Accuracy in Media – by Cliff Kincaid  In one of her secret speeches, Hillary Clinton said, "My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders…" Before this comment was revealed, Adam Taylor of The Washington Post tried to assure everyone that the idea of a North American Union, like the meddlesome and bureaucratic European Union, was dead. Such talk, he said, emanated from "fringe websites" and "conspiracy theorists."  The Hillary speech was made to a Brazilian bank known as Itaú BBA, which describes itself as "Latin America's largest Corporate & Investment Bank" and part of the Itaú Unibanco group, "one of the world's largest financial conglomerates."  The problem for Taylor and other faux journalists is that there is a whole body of research on the topic of a " North American Law Project ," designed to integrate the legal systems of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The project is run out of American University's Center for North American Studies, where students can concentrate in North American Studies . As a matter of fact, such degrees are being offered by several different colleges and universities, including Canada's McGill University .  Passed in 1993, NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, began the process of harmonizing laws among the U.S., Canada and Mexico. But the Council on Foreign Relations admits that the U.S.-Mexico trade balance swung from a $1.7 billion U.S. surplus in 1993 to a $54 billion deficit by 2014. This has led to a loss of about 600,000 jobs.  In addition to shipping jobs to Mexico, NAFTA constituted subversion of our constitutional system. President Clinton submitted NAFTA as an agreement, requiring only a majority of votes in both Houses of Congress for passage, and not a treaty, which would have required a two-thirds vote in favor in the Senate. NAFTA passed by votes of 234-200 in the House and 61-38 in the Senate.  A money crash soon followed in 1995 as Mexico was hit by a peso crisis, and a U.S. bailout was arranged. Congress would not bail out Mexico, so Clinton arranged for loans and guarantees to Mexico totaling almost $40 billion through the International Monetary Fund and the "Exchange Stabilization Fund."  Meanwhile, pressure has been building for the creation of a "North American Community"—also known as a "North American Union"—with regular meetings involving the leaders of the three countries. On June 29, 2016, the Obama White House issued a fact sheet on this year's "North American Leaders' Summit." It said, "The economies of the United States, Canada, and Mexico are deeply integrated. Canada and Mexico are our second and third largest trading partners. Our trade with them exceeds $1.2 trillion dollars annually."  The leaders of these countries agreed to establish a "North American Caucus" to "more effectively work in concert on regional and global issues by holding semi-annual coordination meetings among our foreign ministries." One item on the agenda was for the leaders to reaffirm "North America's strong support for [Colombian] President Santos's efforts to finalize a peace accord with the FARC guerrillas." That fell apart on October 2 when a "peace deal" with the communist terrorists was voted down by the people of Colombia.  But notice how these leaders claim to speak for "North America."  Going global, they also declared, "North America is committed to joint and coordinated actions to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda."  This is U.N.-speak for global taxes and other forms of foreign aid from the U.S. to the rest of the world.  We noted in a column last year that the American people, through their elected representatives, have had absolutely no input in developing the new global agenda that President Obama has tried to implement without the input or approval of Congress.  Interestingly, one of those deeply involved in this global agenda, as we noted at the time, was John Podesta, the chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign who previously served as counselor to Obama. Podesta's emails are at the center of the WikiLeaks disclosures about the operations of the Clinton campaign, the Clinton Foundation and the Democratic Party.  Podesta, founder of the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress and a member of the elitist Trilateral Commission , went to work for Obama as a senior policy consultant on climate change. A liberal Catholic, he has been a professor at Georgetown Law School. One of the leaked emails shows Podesta saying that he applauds the work of Pope Francis on climate change and that "all my Jesuit friends say the Pope is the real deal."  Podesta was picked by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to be a member of the "high-level panel" of "eminent persons" planning the future of the globe. This so-called "High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda" released an 81-page report titled, "A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development."  "In simplest terms," explains Patrick Wood, author of Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation , "Sustainable Development is a replacement economic system for capitalism and free enterprise. It is a system based on resource allocation and usage rather than on supply and demand and free economic market forces."  In this context, Wood argues that the major significance of the transfer of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is not the immediate need by the U.N. or some countries to censor websites, but to generate revenue for global purposes. ICANN will do this, he argues, through management of the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), the links between the Internet and networks, electronic devices and embedded technology with IP addresses. "IoT are the connections between inanimate objects and the humans that depend upon them," he notes. To accomplish this, ICANN has devised a new IP numbering system called IPV6, described as the " vital expansion " of the Internet.  "In terms of 'follow the money,' IoT is expected to generate upwards of $3 trillion by 2025 and is growing at a rate of at least 30 percent per year," Wood argues . "In other words, it is a huge market and money is flying everywhere. If the UN can figure out a way to tax this market, and they will, it will provide a windfall of income and perhaps enough to make it self-perpetuating."  He adds, "Congress never understood this when they passively let Obama fail to renew our contract with ICANN. However, Obama and his globalist handlers understood it perfectly well, which makes the deception and treachery of it even worse."  Under the cover of "sustainable development," Wood predicts the Internet will be used to construct a massive database on human activities, in order to monitor and control nations' and peoples' access to resources. It will constitute ultimate socialist control and a form of "digital slavery," from which he warns there may be no return.  Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid .


Sarah Silverman and Bill Maher destroyed the so-called Fox Republican debates in what Maher described as completely fact free. They both wondered why Hillary and Bernie couldn t debate the Republican candidates right now. This, they agreed, would at least inject some facts in the debates since the Fox moderators refused to do so. Megyn Kelly, if you re such a serious person, said Maher, ask one question about the environment. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNYjzvy5zuA]Sarah Silverman also let loose on the candidates and their supporters saying, Only at a Republican-only debate can you be trying to win over the audience by saying I m going to cut education. She s right! It s something out of the Twilight Zone, where candidates are trying to outdo each other to see who s more likely to destroy the middle class.It s also quite crazy that the candidates weren t asked why the Republicans want to cut funding for the very water agency that could have stopped the water problem before the poisoning of the children of Flint, Michigan. The water poisoning of course was done under the watch of a Republican governor. It s alarming that Fox moderators didn t address this issue, especially since the debates were in Detroit.It seems as though the Fox moderators showed little interest in fact checking and the idea that Fox moderators are hard on Trump or any other Republican candidates is ludicrous.


Veteran Venezuelan opposition leader Antonio Ledezma, under house arrest since 2015 for alleged coup plotting, escaped across the border to Colombia on Friday and later flew to Spain. With a 2018 presidential election looming, an array of major Venezuelan opposition figures are now in exile, detention or are barred from holding office. They say Maduro has turned Venezuela into a dictatorship, while the government accuses them of joining forces with a U.S.-led global plot to topple him. Ledezma, the best-known detained opponent of leftist President Nicolas Maduro after Leopoldo Lopez, had spearheaded street protests against Maduro in 2014 that led to months of violence and 43 deaths. In Spain today I feel free, he said at Madrid s Barajas airport, where he arrived in the early hours of Saturday. He was cheered by a small crowd including his wife and two daughters, who were already in Spain. Supporters chanted the Venezuelan anthem. Let s not permit that Venezuela dies in our hands, he also said, adding that he would soon meet with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. The 62-year-old former Caracas metropolitan mayor said he had gone past 29 police and army controls during a clandestine, overland journey that he kept secret from his loved ones. I ask my wife and daughters to understand. They have suffered long hours of anguish without knowing where I was, he told reporters in the Colombian border town of Cucuta after crossing a bridge from San Antonio in Venezuela. It was my decision alone. Welcome to freedom! tweeted former Colombian President Andres Pastrana, who is close to Venezuela s opposition and the families of other jailed activists. Ledezma was mocked by Maduro as The Vampire, and accused by officials of helping violent hardliners, including dissident military officers plotting to topple the president via air strikes. Ledezma said those charges were trumped up. I hope they never send him back, they can keep the Vampire, Maduro said on Friday evening. The people of Madrid will have to be careful at night, the Vampire (is going) to Madrid. Before boarding a private plane to Bogota, Ledezma said he was planning a global pilgrimage to fight for political freedom in Venezuela. He thanked Colombia s government, which also recently gave asylum to another high-profile Venezuelan dissident, former state prosecutor Luisa Ortega. It s time for him (Maduro) to step aside and allow a transition government, said Ledezma. Maduro cannot keep torturing the Venezuelan people, he s killing Venezuelans with hunger. The OPEC nation of 30 million people is suffering a fourth year of brutal recession, with the highest inflation in the world, shortages of food and medicines, and many people having to skip meals or suffering preventable illnesses. Government supporters have long vilified Ledezma for supporting a brief 2002 coup and accused him of corruption. State media repeatedly show a video where a jailed student radical lauds him as an old fox ... the politician who most supported the resistance. Ledezma, along with another opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, has been part of the more militant wing of Venezuela s opposition coalition. Both oppose a planned new political dialogue between the opposition and government scheduled for early December in the Dominican Republic. I left my flag with Maria Corina Machado, in whom I trust completely, Ledezma told reporters. Ledezma won the Caracas mayoralty in 2008, but some of his functions and funding were quickly transferred to a new, pro-government office. Upstaged by younger opposition leaders, Ledezma was not viewed as a future presidential candidate. Intelligence agents took him from his office in Caracas in February 2015. He was originally held at the Ramo Verde military prison before being granted house arrest. Machado told reporters Ledezma had been under increasing pressure from authorities and had faced threats to return him to Ramo Verde due to his opposition to the political dialogue. We believe in real negotiations, but only ones that lead to the exit of the dictatorship, she told reporters.


Kellyanne Conway: I think the biggest fake news was that Donald Trump couldn t win. pic.twitter.com/T5i68K0gW4 Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) December 2, 2016


When the two men plunged into the unforgiving wilderness of the Adirondacks, they had scant experience and supplies better suited to boys running away from home than to convicted killers fleeing a prison: pepperoni sticks, toilet paper, a cache of black pepper, an electric shaver and 40 granola bars, all packed in a cloth guitar case. But they managed to avoid capture for three weeks in the rugged northernmost reaches of New York State. Navigating by the stars and using evasion tactics gleaned from Vietnam War movies, they pillaged peanut butter and pasta — as well as moonshine and marijuana — from remote hunting cabins. They stole sleep by the hour and tracked their pursuers' movements via news reports on a purloined transistor radio. In the end, feet worn bloody by flight, they argued and went their separate ways before their bids for freedom ended — one in capture, one in death. The escape of David Sweat and Richard W. Matt in June 2015 from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N. Y. captivated the nation. And much of the tale has since been told: how they patiently planned their escape how they manipulated the affections of a female prison employee how they broke out of the prison, one of the state's toughest. But little has been disclosed about what it was actually like for the two hunted men during their slog in the deep woods between the prison and the Canadian border. The survivor, Mr. Sweat, has told their story in novelistic detail — it reads like a new twist on a grand wilderness adventure — to investigators from the New York State Police, the state inspector general's office and the state prison agency in a series of interviews that began from his hospital bed the day he was captured. It is contained in more than 500 pages of transcripts. It is the drama as seen from the vantage point of the hunted, the police and dogs always just one step behind, hopscotching from rural roads to rutted mountainsides, dragging themselves through swamps and up and down steep inclines. The men cobbled together their supplies from what was available inside the prison — "You plan for the worst, hope for the best," Mr. Sweat said — amassing a supply of black pepper he later used to throw dogs off his scent, along with a shaver so they would not look like bearded fugitives. Much of the time the two men spent cold, wet, shivering nights sleeping on the ground or in elevated hunting blinds, platforms hidden high in the trees from which hunters stalk and shoot their prey, a perch from which Mr. Sweat said in one instance he could identify the search area by watching helicopters and planes above. But they also spent some time in cabins used by hunters, at least some of which belong to state corrections officers who work in the prisons like Clinton, Mr. Sweat said. It was in one cabin that they found the moonshine and marijuana, which, along with a propane heater and an ample supply of food, would allow them to stay for two nights. In another officer's camp, they found a shotgun, which they took, and uniform jackets belonging to the corrections officers, which they apparently did not. "I found their weed and everything," Mr. Sweat, 36, told his interrogators, referring to the first cabin. "I was laughing my ass — because I like to smoke weed every once in a while. It mellows me out, keeps me calm. " A senior investigator with the State Police asked if they had smoked any that night. "Yes, we got high as hell for like two nights," he said, adding that they also drank the moonshine. "So you know we'd drink, get high and hang out because there ain't nobody coming up here during the week. " The two convicted killers practically played house. "We'd turn the heaters on and we'd cook," Mr. Sweat recalled. "We made pasta and everything else because they had pasta there, because we didn't care — it was the C. O. s,'" he said, using the shorthand for corrections officers, noting they were unlikely to report the because of the marijuana. The transcripts of the interviews were obtained under the state's Freedom of Information Law. They reveal Mr. Sweat as an enthusiastic raconteur, eager to regale his questioners with his backwoods accomplishments and his skills of improvisation. He was also quick to vent his apparent frustration with what he characterized as his sluggish, foolhardy and sometimes drunken fellow escapee, Mr. Matt. "I got in an argument with him because every place we'd go, he'd get drunk," Mr. Sweat complained. "And he would drink when we were moving. I'm like, 'Dude, you can't be drunk when we're moving you've got to be sober. '" The two men found the transistor radio and a refrigerator full of beer at another cabin, Mr. Sweat told the investigators. And in addition to helping them keep track of where the authorities were searching for them, the radio also provided some measure of entertainment and satisfaction. "It was actually kind of a running joke between him and me because on the radio they're like, 'Oh they're not woodsmen, this and that,'" Mr. Sweat said. "And we'd laugh about it. It's funny … we're not woodsmen and we've been in the woods for weeks. " Then he gloated. "They can't catch us. But we're not woodsmen. " Mr. Sweat said Mr. Matt, 49, had reckless ideas — shooting troopers, carjacking on the rural roads or sticking people up in their homes and taking their money and cars. After two weeks, Mr. Matt began to wear on him. With their hunters in hot pursuit, Mr. Sweat left him behind. "I said, you know what, I hate to do it to him, but I kept my part of the deal, I got him out," he said, "and I bolted on him. " On June 26, a drunken Mr. Matt was confronted by a United States Border Patrol tactical unit, and, the authorities say, pointed a shotgun at one of its members. A federal agent shot him twice in the head and once in the neck. Two days later, Mr. Sweat was walking on a rural road just a mile and a half from the Canadian border when a sergeant in a State Police car approached him. Mr. Sweat believed the sergeant was confused because Mr. Sweat had shaved the night before as part of his plan for not looking like a haggard convict on the run. Mr. Sweat started to cross a field of alfalfa, heading for the tree line on the opposite side. The sergeant tried to call Mr. Sweat back to the road, saying, "Come here. " But Mr. Sweat responded with, "No, I'm good," and kept walking. He started moving faster. The sergeant swore at him. "He started running behind me," Mr. Sweat recalled. "I took off. The next thing he says: 'I'm going to shoot you. If you don't stop, I'm going to shoot you.' I said: 'I ain't got no weapons. I don't have no weapons. '" Mr. Sweat said he held his hands up so the trooper could see he was unarmed, but he kept running. The tree line got closer. He dropped the bag he was carrying. The sergeant got down on one knee, carefully set up his shot and fired. "He hit me twice and it was — the first one hit me in the shoulder the top," Mr. Sweat said. "It killed this whole arm. I couldn't move it. And the other one was on the other side. I thought, 'Man, I'm going to hit the ground,' and just started spitting blood up. He hit my lung. " After Mr. Sweat recovered, he pleaded guilty to escape and promotion of prison contraband and was sentenced to three and a half to seven years in prison, on top of his sentence for the 2002 killing of a Broome County sheriff's deputy. He is currently in the Special Housing Unit at Five Points Correctional Facility in Romulus, N. Y. the state's newest prison. Portions of Mr. Sweat's account could not be corroborated, with Mr. Matt, the only other witness to many of the events, dead. And while a report this summer by the state inspector general, Catherine detailing the prison lapses that led to the escape in some measure relied on Mr. Sweat's account of the breakout itself, it acknowledged that questions would arise about his motivation and credibility. But the report noted that information he provided under oath had been corroborated, wherever possible, by other evidence, adding, "In instances where no independent corroboration exists, the inspector general has found Sweat's account credible and consistent with other known facts. "


Airplane manufacturer Boeing is set to start testing vehicles according to new reports. [The Independent reports that Boeing will soon be testing planes, possibly utilizing artificial intelligence to make decisions usually left up to human pilots. Boeing's aim is to develop an aircraft that can operate entirely with minimal human interaction. Planes can already take off, cruise, and land without much interaction from human pilots, so the idea of a fully functioning artificial plane is not too far fetched. Mike Sinnett, Boeing's vice president of product development, told Reuters, "When I look at the future I see a need for you know 41, 000 commercial jet airplanes over the course of the next 20 years. And that means we're going to need something like six hundred and seventeen thousand more pilots. That's a lot of pilots. " He continued to say, "so one of the ways that may be solved is by having some type of autonomous behaviour and that could be anything from taking instead of five pilots on a long haul flight down to three or two, taking two pilots down to one in a freight situation, or in some cases going from one to none. " "So one of the ways that may be solved is by having some type of autonomous behaviour and that could be anything from taking instead of five pilots on a long haul flight down to three or two, taking two pilots down to one in a freight situation, or in some cases going from one to none," he explained. Starting this summer, Boeing will use advanced cockpit simulators used in the training of pilots to test the new technology before implementing it in an actual aircraft. Boeing isn't the only airplane manufacturer looking at automated travel: Airbus is currently working on flying cars and will be testing flying taxis by the end of 2017 with the aim of rolling out further access to the taxis in 2021. Airbus, however, is looking to develop an system while Boeing seems to be focusing on long haul, large passenger flights. Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com


Forty former U.S. diplomats and national security officials urged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson not to eliminate the State Department office that handles refugees in a letter seen by Reuters on Monday. The letter argued that a Trump administration proposal to transfer the responsibilities of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) to other agencies would undercut U.S. diplomatic leverage in grappling with foreign crises. Among the retired officials who signed the letter were former Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, former Under Secretaries of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns and Wendy Sherman and former Middle East peace envoy Dennis Ross. "Whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kenya, Turkey or South Sudan, the Department of State's efforts to address humanitarian crises must include the tightest coordination of diplomatic engagement and emergency assistance," the letter, which was also signed by 18 executives with non-governmental aid agencies, said. "We are convinced that the elimination of PRM's assistance functions would have profound and negative implications for the Secretary of State's capacity to influence policy issues of key concern to the United States," the letter said. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Tillerson "has no preconceived notions about the outcome of the transformation process he has begun at the State Department." She added that Tillerson viewed the work of both the Bureau of Consular Affairs and the PRM as "essential to the Department's mission to secure our borders and protect the American people." A memo to the Office of Management and Budget seen by Reuters proposes giving PRM's responsibility for the U.S. Refugee Admission Program, which helps resettle refugees in the United States, to the Department of Homeland Security. The memo, which was first reported by CNN on June 30 and which a former official said was prepared by the White House's domestic policy council, proposes transferring its other responsibilities elsewhere and eliminating the bureau. The memo and the letter from the former officials appear to be part of a wider struggle over refugee and immigration policy. This includes executive orders signed by President Donald Trump and challenged in court temporarily banning most refugees and most citizens from some Muslim-majority countries from entering, an internal debate over the cost of resettling refugees and a crackdown on illegal immigration. The issue may come up at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing at 5 p.m. (2100 GMT) on Monday where Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan is scheduled to testify about the State Department's reorganization plans.


The White House is declining to offer public support for draft legislation that would empower judges to require technology companies such as Apple Inc to help law enforcement crack encrypted data, sources familiar with the discussions said. The decision all but assures that the years-long political impasse over encryption will continue even in the wake of the high-profile effort by the Department of Justice to force Apple to break into an iPhone used by a gunman in last December's shootings in San Bernardino, California. President Obama suggested in remarks last month that he had come around to the view that law enforcement agencies needed to have a way to gain access to encrypted information on smartphones. But the administration remains deeply divided on the issue, the sources said. The draft legislation from Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, the Republican chair and top Democrat respectively of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is expected to be introduced as soon as this week. The bill gives federal judges broad authority to order tech companies to help the government but does not spell out what companies might have to do or the circumstances under which they could be ordered to help, according to sources familiar with the text. It also does not create specific penalties for noncompliance. Although the White House has reviewed the text and offered feedback, it is expected to provide minimal public input, if any, the sources said. Its stance is partly a reflection of a political calculus that any encryption bill would be controversial and is unlikely to go far in a gridlocked Congress during an election year, sources said. A White House spokesman declined to comment on the pending legislation, but referred to White House press secretary Josh Earnest's statements on encryption legislation. Last month Earnest said the administration is "skeptical" of lawmakers' ability to resolve the encryption debate given their difficulty in tackling "simple things." Tech companies and civil liberties advocates have opposed encryption legislation, arguing that mandating law enforcement access to tech products will undermine security for everyone. Several lawmakers, including U.S. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat, have vowed to oppose any attempt to limit encryption protections in U.S. technology products. Even some intelligence officials worry that enabling law enforcement agencies to override encryption will create more problems than it solves by opening the door to hackers and foreign intelligence services. Some also say it is unnecessary because the government has other means of getting the information it needs. The Justice Department dropped its legal action against Apple last week, saying it had found a way to hack into the phone. The White House last year backed away from pursuing legislation that would require U.S. technology firms to provide a "back door" to access encrypted data. The backpedaling resembled a retreat by President Bill Clinton's administration in the 1990s on efforts to require a special computer chip in phones to give the U.S. government a way to monitor encrypted conversations. But the desire for encryption legislation among some intelligence and law enforcement officials has never gone away, and it gained new life after the Islamist militant-inspired attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. Obama, speaking at the South by Southwest entertainment festival in Austin, Texas, last month, warned against "fetishizing our phones" and said that doing nothing to address law enforcement's encryption challenges "can't be the right answer." Obama, however, also cautioned against Congress taking any action that would be "sloppy and rushed." Apple and others have called on Congress to help find a solution to the problem of criminals and terrorists using encryption to avoid surveillance. A separate proposal to form a national encryption commission to further study the issue is also not expected to be enacted this year. Meanwhile, tech companies are stepping up their efforts to implement encryption and other security measures. The Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp announced this week that it had implemented complete encryption of its service - and now cannot get access to customer messages even if was ordered to by a court.


by Peter Schiff, Schiff Gold :  Next to Donald Trump's economic policies, one of the most spirited economic debates at the moment involves which direction the dollar will move in the coming months. While Goldman Sachs is predicting the dollar and euro will reach a value equivalency by Q4 of 2017, other analysts see the greenback trending downward next year.  The dollar has risen 4.4% against the euro and 2% against a basket of world currencies since Trump's win on November 8, according to Fortune. Big moves within securities and bonds markets since Trump's victory are creating a general sense of uncertainty, making predicting anything a difficult task.  But for market veterans like Jim Paulsen of Wells Capital Management and Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital, the dollar's demise is clear given inflationary anticipations mixed with short and long-term interest rate increases.  Paulsen recently described the weakening dollar as "the big wild card in 2017," according to CNBC, and stating, "As inflation expectations go north, that's a deterrent and a negative for the US dollar," he said. Underpinning Paulsen's theory are historical trends in funds rate increases. "There [have] been five major increases in the funds rates since the 1970s, and every one of them, when the Fed raised rates, the dollar came down."  Schiff said he sees higher interest rates, stemming from inflationary pressures, as detrimental to the dollar. Despite the spike in bond yields, investors seem to be looking to Trump's fiscal stimulus and tax cuts to provide demand side pressure, increasing consumer spending. Schiff explains: "So far the stock market is remaining oblivious to the spike in bond yields because they think the stimulus that might result from tax cuts and spending increases will be enough to offset the drag of higher interest rates. I think they are woefully mistaken."  Paulsen also sees at a weak dollar providing a good opportunity for international investments. A weak dollar means US exports will be less competitive. Overseas markets could benefit as a result. Paulsen provides his analysis:  "I think those markets are under-owned, they've under-performed for several years … They're better relative values," Paulsen said. "They have younger earnings cycles than the more mature cycle in the United States. They're going to have longer policy support than the United States will."  A weak dollar will mean gold is likely to grow in value. Schiff thinks the recent drop if bullion's price is only a head fake, stating: "people who are betting on the dollar and betting against gold have no idea the impact of higher interest rates. Buying gold and silver in the coming weeks could put investors looking to diversify their portfolio ahead of the curve.


The day before the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, sent a letter to Congress announcing that new evidence had been discovered that might be related to the completed Hillary Clinton email investigation, the Justice Department strongly discouraged the step and told him that he would be breaking with longstanding policy, three law enforcement officials said on Saturday. Senior Justice Department officials did not move to stop him from sending the letter, officials said, but they did everything short of it, pointing to policies against talking about current criminal investigations or being seen as meddling in elections. That Mr. Comey moved ahead despite those protestations underscores the unusual nature of Friday's revelations, which added a dramatic twist to the final days of the presidential campaign. His action reignited a firestorm that Mrs. Clinton believed she had put behind her when the F. B. I. decided in July not to charge anyone in the investigation into the handling of classified information on her private email server. Mr. Comey's letter did not reopen that inquiry, even as he promised to review the new information, which was discovered in an unrelated investigation into the disgraced former congressman Anthony D. Weiner. Senior Justice Department officials, career prosecutors and even some at the F. B. I. were at a loss on Saturday as to what would happen next. Would Mr. Comey provide a accounting of the F. B. I. 's steps until Election Day? Did he plan further announcements? Or did he intend, after shaking up the election with his letter, to remain silent about the facts until the presidential votes had been tallied? The F. B. I. offered no comment, and Justice Department officials said they had no idea what Mr. Comey saw as his next move. Justice Department officials were particularly puzzled about why Mr. Comey had alerted Congress — and by extension, the public — before agents even began reading the newly discovered emails to determine whether they contained classified information or added new facts to the case. Law enforcement officials have begun the process to get court authority to read the emails, officials said. How soon they will get that is unclear, but there is no chance that the review will be completed before Election Day, several law enforcement officials said. Many of the emails are most likely copies of messages that the F. B. I. has already read, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. Despite the Justice Department's concerns, Mr. Comey felt obligated to send the letter. But it opened him up to fierce criticism not only from Democrats but also from current and former officials at the F. B. I. and the Justice Department, including Republicans. "There's a longstanding policy of not doing anything that could influence an election," said George J. Terwilliger III, a deputy attorney general under President George Bush. "Those guidelines exist for a reason. Sometimes, that makes for hard decisions. But bypassing them has consequences. " He added, "There's a difference between being independent and flying solo. " After reports surfaced late last month that Mr. Weiner had sent illicit text messages to a girl in North Carolina, top prosecutors in Charlotte and Manhattan jockeyed for the case. Senior officials in the Justice Department decided that if there were a prosecution, it would take place in New York under the supervision of the United States attorney there, Preet Bharara. Almost immediately, it became clear to investigators that the Weiner case might reignite the Clinton inquiry. Mr. Weiner's estranged wife, Huma Abedin, is a top adviser to Mrs. Clinton, and F. B. I. agents in the earlier investigation had interviewed her and reviewed her emails looking for classified information. On Oct. 3, F. B. I. agents seized several electronic devices from Mr. Weiner: a laptop, his iPhone and an iPad that was in large measure used by his son to watch cartoons, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Days later, F. B. I. agents also confiscated a router that could identify any other devices that had been used, the person said. While searching the laptop, the agents discovered the existence of tens of thousands of emails, some of them sent between Ms. Abedin and other Clinton aides, according to senior law enforcement officials. It is not clear if Ms. Abedin downloaded the emails to the laptop or if they were automatically backed up there. The emails dated back years, the officials said. Ms. Abedin has testified that she did not routinely delete her emails. Because of the age of the emails, many could be outside the scope of the Clinton inquiry, investigators said. And while many are probably duplicative, some would be worth reading, the F. B. I. concluded. In conversations this month, senior Justice Department and F. B. I. officials agreed that the matter was worth pursuing. By law, though, agents and prosecutors in the Clinton investigation could not immediately read the new emails without court authority. The authorities decided only recently to seek that approval. They do not know whether the emails contain classified information or, if they do, whether that would change their determination that nobody should be charged with mishandling it. So Justice Department officials were surprised on Thursday afternoon to receive notice of Mr. Comey's intention to send the letter to Congress. The letter, issued as early voting was underway in some states, guaranteed a new round of questions for Mrs. Clinton just before Election Day. The Justice Department and the F. B. I. have a longstanding policy against discussing current criminal investigations. Another Justice Department policy, restated each election cycle, declares that politics should play no role in investigative decisions. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have interpreted that policy broadly to cover any steps that might give even an impression of partisanship. "We must be particularly sensitive to safeguarding the department's reputation for fairness, neutrality and nonpartisanship," said a 2012 memo from the attorney general's office that restated the policy. But although Mr. Comey told Congress this summer that the Clinton investigation was complete, he believed that if word of the new emails leaked out — and it was sure to leak out, he concluded — he risked being accused of misleading Congress and the public ahead of an election, colleagues said. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch did not directly speak with Mr. Comey about the matter, officials said, but senior Justice Department officials sent word of her concerns. Though Ms. Lynch is technically Mr. Comey's boss, she, too, faced a dilemma. If she ordered Mr. Comey not to send the letter, it could appear that she was trying to withhold information from Congress. After hearing the Justice Department's argument, Mr. Comey concluded that the ramifications of not telling Congress far outweighed concerns about the department guidelines, one senior law enforcement official said. On Friday, Mr. Comey sent Congress the letter, which said emails had surfaced in a case unrelated to the Clinton case. Mr. Comey said that the F. B. I. would review the emails to determine if they improperly contained classified information, adding that the emails "appear to be pertinent. " It was the latest example of a sometimes strained relationship between the Justice Department and Mr. Comey, who — on issues of race, encryption, policing and, most notably, the Clinton investigation — has branded himself as someone who operates outside Washington's typical chain of command. The letter rankled Mrs. Clinton's supporters in part because Mr. Comey has been circumspect in his remarks about another federal investigation, this one involving allegations of Russian meddling in the election. American officials believe that Russian intelligence agents are behind the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails, which have embarrassed the Clinton campaign. Senior Democrats have called on the F. B. I. to investigate whether any of Donald J. Trump's aides are colluding with Russia. Some of his aides have ties to Russian interests, but they have denied any wrongdoing. While Mr. Comey told Congress last month that he would not confirm the existence of any investigation into people associated with Mr. Trump, he said he felt compelled to discuss details of the Clinton investigation because it involved "exceptional circumstances where the public needed information. " Matthew Miller, a Democrat and former Justice Department spokesman who has criticized Mr. Comey's handling of the email investigation, said the F. B. I. director should not pick and choose when to follow the guidelines. "You can't apply the usual standard to one candidate and an entirely different set of rules for the other," he said.


Oroville Dam's spillway was forced to reopen at maximum flow as over 50, 000 cubic feet per second of water careened into the lake and weather scientists warned of an impending 7 to heatwave that could cause flooding from an accelerated snowmelt. [Water inflow at Lake Oroville on April 14 at 3 p. m. was a stunning 51, 378 cubic feet per second, up from 15, 000 cubic feet just 48 hours earlier. With the water level rising to 865. 84 feet, just 4. 14 feet from the danger zone, California Department of Water Resources engineers opened the dam's gates and started continuously releasing water at down the spillway at its top rate of 35, 069 cubic feet per second. Breitbart News reported that the Northern Sierras on April 13 set an record of 89. 7 inches of precipitation for the water year. We warned that a new series of Northern California storms through the Easter holidays was expected to bring heavy rain and hail to the lower elevations, and up to 6 inches of new snow above level. Breitbart News also reported that Eldridge M. Moores, California's preeminent expert regarding tectonic plate movements in mountain belts, told KQED that the main reason Oroville Dam's spillway failed and almost took down the dam itself was due to the structural flaw of using deteriorating incompetent rock ago to anchor the spillway, rather than fresh rock granite that could have lasted up to a 1, 000 years. The California Department of Water Resources declared a very significant risk if repairs to the damaged spillways were not completed and both spillways for the next rainy season that begins on November 1. The large construction crew that has been feverishly trying to repair the spillway, was removed just hours before it reopened. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency now forecasts that the strong heating pattern in of the equatorial Pacific Ocean will develop this summer into an El Niño, creating a high probability of a wet water year that begins on November 1. In another dangerous development, UCLA climate scientist and author of the Water West blog, Daniel Swain, posted images taken from space by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Global Forecast Satellite System that has identified a high probability of a potential 7 to heat wave bearing down on northern California. Swain warned that of a major snowmelt across the Sierras. He warned that a Hurricane flood risk could develop along eastern slopes of Sierra Nevada Mountains over the coming weeks. He highlighted that that the melting snowpack on the Nevada side could send 500 billion gallons of water into the swollen Walker and Carson rivers.


Russian cyber operatives have attacked Britain s media, telecommunications and energy sectors over the past year, according to prepared remarks by the head of the government s main cyber defense agency. Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), declined to provide any details on the attacks in a speech scheduled for Wednesday in London. The remarks follow comments on Monday from Prime Minister Theresa May in which she accused Russia of spreading disinformation and meddling in elections, echoing a heated debate in the United States over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Russian has strongly denied any election interference in the United States. The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond when asked after normal business hours for comment on Martin s remarks. The NCSC, a branch of the GCHQ, Britain s main signals intelligence agency, has been in operation for a year and is charged with shoring up cyber security by working with a wide range of stakeholders. Martin said in his prepared remarks: I can confirm that Russian interference, seen by the National Cyber Security Centre over the past the year, has included attacks on the UK media, telecommunication and energy sectors. The agency was actively engaging with international partners, industry and civil society to tackle the threat from Russia, he said. Martin echoed May s comments that Russia was trying to undermine the international system with information warfare and cyber attacks. Cyber security experts have long worried about attacks on electrical grids in particular, but Martin offered no evidence that the alleged Russian attacks succeeded in penetrating power systems or other critical infrastructure in the UK. ( This story has been refiled to fix transposed letters in acronym in 5th paragraph)


When did Americans decide they were okay with Democrats exempting themselves from the same laws everyone else is required to follow? Fox News reporter Leland Vittert had a brief exchange with Al Sharpton and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.Vittert said he wanted Rawlings-Blake to answer a number of questions about the rioting over the past few days in the wake of Freddie Gray s death. He said he asked: What do you have to say to the number of officers injured, and what do you have to say to businesses that were looted during a reported stand down order? Why can t we ask questions? Vittert asked.Rawlings-Blake remained silent while Sharpton said they d answer questions at the press conference.Vittert added that he asked officers who shoved [him] out of the way why they were protecting the mayor from simple questions, yet decided not to protect businesses from rioters.


The far left is up in arms again, this time over a hacked tape of Hillary Clinton at a fundraiser in a wealthy Virginia suburb. There I was, watching college football and the Ryder Cup as my daughter sat next to me on the couch drawing Rapunzel and Ariel. Halftime of the game I was watching came so I moseyed over to my office to look in on the political world, expecting not much new at 5 o'clock on a Saturday. Didn't see much at first. And then... oh, what's this? Something about basement dwellers. And Hillary. Making fun of people living in basements? What? Oh Christ. Here we go again. Backstory: The Intercept, the (I think it's fair to say) anti-Clinton-though-by-no-means-pro-Trump web site, got a tape of a talk Clinton gave at a private fundraiser in McLean, Virginia, back in February. No, check that. It looks like the Washington Free Beacon got it first and posted it Tuesday. But the conservative Beacon, reflecting house priorities, led with the fact that Clinton evidently said on the tape that she wouldn't upgrade the nuclear arsenal, which for the Beacon indicates of course that she wants America to lose. After that I'm not certain what happened but it seems as if after the Beacon published the audio, a couple Intercept reporters were the first people on the left who got around to listening to it. The Intercept account, as you might guess, didn't give a rat's pooper about the nuclear arsenal but led with the fact that Clinton said, somewhat unfortunately—but in context only somewhat, for reasons I'll explain—that she occupies the "center-left to the center-right." That was a responsible and, for the Intercept, predictable and understandable way to play the story. But then, by the time it got to the Twittersphere, Clinton was somehow making fun of Sanderistas, mocking them for being such losers that they're living in their parent's basements. The hashtag #basementdwellers was trending like mad when I checked in, and I'd imagine it'll be going strong all night. I read a few of them, which boiled down to fuck you, Hillary, you corporate hack, this is why we need the revolution and you're going to be the first to face the firing squad (although I thought I smelled a lot of trolling from the deplorable caucus too). Of all the arrant bullshit I've seen on Twitter this election, this is easily the bullshittiest. She insulted no one. In fact quite the opposite—for someone speaking behind closed doors to ardent supporters, she was not only restrained, but she openly and directly asked her supporters to be patient with the impatient; that is, to understand the views and motivations of the younger people who wanted more radical change. It is important to recognize what's going on in this election. Everybody who's ever been in an election that I'm aware of is quite bewildered because there is a strain of, on the one hand, the kind of populist, nationalist, xenophobic, discriminatory kind of approach that we hear too much of from the Republican candidates. And on the other side, there's just a deep desire to believe that we can have free college, free healthcare, that what we've done hasn't gone far enough, and that we just need to, you know, go as far as, you know, Scandinavia, whatever that means, and half the people don't know what that means, but it's something that they deeply feel. So as a friend of mine said the other day, I am occupying from the center-left to the center-right. And I don't have much company there. Because it is difficult when you're running to be president, and you understand how hard the job is—I don't want to overpromise. I don't want to tell people things that I know we cannot do. Some are new to politics completely. They're children of the Great Recession. And they are living in their parents' basement. They feel they got their education and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves. And they don't see much of a future. I met with a group of young black millennials today and you know one of the young women said, "You know, none of us feel that we have the job that we should have gotten out of college. And we don't believe the job market is going to give us much of a chance." So that is a mindset that is really affecting their politics. And so if you're feeling like you're consigned to, you know, being a barista, or you know, some other job that doesn't pay a lot, and doesn't have some other ladder of opportunity attached to it, then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing. So I think we should all be really understanding of that and should try to do the best we can not to be, you know, a wet blanket on idealism. We want people to be idealistic. We want them to set big goals. But to take what we can achieve now and try to present them as bigger goals. All right. Let's parse them. In the first quote, the first sentence is just an opener, and the second critiques the Trump movement. The third sentence critiques the Sanders people, but there's nothing condescending in it. Maybe that "whatever that means" after the mention of Scandinavia is a little dismissive. But really. Now we're at the point where we're not permitting people speaking in private the occasional verbal tic of the sort we all employ? Then comes center-left and center-right. It's the mention of "center-right" that the Intercept meant to rub in her face, and in a perfect world I'd rather she'd not said it. But it's quite obvious that she is contrasting herself with the movements to her left and to her right—the very two movements she had just described. So she was really just saying, I'm in between those two. And who knows—there were probably Republicans in the room. It was McLean. She may have been trying to reassure them and get them to tell their friends, "You know, we can live with her." No, that's not pandering. It's politics. If she weren't chasing responsible Republican votes, she'd be an idiot. Now, the second and "offending" graf. How in the world these words can offend anyone is just absurd. OK, baristas. But I'm sure even most baristas have higher aspirations in life. But the main thing is that when she says "they are living in their parents' basement," she's obviously not making fun of them. She's just describing them. Indeed, she is explaining to these rich people in one of America's richest towns, hey, take a minute to understand where these folks are coming from. And she's doing so the week after Sanders throttled her in New Hampshire—a point in time when, if anything, she'd have been prone to lash out at them. There's nothing patronizing about any of this. I also saw a bunch of people on Twitter saying in effect for the life of me, I don't see what the big deal is here. I retweeted a guy who said the #basementdwellers "controversy" is proof enough of the reason why she didn't release her speech transcripts. Amen to that.


Germany's center-left chancellor candidate Martin Schulz has criticized U.S. President Donald Trump's policies as "un-American" and warned against lifting sanctions imposed against Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis. In one of the sharpest remarks yet by a senior German politician since the new American leader took office, Schulz told the Funke media group in an interview published on Wednesday that Europe had to stand up to defend liberal values. "What Trump is doing is un-American," Schulz said, adding that the United States like no other country in the world stood for enlightenment, democracy and freedom. "If Trump is now driving a wrecking ball through this set of values, then I will tell him as chancellor: That's not the policy of Germany and Europe," Schulz added. Germany's Social Democrats last week nominated former European Parliament president Schulz to run against Chancellor Angela Merkel in a federal election in September, and the surprise move has boosted popular support for the centre-left party. Merkel said on Monday the global fight against terrorism does not warrant putting groups of people under suspicion, adding Trump's order to restrict people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States violates the spirit of international cooperation. Turning to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Ukraine conflict, Schulz said that sanctions imposed against Russia could only be lifted after both sides had implemented the so-called Minsk peace plan. "As long as the Minsk peace agreement is not fully implemented, the sanctions cannot be lifted. We must tell Putin very clearly that Russia is obliged to respect and defend international law," Schulz said. Schulz' comments bring more clarity about his stance on Russia after some leading Social Democrats have voiced support for a partial lifting of sanctions as long as Russia is implementing some aspects of the plan. Merkel, one of the architects of the peace deal, has repeatedly said that sanctions against Russia can only be lifted once the Minsk agreement has been fully implemented.


Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday told foreign journalists to roam the country and report more, even as five global news organisations found themselves without invitations to cover his speech. The BBC, The Economist, The Financial Times, The Guardian and The New York Times were not invited to the event where Xi introduced his new leadership line-up following a once-in-five-years Communist Party Congress, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) said. Two Reuters journalists were invited. We encourage reporters to travel and see more of China... to learn about and continue to report on more aspects of China, Xi told a gathering of Chinese and international journalists. He did not take questions. We do not need lavish praise from others. However, we do welcome objective reporting and constructive suggestions. Under Xi, China has stepped up censorship and tightened controls on the internet and various aspects of civil society. Reporting conditions for foreign journalists in China have deteriorated in recent years, according to media watchdog groups, with areas of the country including Tibet effectively off-limits. The FCCC criticized the exclusion of the Western news organisations. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that these media organisations have been singled out to send a message, the FCCC said in a statement posted on Twitter. Using media access as a tool to punish journalists whose coverage the Chinese authorities disapprove of is a gross violation of the principles of press freedom. The Beijing bureau chiefs at the Economist and Financial Times both confirmed to Reuters that they had not received invitations. The New York Times had applied for and not received an invitation, a spokesperson said in an email. We are disappointed that we were denied access to President Xi s press conference. The BBC will continue to report fairly and objectively on the stories of China, the BBC said in a statement. The Guardian published a story saying it was among those organisations excluded. Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang referred specific questions about the congress to the press center but said foreign reporters were welcome to cover the gathering. We handle foreign reporter applications according to rules and regulations, he told reporters. An official at the press center told Reuters that it had organized many events that foreign media could and did attend. The Standing Committee unveiling venue had limited space and so there was no guarantee all foreign media who applied could attend, the official said. We hope that foreign media can really pay attention to China s development and objectively and fairly report on China and the Communist Party, said the official, who asked not be named. There were more than 3,000 reporters covering the congress, according to state media, and the leadership announcement was held in a side room at Beijing s Great Hall of the People, not in the cavernous main auditorium.


U.S. President Donald Trump will hold telephone calls with the leaders of Russia, Germany, and France on Saturday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in a tweet on Friday. The Kremlin earlier said Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump would speak. Separately, a source in Berlin said Chancellor Angela Merkel would talk with Trump, although Merkel's spokeswoman declined to comment. French President Francois Hollande and Merkel held a joint news conference earlier on Friday.


If you need reassurance that someone is truly fighting for your best interests in Congress, look no further than Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). She has been fighting for justice for the American people against a corrupt financial system since before she even took office. She is a champion for the unheard American voice that all too often gets drowned out by corporate cash and lobbying efforts from big banks.Republicans, of course, fall in line behind these lobbyists and take what they can get. They then turn around and vote in favor of those who crashed our economy rather than those who elected them into office the people.No greater example of this is than what just happened on the floor of the House of Representatives. A vote was taken (HR766) to let fraudulent bankers off the hook and make it harder for them to be investigated and held accountable. Take a guess how Republicans responded Warren did NOT hold back in her disgust of what was happening before our very eyes:It s not equal justice when a kid gets thrown in jail for stealing a car, while a CEO gets a huge raise when his company steals billions. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 3, 2016The American people remember who broke our economy & who made out like bandits and they didn t send us here to help the bandits. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 3, 2016If anyone in Congress thinks they can make it harder to crack down on corporate criminals, I promise you: The American people are watching. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 3, 2016Systematic fraud on Wall St helped spark the 2008 financial crisis but not a single Wall St executive went to jail. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016You d think big banks would be happy with enforcement so tepid that they could just bake fines into the cost of doing business, right? Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016Nope right now on the House floor, Wall St buddies are pushing a bill to make it tougher to prosecute bank fraud. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016You read that right: The House is just minutes away from voting on a bill to make it tougher to investigate & prosecute bank fraud. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016So she urged everyone to tell Congress to hold Wall Street accountable and vote NO :Tell Congress: They work for the American people not Wall Street banks that break the law. Vote NO on HR 766. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016And this is how House Republicans responded:Every single House Republican who came to work today just voted to make it harder to hold big banks accountable for fraud. Shameful. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016It is remarkably shameful, corrupt and disgusting. Thank goodness for voices like Senator Warren and Senator Sanders for being in the Senate to call these corrupt politicians out and shine a huge spotlight on where Republican loyalties truly are. To know we live in a nation where people of color are locked up for minor offenses or even killed where they stand, but these corrupt bankers are allowed to destroy our economy as well as people s lives and not be held accountable is beyond shameful, it s reprehensible. Thank you for fighting for us, Senator Warren. Thank you.Video/Featured image: YouTube


Donald Trump is truly pathetic.Trump has reportedly not been able to contact Steve Bannon since signing off on his firing on Friday.Calls for Bannon s removal only increased after Trump s refusal to condemn Nazis in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.So, Trump decided to reach out to Bannon on Twitter and thanked his top white supremacist deputy for his service. But Trump did more than just thank Bannon.Trump also insulted Hillary Clinton in a clear demonstration that he does not care about the civility associated with the office of the presidency.I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton it was great! Thanks S Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017This obsession with Hillary Clinton needs to stop. More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 than did for Trump. When Trump insults her, he insults the millions of Americans who voted for her.That s the kind of divisive rhetoric that presidents avoid, and it s the rhetoric that has emboldened Nazis and white supremacists.Many Twitter users took aim at Trump.I did Nazi that coming! Alt Sarah H. Sanders (@AltUSPressSec) August 19, 2017pic.twitter.com/Ea24ZPoOHp Tonneke (@ton566) August 19, 2017You will be Tweeting terrible things about Bannon within a couple weeks when the Breitbart Anti-Trump machine kicks in. Impeach Donald Trump (@Impeach_D_Trump) August 19, 2017The only thing crooked is your fake presidency. News View (@NewsView100) August 19, 2017pic.twitter.com/QHJZD8Eaes Vassilis Ntousas (@VNtousas) August 19, 2017At least Hillary isn t a White Nationalist like yours truly. pic.twitter.com/VhvS8GjOUb The Tweetwit (@TheTweetwit) August 19, 2017A bigoted, hateful man like Steve Bannon should have never been in the administration. Anirvan Ghosh (@anirvanghosh) August 19, 2017Remember to thank him for all the white supremacy he brought to the White House. You must be so proud of that achievement. Mike P Williams ? (@Mike_P_Williams) August 19, 2017Last time I checked it wasn t her accused of treason, racism and nepotism and under several federal investigations Mr HipsterPharmacist (@PhilP85) August 19, 2017Donald Trump is a divisive racist who should be impeached. His presidency has been a train wreck from day one and it s only going to get worse unless Congress does something to stop him.Featured Image: Alex Wong/Getty Images


Newtown, Connecticut was the site of one of the most horrific mass shootings in United States history at Sandy Hook Elementary School. On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza brutally murdered 20 children in first grade, in addition to six school staff members, before he committed suicide.A new documentary, Newtown, discusses in depth the aftermath and wake the mass shooting left. The film s World Premiere was featured at the Sundance Film Festival this past January, and is continuing along the film festival circuit, with the next screenings scheduled for the Cleveland International Film Festival later this month. Filmed over the course of three years, the documentary features interviews with family members of those who were lost, first responders, and school staff members, as the event changed the course of all their lives forever.Despite the incitement caused by the tragedy in Newtown for government legislators to make policy changes which would help prevent future Adam Lanzas from committing similar horrible crimes, those calls fell on deaf ears in Congress. Instead, mass shootings continue to occur across the United States, while no action is taken to decrease their frequencies. Instead, states like Texas, West Virginia, Florida, and most other states in the country allow open carry guns without any sort of special permit. As calls for gun control increased from the public, the NRA and their lobbyists have reacted by pushing for gun ownership to become the norm.In a July 2015 interview, President Barack Obama told the BBC, The one area that I feel I ve been most frustrated and most stymied is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient, common sense gun safety laws, even in the sense of repeated mass killings.


Romanian lawmakers voted on Tuesday to enact judicial changes that critics say will undermine graft investigations by weakening the president s oversight. The move brings the country, ranked as one of the bloc s most corrupt, in line with eastern European Union peers Hungary and Poland in defying EU concerns over the independence of judiciaries and the rule of law. Ruling Social Democrat senators approved the bill by 80-0 with all opposition groupings boycotting the vote. It now goes to the president, who has expresses scepticism about it. He can sign it or send it back for more discussion. The opposition, however, has already said it plans to contest the bill at the constitutional court, which could prolong its adoption by early 2018. Contested elements of the bill include weakening the president s right to vet prosecutor candidates, as well as amending the definition of prosecutors activity to exclude the word independent. The president can refuse to appoint (prosecutors) only once..., reads the bill. Prosecutors carry out their work according to the principles of legality, impartiality, hierarchical control, under the authority of justice minister. Prosecutors are independent in proposing solutions, the bill stipulates. Critics say this amounts to political control. The bill also refers to the finance ministry s obligation to recoup losses triggered by a judicial error from the judge who issued the sentence, instead of from state funds. Experts have said this would could distort court judgments. The bill is are part of a wider judiciary overhaul that has triggered street protests across the country in recent weeks. Romanian prosecutors have investigated thousands of public officials in an unprecedented crackdown on graft in recent years. The lower house and senate speakers, both leaders of the ruling coalition, are on trial in separate cases.


Be aware and be ready to push back on this effort by the State Department and the United Nations to spread seed communities (their term) all over the U.S. Pretty soon we ll be covered up in refugees who are mostly (90%) muslim. We already have millions of illegals from Central America that we cannot and should not support. We now know that small towns across America like Athens, GA and Spartanburg, SC are being targeted for a influx of muslim refugees. Because it s very secretive (for obvious reasons), you need to keep your ear to the ground and push back like Athens and Spartanburg. Below is a fantastic piece that will fill you in on what s REALLY going on:With Muslim immigrants streaming into the United States at a rate of 100,000 per year, some of the communities targeted for new arrivals are seeking information on their new neighbors, only to be frustrated by federal bureaucrats and their hired contractors.How does a city get on the U.S. State Department s list of 190 communities selected for refugee resettlement? How can cities find out who will be coming and when? What services will they use, and what will be the cost to taxpayers?And, the granddaddy of all questions: Can the communities be assured that foreign nationals with ties to ISIS, al-Shabab and other Islamic terrorist groups won t slip through the government s porous screening process posing as refugees ?The answers to these questions are simple. Very little information is available. And there are no guarantees that some very bad apples won t arrive in your town, says a leading expert on the refugee resettlement program. One community that is trying to get information right now is Spartanburg, South Carolina.On March 16, Ann Corcoran, author of the Refugee Resettlement Watch blog, spoke at a national security summit in Columbia, South Carolina, hosted by former Defense Department analyst Frank Gaffney. A few days before that conference, on March 9, a story broke in the local Spartanburg newspaper that World Relief, one of the nine resettlement agencies that works under contract with the federal government, was planning to open an office in Spartanburg.When an agency like World Relief opens an office in a city, it means refugees will be arriving soon. There are no public hearings or announcements in local media, Corcoran said. Typically a story will appear in the local newspaper just before or after the first arrivals appear in town.Corcoran met some activists at Gaffney s conference who wanted to find out more about the plans for resettling United Nations-certified refugees in their city. It is like pulling teeth to get any information, Corcoran said. And these are long-term grassroots activists who know how to get information. One of the activists is Christina Jeffrey, a political science professor and former U.S. House of Representatives historian who ran against Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., in last year s Republican primary. Gowdy is now chairman of the House subcommittee on immigration and refugees. He is chair of this committee, and so they want to set up a refugee office in his home district, and we still can t get any information, Corcoran said.Jeffrey has asked the federal government to prepare a comprehensive impact statement, detailing the impact the refugees will have on Spartanburg s public services. Schools, health facilities, housing, the job market and public welfare programs will all be affected, but so far nobody is saying to what extent.The mayor of Athens, Georgia, who asked for the same type of report last year, encountered the same blackout of information.St. Cloud, Minnesota, residents have also inquired about how many more Somali refugees will be arriving in light of recent problems with Somali student protests at a local community college. Dozens of other Somalis have either left the country to fight for al-Shabab or ISIS while others have been charged and convicted with sending material support to overseas terrorist organizations. They re trying to get information because residents have heard the rumor that there are 1,500 more Somalis getting ready to be resettled there in St. Cloud, Corcoran said.The resettlement agencies hold lots of meetings and place lots of phone calls with stakeholders in the targeted communities, but these collaborative efforts almost always occur outside of the public spotlight. The term stakeholders does not apply to you, the taxpayer footing the bill for all of this, Corcoran said.According to a March 8 article in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, a partnership of faith leaders called Come Closer Spartanburg issued an invitation more than a year ago to World Relief to open a refugee office in Spartanburg. The March 8 article was the first public revelation of this effort even though World Relief had been working behind the scenes with stakeholders for a year. An initial group of 65 refugees will arrive this year, starting in April or May, from Congo, Bhutan and Syria.Jeffrey, in a March 30 op-ed in the local newspaper, shed more light on the group, Come Closer Spartanburg, and its goals: On its website, Come Closer Spartanburg describes the city of Spartanburg as home to what has been identified as the fifth most dangerous neighborhood in the United States. We have extremely high rates of unemployment, poverty and domestic violence. Overall, we were recently listed as the fourth most miserable city to live in our country. It does not take long to realize that we are a city in need of transformation. Jeffrey discovered that the objective is to plant a seed community in Spartanburg that will eventually blossom and transform the city. The federal government is creating communities within communities often pitted against each other economically and culturally.It s the same tactic that has been used for decades in Europe. Looking at other U.S. cities with new refugee communities, it appears that contractors often keep sending refugees to the same place until there is a community within a community. Unassimilated communities have created problems in Europe, and we are beginning to have similar problems here in the United States (witness Milwaukee, Wis., and Lewiston, Maine), Jeffrey writes.Corcoran said the word assimilation is no longer used by the resettlement agencies and their friends in the federal government. Rather, the new buzzword is integration. The goal of integration is to have a multitude of diverse cultures living side by side in coexistence but never assimilating.President Obama issued an executive memorandum dated Nov. 21, 2014, to all federal agencies directing them on Creating Welcoming Communities and Fully Integrated Immigrants and Refugees. This sort of backroom dealing between the federal government, its hired resettlement contractors and local officials is not designed to provide information to the people who live and work in the targeted refugee cities, Corcoran said. They don t like this whole idea that their town is being secretly selected, she said. This has been going on for over a year now in Spartanburg, and the refugees are now due to start arriving in a month or so. And these people have no information until it s actually upon them. The mayor of Athens, Nancy Denson, requested a plan. The city of Spartanburg is asking for the same consideration. That s what these people in Spartanburg are asking for, and they are asking that when you have a plan that you present it publicly at a public hearing, Corcoran said. They don t want to have to show any of that to the public. They re saying it s only 65; well, it s only 65 for the first year. It will continue to be more every year afterward once you become a seed community. Of the more than 500 Syrian refugees brought to the U.S. so far this past year, 90 percent of them have been Muslim, Corcoran said.


Email  Well, here we are, gang.  This morning America woke up and found we'd elected as president an overgrown bully, a huckster without a drop of decency in his pizza-dough body. "How the heck did we get here?" I'll bet you wondered. "What the heck happened?" Well, there's a lot we don't know yet about this election, but I'll tell you this: Maybe you shouldn't have made fun of my exclamation point.  Yeah, remember the exclamation point? The big 'n' red mark plopped next to my serifed-up name like a trout on the counter? We put that logo out, and you people laughed. Oh, how you laughed. "Hey, looks like ol' Wonder Bread Jeb's trying to squeeze some enthusiasm out of his limp little campaign!" You think I didn't hear you? You think I didn't see what you wrote? Of course I did. The taunts, the memes, the novelty Twitter handles, typed with a sneer. I saw all of it, and it hurt me. It hurt Jeb.  You turned me and my exclamation mark into a big dippy joke, and look what it got you. Dread. Defeat. Humiliation. Feel that despair in your gut today, and now imagine if you had "JEB!" in your life right now, splashed across every TV and touchscreen. Hey, there's some punctuation that'd put pep in your step! But nope, the guy who sticks his neck out to make electoral politics just a keystroke more exciting gets ribbed, roasted, raked over the coals, and hung out to dry.  Look, I wasn't a perfect candidate. I know that. But that doesn't mean you had to steer this country straight into a xenophobic hellhole.  That exclamation point was plain fun. It stood out from the pack. It even looked nice on a T-shirt or a coozy. You made a huge mistake the moment you collectively decided to rip my exclamation point to shreds.  I was up all night coming up with it, you know. That "!" was a John Ellis Bush original. I'd already tried out a question mark (too uncertain), an ellipsis (too ambiguous), even two exclamation points (too forceful), so when I hit on the idea of an exclamation point I really thought I had something special. I was so excited to share my excitement with you. Turns out I might as well have slapped my thick, pink matte dick into my hand and waggled it all over Facebook Live like a dang date palm frond, for all the love you gave me.  Look, I wasn't a perfect candidate. I know that. But that doesn't mean you had to steer this country straight into a xenophobic hellhole. All you had to do was be nice about that exclamation point for a few months. But you couldn't leave it alone, could you? You just could not resist having a good, old laugh! Well, take a look around and tell me what you see. A divided nation headed for the falls with a dipshit at the helm, belting out one last drunken shanty before it all goes to chunks and splinters. You bullies deserve it all.  Goodbye, America. I would have been delightful.


Such a nice young man. He was just hearing voices in his head. You mean like Mohamed s voice? Of course CAIR says he was likely just showing off Because that s how Muslim men who live in America show off ???? Not only did this Dearborn Muslim plot to shoot up a Detroit church, but he kept a sword in his car and said that it was his dream to behead someone. Khalil Abu-Rayyan said he wanted to burn people alive, tie them up, cut their tongues. As for the church shooting, Abu-Rayyan said, Honestly, I regret not doing it. If I can t go do jihad at the Middle East I would do a jihad over here. But Abu-Rayyan will not be prosecuted for terrorism; not in Dearborn, he won t. To prosecute him for terrorism would be islamofauxbic. Any time a jihadi gets caught plotting mass murder of the kuffar, it s the FBI that gets the blame: entrapment. The case against Abu-Rayyan has focused on his alleged threats of violence and has raised questions, including whether the government successfully thwarted Abu-Rayyan s alleged plan for a terrorist attack on a Metro Detroit church, or whether the FBI s undercover agent radicalized a vulnerable young man with no criminal past until 2015. Shooting and death makes me excited. I love to hear people scream and beg. I wish I had my gun, Abu-Rayyan told the FBI undercover agent in a text message.The FBI is being accused of radicalizing this savage. Not the Islamic texts and teachings that incite to jihad, not his Muslim brothers waging holy war in the cause of Islam the FBI.Wait, it get worse. The FBI is being criticized for arresting him, as opposed to pursuing other options, such as going to the family.Asked whether they explored other options before arresting Abu-Rayyan, U.S. Attorney spokeswoman Gina Balaya said: Although intervention with a family is appropriate in some cases, when a defendant poses a specific threat of violence, we need take action that protects public safety. Go to the family? The family is usually in on it. Look at San Bernardino. Khalil plotted to shoot up a church. There are no other options but arrest. How can the FBI do its job when it is expected to adhere to sharia law and sanction jihad?


The sudden and shocking death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia opened a new and incendiary front in the already red-hot 2016 presidential race, one that promises to divide Democrats and Republicans and, perhaps, Republicans from themselves. The vacancy on the court, which is now evenly split 4-4 between its conservative and liberal wings, had Republicans calling on President Barack Obama to refrain from choosing a successor to the right-leaning Scalia while Democrats urged Obama to do as the U.S. Constitution requires and put forward a candidate to face confirmation in an albeit hostile Senate. The prospect of such a battle drew swift and furious comment from candidates vying to be elected president in November. Facing off in a debate only hours after the 79-year-old Scalia's death was announced, some Republican presidential candidates seized the moment to caution voters that their party's front-runner, billionaire businessman Donald Trump, could not be trusted to nominate a stalwart conservative. "If Donald Trump is president, he will appoint liberals," charged U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas during the debate in South Carolina, which holds a Republican nominating contest next Saturday. "Two branches of government hang in the balance, not just the presidency, but the Supreme Court," Cruz said. "If we get this wrong, if we nominate the wrong candidate, the Second Amendment, life, marriage, religious liberty, every one of those hangs in the balance." Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina also took a shot at Trump. "Donald Trump is not a conservative, so I don't trust him to pick a judge," Graham said before the debate. A real estate mogul, Trump has supported Democratic politicians in the past. Trump, who also has taken several positions at odds with Republican orthodoxy, joined other candidates at the debate in insisting that Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican majority leader in the Senate, stand by his promise to block any Obama high court choice. "It's up to Mitch McConnell and everyone else to stop it," Trump, a former reality TV show host, said. "It's called delay, delay, delay." Under the U.S. system, the president nominates justices for the nine-member court and the Senate confirms them. The last justice to be approved by the Senate of the opposite party during an election year was Justice Anthony Kennedy in 1988. Obama has already indicated that he intends to send a choice to the Senate in coming weeks, meaning that the nominee will be heavily scrutinized by presidential candidates in both parties - and more than likely be opposed by the majority of Republicans. "The court may genuinely be a major issue this year," said David Axelrod, a former top political adviser to Obama. "It will be a hell of a fight." Criticism of the court, which in recent years has upheld Obama's sweeping healthcare plan and legalized same-sex marriage, has already been a thread running through several Republican candidates' campaigns. The conservative majority on the court had appeared poised to invalidate Obama's immigration and climate-change policies. The loss of Scalia, considered to be a lodestar of conservative legal thought, and the potential swing of the court to the left, ensures that whatever drama plays out in the Senate this year will be mirrored on the campaign trail. "There is no more clarifying debate in politics these days than when it comes to Supreme Court nominees," said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. "This now is for all the marbles." Reid was majority leader of the Senate when it confirmed previous Obama court nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Manley called McConnell's threat not to allow a vote on a potential Scalia replacement "completely beyond the pale." Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton seemed inclined to make McConnell's threat a campaign issue. "The Republicans in the Senate and on the campaign trail who are calling for Justice Scalia's seat to remain vacant dishonor our Constitution," Clinton said in a statement. Axelrod said that the issue could help Clinton, locked in a tight race with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. "I think it will make electability and experience in this realm more important," he said. Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and a longtime observer of the Supreme Court nomination process, said Obama likely has two options. "He could nominate a more liberal candidate who would have no real chance of getting through a Republican Senate - in which case this would become a salient political issue in 2016," Hasen said. Or he could nominate a more moderate candidate who might gain enough Republican support to gain approval, he said. There are risks to both approaches: A Republican obstruction of a liberal nominee would animate the Democratic Party's progressive base in an election year but would leave the court without a potentially tie-breaking vote for perhaps a year. That same Democratic base might view a moderate nominee as a betrayal, while conservative Republican voters likely would frown on any senator who voted to approve an Obama choice. Manley said that McConnell has already shown that he is unwilling to support any choice made by Obama and that the White House must act aggressively. "The president should go forward and nominate the most liberal candidate possible," he said. Given the need to fire up its most passionate voters, that might just be exactly what Republican candidates want as well. (This version of the story was refiled to fix the mistyped word "then" to "than" in paragraph 16.) (Writing by James Oliphant; Reporting by Ginger Gibson and James Oliphant; Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Jeff Mason; Editing by Howard Goller) SAP is the sponsor of this content. It was independently created by Reuters' editorial staff and funded in part by SAP, which otherwise has no role in this coverage.


The Islamic Republic of Pakistan has launched a crackdown against "blasphemy" on social media, and Facebook and Twitter are doing little to stop it. According to government sources, Facebook is even assisting Pakistan in removing "blasphemous" content. [Late last week, government officials in Pakistan informed the Islamabad High Court that "almost 85 percent" of "blasphemous" material on Facebook had been taken down at the request of the government. Facebook has yet to publicly confirm or deny this claim from the Pakistani government. However, earlier this month, Facebook — which claims to be "founded" on "principles of free expression," dispatched a delegation to Pakistan to address the government's demand for religious censorship. At the time of writing, Facebook did not reply to an inquiry from Breitbart News asking the company if they had removed "blasphemous" material to satisfy Pakistan. Pakistan, a country which once harboured Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden within its borders, recently launched a crackdown on social media blasphemy. The country's Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif has ordered authorities to take urgent steps to remove blasphemous content on social media and apprehend those who post it. Last week, three Pakistani bloggers were arrested on suspicion of blasphemy, and had their laptops seized. If convicted, they could face the death penalty. Pakistan wants social media companies to help identify anonymous posters of blapshemous content, and has announced that it will seek the extradition of any Pakistanis who post blasphemous content from abroad. International affairs magazine The Diplomat has branded the crackdown a "war on atheism. " Meanwhile, on Twitter, a hashtag calling for the execution of one of the arrested "blapshemers," '#HangAyazNizami,' trended in Pakistan as Muslim users took to the platform to call for the blood of heretics. Fuck with freedom of speech hang this fucker asap. 😏 #HangAyazNizami, — Sardar Waqar (@Engrr_vicky) March 25, 2017, Call us terrorist or extremist or what everbut he must be hanged #hangayaznizami, — Daniyal Ahmed (@daniyalaahmed) March 25, 2017, He must be drag in the streets then hanged #HangAyazNizami, — Nida Ahmed (@nidaa214) March 25, 2017, Western Twitter users reacted strongly against the trend. Some users pointed out the hypocrisy of Twitter allowing these open calls for religious murder on their platform, while cracking down on peaceful western conservative users. Dear @twitter Those posting pro #hangayazNizami tweets are far more dangerous than Milo. https: . — Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) March 27, 2017, Thousands of muslims who AREN'T terrorists want to hang a blogger for "blasphemy" and some still want mass Muslim migration #HangAyazNizami, — Joseph (@JosephBrowno) March 27, 2017, Those tweeting #HangAyazNizami for "blasphemy" are insecure, petty, weak little cowards. @Jack @Twitter should take note. — Maajid (@MaajidNawaz) March 26, 2017, See this hashtag #HangAyazNizami learn what ordinary Pakistanis want done to a secular blogger now in serious peril. This is NOT a fringe. https: . — Ali A. Rizvi (@aliamjadrizvi) March 26, 2017, I'm wondering if prominent Muslim voices such as @lsarsour will publicly condemn this #HangAyazNizami, or if she'll completely ignore it. — Child Of Kekistan (@ChildofKekistan) March 27, 2017, Twitter has yet to respond to an enquiry from Breitbart News, which asked the company why calls for violence against a blogger remain on the platform, and whether such posts violate the platform's guidelines on "hate content. " You can follow Allum Bokhari on Twitter and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to abokhari@breitbart. com.


Kenya s main opposition leader said on Thursday that anger over last month s presidential election ran so deep it threatened to tear the country apart. Raila Odinga boycotted the Oct. 25 election because he said it would be unfair, leaving President Uhuru Kenyatta to win with 98 percent of the vote. The Supreme Court called the poll after it annulled a first presidential election held in August on procedural grounds. Mainstream Kenyans feel so deeply cheated they are openly toying with the idea of secession, Odinga told an audience in Washington, D.C. His speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank, was broadcast live on Kenyan television. The biggest problem in Kenya right now is exclusion ... unless they (the problems) are addressed they will tear the country apart, he said. As things stand now, anger and radicalization is growing by the day. A small number of politicians in Odinga s opposition alliance have discussed the idea of his strongholds seceding from Kenya but the idea has not gained wide popularity. Odinga s supporter base is concentrated along Kenya s coast, in city slums and in his western strongholds, areas that have traditionally felt excluded from political power and the opportunities for patronage it offers. Odinga s supporters are currently boycotting three companies they say are backing the government. The opposition has called for protests on Friday. In his speech, Odinga noted Kenya s four presidents since independence had all come from the Kikuyu or Kalenjin communities, even though the country had 44 recognized ethnic groups. Kenyatta is a Kikuyu and his deputy, who has made clear his intention to run in the next election, is a Kalenjin. Earlier this week, Odinga told Reuters he wanted a caretaker government for six months while preparations were made for new elections. Government officials reject the idea, saying Odinga had his chance to compete in October. The Supreme Court is due to start hearing petitions on the legality of the October elections next week.


But Is Threatening Trump On Social Media Considered A Serious Crime? Will he be locked up? (Read below to find answer to this question)Matt Harrigan at PacketsledMatt Harrigan is the CEO of PacketSled and Critical Assets and a board member for OWASP is calling for an assassination. Call the police, FBI, and the Secret Service! RIGHTVia Reddit The Donald:Harrigan wants Trump dead.Here are screen shots of his messages on social media:Harrigan later posted an apology on Facebook:My recent facebook comment was intended to be a joke, in the context of a larger conversation, and only privately shared as such. Anyone who knows me, knows that I do not engage in this form of rhetoric with any level of seriousness and the comment most certainly does not represent my real personal views in any regard. I apologize if anything that I said was either taken seriously, was offensive, or caused any legitimate concern. Best Regards, Matt Harrigan GPTwo weeks before the 2008 election, a California man left a vicious message about Barack Obama on a Yahoo finance message board. Re: Obama fk the niggar, he will have a 50 cal in the head soon. He followed it up with another ugly post, which began simply: Shoot the nig. There was more to come. On Election Day, the same poster sent disturbing emails about shooting someone that, as one court put it, would appear to confirm the malevolent nature of the previous statements as well as the poster s own malignant nature. One of the message board participants reported the initial postings, and the Secret Service investigated. With Yahoo s help, it traced the messages to the home computer of Walter Bagdasarian, now 49, a resident of La Mesa, Calif. When agents searched his house, they found that he had weapons in his home, including a .50 caliber muzzle-loading rifle the caliber of bullet the post said would soon be in Obama s head.In July of 2009, Bagdasarian was convicted of violating 18 USC s 879(a)(3), a federal law that makes it a felony to threaten a major presidential candidate with death or bodily harm. Last week, a federal appeals court in California reversed his conviction which had gotten him sentenced to 60 days in a halfway house ruling that his posts did not fall under the law, and that his speech was protected by the first amendment.United States v. Bagdasarian was the latest attempt by the federal courts to police the blurry line between criminal threats and protected speech a line that has become more important than ever as the Internet has given rage-filled people unprecedented opportunities to spew hate.Regardless of how offensive it can often get, the courts are rightly reluctant to let political speech be criminalized. To be convicted under 879(a)(3), it is not enough that someone has made menacing statements. They have to have intended to threaten injury or death, and people viewing the words objectively have to regard them as threatening. In addition to these requirements under 879(a)(3), there is a separate first amendment test: the speaker s words must be a true threat which in this case the court defined as a statement which, in the entire context and under all the circumstances, a reasonable person would foresee would be interpreted by those to whom the statement is communicated as a serious expression of intent to inflict bodily harm upon that person. The San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled, by a 2-1 vote, that Bagdasarian s posts did not meet these tests. The majority was deeply unhappy with Bagdasarian an especially unpleasant fellow, the court said and his words. But the judges in the majority also insisted that the posts were not illegal. There was not enough evidence, they said, to find that Bagdasarian actually intended to put Obama at risk, or that a reasonable observer would think that he did. What s more, the posts were not true threats. The court contrasted Bagdasarian s words with those from another case, in which an enraged discharged employee posted threats like I will kill you and I will personally send you back to the hell from where you came.