sex between men and boys replies
professor's home over research
exploring sex between men and boys replies
A group of students from the University of Texas at Austin showed up at a professor’s house last week and pounded on the windows and doors, accusing him of being a pedophile over his past research on the history of pederasty, or the sexual relationships between adult men and young boys. Students with the group Fire The Abusers wore face masks, carried signs and shouted through bullhorns outside the home of professor Thomas K. Hubbard.(Snip) His writings have been used by the North American Man/Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA, to promote pedophilia, though Mr. Hubbard has denied any involvement or support for the group.
Melania Trump looked ladylike in a belted wool coat as she and her husband, President Donald Trump, welcomed Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales and his wife, Patricia Marroquin de Morales, to the White House on Tuesday. The first lady kept warm in a $2,640 red, white, and black checked design by Chloé while braving the rain in Washington, D.C. The coat, which she wore over a white dress, had oversized white lapels and was cinched at the waist with a matching belt. Melania, 55, topped off her simple, yet elegant look with a pair of maroon velvet heels, and despite the inclement weather,
ROME — The International Association of Exorcists (AIE) has issued a statement warning parents of the dangers of a 2019 children’s book that gives instructions on how to summon up demons.
The statement refers to A Children’s Book of Demons, a book targeting children aged 5-10 by Aaron Leighton, an illustrator and “fan” of occult practices. The book invites children to summon demons as a way of dealing with unpleasant problems such as chores, homework, and getting rid of bullies.
A proposal for a $569 million bond to build two new high school buildings in Midland failed by 25 votes in the November election, a margin slim enough it set off calls for a recount.
The ballots were recounted manually, and to the delight of Midland ISD officials, the results flipped and the proposal passed by a margin of 11 votes.
But last week, a Midland elections staffer found a box on the bottom of a shelf in the office containing 836 ballots that weren't tallied in the recount. Those votes threaten to again reverse the election results, which school officials are counting on
A super PAC led by liberal operative David Brock has dropped more than $2 million into advertisements against President Donald Trump, filings show.The American Bridge PAC, a Democratic opposition research committee, disclosed $250,000 in new independent expenditures for advertising against Trump, according to filings posted to the FEC's website late Friday night. The new disbursements come on the heels of $1.96 million the group spent on similar efforts in mid-November. The expenditures from Brock's PAC over the past several weeks appear to be the PAC's first foray into the 2020 presidential race.
Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said he expects the two articles of impeachment against President Trump to be debated separately on Wednesday, and he said he will ask the House Rules Committee today for "plenty of time" for Republicans to make their case.“I think you're going to see a lot of passionate debate tomorrow," Rep. Collins told Fox News Tuesday morning: (Video)I think especially from the Republican side, who's tired of seeing their president for three years, even before he was sworn in, being attacked by the Democrats over and over again.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler missed Tuesday’s impeachment hearing in the Rules Committee due to a family emergency. According to a report from Politico, Nadler went home to New York to handle a family emergency — the details of which were not initially disclosed — and was expected to return to Washington either late Tuesday or early Wednesday morning. Meanwhile, the hearing went on as scheduled, led instead by Democratic Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has responded to Donald Trump's call for the top US court to stop impeachment.
"The president is not a lawyer," she told the BBC in an exclusive interview, adding: "He's not law trained."
In a wide-ranging conversation, she also said poor women were victims of restrictive abortion access.
The US president is expected to be impeached by the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
As the U.S. presidential race began roaring to life in 2016, authorities in the former Soviet republic of Latvia flagged a series of “ suspicious” financial transactions to Hunter Biden and other colleagues at a Ukrainian natural gas company and sought Kiev’s help investigating, according to documents and interviews. The Feb. 18, 2016 alert to Ukraine came from the Latvian prosecutorial agency responsible for investigating money laundering, and it specifically questioned whether Vice President Joe Biden’s younger son and three other officials at Burisma Holdings were the potential beneficiaries of suspect funds.
FISA Court Issues Rare Public Order
Condemning FBI for Russia Probe
Abuses and Demanding Reforms replies
Condemning FBI for Russia Probe
Abuses and Demanding Reforms replies
In a rare public order issued Tuesday, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court condemned the FBI for the errors and omissions in its application to surveil Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page and gave the bureau until January 10th to propose reforms to prevent future abuses.The order follows the release of Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report, which detailed 17 “significant errors and omissions” in the warrant application to surveil Page.
15 “The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case,
President Donald Trump slammed the House Democrats’ ongoing impeachment process as an “illegal, partisan attempted coup” in a scathing letter sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Tuesday afternoon. “By proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American Democracy,” President Trump wrote in the six-page letter. “You are the ones interfering in America’s elections. You are the ones subverting America’s Democracy. You are the ones Obstructing Justice,” the president added.
Chico State Professor: College Republicans’
First Amendment Rights ‘Intensely Hurtful’
to Students replies
First Amendment Rights ‘Intensely Hurtful’
to Students replies
A professor at Chico State (CSU, Chico) referred to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party as “poison,” and suggested that she and other professors use the “immense privilege” they have as “tenured faculty” to protect students who are offended by their classmates exercising their First Amendment rights. The instructor told Breitbart News that the First Amendment allowing the school’s College Republicans to “voice their support for Trump and — the Republican Party” is “intensely hurtful” to many students on campus.
“The First Amendment protects our Republican Club students to voice their support for Trump and their support of the Republican Party.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump sent a letter on Tuesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, excoriating the House Democrats’ pursuit of an impeachment inquiry just a day before the full House is set to vote.In the lengthy letter, the President calls Pelosi’s actions spiteful and veers into what he sees as personal affronts.“You are offending Americans of faith by continually saying ‘I pray for the President,’ when you know this statement is not true, unless it is meant in a negative sense,” Trump writes in the letter. “It is a terrible thing you are doing, but you will have to live with it, not I!”
Ladies, leave your man at home.
The Wing was supposed to be the ultimate sanctuary for women: decidedly feminine in design, with walls and furniture in shades of millennial pink and a thermometer set at a women’s-clothing-friendly 72 degrees. (Snip) It offers perks that other co-working spaces can’t match — showers stocked with high-end beauty products and events featuring big names such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Critics of the Wing were quick to point out the lack of diversity in the spaces, but the company’s expansion and popularity has brought up a completely different issue that was never expected to arise: straight men wanting to come in and hang out.
Attendees of a “high-profile Democrat wedding” stalked, harassed, and physically assaulted guests of an event hosted by Women for America First at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, on Saturday, the pro-Trump group alleged in a press release issued late Monday evening.
Approximately 200 women attended the aforementioned Women for America First event — titled a Very MAGA Holiday Weekend — at the Willard Hotel. The alleged “high-profile Democrat wedding” took place in an adjacent ballroom.
Women for America First is an outside conservative organization that supports President Donald Trump and is run by longtime grassroots conservative activist Amy Kremer.
Trump tells Pelosi in blistering letter that
Dems are 'declaring open war on American Democracy' replies
Dems are 'declaring open war on American Democracy' replies
President Trump, in a blistering, no-holds-barred six-page letter Tuesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., lambasted the Democrats' impeachment inquiry as an "open war on American Democracy," writing that she has violated her oath of office and "cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!"
"Everyone, you included, knows what is really happening, Trump said. "Your chosen candidate lost the election in 2016, in an Electoral College landslide (306-227), and you and your party have never recovered from this defeat. So you have spent three straight years attempting to overturn the will of the American people and nullify their votes. You view democracy as your enemy!"
He went on:
Washington - A secretive federal court accused the F.B.I. on Tuesday of misleading it about the factual basis for wiretapping a former Trump campaign adviser and ordered the bureau to propose changes in how investigators seek permission for some national security surveillance.
In an extraordinary public order, the presiding judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Rosemary M. Collyer, gave the F.B.I. a Jan. 10 deadline to come up with a proposal. It was the first public response from the court to the scathing findings released last week by the Justice Department’s independent inspector general about the wiretapping of the former Trump adviser, Carter Page, as part of the Russia investigation.
Victims of a mass shooting in Toronto last year filed a C$150 million ($114 million) class-action lawsuit against Smith & Wesson Corp., claiming the company was negligent for not incorporating “smart gun” technology for the firearm used in the attack in Canada’s largest city.
Smith & Wesson was the manufacturer of an M&P .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol, the stolen weapon used by Faisal Hussain to kill two people and injure 13 in an attack on a restaurant strip along Danforth Avenue. Dozens of people suffered injuries while fleeing the shooter, who later killed himself, the lawsuit says. “The handgun was negligently designed and manufactured in that Smith & Wesson failed to incorporate
Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law professor who has been giving Democrats bad advice freely for decades, had a new brainstorm: impeach President Donald John Trump but never let him have a trial in the Senate to clear his good name. Apparently a lack of kangaroos in the Senate give him doubts about the court.
By “withholding” the Articles I don’t mean not voting for them — I mean voting for them but holding off on transmitting them to the Senate. https://t.co/w8uBMTGIlT
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) December 16, 2019
It is weird how one can get a law degree and not bother to read the Constitution.
House Democrats Violated the First, Fourth,
Fifth, and Sixth Amendments in Impeachment
Inquiry replies
Fifth, and Sixth Amendments in Impeachment
Inquiry replies
House Democrats violated the Bill of Rights in pursuing their impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. Republicans have pointed out that Democrats’ articles of impeachment, especially the second article charging “obstruction of Congress,” punish the president for obeying the Constitution’s checks-and-balances.
Yet Democrats have also violated the basic liberties protected by the Bill of Rights, in the following four ways:
First Amendment: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), which led the impeachment inquiry, released a 300-page report in which he printed phone logs purportedly belonging to Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-CA), presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and journalist John Solomon.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday he believes the Senate should vote quickly to dismiss two impeachment charges against President Trump and avoid “an embarrassing scene” in the chamber.
McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, told Fox News Radio he did not support “a show trial” and believes the Senate “ought to vote and move on” after Democrats present their case and the president’s lawyers respond.
The Senate will have to make a decision after hearing the opening arguments from both sides, he said.“Have we learned enough after listening to all of this to go on and vote on the two very weak articles of impeachment?”
The judge overseeing Michael Flynn’s case rebuked the lieutenant general's lawyers, denying claims Flynn was set up by the FBI and shooting down requests for allegedly exculpatory information.
“The Court summarily disposes of Mr. Flynn’s arguments that the FBI conducted an ambush interview for the purpose of trapping him into making false statements and that the government pressured him to enter a guilty plea. The record proves otherwise,” District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan said in a 92-page ruling Monday, ordering a sentencing hearing for Jan. 28.
Flynn's lawyer Sidney Powell called the judge’s ruling “as wrong as it is disappointing” in a short statement to the Washington Examiner.
A group of Republicans, including George Conway, announced the launch of a project aimed at defeating President Donald Trump in an op-ed Tuesday. The New York Times op-ed, written by George T. Conway III, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson, is titled “We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated.” All four authors have worked for and supported Republican campaigns and launched the “Lincoln Project” to take down Trump, according to The NYT. “Over these next 11 months, our efforts will be dedicated to defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box and to elect those patriots who will hold the line,” the op-ed reads.
Dem Rep. Lofgren on Impeachment: Looks
Like Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell ‘Plan
to Rig the Trial’ replies
Like Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell ‘Plan
to Rig the Trial’ replies
Sunday, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) predicted some U.S. Senators would “rig” the impeachment trial should impeachment reach the Senate.
Lofgren said on MSNBC’s “Kasie DC” that based on what she is hearing, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “plan to rig the trial” to “protect” President Donald Trump, which she warned would be a “serious problem for the country.”
“Some of the things I’m hearing from [Graham and McConnell], looks like they plan to rig the trial,” Lofgren claimed. “That’s a serious problem for the country, but I think it’s a problem for Trump as well. President Trump is hoping to be exonerated.
‘Obama ‘Absolutely Confident’ World Would Improve If Women Ran Things’. (Town Hall headline, Dec. 16, 2019)
Well, it certainly didn’t work out that way when two women— his overbearing wife Michelle and Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor and assistant to the president for public engagement and intergovernmental affairs from 2009 to 2017 with her own in-house White House digs to boot— ran the 8-year-long Obama ‘presidency’, now did it? Obama, now hiding himself in luxury mansion settings as self-appointed
Serving as a cop in America is harder than ever — and it comes down to respect. A deficit of respect for the men and women in blue who daily put their lives on the line for the rest of us is hurting recruitment and retention and placing communities at risk.
This month, Sgt. Christopher Brewster of the Houston Police Department was shot and killed while responding to a domestic-violence call.
Flynn filleted
replies
General Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of false statements in the Mueller miasma. After pleading guilty to the charge on two separate occasions, Flynn retained new counsel, proclaimed his innocence, alleged prosecutorial misconduct, urged the court to hold the prosecutors in contempt, and sought dismissal of the case against him based on government misconduct. Having chosen to forego a motion to withdraw his guilty plea and to waive his rights in connection with his guilty plea(s), Flynn was up against it with his post-plea motions.
In a 92-page memorandum opinion issued yesterday (embedded below), Judge Emmet Sullivan denied Flynn’s motions
Pope Francis abolished the "pontifical secret” used in clergy sexual abuse cases on Tuesday, responding to mounting criticism that the high degree of confidentiality has been used to protect pedophiles, silence victims and prevent police from investigating crimes. (Snip) In a new law, Francis decreed that information in abuse cases must be protected by church leaders to ensure its "security, integrity and confidentiality.” But he said "pontifical secret,” the highest form of confidentiality in the church, no longer applies to abuse-related accusations, trials and decisions under the Catholic Church’s canon law.
The Vatican’s leading sex crimes investigator, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, said the reform was an "epochal decision” that will facilitate coordination
Judge Emmet Sullivan had two choices: He could ignore the growing evidence of government misconduct and wind up the two-year saga that has been the sentencing phase of the Michael Flynn criminal case, or he could say “not on my watch.” Yesterday, in a methodical and seemingly tempered opinion, the long-time federal judge opted for the former tack when he denied in full the comprehensive motion to compel Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell filed several months ago. Judge Sullivan then set Flynn’s sentencing for January 28, 2020.
(Snip) two passages, separated by scores of pages in the tedious 99-page opinion, make clear that the outcome was a forgone conclusion.
This is the moment the CIA's then chief of disguise donned a mask as she spoke to an unsuspecting President George H.W. Bush—before dramatically peeling it off to reveal her true identity to him. Jonna Mendez, who spent 27 years working for the CIA, was in charge of creating advanced disguises—including masks—for agents to use on undercover missions. Mendez opted to use one of the convincing masks she had created when she met with President Bush at the White House in the early 1990s. Photos of that meeting show Mendez sitting across from Bush in the Oval Office
Russian state TV has bragged that Donald Trump is an 'agent' of Moscow following foreign minister Sergey Lavrov's visit to the White House.
The day after the closed-door meeting, which Trump said was to discuss election interference, news channel Rossiya 1 ran a segment entitled 'Puppet Master and "Agent" - How to Understand Lavrov’s Meeting With Trump'.
On Sunday another popular talk show, Sunday Evening With Vladimir Soloviev, also discussed Trump and the possibility that the Democrats will get elected - plunging relations with Moscow back into the deep freeze.
At one point the host joked 'should we get another apartment in Rostov ready [for Trump]' -
Maybe we should be afraid of the growing level of political incivility. The Hill quotes president Trump as suggesting that what comes around goes around. "And I tell you what, someday there will be a Democrat president and there will be a Republican House, and I suspect they're going to remember it," Trump said. Rep. Will Hurd put it more prosaically. Politico says "the Texas Republican is concerned impeachment will be used as a weapon against future presidents, just like voting on new Supreme Court justices." Call it the Harry Reid effect, after the former Democratic Senator majority leader who devised a way of ramming measures
A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced Rick Gates, Donald Trump’s former deputy campaign manager, to 36 months of probation, 45 days in "intermittent confinement" on weekends, 300 hours of community service and $20,000 in fines at a hearing in Washington, D.C., after he cooperated with prosecutors.
The special counsel's office had charged Gates and his former business partner, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, in 2017 with crimes including lying to the government about his foreign lobbying work in Ukraine, tax evasion and money laundering. Gates subsequently struck a plea deal with Mueller prosecutors in late February 2018, pleading guilty to two felony counts:
Lindsey Graham insists that the Bidens
and Burisma have no place in a Senate
impeachment trial replies
and Burisma have no place in a Senate
impeachment trial replies
I admit that I have been lusting after a long Senate impeachment trial in which the Democrats would be put on trial, particularly Joe Biden's confession that he bullied Ukraine into firing the prosecutor who was investigating the bribes of millions of dollars in director's fees paid to his degenerate druggie son, Hunter. But it is worth considering whether or not a Senate impeachment trial is the proper venue for getting to the exposure of the corruption.
Senator Lindsey Graham is making the argument that the impeachment trial is the wrong place for the Biden inquiry. (Snip) We can deal with that outside of impeachment
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell struck back Tuesday at his Democratic counterpart's calls for an in-depth impeachment trial featuring multiple new witnesses, dismissing the push as a "fishing expedition" that would set a "nightmarish precedent." "The Senate is meant to act as judge and jury, to hear a trial, not to re-run the entire fact-finding investigation because angry partisans rushed sloppily through it,” he said on the Senate floor.
For a lefty, Michael Bloomberg has a lot of skeletons in his closet.
A short guy with a big ego, he was no pajama boy back when he was making his pile at what's now Bloomberg L.P., a service that originally catered to Wall Street bond traders back in the 1980s.
He's been accused of some spectacularly sexist statements, the kind that leftists have shrieked about when they came from Donald Trump, and worse still, his founded company has since been accused of multiple accounts of sex-harassment and a hostile-to-women workplace environment. That's kind of contradictory for the agenda of a candidate who's seeking Democratic votes on a politically correct platform.
On your Hallmark! Get set! Go! With the longtime queen of holiday cheese dethroned and disgraced, savvy stars are gunning for her crown.For years, Lori Loughlin ruled over the Hallmark Channel’s merry movie landscape, starring in cheese-tastic flicks, from “Homegrown Christmas” (former sweethearts organize a high-school Christmas dance in their hometown; sparks fly) to “Every Christmas Has a Story” (a small town’s holiday spirit wins over a Grinchy news anchor). But the former “Full House” actress’ career took a ho-ho-horrific turn this year when she and her husband
Great News! NFL Great Burgess Owens
Announces Run Against Pro-Impeachment
Utah Democrat Ben McAdams replies
Announces Run Against Pro-Impeachment
Utah Democrat Ben McAdams replies
At least 20 of the 31 Democrats in Trump districts announced they will support the sham Trump impeachment this week. Democrat Ben McAdams announced on Monday he will support the sham impeachment.McAdams won by 694 votes in 2018 over Republican Mia Love in 2018.
(Photo) But this week NFL great Burgess Owens announced he will run to replace Ben McAdams this week.American Lookout reported: Super Bowl champion, businessman, and Utah fourth congressional district Republican candidate Burgess Owens told Breitbart News
Earth's magnetic north pole, which has been wandering faster than expected in recent years, has now crossed the prime meridian.
Magnetic north has been lurching away from its previous home in the Canadian Arctic toward Siberia at a rate of about 34 miles (55 kilometers) a year over the past two decades. The latest model of the Earth's magnetic field, released Dec. 10 by the National Centers for Environmental Information and the British Geological Survey, predicts that this movement will continue, though likely at a slower rate of 25 miles (40 km) each year.
This model is used to calibrate GPS and other navigation measurements.
Joe Biden Promises Flood of Foreign
Graduates for Investors, Paperwork
Protections for Americans replies
Graduates for Investors, Paperwork
Protections for Americans replies
Joe Biden is promising investors that he will flood the white-collar labor market with a huge inflow of cheap foreign graduates, but he is offering only paperwork protections to the millions of U.S. graduates who will lose jobs, salaries, and careers.
“Biden will work with Congress to first reform temporary visas to establish a wage-based allocation process and establish enforcement mechanisms to ensure they are aligned with the labor market and not used to undermine wages,” said Biden’s plan for legal immigration. “Then, Biden will support expanding the number of high-skilled visas and eliminating the limits on employment-based visas by country, which create unacceptably long backlogs,”
WASHINGTON — House Democrats laid out their impeachment case against President Donald Trump on Monday, a sweeping report accusing him of betraying the nation and deserving to be ousted, as key lawmakers began to signal where they stand ahead of this week’s landmark votes.
What Democrats once hoped would be a bipartisan act — only the third time in U.S. history the House will be voting to impeach a president — is now on track to be a starkly partisan roll call Wednesday. No Republicans are breaking with the president, and almost all Democrats are expected to approve the charges against him.
A raucous town hall Monday in the
The House Judiciary Committee’s final report accompanying its articles of impeachment misquotes President Donald Trump — again — talking about his powers under Article II of the Constitution.
(Snip)during the Judiciary Committee’s hearings earlier this month, Democrats repeatedly misquoted Trump as claiming that Article II of the Constitution entitles him to do “whatever I want” as president.
The context of Trump’s remark, which he has made several times, was clearly his power under Article II to hire and fire executive branch employees, specifically Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was investigating so-called “Russia collusion.”
Yet Democrats — including Judiciary Committee counsel, and Democrat donor, Barry Berke — played deceptively-edited video of Trump
On Sunday, the New York Post published an interview with Harvey Weinstein—the first he has given in a year. Weinstein’s comments, given to the reporter Rebecca Rosenberg in a hospital room as he recovered from back surgery, received instant notoriety. They feature the former producer, whose trial for rape and predatory sexual assault is set to begin in January, suggesting that one of the victims who must be acknowledged in the #MeToo conversation he helped ignite is … Harvey Weinstein. He told Rosenberg: “I feel like the forgotten man.”
The myopia is as dull as it is familiar. What’s more striking about the interview,
This week’s Liberal Media Scream features celebrated New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman declaring that only impeaching President Trump will preserve the nation.
In a “Point-CounterPoint” segment on CBS’s Sunday Morning, Friedman declared: “President Trump not only should be impeached, he must be impeached, if we’re to preserve America as we’ve known it.” Responding to Eliana Johnson of the Washington Free Beacon, who argued against impeaching Trump, Friedman began his counterpoint: “President Trump not only should be impeached, he must be impeached, if we’re to preserve America as we’ve known it.
John and Charlotte Henderson will celebrate their eight-decade partnership just before Christmas, on December 22.The Texas couple are 106 and 105, and have spent the vast majority of the last century together. Their romantic epic began at a University of Texas zoology course in 1934, where John was seated behind his future partner. “I thought he was just a fine fella, and I didn’t mind his looking over my shoulder,” Charlotte told the Washington Post. After a five year engagement — “it took her five years to make up her mind that she wanted to get married,” John laughed — the young couple were wed
White House responds to Schumer’s ‘laughable’
request after Dems’ ‘midnight’ impeachment move replies
request after Dems’ ‘midnight’ impeachment move replies
With the Democrat-led House all but certain to vote along party lines to impeach President Donald Trump, the focus shifts to the U.S. Senate, where a trial will be held and, continuing in the Democratic Party’s rich tradition of double standards, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is already questioning the fairness of such a trial.In what Schumer equates to fairness, he wants to call his choice of witnesses, even as he denies the opposition the same right, dismissing their choices as “extraneous” witnesses.It’s all enough to make the White House laugh, as seen in a tweet from press secretary Stephanie Grisham
A California town hall meeting attended by Adam Schiff descended into chaos after pro-Trump hecklers clashed with constituents after calling the congressman a 'liar over the president's impeachment. Schiff was at the event in Glendale, near Los Angeles, hosted by the Armenian National Committee of America on Saturday to discussing how recognizing the Armenian Genocide was a significant bipartisan issue. However, a number of people in the crowd began shouting at him a few minutes into his remarks and protesters held up signs reading 'Don't Impeach.'
United States Congress is getting ready to ban tobacco sales to anyone under the age of 21 as part of a year-end spending deal. In its never-ending habit of trying to regulate any aspect of American life it can get its mitts on, the United States Congress is now set to ban the sale of tobacco products to anyone under the age of 21. The legislation is part of a year-end spending deal and has bipartisan support, according to The Hill and other outlets.
Medicare-for-All’s Last Gasp
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For proponents of a single-payer health-care system, there were few arguments in its favor more compelling than the virtual ubiquity of state-funded health-insurance regimes across the industrialized world. Those advocates dismissed the idea that the unique conditions that prevail in the U.S. render such a system politically untenable, stressing the moral duty on Americans to expand insurance coverage over impediments like cost and feasibility. Those advocates have since received a real-world education in what Americans are prepared to accept from their health care system, and it’s not Medicare-for-all.
The greatest significance in last week’s decisive and seminal British election is the victory it contains for the solidarity of the English-speaking peoples and the strength, coherence, and legitimacy of what Europeans frequently refer to as the Anglo-Saxons.
Of course, broadly, the English-speaking advanced democracies have much in common with Western Europe, and to a slightly reduced degree with Eastern Europe and westernized nations in other regions, most conspicuously Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, South Africa, the Emirates, and parts of Latin America.But the substantial detachment of the United Kingdom from an integrated Europe so it may retain the primacy of the political
The decision by the Supreme Court to review the lower court rulings involving congressional and prosecution subpoenas directed toward President Trump undercuts the second article of impeachment that passed the House Judiciary Committee along party lines last week.
That second article of impeachment charges President Trump with obstruction of Congress for refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas in the absence of a final court order. In so charging him, the House Judiciary Committee has arrogated to itself the power to decide the validity of its subpoenas, as well as the power to determine whether claims of executive privilege must be recognized, both powers that properly belong with the judicial branch
Remember back when Trump and the Russians won the 2016 US election? They won with the votes of the white working class in the Democratic Rust Belt, that used to be the industrial powerhouse of the U.S. Now Boris Johnson has won a “stonking” victory in the UK general election by winning the votes of traditional Labour working-class voters in the old northern industrial heartland. Okay, I’m fed up with this. These voters are not “working class” in the sense used for generations by lefties to promote the idea of a helpless mass of victims kept at starvation wages under the heel of evil capitalists.
Rudy Giuliani has taken a lot of flak from both parties, so let’s hope he is on solid ground here. Given the fact he used to be the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rudy certainly knows a lot about evidence. He’s been tweeting, and last night went on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show for a 15 minute segment (entire segment is embedded at the bottom of this blog), with the key 3 ½ minutes here:
They came for your car, your light bulb, your dishwasher and washing machine, your toilet, your electricity, your airline flight and so much more. Now you can add your burger and steak to their list of what they want to legislate, regulate or confiscate out of your existence. YOUR existence. Not theirs. The global warming agenda is the gift that keeps on giving for everyone who wants to control what you do.
If press reports are to be believed, Congress later this week may repeal two Obamacare taxes—the “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health plans, and the medical device tax—as provisions included in a larger spending bill. Capitol Hill newspapers are now reporting that Democrats agreed to repeal two Obamacare industry taxes—the health insurer tax, which costs approximately $150 billion over a decade, along with the medical device tax—in exchange for repeal of the Cadillac tax, which labor unions want because of their cushy health insurance offerings.
A 22-year-old jihadist wannabe from Connecticut who said he wished the US would “burn in fire” has been arrested while making arrangements to travel to Turkey on a cargo ship to join ISIS, according to federal officials. Ahmad Khalil Elshazly was arrested Sunday on charges of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Elshazly, a US citizen, last year made “numerous statements to others, both in person and through online messaging applications, expressing a desire to travel to Syria and the surrounding area to fight on behalf of ISIS,” according to a court filing.
As a result of the deadly volcanic eruption in New Zealand, Royal Caribbean International announced it had canceled all shore excursions to active volcanoes. (Snip) When the eruption on White Island in New Zealand occurred last week, 47 people were on the island, including many who arrived via the Ovation of the Seas cruise ship. There were nine Americans among those on an excursion when the volcanic activity occurred. In total, at least 15 tourists were killed and dozens more were injured. Two people remain missing despite continued efforts from search and rescue teams scouring the island. Following the tragedy
The Democrats are imploding
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It’s too soon to predict that the Democrats will go the way of the Whigs, but the oldest political party in the world is tripping over its own doctrines, making a public spectacle of its inability to coherently sponsor debates, riven by ideological fissures that seem to be widening, driving away two bedrock constituencies, white working class and black voters, and hitching itself to a doomed impeachment effort that could cost it dearly next November.
It’s a great time to be alive if you are a Republican!
WASHINGTON – President Trump, the first modern president to face impeachment during his first term in the White House, now leads his top Democratic rivals in his bid for a second, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll finds. The national survey, taken as the House of Representatives planned an impeachment vote and the Senate a trial, showed Trump defeating former vice president Joe Biden by three percentage points, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by five points, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren by eight points. In hypothetical head-to-head contests, Trump also led South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg by 10 points and
Regardless of whether you would support or not support the vigorous defense of Michael Flynn, I would hope we would all agree a fulsome discovery of all relevant background material is a cornerstone of justice appropriately applied.
With that in mind it is concerning how Attorney General Bill Barr would prefer to keep DOJ conduct against Flynn hidden from public review. Consider…
Many on the left (as opposed to liberals) have been warring on Christmas for more than a generation. Leftists always deny there is a war on Christmas and mock those who claim there is.
There is a mind-blowing chutzpah or lack of self-awareness when people do something and yet deny that they are actually doing it. But the evidence is overwhelming. The left has stopped schools from calling Christmas vacations by that name -- the name schools called them throughout American history until the last couple of decades. Almost every non-Christian school in America now calls Christmas vacation "winter break."
Joe Biden, who is 77 years old now, made it clear the other day he has no plans to serve only four years if elected president. “I don’t have plans on one term,” said Biden, who would be 82 at the end of it. Note the politician’s careful phrasing: “no plans.” Thoughts, perhaps. But no plans. [Snip]
Biden is like an old shoe, scuffed but comfortable on the mind, unlike the
As a legal showdown with software-development company Oracle heads to the High Court, the stakes are clear.
Big Tech has changed the way we live, and no tech company has been more invasive about it than Google.
From listening to our conversations to tracking our movements to accessing our health data, Google is rapidly becoming omnipotent. As former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, “We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been.
You just can’t make these things up. The new enemy within for the Democratic Party’s radicalized base, worthy of all the venom it can muster, isn’t House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her caution on giving the green light to impeach President Donald Trump. It isn’t Joe Biden for attacking Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders as so far left they’re unelectable. It isn’t even Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who’s announced he will vote against impeaching Trump and will probably switch parties – spurring six of his staff members to quit.
Instead, the populist left’s heavy artillery is now aimed at, of all people, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete
Most legitimate surveys show that the majority of Americans believe in some form of religion and of a Superior Being. Nevertheless, in August, the Democrat Party officially declared itself to be the party of the irreligious. That's not much of a surprise to those who recall G od being booed at the 2012 Dem convention but one has to wonder what prompted this official declaration:
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE recognizes:
1. The value, ethical soundness, and importance of the religiously unaffiliated demographic, a group of Americans who
The biggest political scandal in the history of the United States. Three years of constant lies told by government agents, political operatives, and deceitful news personalities. (snip) every bit of this frame-up job to hang the American president for being a Russian agent and traitor to his nation began as a way to inoculate Hillary Clinton from her largest political vulnerabilities going into the 2016 campaign.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in a case where insurers are seeking $12 billion for losses they suffered after taking part in the Obamacare insurance exchanges.
Temporary programs known as “risk corridors” were designed to help insurers recover from any early losses they suffered after the implementation of Obamacare in 2010, and to minimize their ongoing risk. The programs promised to compensate the insurers for losses they may suffer from insuring largely uninsurable, high risk patients between 2014 and 2016.
It was a hashtag prosecution, a social-media campaign posing as a legal case: #ExxonKnew. And like yesterday’s media balloon become today’s litter, its deflated remains floated back down to earth last week in a New York courtroom.
Whatever you think of them otherwise, ExxonMobil’s communications on climate change had neither the intent nor the effect of wronging the company’s investors. New York’s since-disgraced attorney general Eric Schneiderman had no business bringing a securities-fraud case on that basis, and there was nothing his successor, Letitia James, could have done to rescue the case.
With a House impeachment vote a foregone conclusion, the battle to remove President Trump from office has moved to the Senate. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer grabbed control of the debate Monday with demands for what he called "fairness" in the president's trial.
Schumer wants the Senate to allow testimony from four witnesses the House did not interview: former national security adviser John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, key Mulvaney aide Robert Blair, and Office of Management and Budget official Michael Duffey. House Democratic impeachers wanted the men to testify, but after the White House, claiming privilege, refused, House leaders chose not to try to force
Al Gore Talks—Donald Trump Vindicated
#TimeForAction was the slogan at this year’s Madrid climate conference that ended Sunday. #TimeForTalk would be more accurate. The talking was endless: more than 70,000 hours were spent failing to define a “market instrument,” something that was meant to have been decided at last year’s conference in Katowice, Poland. Even though the Madrid conference ran over into the weekend, making it the longest ever, the issue will be kicked into next year’s talks, in Glasgow, Scotland. “I am disappointed,” United Nations secretary general António Guterres tweeted.
At some point you start to wonder if just maybe the system isn’t rigged against us.
I mean, how many times do the good folks of the United Kingdom have to vote to quit the European Union before they are actually allowed the hell out of the international racket?
In 2016, they stunned the globalist cartel by declaring independence. Ever since, globalist kleptocrats in the U.K. and abroad have been hand-wringing and making all sorts of excuses about how voters did not really mean it when they said they wanted a divorce from Olde Europe.(Snip)
Because it is the same electoral shell game we the voting dupes on this side of the Atlantic
Daniel Horowitz has reviewed ICE’s brand new comprehensive enforcement and removal operations report. ICE reported that it issued detainers on criminal aliens in fiscal year 2019 who were collectively charged with 2,500 murders. To put that in perspective, albeit via an imperfect comparison, Horowitz says that law enforcement agencies only arrested 9,049 individuals in total for homicide in 2018.
This source places the total number of murder arrests in 2018 at a slightly higher number — 11,970. Either way, it’s clear that illegal aliens make up a shockingly high percentage of those arrested for homicide.
Since 2014, more than 130 abortion clinics across the country have shut their doors, according to a pro-abortion group. Pro-life activists will celebrate the fact that there are fewer "clinics" killing unborn babies. However, abortion activists have argued that pro-life laws are intended to close clinics, not to protect women and babies.
The Abortion Care Network identified 136 independent abortion clinics — unaffiliated with Planned Parenthood — that closed since 2014. In that year, 23 clinics closed. In 2015, another 34 shuttered. Twenty-two more followed in 2016, then 17 in 2017 and 13 in 2018. So far this year, another 26 clinics have permanently ceased operations, the organization reported.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York injected $86.4 billion into the repo market on Monday. This follows three months of the Fed intervening in a repo market it normally leaves to its own devices.
When repurchase agreement (repo) rates exploded in September and the Fed intervened in that market for the first time in more than a decade, interested parties cited corporate tax deadlines, regulations, and other minor reasons as the major factor. BIS Quarterly Review shines the light on the $23 trillion elephant in the room.
“US repo markets currently rely heavily on four banks as marginal lenders,” the BIS Quarterly Review article by three economists explains.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer knows his House colleagues bungled their “impeachment inquiry” so badly that they managed to shift public opinion markedly against removing the president. So he’s hoping for a do-over.
That’s the essence of Schumer’s butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth proposals for the Senate trial: He’s asking the GOP Senate majority to do what the House Democratic majority opted not to do, namely try to get some more White House documents and compel testimony from witnesses, including acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
In other words: do more fishing in hopes of getting something that might damage President Trump.
A federal judge on Monday rejected Michael Flynn's comprehensive requests for exculpatory information that may have been withheld by the FBI, saying that the former national security adviser had waived his fundamental constitutional rights by pleading guilty to making false statements.
The order from U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington also set a Jan. 28 sentencing date in the case, and essentially crushed any remaining hopes that Flynn might see his guilty plea tossed. The ruling came just days after Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz identified a slew of misconduct by FBI agents investigating former Trump aide Carter Page -- including by a little-known agent
Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former president who has been living outside the country, was sentenced to death in absentia Tuesday on charges of high treason stemming from his decision to suspend the constitution and detain judges in 2007.
Salman Nadeem, a government law officer, told Reuters that Musharraf was found guilty of Article 6 “for violation of the constitution of Pakistan.” The three-person court ruled in favor of the sentence 2-1.
Musharraf took power in a 1999 coup but was forced to step down in 2008. The charges have been in place since 2013 and he is currently in Dubai.
A federal judge on Monday allowed Georgia to purge 309,000 names from its voter rolls but he also scheduled a second hearing to hear additional arguments.Via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. About 309,000 names were set to be erased from Georgia’s list of registered voters Monday night, a mass cancellation that a federal judge allowed to move forward. A voting rights group, Fair Fight Action, said in federal court Monday that the registration cancellations target roughly 120,000 inactive voters who would otherwise be eligible to participate in elections but are being removed
CNN Impeachment Poll Has Bad News
For Democrats: Support Among Democrats
Drops By Double Digits replies
For Democrats: Support Among Democrats
Drops By Double Digits replies
A new CNN impeachment poll released on Monday found that not only is support for impeachment and removal underwater nationwide, but that support has dropped among Democrat voters by double-digits.“Support for impeaching Trump and removing him from office stands at 45% in the new poll, down from 50% in a poll conducted in mid-November just after the conclusion of the House Intelligence Committee’s public hearings,” CNN reported. “Opposition to impeachment and removal stands at 47% in the new poll, up from 43% in November.”CNN added, “Support for impeachment and removal among Democrats has dipped from 90% in November to 77% now.”
Kanye West isn’t the only one anymore.A growing number of polls show that President Trump is gaining the support of black voters above what any Republican president has ever received. Both Emerson Polling and Rasmussen Reports have it at about 34%, a stunning number. And a new Zogby Analytics survey found that African American support is at the “highest levels of the year,” driven by a strong economy, historically low black unemployment, and Trump’s agenda to support minority small businesses, historically black colleges and universities, and passage of criminal justice reform.
It’s no secret that Democrats want to raise taxes on the rich. They are less willing to admit that their plan would actually raise taxes and shrink economic opportunity for the middle class.
Since the 2017 tax cuts are now two years old, it’s worth revisiting the most universally agreed upon Democratic proposal to raise your taxes: the Repeal the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Leading Democrats like Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have said they want to roll back the 2017 tax cuts.
As the House prepares to send Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, much is being discussed about how the GOP should handle it. Senator Ted Cruz says both sides should get a fair shake. That includes President Trump, who the Senator from Texas believes should be able to call whatever witnesses he wants. Two names he mentioned in this interview with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos were controversial figures at the center of this whole mess: Hunter Biden and the whistleblower.
The first man caught up in the Russia Hoax, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, is seeing his case come to an end.
He was scheduled to be sentenced on December 18 on the charge of lying to a federal agent. That investigation, as we now know, was a barking shambles of bad faith and corruption. But, on the advice of highly conflicted counsel — the law firm that prepared the FARA declaration that was the basis of the charge that Flynn lied also represented him in the criminal proceedings — and under extreme pressure from federal prosecutors, Flynn entered a guilty plea.
How long should a sermon be?
The major branches of Christianity in the U.S. have sharply different traditions, with sermons at historically black Protestant churches lasting — on average - nearly four times as long as Roman Catholic sermons. (Snip)
According to Pew, the median length of the sermons was 37 minutes. Catholic sermons were the shortest, at a median of just 14 minutes, compared with 25 minutes for sermons in mainline Protestant congregations and 39 minutes in evangelical Protestant congregations. Historically black Protestant churches had by far the longest sermons, at a median of 54 minutes.