Posts on Tuesday, December 31, 2019
[Video] Appearing Monday on MSNBC’s All In, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) admitted the “genesis” of impeachment was birthed during then-candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency.
(Watch from 1:58)
A partial transcript is as follows:
CHRISTOPHER HAYES: You just mentioned political expediency and insincerity. Those are two charges that have been leveled against Democrats during this entire affair, particularly when the formal impeachment inquiry. You played a starring role in those charges. The argument goes like this of how House Republicans and Trump, the president and his allies, is basically the Democrats wanted to impeach Donald Trump from day one,
Wall Street closed the books Tuesday on a blockbuster 2019 for stock investors, with the broader market delivering its best returns in six years.
The S&P 500 finished with a gain of 28.9% for the year, its best annual performance since 2013, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 22.3%, led by Apple.
Technology stocks led the way higher, vaulting 48%. That helped power the Nasdaq composite to a 35.3% gain for the year.
Along the way, the three major indexes set more record highs than in 2018 and kept the longest bull market for stocks going.
Ben Rhodes, a former national security aide to former President Barack Obama, accused President Trump of pursuing a foreign policy based on “Obama envy” following news of a violent mob attacking the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.“Trump sanctions on Iran have done nothing to change Iranian behavior except make it worse,” Rhodes, who once described the Iran Deal as “necessary … even if Iran doesn’t change,” tweeted Tuesday morning.“This is what happens when your foreign policy is based on Obama envy, domestic politics, Saudi interests, and magical right wing thinking,” he added:(Tweet)
“CBS Evening News” accidentally aired a picture of former Democratic Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings during a segment on Democratic Georgia Rep. John Lewis’ cancer diagnosis Monday.CBS chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett was filling in for anchor Norah O’Donnell Monday evening and began to talk about Lewis’ recent health announcement. The Georgia congressman said Dec. 29 that he had been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer.Instead of airing a photo of Lewis, 79, during the segment, CBS accidentally showed a photo of Cummings, who died in October. The network also identified Cummings, 68, as Lewis underneath the picture.
It is not easy to understand what the left -- as opposed to liberals -- stands for. If you ask a Christian what to read to learn the basics of Christianity, you will be told the Bible. If you ask a (religious) Jew, you will be told the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. If you ask a Mormon, you will be told the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Ask a Muslim and you will be told the Quran.
But if you ask a leftist what one or two books you should read to understand leftism, every leftist will give you a different answer --
One month shy of completing three years in office, President Trump has fulfilled or is making significant progress on most of his 2016 campaign promises, which aides said give him a strong reelection argument to counter his impeachment by a bitterly partisan House last week.
As the president and his team ready for the 2020 campaign at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, officials said it would be built on the administration's achievements list of 15 categories and 319 “results.”
Vice President Mike Pence told Secrets that the message is simple: “Promises made, promises kept.” Pence, who has already hit the campaign trail in a specially outfitted Trump-Pence bus, added,
From the first years of a century already one-fifth completed, we’ve been told that a new, ascendant America — more nonwhite, more culturally liberal, more feminist — was going to dominate our politics for years to come.
Those predictions have, partially, come true. Barack Obama was elected and reelected president in 2008 and 2012, and Democrats won majorities in House contests in 2006, 2008, and 2018.
But those are slimmer pickings than the emerging majorities were promised. And President Trump’s victory in 2016 has made a mockery of the predictions.
A columnist writing at AZCentral.com suggests it was “terrifying” that parishioners were armed at the church in White Settlement, Texas. On December 29, Breitbart News reported that a gunman at West Freeway Church of Christ opened fire, only to be shot dead by an armed parishioner. Jack Wilson, the good guy with a gun, was one of many parishioners who drew their guns to fight back when the heinous attack began. On December 31, Elivia Diaz, editorial columnist for the Republic and AZcentral.com reacted to the quick takedown of the gunman by claiming that Wilson’s defensive gun use “has turned into a PR tool by gun advocates.”
Iranian militia leader Hadi al-Amiri, one of several identified as leading an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, reportedly visited the White House in 2011 during the presidency of Barack Obama.On Tuesday, a mob in Baghdad attacked the U.S. embassy in retaliation against last weekend’s U.S. airstrikes against the Iran-backed Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah (KH), responsible for killing an American civilian contractor. KH is one of a number of pro-Iran militias that make up the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF/PMU), which legally became a wing of the Iraqi military after fighting the Sunni Islamic State terrorist group.President Donald Trump has since accused Iran of having “orchestrated”
This month, the first person to obtain a legal "non-binary" sex designation has successfully petitioned the court originally responsible for his "non-binary" status to order that the sex on his birth certificate be restored to "male." In documents exclusively provided to PJ Media, James Shupe's petition described his "non-binary" designation as a "psychologically harmful legal fiction." He told PJ Media he hopes this decision will prevent a woman currently seeking "non-binary" recognition from following the same lies.
"The charade of not being male, the legal fiction, it's over," James Shupe told PJ Media on Tuesday. "The lies behind my fictitious sex changes, something I shamefully participated in, first to female,
The Texas shooter who opened fire at a church service had been fed by the congregation on several occasions before he gunned down parishioners in a deadly rampage, church leaders said. Keith Thomas Kinnunen, 43, had visited the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement before to receive food handouts prior to the shooting Sunday that killed two congregants, The Christian Chronicle reported. “We’ve helped him on several occasions with food,” minister Britt Farmer told the outlet. “He gets mad when we won’t give him cash. He’s been here on multiple occasions.”
Kinnunen was wearing a beard and disguise when he walked
Christopher Roach, an attorney, has published two articles on impeachment during the past two weeks. They're both excellent, clear expositions of the principles behind what's going on. While it's impossible for Roach to offer an entirely dispositive opinion on how Trump and the Senate should proceed--simply because political considerations will inevitably intrude--his discussion is conceptually useful. By presenting a clear conceptual framework and understanding of impeachment under our Constitution, we get a better idea how whatever path is chosen should be framed in order to stand with the principles of our constitutional order.
A medical student from China who U.S. authorities say tried to smuggle cancer research material taken from a Boston hospital out of the country has been held without bail by a judge who ruled he was a flight risk.
Zaosong Zheng, 29, who last year earned a visa sponsored by Harvard University to study in the U.S., appeared Monday in U.S. District Court in Boston. (snip) Beth Israel, a Harvard-affiliated teaching hospital, has fired Zheng and is cooperating with authorities, a spokeswoman said.
"We are deeply proud of the breadth and depth of our research programs," Jennifer Kritz said.
That Time Thomas Jefferson and Virginia
Colonists Tried to Get King George to Stop
the Slave Trade replies
Colonists Tried to Get King George to Stop
the Slave Trade replies
So I’ve just finished my first book and am working on another. The first is about the Hubble Space Telescope, the one I’m researching now is about history. Specifically, I'm planning to look at the roots of a very consequential revolution in my home state of Texas, and a lingering mystery about one of its heroes.
As I’m wandering around the internet, I find an interesting document. It’s dated April 1, 1772 (April Fool’s wasn’t a prank thing in England or the colonies then, so it’s no joke). Controversies and conflicts were brewing between the English crown and its American subjects. One of those issues was slavery.
Supporters of an Iranian-backed militia besieged the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes, breaking through the first layer of security at the embassy compound and damaging a reception area before being expelled by Iraqi security forces. Here’s what we know:
●The U.S. Defense Department is sending two Apache helicopters and a “small contingent” of Marines to reinforce security at the embassy.
●President Trump accused Iran of “orchestrating an attack” on the embassy, where protesters ransacked a reception area and set fires.
●Iraqi security forces later intervened and set up a barricade, but protesters threw gasoline bombs into the compound.
Crowds of angry Iraqis protesting America’s recent airstrikes against an Iran-backed militia laid siege to the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad Tuesday, chanting “Down, Down USA!” as they stormed through a main gate, prompting U.S. guards to fire back tear gas in response.
As of Tuesday night, protesters set up tents outside the embassy in the Iraqi capital where they said they intended to stage a sit-in “until American troops leave Iraq and the embassy is closed.” About 100 Marines are being sent to the embassy to bolster security and an Army Apache helicopter flew over the premises and dropped flares in a "show of force", hoping to disburse
Millionaire fugitive Carlos Ghosn escaped from house arrest in Japan this week with the help of a paramilitary group from Lebanon posing as a Gregorian orchestra, it emerged on Tuesday. While awaiting trial for financial crimes in Japan, the 65-year-old former Nissan CEO was loaded into an empty musical instrument case after receiving a visit at his home in Tokyo from a musical band whose members turned out to be mercenaries, Lebanese TV news channel MTV said on Tuesday said.(Snip) The dramatic escape, which reads like a Hollywood action flick, was reportedly masterminded by Ghosn’s wife Carole, a 53-year-old Lebanese
A pair of goons flashed a knife as they yelled “Hey Jew boy” at a Brooklyn teen—the latest in a string of unsettling anti-Semitic incidents in the Big Apple, law enforcement sources said Tuesday. The hate was spewed as the 17-year-old victim was walking on Avenue O near 8th Street at around 7:30 p.m. Monday, the sources said. There are two synagogues within a block of where the incident took place. The rise in anti-Semitic attacks, which Mayor Bill de Blasio has deemed a race-hate “crisis,” has prompted the administration to increase police presence in Jewish communities and around houses of
Nothing is ever as simple as good guy versus bad guy. Reality exists mostly in varying shades of gray.
But there is no question Jack Wilson acted heroically as a church volunteer security guard when he killed a killer in the sanctuary of the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, on Sunday. Wilson, a deeply experienced firearms instructor, was legally carrying and took down a gunman with a single shot. Are we relegated to finding solace in the fact that only three people died inside of a church in the latest tragedy, and must we seek comfort
Disturbing footage has emerged of an Orthodox Jewish man being assaulted by a group of seven teenagers as he walked down a street in Brooklyn–in what has become the 14th documented incident of anti-Semitic violence in New York in less than four weeks. The incident occurred in Crown Heights on December 24 as a Jewish man, who has not been identified, was walking down Lincoln Place near Albany Avenue when he encountered a large group of black teenagers. The man can be seen attempting to avoid their path, but as he begins to walk past them one of the teens throws a folding
Bret Stephens is a columnist at the New York Times. On Friday he wrote an op-ed titled The Secrets of Jewish Genius. In that column, he speculated about why Jews have made such signal contributions to modern intellectual life, far out of proportion to their numbers. Stephens attributed the phenomenon to Jewish teachings and experience: There is a religious tradition that, unlike some others, asks the believer not only to observe and obey but also to discuss and disagree. (Snip) Nothing controversial there. Along the way, however, Stephens visited the possibility that Jews may be, on the average, smarter than gentiles–not exactly a novel thought.
We live in an era where it almost seems that crooked politicians decided among themselves that if they all got in on the booty at the same time, it would be all but impossible to catch offenders up.
When politicians left on December 20 to spend Christmas with their families, they left Impeachment on the Christmas tables of those they were elected to serve. Elitists of the mainstream and social media pretty much took their Christmas Break at the same time.
Is it really any coincidence that all three of the sons of presidential frontrunner Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and has-been John Kerry made millions from Ukraine gas companies?
Brit Hume slams Chuck Todd after he
touted letter mocking Christians for
believing in 'fairy tales' replies
touted letter mocking Christians for
believing in 'fairy tales' replies
Conservative commentator and Fox News analyst Brit Hume added to the pile-on of criticism facing NBC political director Chuck Todd after he touted a letter that compared the story of Noah's ark to a "fairytale.""I wonder if Chuck Todd also thinks this is a 'fairy tale,'" Hume tweeted Monday night, along with a picture of CNN reporter Jake Tapper's Hanukkah celebration. (Tweet/Photo) Over the weekend, Todd hosted a special edition of Meet the Press, exploring the prevalence of fake news and disinformation plaguing the media landscape and public discourse.
Hundreds of Iranian-backed activists stormed the US Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday. (Photo) Iraqi security forced failed to stop the siege of the US Embassy.
The Iraqi protesters were carrying Hezbollah flags. The US ambassador and personnel were evacuated.(Tweets/Photos/Video) President Trump says he will hold Iran responsible.
Two men have been arrested after three women found pills hidden inside a takeaway kebab. The women, all aged in their 20s, bought the meal from Istanbul Grill in Bognor Regis, West Sussex. They contacted police after discovering the tablets in their food after they returned home at 2am on Sunday. Two local men aged 30 and 42 were arrested on suspicion of administering poison with intent to endanger life or inflict grievous bodily harm. Chief Inspector Jon Carter of Sussex Police said: “I understand this incident may cause concern. However, police have taken prompt action to protect the public with the arrest of two people,
A man has been charged after a Picasso painting worth £20m was attacked at the Tate Modern gallery in London. Shakeel Massey, from north London, was charged with criminal damage after the incident on Saturday 28 December. Massey, 20, indicated he will deny the charge while appearing at Camberwell Green Magistrates Court’ on 31 December. He has been remanded in custody until a pre-trial hearing on 30 January, the BBC reports. The Tate Modern has removed the 1944 painting Bust of a Woman from display while experts assess the damage. The painting was reported to have been ripped, however the gallery has not
Navy Ens. Hunter Biden received a fitness report after his first two weeks as a public affairs officer, his personnel file shows. Mr. Biden, who received an age waiver and was sworn in by his dad, Vice President Joseph R. Biden, at the White House, underwent a performance review six months later, according to his Fitness Report and Counseling Record.(Snip) His file shows the first fitness report was done at the time of a pending drug test. The second one, in November, came after the Navy told him he tested positive for cocaine. After nine months as a commissioned naval officer,
Why Americans Fear Trial By Jury
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Everyone on both left and right these days is demanding rights—but not the earliest and most important one, the historic right to trial by a jury of one’s peers.
Today, over 90 percent of American defendants waive that right in favor of a prosecutor’s proposed plea bargain, because, as Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz notes in his new book Guilt by Association, they are warned that the penalty at the trial stage will be excessively higher.
Dershowitz offers frightening examples. Two men picked up their uncle after committing a robbery, making him a passenger in a police car chase where a trooper was shot and killed. The actual murdering robbers copped a
Greta Thunberg's father told her to launch her climate protests alone, as he said he and is wife made green changes to their lives to "save" their daughter from her depression.
Svante Thunberg said he and his wife were “not climate activists” but had stopped flying and turned vegan as they saw the impact it had on their daughter.(Snip)He said the teenager became acutely depressed after being diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome when she was 12, and stopped talking, eating or going to school for a year.
“She stopped eating for three months,” added Mr Thunberg. “Which is the ultimate nightmare for any parent.”
After the House of Representatives’ recent decision to issue two articles of impeachment, it appears the Democrats are having second thoughts. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) thus far has refused to transmit the articles to the Senate because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) publicly has expressed doubts regarding the merits of impeachment and the need for a Senate trial.
The Constitution, of course, gives the Senate “the sole power to try all impeachments.” While the House typically has appointed “managers” who act as prosecutors in the Senate trial, the manner of that trial is ultimately up to the Senate.
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” Yogi Berra reminded us.(Snip)Looking to 2020, this writer predicted that Donald Trump’s great domestic challenge would be to keep the economy firing on all cylinders. His great foreign policy challenge? Avoiding war.
When one looks at the numbers — unemployment at or below 4% for two years, an expansion in its 11th year, the stock market regularly hitting all-time highs — Trump enters his reelection year with a fistful of aces. One has to go back half a century to find numbers like these. (Snip)If there are IEDs on Trump’s road to reelection, they may be found in the Middle and
The mockumentary that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” featured many sidesplitting moments; host Chuck Todd and other Democratic activists disguised as journalists spent an hour solemnly discussing the “assault on the truth” inflicted by Donald Trump and his “cult-like” followers.
(Snip)
One moment, however, stood out: Todd read aloud a letter-to-the editor published in a Kentucky newspaper that equated the Bible to a fairy tale. “Show me a person who believes in Noah’s Ark, and I will show you a Trump voter,” the rando correspondent wrote.
The Great Revolt Enters a New Phase:
How the Populist Uprising of 2016
Will Reverberate in 2020 replies
How the Populist Uprising of 2016
Will Reverberate in 2020 replies
In a country increasingly engaged in national politics and divided, the next 12 months may feel like 12 years. Voters in both trenches are eager to vote, convinced not only of victory but also of vindication. The shocking result in 2016 wasn't a black swan, an irregular election deviating from normalcy, but instead the indicator of the realignment we describe in "The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics," now available in a new a paperback edition in time for the 2020 election season.
The story of America's evolving political topography is one of tectonic plates that slowly grind against one another until a break notably alters the landscape
Well, well, well…. we are not alone in our suspicions of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley.
Tonight Col Douglas Macgregor outlines his own suspicions about the U.S. military attack in Iraq and Syria that parallel our initial gut reaction. Macgregor states his belief that President Trump is being “skillfully misinformed”. WATCH:
Despite Intense Media Disinformation
Zogby Poll Shows President Trump
Beating all Dem Candidates… replies
Zogby Poll Shows President Trump
Beating all Dem Candidates… replies
The scale of media involvement in the 2020 election will likely be the most massively biased propaganda effort in the history of U.S. media manipulation. Together with the big tech effort from control operatives in social media, the scale of unified effort is likely to exceed Orwellian proportions…
However, that said, after three years of constant media propaganda and narrative engineering, recent polling shows President Trump beating all Democrat candidates.
At first glance I was pretty impressed with the chutzpah and disingenuousness of Greta Thunberg, who just came out with this:
Greta Thunberg said she "wouldn't have wasted my time" meeting with President Trump to discuss climate change.
In an interview with BBC radio, the 16-year-old activist was asked what she would have said to Trump if they'd spoken at a United Nations summit on climate change. Thunberg said she wouldn't have said anything because Trump isn't listening.
Ted Cruz educates Pete Buttigieg
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Pete Buttigieg is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. Yesterday, Senator Ted Cruz devastatingly humiliated him for shooting his mouth off when he doesn’t know what he’ s talking about.
In case you missed it, Buttigieg recently instructed a group of youngsters, "The people who wrote the Constitution did not understand that slavery was a bad thing."
That sort of criticism and condescension is part of the larger progressive project to disparage and eventually reject the United States Constitution -- because it limits the power of government and affirms that our rights come from God.
Soros’ War Against the Jews
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When George Soros hit middle age, he began seeing a shrink.
The ruthless financier's problem was that he was burdened with an "oversized" sense of shame over a "guilty secret". That guilty shameful secret which sent Soros to a psychoanalyst was "Jewishness".
Soros’ Jewish problem was generational. He grew up in, in his own words, a "Jewish, anti-Semitic home"
He had adopted his father Tivadar’s worldview, that God was a human invention. It was Tivadar who forged and sold documents to Jews trying to escape the Holocaust, charging "wealthy clients", as he put it, "whatever the market would bear".
In the wake of US airstrikes in Iraq that killed members of the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah, Iran is seizing the opportunity to use its clandestine networks in Iraq to push the US to leave the country. The US has already left Iraq twice before, in the 1990s and in 2011. Iran wagers that it can leverage the airstrikes to mobilize people against the US in Iraq.
(Snip) Along with well known pro-Iranian politicians and militia leaders, such as Hadi al-Amiri, they then stormed the embassy compound and set fires. They raised the flag of Kataib Hezbollah, a militia that US airstrikes had targeted, on the embassy compound. US forces remained inside
Don't Pray Unarmed
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So many hate attacks have taken place in American houses of worship. Religiously-dressed Jews have been senselessly attacked on the streets. The pious are an easy target because they love their neighbors and many pray unarmed.
The Pittsburgh synagogue massacre stole the lives of 11 Jews and wounded six others, including four police officers. The Charleston church shooting claimed the lives of nine Christians and injured one other. The Wisconsin Sikh temple ambush claimed the lives of five Indian Americans and one responding police officer, hospitalizing a second officer. The New Jersey Jewish neighborhood shootout
The Year the World Went Mad
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Now that it’s over, can we all agree that 2019 was a mess? The best part about it was that not much got done in Washington. The economy grew not in spite of that fact, but because of it. The economy thrives on stability, and Democrats controlling the House brought a degree of that – none of their crazy ideas were going anywhere, thankfully, so the economy is safe…for now.
The economic boom and historically low unemployment allowed everyone to focus on other things, and to go crazy over them.
Hundreds of Iraqi Shia militia supporters have broken into the US embassy in Baghdad, storming the compound with gunshots and sirens ringing out, after US air strikes on Hezbollah that killed 25.
The ambassador and other staff were evacuated before US soldiers became besieged at the compound where thousands of violent pro-Iran demonstrators, some wearing militia uniforms, thronged at the gates on Tuesday.
Flames were seen rising from the compound as furious rioters pressed up against the bullet-proof windows within the complex, taunting the US soldiers within and spraying pro-Hezbollah graffiti over the glass.
Half a dozen US marine guards fired warning shots from the rooftops,
Freedom of Speech No More?
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For his work in devising a way to predict the spread of infectious diseases, physician and sociologist Nicholas Christakis found himself on a list of top global thinkers in 2010. The year before that, he was ranked among the world’s most influential people, making him one of the brightest stars in the constellation of liberalism. And yet none of these ornaments of an enlightened and celebrated intellect could inoculate Christakis from a disease that has infected the public mind of late, incubated in the petri dish of academia.
Those resolutions we claim we’re going to keep in the new year continue a tradition that actually began about 4,000 years ago as promises to the gods of Babylon. What if we expected public figures in today’s world to make such vows of self-improvement, beyond just losing weight or eating healthier? President Donald Trump, for instance, could tweet: “While every one of my thoughts are obviously world-class and superb, I will sometimes
Remember when Democrats reflexively accused President Donald Trump of being a racist when he said illegal immigrants steal American jobs? Turns out, he was right, as evidenced by the aftermath of the massive summer raid that rounded up hundreds of illegals working at chicken processing plants in Mississippi.
In early August, some 600 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents surrounded seven plants operated by five companies in six different cities. They rounded up 680 “undocumented” immigrants, in what was described as the largest raid in a single state.
This is part of a larger effort by Trump to target companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
Oh, Beto.
Ronald Reagan once characterized people like Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke when he said, "It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so."
Such was the case when the failed presidential candidate, Mr. "Hell-Yes-I'm-Going-To-Take-Your-Guns," cleaved to his "all guns bad" fantasies Sunday on Twitter right after the Texas church shooting.
Showing that the cliché, "when seconds count, cops are only minutes away," is a cliché for a reason, the wanna-be mass murderer was dispatched within six seconds of getting off his first shot, preventing a mass bloodbath. Two men were killed by the shotgun-toting bad guy
Maybe Democrats have decided that, in the era of President Trump, honesty is no longer required. Or maybe Elizabeth Warren is just too insecure to tell the truth about her own life.
Whatever the reason, the Massachusetts senator has built her campaign on a foundation of exaggerations and misrepresentations.
It's common knowledge by now that Warren, one of the top four 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, identified as a Native American, despite being somewhere between 0.1% and 3% Native American and having zero experience in tribal life. If only her misrepresentations began and ended there.
Ask her constituents in Massachusetts and they may remind you that the senator also fibbed when she promised
The Senate Republican playbook should be put House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on mute and get this trial started. Pelosi and the Democrats have no say in the matter. They don’t. And by withholding the articles of impeachment against President Trump because they know it faces certain death in the Republican Senate creates a new constitutional crisis of its own. This isn’t about a fair trial. As Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel noted, a trial would only further degrade their position in the polls on this impeachment push. It was never popular from the start, and now it’s underwater nationally. It’s especially not popular
BOCA GRANDE, Florida — Every generation has them: the snake-oil charlatans who stir their witches’ brew of lies and cats’ tales and shuffle their decks of grimy tarot cards portending your doom — your certain doom! — if you don’t pay them a handsome price for the antidote to cure you.
The world is about to end in a fiery hell of global warming, starvation, wicked poverty and social injustice, they insist.
Politicians in Washington are peddling all sorts of extravagant cures from fart mufflers for cows (until we can slaughter them all in a humane and environmentally friendly manner) to high-speed trains to Hawaii. Gurgle, gurgle.
If you’re depressed by the state of the world, let me toss out an idea: In the long arc of human history, 2019 has been the best year ever.
The bad things that you fret about are true. But it’s also true that since modern humans emerged about 200,000 years ago, 2019 was probably the year in which children were least likely to die, adults were least likely to be illiterate and people were least likely to suffer excruciating and disfiguring diseases.
Every single day in recent years, another 325,000 people got their first access to electricity. Each day, more than 200,000 got piped water for the first time.
The state of Montana could soon be represented by a second representative in the U.S. House after the 2020 census, according to figures released Monday.
Census information first reported by The Wall Street Journal found that the state's population grew by nearly 80,000 between 2010 and 2019, leading analysts to predict the state would be among several to gain representatives in Congress following the official results' release next year.
Other states projected by the Journal to gain congressional seats include North Carolina, Arizona, Oregon, Florida, and Colorado. States including California, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota were projected to lose one representative each.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said on Monday that she is "open" to calling witnesses as part of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump but stressed that it is still too early to decide who, if anyone, should be called.
Collins — in separate interviews with Maine Public Radio and WCSH, a Maine TV station — said a decision on potential witnesses should wait until after opening arguments from both House impeachment managers and Trump's team
CBS News on Monday apologized for confusing one congressman for another during their evening broadcast.
The network showed a photo of late Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, who died in October at 68, when referring to Georgia Democrat John Lewis.
The image of the longtime lawmaker was placed next to a quote from the civil rights icon about his recently revealed battle with stage four pancreatic cancer.
I’ve previously written about how the Democratic Party has embraced anti-Semitism and defended rabid anti-Semites in their party. But as anti-Semitism becomes increasingly mainstream in the Democratic Party, rather than addressing the problem, Democrats are deflecting, trying to paint anti-Semitism as a Trump problem. Rep. Eric Swalwell recently alleged in an op-ed in the Jewish magazine Forward that Donald Trump is “embracing anti-Semitism.” Because Trump, who has a daughter who’s a converted Jew and Jewish grandchildren, is obviously an anti-Semite, or something. In the wake of the Hanukkah celebration stabbing in Monsey, New York, rather than blame the attacker, Democrats chose to blame Trump — who has done more
The truth behind House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff’s role in engineering President Trump’s impeachment may soon come out. Judicial Watch, a nonprofit group promoting government transparency, is suing to get the whistleblower’s e-mails.
That’s good news. Because no matter what comes of Trump’s Senate trial, Schiff should be held accountable for his devious methods.
The public also needs the truth about the so-called whistleblower. Real whistleblowers deserve to be treated like heroes.
The year 2019 brought some notable golden anniversaries from a wild year: 1969. Some were glorious, such as the Moon Landing; others were scurrilous, scandalous, such as the Manson Family murders, Woodstock, Chappaquiddick. The year 1969 also marked some shocking deaths: Sharon Tate, Mary Jo Kopechne, even Judy Garland.
Another death that year, which rocked that generation, especially the so-called Beat Generation that emerged the previous decade, was that of Jack Kerouac, whose death at age 47 shocked Americans. And yet, in 2019, the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s passing came and went. I didn’t see a single tribute.
Saturday was the seventh night of Hanukkah, a holiday normally celebrated with singing and fried foods and the soft glow of lit menorahs. A gathering of Hasidic Jews at the home of a rabbi in Monsey, New York, instead turned into a nightmare when a man wielding a large knife rushed in and began attacking. Five people were reportedly stabbed and wounded. As of midday Sunday, according to law enforcement, two victims were still in the hospital.
“There’s a lot of horror,” Shoshana Bernstein, a community organizer and mother who lives in Monsey, told me. “It’s tapping into every fear.” Part of the shock is that this happened in Monsey
BAGHDAD -- Hundreds of Iraqi mourners tried to storm the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, following deadly U.S. airstrikes this week that killed 25 fighters from an Iran-backed Shiite militia in Iraq.
Shouting “Down, Down USA!” the crowd tried to push inside the embassy grounds, hurling water bottles and smashing security cameras outside.
The U.S. military carried out the strikes Sunday against the Iranian-backed Kataeb Hezbollah militia, calling it retaliation for last week's killing of an American contractor in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that it blamed on the group.
The new year will bring a welcome gift to many members of the U.S. armed services – one of the biggest pay raises in years.
The military budget for fiscal 2020 – of $738 billion – will increase service member pay by 3.1 percent. Federal civilian pay is also set to rise by 3.1 percent.
The raise will increase pay for enlisted members with less than two years of service to more than six years of service by amounts varying from $1,733 (E-1 with less than two years of service) to $3,837 (E-7 with over six years of service), according to the Navy’s pay chart.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to up the police presence in multi-ethnic neighborhoods to combat a rise in antisemitic hate crimes has received push-back from liberal Jewish groups that contend the measures will further divide communities. Over the weekend, de Blasio announced several new policing measures in response to seven hate crimes in as many days, culminating with an attack in Monsey, New York, that left five members of the ultra-Orthodox community wounded after a knife-wielding assailant stormed the house of a rabbi.(Snip) “This is what dividing vulnerable communities looks like,” said Jews for Racial & Economic Justice