The U.S. Attorney in DC Just Gave Andrew McCabe Some Bad News

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United States Attorney for the District of Columbia Jessie K. Liu has recommended moving forward with charges for fired Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe after he lied under oath multiple times to federal investigators.

Last year McCabe was referred to the U.S. Attorney for criminal charges by the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz. After a lengthy investigation, Horowitz found McCabe lied to FBI agents, Inspector General agents and improperly leaked sensitive information the media. At the time of that referral, McCabe’s lawyers were confident their client wouldn’t be pursued.

“We were advised of the referral within the past few weeks. Although we believe the referral is unjustified, the standard for an IG referral is very low,” McCabe’s attorney released in a statement at the time. “We have already met with staff members from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. We are confident that, unless there is inappropriate pressure from high levels of the Administration, the U.S. Attorney’s Office will conclude that it should decline to prosecute.”

From the IG report:

We found that, in a conversation with then-Director Comey shortly after the WSJ article was published, McCabe lacked candor when he told Comey, or made statements that led Comey to believe, that McCabe had not authorized the disclosure and did not know who did. This conduct violated FBI Offense Code 2.5 (Lack of Candor – No Oath).

(Read more from “The U.S. Attorney in DC Just Gave Andrew Mccabe Some Bad News” HERE)

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Another State to Legalize Assisted Suicide

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Starting next week, physician-assisted suicide will be legal in Maine. . .

Thursday night, the Maine CDC asked for input from doctors and other stake holders in end of life care.

Specifically, the agency wants to know what data they should collect from doctors.

“I always enjoy hearing from my fellow physicians, people who are in the hospice who are concerned about this and in the terminal phase of their life and what their feelings about the law are,” Rep. Patty Hymanson said. (Read more from “Another State to Legalize Assisted Suicide” HERE)

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The Primary Threat Now Is Civilization Jihad, and It’s on Our Own Shores

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In my first article commemorating the eighteenth anniversary of 9/11, I discussed how, rather than dialing back immigration from the Middle East, we stepped on the gas pedal, bringing in millions more without any guarantee we can vet them. But there is the other half of the equation: The radicalism already on our shores and not aggressively investigated and prosecuted by the government.

There was a long-standing Muslim Brotherhood network already in this country in 2001 that was instrumental in inspiring and working with those behind the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 as well as other terror attacks. Rather than going after that network with a vengeance after 9/11, our government still treated them as legitimate Muslim community outreach leaders. That problem is still huge today.

In 2009, the Holy Land Foundation terror-funding trial gave Americans a jolting dose of reality when it came out that so many of the leading charity and community organizations within the American Muslim community had significant ties to terror groups like Hamas. Federal Judge Jorge Solis implicated in the Holy Land Foundation terror trial the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the North American Islamic Trust. His 2009 order denied efforts by CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood affiliates to have their names expunged from the trial record. Solis noted that “the Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (‘IAP’), and with Hamas.”

The judge cited a 1991 memorandum from a Muslim Brotherhood official explaining the organization’s goals in America as follows:

“Understanding the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America” is “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

Rather than following up on this case at every level and actually prosecuting these groups while banishing the Muslim Brotherhood umbrella organizations from polite society, as with KKK, the government indulged their leaders as legitimate partners with the Muslim community. With so many new people coming from the Middle East every year, how do they even have a chance to assimilate into Americanism if these are the ones leading the community and are legitimized by government?

In 2010, counterterrorism expert Patrick Poole, who now writes for PJ Media, wrote a white paper on 10 jihadists living in America who were involved with terrorism and had ties to either the 9/11 group or terror cells that committed prior acts who were indulged by our government, in some cases even after 9/11. Perhaps the best-known example is Anwar al-Awlaki.

Two weeks after 9/11, according to FBI documents released in 2013, our government knew that al-Awlaki bought airline tickets for Mohammed Atta and two of the other hijackers. The flights were in the summer of 2001 and are thought to have been dry runs for the terror attacks. Yet, as Fox News reported in 2010, al-Awlaki was hosted by the military at the Pentagon several months after his disciples flew planes into it for the purpose of “outreach to the Muslim community”! Documents secured by Judicial Watch further confirmed that al-Awlaki was in the crosshairs of law enforcement several other times between 2002 and 2007 but was mysteriously released each time. He is suspected of directing the underwear bomber on Christmas 2009 and was in contact with Nidal Hassan, who murdered 13 people at Fort Hood a month before that. He was eventually killed in a drone strike in Yemen two years later.

Poole details nine other prominent Islamists in America who were treated as partners by our government and military, even though they were hooked up with the very cells responsible for the worst terrorist attacks. One such figure was Ali Mohamed, al Qaeda’s security chief, who was allowed to infiltrate our special forces, training soldiers in Arabic culture at Fort Bragg after being expelled from Egypt in the 1980s. While he was working with one of the most important parts of our military, according to Poole, “he was schooling U.S.-based Islamic militants in weapons, explosives and martial arts, including the cell responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.” He also helped transport bin Laden from Afghanistan to Sudan, trained the Somali forces who attacked our soldiers in “Black Hawk Down,” helped arrange the cell responsible for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and arranged a U.S. fundraising tour for Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man who took over al Qaeda’s leadership after the death of bin Laden.

Another example cited by Poole is Sheikh Kifah Mustapha. He was personally named an unindicted coconspirator and fundraiser for Hamas in the Holy Land Foundation case. A year later, he was given a tour of O’Hare airport as a member of the FBI’s “Citizens Academy.”

How in the world did a man who should have been indicted on terror charges but is free to engage in treason to this day obtain a security clearance?

Earlier in 2010, Mustapha’s behavior was repugnant enough that the Illinois state police fired him as a chaplain. When Mustapha filed a lawsuit, with the help of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated CAIR, even the Democrat attorney general was appalled by him. Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a motion in federal court in 2013 noting that Mustapha “aided and abetted, or at least cheered for, terrorism” after he was caught on a video chanting “terrorist lyrics.”

In October 2010, Eli Lake reported in the Washington Times that then-director of the FBI Robert Mueller was asked about the inclusion of the Hamas cleric in the FBI’s training program, and he refused to answer the question, even as he admitted there are widespread terror links in the sphere of outreach groups the Bureau patronizes.

Indeed, the war on terror is primarily not overseas. It is on our own shores. We need not solve the vexing problems of tribal warfare in Afghanistan to secure our homeland. We need to simply open our eyes and not commit suicide. There’s a reason why our enemies rely on us “sabotaging its miserable house by their hands.” They rely on our own self-destruction for their success. (For more from the author of “The Primary Threat Now Is Civilization Jihad, and It’s on Our Own Shores” please click HERE)

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Trump Administration Announces Rollback of ‘Destructive and Horrible’ Obama-Era Water Rule

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The following is an excerpt from Blaze Media’s daily Capitol Hill Brief email newsletter:

The Trump administration is set to announce a final repeal of the Obama administration’s “Waters of the United States” rule on Thursday. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler made the announcement via an op-ed in the Des Moines Register Thursday morning.

The Obama-era regulation, put forward in 2015, drastically expanded which waterways are subject to federal control under the Clean Water Act to include man-made ditches and streams on private property that only have water in them following rain or snowmelt. It was swamped with litigation from the start. Last month, a federal judge ruled that the Obama administration’s rule violated federal law and sent it back to the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to be reworked.

Wheeler’s op-ed explains that the 2015 rule was “was so far-reaching that they needed to clarify in regulatory text that puddles were excluded.” This created a regulatory headache for farmers, land developers, and anyone confused about whether or not they now needed a federal permit to work on their own land.

President Trump vowed to kill the rule on the campaign trail, and in 2017, he directed the EPA to work on the “elimination of this very destructive and horrible rule.” A proposed rule introduced by the Environmental Protection Agency back in December would relax the definition of what counts as waters that can be regulated. Republican senators tried to pass an amendment repealing the 2015 rule last year, but it failed.

Wheeler wrote that the “new, more precise definition would mean that farmers, land owners, and businesses will spend less time and money determining whether they need a federal permit and more time upgrading aging infrastructure, building homes, creating jobs, and growing crops to feed our families.”

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How Trump Can Take the Supreme Court Border Victory to the Next Level

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In a better world, we’d all suffer from heartburn reading the headline, “Supreme Court allows Trump asylum restrictions to take effect.” We don’t need a Supreme Court to “allow” us to have a sovereign nation or to “allow” a president to use his authority to deny entry to any foreign national. However, in our prevailing political system, I’ll take “allowing” over disallowing any day of the week. Now the Trump administration has an opportunity to go on offense and kick these district judges while they’re down and drive a stake through the heart of the border crisis, ending it once and for all.

Late yesterday, the Supreme Court reversed the partial injunction of the Ninth Circuit and the nationwide injunction by California Judge Jon Tigar against the administration’s policy of rejecting asylum requests of those who could have claimed asylum in another country. Only two justices – Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg – went on record as dissenting from the unsigned SCOTUS decision to reverse the unprecedented lower-court power-grab, at least pending the disposition of the case on the merits.

Now is the time for the administration to strike while the iron is hot and put an end to this entire concept of carefully selected district judges in California controlling international relations and border policies. Rather than tepidly ease into the border policies pending the outcome of the case on the merits, the administration should begin immediately rejecting every non-Mexican asylum applicant at the border. No half-measures and no more deference to the same judges who have been repudiated over and over again.

Trump should call on Sen. McConnell to bring to the floor the bill introduced yesterday by Sen. Tom Cotton, which officially clarifies existing constitutional law that judges cannot issue rulings outside the cases of legitimate plaintiffs and that district judges cannot apply rulings outside their geographical jurisdictions. He should also have a conservative member of the House introduce articles of impeachment against Jon Tigar, who has now blatantly violated the core of judicial power by giving standing to third-party organizations to sue as aggrieved parties just so he can veto border policies.

There is never any pressure within the left-wing legal profession against those judges who rule more progressively than Supreme Court precedent, but only against those who rule more conservatively. This is why Clarence Thomas warned in the original “travel ban” case that absent a categorical repudiation from the Supreme Court, the left-wing groups would continue going back to the same district judges and get the same favorable rulings.

The more the administration delegitimizes the entire concept of universal injunctions and illegal judicial tampering in the process of admission of aliens, the more it will create pressure against these judges stepping out of line.

Then there is the situation at the border itself. We can’t continue going pursuing border policy tethered to the whims of any district judge. This has real-life consequences at our border for the agents on the line, because the policies keep changing every day. Judges have an important role mediating domestic disputes among legitimate parties, but they cannot take the role of a commander-in-chief in securing an international border.

To that end, the administration should begin rejecting all Central American asylum applicants rather than using the half-measure of the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), otherwise known as the “return to Mexico policy.” Rather than rejecting them outright, the administration gives them a notice to appear in court while they wait in Mexico near our border for several months. While it certainly has resulted in many Central Americans returning home and was better than full catch-and-release, it is still a half-baked measure that should no longer be needed.

Todd Bensman, National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, reported a few weeks ago from his conversations with illegal immigrants waiting in Mexico that Central American migrants in the pipeline are already much reduced and further, that those who have been given an MPP document are trying to sneak over the border anyway.

Bensman was on my podcast several weeks ago and related how several of the migrants he met in Mexico who had received MPP documents told him that they were planning to cross the river illegally.

One border agent in the Rio Grande Valley told me he caught a woman from Honduras running away from agents over the weekend. She had a son with her. Until a few weeks ago, this was unheard of. With catch-and-release in full swing, they wanted to get “caught” by an agent if they had a kid with them. Why are they now running?

“Well, after questioning her, we found out that we apprehended her and her son on August 10th almost in the same area,” said the line agent patrolling the RGV, who must remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the media. “She was part of the MPP program. We gave her a court date in December and sent her back to Mexico. She didn’t want to wait, so she paid the cartel $22,000 for having to cross her twice. Unfortunately, this story is now becoming the norm. Every day we are catching family units running from us because they too do not want to wait. Just a few days ago we had a big bailout from a high-speed FTY [failure to yield], and the majority of the illegals in the vehicle were family units in the MPP program. They face no consequences from trying to come over again.”

Thus, we are allowing an entire group of illegal aliens from Central America to remain on our doorstep in very desperate straits in this half-status. Right now, Mexico is deporting many Central Americans, but they won’t deport those who have an MPP document. MPP is rapidly reaching the tipping point of undermining our more categorical policies as well as Mexico’s enforcement. This is why it’s time to just categorically reject all of these asylum applications and not issue MPPs, because they all could have and should have applied for asylum in Mexico. That would end almost the entire flow, and the rest would be subject to deportation by the Mexican authorities.

At the very least, CBP must put teeth in the MPP for those who violate the agreement. I asked a CBP press officer if those MPP recipients who are caught coming over the river again lose their opportunity to apply for asylum. The spokesman replied, “Their paperwork is updated with the illegal entry and they are returned to Mexico to await their hearing date.” Which likely means that a judge might possibly take this infraction into account, but they do not categorically lose their chance to apply. If CBP updated this policy to deny asylum to those who violate their waiting period in Mexico under MPP, it would deter them and likely encourage all of them to return home.

Trump sits at the crossroads of the issues of judicial supremacy and the border crisis. Momentum is on his side, but history has shown that the best way to kill a policy problem is when it has been weakened, lest it become strong again. (For more from the author of “How Trump Can Take the Supreme Court Border Victory to the Next Level” please click HERE)

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CNN Says ‘Right Wing Terrorists’ Are Worse Than Islamist Terrorists Who Attacked on 9/11 — and Gets Brutal Backlash; Al Qaeda Leader Cheers 9/11 Attacks, as Search to Bring Him to Justice Continues

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By The Blaze. CNN’s John Avlon faced a lot of backlash on social media after a bizarre segment where he tried to compare the attack on 9/11 to the threat of “right wing terrorism,” on the anniversary of the horrible attack.

“Here’s a startling statistic. Since 9/11, right wing terrorists have killed more people in the United States than jihadist terrorists,” Avlon said during the segment entitled “Reality Check.”

“There are some folks for who their, for their own political purposes would like to keep the focus on only one form of political violence over another, but that would be unwise because we don’t have the luxury of choosing which threats we face. And there’s a case to be made that these threats actually echo each other,” he continued. . .

“To mark the 18th anniversary of 9/11 is to reflect on how we’re all the children of 9/11. That attack unleashed destructive forces that we’re still wrestling with,” Avlon concluded. “But to truly learn the lessons of 9/11 is to resolve not to let hate win, or fear define us.” . . .

Many critics on social media replied that it was tone-deaf to try to twist the meaning of the 9/11 attacks on a different kind of terrorism altogether.

(Read more from “CNN Says ‘Right Wing Terrorists’ Are Worse Than Islamist Terrorists Who Attacked on 9/11 — and Gets Brutal Backlash” HERE)

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Al Qaeda Leader Cheers 9/11 Attacks

By NBC New York. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri put out a video Wednesday to again cheer the slaughter of thousands of Americans on 9/11, 18 years ago.

The CIA and U.S. military is still trying to find the elusive Al Qaeda leader who is believed to be hiding in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Analysts believe he does not use cell phones and has little contact with the outside world in order to avoid being captured or killed. But al-Zawahiri is still releasing video and audio messages to try to inspire his thousands of followers, with three recordings released in just the last few weeks — including the one today.

In the tape released for 9/11, al-Zawahiri called the killing of 3,000 people in New York, the Pentagon and on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania “blessed raids.”

As minority leader, New York Sen. Charles Schumer is one of the few leaders on Capitol Hill to get regular intelligence briefings on the hunt for al-Zawahiri.

“He was number two. He has the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands,” Schumer said of al-Zawahiri’s role back in 2001. Schumer said he is hopeful progress could soon be made in finally bringing al-Zawahiri to justice. (Read more from “Al Qaeda Leader Cheers 9/11 Attacks, as Search to Bring Him to Justice Continues” HERE)

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Homosexual Lawyers, Community Rally to Defense of High Schooler Who Murdered, Stabbed Classmates

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. . .Abel Cedeno was an 18-year-old student at the Urban Assembly for Wildlife Conservation in the Bronx when he in September 2017 killed his 14-year-old schoolmate, Matthew McCree. He also grievously wounded another student, Ariane Laboy. . .

Outside of the Bronx courtroom, Cedeno’s case became “something of a cause célèbre,” according to The New York Times. LGBT activists rallied to his defense, holding him up as a symbol of how young people face “homophobic” persecution. Some argued that the school should have taken action against his bullies.

Two gay lawyers, Christopher Lynn and Robert Feldman, represented Cedeno at no charges, dubbing his a “gay pride trial.”

Several local elected officials also supported Cedeno, including City Councilman Rubén Díaz Sr., who has been criticized for making homophobic remarks. Diaz helped Cedeno post bail soon after he was charged and later wrote a letter to the judge urging leniency in his sentencing. . .

Darcel Clark, the Bronx district attorney, said in a statement Tuesday: “There was no evidence at trial that Matthew McCree or Ariane Laboy had ever bullied the defendant. His explosion of rage has left so many lives in ruins, including his own.” (Read more from “Homosexual Lawyers, Community Rally to Defense of High Schooler Who Murdered, Stabbed Classmates” HERE)

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Trump Admin: Businesses Can Fire Men for Being Gay If They Fire Women for Being Lesbian, Too. ACLU: No.

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. . .In a 31-page filing submitted Tuesday with the United States Supreme Court, attorneys for the ACLU continue their advocacy on behalf of Donald Zarda, a man who claims that he was fired by Altitude Express, Inc. because of his attraction to other men and for failing to conform to the “straight male macho stereotype.”

Ray Maynard, the owner of Altitude, and the Trump Administration’s attorneys arguing on Maynard’s behalf don’t dispute Zarda’s claim. Rather, they both claim it’s well within Maynard’s rights under federal law to discriminate against sexual orientation in the workplace. . .

In a recent filing, the Trump Administration acknowledged that an employer who “fires a man for being attracted to men and [who] would not fire other employees for their sexual orientation violates Title VII.” The solution here? Discriminate against lesbians, too. . .

Such a staffing decision, the Trump Administration argues, would be allowable because said policy would discriminate against men and women equally. This doubly discriminatory policy would also be legally sound because, they claim, the real discrimination present in such a policy is actually sourced from sexual orientation discrimination–and is not pure or genuine sex discrimination.

“Altitude and the Government argue that when an employer engages in wholesale ‘sexual-orientation discrimination,’ the ‘[u]nfavorable treatment of a gay or lesbian employee’ is ‘not the consequence of that individual’s sex, but instead of an employer’s policy concerning a different trait—sexual orientation—that Title VII does not protect,’” the ACLU filing notes. (Read more from “Trump Admin: Businesses Can Fire Men for Being Gay If They Fire Women for Being Lesbian, Too. ACLU: No.” HERE)

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Water Detected on Potentially ‘Habitable’ Exoplanet for First Time, Scientists Say

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Scientists have detected water vapor in the atmosphere of a “super-Earth” exoplanet with potentially habitable temperatures. The discovery, which is being touted as a milestone, could have major implications in the search for life outside the solar system.

Experts from University College London identified water vapor in the atmosphere of K2-18b, which is 110 light-years from Earth. A light-year, which measures distance in space, equals a little less than 6 trillion miles.

“K2-18b, which is eight times the mass of Earth, is now the only planet orbiting a star outside the solar system, or ‘exoplanet,’ known to have both water and temperatures that could support life,” researchers said in a statement. . .

“Finding water in a potentially habitable world other than Earth is incredibly exciting. K2-18b is not ‘Earth 2.0,’ as it is significantly heavier and has a different atmospheric composition,” said lead author Angelos Tsiaras, Ph.D. of UCL’s Center for Space Exochemistry Data, in the statement. “However, it brings us closer to answering the fundamental question: Is the Earth unique?” . . .

Data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2016 and 2017 was used to study starlight filtered through the exoplanet’s atmosphere. “The results revealed the molecular signature of water vapor, also indicating the presence of hydrogen and helium in the planet’s atmosphere,” UCL said in its statement. (Read more from “Water Detected on Potentially ‘Habitable’ Exoplanet for First Time, Scientists Say” HERE)

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DNC Official May Have Violated Neutrality Rules to Help Joe Biden

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A top official of the Democrat National Committee (DNC) may have violated his organization’s neutrality standards in order to save former Vice President Joe Biden from an embarrassing incident.

Ken Martin, the DNC’s vice chair and the president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, allegedly “bawled” out a liberal activist at the New Hampshire Democrats State Convention last week for handing out fliers critical of Biden. The incident was first recounted by Norman Solomon, the activist on the receiving end of the Martin’s animosity, for the liberal blog Common Dreams.

“Ken Martin was angry that my colleagues and I were handing out a flier—providing some inconvenient facts about Joe Biden—to delegates and activists as they entered the New Hampshire Democratic Party convention,” Solomon, a longtime activist and the founder of RootsAction.org, wrote.

The flier, a copy of which was obtained by Breitbart News, highlights a number of controversial stands the former vice president has taken over the span of his 40-year political career. Included are quotes from Biden on issues like banking regulation, criminal justice, and busing to desegregate public schools, among others.

Martin, who also serves as the chairman of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota, was purportedly incensed over the fliers and chose to confront Solomon over their distribution. (Read more from “DNC Official May Have Violated Neutrality Rules to Help Joe Biden” HERE)

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