[BABYLONBEE] AUSTIN, TX—According to sources, local man Clarence Williams has urged his church’s lead pastor as well as local law enforcement to move forward with an investigation into Russian hacking, claiming that there was ample evidence to support the theory that malicious foreign agents infiltrated and influenced the outcome of a vote on the date for next month’s potluck at Second Baptist Church.
“The final vote tally appeared to show suspicious activity, with over 40 church members voting to hold the potluck on the January 11 date, and only 12 voting for January 18,” an agitated Williams told reporters Friday.
“I really wanted January 18th to win, and I thought it would win—but it did not. Considering these facts, I am confident the results were influenced by Russian hackers,” he continued, adding that Putin “needs to keep his commie hands” off of the sovereign Independent Baptist church’s affairs.
Given the new evidence and pending a thorough investigation, Williams is actively urging church members to consider a recount, or else protest the potluck by failing to bring a casserole to the event.
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12/18/2016 00:00 ||
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"Борис! Что не так с тобой! Неправильно выборы!"
"Boris! What is wrong with you! Wrong election again!"
[Front Page] Our country still faces many problems. And yet there's something undeniably cheering about seeing the left gnash its teeth and shriek hatefully over things like this. "This" being Trump's unique pick of a pro-Israel ambassador to Israel. This being David Remnick, the New Yorker editor who is probably the second most loathsome figure in the media after Jeffrey Goldberg, squirm with frustrated rage.
"Every morning since November 9th, you wake up and read the news and think, This has got to be an issue of The Onion... But, rather than fog the mind and defeat the spirit with the litany of accumulated outrages, let’s concentrate on the outrage of the day: the appointment of a bankruptcy lawyer named David Friedman as Ambassador to Israel. Friedman writes regularly for Arutz Sheva, a pro-settler Web site that is available in English. After reading these columns, you might reasonably conclude that, if Israel decided it was in its interest to annex the West Bank, Friedman would heartily approve and help raise the flag. Ideologically, Friedman is to the right of Benjamin Netanyahu."
Oh no! To the right of Netanyahu? But I thought Netanyahu was already a crazy right-wing extremist. And here Friedman would approve of Israel tossing out Islamic terrorists and reclaiming all of Israel.
Don't we know the Ambassador is supposed to be a State Department cretin obsessed with blaming Israel for the lack of an Islamic terror state to be dubbed Palestine regardless of the historical revisionism. We're not supposed to have a pro-Israel ambassador who thinks Jews can live in '67 Israel. It's not supposed to happen. What happened to David Remnick's sane leftist world?
[DAWN] AS the fallout from Justice Qazi Faez Isa’s report continues and governments, federal and provincial, struggle to explain their inaction, there has been yet another manifestation of the collective failure of the state. On Friday, newly installed army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa signed off on what may be one of the final orders upholding death sentences for terrorism offences handed down by military courts set up under the 21st Amendment. The 13 latest confirmed death sentences means that over 150 individuals have been condemned to die by military courts since their creation in January 2014. With the sunset clause of the 21st Amendment set to take effect early next month, a stark choice awaits the country’s elected representatives: contemplate an extension to the life of the military courts and in doing so further perpetuate the gross distortions to the Constitution and justice system in the country, or, at long last and however belatedly, take up the issue of criminal justice reform.
The preferred option for parliament may well be the option utilised in the case of extreme detention powers and special courts created under the Protection of Pakistain Act, 2014: when that law expired in July, parliament simply opted to do nothing. Pending cases in the special courts have been transferred to anti-terrorism courts and there appears to be no appetite in parliament to give security forces further special powers to detain individuals for prolonged periods. The do-nothing option may seem palatable in a distorted system; after all, when controversial laws expire and their controversial powers no longer exist, the state cannot rely on them to perpetrate unjustness. So, if military courts under the 21st Amendment cease to exist on Jan 7, an opaque and indefensible system of so-called justice will stand dismantled and army chiefs will no longer have the authority to confirm death sentences handed down by those courts. But the do-nothing option is, in fact, deeply problematic. It is the lack of justice system reforms that makes possible the creation of abominations such as military courts in the first place. If no reforms are attempted, the demand for ad hoc systems of justice will invariably be mooted.
Justice system reforms are not easy, but neither are they as hard as they are made out to be. Under its chairman Raza Rabbani, the Senate is trying to nudge parliament to take up the matter of terrorism-related legal reforms. Two bills covering anti-terrorism and protection of witnesses passed by the Senate should be taken up by the National Assembly -- and the sooner it is done, the better. As Mr Rabbani has warned, a legal vacuum may appear on Jan 7. And if history is any guide, dealing hastily with vacuums or emergencies tends to create further problems. Judicial reforms must be undertaken in a determined, but measured way.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/18/2016 00:00 ||
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[Guardian] On Friday, near Palmyra, 14 tanks and an anti-aircraft system were destroyed in an air strike on Isis. Palmyra recently fell to the jihadists after the Syrian regime and its allies diverted forces to Aleppo, leaving the ancient city under-defended.
This was a repeat of events last year when, on the advice of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani, the regime deployed troops away from Palmyra to the strategically significant metropolis of Aleppo. The planes struck Palmyra on the same day Suleimani was photographed treading the city’s rubble. But the planes weren’t Russian or Syrian: they belonged to the US-led international coalition. While the US has its own reasons for battling Isis, in this case it was picking up the slack from the regime.
Palmyra has only symbolic significance for Assad. Aleppo was the prize, and, with the world watching impotent, the regime was able to starve and bludgeon its population into surrender. The regime was aided by Russian bombers and special forces, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah mercenaries, and a horde of sectarian militias from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan ‐ but, above all, it was aided by American indifference.
In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine earlier this year, President Obama said he was "very proud" of the moment in 2013 when, against the "overwhelming weight of conventional wisdom", he decided not to honour his own "red line", allowing Assad to escape accountability for a chemical attack that had killed more than 1,400 civilians.
Obama may be alone in this judgment. A year earlier, seemingly on a whim, he had set a red line on the use of chemical weapons at a time when none were being used. The red line was, in effect, a green light to conventional killing. But the regime called Obama’s bluff ‐ and, predictably, he backed down. No longer fearing punishment, the regime escalated its tactics.
A similar assessment was made recently by Charles Krauthammer.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Front Page] Our country still faces many problems. And yet there's something undeniably cheering about seeing the left gnash its teeth and shriek hatefully over things like this. "This" being Trump's unique pick of a pro-Israel ambassador to Israel. This being David Remnick, the New Yorker editor who is probably the second most loathsome figure in the media after Jeffrey Goldberg, squirm with frustrated rage.
