the Revision Division

HELICOPTER RIDES: Trump On His New ‘Presidential Helicopter Squadron’ Hat: ‘Now, no other President would do this.’

President Donald Trump arrived back at the White House on Friday, December 15, pointing to his new hat, which read “Presidential Helicopter Squadron.” According to the remarks released by the White House [archive] via the Office of the Press Secretary, Trump spoke in Quantico, Virginia, at the Marine Corps Air Facility to Marine Helicopter Squadron One. Although Trump didn’t speak to the press upon his return to the South Lawn, he let the words “Presidential Helicopter Squadron” on his white baseball cap speak for him.

However, the words that the president spoke during his speech are what’s gaining buzz online, with President Trump claiming that no other president would wear such a hat.

OH WELL: Prosecutor: Not enough evidence yet to charge Minneapolis cop in Justine Damond shooting. [archive]

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said he doesn’t yet have enough evidence to charge a Minneapolis police officer who killed an unarmed Australian woman this summer, blaming investigators who “haven’t done their job.”

Freeman is still deciding whether to charge officer Mohamed Noor, who shot Justine Ruszczyk Damond in the alley behind her home in July. Damond had called 911 to report a possible sexual assault. As she approached the squad car, Noor fired from the passenger seat, across his partner and through the driver’s window.

Damond’s death in Southwest Minneapolis’ Fulton neighborhood sparked protests and led to a police department shake-up, including the resignation of Chief Janee Harteau. . . .

“I have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, (that) the moment he shot the gun, he feared for his life. And he used force because he thought he was gonna be killed,” Freeman said. “But I can’t. He won’t answer my questions because he doesn’t have to, OK? We all have Fifth Amendment rights, and I respect that. So I can’t talk to her because she’s gone, and the other cop just gave us some (expletive), OK? So guess what? I gotta figure out angles of the shot, gun residues, reckless-use-of-force experts.”

Here [archive] is some information about the killing from several months ago:

Noor is one of about half a dozen Somali-Americans on the Minneapolis police force and he was the first such hire in the 5th precinct [Minneapolis has the nation’s largest community of Somali refugees].

He has been with the department two years and in that time had already been the subject of two complaints and one lawsuit brought by a woman who alleged he brutalized her.

Noor reportedly told friends he heard a “loud noise” as he and his partner pulled into an alleyway where Damond had summoned them via a 9-1-1 call in which she tried to report a sexual assault in progress. If that story is true, the noise startled Noor, causing him to fire his weapon across his partner, who was driving, through the car window, striking Damond once in the abdomen. She died at the scene.

The shooting by Noor remains under investigation by the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, but Harteau said the officers involved should have turned on their body cameras. She characterized the shooting as “one individual’s actions” and not reflective of the department.

UPDATE: FakeHateCrimes.org [archive] This archive link contains entries 298 through 331. An earlier post has an archive link containing entries 265 through 297. And an even earlier post has archive links to entries 52 through 275.

TODD KINCANNON: “The RNC signed away its right to poll watch in the 1980’s. There has been a federal consent decree prohibiting the GOP from effective poll watching since 1982.” [archive]

More: [archive]

Here’s the federal consent decree I was talking about, where the RNC signed away its rights to stop voter fraud. This is why the Democrats are able to commit voter fraud with impunity. Ronna ROMNEY McDaniel has done nothing about it:

https://www.brennancenter.org/legal-work/dnc-v-rnc-consent-decree [archive]

From the link:

DNC v. RNC Consent Decree
November 5, 2016

In 1982, after caging in predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods, the Republican National Committee and New Jersey Republican State Committee entered into a consent decree with their Democratic party counterparts. Under that decree and its 1987 successor, the Republican party organizations agreed to allow a federal court to review proposed “ballot security” programs, including any proposed voter caging.

GOVERNMENT IS JUST A WORD FOR THE THINGS WE DO TOGETHER: HSLDA [Home School Legal Defense Association] Sues Kentucky Officials for Forcibly Entering Family’s Home, Strip-Searching Six Children. [archive]

The complaint states that on March 31, 2017, Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services Investigator Jeanetta Childress and police deputy Michael Furnish forcibly entered Holly’s home without a warrant, privately interrogated Holly’s oldest child without her permission, and strip-searched each of Holly’s six children.

The officials were responding to a report made the day before by two police officers who witnessed Holly leaving her children in her locked van for five to 10 minutes on a temperate day while she stepped into a café to pick up some muffins for them. Though Investigator Childress and Deputy Furnish had no warrant, Holly allowed them into her home when they threatened to take custody of her children. After taking Holly’s oldest child into her bedroom to question her, the investigator returned and said she had “to take a look at the kids now.” She then proceeded to strip-search Holly’s children, including her daughters, in front of the male deputy.

FAST & FURIOUS, MIDDLE EAST EDITION: The U.S. bought weapons for Syrian rebels — and some wound up in the hands of ISIS terrorists. [archive]

The arms included anti-tank weapons purchased by the United States that ended up in possession of the Islamic State within two months of leaving the factory, according to the study by Conflict Armament Research, an organization that tracks arms shipments. The study was funded by the European Union and German government.

Efforts by the United States and other countries to supply weapons to rebel groups “have significantly augmented the quantity and quality of weapons available to (Islamic State) forces,” the report concluded. . . .

It has long been known that ISIS captured a huge amount of American weapons —including tanks and artillery — when the militant group swept into Iraq from Syria in 2014 and routed several divisions of Iraqi soldiers, many who abandoned their weapons and fled.

The new study raises questions about a different source for weapons: arms secretly sent to rebel factions fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad in his long civil war. The covert CIA program, begun by the Obama administration in 2013, was ended earlier this year by President Trump. Saudi Arabia, which — like the U.S. — strongly opposes Assad, also supplies weapons to rebel groups.

The CIA declined to comment on the report.

IT’S NOT YOURS. IT’S THEIRS: Google Locks Users Out Of Google Docs Deemed To Be “Abusive.” [archive]

Google said in a statement that it had “made a code push that incorrectly flagged a small percentage of Google Docs as abusive, which caused those documents to be automatically blocked. A fix is in place and all users should have full access to their docs.”

Although the error appeared to be a technical glitch, the fact that Google is capable of identifying “bad” Google Docs at all is a reminder: Much of what you upload, receive or type to Google is monitored. . . .

Update: On Tuesday afternoon, Google said that it does not technically read files, but instead uses an automated system of pattern matching to scan for indicators of abuse. Though it can identify clusters of data that might suggest a violation, the system does not pull meaning from the content, according to a company spokesperson.

“THEY GOT TO GO”: Jerry Falwell Backs Steve Bannon Effort to Oust ‘Fake Republicans,’ Calls for Evangelical Army to Rise Up to Defeat Them. [archive]

“There are four or five ‘Fake Republicans’ in the Senate and many in the House. If they can be replaced in 2018—the political class needs to go. . . . I’m talking about people like Susan Collins, [Lindsey] Graham, [Jeff] Flake, [John] McCain, [Mitch] McConnell. . . . they don’t always vote against it. They just make sure enough of their buddies vote against it to kill it. It’s all done behind closed doors. They got to go.” . . .

“We really don’t have a majority in the Senate, and I don’t think in the House. Paul Ryan is in a lot of ways just as bad as a lot of the Senators. He hides it. But it’s a sort of a vicious acquiescence.” . . .

“Don’t look at a candidate on whether he has the same religious background as you do. Don’t look at whether he or she fit to be the pastor of your church. Look at who’s going to vote right on the issues. Look at who’s actually succeeded in real life outside of the political world. That’s who they need to vote for. It may not be the most conservative candidate. But it’s got to be somebody who’s not part of the establishment and has succeeded in real life. Look for somebody with common sense. Find that candidate and support them, and I think they can change the Congress. Then in the last few years of Trump’s presidency we can turn this country around.”

Falwell continued by explaining what he means by “common sense candidates,” and that it does not always mean the most conservative candidates.

“When I say common sense candidates, when I say not always the most conservative, I’m saying don’t just vote on ideology,” Falwell said. “When you listen to these politicians, they know what to say to assure you what their ideology is. But that’s not what matters. What matters is do they have common sense? Have they succeeded in the real world? Then, all the rest will follow because if you have common sense and you start trying to fix things then you’re going to become a conservative like Trump did, because you see that’s the only way to fix things.”

DOJ: Honduran Citizen Charged With Attempting to Use an Explosive Device in Popular Miami Mall. [archive] “Vicente Adolfo Solano, 53, a citizen of Honduras residing in Miami, has been charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in a planned attack at a shopping mall in Miami.”

HOWIE CARR: Latest violence by illegal immigrant on judges’ hands.

Sreynuon Lunn . . . [is] under arrest for the beating of an elderly woman in a wheelchair while robbing her of $2,000 cash, because, he told cops, he was a junkie who needed money for a drug fix. . . .

Surely you remember this career criminal from Cambodia. The Supreme Judicial Court ruled three months ago that law enforcement had no right to arrest or detain Lunn or anyone else “at the request of Federal immigration authorities, pursuant to a civil immigration order.”

Lunn had already been cut loose because of a different insane U.S. Supreme Court decision shielding violent illegal immigrants from deportation. But the SJC ruling re: Lunn, moot as it was, was hailed as basically making Massachusetts a “sanctuary state” for foreign criminals.

Attorney General Maura Healey hailed the SJC for its “smart” decision. A call to her office Monday asking her if she still considers the Lunn decision “smart” was not returned.

Of course, this is not the first time a foreign criminal has been treated with kid gloves in Boston and cut loose by the local judiciary, with bloody results.

Last May, it was an African immigrant named Bampumim Teixeira, who had two violent bank robberies in downtown Boston broomed into a nine-month wrist slap so that he wouldn’t be deported. As soon as he got out of prison, prosecutors say, the fiend slit the throats of two anesthesiologists (both legal immigrants) in South Boston.

Thanks for agreeing to that plea-bargain, District Attorney Dan Conley. Like Healey, Conley is a Democrat.

SWEDEN: Blow Whistle on Adult Migrants Posing as Kids, Lose Your Job: Fired dental hygienist facing financial ruin from government agency. [archive]

“I would probably estimate that up to 80 percent of them were obviously adults,” Herlitz told the Swedish paper Samhallsnytt. “This can be seen, for example, on wisdom teeth that were fully grown – something that is only seen in adults.”

In Sweden, newly arrived asylum seekers receive preferential treatment if they claim to be minors. Unlike adults, they cannot be denied asylum and returned to a part of their country deemed safe while their case is under review. If approved, they are allowed to bring their families to join them, further incentivizing migrants to lie about their age and making Sweden a prime destination for “unaccompanied minors.” Despite growing pressure to medically test migrants using dental, knee or wrist-bone X-rays, which are said to yield age estimates accurate within one year, Swedish authorities have resisted.

To better educate himself and confirm his suspicions, Herlitz and his wife attended a seminar in July 2016 focused on assessing age in both the judicial and sports worlds. At the time, a national debate was underway regarding the high cost of supporting the influx of migrants from the Mideast. Herlitz, upon consulting with a unit manager of the Swedish Migration Board, was told the government indeed wanted to be sure migrants were the age they claimed and that he should report any suspicions to the board.

So, upon returning to work in August of last year, Herlitz began passing on his suspicions to the Swedish Migration Board, based primarily on the wisdom teeth he was observing when treating “minors” and advising that the age listed in their records was wrong, in his expert opinion. He expressed concern that adults posing as minors could put children at risk if they were housed together.

Eight emails later, Herlitz found himself under investigation. The board never responded to his notices, but a guardian for one of the migrants he questioned notified Herlitz’s employer.

“The manager asked me to come to a single room where there was also another senior manager from the employer, Region Gotland. They told me I will not go to work tomorrow, that I’m turned off and that there will be an investigation,” he said.

“AS A WHITE GUY”: Chicago Deli Owner ‘Apologizes’ After Saying Country Music Fans Deserve Las Vegas Shooting. [archive]

“Soon as I heard it was country music, I felt relief. White people shooting white people isn’t terror… it’s community outreach,” the restaurant operator said in his now-deleted tweet.

Attempting to explain his meaning, Morelli, a Hillary Clinton supporter, told [archive] the Chicago Tribune, “As a white guy, I was relieved that it wasn’t across race lines, or religion lines or (an attack) from outside the country. When I heard the news, I said, Please God, don’t let it be war.”

And from the Jewish Daily Forward: Jewish Deli Owner Sorry For Calling Las Vegas Massacre ‘Community Outreach’ For White People. [archive]

Morelli has courted outrage in the past, notably this August, when he posted “alt-right” and Nazi imagery on the Max’s Deli page in what he said was an attempt to mock President Trump and the white supremacists who caused unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“I have a Jewish deli, I am a Jewish man,” he told the Tribune then. “I am the first person that’s going to get a brick through the window if this plague is not stopped immediately.”

“AGING BADLY”: Boys Puberty Book is Pulped After Aging Badly. [archive]

Mr. Frith’s book . . . claimed girls have breasts for two reasons: “feeding babies and looking grown-up and attractive.”

Mr. Ragoonanan said that a follower of his blog alerted him to the book, which was originally published in 2013. “The context of this book is that it’s aimed at boys, young boys, when they’re forming their opinions about women. It was worrying that this kind of passage was out there,” he said in an interview.

Usborne Children’s Books, the book’s United Kingdom-based publisher, quickly apologized for the passage and announced on Aug. 31 that it would destroy its remaining stock of “Growing Up for Boys.”

“We recognize that we have made a mistake. For this we apologize and reiterate that the material will be revised. Our remaining stock will be removed from the warehouse and pulped,” the publisher said.

Despite Usborne’s quick response, Mr. Ragoonanan’s post was shared throughout the internet, with Mr. Frith and Usborne coming in for heavy criticism.

WHICH SIDE? Ohio man pleads guilty to battery after sucker-punching another at rally in Laguna Beach. [archive]

A 20-year-old Ohio resident accused of sucker-punching a man at an America First! rally in Laguna Beach pleaded guilty Friday to one misdemeanor count of battery.

Richard Daniel Losey — of Lancaster, Ohio — was sentenced to 30 days in county jail and three years’ informal probation, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Losey was one of about 2,500 people who went to Main Beach in Laguna on Aug. 20 to either attend or protest the America First! [archive] rally.

So which was it? Was he attending or protesting? Of course, the omission in itself tells us all we need to know.

ALAN DERSHOWITZ: A special counsel is the wrong way to uncover the truth. [archive]

A special counsel is the wrong mechanism for conducting an investigation that will uncover the whole truth.

The mandate of the special counsel is to “prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation.” But the accusations directed at the Trump campaign and administration are not primarily criminal. Accordingly, they fall outside of the jurisdiction of the special counsel. . . .

At the end of his super secret investigations, the special counsel has essentially three options: he can issue indictments and prosecute the defendants, he can issue a statement that no indictments are warranted and close down his investigation, or he can issue a report.

If he were to issue a report, it would be one-sided and based on an investigation not geared towards knowing the whole truth, but rather to develop and present to the grand jury sufficient evidence to show probable cause that a crime may have been committed. The grand jury hears only one side — the prosecutor’s. A report, based on no criminal investigation, is likely to be one-sided and incomplete.

It would have been far better for this country if Congress had appointed a non-partisan investigatory commission to uncover the whole truth, including non-criminal wrongdoing, not only on the part of the Trump campaign and administration, but also on the part of those current and former intelligence officials who willfully leaked classified and highly secret information to the media.

That is one issue that is within the jurisdiction of the special counsel, because it involves serious federal felonies. It would be ironic if the only indictment resulting from the special counsel’s investigation was of the intelligence officials who unlawfully leaked classified information.

DEAL: China says enforcing North Korea coal ban seriously, no violation. [archive]

Following repeated North Korean missile tests that drew international criticism, China in February banned all imports of coal from its reclusive neighbor, cutting off its most important export product.

Reuters reported on April 11 that several North Korean cargo ships, most fully laden, were heading home after China’s customs department issued an official order, on April 7, telling trading companies to return their North Korean coal cargoes.

But on Friday, the website NKNews.org reported several North Korean ships in and around Tangshan port, in northern China.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang, asked about the ships and whether China was allowing North Korean coal back in, said China was “seriously enforcing” the provisions in its announcement banning North Korean coal imports for the remainder of the year, which were in line with U.N. resolutions.

“If the ships are still at sea or outside a port, there will always be some mariners who need to be looked after for humanitarian reasons,” Lu said.

“There is no such thing as any violating of this announcement or China violating its obligations to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions.” . . .

None of the vessels showed recent changes to their draft, a measure of how deep in the water they are floating which rises or falls depending on their load.

Also: Trump administration hails US-China trade deal: Beijing pledges access for rating agencies, credit card companies and American beef. [archive]

The 10-point package revealed on Friday was billed as an “early harvest” from the 100-day plan to reset the trade relationship that Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Donald Trump agreed to pursue when they met in April.

According to a US announcement, the two sides had also agreed to discuss extending that initial 100-day period into a one-year plan.

It is the latest sign that the US president is adopting a less confrontational approach with Beijing. During last year’s election campaign, he threatened to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese goods and label China a currency manipulator.

The threats were always a bargaining chip, going back to Romney’s campaign [archive] (when donor Trump probably forced the issue). See the campaign document, “Reforming The U.S.-China Trade Relationship To Make America Great Again”: [archive] (more…)

LAWSUIT OPPORTUNITY: American University is blocking whites from cafe designated as ‘sanctuary’ for nonwhites. [archive]

The specific demands the university has agreed to honor:

For the remaining of the semester, the Bridge will become a sanctuary for people of color.

All POC students get extensions, [archive] and should not be penalized for already scheduled finals after the incident.

A separate investigation team based out of the university (composed of a group of non-biased expert contractors) that can investigate cases of racism and discrimination brought against the institution of American University.

The approved demands were cited by more than 100 faculty and staff who signed a “solidarity statement” [archive] published in The Eagle Thursday. About two-thirds are affiliated with the College of Arts & Sciences.

SOMALIS: Routine arrest leads Minneapolis police to arsenal. [archive]

The men were placed in the squad while officers searched their car.

Inside, the officers found a hand grenade, handgun, assault rifles and magazines and a large quantity of ammunition, the complaint said. They also found cellphones, computers and electronics equipment, including drone parts.

Bomb squad personnel called to the scene noted that the large amount of ammunition and electronic devices could be used for bomb-making, the complaint said.

Abdullah N. Alrifahe, 27, of Minneapolis, was charged with a gross misdemeanor for carrying a pistol in public without a permit. In December, he was convicted of the same offense.

FINALLY: Donald Trump’s Trade Representative Confirmed, Sights Set on NAFTA. [archive]

Despite efforts by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and National Trade Council Director Peter Navarro to progress Trump’s trade agenda, Congress insisted that [Robert] Lighthizer be confirmed and in place before continuing fast track negotiations, according to White House sources.

“I would call it a slow track to hell,” a White House senior aide said in an interview with Breitbart News, blaming Republicans opposed to renegotiating trade deals and Democrats eager to stall Trump’s agenda. The administration still has to formally notify Congress of its intentions to renegotiate NAFTA, triggering a 90-day waiting period.

Trump shared his frustration in an interview with the Economist, [archive] pointing out that even though Mexico and Canada were ready to renegotiate NAFTA, his negotiator wasn’t confirmed.

“Here you have two people calling saying, ‘Can we negotiate?’ I say ‘Yes,’ and I have to wait for a hundred days,” Trump said. “I don’t know what a hundred days is going to be like.”

Related: What it’ll take to renegotiate NAFTA. [archive]

Related, from before: Lighthizer Passes Senate Panel. [archive] (more…)

JOHN CRUDELE: “Good riddance to John Thompson, the head of the Census Bureau.” [archive]

My crusade against Thompson’s organization began in 2013 with a tip from a census worker named Stefani Butler, [archive] who told me about an enumerator in the Washington, DC, area who was filling out surveys without ever interviewing people. After investigating, I learned from other census people around the country that this was a common practice. . . .

Then I moved on to large contracts that were given out by the bureau without the benefit of having companies submit bids. That also came from a tipster inside the Census Bureau. Again, the bureau under Thompson didn’t seem to do a thing about this skirting of the rules that say government contracts needed to be competitively bid unless there was a very good reason. All along Thompson’s Bureau never protected the whistleblowers, as the law mandates. Instead people like Butler were retaliated against, pushed out of their jobs and simply given no work to do. . . .

Lastly, I wrote numerous times about how Thompson was criticized by his own inspector general — the Census Bureau’s cop, if you will — for not getting a good grip on how much the 2020 Census was going to cost. Thompson had unpacked all kinds of ways he was going to reduce the cost of the 2020 Census from the $12.5 billion price tag a decade earlier. But the IG — as I reported in several columns — didn’t believe him and raised alarms about his plans.

Those concerns were apparently behind Thompson’s sudden “retirement” last week.

Related: What the Census Bureau, and America, Needs from a New Director. [archive] (more…)

BRING IT ON: The time to review and kill hundreds of rules under the CRA has not yet begun. [archive]

In the first three months of the new administration, Congress and President Trump have killed 13 misguided, burdensome, and job-killing regulations that were sent to Congress near the end of Obama’s tenure. . . .

The 13 laws now forbid the respective agencies from ever issuing a “substantially similar” regulation like those disapproved again without subsequent authorization in law. . . .

The first issue that emerged after our theory was explained by Kimberley Strassel in her January 26 WSJ Potomac Watch column [archive] is whether there were many significant rules that were never sent to Congress. PLF and our partner organizations at RedTapeRollback.com [archive] have already uncovered many hundreds in a few months since we started looking. . . .

The most important remaining question is how the CRA, with its time-limited suspension of certain normal congressional procedures, could apply to rules that were originally published years ago. An examination of the statute, however, confirms that the first sentence of the CRA provides that “Before a rule can take effect” the issuing agency shall formally submit it to each house of Congress and GAO. So even if the rules were thought to be in effect before delivery to Congress, they weren’t lawfully in effect. . . .

Paul Larkin was the first to publish a thorough and careful explanation of why the expedited procedures to kill a covered rule under the CRA did not commence until it was formally submitted to Congress. We featured his scholarly paper [archive] . . .

Below is my own summation of the four reasons why the CRA special review procedures cannot run or expire before rules are submitted to Congress. Readers are invited to go on line and print the text of the CRA. [archive] Compare the analysis below to the Act’s text and you’ll then know why the agency’s failure to submit rules to Congress as the law requires will have consequences—and why the time to review and kill many hundreds of rules not previously sent to Congress under the CRA has not yet begun.

GOOD SUMMARY: Trump moves on aluminum under Section 232; Steel investigation update. [archive]

Just one week after launching a national security investigation of steel imports [PDF; archive] under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, President Trump has announced plans to institute a similar investigation regarding aluminum. . . .

President Trump’s memorandum on the Section 232 aluminum investigation largely mirrors his prior memorandum on the Section 232 steel investigation. Both memoranda note that “[c]ore industries such as steel, aluminum, vehicles, aircraft, shipbuilding, and semiconductors are critical elements of our manufacturing and defense industrial bases.” Both memoranda emphasize the need to defend these core industries “against unfair practices and other abuses.” Both memoranda assert that “global markets” are “distorted by large volumes of excess capacity” and observe that this excess capacity “discourages long-term investment in the industry.” Finally, both memoranda emphasize that other efforts at controlling overcapacity have been unsuccessful. . . .

The Commerce Department determines the effect of imports on national security based on the quantity of those imports, and other circumstances related to importation. The Commerce Department judges national security requirements based on a number of factors, including the domestic production needed for national defense requirements, the capacity of domestic industries to meet national defense requirements, and existing and anticipated availability of human resources, raw materials, and other supplies essential to national defense. . . .

According to a Commerce Department summary, [PDF] there have been 26 prior investigations under Section 232, with the first investigation occurring in 1963 and—prior to last week—the most recent investigation being initiated in 2001.

Related: Steel Imports Report: United States (December 2016), courtesy the International Trade Administration of the Department of Commerce.

Also related: Wikipedia entry on the 2002 United States steel tariff, [archive] in particular the “International response” section: (more…)

NICE: Judicial Watch Warns 11 States to Clean Voter Registration Lists or Face Federal Lawsuit. [archive]

The 11 states are: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Tennessee. The states have 90 days after receiving the letters to address the problem and provide Judicial Watch documentation showing that they have conducted a “statewide effort to conduct a program that reasonably ensures the lists of eligible voters are accurate.” Judicial Watch informed the states that should they fail to take action to correct violations of Section 8 of the NVRA, it would file suit.

Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act requires states to make a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from official lists due to “the death of the registrant” or “a change in the residence of the registrant,” and requires states to ensure noncitizens are not registered to vote.

PICK YOUR REGULATORY CAPTURE: E.P.A. Dismisses Members of Major Scientific Review Board. [archive]

The Environmental Protection Agency has dismissed at least five members of a major scientific review board . . .

In his first outings as E.P.A. administrator, Mr. Pruitt has made a point of visiting coal mines and pledging that his agency will seek to restore that industry . . .

[Spokesman J.P.] Freire said the agency wanted “to take as inclusive an approach to regulation as possible.”

“We want to expand the pool of applicants” for the scientific board, he said, “to as broad a range as possible, to include universities that aren’t typically represented and issues that aren’t typically represented.” . . .

The scientists dismissed from the 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors received emails from an agency official informing them that their three-year terms had expired and would not be renewed. That was contrary, the scientists said, to what they had been told by officials at the agency in January, just before Mr. Trump’s inauguration. .
. .

Representative Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who is the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, wrote the House-passed bill intended to restock the Science Advisory Board with more members from the business world.

“In recent years, S.A.B. experts have become nothing more than rubber stamps who approve all of the E.P.A.’s regulations,” Mr. Smith said at a House hearing in February. “The E.P.A. routinely stacks this board with friendly scientists who receive millions of dollars in grants from the federal government. The conflict of interest here is clear.”

HMM: ‘Top Secret’ State Dep’t Employee Charged With Concealing Contacts With Chinese Agents. [archive]

Candace Marie Claiborne, 60, a long-time employee of the U.S. State Department — starting in 1999 under the Clinton administration — was arrested and charged with obstrucing an official proceeding and making false statements about her alleged contacts with agents of Communist China, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced.

Claiborne started at the State Department as an Office Management Specialist and she held a “Top Secret” clearance. Claiborne served in the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations, and in the first two months of the Trump administration. Over the years she held posts at embassies and consulates in Baghdad, Iraq, Khartoum, Sudan, and Beijing and Shanghai, China. She was arrested on March 28, 2017. She can speak Arabic, Chinese and Spanish.

From the DOJ press release linked in that article:

Claiborne . . . is required to report any contacts with persons suspected of affiliation with a foreign intelligence agency.

Despite such a requirement, the affidavit alleges, Claiborne failed to report repeated contacts with two intelligence agents of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), even though these agents provided tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and benefits to Claiborne and her family over five years. According to the affidavit, the gifts and benefits included cash wired to Claiborne’s USAA account, an Apple iPhone and laptop computer, Chinese New Year’s gifts, meals, international travel and vacations, tuition at a Chinese fashion school, a fully furnished apartment, and a monthly stipend. Some of these gifts and benefits were provided directly to Claiborne, the affidavit alleges, while others were provided through a co-conspirator.

According to the affidavit, Claiborne noted in her journal that she could “Generate 20k in 1 year” working with one of the PRC agents, who, shortly after wiring $2,480 to Claiborne, tasked her with providing internal U.S. Government analyses on a U.S.-Sino Strategic Economic Dialogue that had just concluded.

Claiborne, who allegedly confided to a co-conspirator that the PRC agents were “spies,” willfully misled State Department background investigators and FBI investigators about her contacts with those agents, the affidavit states. After the State Department and FBI investigators contacted her, Claiborne also instructed her co-conspirators to delete evidence connecting her to the PRC agents, the affidavit alleges.

HEH: DHS speeds high-profile deportations; Democrats call changes mean-spirited. [archive]

For years, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had a policy of holding off on deportation of someone if members of Congress had written legislation granting them legal status — something known as a “private bill.” But Thomas Homan, acting director at ICE, notified Congress late last week that his agency will no longer automatically follow that practice, saying it would run afoul of President Trump’s new executive order pushing deportation for criminals and public safety risks.

ICE will now only stop a deportation if it gets a specific request from the chairman of the Judiciary Committee or the relevant subcommittee in either the House or Senate. And ICE will only allow one stay, Mr. Homan said, meaning that illegal immigrants can’t be protected indefinitely by congressional request.

In practice, the number of people affected is small. Just 27 private bills were introduced in the last Congress, spanning 2015 and 2016. So far this year 15 private bills have been filed, suggesting an uptick — but still far from a flood of requests. The bills rarely go anywhere, however. No private bills were signed into law in either of the last two Congresses, and just three have been enacted over the last decade.

Mr. Homan said since so few of the immigration bills ever become law, holding off on deportations doesn’t make sense. “The stay mechanism, combined with the repeated introduction of bills, which are rarely, if ever enacted, could prevent ICE from removing aliens who fall within the enforcement priorities outline [by the president], including those who pose a risk to public safety or national security,” Mr. Homan wrote.

WE’LL SEE: Can West Virginia’s coal jobs come back? [archive]

Can coal really hope for a lasting revival in West Virginia? Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, is upbeat.

He says regulatory “overreach” by the previous administration “paralyzed the coal industry,” but that since the start of the year “the attitude has been very, very positive.” Economists are not so optimistic: many say the gains are illusory — and warn against equating a small, short-term improvement with a genuine resurgence. . . .

The fracking boom has drastically lowered prices, leading natural gas to overtake thermal coal in US electricity generation, shrinking the share of coal to 30 percent. Industry officials say even Trump’s lifeline to coal-fired power plants, with the suspension of clean air rules, will not alter the move towards using the cleaner fuel in new plants.

And with an huge oversupply of steel in the world market, even demand for higher-price metallurgical coal is not expected to pick up — unless domestic demand for steel jumps dramatically, for example if Trump follows through on promises of a massive infrastructure project.

Related: Stephen Moore: Coal’s Colossal Comeback. [archive] “Buried in an otherwise-humdrum jobs report was the jaw-dropping pronouncement by the Department of Labor that mining jobs in America were up by 11,000 in March. Since the low point in October 2016, and following years of painful layoffs in the mining industry, the mining sector has added 35,000 jobs.”

LYING PRESS: Boys accused of sexual assault of Twin Falls 5-year-old plead guilty. [archive] “Prosecutors and police said a sexual assault did occur, but many of the details — the knife, that it was a rape, sharing the video, even the defendants’ ethnicities — were wrong.” (The boys are third-world refugees, a detail buried in the story.)

Not a rape? Decide for yourself. Here’s a transcript [archive] of an interview with the victim’s father:

Stranahan: “So you’ve seen that video?”

Victim’s Father: “Yes.”

Stranahan: “Wow, that’s… I… I hadn’t heard that.”

Victim’s Mother: “I haven’t seen it. I just can’t.”

Victim’s Father: “With her anxiety and with her condition I did not allow her to see that. I did not watch the whole thing, like I said, I watched about thirty seconds of it. . . .”

Victim’s Father: “Thirty seconds showed them in the laundry room, they pulled my daughter around, pushed her up against the wall, pulled her pants off, he dropped his pants, he was trying to get her from behind, you know, they only… no, for the boy that was trying to do it he was, you know, he was only seven to nine years old, so not a lot of… he didn’t know what he was really doing, as you’d expect. My daughter didn’t really, was trying to fight him a little bit, she finally got away, pulled her pants up, ran around to the side of a corner, ran inside a washing machine, hunched down, shaking in fear, while he danced around with his pants down, laughing at her, pointing at her, with all the other boys – you could hear them in the background, doing the same thing – and that’s all I watched. Because after that I was just… man, I don’t want to see any more of this. If I do, I’m gonna do something I shouldn’t do.”

Stranahan: “Could you tell how long the clip was? You only watched thirty seconds, but did you see how long it was?”

Victim’s Father: “I didn’t check. I know it was a couple minutes.”

Stranahan: “A couple minutes.”

Victim’s Father: “I know there was a lot more that happened that was told to me by the prosecutor who had watched the video. More after that, you know, he went back to her, tried doing the front, he, um… oral sex with, you know, oral with her, he shoved it in her mouth…”

Victim’s Mother: “Which is considered a rape.”

Victim’s Father: “He peed all over her in her mouth, all over her body, her face, head… you know, totally defiled her, I mean…”

“POOF-BERRIES”: “Morality, at least in the modern age, is the set of rules the girls use to control the boys, which is why the prim-faced moralizers of today are running around trying to stamp out anything that smacks of masculinity.” [archive]

ANDREW JOYCE: Reflections on the History of the Jewish Hoax. [archive]

The reality of the tradition of Jewish power and economic exploitation during this period has been smothered by an extremely effective Judenscherz based, like the accounts of Josephus and Philo, on fictionalized accounts of extreme violence. Historian Jonathan Elukin writes that “violence is traditionally perceived to be at the core of the Jewish experience in Medieval Europe.”[10] Like the earlier accounts, we see multiple references to spontaneous “rising levels of anti-Jewish polemic, accusations of atrocities, physical attacks, and finally expulsion.”[11] However, contrary to the Judenscherz, violence was in fact extremely rare, and even its alleged high point, the Second Crusade, “brought with it little actual violence against European Jewry.”[12] The much-lamented ‘blood libel,’ supposedly the arch-provocation for much of this alleged violence, was in reality so sparse and ineffectual against entrenched Jewish power that “most Jews lived their entire lives without direct experience of those accusations.”[13]

All of this is of course very reminiscent of the Judenscherz of the Russian pogroms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, also of alleged atrocities committed by the German armed forces during World War Two. In these instances, allegations of extreme violence played a key role in galvanising Jewish cohesion and manipulating non-Jews — in the case of the Russian ‘pogroms,’ manipulating Western Whites into accepting millions of Jewish economic migrants masquerading as ‘refugees.’ Then, as during the current invasion of Muslims and Africans, Europeans were inundated with stories of suffering, resulting in an outpouring of empathy. During a British parliamentary consultation on the ‘pogroms’ in 1905, a Rabbi Michelson claimed that “the atrocities had been so fiendish that they could find no parallel even in the most barbarous annals of the most barbarous peoples.”[14] . . .

It was only in the 2000s that the Judenscherz of the Russian pogroms came under systematic attack when Catholic scholar John Doyle Klier (1944–2007) began publishing on the subject, in turn revealing the mechanical and procedural elements in the development of a Jewish hoax.

KEVIN MACDONALD: The Roman Variant of Indo-European Social Organization: Militarization, Aristocratic Government, and Openness to Conquered Peoples.

• Part 1 [archive]
• Part 2 [archive]

PCA, OPC, SJW: Gender Apartheid: Full Transcript of Truth’s Table Podcast.

Here is a full, word-for-word transcript of the “Gender Apartheid” episode of the Truth’s Table podcast, in which prominent PCA [Presbyterian Church in America] and OPC [Orthodox Presbyterian Church] personalities made outrageously heretical statements, passed off radical feminism and liberation theology as biblical truth, stated that “gender is a social construct,” said that there are two sexes AND two genders, apologized to “transgender image-bearers” for not including their perspective, and said that because of rampant “toxic masculinity” in Reformed and evangelical churches, some women are now or soon will be “literally losing their lives.” The full transcript is available after the introduction and background. . . .

Here are some of the most outrageous statements: (All bolding is mine.)

“we understand that gender is a social construct, so we’re technically not actually talking about gender”

“we understand that the extrabiblical confinement of gender roles has really damaged a lot of our family in the church. So you’re going to hear us deal a lot more with this cisgender male/female dynamic today.”

“the Gospel actually tears down the dividing wall of hostility between the sexes and between the genders”

“At conferences that I’m often invited to, are often…always have to do with race, racism, racial reconciliation, trying to do justice in those spheres. But yet completely ignore the toxic patriarchy that is so embedded within the church”

“particularly in white evangelical circles, I think the gender apartheid that occurs is an outworking of the purity culture”

More at the link.

One interesting and sad detail from the post linked above is that PCA pastor Todd Pruitt responded to the podcast on his blog, but removed his post after he was called a racist. But it is still available here. [archive]

DOJ: Blacks committed about half of all murders in 2015. [archive] “The Department of Justice has released Murder data by race for 2015.” [archive]

STEVE SAILER on Tiger Children taking over the social justice jihadi racket. [archive] “You might think that just because you are poor and black that you’d get a leg up in the struggle for, say, a leftist NGO job, but … look out! The hardest-charging immigrants are coming from 10,000 miles away to outhustle you for your black privilege. These well-fed scions of Asia’s upper classes just want it all more than some poor African-American kid from the slums and they’re willing to be the most insufferable brown-nosers ever to get their hands on some juicy black privilege.”

Sailer quotes a comment from one of the articles he links:

This is a key reason why I find myself more and more opposed to legal immigration altogether each year.

His dad worked at Citi and has his own hedgefund… Great, model immigrant, right? His son is still stealing slots from our “top” schools and Affirmative Action rights from blacks, all the while bashing the United States, our history, and our culture.

The boy has no original thoughts, has done nothing but pad his resume, but is still showered with praise and support from Hillary, Obama, and the other loser. Oh, dear, and he’s still oppressed!

It’s also sickening how our culture actively pushes ethnic minorities to despise the US. It’s just madness. Many immigrants come relieved and grateful to be in America, but then their children find new ways to feel oppressed, largely because they’re urged to in school.

In summary, I don’t see the benefit in accepting immigrants if their children will take our spots and hate us while doing it. If you’re able to work on STEM projects, maybe, but if you’re just here to enrich yourself in fields like finance or law, then stay home and fix your own country.

IF I HAD A SON: Caught on video: Mob attack on 14 yr old at King of Prussia mall. [archive]

RICARDO DUCHESNE: There Is Nothing the Alt Right Can Do about the Effeminacy of White Men. [archive]

My view is that white men are the weakest in the world today because they inhabit the most comfortable, easygoing civilization. Prolonged luxurious living, where food is easily obtainable, as the ancient Greeks understood, breeds indulgent men, malleability, and softness. This weakness is a natural consequence of the cyclical nature of history. . . .

When humans face anarchy and savagery, they accept the necessity of behaving in ways that are useful for protecting themselves. They achieve this by creating order, which leads to civilized behavior. But once they achieve comfort through civilization, they focus more on amusements, growing dissolute in luxury and incapable of the discipline and seriousness required to sustain a civilization.

These underlying psychological dispositions were long understood by the ancient Greeks and Romans as common-sense observations about how the demands of survival and living without comforts nurtured strength of character, whereas a life of luxury and easy acquisitions encouraged effeminacy and licentiousness. .
. .

Decline is irreversible. The relentless occupation of the West by hordes of Muslims and Africans is an expression of White male decadence and effeminacy. Only out of the coming chaos and violence will strong White men rise to resurrect the West.

IT’S HER JOB: Susan Rice Has Long History Of Lying To Cover For Obama. [archive]

With the possible exception of Valerie Jarrett, there was no aide closer to former President Obama than Susan Rice.

Rice, the former national security adviser reportedly responsible for making dozens of requests to unmask the names of Trump associates in raw intelligence reports, was so close to Obama that one former National Security Council staffer said the president “views her like a sister,” according to a flowery 2014 Newsweek profile headlined “Susan Rice: Obama’s Right-Hand Woman.” [archive]

Rice served as the ambassador to the United Nations during Obama’s first term. It was in this capacity that she misled the public about the 2012 attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi. . . .

Rice herself claimed ignorance [archive] of Trump team surveillance when asked about it before Fox News reporter Adam Housely revealed her role in the unmasking. . . .

Rice embraced the 2014 deal in which President Obama freed five senior Taliban commanders and high-value terrorists from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for U.S. Army soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who deserted in 2009 and collaborated with the Taliban for the next five years.

Eight U.S. soldiers were killed in the effort to find and recover Bergdahl, who emailed his father just before deserting, claiming he was “ashamed” to be American. In June 2014, Rice went on ABC News to justify the prisoner swap, falsely stating that Bergdahl “served the United States with honor and distinction.” The next year, the Army charged Bergdahl with desertion.

BACKWARDS ASSIMILATION: UK: Subway removes ham and bacon from nearly 200 stores and offers halal meat only after ‘strong demand’ from Muslims. [archive]

Fast food giant Subway has removed ham and bacon from almost 200 outlets, and switched to halal meat alternatives in an attempt to please its Muslim customers.

It has confirmed turkey ham and turkey rashers will be used instead in 185 of its stores, where all the meat will now be prepared according to halal rules.

The chain, which has around 1,500 outlets across the UK, explained its decision by saying it had to balance animal welfare concerns with ‘the views of religious communities’.

INTERESTING TAKE: Trump is not cucking on regime change: Another boomerang operation. [archive]

Trump ran his campaign on preferring a “bad guy” like Assad, if the only alternative is jihadist whackjobs who will spread chaos and violence all around the Middle East and the wider world.

Now, he pins the blame on Assad and says it’s changed his mind. He says he’s famously flexible and not a rigid ideologue, so his plans are subject to change.

But when you listen to interviews from 10, 20, and 30 years ago, it’s clear that he is the least flexible or mutable person who has ever taken high office. At least on the very important matters like trade, re-industrialization, immigration, healthcare, and foreign policy, all fitting into the broad theme of nationalism and populism. He even uses the same phrases and intonation (1999: “Saudi Arabia is ripping us off big-league“). . . .

What does change from Trump is his moment-to-moment messaging, image, and presentation — meant to throw his enemies onto the wrong track, keep them guessing, and lure them into letting their guard down. . . .

The “tell” that Trump is playing his enemies yet again is how over-the-top his denunciations have been about the inhuman barbarity against little beautiful babies. This is the same guy who responded to Bill O’Reilly’s attempt to provoke him into denouncing Putin as a “killer” with, “Yeah, well, there’s a lot of killers out there — you think we’re so innocent?”

He knows which side is likely behind the attack, if not the specific jihadi group / state enabler / deep state operatives. Those specifics will take some time to figure out, and he needs to be left alone by his enemies in the meantime.

Rather than dismissing the attack on Twitter as “another obvious false flag trying to lure our stupid leaders into wasting lives and money in the Middle East,” he’s going to turn it back around on the real perpetrators.

In order for that boomerang to inflict maximum damage, he’s going to have to get people’s emotions on fire about how intolerable the act was. Then when we read a tweet about how he “just found out” that it was really, say, al-Nusra, helped along by Turkey, with CIA support — he can call for greater severity against the jihadists (torture to get information), a clean break with the wrong-side-of-history nations like Turkey / Saudi Arabia, and heads to roll among deep state warmongers.

UPDATE: From the same author: War was green-lit before Trump took office, NOT a betrayal. [archive] “The military has goals of its own . . . If they’re going to go along with Trump being the leader of the nation, he’s going to have to give them something they want as well. And considering that they could stage a coup against him, they have considerable leverage over him.” Say what?

OF COURSE: IRS Seized Millions of Dollars from Innocent Citizens Because It Was Easier Than Going After Crooks. [archive]

The IRS seized millions dollars from innocent individuals and businesses because it was easier than targeting terrorists and drug dealers, a new report [archive] from the Treasury Department’s internal watchdog has revealed.

A report from Treasury’s Inspector General found that the IRS misused a law aimed at cracking down on organized crime and terrorism to target innocent individuals and businesses. Agents adopted a policy of seizing cash before investigating for other wrongdoing because it was just easier to seize the money of innocent people than hardened criminals and terrorists.

“One of the reasons why legal source cases were pursued was that the Department of Justice had encouraged task forces to engage in ‘quick hits,’ where property was more quickly seized and more quickly resolved through negotiation, rather than pursuing cases with other criminal activity (such as drug trafficking and money laundering), which are more time-consuming,” according to the report.

POPULATION: Thinking Outside the Box – Environmental scientist investigates if politics is concealing ‘America’s greatest environmental issue’. [archive] This is a book review of Pandora’s Green Box by Paul Clark.

I am delighted to see the appearance of a new book on America’s disastrous and unsustainable immigration-driven population growth by a fellow environmental scientist . . . Clark is a professional environmental scientist with 10 years of experience in the field, a bachelor degree’s from Towson University in Maryland, and a Master’s in Environmental Science from Johns Hopkins University. His master’s research at Hopkins focused on the impacts of population growth on America’s natural environment. . . .

The book is divided into two parts or segments: population and the environment in the United States, and the effects of politics on the population issue in our country. His concluding chapter — “America’s Greatest Environmental Challenge” — answers the question that he raises at the outset: Is politics concealing the most important environmental threat our country faces early in the twenty-first century?

Roy Beck and I came at this question from a somewhat different angle at the outset of the new millennium 16 years ago in our 2000 paper, “The Environmental Movement’s Retreat from Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization (1970-1998): A First Draft of History,” published in the scholarly Journal of Policy History. Paul Clark’s book represents, in essence, a second draft of this unhappy history. With regard to immigration, he reaches conclusions consistent with our own, but expands upon them, provides much additional documentation, and covers the more recent, wholesale neglect of the population cause by the so-called environmental movement, or what Beck and I termed less enthusiastically, the Environmental Establishment.

Sadly, the situation has only gone from bad to worse. In 2000, Beck and I documented “the virtual abandonment by national environmental groups of U.S. population stabilization as an actively pursued goal,” and called this “perhaps the most striking change” in the environmental movement since the era of the first Earth Day in 1970. But in recent years, as documented by Clark and others, environmental elites are no longer just ignoring U.S. population growth because of their squeamishness about publicly acknowledging the need to reduce immigration if U.S. population growth is ever to be tamed. Now, in effect, these environmentalish posers have actively endorsed endless U.S. population growth by shilling for “comprehensive immigration reform.” This misnamed “reform” is an environmental travesty that would grant amnesty to many millions of illegal aliens and double future legal immigration levels.

HEARTISTE: An American Pietà. [archive]

OLD NEWS VS. NEW NEWS: The Full 60 Minutes Interview Transcript With Mike Cernovich. [archive]

Scott Pelley: You wrote in August a story about Hillary Clinton’s medical condition the headlines said, “Hillary Clinton has Parkinson’s disease. Position confirms.” That’s quite a headline.

Mike Cernovich: Yeah, Dr. Ted Noel had se-sent a story to me anonymously, that I checked out, analyzing her medical condition. And –
Scott Pelley: It isn’t true.

Mike Cernovich: How do you know?

Scott Pelley: Well, she doesn’t seem to have any signs of Parkinson’s disease.

Mike Cernovich: She had a seizure and froze up walking into her motorcade that day caught by a citizen journalist.

Scott Pelley: Did you, well, she had pneumonia. I mean –

Mike Cernovich: How do you know?

Scott Pelley: Well, because that’s what was reported.

Mike Cernovich: By whom? Who told you that?

Scott Pelley: Well, the campaign told us that.

Mike Cernovich: Why would you trust a campaign? Why would you trust the Hillary Clinton flats?

Scott Pelley: Why would you trust this doctor nobody every heard of?

Mike Cernovich: Why would you trust the doctors that go on CNN? Right because nobody’s every heard of him. And that’s the issue, one of legitimacy and social constructs and social statuses. Dr Ted Noel, board certified physician, he reached an analysis based on logic and reason that could be attacked using logic and reason.

Related: Ted Noel: 60 Minutes is Fake News. In this video, Noel says that he was never contacted by 60 Minutes for their hit on him.

THE COST OF SCHOOLING BLACKS: Recent articles from Narrative Collapse:

• What is $666 million a year for education buying Detroit? [archive] “Major media outlets have reported that nearly half of Detroit is functionally illiterate. Since 2010, Detroit High School proficiency rates have only dropped. Why does the school district with the highest cost per pupil have the worst-performing pupils?”
• Michigan’s vast Asian-Black academic performance gap. [archive] “We already discussed the fact that Detroit schools receive more money per pupil than other districts, but have lower test scores. Does this trend hold true for other majority black districts? Yes.”
• Somali, Hmong and Minnesota’s wild academic racial gaps. [archive] “Minneapolis Public Schools had a budget of $654 million and 36,370 students. This is a staggering $18k per student. Despite such lavish spending, Asians, Hispanics, and blacks all performed much worse in Minneapolis than the rest of the state. The increased academic performance gap can not be explained by a lack of money, since these students got more money than most of the rest of the state.”

A PITY: DC Police confirm that Corrina Mehiel was tortured. [archive]

Corrina Mehiel is the 34-year-old white female that was stabbed to death in her home [archive] by a black male on March 20th.

Today the DC Police confirmed that she was in fact tortured. Police say El Hadji Alpha Madiou Toure, 28, attacked Mehiel in her home and tied her up. Police do not believe that Mehiel had ever met Toure before.

The link in the above excerpt leads here: Social justice activist found bound and stabbed to death in DC. [archive] “Mehiel is described as an artist and dedicated social justice activist. According to her friend Mel Chin, visiting professor at GW’s Corcoran School of Art and Design, ‘Corrina was a feminist she wanted to end to violence against women. She was committed to fairness and justice, and always fought for the rights of others. For example, she’d be the first to point out that victims of violence in D.C. are disproportionately people of color.'”

What a loss.

HMM: Prenatal Exposure to Progesterone Affects Sexual Orientation in Humans. [archive]

A case–control double-blind design was used drawing on existing data from the US/Denmark Prenatal Development Project. Index cases were exposed to lutocyclin (bioidentical progesterone = C21H30O2; MW: 314.46) and no other hormonal preparation. Controls were matched on 14 physical, medical, and socioeconomic variables. A structured interview conducted by a psychologist and self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data on sexual orientation, self-identification, attraction to the same and other sex, and history of sexual behavior with each sex. Compared to the unexposed, fewer exposed males and females identified as heterosexual and more of them reported histories of same-sex sexual behavior, attraction to the same or both sexes, and scored higher on attraction to males. Measures of heterosexual behavior and scores on attraction to females did not differ significantly by exposure. We conclude that, regardless of sex, exposure appeared to be associated with higher rates of bisexuality. Prenatal progesterone may be an underappreciated epigenetic factor in human sexual and psychosexual development and, in light of the current prevalence of progesterone treatment during pregnancy for a variety of pregnancy complications, warrants further investigation. . . .

In summary, we observed consistent findings across samples of men and women prenatally exposed to exogenous progesterone for a set of variables directly reflective of sexual orientation. Relative to unexposed controls, prenatal exposure to progesterone was significantly associated with: (1) decreased likelihood of self-identification as heterosexual; (2) increased likelihood of having engaged in same-sex sexual behaviors; (3) increased likelihood of reporting attraction to the same or both sexes, and (4) higher scores on the attraction to males scale. Progesterone exposure was not associated with a decrease in measured heterosexual behavior. Among progesterone-exposed cases, non-heterosexual identity was shown to be associated with higher total dosages and longer duration of prenatal exposure to progesterone. . . .

Our groups were carefully matched on 14 highly relevant prenatal, perinatal, and maternal factors which should serve to minimize confounds in comparisons between exposed and control subjects. . . . Follow-up studies would be required to evaluate the levels of same-sex behavior and/or attraction that may have been revealed in subsequent decades. In keeping with the strengths of the current design, we found consistent statistically significant effects across a number of different measures supporting our hypotheses.

CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES: Tsunami of UACs May Be Nearing an End. [archive]

The crisis of unaccompanied minors (UACs) and family units being apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol is showing signs of going from a tsunami to a steady and more manageable flow, providing cause for cautious optimism and relief for communities inundated by unaccompanied minors and the horrific crimes that have recently occurred.

Recent data released by the Border Patrol shows what may be construed as a last ditch effort by UACs to cross the border and be placed in more than a hundred communities in the United States by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).

While the Border Patrol UAC apprehensions [archive] from December to February in FY 2017 were up by 595 from the previous year, 1,922 were apprehended in February (the first full month after the inauguration), the lowest February apprehension number in five years. (See Table 1.)

RULE OF LAWLESSNESS: 31,725 Illegals From Terror Hotbeds Still On Loose. [archive]

A staggering 31,725 illegal immigrants from countries that aid and abet terrorist organizations received deportation orders from U.S. immigration courts from 2003 through 2015, but what became of them is anyone’s guess, finds a report by a former immigration judge at the behest of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Immigration court records are silent.

In fact, some 3,095 of these aliens fled their hearings, among them 338 people from Iran, Sudan, and Syria, nations the State Department declares state sponsors of terrorism.

Mark H. Metcalf, a former judge on the Miami Immigration Court, authored the report that documents how illegal aliens easily cross U.S. borders or enter on forged travel documents and, when ordered to court, ignore their court dates.

Federal law — 18 U.S.C. § 3146 — imposes penalties from one year to 15 years in prison for those who fail to show up for federal court proceedings. Yet those who dodge immigration court are treated much differently. They can literally abandon their cases without fear of incarceration or removal and, in turn, imperil national and domestic security. American immigration courts, in fact, have the highest failure to appear rate of any court-system in the nation.

From 1996 through 2015, just under 1 million people the U.S. alleged were present illegally or had forfeited their right to remain by committing crimes simply missed their court dates and became fugitives, most never to be seen again.

“Over the past 20 years, 37 percent of all aliens free pending their trials — 918,098 out of 2,498,375 — never showed for court,” Metcalf explains. “Courtrooms, like borders, are porous. On average, 46,000 people each year vanished from proceedings created specifically for those claiming persecution in the lands they called home.”

UPDATE: FakeHateCrimes.org [archive] The archive link here shows entries 265 through 297. See a previous post for archives of earlier entries.

NO SANCTUARY FOR CITIZENS: Sanctuary Cities Free 253 Illegal-Alien Criminals In 2 Weeks: Outlaws becoming ‘main beneficiaries’ of non-cooperation policies. [archive]

New York City is among the uncooperative jurisdictions, having passed a local law in November 2014 that states the police department will not honor ICE detainers. Orange County and Washington, D.C. also have policies that limit cooperation with ICE. In addition to the many cities and counties on the list, ICE also lists the entire states of California and Connecticut as being uncooperative.

ICE began issuing Weekly Declined Detainer Outcome Reports last week in pursuance of President Trump’s January executive order “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States.” [archive]

The agency has issued only two reports so far; the first one covered the week from Jan. 28 to Feb. 3. It listed 206 declined detainers throughout the country, with 142 from Travis County, Texas alone. The Travis County sheriff’s office has a policy of only accepting detainers when accompanied by a court order or when the subject of the request is charged with or has been convicted of capital murder, first degree murder, aggravated sexual assault or continuous smuggling of persons.