https://www.nationalreview.com/news/iran-admits-it-unintentionally-shot-down-ukrainian-passenger-jet/
Iran admitted on Friday that its military had accidentally shot down a civilian passenger jet on Tuesday that belonged to Ukraine International Airlines and that took off from Tehran several hours after Iran attacked U.S. positions in Iraq.
All 176 passengers and crew were killed in the crash, most of them Iranian or Canadian citizens.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/how-mcconnell-outplayed-pelosi/
The Republican leader unified his caucus by relying on precedent.
Mitch McConnell was clear when he addressed the Senate on December 18: Any impeachment trial of President Trump would follow the precedent established by the trial of President Clinton 20 years ago.
Clinton’s trial was divided into pieces. The Senate agreed unanimously to begin with a briefing, opening arguments, questions from senators, and a vote to dismiss. Whether to hear witnesses or introduce additional evidence were questions decided later. “That was the unanimous bipartisan precedent from 1999,” McConnell said. “Put first things first, lay the bipartisan groundwork, and leave mid-trial questions to the middle of the trial.”
The arrangement satisfied Chuck Schumer back when he was a recently elected junior senator from New York. Funny how times change. Now Senate minority leader, and looking to damage Republicans in a presidential election year, Schumer demanded that McConnell call witnesses and ask for additional documents at the outset of the proceedings. Pelosi followed his cues. After the House impeached Trump on December 18, she said she wouldn’t transmit the articles of impeachment until McConnell gave in to Schumer’s demands.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/gov_abbott_announces_that_the_state_of_texas_will_not_accept_refugees_in_2020.html
Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced on Friday that, as of 2020, Texas will no longer participate in the federal refugee resettlement program. The reason he gave was that the federal immigration system is “broken” and the state no longer has the resources to deal with the fallout of that breakdown. Abbott’s move makes Texas the first state to withdraw from the refugee resettlement program.
In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Governor Abbott explained his reasoning:
On behalf of the State of Texas, I write in response to Executive Order 13888, on Enhancing State and Local Involvement in Refugee Resettlement, as issued by President Trump on September 26, 2019.
Texas is one of the most welcoming states for refugees seeking to escape dangers abroad. Since FY2010, more refugees have been received in Texas than in any other state. In fact, over that decade, roughly 10% of all refugees resettled in the United States have been placed in Texas. Even today, the process of resettling continues for many of these refugees.
In addition to accepting refugees all these years, Texas has been left by Congress to deal with disproportionate migration issues resulting from a broken federal immigration system. In May 2019, for example, around 100,000 migrants were apprehended crossing this state’s southern border. In June 2019, individuals from 52 different countries were apprehended here. And in FY2018, the apprehensions included citizens from disparate countries like China, Iran, Kenya, Russia, and Tonga. Texas continues to have to deal with the consequences of an immigration system that Congress has failed to fix.
https://mailchi.mp/49ebc9ff866d/krd-news-fieldston-school-urj-pres-rick-jacobs-and-i
MORE ANTISEMITISM AT FIELDSTON
In “‘No Zionists’ and ‘No Straights’: Tweets from Teacher Rattle Elite New York City School” (Washington Free Beacon, Jan 9), Adam Kredo exposes even more anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism at Fieldston School, this time from history teacher J.B. Brager. Bad enough? This particular teacher was slated to teach an elective history course titled “Nazi Germany and the Holocaust” later this month.Plus, when Congressman Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5) and Congressman Max Rose (NY-11) got word about the anti-Semite who Fieldston forced on their students at a required assembly, their response in a letter to Fieldston’s leadership was perfect:
There should be no place in our national discourse for hate-filled speech targeting any group. As Jewish Members of Congress dedicated to combatting anti-Semitism, we would like to understand how such a speaker could be invited to address ECFS students, what steps the school has taken to hold those responsible accountable, how the school has communicated to students and parents that such rhetoric is unacceptable, and how ECFS will implement processes to prevent future incidents. By drawing comparisons between the Holocaust and the State of Israel, these statements misrepresent current events while devaluing the horrors of the attempt to eliminate European Jewry.
Breaking News: Fieldston has fired J.B. Brager.
Plus, anti-Semitism continues around the globe:
A 30-year old Jewish man was beaten and subjected to anti-Semitic abuse on Tuesday on a Berlin subway:
A man in Toronto finds a swastika scrawled on his Alzheimer-stricken uncle’s head; and
A Holocaust monument and newly renovated synagogue were vandalized in Greece.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aoc-riles-dems-by-refusing-to-pay-party-dues-bankrolling-her-colleagues-opponents
EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has already topped the fundraising charts in her short time in Congress, but the liberal darling won’t donate a cent of her millions to Democrats’ House campaign organization — a position that has rankled some of her colleagues, Fox News has learned.
Instead, Ocasio-Cortez is building her own fundraising operation for fellow progressive candidates to bypass the official Democratic Party infrastructure. Already, she’s actively funding primary challengers to oust certain Democratic colleagues.
“Sometimes the question comes: ‘Do you want to be in a majority or do you want to be in the minority?’” Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., told Fox News, when asked about AOC’s stance. “And do you want to be part of a team?”
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chairwoman Cheri Bustos downplayed Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to shun dues and pointed to the record-breaking fundraising numbers the committee has notched without her.
“That’s always up to individual members so I guess I don’t think about it one way or another,” Bustos said when asked about Ocasio-Cortez’s stance. “We’re raising record amounts of money from our members.”
The DCCC declined to comment further on the matter of Ocasio-Cortez and her dues.
Another Democrat was less diplomatic: “Deadbeat Cortez should pay her bills,” complained the Democratic source. “She’s always whining about people paying their fair share and here she is leaving her friends with the bill.”
Their gripe is that Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t given any money to the DCCC, the party arm with the sole job of electing Democrats to the House. Records obtained by Fox News show the New York Democrat has failed to pay any of her $250,000 in “dues” to the DCCC.
Henry Jackson Society: Home
https://henryjacksonsociety.org
Coming into this week, so-called “woke liberals” were pretty confident of two things: President Trump could do no right and Meghan Markle could do no wrong.
The Markle situation requires little exposition. Family splits are hard at the best of times, only more so when business is combined with family life. In such circumstances, it is wise to tell your family before the press that you’re quitting the firm. Not much, therefore, to be learned from this episode beyond basic courtesy and communication.
President Trump’s week, however, has proved more revelatory.
Prior to his election, the world was widely warned – indeed it became an article of faith – that President Trump did not have the proper temperament or approach to foreign policy. “Dangerous” was how one New York Times editorial referred to the prospect.
This lack of confidence has continued into his presidency. Trump’s approaches to NATO, North Korea, China, and the Middle East have been questioned respectively. Time and again, we have been told that his unorthodox approach risks nuclear war, economic ruin, or both.
www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/09/it-begins-peter-schweizer-book-set-to-upend-official-washington/
The investigative author behind the game-changing New York Times bestsellers Clinton Cash and Secret Empires is set to drop another bombshell book that sources close to the publisher say will “upend official Washington.”
As Axios reported on Thursday, Government Accountability Institute President and Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer’s forthcoming book, Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite (HarperCollins), is set to launch Tuesday, January 2.
The book’s cover features images of Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker.
According to Axios, Schweizer and his GAI team of investigators spent a year and a half researching Profiles in Corruption, which Amazon says numbers 368 pages in length. The table of contents includes individual chapters on: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Eric Garcetti, and Amy Klobuchar.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/susan_rice_lies_again__obama_and_soleimani.html
Susan Rice was a little less ubiquitous this time around than during her infamous five-talk-show world tour repeating the lie that the Benghazi terrorist attack was the fault of an inflammatory video and not due to the criminal negligence of President Barack Hussein Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. But there she was again on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Comedy Hour” defending her former boss, this time against charges that President Trump cleaned up more of Obama’s Iran mess by terminating the life and reign of terror of Iranian Gen. and Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani:
The Obama administration wasn’t presented with the opportunity to take out Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad early Friday, former national security adviser Susan Rice said Friday night.
“Had we been presented such an opportunity, what we would have done is weigh very carefully and very deliberately the risks versus the potential rewards,” Rice told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow….
Rice questioned whether Trump made the right decision.
“So, if in fact the administration can be believed that there was indeed strong intelligence of an imminent threat against the United States that’s being carried out by Soleimani and related militia then the question becomes [was] there more than one way to address that threat?” she told Maddow. “Was the only way to deal with it to kill Soleimani? Certainly, given his history and track record, he deserves his just rewards but the question is does that serve our interests? Does that make us more secure?”
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15411/iraq-us-troops-iran
“They [surviving ISIS fighters] have better techniques, better tactics and a lot more money at their disposal. They are able to buy vehicles, weapons, food supplies and equipment. Technologically they’re more savvy. It’s more difficult to flush them out. So, they are like al-Qaeda on steroids.” — Lahur Talabany, a top Kurdish counter-terrorism official, in an interview with the BBC.
Calling on America to withdraw its forces from Iraq could therefore prove to be utterly self-defeating for the Iraqi government… they will simply be placing themselves at the mercy of a new, and bolder, generation of Islamist fanatics.
A US withdrawal from Iraq would also suit Tehran, where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not only called for the withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq, but the entire Middle East. Not having the US to provide moral and military support to the Iraqi government would allow Iran to continue its meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs, as well as consolidating its malign influence throughout the rest of the region.
The most likely consequence of any attempt by the Iraqi government to demand the removal of American forces will be the return of ISIS as a major terrorist force, as President Donald J. Trump singled out in his televised address January 8.
The issue of whether the estimated 5,200 US troops currently based in Iraq will be allowed to remain in the wake of the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani has been raised following a nonbinding vote by the Iraqi parliament calling for the withdrawal of American forces.
President Trump immediately responded by threatening Iraq with sanctions and a bill for billions of dollars if Baghdad insisted on the withdrawal taking place, although questions remain about the legitimacy of the Iraqi parliament’s demand.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15412/france-islamic-republic
In a country that used to stand for freedom of expression, self-censorship is soaring.
“For the past five years, I’ve been going to the police station every month or so to file a complaint about death threats, not insults, death threats”. — Marika Bret, a journalist at Charlie Hebdo today, January 8, 2020.
“Nobody dares to publish caricatures of Mohammed anymore. Self-censorship prevails…. Hate is directed against those who resist obscuring information rather than against those who obscure it. Not to mention the psychiatrization of terrorism in order better to exonerate Islam. If we had been told in the early 2000s that in 2020, around 20 French cartoonists and intellectuals would be under police protection, no one would have believed it.” — Pascal Bruckner, author.
A Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, was tortured and murdered in her Paris apartment by her neighbor, Kobili Traoré, who was yelling “Allahu Akbar.” A court of appeals recently ruled that Traoré, because he had smoked cannabis, was “not criminally responsible” for his actions. As France’s Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia said, it is a “license to kill Jews”.
“Five years after the killings at Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher, France has learned to live with the Islamist threat,” wrote Yves Thréard, deputy editor at the daily newspaper Le Figaro.
“Not a month goes by… without a murderous attack with the cry of ‘Allahu Akbar’ taking place on our soil…. But what is the point of fighting the effects of Islamism if we do not tackle the origins of this ideology of death? On that front, however, denial continues to compete with naiveté. Nothing has changed in the last five years. On the contrary.
“In the name of diversity, non-discrimination and human rights, France has accepted a number of blows to its culture and history… Islamists are a hot-button issue. They continue the fight which, even without weapons, has all the allure of a war of civilizations. Is the famous ‘Charlie spirit’, which some people thought was blowing after the January 2015 attacks, just an illusion?”
France has been marking the fifth anniversary of the deadly jihadist attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which took place on January 7, 2015. Last month, French Senator Nathalie Goulet warned that more attacks were likely. “In France we have a serious problem and we need to do more to prevent extremists from acting. As it stands, there will be more attacks,” said Goulet said.
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