Tuesday April 16th, 2024

"It Is Not A Question of Who Is Right Or Wrong But What Is Right Or Wrong That Counts."
--Geoff Metcalf
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DHS is monitoring 617,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records

                                                                         Migrants wait to be processed by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol after they crossed the Rio Grande and entered the U.S. from Mexico, Oct. 19, 2023, in Eagle Pass, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

Some 264 illegal immigrants sit in jail in Tarrant County, Texas, and among them they face eight counts of murder, Sheriff Bill Waybourn will tell the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday.

The illegal immigrants also face 38 counts of assault with a deadly weapon, five counts of sexual assault, two counts of possession of child pornography, one count of intoxicated homicide and more than 200 other assorted counts.

“These offenders, [many of which] are gang members and outlaws, have left nothing untouched,” the sheriff will say, according to prepared remarks obtained by The Washington Times. “While I do not necessarily think these aliens have a higher crime rate, just the fact these people are illegal in our country and committed crimes is the impact.”

Sheriff Waybourn will testify to the National Security, Border and Foreign Affairs subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Republican. The hearing is titled “How the Border Crisis Impacts Public Safety.”



Israel to US: 'No Choice but to Respond' to Iran


Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told the United States that Israel has no choice but to retaliate against Iran, after the regime launched a large-scale drone and missile assault against Israel on Sunday.

In a phone call with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday, Gallant told Austin that allowing such a large-scale attack to go unanswered would signal to Iran that it can attack Israel whenever it launches airstrikes against Iranian interests in Syria, Axios reported.

The Iranian regime claimed the attack was a response to an alleged Israeli airstrike in Damascus, Syria, that killed seven senior Iranian officers on April 1.

Austin reportedly reiterated President Joe Biden's stance that Israel should "take the win" and forgo a counterattack, which the U.S. would not support.

Israel’s War Cabinet met on Monday and is expected to make a final decision on whether to strike back and by which method in another meeting scheduled for Tuesday.



Suspected Iranian agent working for Pentagon while U.S. coordinated defense of Israel
                                                             
The Pentagon is seen from Air Force One as it flies over Washington, March 2, 2022. A fake image purportedly showing an explosion near the Pentagon has been widely shared on social media, sending a brief shiver through the stock market. But police and fire officials in Arlington, Virginia, said Monday, May 22, 2023, that the image isn't real and there was no incident at the U.S. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.

Frustration is swirling on Capitol Hill following a top Defense Department official’s revelation that a suspected Iranian influence agent remained on the job at the Pentagon last week while U.S. national security officials were coordinating international efforts to defend Israel from a coming Iranian attack.

Sparks flew during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week when Assistant Secretary of Defense Christopher Maier told lawmakers that Ariane Tabatabai remained at work in an office overseeing special operations and irregular warfare despite concerns from lawmakers that she has operated at the behest of the Iranian regime.

Iran vows to hit Israel with 'never before used' weapons...
Restraint or retribution? Jewish state dilemma...
Quiet before the storm...
Islamic Revolution Makes Strategic Shift...
UK needs Iron Dome after wake-up call!
ELLWOOD: Enemies of West preparing to use nuke...
Tehran growing partnership with Moscow...
Biden options for retaliating risk antagonizing China...



ATF says guns now being sold on apps such as Facebook, TikTok and Tinder


More guns are now trafficked to criminals through online sources such as Facebook, TikTok and Tinder than are trafficked at gun shows or flea markets, according to new Justice Department data that argues the marketplace for illegally obtained weapons is quickly evolving.

The report studied more than 8,000 gun trafficking cases from 2017 through 2021. Researchers found the most common source was a private person-to-person sale that didn’t go through a background check or a straw purchase to obtain a gun for someone prohibited.

Stolen weapons were the third most common factor, though online-orchestrated sales and “ghost” guns — untraceable firearms manufactured outside the official industry — were quickly growing as a source, according to the data compiled by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.



AP-NORC Poll: 7 in 10 Side With Trump in New York Criminal Case

                                                                    Former President Donald Trump awaits the start of proceedings on the second day of jury selection at Manhattan criminal court, Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in New York. Trump returned to the courtroom Tuesday as a judge works to find a panel of jurors who will decide whether the former president is guilty of criminal charges alleging he falsified business records to cover up a sex scandal during the 2016 campaign. (Michael M. Santiago/Pool Photo via AP)

The first criminal trial facing former President Donald Trump is also the one in which Americans are least convinced he committed a crime, a new AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds.

Only about one-third of U.S. adults say Trump did something illegal in the New York City criminal trial in which he's charged with falsifying business records to pay a former adult film star to keep quiet before the 2016 election about an alleged extramarital affair.

Meanwhile, close to half think he did something illegal in the other three criminal cases pending against him. And they’re fairly skeptical that Trump is getting a fair shake from the prosecutors in the case — or that the judge and jurors can be impartial in cases involving him.

Still, half of those surveyed said they would consider Trump unfit to serve as president if he is convicted.



Trump returns to court as jury selection enters second day in his hush money criminal trial


Jury selection in Donald Trump’s hush money trial resumed Tuesday as lawyers worked to find a panel of New Yorkers who will decide whether the Republican who hopes to return to the White House will become the first former president convicted of a crime.

The first day of the historic trial in Manhattan ended Monday with no one yet chosen to be on the panel of 12 jurors and six alternates. Dozens of people were dismissed after saying they didn’t believe they could be fair, though dozens of other prospective jurors have yet to be questioned.

It’s the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial and may be the only one that could reach a verdict before voters decide in November whether the presumptive Republican presidential nominee should return to the White House.

N.Y. judge refuses Trump’s request to attend Supreme Court immunity argument



NPR Editor Suspended After Exposing CEO's Progressive Tweets


NPR Chief Executive Officer Katherine Maher is under fire for resurfaced social media posts she made that targeted former President Donald Trump and for speaking out for liberal causes years before she was brought in for the organization's top spot in January.

Senior NPR Business Editor Uri Berliner, who put the spotlight on Maher's posts in an April 9 column published by The Free Press, was suspened Friday by NPR.

In the column, Berliner wrote that "people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview."

The New York Times first reported on Berliner's accusations Monday.



Ketanji Brown Jackson's New Warning to Supreme Court

                                                                        Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is pictured while attending President Joe Biden's State of the Union address in Washington, D.C. on February 7, 2023. Jackson warned that the Supreme Court's conservative majority had not shown "reason and restraint" by allowing an Idaho ban on transgender youth health care to be enforced on Monday.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has warned that her conservative colleagues failed to show "reason and restraint" by allowing Idaho's transgender youth health care ban to be enforced during an appeal.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority on Monday granted a request from Idaho officials to allow enforcement of a near-total ban on gender-affirming health care for transgender youth while the case works its way through the courts. The ban had previously been temporarily blocked by a lower court.

The decision does not apply to the two teenage transgender girls whose families filed a lawsuit over the ban. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch noted in his concurring opinion that "the plaintiffs face no harm from the partial stay," while arguing that blocking the ban could prevent "Idaho from executing any aspect of its law for years."



Our oppressive tax system can be analogized to Dracula

Was it as bad for you as it was for me? Sending Washington money we earn, but Washington doesn’t, I mean?

It’s not just being part of the half the nation that pays taxes while the other half doesn’t that bothers me. It’s the waste and unnecessary programs and agencies that have long outlived whatever usefulness they once had (if they were ever necessary). And still, President Biden wants to raise taxes even more without proposing a single dollar be cut to reduce our unsustainable $34 trillion debt.

As The Washington Times reported, Mr. Biden “wants to impose a 25% minimum tax on all income not currently taxed — including unrealized gains on assets — for Americans with a net worth of $100 million. Mr. Biden has also urged Congress to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% up from 21%.”

No American should be forced to endure the annual torture of compiling records and filling out tax returns. Many other nations have far simpler systems. Even the instructions for filling out forms for the IRS need instructions to be understood. It is why so many must hire tax attorneys who fulfill the role of language translators.



Biden on the economy: ‘I don’t feel your pain’

This president is no Bill Clinton

In 1992, Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton famously told American voters who were hurting because of a lousy economy, “I feel your pain.”

Whether Bill was being sincere or not, it was a good line, and it resonated.

Now, President Biden is running for reelection with the opposite message: Stop complaining. Everything is going great. Some of his sycophants in Congress and his stooges in the media are complaining that the problem isn’t Mr. Biden’s failed policies, but that Americans are too stupid to understand how good things are today.

Gail Collins of The New York Times recently groused: “I know that we aren’t supposed to lecture people about how good their lives are, but it’s weird that the nation doesn’t seem more conscious of how well things are going. … Prices have begun to stabilize or even drop.”


Medal of Honor
See the source image
THOMAS JEROME HUDNER JR.

RANK: LIEUTENANT, J.G.
CONFLICT/ERA: KOREAN WAR

MILITARY SERVICE BRANCH: U.S. NAVY
MEDAL OF HONOR ACTION DATE: DECEMBER 4, 1950

MEDAL OF HONOR ACTION PLACE: CHOSIN RESERVOIR, KOREA
CITATION

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a pilot in Fighter Squadron 32, while attempting to rescue a squadron mate whose plane, struck by antiaircraft fire and trailing smoke, was forced down behind enemy lines. Quickly maneuvering to circle the downed pilot and protect him from enemy troops infesting the area, Lt. (j.g.) Hudner risked his life to save the injured flier who was trapped alive in the burning wreckage. Fully aware of the extreme danger in landing on the rough mountainous terrain, and the scant hope of escape or survival in subzero temperature, he put his plane down skillfully in a deliberate wheels-up landing in the presence of enemy troops. With his bare hands, he packed the fuselage with snow to keep the flames away from the pilot and struggled to pull him free. Unsuccessful in this he returned to his crashed aircraft and radioed other airborne planes, requesting that a helicopter be dispatched with an ax and fire extinguisher. He then remained on the spot despite the continuing danger from enemy action and, with the assistance of the rescue pilot, renewed a desperate but unavailing battle against time, cold, and flames. Lt. (j.g.) Hudner's exceptionally valiant action and selfless devotion to a shipmate sustain and enhance the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.


From the Archive....

            TO KILL OR FEED A MOCKINGBIRD
                 By Geoff Metcalf
                 July 29, 2002

            Two mutually exclusive and under reported stories have been troubling me.

               *   The apparent penchant for political operatives to leak classified information that jeopardizes national security.
               *   The generational control of information dissemination by powerful controllers.

            So we have another ‘Catch-22’.

            The complicity of the mainstream media to spin, cover, and obfuscate government abuse of power under the color of authority was not unique to the Clinton administration.  It may have been more ubiquitous, and at times even clumsy, but it was not unique.

            It has been reported that in June 1991 David Rockefeller allegedly told a Bilderberg meeting in Baden Baden German, "We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years." He went on to explain: "It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries."

            Some argue that quote is apocryphal urban legend.  However, although I have never been able to find three corroborating independent sources for it, it IS consistent in content and tone with other Bilderberg quotes I HAVE been able to confirm.

            “If we had been subjected to the light of publicity….” Indicates the one world, globalist, wannabe controllers were/are successful in managing the message.

            Operation ‘Mockingbird’ was a program supposedly conceived by a brilliant Machiavellian State Department official, Frank Wisner.  Wisner selected Philip Graham, then publisher of the Washington Post to manage the program.  According to Deborah Davis, author of ‘Katharine the Great’, "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all, according to a former CIA analyst."

            Over twenty five major newspapers and wire services became willing house organs for the CIA media manipulation.

            Investigators digging into MOCKINGBIRD have been flabbergasted to discover FOIA documents in which agents boast (in CIA office memos) of  pride in having placed "important assets" inside every major news publication in the country.

            I know, this is the stuff of Ludlum novels conspiracy wackos, but not until 1982 did the ‘Company’ finally concede that reporters on the CIA payroll have been case officers to field agents.

            I have too often observed, “Some people don’t like to be confused with facts that contradict their preconceived opinions.”  I have also noted (and struggle to maintain) “It is not WHO is right or wrong…but WHAT is right or wrong.”

            Anyone with almost ‘any’ military experience has no doubt seen the once ubiquitous posters cautioning “Loose Lips Sink Ships”.  It is a left over phrase from WWII and among “lessons learned”.

            In the complex world of intelligence loose lips can and have cost lives.

            Once upon a time, not so long ago, Senator Patrick Leahy (currently the Senate Judiciary committee’s lead obstructionist) used to be the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the mid 80s.  Leahy allegedly ‘inadvertently’ exposed a top-secret intercept of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak that led to the capture of the Achille Lauro terrorists.  That supposed slip of the tongue “cost the life of at least one Egyptian operative.” http://www.newsmax.com/showinside.shtml?a=2001/1/31/85757

            Loose Lip Leahy was forced to resign in disgrace 14 years ago in the wake of having to acknowledge he leaked secret intelligence to the press.   However today he lords his power over the Senate Judiciary committee.  Congress’ institutional memory must be as short as some of Jennifer Flowers former paramours.

            In our contemporary environment in which whistleblowers have become in many cases heroes it is important to make the distinctions between the appropriateness of corporate and political whistleblowers and the idiot or miscreant who leaks information with genuine national security implications.

            Currently the FBI is investigating national security leaks from specifically the House and Senate Select Intelligence committees.  This is serious stuff.

            Defenders of the indefensible will argue it is a political witch-hunt by politicians in a heavy C.Y.A. mode.  That is not true but a convenient political spin job.

            Sure it is true the white house is p.o.-ed over media reports that the National Security Agency had received but not acted on two early warning messages to 9/11.  Dick Cheney reportedly went ballistic and ripped congressional leaders.  Both House and Senate Select Intelligence committees asked the Attorney General to conduct an investigation (and no doubt quietly prayed it would be botched).

            Justice said in a statement, “…the appropriate department officials will expeditiously review this matter and take any appropriate action.”  Not if congress has anything to say about it.  Don’t expect anything fast.  Remember Leahy resigned in disgrace 14 years ago and today has the chutzpah to pontificate ad nauseum to the Judiciary committee and stall any and all Bush judicial appointments.

            More on Operation Mockingbird http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/