Obama Admin Surveillance Abuses Memo Could Go Public Shortly

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President Trump has reportedly signed off on the expedited release of a Congressional memo that documents widespread surveillance abuse by the Obama administration’s intelligence apparatus.

The president will reportedly wait until after Tuesday night’s State of the Union address to release the highly-anticipated memo, which was drafted by House Oversight Committee Chairman Devin Nunes.

Trump aides reportedly advised the president to hold off on releasing the memo until after his speech, so that he could deliver his message to the nation without any competing media narratives.

White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders told reporters Tuesday:

“We are incredibly focused on the State of the Union and the President wants to make sure that this is his moment to speak to the American people, and I think that is where his focus is going to be all day today.”

Many Republicans in Congress have concluded that the memo is essential to understanding the Obama administration’s abuses of power in office. Democrats, on the other hand, have proclaimed the memo as a partisan “nothingburger.”

Notably, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe abruptly left his position at the Bureau Monday, after his boss, FBI Director Chris Wray, viewed the memo. (For more from the author of “Obama Admin Surveillance Abuses Memo Could Go Public Shortly” please click HERE)

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Policeman Who Adopts a Baby from Addict Gets Huge Surprise from Trump

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Late last year, the nation was touched by the story of a New Mexico police officer who adopted a homeless drug addict’s newborn daughter.

But the moving story didn’t just catch the attention of millions of people across the country — the White House noticed as well.

Now, Albuquerque Police Officer Ryan Holets will attend the 2018 State of the Union address on Tuesday as the guest of President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania.

Holets, 27, will join 14 other guests seated in the fist lady’s box as the president delivers his first State of the Union. All of these guests, said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, “represent the unbreakable American spirit.”

In a recent interview with CNN, Holets pondered the weight of being invited to one of the most important speeches of the year as a guest of the president and first lady. He even likened the experience to being in the “twilight zone.”

“We have entered the twilight zone for sure,” he said.

The Trump administration reportedly wants to highlight the story of Holets and his family as it attempts to show how hard it is working to fight the opioid epidemic.

But for the police officer himself, the message he wants to send is an even simpler one. `

“It’s changed my perspective forever,” he said. “I can’t drive anywhere without noticing people that are homeless. I can’t help but notice people that are panhandling. Then I think about everything they’ve gone through.”

Holets first entered the life of his new baby daughter in September 2017, when he responded to a report of a possible theft at a convenience store. As he was leaving, he noticed a couple injecting themselves with heroin behind the store.

The woman, 35-year-old Crystal Champ, was pregnant at the time. Holets turned on his body camera and walked up to the couple.

“Why do you have to be doing that stuff?” he can be heard asking Champ. “It’s going to ruin your baby. You’re going to kill your baby.”

Champ started crying. Later she told CNN she is addicted to crystal meth and heroin. “I’m the first one to know how bad my situation is,” she said, adding, “I know what a horrible person I am.”

At that point, Holets, who already had four children, decided to help.

“I’ve gotten so tired of seeing so many situations where I want to help but can’t,” he said. “And in that moment, I realized I had a chance to help and to heck with the risks.”

His wife, Rebecca Holets, explained that they felt called by God to adopt.

“We feel God has called us to do that,” Rebecca said. “It’s been on our hearts for a while.”

Both Champ and the baby’s father, Tom Key, agreed to let the family adopt their child, and on Oct. 12, the baby — named Hope — came into the world.

Hope needed treatment from doctors to address her withdrawals, but her adopted parents were allowed to take her home after about a week and a half.

Several months later, Hope is doing well.

“She’s gaining weight, eating well, sleeping well,” Ryan told The Washington Post. “We’re just praying and hoping for the best for her. As far as development goes, we won’t know the effects until she’s older.”

Hope’s birth parents, meanwhile, both recently checked into a Florida rehab center. (For more from the author of “Policeman Who Adopts a Baby from Addict Gets Huge Surprise from Trump” please click HERE)

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‘Holy Grail’: Newly Discovered School Bus-Sized Dinosaur Species Found in Sahara Desert

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Researchers from Mansoura University in Egypt have recently discovered a new dinosaur species they say represents an advancement in our understanding of prehistoric land animals on the African and European continents.

As Fox News reports, the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology program led the Egyptian expedition in the Sahara desert during which fossils belonging to the new species, subsequently named Mansourasaurus shahinae. The remains are believed to be about 80 million years old.

The species is described as a long-necked herbivore with bony plates embedded in its skin. It was about the size of a school bus, weighing more than 5 tons and stretching 33 feet long, according to Reuters.

Along with a detailed description of the remains found, a report published by Nature Ecology and Evolution noted that the discovery “provides an opportunity to test hypotheses of biotic connections between northern Africa and southern Europe during the (post-Cenomanian Cretaceous).”

That period, roughly 94 million to 66 million years ago, has provided few fossilized remains on the continent, according to the journal.

“Here we present a new titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) of Egypt that is represented by the most complete terrestrial vertebrate skeleton yet discovered from the PCC of the African mainland,” the researchers wrote.

According to an author who contributed to the study, scientists might be closer to addressing a number of unanswered questions in light of research on this new species.

“Mansourasaurus shahinae is a key new dinosaur species, and a critical discovery for Egyptian and African paleontology,” Dr. Eric Gorscak said.

He went on to say that Africa is still in many ways a “giant question mark in terms of land-dwelling animals” during the period preceding the extinction of the dinosaurs.

“Mansourasaurus helps us address longstanding questions about Africa’s fossil record and paleobiology — what animals were living there, and to what other species were these animals most closely related?” said Gorscak, a postdoctoral research scientist at the Field Museum.

He noted that at least one question was answered with the discovery itself.

“Africa’s last dinosaurs weren’t completely isolated, contrary to what some have proposed in the past,” Gorscak said. “There were still connections to Europe.”

There has long been disagreement among scientists regarding how continental drift impacted the connection between Africa and Europe during this period.

Dr. Matthew Lemanna, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and another author of the study, was even more effusive in his celebration of the discovery.

“When I first saw pics of the fossils, my jaw hit the floor,” he said.

Lemanna called the fossil the “Holy Grail,” echoing the study’s emphasis on its potential to answer longstanding questions.

He said that “a well-preserved dinosaur from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs in Africa” is something “we paleontologists had been searching for for a long, long time.” (For more from the author of “‘Holy Grail’: Newly Discovered School Bus-Sized Dinosaur Species Found in Sahara Desert” please click HERE)

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Trump Admin Pushing to Make Welfare Recipients Work for Food Stamps

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The Trump administration wants Congress to implement additional work requirements for food stamp recipients.

On Wednesday, the Department of Agriculture released a document detailing what principles should be part of any farm legislation Congress comes up with.

In the document, USDA noted that it supports “work as the pathway to self-sufficiency, well-being, and economic mobility for individuals and families receiving supplemental nutrition assistance.”

Speaking Wednesday at an event on a farm near Mifflintown, Pennsylvania, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue discussed the importance of increased work requirements. He said the Trump administration is trying to discourage a “lifestyle” of dependence on the federal government.

“It’s evident that there are able-bodied adults without dependents who are on the food stamp program, who we believe it is in their best interests, and their families’ best interests, to move into an independent lifestyle,” Perdue told reporters, according to Bloomberg News.

“During the last downturn, it became a lifestyle for some people. We don’t want it to become permanent.”

The Trump administration did not say whether it plans to cut funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which covers roughly 46.5 million people.

But work requirements could be one way to save money under the farm legislation outlined by the USDA.

In 2015, the department said that 57 percent of working-age adult SNAP recipients either had a job or were seeking to find one, while 22 percent claimed they could not work because of a disability, the Washington Examiner reported.

The Trump administration has previously taken steps to cut dependence on welfare programs.

In August 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services ended an Obama administration policy that allowed states to exempt poor people from having to prove they were either looking for a job or getting trained to do a particular task.

“The waiver option offered by the Obama administration is being replaced today by an expectation that work should always be encouraged as a condition for receiving welfare,” said Steven Wagner, the department’s acting assistant secretary for children and families.

Moreover, earlier this month, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said it would allow states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients.

“Medicaid needs to be more flexible so that states can best address the needs of this population. Our fundamental goal is to make a positive and lasting difference in the health and wellness of our beneficiaries, and today’s announcement is a step in that direction,” said agency administrator Seema Verma, according to CNN.

But this move prompted backlash, with three consumer advocacy groups filing a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday after Kentucky became the first state to require many of its Medicaid recipients to work in order to receive benefits.

About 75 million people nationwide are covered by Medicaid. (For more from the author of “Trump Admin Pushing to Make Welfare Recipients Work for Food Stamps” please click HERE)

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Robots Starting to Beat Chemists at Their Own Game?

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This line from 17th century alchemist Johann Joachim Becher is frequently used by synthetic chemists to express their dedication and delight in practical work. Although a lot has changed since Becher’s day, chemists still spend a lot of time weighing solids and measuring liquids to make molecules and discover new reactions. ‘Chemistry is still a highly experimentally demanding discipline – you need to work in the lab to get results,’ says Cristina Nevado, an organic chemist at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

However, robots are starting to beat chemists at their own game. An automated flow reactor optimises a reaction in only one day – a task that might take a human chemists weeks or even months. Smart systems like the drug discovery robot Eve combine lab skills and artificial intelligence to test and modify a given hypothesis.

‘Chemists are hungry for change,’ declares Martin Burke from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US. Having built a small molecule synthesiser, Burke is one of the scientists embracing automation and robotics – technology that might not only free chemists from some of the more tedious parts of their work, but completely change the way molecules are made. Eventually, Burke and others believe, advanced synthesis robots will entirely replace human lab workers.

Already, automation has played an important part in making small-scale synthesis more efficient. Descendants of Unimate, the first industrial robotic arm patented in 1961, now transfer vials and tubes into analytical machines or dispense amounts of liquid too small for human hands to handle. Over the last few decades, machines carrying out more sophisticated tasks like column chromatography have become affordable and widespread. (Read more from “Robots Starting to Beat Chemists at Their Own Game?” HERE)

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Teen in Shock: Attacked in Nightclub After Rejecting Groper

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A Swedish teenager was attacked at a nightclub after turning away a man who groped her, leaving her face badly bloodied as shown in horrifying snapshots that soon went viral.

Sophie Johansson, 19, was partying at Babel in Malmö on Saturday night when an unknown man on the dance floor pulled on her bag. She told Swedish outlet Aftonbladet that when she turned around, the man grabbed her butt and between her legs. She then says she hit him to get him to stop, but he punched her in the face.

Hoping to avoid a further escalation, Johansson and her friend decided to leave — but as she was on her way out, she says the man struck her over the head with a bottle.

Graphic photos of Johansson show her face and chest covered in blood from where the bottle struck the left side of her face. She was soon brought to a hospital, where she received several stitches.

Police have yet to identify the man, whom Johansson described to the paper as being around 25 years old, 5-foot-7, with a muscular build. She also said he had dark hair and wore a dark long-sleeve shirt. Law enforcement chose not to open an investigation since the man is unknown, but is asking for tips from anyone who saw what happened. (Read more from “Teen in Shock: Attack in Nightclub After Rejecting Groper” HERE)

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American Visitors to Cuba Now Reporting Mysterious Attacks

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Nineteen American citizens have reported symptoms similar to those suffered by U.S. diplomats who had been identified as victims of alleged attacks in Cuba.

“Since September 29, the Department of State has been contacted by 19 U.S. citizens who reported experiencing symptoms similar to those listed in the Travel Warning after visiting Cuba,” a spokesperson for the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs told the Miami Herald in an email . . .

In late September, the State Department issued a travel warning advising Americans not to travel to Cuba because they could become victims of mysterious attacks such as those suffered by 24 diplomats and their families while they were stationed in Havana. The U.S. also removed most of the staff at its embassy in the Cuban capital.

Among the symptoms described in the travel warning are: “ear complaints and hearing loss, dizziness, headache, fatigue, cognitive issues, and difficulty sleeping.”

In January, the State Department changed the wording and currently recommends “reconsidering” traveling to Cuba. However, officials stressed that the situation on the island had not changed, nor their message to American travelers. The list of possible symptoms remained unchanged in the new travel advisory. (Read more from “American Visitors to Cuba Now Reporting Mysterious Attacks” HERE)

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Homosexuals Lash out at Prayer, Call It the Ultimate ‘Conversion Therapy’

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A woman who testified of her departure from a “wild” life as a lesbian through prayer after joining a Bible study is being blasted by a writer for the London Guardian newspaper.

“Prayer,” concludes a dismissive Josiah Hesse in the Guardian, apparently has become a new form of the much-maligned “conversion therapy.”

The reaction was prompted by a video of Emily Thomes’ testimony released by Anchored North, an evangelical media company . . .

While packaged similar to pro-LGBT marketing campaigns, Thomes’ message is that a person can be freed from same-sex attractions through the power of Jesus Christ.

Hesse then seeks out the spokeswoman of a homosexual-rights campaign who “speaks out against the dangers of conversion therapy.” (Read more from “Homosexuals Lash out at Prayer, Call It the Ultimate ‘Conversion Therapy'” HERE)

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Hillary Admits She Mishandled Claims Against Aide

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Hillary Clinton acknowledged Tuesday evening that she mishandled the 2008 sexual-harassment claims against a male campaign staffer.

The former first lady said in a lengthy Facebook post that she understood why she was being asked in this “#MeToo” moment why she overruled her advisers and kept Burns Strider on the job despite ”his inappropriate workplace behavior.”

“The short answer is this: If I had it to do again, I wouldn’t,” Mrs. Clinton wrote in a post released just 15 minutes before President Trump’s State of the Union address.

Mrs. Clinton said she “didn’t think firing [Mr. Strider] was the best solution to the problem. He needed to be punished, change his behavior, and understand why his actions were wrong. The young woman needed to be able to thrive and feel safe. I thought both could happen without him losing his job.”

She then argued that she had “made, directly and indirectly, thousands of personnel decisions – everything from hiring to promoting to disciplining to firing. Most of these decisions worked out well.” (Read more from “Hillary Admits She Mishandled Claims Against Aide” HERE)

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THE FACE OF EVIL: Murkowski Votes to Keep America’s Baby Butcher Shops Open For Business

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The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a bill that would create a federal ban on abortions that take place after the 20th week of pregnancy, was defeated in the United States Senate Monday night. The Senate fell short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster and proceed to a simple majority vote on the bill.

Two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, joined with the Democrats to vote against breaking a filibuster. Three pro-life Democrats voted for the ban.

The 20-week point is approximately halfway through a woman’s pregnancy. Parents can know the baby’s sex. At 20 weeks, the baby is roughly the size of a banana, weighing about 10.2 ounces and measuring approximately 6.5 inches from crown to rump. At 21 weeks, the baby can be measured from “head to toe.”

At this point in the pregnancy, the baby can hear her mother’s heartbeat and voice. The baby’s hair is starting to grow. Her body, fully formed, is performing somersaults in the womb. The baby’s eyes are working, and she can perceive light. The baby has fingerprints, yawns, and sucks her thumb.

Also, at this stage of the pregnancy, the baby in the womb can feel pain. This means that during the abortion procedure, the baby can feel as her limbs are torn off with forceps and pulled from the mother’s womb.

As Townhall’s Guy Benson noted on Twitter, supporting a ban on abortions after 20 weeks is a mainstream position. Recent polling shows that even self-described “pro-choice” Americans support significant restrictions on abortion. Six in ten Americans support banning abortions after the 20-week point of pain.

\Abortion is cruel and inhumane. It is an evil thing. And today roughly half of the United States Senate, including two Republicans, voted to continue the practice even when a baby can feel pain.