Army General and Former VP of Company at the Heart of Child Sex Trafficking Scandal Arrested for Child Rape

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A retired Army general, who after leaving the military, worked as VP for embattled DynaCorp International for three years – the private military contractor at the heart of numerous international child sex scandals – has been charged with multiple counts of rape for the alleged assault of at least one minor three decades ago.

Maj. Gen. James Grazioplene faces six charges for alleged rapes that happened in 1983 and 1989, according to an announcement made by the Army last Friday. He faces life and prison and the loss of his pension if convicted of the charges. As a retired officer, Grazioplene is subject to military law under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and will face an Article 32 hearing to determine if he will face a court martial.

Details surrounding the case remain scarce, as the Army released no other information as to what precipitated Grazioplene being charged three decades after the alleged sexual assault . . .

While potentially just a coincidence, Grazioplene’s connections with DynCorp immediately raise a red flag, as the company has been embroiled in numerous high-level scandals involving the exploitation and trafficking of children for sex — dating as far back as the Bosnia conflict during Bill Clinton’s tenure as US President.

Revealing the extreme level of complicity, by DynCorp, in the illegal exploitation of children, former employee, Ben Johnston filed a RICO lawsuit against Dyncorp after he was allegedly fired for reporting human rights abuses by other employees during the Bosnian conflict. (Read more from “Army General and Former vp of Company at the Heart of Child Sex Trafficking Scandal Arrested for Child Rape” HERE)

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What Chuck Schumer Is Revealing out in the Open

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Senator Chuck Schumer on MSNBC: “We’re no longer fact-based. The founding fathers created a country based on fact. We don’t have a fact base. If Breitbart News and the New York Times are regarded with equal credibility, you worry about this democracy.”

First of all, in Schumer’s opening sentence, who is this “we”? There is an implication that the “we” is somehow monolithic and centralized. But people have been in disagreement about facts and what they mean since the dawn of time. People have rejected centralized sources of facts, from kings and queens and priests, to newspapers and television news.

In the same way that 99% of economists assume society must be planned and centralized, Schumer and “the people in power” assume media must operate as a centralized force—as if it’s a natural law.

They just assume it, because until recently, it was the case, it was cozy and easy. But not now. And they’re angry and shocked. They see their foundation of propaganda and mind control slipping away.

You must appreciate how secure they used to feel. It was a cake walk, a picnic in the park. The definition of “fact” was: whatever centralized media said it was. What could be simpler? And to them, that was “democracy.”

Feed the people lies, hide deeper truth, slam dunk.

Then along came independent media.

Boom.

t turned out millions of people were interested.
The cat jumped out of the bag.

I know about this. I’ve been letting cats out of bags since 1982.

That’s longer than some of my readers have been alive.

I also know about censorship, because almost from the beginning of my work as a reporter, I had stories turned down by major media outlets and even alternative outlets. I saw the handwriting on the wall.

Chuck Schumer is echoing what many of his colleagues—and far more powerful people—are worrying about. Their vaunted mouthpieces, the NY Times, the Washington Post, etc., are failing. They can’t carry the same old freight with impunity.

So Schumer “worries about the future of democracy.” What he’s actually worried about has nothing to do with democracy, and it certainly has nothing to do with a Republic, which was the form of this nation from the beginning.

Schumer is worried about decentralization.

He’s worried that people are defecting from the authoritarian arrogant Castle of Truth.

And, given his position, he should be worried.

We are at a tipping point. Needless to say—but I will say it—independent media need your support. Your choice about where you obtain your news makes a difference.

Until a few years ago, I never considered that I was relentless. I was just doing my work. But as I saw the counter-efforts of major media, social media, government, Globalists, and other players, as they tried to reassert their primacy, I found a deeper level of commitment. A person can find many reasons to stop what he is doing. Every person eventually realizes that. But will he give in? Or will he decide to keep going? My choice is reflected on these pages, where I write every day.

Many of my colleagues have made the same choice. As for myself, I take the long, long view. Whatever befalls this civilization, the individual survives. He cannot be erased. I know that as surely as I know I am sitting here.

People like Chuck Schumer are living on a foundation of sand. Their power depends on obfuscation and deception and exchanging favors. When they feel the ground shifting under their feet, they growl and accuse and declaim and resort to fake ideals. If they see their con isn’t working and isn’t selling, then they panic.

Which is a good sign.

Many, many years ago, I had a good relationship with a media outlet. Then one day, the man in charge told me I was “positioning myself” outside the scope of his audience. I was speaking to “different people,” and therefore I should “go my own way.” I could tell he wasn’t happy about saying this, because he thought of himself as an independent, but there it was. He was bending to the demands of “his people.” So we parted company.

I was now further “out there” than I had been before. I was “independent of an ‘independent’ media outlet.” It took me about five minutes to see the joke. A good and useful joke.

As the years rolled on, I kept finding myself in a more independent position, which meant I was writing what I wanted to write, and in the process I was discovering deeper levels of what I wanted to write.

Understanding this changed my political view. If I didn’t stand for the free and independent individual, what did I stand for? If I didn’t keep coming back to THAT, what could I come back to?

It made sense to me then, and it makes sense to me now.

This is why I keep writing about collective, the group, the mass, and the generality, those fake representations of life.

The individual is always free, whether he knows it or not. And therefore, he can choose.

This is what the Chuck Schumers of this world vaguely apprehend on the horizon. They can’t believe what they’re seeing; it’s too horrible a prospect. They reject it as a fantasy. A random nightmare.

But it isn’t a random nightmare.

It’s the potential for an open future.

Decentralized.

Alive.

Back from obscurity.

Back from the late 18th century, when the ideas embedded in the Constitution reflected the desire to unleash the free and independent individual and afford him protection from the powers-that-be. (For more from the author of “What Chuck Schumer Is Revealing out in the Open” please click HERE)

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Hillary Aides Threatened Prime Minister’s Son With IRS Audit

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Hillary Clinton’s Department of State aides threatened a South Asian prime minister’s son with an IRS audit in an attempt to stop a Bangladesh government investigation of a close friend and donor of Clinton’s, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group learned.

A Bangladesh government commission was investigating multiple charges of financial mismanagement at Grameen Bank, beginning in May 2012. Muhammad Yunus, a major Clinton Foundation donor, served as managing director of the bank.

Sajeeb Wazed Joy, son of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and permanent U.S. resident, recalled the account of the threatened IRS audit to TheDCNF. The allegations mark the first known instance in the U.S. that Clinton’s Department of State used IRS power to intimidate a close relative of a friendly nation’s head of state on behalf of a Clinton Foundation donor.

Joy told TheDCNF it was “astounding and mind boggling” that senior State Department officials between 2010 and 2012 repeatedly pressured him to influence his mother to drop the commission investigation.

The commission report was released in early 2013. (Read more from “Hillary Aides Threatened Prime Minister’s Son With IRS Audit” HERE)

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Promise Not Kept: Trump’s Illegal Executive Amnesty

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It takes some time for a successor to clean up the mess of his predecessor. But when a new president continues a patently illegal immigration program from his predecessor, at some point he must own that unconstitutional policy. For Obama’s illegal executive amnesty, Trump is rapidly approaching that moment.

Yesterday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer used all of the typical straw-man arguments to explain why the president has decided to keep Obama’s executive amnesty in place:

I think he’s been consistent about two things. One, that he has a heart. He wants to make sure that he does what’s in the interest of children in particular. But secondly, I think the President’s priorities since he took office have been very clear that the focus would be on folks who presented a danger to public safety. And that’s what it’s been, and that’s where it continues to be. And I think he is someone who understands the issue and the priorities that need to get laid out by this country. And so everything that he has done has been consistent with what he said from the get-go.

What about the legality – the fact that it is illegal to issue work permits and Social Security cards contrary to the most foundational sovereignty statutes?

I think that his comments that he made last week, that he understands that in a lot of cases this involves families and small children who have been here, and he has a heart…

And how does that address the legality, again?

Besides, it is wholly inconsistent with the policies and the talking points Trump harnessed during the campaign.

When Trump was campaigning in Phoenix last August, he spoke with true moral clarity on the issue of immigration in a way that shows “heart” first and foremost to the American people and, by extension, to those who make the dangerous trek across the southern border:

We will immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties in which he defied federal law and the Constitution to give amnesty to approximately five million illegal immigrants, five million.

The president actually revealed what was in his “heart” when he said in the speech that Arizona held a special place in his heart. Arizona has been beleaguered by these very myopic policies that place the emotional arguments of foreign nationals in a vacuum ahead of the broad needs and concerns of Americans. Trump lambasted the media and Hillary at the time for focusing on “one thing and only one thing, the needs of people living here illegally.” He then spoke with moral clarity of how “the central issue is not the needs of the 11 million illegal immigrants” and that “anyone who tells you that the core issue is the needs of those living here illegally has simply spent too much time in Washington…. There is only one core issue in the immigration debate, and that issue is the well-being of the American people.”

As I’ve noted before, and demonstrated from the Rockville rape case, it is this very promise of amnesty for “families with children” that is solely responsible for the recent surge in migration from Central America that has cost taxpayers untold sums of funding, burdened schools, crushed hospitals, and, yes, has resulted in violent crime against Americans. And as we saw with a slew of violent incidents perpetrated by young illegal aliens, they usually have clean records … until they offend. The “vetting” of the Obama administration was a joke, because 96 percent of applicants were granted legal status.

Yet the Trump administration is likely issuing roughly 760 illegal cards to illegal aliens every day. Even Marco Rubio said he’d only honor those cards already handed out. For this administration to renew a flagrantly illegal policy demonstrates that the campaign rhetoric of the entire Republican Party when in opposition is an utter joke. It’s one thing to show recalcitrance to ending a legal, albeit odious, policy. But to continue an illegal policy, especially when illegal aliens are the sole beneficiaries of that policy, is a mockery of the rule of law. Trump could end this tomorrow with a simple display of inaction – refusing to renew any work permits.

As a man who always likes to project power and the image of a winner, there is a further need for Trump to eliminate Obama’s executive amnesty in light of the courts nullifying his own immigration orders. For this administration to sit idly as Trump’s completely legal immigration order is struck down (while refusing to negotiate it as part of the budget bill) and at the same time continue the illegal immigration order of an ex-president is the ultimate humiliation of the The Donald. Moreover, courts are treating Obama’s order as a legitimate “law” through which to force states to issue driver’s licenses for illegals.

Trump is clearly a man who desires to check off his list of promises. Getting rid of Obama’s executive amnesty must make its way back onto that list. (For more from the author of “Promise Not Kept: Trump’s Illegal Executive Amnesty” please click HERE)

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Leftists Ramping up the Violence: How Long Until They Kill Somebody?

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How long before somebody gets killed by an enraged leftist? Let’s start a pool. I’ll be the bookie (the only sure way to make money).

Odds on a killing in the next six months, 7 to 1 against; from six months to a year, 4 to 1; after a year 2 to 1. Get your bets in early. These odds might tighten.

Some friends of mine, Roy Spencer and John Christy, were shot at. Both men are bona fide atmospheric scientists. They have actually studied and contributed greatly to their field. They also express skepticism that global-warming-of-doom will kill us all unless we put the government in charge of all aspects of our lives.

Spencer wrote:

A total of seven shots were fired into our National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) building here at [the University of Alabama Huntsville] over the weekend.

All bullets hit the 4th floor, which is where John Christy’s office is (my office is in another part of the building).

Given that this was Earth Day weekend, with a March for Science passing right past our building on Saturday afternoon, I think this is more than coincidence.

The UAH police, with lickety split speed, classified the violence as a “random shooting.”

The bullets must have just showed up out of nowhere.

Storming the Heritage Foundation

So the violent folks at People’s Action — why do communists always say their violence is done in the name of the people? — attacked the Heritage Foundation offices. Stormed right on in.

Media accounts call the violent actors “protesters.” The proper word is, of course, thugs, though violent rabble would do as well. The media does not use proper labels because, as everybody knows, the media is delighted by the attacks.

Why did these violent individuals storm a think tank? In their own fantastical words, “We’re shutting it down at @Heritage because it continues to be @realDonaldTrump’s think tank. #RiseUp2017 #Budget4ThePeople”

Well, what more justification is needed since the think tank expresses (tepid) support for a sitting President? Off with their heads, amirite?

We’ve already seen the well ensconced culture of violence on university and college campuses, now places of strict and unthinking intolerance. Just as a for-example, students, many with those dead-alive eyes familiar from social media posts, attacked author Charles Murray and a professor at Middlebury College. The professor was sent to the hospital.

The media sighed a slight sigh and then hinted the woman with Murray had it coming because, said the Washington Post, the Southern Poverty Law Center “considers Murray a white nationalist who uses ‘racist pseudoscience. …’”

Students at Wellesley penned an article that said, in effect, that if they have to keep hearing talk from people on the right, “hostility may be warranted” to shut them up.

The mercurial Ann Coulter was invited to speak at Berkeley, ground zero for fingers stuck in ears, but was told by the university officials she couldn’t come, because why? Because of concerns over her safety.

Now I ask you, is that not tacit admission that student violence is expected and seen as natural, and perhaps even desirable? I’ll answer for you: yes it is.

Coulter is still coming, and daring Berkeley, an institution that boasts of it free speech heritage, to shut her up. Police forces have begun mustering. Update (26 April, 6:15 PM): Coulter, losing even her supporters, herself canceled her speech.

But will the police be allowed to intervene should violence begin? At the so-called Battle of Berkeley, pro- and anti-Trump supporters clashed, and police infamously sat on their thumbs. (They are even “training for violence.” The antifa forces lost, and so they are now actively “training” for the next battle.)

Why this inaction? It’s a good bet that the politicians anticipating the event thought it would be yet another instance of leftists causing mayhem, violent acts they could “officially” condemn after they occurred, but which they were not unhappy to see. Yet this time, the other side fought back. And won.

Now that the right is fighting, it’s an even better wager that the politicians will have the police move in quickly at the first hint of violence.

Free speech is dead on the American campus. How do we know? Leftists tell us so. Dead, and good riddance, they say. The New York Times and the New Republic say students are right to insist they should not have to hear ideas which might cause them pain.

Author Heather Mac Donald was chased off a campus by a violent mob recently. She noted that some students at Berkeley “opined that physical attacks against supporters of Mr. Yiannopoulos and President Trump were ‘not acts of violence. They were acts of self-defense.’”

There you have it. When the killing comes, it will be called “self defense.” It will be called “necessary.” Those reporting on it will express sadness, yes, but they will, oh so regretfully, say it couldn’t be helped.

How are those odds above looking to you now? (For more from the author of “Leftists Ramping up the Violence: How Long Until They Kill Somebody?” please click HERE)

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The ‘Gay Infertility’ Myth

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On April 22nd, USA Today published an article titled “The Psychology of Infertility.” The article highlighted three couples who could not have children. The couples chose to have a child through in-vitro fertilization (IVF), adoption and surrogacy. While music played in the background, the couples talked about the trouble they had conceiving. There was only one problem: One couple was made up of two men. “We don’t have a uterus,” they explained.

Got it? It seems that two men can’t conceive a baby! And their problem, we’re told, is one of infertility. Really. Dan and Will Neville-Rehbehn had to spend thousands of dollars to find a breeder, that is, surrogate, to bear them a baby. The men “contributed” the sperm, according to the companion story.

Twenty years ago, their video would have been a skit on Saturday Night Live. Now, it’s a news story on USA Today. And that news story is doing its darnedest to fob off on readers the “gay infertility” myth.

Not the Same

Infertility and Incompatibility are not the same thing. Most insurance companies get this. That’s why they refuse to perform infertility treatment with same-sex couples. Both men, and both women, in these pairings can be quite fertile. That is, each one could have children with someone of the opposite sex. The fact that no one can conceive a child with a person of the same sex isn’t infertility. It’s a basic fact of biology.

The heartache that compatible (that is, male-female) couples endure is just not the same problem as two men or two women trying to “conceive.” It’s like comparing the fact that someone can’t flap his arms and fly with someone who is paralyzed. To identify the problem of infertility with a universal fact of biology is an insult to couples really struggling with infertility.

Insurance Companies are Right Not To Pay

And at least on the surface, some “gay parent” activists admit as much. Still, they continue to fight against it. One frustrated attorney railed against insurance companies that refuse to pay for infertility treatment for same-sex couples. She wasn’t even happy with those that pay for treatment after lesbians have undergone testing for infertility. “[Lesbian couples] will never be treated ‘equally,’ there will always be an additional financial burden to prove they are infertile,” said Emily Hecht-McGowan, Esq., the chief policy officer at the Family Equality Council. “To expect a lesbian couple to get pregnant on their own — it’s not going to happen.”

Well, she’s right about that.

United Healthcare refused to treat a lesbian couple because it defined infertility as an “inability to achieve pregnancy after 12 months of unprotected heterosexual intercourse.” According to the New York Times, the couple said the “subtext of the United Healthcare policy is that a lesbian could get pregnant by having sex with a man, she just chooses not to.”

Well, yes. If a woman chooses not to have sex with a man, she will not conceive. That doesn’t mean she can’t conceive. It means she has chosen not to do the one thing that would allow her to do so.

Required Infertility Testing is Reasonable

Shannon Price Minter, the head of the legal division at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, complained that it’s unfair that lesbians must be tested for fertility before treatment. “To me,” she complained, “the central injustice is that when a person has a known condition that precludes them from becoming pregnant, such as a woman who has had her ovaries removed, there is no requirement to go through a period of unprotected intercourse before being recognized as requiring fertility treatments. …”

That’s not a riddle. You only undergo testing when you don’t know the medical problem. In her example, the woman already knew she had her ovaries removed. Why would she test to see if they were working?

In contrast, a healthy lesbian may or may not have a medical issue. Therefore, doctors test them. It’s reasonable for an insurance company not to pay for costly infertility treatments when there is no medical problem.

Against God’s Design

Healthy men and women who are in a same-sex relationship do not, by and large, have a medical issue that precludes them from conceiving. There’s no “infertility” problem. They don’t have faulty reproductive organs. They’re just not using them as they’re designed. That is, in the way that can even lead to conception.

Individual gay people may be infertile. But “gay infertility” is a myth. USA Today just hopes you won’t notice. (For more from the author of “The ‘Gay Infertility’ Myth” please click HERE)

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Turkey Bombs Syrian Christians. Will Trump Act to Protect Them?

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Yesterday I woke up early, checked my phone and immediately all indicators went red (so to speak). I got the news that Turkey had bombed the area around a Christian town in North-East Syria and hit Bara, a Yazidi town in Sinjar, Iraq. All of this happened under the pretext of “fighting terrorists.”

Today I heard even more unsettling news: Turkey has launched ground attacks against the U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters who man the front lines against ISIS, alongside Syrian Christians. Those courageous Christians defending their families are hoping that the Trump administration halts these attacks. They are a blatant attempt to rebuke U.S. influence in the region. Emboldened by his win in a power-grabbing referendum, Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan has decided to slap Uncle Sam in the face.

What Syrian Christians fear most is a Turkish ground attack on their heartland, the Khabour Valley. If that happens, they will pull back from fighting ISIS to defend themselves against Turkey, a member of NATO.

A Slap in the Face for America

I quickly got confirmation from both Syrian Christians and Yazidis that the air attack had indeed occurred. In total, 26 airstrikes were carried out. The Turks hit many civilians and SDF defense forces — allies of the United States. There was a total of 20 casualties near Derik. A media center and small headquarters of the Kurdish YPG were hit. The Kurdish YPG is part of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, along with the Christian Syriac Military Council, Arabs and others.

In Iraq, the airstrikes hit the Yazidi defense forces (YBŞ), who lost two fighters, while three civilians were wounded. Five Kurdish Peshmerga were killed as well. All these groups have been cooperating with the U.S. in fighting ISIS and protecting religious freedom.

Of course this is a nerve-wracking experience for the people of Derik. This Christian town is a nice place that had so far escaped the damage of war. When you stand on the roof of one of these houses you can see the Turkish mountains looming over the flat countryside of North-East Syria. There is a very nice hotel that kept going despite the war. Derik is an example of Christian resilience in the face of civil war and ISIS.

Turkey bombed it.

ISIS is far away from Derik. It never even got close to it. There was no legitimate reason whatsoever for such an aggressive act against these people.

Bombing the Hunted Yazidis

Even worse is the attack on the persecuted Yazidis. I have read reports today that these displaced people, who lost everything due to ISIS, could see the bomb blasts from their tents. A harrowing experience for a people that just survived a genocide.

Both the Syrian Christians and the Yazidis quickly released their statements this morning. The media already picked up what happened and reported the Kurdish casualties. Lost in the media reports was a crucial fact: This was a direct attack by a NATO member on a Christian town in Syria.

How will the U.S. respond? Feeling betrayed, members of the Syrian Christian, Kurdish and Yazidi communities wondered if the U.S. had sold them out. Was Trump eager to please the Turkish government? My personal take is that the U.S. was at first not aware of the intentions of the Turkish jets. The Americans were caught by surprise. This seems the most logical explanation: These strikes also posed a direct threat to U.S. forces in Northern Syria.

Punishing Trump for Mentioning the Armenian Genocide

One explanation swirling around is that these strikes were an attack in response to President Trump’s commemoration on April 24th of the Armenian/Assyrian genocide committed by the Ottoman empire and its “Young Turks.” If so, Turkey proved that it wants to continue that genocide.

On the same day as the attack, commanders of the U.S. forces based in Northern Syria inspected the consequences of the airstrikes together with SDF commanders. Furthermore, the State Department and Pentagon both described the United States as “deeply concerned” by the strikes. They said that their objections were raised directly with the Turkish government. They warned that Turkey’s targeting of Kurdish groups could distract from the common campaign to defeat ISIS.

However the core question is: What solid assurances will President Trump give to the victims of this bombing? Will he make it starkly clear to Turkey that it may not bomb Christian towns in Syria and Yazidi villages in Iraq? That this is really over?

The U.S. Must Arm the Victims, Its Natural Allies

One crucial way to end the suffering of these peoples is to arm them properly and to empower them politically. The Yazidis of Sinjar want all Kurdish forces to leave Sinjar. They wish to run their own defense forces and to achieve autonomy within Iraq and the Iraqi Constitution. This would also clear the way for autonomy for the Syriac-Assyrian Christians of Nineveh Plain in Iraq. That would take away any pretext for Turkey to attack the Yazidis ever again.

In Syria, the Trump Administration should make the logical choice to arm the Syrian Christians. Their Syriac Military Council is a real force fighting ISIS — independent of Assad. As I’ve written here before, there is no good reason why Christian forces are singled out and denied the weapons the U.S. gives to their Arab allies. Giving the Christians weapons for self-defense would send a powerful signal to Turkey that attacks on helpless religious minorities are a “red line” the U.S. won’t let Turkey cross.

Finally, President Trump should give much more attention to the Federation of Northern Syria, where religious freedom prevails. Indeed, as John Zmirak and Jason Jones wrote, the Federation should serve as the model for a new, federated Syria. To this end, the Trump Administration should declare publicly that no force will be allowed to attack SDF-controlled areas. He should declare it a “no-fly zone,” off limits to Turkey or Assad’s air force. Russia would raise no objections.

President Trump needs the cooperation of Syria’s Christians and Yazidis to end this war the right way: leaving behind religious freedom for all. He should not allow Turkey to blast that opportunity into rubble. (For more from the author of “Turkey Bombs Syrian Christians. Will Trump Act to Protect Them?” please click HERE)

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The Market for Baby Body Parts Is Growing: New Video of Planned Parenthood Exec

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Planned Parenthood has trafficked in human organs. We know that they don’t merely “donate tissue” but negotiate the sale of baby body parts.

Just ask Mary Gatter, the Planned Parenthood doctor who once joked that she “wanted a Lamborghini” while haggling over the price of a dead baby’s organs.

Dr. Gatter is the Medical Directors’ Council President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She isn’t a fringe figure in the world of abortion providers — she’s the leading light. And she has a starring role in a new undercover video from the Center for Medical Progress (CMP).

If you thought maybe Dr. Gatter’s previous video simply showed her on a bad day, check out this new footage.

Dr. Gatter is as eager as ever to talk price points and “specimens” with a tissue buyer she has just met at a conference. She cuts right to the chase. Identifying herself in her role with the clinic at Planned Parenthood of Pasadena, she asks:

“What kind of volume do you need, and what gestational ages?” Her eye gleams as she raises an eyebrow to the tissue buyer. She explains that she “did it in L.A., I’m committed to it. I think it’s a great idea… you have to pay a little money for use of the space, but we’re not greedy about that.”

For use of the space is weasel-speak used by abortion profiteers. It means blood money, and it’s very different from a shared rental agreement. When the prospective buyer asks about what she’d expect “in terms of compensation,” Gatter explains the numbers: “Per specimen, like $75 a specimen, or $50 a specimen?”

The buyer explains that he’s been quoting $50. Gatter is quick to correct him on the current state of the fetal tissue market.

“Fifty is on the low end. Fifty was, like, twelve years ago.”

If this were a nominal fee for the use of space at the clinic, the numbers would be about time and square footage, not volume and gestational age. But this is about the market for baby body parts, which has been around for more than a decade. And in that time it’s seen 50% growth.

No wonder Planned Parenthood was so willing to discuss these transactions with a potential buyer.

Gatter has a lot of experience to share. She “believes in it,” after all. As the Medical Director for PPLA, she oversaw their partnership with Novogenix Laboratories, a local for-profit fetal organ and tissue harvesting company. In the video, she tells her potential buyer about her relationship with Novogenix and how they went up to 24 weeks at PPLA and a “lovely tech” regularly visited two of their sites to harvest fetal organs.

From CMP:

According to contracts and invoices, the real-life fetal organ and tissue wholesaler companies Novogenix, StemExpress, and Advanced Bioscience Resources all made monthly payments to Planned Parenthood based on the number of resalable fetal specimens the wholesalers’ workers could harvest inside the abortion clinics. Planned Parenthood told Congressional investigators it kept no contemporaneous records of actual costs for reimbursement under the law.

The Novogenix contract promises Planned Parenthood Los Angeles $45 “per donated specimen.” Planned Parenthood Los Angeles does over 15,000 abortions every year, but has never publicly admitted how much money they received total under their contract with Novogenix. In December 2016, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Select Investigative Panel both referred Planned Parenthood Los Angeles and Novogenix to the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice for further investigation and criminal prosecution.

CMP project lead David Daleiden notes, “The fact that Novogenix, StemExpress, and ABR stationed their own workers inside Planned Parenthood abortion clinics to perform the harvesting, packaging, and transport of aborted baby body parts demonstrates that Planned Parenthood had no reimbursable costs under the law. The volume-based sums that Planned Parenthood charged these businesses for baby parts are criminal trafficking and profiteering in fetal body parts. The U.S. Department of Justice should take heed of the Congressional investigations’ criminal referrals and prosecute Planned Parenthood to the full extent of the law, and taxpayers must stop being forced to subsidize Planned Parenthood’s criminal abortion empire.”

If you want to watch the unedited, full video clip, the Center for Medical Progress made that available here. (For more from the author of “The Market for Baby Body Parts Is Growing: New Video of Planned Parenthood Exec” please click HERE)

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What Trump Has Done on Immigration in First 100 Days

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President Donald Trump’s dedication to enforcing immigration law is one of his significant accomplishments as he nears his 100th day in office Saturday, experts and lawmakers say.

Trump is “taking the handcuffs off of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the Border Patrol because the immigration enforcement officers were prohibited from doing their job to a significant degree under [President Barack] Obama,” Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Signal in an interview.

The Trump administration highlighted its dedication to enforcing immigration law in a list, initially obtained by CNN, which specifies victories during the president’s first 100 days in office.

Included are executive orders issued by Trump on Jan. 25 that detail border security and immigration enforcement directives. These include instructions for a border wall, an order to withhold funding from sanctuary cities that are noncompliant with U.S. immigration law, and the hiring of “10,000 additional immigration officers.”

The list also includes an April 11 announcement from Attorney General Jeff Sessions where he instructed federal prosecutors to prioritize criminal immigration enforcement.

Trump also signed a revised executive order in March which placed temporary travel restrictions on residents of six countries the Obama administration and Congress had designated as posing risks of terrorism.

The original executive order issued in January was nullified by a federal judge in Seattle in a ruling upheld by a U.S. appeals court. The revised executive order was blocked by a federal judge in Hawaii.

Enforcing the Law

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, who is vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime, terrorism, and homeland security, said he agrees with these measures.

“Just having a president who says, ‘We’re going to enforce the border’ has had a profound effect on the number of people that are coming into the country illegally,” Gohmert told The Daily Signal in an interview. “It [has] already dramatically been cut back and so I think this is moving along quite well.”

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an interview that there is a stark difference between the Obama administration and the Trump administration.

“What has changed so radically is that the Department of Homeland Security and all our border patrol agents are now finally able to do their jobs,” von Spakovsky said. “The handcuffs have been taken off.”

The number of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in March, under 12,500, is the lowest total in 17 years, he said.

Trump’s approach to illegal immigration is vastly different from Obama’s, said Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates stricter enforcement of immigration laws.

“Under Obama … if the Border Patrol caught somebody who said he had been in the United States before January of 2014, they had to let him go, even if they knew he was illegal,” Krikorian said. “In other words, Obama essentially had a kind of informal amnesty for anyone sneaking across the border who would say that he had been in the country before January of 2014.”

This practice, reinstated in 2016, came from Obama’s “priorities” program, which instructed agents to pick up criminals, individuals threatening national security, and illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. after Jan. 1, 2014.

When Obama was in office, Krikorian said, Border Patrol agents would see individuals who were “still wet from wading across the Rio Grande.”

However, if the Border Patrol agents “hadn’t actually seen them with their own eyes in the river, they had to let them go” if they claimed to have arrived before 2014, he said.

Working Toward Building the Wall

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., said Trump’s promise of building a border wall is already decreasing illegal immigration.

“One thing that the Trump administration has done very well is broadcast loud and clear that they are going to keep their promise of [building] the border wall,” Biggs, who comes from a border state, told The Daily Signal in an interview. “And that has resulted in a reduction in crossings.”

Last month, Trump sent a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., which detailed border wall funding with a request for $1.38 trillion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to be available through September 2021. It would cover “procurement, construction, and improvements required for the operational control of United States borders, including design and construction of a wall and other physical barriers on the southern border of the United States.”

Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate, however, have said they prefer to put off a fight with Democrats over beginning to pay for the wall until the fall, rather than as part of funding the government for the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

“Full border wall funding can’t be there at this point,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., a supporter of the wall, said in a recent interview with The Daily Signal. “It’s not designed, prototypes have not been created.”

Trump said Tuesday that funding for the wall likely will not be included in the spending bill that Congress must pass by midnight Friday to avoid a partial government shutdown, The New York Times reported.

Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank on immigration, told The Daily Signal in an email that “the net result of his first 100 days is that a combination of action and rhetoric appear to be significantly reshaping the current immigration reality in the U.S.”

Taking a Stand Against Sanctuary Cities

Trump issued an executive order Jan. 25 denying unspecified federal funding to sanctuary cities.

“I’ve been particularly encouraged by the administration’s support for denying federal funds to sanctuary cities, in line with legislation I’ve backed,” Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal.

During the Obama presidency, Blunt called on Senate colleagues to “limit federal funding” to sanctuary cities that did not cooperate with enforcing federal immigration laws.

“The previous administration set a dangerous precedent by cherry-picking the laws it chose to enforce, and I’m glad we now have a partner in the White House who is holding sanctuary cities accountable,” Blunt said.

Trump’s order is facing opposition in the courts, however.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in San Francisco placed a national hold on Trump’s executive order regarding sanctuary cities until the issue can work its way through the courts.

Federal funding for entitlement programs such as Medicaid in sanctuary cities, however, would not be affected by the president’s order, von Spakovsky said in a new commentary.

The Department of Justice says it is working to implement Trump’s executive order to urge sanctuary cities to provide documentation of compliance with the department. The department also is hiring more immigration judges who will serve at detention centers along the border, Sessions announced this month.

Room to Improve

An area of immigration policy that Trump could improve on, Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies said, is addressing a program implemented by the Obama administration in 2012 called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

This program has provided deportation protection and work permits to over 750,000 immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

“The fact that [Trump] has basically adopted the DACA, the illegal DACA amnesty, as his own is the one big black mark with regard to immigration,” Krikorian said. “Does it cancel everything else out? No, but it clearly is a problem.”

Donald M. Kerwin, executive director of the Center for Migration Studies, a pro-immigration think tank, said he disagrees with Trump’s approach.

Kerwin specifically criticized what he called Trump’s commitment “to decreasing refugee admissions by more than 15 percent at a time when you know there’s a global refugee crisis that exceeds in size the crisis after World War II.”

Kerwin also criticized Trump’s heightened border security measures and dedication to building a border wall.

“The language, the rhetoric has been brutal,” Kerwin told The Daily Signal in an interview, adding:

It’s been unwelcoming. The proposals have been extraordinarily extremist and harsh, and they show no concern at all, no recognition at all for the benefits that immigrants contribute to the United States.

Going forward, Biggs said, Trump should remain focused on the border wall and the need to secure funding for it.

Blunt appeared to like what he sees.

“President Trump is putting the safety of the American people first by taking action to enforce our immigration laws, strengthen border security, and prevent terrorists from entering the country,” he said. (For more from the author of “What Trump Has Done on Immigration in First 100 Days” please click HERE)

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Federal Land Grabs Have Gotten out of Control. Why Trump’s Executive Order Is a Positive Sign.

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Draining the swamp doesn’t just mean shrinking the size of federal bureaucracies. It means reducing the role of government throughout our society—including its ability to seize land.

A good place to start is President Donald Trump’s executive order, which calls for a review of national monument designations—a tool long used by presidents to unilaterally restrict land use.

The tradition of presidents designating national monuments began in 1906 when President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act.

That law was intended to prevent the looting of archaeological and Native American structures and objects, and it gave the federal government an expeditious path to do so.

Unsurprisingly, its use has evolved into a federal power tool for making land grabs that cater to special interests, rather than welcoming input from local affected parties, such as the outdoor tourist industry, Native American tribes, or simply the people living in the community.

Such land grabs date way back before President Barack Obama. Before his last-minute monument designations, 16 presidents designated more than 140 monuments covering over 285 million acres of land and marine areas.

Like every other environmental decision ordered by a new administration, the left responded to Trump’s executive order by predicting that it will reduce America the Beautiful to a dumpster fire.

As one publication put it, the order is a “sop to right-wing radicals who are hostile to public lands—and really hate Obama.” (They forgot to mention the hatred for puppies and rainbows, too).

Contrary to the media spin, the issue at hand is not about environmental stewardship, but taking decisions away from states, private citizens, and local interests.

For more than a century, the president of the United States has had the power to unilaterally designate land as a national monument, without input from Congress or the affected states.

Such action from the president either prohibits or restricts economic opportunity in the area, and often does more environmental harm than good.

Reading The Washington Post article on Trump’s order, one could easily assume that there is no local opposition to the controversial 1.35 million acre monument designation at Bears Ears declared by Obama in the final days of his presidency—one of the presumed targets of Trump’s executive order.

The Post gives the false impression that only elected Republican members of Congress opposed Obama’s designation.

The article highlights that a coalition of tribes, environmentalists, archaeologists, and outdoor industry groups all lobbied Obama for the protection at Bears Ears. Yet the author conveniently fails to include opposition from, you know, the local tribes and people that actually live in San Juan County.

For instance, members of the Navajo of San Juan County tribe—the county where Bears Ears resides—rescinded their support for the monument designation. Chester Johnson, of the Aneth Navajo chapter said,

At that time when they switched to national monument they didn’t share it back with the community what their intent was. Aneth is the only one chapter that had the backbone to stand up and say, ‘Look central government, you don’t do that. You share it with us what the intent is for our region, the land that we use for centuries.’

Another Aneth chapter member, Susie Philemon, fought back tears as she urged opposition to the designation, underscoring the fact that they have strong incentives, both economic and spiritual, to protect and preserve the land.

She stressed that “[t]here are people that still graze there, they reside there, and they make that place their livelihood and you cannot just take that away.”

San Juan County leaders staunchly opposed Obama’s designation.

Native American Rebecca Benally, the first woman elected to the San Juan County Commission, voiced opposition to the centralized decision, saying, “My constituents do not want a national monument in San Juan County because it’s just another federal overreach with empty promises.”

As loudly as the local community, the Navajo of San Juan County tribe, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, and members of Congress and state officials voiced their concerns, they all fell on deaf ears.

The problem of unilateral land designation dates much further back than Obama and Bears Ears.

Although Obama designated the contentious Bears Ears monument in Utah as he walked out the White House door, the use of the Antiquities Act is a bipartisan problem. Presidents from both parties have abused the power to restrict land use.

A review of the use of the Antiquities Act designations is a welcome and necessary first step, but ultimately Congress needs to intervene.

Congress should recognize that states, local governments, and private citizens are the best arbiters of how to manage land and should repeal the Antiquities Act or limit the president’s power by requiring congressional, state, and local approval for any national monument designation.

Whether the issue is logging, recreation, conservation, or energy extraction, such decisions are most effectively made at the state and local levels. An antiquated law more than 110 years old shouldn’t ruin the lives of communities. (For more from the author of “Federal Land Grabs Have Gotten out of Control. Why Trump’s Executive Order Is a Positive Sign.” please click HERE)

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