A NJ law firm is releasing the name of 52 former NJ scout leaders accused of being pedophiles who preyed on young boys.
Imagine my shock at reading the name of a former scout leader and our local troop number among the list for attacks that happened not long after you left their troop. It’s sobering, I can tell you that.
“Boys Scouts ‘Perversion Files’ includes 52 former N.J. scout leaders. Law firm says there were 12K victims nationally.
The identities of 52 former Boy Scout leaders from New Jersey who allegedly sexually abused boys and were included in the organization’s so-called “Perversion Files” were revisited Tuesday by a law firm seeking to shed light on the systemic nature of the abuse and demand more information to be released.
The leaders named in the Boy Scouts of America’s documents, officially called the list “Ineligible Volunteer Files,” were first revealed in 2012. They are among 7,000-plus alleged child sex abusers across the country tied to the scouts, Jeff Anderson of New York-based Jeff Anderson & Associates said.
There are 12,254 victims in those files, the firm said. The information detailed Tuesday did not identify how many of those victims are from New Jersey.
“This is about the institution failing to do the right thing, failing to disclose these names,” attorney Greg Gianforcaro, whose private firm partnered with Anderson’s law firm, said during an afternoon press conference in Newark. “It shouldn’t be us disclosing these names. It should be the Boy Scouts.”
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I can’t help but agree, but the BSA is in CYA mode to dampen the financial impact on their org. Disgusting and sad.
“Violence against Christians spreads far beyond Sri Lanka. Pew Research lists Christians as the most harassed faith in the world, with significant levels of persecution in 144 countries, according to 2016 data. People of all faiths should care about this, because the world climate is growing increasingly hostile to religious freedom as religious fundamentalism creeps into national politics and people increasingly define themselves in opposition to other people’s faiths.
The idea of religious toleration, a proud feature of some parts of Middle Eastern history, is losing currency among a fundamentalist wave in the region. Throughout the twenty-first century, more than 2 million Christians have been displaced from countries like Egypt, Syria, and Iraq due to the effects of Islamic fundamentalism and sectarian violence in the region. Few groups have suffered as Christian minorities have due to the rise of Islamist political parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and ISIS in Libya, with arson, displacement, and even beheadings occurring in these persecutory domains.
It is not just backwards Islamist regimes who are persecuting Christians, either. China’s authoritarian atheist government, fearful of the revolutionary potential of Christian minorities, is tightening its restrictions on the country’s Christians, enforcing its laws against Chinese “house churches” (churches that operate outside the purview of the official state church) and evangelistic speech with greater severity than in previous years.
South Asia is also becoming a hotbed for anti-Christian persecution. According to Open Doors USA, an organization tracking Christian persecution across the world, Indian Christians now face an “extreme” level of persecution, up from “high” just five years ago, due to spikes in Hindu extremism targeting churches, as well as halfhearted government responses failing to protect these minorities. Open Doors USA now claims with evidence that one in three Christians in all of Asia currently face some form of persecution.
Even in the enlightened West, religious freedom is facing its biggest challenge in centuries. Journalists have reported a record 47 documented desecrations of church property in France for February 2019. In Germany, three-quarters of resettled Christian refugees claim to experience persecution, mostly from the Muslim refugees which surround them. The number of attacks on Catholic churches in the whole of Europe is already up 25 percent compared to the number of attacks during a similar period last year.
While many European journalists rightly blame mass migration from majority-Muslim countries for these religious persecution issues, migration is not the only factor here. Just as significant is Western Europe’s culture of enforced secularism, a world where religious speech is policed and religious symbols (such as burqas) are not allowed in French public schools or German business settings.
Western Europe no longer inspires religious freedom. Western Europe is instead now a land where public religion is actively discouraged, a world where religious differences are often hashed out in the dark rather than debated in the daylight.”
“Islamic Terrorism Remains The World’s Greatest Threat To Peace
The Sri Lankan massacre is just another harrowing reminder.”
After the horrific mass murder of 50 Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand, there was widespread coverage and a torrent of mainstream news networks contemplating the threat of white supremacy. These conversations, completely reasonable and necessary in the face of violent attacks from a racist gunman, soon began deteriorating into politically motivated and specious claims contending that “white supremacy” had become the predominate terror threat in the world.
Well, the coordinated bomb blasts aimed at Christian worshippers on Easter Sunday, which killed at least 290 people and injured hundreds more, demonstrates the kind of meticulous planning, funding, resources, and support that is still exclusively the domain of radical Islamic terrorism. It’s not merely that the act was planned to maximize the death toll, but that it is a continuation of long-standing efforts by Islamists to destroy the Christian communities left in Asia.
Those who kill in the name of Islam are part of a worldwide, historic, ideological, and political movement that includes, to various degrees and various reasons, radicalized men and women from both great factions of the faith. Then again, terrorist groups—as well as their recruitment and propaganda outfits—are often functioning in Islamic regimes, which either actively sustain terror, tolerate these groups, or pay them off to engage in terrorism elsewhere.
The Christians who remain in the Islamic world are often oppressed in other ways. In a number of these nations, publicly praying in any faith but Islam is forbidden and, in many, converting to Christianity is still punishable by death. “Islamic extremism remains the global, dominant driver of persecution, responsible for initiating oppression and conflict in 35 of the 50 countries on the list,” according to Open Doors, a worldwide Christian group.
The idea that a similar threat exists in the West is risible. There’s not a single Western country that doesn’t afford Muslim citizens the same rights it does as all other citizens. No government on Earth supports white supremacy.
There is no funding infrastructure for those who support white power. There is no Christian or Jewish denomination, or any notable political factions, in those nations that imbue white supremacy with any theological or ideological legitimacy. There is no white supremacist government trying to obtain nuclear weapons, and none sending their terrorists to other countries. In the world’s free nations, where any political party can participate in the process, the power of racist groups is minimal.
Yet the American left continues to downplay the danger, first by arguing that Islam has nothing to do with Islamic terrorism, then by lumping every white-skinned person who commits a terrorist act into one imaginary coherent political movement to contrast against it. It’s true that Americans have been spared much Islamic terror since 2002—a year that, curiously, nearly every graph media uses to measure domestic terrorism starts—but only because we’ve spent billions of dollars each year and immense resources, both in lives and treasure, keeping it out of the country and fighting it abroad.
Another reason the majority of Americans might not comprehend Islamic radicalism’s reach is the skewed intensity of the media coverage. Political correctness and a chilling fear of being labeled “Islamophobic” makes it difficult to honestly report on terrorism around the world.”
“Medical conditions, such as psychological disorders, all have a predictably reliable set of symptoms and traits. For example, persons who suffer from narcissistic personality disorder all have exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, a lack of empathy, and several other shared behaviors. (Think Barack Obama, Michael Avenatti, Chris Cuomo, and their ilk. Though Trump is often called a narcissist by the Left, he is not; he is extremely empathetic and extraordinarily magnanimous.)
Similarly, those who hold certain political views predictably share numerous characteristics. Jed Babbin has a column at The American Spectator, “The Democrats’ Fanaticism,” in which he lays out the impenetrable Trump-hatred of the Left. Leftists are unable to give up on the Trump-colluded-with-Russia meme they have relied upon to destroy the presidency of Donald Trump. They are obsessed, unable to address any other issue that requires their attention. They cannot accept the Mueller Report’s conclusion that there was in fact no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Babbin quotes Churchill: A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. That perfectly describes the Democratic Party of today. What is interesting is the how much in lockstep are the political views these people have in common.
The people who are convinced Trump has no business being president, no matter how successful he has been in spite of their nonstop attacks, are the same folks who are convinced that we, humanity at large, are a blight upon the planet and causing global warming. Climate has indeed changed constantly, but, in their quest to control how we all live, leftists are certain that we, especially Americans, are responsible for a slight rise (or drop) in temperature here and there. These are the same people who have embraced the notion that sex is fluid! It is not. Yes, gender dysphoria exists; it is a mental condition.
The same people who hate Trump believe in the hoax of global warming and are letting small children “choose” their sex. A trans child is the latest celebrity accessory. To those on the other side of such nonsense, this is child abuse, especially when children as young as eight are given over to doctors who begin hormone treatments that will likely ruin their lives.
Who are those who think speech one disagrees with is a form of violence? The very same people. They believe that conservative speakers should not be welcome on college campuses because their words might make students feel unsafe. They openly oppose the free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. These are the same folks who think people should be able to use the restroom of the sex with which they “identify.” Thus, a teenage boy who feels like a girl must be allowed to shower with the girls after gym class. If that makes those girls uncomfortable, too bad. Their discomfort is politically incorrect. Only the feelings of the trans person matter.”
“IG’s FISA Probe May Hamper Dems’ Impeachment Plans”
“As Democrats mull how far to push the impeachment envelope against President Trump after Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion with Russia in the 2016 election but punted on obstruction of justice charges, another investigation could further blunt their attempts to oust the president from office or damage his re-election chances.
Amid calls from Trump and his supporters to “investigate the investigators,” Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been hard at work over the last year looking into the sources and methods the FBI used to begin surveillance of a one-time Trump campaign adviser based at least in part on discredited information gathered by a former British spy.
That packet of intelligence, known as the “Steele dossier,” contains salacious and unsubstantiated details about Trump’s alleged romps with Russian prostitutes, along with business and political quid pro quos with Russian officials.
Attorney General Robert Barr said the inspector general is wrapping up his probe and could release a final report as early as next month.
Those interviewed by Horowitz and his team over the past year, according to Politico, say he seems intensely focused on undermining the dossier and credibility of Christopher Steele, the former British MI6 agent who produced the document. Steele had served as a confidential source for the FBI since 2010 until a falling out over his leaks to the media about the Trump-Russia probe.
While prominent Democrats have accused Mueller of failing to do his duty and Barr of prioritizing the interests of Trump over the American people, they’ll have a more difficult time assailing Horowitz, a Harvard-educated lawyer appointed by President Obama to the DoJ’s top watchdog post in 2012.”
“10 factors making Russia election interference the most enduring scandal of the Obama era”
“There’s at least one conclusion on which there’s largely bipartisan agreement: Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election. No vote tallies were changed, according to Obama administration intel analyses, but the interference was serious enough that many insist drastic steps must be taken to avoid a repeat in 2020.
Now, with special counsel Robert Mueller’s exhaustive investigation over and no Trump official charged with taking part in any Russki scheme, Russian election interference may turn out to be the most persistent scandal of the Obama era.
To date, it’s also one of the most puzzling.
Depending on which set of facts we examine, Russian interference was alternately foreseeable and unpredictable; expected, yet surprising.
The official reaction to it has begun to unfold as a Keystone Cops-type response by top Obama intel officials. They appear to have been so distracted by political motivations that they lost sight of the very danger they now claim threatens our democracy.
Here are 10 reasons why Russia election interference seems set to become the most enduring scandal of the Obama administration.
Missed opportunity. Perhaps the best shot at disrupting Russian interference came as early as fall 2015. That’s when the FBI supposedly detected successful efforts by Russian hackers to breach Democratic National Committee (DNC) computers. For reasons unknown, the systems and others remained vulnerable to further attacks.
By July 2016, the DNC and FBI both had concluded Russians were responsible for additional hacks. Yet, the DNC reportedly refused to allow the FBI to examine its servers and data in a timely fashion and — for reasons unexplained — the FBI failed to confiscate them. Obviously, when national security is at stake, the FBI does not need permission to examine evidence. A senior law enforcement official told CNN the DNC’s withholding of crucial evidence “caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.” If the FBI (then led by Director James Comey) had acted quickly and definitively to examine the evidence, could that have prevented further interference?
Denial. On Oct. 18, 2016, President Obama made a comment that rivals his “ISIS is the jayvee team” remark in terms of its wrongheadedness. He declared that “no serious person” would suggest America’s elections could be rigged. “There’s no evidence that that has happened in the past or that there are instances in which that will happen this time,” said Obama.
At the time, the president was addressing a reporter’s question about voter fraud. But it’s significant to note that he offered this answer smack dab in the middle of the supposed Russia targeting of our election process. His failure to take the obvious opportunity to address this vulnerability implies he did not fully appreciate the threat, or was unwilling to confront it. Instead, he left the impression that the U.S. election process is impenetrable and outside interference is impossible.
Obama also infamously mocked Republican nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 when Romney suggested Russia was a foe to be reckoned with. This begs the question of whether problems could have been staved off if the president had taken Russia more seriously.”
“The struggle between House Democrats and the Trump administration over investigations intensified Tuesday as a former White House official defied a subpoena and the Treasury Department ignored a deadline for providing President Donald Trump’s tax returns.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the White House has adopted the “untenable” position that it can ignore requests from the Democratic majority in the House.
“It appears that the president believes that the Constitution does not apply to his White House, that he may order officials at will to violate their legal obligations, and that he may obstruct attempts by Congress to conduct oversight,” Cummings said in a statement.
Cummings was specifically referring to Carl Kline, a former White House personnel security director, who was subpoenaed by Democrats.
Kline did not show up Tuesday for a scheduled deposition, and Cummings said he is consulting with other lawmakers and staff about scheduling a vote to hold Kline in contempt of Congress. The committee subpoenaed Kline after one of his former subordinates told the panel that dozens of people in Trump’s administration were granted security clearances despite “disqualifying issues” in their backgrounds.
Trump said he doesn’t want former or current aides testifying in Congress, “where it’s very partisan — obviously very partisan.””
“The White House plans to fight a subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee for former White House counsel Donald McGahn to testify, according to people familiar with the matter, setting up another showdown in the aftermath of the special counsel report.
The Trump administration also plans to oppose other requests from House committees for the testimony of current and former aides about actions in the White House described in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report, according to two people familiar with internal thinking who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke of the plans on the condition of anonymity.
White House lawyers plan to tell attorneys for administration witnesses called by the House that they will be asserting executive privilege over their testimony, officials said.
Such a move will intensify a power struggle between the Trump administration and congressional Democrats, potentially setting up a protracted court battle.”
“Judicial Watch: FBI Admits Hillary Clinton Emails Found in Obama White House”
“Also Confirms Over 49,000 Clinton Server Emails Found on Weiner Laptop”
“Judicial Watch announced today that a senior FBI official admitted, in writing and under oath, that the agency found Clinton email records in the Obama White House, specifically, the Executive Office of the President. The FBI also admitted nearly 49,000 Clinton server emails were reviewed as result of a search warrant for her material on the laptop of Anthony Weiner.
E.W. (Bill) Priestap, assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, made the disclosure to Judicial Watch as part of court-ordered discovery into the Clinton email issue.
U.S District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides, as well as Priestap, to be deposed or answer writer questions under oath. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”
Priestap was asked by Judicial Watch to identify representatives of Hillary Clinton, her former staff, and government agencies from which “email repositories were obtained.” Priestap responded with the following non-exhaustive list:
Bryan Pagliano
Cheryl Mills
Executive Office of the President [Emphasis added]
Heather Samuelson
Jacob Sullivan
Justin Cooper
United States Department of State
United States Secret Service
Williams & Connolly LLP
Priestap also testifies that 48,982 emails were reviewed as a result of a warrant for Clinton email account information from the laptop of Anthony Weiner, who had been married to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
A complete copy of Priestap’s interrogatory responses is available here. Priestap, is serving as assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division and helped oversee both the Clinton email and the 2016 presidential campaign investigations. Priestap testified in a separate lawsuit that Clinton was the subject of a grand jury investigation related to her BlackBerry email accounts.
“This astonishing confirmation, made under oath by the FBI, shows that the Obama FBI had to go to President Obama’s White House office to find emails that Hillary Clinton tried to destroy or hide from the American people.” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “No wonder Hillary Clinton has thus far skated – Barack Obama is implicated in her email scheme.”
This is the other reason this shouldn’t all just go away.
The victims. The people who did nothing wrong, broke no laws, but had their lives ruined anyway by people seeking to get Trump. This is why it can’t be forgotten, and we need to make sure it never happens again.
It’s also why we need to hold the media accountable for their role in this conspiracy. They printed lies that ruined lives, and they don’t even have the decency to admit it.
“Byron York: The personal cost of the Trump-Russia investigation”
“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is over, but the aftereffects of the Trump-Russia affair live on. One such aftereffect is the reluctance of some important figures in the 2016 campaign to speak out, for fear of continued legal entanglements.
Take J.D. Gordon, who served as the Trump campaign’s director of national security. Never accused of any wrongdoing, he played a central role in one of the most controversial and least understood episodes of the Trump-Russia matter: the approval of the 2016 GOP platform at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
On July 18, 2016, the Washington Post published a story headlined, “Trump campaign guts GOP’s anti-Russia stance on Ukraine.” Below a scandalously erroneous headline, the piece reported that the campaign, acting contrary to the views of “almost all Republican foreign policy leaders,” killed a proposal that the United States provide lethal aid to Ukraine in its struggle against Russia.
Why would the campaign do that? Democrats quickly accused Trump of watering down national security, of selling out Ukraine, to please Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It got worse. As a media frenzy built, Trump opponents cited the platform as Exhibit A in their case that the Trump campaign and Russia conspired to influence the 2016 election. As the tale went, the Russians helped Trump, he was in their debt, and he paid them back by supporting weakened U.S. policy toward Ukraine.
It was all entirely wrong. If anyone bothered to look into the facts — almost no one did — they would have discovered that the original draft of the GOP platform was quite strong on Russia and Ukraine. Not a word of it was removed. Then a single delegate proposed an amendment that would have added promises of tougher U.S. sanctions on Russia, greater military coordination with NATO, and the provision of “lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine’s armed forces.
Gordon was the Trump staffer in the meeting as delegates considered the amendment. He did not object to the proposal of tougher sanctions, did not object to the proposal of greater military coordination with NATO, but changed the proposal to provide “lethal defensive weapons” to a promise of “appropriate assistance to the armed forces of Ukraine.” (Gordon later told investigators he changed part of the amendment because he felt it was not in line with candidate Trump’s position on Ukraine.)
The revised amendment was accepted, and the final platform was tougher on Russia and Ukraine than the original platform draft. It was not “gutted.” It was strengthened.
Nevertheless, the media and Democrats ran with the opposite story, and the “gutting” of the platform became part of the collusion narrative. And then the investigations started.”
Because murderers, thieves, and rapist are more likely to vote Democrat. That’s why.
They should set up polling stations at prisons.
Or maybe jut count the prison population as Democratic votes.
Same for street dwellers. Just drive by and count them.
That’s all we need. .
As if we didn’t already have enough to worry about.
I see on ATT news that Pluto’s atmosphere is about to collapse.
Same issue says Megyn Kelly is enjoying her vacation in Hawaii.
Wandering Views 
A NJ law firm is releasing the name of 52 former NJ scout leaders accused of being pedophiles who preyed on young boys.
Imagine my shock at reading the name of a former scout leader and our local troop number among the list for attacks that happened not long after you left their troop. It’s sobering, I can tell you that.
And so many victims.
https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/news/2019/04/boys-scouts-perversion-files-includes-52-former-nj-scout-leaders-law-firm-says-there-were-12k-victims-nationally.html
“Boys Scouts ‘Perversion Files’ includes 52 former N.J. scout leaders. Law firm says there were 12K victims nationally.
The identities of 52 former Boy Scout leaders from New Jersey who allegedly sexually abused boys and were included in the organization’s so-called “Perversion Files” were revisited Tuesday by a law firm seeking to shed light on the systemic nature of the abuse and demand more information to be released.
The leaders named in the Boy Scouts of America’s documents, officially called the list “Ineligible Volunteer Files,” were first revealed in 2012. They are among 7,000-plus alleged child sex abusers across the country tied to the scouts, Jeff Anderson of New York-based Jeff Anderson & Associates said.
There are 12,254 victims in those files, the firm said. The information detailed Tuesday did not identify how many of those victims are from New Jersey.
“This is about the institution failing to do the right thing, failing to disclose these names,” attorney Greg Gianforcaro, whose private firm partnered with Anderson’s law firm, said during an afternoon press conference in Newark. “It shouldn’t be us disclosing these names. It should be the Boy Scouts.”
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I can’t help but agree, but the BSA is in CYA mode to dampen the financial impact on their org. Disgusting and sad.
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A growing problem, as we were told it would be.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/23/sri-lanka-attacks-highlight-growing-worldwide-persecution-christians/
“Violence against Christians spreads far beyond Sri Lanka. Pew Research lists Christians as the most harassed faith in the world, with significant levels of persecution in 144 countries, according to 2016 data. People of all faiths should care about this, because the world climate is growing increasingly hostile to religious freedom as religious fundamentalism creeps into national politics and people increasingly define themselves in opposition to other people’s faiths.
The idea of religious toleration, a proud feature of some parts of Middle Eastern history, is losing currency among a fundamentalist wave in the region. Throughout the twenty-first century, more than 2 million Christians have been displaced from countries like Egypt, Syria, and Iraq due to the effects of Islamic fundamentalism and sectarian violence in the region. Few groups have suffered as Christian minorities have due to the rise of Islamist political parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and ISIS in Libya, with arson, displacement, and even beheadings occurring in these persecutory domains.
It is not just backwards Islamist regimes who are persecuting Christians, either. China’s authoritarian atheist government, fearful of the revolutionary potential of Christian minorities, is tightening its restrictions on the country’s Christians, enforcing its laws against Chinese “house churches” (churches that operate outside the purview of the official state church) and evangelistic speech with greater severity than in previous years.
South Asia is also becoming a hotbed for anti-Christian persecution. According to Open Doors USA, an organization tracking Christian persecution across the world, Indian Christians now face an “extreme” level of persecution, up from “high” just five years ago, due to spikes in Hindu extremism targeting churches, as well as halfhearted government responses failing to protect these minorities. Open Doors USA now claims with evidence that one in three Christians in all of Asia currently face some form of persecution.
Even in the enlightened West, religious freedom is facing its biggest challenge in centuries. Journalists have reported a record 47 documented desecrations of church property in France for February 2019. In Germany, three-quarters of resettled Christian refugees claim to experience persecution, mostly from the Muslim refugees which surround them. The number of attacks on Catholic churches in the whole of Europe is already up 25 percent compared to the number of attacks during a similar period last year.
While many European journalists rightly blame mass migration from majority-Muslim countries for these religious persecution issues, migration is not the only factor here. Just as significant is Western Europe’s culture of enforced secularism, a world where religious speech is policed and religious symbols (such as burqas) are not allowed in French public schools or German business settings.
Western Europe no longer inspires religious freedom. Western Europe is instead now a land where public religion is actively discouraged, a world where religious differences are often hashed out in the dark rather than debated in the daylight.”
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The greatest threat to world peace.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/22/islamic-terrorism-remains-the-worlds-greatest-threat-to-peace/
“Islamic Terrorism Remains The World’s Greatest Threat To Peace
The Sri Lankan massacre is just another harrowing reminder.”
After the horrific mass murder of 50 Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand, there was widespread coverage and a torrent of mainstream news networks contemplating the threat of white supremacy. These conversations, completely reasonable and necessary in the face of violent attacks from a racist gunman, soon began deteriorating into politically motivated and specious claims contending that “white supremacy” had become the predominate terror threat in the world.
Well, the coordinated bomb blasts aimed at Christian worshippers on Easter Sunday, which killed at least 290 people and injured hundreds more, demonstrates the kind of meticulous planning, funding, resources, and support that is still exclusively the domain of radical Islamic terrorism. It’s not merely that the act was planned to maximize the death toll, but that it is a continuation of long-standing efforts by Islamists to destroy the Christian communities left in Asia.
Those who kill in the name of Islam are part of a worldwide, historic, ideological, and political movement that includes, to various degrees and various reasons, radicalized men and women from both great factions of the faith. Then again, terrorist groups—as well as their recruitment and propaganda outfits—are often functioning in Islamic regimes, which either actively sustain terror, tolerate these groups, or pay them off to engage in terrorism elsewhere.
The Christians who remain in the Islamic world are often oppressed in other ways. In a number of these nations, publicly praying in any faith but Islam is forbidden and, in many, converting to Christianity is still punishable by death. “Islamic extremism remains the global, dominant driver of persecution, responsible for initiating oppression and conflict in 35 of the 50 countries on the list,” according to Open Doors, a worldwide Christian group.
The idea that a similar threat exists in the West is risible. There’s not a single Western country that doesn’t afford Muslim citizens the same rights it does as all other citizens. No government on Earth supports white supremacy.
There is no funding infrastructure for those who support white power. There is no Christian or Jewish denomination, or any notable political factions, in those nations that imbue white supremacy with any theological or ideological legitimacy. There is no white supremacist government trying to obtain nuclear weapons, and none sending their terrorists to other countries. In the world’s free nations, where any political party can participate in the process, the power of racist groups is minimal.
Yet the American left continues to downplay the danger, first by arguing that Islam has nothing to do with Islamic terrorism, then by lumping every white-skinned person who commits a terrorist act into one imaginary coherent political movement to contrast against it. It’s true that Americans have been spared much Islamic terror since 2002—a year that, curiously, nearly every graph media uses to measure domestic terrorism starts—but only because we’ve spent billions of dollars each year and immense resources, both in lives and treasure, keeping it out of the country and fighting it abroad.
Another reason the majority of Americans might not comprehend Islamic radicalism’s reach is the skewed intensity of the media coverage. Political correctness and a chilling fear of being labeled “Islamophobic” makes it difficult to honestly report on terrorism around the world.”
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The uniformity of groupthink.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/the_antitrump_left_and_the_incredible_uniformity_of_groupthink.html
“Medical conditions, such as psychological disorders, all have a predictably reliable set of symptoms and traits. For example, persons who suffer from narcissistic personality disorder all have exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, a lack of empathy, and several other shared behaviors. (Think Barack Obama, Michael Avenatti, Chris Cuomo, and their ilk. Though Trump is often called a narcissist by the Left, he is not; he is extremely empathetic and extraordinarily magnanimous.)
Similarly, those who hold certain political views predictably share numerous characteristics. Jed Babbin has a column at The American Spectator, “The Democrats’ Fanaticism,” in which he lays out the impenetrable Trump-hatred of the Left. Leftists are unable to give up on the Trump-colluded-with-Russia meme they have relied upon to destroy the presidency of Donald Trump. They are obsessed, unable to address any other issue that requires their attention. They cannot accept the Mueller Report’s conclusion that there was in fact no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Babbin quotes Churchill: A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. That perfectly describes the Democratic Party of today. What is interesting is the how much in lockstep are the political views these people have in common.
The people who are convinced Trump has no business being president, no matter how successful he has been in spite of their nonstop attacks, are the same folks who are convinced that we, humanity at large, are a blight upon the planet and causing global warming. Climate has indeed changed constantly, but, in their quest to control how we all live, leftists are certain that we, especially Americans, are responsible for a slight rise (or drop) in temperature here and there. These are the same people who have embraced the notion that sex is fluid! It is not. Yes, gender dysphoria exists; it is a mental condition.
The same people who hate Trump believe in the hoax of global warming and are letting small children “choose” their sex. A trans child is the latest celebrity accessory. To those on the other side of such nonsense, this is child abuse, especially when children as young as eight are given over to doctors who begin hormone treatments that will likely ruin their lives.
Who are those who think speech one disagrees with is a form of violence? The very same people. They believe that conservative speakers should not be welcome on college campuses because their words might make students feel unsafe. They openly oppose the free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. These are the same folks who think people should be able to use the restroom of the sex with which they “identify.” Thus, a teenage boy who feels like a girl must be allowed to shower with the girls after gym class. If that makes those girls uncomfortable, too bad. Their discomfort is politically incorrect. Only the feelings of the trans person matter.”
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So the word of the day is impeachment, even though no crimes have been committed or proven.
Some people thought everyone would just move on after Trump was cleared. 🙂
The coming IG report is going to make that even harder.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/04/23/igs_fisa_probe_may_hamper_dems_impeachment_plans_140130.html
“IG’s FISA Probe May Hamper Dems’ Impeachment Plans”
“As Democrats mull how far to push the impeachment envelope against President Trump after Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion with Russia in the 2016 election but punted on obstruction of justice charges, another investigation could further blunt their attempts to oust the president from office or damage his re-election chances.
Amid calls from Trump and his supporters to “investigate the investigators,” Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been hard at work over the last year looking into the sources and methods the FBI used to begin surveillance of a one-time Trump campaign adviser based at least in part on discredited information gathered by a former British spy.
That packet of intelligence, known as the “Steele dossier,” contains salacious and unsubstantiated details about Trump’s alleged romps with Russian prostitutes, along with business and political quid pro quos with Russian officials.
Attorney General Robert Barr said the inspector general is wrapping up his probe and could release a final report as early as next month.
Those interviewed by Horowitz and his team over the past year, according to Politico, say he seems intensely focused on undermining the dossier and credibility of Christopher Steele, the former British MI6 agent who produced the document. Steele had served as a confidential source for the FBI since 2010 until a falling out over his leaks to the media about the Trump-Russia probe.
While prominent Democrats have accused Mueller of failing to do his duty and Barr of prioritizing the interests of Trump over the American people, they’ll have a more difficult time assailing Horowitz, a Harvard-educated lawyer appointed by President Obama to the DoJ’s top watchdog post in 2012.”
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Speaking of Obama…….
I think the coup attempt against Trump is a bigger deal than this scandal though, although they are related.
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/439808-10-factors-making-russia-election-interference-the-most-enduring-scandal
“10 factors making Russia election interference the most enduring scandal of the Obama era”
“There’s at least one conclusion on which there’s largely bipartisan agreement: Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election. No vote tallies were changed, according to Obama administration intel analyses, but the interference was serious enough that many insist drastic steps must be taken to avoid a repeat in 2020.
Now, with special counsel Robert Mueller’s exhaustive investigation over and no Trump official charged with taking part in any Russki scheme, Russian election interference may turn out to be the most persistent scandal of the Obama era.
To date, it’s also one of the most puzzling.
Depending on which set of facts we examine, Russian interference was alternately foreseeable and unpredictable; expected, yet surprising.
The official reaction to it has begun to unfold as a Keystone Cops-type response by top Obama intel officials. They appear to have been so distracted by political motivations that they lost sight of the very danger they now claim threatens our democracy.
Here are 10 reasons why Russia election interference seems set to become the most enduring scandal of the Obama administration.
Missed opportunity. Perhaps the best shot at disrupting Russian interference came as early as fall 2015. That’s when the FBI supposedly detected successful efforts by Russian hackers to breach Democratic National Committee (DNC) computers. For reasons unknown, the systems and others remained vulnerable to further attacks.
By July 2016, the DNC and FBI both had concluded Russians were responsible for additional hacks. Yet, the DNC reportedly refused to allow the FBI to examine its servers and data in a timely fashion and — for reasons unexplained — the FBI failed to confiscate them. Obviously, when national security is at stake, the FBI does not need permission to examine evidence. A senior law enforcement official told CNN the DNC’s withholding of crucial evidence “caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.” If the FBI (then led by Director James Comey) had acted quickly and definitively to examine the evidence, could that have prevented further interference?
Denial. On Oct. 18, 2016, President Obama made a comment that rivals his “ISIS is the jayvee team” remark in terms of its wrongheadedness. He declared that “no serious person” would suggest America’s elections could be rigged. “There’s no evidence that that has happened in the past or that there are instances in which that will happen this time,” said Obama.
At the time, the president was addressing a reporter’s question about voter fraud. But it’s significant to note that he offered this answer smack dab in the middle of the supposed Russia targeting of our election process. His failure to take the obvious opportunity to address this vulnerability implies he did not fully appreciate the threat, or was unwilling to confront it. Instead, he left the impression that the U.S. election process is impenetrable and outside interference is impossible.
Obama also infamously mocked Republican nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 when Romney suggested Russia was a foe to be reckoned with. This begs the question of whether problems could have been staved off if the president had taken Russia more seriously.”
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Poor Elijah. He can’t fish if you won’t give him no bait. 🙂
Give him nothing. If he doesn’t like it, too bad. Tell him to thank Eric Holder, who showed us how to do it. 🙂
https://apnews.com/b1de0b62669c42e88939e0fdfa792092
“The struggle between House Democrats and the Trump administration over investigations intensified Tuesday as a former White House official defied a subpoena and the Treasury Department ignored a deadline for providing President Donald Trump’s tax returns.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the White House has adopted the “untenable” position that it can ignore requests from the Democratic majority in the House.
“It appears that the president believes that the Constitution does not apply to his White House, that he may order officials at will to violate their legal obligations, and that he may obstruct attempts by Congress to conduct oversight,” Cummings said in a statement.
Cummings was specifically referring to Carl Kline, a former White House personnel security director, who was subpoenaed by Democrats.
Kline did not show up Tuesday for a scheduled deposition, and Cummings said he is consulting with other lawmakers and staff about scheduling a vote to hold Kline in contempt of Congress. The committee subpoenaed Kline after one of his former subordinates told the panel that dozens of people in Trump’s administration were granted security clearances despite “disqualifying issues” in their backgrounds.
Trump said he doesn’t want former or current aides testifying in Congress, “where it’s very partisan — obviously very partisan.””
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The WH is fighting it, as they should because it serves no legitimate purpose. It’s all politics.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/white-house-plans-to-fight-house-subpoena-of-former-counsel-donald-mcgahn-for-testimony-on-mueller-report/ar-BBWdPXY
“The White House plans to fight a subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee for former White House counsel Donald McGahn to testify, according to people familiar with the matter, setting up another showdown in the aftermath of the special counsel report.
The Trump administration also plans to oppose other requests from House committees for the testimony of current and former aides about actions in the White House described in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report, according to two people familiar with internal thinking who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke of the plans on the condition of anonymity.
White House lawyers plan to tell attorneys for administration witnesses called by the House that they will be asserting executive privilege over their testimony, officials said.
Such a move will intensify a power struggle between the Trump administration and congressional Democrats, potentially setting up a protracted court battle.”
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Oh my. Looky here.
Someone has more ‘splainin’ to do. Lookin’ at you Barry……
And again, thank God for Judicial Watch.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-fbi-admits-hillary-clinton-emails-found-in-obama-white-house/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=press_release
“Judicial Watch: FBI Admits Hillary Clinton Emails Found in Obama White House”
“Also Confirms Over 49,000 Clinton Server Emails Found on Weiner Laptop”
“Judicial Watch announced today that a senior FBI official admitted, in writing and under oath, that the agency found Clinton email records in the Obama White House, specifically, the Executive Office of the President. The FBI also admitted nearly 49,000 Clinton server emails were reviewed as result of a search warrant for her material on the laptop of Anthony Weiner.
E.W. (Bill) Priestap, assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, made the disclosure to Judicial Watch as part of court-ordered discovery into the Clinton email issue.
U.S District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides, as well as Priestap, to be deposed or answer writer questions under oath. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”
Priestap was asked by Judicial Watch to identify representatives of Hillary Clinton, her former staff, and government agencies from which “email repositories were obtained.” Priestap responded with the following non-exhaustive list:
Bryan Pagliano
Cheryl Mills
Executive Office of the President [Emphasis added]
Heather Samuelson
Jacob Sullivan
Justin Cooper
United States Department of State
United States Secret Service
Williams & Connolly LLP
Priestap also testifies that 48,982 emails were reviewed as a result of a warrant for Clinton email account information from the laptop of Anthony Weiner, who had been married to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
A complete copy of Priestap’s interrogatory responses is available here. Priestap, is serving as assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division and helped oversee both the Clinton email and the 2016 presidential campaign investigations. Priestap testified in a separate lawsuit that Clinton was the subject of a grand jury investigation related to her BlackBerry email accounts.
“This astonishing confirmation, made under oath by the FBI, shows that the Obama FBI had to go to President Obama’s White House office to find emails that Hillary Clinton tried to destroy or hide from the American people.” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “No wonder Hillary Clinton has thus far skated – Barack Obama is implicated in her email scheme.”
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This is the other reason this shouldn’t all just go away.
The victims. The people who did nothing wrong, broke no laws, but had their lives ruined anyway by people seeking to get Trump. This is why it can’t be forgotten, and we need to make sure it never happens again.
It’s also why we need to hold the media accountable for their role in this conspiracy. They printed lies that ruined lives, and they don’t even have the decency to admit it.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-the-personal-cost-of-the-trump-russia-probe
“Byron York: The personal cost of the Trump-Russia investigation”
“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is over, but the aftereffects of the Trump-Russia affair live on. One such aftereffect is the reluctance of some important figures in the 2016 campaign to speak out, for fear of continued legal entanglements.
Take J.D. Gordon, who served as the Trump campaign’s director of national security. Never accused of any wrongdoing, he played a central role in one of the most controversial and least understood episodes of the Trump-Russia matter: the approval of the 2016 GOP platform at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
On July 18, 2016, the Washington Post published a story headlined, “Trump campaign guts GOP’s anti-Russia stance on Ukraine.” Below a scandalously erroneous headline, the piece reported that the campaign, acting contrary to the views of “almost all Republican foreign policy leaders,” killed a proposal that the United States provide lethal aid to Ukraine in its struggle against Russia.
Why would the campaign do that? Democrats quickly accused Trump of watering down national security, of selling out Ukraine, to please Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It got worse. As a media frenzy built, Trump opponents cited the platform as Exhibit A in their case that the Trump campaign and Russia conspired to influence the 2016 election. As the tale went, the Russians helped Trump, he was in their debt, and he paid them back by supporting weakened U.S. policy toward Ukraine.
It was all entirely wrong. If anyone bothered to look into the facts — almost no one did — they would have discovered that the original draft of the GOP platform was quite strong on Russia and Ukraine. Not a word of it was removed. Then a single delegate proposed an amendment that would have added promises of tougher U.S. sanctions on Russia, greater military coordination with NATO, and the provision of “lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine’s armed forces.
Gordon was the Trump staffer in the meeting as delegates considered the amendment. He did not object to the proposal of tougher sanctions, did not object to the proposal of greater military coordination with NATO, but changed the proposal to provide “lethal defensive weapons” to a promise of “appropriate assistance to the armed forces of Ukraine.” (Gordon later told investigators he changed part of the amendment because he felt it was not in line with candidate Trump’s position on Ukraine.)
The revised amendment was accepted, and the final platform was tougher on Russia and Ukraine than the original platform draft. It was not “gutted.” It was strengthened.
Nevertheless, the media and Democrats ran with the opposite story, and the “gutting” of the platform became part of the collusion narrative. And then the investigations started.”
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Because murderers, thieves, and rapist are more likely to vote Democrat. That’s why.
They should set up polling stations at prisons.
Or maybe jut count the prison population as Democratic votes.
Same for street dwellers. Just drive by and count them.
That’s all we need. .
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As if we didn’t already have enough to worry about.
I see on ATT news that Pluto’s atmosphere is about to collapse.
Same issue says Megyn Kelly is enjoying her vacation in Hawaii.
Don’t laugh. They have equal importance.
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