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Catholic hospitals in Ireland will be required to perform abortions. Ireland has a single payer medical system, which enables the government to dictate this.
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A proposal to split California into three states will be on the ballot in November.
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The Department of Justice plans to file more civil rights lawsuits against cities that discriminate against houses of worship.
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Andrew McCabe’s lawyer sued the Department of Justice and the FBI, claiming McCabe is being denied access to documents required to defend him against the misconduct allegations that got him fired.
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Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a large assault on the port of Hodeidah, Yemen. The Saudis say they only want to capture the seaport, the airport, and the road to Sanaa — they’re not interested in street-to-street fighting against the Houthis.
Tag: abortion
Links for 6-4-2018
- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7–2 in favor of Jack Phillips in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, but the ruling was drawn narrowly and avoided addressing First Amendment issues. Michael Farris, who represented Jack Phillips, wrote a reaction for National Review, and David French put a positive spin on the decision for the same publication. You can read the full decision here.
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The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously vacated a lower court ruling that required the federal government to facilitate an abortion for an illegal immigrant minor.
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A former Defense Intelligence Agency officer was arrested for spying on China’s behalf:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation took Ron Rockwell Hansen, 58, into custody on Saturday while he was on his way to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to get a connecting flight to China.
The department said he has been accused of trying to transmit national defense information to China and with receiving “hundreds of thousands of dollars” while acting illegally as an agent for the Chinese government.
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on China to “make a full public accounting” of the Tiananmen Square massacre, 29 years after the event.
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Two Congressmen introduced a bill that would require Chinese government-funded Confucius Institutes operating on American college campuses to register as foreign agents.
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A anti-drug police unit in South Carolina routinely conducts illegal no-knock raids, including one where they shot a Myrtle Beach man nine times, crippling him for life.
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California’s legislature voted to extend the state’s Medicaid program to illegal immigrants. This will cost the state an estimated $3 billion this fiscal year.
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Facebook sold information about its users to at least 60 device manufacturers, including Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and Amazon.
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Turkey and the U.S. agreed on a “roadmap” for the future of Manbij, Syria, but declined to say what’s on that roadmap.
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An ISIS suicide bomber targeted a gathering of Afghan clerics who are friendly with the government.
Links for 5-29-2018
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Missouri Governor Eric Greitens (R) resigned effective Friday afternoon after getting himself into scandals involving an extramarital affair and a potentially illegal fundraising scheme. Missouri’s legislature is in special session to consider what to do about him, and they could have impeached him. Lt. Governor Mike Parson will become the new governor.
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Congressman Thomas Garrett (R-VA) won’t run for re-election, and will instead spend his time being treated for alcoholism.
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The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a Planned Parenthood case challenging an Arkansas law that requires abortion doctors who dispense abortifacients to maintain contact with another doctor who has admitting privileges at a local hospital. Two of Arkansas’ three abortion clinics may close when the law goes into effect.
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A Russian journalist and critic of Vladimir Putin, Arkady Babchenko, was shot dead in Kiev, Ukraine, where he’d gone into exile.
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Japan detected another Chinese ship conducting transfers at sea with a North Korean ship, which suggests they were evading sanctions.
Links for 5-27-2018
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The USS Higgins and USS Antietam sailed to within 12 miles of artificial islands China built in the Paracel Islands chain in the South China Sea.
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Two former French intelligence officers were arrested and charged with spying for China. The two spies worked for DGSE, the French version of the CIA.
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British Prime Minister Theresa May refused to liberalize abortion laws in Northern Ireland after Irish voters approved a referendum allowing abortion.
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Four Russian soldiers were killed in Syria’s Deir al-Zor province. The Russians were working with a Syrian government artillery battery when it was attacked by rebels.
Links for 5-26-2018
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Irish voters approved a referendum by a 2:1 margin that would legalize abortion with no restrictions up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.
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Venezuela released American missionary Josh Holt after holding him without charge for two years.
Links for 5-18-2018
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A new leak to The New York Times says the FBI’s source in the Trump campaign was an informant sent to talk to George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. The informant is said to be “an American academic who teaches in Britain.”
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions told immigration judges that they can’t shunt deportation cases onto permanent wait lists, a favorite tactic of the Obama administration that amounted to de facto amnesty.
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The House Freedom Caucus sank the farm bill because GOP House leadership refused to bring Congressman Bob Goodlatte’s immigration bill up for a vote in exchange for the Freedom Caucus’ support.
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The U.S. Senate voted 76–21 to kill a bill proposed by Rand Paul that would have balanced the budget by restricting the growth of federal expenditures to 1% a year.
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The Trump administration is restoring a Reagan-era regulation that denies Title X funding to clinics that discuss abortion with patients or that share space with abortion providers. Planned Parenthood currently collects about a fifth of all Title X funding.
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Donald Trump nominated Admiral Harry Harris as ambassador to South Korea. Admiral Harris is currently head of Pacific Command. The post of ambassador to South Korea has been vacant since Trump took office. Trump originally nominated Harris to be ambassador to Australia.
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An adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae wants to see the U.S.-South Korea alliance end.
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Two North Koreans defected to South Korea by sea. One of them is a military officer.
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Ari Lieberman wrote a good summary of everything Turkey has done in response to the U.S. moving its embassy to Jerusalem.
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Iraq’s electoral commission confirmed that the bloc lead by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr won the country’s parliamentary election. Sadr’s bloc won 54 seats, the pro-Iranian Al-Fatih bloc won 47, and incumbent Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s bloc won 42.
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Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal was discharged from the hospital after spending three months recovering from an apparent assassination attempt by Russia.
Links for 3-5-2018
- John Kerry has been working with Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. and others to rescue the Iranian nuclear deal:
With the Iran deal facing its gravest threat since it was signed in 2015, Kerry has been on an aggressive yet stealthy mission to preserve it, using his deep lists of contacts gleaned during his time as the top US diplomat to try to apply pressure on the Trump administration from the outside. President Trump, who has consistently criticized the pact and campaigned in 2016 on scuttling it, faces a May 12 deadline to decide whether to continue abiding by its terms.
Kerry also met last month with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and he’s been on the phone with top European Union official Federica Mogherini, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal the private meetings. Kerry has also met with French President Emmanuel Macron in both Paris and New York, conversing over the details of sanctions and regional nuclear threats in both French and English.
This is about as blatant a violation of the Logan Act as you’ll find, but Dan McLaughlin argues Congress should repeal the Logan Act.
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The Guardian reports that the Trump administration hired an Israeli private intelligence company to investigate two Obama administration officials, Ben Rhodes and Colin Kahl, whose work was instrumental on the Iran nuclear deal. The Guardian treats this an unacceptable, but of course was OK for the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to hire a former MI6 agent (Christopher Steele) to investigate Donald Trump and his campaign, relying on Russian sources for information.
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Andrew McCarthy argues that Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller need to publicly state whether there’s a criminal case against Donald Trump and the nature of that case:
In every other independent-prosecutor investigation in modern history — Watergate, Iran-Contra, Whitewater/Lewinsky — the president and the public have known exactly what was alleged. The prosecutor was able to investigate with all the secrecy the law allows, but under circumstances in which we all understood what was being investigated and why the president was suspected of wrongdoing.
After two years, we are entitled to nothing less. The president should direct Rosenstein to outline, publicly and in detail, the good-faith basis for a criminal investigation arising out of Russia’s interference in the election — if there is one. If he can’t, Mueller’s criminal investigation should be terminated; if he can, Mueller should be compelled to explain (unless Rosenstein’s disclosure makes it clear) why he needs to interview President Trump in order to complete his work.
If Rosenstein and Mueller are reluctant to do that, it can only be because they’ve decided that not only their investigation but also their desire for secrecy take precedence over every other consideration, including the president’s capacity to govern domestically and conduct foreign policy in a dangerous world. But secrecy is not the nation’s top priority. It’s long past time to lay the cards on the table.
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Two of James Comey’s allies within the FBI, James Baker and Lisa Page, quit their jobs yesterday. Baker is joining the Brookings Institution.
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The Trump administration plans to end Temporary Protected Status for 86,000 Hondurans who happened to be in the U.S. when Hurricane Mitch hit their home country in 1999. Mark Krikorian writes that Congress needs to reform this program so presidents stop abusing it.
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Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed a fetal heartbeat bill into law, which means Iowa is now the state with the tightest restrictions on abortion. Of course implementation of the law will be blocked while it’s challenged in courts for years.
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A magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit Hawaii’s big island after Kilauea erupted and sent lava flowing through a housing subdivision.
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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and more 1,000 other protesters were arrested ahead of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration.
