Dem Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Pakistani IT staffer Imran Awan was arrested at Dulles airport while trying to flee the United States. Get the back story from Maria Bartiromo: How is it possible that 3 brothers are hired, Muslim brothers just saying, to work in Congress and deal with our most intelligent and sensitive information, number one? They were all making $160,000! Why were they paid so much? 22 years old one of the guys, the other was 25. They re making $160,000, $161,000 and $165,000. And one of them has a criminal background! If you haven t been following this crazy series of events, we ve got a previous report below to fill you in. Basically, Imran Awan and three Muslim relatives were hired to handle IT for the DNC which gave them access to lots of sensitive information NOT GOOD! The Daily Caller just exclusively reported that Awan attempted to destroy hard drives then desperately tried to retrieve them when they were discovered.GETTING THOSE DESTROYED HARD RIVES BACK:Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately tried to get the hard drives back, the individual told The Daily Caller News Foundation s Investigative Group.A high-level congressional source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, confirmed that the FBI has joined what Politico previously described as a Capitol Police criminal probe into serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network by Imran and three of his relatives, who had access to the emails and files of the more than two dozen House Democrats who employed them on a part-time basis.Capitol Police have also seized computer equipment tied to the Florida lawmaker.Awan s younger brothers, Abid and Jamal, his wife, Hina Alvi, and Rao Abbas, Imran s best friend, are also under investigation. There have been no arrests in the case.THIS CASE IS HUGE! MARIA BARTIROMO IS LIVID ABOUT IT:A Pakistani family under criminal investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police (see our previous report below) for abusing their access to the House of Representatives information technology (IT) system may have engaged in myriad other questionable schemes besides allegedly placing ghost employees on the congressional payroll.Imran Awan, his wife Hina, and brothers Abid and Jamal collectively netted more than $4 million in salary as IT administrators for House Democrats between 2009 and 2017. Yet the absence of signs of wealth displayed among them raise questions such as was the money sent overseas or did something other than paychecks motivate their actions?Capitol Police revoked the Awans access to the congressional IT system in February 2017 after a major data breach was detected. Their access had allowed them to read emails and files of dozens of members, including many serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON THIS THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA IS IGNORING THE CRIMINALITY OF THESE BROTHERS:3 MUSLIM BROTHERS Working For Dems In Congress CAUGHT Accessing Unauthorized Top-Secret Government Intel One Has Criminal Background May Have Ties To Muslim Brotherhood [VIDEO]3 Congressional IT employees have been fired for accessing members computer networks without permission. Maria s on the show, knows more about this. Can you fill me in a bit.Here are their names Stuart. let me tell you what the 3 people that were fired on Thursday: Abid, Imran and Jamal Awan. They were barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives on Thursday because they accessed Congressmen and Congress people s computer networks unauthorized. At a minimum they were fired. At a minimum we know that they accessed computers unauthorized and they did so in foreign intelligence, foreign affairs and intelligence committees. Okay? So they were getting very important information, government information. They accessed these computers. That is the least of it. There s also some talk that people are looking into what ties they have into terrorism. Are they impacted by the Muslim Brotherhood? Are they a part of the Muslim Brotherhood? One of them has a criminal background!How is it possible that 3 brothers are hired, Muslim brothers just saying, to work in Congress and deal with our most intelligent and sensitive information, number one? They were all making $160,000! Why were they paid so much? 22 years old one of the guys, the other was 25. They re making $160,000, $161,000 and $165,000. And one of them has a criminal background! I hear what you re saying, I mean, these intelligence committees handle our terror strategies right? They got in on Benghazi by the way.Yes, and they also worked for many Democrats in the House. They are thinking that they may be also one of the reasons Debbie Wasserman Schultz got hacked. There s so much more to come on this Stuart, it s an incredible story. I think it s amazing!Chiefs of staff for dozens of Democratic lawmakers who employed the four were informed last week that a criminal probe was underway into their use of congressional information technology systems, including the existence of an external server to which House data was being funneled, and into the theft of and overbilling for computer equipment.Their salaries and time were shared among dozens of Democratic members, including former Democratic National Committee Chairman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida.Chiefs of staff for dozens of Democratic lawmakers who employed the four were informed last week that a criminal probe was underway into their use of congressional information technology systems, including the existence of an external server to which House data was being funneled, and into the theft of and overbilling for computer equipment.Despite the generous salaries, the four were involved in multiple suspicious mortgage transfers and a debt-evading bankruptcy. Abid had more than $1 million in debts following a failed business called Cars International that he ran in Falls Church, Va., from November 2009 to September 2010. Business associates said in court documents that Abid had stolen money and vehicles from them.It s unclear how Abid found time to run an automotive business while working full-time for Congress. He had been on the congressional payroll since 2005. A congressional credit union repossessed two of his personal cars before the business folded.Abid filed for bankruptcy in 2012, but somehow managed to keep ownership of two houses while telling the bankruptcy court and creditors that he had no assets with which to pay them. He signed a sworn statement that he and his wife, Natalia Soba, were living apart and needed separate residences. My spouse and I are legally separated under applicable non-bankruptcy law or my spouse and I are living apart other than for the purpose of evading the requirements of 707(b)(2)(A) of the Bankruptcy Code, Abid claimed in bankruptcy documents. But both houses had been in the family for years.Abid s record includes numerous driving- and alcohol-related legal problems, including driving with a suspended or revoked license, court records show. He was found guilty of drunk driving a month before he started at the House, and was arrested for public intoxication a month after his first day.A spokesman for Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas told TheDCNF Friday that Jamal s employment with our office has been terminated. Hilarie Chambers, a spokeswoman for Rep. Sandy Levin who employed Abid told TheDCNF that after being notified by the House Administration Committee, this individual was removed from our payroll. We are confident that everything in our office is secure. Not every Democrat is willing to terminate their connection with these four:Some Democrats have not terminated their connection with the four, including Wasserman Schultz, who employs Imran and who resigned from her DNC post last year after a computer hack revealed embarassing emails. Derrick Robinson, spokesman for California Rep. Karen Bass, refused to comment on Alvi s employment status.


The GOP is known for its misogyny. This is especially true of those currently running for president on that side of the aisle. So, it is only fitting that misogynist insults often used by men are turned on these guys, and Full Frontal host Samantha Bee did just that on Monday s edition of her show.Women are often accused of being too emotional to be in certain positions, but the mudslinging and childish insults that have peppered the GOP debates and campaign trails show that men can be just as emotional in their cases inappropriately so. Bee started her first segment with a eulogy for the death of the Republican Party in the wake of the absolute national embarrassment that is their presidential primary, then turned on the candidates themselves. She began: I don t mean to sound sexist, but I think men are just too emotional to be president. Bee then pointed out what everyone knows, saying that the GOP establishment knows that the Donald Trump candidacy is doing to their brand what his a*shole son does to real elephants. This narrative within the establishment has made old-time GOPers like former presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Arizona Senator John McCain try to urge people within the party not to support Trump.Bee says that this won t do any good, though, if past efforts by Romney are any indication, because when [Romney] tried to stand between a charismatic guy and the White House, you got beat like a Muslim girl at a Trump rally. Samantha Been is absolutely correct here. Trump will likely be the GOP s nominee, and that is absolute nightmare for them. He s an openly racist, misogynist, xenophobic asshole who bears some startling and disturbing resemblances to Adolf Hitler, and we all know how THAT ended.You re done, GOP and you did it to yourselves. Good riddance.Watch Samantha Bee s brilliant takedown below:


On this day in 1973, J. Fred Buzhardt, a lawyer defending President Richard Nixon in the Watergate case, revealed that a key White House tape had an 18...


Parliamentarians in Russia gave a mixed reaction on Monday to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's proposal to strike a deal on nuclear arms cuts in exchange for Washington lifting sanctions imposed on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis. Konstantin Kosachev, head of the upper house of parliament's international affairs committee, was cited by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying getting the sanctions annulled was not a goal in itself and not worth making security concessions for. "We consider them (the sanctions) a stupid legacy of the outgoing White House team that need to be consigned to history along with them," said Kosachev. But another Russian senator, Oleg Morozov, was quoted by the same agency as saying that Moscow would be ready to discuss the issue of nuclear cuts, something he said Russia itself favored. Trump told The Times of London in an interview published online on Sunday that he would propose offering to end sanctions imposed on Russia for its annexation of Crimea in return for a nuclear arms reduction deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin.


Washington (CNN) The Iran nuclear talks are progressing. But tough issues still remain. We could reach a deal. But we also might not. About 50-50. Less than 50-50. It's all up in the air. Those messages are just a slice of what top U.S. officials are saying publicly as they emerge from closed-door negotiations with their Iranian counterparts, struggling to find a way to broker a lasting deal aimed at keeping Iran from a nuclear weapon. But there's a method to the messaging madness as the Obama administration is looking to reassure key constituencies in the U.S. while holding together an increasingly fractious coalition of countries joining them in the negotiations and also ratcheting up pressure on Iran. "All of this is inevitably to some extent posturing, but it's also real and important in terms of setting the expectations for the negotiating parties," as well as setting the political context at home, said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution and a former State Department Iran policy adviser. Skeptics in Congress want to know the U.S. is taking a hard line and pressing for the best deal possible. International partners want to know the U.S. hasn't brought them to this point for nothing. And Iran needs to know the U.S. won't concede certain points but is truly willing to walk away. "As I have said many times and as I discussed with President Obama last night, we are not going to sit at the negotiating table forever," Kerry said at a press conference Thursday. But he also said the U.S. isn't pressed by time: "We shouldn't get up and leave simply because the clock strikes midnight." Bold public statements that the U.S. is prepared to leave Iran hanging at the negotiating table telegraph the message that Tehran needs to budge on certain issues or it could find itself without the much-awaited sanctions relief it has chased for years. That's how Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a key Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, interpreted Kerry's words. "My hunch is that what we're hearing here from Secretary Kerry is a determination to send a message to the Iranian Supreme Leader: 'The deal that is on the table is the best deal you're going to get. You either need to accept it or we're going to walk away,'" Coons said Thursday on CNN. Maloney said Kerry and other officials' statements are a clear gambit to "influence Iranian expectations and Iranian decision-making" on the inside from the outside. "Those theatrics were necessary," Maloney said. But they also have another audience: restive members of Congress who fear that the repeated deadline extensions are a sign that Iran is gaining the upper hand and sticking to its demands while the U.S. caves. By passing the July 9 date that Congress set for completing the deal and turning a copy over to Congress, the administration now faces a congressional review period of 60 days rather than just 30. That's twice as much time for vocal opponents to tear the details of the deal apart and rally votes against the measure. So Kerry and President Barack Obama have doubled down in recent weeks on their insistence that the U.S. is willing to walk away from talks altogether if Iran won't relent on the final, crucial sticking points. "I will walk away from the negotiations if, in fact it's a bad deal," Obama said last week from the White House. "If the tough decisions don't get made, we are absolutely prepared to call an end to this process," Kerry stressed on Thursday. That's giving some in Congress hope that the Obama administration is sticking to its guns. But it's not clear whether the more hardened skeptics are buying the administration's insistence that it is not flinching on key points, Maloney said. "There's still frustration and an overwhelming skepticism toward the administration and its ability to hold a hard line with respect to Iran," she said. The talking point of walking away from a deal also helps reinforce the administration's arguments that it has worked tirelessly to obtain a good deal and that it therefore got the best one possible -- should a deal be reached. And if there is no deal, the messaging will help to lower expectations. That's why Obama told Senate Democrats this week that it's more likely that there won't be a deal. "He said in the course of the negotiations he's been more optimistic, less optimistic. And he said that the chances at this point are below 50-50," said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. Days later, though, Kerry played the other side of expectations, telling reporters optimistically that the parties "resolved some of the things that were outstanding" and that "it's safe to say that we have made progress today." Because ultimately, the U.S. needs to keep not just Iran, but its partners, in the negotiations pressing full steam ahead at the negotiating table. The coalition of five world powers -- Russia, China, Germany, France and the UK -- negotiating alongside the U.S. is already showing signs of strain, as Russia adopts a stance on relaxing sanctions more in line with Iran's. In particular, the new Iranian demand that the arms embargo on it be lifted has caused frustration for the U.S. while winning support from Moscow. On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov indicated that his country was backing Iran's bid to lift the arms embargo "as soon as possible." Russia is a top supplier of weapons to Iran. For that, Americans also have a talking point. "Under no circumstances should we relieve pressure on Iran relative to ballistic missile capabilities and arms trafficking," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said this week on Capitol Hill.


Hundreds of pilot whales that swam into a shallow New Zealand bay died overnight after they got stuck in the waterway and beached themselves on the coastline. More than 500 rescuers tried frantically to send the pilot whales back out to sea, but at least 250 died in what officials called one of the worst whale strandings in New Zealand's history. Attempts to refloat the remaining whales during high tide met with partial success. About 50 whales had swum out of the bay after high tide, according to the Department of Conservation, but as many as 90 others had rebeached themselves by Friday afternoon. Volunteers said they would try to refloat the stranded whales again on Saturday. Whale strandings at Farewell Spit, at the northern tip of New Zealand's South Island, happen most years, Kath Inwood, a ranger, told The Associated Press. But the high number of whales trapped this year has surprised conservation officials. The whale stranding was the largest in the country since 1985, when 450 were stranded near Auckland. New Zealand has one of the highest rates of whale strandings, which are believed to occur when the mammals, who are known for their social bonding, make navigational mistakes while chasing prey, escaping predators or trying to protect sick members of the group.


Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he doubted that a possible U.S. preventative strike on North Korea would destroy all of Pyongyang s weapons.


US air strikes in Afghanistan increase in 2016 Sun Oct 30, 2016 6:12PM A US drone aircraft lands at Afghanistan's Jalalabad Airport. © AFP  Amin AlemiPress TV, Kabul  A number of US military officials have declared that America has conducted 700 air raids in Afghanistan in 2016. The figure shows a 4 percent increase in such strikes compared to last year. Afghan officials, however, believe that the country can fight terror groups without support from US forces. Loading ...


License DMCA  It's like we are back to the 1800s when the U.S. Army rampaged against Native American tribes across the American West. The militarized police and the use of the National Guard this week in responding to the Standing Rock Sioux Native American challenge in North Dakota to big oil and its dangerous pipelines reminds one of Custer's Last Stand against Sitting Bull.  In fact, the portrait of Sitting Bull is on one of the most popular t-shirts available to supporters of the "water protectors," as those are known who protest yet one more oil pipeline that crosses sensitive watershed areas and major rivers of the United States.  Four days last week, I joined hundreds of Native Americans and social justice campaigners from around the United States and around the world, in challenging the Dakota Access Pipe Line (DAPL), the 1,172-mile, $3.7 billion dollar scar across the face of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.  Last week, I photographed the area along Highway 6 south of Bismarck where the Energy Transfer Partnership contractors were busy digging the trench for the "Black Snake" as the pipeline is called. License DMCA - Advertisement -  I also counted 24 police cars returning to Bismarck at shift change around 3 p.m., a huge number of state law enforcement personnel and vehicles dedicated to protection of corporate business, instead of the rights of citizens.  Huge machines were chewing up the earth near water sources for all of North Dakota. The pipeline was rerouted from near Bismarck so if the pipeline breaks it would not endanger the water supply of the capital city of the state. But it was relocated to where it will cross the Missouri River and will jeopardize the water supply of the Native Americans and all Americans living in southern North Dakota and downstream of the Missouri River. Security forces protecting the Dakota Access pipeline construction spray protesters with pepper spray. License DMCA - Advertisement -  On Thursday, the digging took a more confrontational turn. The huge digging equipment arrived to cut across State Highway 1806 at a spot where water protectors had set up a front-line camp several months ago, one mile north of the main encampment of over 1,000 people. As the equipment arrived, the "water protectors" blocked the highway.  In a dangerous incident, an armed private security guard of DAPL came onto the camp and was chased off into the water abutting the camp by water protectors. After a lengthy standoff, tribal agency police arrived and arrested the security guard. Water protectors set his security vehicle on fire.  On Friday more than 100 local and state police and North Dakota National Guard arrested over 140 people who blocked the highway attempting to stop the destruction of the land. Police in riot gear with automatic rifles lined up across a highway, with multiple MRAPs (mine-resistant ambush protected military vehicles), a sound cannon that can immobilize persons nearby, Humvees driven by National Guardsmen, an armored police truck and a bulldozer.  Police used mace, pepper spray, tear gas and flash-bang grenades and bean-bag rounds against Native Americans who lined up on the highway. Police reportedly shot rubber bullets at their horses and wounded one rider and his horse.  As this police mayhem was unfolding, a small herd of buffalo stampeded across a nearby field, a strong symbolic signal to the water protectors who erupted in cheers and shouts, leaving law enforcement officials wondering what was happening. The security forces protecting the Dakota Access pipeline against protesters are heavily militarized.


While Donald Trump and his brownshirts are busy destroying the country, President Obama is committing his time and energy to making the country a better place.On Saturday, the former President made a surprise video appearance at a Chance the Rapper show in Chicago where he did his usual thing and delivered a positive message.Obama thanked the performer for serving as the grand marshal of Chicago s annual Bud Billiken parade (the largest and oldest African-American parade in the country) and thanked him for helping provide school supplies to Chicago s students. The Hill notes that:Chance the Rapper s charity, SocialWorks, and Brooklyn-based backpack company STATE bags reportedly donated 30,000 backpacks filled with school supplies to Chicago students at the parade, the news outlet reported, adding that the rapper also handed out free tickets to his concert. He previously donated more than $1 million to the Chicago Public Schools foundation.Chance the Rapper in a recent interview said his platform and voice are bigger than President Trump s. I have a bigger voice than Donald Trump, you know what I m saying? Than literally anybody that works in politics, he said. We want to make sure our kids are safe, we want to make sure that they are ready to go back to school. We want to make sure that we are nurturing and protecting and encouraging and loving the next generation of leaders all throughout the city of Chicago, Obama says in a video posted to Twitter by Black Owned Chicago. So Chance, I m grateful for everything that you ve done on behalf of the young people back home. President @BarackObama had some words of encouragement for @chancetherapper tonight at his #BBBash concert. #BlackOwnedChicago pic.twitter.com/aebsFgk4Pd Black Owned Chicago (@blackownedchi) August 13, 2017This has many Americans nostalgic for when they had a President they could respect:.@nastywomanatlaw You seein this shit?! Why wasn't I there? Jared Rogers Martin (@Jaredrog) August 13, 2017 pic.twitter.com/ckvwYyMIKS Michael ? (@maxmc785) August 14, 2017It made me so proud to watch this video of President @BarackObama we need him back in the White House. Tiamat (@EvaTiamatMedusa) August 13, 2017COME BACK OBAMA!! We need you now more than ever!! Ritchie K. Blackmore (@Ritchie_1966) August 13, 2017OBAMA, THIS NATION REALLY NEEDS,YOU MORE THAN EVER BEFORE Vero/Roni/Vee (@prettywings24) August 13, 2017Unfortunately, President Obama can t come back no matter how much the country wants him to but we can get rid of Donald Trump, who is currently destroying education, safety net programs, and the world s sense that Americans have any sense of decency.


Transgender recruits will be able to join the U.S. military as of Jan. 1 after a federal judge on Monday denied a request by President Donald Trump's administration to enforce his ban on transgender troops while the government appeals an order blocking it. In a ruling, with which the Pentagon said it would comply, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington refused to lift part of her Oct. 30 order stopping the ban from taking effect until the case is resolved, saying it likely violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law. The White House said the Justice Department was reviewing its options. The Pentagon said in a statement that it would follow court orders and begin processing transgender applicants on Jan. 1. It added, however, that it and the U.S. Department of Justice "are actively pursuing relief from those court orders in order to allow an ongoing policy review scheduled to be completed before the end of March." The administration had argued that the Jan. 1 deadline was problematic because tens of thousands of personnel would have to be trained on the medical standards needed to process transgender applicants, and the military was not ready for that. Kollar-Kotelly rejected the concerns, saying preparations for accepting transgender troops were under way during the administration of Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama. "The directive from the Secretary of Defense requiring the military to prepare to begin allowing accession of transgender individuals was issued on June 30, 2016 - nearly one and a half years ago," the judge said. Several transgender service members filed a lawsuit after Trump said in July he would ban transgender people from the military, citing concern over military focus and medical costs. In an August memorandum, Trump gave the military until March 2018 to revert to a policy prohibiting openly transgender individuals from joining the military and authorizing their discharge. The memo also halted the use of government funds for sex-reassignment surgery for active-duty personnel. Defense Secretary James Mattis had previously delayed a deadline that had been set during the Obama administration to begin enlisting transgender recruits to Jan. 1, which Trump's ban then put off indefinitely. The Pentagon said on Monday there were a number of guidelines that would have to be met by the applicants. It said that sex reassignment or genital reconstruction would be disqualifying factors unless a medical provider certified that a period of 18 months had passed since the most recent surgery, no complications persisted and additional surgeries are not required. The service members who sued Trump, Mattis and military leaders in August had been serving openly as transgender people in the U.S. Army, Air Force and Coast Guard. They said Trump's ban discriminated against them based on their sex and transgender status. In her October ruling, Kollar-Kotelly said the Trump administration's reasons for the ban "do not appear to be supported by any facts" and cited a military-commissioned study that debunked concerns about military cohesion or healthcare costs. A federal judge in Maryland also halted the ban in Nov. 21 ruling.


Republican Donald Trump neared the end of his vice presidential search on Thursday and appeared to be leaning toward Indiana Governor Mike Pence, a conservative with the potential to unify divided Republicans. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee tweeted on Wednesday night that he would announce his choice on Friday at 11 a.m. (1500 GMT) in Manhattan. The New York businessman is to be formally nominated as the party's candidate for the Nov. 8 election at the Republican National Convention next week in Cleveland. Traditionally, the vice presidential choice is used to build enthusiasm among party loyalists. Trump's choice of running mate is seen as critical because his defeat of 16 rivals in the Republican primary race left the party divided and some party leaders are still uneasy about some of his campaign positions, and his style. Sources familiar with campaign operations cautioned that while Pence and former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich were finalists, Trump could always have a last-minute change of heart and choose someone else from his short list. A source close to the campaign said Trump appeared to be leaning toward Pence but could easily change his mind. Gingrich told an ABC News correspondent he expected to hear Trump's decision after 1 p.m. EDT and would not be surprised if Trump chooses Pence. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, 53, a former rival to Trump in the presidential race, is also high on the list of potential running mates and provides the kind of counterpunch to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton that Republicans like. Pence, 57, a former congressman, is seen as a safe choice, not too flashy but popular among conservatives, with Midwestern appeal and the ability to rally more party faithful behind Trump. Gingrich, 73, is a close adviser to Trump with a wealth of ideas and deep experience in the legislative process from his time as speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1990s. In what has been an unusually public process, Trump, 70, sat down with both Pence and Gingrich separately in Indianapolis on Wednesday. He also met with a fourth potential No. 2, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, 69, of Alabama, who has been one of Trump's closest advisers. The New York businessman had dinner with Pence on Tuesday night after they appeared together at a rally. Trump, joined by daughter Ivanka and sons Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, had breakfast with Pence and his wife, Karen, on Wednesday at the governor's residence in Indianapolis. Trump adviser Ed Brookover told CNN that Trump "first and foremost" wants a running mate who he has good chemistry with and someone who can help him govern best.


Kenyan opposition supporters skirmished with police and threw up burning barricades in pockets of the country on Thursday, seeking to derail President Uhuru Kenyatta s likely re-election with a low voter turnout. The election commission said that more than one in 10 polling stations failed to open. Voting was delayed until Oct. 28 in four of Kenya s 47 counties - all in the opposition-supporting west - due to security challenges . The repeat election is being closely watched across East Africa, which relies on Kenya as a trade and logistics hub, and in the West, which considers Nairobi a bulwark against Islamist militancy in Somalia and civil conflict in South Sudan and Burundi. In the western city of Kisumu, police used tear gas and fired live rounds over the heads of stone-throwing youths heeding opposition leader Raila Odinga s call for a voter boycott. Gunfire killed one protester and wounded three, a nurse said. In Homa Bay county next door, police said they shot dead one protester and injured another. Riot police fired tear gas in Kibera and Mathare, two volatile Nairobi slums. Protesters set fires and threw stones in Kibera, and in Mathare a church was firebombed. Around 50 people have been killed, mostly by security forces, since the original Aug. 8 vote. The Supreme Court annulled Kenyatta s win in that poll on procedural grounds and ordered fresh elections, but Odinga pulled out of the rerun and urged a boycott because, he said, the poll would not be fair. In the capital, polling stations saw a sprinkling of voters instead of the hours-long queues that waited in August. With Kenyatta all but ensured a victory, eyes are on the turnout, which was nearly 80 percent in the August vote. The election commission said Thursday s estimated turnout was 48 percent, excluding the counties where voting did not take place. We are requesting them (voters) humbly that they should turn out in large numbers, Kenyatta, the U.S.-educated son of Kenya s founding father, Jomo Kenyatta, said after voting. We re tired as a country of electioneering and I think it s time to move forward. A decade after 1,200 people were killed over another disputed election, many Kenyans feared violence could spread. As well as delayed voting, the poll is likely to trigger legal challenges to the result, stirring longer-term instability and ethnic divisions. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court was due to hear a case seeking to push back the polls. But it was unable to sit after five out of the seven judges failed to show up. The lack of a quorum is highly unusual for a Supreme Court hearing, a statement from the European Union said. Not hearing this case has de facto cut off the legal path for remedy. In Kisumu, the scene of major ethnic violence after the disputed election in 2007, many schools designated as polling stations were padlocked. Young men milled about outside. In Kisumu Central, constituency returning officer John Ngutai said no voting materials had been distributed and only three of 400 staff had turned up. One nervous official said his election work was a suicide mission . Reuters found no polling stations open. Wafula Chebukati, head of the election commission, said counties where voting would be delayed included Homa Bay, Kisumu, Migori and Siaya. But residents were skeptical. Today, not a single polling station opened. People have been throwing stones all day at the police. So I don t think people will accept that elections take place. Unless Raila says OK , it won t happen, said social worker Christine Onyango. Kisumu businessman Joshua Nyamori, 42, was one of the few brave enough to defy Odinga s stay-away call, but could not cast his ballot. Residents fear reprisal from political gangs organized by politicians. This is wrong, he said. In the coastal city of Mombasa, protesters lit tyres and timber along the main highway. Reuters contacted a dozen polling stations there after voting closed. The highest turnout was 89 voters out of 793. We have seen you, we know you and we have marked you, a group of opposition supporters shouted at voters outside a polling station. Four armed police were on guard at each station - double the number on duty last time. Yvonne Mwenesi, 21, was beaten outside another polling station before police rescued her. I had just voted and as I walked out, a group of men who I know attacked me saying I had betrayed them by voting, she said, her nose bleeding. On the eve of the vote, Odinga backed off previous calls for protests and, speaking in English, urged supporters to stay home and hold vigils instead. Some politicians who preceded him urged in the KiSwahili language that supporters should ensure the vote did not take place. Odinga s National Super Alliance coalition, whose supporters attacked polling staff in the run-up to the vote, could argue in court that the lack of open polling stations showed the re-run was invalid. The Supreme Court said it would annul this election too if it did not meet legal standards. The head of the election commission said last week he could not guarantee a free and fair vote, citing political interference and threats of violence. One election commissioner quit and fled the country. Another official was tortured and murdered days before the Aug. 8 vote.


The members of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce had broken their fasts and left the mosque near Florida's eastern shoreline. In the waning minutes of Sunday, less than an hour later, a surveillance camera recorded a man as he approached the mosque. Then came a flash as flames damaged the house of worship where the man who attacked an Orlando, Fla. nightclub often prayed. The authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, were investigating the fire as a potential hate crime, even as officials cautioned that they remained uncertain about the motive. The blaze occurred on the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and nearly three months after Omar Mateen opened fire at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. It also happened around the beginning of Eid a Muslim holiday. "Today was supposed to be a day of this community exchanging gifts with their kids, visiting their family members, having dinners, having lunches," Wilfredo Ruiz, a spokesman for the mosque, said at a Monday afternoon news conference in Fort Pierce, Fla. "Instead, they needed to go to another place to worship. " No one was injured in the attack, and the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office sought help identifying the suspect, whom the authorities described as a white or Hispanic male. Video showed the man arriving at the mosque, which is in a former Presbyterian church, about 11:38 p. m. on Sunday, appearing to carry paper and a bottle of some type of liquid. The camera recorded a flash, presumably when the fire ignited, and the man waved his arms, perhaps from a burn, before he fled on a motorcycle. Officials refused to speculate about a connection between the fire and the anniversary of the terrorist attack. A spokesman for the Sheriff's Office, Bryan Beaty, declined to discuss whether Mr. Mateen's ties to the mosque might have prompted the fire. With its painted star and crescent, palm trees and occasional protester outside, the Sunni mosque is central to Islamic life in Fort Pierce, a city of around 44, 000 people about an hour's drive north of Palm Beach. Yet it has also been a hub of controversy, drawing attention twice in recent years as a place where young men who staged attacks had worshiped. In addition to Mr. Mateen, who was killed during the siege at Pulse, which left 49 other people dead, the Islamic Center was a frequent stop for Moner Mohammad Abusalha, who carried out a 2014 suicide bombing in Syria. (The F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, said the men had known each other "casually. ") In June, the Islamic Center's imam, Syed Shafeeq Rahman, distanced himself and the mosque from Mr. Mateen and, more generally, from extremist ideology. "There is nothing that he is hearing from me to do killing, to do bloodshed, to do anything, because we never talk like that," the imam said of Mr. Mateen. The mosque, like many in the United States, has expressed concerns about security and the commitment of the local authorities to protect its members and property. Tensions mounted in July after the authorities arrested a man they said had repeatedly punched someone who had been at the Islamic Center to pray. The case is pending in the local circuit court, where a prosecutor said in a filing last month that the accused man had "evidenced prejudice" during the attack. Mr. Beaty said deputies had also investigated two suspicious vehicles and a harassing phone call at the mosque since the June 12 attack in Orlando. The fire at the Islamic Center is at least the third suspected arson at a Florida mosque this summer. A Tampa mosque was targeted twice in less than 24 hours last month, and a spokesman for the city's Fire Department, Jason A. Penny, said Monday that the inquiry there remained active. In Fort Pierce on Monday, people responded to the attack with a mix of outrage and sadness. "An attack on any house of worship is an attack on all houses of worship," said Ahmed Bedier, a Muslim activist in Florida. "It's unacceptable. "


BEIRUT, Lebanon — With Russia's backing, the United Nations Security Council voted on Monday to send United Nations observers to monitor evacuations from the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo and to report back regularly. Russia had threatened to veto an earlier resolution proposed by France, which had sought to place the evacuations under United Nations supervision, but a compromise was reached on Sunday that would allow the monitors to observe after consultations with "interested parties. " The resolution passed unanimously. That could, in principle, give any number of groups on the ground — including Syrian soldiers and the Shiite militias fighting alongside them — the ability to block access. Fighters from the array of rebel groups, including extremists, could also block access to areas they control. Three questions now loom: Will Russia lean on Syria to allow safe and unimpeded access, as the resolution demands? How long will it take for the monitors to start working? And would they be in place before the evacuations are complete? "Our objective is: immediately," Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, said when asked by reporters after the vote when the monitors would start. "They need to get in there and be relevant on those green buses," the ones used to evacuate civilians and rebels. The United Nations spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, could not say on Monday how many monitors would be deployed or how quickly they could be posted. Asked whether they could be deployed within the next 24 hours, when more evacuations are expected, Mr. Dujarric said: "It's dangerous for me to predict anything. Our colleagues on ground are trying to make this work. " Nor was there much clarity from a statement sent by the United Nations emergency relief chief, Stephen O'Brien. "We stand ready to scale up our presence and efforts across the entire city, in line with the resolution and international humanitarian law," the statement read. "This can be done immediately, but only if the parties live up to this resolution and their most basic legal obligations. " Hours after the vote, the United Nations envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said he would convene political talks among Syrian government and opposition groups starting Feb. 8. Citing the Security Council deal, he said, "It is vital to build on this initial momentum. " The United Nations says it has about 100 staff members in Aleppo, mostly Syrian citizens, and several hundred others in nearby Syrian cities. Officials with the organization have said they were denied permission to observe evacuations. As many as 50, 000 civilians may still be stuck in the area, according to humanitarian groups, although a precise figure is all but impossible to determine. "After so many delaying tactics and obstruction, this resolution should finally allow the full respect of international humanitarian law in Syria," President François Hollande of France said in a statement. "It should also pave the way for a and negotiate a political solution that is much awaited by the Syrian people and the entire international community. " The extent to which the Syrian government will cooperate with the monitoring is unclear, though Russia is a principal military backer of President Bashar 's regime. After days of delays and sporadic violence, the evacuation of civilians and fighters from besieged communities in Syria resumed Sunday night, with convoys taking people out of eastern Aleppo and two nearby Shiite villages. As of Monday afternoon, 20, 000 people had been removed from the last part of Aleppo, the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said in a post on Twitter. Among those evacuated to a area west of the city was Bana a girl whose Twitter posts with her mother throughout the siege by government forces helped draw attention to the plight of civilians. Opposition activists posted videos and photographs of the girl and her mother on Monday after they arrived in territory. The evacuation of more than 2, 000 sick and wounded people from two Shiite villages that have been surrounded by Sunni insurgents for years also began Monday. The villages, Fouaa and Kfarya, were not originally part of the agreement but were added after gunmen prevented buses from removing people from eastern Aleppo last week. Ten buses carrying civilians from the villages left on Monday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, and local journalists posted online videos of their arrival in another area. Also added to the agreement was the evacuation of two villages near the border with Lebanon, Zabadani and Madaya, that have long been surrounded by government forces. The evacuation deal, brokered by Russia, Turkey and Iran, was intended to relieve one of the more crushing aspects of Syria's war: the practice by both sides of besieging their opponents and bombarding their communities. The agreement, and an accompanying has proceeded haltingly since it began on Wednesday, with gunfire on the route repeatedly stopping convoys. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which opposes the Syrian government, said five buses that had been held up by forces for hours were allowed to leave eastern Aleppo before midnight on Sunday. The eastern part of Aleppo, the remaining area of the city, has been surrounded by government forces for months and subjected to frequent airstrikes that have killed hundreds of people and have reduced neighborhoods to rubble. If the evacuations continue without interruption, the removal of the remaining residents of eastern Aleppo will put the entire city under Mr. Assad's control and mark a turning point in the war. Aleppo was once the largest city in Syria and was its industrial hub before the war. Its fall would leave rebels in control of only smaller towns and rural areas. The jihadists of the Islamic State, who oppose both the government and the rebels, still hold significant territory farther east, including the city of Raqqa, their de facto capital.


The collapse of Islamic State s self-proclaimed caliphate has not diminished the militant group s ability to inspire attacks on Western targets via the internet, U.S. national security officials told senators on Wednesday. The Sunni Muslim extremist group has been building its external operations over the past two years and has claimed or been linked to at least 20 attacks against Western interests since January, said Lora Shiao, acting director of intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center. Unfortunately, we don t see ISIS loss of territory translating into a corresponding reduction in its inability to inspire attacks, she told a U.S. Senate committee. ISIS capacity to reach sympathizers around the world through its robust social media capability is unprecedented and gives the group access to large numbers of HVEs, Shiao said, using the government s acronym for homegrown violent extremists. The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State estimated on Tuesday that fewer than 3,000 fighters belonging to the hardline Sunni militant group remain in Iraq and Syria, where they declared a caliphate in 2014. ISIS was driven out of Raqqa, the Syrian city it called its capital, in October, prompting President Donald Trump to say the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight. Yet the elimination of the physical caliphate does not mark the end of ISIS or other global terrorist organizations, said Mark Mitchell, acting assistant defense secretary for special operations/low-intensity conflict. As ISIS loses territory it will become more reliant on virtual connections, he said, and continue to inspire stray dog attacks by vulnerable people. Senators questioned the security officials about U.S. efforts to fight online recruitment of potential extremists. This is the new caliphate - in cyberspace, said Ron Johnson, the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The experts described an evolving threat including ISIS ability to adapt its narrative after territorial losses to portray the struggle as a long-term process. The internet is the primary tool for radicalization and no group has been more successful than ISIS in drawing people into its message, said Nikki Floris, deputy assistant director for counterterrorism at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In a possible reference to Trump s use of Twitter, Democratic Senator Kamala Harris asked Floris, Has the FBI examined the role that social media posts or videos from our own government officials affect the online recruitment tactics used by ISIS? The answer was no.


Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera urged caution on Friday because more provocation was possible from North Korea on Oct. 10, when the start of lower house election campaigns in Japan coincides with one of the North s main anniversaries. Tensions have risen on the Korean peninsula since reclusive North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3, leading to a new round of sanctions after a unanimous vote by the United Nations Security Council. U.S. President Donald Trump has since traded insults with North Korean leaders, raising the stakes even further. North Korea has often marked significant events on its calendar by conducting weapons tests, such as its fifth nuclear test last year on Sept. 9, its founding anniversary. Onodera said Oct. 10 marks an important anniversary for North Korea. It is the date the North celebrates the founding of the North Korean communist party. I understand it is an important anniversary for North Korea. We would like to maintain a sense of urgency, Onodera told reporters. Oct. 10 is also coincidentally the same day that campaigns will begin in Japan for parliament s lower house election 12 days later after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dissolved the chamber on Thursday. Onodera s warning echoed a comment by South Korean national security adviser Chung Eui-yong, who said during a meeting with President Moon Jae-in on Thursday that he expected Pyongyang to act around Oct. 10 and 18, but gave no details. [nL4N1M9191] Oct. 18 marks the start of China s all-important Communist Party Congress. North Korea has conducted a series of ballistic missile launches this year, including two launches over Japan in recent weeks, in defiance of international pressure. China, North Korea s main ally and trading partner, has urged that dialogue is the only way to resolve the crisis, although Japan has tended to support Washington s more robust approach. Abe has said now is the time to apply pressure on North Korea, rather than dialogue, in order to convince North Korea to end its nuclear and missile programs.


Just one month ago, Hillary Clinton had amassed a 9-point lead over Donald Trump in national polls and had an even bigger advantage in several swing states. Her eventual victory seemed to many to be all but assured, and Democrats were so confident of winning that a landslide victory even seemed like a possibility. But it's all been downhill for Clinton from there. Starting in mid-August, her leads in both national and swing state polls began to gradually shrink. And the events of this past weekend seem to have made her margin narrow even further, as Trump has been getting some of his best state polls of the entire general election campaign. Importantly, Clinton still appears to be narrowly ahead both nationally and in enough states to win. But the recent trends have not been good for her, and make a remarkably dramatic contrast with where the race appeared to be last month. So what's happened? Why has this race gotten so close all of a sudden? Matt Yglesias offers the big-picture point that Clinton is simply quite unpopular. But that still leaves open the question of why things have changed so quickly. Inconveniently, a month of a campaign is a complex thing, with many different events unfolding either concurrently or one after another, which makes it difficult to test a clean theory about what's made the difference. Some combination of all this is most likely responsible for the shift we've seen, due to voters changing their minds and, perhaps, differences in poll response rates — though it's unclear which of these factors is most important. What is clear is that a race Democrats hoped would be a landslide is now looking more like a nail-biter. In the weeks following the Democratic convention in late July, Trump's poll standing plummeted. This was probably partly because Clinton got a convention bounce, but another factor was likely Trump's high-profile attacks on the family of the late Capt. Humayun Khan. The Kahn controversy was heavily covered in the press and earned Trump a new round of condemnations from high-profile Republicans. But around August 17, Trump decided to make a change. He installed a new campaign team. He stopped doing constant TV interviews where he'd end up putting his foot in his mouth. He started doing more traditional and message-driven campaign events, as the Wall Street Journal's Monica Langley writes. And perhaps most importantly, Trump has managed to avoid embroiling himself in any major new, campaign-consuming controversies (well, until Thursday's birther flap, which hasn't yet played out in the polls). Of course, he is being graded on a curve here — as Matt Yglesias writes, even uneventful Trump interviews usually contain several untrue or offensive statements that would shock us if any other politician were involved. Trump still isn't doing as well as we would expect a generic Republican nominee to be doing. Vox's fundamentals-based elections forecast suggests that he should be winning 50.9 percent of the two-party vote, and he's currently 3 points behind that. Still, Trump has generally spent the past month hammering home his critique of Clinton rather than being dogged with questions about one offensive statement or another. And that could be helping bring some reluctant Republicans back into his camp. There's also one other big thing that's changed for Trump in this time period: He finally started spending money on swing state campaign ads. Until mid-August, Hillary Clinton had been spending millions on the airwaves essentially unopposed in every key state, but now the Trump campaign has been investing millions in ads as well. Now, these ads are only seen by swing state voters, so we wouldn't expect them to make a dent in national polls. And Trump has improved nationally, so they're not at the heart of what's going on. Still, they could be making a difference at the margins in his performance in the swing states that will decide the election. As Trump has been improving his operation, Clinton has been dogged by a series of negative news stories that could be hurting her to some extent. On September 2, the FBI released a report of its findings in its investigation into Clinton's emails. There wasn't really much "news" here, but it quite understandably led to a new spate of news stories with "Clinton" and "FBI" in the headlines. And considering that the last time Clinton sank this badly in the polls was in the weeks after FBI Director James Comey first announced his findings in early July, it seems that when the topic is in the news, Clinton's poll standing suffers. Over this same late August/early September time period, a series of negative-sounding stories about the Clinton Foundation also were published. Most of these stories didn't seem to amount to very much if you read their details closely. But the very fact that a bunch of negative-sounding stories about Clinton appeared in the news helps create an aura of "corruption" around her, particularly when Trump dubs her "crooked," regardless of the fine details. (Most voters aren't retaining the fine details here.) Meanwhile, Clinton kept a relatively light campaign schedule in August so she could focus on fundraising instead. The side effect, though, was that she didn't have the opportunity to "counterprogram" those negative news stories with positive events putting her message out there. "Clinton's decision to lay low in August … will be debated for years," Politico's Glenn Thrush writes. "If she wins, her summertime fundraising blitz, meant to unleash a torrent of anti-Trump advertising at campaign's end, will be regarded as strategic genius; lose and her decision is up there with Michael Dukakis in the tank." I find that to be a bit overheated and doubt this made that much of a difference, but, hey, when voters did see a lot of Clinton and her message during the week of the Democratic convention, they did seem to like them well enough. So the race had already gotten a good deal closer since mid-August. But then, the events of this past weekend seem to hurt Clinton even more — though it's not clear which mattered most. First was "deplorables-gate." At a fundraiser last Friday, Clinton disparaged "half" of Trump's supporters at a fundraiser as belonging in "the basket of deplorables … racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it." Clinton soon gave a semi-apology, saying that "half" was too much but reiterating that Trump does indeed have many racist supporters. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign and much of the media quickly portrayed her remarks as a devastating gaffe akin to Mitt Romney's "47 percent" comments from 2012. Afterward, things got worse for Clinton, as she felt faint and had to leave a 9/11 commemoration event on Sunday, was recorded nearly collapsing while being led into her car, and belatedly admitted that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier. All this seemed to some to vindicate rumors Trump and his allies had been trying to spread about Clinton's health for some time, and made Clinton appear less than fully forthright. This is speculative, but, like Brendan Nyhan of the Upshot, I suspect the health news is hurting Clinton more than deplorables-gate. Yes, the Trump campaign has seized on her remark, but the Clinton team probably has better data and they now seem eager to discuss the topic (after the candidate's initial semi-apology). Furthermore, the deplorables comment seems like the type of inside-baseball campaign story that ordinary voters won't really care about, whereas Clinton's health is far more striking. Search data also suggests that people are far, far more interested in Clinton's health than in the "deplorables" controversy. Now, it's possible that this sudden swing in the polls is affected somewhat by differential non-response rates, a phenomenon Vox's Jeff Stein wrote about earlier this year. That is to say, the news of Clinton's illness may have made her supporters less enthusiastic about even answering polls, so they'd naturally show up less often in the results even after demographic weighting. Similarly, Trump supporters may have been disproportionately less likely to respond to polls back in early August, when Trump was under fire for his attacks on the Khan family. That could have made Clinton's poll leads look artificially large then, and a change in Clinton supporter response rates could be making the race look unusually tight now. As Stein wrote, Andrew Gelman and Alan Abramowitz have compiled evidence showing that what looks like big poll swings can often be explained partly by this effect. Yet if Clinton voters truly are feeling so unenthusiastic about the race that they won't answer phone polls, that in itself indicates a major underlying enthusiasm problem her campaign needs to solve. Furthermore, finding creative reasons to dismiss poll results that may not fit with your preconceptions has generally been a bad idea this year, as Trump's primary rise and Brexit have both shown. As for whether this is the harbinger of a new normal in the race, well, we don't really know, of course. There are still 53 more days until Election Day, and much can happen in that time. (Everything mentioned above happened in just the past month!) Clinton's health could get better or worse. Trump could avoid more gaffes or start backsliding like he did with birtherism on Thursday. The media could cover Trump more harshly now that it seems more likely he could win. The debates could go well or disastrously for either candidate. What is clear is that a race Democrats briefly thought they had in the bag no longer looks like such a sure thing.


Florida government official is serious about the BBQ aroma infraction.LOL! The environmental laws are creeping into our everyday normal activities like grilling out. Big government is way out of control! Once our homes were our castles. Now they are the government s. Not even the most trivial details of how we make use of our own property escapes bureaucratic regulation in the name of the environment. For example:Cobb County [Georgia] is telling a Kennesaw family to apply for permission to park their kids cars in their own driveway.The Oviedo family got a notice of violation for having four cars in the driveway. The family has relatives visiting and two kids home from college. They got a visit Friday from code enforcement, acting on an anonymous complaint. The neighborhood is zoned an Open Space Community. A recent rule changed, and enacted a limit of two cars parked in the drive. After Channel 2 consumer investigator Jim Strickland got the county on the phone, officials decided to let the issue slide this summer, but put the family on notice next summer would require a permit to park four cars in the driveway. I m having to pay to park on a property that I already pay tax on, said [Kim] Oviedo.But think how grateful the polar bears will be!Cobb County s Open Space Community zoning was established to encourage the preservation of natural resources within residential development. Once environazis get their heads in your tent, you have been relegated to sleeping out on the sand.


October 30, 2016 at 3:02 pm  Besides, using a «cloud» account, is extremely stupid. Paedo hunter October 30, 2016 at 1:09 pm  and about time too……my biggest 'fear' is the brainwashed masses putting resistence to the change…..like the Brexit 'remainers' who just can't accept they lost yet still fighting at every legal street corner to have it reversed….that kinda mindset for different issues worldwide are the biggest stumbling block to change and they also feed the ruling classes objectives and give them reason to plant some more MSM treats for us to despair at…..like Russophobia……"LONG LIVE PUTIN" Mike October 30, 2016 at 12:05 pm  Thanks Gilad, at least everyone here at vt isn't brainwashed by Hillary. Vt is doing a disservice to itself by closing the comment sections on articles by Ian and Gordo. What cant control the narrative so you close the comments? Sad days for the Vt faithful! CoJonesGrandes October 30, 2016 at 12:57 pm  Are you aware of Karla Turner's work? The negative aliens who have controlled this planet for ages have many tools in their box. For example,where an incorruptible person has acquired a large following but works against their agenda, one way of dealing with such a person is to replace his soul. This way, it would appear as if that person has switched allegiances. Unless you are psychic enough to see the soul, you would have NO idea that there has been any such switcheroo. http://www.reptilianagenda.com/exp/e112300a.shtml Quote: HOW THE ALIENS MIGHT CONTROL THE LEADERS:  "…. if they wanted to use one of their own souls … perhaps to inhabit the body of a politicians and work full-time through it, that could be done. …. they could simply take the soul out and stick another soul in. They have the ability to retrieve what we call the soul, to store it in a container, and to put it back into another body. They can put it in any body they wish." Ariana October 30, 2016 at 11:37 am  Sorry Correction _ Ironically, the masters of color revolutions around the world, are now experiencing the same colorfull revolution from inside, without any snipers behind the courtain and walls !  You must be logged in to post a comment Login WHAT'S HOT


Revelers in Guatemala set ablaze cardboard representations of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump wearing devil horns during a traditional ceremony, "La Quema del Diablo", or the Burning of the Devil, held ahead of Christmas every year. Trump's hardline stance on immigration during his presidential election campaign, including a promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, has drawn anger from Latin Americans in the United States and around the world. "We are against this person in many respects, regarding deportations, the wall he wants to build. We do not agree," said participant Astrid Soto, just before setting fire to the Trump figures, which clutched fistfuls of fake cash, and a U.S. flag. Participants believe the practice of torching the devil helps banish bad spirits from their homes and neighborhoods. The custom began in the 16th century, but has spread out from various towns since the 1990s to become popular nationwide.


Britain on Tuesday dismissed U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's unprecedented expression of support for Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage to be made British ambassador to Washington, saying pointedly that there is no vacancy for the job. Trump, who after his election victory met Farage before any EU leaders, said on Twitter that "many people" would like to see the former metals trader turned politician as Britain's ambassador. "Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!" Trump said. Prime Minister Theresa May, who congratulated Trump on his victory, was swift to reject such an undiplomatic proposal, with a spokesman saying Britain already had an excellent ambassador to Washington and that London would appoint its own envoys. "We have first rate ambassador in Washington," Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who campaigned for Brexit, told the British parliament. "There is no vacancy for that position." It is highly unusual in the modern era for leaders to publicly suggest to foreign nations whom they would like to see as ambassador, though during strained relations they sometimes reject or expel envoys. Trump's suggestion provoked anger, support and even hilarity in Britain, with one lawmaker, Conservative Simon Burns, joking that perhaps Britain should suggest Hillary Clinton as its preferred choice as ambassador to London. But the apparent public suggestion about who to appoint as ambassador by the man who will lead Britain's most powerful ally puts Prime Minister May in a difficult position just as she tries to build ties with Washington ahead of leaving the EU. London is trying to gauge whether Trump would support a special trade deal with Britain as it negotiates a divorce from the EU. Britain also places great store on what it calls its "special relationship" with the United States. Farage, who spent decades campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union and helped force former Prime Minister David Cameron to call the June referendum that brought the Brexit vote, spoke at a Trump rally during the U.S. campaign and visited the president-elect after his victory. As leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and one of the key figures of the successful Brexit campaign, Farage has repeatedly angered EU leaders by predicting the collapse of the EU, which he says is run by an out-of-touch elite of "idiots". Farage said Trump's suggestion that he serve as ambassador had come "like a bolt from the blue" but Trump understood loyalty in a way that those in the "cesspit" of career politics did not. "I am in a good position with the President-elect's support to help. The world has changed and it's time that Downing Street did too," Farage said in an article written for the Breitbart news website. "I would do anything to help our national interest and to help cement ties with the incoming Anglophile administration," Farage said. A photograph of Trump greeting Farage in front of a gilded elevator shortly after the U.S. election caused consternation in EU capitals, many of whom view Trump with a mixture of fear and puzzlement. His suggestion of Farage also provoked anger among some British lawmakers. "Many people think you should mind your own business and talk about pussy-grabbing less, but hey, life is a constant disappointment," Jess Phillips, a lawmaker for the opposition Labour Party, said on Twitter in a reference to Trump's previous vulgar comments about groping women. Accused by his critics of being a racist and a bigot, Farage peppers his speeches with jokes and the odd expletive while railing against what he calls the doomed European superstate and immigration into Britain. He is a member of the European parliament but has failed in his efforts to win election to the British parliament. Farage said Trump would be a great president after "the political revolution" that brought Brexit in Britain and Trump to power in the United States. "In the United Kingdom the people have spoken but the players at the top have, I am afraid, stayed the same," Farage, 52, said. "Those who supported Remain now hold senior positions. Worst still, those who were openly abusive about Trump now pretend to be his friend," said Farage. Farage has urged May to build ties with Trump, who provoked criticism in Britain with his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. Queen Elizabeth might invite Trump for a state visit to Britain next year. Farage made light of allegations of sexual assault against Trump during the U.S. campaign by encouraging him to "come and schmooze" May but adding "don't touch her for goodness sake". When U.S. President Barack Obama said before the referendum that Britain would be at the back of the queue for a trade deal, Farage said it was disgraceful to intervene in the sovereign affairs of Britain. In a radio interview after the U.S. election, Farage described the U.S. president as: "That Obama creature – a loathsome individual who couldn't stand our country." The way ambassadors are chosen in the United States and Europe differ significantly. It is common practice for the United States to appoint celebrities or campaign donors as envoys, for example when Richard Nixon appointed Shirley Temple as his envoy to Ghana in 1974. European states mostly appoint career diplomats or officials with long experience as ambassadors. Kim Darroch, the current British ambassador in Washington, did not reply to emails from Reuters requesting comment on Trump's remarks. His email bounced back with an out of office reply saying that the ambassador was traveling.


Nazar Naqvi has faithfully voted Republican for more than three decades. After Donald Trump's feud with Muslim parents who lost a son in battle for the United States, he has vowed not a single Republican will get his vote. Naqvi, 69, a retired U.S. government engineer from Newburgh, New York, is a member of a small community of Muslims who are among America's Gold Star families, those whose loved ones were killed while serving in the U.S. military. His son Mohsin Naqvi, who was born in Pakistan, enlisted in the U.S. Army four days after Sept. 11, 2001, and was killed in 2008 by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Trump lashed out at Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Pakistani American parents of slain U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, after they appeared at last week's Democratic convention in Philadelphia to criticize the Republican presidential hopeful for proposing a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country. "I'm going to vote for anyone but Republicans because of this one person, this man who has gone out of his mind," Naqvi said this week. "Not any office should get our vote. He has been nominated not by one person - the Republican Party nominated him." Naqvi said he was pressing his registered Republican friends to do the same. The Pentagon says that 3,939 active duty service members have identified themselves as Muslim, less than 1 percent of the 1.3 million active duty U.S. military troops, but a Pentagon spokesman said there is no record of how many Muslims have been killed in action. Reuters reached out to a dozen Muslim Gold Star families who lost a loved one in action after Sept. 11, 2001. The families are not organized as a group and some did not want to talk. But those who did agreed that Trump's comments upended their political loyalties, and moved them to take action to register and motivate other voters to keep Trump out of the White House in November. Nooshin Razani, 43, an Iranian-American pediatrician in Oakland, California, whose 19-year-old brother Omead Razani died while serving as a U.S. Army medic in Iraq in 2004, said Trump's comments sparked her to speak to the press for the first time. "When I saw there was this person who was willing to use religion in this negative way, I decided I'm coming forward," said Razani. Trump rebuked Khizr Khan for suggesting that he should read the U.S. Constitution and said his wife Ghazala may have stood silently by her husband because she might not have been "allowed" to speak. Although Trump did call their son a hero and said his aim was to end radical Islamic terror, the ensuing uproar has caused many Republicans to distance themselves from him and to support the Khan family. Razani joined more than 20 Gold Star families in signing an open letter calling for Trump to apologize to the Khans and said she is going to volunteer to register voters, mainly because of Trump's comments about Ghazala Khan, which she said insulted all Muslim women. "I want to be an active part of making sure people's voices are heard. Even people Trump thinks don't speak up," Razani said. Trump's ongoing dispute with the Khans has become a call to political action for Kevin Ahearn of Phoenix. His brother, Army Major James Ahearn, converted to Islam to marry a woman with whom he fell in love in Iraq, brought to the United States and with whom he had a daughter before he was killed by a bomb in Iraq in 2007. Kevin Ahearn, 48, said on Tuesday that he and his husband planned to go to Democratic Headquarters in Phoenix to volunteer for the first time. "It makes me all the more determined that he does not make it to the White House," said Ahearn, whose Muslim niece now is 10. The soldier's mother said she was shocked by Trump's rhetoric and wishes she could talk to her late son about it. "He was always a staunch Republican because they backed the military. I can't imagine how he would feel now," said Constance Ahearn, 75, who lives in the San Francisco area.


Abortion opponents gathered on Friday in Washington for their annual march, which has taken place every year since 1974 to protest the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision from 1973. ■ Vice President Mike Pence, the official to ever speak in person at the march, told the crowd that "life is winning. " ■ Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, also addressed the crowd. ■ The march drew thousands of activists. Mr. Pence, using the refrain "life is winning," assured the crowd that Mr. Trump shared their opposition to abortion and would appoint a justice to the Supreme Court who held that view as well. "We will not rest until we restore a culture of life in America," Mr. Pence said, and thousands in the crowd cheered. He also said that by many measures — the views of members of Congress and advances in science among them — "life is winning in America. " Standing where other Republican leaders have usually just sent video or audio recordings of their message, Mr. Pence said the movement should embrace the moment. Kellyanne Conway may have sprung onto the national political scene largely unknown. But inside the movement of those opposing abortion, she has been a leading figure for two decades. "Kellyanne is one of us," is how she was introduced at the March for Life. As a pollster and political strategist, she advised numerous groups like the Susan B. Anthony List and the March for Life, urging them to adopt what she often described as a more approach that avoided some of the more incendiary language of the movement in the past. Opponents of abortion gather every year on the National Mall and march to the Supreme Court. Usually their defiance is not much more than symbolism — the court is the origin of Roe v. Wade, the decision in 1973 that they have sought for more than 40 years to overturn. This year they have ample reason to believe that under a government, they will begin to see movement for the first time in more than a decade. In previous years, no president or vice president has ever addressed the march in person. This year, the Trump administration will be out in full force with the appearances of Mr. Pence and Ms. Conway. President Trump, in one of his first official acts, signed an order prohibiting foreign aid to health providers abroad who discuss abortion as a option. And in a break with previous Republican presidents, he has embraced the idea of a litmus test for his Supreme Court nominees and pledged explicitly to name someone who opposes abortion. He said he would announce his choice on Thursday to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last February. Mr. Trump has become an unlikely champion for the movement, with abortion opponents saying he is probably their most unflinching White House ally since President Ronald Reagan. Though Mr. Trump spent much of his life as a supporter of abortion rights, he spoke more vividly and forcefully on the issue during the campaign than any recent Republican nominee. And while many groups opposing abortion were vehemently opposed to Mr. Trump during the Republican primaries last year, almost all of them came around. Today, however unexpectedly, they march in a Washington suddenly more friendly to their interests. Many of the activists said they were looking forward to President Trump appointing Supreme Court justices who might overturn the right to abortions and to the defunding of Planned Parenthood. Marchers waved signs spelling out their beliefs in messages like "Save the babies," " " and "Trump for Baby Bumps. " Still, some of the marchers remained wary of the new president. Kathleen Crank, 19, a sophomore at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan. traveled on a five bus caravan of 260 students to come to the march. She said she was happy to have a president who would oppose abortion but wasn't excited about much else about Mr. Trump. She said she waited until the last minute and decided not to vote for either him or Hillary Clinton. "Their stance on abortion is probably the only issue I'm glad about for this administration," she said. "I'm glad that after eight years of reading Obama's tweets celebrating Roe v. Wade, I'm glad we finally have an administration that is recognizing we need to cut funding for abortions in other countries and bringing it back down to the state level. " Ms. Crank also said she saw abortions as less about religion than about preserving the rights of unborn children. "It's more a social justice issue for unborn babies than a religious one to push an agenda," she said. "Everyone should be able to live their life and live it however they want to. " Annette Saunders, 60, drove five hours with her husband from Norwalk, Conn. to volunteer with Save the Storks, a group that opposes abortion, and to hand out signs that said, "For those who can't. " Though she voted for Mr. Trump, Ms. Saunders said she agonized over the decision because she found him to be "crass" and was frustrated by the tape of him using vulgarities to talk about women. "I was concerned but I felt like God told me to vote for Donald Trump," she said. "He is standing up for and his vice president certainly is and I'm excited about seeing a turnaround. " Jon Banks and Josie Rauh, both 18, were taking photos of each other in front of the Washington Monument clad in red and blue President caps. They were part of a group that traveled to Washington from Archbishop Hoban, a private Catholic high school in Akron, Ohio. Both said Mr. Trump's opposition to abortion were the centerpieces of their support for the new president. They grew up in families dedicated to the cause. Ms. Rauh had supported former President Barack Obama but became enthusiastic in 2016. "I thought Obama was a pretty good president," she said. "I think there are some things that need to be changed, like Roe v. Wade. I think Trump has got a plan and is ready to do it. " "I want women to have their rights," she added. "But I think there are a bunch of women in the womb that are being killed, too. " Mr. Banks, the son of a police officer, said he was thrilled by Mr. Trump's patriotism. He said he hoped the new president found a way to outlaw abortion. As Mr. Pence, Ms. Conway and several other speakers celebrated what they described as a new phase for the movement, thousands of people shouted "Trump" and "Life" while happily waving their hands. Anne Nudi, 49, a nurse and college professor who flew to Washington from her home in Kenosha, Wis. to come to the march, said she enthusiastically cast her ballot for Mr. Trump and has been encouraged by his first busy week in office. "I feel empowered. I feel positive. I feel encouraged about the future and I feel blessed that I have a president who is supportive of our cause," she said as she shivered while watching the speakers. "I believe he's a good person. He's made his own way and I believe he wants what's best for our country regardless of party affiliation. "


(CNN) Donald Trump is ratcheting up his rhetoric about American Muslims, saying there's precedent for monitoring some mosques amid the recent terror wave. At a Birmingham, Alabama, rally on Saturday -- which included a physical altercation between a black protester and several white Trump backers -- the 2016 Republican front-runner suggested law enforcement keep an eye on certain Islamic houses of worship which, in his view, could pose terrorist threats. "I want surveillance of certain mosques if that's OK," Trump told the often-raucous and approving crowd. "We've had it before." The remarks echo a call Trump made earlier in the week, when he said on MSNBC he'd "strongly consider" shutting down mosques in the U.S. The billionaire businessman also linked current terrorist concerns, after the Paris carnage and other attacks, with 9/11. "I watched the World Trade Center go down," Trump asserted, adding he watched in New Jersey, "as thousands of people were cheering as the building was coming down." Trump then denounced calls to resettle Syrian refuges on U.S. soil, which his Republican rivals for the nomination also oppose. "I want surveillance. I will absolutely take (a) database on the people coming in from Syria. "If we can't stop it -- but we are going to if I win -- they're going back." Several attendees at the rally punched and kicked a protester who tried to disrupt Trump's speech. At least a half-dozen attendees shoved and tackled the protester, a black man, to the ground as he refused to leave the event. At least one man punched the protester and a woman kicked him while he was on the ground. All of the attendees who were involved in the physical altercation with the protester were white. The protester appeared to be shouting "black lives matter" and later removed his sweatshirt to reveal a shirt with those words. At least one attendee shouted "all lives matter" as the protester was eventually led out by police officers on the scene. Birmingham Police Lt. Sean Edwards told CNN that three people were asked to leave the event following the scuffle. No arrests were made, and the protester did not require medical attention. Campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks told CNN that "the campaign does not condone this behavior." Trump has fended off criticism recently that he was accused of backing a U.S. database on all Muslims in the country. Trump has denied making that remark but hasn't dismissed the idea out-of-hand. The database controversy began Thursday when Trump told Yahoo News that he would create new anti-terrorism measures if he's elected. "We're going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule," he told Yahoo News. "And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we're going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago." The Yahoo reporter asked about the possibility of a database for Muslims or "a form of special identification that noted their religion." Trump did not say no to either idea. Then, after an Iowa campaign event later that day, an NBC reporter asked Trump if he favored a database to track Muslims in the country. Trump responded in a way some took as backing that idea. At Saturday's rally in Alabama, Trump said he decided not to answer once he heard the reporter identified as being with NBC News.


Whole Foods is a store that many people love. They love the organic food, the appearance of cleanliness and health, and the impeccable customer service. However, lately, this popular chain has found itself under fire for creating and marketing products that are excessively expensive and completely unnecessary often at the expense of the environment due to the packaging, and at the expense of its customers budgets.Everyone remembers the absolute shitstorm caused by the asparagus water last year that the chain sold $6 a bottle for water with a couple of stalks of asparagus in it. Apparently, that did not teach the folks at Whole Foods a lesson, because they have now just had a similar reaction to another ridiculously expensive product oranges that are already peeled, which are going for a whopping $6 a pound.Needless to say, the public has not taken kindly to this move, and many people have taken to Twitter to blast the chain. Here are just a few choice critical tweets:Firstly, it was pointed out how environmentally irresponsible this is:If only nature would find a way to cover these oranges so we didn't need to waste so much plastic on them. pic.twitter.com/00YECaHB4D Nathalie Gordon (@awlilnatty) March 3, 2016 @awlilnatty Fucking hell. That makes me unbelievably angry actually. Talk about necessarily contributing to plastic taking over the planet. Swiftie Be (@StephanieBe) March 3, 2016Others pointed out how ironic the chain s antics are, given its name:@ajdomanico @awlilnatty the irony of this being Whole Foods too Mollie Goodfellow (@hansmollman) March 3, 2016Others made fun of the obviously lazy nature of the people who would purchase this:@ConorS @awlilnatty @MisterVivian next logical step: half eaten. (@Jemppu) March 4, 2016It was pointed out that it could be ableist to assume that everyone can peel an orange; however, that point was quickly followed by the obvious fact that such people are not who Whole Foods is targeting. In fact, due to the fact that most disabled people are not exactly well-to-do, they likely could never even afford to shop at Whole Foods, making that particular point moot:@otherbecky @awlilnatty You know, as well as i do, that that is NOT who that is marketed towards. Also, the packaging is still superfluous. Swiftie Be (@StephanieBe) March 4, 2016All of this and more is true here. This is simply outrageous. Shame on you, Whole Foods. You market to organic food-eating, hippieish, health conscious liberals, and you expect us to put up with this, to not notice? Well, for the second time in their price-gouging attempt, Whole Foods was forced to backtrack, calling the marketing and selling of these pre-peeled oranges a mistake. @awlilnatty Definitely our mistake. These have been pulled. We hear you, and we will leave them in their natural packaging: the peel. Whole Foods Market (@WholeFoods) March 3, 2016You re damn right it was a mistake. Hopefully you people have learned your lesson this time.


Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner vowed to pursue a legal challenge against union dues the state collects from non-unionized, rank-and-file government workers despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday that upheld the practice. In a victory for labor, a 4-4 deadlock by the nation's high court allowed a federal appeals court opinion to stand against 10 non-unionized California public school teachers who contended so-called fair-share dues should not be withheld from their paychecks if they chose against union membership. But the court move likely does not settle the issue, because nearly identical federal litigation in Illinois that Rauner helped launch last year remains viable. "Our case is winding its way through the courts, and it will get to the Supreme Court probably at some point in the future," Rauner said during a stop in rural Illinois on Tuesday. "And we will just continue the fight for the freedom of political expression and the right of free speech for government employees. It's a fundamental issue." Since taking office in 2015, the first-term Republican governor has waged war with public-sector unions in a bid to weaken their longstanding influence over state politics. During his first month in office, the governor signed an executive order to bar state agencies from withholding fair-share dues, which non-unionized employees must pay under Illinois law and collective-bargaining agreements to support non-political union activities that benefit all workers. Public-sector unions sued in Illinois state court to block Rauner's executive order from being implemented and persuaded a judge to allow the fees to continue to be collected while the case, which is still pending, was litigated. Simultaneously, Rauner sued in federal court to challenge the fees, but last May he was dismissed from the case by a judge, who ruled the governor lacked legal standing. Three non-unionized Illinois workers forced to pay between $19.75 and $60.86 in union dues per paycheck were allowed to proceed with their own complaint. A spokesman for the union representing the largest bloc of state workers called Tuesday's Supreme Court ruling a "win" but acknowledged the Illinois case may become the next fair-share battlefront. "These attacks are political, and they're ideological. They're brought by people who want to rig the economy and our democracy in their favor. They're not going to stop because they lost this particular challenge. They'll bring another one," said Anders Lindall, a spokesman for AFSCME Council 31.


GOP presidential candidates called for prayers for victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris and a swift response from the U.S., while criticizing President Barack Obama's foreign policy.


Newly released body camera footage shows a La Junta, Colorado police officer violently slamming a man s head to the pavement with enough force to break his neck. The officer s actions left the man, who was never charged with any crime, paralyzed from the chest down.According to Donovan Duran s family the young MMA fighter was experiencing a mental health crisis at the time of the encounter with police, which took place in December of 2015.Over the course of several days Duran s family called police to help them cope with what they describe as unusual behavior.The Denver Post reports that Duran was drinking excessively and experiencing bouts of paranoia in the days prior to his injury.On two prior occasions police had taken the man to a local hospital. On both occasions he was released without treatment.According to police, authorities were not able to hold him in custody because he had not broken any laws.The latter half of the body cam video shows officer Vince Fraker speaking with Duran before his arrest. Although it appears that some of the footage has been edited, none of the footage published by the Denver Post shows the man being combative or threatening the police.The first portion of the video shows the moment that Fraker slams Duran s head to the pavement. It s clear that he is severely injured and no longer able to stand or walk.The video shows Fraker and another officer dealing with Duran s injuries in a shockingly callous manner, dragging him across the hospital parking lot and tossing his limp body around without any concern whatsoever for his well-being.Watch the video below, courtesy of the Denver Post.More than six months later Duran still remains in the hospital. In spite of the brutal treatment he received from police, he was never charged with any crime.According to the Denver Post:A grand jury in April found there were no fileable charges against Fraker or another officer involved in the encounter.The grand jurors wrote in a report that while Fraker was responsible for Duran s injuries a fractured neck that left him paralyzed from his nipples down when he rolled him out of a La Junta police SUV, it cannot be the basis of any criminal charges. Duran s attorneys have filed a federal lawsuit, stating: La Junta Police Department training of officers does not include proper training in responding to calls involving persons in crisis or with obvious mental health problems, including use of force policies and de-escalation strategies. The suit goes on to say: Fraker s use of excessive force as described above herein was outrageous and shocking to the conscience, in violation of Duran s substantive due process rights. A spokesperson for the La Junta Police Department states that an internal investigation into the incident is still underway.Image credit: video screen capture via Denver Post


A bipartisan group of 48 lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday asked the Obama administration to brief Congress "as soon as possible" about a 2015 Yahoo YHOO.O program to scan all of its users' incoming email at the behest of the government. The request comes amid scrutiny by privacy advocates and civil liberties groups about the legal authority and technical nature of the surveillance program, first revealed by Reuters last week. Custom software was installed to search messages to hundreds of millions of accounts under an order issued by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. "As legislators, it is our responsibility to have accurate information about the intelligence activities conducted by the federal government," according to the letter, organized by Republican Representative Justin Amash of Michigan and Democratic Representative Ted Lieu of California. "Accordingly, we request information and a briefing as soon as possible for all members of Congress to resolve the issues raised by these reports." Investigators searched for messages that contained a single piece of digital content linked to a foreign state sponsor of terrorism, sources have told Reuters, though the nature of the content remains unclear. Intelligence officials said Yahoo modified existing systems used to stop child pornography and filter spam messages on its email service. But three former Yahoo employees told Reuters the court-ordered search was done by a module buried deep near the core of the company's email server operation system, far below where mail sorting was handled. The Senate and House intelligence committees were given a copy of the order when it was issued last year, sources said, but other members of Congress have express concern at the scope of the email scanning. Some legal experts have questioned the breadth of the court order and whether it runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches. Half of registered U.S. voters believe the Yahoo program violated the privacy of customers, according to a poll of 1,989 people conducted last week by Morning Consult, a polling and media company. Twenty-five percent were supportive of the program because of its potential to stop criminal acts, the survey found, while another quarter did not know or had no opinion. The congressional letter is addressed to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.


There have been many reactions to the horrific shooting at a Republican baseball game this week, but the one that was just given by Congressman Mark Sanford (R-SC) is one of the most shocking.While many Republicans have been quick to blame Democrats and Liberals for the shooter s actions, Sanford went on Morning Joe today to point the finger at America s president, Donald Trump. Sounding like a Republican who might actually have a tiny grip on reality, Sanford argued that Trump helped create a toxic political environment, which may have motivated yesterday s attack. Sanford said: I think we have to watch out as a society because, if we don t watch out, civility is indeed a part of civilized government and an open political system. If you let these forces play out, I think we end up at a very, very bad spot. I think what happened yesterday was symptomatic of it. Sanford then turned his focus on Trump, stating that he is part of the reason America has become so deeply divided, and his rhetoric has undoubtedly had an effect on the country. Sanford didn t mince his words when he said: I would argue that the president is at least in partially not totally but partially to blame for demons that have been unleashed. The fact that you have the top guy saying I wish I can hit you in the face. Why don t you and I ll pay your legal fees. That s bizarre. We ought to call it as such. What I ve said back home, some of these people have been frankly weird and different in a town hall meeting. I say what is going on. They ll say look, if the guy at the top can say anything to anybody at any time, why can t I? I think we all need to look for ways to learn from what happened yesterday and to say, wait a minute, this is a pause moment. What might I do a little differently in the way I reached out to other members. Finally, a Republican who has the guts to point out just how insane and inappropriate Trump s behavior is, and to acknowledge that there are consequences to having a POTUS who is this unhinged. You can watch the interview below: