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Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council attempt to start an independent investigation into the latest chemical weapons attack in Syria. Bashar al-Assad’s government says it will allow representatives from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to travel to Douma, the site of the attack.
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The New York Times reported that the FBI agents who searched Michael Cohen’s office, home, and hotel room were looking for records regarding payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Both women allegedly had affairs with Donald Trump, and both were allegedly paid for their silence in advance of the 2016 presidential election.
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Yulia Skripal, the daughter of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, left the hospital five weeks after she and her father were poisoned with Novichok, a Russian nerve agent. The U.K. government is considering giving the Skripals new identities and squirreling them away in the U.S.
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Chinese President Xi Jingping promised to lower some import tariffs, a step that would help defuse a brewing trade war with the Trump administration.
Tag: Italy
Links for 3-5-2018
- The Convention of States Project received great coverage on Steve Hilton’s Fox News show:
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Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) will finally retire effective April 1. Health issues have kept Cochran away from the Senate for much of the past year.
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Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a bill that repeals the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990.
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The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is investigating Broadcom’s proposed acquisition of Qualcomm. CFIUS asked Qualcomm to postpone a shareholder meeting to discuss Broadcom’s offer while it investigates the national security implications of the deal.
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Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova criticized the politicization of the FBI during a speech at Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center:
A pall hangs over Mueller, and a pall hangs over the DOJ. But the darkest pall hangs over the FBI, America’s premier federal law enforcement agency, which since the demise of J. Edgar Hoover has been steadfast in steering clear of politics. Even during L. Patrick Gray’s brief tenure as acting director during Watergate, it was not the FBI but Gray personally who was implicated. The current scandal pervades the Bureau. It spans from Director Comey to Deputy Director McCabe to General Counsel Baker. It spread to counterintelligence via Peter Strzok. When line agents complained about the misconduct, McCabe retaliated by placing them under investigation for leaking information.
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Planned Parenthood is the NRA of the Democratic Party, except the NRA doesn’t collect $500 million in government funding every year.
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Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal is critically ill after he was exposed to an unknown substance in Salisbury, England. Skripal was a colonel in the GRU when he was convicted of treason for spying for the U.K.; he was freed in a spy swap in 2010. There’s a good chance Russia found a way to poison him.
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A Czech court released Syrian Kurdish leader Saleh Muslim, who moved on to Germany. Now Turkey wants Germany to detain Muslim and extradite him.
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Euroskeptic and anti-immigration political parties did well in Italy’s election yesterday, but the initial result was a hung parliament.
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Candace Owens tells celebrities that we don’t care what they think:
Links for 2-20-2018
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Donald Trump reportedly wants the ATF and Department of Justice to ban bump stocks.
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The U.S. Army awarded the Medal of Heroism to three JROTC cadets who were killed during the attack on a Parkland, Florida high school last week.
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The U.S. Navy sent two destroyers into the Black Sea for the first time since 2014.
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The Trump administration proposed relaxed regulations on short-term health insurance plans, making them a viable alternative to expensive ObamaCare plans.
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The national and Pennsylvania Republican Parties sued to block a new U.S. House district map imposed by Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court. The Republicans are trying to prevent the new map from being used for the 2018 midterm election.
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The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a case challenging California’s 10 day waiting period for firearms purchases, which prompted Clarence Thomas to issue a scathing dissent. Thomas wrote: “The right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court’s constitutional orphan. And the lower courts seem to have gotten the message.”
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A San Francisco TV station surveyed 153 blocks of the city’s downtown and found a huge amount of trash, feces, and hypodermic needles — circumstances they liken to a Third World slum.
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Los Angeles County’s homeless problem is growing worse despite millions of dollars spent on new housing.
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Nikki Haley responded to a Palestinian Authority leader who told her to shut up:
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South Korea filed a complaint against the U.S. at the World Trade Organization. The dispute is over anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties applied to steel and transformers imported into the U.S.
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Heavy attacks by the Syrian government and its allies against rebels in Ghouta reportedly killed at least 250 people since Sunday night.
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A new estimate says 300 Russian mercenaries were killed or wounded last week when they attacked Deir al-Zor, Syria, a city where U.S. troops and their allies are based. The wounded were evacuated to four Russian military hospitals.
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An illegal immigrant was charged with killing and dismembering an 18-year-old girl in Italy two weeks before an election, which was already contentious thanks to larger immigration issues and a stagnant economy.
Links for 12-23-2016
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President Obama took a parting shot at Israel by abstaining during a United Nations Security Council vote on a resolution declaring any Israeli presence beyond the 1949 armistice line to be illegal; this includes the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, the Western Wall, and the West Bank. Donald Trump used his favorite medium to proclaim that the federal government’s attitude toward Israel will change once he’s in office:
As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th.
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Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2016 -
The United Nations Security Council defeated a U.S. resolution imposing an arms embargo and sanctions on South Sudan.
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Italian police in Milan stumbled upon the suspect in the Berlin truck attack, Anis Amri, and shot him dead after he pulled a pistol on them. The policeman who shot Amri is a rookie. After Amri’s death, ISIS published a video showing Amri pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.
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Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) paid his wife more than $100,000 from campaign funds during the 2016 election cycle.
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Pope Francis is trying to improve relations with China’s government and the state-sanctioned Catholic church, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA). He risks alienating “underground” Chinese Catholics who are loyal to the Vatican, not the CCPA.
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Saudi Arabia’s government plans to spend $53 billion over four years on incentives to private sector companies to diversify the economy.
Links for 8-24-2016
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The U.S. Army identified the soldier killed near Lashkar Gar, Afghanistan: Staff Sgt. Matthew V. Thompson, a Green Beret who joined the Army in 2011. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and a Bronze Star with valor.
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A magnitude 6.2 earthquake hit central Italy, killing at least 120 people.
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The “Cajun Navy” — private volunteers using their own boats and trucks — have been successfully rescuing people from the flooding in Louisiana. Naturally, a state senator, Jonathan Perry, wants to begin licensing these volunteers to reduce “liability.”
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Josiah Peterson analyzed the states that independent candidate for president Evan McMullin could conceivably win. Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho top the list.
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Breitbart.com claims many Mormons oppose Donald Trump because their church supports illegal immigration. Mike Garner argues it’s because they’re very familiar with religious persecution, and they don’t like Trump’s idea of banning immigrants for their religious beliefs.
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Evan Bayh has trouble reciting the address of the Indianapolis condo where he claims to live, which could complicate his campaign to return to the U.S. Senate.
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The $1.3 billion that the Obama administration paid to Iran may have come in the form of 13 payments of $99,999,999.99 transferred from the Treasury Department’s Judgement Fund to the State Department. All 13 transfers occurred on January 19.
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Members of Congress are asking why Mylan NV increased the price for a pair of EpiPens by 400%. They’re focusing on the company’s CEO, Heather Bresch, who happens to be the daughter of Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV). Bresch’s salary has increased 671% since she became CEO in 2007.
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President Obama declared 87,500 acres of central Maine a national monument, the “Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.” One of the co-founders of Burt’s Bees, Roxanne Quimby, donated the land.
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Turkish tanks and Free Syrian Army soldiers crossed from Turkey into Syria and captured the town of Jarablus from ISIS. Turkey threatened to extend the attack to target the Kurdish YPG in northern Syria, which is significant because American special forces soldiers are fighting with the YPG.
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The U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) issued a report stating that the Syrian government twice dropped chlorine gas bombs in Idlib, and that ISIS has used sulfur mustard gas weapons. The OPCW also found traces of nerve gas chemicals when they inspected facilities in Syria — after Syria claimed to have destroyed all such weapons.
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ISIS attacked a camp for Syrian rebels backed by the U.S. that’s near the intersection of the borders of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.
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The large oil companies — including Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, and Chevron — are carrying enormous debt loads after two years of low crude oil prices, raising questions about their ability to pay dividends and explore for new oil and gas.
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North Korea successfully launched a missile from a submarine; the missile traveled 310 miles, a North Korean record. Most of South Korea is within range of this weapon if it’s launched from an area near the coast.
Links for 7-12-2016
- Loretta Lynch testified before the House Judiciary Committee and refused to answer questions about her decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton over her private email server. Lynch also refused to answer basic questions about the legal implications of mishandling classified material. I would have moved to impeach her, since she claims not to know anything about an important area of the law, which makes her unqualified to hold office of attorney general.
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Two committees of the House of Representatives sent a referral to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, asking for an investigation into whether Hillary Clinton perjured herself when she testified before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Clinton’s testimony doesn’t square with the FBI’s findings in its investigation of her private email server. Obviously the Department of Justice won’t do anything in response to the referral.
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Victor Davis Hanson on Barack Obama’s use of police shootings to promote tribal grievances:
Shortly afterwards, twelve Dallas law-enforcement officers were shot, and five of them killed, by a black assassin who declared solidarity with Black Lives Matter and proclaimed his hatred for white law enforcement. That outbreak prompted Obama to take to the podium again to recalibrate his earlier message. This time he amplified his gun-control message, and somewhat delusionally added that the upswing in racial polarization did not imperil national unity — in much the same way that, in years past, he had announced that al-Qaeda was on the run, we were leaving behind a stable Iraq, and ISIS was a jayvee organization. Note the Obama editorial method in the case of police incidents, from Skip Gates to Louisiana and Minnesota: He typically speaks before he has the facts, and when subsequent information calls into question his talking points and theorizing, he never goes back and makes the corrections. Nor does he address facts — from Ferguson to Dallas — that do not fit his political agenda. Finally, a police shooting of an African-American suspect is never an “isolated event,” while the shooting of an officer by a black assassin is isolated and never really thematic of any larger racial pathology.
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President Obama spoke at the memorial service for the Dallas police officers and spouted gun control lies.
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Congressman Justin Amash organized a successful effort to block the fast-tracking of a bill called the “Anti-terrorism Information Sharing Is Strength Act,” which amends and expands the Patriot Act. Now the bill will have to go through the normal committee process so people can learn what’s in it. Members of the House will also have the opportunity to amend it, something they could not do if it was fast-tracked.
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A bipartisan staff report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations concludes that the State Department gave $465,000 to a non-profit group, OneVoice, that used the money to campaign against Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s parliamentary elections. State Department officials also deleted the emails they exchanged with the group, which I’m sure was just an unintentional oversight.
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As expected, an international tribunal ruled against China’s claim that most of the South China Sea is its territory. China won’t honor the ruling, so it’s not clear what happens next.
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Vladimir Putin fired every commander in Russia’s Baltic fleet, reportedly because they refused orders to confront American warships in the manner Putin wanted.
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Fighting spiked in Ukraine while NATO was holding a summit in Warsaw. This probably wasn’t a coincidence.
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Italy is nearing a banking crisis: 17% of all outstanding bank loans are non-performing, amounting to €360 billion.
Links for 7-10-2016
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The Dallas shooter was sent home early from a tour in Afghanistan for sexually harassing a female soldier. He was supposed to receive a less-than honorable discharge from the Army, but received an honorable discharge instead for unknown reasons. The harassment was serious enough that the victim asked for and received a restraining order.
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Donald Trump is reportedly considering making retired Lt. General Michael Flynn his running mate. Flynn is a registered Democrat and he supports abortion. The New York Post ran an excerpt from his upcoming book that explains how and why he was fired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
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The Obama administration transferred a Club Gitmo resident to Italy.
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Another ObamaCare co-op is shutting down – Oregon’s Health CO-OP.
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The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and the Bahamas issued travel warnings to their citizens about Black Lives Matter-related violence in the U.S.
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Malcolm Turnbull’s coalition won re-election in Australia’s House of Representatives, but it was an extremely tight election, and not all races have been decided. It’s not clear if the current coalition will win a 76 seat majority, or if they’ll have to pull in more independent or minority party representatives. Going into the election Turnbull’s coalition held 90 seats.
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Shinzo Abe’s coalition retained its majority in Japan’s Upper House, and may have won enough seats to claim a two-thirds majority.
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ISIS shot down a Russian Mi–25 helicopter in Syria, killing both the pilots.
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South Sudan may be headed for another civil war after troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and troops loyal to Vice President Riek Machar began fighting in the capital, Juba. Civilians in the area of the fighting started streaming into a U.N. base for shelter.
