ICE Lays Down the Law and Arrests 364 — Convictions Included Attempted Murder, Child Sexual Exploitation

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Earlier this week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced another massive enforcement operation resulting in hundreds of immigrant arrests.

The 30-day operation took place in several midwestern states and rounded up immigrants who had prior criminal convictions. Those convictions included child sexual exploitation, rape, attempted murder, assault, burglary, and drug trafficking.

Although the arrested immigrants came from as far away as Saudi Arabia, the vast majority came from Mexico (236) and South America. ICE said it arrested 97 immigrants who illegally re-entered the United States after deportation.

In a statement, ICE’s field office director for Chicago praised the agency’s work. “Operations like this reflect the vital work our ERO officers do every day to protect our communities, uphold public safety and protect the integrity of our immigration laws,” director, Ricardo Wong, said.

“We will continue to devote the full efforts of our agency to protecting citizens and enforcing federal immigration law. Communities are safer today because of the hard work done by the men and women of ERO.” (Read more from “ICE Lays Down the Law and Arrests 364 — Convictions Included Attempted Murder, Child Sexual Exploitation” HERE)

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Scam PACs Killed the Tea Party. Now the GOP Is Facing the Consequences

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Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is in trouble. He’s running for re-election in Texas, the race is closer than it has any right to be, and the Tea Party isn’t around to help him this time.

The latest polls conducted in August have Cruz leading his opponent, Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, by just four points and then just one point. O’Rourke has consistently dwarfed Cruz’s fund-raising, building a national profile through glowing articles written to energize grassroots progressives. The Left is eager to show a blue wave is happening by defeating Cruz, the Senate’s highest-profile conservative in arguably the most conservative state in the union.

Conservatives aren’t matching the Democrats’ grassroots enthusiasm. The Star-Telegram reports that Cruz, on the campaign trail, is telling Texas voters he does not have enough money to compete with O’Rourke’s million-dollar TV ad assault.

“We’re seeing the airwaves flooded [with O’Rourke’s TV ads],” Cruz told a rally at The Colony, Texas. “We’ve got to save our resources to turn out and mobilize conservatives.”

The Tea Party grassroots groups that were instrumental to electing Cruz to the Senate in 2012, defeating an establishment Republican in the GOP primary, aren’t able to offer the same assistance as they did when the Tea Party was ascendent in 2010 and 2012. The money just isn’t there, as the Star-Telegram highlights:

Of the groups that worked to help Cruz do that in his first race, FreedomWorks (which raised more than $23 million during that election cycle and spent roughly $500,000 helping Cruz) reported $117,000 on hand as of June 30.

The Senate Conservatives Fund, which raised roughly $16 million in the 2012 election cycle, has brought in about $4 million in the 2018 cycle. The Tea Party Express reported $0 raised in the 2018 election cycle, according to reports with the Federal Election Commission.

One GOP Senate operative attributes the lack of small-dollar donations to all of the focus on President Donald Trump and the political antics surrounding the White House.

“All of the grassroots enthusiasm that drove tea party fundraising spends all of its time supporting Trump on Twitter,” the operative told the Star-Tribune anonymously, so that he could speak candidly. “There[‘s] so much focus on Trump, it’s really sucked a lot of the oxygen out of the small-dollar enthusiasm.”

The weak fund-raising showing from Tea Party grassroots groups isn’t a problem that affects only Ted Cruz. More broadly, these conservative organizations do not have the resources to defend conservative incumbents across the country and help conservative challengers defeat Democrats.

But blaming the focus on Trump as the sole reason conservatives are in trouble is misdiagnosing the problem. The fact of the matter is that the Tea Party and conservative political movement is dead. It was murdered.

It was murdered by greedy lawyers and political consultants who saw thousands of limited-government activists rise up in 2009 to oppose the Obama agenda and thought they could get rich by cheating these people. They created scam PACs, political action committees that promised to take on the Washington establishment if you would just open your pocketbook, while in reality they enriched their own operatives. As Politico reported in 2015, these PACs raised millions of dollars from earnest, well-intentioned grassroots conservatives and then flushed that money into the D.C. swamp:

A POLITICO analysis of reports filed with the Federal Election Commission covering the 2014 cycle found that 33 PACs that court small donors with tea party-oriented email and direct-mail appeals raised $43 million — 74 percent of which came from small donors. The PACs spent only $3 million on ads and contributions to boost the long-shot candidates often touted in the appeals, compared to $39.5 million on operating expenses, including $6 million to firms owned or managed by the operatives who run the PACs. POLITICO’s list is not all-inclusive, and some conservatives fret that it’s almost impossible to identify all the groups that are out there, let alone to rein them in.

“These groups have the pulse of the crowd, and they recognize that they can make a profit off the angst of the conservative base voters who are looking for outsiders,” said the influential conservative pundit Erick Erickson, who has taken it upon himself to call out PAC operators and fundraisers he sees as scams. They are “completely a drain,” said Erickson, whose assessments of candidates and groups carry particular weight among tea party activists and the Republicans who court them. “The conservative activists feel like they’ve contributed to a cause greater than themselves, but the money goes to the consultants, and eventually the activists get burned out and stop giving money, including to the legitimate causes.”

Valuable resources were parasitically sucked from the conservative movement, resources that could have supported conservative candidates against the establishment and pushed forward a conservative agenda. Combine that with a backstabbing Republican leadership, and the hard work of the conservative grassroots was rewarded with inaction from Congress. Even with full Republican control of government and the final dying action of the Tea Party, embodied in the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, the only significant delivery from Congress and the president has been tax cuts, the expectation of every GOP administration.

Is it any wonder that conservative grassroots are no longer donating? They’ve given money for years, and what are the returns for that investment? Where are the bold conservative reforms?

Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee is seeing record fund-raising, a sign that GOP establishment donors are still engaged. The party establishment is empowered to support candidates who will support them, while grassroots conservatives are tuned out. That’s partly why conservative candidates who could be thought of as “Tea Party” insurgents performed miserably against incumbent Republicans in the 2018 primaries: There’s no movement to support them.

But Republicans need the conservative movement. They cannot win the midterms by offering a milquetoast, unambitious agenda of cutting taxes and complaining that there aren’t enough Republicans in the Senate to do anything else. Cruz is likely to beat O’Rourke; he’s a Republican running in Texas, after all. But Republicans in bluer parts of the country aren’t so fortunate. They need the conservative grassroots to support their campaigns and turn out to vote.

Unfortunately, there is no Tea Party to defend the GOP majorities in 2018. The Democrats are dancing on its grave. (For more from the author of “Scam PACs Killed the Tea Party. Now the GOP Is Facing the Consequences” please click HERE)

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Opposition Media: Well, the Toronto Star Just Gave Trump Another Reason to Bash the Dishonest Press

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President Trump’s relations with the press are contentious, and today’s events just offered more justification for his aggressive nature with the elite news media. Apparently, off the record means nothing now that Donald Trump is in office. The president is in the midst of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement between Mexico and Canada. Bloomberg News had a meeting with the president, where he said some portions would be OTR. Someone at Bloomberg appears to have leaked these details to the Toronto Star, who ran with it. The story is not 100 percent verifiable, which the Star admits, so just shows you where newsrooms are nowadays. Trump was speaking about how he was not going to compromise with Canada in the new trade talks…reportedly…:

In remarks Trump wanted to be “off the record,” Trump told Bloomberg News reporters on Thursday, according to a source, that he is not making any compromises at all in the talks with Canada — but that he cannot say this publicly because “it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal.”

“Here’s the problem. If I say no — the answer’s no. If I say no, then you’re going to put that, and it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal … I can’t kill these people,” he said of the Canadian government.

In another remark he did not want published, Trump said, according to the source, that the possible deal with Canada would be “totally on our terms.” He suggested he was scaring the Canadians into submission by repeatedly threatening to impose tariffs.

“Off the record, Canada’s working their ass off. And every time we have a problem with a point, I just put up a picture of a Chevrolet Impala,” Trump said, according to the source. The Impala is produced at the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ontario.

(Read more from “Opposition Media: Well, the Toronto Star Just Gave Trump Another Reason to Bash the Dishonest Press” HERE)

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Unmanned Massive Airship to Supply Unprecedented Government Surveillance From Above

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An unmanned airship could revolutionise police and rescue operations by offering silent surveillance from above using an array of high-resolution cameras.

The zero-emission vehicle, dubbed Eon, is designed by British aviation firm Avalon Airships to be a fully-autonomous aircraft that lands on water, allowing it to access difficult-to-reach locations.

The company claims the vehicle, about the same size of a double-decker bus, would fit a wide variety of applications ranging from commercial uses to ambulance, surveillance and policing applications.

It would come equipped with a small, detachable drone that could carry medical supplies, including a defibrillator, to anyone injured below. . .

The Eon would be powered by fully electric motors and stay afloat using helium, making it almost-silent while it cruises through the air, boasting a range of 300 miles (480km). (Read more from “Unmanned Massive Airship to Supply Unprecedented Government Surveillance From Above” HERE)

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Pope Francis: Resign, and Let Pope Benedict Return From Retirement

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By Conservative HQ. No institution that is sick can cure itself, and the Catholic Church is grievously ill. Like any patient, the institutional Church must be a willing participant in the cure. But it will be up to the Catholic laity to administer the necessary fixes.

We join others who have already made the call for Pope Francis to resign, and ask you to do the same by clicking and signing this petition, which will be widely circulated to thousands of Catholic leaders including clergy, laity, and the media. While the Pope’s failures have been many, the flashpoint may be that he chose to ignore the warning issued by Apostolic Nuncio Carlo Maria Viganò about the pattern of sexual abuse under Archbishop McCarrick of Washington, D.C. Pope Benedict had demoted McCarrick. Ignoring the warning, Pope Francis chose to promote and insulate McCarrick, leaving the inescapable conclusion that the current Pope’s resignation is the only acceptable beginning of both the legal and spiritual remedies.

The bigger picture, however, is that the Church needs a change that will exert energy about God’s law and the core, natural human institution, the family. Pope Francis is compromised, and does not have the credibility to lead in this reform and transition.

Like a past, strong, and credible CEO coming out of retirement to salvage the reputation of the entity, Pope Benedict is the natural replacement for Pope Francis during a period of transition.

Changing the head of the Catholic Church is far from the only steps that need to be taken. If the remedy is left to the current hierarchy within the Church, no credible, meaningful, and lasting reforms will be undertaken or, if enacted, won’t succeed. The “deep state,” so to speak, within the Catholic Church is insulated and will fight to preserve itself at the expense of curing the homosexual sex abuse that has incubated within the Church under the current hierarchy. (Read more from “Pope Francis: Resign, and Let Pope Benedict Return From Retirement” HERE)

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Pope Francis ‘Serene’ Despite Calls for Resignation

By New York Post. Pope Francis is “serene” despite calls for him to resign over allegations that he covered up for a US cardinal accused of sexual misconduct, the Vatican’s secretary of state said Thursday.

“From what I saw – I haven’t seen him today, but I have seen him in these days; I was with him during the trip to Ireland and after – he seems serene,” Cardinal Pietro Parolin said in an interview with Vatican Insider, the online supplement to Italian newspaper La Stampa.

An 11-page letter by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano has created “much bitterness and worry” within the Vatican, Parolin said – but the pontiff “has the ability to take a very serene approach.”

The inflammatory statement made by Vigano Saturday accused Pope Francis – and other high-ranking church officials – of failing to act on accusations of sexual abuse by ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Vigano claims he told Pope Francis that McCarrick was a “serial predator” back in 2013. (Read more from “Pope Francis ‘Serene’ Despite Calls for Resignation” HERE)

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The Wonders of Socialized Medicine: Some Are Waiting up to 62 Hours for an Ambulance in the UK

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Folks, if we ever become taken over by the Bernie Sanders supporters and the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wing of the Democratic Party, take comfort in that we’ll all be equal…in our sufferings together. The economic destitution that is to come from their agenda that will cost over $40+ trillion over the next ten years, with a $218 trillion in total over the next three decades. The Venezuela-ization of our country would occur. So, we get back to the far left’s favorite issue: health care. They slam the U.S. for not having a total trash health care system, like in Europe. Europe has socialized systems, they say. Good for Europe, I couldn’t care less. They also have immense issues. In the UK, the whole system is in shambles, with patient stacking occurring on a daily basis. The New York Times had a piece on it in January:

At some emergency wards, patients wait more than 12 hours before they are tended to. Corridors are jammed with beds carrying frail and elderly patients waiting to be admitted to hospital wards. Outpatient appointments were canceled to free up staff members, and by Wednesday morning hospitals had been ordered to postpone nonurgent surgeries until the end of the month.

Cuts to the National Health Service budget in Britain have left hospitals stretched over the winter for years, but this time a flu outbreak, colder weather and high levels of respiratory illnesses have put the N.H.S. under the highest strain in decades.

Now, for some parts of the UK, it could take up to 62 hours to get an ambulance to come to your door. So, if you’re elderly, fall, and break your hip, you have to lie in agony for hours…because socialism (via BBC):

A patient waited 62 hours for an ambulance, while four trusts took more than 24 hours to respond to 999 calls, new figures have shown.

(Read more from “The Wonders of Socialized Medicine: Some Are Waiting up to 62 Hours for an Ambulance in the UK” HERE)

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Shocking: A Politician Formerly Incredibly Close to McCain Cut From Attending Funeral Service

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By Conservative Tribune. . .As news coverage of memorial services for the late Sen. John McCain maintain a steady, prominent presence in the media, details about the Arizona political giant’s funeral are also providing a reliable source of buzz for reporters looking for an opportunity to snipe at the American right. . .

According to reports first broken by People magazine, the McCain family has made it clear that Palin, a woman who ran as McCain’s vice presidential candidate in his doomed campaign against Barack Obama in 2008, was not even welcome at his funeral. . .

An apparently separate source backed up the statement, and speculated that the decision had been made by McCain’s widow.

“My guess is, it came from Cindy,” People quoted that source, “close to the McCain family,” as saying. “She is very protective of John’s memory and legacy. She’s also a grieving widow. I think she wants to get through this as best she can.” . . .

“‘Donald Trump and Sarah Palin were not served official notice outright,’ says the source close to the McCain family. ‘I want to make that clear. It wasn’t a no-trespass order. They won’t be turned away by guards if they show up at the funeral.’” (Read more from “Shocking: A Politician Formerly Incredibly Close to McCain Cut From Attending Funeral Service” HERE)

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John Mccain Death: Daughter Meghan Breaks Down Into Tears Over Father’s Coffin at Memorial

By Express. Meghan, who is the late Senator’s daughter, was teary in several moments during the ceremony, but when she she stepped up to her father’s coffin after her mother, Cindy, she seemed to shake.

She touched the coffin with her right hand, leaning on it for support before walking away while sobbing.

Meghan was clearly close to her father and when the veteran passed away on Saturday she shared a heartbreaking statement and tribute on Twitter.

She wrote: “All that I am is thanks to him.

“Now that he is gone, the task of my lifetime is to live up to his example, his expectations, and his love.” (Read more from “John McCain Death: Daughter Meghan Breaks Down Into Tears Over Father’s Coffin at Memorial” HERE)

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Here Is Who Bruce Ohr Did and Did Not Tell About His Dossier Contacts

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Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr told Congress earlier this week that he informed half a dozen FBI and Justice Department officials about his contacts with dossier author Christopher Steele and opposition researcher Glenn Simpson.

Sources familiar with Ohr’s testimony before the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees told The Daily Caller News Foundation that Ohr informed Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page about his interactions with Steele and Simpson. He also informed Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann about his dossier-related work. . .

Ohr testified that he informed his Justice Department peers, but not his superiors, about his contacts with Steele and Simpson. One of the superiors kept out of the loop was former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Ohr said he was demoted as assistant deputy attorney general in December because he failed to tell Yates and other top officials about his dossier interactions.

Republicans have sought an interview with Ohr to find out why he maintained contact with Steele even after the FBI decided to cut ties with the former British spy just before the 2016 election. The FBI said in applications for spy warrants against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page that the bureau dropped Steele as an informant because he had unauthorized contacts with the media. Despite that, Ohr met and spoke with Steele numerous times through May 2017. Ohr debriefed the FBI at least 12 times following his post-election contacts with Steele.

Weissmann’s contact with Ohr about the dossier is significant because of the mutual interest that Weissmann and Fusion’s Simpson had in former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. (Read more from “Here Is Who Bruce Ohr Did and Did Not Tell About His Dossier Contacts” HERE)

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Driver Who Allegedly Killed Oregon Couple in DUI Crash Is a Illegal Alien

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The man suspected of killing an Oregon couple in a high-speed drunk driving collision earlier in August is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, The Daily Caller News Foundation learned.

Eduardo de la Lima Vargas, 39, allegedly ran a red light on a state highway in Salem, Oregon, on Aug. 19, striking a motorcycle being driven by Logan Wilson, 34, and his wife Jessi, 32. The collision tossed the Wilsons from the motorcycle, fatally injuring both.

Vargas blew a .10 blood alcohol level on a breathalyzer roughly two hours after the crash, according to a Salem police report. Investigators believe he was probably driving at twice the legal alcohol limit at the time he crashed into the Wilsons, who are survived by four young children.

Following the wreck, Vargas was booked into the Marion County jail on two counts of manslaughter, as well as one count each of reckless endangering, reckless driving and driving under the influence. He remains in state custody on a $500,000 bond.

Additionally, Vargas is now the subject of a federal immigration detention request. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed the detainer Aug. 24 in a statement to Salem-based crime researcher David Olen Cross, who shared it Thursday with TheDCNF. (Read more from “Driver Who Allegedly Killed Oregon Couple in DUI Crash Is a Illegal Alien” HERE)

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Trump Threatens to Withdraw From World Trade Organization

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If the World Trade Organization doesn’t “shape up,” President Donald Trump told Bloomberg he would pull the United States out.

In a Thursday interview with Bloomberg, Trump again criticized the international trading group’s treatment of the United States.

He told Bloomberg, “If they don’t shape up, I would withdraw from the WTO.”

The president’s comments follow previous reports that Trump had told White House aides that he wanted to withdraw from the WTO.

But top Trump administration officials haven’t been as eager to pull out of the global trade regulator. In July, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC that talk to withdraw from the WTO was “a little premature.” (Read more from “Trump Threatens to Withdraw From World Trade Organization” HERE)

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