Watch: Las Vegas Investigators Reveal Disturbing Material Found on Stephen Paddock’s Computer

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Las Vegas Metropolitan Sheriff Joe Lombardo revealed on Friday that Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas gunman, had a “disturbing” search history on his computer, which included child pornography.

Lombardo, in his first press conference since October, spoke about the new 81-page police report released on Friday, and added that the FBI is investigating an unidentified suspect.

“I realize it’s been three months since you have received an update on the 1 Oct. shooting,” Lombardo told reporters. “We have done a lot of work trying to piece together what happened.”

“This report won’t answer every question, or even the biggest question as to why he did what he did,” Lombardo continued. “We are all going to have to be patient and let the investigation run its course.”

Lombardo reiterated that it is the view of law enforcement that there was only one shooter, and that at this time there are no signs of radicalization.

(Read more from “Watch: Las Vegas Investigators Reveal Disturbing Material Found on Stephen Paddock’s Computer” HERE)

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The NYT Was Just Caught Changing a Headline Because It Made Democrats Look Too Bad

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The New York Times changed a headline in an article Saturday morning about the government shutdown that absolves Democrats of blame for the impasse.

“Senate Democrat Block Bill to Keep Government Open Past Midnight, Shutdown Looms,” is the original version of The Times’ headline — one that went through various changes as negotiations on the budget deal broke down.

However, a final version of the headline was published at 12:01 a.m. and appears to dramatically downplay Democrats responsibility in the matter, according to an analysis The Daily Caller News Foundation conducted using NewsDiffs, a website that tracks changes made to high-performing articles.

The final version of the headline states: “Government Shuts Down as Bill to Extend Funding Is Blocked.”

The Times substantially altered the original article as well. Editors nixed a sentence, for instance, noting that, “Senate Democrats blocked passage of a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open.”

The media giant has not responded to TheDCNF’s questions about the reason for the changes, which could include the need to keep up with the hustle and bustle of the budget negotiations. Yet, many other legacy news outlets ran with headlines leveling criticism on Democrats for the inability to prevent a government shutdown.

“U.S. Shutdown Starts as Senate Democrats Block GOP Funding Plan” a Bloomberg headline blared early Saturday morning, referring to the Senate’s inability to agree on a variety of budgetary issues.

The AP chimed in with a similar headline reflecting the sheer anarchy surrounding the budget negotiating process.

Republican and Democratic leaders have not stopped talking through their differences.

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, for instance, said late Friday night that the conflict has a “really good chance” of being resolved before the weekend concludes.

Both parties took substantial risks.

Republicans refused to bend to the Democrat’s demands to negotiate, while the minority party largely unified to use the shutdown deadline to exact protections from the GOP for hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants.

Republicans tried to sweeten the deal, offering Democrats a long-term extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, as well as the delay of some unpopular health-care taxes.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans believed the public would blame Democrats if the sweetener was rejected.

McConnell’s party controls 51 seats in the Senate, while Democrats have 49.

It requires 60 votes to pass a spending bill and the majority party cannot use reconciliation to reduce the number of votes required for cloture.

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.

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Major State to Register Illegal Aliens to Vote Automatically

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California will take the next step in blurring the lines between citizens and non-citizens beginning April Fool’s Day when the state complies with a court order to begin automatically registering to vote all those who are granted driver’s licenses.

The state has long provided driver’s licenses to all who simply claimed, without proof, that they were citizens of in the country legally. There were no checks made or documentation required.

But beginning April 1 every person who gets a California driver’s license will be automatically entitled to vote.

“We are very pleased that Californians will have easier access to voter registration,” said Jeremiah Levine, an attorney with Morrison Foerster who represented the voting-rights groups. “We are especially satisfied that changes will be made before California’s statewide and federal primary elections.”

The state complied with the order under a program dubbed the California New Motor Voter Act. Signed into law in October 2015, the new statute requires the DMV to forward records for all eligible applicants to the Secretary of State’s Office for registration unless those applicants elect not to register to vote. (Read more from “Major State to Register Illegal Aliens to Vote Automatically” HERE)

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Feds Quietly Relocating Illegals on Commercial Flights

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Federal escorts dressed in civilian clothing are quietly putting illegal immigrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border on taxpayer-funded flights and secretly taking them to unsuspecting communities across the U.S., according to a government-watchdog agency.

“In the last few days alone, groups of illegal aliens boarded planes at airports in Texas and Arizona accompanied by a taxpayer-funded government escort in civilian clothes to avoid drawing attention,” Judicial Watch reported Friday. “The first flight originated at Valley International Airport in Harlingen, Texas, and was bound for Minneapolis. The second left from Tucson International Airport and arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah, federal sources said.”

In both cases, illegal immigrants, who appeared to be in their teens, were reportedly escorted by Health and Human Services chaperones.

Judicial Watch said Friday that “high-ranking Homeland Security officials” confirmed its report. The organization said it reached out to HHS for comment but hadn’t received a response from the agency. WND requested comment from HHS on Monday but hadn’t received a reply at the time of this report.

A source described as a “veteran federal official” told Judicial Watch the illegal immigrants, who are given a red HHS wristband, receive “the gold glove treatment.” They’re reportedly boarded on the commercial flights before other passengers and even law-enforcement authorities. (Read more from “Feds Quietly Relocating Illegals on Commercial Flights” HERE)

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Study Reveals the Most ‘Difficult’ Family Members

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Tired of your mother or sister prying into your personal life? You’re not alone. While the women in our lives often prove to be the most caring and helpful in times of need, a new study finds that female family members also tend to be the most difficult.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Bar-Ilan University in Israel used surveys focusing on the relationships of more than 1,100 adults young and old from the San Francisco Bay Area. Of the 12,000-some personal relationships — including close and casual friends, family members, or colleagues — described in their responses, the research team honed in on individuals whom the respondents flagged as people they “sometimes find demanding or difficult.”

While about 15 percent of relationships were dubbed as difficult, the authors found that close female relatives — mothers, sisters, and wives — led the way in that category. It’s very likely, however, that women ranked more prominently because they tend to be the ones who involve themselves more deeply in a person’s life, while men tend to be more passive.

“The message here is that, with female relatives, it can be a two-sided thing. They may be the people you most depend on, but also the people who nag you the most,” says study senior author Claude Fischer, a sociology professor at Berkeley, in a news release. “It’s a testament to their deeper engagement in social ties.”

Generally speaking, parents, siblings and spouses were named most frequently as difficult individuals. As for who was the least frustrating, participants agreed that friends led the pack, only representing about 7 percent of the bothersome bunch. (Read more from “Study Reveals the Most ‘Difficult’ Family Members” HERE)

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Students Flee as Muslim Professor Starts Bizarre Behavior

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An adjunct professor of astronomy has been suspended for antics in class so bizarre that students fled the room and the police were summoned.

Tarrant County College’s Daniel Mashburn arrived to his class last Tuesday night 20 minutes late garbed in “a cap, a toboggan, a scarf over his face and gloves.”

According to Fox-4, students in attendance said Mashburn “talked about the Koran and the moon and the dark night,” appeared incoherent, “and never discussed anything astronomy-related.”

“Mostly he was talking about different things of the Muslim faith,” [student April] McLeod said. “I was in class for about five minutes. He kept messing with his pocket and you could tell there was an object in the right-hand pocket. And whenever he went to pull out his hand, I started having this really bad feeling and jumped up and ran out of the classroom.” . . .

Inside Higher Ed reports Mashburn has been replaced by a new instructor while the college investigates his conduct. It notes an American Association of University Professors policy which states instructors “should only be removed from the classroom during an investigation of their conduct if they pose a safety risk.” (Read more from “Students Flee as Muslim Professor Starts Bizarre Behavior” HERE)

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Supremes Join Trump to Stop Obama Power Grab

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The Trump administration has worked virtually nonstop since the inauguration to unwind and withdraw some of the environmental campaigns launched by Barack Obama, and on Monday the Supreme Court joined in.

The justices ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot provide a hedge of protection preventing courts from reviewing its actions by requiring such appeals be heard only in some courts.

“Today’s ruling is a victory for the rule of law and for accountability in government,” said James S. Burling, of Pacific Legal Foundation.

His organization worked with farmers, ranchers and other landowners nationwide who wanted to fight the Obama-era Waters of the U.S. ruling . . .

“The EPA’s ‘waters of the United States’ rule may be the most brazen – and lawless – expansion of bureaucratic power in American history. The regulators who imposed it tried to shield it from review by limiting opportunities for the public to bring challenges. The Supreme Court struck a blow for liberty by rejecting this ploy and guaranteeing access to justice for the EPA’s victims,” Burling said. (Read more from “Supremes Join Trump to Stop Obama Power Grab” HERE)

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New Scientific Breakthroughs Are Having a Huge Impact on the Abortion Debate

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. . .Activists like McGuire believe it makes perfect sense to be pro-science and pro-life. While she opposes abortion on moral grounds, she believes studies of fetal development, improved medical techniques, and other advances anchor the movement’s arguments in scientific fact. “The pro-life message has been, for the last 40-something years, that the fetus … is a life, and it is a human life worthy of all the rights the rest of us have,” she said. “That’s been more of an abstract concept until the last decade or so.” But, she added, “when you’re seeing a baby sucking its thumb at 18 weeks, smiling, clapping,” it becomes “harder to square the idea that that 20-week-old, that unborn baby or fetus, is discardable.”

Scientific progress is remaking the debate around abortion. When the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, the case that led the way to legal abortion, it pegged most fetuses’ chance of viable life outside the womb at 28 weeks; after that point, it ruled, states could reasonably restrict women’s access to the procedure. Now, with new medical techniques, doctors are debating whether that threshold should be closer to 22 weeks. Like McGuire, today’s prospective moms and dads can learn more about their baby earlier into a pregnancy than their parents or grandparents. And like McGuire, when they see their fetus on an ultrasound, they may see humanizing qualities like smiles or claps, even if most scientists see random muscle movements.

These advances fundamentally shift the moral intuition around abortion. New technology makes it easier to apprehend the humanity of a growing child and imagine a fetus as a creature with moral status. Over the last several decades, pro-life leaders have increasingly recognized this and rallied the power of scientific evidence to promote their cause. They have built new institutions to produce, track, and distribute scientifically crafted information on abortion. They hungrily follow new research in embryology. They celebrate progress in neonatology as a means to save young lives. New science is “instilling a sense of awe that we never really had before at any point in human history,” McGuire said. “We didn’t know any of this.”

In many ways, this represents a dramatic reversal; pro-choice activists have long claimed science for their own side. The Guttmacher Institute, a research and advocacy organization that defends abortion and reproductive rights, has exercised a near-monopoly over the data of abortion, serving as a source for supporters and opponents alike. And the pro-choice movement’s rhetoric has matched its resources: Its proponents often describe themselves as the sole defenders of women’s welfare and scientific consensus. The idea that life begins at conception “goes against legal precedent, science, and public opinion,” said Ilyse Hogue, the president of the abortion-advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice America, in a recent op-ed for CNBC. Members of the pro-life movement are “not really anti-abortion,” she wrote in another piece. “They are against [a] world where women can contribute equally and chart our own destiny in ways our grandmothers never thought possible.” (Read more from “New Scientific Breakthroughs Are Having a Huge Impact on the Abortion Debate” HERE)

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Former Military Lawyers Just Dropped a Bombshell on ‘Chelsea Manning’s’ Senate Run

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Chelsea Manning has filed to run for Senate as a Democratic candidate in Maryland, but such a run subjects Manning to prosecution for violating Pentagon regulations on political activities, according to former military lawyers.

Manning, the transgender soldier who spent seven years in prison for leaking more than 700,000 sensitive documents to WikiLeaks, recently filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission and is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for the Senate seat in Maryland currently occupied by Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin, a two-term senator.

In a Thursday tweet, Manning posted a certificate of candidacy obtained from the Maryland State Board of Elections, an important and required step in the process of running for Senate.

One of the lines of the certificate states: “I am a registered voter and a citizen of Maryland and meet all other requirements for the above listed office.”

The website of the state board shows that Manning filed in Annapolis on Thursday, which is far in advance of the late February deadline and raises the stakes for the Democratic primary in Maryland set to begin at the end of June.

As part of the coverage of Manning’s filing with the FEC and state board, virtually every media organization has declared that Manning is a former Army private. In fact, as the Army confirmed to The Daily Caller News Foundation in September 2017, Manning remains an active-duty soldier, albeit on excess leave and in a non-pay status while his appeal of a general court-martial for violating the Espionage Act and other orders is still underway.

Manning was originally sentenced to 35 years in prison, but then-President Barack Obama stepped in and commuted the sentence as one of his last acts in office, freeing Manning from a military prison in Kansas.

The Army further stated that Manning holds an active-duty identification card and acknowledged his status and access to government health care prior to being released.

While Manning’s felony conviction does not appear to automatically disqualify a run for office, his active-duty status presents a much more troubling issue. Such a status, in other words, has enormous implications for engaging in any kind of political activity, especially a Senate run.

Dru Brenner-Beck, retired Army judge advocate general and president of the National Institute of Military Justice, told The Daily Caller News Foundation that on the face of it, Manning is prohibited by Department of Defense regulations from running for office while serving in an active-duty capacity.

The only exception is if Secretary of Defense Gen. James Mattis grants explicit permission, a power that cannot be delegated by a secretary to anyone else.

According to Brenner-Beck, the regulation in question is Department of Defense Directive 1344.10 Directive 1344.10, Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces, dated Feb. 9, 2008, para. 4.2.2.

“That paragraph is punitive and violation of it subjects her to courts-martial for violation of a lawful order or regulation under Article 92,” Brenner-Beck told TheDCNF. “Her activities campaigning for herself and fundraising for herself may also violate other provisions of the DoD Directive, themselves separately punishable under the UCMJ, art. 92.”

Brenner-Beck added that prosecution, in this case, is a “discretionary decision by her chain of command.”

Victor M. Hansen, a law professor at New England Law and former military lawyer, also agreed that Manning’s run for office is legally prohibited and could result in prosecution.

“It’s prohibited for the obvious reason that you don’t want someone serving two masters on active-duty,” Hansen stated.

He added: “But in Manning’s case, it’s less of a concern, because she’s on excess leave — she has less connection with the military than GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham did when he was an Air Force reserve judge advocate general and certainly less than Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster does while serving as national security adviser to Donald Trump.”

If the Pentagon declines to prosecute, it’s possible that other active-duty members of the military will assume that running for office or engaging in political campaigns or advocacy in ways that overstep the bounds of regulations won’t be met with much resistance.

But Hansen doesn’t think someone as outlandish as Manning would inspire other active-duty service members to violate DOD regulations and run for political office, in addition to other prohibited forms of political involvement. For Hansen, Manning is a bit of an exceptional case.

Brenner-Beck, however, believes that prosecution under the Trump administration is not out of the question because of Trump’s active involvement in disparaging Bowe Bergdahl, who was on trial for desertion and misbehavior before the enemy in Afghanistan. Brenner-Beck believes Bergdahl represents a blatant example of disregarding the principle of avoiding unlawful command influence.

Trump blasted Manning in January 2017, after Obama commuted his prison sentence, calling him an “ungrateful traitor” who never should have been released.

Hansen also warned of the possibility of outside pressure on Manning’s chain of command.

“There’s always the risk that somebody could put pressure on that commander or take it to a higher level and prosecute at that level, so there is a risk of unlawful command influence,” Hansen said. “If someone were to decide that we want to bring charges for Manning on this, that would be the very thing I would look into — who made the decision, why, and was there any outside pressures from above.”

According to Hansen, the Army likely wants the issue of Manning to fade away from the public spotlight rather than having a commander take the time to open an investigation.

In his first interview since filing paperwork with the FEC, Manning denied that the run was merely a PR stunt and insisted that despite Cardin’s popularity and strong base of support, he is dead-set on both running and winning.

“We know it’s a real fight ahead of us,” Manning told The Guardian. “We do want to win, but if we lose our principles then winning wouldn’t matter.”

Manning’s main political positions include closing down all prisons, providing free health care and opening U.S. borders to all immigrants.

“We shouldn’t be denying the absolute right to come into the United States,” he added. “You have a right, everybody does.”

It remains to be seen how other political entities will handle a prohibited run for office. So far, Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin, the incumbent Manning is attempting to challenge, has only stated: “Senator Cardin is looking forward to a vigorous debate of the issues and a robust conversation with Maryland voters.”

Cardin’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Manning’s eligibility to run, neither did the Democratic Party of Maryland.

The Army refused to comment to TheDCNF.

Chelsea Manning did not respond to TheDCNF’s request for comment.

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.

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Someone Just Found a Video of Obama Talking About the 2013 Government Shutdown

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Former President Barack Obama had stern words after the Republican minority in the Senate shut down the government for 16 days in 2013 over funding for Obamacare.

“You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don’t break it,” Obama said in remarks on Oct. 17, 2013, after Congress reached a deal to reopen the government.

“Don’t break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building,” he added. “That’s not being faithful to what this country’s about.”

“Now, there’s been a lot of discussion lately of the politics of this shutdown,” Obama said. “But let’s be clear. There are no winners here. These last few weeks have inflicted completely unnecessary damage on our economy.”

The government shutdown began early Saturday after the Senate failed to pass a temporary funding bill.

Democrats voted against the measure and demanded a deal to address illegal immigrants who have protection under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Both parties have spent the past week fighting over who is more responsible for the shutdown.

Republicans blame Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for fighting for illegal immigrants more than the military service members and government employees who would be affected by the shutdown.

“Senate Democrats own the Schumer Shutdown. Tonight, they put politics above our national security, military families, vulnerable children, and our country’s ability to serve all Americans,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement Saturday.

“We will not negotiate the status of unlawful immigrants while Democrats hold our lawful citizens hostage over their reckless demands,” she continued. “This is the behavior of obstructionist losers, not legislators.”

Democrats, meanwhile, have placed the blame on Republicans who control the House, and the Senate by a narrow majority, and President Donald Trump for failing to negotiate, but neither side appears to be making specific policy demands.

Schumer himself decried the politics of brinksmanship that led to the 2013 shutdown. “No matter how strongly one feels about an issue, you shouldn’t hold millions of people hostage,” Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week” in 2013. “That’s what the other side is doing. That’s wrong, and we can’t give in to that.”

Obama’s 2013 charge that the GOP should “go out there and win an election” if they didn’t like his policies proved prophetic.

Republicans gained nine Senate seats a year later in the 2014 midterm elections, ending nearly eight years of a Democratic majority in that chamber.

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.

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