GOP May Forgo Calling Any Witnesses in Impeachment Trial; Lawyer Turns Impeachment Tables by Scorching Bidens at Hearing

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By The Blaze. Top Senate Republicans signaled Tuesday that the GOP may opt against calling any witnesses at all in an upper chamber trial if House Democrats vote to impeach President Donald Trump, offering numerous reasons for such a strategy. . .

The Washington Examiner spoke with several GOP lawmakers who floated the possibility of calling few witnesses or none whatsoever, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) making the case for expedience in telling the outlet, “Here’s what I want to avoid: this thing going on longer than it needs to. I want to end this.”

Third-ranking GOP Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.) asserted that after House Democrats and the White House have made their arguments at the beginning of the prospective Senate trial, “I would expect that most members would be ready to vote and wouldn’t need more information,” adding, “Many people have their minds pretty well made up.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Reuters that at that point in the trial, it could go one of two ways: “Down the path of calling witnesses and basically having another trial,” or, a majority of senators coming together and deciding “that they’ve heard enough and they believe they know what would happen and could move to vote on the two articles of impeachment sent over to us by the House.”

Both The Examiner and Reuters noted that there is no indication at this point that the Republican-led Senate would vote to impeach the president, and both also pointed out that President Trump has pressed for calling GOP witnesses in the Senate trial. (Read more from “GOP May Forgo Calling Any Witnesses in Impeachment Trial” HERE)

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GOP Lawyer Turns Impeachment Tables by Scorching Bidens at Hearing

By Fox News. The top lawyer for Judiciary and Intelligence Committee Republicans testified Monday that there was a “legitimate basis” for President Trump to ask Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to launch a public investigation into the Biden family’s dealings in Ukraine.

During impeachment inquiry testimony in front of the Judiciary Committee, minority counsel Steve Castor tried to turn the tables on the Democrat-led investigation into whether President Trump tried to pressure his Ukrainian colleague into investigating a political rival by withholding aid and a White House meeting by arguing that there were real concerns about the former vice president’s son’s involvement with the Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma Holdings.

“Hunter Biden was reportedly receiving $50,000 to $83,000 a month for compensation for his role on the Burisma board,” Castor said of the former vice president’s son.

Castor questioned why a person who doesn’t have a history with Ukraine and doesn’t speak either Ukrainian or Russian would have a senior role on the company’s board.

“At the time that Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board, his father, former Vice President Biden, was the Obama Administration’s point person for Ukraine.” (Read more from “GOP Lawyer Turns Impeachment Tables by Scorching Bidens at Hearing” HERE)

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Only Six Guns Surrendered on First Day of Gun Turn-In Program (VIDEO)

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Only six guns were surrendered on the first day of a Philadelphia “no questions asked” gun turn-in program over the weekend — yet KYW-TV said organizers are pleased with the results. . .

Victoria Greene’s son Emir Greene was murdered in 1997 when he was just 20 years old, the station said, so she founded the Emir Healing Center — and a few guns were turned in there Saturday.

“People might say, ‘Oh, that’s not many.’ But no, it is. It is. Because we’re talking about life and death,” Greene told KYW. “This is a new effort, but I think it’s really going to have some momentum.”

Damone Jones, senior pastor of Bible Way Baptist Church, told the station that gun violence has reached “epidemic” proportions.

“We’re at an epidemic stage at this point,” Jones noted to KYW. “If this is not an urgent situation now, based on how many children, now it seems like it’s every week there’s another child being shot.”

(Read more from “Only Six Guns Surrendered on First Day of Gun Turn-In Program” HERE)

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Shocking Video of Python, Honey Badger and Jackals Fighting Each Other Goes Viral

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A shocking video of a python, honey badger and two jackals fighting each other has gone viral after a group of tourists recorded it on safari in Africa.

In the first few seconds, the honey badger and the jackals can be seen fighting over the python, dragging it along the ground in Chobe Park in Botswana. The jackals initially saved the life of the honey badger, but the honey badger quickly turns on the jackals. In the clip, the honey badger is seen chasing the two jackals away from the python before ultimately coming out on top in the showdown.

According to Chobe Park’s website, it is “home to Africa’s largest elephant population,” at approximately 120,000. “Buffalo can be easily found in equally large herds, while the river is home to a great number of hippos. Sticking with the bigger mammals, there are plenty of giraffe around, too,” the park wrote on its website.

The park, which offers a wide range of tours and safaris to explore, has a “considerable” lion population, in addition to the lion’s archenemy, the spotted hyena.

(Read more from “Shocking Video of Python, Honey Badger and Jackals Fighting Each Other Goes Viral” HERE)

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Doctors Said Woman Would Be Blind and Deaf. Her Parents Rejected Abortion and She Is Healthy

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. . .Earlier this year, an Irish couple aborted their unborn baby after being told the baby tested positive for a potentially fatal fetal anomaly. Too late, they found out that the tests were wrong, and their aborted baby had been healthy. One can only guess how many other tragic cases there are like it.

Other parents have the wisdom to choose life for their unborn babies, understanding that their baby is a valuable human being, no matter what health problems they may have. . .

Catholic Philly reports the young woman shared her story Nov. 24 during the Pro-Life Union of Greater Philadelphia’s Stand Up for Life dinner.

[Rachel] Guy said she was diagnosed with a chromosomal abnormality at 22 weeks of pregnancy, and several doctors urged her mother to abort her. Doctors told her parents that she probably would be blind and deaf and have intellectual disabilities, she said. . .

Her initial doctors’ predictions never came true. Today, Guy can both see and hear. Several years ago, she said she wrote to those doctors, telling them that she forgives them for recommending that she be aborted. (Read more from “Doctors Said Woman Would Be Blind and Deaf. Her Parents Rejected Abortion and She Is Healthy” HERE)

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Former FBI Attorney Lisa Page Sues DOJ for Releasing Her Texts with Peter Strzok

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Former FBI attorney Lisa Page is suing the Department of Justice and the FBI for violating her privacy by releasing her personal information to the public.

Page, 39, announced her lawsuit over Twitter on Tuesday. The attorney alleges that the DOJ and the FBI’s release of text messages between her and then-FBI agent Peter Strzok violated Privacy Act provisions regulating the release of private information to the media.

“I sued the Department of Justice and FBI today,” Page said. “I take little joy in having done so. But what they did in leaking my messages to the press was not only wrong, it was illegal.”

The DOJ released 375 of Page’s texts to Strzok in December 2017. The DOJ inspector general compiled the messages as part of a larger investigation into alleged bias at the FBI. The messages were released as evidence that some FBI officials displayed bias against President Trump. (Read more from “Former FBI Attorney Lisa Page Sues DOJ for Releasing Her Texts with Peter Strzok” HERE)

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Jersey City Shooting: Police Officer Among 6 Killed in Shooting; Gunmen in Deadly Shooting Targeted Jewish Market

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By ABC 7. One police officer was killed and two others were wounded, and five people were dead inside a grocery store following a wild shootout and standoff in Jersey City Tuesday afternoon.

The slain officer, identified as Detective Joseph Seals, was a 13-year veteran, husband, and father of five.

“It’s a really tough day for the city of Jersey City,” Mayor Steven Fulop said. “Even more than being a police officer that loved Jersey City, that was probably responsible for or one of the leading officers for the most guns getting off the street, from what I understand, he was also a husband and a father of five children.”

Authorities say the incident started at Bay View Cemetery just after noon, with Seals, 40, fatally shot and a second officer wounded in the shoulder, and was possibly related to a drug or gun deal gone bad.

They say two men dressed in black then fled in a stolen U-Haul to the area of JC Kosher Supermarket on Martin Luther King Drive, where they continued firing at responding officers. (Read more from “Jersey City Shooting: Police Officer Among 6 Killed in Shooting” HERE)

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Jersey City Mayor: Gunmen in Deadly Shooting Targeted Jewish Market

By Washington Examiner. The shooters in a fatal gunfight in Jersey City, New Jersey, intentionally targeted the kosher supermarket in which must of the shootout took place, according to the city’s mayor.

Six people, including one police officer and two suspects, were killed in the gun battle that unfolded Tuesday afternoon. According to reports, the shooting may have started in a cemetery before the shooters fled to a bodega owned by a Jewish family from Brooklyn, New York. Police later found five of the dead inside the store.

While an investigation into the matter is still ongoing, Mayor Steven Fulop indicated that initial investigation suggests the suspects targeted the market. . .

It is unclear if there is an active anti-Semitic hate crime investigation into the incident. (Read more from “Jersey City Mayor: Gunmen in Deadly Shooting Targeted Jewish Market” HERE)

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Pentagon Suspends Hundreds of Saudis from Operational Training After Massacre

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The Pentagon suspended operational training for hundreds of Saudi military officials in the United States on Tuesday in response to a member of the Saudi military massacring Americans at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, last week.

The news came after a 21-year-old Saudi national, who was a member of the Saudi Royal Air Force, opened fire at the base last week killing three American sailors and wounding eight others, including two police officers.

Fox News reported that the suspension targets 852 Saudi nationals who are in the training in the United States and who “will be immediately confined to classroom training, while all operational training in the air, land, and sea ‘will pause.’” . . .

David L. Norquist, the deputy secretary of defense, said in a statement on Tuesday evening, “The Department of Defense recognizes the importance of long-standing military education and training with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The Department has trained more than 28,000 Saudi students over the life of our security cooperation relationship without serious incident. KSA is an essential partner, and we will continue to partner with the Kingdom to reinforce defense cooperation, increase military investment, and advance America’s interests.”

“As we reaffirm our commitment to these critical military partnerships, so must we assess the efficacy of our security procedures in light of the tragic loss of life on December 6, 2019, at Naval Air Station Pensacola,” Norquist continued. “In doing so, we will make every effort to ensure the safety of all personnel and their families on U.S. military installations. Therefore I direct the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USD(I)) to take immediate steps to strengthen personnel vetting for International Military Students (IMS), and to complete a review within 10 days of policies and procedures for screening foreign students and granting access to our bases. These efforts will seek to more closely align IMS vetting procedures with those we apply to U.S. personnel. With respect to specific training programs and personnel under their cognizance, the Secretaries of the Military Departments may take additional security measures as they see fit.” (Read more from “Pentagon Suspends Hundreds of Saudis from Operational Training After Massacre” HERE)

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Former Chinese Labor Camp Prisoner Tells His Heartrending Story

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While the world has slowly turned its attention to the communist Chinese government’s human rights abuses over the last few months, Tahir Hamut has been painfully aware of them for many years.

Hamut — a Uighur filmmaker and poet — was born in China’s Uighur Autonomous Region in 1969 and worked as a teacher before his life was changed forever in 1996.

“I was detained on my way to study in Turkey and accused of attempting to escape from China with sensitive state materials,” Hamut explained via an interpreter. After that, he said, he was in a Chinese prison for 18 months and was sentenced to three years in a labor camp. That sentence was handed down in 1997.

He said that, at the time of his incarceration, “nearly 350” prisoners were in the same labor camp, 230 of which were political prisoners.

Hamut made the remarks to lead off a Tuesday panel discussion on Capitol Hill about the Chinese government’s human rights abuses against the country’s Uighur Muslim minority — e.g., the mass internment of Uighurs in concentration camps and subsequent forced labor.

“In the beginning, along with other labor camp prisoners, I dug gravel in an uninhabitable place which was not far from the labor camp,” Hamut recalled. “Every day, excluding Sundays, each person must complete a task of digging 2 cubic meters of gravel; everyone worked very hard to make this requirement, otherwise they would get punished by torture.”

Hamut said that prisoners would often have serious health problems as a result of the “excessive hard labor” but often went without proper medical treatment in the camps, leaving them to suffer for the rest of their lives, while others died as a result.

“I was in the labor camp for more than a year, around 18 months, and my weight dropped to 45 kilograms” or just under 100 lbs., Hamut recalled.

“I thought I would die there, but I managed to survive with the help of other prisoners.”

Later, Hamut said, he was transferred from the gravel work to a brick factory, where his job was to bake bricks. In addition to those duties, he noted that he and others had to plant crops, pick cotton, and even do domestic work for policemen. He also says that the labor camp used prisoner labor to make money.

Hamut was eventually released and, years later, would escape to the United States in August 2017. But getting out of China didn’t mean he was free of the effects of Chinese repression. He said that multiple members of his family, including two of his wife’s brothers and his own brother, have been detained by Chinese authorities and placed in the concentration camps that made international headlines earlier this year.

“For the past two years we have been thinking of them and are concerned for their safety,” Hamut said. “I hope they are safe.”

He added that he learned that earlier this year, two members of his wife’s family were released from the concentration camps, but they are only allowed to go home two days per week and are forced to work at a factory during the other five.

“My wife’s brothers and other family members have no idea how long this forced labor will last, and we also don’t know what kind of factories they are,” Hamut concluded. “We still hope that they will be safe.” (For more from the author of “Former Chinese Labor Camp Prisoner Tells His Heartrending Story” please click HERE)

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Sitting Ducks: Why Are Our Soldiers Disarmed on Our Own Bases?

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After you recover from the shock of learning that Saudi pilots are training with American soldiers on our military bases, you’ll inevitably stumble across another stupefying question. How is it that the Saudi terrorist attacker at the Pensacola Naval Air Station was shot dead by local Pensacola sheriff’s deputies, while not a single sailor – officer or enlisted – had any firearm to defend himself? Well, much as President Trump promised to shut down visas from countries like Saudi Arabia, he also promised to end the gun-free zone status for our soldiers on bases. The time has come for him to fulfill both promises.

Last night, the House and Senate conference committee filed the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2020, authorizing up to $743.3 billion in defense spending. It includes $71.5 billion in funding for more “overseas contingency operations,” AKA nation-building in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. But what is the point in funding such escapades if our soldiers can’t even arm themselves on our own bases? Why does Congress never debate the fundamental values, mission, and character of our military? It’s all about dollars and cents and never about policy. Now is the time for Trump to demand that real issues be dealt with in the NDAA, including arming soldiers on bases, or else he should use his authority as commander in chief to change the internal policies.

In the face of mass shootings on military bases, Trump promised emphatically to end the suicidal policies disarming our soldiers. Between terrorist attacks at Chattanooga and Fort Hood and domestic shooters on several other bases, it has become clear that base security only serves to deter good people with guns. As we painfully learned in Pensacola on Friday, the impervious security clearly didn’t stop Mohamad Alshamrani from bringing in a Glock .45.

Speaking at the February 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference, President Trump promised to “look at that whole military base gun-free zone [policy]. If we can’t have our military holding guns, it is pretty bad,” lamented the president as he mocked the gun-free zone policy. “We had a number of instances on military bases. You know that. We want to protect our military.”

In fact, Trump had already promised to get rid of gun-free zones in the military on his “first day” in office during the campaign. “I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools, and — you have to — and on military bases,” said Trump at a rally in Vermont on January 8, 2016. “My first day, it gets signed, okay? My first day. There’s no more gun-free zones.”

But like so many instances where the president has good instincts, the broken military leadership pushed back and conservatives were too distracted to put up a fight, so the White House dropped the idea. These are the same military leaders who knowingly sent our soldiers to die in Afghanistan with no defined mission or plan to win. These are the same generals who work harder at prosecuting our warriors than defeating our enemies. These are the same generals that have pushed social engineering and have expunged Christianity from the military. And they are the same generals Trump said in 2016 have “been reduced to rubble” and “they have been reduced to a point where it’s embarrassing to our country.”

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper had a very tepid response to the Pensacola attacks. He praised the Saudi military training program as indispensable to national security and acts as if he can’t understand why Saudi nationals were filming the shooting. He sure doesn’t seem like the type of leader to push for arming our soldiers at bases.

The ban on carrying weapons dates back to a 1992 Pentagon directive, which can easily be overturned by Trump. In November 2016, Obama’s Department of Defense issued a directive allowing base commanders to give certain troops permission to carry concealed firearms on base “for a personal protection purpose not related to performance of an official duty or status” for a very limited period of time. Imagine that! They can’t carry weapons as part of their official duty as soldiers!

In 2016, five soldiers were killed at a Naval Reserve base in Chattanooga by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. In 2013, 12 people were killed and 8 injured at the Washington Navy Yard by a disgruntled former sailor who suffered from mental illness. In 2009, 14 were killed and 30 injured by Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood. In all these cases, it took way too long for either local police or military police to arrive.

While gun-free zones are always a bad idea, as 96.2 percent of all mass shootings have occurred where guns are banned, having them on military bases is particularly counterintuitive. Given the strict security, the perpetrators know with certainty that, of all places, not a single soldier will be carrying a weapon because the penalty for doing so is quite severe. Yet, clearly, that same security hasn’t worked to prevent evil people from bringing in weapons. This policy makes our soldiers sitting ducks.

If these same generals believe in sending our soldiers to fight endless tribal civil wars overseas, the least they can do is allow them to be armed and protected on our own shores. That’s doubly true for the same generals who will advocate the continuation of training Middle Easterners on those very bases. The broken generals can’t have it all ways, and it’s time for Trump to call them on it. (For more from the author of “Sitting Ducks: Why Are Our Soldiers Disarmed on Our Own Bases?” please click HERE)

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Hunter Biden’s Child Support Case Just Got Even More Interesting

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Last month, a DNA test confirmed that Hunter Biden is the father of a child born in August 2018. The mother, Luden Roberts, reportedly worked at Mpire Gentlemen’s Club in Washington, D.C., where Biden frequented. That’s how the two allegedly met. Roberts has, understandably, gone after Biden for child support, health care and legal fees.

Biden filed a motion in the Arkansas Circuit Court of Independence for a protective order to shield his financial records from being made public a few weeks ago. A judge demanded both Roberts and Biden hand over five years worth of financial records, meaning he has to reveal his position at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma and just how much money they paid him, Daily Mail reported. It has been estimated that he was paid anywhere between $50,000 to $83,000 a month to sit on Burisma’s board, despite having no natural energy experience. . .

Roberts wants Biden to admit he sat on the board of Burisma and received a monthly paycheck from the company and that “he ‘or an entity owned, controlled or under your direction or supervision’ received money from a Chinese person or entity for foreign and domestic investment purposes.” . . .

We won’t however, see copies of Biden’s financial records. The judge decided to seal them.

“The likelihood that [Biden’s] private records will be used in an inappropriate or malicious manner for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with these proceedings is exceedingly high and should not be tolerated by the court,” the court filing read. (Read more from “Hunter Biden’s Child Support Case Just Got Even More Interesting” HERE)

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