U.S. Senate Democrats, seeking to capitalize on growing disclosures about the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia, urged a top Republican lawmaker on Tuesday to obtain President Donald Trump's tax returns as a matter of national security. It was the second request for Trump's returns by Senate Democrats in as many weeks, part of a Democratic campaign to pressure Republicans in Congress into obtaining the documents that could reveal conflicts of interest posed by the president's global business empire. Trump has defied decades of precedent by refusing to release his tax returns, saying his tax affairs were under federal audit. The Internal Revenue Service has said that is no obstacle to releasing them publicly. In a letter on Tuesday to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, two of the panel's leading Democrats said Trump's tax returns should be pursued in light of "critical national security implications" posed by contacts between Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and Trump associates, including U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. "There is no debate that the conflicts in question pose a threat to American national security and the integrity of the government of the United States, and more and more keep coming to light," wrote Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the committee's top Democrat, and Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. Hatch and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady rejected a request for the returns last Wednesday by Senate Democrats, saying congressional actions that target individual tax returns would constitute an abuse of authority and set a dangerous precedent. On Tuesday, a Hatch spokesman said the Utah Republican had no further comment. The two Democratic lawmakers said national security had long been a focus of the Senate Finance Committee oversight of issues involving trade, Iran and terrorism. They also said the panel previously sought the tax returns of former Enron Corp executives, oil and gas companies and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, as part of its oversight duties. Wyden and Stabenow said they wanted the committee to hold a closed session in which lawmakers could conduct a bipartisan review of Trump's returns. They added: "If committee members identify ties or relations to foreign governments within these documents, we will respectfully request the chairman and members of the committee hold a vote to make that information available to the public."


Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) dropped a bombshell on Tuesday morning. During a press conference, they announced what Cummings described as a major problem for the Trump administration: it looks like former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn committed a felony. We received a response from the White House refusing to provide any of the documents we requested, Cummings said. The White House has refused to offer a single piece of paper in response to this committee s bipartisan request. According to the congressman, classified military documents have revealed that Flynn failed to disclose payments he received from foreign governments before he became Trump s National security advisor. This is a major problem, Cummings said. I believe these documents should be declassified to the fullest extent possible without compromising sources or methods, he added.Cumings also noted that Flynn s illegal actions could land him in prison for up to five years. Chaffetz said that if these documents are correct, then Flynn s actions were clearly illegal and there will be consequences. As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey or anybody else, Chaffetz said. And it appears as if he did take that money, it was inappropriate, and there are repercussions for it as a violation of the law. The congressmen, who both serve as senior members of the House Oversight Committee, said that so far, they haven t seen a shred of evidence to suggest that Flynn actually followed the law and got permission from the federal government before taking cash from multiple foreign governments.You can watch video of their press conference, here:


On Thursday's Breitbart News Daily, former U. N. ambassador John Bolton told SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam that he would "absolutely" have fired FBI Director James Comey if the decision was his to make. ["My only criticism of the Trump administration decision was that they should have fired him on January the 20th," Bolton added. "I speak as an alumnus of the Department of Justice in the Reagan and early Bush 41 administrations. I was assistant attorney general first for the head of the Office of Legislative Affairs, and then head of the Civil Division, the department's largest litigating division. I've dealt with the FBI when I was at Justice. I've dealt with them continuously in my days at the State Department on counterintelligence and other issues. I've dealt with them in their background investigation of judicial nominees. It was one of my principal responsibilities in legislative affairs at the Justice Department," he recalled. "I know the FBI well, and I have enormous respect for it. James Comey disgraced the FBI by his conduct of the Hillary Clinton email investigation and many, many other things that have never become public, but that agents talk about in private conversations," Bolton declared. "This was always about the greater glory of Jim Comey," he said. "It's perfectly clear that the way he handled the Clinton email investigation, both in terms of his erroneous legal interpretation of the applicable statutes, but also most critically his July 5 news conference and his subsequent letters to Congress in October and November, reopening and then closing the investigation, were a gross violation of unambiguous Department of Justice policies about not commenting on ongoing investigations. " "It applies to investigators as well as prosecutors, and there's a reason for this," Bolton explained. "It's not just a policy that you don't talk about investigations and prosecutions. The rule is, you either indict someone or you close the file. " "Why is that important?" he asked. "I think it has constitutional foundations: the presumption of innocence for the average citizen, the requirement that guilt be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, that an accused defendant have the right to confront witnesses against him. There's nothing in that series of constitutional projections that allows prosecutors or investigators to comment on the behavior of an individual citizen, other than in a court to prove up an indictment. " "I have nothing good to say about Hillary Clinton's conduct on the email scene, but it was not James Comey's business to give a review of her behavior," Bolton declared. "That's the real interference in the election. Subsequent the letters and things that flowed from that really all come from that initial mistake. That's why honestly it's the case that if Hillary had been elected, she would have been justified in firing Comey on the 20th of January. " "All of this business about the firing being an effort to somehow undercut the Russia investigation is utter nonsense. Jeff Sessions, who was a campaign surrogate for the Trump campaign, is recused from the Russia investigation. The Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, who is a career Justice Department prosecutor, is acting Attorney General for that purpose. The FBI investigation has not been impeded at all. There is absolutely no evidence of that. This is all media speculation and hype," he said. "I just hope that the Department of Justice and the White House stand firm on this, because there is an important principle at stake. Substantively, it was right to fire Comey for the protection of 300 million presumed innocent until proven guilty Americans, that investigators and prosecutors don't get to dish on you in public if they feel they can't indict," he maintained. Bolton said there was no question Hillary Clinton, or perhaps outgoing President Barack Obama, would have fired Comey if she had won the election. "What Comey did, as outlined in Rosenstein's memo that accompanied the Sessions recommendation to the president that Comey be fired, is unanswerable," Bolton contended. "And you can bet that the media and the Democratic politicians who are condemning Trump today would have leapt to her defense and said it was entirely justified. " "I hope that my own principles would have sustained me to the point where I would agree because it would have been justified," he added. "It's Comey's conduct here that's the center of the issue. It's not whether Trump had an effective media strategy on Tuesday night. It's not whether they should have gotten Comey on the phone first. It's not because he was meeting with the Russian foreign minister the next day. " "Look, timing is never good on these things," Bolton said. "The best timing was January the 20th. Every day that goes on after that is a little bit worse. The idea that Trump should have waited 90 or 180 days before firing Comey … " He laughed as Kassam interjected and said Trump's critics might as well insist he give the FBI director four years' notice. "Let's not leave him in there, precisely," Bolton concurred. Bolton said the Comey firing is "not even close to" a scandal, as some critics have claimed. "I know those people at the FBI. They are tough, they are patriotic. They tend to skew conservative in their voting patterns," said Bolton. "But when it comes to law enforcement, nothing gets between them and the truth. The idea that the Trump administration or anybody else from a political background could affect them, could intimidate them, is just ludicrous. It's just ludicrous. " "This whole notion that you have to have an independent counsel and an independent set of investigators is just a way to politicize prosecutions," he said. "The fact is, this investigation of Russia — the Trump campaign connection, whatever it is — will go on utterly unimpeded, and if anything with even more determination on the part of the career prosecutors and FBI investigators that they're not going to be interfered with. They're going to get to the truth, whatever the truth is. This will strengthen their resolve. " "Why not appoint Eric Holder the independent counsel? I mean, let's get right to it. How about Loretta Lynch? They're both unemployed now," Bolton suggested sarcastically. Kassam turned to international news, asking Bolton about Turkey's strenuous objections to the Trump administration's stated plan to arm and support Syrian Kurdish forces in the upcoming battle to recapture the Islamic State capital of Raqqa. Turkey maintains the Syrian YPG militia is linked to the violent PKK separatists in Turkey, and could pass American weapons to them. "I would not arm them," Bolton said. "I understand what the logic is, that we have armed Kurds in Iraq against the Islamic State. But the fact is, not all Kurds are equally favorable toward a Western view of responsible government. The PKK is a terrorist and communist organization. " "I think this is simply carrying on unfortunately from the Obama policy of how to destroy ISIS, and I think it's the wrong way to go," he advised. "I don't have much sympathy, if any, for Erdogan," he said of Turkey's president. "I do have sympathy for Turkey, and I'm very worried these same weapons we're giving them now are going to be turned against Turkish civilians down the road. We've got a very difficult alliance management problem here with Erodgan. I do think he has authoritarian tendencies. I worry that he's being seduced by Putin. But I think we've got to grit our teeth and think of Turkey rather than Erdogan, and see if we can see it through here. " "I think we need a completely new strategy to defeat ISIS," Bolton recommended. "I don't think we want to do it in any kind of way that strengthens other terrorist groups, including those among the Syrian opposition. I don't think we want to do it in a way that strengthens the Iranian axis of power — including the Baghdad government sadly, the Assad regime, and Hezbollah, which is pretty much the direction that the Obama strategy was going in. " "There's a lot to correct here. I certainly share the view that we want to destroy the caliphate at the earliest possible opportunity, but arming this particular group I think is a mistake," he said. Kassam asked Bolton what he thought of Henry Kissinger's presence in the Oval Office on Wednesday when President Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. "I've spoken to him before. In the interests of full disclosure, I try and speak to him fairly frequently myself," Bolton said of Kissinger. "I think hearing his insights is a plus for any president. That doesn't mean that I agree with him on everything, and I rather doubt that President Trump agrees with him on everything. But few people have been through what Kissinger went through and have the insight. Anybody who's got some spare time should read all three volumes of his memoir of his days in the White House and the State Department. " "What got me most about that meeting was the instant pivot by Democrats and the press to say, 'There it is! Henry Kissinger, tainted by his association with Richard Nixon!' They just can't restrain themselves," Bolton marveled. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern.


GENERALLY, VENEZUELANS DO NOT EAT RABBITS AND SEE THEM AS PETS The Venezuelan government just urged its citizens to eat their pet rabbits so they won t starve to death. A severe food crisis is part of the socialist utopia that just keeps going downhill. What s next? Cannibalism?President Nicolas Maduro unveiled a government program called Plan Rabbit at a meeting with his agriculture minister, Freddy Bernal, that was broadcast on Periscope, CNN Money reported. It s a plan to distribute rabbits to communities across Venezuela to breed and eat. Maduro noted that rabbits breed quickly and are a good source of protein, but not cholesterol.GOVERNMENT PUSHES A CHANGE IN CONSUMPTION PATTERNS The rabbit isn t a pet, it s only two and a half kilos of meat, Bernal stressed in the streamed announcement. He then invoked President Donald Trump to push the program. Trump s attack against the Venezuelan people is an opportunity to revise and change cultural consumption patterns, he said.Venezuelan opposition leaders immediately slammed the move. Are you serious? asked former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles in a video response. You want people to start raising rabbits to solve the problem of hunger in our country? A 2016 study found that three-fourths of Venezuelans had lost almost twenty pounds on average over the course of the year. Meat is particularly scarce in the South American nation, with citizens even resorting to butchering zoo animals, according to police.Most economists agree the mass hunger is the result of socialist government policies spearheaded by former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and Maduro, his successor. Chavez instituted price controls on many food items, which helped lead to shortages and massive inflation.We ve previously reported on shortages of food and even toilet paper in Venezuela.BYOTP! NO TOILET PAPER AND NO FOODSocialism doesn t work but I guess Venezuela didn t get the memo. No toilet paper? No food? Yes, it s come to that in this socialist hellhole Venezuela s product shortages have become so severe that some hotels in that country are asking guests to bring their own toilet paper and soap, a local tourism industry spokesman said on Wednesday . It s an extreme situation, says Xinia Camacho, owner of a 20-room boutique hotel in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada national park. For over a year we haven t had toilet paper, soap, any kind of milk, coffee or sugar. So we have to tell our guests to come prepared. Montilla says bigger hotels can circumvent product shortages by buying toilet paper and other basic supplies from black market smugglers who charge up to 6-times the regular price. But smaller, family-run hotels can t always afford to pay such steep prices, which means that sometimes they have to make do without.READ MORE: WFB


in: Multimedia , Politics (image: Gage Skidmore) Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall (King James Bible). Throughout recorded history, hubris has been the Achilles' Heel of political despots. Hillary Clinton and her political crime machine has been operating above the law for decades, stretching back at least to when Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas. "Hillary Clinton is a toilet scrubber for Goldman Sachs" – John Titus on the Shadow of Truth During her 2016 Presidential Campaign, it became routine for her get in front the public and lie with convincing ease. In Greek tragedy, "hubris" was an anti-hero's excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to the character's unforeseen demise. When Hillary was deposed by the FBI about the 33,000 emails on her private server that were wiped clean forever using BleachBit, she assumed her tracks were irrevocably covered up. But it wasn't just 33,000 emails that were incinerated, reams of evidence including laptops, server back-ups and Blackberries either "disappeared" or were wiped clean. But out of the blue, as if sent to earth from a Higher Power, the FBI in its child pornography investigation of Anthony Weiner stumbled on to a laptop with 650,000 emails that appeared to have been downloaded from Hillary Clinton's private server. It is highly probable that among this treasure trough of emails will be copies of the 33,000 emails that Hillary arrogantly assumed were wiped from the Universe. Hubris gets 'em every time. But it gets better than that. 650,000 is decade's worth of emails. It's also possible that Weiner's laptop will finally shed the light of Truth on Benghazi. "Jim Comey did not re-open this investigation of to go over old ground. Worse infractions were discovered." – John Titus In addition to exposing Hillary to all sorts of felonies, here statement to the FBI under oath could be undermined by this unforeseen "Black Swan" event that has engulfed her campaign. The Shadow of Truth is pleased to present John Titus of Best Evidence productions and his unique insight into this event. The two-part podcast covers analysis that has not been presented in either the mainstream or alternative media: Part 1


Mrs. Clinton provided material assistance to terrorists and lied to Congress in a venue where the law required her to be truthful. JUDGE NAPOLITANOIn the course of my work, I am often asked by colleagues to review and explain documents and statutes. Recently, in conjunction with my colleagues Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne, I read the transcripts of an interview Ms. Browne did with a man named Marc Turi, and Ms. Herridge asked me to review emails to and from State Department and congressional officials during the years when Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state.What I saw has persuaded me beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that Mrs. Clinton provided material assistance to terrorists and lied to Congress in a venue where the law required her to be truthful. Here is the backstory.Mr. Turi is a lawfully licensed American arms dealer. In 2011, he applied to the Departments of State and Treasury for approvals to sell arms to the government of Qatar. Qatar is a small Middle Eastern country whose government is so entwined with the U.S. government that it almost always will do what American government officials ask of it.In its efforts to keep arms from countries and groups that might harm Americans and American interests, Congress has authorized the Departments of State and Treasury to be arms gatekeepers. They can declare a country or group to be a terrorist organization, in which case selling or facilitating the sale of arms to it is a felony. They also can license dealers to sell.Mr. Turi sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of arms to the government of Qatar, which then, at the request of American government officials, were sold, bartered or given to rebel groups in Libya and Syria. Some of the groups that received the arms were on the U.S. terror list. Thus, the same State and Treasury Departments that licensed the sales also prohibited them.How could that be?That s where Mrs. Clinton s secret State Department and her secret war come in. Because Mrs. Clinton used her husband s computer server for all of her email traffic while she was the secretary of state, a violation of three federal laws, few in the State Department outside her inner circle knew what she was up to.Now we know.She obtained permission from President Obama and consent from congressional leaders in both houses of Congress and in both parties to arm rebels in Syria and Libya in an effort to overthrow the governments of those countries.Many of the rebels Mrs. Clinton armed, using the weapons lawfully sold to Qatar by Mr. Turi and others, were terrorist groups who are our sworn enemies. There was no congressional declaration of war, no congressional vote, no congressional knowledge beyond fewer than a dozen members, and no federal statute that authorized this.When Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, asked Mrs. Clinton at a public hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 23, 2013, whether she knew about American arms shipped to the Middle East, to Turkey or to any other country, she denied any knowledge. It is unclear whether she was under oath at the time, but that is legally irrelevant. The obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to Congress pertains to all witnesses who testify before congressional committees, whether an oath has been administered or not. (Just ask Roger Clemens, who was twice prosecuted for misleading Congress about the contents of his urine while not under oath. He was acquitted.)Here is her relevant testimony:Mr. Paul: My question is is the U.S. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons buying, selling anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya?Mrs. Clinton: To Turkey? I will have to take that question for the record. Nobody s ever raised that with me. I, I .Mr. Paul: It s been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and that they may have weapons and what I d like to know is the [Benghazi] annex that was close by . Were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons and were any of these weapons transferred to other countries any countries, Turkey included?Mrs. Clinton: Senator, you will have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex. And I will see what information is available and ahhhh .Mr. Paul: You are saying you don t know .Mrs. Clinton: I do not know. I don t have any information on that. VIDEO OF THIS TESTIMONY IS BELOW: This secret war and the criminal behavior that animated it was the product of conspirators in the White House, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Justice Department, the CIA and a tight-knit group of members of Congress. Their conspiracy has now unraveled. Where is the outrage among the balance of Congress?


Former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta believes that Donald Trump has doomed the entire planet. ["Make no mistake, the Trump administration's rampage against the environment presents an existential threat to the entire planet," Podesta wrote in the Washington Post on Wednesday. The former failed campaign manager, a passionate warrior for global warming, appeared distraught after Trump signed an executive order to ratchet back the environmental regulations that choked businesses and job growth. Podesta appears unwilling to let go of the fact that Clinton lost the election, again citing the popular vote in 2016 as a reason to fight Trump's agenda. "Winning the popular vote by nearly three million votes was not enough for Hillary Clinton to win the White House, but those votes nonetheless reflect the voices of a majority of Americans," he said. He urged Americans to work against the administration's environmental agenda. "As Americans, we need to do all we can to stop the Trump administration and Republican leaders in Congress from implementing the most agenda in decades," he said, adding that "resistance works. "


President Donald Trump has nominated Christopher Wray as the new FBI director. ["I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI," the president announced on Twitter on Wednesday morning. "Details to follow. " Wray served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General in former President George W. Bush's administration and was promoted to the assistant attorney general for the criminal division, before he left to work in the private sector as a partner at the Washington law firm King Spalding. During his time in government, he oversaw the highly publicized Enron case and oversaw the legal aspects of the war on terror after according to King Spalding's website. He also served as Governor Chris Christie's personal attorney during the bridgegate scandal. Last week, Christie praised Wray as an "outstanding lawyer," after it was revealed that he was under consideration. "He has absolute integrity and honesty, and I think that the president certainly would not be making a mistake if he asked Chris Wray to be FBI director," Christie said. Trump's choice earned praise from Norm Eisen, a Brookings Institute fellow and former ethics czar for former president Obama. "Good choice. Oversaw Enron case, which I also spent years of my life on," Eisen wrote on Twitter. "He was very fair. I endorse. "


The terrorist attack that killed 49 and wounded 53 in Orlando, Fla. was the largest mass killing of gay people in American history, but before Sunday that grim distinction was held by a largely forgotten arson at a New Orleans bar in 1973 that killed 32 people at a time of pernicious stigma. Churches refused to bury the victims' remains. Their deaths were mostly ignored and sometimes mocked by politicians and the media. No one was ever charged. A joke made the rounds in workplaces and was repeated on the radio: "Where will they bury the queers? In fruit jars!" Outpourings of grief from politicians and everyday people have followed the Orlando shooting, but for those who remember the fire in the New Orleans bar, the UpStairs Lounge, its lonely memory has loomed large over conversations about the carnage this week at the Pulse nightclub. Mike Moreau, 72, who lost several friends in the fire, said he was struck by all the differences between then and now, but also by the familiarity of tragedy's dull ache. "What happened to us had to be kept so private," said Mr. Moreau. "The public didn't want to know about it, and if they heard about it they didn't care — 'Thank God, they're gone, they deserved it. '" "To see the outpouring of love and support that these poor families have gotten is fantastic," he added about the Orlando massacre. "They are hurting the same way we hurt, but at least they know that the world supports them and understands their grief. " Mr. Moreau was with friends at a nearby bar on June 24, 1973, when an arsonist doused the stairs of the UpStairs Lounge with lighter fluid, set it aflame and rang the doorbell. When someone answered the door, a fireball burst into the room. One group of patrons fled out a back exit, but another was trapped across the room, caught between the flames and windows fitted with metal bars. When firefighters extinguished the blaze, they found a pile of charred bodies, some embracing and others pressed against the windows. Congregants from the New Orleans chapter of the Metropolitan Community Church, an L. G. B. T. group, were meeting there after services. The Rev. Bill Larson was among the dead. His charred body was left slumped against the window bars in full view of for hours. He was one of many who died without ever coming out to their families, and his mother would not deal with his remains, said Robert L. Camina, who directed a documentary, UpStairs Inferno, about the blaze. "His mother refused to collect his ashes because she was too embarrassed that she had a gay son," Mr. Camina said. "And that is just one example. There are three people who were never identified at all. Why? Somebody has to miss them. " Those three were buried in unmarked graves in a potter's field along with a fourth person, Ferris LeBlanc, whose family did not know his fate until last year, Mr. Camina said. "They dug a hole in the ground and put a bag in it and covered it back up," Mr. Moreau said. Public figures were unsupportive. The mayor, Moon Landrieu, did not cancel his vacation. Forty years later, a son of his, the current mayor, Mitch Landrieu, declared a day of public mourning for the fire's victims on its anniversary. "L. G. B. T. people have a place at the table now that they did not have then," said Clayton who wrote a book about the arson that was published in 2014. The fire was an open wound for the gay community in New Orleans for years. No one was charged with the attack, and a man viewed by many as the primary suspect was never arrested. He committed suicide a year after the blaze. "There was never any sense of justice," said Sebastian Rey, the president of the L. G. B. T. Community Center of New Orleans. Survivors had to deny any connection to the fire, including the loss of loved ones, because they could lose their jobs or apartments if bosses and landlords suspected they were gay. Mr. Rey said people who lived through that period did not talk about it for decades. As time passed, the tragedy became "a rumor" to new generations of L. G. B. T. people, he said. Johnny Townsend, who interviewed survivors in the late '80s and finally published their accounts in 2014, said the 40th anniversary commemoration gave it a kind of public attention it had not had before. "People now feel more of a sense of their own history," he said. For Mr. Moreau, the outpouring of support for the victims in Orlando has been an "uplifting" sign of progress, he said. "In Orlando, those poor people know at least that the whole world is behind them," he said. "Nobody cared about us. "


Teaching kids all across America that bringing fake bombs to school on 9-11 really pays off Is it possible the radical Muslim family who became famous when their son took a fake bomb to school on 9-11 has discovered the cost of living in Qatar is higher than they anticipated? Or is it possible they just miss being in the spotlight? We re thinking America may have a slightly different attitude about the Muslim clock boy post Paris tragedy You know what they say timing is everything .(pun intended).Give us $15 million or else.That s the demand from the family of the world s most famous clockmaker, Ahmed Mohamed, to the City of Irving and Irving ISD. The city and district were each sent letters on Monday demanding money or else a lawsuit would be filed.The family wants $10 million from the City of Irving and $5 million from Irving ISD for damages it claims Ahmed and the family suffered after the teen was arrested. The family also wants an apology from the two entities.Mohamed, 14, was arrested by Irving police in September after he brought a homemade digital clock to school that was mistaken for a bomb by Irving MacArthur High School faculty. The subsequent fallout made international headlines.Mohamed and his immediately family are now overseas in Qatar and enrolling in school after a foundation has offered to pay for his education. The letter demanding money from the city and district says that the family wants more than anything to come home to Irving.The letter gives both the city and the district 60 days to pay up or else face a lawsuit.City and district officials didn t have any immediate comment on the letter.


Kazakhstan is to change its official alphabet for the third time in less than 100 years in what is seen in part as symbolic move to underline its independence. President Nursultan Nazarbayev ordered his office on Thursday to prepare for a switch to a Latin-based alphabet from a Cyrillic one, distancing itself, at least graphically, from Russia. The oil-rich former Soviet republic of 18 million has very close ties with Moscow, its main trading partner, but is also wary of Russia s ambitions to maintain its political influence throughout the region. Kazakh, a Turkic language, used to be written in Arabic script until the 1920s when the Soviet Union briefly introduced a Latin alphabet for it. This was later replaced by a Cyrillic one in 1940, based on the Russian alphabet. Part of the latest switch relates to modern technology. The currently used Cyrillic alphabet has 42 symbols, making it cumbersome to use with digital devices - a standard Kazakh keyboard utilizes almost all number keys in addition to letter and punctuation keys. The latest version of the proposed Latin alphabet works around that by using apostrophe signs to modify letters. The country s official name would thus be spelled as Qazaqstan Respy blikasy. According to a statement published by Nazarbayev s office, he has ordered his chief of staff to draft an executive order introducing the new alphabet. The switch will be gradual, it said. Alhough Kazakh has been the state language since Kazakhstan became independent in 1991, only 62 percent of the population said they were fluent in both written and spoken Kazakh during a the most recent national census in 2009. Russian is more widespread with 85 percent claiming fluency in the same census. Russian is recognized as an official language in Kazakhstan. Several other Turkic nations, including Turkey itself, ex-Soviet Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, have also switched to Latin alphabets.


Looking for a Trump bump in the economy? Keep waiting. After two months of stellar job creation that convinced administration officials that President Trump's policies were paying off immediately, employers pulled back sharply on hiring in March. The economy added 98, 000 jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday, fewer than half the monthly number for January and February. The report contained some notable good news: The unemployment rate fell to 4. 5 percent, the lowest level in almost a decade and a milestone in the long road back from the Great Recession. The rate was 4. 7 percent in February. Wages also continued to rise. But the disappointing number of new jobs was jarring for the administration, and well below what economists had expected. It comes as the stock market surge, which followed the November election, subsides and amid signs that economic growth in the year's first quarter proves weak. Economic perceptions, as well, may not be playing out in reality. Sentiment among consumers and businesses rose after Mr. Trump's election, but so far, it has not been matched by a comparable increase in spending by either group. "We've given up on waiting for hard data to improve," said Rob Martin, an economist at Barclays. "It's been five months since confidence increased. If consumption were going to improve, it would have already. " Industries that Mr. Trump emphasized in his campaign — particularly manufacturing — continued to add jobs last month, but at a slower pace. Payrolls in the retail sector, meanwhile, declined further, shedding tens of thousands of jobs. The response from the White House, which crowed last month after more than 200, 000 jobs were produced in Mr. Trump's first full month in office, was muted Friday. Gary D. Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs executive who is director of the White House's National Economic Council, emphasized the decline in the unemployment rate. "When you look at the jobs report as a whole, I think there's an awful lot of good news in here," he told Fox Business Network. Congressional Democrats took a dimmer view. Also watching closely are the policy makers of the Federal Reserve, which has begun to reel in its stimulus. It raised interest rates last month and said it planned to do so twice more this year. But signs of a sluggish economy could affect how quickly the central bank moves. "This raises the stakes for the April report," said Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist at MFR, a research firm. "You need to see things pick up in April, or else March won't look like aberration. " The market reaction, in any case, was sanguine, with stocks essentially flat for the day. Barclays has said it expects the economy to actually slow in the first half of 2017, before rebounding modestly in the second half. "Given this data today, we see downside risk in our already soft expectations for the first half," Mr. Martin said. The consensus view on Wall Street is that the economy expanded at an annual rate of 1 percent last quarter, with the pace of growth in the current second quarter rising to 3. 5 percent. The March report represents a snapshot of the economy, not an oil painting. And snow and cold weather in many parts of the country clearly took a toll on the construction sector, which barely grew after gaining a total of more than 90, 000 jobs in January and February. "January and February were abnormally warm, so they were pumped up, and you had some payback in March exacerbated by the harsh weather," Mr. Shapiro said. On Capitol Hill, Republicans acknowledged a view of the report. "The economy clearly should be generating higher job growth," said Representative Pat Tiberi, an Ohio Republican who is chairman of the Joint Economic Committee. "However, the unemployment rate fell to the lowest rate since before the recession. " The top Democrat on the committee, Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, ignored the new jobless rate and focused instead on the disappointing payroll gain. "Today's jobs numbers show there are still challenges ahead that this administration must address," Mr. Heinrich said. "President Trump promised that he would be 'the greatest jobs producer that God ever created.' Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee will hold him to this promise. " Last month, when February's payroll gain turned out to be much better than expected, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, claimed credit for Mr. Trump. Mr. Spicer called the job creation a result of "the surge in economic confidence and optimism that has been inspired since his election. " Part of the problem for the administration is that its legislative accomplishments in the first hundred days are falling far short of the expectations — notably, for tax cuts and infrastructure spending — since the election. Whether or not they support Mr. Trump, mainstream economists say it will take many months for policy shifts in Washington to move a economy with 153 million workers. What is more, the tepid numbers for March mask pockets of strength. For example, a few sectors like professional and business services are holding up well, adding 56, 000 jobs last month. Hyland, a business software designer in Westlake, Ohio, plans to hire at least 300 people this year, Bill Priemer, its chief executive, said. That is a 15 percent increase in head count at the company, and it is a sign of just how quickly demand is growing for new technologies like content management, one of Hyland's specialties. "We are growing faster than the economy and the enterprise software sector overall," Mr. Priemer said. "Digital transformation is a big buzzword, but it's just fancy terminology to describe how business can use technology to streamline their operations. " On the other hand, new technologies are upending venerable industries like retailing, as consumers shift to shopping online and department stores close. The retail sector lost almost 30, 000 jobs last month, after a decline of about 31, 000 in February. The headline numbers for hiring and the unemployment rate are derived from separate surveys by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one of establishments, the other of households. Although the two tends to converge over time, they can vary widely from month to month, and March was one of those times. So while businesses showed an anemic gain of 98, 000 jobs in terms of payrolls, households reported a 472, 000 increase in employment, without any fall in labor participation. That explains why the unemployment rate could fall by 0. 2 of a percentage point, even as the number for job creation was far short of expectations. "I think the headline number was clearly impacted by the weather," said Michelle Meyer, head of United States economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. But at some point she said, rosy economic expectations are likely to catch up with a more sober reality. "Sentiment surveys moved sharply higher after the election on expectations of policies and tax reform," she added. "So far, that hasn't happened, and the big question is whether confidence can remain as strong. "


The president says he doesn t think Obamacare is going anywhere just yet. In an interview on ABC s This Week, Obama said he doesn t think the Affordable Care Act will be fully repealed quite like Republicans hope and millions of Americans fear.President Obama said that although there is definitely the risk of a full repeal, he simply doesn t think the GOP can come up with a viable replacement plan. After all, he explained with amusement, they have been trying to do so for seven full years and have always failed. But when asked directly if he thought his signature health care legislation would survive, the president said he had faith that the ACA would endure. I think it will, he said. It may be called something else. And as I said, I don t mind. If in fact the Republicans make some modifications, Obama continued. Some of which I may have been seeking previously, but they wouldn t cooperate because they didn t want to make the system work, and re-label it as Trumpcare, I m fine with that. Obama said he isn t worried about having his name attached to the ACA, he is worried about the millions of Americans who depend on the legislation for their medical care. He noted all the letters he gets from real people whose lives have literally been saved because of Obamacare and said that this is what matters to him. This is his legacy, he insisted, not having his name stamped on it.Republicans are still bound and determined to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something better. However, as Obama points out, this isn t necessarily what the American people want. He notes that many Trump voters have said they never really believed that Donald Trump would take away their health care. Obama is hopeful that the will of the American people can keep the ACA around for a long time to come, even if it is called Trumpcare.Watch what President Obama had to say about Obamacare today, here:


Charles Oakley has strong feelings about comped tickets. They are not freebies, he said in a recent interview. Instead, they are the vehicle through which teams show respect for former players. The Knicks have not offered Oakley free tickets for a long time. Worse, Oakley said, is the feeling that the organization has been scrubbing him from its history. This season, for example, the Knicks are celebrating their 70th anniversary, and Oakley has not been invited to participate in any of the events. It seems unlikely that any of that will change now. Mounting losses and a dysfunctional relationship between Carmelo Anthony and the team's president, Phil Jackson, are no longer enough for the Knicks. On Wednesday night, a franchise with an addiction to needless drama raised the bar when Oakley, one of the franchise's most beloved former players, was removed from Madison Square Garden in handcuffs after a fracas involving security personnel. If the episode was the product of years of festering animosity between Oakley and James L. Dolan, the team's owner, then the fallout was swift, with the public and a number of prominent N. B. A. players quickly siding with Oakley. He was charged with three counts of assault and one count of criminal trespass, all misdemeanors, and came out of the encounter more revered than ever among the team's many frustrated fans. Even before the Knicks wrapped up their loss to the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday night, the hashtag #FreeOakley began to circulate on social media. A police officer at the Manhattan precinct where Oakley was being processed stood on the steps and shouted, "Free Charles Oakley!" Passing motorists rolled down their windows and complained about how he had been treated. Several N. B. A. stars were quick to express their support for Oakley on social media. The Clippers' Chris Paul, who was not at Wednesday's game because of a thumb injury, bristled at the Knicks' statement on Wednesday night that Oakley needed some sort of help, and Paul described him as "the realest person our league has seen. " The Chicago Bulls' Dwyane Wade and the Cleveland Cavaliers' LeBron James posted photographs of Oakley from his playing days with the Knicks on their Instagram accounts. James called him a legend. And Reggie Miller, a former star with the Indiana Pacers and a player who had legendary playoff duels with Oakley's Knicks in the 1990s, weighed in on Twitter with vehement criticism of the franchise. He questioned why any N. B. A. free agent would want to sign with the Knicks and "play for an owner who treats the past greats like this or a president who stabs star player in the back?" The latter part of the tweet was, of course, a reference to Jackson, whose efforts to force Anthony out of New York have been overshadowed by the Oakley episode — at least for the moment. The Knicks are, by any objective measure, a mess, and Miller may be right that they are taking on a toxic reputation around the league. The Knicks are even making the Nets, with their record, look like the most stable basketball organization in New York City. Less clear, though, is what actually occurred Wednesday night that resulted in Oakley's ejection. At the start of the game, Oakley was sitting with several friends, and they were not far from Dolan's usual seat, which is in the front row in the corner of the court. Accounts of Oakley's behavior at that point vary widely, with some fans saying they didn't hear or see Oakley saying or doing anything inappropriate, or trying to provoke Dolan, and others suggesting he seemed somewhat combative. In any case, when security guards approached Oakley, he clearly became angry, unleashing a string of profanities and becoming physical with at least two of them. As he was then removed from the arena, the crowd chanted his name, a moment that may come to symbolize an increasingly disastrous season. Shortly after the encounter, the Knicks issued a statement that ended with the hope that Oakley would get "some help,'' a suggestion that offended many people in addition to Paul. On Thursday, the Knicks issued a statement in which they more explicitly stated that numerous Garden employees and New York City police officers had witnessed "abusive behavior'' by Oakley as the episode unfolded. It dismissed his contention that he had done nothing wrong as "pure fiction. '' Madison Square Garden officials provided one employee's description of the encounter to The New York Times, identifying her as a woman who was an "order taker'' in the section in which Oakley was sitting. According to the statement by the woman, whom the Garden did not name, Oakley was agitated when he sat down, asking where Dolan was and why security guards were looking at him. She said she urged him to calm down, to no avail. Oakley played for the Knicks for 10 seasons and through much of the 1990s, when the Knicks were a tough, competitive team and Oakley's determined physical presence near the basket epitomized everything the Knicks were about. Dolan did not become the chairman of the Garden until Oakley had already left the Knicks. Nevertheless, the two men have managed to become adversaries in the years that followed. In a recent interview, Oakley said that he tried to approach Dolan at the 2014 N. B. A. Game in New Orleans but was rebuffed. Dolan, he said, refused to shake his hand. Oakley said that he was later told that he had said "something in the paper" that had infuriated Dolan. Oakley said he had no idea what he said to offend Dolan. Oakley has been a vocal critic of the team — and of Dolan, in particular — for years. His insistence that he does not know why the team treats him so poorly is, at the very least, disingenuous. He has been miffed that the Knicks did not offer him a coaching position. He has cursed Dolan through the news media, largely for Dolan's refusal to meet with him. And he has continued to channel many fans' frustrations by venting about the team's poor play. Oakley is no stranger to confrontation. As a player, he once punched Charles Barkley in the face during a preseason game. He was the consummate enforcer in an era of physical play. It has become clear, through some of his actions in retirement, that his approach to the game was really who he is. And that has caused some problems. In 2010, he was involved in a scuffle at a Las Vegas casino that left him with a broken arm. More recently, after Game 7 of last season's N. B. A. finals, Oakley screamed at security personnel in Oakland, Calif. who were trying to prevent him (with varying degrees of success) from entering the Cavaliers' jubilant locker room. The Cavaliers had just won their first championship after defeating the Golden State Warriors, and Oakley, who grew up in Cleveland, wanted to join the celebration. "They was just mad they lost," Oakley said in a recent interview, referring to the Warriors. Friends describe Oakley as loyal, generous and protective. But he is also sensitive to slights, perceived and real. Over lunch with this writer in November, he reflected on his playing days with the Knicks and lamented how the team, he thought, had refused to market anyone except Patrick Ewing. "They probably never sold my jersey in New York until I left," he said. Oakley added that he still attended three or four Knicks games every season, always paying his own way. And every time, he said, he would be watched by security personnel. He said that Dolan was behind their actions. "Anytime I go into the Garden, they have to call him and tell him where I'm at," he said. "They got to let him know, 'Oakley is in the building. '" He added: "It's so disrespectful. I bought my tickets. And you're going to tell someone he can't walk around?" Oakley sounded most upset when he said that the Knicks had tarnished his relationships with many of his former teammates. Oakley recalled a game at the Garden last season when he bumped into a former teammate near the court. The teammate, Oakley said, apprehensively urged him to keep his voice down. "The guys I played with," Oakley said, "they can't even talk to me or be around me. " On Thursday, in an interview on ESPN Radio, Oakley apologized for his role in Wednesday's episode. "I feel sorry for the fans," he said. The fans, in turn, seem to be on Oakley's side. Welcome to the world of the Knicks.


The U.S. military said on Friday it carried out airstrikes on Nov. 20 in Yemen s al Bayda province that killed five militants from al Qaeda s affiliate there, including Mujahid al-Adani, whom it described as one of the group s leaders. Al-Adani maintained a significant influence within AQAP as well as close ties to other AQAP senior leaders, the U.S. military s Central Command said in a statement, using an acronym for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.


Washington (CNN) If you're running for President, get used to becoming hung up over Iraq. Because barring a miracle, whoever wins the White House will become the fifth consecutive American president ensnared by a nation that has consumed trillions of U.S. dollars and thousands of American lives. It has also blighted a string of high-flying political careers. If the last week on the 2016 campaign trail has proved anything, it's that American politics is still nowhere near purged of the bitter political divides of a war undertaken 12 turbulent years ago, somewhat like the Vietnam War that reverberated through successive presidencies. Leading Republican candidates have suddenly been tripped up by the most basic question -- was President George W. Bush right to invade Iraq way back in 2003? And no doubt Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton will yet again have to answer for the vote she cast in favor of the war while in the Senate. The American entanglement with Iraq started under President George H.W. Bush when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein marched into Kuwait in 1989, evolved into a standoff and occasional air strikes under President Bill Clinton and erupted into a full-scale invasion under George W. Bush. And now under President Barack Obama a quarter of a century later, America's misadventure in the fractured Middle Eastern nation has transformed into a slog against the bloodthirsty Sunni radicals of ISIS. With no end in sight. Senior administration officials have already admitted that the fight against ISIS will go beyond the current presidency -- in the process hinting at one of the great disappointments of the Obama era. In 20 months, the President who was elected perhaps more than anything else to end the Iraq war, will bequeath to his successor a new phase of that same intractable conflict. Despite declaring the war over -- and bringing home the last U.S. soldier in December 2011 -- Obama has been sucked back in. Just this weekend, an ISIS surge into the key Iraqi city of Ramadi and a U.S. Special Operations raid into Syria to kill one of the group's top leaders have shown that American involvement has not ended, and that the engagement is proceeding without any clear sign of victory. Iraq's enduring power to confound American presidents -- and to reverberate in successive presidential campaigns -- is a reminder that when America goes to war abroad, anything but a swift, clear-cut victory unleashes an unpredictable cascade of political consequences at home. "Failed wars always hurt the president fighting them, but also continue to impact the party of the presidency for decades after they are gone," said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history at Princeton University. Iraq has become a political issue akin to Vietnam, as politicians seize on the aftermath of an inconclusive war to eviscerate their rivals' handling of foreign policy. Democrats make a case that the 2003 invasion invalidated an entire school of Republican political thought -- neoconservatism -- and say the war proves the GOP cannot be trusted with U.S. national security. Republicans meanwhile insist the war was all but won in 2009 by Bush's belated troop surge and blame Obama for being more concerned with honoring a political promise to end the war than the reality of the deeply unstable nation he left behind. Still, Mark Atwood Lawrence, professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, argues that political fallout from the Iraq war could prove to be less radioactive than that of Vietnam, which took decades to play itself out. One reason for that is the bipartisan consensus now forming that the war was a mistake given that Hussein's weapons of mass destruction -- used as a justification for war -- did not exist. It's perhaps a surprise that politicians took so long to catch up to this predominant view given that citizens made up their minds long ago. In a New York Times/CBS News poll last year, 75% of those asked said the Iraq war was not worth the loss of American lives. The findings are consistent with other opinion surveys. The GOP reluctance to criticize the decision to go to war stems in part from the candidates' desire not to alienate conservative primary voters thirsting for tough-talking foreign policy. And calling the war a mistake raises the treacherous question of whether the deaths of more than 4,000 U.S. troops were a waste. But it still perplexed many political insiders that it took former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush a week of painfully groping for answers to come up with a satisfactory, and some believed obvious, response: that had he known then that U.S. intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was flawed, he would not have gone to war in 2003. Jeb Bush was at least trapped between his own political fortunes and loyalty to his brother. But Republican candidate Marco Rubio, a Florida senator, had no such family ties to blame for his trouble putting to rest questions about his views on the topic. Rubio got into a heated dispute on Fox News Sunday after denying that he had flip-flopped by now concluding that the Iraq war was a mistake. Their apparent confusion has provided an opening for fellow Republican Rand Paul, a Kentucky senator and presidential candidate, to renew his argument for a foreign policy derided by critics as isolationist but in tune with the majority of voters who now view the Iraq war as a mistake. Paul said at a GOP dinner in Iowa this past weekend that the notion that the Iraq war should never have been fought is "a valid question, not just because we're talking about history, but we are talking about the Middle East, where history repeats itself." It isn't only Republicans who are vulnerable on the issue. Hillary Clinton needs no reminder of the capacity of Iraq to crush political dreams, after her 2002 Senate vote to authorize the Iraq war cost her primary support and paved Obama's way to the presidency. Clinton, conscious of the consequences of admitting her judgment on national security was flawed, never said during her 2008 White House bid that her Senate vote on Iraq was a mistake. But in last year's book "Hard Choices," in which she provided a blueprint for how supporters could defend her record, she was much more clear. "I got it wrong. Plain and simple," she wrote. Some U.S. foreign policy veterans are warning that the political debate in Washington is hampering hopes of meeting the challenge to U.S. security posed by ISIS and finally closing America's book on Iraq. Where once it was politically difficult to oppose the use of force in Iraq, now that position has become toxic. "Now Iraq poses a threat -- it didn't 10 years ago," said James Rubin, an assistant secretary of state under Clinton, referring to ISIS and its efforts to export its ideology and terror tactics to the West. "It's a shame that the politics, the pendulum of our political system, has swung so far to the other direction that our President and others are not prepared to take some modest steps to defeat a genuine threat, not the fake threat that was exaggerated 10 years ago," Rubin told CNN.


A Vietnamese woman accused of killing the half-brother of North Korea s leader was captured on camera making an aggressive attack on him, two days after a similar act on another person, a police investigator told a Malaysian court on Tuesday. Doan Thi Huong, 28, is charged along with Siti Aisyah, an Indonesian woman, with killing Kim Jong Nam by smearing his face with VX, a chemical poison banned by the United Nations, at Kuala Lumpur airport on Feb. 13. There was a stark difference in Huong s movements in two closed circuit television recordings made in the airport s third level departure hall, said police official Wan Azirul Nizam Che Wan Aziz. The first recording on Feb. 11 showed Huong approach an unidentified member of the public from behind to wipe something on the person s face in a soft manner , he said. She then appeared to apologize, placing her hands together and bowing her head, before retreating slowly, added Wan Azirul, a member of the airport district s Criminal Investigations Department. But a similar act carried out on Kim Jong Nam was quite rough and seemed more like an attack, Wan Azirul said. For me, the act seemed aggressive. Other differences I saw were in her movements - compared to before, the accused Doan moved in a quick and rushed manner, he said, using Huong s first name. The women have pleaded not guilty, saying they thought they were involved in some sort of prank for a reality TV show. They face the death penalty if convicted. Chemical weapons expert Raja Subramaniam said degradation products of VX were found on Huong s fingernails but not on the rest of her hands. Traces of VX were found on the clothes worn by both accused women, Subramaniam said in court last week. On Tuesday, Subramaniam also declared impossible a theory that the VX was created by combining together two non-poisonous chemicals, saying it would have required large amounts of heat in order to work. Experts had earlier suggested the women had each been given a non-lethal substance that formed a deadly combination after being smeared on the victim s face. Hisyam Teh, Huong s lawyer, argued during cross-examination that she could not have known that she was handling VX. No sane person, having been made aware that a liquid was VX, basically the deadliest of all nerve agents, would put out his hand for VX to get administered, he added. The trial will resume on Wednesday.


Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said Moscow had not had high-level contacts with the new North Korean leadership but they were possible, the Interfax news agency reported on Friday. In theory they (contacts) are possible, Interfax quoted Morgulov as saying. Morgulov said Russia had many communication channels with North Korea, which in one way or another are bearing fruit .


President Donald Trump will announce next week his choice for who will lead the Federal Reserve, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Friday.


The Polish Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a government request to extradite Roman Polanski, the filmmaker, to the United States over a conviction for having sex with a girl. The decision almost certainly ends the legal battle in Poland over how to deal with Mr. Polanski, although as a practical matter, even a ruling in favor of the government would have had little effect. Mr. Polanski, a dual citizen of France and Poland, lives in France, which does not extradite its citizens. Judge Michal Laskowski ruled that a lower court's verdict was not a "flagrant violation of the law," as the request for an appeal had claimed. "The regional court of Krakow considered and verified all evidence exceptionally carefully," Judge Laskowski said. The legal effort reflects a broader push by the conservative Law and Justice government, which since coming to power a year ago has been calling for a return to Roman Catholic values in Poland, to try to reinforce its reputation as a party. The ruling on Tuesday came six months after the chief prosecutor and justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, asked the court to overrule the earlier verdict as the government sought to extradite Mr. Polanski, whom authorities in the United States have wanted for decades. A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said that Mr. Ziobro "accepts and respects" the Supreme Court's decision, although he still "takes the position that proceedings concerning sexual abuse of minors should be enforced consistently" regardless of who committed the crime, or when it occurred. Mr. Polanski was arrested in 1977 on charges that included the rape of the teenager at the Los Angeles home of Jack Nicholson, the actor. In 1978, Mr. Polanski left the United States on the eve of sentencing under an agreement by which he was to plead guilty to a count of statutory rape. In October 2015, a judge in Krakow, Poland, ruled that turning over Mr. Polanski would be an "obviously unlawful" deprivation of liberty, saying that the State of California, where he was convicted, was unlikely to conduct a fair trial and provide humane conditions of confinement for the director, who was 82 at the time. The Krakow prosecutor's office, which had sought Mr. Polanski's extradition on behalf of Los Angeles County, said a month later that it would abide by the judge's ruling. But Mr. Ziobro appealed the decision to the Supreme Court at the end of May, calling the trial judge's ruling "incomprehensible" and a "serious breach" of the extradition agreement between Poland and the United States. Mr. Ziobro said in an interview with Polish state radio in May that Mr. Polanski had received preferential treatment because of his fame. "If he was just a regular guy, a teacher, doctor, plumber, decorator, then I'm confident that he'd have been deported from any country to the U. S. a long time ago," he said. In his opening statement on Tuesday, Jan Olszewski, a lawyer for Mr. Polanski, recalled how the Swiss authorities had declined in 2010 to extradite Mr. Polanski, who directed "Chinatown," because of doubts over the conduct of the judge in his original trial. Jerzy Stachowicz, another lawyer for Mr. Polanski, argued in court that his client had not technically fled the United States because he had never been prohibited from leaving. "Mr. Polanski didn't flee, as it is believed," Mr. Stachowicz said. "He simply bought a plane ticket, checked in his luggage and boarded a plane. It was not fleeing. " Referring to Mr. Ziobro's argument, Mr. Stachowicz said, "If Mr. Polanski were not a celebrity, a famous filmmaker, but he was an average Joe, this case would have been over long ago, and nobody would have ever heard of it. " The Supreme Court ruling means that Mr. Polanski, now 83, would be free to work in Poland. He has been planning to make a film about Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew who was wrongly accused of spying and whose case raised a debate in the late 19th century about prosecutorial misconduct. The film, "An Officer and a Spy," was to be shot in Poland, but it was announced in June that Mr. Polanski had decided to make it in France. That prompted speculation that his legal problems had led him to move production of the film, but Robert Benmussa, the film's producer, attributed the decision to French tax incentives, according to The Los Angeles Times. Mr. Polanski, who lives with his wife in France, was not in court on Tuesday. "This is just too emotional for him," Mr. Stachowicz said by telephone on Monday, before the ruling. "This has been going on for such a long time. A ruling against overruling the first verdict would be a great relief for him. " After the ruling, Mr. Olszewski, the lawyer, said that he had spoken with Mr. Polanski on the phone. "He is currently in France, where he is shooting his new film," Mr. Olszewski said. "He is beyond happy that this is finally over. At least in Poland. "


Election Day: No Legal Pot In Ohio; Democrats Lose In The South Tuesday is "off year" Election Day in parts of the country. Legalizing marijuana is on the ballot in Ohio, Houston voters will decide on an equal rights ordinance and San Francisco weighs short-term rentals in what's being called the "Airbnb Initiative." Elsewhere, eyes are on governor races in Kentucky and Louisiana, and whether Democrats can make any progress in the South. Here's a look at some of the races: Houston voters will decide whether to keep an equal rights ordinance that was approved by the City Council last year. The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity — criteria not covered by national anti-discrimination laws. The ordinance is hotly debated, particularly after some opposition ads were released. The ads claim that the ordinance would allow men who identify as women to assault women and young girls in bathrooms. Hillary Clinton tweeted her support for the ordinance on Oct. 29, writing: "No one should face discrimination for who they are or who they love — I support efforts for Equality in Houston & beyond. #HERO #YesOnProp1 -H". A White House spokesman said that President Obama and Vice President Biden were "confident that the citizens of Houston will vote in favor of fairness and equality." Update from Houston Public Media: Houston's voters strongly rejected the anti-discrimination measure, with about three-fifths of voters opposed. Republican Matt Bevin and Democrat Jack Conway are running to replace retiring Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat. Although Republicans have aggressively been spending money in the hope of retaining the governor's mansion, Conway has outspent Bevin 4 to 1. This race has been characterized by both candidates accusing each other of lying about their records. Update from WFPL in Louisville: Conway conceded the race — the returns late Tuesday night showed Bevin winning with about 53 percent of the vote — and Republicans generally performed well in the state. Louisiana has a gubernatorial election this year but it doesn't work the way you might expect. Louisiana's election system relies on what's called a "jungle primary." In a jungle primary, all candidates regardless of party appear on one ballot. If no one wins 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates face each other in a runoff election. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat and state legislative leader, earned roughly 40 percent of the vote. He now will face Sen. David Vitter, a Republican, in the runoff election on Nov. 21. Vitter has had a tough race so far. His critics have continuously cited his involvement in a 2007 prostitution scandal, in which Vitter's telephone number was found in the records of the so-called D.C. Madam, Deborah Palfrey. Palfrey was accused of running a prostitution ring that made more than $2 million over 13 years. The "Clean Elections Initiative" would increase public funding for candidates to up to $3 million in order to make them more competitive against privately-funded candidates, according to Reuters. The existing law makes up to $2 million available to candidates for state office. The ballot measure would also increase disclosure requirements and increase the penalties for campaign finance violations. Update from the Portland Press Herald: The measure passed, with 55 percent of the vote as of late Tuesday: Republican Gov. Phil Bryant is up for reelection and faces opposition from an unlikely candidate — truck driver and political unknown Robert Gray. According to The Associated Press, Gray didn't even tell his closest relatives that he had signed up to campaign for governor. Bryant has spent roughly $2.7 million this year and reportedly has $1.4 million in the bank. Gray has spent about $3,000 on his campaign in the past three months. Update from Mississippi Public Broadcasting: Gray will presumably be back on the road after losing, 67 percent to 32 percent. Ohio voters vote on two ballot measures with constitutional amendments that could dramatically change marijuana laws in their state. Issue 3, as one of these two measures is called, would enable landowners or operators of 10 predetermined sites the right to grow commercial marijuana. That's in contradiction to the second measure, Issue 2, which would prohibit monopolies from being enshrined in the state constitution. If both measures pass, there's sure to be lots of confusion. Update from WCPN in Cleveland: Voters rejected legal and medical marijuana, with two-thirds voting against Issue 3; Issue 2, the measure rejecting the proposed marijuana oligopoly, was passing 54 percent to 46 percent. San Franciscans heading to the polls Tuesday will get to vote on Proposition F, colloquially known as the "Airbnb Initiative." The initiative is a ballot measure that would strengthen regulation on the short-term rental of houses and apartments. While Airbnb is likely the biggest company in that niche market, the Los Angeles Times points out that there are other vacation rental companies that would be affected. Right now, residents can rent out their apartment or home for 90 days in a year. Proposition F would limit that rental period to 75 days. The measure is viewed as an attempt to discourage people from taking units off the housing market and using them as short-term apartment rentals. San Francisco has an acute housing shortage. Update from KQED in San Francisco: Voters rejected the measure, Proposition F, 55 percent to 45 percent. Seattle voters will decide on a campaign finance measure that's being touted as a national model for campaign finance reform. Ballot initiative I-122, if passed, would create a public financing model in the city. Every resident would receive a $100 voucher to give to the candidate of their choosing. The measure would also limit election campaign contributions from entities receiving city contracts of $250,000 or more, or from people spending more than $5,000 on lobbying. Update from KUOW in Seattle: Voters overwhelmingly passed the measure, 60 percent to 40 percent. All 140 seats of Virginia's General Assembly are up for election today. Republicans currently control the state Senate, 21 seats to 19. Expecting low turnout, both parties have been trying to drive their message home to voters. Republicans are expected to retain their majority in the GA. Democrats hope to take control of the state Senate. Update from the Richmond Times-Dispatch: Republicans have kept their majority in the Senate, and their strong control of the General Assembly.


Apparently, male Tennessee Republican lawmakers are so sleazy and horny that the female House Speaker has warned interns to stay far away from them.In the wake of state GOP Rep. Jeremy Durham resigning his position as Majority Whip after getting caught creepily sexting female interns, House Speaker Beth Harwell is instructing the Director of the Internship program to institute new rules to keep interns safe from the wandering eyes of male lawmakers. As a precautionary measure, I have instructed the Director of the Internship program that interns are not to attend receptions or events related to the legislature, and they are not to give their cell phone numbers to members, she announced on Monday.Harwell also announced the formation of a committee to review the 20-year-old sexual harassment policy that somehow hasn t been changed over the years. If any personnel have suggestions for improvement, I urge them to give the committee their recommendations, Harwell said. At the conclusion of this review, the members will go through sexual harassment training. But Talking Points Memo reports that Democrats are criticizing the new rules because they appear to be blaming the female interns for the behavior of male lawmakers instead of focusing on keeping the lawmakers in check. Signaling out one group of women and asking them to change their behavior is a completely inadequate and inappropriate response to a problem with alleged behavior by a lawmaker, Rep. Mike Stewart said.Stewart does have a point. At the very least, new restrictions could be instituted regulating how lawmakers interact and behave around female interns. Instead of focusing on just the interns, focus on the lawmakers equally.As for Durham, Harwell and other GOP leaders have called for him to reign his seat entirely. If the rumors I continue to hear regarding Representative Durham are true, Representative Durham needs to focus on his family and receiving the help he needs, Harwell said.GOP Chairman Ryan Haynes also called for Durham to step down. In light of these recent revelations, I do think it is important that Representative Durham step down from his position as a member of this body so that the legislators can continue to focus on the important work that Tennesseans expect us to focus on. Seriously, Tennessee. You need to get your act together because this is just embarrassing. Featured image from Twitter


Donald Trump s biggest claim to fame, The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice, were endangered last year when he revealed himself to be nothing but a horrible, childish bigot in presidential candidates clothing. At that time, NBC fired him and began looking at who might replace him, and now they have their answer, along with a very insulting tagline.NBC tapped Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace Trump last fall, but made it official with a new promo they released over the weekend. It says, on The Apprentice s YouTube channel: Brains, brawn and business acumen we re building a better boss. [emphasis mine]Ouch. That can be taken several different ways the most obvious being that they think Schwarzenegger s more rounded personality is a better fit than Trump ever was.That s insulting enough. However, NBC specifically fired Trump over his comments about Mexican immigrants last year, at the same time other companies cut ties with him for the same reason. So this could also be seen as a dig at him for what s proven to be his severe lack of even a modicum of professionalism pretty much anywhere.NBC also won t bring Trump back, even if he loses the election and comes crawling back on his hands and knees. NBC s entertainment chair, Robert Greenblatt, said earlier this month: No. He would never be back on Celebrity Apprentice, as long as I m here. Woe to Trump if whatever new business ventures on which he embarks after losing in November fail, just like so many of his other businesses have failed.Rumors are swirling that Trump may be using this election cycle to help launch his own television network, rather than making a serious run at the White House. However, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump University, Trump Taj Mahal, and more, were all such dismal failures it s a wonder Trump thinks he can even pull off a new business venture. Despite possibly having help from Roger Ailes and Steve Bannon, a Trump television network might fail just as hard.Oh, Trumplestiltskin. His days of fame are numbered, and NBC is trying to make that number shrink. Watch the promo for Celebrity Apprentice below:


U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday avoided direct mention of a pipeline that has provoked high-profile protests from Native Americans but urged tribal leaders to use the spotlight to continue pushing for recognition even after he leaves office. Obama spoke at his eighth and final Tribal Nations Conference, which he created during his first year in office. Leaders of more than 560 Native American tribes gathered for the Washington event as one of the largest Native American protests in decades continues in North Dakota. In his remarks, Obama acknowledged that Native American tribes have unified around the demonstrations led by the Standing Rock Sioux, a tribe that he visited in 2014. "I know that many of you have come together across tribes and across the country to support the community at Standing Rock and together you are making your voices heard," he said. "This moment highlights why it's so important that we redouble our efforts to make sure that every federal agency truly consults and listens and works with you, sovereign to sovereign." In recent weeks, protests against the Dakota Access pipeline have drawn international attention, prompting the U.S. government to temporarily block its construction on federal land. Tribal leaders say the pipeline will desecrate sacred land and pollute water. When fully connected to existing lines, the 1,100-mile (1,770 km) pipeline would be the first to carry crude oil from the Bakken shale directly to the U.S. Gulf. The $3.7 billion project is being built by the Dakota Access subsidiary of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners LP. Obama discussed the progress made by his administration over the last eight years to improve relations with tribal nations, and urged leaders to keep fighting for more visibility and input regardless of who succeeds him in the White House next year. "Our progress depends in part on who sits the in Oval Office, and whether they're setting the right priorities, but lasting progress depends on all of us, not just who the president is." Various Obama administration officials unveiled initiatives aimed at upholding Native American sovereignty at the conference. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced a forthcoming memorandum from Obama that would require federal agencies to consider Native American treaty rights in decision-making on natural resource projects, hoping to avoid future conflicts with tribes such as the current Dakota Access dispute. The Justice and Interior Departments also announced settlements with 17 tribes that had sued the U.S. government, accusing them of mismanaging monetary assets and natural resources that the government held in trust for the tribes. The "vast majority" of all such disputes have been settled, according to the government, which has paid $1.9 billion to resolve the cases since April 2012. Those settlements characterize the Obama administration's effort to mend ties "where we have failed in the past in our trust responsibilities," said Lawrence Roberts, assistant secretary for Indian Affairs at the Interior Department, on the sidelines of Monday's conference. Regan Dunn, 15, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, delivered opening remarks at the conference. Dunn said afterward she had never imagined a company might try to build a pipeline through her homeland, but that the wide opposition among various tribes - including some she had not previously heard of - has been "heartwarming." Brian Cladoosby, president of the National Congress of American Indians, which represents more than 500 tribes, praised Obama's legacy on Native American issues and warned the assembly that "there is no guarantee going forward there will be the same commitment from the next administration." When the Justice Department, Interior Department and the U.S. Army temporarily blocked the pipeline's construction on Sept. 9, the administration called for "a serious discussion" about how tribes are consulted by the government on decisions over major infrastructure projects. The Army, Interior and Justice departments will hold hearings on the shortcomings of the present process on Oct. 11, and formal discussions with tribes in six U.S. regions from Oct. 25 through Nov. 21. The deadline for written comments will be Nov. 30, the agencies announced. On Thursday, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, Dave Archambault, told a House of Representatives panel there was no "meaningful consultation" before permits were issued to bring the pipeline through his tribe's territory. Archambault is scheduled to speak on Monday evening at a rally of pipeline opponents.


A teenager who moved to Britain after his parents were killed in Iraq will go on trial in March over a bomb attack on a packed commuter train that injured 30 people in London in September. Ahmed Hassan, 18, is accused of intent to kill and cause serious injury by planting a home-made bomb at Parsons Green station in London. The bomb shot flames through a carriage but failed to fully explode. Hassan appeared via video link at London s Central Criminal Court on Friday where a judge said a two week trial would start on March 5. He is set to appear in court next on Jan. 19.


Following Wednesdays presidential debate Pentagon officials found themselves completely dumbfounded as to why former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would feel it appropriate to announce U.S. Special Access Program intel on national television. According to sources within the Department of Defense speaking under anonymity, Clinton likely violated at least two Dept. of Defense SAP protocols during the debate by announcing on live television the United States Governments response time for a nuclear launch.To the dismay of intelligence officials, the fact that this top secret information is now publicly known not only proves that Clinton is unfit to be commander-in-chief, but it also poses a direct threat to national security. One high ranking intelligence official explained that any time frame calculated pertaining to a US nuclear launch would have merely been an educated hypothesis, absent leaked documents and there have been no such breaches prior to Clintons admission Wednesday. Via TruePundit Secretary Clinton proved tonight she is unfit to be commander-in-chief, a top-ranking DOD intelligence source said. What she did compromises our national security. She is cavalier and reckless and in my opinion should be detained and questioned so we can unravel why she did what she did. According to Pentagon sources, the information Clinton disseminated publicly is Top Secret intelligence governed under the U.S. Special Access Program (SAP) which dictates safeguards and protocols for accessing and discussing highly classified and Top Secret intelligence. The specific details of the countrys nuclear response time discussed by Clinton, sources said, are only known by a handful of individuals outside top military brass Targeting options by ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missiles), air or sea, launch order, launch procedures and response are some of the most secretly guarded tenets of national security and nuclear war policy, a Pentagon source said. Its truly incredible that (nuclear) response time as part of an ERO (Emergency Response Option) is now out there in the public domain to our adversaries. U.S. Defense sources said according to developed U.S. counterintelligence, military officials in China, North Korea, Syria, Russia, Iran and even actors like ISIS had no previous definitive intelligence to determine the U.S. nuclear response time, especially during an ERO, prior to Clintons admission Wednesday night. Sources reluctantly acknowledged her calculations were accurate.


US In Danger of Losing Allies In Asia Philippines President turning his country away from the US and pivoting in the direction of China.  Often called the Donald Trump of the Philippines, this new President is turning away from America as an ally and is embracing China.  This threat to national security cannot be overstated. If we lose the Philippines as an ally, China will have free military reign of Asia. South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand and Vietnam will be in grave danger. An analysis of this potential threat is contained in the following video.


The United States Attorney's Office Southern District of New York announced on Wednesday that the entire administration of the Luchese Family, 19 members in total, are being charged for their alleged roles in racketeering, murder, narcotics, and firearms offenses. [The arrests — including captains, soldiers, and associates — were part of a multiagency effort conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New York Police Department (NYPD) and the Waterfront Commission of the New York Harbor. Angel M. Melendez, special agent in charge of HSI New York, noted the impact that the Luchese Family had on the New York City area. "The Luchese Family and its associates are alleged to be linked to guns, drugs, racketeering, and murder. They are also alleged to have used their criminal enterprise to launder money, tamper with witnesses and extortion," said Melendez. "It is clear that this 'family' business is of no benefit to its community or to this great city. HSI will continue to strengthen its partnership with the FBI and NYPD to ensure that alleged criminals like the Luchese Family face the consequences of their actions. " Authorities arrested 15 of the 19 defendants on Wednesday the other four defendants were already in custody. Seventeen of the defendants, if convicted, are facing life sentences. Those charged in the superseding indictment are (potential sentence): The members of the Luchese Family worth noting are Matthew Madonna, the alleged street boss Steven Crea Sr. the alleged underboss Steven Crea Jr. an alleged captain and Joseph Dinapoli, the alleged consigliere of the Luchese Family. La Cosa Nostra is considered by authorities to be alive and well in the U. S.: La Cosa Nostra operates through entities known as "Families. " In the New York City area, those families include the Genovese, Gambino, Luchese, Bonanno, Colombo, and Decavalcante Families. Each Family operates through groups of individuals known as "crews" and "regimes. " Each "crew" has as its leader a person known as a "Caporegime," "Capo," "Captain," or "Skipper," who is responsible for supervising the criminal activities of his crew and providing "Soldiers" and associates with support and protection. In return, the Capo typically receives a share of the illegal earnings of each of his crew's Soldiers and associates, which is sometimes referred to as "Attribute". Each crew consists of "made" members, sometimes known as "Soldiers," "wiseguys," "friends of ours," and "good fellows. " Soldiers are aided in their criminal endeavors by other trusted individuals, known as "associates," who sometimes are referred to as "connected" or identified as "with" a Soldier or other member of the Family. Associates participate in the various activities of the crew and its members. In order for an associate to become a made member of the Family, the associate must first be of Italian descent and typically needs to demonstrate the ability to generate income for the Family and the willingness to commit acts of violence. In August 2016, Breitbart reported the FBI arrested 46 alleged members of the Italian mafia along the east coast of the U. S. accused of "engaging in extortion, arson, fraud, illegal gambling, firearms trafficking and assault. " Ryan Saavedra is a contributor for Breitbart Texas and can be found on Twitter at @RealSaavedra.


Wikileaks Just Released Her Full Isis Donor List With Names!  WikiLeaks just finished the job that started few months ago! Hillary just got killed! She is not going to survive this! It's too much! Pure treason!  According to Conservative Daily Post: Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton are the founders of ISIS. We have proven that through emails and documents leaked from WikiLeaks, but liberal media outlets still refuse to cover it.  After all, they are still more focused on what Trump said eleven years ago than what Hillary has actually done.  Because of brave patriots like Julian Assange, we have been given more evidence that Hillary Clinton is more connected to ISIS than we originally believed.  An email was leaked between Clinton and John Podesta indicating that: "Western intelligence, US intelligence and sources in the region" to accuse Qatar and Saudi Arabia of "providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [or ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region."  Citing the need to "use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets," said Hillary to Podesta while arguing the current developments in the Middle East were "important to the U.S. for reasons that often differ from country to country."  Odd that Clinton argues Saudi Arabia and Qatar are helping fund ISIS when Hillary's largest donations come from those two countries.  In another correspondence from 2012, the Director of Foreign Policy at the Clinton Foundation, Amitabh Desai, set up a meeting with Bill Clinton for five minutes in exchange for a $1,000,000 "birthday check."  The email adds that the small but rich nation occupying the Qatar Peninsula would "welcome the Clinton Foundation's suggestions for investments in Haiti — particularly on education and health." Desai added that while Qatar had already "allocated most of their $20 million … they were happy to consider projects we suggest." Like this? Share it now.


Obama has waisted billions on green energy but the free market wins in the end with the success of fracking and natural gas. You won t hear this from Obama because it doesn t further his agenda to spread the wealth of American taxpayers. Obama plans on spreading our tax dollars to India Yes, India! He s pledged billions to India to increase green energy. We know better than that though it s just another scam to give your hard earned dollars to a failed industry that can t make it in the free market. President Barack Obama is poised to repeat his history of weak-handed negotiations on the world stage when nearly 200 countries gather in Paris on Monday to consider an international response to climate change. According to the president, rejecting the Keystone XL oil pipeline and piling regulations on the fossil fuel and power industries in the United States are necessary to preserving America s credibility as a leader on the world stage.But by doing this, Obama ignores the strongest card in America s hand as he steps to the table: the advances our energy sector has made to reduce carbon emissions while simultaneously acting as the lone bright spot in our economy.In essence, his rhetoric is blind to the true story of American energy. But this story cannot be ignored.According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, monthly power sector carbon dioxide emissions reached a 27-year low in April 2015. But, the progress does not stop there. Total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are also declining. According to data available from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions dropped 9 percent between 2005 and 2013 the largest reduction from any country.So what has made these positive developments possible? The answer is America s oil and natural gas renaissance, as well as our insatiable appetite to innovate. Despite Obama s efforts to stop oil and natural gas development on federal lands and the introduction of unnecessary regulations that increase the cost of production and consumption, American production has been growing at an astounding rate. Natural gas production hit nearly 91 billion cubic feet per day an increase of about 27 billion cubic feet since August 2006, or enough gas to power up to 290,000 homes per year.A Manhattan Institute study concluded that the increase in clean natural gas production is the greatest contributor toward declining U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, carbon emissions in America are down to where they were a quarter century ago, though our population has been growing.Even EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has recognized the important contributions of American natural gas to reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, saying hydraulic fracturing has created an opportunity for a shift into natural gas, and that shift has been enormously beneficial from a clean air perspective, as well as from a climate perspective. It is important to note that this progress wasn t driven by arbitrary benchmarks or government mandates, but rather by the free market and natural consensus for a freer, safer, and more economically prosperous future. The conclusion the president should draw from this and bring to the table with the international community is clear: only by embracing the free market can we improve the world s environmental outlook while also strengthening our economies.To demonstrate true leadership, Obama should start emphasizing the important role of hydraulic fracturing and natural gas development across the globe. America would then be standing for policies with proven results rather than for ideas that may sound good, but just don t work. Developing nations desperate for economic growth would be particularly enthusiastic with this proposition as an alternative to the economically disastrous policies currently in vogue.And this is exactly the vision the Republican-led Congress intends to project to the world. We are listening to the American people, who largely do not support the president s regulatory agenda and who understand that there is a better way.