#18026

SOUTH DAYTONA — The windows of Volusia County’s Republican Party headquarters were found shot out Monday morning and four bullet holes were

#18027

Twitter has verified the official account of the Muslim Brotherhood, after previously banning conservatives and celebrity Trump supporters.

#18028

Actor Brandon Dixon and the cast of the Broadway show lectured Mike Pence Friday night about their fears of a Trump presidency.

#18029

To the editor: After the presidential elections in 2008 and 2012, those who expressed serious reservations and concerns about the Obama administration’s policies and personnel were told by many of today’s same protesters to “deal with it.” (“ Donald Trump's first picks for top jobs show how he plans to govern from the hard right ,” Nov. 18)

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#18032

Nigel Farage says wants to be a "bridge" between the UK and Donald Trump's incoming US administration.

#18033

The national police officers union says the shirts are offensive. A third party, Old Glory, is selling the shirts on Walmart's website.

#18034

Both groups want to distort the Constitution to serve their own purposes.

#18035

Evil. And they wonder why people distrust them.

#18036

Senate conservatives were eager this week to vote for the first step in repealing Obamacare. But that also meant a vote for a measure that says the public debt will increase by $9 trillion over the next 10 years – the very sort of fiscal nightmare those conservatives have been fighting for years.

#18037

Barack Obama did not go out quietly. His unquiet final acts were overshadowed, in part by a successor who refused to come in quietly, and in part by Obama’s own endless, sentimental farewell tour. But there was nothing nostalgic or sentimental about Obama’s last acts. Two of them were simply shocking.
Perhaps we should have known. At the 2015 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, he joked about whether he had a bucket list: “Well, I have something that rhymes with bucket list.”
Turns out, he wasn’t kidding. Commuting the sentence of Chelsea Manning, one of the great traitors of our time, is finger-in-the-eye willfulness. Obama took 28 years off the sentence of a soldier who stole and then released through WikiLeaks almost half a million military reports plus another quarter-million State Department documents.
The cables were embarrassing; the military secrets were almost certainly deadly. They jeopardized the lives not just of American soldiers on two active fronts — Iraq and Afghanistan — but of locals who were, at great peril, secretly aiding and abetting us. After Manning’s documents release, the Taliban “went on a killing spree” (according to intelligence sources quoted by Fox News) of those who fit the description of individuals working with the United States.
Moreover, we will be involved in many shadowy conflicts throughout the world. Locals will have to choose between us and our enemies. Would you choose a side that is so forgiving of a leaker who betrays her country — and you?
Even the word “leaker” is misleading. Leak makes it sound like a piece of information a whistleblower gives Woodward and Bernstein to expose misdeeds in high office. This was nothing of the sort. It was the indiscriminate dumping of a mountain of national-security secrets certain to bring harm to American troops, allies, and interests.
Obama considered Manning’s 35-year sentence excessive. On the contrary. It was lenient. Manning could have been — and in previous ages, might well have been — hanged for such treason. Now she walks after seven years.
What makes this commutation so spectacularly in-your-face is its hypocrisy. Here is a president who spent weeks banging the drums over the harm inflicted by WikiLeaks with its release of stolen materials and e-mails during the election campaign. He demanded a report immediately. He imposed sanctions on Russia. He preened about the sanctity of the American political process.
Over what? What exactly was released? A campaign chairman’s private e-mails and Democratic National Committee chatter, i.e. campaign gossip, backbiting, indiscretions, and cynicism. The usual stuff, embarrassing but not dangerous. No national-security secrets, no classified material, no exposure of anyone to harm, just to ridicule and opprobrium.
What better demonstration of bona fides than a gratuitous attack on Israel? Or the about-face on Manning and WikiLeaks?
The other last-minute Obama bombshell occurred four weeks earlier when, for the first time in nearly a half-century, the United States abandoned Israel on a crucial Security Council resolution, allowing the passage of a condemnation that will plague both Israel and its citizens for years to come. After eight years of reassurance, Obama seized the chance — free of political accountability for himself and his potential Democratic successor — to do permanent damage to Israel. (The U.S. has no power to reverse the Security Council resolution.)
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. who went on to be a great Democratic senator, once argued passionately that in the anti-American, anti-democratic swamp of the U.N., America should act unwaveringly in opposition and never give in to the jackals. Obama joined the jackals.
Why? To curry favor with the international Left? After all, Obama leaves office as a relatively young man of 55. His next chapter could very well be as a leader on the international stage, perhaps at the U.N. (secretary-general?) or some transnational (ostensibly) human-rights organization. What better demonstration of bona fides than a gratuitous attack on Israel? Or the about-face on Manning and WikiLeaks? Or the freeing of a still-unrepentant Puerto Rican terrorist, Oscar Lopez Rivera, also pulled off with three days remaining in his presidency?
A more likely explanation, however, is that these are acts not of calculation but of authenticity. This is Obama being Obama. He leaves office as he came in: a man of the Left, but possessing the intelligence and discipline to suppress his more radical instincts. As of November 9, 2016, suppression was no longer necessary.
We’ve just gotten a glimpse of his real self. From now on, we shall see much more of it.
— Charles Krauthammer’s e-mail address is [email protected]. © 2017, The Washington Post Writers Group

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All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

#18039

President Trump Takes Calls with World Leaders: Germany, France, Australia, Russia, Japan

#18040

Live from my safe space! After Milo MILO Addresses The UC Berkeley Riots this is a good summary of the media bias. Although some like Philip DeFranco condemn...

#18041

It’s no big secret that technology is taking over a lot of things in our lives. Instead of telephone calls and e-mails, we have Facebook and text messages. Instead of playing board games and going outside, we have digital video games to play with each other. Physical books are also being rendered obsolete by eReaders. This trend is also affecting our news sources, as many publications are shifting resources away from print towards digital. Because of this, many suggest print is either dying or dead. Is this true? And if it is true, what does it say about the mainstream media? Jack Shafer of Politico wrote an interesting article not only making a case for print but also discussing the implications of the media shift towards digital. He refers to a study conducted by Neil Thurman that shows 88.5% of readers still read print, whereas 7.49% read on mobile and only 4% on PC. A University of Texas scholar conducted a similar study that criticized the digital shift, noting print?

#18042

President Trump’s administration started off strong on policy but predictably chaotic on messaging.
Here are his grades thus far:
Trump’s First Week: B+
Trump’s Second Week: A-

#18043

Commentary We’re now six weeks or so into the sham presidency of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and already ...

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#18045

Democrats are pushing for Jeff Session to resign over undisclosed communications with Russian officials. Jake Novak says there is no merit to these claims.

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The president’s power over states is limited, but aides say he can use the bully pulpit.

#18047

Former President Obama’s administration spent a record-shattering $36.2 million on legal costs beating back Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, according to an analysis from the Associated Press. Obama, who once hailed his administration as “the most transparent administration in history,” fielded a record-breaking influx of 788,769 FOIA requests last year alone and spent $478 million answering those requests. A whopping $36.2 million was spent fighting to keep federal records from the public eye. “President Obama’s administration was an enemy of transparency, not a proponent.” “President Obama’s administration was an enemy of transparency, not a proponent,” Tom Fitton, president of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, told LifeZette. “All the secrecy is expensive, so it’s no surprise that the numbers are what they are.” The Obama administration employed 4,263 full-time employees to handle the requests FOIA filed last year — a number that far exceeded the 142 full-time employees the previous year. As the AP noted, the administration set a record for the

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Sen. John McCain’s characterization of Kim Jong-un as a “crazy fat kid” drew a sharp response this week from Pyongyang’s foreign ministry, which called the remark “a grave provocation little short of declaration of war.”

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Former Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown was convicted of more than a dozen federal fraud charges.

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Family's private investigator: There is evidence Seth Rich had contact with WikiLeaks prior to death
It has been almost a year since Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was murdered in the nation's capital. There have been no solid answers about why he was killed until now.
