SteveWire newslinks, analysis, commentary
“Scripture says, if #God is not the Architect, in vain do the builders labor.
Let’s #pray to do God’s Will.
In the upcoming #election, let’s pray to do God’s Will with how each of us casts a vote, as well as with our other democracy-related activities, such as conversations, bumper stickers, yard signs, online posts, volunteering activities and so forth. …”
#Senate #Kavanaugh #SupremeCourt #Abortion #BlaseyFord #Trump
Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, on Oct. 6, 2018, was confirmed to a seat as Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court by a Senate vote of 50-48.
One Senator voting “present,” indicating that, while she would have voted “no,” she was pairing her vote, presumably as a courtesy, was pairing her vote with another Senator who was absent for his daughter’s wedding.
So Kavanaugh was not actually confirmed by a majority of the Senate itself, but merely a slight majority of those Senators present. Had one vote changed to the negative, Pence could have broken the tie in favor of confirmation. Apparently if all Senators had been present, the Senator attending the wedding, and the Senator pairing her vote with him, would have made the total 51-49, also resulting in confirmation.
The Kavanaugh nomination drew controversy on multiple counts. Some proponents of decriminalized abortion suggested that Kavanaugh might become the deciding vote on the Court to scale back or reverse past decisions blocking prosecutions for abortion, while others suggested the Kavanaugh would actually uphold abortion.
The author of this article repeatedly raised concerns about Kavanaugh’s association with outgoing Justice Anthony Kennedy, and Kavanaugh’s ongoing publicly professed admiration for Kennedy.
Kennedy is one of the main architects of judicially spawned abortion in the United States, as well as a major architect of judicially fostered homosexual jurisprudence. Kennedy was the deciding vote and co-author of the Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey decision in 1992 that carried forward decriminalized abortion when it essentially upheld but modified Roe v. Wade. Kavanaugh clerked for Kennedy within a year or so of that decision.
Kennedy would later vote, and co-author, Supreme Court jurisprudence promoting the idea of sodomy, homosexuality and homosexual “marriage” as Constitutional rights.
Kavanaugh updated and reaffirmed his association with Kennedy during Kavanaugh’s nomination process by declaring Kennedy to be a champion of liberty, leaving a legacy of liberty. As pointed out by the author, that position defies the notion that the first liberty is the right of the innocent not to be deprived of life, as well as the concept that a government’s legitimacy is grounded up its defense of human life, one of the tenets of other basic principles such as justice and peaceful social order.
Meanwhile, however excruciating or involved the confirmation and investigative process might have become, there appeared to be no definitive resolution of questions raised about past alcohol-related criminal sexual wrongdoing by Kavanaugh, alleged by psychology professor Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, or other issues raised by Ford or others. One might wonder why, and how, a process that became so intrusive and so involved did not manage to get to the bottom of what actually did, or did not, happen.
In the case of a confirmation hearing, the issue is not whether to deprive the nominee of life or liberty, or of extracting money damages. The issue is whether to abstain from providing a position of great power. So, even though the subject matter relates to allegations of criminality and allegations of tortious misconduct, the standard of proof, and the willingness to remain neutral by not moving forward with confirmation, presumably could be different than the standards of proof for a criminal trial or civil proceeding.
“Nearly 200 children who returned to school unvaccinated have been sent home across North Dakota … * * * One of the new required shots for school children is the meningococcal conjugate vaccine for 16- and 17-year-olds entering the 11th and 12th grades … [addressing] a serious bacterial infection that can cause meningitis and ‘possibly lead to death or permanent disability within hours of first symptoms’ …. the disease can also have … non-fatal consequences [such as] ‘… lifelong … neurological damage or loss of limbs. …’
Parents can ask for [moral or religious] exemptions …. Children who have been excluded usually return within three days, according to West Fargo Public Schools. … [T]he immunization rate for measles, mumps and rubella … [has a] national median of 94 percent, reported Inforum.”
Former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was one of the architects of Abortionism as the deciding vote and co-author of the 1992 Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v. Casey decision that modified Roe v. Wade yet carried forward the decriminalization of abortion.
Yet, within a year, current Donald Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh signed on as a law clerk for Anthony Kennedy. Rather than repudiate that decision and apologize, during his nomination process, Kavanaugh instead has ratified and updated his association with Kennedy by calling Kennedy a champion of liberty, saying Kennedy has left a legacy of liberty.
So Kavanaugh clerked for a pro-abortion Justice who was the deciding vote keeping abortion going, and now promotes the pro-abortion Justice as a “champion of liberty.”
If you are prolife, you need to oppose the Kavanaugh nomination. And, if you do not, it calls into question whether you were ever pro-life to begin with.
Kavanaugh additionally allowed pro-abortion Condolleeza Rice to help introduce him before the Judiciary Committee.
Kavanaugh’s association with powerful, celebrity pro-abortion figures implies a shocking lack of moral conscience and poor judgment.
Abortion is the biggest human rights violation of our time, and he has associated himself with it by his actions and his remarks.
Human life, and the right of the innocent not to be killed, is the most fundamental of liberties, making abortion one of the biggest enemies of liberty. Protection of innocent human life also is one of the foundations of legitimate government, one of the excuses government has for existing in the first place. Yet Kavanaugh has associated himself with enemies of the right to life and persons who thereby have set themselves against the defense of American lives.
Working for a pro-abortion judge, alone, is enough to make Kavanaugh unfit. Yet calling a pro-abortion judge a champion of liberty means that Kavanaugh is a person who stands liberty upside-down and someone whose analytical intellect is either wholly unfit or twisted by self-serving dishonesty.
One can only speculate as to Kavanaugh’s motives, then and now.
Yet one of the biggest problems with abortion today is the risk that something horrific and unthinkable, the deliberate taking of defenseless human life, has become “business as usual” or routine. Kavanaugh’s casual attitude towards saluting Kennedy contributes to a climate of human life being regarded as cheap and expendable.
Kavanaugh’s flippant, oblivious attitude stands in the way of the necessary readjustment of public attitudes about this widespread human rights violation.
As such, Kavanaugh might even be responsible for deaths already. Women in difficult situations, pressured into confused acquiescence with the killing of their child, might back their way into because some segments of society wish to blur over the nature of the situation. Kavanaugh has added to the blur.
Given his origins as a local Washingtonian child of privilege, we have no idea to what extent Kavanaugh is a self-serving social climber who decided to “go along to get along.” We know that, amidst accusations of drunken, underaged, psychopathic, criminal behavior, Kavanaugh, in a sometimes emotionalistic set of responses, blurted out defensive remarks about his high school class rank — as if that piece of data had any relevance whatsoever to the charges.
Now, Kavanaugh did not even go to the best school for boys in the Washington area. That would be Saint Anselm’s Abbey Academy, traditionally one of the top-10 schools in America for SAT scores. Kavanaugh went to a different school that presumably is respectable academically, yet is more of a posh, country-club-like school. Yet if, all these years later, as a would-be grown-up, aKvanaugh still gets excited about his class rank, to the point that he apparently thinks it helps deflect accusations of criminality, just how important was it to him to climb the social ladder, such as with Yale, plumb judicial clerkships and so forth.
Kavanugh is somebody who was made a partner at Kirkland & Ellis less than a decade out of law school, with no law firm experience, based solely on his judicial clerkships, a brief stint with the Solicitor General and his work for Special Prosecutor Ken Starr.
Did Kavanaugh really not care about the mass murder of innocent American babies in the womb, if being oblivious to that horror meant fluffing his resume with a Supreme Court clerkship, instead of rejecting involvement with a human rights violator?
Is his desire to fluff his credentials now so great, that he wants to continue gliding along in the giddy heights of legal profession and Washingtonian elites, by fantasizing that the clerkship was something impressive, with a champion of liberty, rather than a black mark on his record that should bar him from his own judicial appointment?
In any event, his current posture makes him morally and intellectually unfit for judicial office.
If you, yourself, want to be known as prolife, you cannot support him. If you do support him, you are making it “open season” to expose yourself as not being prolife.
And that goes for the big-money anti-abortion groups that have decided to endorse Kavanaugh personally instead of simply addressing the broader issue. With roughly 60 million surgical abortions in the United States and counting, it would be silly to refer to anything like a “pro-lif establishment.” Yet, to the extent that some big-money nonprofits have tainted themselves by endorsing a troubled nominee like Kavanaugh, they also have exposed themselves as not being a good source of insight or leadership, as not being authentically prolife; and as not being an appropriation destination for financial gifts.
Again, if you, yourself, want to be known as prolife, you cannot support Kavanaugh. If you do support him, you are exposing yourself as not being prolife.
Brett Kavanaugh’s association with, and ongoing endorsement of, pro-abortion former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy as a champion of “liberty,” reveals Kavanaugh’s lack of moral compass and judicial and intellectual incompetence. As such, any loyal American and any person with respect for human life should oppose his confirmation to the Supreme Court and call for his removal from the judiciary.
The biggest threat to American lives, for four decades, has been so-called “abortion,” the deliberate taking of human life in a mother’s womb. Sixty million surgical abortions alone since the Roe v. Wade decision blocked prosecutions for abortion make it a bigger killer of Americans than all wars combined. On average, abortion is nearly like having 9/11 occur every single day.
In 1992, abortion was kept decriminalized by Planned Parenthood v. Casey, with Anthony Kennedy serving as the deciding vote and co-author of the main opinion.
Yet, despite Kavanaugh’s supposed affiliation with the Catholic Faith, and despite his supposedly elite education, Kavanaugh was willing to serve as a law clerk for Anthony Kennedy within a year of Kennedy’s human rights violation as a perpetrator of Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
If Kavanaugh had repudiated his past association with Kennedy, and attributed it immaturity, or a lack of awareness of the horrific scope and nature of abortion within less than two decades of Roe v. Wade, there still would be cause to reject his nomination.
Yet, right up until the present, and throughout his nomination process, Kavanaugh has aggravated his wrongdoing, updated his association with Kennedy, and made it even more egregious by referencing Anthony Kennedy as having a legacy of liberty or being a champion of liberty.
That places Kavanaugh in the position of praising and admiring one of the architects of some of the most massive and atrocious human rights violations in human history.
Additionally, the scope of abortion as, literally, a direct threat and attack on the American population, calls for charges of de facto treason, and calls into question Kavanaugh’s patriotism and loyalty to the United States.
These facts alone would require a rejection of his nomination.
Defense of human life is the cornerstone of a national government’s right to exist, its justification for being a government.
Yet to associate an architect of decriminalized abortion with liberty, a cornerstone value of the American Republic, not only reveals Kavanaugh as an anti-American hypocrite, it calls into question his competency to engage in rational thought and honest intellectual analysis, and therefore calls into question his capacity to serve on the bench.
The most fundamental liberty, and first liberty interest mentioned in the nation’s founding Declaration of Independence, is the right to live and not be killed.
Abortion, the deliberate taking of defenseless human life, is the opposite of liberty.
Indeed, it is the defenselessness of the targeted victim that helps defines abortion. If a child in the womb had the capacity to defend herself, there would be no abortion.
Moreover, abortion’s scope is not only an existential threat to America, it is an existential threat to American democracy and the legitimacy of the American government. It is not simply the the case that government justifies its existence on its ability to defend human life, but embraces the taking of human life on a massive scale.
Decriminalized surgical Abortion has killed roughly the same number of persons necessary to get elected to the Presidency. One of the major political parties is in a position where it cannot form a legitimate government, because roughly as many Americans have been killed, in their mothers’ wombs, as the number of votes that party gets in presidential elections. It would be like Hitler murdering 6 million Jews, getting 6 million votes from Nazis, and claiming that he was duly elected by the nation as a whole.
And, in addition to some Republicans being pro-abortion themselves, lukewarm Republicans mouthing anti-abortion positions but tepidly failing to take action to remedy the situation, call into question their own weak leadership and legitimacy.
Yet, on the level of intellect and rational analysis, Kavanaugh’s lauding of the person most responsible for decriminalized abortion as a champion of “liberty” is not simply treasonous.
It is, to put it simply, stupid.
Since getting killed is the opposite of liberty, Kavanaugh lauding an architect of the mass-killing of innocent American lives makes Kavanaugh sound like a manipulative liar and an intellectually stunted buffoon.
Additionally troubling is the context of Kavanaugh as a Washingtonian child of privilege, raising the prospect of him “going along to get along,” putting status and prestige, and resume-filling, ahead of right and wrong and ahead of loyalty to the nation. His continued malfeasance in praising Kennedy raises the prospect of Kavanaugh of putting the desire to be “in with the in-crowd,” whether in Washington or in the troubled would-be “legal” profession ahead of moral and intellectual sanity, and ahead of the duty to protect American lives.
Any loyal American should oppose the Kavanaugh nomination.
Any person wanting to respect human life should oppose the Kavanaugh nomination.
Andy would-be “anti-abortion” group or individual, or would-be “conservative” group or individual that endorses Kavanaugh should be dismissed as contrary to their supposed mission; should be denied donations or honors; and should be rejected as a would-be voice for pro-life or traditional values.
Any legislator promoting the Kavanaugh nomination should be rejected and voted out. If such a person has been posing as pro-life or traditional values or conservative, that might help explain why decriminalized abortion has malingered on for four decades — because someone flying a “false flag” took up space in the body politic that should have gone to someone who actually holds those values.
Of course, another reason that decriminalized abortion has malingered on has been Congress going AWOL, committing dereliction of duty and drawing their salary under false pretenses, by failing to carry out their Constitutional duty to impeach and remove renegade judges — renegade judges and justices committing crimes against the Constitution and associating with the treasonous mass-killings of Americans in their mother’s wombs.
The Constitution provides measures for its own amending. A renegade judge or justice amending the Constitution in violation of that provision — such as by judicial fiat, by a vote of less than ten politically lawyers serving as justices — has committed an illegal act.
A renegade judge doing so, with the foreseeable and known result of the mass-murder of Americans, should be regarded as treasonous.
The Constitution does not have a gap allowing such a thing to happen; the Founding Fathers did not have a lack of foresight to fail to provide for such a contingency. The Constitution provides for the removal of judges, by action of Congress. Failure to carry out that Constitutional duty makes the weak, derelict legislators accessories by omission.
If we see that the same people pushing the Kavanaugh nomination also have failed to carry out their Constitutional duties of office, if we see that they have failed to take steps to remove renegade judges, then their involvement with Kavanaugh provides a useful filter calling for their exposure and removal — a fresh reminder that they need to be rejected as failed leaders and removed from office, and replaced with actual leaders who will do their jobs and be loyal to America.
Of course, an added factor is that President Donald Trump also has praised Anthony Kennedy.
As long as Trump remains in office, it is up to Americans to send the nomination back to Trump, and tell him to “get it right’ this time by rejecting Anthony Kennedy’s anti-American legacy and nominating a proper nominee instead of Kavanaugh.
Meanwhile, Trump has added further disgrace by appointing a pro-abortion Republican, Rudolph Giuliani, to a key White House post.
If there is an effort to “Dump Trump,” these embarrassing missteps should prompt such a movement now, while there is still time before the next Presidential election.
A Republican failure to do so would further expose, as fraudulent “cocktail conservatives,” any Republicans who additionally demonstrate a disrespect for the nation by attempting to push forward the troubled Kavanaugh nomination.
“A federal judge said Special Counsel Robert Mueller should not have ‘unfettered power’ in probing ties between … Trump’s campaign and Russia … accus[ing] Mueller of using criminal cases to pressure Trump’s allies to turn against him. At a tense hearing in a federal court in Virginia … U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III sharply questioned whether Mueller exceeded his authority in filing tax and bank fraud charges against Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort. … ‘I’ve been saying that for a long time. It’s a witch hunt,’ [Trump] said of Mueller’s probe ….”
“The Federal Reserve held short-term interest rates steady Wednesday and indicated it remains on track to raise them gradually in coming months to keep the expanding economy on an even keel. … after its two-day policy meeting, offered nothing to dispel market expectations that it would deliver its second rate increase of the year … in June. … Fed officials would like to see the jobless rate remain steady … [They] have to sort out how the recent fiscal policy changes could boost growth and inflation. It is probably too soon for officials to have reached firm conclusions …. Trade policy is another wild card. …”
“… in nearly three decades of American mass school shootings … killers mostly use guns owned by a family member …. The Wall Street Journal reviewed … school shootings with at least three victims dead or injured since 1990 and found 32. Most shooters are white male teenagers. In 25 … cases … shooters were teenagers or younger. In 17 of the 20 of those cases where details were available on where the shooter got the gun, they were sourced at home … a few also [got] … weapons from relatives. About 42% of U.S. adults say they live in households with a gun ….”
House Permanent Select Committee on #Intelligence
#Russia Investigation
Following a more than yearlong, bipartisan investigation into Russia active measures targeting the 2016 U.S. #election, the House Intelligence Committee has completed a draft report of 150+ pages, with 600+ citations. The draft report addresses, in detail, each of the questions within the agreed parameters of the investigation, as announced in March 2017. It analyzes:
The draft report contains 40+ initial findings that describe:
The draft report includes 25+ proposed recommendations for Congress and the executive branch to improve:
The draft report will be provided to the Committee minority on March 13 for review and comment. After adoption it will be submitted for a declassification review, and a declassified version will be made public. The report’s completion will signify the closure of one chapter in the Committee’s robust oversight of the threat posed by Moscow—which began well before the investigation and will continue thereafter.
Additional follow-on efforts arising from the investigation include oversight of the unmasking of Americans’ names in intelligence reports, FISA abuse, and other matters.
Whoops, better scrub your facebook posts and twitter rants. Secrecy News reports that Congress is focusing on asking the executive branch to delve into social media activity when vetting persons needing a security clearance.
“Members of Congress are urging the executive branch to update and expand the security clearance process by examining the social media presence of individuals … considered for a security clearance for access to classified information. ‘I put more effort into understanding who my interns are’ than the security clearance process does, said Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr at a hearing …. ‘You go to the areas that you learn the most about them — social media is right at the top of the list.’ ‘I can’t envision anyone coming into the office that you haven’t thoroughly checked out everything that they’ve said online,’ …
Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a bill to promote the use of social media in security clearance investigations. …”
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
May 09, 2017
Statement from the Press SecretaryToday, President Donald J. #Trump informed #FBI Director James #Comey that he has been terminated and removed from office. President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“The FBI is one of our Nation’s most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement,” said President Trump.
A search for a new permanent FBI Director will begin immediately.
“… Trump on Tuesday fired FBI Director James Comey … ending a rocky year-long stretch for the top law enforcement officer who came under fire for his handling of the Clinton email probe — and whose agency has been investigating whether Trump’s campaign had ties to Russia. …
The president told Comey in a brief letter that he could not ‘effectively lead’ the bureau and called for ‘new leadership that restores public trust and confidence’ in law enforcement.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the president’s decision was based on ‘the clear recommendations’ of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. …”
“The Congressional Research Service examines H.R. 1628, The American Health Care Act (AHCA) …”
(WhiteHouse.gov – Gary Cohn – April 26, 2017 – reposted from: whitehouse.gov/blog/2017/04/26/president-trump-proposed-massive-tax-cut-heres-what-you-need-know)
We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something big. President #Trump has made #tax reform a priority, and we have a #Republican #Congress that wants to get it done. This is something that #Democrats should support too because it’s good for the American people.
The President is going to seize this opportunity by leading the most significant tax reform legislation since 1986 – and one of the biggest tax cuts in American history.
The President has focused on three things since his campaign: job creation, economic growth, and helping low and middle-income families who have been left behind by this economy. He understands that there are a lot of people in this country that feel like they work hard and still can’t get ahead. They are sick of turning their paychecks over to Washington and having no idea how their tax dollars are spent. They are frustrated by a tax code that is so complicated that they can’t even do their own taxes.
That’s why tax reform is such a big priority for this President. He cares about making the economy work better for the American people.
We are going to cut taxes for businesses to make them competitive, and we are going to cut taxes for the American people – especially low and middle-income families.
In 1935, we had a one-page tax form consisting of 34 lines and two pages of instructions. Today, the basic 1040 form has 79 lines and 211 pages of instructions. Instead of a single tax form, the IRS now has 199 tax forms on the individual side of the tax code alone. Taxpayers spend nearly 7 billion hours complying with the tax code each year, and nearly 90% of taxpayers need help filing their taxes.
We are going to cut taxes and simplify the tax code by taking the current 7 tax brackets we have today and reducing them to only three brackets: 10 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent.
We are going to double the standard deduction so that a married couple won’t pay any taxes on the first $24,000 of income they earn. So in essence, we are creating a 0 percent tax rate for the first $24,000 that a couple earns.
The larger standard deduction also leads to simplification because far fewer taxpayers will need to itemize, which means their tax form can go back to that one simple page.
Families in this country will also benefit from tax relief to help them with child and dependent care expenses.
We are going to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). The AMT creates significant complications and burdens by requiring taxpayers to do their taxes twice to see which is higher. That makes no sense; we should have one simple tax code.
Job creation and economic growth is the top priority for this Administration, and nothing drives economic growth like capital investment. Therefore, we are going to return the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends to 20 percent by repealing the harmful 3.8 percent Obamacare tax. That tax has been a direct hit on investment income and small business owners.
We are going to repeal the death tax. The threat of being hit by the death tax leads small business owners and farmers in this country to waste countless hours and resources on complicated estate planning to make sure their children aren’t hit with a huge tax when they die. No one wants their children to have to sell the family business to pay an unfair tax.
We are going to eliminate most of the tax breaks that mainly benefit high-income individuals. Home ownership, charitable giving, and retirement savings will be protected – but other tax benefits will be eliminated.
This is not going to be easy. Doing big things never is. But one thing is for certain: I would not bet against this President. He will get this done for the American people.
Gary Cohn is the chief economic advisor to President Donald J. Trump and Director of the National Economic Council
“As a young federal prosecutor in the 1990s, Rod J. Rosenstein played a key role in the highly charged independent investigation of the president and first lady, Bill and Hillary Clinton, over their investments in a failed real estate company known as Whitewater. Rosenstein now is poised to take over another sensitive investigation: the FBI counterintelligence inquiry into whether President Trump’s current or former aides colluded with Russian intelligence to interfere with last year’s election. …”
“Republican congressional investigators expect a potential ‘smoking gun’ establishing that the #Obama administration spied on the #Trump transition team, and possibly the president-elect himself, will be produced to the House #Intelligence Committee this week …. Classified intelligence showing incidental collection of Trump team communications, purportedly seen by committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and described by him in vague terms … came from multiple sources …. The intelligence corroborated information about surveillance of the Trump team that was known to Nunes, sources said, even before President Trump accused his predecessor of having wiretapped him …. The intelligence is said to leave no doubt the Obama administration, in its closing days, was using the cover of legitimate surveillance on foreign targets to spy on President-elect Trump, according to sources. The key to that conclusion is the unmasking of selected U.S. persons whose names appeared in the intelligence, … the paper trail leaves no other plausible purpose for the unmasking other than to damage the incoming Trump administration. …”
“… Justice Kennedy was incredibly welcoming and gracious … he taught me so much. I am forever grateful. … These judges brought me up in the law. Truly, I would not be here without them. Today is as much their day as it is mine. …” — Judge Neil Gorsuch, at the White House, Jan. 31, 2017
Neil Gorsuch was willing to clerk for pro-abortion Anthony Kennedy within roughly a year after Kennedy’s aggressive pro-abortion stance manifested itself in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), in which Kennedy was one of multiple coauthors of the Court’s decision. Kennedy apparently was the only active Justice that Gorsuch actually clerked for, part-time while Gorsuch used his status as a token clerk for retired Justice Byron White as a back door into the world of Supreme Court clerkships.
Even just last year, Kennedy abused his power on the Supreme Court to tip the balance in favor of attacking Texas requirements aimed at protecting women’s health, with Kennedy acting in favor of looser access to abortion instead.
Not only has Gorsuch failed to repudiate his past association with Kennedy, he spoke favorably of Kennedy, within the past two months, when accepting Donald Trump’s nomination of Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
All of these facts raise serious questions about Gorsuch’s moral compass, judgment, analytical capacity and overall lack of suitability for a judicial position in the United States.
The issue is not simply how to parse some of Gorsuch’s words, in a dry, static, narrowly construed legalistic manner; the issue is what his words, posture and failure to speak, say about his thinking, abilities and character, past and present, against the backdrop of an underperforming, morally questionable legal profession and wholesale slaughter of vulnerable Americans in the womb.
Interestingly enough, the White House does not seem to make it easy to find Gorsuch’s full comments from January in text, even though they are included on the White House video. According to a transcript from the Denver Post, Gorsuch asserted:
“‘I began my legal career working for Byron White, the last Coloradan to serve on the Supreme Court, and the only justice to lead the NFL in rushing. [Laughter] He was one of the smartest and most courageous men I’ve ever known. When Justice White retired, he gave me the chance to work for Justice Kennedy, as well. Justice Kennedy was incredibly welcoming and gracious, and like Justice White, he taught me so much. I am forever grateful. And if you’ve ever met Judge David Sentelle, you’ll know just how lucky I was to land a clerkship with him right out of school. [Waves] Thank you. These judges brought me up in the law. Truly, I would not be here without them. Today is as much their day as it is mine. …'”
The comments seem somewhat manipulative from the beginning, given the seeming implication that Gorsuch was trying to portray himself as having started out as a regular Supreme Court law clerk, only to scramble to continue helping the institution after his employer retired. The facts seem to indicate that he actually started out, from the beginning, working for a retired Justice as a kind of token retirement benefit accorded the retired Justice, and, having inserted himself onto the scene, also took part-time work with Kennedy, as his only work for an active Justice. Left out is whether Gorsuch even attempted to work for a more conservative or moderate Justice, or why it is he ended up with a human rights violator like Kennedy. Additionally concerning is whether, with Trump failing to appoint a non-lawyer to the Supreme Court, he has ended up a lawyer so neck-deep in the artificial world of the legal profession that he “cannot see the forest for the trees.” One is left to wonder whether a status-hungry, resume-filling Gorsuch, lost in the arcane world of lawyers, decided that the pedigree of working for an active Justice was more important than the millions of American lives being snuffed out, and Rule of Law being undermined, by the anti-constitutional human rights violator that he was associating with when he worked for Kennedy.
There reportedly have been roughly 59 million surgical abortions in the United States since the Supreme Court began blocking prosecutions for abortions in 1973.
The Supreme Court’s decisions obstructing abortion prosecutions, seeking to enshrine prenatal child-killing as a would-be “right,” are illegal and an abuse of power.
The Constitution provides an explicit mechanism for amending the Constitution, including to account for shifts in public values. A simple majority vote by an aggressive Supreme Court is not that mechanism.
Kennedy’s actions promoting abortion are an shockingly overt attack on, and violation of, the Constitution.
Under centuries of political theory, the core duty of any government, and any government’s core justification for existing, is the defense of innocent human life.
A democracy, in particular, rests its government’s legitimacy on serving the will and interests of its people, including protecting the rights of minority portions of the population, including safeguarding and respecting the rights of all persons living within the nation. The most fundamental right, recognized since the founding of the republic, is the right to live and not be killed.
Kennedy and his pro-abortion confederates essentially have declared a civil war against an enormous, and most vulnerable, portion of the American population. In the process Kennedy and his pro-abortion confederates have launched an assault on human life, an assault on Rule of Law, an assault on the American Way of Life and Americans themselves, and a relentless drive to arrogate to mere lawyers with political connections a fanciful self-proclaimed status of philosopher king.
Moreover, a key element of pro-abortion Supreme Court judicial ideology is to define, condemn and doom the victims precisely because of their helplessness, saying that it is because a victim is helpless (or lacking so-called independent “viability”) that members of that class of persons may be killed, on a massive scale, without cause, without due process, using methods that are almost unimaginably vicious and painful. There are methods by which abortion is death by torture, ripping apart the bodies of living persons who can feel pain, while they are defenseless in their mothers’ wombs.
There are, of course, other issues of concern surrounding the troubled tenure of Anthony Kennedy. However, so-called abortion is numerically the biggest threat to American lives, and, by that measure, on that basic level, the country’s biggest de facto national security threat.
Given that abortion is killing millions of Americans, Kennedy and his pro-abortion confederates are also essentially guilty of de facto domestic treason, and conspiracy to murder or conspiracy to become accessories to murder. Even if the mechanism for the mass-killing includes intermediate steps by a multitude of others, by comparison, if Kennedy simply issued a decree requiring sticks of dynamite to be made available to terrorists, to suggest that Kennedy would not share responsibility for the resulting deaths would be absurd. The same is true of his efforts to “tee up” millions of abortions.
Kennedy and his pro-abortion confederates should be impeached and removed on that basis. Congress has been remiss in failing to carry its duty in that regard, as a last line of defense placed upon Congress by the Constitution and the many Americans who have laid down their lives over two centuries to defend that Constitution and the American Way of Life, sacrifices for which Kennedy and the weak-willed Congress have demonstrated repeated contempt.
Additionally, abortion is racist and sexist, with a disproportionate impact on racial minorities and females, giving rise to concern over other severe moral and constitutional defects. There also have been charges of abortion being used to cover up evidence of other crimes.
Yet instead of repudiating his association with Kennedy, Gorsuch observes:
“‘… Justice Kennedy was incredibly welcoming and gracious … he taught me so much. I am forever grateful. … These judges brought me up in the law. Truly, I would not be here without them. Today is as much their day as it is mine. …'”
There is a stark backdrop formed by the Kennedy ideology, and the horrific nature and mind-boggling magnitude of the harms Kennedy has helped impose upon America. Against that backdrop, one should call into question Gorsuch’s moral compass, judgment, intelligence, analytical ability and honesty, when observing Gorsuch’s lapse into a lassitude of “go along to get along, let’s celebrate the superficial feel-good status-building bullet-points in my resume,” given the irrational, unlawyer-like evils of Kennedy and Gorsuch’s recent ratification of his association with Kennedy.
To put it simply, to celebrate ties to Kennedy does not just mean Gorsuch is unfit for the bench, and should not have been confirmed for a federal court of appeals. It means Gorsuch lacks leadership, is a weak figure and is not a very good thinker.
The scandal should be regarded as an embarrassment to Donald Trump. Trump embarrassed himself by picking Gorsuch and by himself, Trump, praising Gorsuch’s past without caveats.
Even worse, Trump was supposed to be a highly capable outsider who was going to “play things straight” and “drain the swamp,” including giving a top priority to his duties as Commander-in-Chief to defend American lives.
Yet, instead of picking a non-lawyer who would help correct the low intellectual and moral standards of the legal profession, Trump picked a legal profession insider with an apparent “go along to get along attitude” even in the face of 59 million American dead.
Already Trump, the wealthy businessman who never really built much more than resorts, casinos and TV rating, is watering himself down.
There is the curious fact that the abortion issue had tipped the balance in recent presidential elections, with the prolife, traditional values majority apparently having a reflex to be tepid in the face of the Republican Party’s attempt to water down its nominees’ credentials.
In contrast, George W. Bush, despite not really being thoroughly prolife, managed to put together a prolife agenda with a specific big-picture focus, pulling in the prolife majority. He did so largely by focusing on Supreme Court nominations, banning partial-birth infanticide and banning funding for prenatal killing, building a common ground on all those major points. For example, while a majority of Americans are prolife, a vast super-majority support a ban on partial-birth infanticide.
John McCain and Mitt Romney, already raising questions and causing the traditional values majority to step back and wonder about their political fiber, failed to articulate the same kind of focus (and as a running mate Paul Ryan even allowed himself to articulate a modified pro-abortion view, openly admitting that his ticket supported abortion in some circumstances, an offensive and unbelievably impractical act that undoubtedly weakened the resolve of his potential base to expend greater energy in his behalf).
Trump, however, despite questions about his past views or values credentials, started to regain some focus on the specific practical major themes of the abortion issue and the big-picture steps he would need to take as President. And Trump even drove his opponent to openly expose herself as an extreme radical on abortion and infanticide, out of step with all but a small portion of the electorate.
With Gorsuch, however, Trump begins to lose that focus. He has failed to find the right nominee. That Gorsuch could serve for three decades or more makes the situation even worse.
In the face of the Gorsuch nomination, there is, indeed, a need to avoid lassitude and complacency among the majority of Americans who consider themselves prolife. One of the reasons four decades of mass-killing has rolled on is the willingness of portions of the prolife majority to tolerate weak efforts and compromised, watered down values posing as something more.
Americans who love their country and want to rebuild respect for Rule of Law should oppose Gorsuch, seek the impeachment and removal of Kennedy and his confederates and demand that Trump step up, do a better job and “get it right.”
“Neil Gorsuch the Law Clerk” – SCOTUSblog
“BIO: Judge Neil Gorsuch” – Fox News
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992) – FindLaw
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992) – Justia
“Anthony Kennedy on Abortion” – OnTheIssues
“… White had retired from the court in the spring of 1993. According to some accounts at the time, White had not hired a full slate of law clerks for the term that would start in the fall of 1993 because he had an inclination to retire. It is unclear whether #Gorsuch was aware of this when White hired him.
Following a tradition among retired justices, who are assigned one law clerk, White agreed to share his clerk with an active justice. Gorsuch thus became a part-time member of Justice Anthony #Kennedy’s chambers.
The #SupremeCourt heard arguments in 99 cases during Gorsuch’s clerkship, issuing 93 full opinions.The most high-profile merits cases that term involved protest buffer zones around abortion clinics, the use of gender-based peremptory challenges in jury selection and whether a rap song incorporating parts of a Roy Orbison song constituted fair use under copyright law.
Whether Gorsuch played any significant role in advising Justice Kennedy on the term’s merits cases remains a private matter. And the amount of time he devoted to the needs of the newly retired Justice White isn’t widely known. …”
“CURRENT POSITION: U.S. Court of Appeals, 10th Circuit, from 2006-present
LEGAL EXPERIENCE:
President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence addressed a meeting of the National Governors Association at the White House on Monday, Feb. 27. Trump touched upon a variety of subjects, including the federal budget, defense spending, immigration, Obamacare and the relationship between the states and the federal government. The transcript follows below the video.
(WhiteHouse.gov – Feb. 27, 2017)
For Immediate Release
February 27, 2017
Remarks by President Trump in Meeting with the National Governors Association
State Dining Room
9:45 A.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. (Applause.) That is pretty good, I’ll tell you. Coming from governors, I can’t really — I can’t even believe it. That’s so impressive. And I very much appreciate you being here. And thank you to Vice President Pence. He has been so wonderful to work with. He’s a real talent, a real guy. And he is central casting, do we agree? Central casting. He’s been great. (Applause.)
Good morning, everybody, and welcome back to the White House. The First Lady and I were very, very happy last night to host you. We saw some real talent, military talent, musicians who were fantastic. And everybody enjoyed it. (Applause.)
I’m very proud to have so many former governors in my Cabinet. Vice President Pence, as you know, big governor from a very great state — I state I like very much — Indiana. Nikki Haley at the U.N. — is Nikki here someplace? I think so — yes. We have Rick Perry — is going before. We’re trying to get people approved, we can’t get them out. But Rick is going to do a fantastic job. Sonny Purdue will be joining the Cabinet very soon. Terry Branstad will be our ambassador to China. And an interesting story on Terry — every time I spoke in Iowa, he’d say, please don’t say anything bad about China. (Laughter.) I said, what do you mean? What do you mean? He said, I like China and we do a lot of business with China. “And really, just don’t” — and I said, “hmm.” So when it came down to picking an ambassador, I called him up, I said, you like China. And I can tell you, China is very, very happy with our choice. So we made everybody happy. (Applause.) Right? These governors — thank you. And thank you, Terry.
These governors have been bold reformers, and their success shows why we need to make states the laboratories of democracy once again. Many of you have shared past frustrations with waiting for permission from the federal government and agencies — and I understand that, and I’ve had many people tell me about it, and it’s been catastrophic for some of your states. You know your citizens and you know they want things done. But they don’t get things done and it’s not your fault. Sometimes it’s your fault, but they understand that. But sometimes it’s not your fault. We’re going to speed it up.
Because that’s not how a partnership is supposed to work. The government should not stand in your way in delivering needed reforms and services — and it won’t. We’re going to move very, very quickly, environmentally, with Scott and so many others that are involved in the process of regulation. We are going to be cutting — we’re going to be doing the right thing. We’re going to be protecting people environmentally and safety-wise, but we’re going to be moving it quickly, very quickly. (Applause.)
And speaking of that, I know many of you — and I’ve spoken to some of you last night about it — have many projects that are — I mean, just literally tied up because of environmental concerns, and it’s been in for years and years and years the project your state wants, great for employment — everybody wants them — and they couldn’t get them out of environmental protection. And we will get them out. Now, that doesn’t mean they’re going to be approved, but they’ll be rejected quickly one way or the other. They’ll be either rejected quickly or they’re going to get approved. I would say most will be approved, but you’re going to know you’re not going to wait nine years or eleven years — some of the horror stories that I’ve heard.
Under my administration, we’re going to have a true partnership of collaboration and cooperation. We will get to the answers and we will get them quickly, and the flexibility you need to implement the reforms that you are going to have in order to make decision-making proper and decision-making fast. So we’re going to do both those things — proper and fast.
One of the most important responsibilities for the federal government is the budget of the United States. My first budget will be submitted to the Congress next month. This budget will be a public safety and national security budget, very much based on those two with plenty of other things, but very strong. And it will include a historic increase in defense spending to rebuild the depleted military of the United States of America at a time we most need it. (Applause.)
And you’ll be hearing about that tomorrow night in great detail. This is a landmark event, a message to the world, in these dangerous times, of American strength, security and resolve. We must ensure that our courageous servicemen and women have the tools they need to deter war, and when called upon to fight in our name only do one thing: Win. We have to win. We have to start winning wars again.
I have to say, when I was young, in high school and college, everybody used to say “we haven’t lost a war” — we never lost a war — you remember. Some of you were right there with me, and you remember we never lost a war. America never lost. And now we never win a war. We never win. And we don’t fight to win. We don’t fight to win. So we either got to win, or don’t fight it at all. But where we are — 17 years — almost 17 years of fighting in the Middle East. I saw a chart the other day — as of about a month ago, $6 trillion we’ve spent in the Middle East — $6 trillion. And I want to tell you, that’s just unacceptable. And we’re nowhere. Actually, if you think about it, we’re less than nowhere. The Middle East is far worse than it was 16, 17 years ago. There’s not even a contest. So we’ve spent $6 trillion. We have a hornet’s nest. It’s a mess like you’ve never seen before. We’re nowhere. So we’re going to straighten it out.
This defense spending increase will be offset and paid for by finding greater savings and efficiencies across the federal government. We’re going to do more with less. I got involved in an airplane contract, I got involved in some other contracts, and we cut the hell out of the prices. I mean, we saved a lot of money, tremendous amount of money, beyond anything that the generals that were involved — they said they’d never seen anything like this before.
On one plane, on a small order of one plane, I saved $725 million. And I would say I devoted about, if I added it up, all those calls, probably about an hour. So I think that might be my highest and best use. (Laughter.) Because if we can do that, our budget will be — might be my highest and best. (Applause.)
And there are many other places; it’s all the same. And in one way, that’s a good thing because we have an answer. And David is going to do a fantastic job at the VA. I see David is sitting there, shaking his head. Stand up, David. (Applause.) So we can’t get our people through Cabinet, but he went through — was it 95 to nothing?
SECRETARY SHULKIN: A hundred to zero.
THE PRESIDENT: How the h[***] did you do that? (Laughter.) Boy, oh boy. He must be good. You were the one. One hundred to zero, wow. Chose you — hey, we can do it. But we do — we have still quite a few Cabinet members, and they’re just in limbo waiting and waiting. It’s like obstruction. It’s obstruction. But eventually we’ll get them, and they’ll put their people in, and we’ll get those agencies, et cetera, to work.
We’re going to do more with less and make the government lean and accountable to the people. We can do so much more with the money we spend. With $20 trillion in debt — can you imagine that — the government must learn to tighten its belt, something families all across the country have had to learn to do, unfortunately. But they’ve had to learn to do it, and they’ve done it well.
My budget increases spending, and the increase in all spending, for federal law enforcement also. And activities having to do with law enforcement will be substantially increased. And we will fight violent crime. If you look at what’s happening in our cities, you look at what’s happening in Chicago, what’s going on in Chicago — we will fight violent crime, and we will win. And we’ll win that one fairly quickly. Once we give the local police, the local law enforcement the right to go in and fight it, and we back them monetarily and also otherwise, we’re going to win that one. We’re going to win it fairly quickly, I believe.
My budget also puts America first by keeping tax dollars in America to help veterans and first responders. So important. This budget follows through on my promise to focus on keeping Americans safe, keeping out terrorists, keeping out criminals, and putting violent offenders behind bars, or removing them from our country altogether. And I must say that we’ve been treated very well — very, very well — on the job that General Kelly has done at the border. It’s tough, it’s strong.
I was talking last night to Terry McAuliffe, and he said, you have to mention this — because he met with — where is Terry? He’s around here someplace. Terry — he met with General Kelly, and I think I can say you were impressed with General Kelly. And he said, you have to get the point out that they’re removing the bad ones. And that’s where our focus is — it’s the bad ones. We’re getting some very, very bad players out of this country — drug lords, gang members, heads of gangs, killers, murderers — we’re getting them out. That’s what we’re focused on.
The press isn’t covering that, unfortunately, but it’s something that is very important. We’re getting the bad ones out. And that’s always where I said I was going to start. I was going to start with these bad players. And they are bad. They are rough and tough, and we’re getting them the hell out of our country, and we’re bringing them to where they started out. Let their country do what they have to do with them.
So the budget, which is going to be a very big part of tomorrow night’s speech, it’s going to be I think a budget of great rationality. But it’s going to have to do with military, safety, economic development, and things such as that. Great detail tomorrow night.
We’re also going to do whatever we can to restore the authority of the states when that is the appropriate thing to do. We’re going to give you back a lot of the powers that have been taken away from states and great people and great governors. And you can control it better than the federal government because you’re right on top of it. You have something that’s controllable. So I think that’s going to be very important. You see that already taking effect.
We have to let the states compete and to see who has the best solutions. They know the best how to spend their dollars and how to take care of the people within each state. And the states are different, and people are different. So the governors are going to have a lot more decision-making ability than they have right now.
All states will benefit from our economic agenda. We will reduce taxes very, very substantially, and simplify the tax code. We’re also going to make taxes between countries much more fair. We’re one of the only countries in the world that people can sell their product into us and have no tax, no nothing, and they get rich. And yet if you want to do business with them, you’ll have taxes, I’ve seen, as high as 100 percent. So they sell into us, no problem; we sell into them — because we don’t sell them because the tax is so high that they don’t want us to sell into them.
So I know that’s always been a point of contention, but to me it’s just fair. It’s just fair. It’s reciprocal. It’s fair. And so we’re going to be doing a lot of work on that, and that’s becoming a very, very important factor — fairness. Because I believe in free trade. I want so much trade — somebody said, oh, maybe he’s a total nationalist — which I am, in a true sense — but I want trade. I want great trade between countries.
But the word “free” is very deceiving, because it’s good for them, it’s not good for us. I want fair trade. And if we’re going to be taxed, they should be taxed at the same amount, the other countries. And one of two things is going to happen: We’re going to make a lot of money or the other country is going to get rid of its tax. And that’s good, too, because now the product, like Harley-Davidson — I was talking to them — the product will now flow into other countries where right now they can’t do it.
So we’re going to make it easier for states to invest in infrastructure, and I’m going to have a big statement tomorrow night on infrastructure. We spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, and we have potholes all over our highways and our roads. I have a friend who is in the trucking business. He said, my trucks are destroyed going from New York to Los Angeles. They’re destroyed. He said, I’m not going to get the good trucks. He always prided himself on buying the best equipment. He said, the roads are so bad that, by the time we make the journey from New York to Los Angeles or back, he said the equipment is just beat to hell. I said, when has it been like that before? He said, it’s never — he’s been in the business for 40 years — he said it’s never been like that. Forty years — never been like that. So we’re going to take care of that.
Infrastructure — we’re going to start spending on infrastructure big. And it’s not like we have a choice. It’s not like, oh, gee, let’s hold it off. Our highways, our bridges are unsafe. Our tunnels — I mean, we have tunnels in New York where the tiles are on the ceiling, and you see many tiles missing. And you wonder, you know, you’re driving at 40 miles an hour, 50 miles an hour through a tunnel. Take a look at the Lincoln Tunnel and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, and you’re driving, and you see all this loose material that’s heavy. And it was made many years ago, so it’s heavy. Today, it’s light. It used to be better. The problem is, you got to hold it up. And I say to myself — every time I drive through, I say, I wonder how many people are hurt or injured when they are driving at 40, 50 miles an hour through a tunnel, and the tile falls off. And there are so many missing tiles and such loose concrete. So we have to fix our infrastructure. It’s not like we have a choice. We have no choice, and we’re going to do it, and it also happens to mean jobs, which is a good thing.
We’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare, and get states the flexibility that they need to make the end result really, really good for them. A very complicated issue. We have Tom Price, just got confirmed — sitting here. (Applause.) Stand up, Tom. And I spent a lot of time with Governor Walker and Governor Rick Scott the other day — we were talking about it. They’re really very expert on the subject, and I want to thank them. They spent a lot of time with me. Governor Christie who’s here someplace. Where’s Chris? Governor Christie, thank you. And so we have a lot of talent and a lot of expertise here, I will tell you. And we have come up with a solution that’s really, really, I think, very good.
Now, I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated. And statutorily and for budget purposes, as you know, we have to do healthcare before we do the tax cut. The tax cut is going to be major, it’s going to be simple, and the whole tax plan is wonderful. But I can’t do it until we do healthcare because we have to know what the healthcare is going to cost. And, statutorily, that’s the way it is. So for those people that say, oh, gee, I wish we could do the tax first — it just doesn’t work that way. I would like to do that first. It’s actually — tax cutting has never been that easy, but it’s a tiny, little ant compared to what we’re talking about with Obamacare.
And you have to remember — and I say this to Democrats in the room — of which we have many — Obamacare has failed. If you go to Minnesota, where they had a 66-percent increase, and the governor of Minnesota, who is with us today, said, Obamacare — the Affordable Care Act — is no longer affordable — something to that effect. I think that might be it exactly. But the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable. Obamacare has failed.
I say to the Republicans, if you really want to do politically something good, don’t do anything. Sit back for a period of two years, because ’17 is going to be a disaster — a disaster — for Obamacare if we don’t do something. Let it be a disaster because we can blame that on the Dems that are in our room, and we can blame that on the Democrats and President Obama. Let it implode, and then let it implode in ’18 even worse. Don’t do anything, and they will come begging for us to do something. But that’s not the fair thing to do for the people. It’s not the fair thing.
Politically, I think it would be a great solution, because as soon as we touch it, if we do the most minute thing — just a tiny, little change — what’s going to happen? They’re going to say, it’s the Republicans’ problem. That’s the way it is. But we have to do what’s right because Obamacare is a failed disaster.
And it’s interesting, it’s sort of like, when you see — you see it with politicians, you see it with President Obama — when you know he’s getting out of office and the clock is ticking, and he’s not going to be there, his approval rating goes way up, even though, you know, not that active in the last period of time. The approval rating goes up. That’s not him; that’s like almost everybody. I see it happening with Obamacare. People hate it, but now they see that the end is coming, and they’re saying, oh, maybe we love it. There’s nothing to love. It’s a disaster, folks, okay? So you have to remember that.
And, very importantly, we are going to work to restore local control to our nation’s education system. Betsy is here someplace, and she is going to be, I think, fantastic. (Applause.) I think she’s going to be fantastic. Stand up, Betsy. Betsy feels so strongly, and she has had such support from so many people. You know, you don’t see that too much because you see the anti, you never see the positive. But I can tell you, I’ve had so many calls while she was going through that horrible process. That was a tough, tough, nasty process. And she hung in, she was as strong as you get. But so many people were calling Betsy, saying you will do such a fantastic job once you get it.
It’s like sometimes I’d say, it’s much tougher to get into Harvard than it is to stay there. Does that make sense? It’s tougher to get into the Wharton School of Finance — you can’t get in. But if you get in, it’s fine, you get through, right? I think you’re going to do a fantastic job, and we’re very proud of you. And you took a lot of heat, but you’re going to do great. So she wants to bring decision-making powers back to parents, back to the families and back to the states, where they can really control education.
And just finally, I’m looking forward to working with you on these projects and so much more. We’re going to do these projects and so many more. And I thank you all again for being here. It’s going to be a really productive discussion — so productive that I’m going to ask the press to start leaving because I wouldn’t want them to see any great, productive session. (Laughter.) But they’ll be seeing it and hearing about it.
Again, thank you very much all for being at the White House. We’ll do this many times. I want the opinions of the governors of the states of the United States. So I want to just thank you all for being here, and let’s take some questions, okay? (Applause.) Thank you.
END
10:05 A.M. EST
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said on Saturday that calls for a special prosecutor to investigate possible ties between Donald #Trump advisers and the #Russian government amount to a ‘witch hunt’ and resemble the #McCarthyism of the 1950s. ‘At this point we can’t go on a witch hunt against any American people … just because they appeared in a news story,’ California Rep. Devin Nunes told reporters at California Republican convention in Sacramento on Saturday, according to the San Francisco Gate.
As President Donald Trump prepared for his first address to the U.S. Congress, the White House on Sunday sought to fend off the latest calls for an independent probe of Russian efforts to impact last year’s U.S. election and any ties between Moscow and the president’s inner circle. …
… discussing investigations into Russia’s hacking during last year’s presidential election and disputed contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, ‘the FBI has already said this story is BS.’ … “
“#Republicans are increasingly divided over the issue of whether members of Donald #Trump’s presidential campaign made illegal contact with #Russia and if a special prosecutor should be appointed over Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate such allegations. Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told “Fox News Sunday” that he has confidence in Sessions, a Trump campaign supporter and former AlabamPolia senator, and his judgment.”
“… An order that directs federal agencies to ease the ‘regulatory burdens’ of ObamaCare. … ‘… on any State or a cost, fee, tax, penalty, or regulatory burden on individuals, families, healthcare providers, health insurers, patients, recipients of healthcare services, purchasers of health insurance, or makers of medical devices, products, or medications.’ * * * An order imposing a hiring freeze for some federal government workers …. This excludes the military, as Trump noted at the signing. * * * a notice that the U.S. will begin withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. * * * … the … ‘Mexico City Policy’ … ban on federal funds to international groups that perform abortions or lobby to legalize or promote abortion. …”
“On Monday … Trump signed an executive order reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits federal funding from going towards foreign nonprofit organizations that promote or commit abortions. … The policy … was implemented by … Reagan … [it] will effectively defund International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International. Trump … [also] has made promises to defund Planned Parenthood and make permanent the Hyde Amendment ….”
President Donald J. Trump’s Inaugural Address upon being sworn in as the 45th President of the United States on Jan. 20, 2016.
(WhiteHouse.gov – Jan. 20, 2017)
Remarks of President Donald J. Trump – As Prepared for Delivery
#Inaugural Address
Friday, January 20, 2017
Washington, D.C.
As Prepared for Delivery –
Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans, and people of the world: thank you.
We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people.
Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for years to come.
We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done.
Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent.
Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People.
For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.
Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth.
Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed.
The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.
Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.
That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.
It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America.
This is your day. This is your celebration.
And this, the United States of America, is your country.
What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.
January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.
The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.
Everyone is listening to you now.
You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before.
At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens.
Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves.
These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.
But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.
This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.
We are one nation – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.
The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.
For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry;
Subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military;
We’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own;
And spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.
We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.
One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.
The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.
But that is the past. And now we are looking only to the future.
We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power.
From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.
From this moment on, it’s going to be America First.
Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families.
We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.
I will fight for you with every breath in my body – and I will never, ever let you down.
America will start winning again, winning like never before.
We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams.
We will build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation.
We will get our people off of welfare and back to work – rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.
We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and Hire American.
We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.
We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow.
We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones – and unite the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.
At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.
When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.
The Bible tells us, “how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity.”
We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity.
When America is united, America is totally unstoppable.
There should be no fear – we are protected, and we will always be protected.
We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement and, most importantly, we are protected by God.
Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger.
In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving.
We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action – constantly complaining but never doing anything about it.
The time for empty talk is over.
Now arrives the hour of action.
Do not let anyone tell you it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America.
We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again.
We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow.
A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions.
It is time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget: that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American Flag.
And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty Creator.
So to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words:
You will never be ignored again.
Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.
Together, We Will Make America Strong Again.
We Will Make America Wealthy Again.
We Will Make America Proud Again.
We Will Make America Safe Again.
And, Yes, Together, We Will Make America Great Again. Thank you, God Bless You, And God Bless America.
“Donald #Trump will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States on Friday. Here’s what his schedule over the next few days looks like, according to his incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer. …”
Appearing in New York a little more than a week before his upcoming inauguration, Donald #Trump, on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2017, gives his first formal press conference since being elected President. [Click here for CNBC transcript]
“Thousands of demonstrators are expected to turn out in Washington next week for protests aiming to ‘shut down’ the #inauguration of Donald #Trump as the next U.S. president, organizers said …. Protesters will attempt to close down 12 security checkpoints at the U.S. Capitol, where Trump will take the oath of office on Jan. 20, and along the 2.5-mile (4-km) parade route down Pennsylvania Avenue, according to leaders of a group called DisruptJ20. …”
“Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich … would prefer an advisory position to President-elect Donald Trump as opposed to a Cabinet …. ‘I want to be the general planner, looking out over the next eight years and trying to design how we fundamentally reshape the federal government,’ Gingrich told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly …. ‘That’s a very broad job. The closest analogy probably is [New Deal architect] Harry Hopkins and the work he did for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.’
Hillary Rodham Clinton apparently is on track to total roughly 56 million votes, compared with roughly 59 million surgical abortions in the United States performed since 1973. The United States confronts the baffling and horrifying spectacle of a politician nearly winning the Presidency while getting fewer votes than the number of people killed by policies she promotes.
Clinton is rabidly pro-abortion, emphasizing abortion in her campaign and having taken the extreme step of supporting partial-birth abortion, something opposed by a super-majority of Americans. She also has praised, and accepted money from, the country’s largest abortion provider.
Tentative numbers late on election night have Trump getting about 58 million votes, and third or fourth party candidates getting another 5 million or so.
So if Clinton had succeeded in getting a plurality, she would created something akin to a constitutional crisis, or pre-constitutional crisis, and a threat to the foundations of the American republic. She not only would have been getting fewer votes than the total votes against her; she would have been claiming the Presidency with fewer votes than the total number of people killed by policies she promotes.
The number of Americans killed in the womb by abortion is 59 million, the number of people voting against her was about 63 million, and she got roughly 56 million votes.
It would have been impossible for Clinton to form a government with democratic legitimacy in the context. It would be analogous to Hitler murdering 6 million Jews, getting 5 million votes, having 7 million people vote against him, yet claim to be the duly elected leader of a democracy.
Clinton’s status as a pro-abortion extremist makes her a grotesque human rights violator. Yet the sheer numbers involved with the killings also make it impossible for her to realistically be a participant in a republic grounded on the values of life and liberty.
One cannot participate in government of the people, by the people and for the people, when one is wrapped up in killing the people, and taking money from an industry that kills people, whether they be adults or children in the womb.
America crossed a horrifying threshold by seeing a major party candidate get fewer votes than the number of people killed by policies she promotes, yet still see that candidate get nearly half of the electoral votes.
This shocking occurrence should be an added wake-up call to “draw a line in the sand” against the shocking moral and demographic magnitude of prenatal child-killing in America. This reality also highlights the need to recognize that those embracing what is a widespread human rights atrocity have no place in public life in the United States, especially as the nation aspires to be a democracy, a republic and a civilized nation.
At approximately 2:40 a.m. Wednesday, Fox News finally called Pennsylvania for Donald Trump, pushing Trump to 274 electoral votes and counting, with 270 needed to win the Presidency.
At approximately 2:45 a.m., Vice President-Elect Mike Pence and his family took the stage at Trump Election Night Headquarters, with Pence announcing the result and introducing President-Elect Trump, who appeared on-stage several minutes later with some of his family.
Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton reportedly called Trump to concede.
Trump called for unity, healing and for the country to come together. He pledged to be President for all Americans.
He particularly called out to his opponents for guidance and help, to work together.
Trump aspired to rebuild the nation as one working together for the American Dream, including national growth and renewal.
In particular, he spoke of the need to rebuild inner cities and help veterans.
[featured images are file photos]
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s agenda has a racist impact, as do your own actions if you vote for her or otherwise support her.
Prenatal child-killing — sometimes re-characterized by the pseudo-clinical-sounding term “abortion” — impacts African Americans to an alarmingly disproportionate degree, and with a magnitude that is mind-boggling.
It is the largest killer of African Americans, and it hits blacks at a rate several times that of whites. Some have called abortion an Anti-Black Genocide, even as the overall American total of roughly 59 million abortions constitutes a broader Anti-American Genocide.
To put it simply, Black Lives don’t matter in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s agenda, given that she supports the continued decriminalization of abortion. She has praised the biggest U.S. abortion “provider,” including when she was Secretary of State and was not even supposed to be involved with the issue domestically. And she has accepted money from the abortion industry. And she has done all of this in a societal context where abortion has a massive racist impact.
Indeed, the foundress of that biggest abortion provider was quoted as saying that a purpose of her organization was to limit the number of Negro babies. That was even before abortion itself was decriminalized.
One source estimates 16 million black women having had abortions since 1973, which would be a somewhat low number, if it only includes African American mothers, and does not include any white mothers abortion children fathered by African American fathers. The 16 million dead African Americans is nearly half the remaining population of African Americans, which stands at 36 million. The same source indicates:
“Minority women constitute only about 13% of the female population (age 15-44) in the United States, but they underwent approximately 36% of the abortions. … black women are more than 5 times as likely as white women to have an abortion
. On average, 1,876 black babies are aborted every day in the United States.
“
We also have heard about how the radical left, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, have tried to play racial minorities for fools otherwise, trying to grab their votes while leaving them living in substandard conditions with no real help to get out to a better life.
The left-wing candidate shows little regard, if any, for the number of black men going to prison, or the human rights atrocities occurring inside prisons, or the high crime rates in minority-dominated areas. She shows little regard for the number of fatherless households or the high rate of unwed pregnancies and the impact on poverty.
Yet the abortion issue is even more stark, because, like the urban crime rate, it is a matter of life and death.
Despite serving as a figurehead Senator from New York, she does even not seem to care about the fact that, in one or more recent years, more black babies were killed in the womb in New York City than were born alive.
Considering the racist impact, for Black babies, it is like a lynching in the womb.
Add to that the fact that some portion of abortions are done by dismemberment. And add to that the fact that, for some portion, past a certain month of gestation, the babies can feel the pain.
It is as if the Democrats went from being pro-slavery, to pro-segregation, to pro-abortion without missing a beat, with these lynchings in the womb, death by torture to innocent children.
Indeed, the Democrats did not necessarily really start trying to hold themselves as a party for blacks until the 1960’s, perhaps after Democrat-supported segregation already had been pushing African Americans to migrate to urban areas, where they then suffered urban ills. And it was within less than a decade of that point, less than a decade from the 1960’s, that abortion was decriminalized, by leftist judges blocking prosecutions under laws that were already on the books.
The abortions, lynchings inside the womb, ended up impacting blacks on a much bigger scale than the lynchings that had occurred from tree branches.
Yes, Hillary Rodham Clinton is a racist, by her actions.
And considering the nature and mind-boggling magnitude of abortion, and its racist impact … if you vote for her … or argue in favor of her online or at the grocery store … or put up signage or bumper stickers supporting her … or donate money to her … you are a racist, too.
By your actions, and their ultimate impact, you are a racist, too.
Just as voters who are drunk or high on drugs should not vote, voters in a state of sin also should not vote.
The last thing the country needs is to have persons with clouded judgment or clouded motives exercising political power, including exercising the power to vote. Yet that is exactly what we would get, with voters casting ballots while in a state of sin.
Voting in a state of sin would distort judgment and perceptions, make it harder to act for good and make it easier to act for ill.
Sin clouds judgment and reorients priorities in the wrong direction. Habits of sin also make it easier for forces of temptation, including personified evil, to work their way into perceptions, thinking and decisionmaking.
Making matters worse, we have an election where sin has been infused into certain political ideologies. It is as if some candidates for President, for example, would like to be Enabler-in-Chief instead of Commander-in-Chief.
An Enabler-in-Chief would be someone who provides the serious sinner with the false pseudo-comfort of an “easy” way out, being told by the candidate that their evil doings, such as moral depravity, prenatal childkilling, euthanasia or so-called “assisted suicide”, are just fine, that there is no need to deal with the anxiety of confronting their guilty conscience, confessing the truth, repenting, converting and seeking a new life.
Now, some might try to argue that everybody is a sinner, and perhaps try to manipulate the question brush the whole matter aside.
To some extent that is true, although it is possible, for example, for a Catholic voter to go to Confession, receive Absolution, declare and seek a complete rejection of sin, then vote.
Nevertheless, let us revise the imperative to refer to serious sin, or rather grave sin or mortal sin. Those who have killed others, without doing so in legitimate self-defense or the defense of others, should not vote. That includes those who have involved themselves with prenatal child-killing, so-called “abortion.” Exceptions might be made for those who have sincerely repented and converted, which, for Catholics, would mean taking the necessary steps, currently in place, to have their automatic Excommunication lifted.
An added problem such a voter gets into, however, is that, when a candidate is pro-abortion, or otherwise promotes serious sin, it becomes sinful to even engage in the act of voting, in favor of the Candidate Promoting Sin. And doing so also would call into question the sincerity of the sinful voter’s claim to have repented.
For example, consider a voter who is a chronic masturbator, who sometimes has seized opportunities to fornicate, who got themselves involved with a pregnancy as the male or the female, and then got connected with an abortion murdering their child in the womb, either as the mother or as the father. Perhaps the childkiller/ fornicator/ masturbator takes advantage of the current Pope’s Year of Mercy option to clear their status and escape damnation just by going to Confession. And perhaps, with God’s Grace, they even abstain from masturbating and further fornicating. If they then squander their new-found Graces, and cast aside their new life of freedom from evil by voting for a pro-abortion candidate, their repentance would be in doubt, and they would be sinning anew.
Those who have engaged in sexual gratification or activity of any kind, outside of Sacramental Marriage, are in a state of grave sin and should not vote.That includes adultery, fornication, sodomy, solo masturbation, mutual masturbation, the viewing of pornography and perhaps even looking at some other person in a lustful manner.
Christ said clearly that looking at another person with lust is like committing adultery in the heart.
Another problem today is that there are those who are so entrenched in sin that they have built up all sorts of structures sustaining it, such as cohabitating in a sinful “relationship” with shared housing, or using their business life to promote sin, such as belonging to a law firm that boasts about employing persons living in sin.
Those engaging in theft, or dishonesty, or other grave sins also should abstain from voting, although some might argue about how serious or large the theft or dishonesty has to be.
What is particularly bizarre in the current election is the presence of candidates promoting abortion. The only “religions” pushing for the killing of children, in the womb or already born, are ancient demon-worshiping pagan rites and subsets of Satanists. So one confronts a situation of an ideology of child-killing embraced only by demon-worshiping pagans, certain Satanists, and a handful of political parties and their minions. That the political parties doing so try to recast the matter with manipulative false arguments, perhaps seeking to portray the evil as something opposite, is not only not surprising. False arguments and manipulation, and evil trying to pose as “good” is a common modus operandi of evil. In the Gospel we even see that the devil itself tried to misquote Holy Scripture when seeking to tempt Christ in the desert.
We need voters thinking clearly, acting for good; we do not need the country’s future disrupted and diverted by voters in an altered state of bad judgment and corrupt spirituality, perhaps additionally with devils pushing them to think themselves clever if they vote for the devils’ candidate.
Yet, in this narcissistic childish culture, perhaps it would be easier to put it another way.
Voters in a state of sin are not really themselves. It would be analogous to them being drunk or high on drugs, or in some other altered state.
While in a state of sin, they are in conflict with the true them, as well as in conflict with their true hearts. The Law of God, God’s Law of Love that stands in conflict with sin, is engraved on the flesh tablets of the human heart. If we sin, we not only stand in conflict with God; we stand in conflict with our own true hearts.
At the very least, voters in a state of sin have clouded judgment, distracted distorted perceptions, and motivations that are different from the motivations that they would have as their true selves, in union with God, as the good person, the real person God Created them to be.
Voters in a state of sin, particularly a state of grave sin, should not vote.
“In the past three election cycles, PlannedParenthood’s advocacy and political arms, employees, and their families have spent over $38 million to elect or defeat candidates for federal office who decide how much taxpayers subsidize the nation’s largest abortion provider.”
As … Hillary #Clinton and #Hollywood continue to deceitfully prop up #PlannedParenthood … under the guise of women’s ‘health,’ the #abortion mill is … pursuing a legal battle … to kill unborn babies with Down Syndrome. … team[ing] up with the American Civil Liberties Union to try to have an Indiana law signed by Governor Mike Pence, which prohibits abortion for reasons of #race, #sex or genetic defect such as #DownSyndrome, thrown out. … [to be] heard by pro-abortion Obama-appointee Judge Tanya Walton Pratt. In July, Pratt granted the abortion mill’s request and blocked the law from being enforced. … House Bill 1337 also requires aborted or miscarried babies’ bodies to be disposed via humane practices of cremation or burial. …
[featured image is file photo]
“From Russia to North Korea to the slaughter in Syria, the next president will face foreign-policy challenges that test the very fundamentals of world order.”
“Next to Barack #Obama, Hillary #Clinton may be the most pro-#abortion presidential candidate in American history. Clinton, and the Left in general, attempt to mask the heinous nature of the procedure they support by employing euphemisms such as “reproductive health” and “choice,” but in reality what they’re championing is the termination of innocent life, even at the latest stages of development. …”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is calling on Congress to crack down on accepting refugees after a series of weekend explosions … ‘Congress should act to prevent Americans who have travelled abroad for training from returning here, and to stop the flow of refugees from hotbeds of terrorism in the Middle East that President #Obama is determined to bring to our country,’ Cruz, who has been a vocal critic of the Obama administration’s terrorism policy, said in a statement on Monday. * * * [Cruz] has pushed legislation for years that would revoke citizenship for anyone fighting with, or providing material support to, ISIS and terrorist groups abroad. He also renewed his push to block … Obama’s plan to increase the number of Syrian refugees accepted into the United States …. Cruz also called for supporting law enforcement and working with the American Muslim community.
A House floor vote on a resolution to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen could still come next week, despite a deal under which the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday with [Koskinen]…. House Freedom Caucus member Tim Huelskamp [said] that a deal to delay the impeachment vote … only involved waiting until after the Judiciary hearing. There was no agreement to wait until November ….
* * * Speaker Paul D. Ryan told reporters that he wasn’t involved in the deal … but that his understanding was the hearing scheduled for next week would be in lieu of a vote before November.
Multiple reports have cited ties between Russian entities and the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails, and on Wednesday House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul said in a CNN interview that the Republican National Committee had been hacked as well, though the Texas congressman quickly backpedaled, saying he ‘misspoke.’
The United States Army’s finances are so jumbled it had to make trillions of dollars of improper accounting adjustments to create an illusion that its books are balanced. … [DOD’s] Inspector General … said the Army made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one quarter alone in 2015 … $6.5 trillion for the year. … the Army lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up. … the latest example of … severe accounting problems plaguing [DOD] for decades. … a spokesman … downplayed the significance of the improper changes, which he said net out to $62.4 billion. … The IG report also blamed DFAS, saying it too made unjustified changes to numbers. For example … rather than solving [a] disparity, DFAS personnel inserted a false ‘correction’ to make … numbers match. … [and] more than 16,000 financial data files … vanished ….
U.S. intelligence officials told top congressional leaders a year ago that Russian hackers were attacking the Democratic Party, three sources familiar with the matter said … but the lawmakers were unable to tell the targets … because the information was so secret. … disclosure … would have revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies were continuing to monitor the hacking, as well as … sources and … methods …. The congressional briefing was given … in a secure room called a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, to … four Republicans: Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell … Speaker John Boehner … Senator Richard Burr and Representative Devin Nunes, the House and Senate intelligence committee chairs. Their Democratic counterparts were: Senator Harry Reid and Representative Nancy Pelosi … Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Adam Schiff of the intelligence committees. * * * One of the sources said the Clinton campaign first detected attacks on its data system in early March, and was given what the source described as a “general briefing” about it by the FBI later that month. The source said the FBI made no mention of a Russian connection in that briefing and did not say when the penetration first took place.