Two Killed in High-Speed Car Chase of Cartel Smugglers in Texas

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The cascading effects of death, destruction, and tragedy as a result of not holding the line at our border are too numerous to count. One of those effects that goes unreported in the national media is the number of people who are endangered in south Texas from high-speed chases between law enforcement and cartel smugglers at our border.

On Wednesday, two innocent bystanders were killed when an alien smuggler transporting a group of illegal aliens in a Ford Explorer lost control of the vehicle during a high-speed chase with Texas state troopers and crashed into innocent motorists on the other side of U.S. Highway 83 in La Joya. Leonel Martinez Jr., 45, and Aurora Sanchez, 69, were in the Nissan that got struck. Now two Americans are dead, five illegal alien passengers are injured, and the smuggler is still on the loose because he managed to survive the crash and bail out on the side of the road.

Last week, I wrote about the concerns of some ranchers that our government employs a “depth in defense” strategy of waiting for cartel smugglers to cross into the country and then attempting to apprehend them. The problem with not putting the Border Patrol or the military on the border line itself is that the cartels have already gamed out how to succeed at evading the checkpoints once they successfully step foot on our soil with the use of pickups and “bailouts.”

Jaseson Jones, retired captain with the Texas Department of Public Safety, commanded a counter-smuggling team in south Texas and dealt with this problem all the time. “Bailouts are a non-recorded crime incident which are a direct result of an unsecure border,” said Jones. “The way it works is after a vehicle is stolen, it will be driven to the border by those in the network already in our country. People who just crossed into the United States illegally between the ports of entry (POE) will be stacked on top of one another in the cab and in the bed. It is very common to have twenty or thirty people in a truck. The goal is to make it to a stash house before law enforcement can intercept it. If law enforcement locates the vehicle, a high-speed pursuit will be initiated. Often the smuggler will drive off the road and … crash, with the occupants bailing out and running in every direction. Hence the term bailout.”

The bailout strategy and all the dangers inherent in it are another reason why the border needs to be secured at the line itself, according to Jones. “The solution to stop these incidents and many other types of non-recorded crimes that occur as a direct result of an unsecure border is for Border Patrol to hold the line across the southwest border. Stop responding to sensor hits and utilizing an outdated investigative model.”

The effects of the cartel activity being allowed to violate our sovereignty well into our territory are felt by counties that aren’t even right on the border. In an interview with CR, Sheriff Benny Martinez of Brooks County, Texas, just north of Hidalgo County, where this latest smuggling wreck fatality took place, noted that he deals with the secondary effects of the smugglers getting in to the country even 65-70 miles from the border. He believes that when you don’t place more assets at the border itself, it turns the rest of the counties into border counties. “We’ve been playing a losing battle for quite some time by not holding the line at the border and putting more resources and infrastructure into stopping the smugglers at the border itself,” he said.

He explained how the cartels send down their existing associates in big cities like Houston and San Antonio and pick up these new illegal crossers and drug traffickers before Border Patrol can apprehend them further up at the checkpoints. Then they travel north into his county and bail out before the Border Patrol checkpoint in Falfurrias, the last CBP checkpoint in Texas headed north, and disappear into the brush. This forces federal, state, and local law enforcement to expend a tremendous amount of resources to get a few criminals, often creating dangerous situations with high-speed chases. We wind up catching few of them and wasting resources; innocent people get killed in the process, and the cartels get what they want, all the while extending the border problems very far north into our territory.

“I’ve been personally involved in these pursuits many times where the driver gets away, but innocent people are killed as a result of them evading police presence,” said the sheriff of what should be a quiet county of 7,000 people. “We’ve had three of these fatal incidents in my county, 65-70 miles from the border. It always seems like the cartel drivers survive and get away and kill innocent people. As long as the border is not secured as it should be, that is going to continue. We need a barrier right near the river and the personnel with it where we can intercept them before they get on conveyances and vehicles and before they get put in stash houses and held against their will. These are humans we’re talking about, and they are getting killed as a result of an insecure border.”

Without this infrastructure, personnel, and proactive strategy to stop the cartel smuggling at the river, his county, which should be a quiet rural haven for ranchers, becomes a transnational criminal smuggling zone. “They evade our checkpoints by means of walking through the brush and get picked up in certain other areas. Without enough agents on the ground to intercept them at the line, we’re going to have these dangerous pursuits. And the criminal element knows that, more than likely, they will get their load through. Just 10 days ago, we had a standoff with a truck who was going 130 miles down highway 281 and they got away. We have no idea what was in the vehicle, and without the correct resources at the border, this is going to continue.”

Sherriff Martinez also lamented the dead bodies that his county has to deal with when they are left behind to die in the harsh brush on private lands. According to the latest Border Operations Sector Assessment put out by the Texas Rangers, “From 2009 to the present, human remains have been found in Brooks County 641 times.” The sheriff feels that those in Washington have no clue what they are dealing with in south Texas. “Because of the line not being supported between the ports of entry, the deaths, crashes, and stash houses will continue.”

Here is a short report from Fox Houston in 2014 on what Brooks County must deal with in terms of bailouts and bodies and how it taxes their resources and harms private land.

Jaeson Jones, who used to command the Texas Ranger division that published the Border Operations Sector Assessment, told me that they are seeing cartel bailouts occurring “as far north as Oklahoma.”

As the Rio Grande Sector continues to experience record traffic, more than 1,500 individuals in one 24-hour period this week, all the counties just north of the border will continue to experience the residual effects. As the border agents are busy processing the Central Americans, the cartels have a lot of latitude to send in their loads and dangerous criminals to burden the rest of Texas’ state and local law enforcement.

Consequently, while all American communities are dealing with the effects of the cartels and criminal aliens, counties well north of the border are also dealing with the direct primary and secondary effects of the actual smuggling in its first cross-border stage. This is because, as Jones notes, we treat the cartels and illegal immigration like “any other domestic investigative crime rather than an invasion.”

Again, we need to build a wall, but we also need to build a will as a nation: A will to do everything it takes to secure every inch of our sovereignty at the line of scrimmage while also empowering ICE to deport the cartel networks in the bigger cities that help facilitate these smugglers from farther north. We have criminal alien networks running rampant in the cities and new illegal aliens with free rein to walk through our border to get picked up before they are ever discovered by agents.

We need the military at the border until the wall is fully built. As Jones told me, “In areas where manpower is not available or limited, Border Patrol will need to collaborate with private, local, state, federal, and Department of Defense partners or do whatever is required to gain operational control of our southwest border.”

Obviously, the wall, as I’ve noted before, will not help one iota against the lawfare of Central Americans surrendering themselves for amnesty, but it will help combat this sort of cartel smuggling activity. Why should there be a 70-mile buffer zone of our own land exposed to the cartel activities? Shouldn’t every inch of our territory be safe from foreign threats, and shouldn’t the buffer zone be on the southern side of the border? We secure other country’s borders. Why not our own? (For more from the author of “Two Killed in High-Speed Car Chase of Cartel Smugglers in Texas” please click HERE)

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Ocasio-Cortez Has Ties to Dark Money Group

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has ties with a dark money group that trains progressive organizers on how to lead grassroots political campaigns across the country.

The group, Organize for Justice, is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, meaning it can raise unlimited sums of money without having to disclose the identity of its donors to the public.

Organize for Justice’s website states that it is the “sister organization” of Justice Democrats, the PAC that, according to corporate filings, Ocasio-Cortez and her chief of staff have held control over since December 2017.

Ocasio-Cortez has frequently decried the use of dark money in politics. During her primary campaign, she said dark money was an “enemy to democracy” and that it poses a “very real danger” of silencing grassroots candidates.

Organize for Justice was founded by former Ocasio-Cortez campaign volunteers in November, according to corporate documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. Justice Democrats’ executive director, Alexandra Rojas, also serves on the board of the dark money group.

(Read more from “Ocasio-Cortez Has Ties to Dark Money Group” HERE)

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Remington Can Be Sued Over Sandy Hook Shooting

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A divided Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Thursday that gun manufacturer Remington can be sued for alleged wrongful marketing of its Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, which was used in the mass murder of children and teachers at Newtown’s Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. . .

A lower court judge previously threw out a wrongful death lawsuit against the company, saying it violated a 2005 federal law called the Protection of Lawful Commerce Act. Justices reversed that ruling in a 4-3 decision, with the majority agreeing that under Connecticut’s advertising laws, firearm companies may be held liable, The Associated Press reported.

Remington is being sued by the relatives of nine victims who were murdered in the massacre, and by one survivor. On Dec. 14, 2012, 20 children and six educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Attorney Joshua Koskoff, who represents the plaintiffs, told the AP, “The families’ goal has always been to shed light on Remington’s calculated and profit-driven strategy to expand the AR-15 market and court high-risk users, all at the expense of Americans’ safety.

The lawsuit alleges that Remington has “for years sold AR-15s in a manner that foreseeably leads to the use of those weapons by unauthorized and unsafe users” by marketing them as weapons used by soldiers in battle. (Read more from “Remington Can Be Sued Over Sandy Hook Shooting” HERE)

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Teen Suspended for Posting Bible Verses in Response to Pride Flags

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A student in Ohio claims she received a day of in-school suspension after she hung Bible verses on walls and lockers in response to LGBTQ pride flags decorating the halls. The teen also alleges that her principal said she was “targeting the [Gay-Straight Alliance] organization.”

In a video shared on her mother’s Facebook page, Gabby Helsinger details the incident that occurred at Lebanon High School. Her mother, Tina Helsinger, captioned the video, “Lebanon schools celebrates [sic] evil and punishes righteousness!!”

“On Thursday when I got to school, I see that there were pride flags, posters around my school,” Gabby said in the video. “And I felt the need to write down some Bible verses so I could put them around my school. And I wrote them down and I put them around the lockers, the walls.” It is unknown which Bible verses Gabby chose to share with her peers. . .

She additionally noted that she had “seen that there [were] people in my school that needed help… They don’t need to be living in the confusion of wondering if they should be gay, bi, lesbian, trans — anything like that. And I know that God is the only way that they can be healed by that, and that’s why I did it. I was not targeting any kind of organization.”

When she arrived at the principal’s office, according to Gabby, he asked her why she hung the Bible verses. “And I said, ‘Because I wanted to spread the word of God.’ And [the principal] goes, ‘Well did you have permission?’ And I said, ‘No.’ I didn’t know you had to have permission because people do it a lot — putting Post-It notes on people’s lockers, so I just did it.” (Read more from “Teen Suspended for Posting Bible Verses in Response to Pride Flags” HERE)

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Elizabeth Warren Finds an Unlikely Ally in Ted Cruz

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One of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) main talking points over the last few weeks has been about the monopoly technology websites, like Facebook, Google and Amazon have. In her mind, it sets a dangerous precedent for censoring public debate.

Recently, Warren’s presidential campaign had ads on Facebook talking about her stance on breaking up big tech monopolies, and in particular, Facebook (yes, it is ironic). The social media giant responded by pulling the ads. Eventually, the ads were restored but the whole debacle proves Warren’s point.

For years, conservatives have said that our speech is being stifled. They’ve “shadow banned” us to keep us from making our voices heard, all in hopes of permanently silencing us. People who disagree or call out big tech are often suspended from the website or their interactions/mentions are limited. Think of how many people have been banned from Twitter, YouTube and Facebook alone. Alex Jones. Laura Loomer. Jacob Wohl. Whether or not you agree with their politics, positions or statements, one thing is for sure: they’ve been silenced for not agreeing with the company’s leadership.

(Read more from “Elizabeth Warren Finds an Unlikely Ally in Ted Cruz” HERE)

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A Man’s Shirt Choice Caused a MS-13 Member to Murder Him

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By The Blaze. Federal prosecutors said MS-13 gang members murdered a man in Long Island simply because he was wearing a Peyton Manning football jersey, according to the New York Post.

The revelation is related to the January 2017 murder of Esteban Alvarado-Bonilla at a deli. MS-13 member Mario Aguilar-Lopez pleaded guilty to the murder in November 2018.

U.S. Assistant Attorney Raymond Tierney discussed the details of the motivation behind the murder during court proceedings Tuesday for Jose Suarez, who is accused of being the getaway driver in the murder in order to earn respect of the gang. . .

Alvarado-Bonilla was suspected of being a member of the rival 18th Street gang. Manning’s jersey number was 18. As a result, Alvarado-Bonilla was “marked for death,” prosecutors said.

Aguilar-Lopez fired five shots at Alvarado-Bonilla’s head at point-blank range, and one bullet also struck a nearby employee, who survived. (Read more from “A Man’s Shirt Choice Caused a MS-13 Member to Murder Him” HERE)

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U.S. Southern Border ‘Invasion’ by the Numbers

By Boston Herald. President Trump declared a national emergency Friday to circumvent Congress and secure $8 billion for barriers on the southern border.

Through presidential addresses and press conferences, Trump has given a host of reasons for his crackdown on the border, often centering on controlling the flow of illegal immigrants, drugs and gang members.

“We have an invasion of drugs, invasion of gangs, invasion of people, and it’s unacceptable,” Trump said from the Rose Garden on Friday. . .

There were 377 MS-13 gang members apprehended nationwide in fiscal 2018, as of Aug. 31. That was up from 228 the year prior, but down from 437 in fiscal 2014. Recent FBI estimates put MS-13 gang membership in the U.S. at about 10,000, but it’s not clear how many of them are citizens versus immigrants. (Read more from “U.S. Southern Border ‘Invasion’ by the Numbers” HERE)

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Ocasio-Cortez Has EPIC Meltdown

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During a House Financial Services Committee meeting hosted by Chairwoman Maxine Waters on Tuesday, democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) attempted to take down Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan on the issue of climate change — and ended up inspiring widespread backlash for her non sequitur questions. Amid the wave of criticism for her performance at the hearing, the freshman representative and former bartender issued a series of tweets pushing back against those poking holes in her global warming logic.

At the hearing, titled “Holding Megabanks Accountable: An Examination of Wells Fargo’s Pattern of Consumer Abuses,” Ocasio-Cortez launched into a series of causally problematic accusations, attempting to blame the bank for the “caging of children” at the border, hypothetical “spills,” and “when we have to reinvest in infrastructure building sea walls from the erosion of … infrastructure or cleanups, wildfires” (videos below).

She then responded directly to criticism of her logic by A&E’s “Rodeo Girls” star Marvel Marisa Murphy, who wrote: “So using her own logic… Hypothetically, if @AOC made a drink while bartending, then served it to a person, who then killed a family of 5 while driving drunk, she should then be held accountable for the incident, right? Bartenders beware, she could be coming after you next!!”

“Actually, in NYC if you’re a bartender and knowingly over-serve to someone, you *ARE* liable for things they do after they leave the bar, because you knowingly put them at risk for $. Its called the Dram Shop Act. It’s a big reason why bartenders cut people off. And it works,” Ocasio-Cortez responded, adding in yet another post: “The key here is in the advance knowledge. When you *knowingly* do something that you know *in advance* will do harm, and do it anyway, you open yourself up. Companies *know in advance* that climate change will get worse if we keep growing fossil fuel consumption and production.”

(Read more from “Ocasio-Cortez Has EPIC Meltdown” HERE)

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Here’s What a REAL Emergency Border Plan Would Look Like

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Over the weekend, the president asserted that apprehended illegal aliens are not being let into our country. That is absolutely not the case, but the president does have the power to end catch-and-release. Why is talking about ending catch-and-release and not actually ending it?

Trump also declared this week in an interview with Breitbart, “I don’t want to have anyone coming in that’s on welfare.” Yet we are now bringing in hundreds of thousands of the most impoverished migrants through our border every year, and they will likely never be deported. Why is Trump so quiet since the data on the border emergency proved him right, and why is he not stepping up his game?

Catch-and-release at our border has gotten so bad that it has incentivized record numbers of impoverished Central Americans to surrender themselves to agents. This, in turn, creates such a shortage of beds that even the people who would otherwise not be released are now being released. They remain in our communities indefinitely, expose us to diseases, saddle taxpayers with public charge and crime, and tie up the resources of the border agents – all when we know the claim of asylum is bogus. The president is focusing his entire political capital in the emergency declaration on pennies in border wall funding, when these policies are causing us to bring in aliens from behind the border wall. Why is Trump not using his political capital to shut down catch-and-release and implement a true emergency plan that addresses the very emergency he decried and the media now admits exists?

Unfortunately, the illegal immigrants and the cartels don’t watch Trump’s CPAC speech or read his tweets. They look at what his government is actually doing on the ground at the border. Just since December 21, DHS has been forced to release 84,500 illegal aliens from Central American family units: 14,500 were in the Phoenix area, 37,500 in south Texas, 24,000 in El Paso, and 8,500 in San Diego, according to the Arizona Republic. Many of the ones dropped off this past weekend in Phoenix were in the country for less than 24 hours. Just from a health crisis standpoint, how can we be sure that Americans won’t be infected by those coming from places with rampant diseases when they are released so quickly?

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, who has watched every aspect of the immigration debate for decades, is wholly unimpressed with the administration’s half-hearted approach. “The Trump administration gives the impression that they have just given up on trying to preserve our border,” said Vaughan. “The top agency leaders like DHS Sec. Nielsen and CBP Director McAleenan are just throwing up their hands and saying, ‘We can’t do anything until Congress passes some new laws.’ They might as well be saying, ‘We can’t do anything until pigs fly.’ This administration is suffering from a lack of resolve, a lack of creative thinking, a lack of accountability, and a lack of leadership.”

For quite some time, I have noted that the president has declined to assert his ironclad power to block all immigration or foreign commerce on our soil. While the administration has announced a policy of returning some bogus asylum-seekers to Mexico at two points of entry, bizarrely, it has only selected 240 migrants for this new treatment. “That’s not enough to make a difference,” notes Vaughan.

Time will tell whether they expand this policy and are willing to tell the courts to stay in their lane.

Vaughan further notes that, with a declaration of an emergency, there is an entirely new power for the administration to tap in order to protect Americans from the effects of illegal immigration and deter future waves.

“If they are not going to use this policy [of denying claims on our soil], then another option would be to start following the official mass migration plan that was written and tested just before this crisis started in 2012-2013. This plan calls for DHS to stand up tent facilities adjacent to the existing detention centers used along the border and house illegal migrants there – even the families – in lieu of the dizzying catch-and-release process that is now the norm.”

This will ensure that aliens are kept quarantined away from our hospitals and communities and are not released on our dime. The president actually promised to do something similar last October when the problem wasn’t even as bad. “We’re going to build tent cities. We’re going to put tents up all over the place. We’re not going to build structures and spend all of this, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars — we’re going to have tents,” promised the president right before the midterm elections. Instead, we are actually building costly infrastructure for illegal aliens, expending enormous Border Patrol resources to house and transport them, and then we release them into our communities anyway.

According to Vaughan, centrally holding the migrants in several tent cities would also solve the catch-and-release problem and the self-fulfilling cycle of illegal aliens coming here to abscond their court dates.

“Under the law, CBP is allowed to detain families with kids for up to 72 hours, so they should process them within that period of time. They should operate like a night court, fulfilling the due process immediately, instead of dumping them on the existing immigration court system, which will take a minimum of eight years to complete the case, if they even show up, and most of them won’t. The courts are almost a farce right now; why carry on in this way? They could assign the asylum officers and judges to temporary emergency duty at the border – or better yet, hire some new temporary officers, such as retired USCIS and State Department officials, or others who can step in and adjudicate these cases according to the law as it is written. Such temporary duty is commonplace within DHS agencies and the State Department, and it should be done here. Heck, I’ll volunteer.”

Indeed, according to the DOJ’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, just in the first three months of this fiscal year, there were 17,200 removal orders issued in absentia. Meaning, even the people we get around to deporting wind up disappearing indefinitely and are added to the list of almost one million illegal aliens with final deportation orders who remain in the country. That is the lynchpin to the entire magnet at our border. Tent cities and a “rocket docket” of deportations in the contained detention area would cost a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the catch-and-release and will remove this magnet.

Thus, new migration can be chocked off by refusing to admit any new credible fear claims outside Mexico. Those already here can be sent to tent cities. What about those who have already absconded? Vaughan believes that it’s time we stop giving them de facto amnesty and extend our sovereignty over their lawlessness, which will further deter new migration.

“The president should direct ICE to create a list of all those who have absconded from the process by failing to appear for their court hearings or for removal. This is a felony, and criminal warrants should be issued. If any of these individuals is arrested for another crime, then the local law enforcement agency can hold them on ICE’s criminal warrant, and ICE can detain, process and remove them. In addition, ICE could staff special at-large enforcement teams to locate and remove them, using a share of its existing resources. … This job is no less important than other things ICE does like policing intellectual property violations and returning stolen antiquities.”

Obviously, ICE typically prioritizes the removal of the estimated two million criminal aliens in this country over other illegal aliens. But it would be worthwhile for them divert resources to specifically target those who abscond through catch-and-release because that is the primary cause of the current border crisis and it needs to be countered immediately.

The bottom line is the status quo is not an option, nor is expending all Trump’s political capital on $2.6 billion in funding. The president has broad authority to block immigration, regulate its flow, deport illegal aliens, change processing procedures, designate the cartels as terrorists, place the military at the border to counter the cartels, and deputize state and local law enforcement to help enforce immigration laws at the border. This needs to be an all-of-the-above approach, where all of Trump’s actions match his rhetoric of declaring an emergency. This will put him on firmer political ground and is better policy to stem the tide of illegal immigration and combat the cartels and drug trafficking.

As Jessica Vaughan warns, “If top administration officials are sitting around thinking that the situation will get so bad that Congress will have to act eventually, they are wrong.” She feels it’s time to open the tool box and use every option, including the emergency processing plan.

“I’m not in favor of executive power grabs, but I’m less in favor of open borders. It’s irresponsible to fail to act on this problem using the authorities that the president already has.” (For more from the author of “Here’s What a REAL Emergency Border Plan Would Look Like” please click HERE)

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The FBI Was Close to Charging Hillary Clinton in 2016 — Here’s Who Shut It Down

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By The Blaze. Newly released transcripts from a controversial former FBI lawyer’s testimony before Congress show that the FBI was considering charging Hillary Clinton in 2016 when the Department of Justice shut down the possibility.

Lisa Page was identified as the other side of a text message conversation with FBI agent Peter Strzok that derided then-candidate Donald Trump ahead of the election.

Her private testimony before a joint task force of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees shed light on the controversial decision by former FBI Director James Comey to publicly criticize Clinton but not charge her with any crime.

Some cite the decision as part of the reason Clinton was defeated in the 2016 presidential race. Others see the reticence of the FBI to charge Clinton as evidence of a “deep state” bias towards the Democratic party and against President Donald Trump.

Page responded in her testimony to Republican concerns that the FBI did not seriously consider pressing charges against Clinton out of a bias against Trump, according to the Washington Examiner. (Read more from “The FBI Was Close to Charging Hillary Clinton in 2016 — Here’s Who Shut It Down” HERE)

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Lisa Page said senior FBI officials wanted to take Hillary Clinton down

By Washington Examiner. Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page testified last year that top officials in the bureau expressed bias against Hillary Clinton while she was being investigated for her emails.

The claim, part of newly released transcripts from private testimony in front of a joint task force of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees in July 2018, contrasts with the prevailing concern among some conservatives that there has been an anti-Trump tilt in the upper levels of the Justice Department and FBI.

“I am aware of senior FBI officials talking to subordinate FBI officials on the Hillary Clinton investigative team who unquestionably had anti-Hillary sentiment, but who also said: You have to get her or — again, I don’t have an exact quote — but like we’re counting on you, you know,” Page said.

Page was being grilled by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who asked how these subordinate officials would respond.

“My guess is they just probably parried and said: Just follow the facts, ma’am/sir. It’s a challenging place to be put in, I would say,” she replied.” (Read more from “Lisa Page said senior FBI officials wanted to take Hillary Clinton down” HERE)

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Are We Entering the Age of the Biochip?

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Biochips are usually encased in medical glass, have a tiny antenna and an integrated circuit that transmits data when scanned by an electronic reader.

They might be little more than a gadget at this point, but they’re showing signs of catching on. The tiny chips already can replace keys, credit cards and train tickets and buy snacks. The tipping point from novelty to necessity seems inevitable. But what about security? What about privacy?

In 2004, the FDA approved a chip that would store medical records and be implanted in the upper arm. The idea was that it would save time in an emergency. Doctors would be able to scan the chip and quickly learn the patient’s blood type, allergies and health history. A market for the chip didn’t materialize. It failed. A key reason: Doctors said patients were concerned about privacy. . .

Five states — California, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Wisconsin — already have passed laws prohibiting “mandatory implantation” of biochips. And what about hacking? As more and more people get biochipped and credit card numbers are stored, won’t criminals soon follow? It’s happened with credit cards, and they are passive. . .

Whether or not it’s the end times, a more immediate question might be: Will biochips mark the end of our personal privacy, or will they finally be embraced by a once-skeptical public? (Read more from “Are We Entering the Age of the Biochip?” HERE)

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