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Nathan Phillips Led Protest Attempting to Crash Mass After Covington Catholic Confrontation

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Soon after Native American activist Nathan Phillips confronted high school boys from Covington Catholic in front of the Lincoln Memorial, he reportedly led a protest of about 20 fellow Native activists, unsuccessfully attempting to crash the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception’s Saturday evening Mass.

Catholic News Agency (CNA) reported Tuesday:

While chanting and playing ceremonial drums, a group of Native American rights activists reportedly led by Nathan Phillips attempted Jan. 19 to enter Washington, D.C.’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception during a Saturday evening Mass.

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Over the weekend, the Kentucky teens were smeared by the media for allegedly harassing Phillips based off a selectively edited video clip. However, after the full video context came out, it was clear that the boys were the ones harassed by another activist group and approached by Mr. Phillips. Mainstream media outlets were forced to walk back their initial one-sided reporting after rumors of lawsuits from the boys’ families floated around online. . .

“A source close to the shrine’s leadership corroborated the security guard’s account, telling CNA that during the Mass, Phillips and the group tried to enter the church while playing drums and chanting, and were prohibited from entering the building by security personnel, who locked the main basilica doors with the congregation still inside,” the report notes. (Read more from “Nathan Phillips Led Protest Attempting to Crash Mass After Covington Catholic Confrontation” HERE)

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Here’s What You Need to Know About the Viral Confrontation Between Covington Catholic Students and Native American Protesters

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By Daily Wire. On Saturday, a video went viral, seemingly showing a group of Catholic high school students confronting and harassing a Native American protester who appeared to be peacefully playing a drum, but by Saturday night it was clear the confrontation wasn’t the end of the story.

The three-minute video was posted online by a group of Native American protesters who claimed they were harassed and intimidated by a group of Covington Catholic High School students waiting for their bus near the Lincoln Memorial. The video is heavily clipped at the beginning and end, and shows only an apparent “confrontation” between a protester named Nathan Phillips and a Make America Great Again-hat wearing teen. . .

He and others accused the teens of chanting “build the wall” and hurling racial epithets at the group of Native Americans. Phillips said that the MAGA-hat wearing student closest to him taunted him — an assessment that was immediately adopted by most commentators, who compared the student to a white student taunting black customers at a Civil Rights lunch counter, and in some cases, even threatened the student outright.

Saturday night, a two-hour long, full video of the confrontation became widely available on social media, and that video shows a very different interaction than the one initally portrayed. The video, taken from the point of view of a second group of protesters who witnessed the interaction, shows that Phillips approached the teens — not the other way around, as Phillips claims — and that the teens were relatively peaceful during the incident, laughing and clapping along with Phillips’ drumming, and occasionally asking questions like, “what is going on here?”

Phillips and the students chanted together for a few minutes before the students appear to lose interest and filter away. During that time, though, Phillips claims he felt threatened, though separate videos seem to show that a handful of Native American protesters were taunting the students with racially tinged chants.

(Read more from “Here’s What You Need to Know About the Confrontation Between Covington Catholic Students and Native American Protesters” HERE)

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The Real Story Behind Native American Protest Revealed

By The Daily Caller. Catholic high school boys in MAGA hats became the villains in a weekend viral video storm that left out context and facts to drive a narrative — and media outlets were quick to promote the story without digging further.

The New York Times published an article titled “Boys in ‘Make America Great Again’ Hats Mob Native American Elder at Indigenous People’s March,” and multiple other outlets framed the story in the same way.

But as multiple sources began to provide context — background information and additional videos — the original story began to take on an entirely different shape. The boys, who certainly might have handled the situation better, were surrounded by adults who also might have done the same, and the media chose to report only one side of that story. . .

Although the posted videos did not include any of these things, it was reported that the person who took the video had heard the boys chanting “build the wall and other Trumpisms” and claimed that the boys were just looking for “ANY opportunity to get violent.”

All accounts and videos were in agreement on at least a few key points — namely that at one point, for at least a short time, Phillips and the others in his small group were more or less surrounded by the group of boys. Phillips made no visible attempt to leave, however, and the boys made no visible attempt to prevent him from doing so. (Read more from “The Real Story Behind Native American Protest Revealed” HERE)

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U.S. Duped by ‘Monumental’ Charlottesville Lie

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There’s no reason for the Charlottesville, Virginia, and other Southern cities to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee as long as racist Democrats continue to be honored throughout the country, contends Dinesh D’Souza, author of the sensational historical expose “The Big Lie: Exposing The Nazi Roots Of The Far Left,”

D’Souza blasted the national media and Charlottesville officials for creating a disastrous conflict based on a lie.

“Let’s start with the fact this whole thing was kicked off because of an attempt to take down a monument to Robert E. Lee,” D’Souza told WND. “Here’s the irony: Robert E. Lee was the most decorated soldier in the U.S. Army. He was a man of unimpeachable integrity. Lincoln offered him command of the Union Army, but Lee refused only because his loyalty was to Virginia. Lee opposed both secession and slavery.

“And yet to the historically illiterate left, a man who opposed both slavery and secession has come to symbolize both slavery and secession.”

D’Souza said the controversy is a massive attempt at historical misdirection. (Read more from “U.S. Duped by ‘Monumental’ Charlottesville Lie” HERE)

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Obama Administration Sides With Protesters, Halting Construction of Dakota Access Pipeline

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The Department of the Army handed protesters of the Dakota Access pipeline a victory Sunday when it announced the project would be re-routed. The decision came on the eve of the government’s Monday deadline for protesters to evacuate their encampment.

For the past several months, members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have waged a campaign against the pipeline, drawing the support of environmentalists and liberal entertainers. They were upset that the pipeline would cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota. Now, the company installing the 1,172-mile pipeline will have to find another route or appeal to the incoming Trump administration in 2017.

“Although we have had continuing discussion and exchanges of new information with the Standing Rock Sioux and Dakota Access, it’s clear that there’s more work to do,” Jo-Ellen Darcy, the Army’s assistant secretary for civil works, said in the statement Sunday. “The best way to complete that work responsibly and expeditiously is to explore alternate routes for the pipeline crossing.”

It’s unclear what protesters will do Monday, when they face the deadline to leave. Even before Sunday’s decision, North Dakota’s congressman warned that the fight over the pipeline would likely continue.

“The idea that [the pipeline protest] is about the environment is bogus,” Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said last week in an interview with Daily Signal editor in chief Rob Bluey.

The pipeline is designed to transport oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to southern Illinois.

Prior to Sunday’s announcement, Energy Transfer Partners, the company in charge of the project, had estimated it would be fully operational by the end of this year. It is already over 90 percent complete, but environmentalists and citizens of the nearby Standing Rock Sioux Reservation successful halted its construction.

On April 1, tribal citizens founded the “Sacred Stone Camp” near the construction site to protest the pipeline. The group is concerned that it will be constructed close enough to the tribe’s water source, the Missouri River, to cause spillage.

However, according to Time magazine, the pipeline does not pass through tribal land. Since Sacred Stone’s founding, the site has been subject to ongoing protests to halt the pipeline’s construction.

State officials and the Army Corps of Engineers have issued an evacuation notice to protesters, but Cramer said it is unlikely they will comply.

“They have … issued an evacuation notice for the land that the camp is on, the illegal camp, and so as of next Monday [Dec. 5], anyone staying there will be trespassing,” Cramer said.

When asked if he was confident that the protesters would leave by the deadline, the congressman said:

I’m not, because the tribe and others have committed to staying there. I will tell you that the 2 feet of snow or so that they’ve got in the last couple of days probably is a greater distraction than an evacuation notice from the [U.S. Army] Corps of Engineers, but winter can be a very sobering time in North Dakota on the prairie.

“What started out as a prayerful, peaceful protest of course has turned into a very violent and aggressive riot in many cases,” the congressman said in his interview with The Daily Signal. “The blending of agitators and out-of-state people with a different agenda than just protection of water for the tribe has created a lot of chaos,” he said.

In the interview, Cramer also rejected the idea that protesters were seeking to defend the environment against the pipeline’s construction.

“This oil is being produced today. It’s being moved now. It’s just not being moved by this efficient, safe means of transportation,” Cramer said. “So the idea that some of this is about the environment is bogus. This oil is going to be produced. So I just think that many of the arguments against it are ironic at best and hypocritical most likely.”

When asked about how he believed the management of federal lands would change under the incoming Trump administration, Cramer expressed optimism that President-elect Donald Trump would handle things differently.

“We own … over $50 trillion … worth of oil and gas. [Trump is] a businessman; he knows what $50 trillion could do for our country,” Cramer said, adding:

Mr. Trump is also an environmentalist. The idea of just exploiting federal lands is something he doesn’t take lightly either, but he’s also smart enough to know that modern technology and appropriate safeguards can be put in place to do it in a safe and reasonable manner while at the same time exploiting it for the benefit of our economy and job creation and, certainly, national security.

(For more from the author of “Obama Administration Sides With Protesters, Halting Construction of Dakota Access Pipeline” please click HERE)

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Anti-Cop Protesters Fail to Disrupt New Year’s in Times Square

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

Photo Credit: Breitbart

By Kerry Picket. The demonstrators marched from Union Square to 38th and Broadway, where they were prohibited from going any further uptown towards the celebration when the clock struck 12. Protesters were beckoned by the organization Stop Mass Incarceration to participate in the march on New Year’s Eve.

The New York Police Department passed out flyers to protesters at Union Square telling the marchers that they must walk on the sidewalk during their march and not go into the streets and block vehicle traffic. A recording that looped numerous times played the NYPD flyer’s message through a loudspeaker during the night.

By 10 p.m., about 100 protesters began walking up 6th Avenue toward Times Square as NYPD officers controlled the direction of the march. Police diverted the group as they approached 33rd street in Herald Square.

“NYPD – KKK, how many kids did you kill today?” protesters yelled, as they carried “I can’t breathe” signs, referencing the last words of Eric Garner as NYPD officers held him in a headlock after he resisted arrest. (Read more about the anti-cop protesters fail to disrupt NYC New Year’s Eve HERE)

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De Blasio Slaps NYPD in the Face on the Last Day of 2014

By Laurel Babcock, Kirstan Conley and Bruce Golding. Mayor de Blasio delivered another blow to New York’s Finest on Wednesday when he reappointed a Brooklyn judge who freed without bail two men who threatened cops just days after the Bed-Stuy double police assassination.

The stunning decision came even as one of the suspects — a gang member charged with posting police death threats online — skipped out on a court date and had a warrant out for his arrest, sources said.

Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Laura Johnson had faced a midnight expiration of her term. She was appointed by Mayor Mike Bloomberg in January 2013.

Her one-year, interim reappointment by de Blasio outraged law-enforcement officials a day after he met with the heads of five police unions to heal his fractured relationship with cops.

“The mayor’s actions of reappointing this judge are completely hypocritical to his argument that he’s pro-police and counterproductive to what he claims to be an effort to open dialogue going forward,” said sergeants union chief Ed Mullins. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Tens of Thousands of Connecticut Gun Owners Engage in State-Wide Act of Civil Disobedience

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On Jan. 1, 2014, tens of thousands of defiant gun owners seemingly made the choice not to register their semi-automatic rifles with the state of Connecticut as required by a hastily-passed gun control law. By possessing unregistered so-called “assault rifles,” they all technically became guilty of committing Class D felonies overnight.

Police had received 47,916 applications for “assault weapons certificates” and 21,000 incomplete applications as of Dec. 31, Lt. Paul Vance told The Courant.

At roughly 50,000 applications, officials estimate that as little as 15 percent of the covered semi-automatic rifles have actually been registered with the state. “No one has anything close to definitive figures, but the most conservative estimates place the number of unregistered assault weapons well above 50,000, and perhaps as high as 350,000,” the report states. Needless to say, officials and some lawmakers are stunned.

Due to the new gun control bill passed in April, likely at least 20,000 individual people — possibly as many as 100,000 — are now in direct violation of the law for refusing to register their guns. As we noted above, that act is now a Class D Felony.

Mike Lawlor, “the state’s top official in criminal justice,” suggested maybe the firearms unit in Connecticut could “sent them a letter.” However, he said an aggressive push to prosecute gun owners in the state is not going to happen at this point.

Read more from this story HERE.

Naked Feminist Protesters Drench Catholic Archbishop as He Prays

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A group of naked women bum-rushed Belgian Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard while he was speaking in Brussels and doused him with water from bottles shaped like the Virgin Mary on Tuesday.

The women were reportedly feminist protesters from the Ukranian-based FEMEN group, which is known for organizing topless protests against the Catholic Church and others.

According to AFP, the four protesters charged the archbishop during “a debate on blasphemy and freedom of expression held at the Brussels’ Free University (ULB) campus Tuesday evening, baring their breasts and squirting water at Archbishop Andre Leonard as they accused him of homophobia.”

Photos of the event show Leonard patiently sitting quietly with his eyes closed and hands folded in prayer as the women empty bottles of water on his head and clothes.

Read more from this story HERE. [warning: most readers will find the photos offensive]

Police Won't Say Why Pastor Arrested

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Photo Credit: WND

The last remaining abortion clinic in Mississippi, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, may appreciate U. S. District Judge Daniel Jordan III for blocking a state law that would have closed its doors.

But the group also can thank the Jackson Police Department for running interference as well. Several city police officers swooped in and arrested a preacher named Chet Gallagher while he walked along a public sidewalk in front of the abortion clinic, preaching the Word of God to a dozen or more people, this week.

The charges? Don’t know; police didn’t tell him.

Department officials even declined to give him charging documents when he was ordered to appear in court in June.

“It’s hard to say what they’re charging me with,” Gallagher told WND in a phone interview.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mission Accomplished: Obama’s Jobs Council Shut Down

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Photo Credit: WarmSleepyPresident Barack Obama will let his jobs council expire this week without renewing its charter, winding down one source of input from the business community even as unemployment remains stubbornly high.

When Obama in January 2011 formed his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, unemployment was hovering above 9 percent. Two years president later, more than 12 million people in the U.S. are out of work. The unemployment rate has improved to 7.8 percent, but both parties agree that’s still too high.

A provision in Obama’s executive order establishing the council says it sunsets on Thursday. A White House official said the president does not plan to extend it.

Officials said the president always intended for the council to fulfill its mission and then wind down, and said that Obama would continue to actively engage and seek input from business leaders about ways to accelerate job-creation and economic growth. Among the steps Obama plans to pursue are expedited permits for infrastructure projects, the White House said.

Even before it was clear whether Obama would renew the jobs council, Republicans seized on its likely expiration as evidence the president has devoted insufficient attention to creating jobs, which polling shows remains a top priority for Americans. The Republican National Committee dubbed it part of “the failed Obama record,” while the House Republicans’ campaign committee, in an online petition, accused Obama of laying off his own jobs council.

Read more on this story HERE.

Egypt: Faith in the Muslim Brotherhood Failing

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Photo Credit: Mr. TheklanFive days of protests in Egypt, with dozens of people killed and entire cities in turmoil, have revealed a whopping deficit of public trust in the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic group that dominates the leadership of this young democracy of the Arab Spring.

In cities like Port Said, the protesters have displayed an open defiance of President Mohamed Morsi’s orders on a curfew and state of emergency. Egypt’s Army chief warns of the state collapsing. And indeed, many Egyptians now talk of splitting up the Arab world’s most populous state.

The triggers for this upheaval were the second anniversary of the fall of Hosni Mubarak and a court sentencing 21 people for the deaths of 74 people after a soccer match last year. But below the surface of this dissent lies a deeper struggle. It is one trying to define the source of legitimacy for Egypt’s new leaders, or the kind of sentiment that cements trust between a government and its people.

As it has slowly risen to power in the past two years, the Muslim Brotherhood has broken many promises about the role it would play in representative government. Its flip-flops and power grabs in forming a new regime have only added to a worry among democracy advocates that Mr. Morsi would define his authority from Islam, or sharia law, rather than from constitutional rights and secular pluralism.

Even within the Brotherhood, a decades-long debate on reconciling Islam as a revealed religion with liberal democracy has yet to be settled, resulting in splits and high-level defections. A younger generation in the group wants to rely on persuasion to gain support while an old guard sticks to al-sama’ wa’l-ta’a, or “hearing and obeying.”

Read more from this story HERE.