[The Hill] The White House this month tried to plant immigration enforcement officials in the refugee agency that oversees unaccompanied migrant children, according to The Washington Post.
The plan, which was crafted by Stephen Miller, President Trump’s top immigration adviser who has advocated for some of the White House’s most hardline policies, is part of an ongoing effort to obtain information from the children’s parents and relatives to target them for deportation, six current and former administration officials told The Post.
Senior officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ultimately rejected the attempt but did allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to collect fingerprints and other biometric information from parents trying to collect their children at government shelters, the newspaper reported. If the adults were determined to be ineligible to take custody of the children, the agents could then use the information they gathered to target them for arrest and deportation.
The Post reports the arrangement appeared to violate laws that prevent the use of refugee programs for deportation enforcement, but Trump administration officials maintain that adults who are denied custody of their children lose their status as "potential sponsors" and are eligible for arrest.
The program appears to stem from Miller’s longtime claims that parents are manipulating HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement by hiring smugglers to bring their children into the U.S. illegally. Absolutely TRUE
Officials acknowledged to the Post that the plan would instill fear in immigrants but maintained that it would serve as a deterrent to parents from sending their children into the U.S. illegally.
Officials at ICE and HHS told the Post that the information shared with enforcement agents would mostly be used to screen adults for criminal offenses and other "red flags," and would not be primarily used to arrest parents and relatives claim "unaccompanied alien children."
Neither the White House nor HHS immediately responded to requests for comment from The Hill.
#4
Look at the eyes. There's no sign of psychopathy or even developing psychopathy. A truly dangerous element in the making. Probably as easy as killing a video game character for him. I think a matter of regressive primate genes.
For a child that's a very weird gaze indeed: affectless, devoid of any kind of childlike openness, naïveté, curiosity, anything we associate with good faith.
When friends would visit me back in the day, I told them under no circumstances should they even set foot in Morningsude Park - at any hour of the day. A dark wood populated by savages like this feral non-youth.
[SpaceDaily] Cape Canaveral - "We do have an off-nominal orbit insertion," says Steve Siceloff, a Boeing spokesperson at mission control has reported on NASA TV from in Houston. "We have spacecraft control. Guidance and control teams are assessing their next maneuvers. Spacecraft batteries are good, and the spacecraft is in a stable orbit."
Boeing had launched its Starliner capsule successfully on Friday onboard a ULA Atlas 5 for a crewless eight-day journey to the International Space Station and back as a dry run for NASA's plans to end US dependence on Russia for space rides
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/21/2019 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[11128 views]
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#1
Sort of in the Signs and Portents region of management malfeasance failures.
#4
The notion that corporate culture at the head office has no effect on product is peculiar.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/21/2019 11:11 Comments ||
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#5
Ah, but how is their diversity program? That's the important bit.
Posted by: James ||
12/21/2019 11:29 Comments ||
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#6
BTW a side point. Boeing designed the capsule to be able to be launched on an Atlas, Vulcan or F9. So if they need to do a bunch of cheap testing they could use end of life F9 boosters.
[NY Post] A Brazilian gang leader had four rideshare drivers killed because he was angry that his sick mother's Uber ride was canceled, according to a report.
The drivers ‐ who worked for Uber and the local transit firm 99 ‐ were tortured and slain behind a shack in the northeastern city of Salvador on Dec. 13, according to the UK Guardian. A fifth driver made a daring escape into a nearby swamp and called police.
"The gangster ordered these people killed because his mother called Uber, but the car never arrived," said Rui Costa, governor of Bahia, according to the outlet. Oh, so it wasn't for some unreasonable cause...
The victim who got away told a local television station that he was called to the neighborhood for a pickup ‐ then forced out of his car at gunpoint and led behind a shack, where he saw other drivers being tortured.
He managed to escape when another driver snatched a pistol away from one of the kidnappers, he said.
Cops confronted two suspects and killed them in a shootout the same day the drivers were kidnapped, according to the outlet.
The gang leader, who has not been named, was found shot to death Monday.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/21/2019 07:26 ||
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[11136 views]
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#1
Let me guess.... the original ride was cancelled because the neighborhood was too rough?
[Aljazeera] Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - Muslim countries should initiate a boycott of Chinese products, an influential Malaysian preacher has said, calling for an end to the detention of ethnic Uighurs, at least a million of whom are reportedly held against their will in China's Xinjiang province.
Mohd Asri bin Zainul Abidin, the top Islamic jurist in Malaysia's Perlis state, said political and religious leaders from the Muslim world should exert more economic and diplomatic pressure on Beijing for its treatment and alleged human rights abuse of the minority Muslim group living in its westernmost province.
Since the protests escalated in June, more than 6,100 people have been arrested for a range of offenses -- including taking part in unlawful assemblies like the one Ivan attended.
Almost a thousand people have been formally charged so far, but the number is expected to rise, as are arrests, as police pour over the reams of evidence amassed throughout the past six months.
The unrest began with largely peaceful mass marches against a proposed extradition bill with China. Though the bill has since been withdrawn, the initial protests unleashed a torrent of anger and frustration with Hong Kong’s political system. Since June, protesters have demanded an investigation into allegations of police brutality and called for greater democracy.
While the early demonstrations were legally-approved marches, almost everyone who has attended protests in recent months has been at an event deemed unlawful. Many may be guilty of rioting, due to the offense’s broad legal definition, or of violating a ban on facial coverings at public assemblies, which city leaders introduced by invoking rarely-used emergency powers.
The number of people potentially eligible for arrest could number in the hundreds of thousands.
Many of those already arrested, like Ivan, are in their twenties, or even younger. They have been the drivers of the protest movement but have also borne the brunt of the reaction and could be the ones ultimately paying the cost -- an entire generation criminalized, in a fight for their future which could end up costing them just that.
SIX MONTHS THAT CHANGED HONG KONG
While Hong Kong is part of China, it also maintains a degree of autonomy. As a former British colony, it enjoys its own legal and political systems, and protected freedoms of press, speech, and assembly.
When protesters marched in June, it was with one objective -- to demand the withdrawal of a bill they thought threatened those freedoms.
Championed by the city’s top leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, the bill would have allowed extradition of fugitives to mainland China.
Hong Kong’s freedoms stand in stark contrast to the mainland, where President Xi Jinping maintains a tight grip on power. China’s legal system is beholden to the ruling Communist Party -- it has a notoriously high conviction rate and a history of political prosecutions. It's one of the main reasons why Hong Kong protesters were so fiercely opposed to the extradition bill; they feared Beijing could use the bill to target political dissidents and erode Hong Kong’s autonomy.
In June, after protest organizers estimated 2 million people took to the streets, Lam said she wanted to offer the city her "most sincere apology."
"I have heard you loud and clear and have reflected deeply on all that has transpired," she said. "The concerns over the past few months have been caused by the deficiencies of the (Hong Kong) government."
But the standoff continued.
As protests stretched on through the summer, peaceful mass marches were largely replaced by violent clashes with police. Police fired tear gas once, then twice, then every week, while protesters built flaming barricades and threw petrol bombs and bricks.
Chinese state media criticized the protests, with China Daily saying Hong Kong had been plagued by "unwarranted political wrangling and violent radicalism.”
Over several months of street battles, the protest movement coalesced around the slogan “Five demands, not one less.” The first was the withdrawal of the extradition bill, which Lam’s government officially did in September. Remaining demands include: launch an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality; retract the categorization of previous protests as "riots"; provide amnesty for arrested protesters; and introduce full universal suffrage.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
12/21/2019 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[11125 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#1
Should have been six, or a second - A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
[SaraACarter] What happened to Joseph Mifsud? It is the biggest mystery surrounding the man that allegedly began the FBI’s probe into President Donald Trump’s campaign and the now debunked theory that campaign officials conspired with Russia in the 2016 election.
A new story out of Italy suggests that an infamous audio file allegedly sent by Mifsud to two Italian papers is believed to be fake, according to reporters who had it analyzed by one of Italy’s top forensic experts. The audio file is not the same deposition audio file that is in the possession of the Department of Justice and the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which Mifsud allegedly describes the work he was doing and why he targeted George Papadopoulos. The last anyone has heard from Mifsud was the Spring of 2018.
Department of Justice officials declined to comment to SaraACarter.com on the ongoing investigation or Mifsud.
However, a detailed story by the reputable and well known Italian news outlet Il Giornale, Italian journalists Roberto Vivaldelli and Mauro Indelicato, suggest that sources within the Agrigento Public Prosecution office, who brought charges on Mifsud in another criminal matter associated with his work at a public university in Italy, believe he is dead. Their story is published in English at Il Giornale’s blog site Inside Over.
Sources interviewed from the Italian prosecutors office, told the journalists that they believe there is an “80 percent” chance that Mifsud is no longer alive.
I spoke to Roberto Vivaldelli Friday, and he affirmed that the newest details regarding Mifsud came as a result of their investigation into Mifsud’s time as president of a university in the southern Italian city of Agrigento, Sicily. Currently, prosecutor’s in Agriengento, Sicily are investigating Mifsud’s alleged misuse of university finances and unexplained expenses.
UPDATE: Late Friday night, George Papadopolous responded to the reports that Italian prosecutors in Agrigento, Sicily believe the Maltese Professor Joseph Mifsud is dead.
“Lil Joey Mifsud is not sleeping with the fishes,” Tweeted Papadopolous. “More to come.”
[IsraelTimes] Police had asked that Cypriot citizens working for Israeli firm be held for 8 more days over accusations of illegal surveillance, but judge declined.
The Cypriot suspects, two men and a woman, faced 13 charges related to violation of privacy laws, processing private data, falsely obtaining documents and breaking the radio communication law.
The vehicle is owned by Cyprus-registered company WiSpear, whose Israeli CEO Tal Dillian is said to be a former Israeli intelligence officer.
The van was seized on November 17 in Larnaca and is still in the possession of the police.
WiSpear denies any wrongdoing and says the van was not used to spy on anybody in Cyprus.
In a statement earlier this month, Dillian lashed out at "amateurish" police for prolonging a "witch hunt" against him.
Dillian said he was "embedded into a vicious circle of accusations" solely based on an interview given to Forbes which ran a video story about the van and the technology it used.
"The interview has been altered and used to fuel rumors and innuendos about illegal activities, coming from unnamed sources and serving unclear motives," he said.
He refuted there had been any illegal activity and was adamant "the police are aware of this fact which is supported by their own investigation."
Is it, really? Sure, the time's in the "embedment", but it's not in the link up top. I doubt I'm the only reader who tends to bump embedded vids out to a new tab. If I hadn't run into YT's age page there, muttered "Okay, what the hell...", and come back here to view it, I'd have reacted just the way grom did.
[Breibart] Mark Galli writes that, while "Democrats have had it out" for Trump "from day one," a reality that places his impeachment "under a cloud of partisan suspicion," nevertheless: So the Billy Graham foundation has been infiltrated by marxists. No surprise there. The more organized a religion gets, the more wolves and corruptions.
The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president's political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.
Galli states Americans are actually not "shocked" by this behavior because Trump "has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration." He writes:
He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone - with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders‐is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.
Galli parts ways with Trump's many evangelical supporters whom, he says, boast of the president's Supreme Court and other federal court nominees, as well as his steady defense of religious freedom, and his efforts to bring unemployment to all-time lows.
Nothing positive Trump has done or accomplished, however, he says, is of any consequence given what he claims is the president's "grossly immoral character":
We believe the impeachment hearings have made it absolutely clear, in a way the Mueller investigation did not, that President Trump has abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath. The impeachment hearings have illuminated the president's moral deficiencies for all to see. This damages the institution of the presidency, damages the reputation of our country, and damages both the spirit and the future of our people. None of the president's positives can balance the moral and political danger we face under a leader of such grossly immoral character.
Galli likens his condemnation of Trump to statements Christianity Today made about former President Bill Clinton in 1998:
Unfortunately, the words that we applied to Mr. Clinton 20 years ago apply almost perfectly to our current president. Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election‐that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.
Galli next takes to task his fellow evangelicals:
To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump's immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we don't reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come? Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation's leader doesn't really matter in the end?
Though claiming Christianity Today has "reserved judgment" on Trump and exercised "patient charity," the editor ultimately asserts, "[I]t's time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence." It would pay great dividends to investigate Galli's private finances, if only the feebs weren't compromised themselves now. He'll turn out to be a regular Gehazi.
As if any of that has f-all to do with how faithful the president is to the Constitution.
Or to how much he knows about the economy, or how wise his foreign policy is or how effective he is at advancing our interests and ensuring peace and prosperity for Americans.
Zero and W were what these idiots would consider "moral" White House occupants. And these morally-superior clowns trashed our Constitution, botched our foreign policy, and presided over a shitty and stagnant economy that destroyed millions of Americans' finances and hopes of a decent life for them and their kids.
Under these two "moral" presidents, Americans' longevity for the first time in our history actually DECLINED. Americans were literally dying off in huge numbers: deaths caused, ultimately, by despair. Stuff your morality up your arse, preacher.
#6
Could find no reference to that, G. He is an Anglican convert from Presbyterianism
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/21/2019 6:24 Comments ||
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#7
^Of course not. Did you see any evidence that "The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president's political opponents."?
? You mean the President of Ukraine - literally a comedian by trade, presiding over the most shambolic state in Europe - is going to bother, worry, trouble in any way one of our most powerful politicians, the man who brags about shooting down prosecutors with bully boy tactics?
"discredit"
.... how could anyone further discredit the man whose son pocketed millions from one of Ukraine's most corrupt firms and millions more from Chinese "investment fund"? Whose brother grabbed a $1.5 BILLION Iraq reconstruction contract?
Do these people even gave any inkling of how absurd they are?
#10
I am an evangelical Christian, and most of us stopped reading Christianity Today some time ago. In our view, it has long strayed from the original vision Billy Graham had for it, as Franklin Graham's response makes clear.
No one should think that CT speaks for evangelical Christians today. This guy is using what was once a respected name to advance a viewpoint far removed from the main message of the Bible.
Hint: How many Roman emperors did Jesus call on to be removed from office?
Posted by: Tom ||
12/21/2019 10:17 Comments ||
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#12
Ah, lefty reasoning. For the last 3 years we have been brow beaten with the most preposterous allegations about 'Russian collusion'. All based on the notion that even the very suggestion that the president was somehow 'compromised' by the Russians was enough to remove him from office.
But now when questions arise about the top polling dem...chiefly from his own loud mouth and congenital braggadoccio, that's all different because, uh, REASONS!
#13
So the Billy Graham foundation has been infiltrated by marxists.
Dulis: Christianity Today Editor Champions Theologian Who Excused Stalin’s Mass Murder However, Galli has no moral authority to make this judgment on political preferences. Just a few years before this missive, Galli authored a lionizing biography of Karl Barth (pictured, inset) — a neo-orthodox theologian (e.g., believed that Christ did rise from the dead but the eyewitnesses did not record it accurately) and avowed socialist who excused Josef Stalin’s “totalitarian atrocities” due to the “positive intention” of the Marxist world view. He wrote:
#16
From now on, every single Taylor Swift song purchased on iTunes or elsewhere will now be funding the Soros machine, and the Leftists’ agenda. How many others have gone through the same thing! What are we really buying into!?Mag Media
She now claims she is not happy about it. Whatever...
[IsraelTimes] Police said to be investigating possible link to a string of anti-Semitic graffiti attacks in city that targeted vehicles and Jewish schools; suspect detained in Hawaii.
The Beverly Hills Police Department on Wednesday arrested a suspect in a case of vandalism at a Beverly Hills synagogue over the weekend.
Nathaniel Anton Redding, 24, of Millersville, Pennsylvania, was charged with vandalism of a religious property and commercial burglary, CBS Los Angeles reported.
The charges against Redding also include a penalty enhancement for carrying out a hate crime.
On Saturday, a suspect described as a white male entered the Nessah Synagogue, a Persian Jewish congregation in Beverly Hills, and vandalized the sanctuary, tearing prayer books and strewing Torah scrolls on the floor.
"The criminal who we believe desecrated a holy place on Shabbat is now in jug thanks to the superb work of the Beverly Hills Police Department," Beverly Hills Mayor John Mirisch said in a statement. "I said we would catch this guy, and we did."
Redding was arrested in Hawaii in a joint operation between Beverly Hills police and Hawaii Police.
He is being held without bail as he waits for a hearing on inter-state extradition so that he can be sent back to Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,.
Detectives are reportedly looking into a possible connection between the Nessah Synagogue vandalism and a series of recent graffiti attacks in Los Angeles that have also targeted Jewish property.
On Monday evening three Jewish schools were tagged with anti-Semitic graffiti and later that night and early Tuesday morning some two dozen vehicles were spray-painted in Calabasas.
A swastika and hateful messages including the phrase "time to pay" were found spray-painted at the American Jewish University in Bel Air, the Westwood Charter School and Milken Community High School on Tuesday, according to a report on the LAist website.
Also Monday night, vehicles were vandalized near the Brentwood and Westwood communities of Los Angeles "in a similar manner" the LAPD said, according to the CBSLA report.
In September, "Free Paleostine" was spray-painted on the front of the Baba Sale Congregation
Ah, there it is: he isn’t a Jew hater, he’s just anti-Zionist.
in the Fairfax district of the city and "Six million $ was not enough" was drawn in marker on the welcome sign affixed to the gate of the city’s Temple Ahavat Shalom.
LAist cited the Anti-Defamation League as stating that there have been 36 such incidents in Los Angeles in 2019.
#2
I think the jolly guys at the institute should 'cancel' such people. Deterrence by mortal fear. Russkies do it all the time, sloppily. They always walk away.
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.