IT’s Over: Wikileaks Nukes the Trump-Russia Story From Orbit, Leaves Only Planetary Debris

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#FakeNews media, quarterbacked by CNN, continue to market the “Russia hacked the election” meme, 24×7.

If I’m in an airport, it’s certain that CNN is droning on, using the same comedians lightweights that completely missed the Trump phenomenon.

And all of this despite more than a dozen officials (of both party affiliations) who have publicly stated there was no Russia-Trump collusion.

Well, Wikileaks has just published an excerpt of the book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign. It’s by a bunch of Democrat insiders. And it’s stunning.

I’ll cut to the chase: within 24 hours of their crushing election defeat, Hillary Clinton and her campaign aides created the “Russia hacked the election” meme from whole cloth. Yes, it’s true:

So… the clownish dolt John (“What’s your password?”) Podesta and, presumably, the rocket scientist Chelsea Clinton concocted the entire myth from thin air.

The real story is not the sci-fi thriller these crapweasels invented. It’s that they coordinated with their legacy media counterparts to sell it like a long-running infomercial.

And that Democrats were willing to risk an international conflict with Russia to paper over their political loss.

Fortunately, this bogus crap has overcooked so long, normal Americans have tuned completely out.

And, at this point, CNN’s slogan shouldn’t be “Fake News”, it should be “Political Sci-Fi Done Right”. (For more from the author of “IT’s Over: Wikileaks Nukes the Trump-Russia Story From Orbit, Leaves Only Planetary Debris” please click HERE)

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Trump: May Cancel Briefings for ‘Sake of Accuracy’

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President Donald Trump tweeted several times Friday morning after the firing of FBI Director James Comey, defending the narrative and timeline his administration gave for the decision.

He questioned whether his administration should cancel all future press briefings and, instead, replace them with written responses to questions, “for the sake of accuracy.”

The president’s advisers said this week that Trump fired Comey on Tuesday in response to a recommendation by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Later, however, they said that Trump had planned to fire Comey regardless. (Read more from “Trump: May Cancel Briefings for ‘Sake of Accuracy'” HERE)

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Merkel: Germany Won’t Step up Fight Against ISIS Even If NATO Does

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel does not plan on increasing the country’s commitment to the fight against the Islamic State even if NATO increases its commitment to the fight, she declared Thursday.

Merkel appeared with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg who has indicated he is amenable to President Donald Trump’s insistence that the alliance increase its commitment to the U.S. led anti-ISIS effort.

Trump pushed Stoltenberg to “adapt to the challenges of the future” during his April 12 visit. “This includes upgrading NATO to focus on today’s most pressing security and all of its challenges, including migration and terrorism,” he continued.

NATO is reportedly considering establishing an office solely dedicated to counter-terrorism. NATO officials, however, are reluctant to commit to the post without agreement from allies that counter-terrorism should be a priority. They are also seeking extra funding for training initiatives.

“I want to state very clearly, that even if such a decision is made, it will not mean that any military activity that Germany currently carries out, for instance, AWACS surveillance will be expanded or something like that,” Merkel emphatically declared. Germany only contributed approximately 150 troops to the anti-ISIS mission to train, advise, and assist forces according to an August 2016 Congressional Research Service report. (Read more from “Merkel: Germany Won’t Step up Fight Against ISIS Even If NATO Does” HERE)

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Past Time to End This Democratic Witch Hunt

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I don’t deny that President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey was handled poorly, but it pales in comparison with the Democrats’ ongoing partisan witch hunt against President Trump concerning Russia. That should be the story.

Shortly after Trump’s dismissal of Comey, Trump defenders had plenty of ammunition. Widely respected and nonpartisan Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had reportedly recommended that Trump fire Comey.

Trump’s Communications

But then the communications from Team Trump on the matter seemed to muddy the waters. Though maintaining that Rosenstein’s recommendation was pivotal, Trump spokespeople added other reasons. They claimed that Trump had fired Comey based on his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation and because numerous FBI agents and employees were dispirited by Comey’s actions.

Then acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe testified, “The vast majority of FBI employees enjoyed a deep, positive connection to Director Comey.” A number of retired FBI officials also apparently showed solidarity with Comey by using his face for their Facebook profile photos. And though Rosenstein has contradicted mainstream media reports that he was contemplating resigning over the narrative that he had recommended Comey’s dismissal, he reportedly claims that he did not expressly recommend the firing. Oh, boy.

Trump added more to the mix when he told Lester Holt in an interview that he had decided to fire Comey irrespective of the reported Rosenstein recommendation. Media outlets are having a field day with this alleged contradiction. Trump has thrown his communications team under the bus, they say, because his spokespeople clearly said that Trump’s firing was a response to the recommendation. Trump’s tweets concerning possible recorded conversations between him and Comey didn’t help, either.

What a mess.

Trump’s Constitutional Authority

Though it doesn’t look good that Trump’s version arguably varies from that of his spokespeople, I don’t see any major inconsistency here. I suspect that Trump was increasingly frustrated with Comey and wanted to fire him and that the recommendation helped justify it. Either way, Trump had the constitutional authority to fire Comey, and it would be scandalous only if he did so to impede a legitimate investigation into his alleged collusion with Russia, which is not the case.

Trump is obviously exasperated that the Democrats are impeding his policy agenda with their obsessive hammering of the bogus charge that he and his team conspired with Russia to interfere with the presidential election.

No Evidence of Collusion

Despite the incessant media reports and congressional investigations, not a shred of evidence has emerged to substantiate the charge of collusion. We keep saying this, but the media and Democrats keep pretending otherwise. It’s unconscionable. Even James Clapper, former President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence, has admitted that there is no evidence of collusion and that he has no reason to suspect it.

The real scandal is not Trump’s firing Comey — even if Trump’s supporters are unhappy with the timing and the way it was handled and communicated. The scandal is the liberal establishment’s coordinated conspiracy to falsely allege that Trump stole the presidency by colluding with Russia. Liberals absolutely know that it’s not true, but they will not quit bearing false witness. How dare they posture indignantly about Trump’s supposed dishonesty?

Liberals’ Counterfeit Hysteria

Their counterfeit hysteria knows no bounds. Not long ago, Democrats were demanding Comey’s head, alleging that his public announcements had sabotaged Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Now they are claiming the firing is a “constitutional crisis” and a “coup.” Not only did Trump have the authority to fire Comey but also the termination does not end the investigation.

Author Jon Meacham claimed on Morning Joe that Trump had removed someone “in charge of an investigation that could lead to treason.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal said the firing may well lead to impeachment hearings. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to oversee the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign.

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, said: “We have a deeply insecure president who understands that the noose is tightening because of this Russia investigation. And that’s why I believe he has let Jim Comey go.”

Kaine knows better. There is no evidence that there is any noose, much less that it’s tightening, and the media’s claim that Trump fired Comey because he was seeking more funds to investigate him has been expressly denied by acting Director McCabe. CNN’s Van Jones said that the only people who are happy about the firing “are sitting in the Kremlin.” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews claimed that the firing was “a little whiff of fascism.” Countless liberal media and political figures are comparing the Comey firing to the Saturday Night Massacre, in which Richard Nixon fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox.

Nonexistent Scandal

The way this firing transpired is unfortunate, but we wouldn’t be talking about this if Democrats and the media weren’t lying every hour of every day about a nonexistent scandal. This bogus investigation should end forthwith, no matter who is heading it, because it is based on nothing but innuendo and partisanship. You conduct an investigation not because you want something to be true but because you have some evidence suggesting it may be. There is no such evidence here, and they’ve admitted it. Let’s move on. (For more from the author of “Past Time to End This Democratic Witch Hunt” please click HERE)

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Teacher Fired for Giving Student a Bible Gets Job Back — Victory!

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Mr. Tutka [was] a substitute teacher in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. But he was fired from that job after he gave a student a Bible.

The student happened to be the last person entering through a door. Mr. Tutka told the youngster, “The first shall be last, but the last shall be first.”

The student later inquired on several occasions about the origins of the quote. He showed the student the verse in his Bible, which led to the student asking for a personal copy of the Bible. And being a good Gideon, Mr. Tutka gladly supplied the child with a copy.

First Liberty Institute took on Mr. Tutka’s case — and eventually scored a victory with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They agreed that the school district had discriminated against Mr. Tutka on the “basis of religion and retaliation.” (Read more from “Teacher Fired for Giving Student a Bible Gets Job Back — Victory!” HERE)

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The Man Who Was Beheaded the Day He Became a Christian

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Most of us know the story of the 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt who held fast to their faith and were beheaded by ISIS in February, 2015. But did you know that only 20 of them were actually Copts from Egypt? Did you know that one of the martyrs was from Chad, and he had not been a Christian prior to the day of his beheading?

This story was previously reported. But I had not heard it before this week, when I attended the World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians hosted by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. A Coptic leader shared this remarkable story. It’s yet another tribute to the faith of these martyred Copts.

“Their God is My God”

All 21 men had been working in Libya when they were kidnapped by ISIS. But as can be seen in pictures where they are lined up on the beach to be killed, one of them had darker skin and different facial features. This was the man from Chad.

The Coptic Christians were given a choice to deny Jesus or die. They refused to deny Him, knowing it would cost them their heads.

When the terrorists ordered the man from Chad to deny Jesus or die, he answered, “Their God is my God,” thereby sealing his fate.

That’s how moved he was by the faith of these Christians. Their refusal to deny their Savior, even at the point of death — literally, at the point of a knife to their throats — moved him to make a profession of faith, one that would cost him his head as well. Can we grasp the intensity of this story?

The man had not been a believer. All he had to say was, “I don’t believe in Jesus” or, “Jesus is not the Son of God,” and he could walk away a free man. He would be with his family again. He would not die a brutal death. He would live to see another day.

How many Christians would be sorely tempted under such circumstances? How many would waver and, for that moment, deny their Lord, just to avoid beheading? Yet this man, who had not been a follower of Jesus before then, was so moved by the dedication of these Christians that he became a believer on the spot.

“Go ahead and behead me,” he was saying. “Your god is not my God. Their God is my God.”

Power of the Gospel

That is the power of the gospel, and that is how we overcome Satan, by not loving our lives to the point of death (Revelation 12:11).

That is why this story needs to be told and retold until the faith of those martyrs becomes our faith, until people look at our lives and say, “Your God is my God, whatever may come my way.”

And here’s something striking. As I have listened this week to the stories of persecuted Christians, even hearing from family members of martyrs, I have not heard a word of self-pity. Not a word.

I have heard words of courage and dedication. I have heard words of great love for Jesus. I have heard requests for prayer and help. But I have not heard any self-pity.

The daughter of an Iranian pastor martyred 20 years ago spoke of her own life experience and of her father’s refusal to back down. Now, 20 years after her father was buried in an unmarked grave, she could speak of multiplied hundreds of thousands of Iranian Muslims coming to faith in Jesus. Her father’s blood was not shed in vain.

That is how a seed planted in the ground first dies and then produces much fruit (John 12:24-25).

A Syrian Christian leader shared how a radical Islamic group offered to arm them to fight against another radical Islamic faction. He replied, “We already have two arms, love and forgiveness. We don’t want to become another militia.”

That is how we overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21). Some Christians even said to ISIS, “Thank you for helping to unite us!”

We Are More Than Conquerors Through Christ

Yet it would be wrong to think of these suffering believers as super saints, which is another lesson for us all.

Most of them are just ordinary Christians, not preachers or pastors, and certainly not big-name evangelists. They are mothers and fathers, young people and old people, laborers and housewives, educated and uneducated. Yet they have remained faithful under hellish pressure, enduring unspeaking suffering.

Yet rather than curse God, they bless Him, and rather than retaliate against their enemies with hatred and vengeance, they offer forgiveness and love.

Earlier this year, a couple told me about their trip to Ethiopia where they met with family members of the Ethiopian Christians beheaded by ISIS. They spoke with the widow of one of the martyrs who was pregnant when he was killed, making his death even more painful.

But when they talked with this young woman, rather than bemoan her terrible loss, she said to them, “How is it that I had the privilege of being married to a martyr for Jesus?” She was an uneducated woman with no social status, and she was humbled beyond words that she was chosen to be the wife of a martyr.

This is why radical Islam will ultimately fall before the name of Jesus and why every other force that seeks to wipe out the Church will fail in the end. It’s also why we should stop feeling sorry for ourselves when things get a little rough. Are we not also more than conquerors through Him who loved us? (See Romans 8:37) (For more from the author of “The Man Who Was Beheaded the Day He Became a Christian” please click HERE)

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A Graduation Reminder: Our Children Need Christian Teachers

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My friend is the old professor out of the movies. White-haired, white-bearded, a bit portly, almost always to be found wearing a tweed jacket and a tie. His home is stuffed with old furniture and books. He says grace at meals in Latin. (He teaches classics.) You’d spot him as a professor a hundred yards away.

Tomorrow he goes to his last commencement. I bring him up because I think the way he taught shows us why young people need Christian teachers. Not secularists, not even fair-minded secularists. Christians.

The Obvious Reason for Christian Teachers

There’s the obvious reasons. First, Christians teach the Christian story more fairly. They don’t teach the long history of Christianity as the age of ignorance and superstition and bigotry. They don’t treat the Enlightenment as the time man threw off the blindfold of religion and finally saw the truth, and brought all good things to the world, like science, and deodorant.

That’s the story my public school teachers taught me. The story’s almost complete rubbish, but I believed it for years, because that’s all I heard.

Second, Christians will teach the whole story. The story of our civilization includes a lot of Christianity, which secularists tend to leave out.

You can major in philosophy at some good colleges without reading a Christian philosopher. You might get a bit of St. Augustine and St. Thomas in the intro course, but after that, no Christians. You don’t know philosophy if you go from Aristotle to Descartes, with a glance at a couple guys in between.

We need Christian teachers to make sure our children get the whole story and get it right. Few secular teachers will give them that. But there’s another reason — not so obvious — we need Christian teachers.

The Not So Obvious Reason

Christian teachers teach their students how to see the world as a Christian. They show their students how to think as Christians should. Students only learn this by seeing it done over time.

Yes, not every professed Christian who teaches, teaches like this. Some of them do what the secularists do, only in reverse. Yes, some very secular teachers will teach like this. But many more Christians than secularists will teach like this, I think. The good Christian teachers like my friend do it, and there are a lot of them around.

They teach like that because they exercise the Christian intellectual virtues. They go the extra mile to be fair to an opponent, and work hard to dig for the truth. They’ve learned to listen before judging. They have a sense of their own sins and how blind they can be to the truth. They do unto other thinkers as they’d have those thinkers do unto them.

Such teachers don’t do this consciously. They do it because that’s who they are. Specifically, that’s who they are as Jesus’s serious disciples. As He works to make them holier, He also makes them wiser.

Take my friend. He’s a good example. I know this partly because I’ve learned from him myself. Think of a bunch of bright, opinionated guys at dinner. Someone declares Thinker X wrong and the other guys start to agree.

If he knows the subject, my friend will break in. He’ll say either that the matter is complicated, for these reasons, or that X is saying something we need to think about, for these reasons. If he doesn’t know the subject, he’ll ask probing questions. He wants to be fair, and he wants to know the truth. The rest of us may feel a little chastened.

Here’s How He Changes Students

Here’s one hugely important way Christian teachers like him change students. They’ll pick up his attitude to the work of the mind and to truth itself. That becomes part of how they see and think. These students will have learned something of the intellectual virtues because they’ve seen them exercised by the white-haired guy in the tweed jacket twice a week for fourteen weeks.

It may be, for example, that the student once inclined to respond to something new with “That’s dumb” now says, “I better see if there’s anything to it.” He’ll never realize that instinctive act of intellectual maturity came from ol’ Dr. Smith. But he’s still a different man, and a better thinker, than he would have been without the professor’s example.

It may be that he never reads the classics again, but he may listen to the old codger at work that everyone else ignores, because he suspects he knows something no one else does. He won’t know he learned that wisdom from his classics prof.

The student may start to say at dinner with bright, opinionated friends, “Well, you know,” about to lay down the law, and stop talking because he sees that he doesn’t know. He will have learned that from Dr. Smith.

Education is Implication

Students need Christian teachers who will present the material fairly and completely. They also need Christian teachers who will teach them by their example. Young people learning to think need to see Christians thinking and speaking like Christians. They need examples of wisdom in practice.

The world doesn’t teach them that. Secular education won’t teach them that. They need this not just to be better Christians but to be good thinkers.

G. K. Chesterton put it nicely. “Education is implication,” he said. “It is not the things you say which children respect; when you say things, they very commonly laugh and do the opposite. It is the things you assume that really sink into them. It is the things that you forget even to teach that they learn.” (For more from the author of “A Graduation Reminder: Our Children Need Christian Teachers” please click HERE)

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Removal of Confederate Icons Stirs Nuanced, Varied Reactions

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The statue of the Confederacy’s president had been hoisted from its stone pedestal in the pre-dawn hours and the blue glint of police lights was still visible two blocks away outside the corner laundromat where Carol Patterson sat as diverted rush-hour traffic rolled by.

“It’s entertaining,” Patterson, 74, said of the hubbub surrounding the Thursday morning removal of the statue from the busy New Orleans street that still bears the name Jefferson Davis Parkway. Police on horseback stood sentry nearby, in the event of demonstrations.

Patterson, who is white, has taken part in demonstrations and doesn’t share the reverence some white Southerners hold for Confederate figures. But she thinks Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s initiative to remove four monuments to Confederate-era figures was a mistake. (Read more from “Removal of Confederate Icons Stirs Nuanced, Varied Reactions” HERE)

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ICE Spent Tens of Thousands of Dollars Sending Officials to Tolerance Seminar

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent tens of thousands of dollars to send its officials to a “tolerance seminar” put on by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a group known for opposing immigration control efforts.

Documents provided by ICE to the Immigration Reform Law Institute in response to a Freedom of Information Act request indicate that several dozen ICE officials attended a Simon Wiesenthal Center seminar in Los Angeles. The documents state that the training cost about $1,500 for each official.

The PowerPoint presentation officials viewed at the three-day “Tools for Tolerance” seminar discusses ICE’s own goals regarding “workplace demographics” and the agency’s “diversity and inclusion strategic plan.”

And yet, the documents also show that ICE’s workforce, comprised of more than 200,000 employees, is already in full alignment with American racial demographics. What’s more, in some areas, ICE even far exceeds diversity requirements. More than 50 percent of Border Patrol agents are Hispanic.

“The training was intended to develop “greater cultural awareness” and designed for agents to “recognize their own inherent cultural biases,” as The Daily Caller News Foundation exclusively reported in August 2016. (Read more from “ICE Spent Tens of Thousands of Dollars Sending Officials to Tolerance Seminar” HERE)

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Here’s How Far Behind Trump Is on Political Appointments Compared to Obama, Bush

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President Donald Trump has begun to move on naming federal judges and will eventually be naming a new FBI director, but more broadly, he remains slow in filling political appointments compared to his predecessors.

Trump has made 85 nominations to the Senate at this point in his presidency as of Friday, according to the Center for Presidential Transition, which tracks presidential appointees. In that same period of his first term, President Barack Obama made 212 nominations, President George W. Bush made 161 nominations, President Bill Clinton made 182 nominations, and President George H. W. Bush made 135 nominees by this point.

Trump, so far, is leaving key management positions unfilled, said Mallory Barg Bulman, vice president of research and evaluation at the Partnership for Public Service, the parent organization to the Center for Presidential Transition.

“Leadership matters a lot, as does having the right people in place,” Bulman told The Daily Signal. “You can’t start the game until the whole team is on the field.”

Trump has no nominee for 460 of the 557 key leadership positions, as of Friday, according to Partnership for Public Service. Trump has nominated 49, announced the nomination of 19, and 29 people have been confirmed.

Earlier this week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the administration is taking time to vet employees.

“We’re actually going through the Office of Government Ethics and FBI clearances before announcing most of these individuals,” Spicer said at the Monday press briefing. “And so, there’s a little bit of a difference in how we’re doing this. But we are well on pace with respect to many of these [appointments] to get the government up and running.”

Trump has not yet even named a director to run the Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal workforce, noted Robert Moffit, a former assistant OPM director under President Ronald Reagan.

“The bottom line is that the president can’t run the federal government out of the White House and secretaries can’t run giant agencies huddled in an executive suite,” Moffit, now a senior fellow for health policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. “Unilateral disarmament is a victory for the swamp. The swamp creatures have won the fight. Unless you control the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy controls you.”

Moffit, who also worked in the Reagan administration’s Department of Health and Human Services, said Reagan took control of the federal bureaucracy shortly into his presidency.

He said congressional relations is a key area where political appointees should be working, instead of leaving it to career civil service employees in some cases. That’s because, Moffit stressed, it’s the job of the career civil service employees to execute administration policy but the job of political appointees to advocate and explain those policies to Congress.

The president can name about 4,000 political appointees.

Out of that, 1,242 are key leadership positions that need Senate confirmation, according to the Partnership for Public Service. Another 472 political appointees—largely White House staff—don’t require Senate confirmation, according to the partnership. Further, 761 non-career senior executive positions can be filled throughout the executive branch—though not all are presidential appointees. Finally, 1,538 non-career federal employees report directly to a presidential appointee.

The partnership did not have a final number on how many of these positions are filled or unfilled, because it only tracks key leadership positions—most of which require Senate confirmation.

The White House Transition Project measures a different metric, but still finds Trump well behind other presidents going back through Reagan. Trump officially fell behind in March, said Terry Sullivan, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the executive director of the project.

Rather than measuring 4,000 jobs, which includes all U.S. marshals, U.S. attorneys, and every inconsequential U.S. ambassador, the White House Transition Project looks primarily at 221 government appointments that are required for the essential function of government, have policy roles, and have the potential to be controversial, Sullivan said.

“This is not a result of a policy predisposition to shrinking government,” Sullivan told The Daily Signal. “He wants a tax cut but he isn’t staffing up the Treasury Department. He doesn’t want more EPA regulations, but he isn’t moving slower or faster with that agency than Veterans Affairs or Health and Human Services, things he cares about.” (For more from the author of “Here’s How Far Behind Trump Is on Political Appointments Compared to Obama, Bush” please click HERE)

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