Members of Congress are back on the campaign trail, but before they left Washington, Republican congressional leaders released their list of “accomplishments.” See if any of these would make your list.
(For more from the author of “This Is Not Why Voters Put the GOP in Control of Congress” please click HERE)
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Alaska Family Action, the political arm of Alaska Family Council, announced its endorsement of Joe Miller for U.S. Senate on Wednesday.
In a statement, Alaska Family Action president Jim Minnery said the AFA’s board of directors voted to back Miller because he “has been a consistent and outspoken supporter of religious liberty, protections of the unborn, support of traditional family policies and parental rights.”
The AFA statement went on to point out that incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski received an “F” rating (just 20 percent) from Conservative Review on its Liberty Scorecard and scored 35 percent on the Heritage Action Scorecard for her votes.
The average for Republican senators on the latter is 57 percent, while conservative senators like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz scored 100 and 97 percent, respectively.
Murkowski is the most liberal “Republican” senator up for re-election, having voted with Pres. Obama 72 percent of the time during the last Congress, according to Roll Call.
She received an 80 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Minnery’s statement concluded, “Alaska Family Action is proud to get behind a bold pro-family, pro-life candidate like Joe Miller who can help turn this country around.”
Miller responded, “I am honored to receive the endorsement of Alaska Family Action. If chosen to serve as Alaska’s next United States senator, I pledge that I will promote a culture of life and uphold our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and religion.”
Miller has also been endorsed by Alaska Right to Life and Family Research Council Executive Vice President Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jerry Boykin.
Joe Miller is a limited government Constitutionalist who believes government exists to protect our liberties, not to take them away. He supports free people, free markets, federalism, the Constitutional right to life, the 2nd Amendment, religious liberty, American sovereignty, and a strong national defense.
For yet another day, protesters reminded American voters that former President Bill Clinton stands accused of a rape that the alleged victim claims Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton helped cover up.
Protestor interrupts Bill Clinton rally in Canton, OH pic.twitter.com/ehesJzNa3L
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) October 5, 2016
“Bill Clinton has harmed women!” a woman shouted Tuesday during a rally in Canton, Ohio, at which the former president spoke.
The woman got the attention of TV cameras by holding up a hand-lettered T-shirt reading “Bill Clinton a Rapist.”
“Bill Clinton is a rapist!” she yelled as she walked through the crowd, holding the shirt aloft before being taken out by security at the Ohio event.
Clinton appeared unconcerned with the protest.
“I love it when people come into my rallies, and it’s a dead giveaway when they don’t want to have a conversation because they know they’ll lose the conversation,” he said.
However, the allegation concerns somebody. At Ohio University, where Clinton spoke on Tuesday, someone used the college’s so-called free speech wall to paint a slogan reading, “Bill Clinton Rapes.”
The comment was later painted over before Clinton’s arrival later in the day.
On Wednesday, a young man being interviewed outside a Donald Trump rally near Las Vegas slipped in the phrase “Bill Clinton is a rapist” into his interview with KVVU-TV.
The uptick in actions to remind voters of Clinton’s past kicked off last Friday, when Infowars host Alex Jones kicked off the “Nationwide Campaign to Expose Clinton Sex Crimes.”
The rules of the contest, which are not being followed by those playing, require participants to wear a T-shirt adorned with Bill Clinton’s face and the word “rape.”
“Anyone that gets on national TV with the shirt clearly, for more than five seconds, gets $1,000. That means behind cameras, you name it,” Jones said Friday. “Anyone that gets it on air on national TV and gets the words out ‘Bill Clinton is a rapist,’ or things along that line, with a bullhorn — I could go to this right now, $5,000.”
On Saturday, a man wearing the shirt and chanting the slogan interrupted a Fox and Friends live broadcast in New York City.
On Monday, a man in Loveland Colo., made sure the comment was slipped into his interview with MSNBC.
The rape claim against Clinton stems from an accusation against him made in 1999 by Juanita Broaddrick, who claimed that she was raped by Bill Clinton in April 1978. Clinton was never prosecuted on the charge.
Broaddrick has said that Hillary Clinton was aware of the incident and helped to cover it up. (For more from the author of “Bill Clinton Dogged by Protester Reminding Voters of Rape Accusation” please click HERE)
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Dabiq should have been the preordained site of an apocalyptic battle between a Muslim army and a Christian legion,, according to Islamic mythology.
That battle would be the harbinger of a new world order in which Islam will be the only religion.
Dabiq is of such great significance to Islamic State that it named its English-language online magazine after the town in northern Syria and believes the battle will bring the end of the world.
This is based on what the Prophet Mohammad foretold 1,400 years ago.
“The last hour will not come” until an Islamic army will defeat the “Romans” there, the Prophet said about Dabiq.
“The spark has been lit in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify — by Allah’s permission — until it burns the Crusader armies in Dabiq,” Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the liquidated founder of ISIS was quoted as saying by Dabiq Magazine last year.
In Islamic State’s version of this prophecy, the U.S.-led coalition is playing the role of the Romans while ISIS will represent the Muslim army.
However, despite Islamic State’s frantic preparations for the battle — the jihadist organization sent hundreds of its best fighters to Dabiq recently — the town is close to collapse and could spell the end of ISIS in Syria, British media reported on Wednesday.
The U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army supported by 300 U.S. Special Forces and coalition warplanes is making rapid gains on the battlefield and the town could even fall within hours, according to the British news site Express.
Mostafa Sejari, a commander of the Free Syrian Army, however, warned he expected the battle for Dabiq would be “the fiercest ever” but nevertheless expected that FSA control over the city was a matter of time.
In Islamic State’s version of this prophecy, the U.S.-led coalition is playing the role of the Romans while ISIS will represent the Muslim army.
“By controlling Dabiq, we break the myth of Daesh and open a road to reach Marea (in Turkey). Controlling Dabiq is just a matter of time, God willing,” Sejari told Express while using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
The progress of the American-Syria alliance is hindered by hundreds of mines that have been planted by ISIS ahead of the battle and the expectation is that the jihadist group will use many suicide bombers to block the entrance to Dabiq.
The Obama administration believes the fall of Dabiq will deliver a devastating blow to the morale of Islamic State’s fighters and would make the recapture of more important cities such as Raqqa (ISIS’ capital in Syria) and Mosul (the second-largest city in Iraq) easier.
But the fall of Dabiq will also harm ISIS’ abilities to recruit new fighters, Kyle Orton, a Middle East analyst and research fellow with the Henry Jackson Society, told Express.
“The coming loss of the town — probably in the next fortnight — will be a blow to ISIS’s ability to recruit, and the Turkish intervention, which has closed the border and driven a wedge between the opposition and al-Qaeda by giving the rebels a realistic alternative, jihadist recruitment in general, seems set to suffer in Syria,” Orton said.
The situation in the self-declared Caliphate has become so difficult that it has caused ISIS to declare the state of emergency.
The U.K. Daily Star reported Tuesday that ISIS leaders who gathered for a crisis meeting in the Iraqi town of Mutaibija ”turned on each other with weapons after arguments broke out.”
A commander of the Shiite al-Hashd al-Shaabi militia told the British paper that “the meeting turned into a bloody massacre after exacerbated disputes between the ISIS leaders that led them to use weapons against each other.”
The Shiite rebel commander added that spies had told him that there are growing disputes among Islamic State leaders. (For more from the author of “ISIS in Huge Trouble at Site of ‘Apocalyptic Battle’ After Blitz by American-Syrian Alliance” please click HERE)
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With all of the attention given to the presidential elections, it’s easy to forget that the U.S. just ended the 2016 fiscal year. This means it’s time for the annual examination of how much more debt we have!
According to the newest Treasury Department figures (H/T to The Washington Examiner and CNS News), total U.S. debt held by the federal government was $19.573 trillion on October 1. That’s an astronomical amount of debt, quite a bit larger than our current Gross National Product.
As the Examiner and CNS pointed out, and the Treasury numbers confirmed, U.S. debt technically jumped more than $1.4 trillion in the last 12 months. That’s thanks to the Treasury Department temporarily not taking on more debt via use of “extraordinary measures.” Those measures staved off a debt increase from March 2015 through early November — and then the debt jumped hundreds of billions of dollars within a month.
Looking at the Fiscal Year 2016 debt in context to our larger debt picture, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected in August that the annual deficit would be about $540 billion. That’s larger than immediate prior years, but lower than what we’ll see over the next decade. (The deficit and an increase in the national debt are two different things, thanks to how the federal government does its accounting.)
Contrary to liberal tripe about the feds needing more taxes, CBO projects that government revenues via taxes, fees, etc. will rise over the next decade as a percentage of GDP and continue to be above the 50-year average. The real culprit for our growing debt, spending, will go up even more — well beyond the 50-year norm — putting the U.S. at an even worse fiscal position than we’re at now. CBO projects we will add nearly $8.6 trillion to our debt by 2026.
But even this scary scenario, which would likely impact our economy’s growth, doesn’t tally up the worst of it all. The big-picture analysis most often cited by media outlets is the “baseline” projection by CBO — the optimistic one. In the August projections, CBO gave a list of alternative fiscal scenarios that could play out, depending on the decisions politicians make. A quick tally of those scenarios shows that the debt could be as much as $2.755 trillion higher than the positive projections, or $792 billion lower.
Short version: We don’t need more taxation. We need more economic growth and less spending. However, neither party wants to effectively reform the entitlements (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, and other parts of the budget that don’t get annually approved by Congress) that are the major cause of our budget increases in recent years, and are projected to, for the most part, rise in cost. And effective tax reform is nowhere to be seen. (For more from the author of “Reminder: Our National Debt Grew $540 Billion Last Year” please click HERE)
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Last night’s vice-presidential debate may not matter much to Americans when they vote in November for the next resident of the White House, but the two candidates starkly separated themselves from each other on the issue of abortion — and on the understanding of life their views express. GOP nominee Mike Pence’s defense of the unborn mattered to pro-lifers and to many Christians.
Abortion entered the debate in its waning moments, as moderator Elaine Quijano asked Democrat Senator Tim Kaine and Republican governor Mike Pence “about a time when you struggled to balance your personal faith and a public policy position?” (A full transcript can be found here.)
Personal Faith and Abortion
According to Kaine, who is Roman Catholic, “I try to practice my religion in a very devout way and follow the teachings of my church in my own personal life. But I don’t believe in this nation, a First Amendment nation, where we don’t raise any religion over the other, and we allow people to worship as they please, that the doctrines of any one religion should be mandated for everyone.”
He said that “the hardest struggle in my faith life was the Catholic Church is against the death penalty and so am I. But I was governor of a state, and the state law said that there was a death penalty for crimes if the jury determined them to be heinous.”
Kaine, who misrepresented the Catholic Church’s teaching on the death penalty, said, “It was very, very difficult to allow executions to go forward, but in circumstances where I didn’t feel like there was a case for clemency, I told Virginia voters I would uphold the law, and I did.”
According to Pence, who was raised Catholic but is now Evangelical, “the sanctity of life proceeds out of the belief that — that ancient principle that — where God says before you were formed in the womb, I knew you, and so for my first time in public life, I sought to stand with great compassion for the sanctity of life.”
Indiana, he continued, “has also sought to make sure that we expand alternatives in health care counseling for women, non-abortion alternatives. I’m also very pleased at the fact we’re well on our way in Indiana to becoming the most pro-adoption state in America. I think if you’re going to be pro-life, you should — you should be pro-adoption.”
Pence v. Kaine
It was then that Pence attacked Clinton and Kaine on their abortion positions. Clinton has said she will repeal the Hyde Amendment, and supports partial-birth and late-term abortions. Kaine, who also supports late-term abortions, formally supports Hyde, which limits federal funding for abortions, but has said he will subordinate his beliefs to Clinton’s if they win in November.
“But what I can’t understand,” Pence said, “is with Hillary Clinton and now Senator Kaine at her side is to support a practice like partial-birth abortion. I mean, to hold to the view — and I know Senator Kaine, you hold pro-life views personally — but the very idea that a child that is almost born into the world could still have their life taken from them is just anathema to me.”
“I know you’ve historically opposed taxpayer funding of abortion,” Pence then told Kaine. “But Hillary Clinton wants to — wants to repeal the longstanding provision in the law where we said we wouldn’t use taxpayer dollars to fund abortion. So for me, my faith informs my life. I try and spend a little time on my knees every day. But it all for me begins with cherishing the dignity, the worth, the value of every human life.”
Kaine v. Pence (and Trump)
Kaine responded that while he and Clinton “really feel like you should live fully and with enthusiasm the commands of your faith,” they also believe “it is not the role of the public servant to mandate that for everybody else.”
“So let’s talk about abortion and choice,” he continued. “We support Roe v. Wade. We support the constitutional right of American women to consult their own conscience, their own supportive partner, their own minister, but then make their own decision about pregnancy. That’s something we trust American women to do that. And we don’t think that women should be punished, as Donald Trump said they should, for making the decision to have an abortion.”
Trump said in March that women who get abortions should be punished. He walked that statement back the next day after pro-life leaders hammered the comments. He supports abortion in the cases of rape, incest, and life of the mother, and has changed positions on several key abortion issues since launching his presidential bid last year. Last month he promised to make the Hyde Amendment permanent law, sign a ban on most late-term abortions and defund Planned Parenthood.
Kaine noted that Pence, who has long been praised by pro-life advocates for his desire to protect the unborn “wants to repeal Roe v. Wade. He said he wants to put it on the ash heap of history. And we have some young people in the audience who weren’t even born when Roe was decided. This is pretty important. Before Roe v. Wade, states could pass criminal laws to do just that, to punish women if they made the choice to terminate a pregnancy.”
“I think you should live your moral values,” concluded Kaine. “But the last thing, the very last thing that government should do is have laws that would punish women who make reproductive choices. And that is the fundamental difference between a Clinton-Kaine ticket and a Trump-Pence ticket that wants to punish women who make that choice.”
Pence responded that “Donald Trump and I would never support legislation that punished women who made the heartbreaking choice to end a pregnancy.” Pressed by Kaine on Trump’s comment, Pence said, “he’s not a polished politician like you and Hillary Clinton,” and declared, “I’m telling you what the policy of our administration would be.”
“[T]here is a choice,” he continued, “and it is a choice on life. I couldn’t be more proud to be standing with Donald Trump, who’s standing for the right to life.” He appreciated Kaine’s previous support for the Hyde Amendment, but pointed out that Clinton opposed it.
People need to understand, we can come together as a nation. We can create a culture of life. More and more young people today are embracing life because we know we are — we’re better for it. We can — like Mother Teresa said at that famous national prayer breakfast, bring the — let’s welcome the children into our world. There are so many families around the country who can’t have children. We could improve adoption so that families that can’t have children can adopt more readily those children from crisis pregnancies.
“Trust Women” Versus “Most Vulnerable” of Society
Kaine responded by turning the issue into women’s rights. “Governor, why don’t you trust women to make this choice for themselves? We can encourage people to support life. Of course we can. But why don’t you trust women? Why doesn’t Donald Trump trust women to make this choice for themselves?”
That’s what we ought to be doing in public life. Living our lives of faith or motivation with enthusiasm and excitement, convincing other, dialoguing with each other about important moral issues of the day, but on fundamental issues of morality, we should let women make their own decisions.
Pence replied: “Because a society can be judged by how it deals with its most vulnerable, the aged, the infirm, the disabled, and the unborn. I believe it with all my heart. And I couldn’t be more proud to be standing with a pro-life candidate in Donald Trump.” (For more from the author of “Abortion Separates Tim Kaine and Mike Pence, as Does the Way They Understand Their Faith” please click HERE)
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Should Christians get behind Donald Trump?
As I’ve demonstrated here, on every criterion of politics, it seems to me that electing Donald Trump is less dangerous to the preaching of the gospel, the safety of Christian institutions from colleges down to the family, and the lives of unborn children. We don’t have to believe the claim that he’s even a “baby Christian” to recognize that this is true. Winston Churchill wasn’t any kind of Christian, but he defended our institutions and our freedoms, and that was all we needed. It is all the church ever needs. Given our own failure to evangelize the culture, it may be more than we deserve.
But aren’t Christians all about asking God for exactly that — more than we deserve? If it sounds like I’m saying that the election of Donald Trump might be a moment of unmerited grace for the United States of America. … Yes, given the only live alternative, that is exactly what I mean.
I think that some Christian resistance to backing this candidate comes down to simple distaste — some of it justified. This is a man with multiple divorces, a flashy and hedonistic lifestyle, a penchant for juvenile insults — the list could go on and on. It can wear down the soul just to think about it, and that’s for a simple reason: It’s gossip. The sins of other people aren’t meant to be fodder for our spiritual reflection, though the devil tells us otherwise. The flaws that matter in a political leader are those that connect to his likely performance in office, compared to the real-world alternatives. When we say we prefer the hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, racist agnostic Winston Churchill, we mean compared to Adolf Hitler. It’s nonsense to line up every leader next to Jesus or even our ideal politician. I promise you, they will all fall far short.
Besides, there’s a long history of Christians humbly setting aside their craving for a fully admirable leader, in recognition of a stark reality: In a fallen world, we are subject to violence. Those we are called to protect, from our own children to those in the wombs of desperate strangers, demand that we find a way to defend them. If we look at the sword which God has left in our path, and sniff that it isn’t shiny enough or might be caked with mud, and leave the innocents to suffer — make no mistake, we will answer for it.
Do Not Put God to the Test
The early Church is a good guide for this. For centuries, Christians had suffered hideously — being hunted like animals by the Roman secret police, then rounded up and killed in gruesome ways in the Colosseum as public entertainment. Many thousands were skinned alive, hanged, burned, or torn apart by animals, to the cheers and jeers of the crowd. Many more renounced their faith to save their lives, then eked out stolen decades haunted by guilt — to face an uncertain fate on the day of judgment. We might like to pretend that we would act like heroes or martyrs, but most people don’t. It’s our job to avoid and help others avoid occasions of sin, such as this one. Jesus himself warned us not to put the Lord our God to the test.
As Philip Jenkins documented in his powerful, tragic The Lost History of Christianity, by the year 1000 the majority of Christians on earth lived in the Middle East and Asia. Yet within 200 years those churches had virtually disappeared, ground down by persecution. All that’s left of most of them are a few scattered ruins in deserts, and scraps of bibles found in the lavatories of mosques.
It can happen here. Hillary Clinton and the worldview she represents have promised to make it happen here. What else can you make of her speech to the United Nations, where she said that for women to enjoy their fundamental rights, guaranteed by the government, Christian beliefs on abortion would have to change?
Is that any different from Diocletian decreeing that we must worship the emperor? Obama’s number two lawyer already told the Supreme Court that churches which don’t perform same-sex marriages will have to face crippling taxes. We can’t say we haven’t been warned.
Constantine
When the pagan warlord Constantine came to power in 312, he rallied support from Christians by revoking their persecution. For the first time in hundreds of years, the church could operate in the open. Constantine himself remained religiously ambiguous, only accepting baptism on his deathbed — once he’d already committed the many sins he thought he would need to, to keep his throne. He saw one of his sons, Crispus, as a political rival and had him cruelly executed. He did not move to create an ideal Christian society; slavery remained perfectly legal. So did the exposure of unwanted infants. Constantine let passersby who rescued such infants claim them and sell them as slaves. The poor were taxed cruelly, and the sons of army veterans were forcibly conscripted as soldiers themselves.
Perfectionist Christians, who demanded the kingdom of heaven on earth, or felt a profound distaste for this ruthless autocrat, might have held themselves aloof and refused to work with Constantine — as one sect, the Donatists did. They scorned the prayers of “imperfect” Christians, and removed themselves to live in “pure” communities. But the vast majority of Christians, including the hundreds of bishops who had remained faithful under persecution, looked instead to Constantine with gratitude as a gift from a loving God. The early Christian poet Lactantius wrote this hymn of praise:
We should now give thanks to the Lord, Who has gathered together the flock that was devastated by ravening wolves, Who has exterminated the wild beasts which drove it from the pasture. Where is now the swarming multitude of our enemies, where the hangmen of Diocletian and Maximian? God has swept them from the earth; let us therefore celebrate His triumph with joy; let us observe the victory of the Lord with songs of praise, and honor Him with prayer day and night. …
Constantine’s Council Gave Us the Creed
The bishops were more than grateful. They were downright cooperative, allowing Constantine to summon a church council to resolve controversies over the divinity of Christ. He paid for the bishops’ travel and gave the keynote speech at the council’s opening — then used the force of law to enact its decisions. It was this council, held in Nicaea, that gave us the formula still recited by well over a billion Christians: the Nicene Creed.
Since the church is the means of salvation, its first duty, after faithfulness, is self-preservation. I cannot think of a less loving or less Christian thing to do than to willfully raise the risk of a persecution that might lead souls to hell. If we do that out of distaste, to keep our hands “clean,” or to keep up the federal funding for our favorite government program, we are failing as Christians. I for one don’t wish to hear on the Last Day these words: “I was persecuted, since you did not protect me.” (For more from the author of “If We Reject Trump, We May Be Inviting Persecution” please click HERE)
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The Republican leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee is seeking further answers from the Obama administration about why an illegal immigrant charged with murdering five homeless people in a Los Angeles arson fire this summer was not previously deported.
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa on Wednesday wrote a letter to Sarah Saldana, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, asking follow-up questions related to the government’s response to a previous inquiry by the senator into how Johnny Josue Sanchez of Honduras, the suspect, was able to stay in the country despite having a violent history.
“Specifically, [Grassley] is asking whether Sanchez was not considered a priority under the Obama administration’s Priority Enforcement Program and whether federal authorities were blocked by local sanctuary policies that prevent cooperation with federal immigration officials,” the letter states.
Sanchez was arrested by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office on June 13 for five counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder after he allegedly set fire to a vacant building where five homeless people were squatting, including four individuals from Iowa.
Shortly after the incident, on June 27, Grassley and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to Jeh Johnson, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, to learn more about Sanchez, who, according to media reports, had been arrested three times in the months before the fire.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Sanchez was arrested by border patrol agents in 2012 for illegally entering the country at the southeastern California border. Sanchez was promptly released from custody, the newspaper reported, because he had no previous immigration violations or criminal history.
Sanchez was then placed under supervision and ordered to report regularly to immigration authorities, but he stopped reporting in August 2014.
But in January of this year, the Los Angeles Police Department arrested Sanchez on suspicion of domestic violence. He was arrested again in May and June on suspicion of drug possession. His most recent arrest was less than a week before he allegedly set fire to the Los Angeles building. He was released the next day.
According to the Times, the Los Angeles Police Department does not honor immigration requests from the federal government to be notified of a person’s release from jail unless a warrant is issued or a judge has vetted the request.
In response to Grassley and Goodlatte’s original inquiry, the senator says, the Obama administration acknowledged more details about Sanchez’s history.
Grassley says he learned that Sanchez lied about his birth date to the border patrol upon entering the country illegally, which allowed him to be processed as a juvenile and sent to a youth shelter in California.
Sanchez stayed at a juvenile facility in Fullerton, California, for seven days, Grassley says, until the Honduran Consulate in Houston, Texas, verified Sanchez’s true birth date and provided a birth certificate showing he was not a juvenile.
After receiving this information, Immigration and Customs Enforcement regained custody of Sanchez and then released him after he signed a document promising to report to future court appearances related to his immigration status.
He never made it to court.
“Considering that Sanchez had intentionally misled federal authorities, it would seem inevitable that Sanchez would fail to appear before ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] as directed,” Grassley wrote in Wednesday’s letter. “Sanchez should have been detained until his removal was completed.”
But more concerning to Grassley, he says, was that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, after Sanchez’s subsequent arrests this year, never requested that the Los Angeles Police Department issue a detainer on him to hold him in custody, or notify federal immigration authorities of his pending release from jail.
Grassley wants to know why those requests were never made to the local police department, and whether this decision was related to the Obama administration’s decision in 2014 to narrow the types of people it seeks to deport.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are told to first target illegal immigrants considered to be threats to national security and public safety, who have likely been convicted of a felony. Other priorities for deportation include individuals who have been convicted of multiple misdemeanors, and recent arrivals who came here illegally after Jan. 1, 2014.
Grassley also asks in the letter whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement even knew about Sanchez’s previous arrests this year, or if its knowledge was limited because of Los Angeles’ policy to limit cooperation with federal immigration requests.
“Was Sanchez not considered a priority under the administration’s Priority Enforcement Program (PEP)? Was ICE never informed of the previous arrests because of Los Angeles’ sanctuary policies?” Grassley asked. (For more from the author of “Illegal Alien With a Violent History Charged With Killing 5. Now a GOP Senator Is Asking Questions.” please click HERE)
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Speculation about Russian interference in the upcoming U.S. presidential election is flowing fast in the U.S. media.
Russia was widely believed to be responsible for embarrassing email hacks at the Democratic National Convention. Speculation abounds in the media that the Russian government might try to throw the U.S. election this way or that with a boldness not even seen during Soviet days.
Speculation is all we have for now, yet, the Russian propagandists may feel they have accomplished quite enough. Sowing confusion in the West and presenting Russia as an innocent victim of U.S. political infighting are key elements in Russia’s information warfare.
On the international front, Russia is no less active. Having honed disinformation skills in the conflict with Ukraine, Russian media are now focused on Syria.
In a through-the-looking-glass maneuver, Russia has accused the United States of bombing Syrian government troops and aiding the Islamic State, while Russia itself that is bombed Syrian civilian targets, including a hospital. This leaves U.S. officials, like Secretary of State John Kerry and United Nations Ambassador Samantha Powers, constantly playing defense.
There is no sign of Russia’s information campaign abating. The campaign has successfully restored Russia as a global player, muscling in where the United States and Europe have faltered.
A recent paper published by Chatham House titled “Russia’s ‘New’ Tools for Confronting the West,” describes Russia as engaging in hybrid warfare, comprised of new generations of kinetic weaponry combined with a revamped information warfare strategy.
The key to understanding Russians’ strategy, writes author Keir Giles, a research fellow at Chatham House, is the consistency of Russian strategy over time. In both its use of military force and its use of disinformation, the Kremlin reveals reliance on the past as well as the ability to adapt to new tools, like the internet. And yet for all our experience in dealing with Russian propaganda in the past, we continue to be challenged by it in the present.
Two key recommendations of the report stand out:
“Russia continues to present itself as being under approaching threat from the West, and is mobilizing to address that threat. Russia’s security initiatives, even if it views or presents them as defensive measures, are likely to have severe consequences for its neighbors. Russia’s growing confidence in pursuing its objectives will make it even harder for the West to protect itself against Russian assertiveness, without the implementation of measures to resist Russian information warfare, and without the availability of significant military force to act as an immediate and present deterrent in the front-line states.”
“For Western governments and leaders, an essential first step towards more successful management of the relationship with Moscow would be to recognize that the West’s values and strategic interests and those of Russia are fundamentally incompatible.”
The underlying gap in values and goals between the United States and Russia is far too frequently underestimated by those in power in Washington. The last to fully understand it was President Ronald Reagan, who incidentally also had the best information strategy in recent history. (For more from the author of “Russia’s Information Warfare Continues” please click HERE)
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In the wake of the New York and New Jersey bombings, and coming on the heels of the 15th anniversary of Sept. 11 last month, security measures like bomb-sniffing dogs are getting a lot of attention.
Bomb-sniffing dogs are an essential component of security, keeping Americans safe at home and especially as they travel. Yet bomb-sniffing dogs in airports across the United States are failing to pass certification tests, causing serious concern.
A recent investigation by NBC News concluded that in 10 major U.S. airports, K-9 teams failed to pass their annual certification testing more than 50 times between January 1, 2013, and June 15, 2013. At Dulles International Airport, the K-9 teams failed an alarmingly high 10 times. These K-9 teams are funded by the Transportation Security Administration.
While some failures are to be expected, bomb-sniffing dogs are an important piece of airport security, making these findings very worrisome. Once a K-9 team fails, it is banned from working until the dogs retest and meet the proper certification standards. Still, as reliance on bomb-sniffing dogs increases, so does the expectation that they will exceed the qualifications put in place by the TSA.
Security experts and government oversight organizations have pointed to K-9 unit training as critical to their success. The Government Accountability Office found that from 2011 to 2012, several K-9 teams did not comply with the TSA’s monthly training requirements on multiple occasions. Without consistent training, bomb-sniffing dogs are not capable of protecting airports properly or passing their annual certifications.
These incidents highlight a need for privatizing airport security. The Screening Partnership Program, created in 2001, replaces the TSA with private screeners in airports. With the program’s screeners in place, the TSA’s role shifts to oversight, ensuring that security regulations, such as K-9 training requirements, are being fulfilled.
In addition to providing potential security benefits, the program may also reduce airport screening costs, increase screening efficiency, and improve customer service.
More airports should recognize and join the Screening Partnership Program. It would allow the TSA to focus on assessing the state of security at airports and ensure that risks are being properly handled. If airports are not satisfied by a private security contractor, they should have the ability to fire and replace them if necessary.
Congress should also make it easier for airports to join the program. There are unnecessary regulations currently in place that severely delay and hamper the process. For instance, the TSA needs to stop hand-picking the private security contractor who replaces them. Instead, the airport should be allowed to choose from a pre-approved list of vendors, allowing airports to choose the best contractor for their needs.
Expanding participation in the Screening Partnership Program would go a long way to improving the underperforming TSA, and would create a safer airport environment. Airport security has come a long way since Sept. 11, 2001, but the failures of bomb-sniffing dogs show there are still improvements to be made. (For more from the author of “Privatize Airport Screeners to Get Bomb-Sniffing Dogs Back on the Scent of Terrorists” please click HERE)
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