Another Good Guy With a Gun — This Time a Florida City Official — Shoots Home Intruder

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By The Blaze. Typically stories about United States citizens who take to heart their constitutional right to keep and bear arms — and who use their guns to protect themselves and loved ones — involve civilians.

But this time the good guy with a gun turned out to be a Florida city official — and the result was the same as it’s been in so many of these instances: Bad news for the bad guy. . .

Palmetto police spotted a possibly impaired driver about 10 p.m. Thursday and attempted to pull over the vehicle — but the driver sped away instead, police told the Bradenton Herald. . .

Vasquez-Perez climbed a fence into Palmetto Commissioner Brian Williams’ backyard and broke into Williams’ garage in an apparent attempt to hide from police, the paper said. . .

But Williams pushed Vasquez-Perez back — and then shot him twice, Chief of Police Scott Tyler told the paper. (Read more from “Another Good Guy With a Gun — This Time a Florida City Official — Shoots Home Intruder” HERE)

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Palmetto City Commissioner Shoots Intruder in Self-Defense, Police Say

By Bradenton Herald. A Palmetto city commissioner shot a man in self-defense after that man broke into his home after crashing into his neighbor’s house while fleeing from a traffic stop, according to police. . .

Williams’ daughter, who lives next door, spotted Vasquez-Perez and called her dad. Williams armed himself, then heard Vasquez-Perez trying to get into the kitchen from the garage. Vasquez-Perez was then confronted by Williams at gunpoint. Vasquez-Perez attempted to push past and punch Williams, who then pushed Vasquez-Perez back and shot him twice, according to Tyler.

“He was lawfully defending home and family,” Tyler said. . .

Vasquez-Perez surrendered to police and was rushed to Blake Medical Center, where he underwent surgery. As of Friday, he was in stable condition and expected to recover from his injuries.

Williams declined to comment while the police investigation into the shooting remains open other than to say, “I am glad that everything turned out the way it did. I guess he is doing OK and we are happy and glad that no one in my family was hurt.” (Read more from “Palmetto City Commissioner Shoots Intruder in Self-Defense, Police Say” HERE)

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Border Patrol Now Facing Invasion of Infectious Diseases, While Democrats Worry About the Invaders

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Our Border Patrol agents have not only been conscripted as the world’s day care center, they have now become the world’s hospital for dangerous diseases. Perhaps serving as the world’s police force no longer looks so bad in comparison.

First, the illegal immigrants came for jobs and family unification with other relatives who illegally violated our sovereignty. Then they came for welfare and abortion access. Now they are coming with dangerous diseases. Yet the politicians, rather than seeking to shut down the flow and protect Americans from the public health concern, are pressuring our Border Patrol to become the world’s hospital, with stricter “malpractice” standards than domestic health care practitioners. Meanwhile, the evil drug cartels and human smugglers who are orchestrating this flow in order to paralyze the Border Patrol are making a killing off organized crime.

According to a report by USA Today, “Between Dec. 22 and Sunday, the agency reported 451 cases referred to doctors or other providers, including 259 children.” They report that the illegals have increasingly “been arriving with all kinds of ailments, many with flu or pneumonia that can be particularly pervasive and dangerous this time of year.”

CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan made it clear in a statement on Monday that many of those coming with “cases of pneumonia, tuberculosis, parasites” did not develop them on the way but actually left for our country while ill. This is quite literally what our country has tried to stop since the colonial times. Now we have infectious disease chain migration, whereby our politicians are encouraging them to come here with diseases and chastising our agents for not treating them fast enough.

Part of a “Gaza style” media warfare on our sovereignty

What affect does this have on our security at the border? Now, on top of dealing with flows of over 100 migrants at a time sent their way by the cartels, Border Patrol is forced to use more resources and add an entirely new layer of emergency medical assessments. The DHS is calling on the CDC to investigate the cause of this growing trend.

Picture our border for a moment as a war zone. We have the worst drugs, gangs, and criminals being smuggled over by some of the most violent organizations such as Jalisco, Sinaloa, Gulfo, and Juarez – groups that rival ISIS in terms of their immoral tactics. We need every ounce of talent and time from our agents oriented toward stopping that flow and their criminal activity. Instead, Schumer and Pelosi have enabled these cartels to successfully launch lawfare against our agents. The cartels use the migrants as a blitz play in a dangerous game of migration football with our agents, as Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, described to me in an interview last month. The cartels now know that our agents have become a day care center and processing venue for tens of thousands of migrants. That way they can confidently pour drugs and dangerous criminals over our border without ever being confronted by an agent doing patrol work.

Where are the agents? They are now walking on eggshells, dealing with all the sickest people in Latin America, often made worse by abuse at the hands of these very cartels. But the cartels know our agents will get blamed for it. This is part of a broader psychological/media war against our agents, in the spirit of what Hamas has been doing to the Israeli military at the Gaza border for years. Just last night, CBP put out a statement exposing how migrants were attempting “to lift toddler sized children up and over the concertina wire” of the San Diego fence while simultaneously throwing rocks at border agents. Agents were, therefore, “not in a position to safely assist the children due to the large number of rocks being thrown at them,” according to CBP.

The abuse of our border agents is even more appalling and dangerous when you consider how few of them there are patrolling at any given moment. Brandon Judd testified before the House Oversight subcommittee on national security last April that because of the growing inefficient bureaucracy, only “around 50 are assigned to actually patrol the border in a 24-hour period of time” at the Rio Grande Valley, our busiest sector.

Thus, quite literally, Schumer and Pelosi are not only enabling but facilitating the vilest human and drug smuggling network ever assembled. Then they have the nerve to virtue-signal about the shutdown and suspended pay for border agents. Rather than abuse these agents and pay them to facilitate an invasion – quite the opposite of what they signed up for – why don’t we restore their original jobs?

Stopping criminals, diseases, and public charges from entering our country was once a universal ideal

Then there are the forgotten people of this debate. What about Americans suffering from the dangers of illegal immigration? Why is the only concern of the media directed toward the welfare of the invaders, not the security of the American people whom the politicians are charged with protecting? Imagine if we had thousands of migrants being smuggled through our border by ISIS and Border Patrol was forced to worry about their needs instead of stopping the danger to America by the very evildoers orchestrating it. Well, just because the media hasn’t exposed people to the names of Jalisco and Sinaloa the way they do ISIS doesn’t mean they are any less evil and dangerous than ISIS.

Look how far we have regressed as a society and a nation-state. Protecting Americans from migrants who are criminals, public charges, or those carrying infectious diseases was so deeply embedded in our social compact since our founding that the Supreme Court said states could even brush up against federal powers over foreign commerce to protect their own welfare.

In the 1820s and ’30s, New York, Massachusetts, and Maryland (the “border states” of those days) passed laws mandating inspections of landing vessels at the ports to weed out those who would likely be a public charge or who were carrying diseases. In City of New York v. Milne (1837), the Supreme Court deemed New York’s regulation of ships transporting immigrants preventing “multitudes of poor persons” from coming “without possessing the means of supporting themselves” as constitutional and not infringing upon the foreign commerce power of the federal government.

Here is what the court said about the importance of even state sovereignty against all forms of liability of foreign nationals:

There can be no mode in which the power to regulate internal police could be more appropriately exercised. … Can anything fall more directly within the police power and internal regulation of a state than that which concerns the care and management of paupers or convicts or any other class or description of persons that may be thrown into the country and likely to endanger its safety, or become chargeabl[e] for their maintenance? […]

We think it as competent and as necessary for a state to provide precautionary measures against the moral pestilence of paupers, vagabonds, and possibly convicts as it is to guard against the physical pestilence which may arise from unsound and infections articles imported or from a ship the crew of which may be laboring under an infectious disease.

This is why I believe states like Texas and Arizona are well within their rights to take precautionary measures to block the invasion at their borders, irrespective of what the federal government does.

Either way, if this is how our early political figures thought of state powers to reject infectious migrants and public charges (and certainly criminals), how much more is it the responsibility of the federal government to protect the whole of the union? And in those days, those transporting migrants weren’t flooding our country with drugs and gangs and weren’t run by smugglers who chop off limbs like ISIS.

Yet the first order of business for House Democrats upon assuming control will be to hold hearings not on the harm posed to Americans by “convicts, paupers, and infected persons,” as our laws have dictated for years, but on accusing Border Patrol of not performing miracles to revive those killed or seriously endangered by the smugglers and evil parents.

A growing number of children are being brought here with tuberculosis. But these are just the ones we apprehend or those who surrender themselves to the border agents. What about the ones we never catch? They are in our communities.

As early as 1907, we passed laws singling out those with tuberculosis for exclusion. Yet 112 years later, we have gone backwards by allowing the courts to essentially invite in a population that is 83 times more likely to have TB than Americans. Worse, rather than turning them back, we are now on the hook for their survival. There is nothing progressive about that.

If a government can’t turn back and deter invaders from bringing in infectious diseases we worked to eradicate a century ago, and if their actions will only embolden the drug and human smugglers, then why have a Border Patrol at all? (For more from the author of “Border Patrol Now Facing Invasion of Infectious Diseases, While Democrats Worry About the Invaders” please click HERE)

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Video Surfaces of WaPo Op-Ed Contributor Chanting ‘Death to America’

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Less than two months after he was given prominent op-ed space in the Washington Post, a video has surfaced of Houthi rebel leader Mohammad Ali al-Houthi launching a shoulder-fired missile and then reciting the Houthi slogan, which calls for “Death to America.”

The Washington Post contributor chants, “Allah is the greatest. Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse the Jews. Victory to Islam.” He has also taken to his unverified but media– and think tank-cited Twitter account to repeat the infamous Houthi slogan.

Ali Shihabi, the founder of the Arabia Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based Middle East think tank, confirmed to Conservative Review that it is indeed al-Houthi in the video. Shihabi tells CR that it is “documentary evidence of the type of leader” that the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen is up against, whom “many critics have ignored.”

Other videos have surfaced showing Mr. al-Houthi traveling in a vehicle with very young male soldiers (the Houthi rebels draft child soldiers) while stationed at a mounted machine gun.

al-Houthi is the head of the Houthis’ Supreme Revolutionary Committee. He is described as “one of the most powerful men” in the Iran-backed rebel group.

On November 9, the radical extremist leader was given valuable space in the Washington Post’s Global Opinions section, edited by Karen Attiah, a passionate advocate for the controversial slain Saudi activist Jamal Khashoggi, who in his last days worked as a de facto asset to the Qatari and Turkish regimes.

After Jamal Khashoggi’s death, Attiah worked to turn the Global Opinions section into a space to pursue his pro-Islamist, anti-Saudi monarchy agenda.

In his Washington Post column, the Houthi radical claimed to want “peace for Yemen.”

“We love peace — the kind of honorable peace defended by our revolution’s leader, Abdulmalik al-Houthi. We are ready for peace, the peace of the brave. God willing, Yemenis will remain the callers of peace and lovers of peace,” al-Houthi wrote.

Of course, to al-Houthi, the road map to peace begins and ends with placing blame on all of the issues in Yemen squarely with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Nowhere in the piece did the Washington Post add a disclaimer or note the fact that the Houthis routinely commit war crimes.

The facts tell a story far removed from al-Houthi’s unchecked propaganda. The Houthis have become notorious for their ruthless behavior, which includes the systematic detention and torture of journalists and the forced recruitment of child soldiers. The UN’s World Food Program has recently alleged that the Houthis are to blame for stealing desperately needed aid meant for the people of Yemen, letting commanders like al-Houthi eat well while the group contributes to the ongoing famine and mass starvation inside the country. (For more from the author of “Video Surfaces of WaPo Op-Ed Contributor Chanting ‘Death to America'” please click HERE)

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New: Emerging Information on U.S. ‘Spy’ Detained in Russia

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As I previously reported here at Townhall, a United States citizen who has now been identified as Paul Whelan, has been detained by the Russian Federal Security Service and said to be caught “during an espionage operation.”

His twin brother is now speaking up on background regarding his brother’s trip, who was a former U.S. Marine. David asserted in many TV interviews early Wednesday that his brother was in Russia to attend a wedding. David Whelan has also shared that this family was told by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that they have not been able to speak to Paul since his arrest.

Paul’s brother claims he was a frequent traveler to Moscow and the last time anyone heard from him was around 5 p.m. when he failed to show up that evening for the wedding.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said the United States intends to learn more about the charges and will demand his immediate return “if the detention is not appropriate.”

Pompeo continues in part stating that the U.S. has “made clear to the Russians our expectation that we will learn more about the charges and come to understand what it is he’s been accused of and if the detention is not appropriate we will demand his immediate return.” (Read more from “New: Emerging Information on U.S. ‘Spy’ Detained in Russia” HERE)

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Nancy Pelosi’s Daughter Uses Gruesome Metaphor to Describe Her Mother

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Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) daughter chose an intense way to describe her mother during a CNN interview about Nancy Pelosi’s meetings with President Donald Trump over the government shutdown. . .

Here’s what she said:

“She’ll cut your head off, and you won’t even know you’re bleeding. That’s all you need to know about her. No one ever won betting against Nancy Pelosi. She’s persevered. You got to give her credit. No matter what you think of her, you have to give her credit because, think about it, think about all these presidents she’s endured, right? The [George H.W.] Bush, the [George W.] Bush, the Clinton.

She’s been through it all. So, she’s been around. This is not her first rodeo, as your friend George Bush would say. She knows what she’s doing, and that should make you sleep at night, knowing that somebody in this town knows what they’re doing.”

Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have been in a standoff with President Donald Trump over funding for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Pelosi said the Democratic-majority House plans to pass a funding bill without wall funding, and Trump insists that he will not sign a bill that doesn’t pay for the wall. (Read more from “Nancy Pelosi’s Daughter Uses Gruesome Metaphor to Describe Her Mother” HERE)

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Parkland Victim’s Father Unloads on Sheriff’s Office After Exhaustive Report

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Andrew Pollack, father of Parkland victim Meadow Pollack, did not mince words when responding to the Sun Sentinel’s recent minute-by-minute rundown of the Parkland, Florida, shooting, titled, “Unprepared and Overwhelmed.”

“It’s pretty disgraceful when you look at it. It’s hard to even watch it, how bad the response was that happened that day,” said Pollack.

(Read more from “Parkland Victim’s Father Unloads on Sheriff’s Office After Exhaustive Report” HERE)

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Man Tries to Throttle McDonald’s Employee Over Plastic Straws. She Serves Him a Super-Size Whooping

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A St. Petersburg, Florid, a McDonald’s customer has been arrested after starting (and handily losing) a brawl with a female restaurant employee over plastic straws.

Upset about the lack of any straws in the condiment section, Daniel Willis Taylor — a white male transient, according to The Washington Post — proceeded to verbally scold a black female cashier. The argument quickly escalated into physical violence when Taylor reached across the counter and grabbed the employee’s shirt.

“She told him that it’s the law now that they’re not supposed to have the straws in the lobby,” said Brenda Biandudi, who witnessed and recorded the altercation, then spoke to The Washington Post on Wednesday via phone. “He said there’s no such law.”

But the cashier was indeed correct, as the St. Petersburg City Council voted to ban plastic straws entirely starting in 2020 but allowed business to only grant the straws upon customer request in 2019, the Post reported. . .

Soon after Biandudi pulled out her camera, Taylor leaned across the counter and grabbed the cashier. After an initial loss of balance, the employee punched the man several times until other employees broke the two apart. (Read more from “Man Tries to Throttle McDonald’s Employee Over Plastic Straws. She Serves Him a Super-Size Whooping” HERE)

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Dems ‘Refused’ to Even Listen to Border Security Briefing at White House

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Democratic lawmakers brought a border security briefing at the White House to a screeching halt Wednesday, refusing to even listen to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, a White House official tells The Daily Caller.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy echoed this version of events to reporters outside the White House immediately after the briefing, saying, “Once the secretary started, Schumer interrupted her and didn’t want to hear it.”

Republican and Democratic lawmakers after the meeting indicated little progress was made toward ending the partial government shutdown and that they agreed to reconvene Friday. The White House official says there was a consensus in the room that negotiations would be put on hold until Pelosi officially assumed her expected role of Speaker.

The White House official told TheDC that both Pelosi and Schumer refused to hear out Nielsen’s briefing and instead advocated for two solutions to end the government shutdown. Neither of the Democratic options would provide the additional funding for border security requested by The White House.

“Democrats in the room either don’t care that there is a humanitarian crisis on the border or just prefer ignorance. It was incredibly disheartening that they don’t want to know the facts when making policy,” DHS Spokeswoman Katie Waldman said in a statement to TheDC. (Read more from “Dems ‘Refused’ to Even Listen to Border Security Briefing at White House” HERE)

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One Way Elizabeth Warren Thinks She’s Obama

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By The Daily Caller. Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s website for her presidential exploratory committee attempts to link questions about her claims of Native American heritage to people who questioned whether former President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

Warren launched the committee Monday, including a website with a “fact squad” meant to push back against criticisms of the senator.

Warren’s website blames “the right-wing machine” for scrutiny of her heritage claims. . .

“Show us your papers. Release your birth certificate. It’s all part of the right’s disgusting effort to use race-baiting and fear-mongering to distract our country and divide our people while they rig the system for the rich and powerful,” Warren’s site claims.

It also displays a photoshopped image of Obama behind Warren that reads: “Don’t worry Liz, I think we fooled them.” (Read more from “One Way Elizabeth Warren Thinks She’s Obama” HERE)

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Warren Is Officially Launching 2020 Presidential Committee

By The Daily Caller. Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced on the last day of 2018 she is officially forming a presidential exploratory committee in a bid to run for the presidency in 2020.

“America’s middle class is under attack,” Warren said in the announcement video Monday. “How did we get here? Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie. And they enlisted politicians to cut them a bigger slice.”

Speculation regarding the Massachusetts senator’s presidential aspirations have been swirling for months. In June, she announced that she would not be running for president, however, less than three months later she seemingly flipped on her word, revealing she would, in fact, take a “hard look” at launching a presidential campaign following the midterms. During an interview leading up to her November election, Warren refused to commit to serving her full term in the Senate if re-elected.

Warren has also been quietly shopping for office space in the Boston area to headquarter her possible presidential campaign, according to a report earlier in December. And on Sunday night, she changed the name of her twitter account from “elizabethforma” to “ewarren,” removing her home state of Massachusetts. (Read more from “Warren Is Officially Launching 2020 Presidential Committee” HERE)

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Mexican President’s Immigration Plan Could Be Game Changer

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By Fox News. In a bid to reduce migration to the U.S. and attract investment, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has proposed the creation of economic “free zones” along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Tax Incentive Decree for the Northern Border Region, which Lopez Obrador announced Saturday, would create a free zone that would stretch from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Coast and be more than 15 miles wide, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Inside the zone, income taxes would be reduced by a third and Value Added Taxes on imported goods would be slashed in half, the minimum wage would increase 100 percent, and fuel prices would equal U.S. prices, the report said.

“It’s going to be the biggest free zone in the world,” Lopez Obrador said. “It is very important to project for winning investment, creating jobs and taking advantage of the economic strength of the United States.”

Lopez Obrador, a self-styled left-wing populist, took office Dec. 1 with the promise to help the country’s poor, noting that the nation’s minimum wage had lost 70 percent of its purchasing power in recent decades after devaluations and economic crises. (Read more from “Mexican President’s Immigration Plan Could Be Game Changer” HERE)

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US, Mexico Seek to Stem Migration From Central America by Funding Development in Region

By USA Today. The United States and Mexico will be cooperating closely to convince thousands of potential Central American migrants to not risk the perilous journey to the U.S. border by investing money into some of the region’s poorest areas.

Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said up to $10.6 billion in existing U.S. funding would fund “institutional reform” and “good government” initiatives in Central America, along with regional development in southern Mexico – where new Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promised to pull the region out of poverty through projects ranging from railways to refineries to planting thousands of hectares of trees.

Cross-border cabinet meetings would be convened, Ebrard said, and private sector participation would be included in the plan.

“Both countries recognize the strong links between economic growth in southern Mexico and successfully promoting prosperity, good government and security in Central America,” Ebrard told reporters.

“We’re committed to promoting strong regional economic growth, better-paying jobs and better opportunities for all our citizens.” (Read more from “US, Mexico Seek to Stem Migration From Central America by Funding Development in Region” HERE)

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