Frightened, alone and locked up… Not children in Trump's border camps, but young migrants who were detained under Obama

Frightened, alone and locked in 'cages' - at first these images of migrant children appear to be straight from Donald Trump's America.

But in fact they show thousands of youngsters detained at the US border under the Obama administration in 2014. 

The youngsters were locked up at shelters in Texas and Arizona after arriving unaccompanied at the border in their tens of thousands that year.

The problem faced by both presidents is what to do with children who arrive at the border with no adult or legal guardian alongside them.

While unaccompanied youngsters from Mexico can be immediately turned back, those arriving from further afield - such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador - have to be granted a legal hearing.

That leads to the children being locked up in shelters while the cases work themselves out, and caused a barrage of criticism for both leaders.

Under Trump, 32,372 unaccompanied minors have arrived at the border in the 2018 fiscal year, which is more than triple the number which arrived last year.

By comparison, an estimated 60,000 unaccompanied minors arrived under the Obama administration in 2014, almost four times the number that arrived in 2012. 

At the time Obama faced protests from both sides of the aisle and was accused of encouraging minors to chance the crossing with soft-touch immigration policies.

Meanwhile Trump has been accused of using the children as political pawns to force Democrats to sign tougher immigration laws.

SOURCE 

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Trump signs executive order to end family separation

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending the practice of separating children from their families in detention centers for illegal immigrants. The order will likely be challenged in court, however.

“I'll be signing something in a little while that's going to do that," Trump said on Wednesday morning. “I'll be doing something that's somewhat preemptive and ultimately will be matched by legislation I'm sure.”

The “something” is an executive order to keep families together in immigration detention facilities, which Trump signed on Wednesday before departing for his scheduled trip to Minnesota.

The current practice of housing children at facilities run by the Department of Health and Human Services stems from a 1997 Flores settlement, under which the Clinton administration agreed not to hold children in immigration jails for more than 20 days. Subsequent administrations chose to implement that law by releasing the families into the US with a promise they would appear before immigration courts. In most cases, that would never happen.

“We’re going to keep families together, but we have to keep our borders strong,” Trump said.

The temporary measure will allow the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to detain families crossing the border illegally together, except "when there is a concern that detention of an alien child with the child’s alien parent would pose a risk to the child’s welfare."

It also instructs the Department of Defense to provide "any existing facilities available for the housing and care of alien families, and shall construct such facilities if necessary."

Meeting with GOP lawmakers at the White House earlier in the day, Trump brought up that a deal on immigration with the Democrats was almost done in January, but a federal judge ruled in favor of keeping an Obama-era executive action shielding some illegal immigrants, known as DACA.

“All of a sudden they weren’t there anymore,” Trump said.

Democrats have refused to support any of the proposed immigration bills in Congress, saying that Trump can fix the family separation issue through executive action.

“There are so many obstacles to legislation and when the president can do it with his own pen, it makes no sense,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters on Tuesday. “Legislation is not the way to go here when it’s so easy for the president to sign it.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has already announced it would challenge reunifying children with their parents, since that would mean effectively putting them in jail, violating the terms of Flores.

SOURCE 

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The sewer that is a Leftist mind

He had to apologize but he gave us a view of the disgusting  maggot-infested cesspit that is his mind

Peter Fonda proposed kidnapping the president’s youngest son. His tweet has been deleted, but its authenticity was initially corroborated by Twitter responses and multiple screenshots before Fonda himself apologized for it. He wrote:

WE SHOULD RIP BARRON TRUMP FROM HIS MOTHER’S ARMS AND PUT HIM IN A CAGE WITH PEDOPHILES AND SEE IF MOTHER WILL STAND UP AGAINST THE GIANT ASSHOLE SHE IS MARRIED TO. 90 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE STREETS ON THE SAME WEEKEND IN THE COUNTRY. FUCK

On Wednesday afternoon, Donald Trump Jr. ripped actor Peter Fonda. Here’s what Barron’s big brother had to say:

“I didn’t think it was possible but Peter Fonda has found a way to be as disgusting as his sister Jane as when she stood with the enemy in Vietnam. Doesn’t get more vile than wishing for a young boy to be raped by pedophiles. There’s a special place in hell…”, Don Jr. tweeted.

As we reported earlier, the Secret Service has officially been called on Peter Fonda after his threat to Barron:

In another shocking all-caps Twitter rant, Fonda had this to say:

“WE SHOULD HACK THIS SYSTEM, GET THE ADDRESSES OF THE ICE AGENTS CBP AGENTS AND SURROUND THEIR HOMES IN PROTEST. WE SHOULD FIND OUT WHAT SCHOOLS THEIR CHILDREN GO TO AND SURROUND THE SCHOOLS IN PROTEST. THESE AGENTS ARE DOING THIS CUZ THEY WANT TO DO IT. THEY LIKE DOING THIS. FUCK.”

He then followed up with this now deleted tweet:

“Sounds great. We don’t have to take the agents kids, we only need to surround their schools and scare the shit out of them and worry the fuck out of the agents frm CBE ICE & REGULAR BORDER PATROL AGENTS. WE NEED TO SCARE THE FUCK OUT OF THEM! NEED TO MAKE THEIR CHILDREN WORRY NOW

Paul Joseph Watson correctly said this about Fonda’s twitter rants:

Things @iamfonda has encouraged in the last 24 hours;

- Showing up at schools to "scare the shit out of" children of Border Patrol agents.

- Putting Barron Trump "in a cage with pedophiles".

- Hacking a government database.

This is gonna be an interesting test of Twitter's TOS.

SOURCE 

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On Tuesday, President Trump slammed the media during a speech to the National Federation of Independent Business Leaders

“We don’t want people pouring into our country. We want them to come in through the process, through the legal system, and we want ultimately a merit-based system where people come in based on merit. Keep in mind, those who apply for asylum legally at ports of entry are not prosecuted. The fake news media back there doesn’t talk about that.”

As the audience laughed, Trump noted, “They are fake. They are helping, they are helping these smugglers and these traffickers like nobody would believe. They know it, they know exactly what they’re doing, and it should be stopped.”

The audience ate it up.

Trump finished by talking about the dangers of MS-13 and gangs.

“People that come in violate the law, they endanger their children in the process and frankly, they endanger all of our children. You see what happens with MS-13, where your sons and daughters are attacked violently. Kids that never even heard of such a thing are being attacked violently, not with guns, but with knives because it’s much more painful,” Trump said.

He continued, “Inconceivable that we even have to talk about MS-13 and other gangs. They attack violently, the most painful way possible. And a bullet is too quick.”

Trump added, “And we are allowing these people into our country? Not with me. We are taking them out by the thousands. We are taking them out by the thousands.”

SOURCE 

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Trump rips media for ignoring Americans 'permanently separated' from loved ones by illegals' crimes

President Trump slammed the media Wednesday night for ignoring American families “permanently separated” from their loved ones in crimes committed by illegal immigrants, on the same day he reversed a much-criticized policy that separated illegal immigrant children from their parents.

At a packed campaign rally in Duluth, Minnesota, the president tried to change the focus from his immigration policy backpedaling by spotlighting cases such as Kate Steinle, a woman shot and killed by an illegal immigrant in San Francisco in 2015.

“The media never talks about the American victims of illegal immigration — what’s happened to their children, what’s happened to their husbands, what’s happened to their wives,” Mr. Trump said. “The media doesn’t talk about the American families permanently separated from their loved ones because Democrat policies release violent criminals into our communities.”

He said TV networks “don’t bring cameras to interview the ‘Angel’ moms whose children were killed by criminal aliens who should have never been here in the first place.”

“But as your president, I will always fight to protect American families,” Mr. Trump said. “I will never be silent in the face of vicious smears and attacks on the heroic agents and officers of ICE and the border patrol who save thousands and thousands of lives.”

He turned that theme into a campaign issue, telling the boisterous crowd, “If you want to create a humane, lawful system of immigration, then you need to retire the Democrats and elect Republicans to finally secure our borders.”

SOURCE 

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Gowdy Blasts FBI And Comey For ‘Textbook Bias’

Gowdy blasted former FBI director James Comey for his handling of the rigged Clinton Investigation, noting FBI agent’s prejudgements on the outcome of the Hillary investigation and prior to the Trump investigation.

“If prejudging the outcome of an investigation before it ends and prejudging the outcome of an investigation before it begins is not evidence of outcome determinative bias, for the life of me, I don’t know what would be,” Gowdy stated.

Gowdy has previously admitted his belief, “Former Director Comey violated Department policy in several significant ways.”

“The FBI’s actions and those of former Director Comey severely damaged the credibility of the investigation, the public’s ability to rely on the results of the investigation, and the very institutions he claims to revere.”

Gowdy ultimately declared,“we can’t survive with a justice system we don’t trust.”

The American people should be able to trust that the FBI will run fair investigations on behalf of the United States of America. Clearly, that’s not the case.

SOURCE 

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Trump takes on airline unfairness

American aviation transcends multiple industrial sectors, including the service industry and manufacturing. For decades, U.S. airlines and workers have been attacked by foreign competitors that skirt fair competition provisions in our aviation trade deals, known as Open Skies agreements.

By providing massive subsidies to their state-owned airlines, the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have violated these agreements and destabilized the marketplace for American competitors. The Trump administration, as it has on other key fronts, including tax reform, took decisive action and brought both Gulf states to the negotiating table. It extracted promises of financial transparency and an end to mass subsidization, putting a stop to the “capacity dumping” that Qatar Airways, Emirates, and Etihad Airways have used to push U.S. domestic airlines and other foreign competitors out of air travel markets.

It is astounding that previous administrations failed to stand up for American workers and ensure a level and fair playing field. The failure to enforce our Open Skies agreements with these two countries put 1.2 million American jobs at risk. President Trump has thankfully shown that he understands the stakes. But that hasn’t stopped special interests, operating on behalf of the Gulf state airlines, from trying to muddy the water with misinformation and political brinkmanship. They’ve used shady tactics for years to try to prevent the U.S. government from taking any action.

The Gulf carriers are backed by K Street fronts that have been accused of carrying water for foreign interests. As the Associated Press and others have reported, the U.S. Travel Association (which has led the opposition) is “funded by the Emirati airlines.” Breitbart News has exposed the foreign ties of U.S. Travel land its cohorts, many of whom – including public relations flak Jonathan Grella – have also been outspoken critics of President Trump. Grella, per Breitbart, has referred to President Trump as a “nasty bully.” The Air Line Pilots Association has requested that the Department of Justice investigate U.S. Travel for its failure to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act due to its ties to the United Arab Emirates.

Thankfully, the White House and lawmakers on Capitol Hill have seen through this hackneyed ruse. Over 300 lawmakers called for enforcing our Open Skies agreements with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. At the end of the day, President Trump has proven that he is a staunch ally of American workers – unwavering in his commitment to ensure free and fair competition and to put our economy in the best position possible. It is doubtful that any amount of mudslinging and misinformation peddled by foreign interests and opponents of President Trump’s agenda will change that.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************

Trump is a genuine original

Let me risk a prophecy:  Future Presidents are now going to feel that they have to do this too



Donald Trump gave an impassioned speech Tuesday to a group of business leaders in Washington, D.C., in which he hammered the recent outrage over immigration policies.

Recent media outrage over the administration’s enforcement of America’s border laws — that result in the separating some families at the border if they seek asylum after crossing the border illegally at non-checkpoint locations — has captured the nation’s attention.

Trump took the fight directly to the media in the speech, saying they were on the side of the smugglers and human traffickers who operate on our borders. The president also hit back at Hillary Clinton for attacking him over open borders criticism.

The president also hit Obamacare taxes and regulations and lauded his tax cuts in front of the business leaders. “Cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts,” Trump said.

The room was enthusiastic toward Trump and his attacks on various political opponents, regularly applauding and cheering passionately.

As Trump exited the stage, he took a moment to wave at the audience. Then, the president approached an American flag in the corner of the room and gave it a hug.

It was not the first time that Trump has given a hug to the American flag. He also did so on the campaign trail.

SOURCE 

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Trump blesses House Republicans' new compromise immigration bill

A lot of GOP congressmen were initially skeptical of Trump but his successes have now given him authority.  So we see that his support is expected to change minds towards voting for the bill

President Trump blessed House Republicans’ new compromise immigration bill “1,000 percent” Tuesday, giving political cover to conservatives looking to back the bill and creating momentum ahead of a showdown vote expected later this week.

He said the legislation, which grants citizenship rights to illegal immigrant “Dreamers,” funds his border wall, limits the chain of family migration and ends the visa lottery, checks off all the boxes on his immediate immigration wishlist.

Meeting with Republicans for an hour Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump told them he would welcome a fix to the family separation issue that’s engulfed the immigration debate this week. But he made clear any action will have to come from Congress, not from the administration.

His blessing clears up the mess he left last Friday, when he said he “wouldn’t sign” the bill. The White House later said he misunderstood the question, but his wavering had left a number of conservatives fearful of voting for the bill only to have the president walk away from the legislation, leaving them on a political ledge.

“He says I am behind you 1,000 percent and I am not going to leave you out to dry,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers, chair of the House Republican Conference.

Whether that’s good enough to win 218 Republicans — the number needed to approve the bill — is unclear. “It’s going to be close,” said Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who helped craft the compromise bill. “This is a very challenging issue, very controversial. All members are going to have to take some risks to make this happen.”

Rep. Mark Meadows, head of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, said he’s still weighing his own vote, but the bill is a no-go for some conservatives. “I think there are some who believe that it is amnesty and they don’t want to vote for amnesty,” he said. He also said there are some on the liberal side of the party who wanted a more generous legalization for Dreamers.

“We represent very different districts,” he said. “The thing that motivates me to stay involved is I think the moderates negotiated in good faith - whether we get to 218 or not I don’t know.”

GOP leaders released the official version of the bill Tuesday evening while Mr. Trump was meeting with them.

The bill would grant full legal status and a path to citizenship to people who qualify for the Obama-era DACA program. The bill also ends the visa lottery and limits the types of family members that can be sponsored for immigration — then takes those visas and uses them on the DACA population and other children brought to the U.S. by their parents.

In terms of enforcement, the bill allows Homeland Security to detain more people and deport them faster, and it increases the threshold for people attempting to claim asylum, with a goal of cutting down on fraudulent claims that have clogged the system.

GOP leaders tucked in a new fix for the family separation issue, allowing the government to hold children and their parents in immigration detention facilities for longer than 20 days. The bill also says that illegal immigrant parents charged with misdemeanors, who normally would be sent to the criminal justice system’s jails, can be held in immigration detention — meaning they can remain with their children.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan told The Washington Times Mr. Trump got a good reception from the party. “It was great,” he said.

Outside the meeting a group of Democrats marched along the corridors holding signs that said, “Families Belong Together,” and that depicted some of the now-iconic photos of children and their parents at the border.

As the president walked through one of the Capitol’s corridors a heckler shouted at him “Mister President, F– you!” An NBC reporter said on Twitter that the culprit was a congressional intern.

Earlier Tuesday some of the president’s key supporters warned him against embracing the bill. The National ICE Council, the union that represents officers at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the bill falls short on a number of the president’s campaign promises.

Chris Crane, the council president, wrote a letter to Mr. Trump saying the bill would open the door to massive fraud, would allow people who defied judges’ deportation orders to get on a pathway to citizenship, and fails to make good on Mr. Trump’s promise of a deportation force of 10,000 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

He labeled the bill the “Ryan amnesty” and said it also repeats the same mistakes of the failed 2013 “Gang of 8” immigration bill.

“You pledged publicly to ‘have the backs’ of the men and women of ICE law enforcement. I am asking you to keep that promise,” Mr. Crane wrote. The ICE Council endorsed Mr. Trump on the campaign trail in 2016.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia said he is “sympathetic to their concerns” but that the compromise is better than alternative proposals that they would have “hated.”

“But we really have to do something that can get to 218 votes and some of the people who are in that negotiation did not support their request,” Mr. Goodlatte said. “This happened very quickly and if they don’t think they were consulted enough I understand that.”

GOP leaders plan two votes later this week.

One would be on an enforcement-heavy bill written months ago by Mr. Goodlatte and Rep. Michael McCaul, chairmen of the two key committees. That bill includes a renewable DACA permit but doesn’t give Dreamers a pathway to citizenship. It does include a host of new enforcement measures such as requiring businesses to use E-Verify to check their workers, cracking down on sanctuary cities and making it a misdemeanor to overstay a visa.

Those measures went too far for many Republicans and the Goodlatte bill struggled to reach 218 supporters.

So GOP leaders pushed Mr. Goodlatte, Mr. McCaul and moderate lawmakers to work on the compromise bill.

Mr. Trump had previous backed the enforcement-heavy bill, but his full-throated support for the compromise was critical.

“Folks that would have been against it, I think it’s harder for them to be against it now,” said Rep. Bill Flores, Texas Republican. “I think he probably changed a lot of minds.”

SOURCE 

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CNN Tries To Shame Border Patrol Agent — He Flips The Script And Leaves Host Speechless


The dear little lady interviewer has got her lashes on, her blusher on and her hair just right but she forgot to fill her head up with knowledge of her subject

CNN brought on Chris Cabrera, a spokesperson for the National Border Patrol Council, Tuesday to discuss the Trump administration enforcing America’s border laws.

The Trump administration has enacted a policy of zero tolerance when enforcing America’s border laws. The laws result in separating some families if they cross the border illegally at non-checkpoint locations.

CNN’s Brooke Baldwin brought on Cabrera to grill him over the enforcement of the policy. However, it was Baldwin who got the grilling when Cabrera fact-checked her over the status of immigrants at the border.

“There’s so much being thrown at people who don’t know as much about immigration certainly as you do as a border patrol agent, but there a a couple of ways to come into this country if you’re an undocumented immigrant and you come out on the Rio Grande river, that’s illegal,” Baldwin said.

Cabrera countered, “Even if you’re a U.S. citizen, it’s illegal.”

Baldwin then asked specifically about delays for asylum seekers.

Cabrera said bluntly, “We’ve had this situation going on for four years now. I don’t think you can necessarily blame it on one administration or another. It started under one and is continuing under another. It hasn’t been fixed and it needs to be fixed.”

He continued, “Right now we have this beacon of, ‘We’ll leave the light on for you and let you come illegally into the country.’ If you’ve seen some of the stuff we’ve seen, you’d understand how important it is to have a tough stance to divert people from coming here.”

Cabrera then bluntly told Baldwin some of the horrors he has seen.

“When you see a 12-year-old girl with a plan B pill, her parents put her on birth control because they know getting violated is part of the journey, that’s a terrible way to live. When you see a 4-year-old girl traveling alone with just her parents phone number written across her shirt. We had a 9-year-old boy have heat stroke in front of us and die with no family around. That’s because we’re allowing people to take advantage of this system.”

The retelling of the child horror stories elicited an audible gasp from Baldwin.

Cabrera went on to say that it’s up to Congress to change the law, but until then his agents will continue to enforce the laws on the books.

“Most of our agents are parents. I’ve seen guys and I’ve done it myself, you give your last bottle of water to a kid, you’ll take a toy out of your car to give to one of these kids because you know the situation they’re in.” Caberera said. “Agents are very sympathetic. We’re human, we’re fathers, we have families. We do a lot for the communities here, whether or not a camera is involved. Our agents are very involved. And nobody saves more lives along the southwestern border than the U.S. Border patrol.”

SOURCE 

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Border Ranchers Shock MSNBC With Facts On Illegal Immigration

A husband and wife who ranch on the Rio Grande river told MSNBC on Tuesday that they believe President Trump is doing the right thing by enforcing border laws.

MSNBC tried to ask the couple a multitude of leading questions about the separation of families when they cross the border illegally, but the ranchers continuously smashed their narrative.

“When you see parents and children separated why do you support the policy that, to many people, appears to be heartless?” MSNBC’s Kerry Sanders asked.

“It’s basically the laws of our land,” Presnall Cage said. “Trump I believe is going in the right direction. I believe it’s going to be a deterrent to keep this from happening.”

Sanders asked Stephanie Cage, “You’re a mother, you’re a grandmother of seven, um, how do you react when you see that the families are being split apart?”

“Of course it is very upsetting, but I’m as equally upset with the parents for exposing their children to the dangers of smuggling their children across the border,” Cage replied.

The Cage family also debunked the notion that the vast majority of illegal immigrants are fleeing violence, retorting, “That’s very much exaggerated … very few cases are caused by that, I think most of them are coming over here to try to make a better life in this country and all this country has to offer.”

SOURCE 

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US leaves UN Human Rights Council

They should leave the corrupt UN entirely  -- or at least stop funding it

Washington has decided to walk out of the UN Human Rights Council.  The US has long cited concerns about the body’s “anti-Israel bias.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley announced the decision at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.

This is the first time a member of the council would leave the body voluntarily. The US was halfway through its three-year term on the 47-member panel.

On Monday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein criticized Washington over the “unconscionable” policy of separating children of immigrants who cross the border illegally and holding them in detention centers. “I call on the United States to immediately end the practice of forcible separation of these children,” al-Hussein said.

While the timing of the US exit from the UN body coincides with this criticism, Washington’s objections to the Human Rights Council over the years have mostly been in regard to Israel. Ambassador Haley has accused the council of a “relentless, pathological campaign” against Israel, and said the US would leave unless the body gets rid of its “chronic anti-Israel bias.”

Shortly after its establishment in 2006, the council voted to make a review of alleged human rights abuses by Israel a permanent feature of every session, known as Agenda Item 7. Likewise, the body’s special rapporteur on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the only expert whose mandate is not time-limited.

SOURCE 

*********************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************

Trump is a genuine original

Let me risk a prophecy:  Future Presidents are now going to feel that they have to do this too



Donald Trump gave an impassioned speech Tuesday to a group of business leaders in Washington, D.C., in which he hammered the recent outrage over immigration policies.

Recent media outrage over the administration’s enforcement of America’s border laws — that result in the separating some families at the border if they seek asylum after crossing the border illegally at non-checkpoint locations — has captured the nation’s attention.

Trump took the fight directly to the media in the speech, saying they were on the side of the smugglers and human traffickers who operate on our borders. The president also hit back at Hillary Clinton for attacking him over open borders criticism.

The president also hit Obamacare taxes and regulations and lauded his tax cuts in front of the business leaders. “Cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts,” Trump said.

The room was enthusiastic toward Trump and his attacks on various political opponents, regularly applauding and cheering passionately.

As Trump exited the stage, he took a moment to wave at the audience. Then, the president approached an American flag in the corner of the room and gave it a hug.

It was not the first time that Trump has given a hug to the American flag. He also did so on the campaign trail.

SOURCE 

*********************************

Trump blesses House Republicans' new compromise immigration bill

A lot of GOP congressmen were initially skeptical of Trump but his successes have now given him authority.  So we see that his support is expected to change minds towards voting for the bill

President Trump blessed House Republicans’ new compromise immigration bill “1,000 percent” Tuesday, giving political cover to conservatives looking to back the bill and creating momentum ahead of a showdown vote expected later this week.

He said the legislation, which grants citizenship rights to illegal immigrant “Dreamers,” funds his border wall, limits the chain of family migration and ends the visa lottery, checks off all the boxes on his immediate immigration wishlist.

Meeting with Republicans for an hour Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump told them he would welcome a fix to the family separation issue that’s engulfed the immigration debate this week. But he made clear any action will have to come from Congress, not from the administration.

His blessing clears up the mess he left last Friday, when he said he “wouldn’t sign” the bill. The White House later said he misunderstood the question, but his wavering had left a number of conservatives fearful of voting for the bill only to have the president walk away from the legislation, leaving them on a political ledge.

“He says I am behind you 1,000 percent and I am not going to leave you out to dry,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers, chair of the House Republican Conference.

Whether that’s good enough to win 218 Republicans — the number needed to approve the bill — is unclear. “It’s going to be close,” said Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who helped craft the compromise bill. “This is a very challenging issue, very controversial. All members are going to have to take some risks to make this happen.”

Rep. Mark Meadows, head of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, said he’s still weighing his own vote, but the bill is a no-go for some conservatives. “I think there are some who believe that it is amnesty and they don’t want to vote for amnesty,” he said. He also said there are some on the liberal side of the party who wanted a more generous legalization for Dreamers.

“We represent very different districts,” he said. “The thing that motivates me to stay involved is I think the moderates negotiated in good faith - whether we get to 218 or not I don’t know.”

GOP leaders released the official version of the bill Tuesday evening while Mr. Trump was meeting with them.

The bill would grant full legal status and a path to citizenship to people who qualify for the Obama-era DACA program. The bill also ends the visa lottery and limits the types of family members that can be sponsored for immigration — then takes those visas and uses them on the DACA population and other children brought to the U.S. by their parents.

In terms of enforcement, the bill allows Homeland Security to detain more people and deport them faster, and it increases the threshold for people attempting to claim asylum, with a goal of cutting down on fraudulent claims that have clogged the system.

GOP leaders tucked in a new fix for the family separation issue, allowing the government to hold children and their parents in immigration detention facilities for longer than 20 days. The bill also says that illegal immigrant parents charged with misdemeanors, who normally would be sent to the criminal justice system’s jails, can be held in immigration detention — meaning they can remain with their children.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan told The Washington Times Mr. Trump got a good reception from the party. “It was great,” he said.

Outside the meeting a group of Democrats marched along the corridors holding signs that said, “Families Belong Together,” and that depicted some of the now-iconic photos of children and their parents at the border.

As the president walked through one of the Capitol’s corridors a heckler shouted at him “Mister President, F– you!” An NBC reporter said on Twitter that the culprit was a congressional intern.

Earlier Tuesday some of the president’s key supporters warned him against embracing the bill. The National ICE Council, the union that represents officers at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the bill falls short on a number of the president’s campaign promises.

Chris Crane, the council president, wrote a letter to Mr. Trump saying the bill would open the door to massive fraud, would allow people who defied judges’ deportation orders to get on a pathway to citizenship, and fails to make good on Mr. Trump’s promise of a deportation force of 10,000 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

He labeled the bill the “Ryan amnesty” and said it also repeats the same mistakes of the failed 2013 “Gang of 8” immigration bill.

“You pledged publicly to ‘have the backs’ of the men and women of ICE law enforcement. I am asking you to keep that promise,” Mr. Crane wrote. The ICE Council endorsed Mr. Trump on the campaign trail in 2016.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia said he is “sympathetic to their concerns” but that the compromise is better than alternative proposals that they would have “hated.”

“But we really have to do something that can get to 218 votes and some of the people who are in that negotiation did not support their request,” Mr. Goodlatte said. “This happened very quickly and if they don’t think they were consulted enough I understand that.”

GOP leaders plan two votes later this week.

One would be on an enforcement-heavy bill written months ago by Mr. Goodlatte and Rep. Michael McCaul, chairmen of the two key committees. That bill includes a renewable DACA permit but doesn’t give Dreamers a pathway to citizenship. It does include a host of new enforcement measures such as requiring businesses to use E-Verify to check their workers, cracking down on sanctuary cities and making it a misdemeanor to overstay a visa.

Those measures went too far for many Republicans and the Goodlatte bill struggled to reach 218 supporters.

So GOP leaders pushed Mr. Goodlatte, Mr. McCaul and moderate lawmakers to work on the compromise bill.

Mr. Trump had previous backed the enforcement-heavy bill, but his full-throated support for the compromise was critical.

“Folks that would have been against it, I think it’s harder for them to be against it now,” said Rep. Bill Flores, Texas Republican. “I think he probably changed a lot of minds.”

SOURCE 

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CNN Tries To Shame Border Patrol Agent — He Flips The Script And Leaves Host Speechless

CNN brought on Chris Cabrera, a spokesperson for the National Border Patrol Council, Tuesday to discuss the Trump administration enforcing America’s border laws.

The Trump administration has enacted a policy of zero tolerance when enforcing America’s border laws. The laws result in separating some families if they cross the border illegally at non-checkpoint locations.

CNN’s Brooke Baldwin brought on Cabrera to grill him over the enforcement of the policy. However, it was Baldwin who got the grilling when Cabrera fact-checked her over the status of immigrants at the border.

“There’s so much being thrown at people who don’t know as much about immigration certainly as you do as a border patrol agent, but there a a couple of ways to come into this country if you’re an undocumented immigrant and you come out on the Rio Grande river, that’s illegal,” Baldwin said.

Cabrera countered, “Even if you’re a U.S. citizen, it’s illegal.”

Baldwin then asked specifically about delays for asylum seekers.

Cabrera said bluntly, “We’ve had this situation going on for four years now. I don’t think you can necessarily blame it on one administration or another. It started under one and is continuing under another. It hasn’t been fixed and it needs to be fixed.”

He continued, “Right now we have this beacon of, ‘We’ll leave the light on for you and let you come illegally into the country.’ If you’ve seen some of the stuff we’ve seen, you’d understand how important it is to have a tough stance to divert people from coming here.”

Cabrera then bluntly told Baldwin some of the horrors he has seen.

“When you see a 12-year-old girl with a plan B pill, her parents put her on birth control because they know getting violated is part of the journey, that’s a terrible way to live. When you see a 4-year-old girl traveling alone with just her parents phone number written across her shirt. We had a 9-year-old boy have heat stroke in front of us and die with no family around. That’s because we’re allowing people to take advantage of this system.”

The retelling of the child horror stories elicited an audible gasp from Baldwin.

Cabrera went on to say that it’s up to Congress to change the law, but until then his agents will continue to enforce the laws on the books.

“Most of our agents are parents. I’ve seen guys and I’ve done it myself, you give your last bottle of water to a kid, you’ll take a toy out of your car to give to one of these kids because you know the situation they’re in.” Caberera said. “Agents are very sympathetic. We’re human, we’re fathers, we have families. We do a lot for the communities here, whether or not a camera is involved. Our agents are very involved. And nobody saves more lives along the southwestern border than the U.S. Border patrol.”

SOURCE 

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Border Ranchers Shock MSNBC With Facts On Illegal Immigration

A husband and wife who ranch on the Rio Grande river told MSNBC on Tuesday that they believe President Trump is doing the right thing by enforcing border laws.

MSNBC tried to ask the couple a multitude of leading questions about the separation of families when they cross the border illegally, but the ranchers continuously smashed their narrative.

“When you see parents and children separated why do you support the policy that, to many people, appears to be heartless?” MSNBC’s Kerry Sanders asked.

“It’s basically the laws of our land,” Presnall Cage said. “Trump I believe is going in the right direction. I believe it’s going to be a deterrent to keep this from happening.”

Sanders asked Stephanie Cage, “You’re a mother, you’re a grandmother of seven, um, how do you react when you see that the families are being split apart?”

“Of course it is very upsetting, but I’m as equally upset with the parents for exposing their children to the dangers of smuggling their children across the border,” Cage replied.

The Cage family also debunked the notion that the vast majority of illegal immigrants are fleeing violence, retorting, “That’s very much exaggerated … very few cases are caused by that, I think most of them are coming over here to try to make a better life in this country and all this country has to offer.”

SOURCE 

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US leaves UN Human Rights Council

They should leave the corrupt UN entirely  -- or at least stop funding it

Washington has decided to walk out of the UN Human Rights Council.  The US has long cited concerns about the body’s “anti-Israel bias.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley announced the decision at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.

This is the first time a member of the council would leave the body voluntarily. The US was halfway through its three-year term on the 47-member panel.

On Monday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein criticized Washington over the “unconscionable” policy of separating children of immigrants who cross the border illegally and holding them in detention centers. “I call on the United States to immediately end the practice of forcible separation of these children,” al-Hussein said.

While the timing of the US exit from the UN body coincides with this criticism, Washington’s objections to the Human Rights Council over the years have mostly been in regard to Israel. Ambassador Haley has accused the council of a “relentless, pathological campaign” against Israel, and said the US would leave unless the body gets rid of its “chronic anti-Israel bias.”

Shortly after its establishment in 2006, the council voted to make a review of alleged human rights abuses by Israel a permanent feature of every session, known as Agenda Item 7. Likewise, the body’s special rapporteur on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the only expert whose mandate is not time-limited.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Can unemployment go lower?

The facts:

"The US unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent in May 2018 from 3.9 percent in the previous month, and below market expectations of 3.9 percent. It was the lowest rate since April 2000, as the number of unemployed decreased by 281 thousand to 6.07 million and employment rose by 293 thousand to 155.47 million. Unemployment Rate in the United States averaged 5.78 percent from 1948 until 2018, reaching an all time high of 10.80 percent in November of 1982 and a record low of 2.50 percent in May of 1953"

So, in a sense you see the answer to my question before you. Just 4 months after escaping decades of "Progressive" administrations, with the election of Ike, the American economy went wild in 1953. Though progress had also been made under the preceding moderate Truman administration.  Clearly there was a big catchup with business projects that would have been risky under the Democrats being suddenly seen as safe for investment.  Much the same has happened under Trump.  Conservative administrations are good for business confidence and confident businessmen expand their activities -- creating jobs.

The good figure for 2000 was under Bill Clinton, a passing era in which budgets were not only proposed and adopted but were actually  in surplus for three years, partly by way of cutting back the military. Clinton was a moderate in many ways and in relation to the economy ran very conservative policies.

So back to normality.  As the summary of facts above shows, the average rate of employment over the years is over 5% and economists have long proclaimed that 5% is a "frictional" or natural level of unemployment -- a level which you can't go below for long

So is that right?  There is no sign of it. People thought the 3.9% figure recorded in April was as low as you could go but now we see a further fall to 3.8% in May.  And, despite Democrat denials, it is an effect of the present administration.  In May 2010, the second year of the Obama administation, the figure was 9.6% -- a large gap indeed.  So Trump has got an amazingly successful recipe for American prosperity.  Whatever he has been doing must be given great credit for creating jobs

Yet what Trump has been doing runs completely against conventional economic wisdom.  Economists preach free trade as the highroad to prosperity -- but Trump has been a champion of tariffs and import restrictions.  But Trump has recently said that he learned the free trade story while he was at Wharton and still regards it as the ideal.

So it is clear that free trade alone is not enough for prosperity in the real world we have at the present.  You actually have to sponsor jobs -- by protections if necessary -- in order to get good job growth.  There was striking evidence of that in the 19th century -- when American industry prospered mightily behind high tariff walls.  But there is no such thing as a free lunch and the penalty in that case was a civil war, when Northern manufacturers faced the threat of losing half of their markets in the South. They could not and did not allow that

But although the opposition to Trump is as furious as anything seen in the old South, the powers of a modern president are too great for Trump opponents to challenge.  The fact that the military is strongly pro-Trump is also a barrier to armed rebellion.

But economists are not very good at factoring war into their equations so how do they explain the 19th century boom?  It is to them a classic case of the "infant industry" exception.  American technology and industry were still very new and well behind the mature industries of the old world. So it had to be given time to catch up. And that does seem to be what happened.  So the 19th century experience is no guide to the 21st century.  It gives us no assurance that Trump's policies will continue to succeed. As initial optimism wears off and the costs become evident, one could argue that America will rebound to the old 5% level of "frictional" employment.  You cannot square the circle for long.

So is there any other precedent which would lead us to believe that the Trump good news will continue?  There is: Australia of the 1950's and '60s.  The Prime Minister of Australia from 1949 to 1966 was the avuncular Robert Menzies, a very conservative man. Many people who remember those years recall that era as a golden age.  And what were his economic policies?  They were very protectionist and focused on creating and preserving Australian jobs. So that sounds a lot like Trump, does it not?  So what was unemployment like in his era?  It was almost always UNDER 2%.  It was regarded as a political crisis if it looked like it would go over 2%.  Frictional unemployment barely existed.

So the lesson is clear:  Maximum jobs requires some protection of industry.  Both Trump and Menzies have demonstrated that.  It could be called the "Trump Rule".  And the Australian precedent says that we can even hope for 2% under Trump.  How good is that? 

So WHY is an actively protectionist administration needed for businessmen to be maximally enterprising?  It's dead simple.  It gives businessmen throughout the country the feeling that government has got their back.  It gives them the feeling that government will at least be on their side if there is a push for change of any sort.  Democrat administrations are, by contrast, enemies of business -- and blind Frederick can see that. Hence 9.6% unemployment under Obama compared with 3.8% under Trump. Businessmen are people too.  They respond to incentives and recoil from attack -- JR.

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DACA kids approved by Obama despite murder, rape and sex crimes arrests

Ten people who’d been arrested on murder charges were nonetheless granted permission to remain and work in the U.S. under the Obama-era DACA amnesty, according to new government data released Monday.

Thirty-one “Dreamers” had rape charges on their records, nearly 500 had been accused of sex crimes, and more than 2,000 had been arrested for drunken driving — yet were approved for DACA status.

All told, 53,000 people who have been approved for DACA — 7 percent of the total — had a criminal record when the government granted them status. Nearly 8,000 racked up criminal charges after they’d been approved, according to the data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

DACA turned six years old on Friday and is back in the news as the House of Representatives begins to debate whether to grant a broad amnesty to Dreamers, and as courts across the country grapple with the legality of the 2012 program.

The new data will likely affect both the legislative and court action, since it gives some indications of the levels of screening, and waivers, the government is willing to offer for Dreamers who apply.

All told more than 888,000 people have applied for DACA status over the years. Of those, more than 770,000 were approved. Nearly 67,000 were rejected — and of those, about 31 percent had criminal records, the data show.

SOURCE

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Dems Exploit Children of Illegals for Political Fodder

Appealing to emotions with false assertions, Democrats and their propaganda mouthpieces in the mainstream media have manufactured a campaign issue they seek to ride all the way to the November elections. As President Donald Trump has cracked down on illegal immigration, Democrats are shouting about his zero-tolerance law-enforcement policy that sometimes separates children from parents who illegally cross the U.S. border. As Democrats have increasingly run to the fainting couches, some have even ridiculously compared Trump's law enforcement to that of Nazi Germany. It's a classic case of uninformed emotions leading to calls for changing a policy few even care to understand.

First and foremost, the Trump administration has not changed any rules that govern the nation's immigration and border enforcement. As Rich Lowry of National Review explains, "Separation happens only if officials find that the adult is falsely claiming to be the child's parent, or is a threat to the child, or is put into criminal proceedings."

The Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy is simply a change from Barack Obama's policy of limited enforcement in which his administration deliberately avoided enforcing the nation's immigration laws consistently.

What has caused all the commotion over separating children from their illegal alien parents is something called the Flores Consent Decree, which mandates that children can be held by the government for no longer than 20 days. This law has been effectively exploited by illegal aliens, who, after crossing illegally, request asylum, a process often exceeding the short window of 20 days. Paul Mirengoff of Power Line notes, "Since asylum petitions take more than 20 days to process, the government must either release the adults and children together into the country pending the adjudication of the asylum claim or hold the adults and release the children, thereby separating them. If the adult illegal immigrant is released while the claim is pending, it's extremely unlikely that the government will find him or her again. Thus, releasing the adult is tantamount to allowing the illegal immigrant to live in the U.S. regardless of the merits of the case." That explains why Democrats want to keep the racket going. Worse, their "sanctuary cities" serve as beacons attracting even more illegals.

A clear first step to end the issue of separating families would be the elimination of the Flores Consent Decree. But aside from all the absurd over-the-top emotional criticism of the practice of separating children from adults who have illegally crossed the border, the fact of the matter is that separating children from their parents is not at all unusual law-enforcement policy even for U.S. citizens. In 2016, more than 21,000 children were separated from their parents and placed into foster care after their parents had been incarcerated. Where are all the emotional calls to end the practice of separating children from their criminal parents? Should the children live with their parents in prison? Obviously the question is absurd on its face, so why isn't the reaction the same with regard to those who break our nation's laws by entering the country illegally? There are legal means by which families can seek asylum within the U.S., and parents who do so are not separated from their children.

By the way, Trump has repeatedly called on Congress to come up with solutions to the illegal immigration problem, including funding for the construction of a border wall. But Democrats now oppose what they once supported.

This issue boils down to Democrats and the Leftmedia claiming to take the moral high ground while at the same time attacking the very laws that enable a nation to secure its borders. Noncitizens do not have a right to enter the U.S. Trump's enforcement of the law is what every American should desire, and if a majority want the law changed, then they can lobby Congress to make that change. Don't fault Trump for doing his job. Unfortunately, Democrats seeing nothing but an opportunity to exploit emotions for votes.

SOURCE

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Backdoor to illegal immigration closing: U.S. clears more asylum cases than it receives in May

The government is making headway on the asylum backlog for the first time in years, clearing more cases in May than it received, as officials finally think they have hit on ways to tamp down on people abusing the system as a backdoor method of illegal immigration.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services took in 7,757 cases last month, but completed 7,959 cases.

The success came on both sides of the ledger. New cases have been cut nearly in half when compared to the peak years during the Obama administration, while the number of cases closed more than doubled compared to the Obama years.

And those achievements came even before the Justice Department’s decision this week to tighten standards for asylum. That move should speed USCIS’s ability to reduce a backlog that’s reached nearly 320,000 cases, as would-be illegal immigrants figured ways to use the asylum system as a loophole to gain a foothold in the U.S.

“Asylum and ‘credible fear’ claims have skyrocketed across the board in recent years largely because individuals know they can exploit a broken system to enter the U.S., avoid removal, and remain in the country,” said Michael Bars, a spokesman for the agency.

Asylum is the protection given to people already on U.S. soil who say they fear being sent back home. Refugees are people who make that request from outside the U.S.

In recent years the number of asylum-seekers has soared, with illegal immigrants from Central America in particular turning to the asylum system. They say they’re fleeing poor conditions back home. Security experts say they’re exploiting a loophole-filled U.S. system to avoid being deported.

In 2011, before the surge of Central Americans took hold, USCIS ended the year with fewer than 10,000 cases pending. By the end of 2015 the backlog was more than 125,000 cases, it leapt to 233,000 at the end of 2016, and topped 300,000 late last year.

Someone who lodges an asylum claim at the border must clear an initial “credible fear” screening by saying he would be in danger if sent home. It’s a low bar that most meet.

Take the recent migrant caravan, most of whose members said they were claiming asylum. As of June 1 USCIS had reviewed 357 of their cases, and had granted positive credible fear decisions in 337 of them — a 94 percent success rate. Among the broader population, credible fear approval rates hover above 75 percent.

From there, the applicants are supposed to pursue their asylum claims with USCIS or with the Executive Office of Immigration Review. But officials say as many as half of them won’t pursue those claims — particularly if they’ve already been released into the U.S. and can disappear into the shadows.

Of those who do pursue cases, most won’t be approved.

The Washington Times reached out to several immigrant-rights groups to run the backlog numbers by them, but didn’t receive comments.

More generally, though, administration critics say they believe the government has become too hawkish in doling out asylum denials, preventing people with potentially valid claims from having a chance to make their case.

“We don’t know for sure, because none of the agencies have responded. But we hear that parents are going to court in mass trials and having their asylum claims denied – not heard, but denied — and then the parents are deported,” Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat, said in a speech on the floor of the U.S. House this week.

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, released an analysis this week arguing the administration is making it tougher to claim asylum on the front end, and pressing for faster decisions on the back end, which the analysts said lead to errors and an increased risk of deporting people who should have received asylum.

Administration critics were further enraged this week after Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a ruling that domestic violence or fear of gangs is not, on its own, enough of a reason to be granted asylum.

Mr. Sessions said the U.S. asylum system isn’t a solution to rough conditions across the globe, but rather a special protection for people facing persecution by a government, or people whose governments are essentially endorsing the persecution by looking the other way.

Immigrant-rights advocates and congressional Democrats said that will mean a “death sentence” for some women living in abusive relationships or children in dangerous neighborhoods in Central America.

USCIS, though, says the changes will bring clarity to a system in need of firm guidance about how far asylum protections can be stretched. “The attorney general’s decision will be implemented as soon as possible,” said Mr. Bars, the agency spokesman.

USCIS officials credited several changes for this year’s successes in controlling the backlog.

In January the agency reversed an Obama-era policy that focused on the oldest cases, and instead went to a last-in-first-out, or LIFO, approach that makes quick decisions on people showing up at the borders or lodging claims in the interior right now. LIFO helped cut a backlog in the 1990s, and it’s already making a dent now, officials said, by changing the incentives.

Under the Obama approach, someone who showed up demanding asylum might have waited two years for a first interview. During that time they could apply for a work permit, giving them a foothold in the U.S.

With the new LIFO policy applicants are getting their first interview in three weeks. And since most people interviewed are ineligible, and can be put into deportation proceedings once their claims are rejected, it’s discouraging those who had been taking advantage of the system, the agency says.

The agency has also more than doubled its team of asylum officers over the last five years, to nearly 700, and has borrowed another 100 people from the refugee caseload — similar work — to help on the asylum backlog.

USCIS says about a quarter of the backlog are people who know they don’t qualify for asylum, and want to get rejected. They feel they have claims they want to make before an immigration judge, but the only way to get a day in court is to lose their asylum claim and be put into deportation proceedings, where they can argue their other case.

USCIS has come up with a method for trying to identify and clear those people through faster.

SOURCE

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Two scumbags: Harvey Weinstein and friend



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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Behind the chaos curtain, Trump is grinding out a lot of policy wins

Some grudging admissions from the "Boston Globe" below, in the heart of "blue" country:

President Trump’s White House presents a daily tableau of chaos, falsehoods, caustic attacks, and allegations of corruption. But despite his stormy and impulsive management style — and in some ways, because of it — Trump is presiding over an administration that is grinding out policy victories with surprising efficiency, fulfilling campaign promises and propelling his support among Republican voters to record heights.

Nearly 18 months after taking office, his accomplishments have reached something of a critical mass, with Republicans rallying around him over wins that have thrilled the party base from social conservatives to defense hawks. The majority of his successes have been reversals of the Obama agenda, a goal shared by Republican leaders who are now tacitly or actively participating in his remake of the 164-year-old Republican Party to match his own image and priorities.

Republican supporters assert that, after a rocky start in 2017, Trump has learned on the job and is now firmly in control of the GOP and the nation’s agenda. If they are right, it is certainly Democrats’ worst nightmare.

“Every month that goes by strengthens the president’s hand,” said Christopher Ruddy, a Trump confidant and the chief executive of the right-leaning media outlet Newsmax. “His foreign policy success, especially now with North Korea, makes people think, ‘OK, he’s different. I don’t agree with all his approaches, but something is working here and let’s give it a try.’”

Even Republicans who have been highly critical of Trump are torn. They are impressed with the pace of his work on the conservative wish list, as they continue to fret about the direction he is pulling the Republican Party, away from its traditional ideological pillars and toward one that revolves around Trump’s singular personality.

Despite a chaotic and scandal-plagued tenure, President Trump has racked up a long list of conservative victories after 18 months in office.

“When are Republicans going to stand up to Trump? Never. They’re getting what they want,” said Charlie Sykes, a longtime Wisconsin-based conservative talk radio host.

“This is the agonizing dilemma for a lot of folks,” he said. “You get the tax cuts, but then of course you might have to swallow a trade war. You get federal judges, but you might also have to bite your tongue when you see attacks on the rule of law. A lot of Republicans and conservatives are really wrestling with that checkered record.”

Trump has reshaped the federal judiciary system — from his Supreme Court appointment of Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch to dozens of lifetime appointments in the lower courts. He has taken a sledgehammer to Barack Obama’s environmental policies. He has appeased social conservatives with policies targeting transgender rights. He has eviscerated Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

And while he is satisfying conventional Republican constituencies like business executives and evangelicals, his penchant for disrupting the status quo is appealing to a non-traditional populist base hungry for action in a capital long frozen in place by partisan divisions. In the past week alone he has blown up decades of GOP doctrine and conventional wisdom by upending decades-old trade policies, feuding with mainstay allies, and opening up direct talks with North Korea.

His record goes a long way toward explaining why Republican leaders are so often silent in the face of new Trump policies such as cozy relations with Russia and attacks on federal law enforcement. Members of Congress can read polls like anyone else: Nearly 90 percent of Republicans approve of the job Trump is doing, which puts him at a higher level of support than any president has had with his own party aside from George W. Bush, whose popularity soared after the 9/11 terror attacks. Among all Americans, Trump’s approval rating has consistently climbed above 40 percent in recent weeks — low for historic standards but a resurgence for him.

Many candidates are hugging Trump tightly, running ads that feature him prominently and tout how closely aligned they are to his policies. Republican primary voters in South Carolina last week ousted an incumbent, Representative Mark Sanford, who had been critical of Trump, and in Virginia they nominated a controversial US Senate nominee, Corey Stewart, who has modeled his campaign on Trump in both substance and style.

“They’re talking about things he wants to do, especially immigration,” said Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor at the Cook Political Report who closely tracks races around the country. “The most frequent mention of something that he has done is tax cuts.”

Trump’s surge in strength highlights the stakes for Democrats in 2018. If they hope to slow him down they need to win back majorities in Congress, and there have been some troubling signs.

In Florida — the nation’s largest swing state and a key to the 2020 presidential election — some 48 percent of voters approve of the job Trump is doing, compared with 49 percent who disapprove, according to a recent survey conducted for Politico and AARP. His numbers are even better among voters age 50 and older, which is an important factor in a state rich in reliably voting retirees.

In the US Senate race, incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson is running neck and neck with Republican challenger Rick Scott, who is the current governor.

“This is what keeps me up at night,” said Peter Fenn, a longtime Democratic strategist. “I’m afraid that Democrats are so upset with the abnormality of Donald Trump that they’re not focusing enough on the substance — on the policies and the programs and the damage that he’s doing to the country.”

“To pretend nothing’s getting done, or it’s just about the tax bill and North Korea — even if those are front of mind — is a mistake,” he added.

Fenn thinks Democrats need to make a stronger argument about why voters should reward them with majorities: that they could be an effective check on Trump.

“This is not a competent man in charge here. But that doesn’t make any difference,” Fenn said. “There are people, whether in the Justice Department dealing with immigration or in housing and urban development dealing with help for poor people — you’ve got ideologies in there who are undermining, in our view, clear, right policy objectives.”

In many cases, Trump has managed to impose his will on issues despite intra-party divisions that have prevented sweeping legislation from clearing Congress.

While Congress was unable to repeal Obama’s signature health care law, for instance, Trump and Republicans have devised ways to weaken it substantially. In the December 2016 tax cut bill, they ended the individual mandate requiring that virtually all Americans have health insurance. And now the Justice Department has said it will not step in legally to protect patients with pre-existing conditions hit with coverage denials or exorbitant premiums.

Longer term, there is a downside to many of Trump’s actions, and many of them are still a work in progress. Talks with North Korea, for example, show the power of Trump’s stagecraft to punch through decades of deadlock, but many Republicans worry that he is giving away too much without any firm commitments from Kim Jong Un, a ruthless dictator who has recently gone through a rapid public relations remake.

Trump’s policy successes also could be fleeting: Most of them have come through executive orders, which means they could be undone as quickly as he enacted them. Trump has issued such orders at a rate of 54 per year, a brisker pace than any other president since Jimmy Carter, according to data kept by the American Presidency Project.

Still, key members of Trump’s Cabinet have proved lethally efficient when it comes to gutting Obama-era policies.

His secretaries and administrators have slashed the size of federal parkland, rescinded fuel economy standards, opened up new offshore oil and gas drilling along US coastal waters, and authorized construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to bring oil from Canada to the United States. They have dismantled a unit of the Department of Education that investigated some for-profit schools, and have delayed rules designed to protect borrowers defrauded by predatory lenders.

“In those places where he placed very conservative people who had a clear agenda . . . there is definitely big change happening in subterranean ways,” said Daniel Gitterman, a professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has studied Trump’s executive orders. “Perhaps by all the focus on dysfunction of the White House, we’re missing that he’s got some lieutenants who have a clear mission.”

SOURCE 

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54% of alien children, teens, on welfare, nearly half for adults

More than half of all non-citizen children and teens in the United States are receiving taxpayer-funded welfare, mostly Medicaid, while nearly half of all non-citizen adults legally in the country are on welfare, according to a new report.

In a just-released study of welfare use by U.S. born Americans, naturalized citizens and non-citizen aliens, the Migration Policy Institute found that of the 22 million non-citizens in the country, 10.3 million are one at least welfare program.

The report said that 54.2 percent of children and teens up to age 17 receive at least one of four major public welfare benefits while its 46.3 percent for those aged 18-54 and 47.8 for older aliens.

By comparison, 32 percent of the U.S. born population of 270 million receive some welfare. Of those, 45.8 percent are children and teens, 30 percent are aged 18-54 and 22.5 percent are age 55 and older.

The report warns that the Trump administration is considering new rules that would make it difficult for immigrants to receive a green card if they or one of their dependents are receiving Medicaid, cash welfare, food stamps or Social Security benefits.

MPI estimates that the law would have a “chilling effect” on immigration and cut welfare use by aliens significantly, likely what the Trump administration wants to hear. According to the report:

Although it is difficult to estimate precisely how many people would alter their behavior in response to the proposed change in public-chart policy, if immigrants’ use patterns were to follow those observed during the late 1990s there could be a decline of between 20 percent and 60 percent -- and that even some members of groups exempt from the new rule [e.g. refugees] would likely withdraw from pubic programs.

MPI noted that U.S. born children of non-resident immigrants could be hurt by the changes.

SOURCE

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Small Business Optimism Through the Roof,/b>

Business optimism soars to 1980s levels. Good news for America. Good news for Trump.   

Thanks to President Donald Trump’s aggressive agenda of cutting onerous regulations coupled with the passage of the GOP tax cuts — which not a single Democrat voted for — the U.S. economy has blasted out of the eight-year doldrums that Barack Obama once labeled the “new normal.” The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) noted that, this past May, optimism among small businesses hit the second-highest level ever recorded, just shy of the record set in 1983. And who was president in 1983?

The NFIB gave credit for the optimism primarily to Republican tax reform, writing, “The new tax code is returning money to the private sector where history makes clear it will be better invested than by a government bureaucracy.” But it also pointed to Trump’s policies, noting, “Regulatory costs, as significant as taxes, are being reduced.” NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg explained just how well small business is doing: “Small business owners are continuing an 18-month streak of unprecedented optimism, which is leading to more hiring and raising wages. While they continue to face challenges in hiring qualified workers, they now have more resources to commit to attracting candidates.” NFIB President and CEO Juanita Duggan added, “Main Street optimism is on a stratospheric trajectory thanks to recent tax cuts and regulatory changes. For years, owners have continuously signaled that when taxes and regulations ease, earnings and employee compensation increase.”

Meanwhile, Democrats and leftists can only see negatives. Nancy Pelosi continues to decry the Republican tax cuts as bad for America and pledges to roll them back if Democrats regain control of Congress. And yet, the government isn’t hurting for tax revenue — the Fed just collected a record high in individual income taxes through May. Do Democrats really believe that Americans are longing for the years of next-to-no growth in the overly regulated Obama economy?

And then there’s #Resistance leader Bill Maher, who acknowledges the fact that the economy is doing great but whose leftist desire for greater government control over the lives of citizens trumps any joy he has for the growing economy. In fact, he’d rather Americans suffer under a bad economy if it gets the Left back into power. For leftists like Pelosi and Maher, the real issue is one of power.

It would seem that Trump and Republicans have been the ones listening to Americans, while Democrats and leftists are focused solely on preaching their socialist ideology, irrespective of reality or the Constitution.

SOURCE 

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Why Kanye West and More Black Americans Are Supporting Trump

Kanye West surprised the American music scene by dropping a single, "Ye vs. The People," in which he and fellow rapper T.I. go back and forth about their political views.

Some are calling his vocal support of President Donald Trump nothing more than a publicity stunt. But even if that's true, West is bringing attention to some very important issues.

At what point did Trump become such a villain and the blame for everything and everyone's problem?

An article from Revolt TV points to over 35 positive rap references to Trump, including Jay Z, Ice Cube, Fat Joe, Lil Kim, Nicki Minaj, and Meek Mill. You get my point.

FiveThirtyEight did a study on 266 hip hop songs and lyrics referencing Trump and Hillary Clinton. From 1989 until 2015, Trump was positive and represented money, power, and what many strive to achieve, including "Listen I ain't from the slums, I fought my way up out the slum / Arrogant rich n-- , we might vote for Trump," Cam'ron rapped on "Dope Spot" in 2015 .

Most references to Clinton were negative, including "Never Put Your Trust in Hillary Rodham".

Even some of the most recognized black leaders, including Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton praised Trump for his diversity efforts. Trump endorsed Jackson in his failed attempt to run for president years ago.

So something besides just ideological differences has to be going on here, right?

Is it Trump? Is it the Republican Party? Is it the policies he represents? Most people I ask give reasons that are personal, as well as what they've heard through liberal media.

In the song West said, "See that's the problem with this d- nation / All Blacks gotta be Democrats, man, we ain't made it off the plantation."

And while I wouldn't put it quite the same way, I do believe many of the policy priorities so strongly supported by the left do more to keep people poor than they do to lift them out of poverty.

According to Forbes, "Welfare offers short-term help and long-term poverty." The first failure of government welfare programs is to favor help with current consumption while placing almost no emphasis on job training or anything else that might allow today's poor people to become self-sufficient in the future.

It's hard to argue against policies that will reduce energy poverty for black and minority communities, or to defend why you dislike Betsy DeVos and K-12 education policy under this administration promoting school choice when your child attends private school.

Opportunities to pursue the American dream without worrying that an occupational license scheme will keep you from starting your own business have become a cornerstone of conservative policy, and the opportunity to receive justice under the law and take mental health into consideration is getting more and more attention every day.

These are policy priorities of the Trump administration and issues I was in favor of long before Trump became a candidate. These are issues that most African-Americans and other minorities believe in.

I rode a bike and delivered newspapers every morning from sixth through 12th grade and earned a football scholarship.

I've also been a small business owner under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Trump. These and other experiences have allowed me to see life through a different lens.

For me, there's no comparison. We've been more successful as a small business and family under these Republican administrations than under the Obama administration. That's why I believe in opportunity over handouts, and empowerment over entitlements.

When it comes down to it, it's about opportunity, and that's something we should all get behind. However, like many other blacks who have spoken out in support of the Trump administration, I've been called names, lost friends, and gotten all sorts of clapback because I see things differently.

I'm a husband and father whose children are taught to respect everyone's point of view-even if you don't agree. But more and more, those who don't follow the narrow box built for us by the left are written off as crazy.

However you choose to vote, we should all be able to agree to respect each other. Just because we disagree doesn't mean we're enemies. So, do you, Kanye West! And props for speaking your truth. We should all feel comfortable doing the same.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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White House Fires Back After MSNBC’s Scarborough Compares Immigration Policy to Nazis

When you have to go to the Nazis to criticize someone, unless they’re an actual anti-Semitic fascist, you can be fairly certain that you’re not exactly making a good decision. I figured this would pretty much be a given in the 2010s, but the presidency of Donald Trump has again brought to the fore the specter of the Holocaust and Nuremberg rallies.

The latest public figure to resort to the Nazis is (what a surprise) MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who is convinced that the Trump administration’s policies on families caught immigrating illegally is something straight out of the Third Reich.

During a Friday morning rant, Scarborough went after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has said that the administration was merely enforcing the law by detaining those caught crossing the border illegally and then putting their children into state custody after 20 days (an Obama-era regulation, it must be noted).

“It’s not the law,” Scarborough said. “This is Donald Trump’s interpretation of the law.”

Then Scarborough went into waters where even MSNBC usually won’t tread.

“I know children are being ripped from their mother’s arms, even while they’re being breast-fed. I know children are being marched away to showers, I know they’re being marched away to showers,” Scarborough said, “being told they are just like the Nazis, and said that they were taking people to the showers and then they never came back.

“You’d think they’d use another trick like, ‘Hey, got a slurpee room over there, we’re going to take them to get them a slurpee.’ I mean, that would be better than, ‘We’re marching them in the showers — they’ll be right back,’ and then they never come back.”

If ICE is doing this, it would probably behoove them to stop, although this information has a whiff of the Ferris Bueller 31 Flavors scene about it. Furthermore, Scarborough didn’t seem to acknowledge that the regulation stipulating that ICE can’t detain children for over 20 days came into effect under the Obama administration.

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It’s worth pointing out that this whole narrative about ICE taking children away seems to have come mostly from a tweet by a Boston Globe reporter who seems to have gotten this information third-hand

“It is appalling that Joe Scarborough would compare sworn federal law enforcement officers — who put their lives on the line every day to keep American people safe — to Nazis,” a statement from White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley read. “This is the type of inflammatory and unacceptable rhetoric that puts a target on the backs of our great law enforcement.”

“It is also horribly insulting to the memory of the 6 million Jews who perished in the Nazi Holocaust,” the statement continued. “Not only is Scarborough’s rhetoric shameful, but his facts are categorically false.”

He also noted that there was no difference between how American citizens and illegal aliens were treated when they broke the law.

“When American citizens break the law, they are separated from their children and prosecuted,” Gidley said. “It’s unclear why Scarborough believes that illegal aliens are entitled to more rights than those afforded to American citizens.”

“While Scarborough is quick to launch into his straight-to-camera outrage over the temporary separation of illegal alien families, he has never shown similar outrage for the permanent separation of American families forever torn apart from their children, who were killed by criminal aliens as a result of Democrats’ open borders policies. If Joe Scarborough actually cared about keeping illegal alien families together, he would use his platform to support the Trump Administration’s efforts to close loopholes in federal immigration law.”

I doubt that last part will be on the agenda of “Morning Joe” anytime soon, but I would hope that Nazi comparisons won’t be, either. It’s one of the few things I can definitively say is below even Joe Scarborough and his morning retinue.

Invoking the Nazis over almost anything is a poor decision. Invoking them over ICE agents who are merely enforcing the law is beyond inappropriate.

SOURCE 

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‘WE DO NOT SEPARATE BABIES FROM ADULTS’: DHS DENIES ALLEGATION IT ‘RIPPED’ BREASTFEEDING BABY FROM MOTHER

Department of Homeland Security officials on Friday flatly denied a widely reported allegation that border authorities forcibly separated a breastfeeding baby from her mother while she was awaiting prosecution for entering the country illegally.

“We do not separate babies from adults,” a DHS official told reporters during a background briefing. “It’s a bright line.”

CNN first reported that an illegal immigrant from Honduras claimed federal authorities took her daughter while she breastfed the child at an immigration detention center in McAllen, Texas, on Tuesday. The CNN report was picked up by several national media outlets, including the Huffington Post, The Daily Beast and Vox, sparking further condemnation of the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant families caught crossing the border illegally.

The CNN report did not quote the mother herself, but rather an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project who had reportedly interviewed the woman. A Customs and Border Protection spokesman denied the allegations in a statement to CNN on Wednesday.

“Nothing could be further from the truth and these allegations are unsubstantiated,” the spokesman, Carlos Diaz, told CNN in an email.

DHS officials reiterated that denial on Friday, telling reporters the claim was false and that department officials have been working to investigate the circumstances surrounding the allegation.

Also Friday, the Department of Justice confirmed that 1,995 migrant children were separated from 1,940 adults from April 19 through May 31. The adults in that group were prosecuted for illegal entry, immigration violations, and in some cases, other criminal conduct. DOJ officials did not release a breakdown of the children’s ages or the charges brought against the adults.

The family separations stem from Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting as many cases of illegal entry as possible, regardless of whether the defendant was crossing the border with children. The policy has been denounced by immigration activists and religious groups, who have called it a cruel exercise of prosecutorial authority. (RELATED: Bishop Of Tucson Calls For Canonical Penalties For Catholics Involved In Separating Families At Border)

Sessions defended the policy on Friday, arguing that the Bible chapter Romans 13 instructs Christians to “obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.”

“Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful,” Sessions said in a speech to law enforcement officers in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The family separation figures released Friday are for migrants who jumped the border between official ports of entry, DOJ officials said. Family units who present themselves at the ports are not separated, except in cases where border officials can’t confirm the relationship between the child and the adult, or if there is some concern about the child’s safety.

SOURCE 

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James Woods effectively mocks ‘Negative’ Nancy — in One Sentence

Nancy Pelosi has been making headlines this past week after a press conference revealed exactly how ‘anti-America’ she is.

Now deemed ‘Negative Nancy,’ she explained how record low unemployment, a booming economy, and mending relations with North Korea is not only ‘bad’ for Americans, but also just plain evil.

All positive results from the Trump camp, she turns around and spins it to be negative.

Pelosi also outright lied, saying, “The president’s reckless policies are exploding gas prices, wiping out the few meager gains that some families should have received from the GOP tax scam, as wages remain stagnant.”

This week, Actor James Woods came to his own conclusion about Negative Nancy, and we think he may be spot on…

“I’m now convinced #NancyPelosi is a GOP plant…”

If you think about it, this makes a LOT of sense. It’s truly surprising that Pelosi is allowed to serve in the House of Representatives — continuing to win reelection time and time again. Are there really that many liberals who want to see this nutjob in charge? She makes the left look bad, daily.

SOURCE 

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DERSH ON MANAFORT: WHY DOES THE GOVERNMENT GET TO WIN WITHOUT A HEARING OR TRIAL?

Alan Dershowitz slammed the legal system for allowing the jailing of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, explaining on Saturday’s “Fox & Friends” that he shouldn’t be jailed based solely on an indictment.

Dershowitz, Harvard Law School professor emeritus, said, “The government says he did it, he says no he didn’t do it … Why does the government get to win without a hearing or trial?”

Dershowitz argued that it wasn’t just Manafort, and that there were thousands of Americans who are jailed based on indictments rather than trials, and he said that such action was “obnoxious to the Constitution.”

"There are thousands of people today in jail today, before they have been convicted of any crime. Many minorities, now Paul Manafort joins them based on an indictment. And indictments are not supposed to have any real impact, we still have a presumption of innocence. Under the law Manafort is no more guilty of contacting witnesses or attempting to obstruct justice than any of us. The government says he did it he says no he didn’t do it. He ‘didn’t know they were witnesses, and his conversations entirely innocent'. Why does the government get to win without a hearing or trial?"

Dershowitz said that the real problem was that Manafort was being jailed to keep up the “pressure.” He said, “Well, it’s part of pressure. If Paul Manafort weren’t part of the campaign, nobody would have ever looked into his background, his lobbying. Nobody would be monitoring and finding out whether he is calling witnesses.”

He further noted that Manafort’s actions, even if they were not entirely above board, were the natural response of anyone who was under investigation. “You know, it’s the most natural thing in the world when you are under investigation to see if maybe the witnesses should tell the truth.”

Dershowitz finally suggested that there should have first been an evidentiary hearing or what he referred to as a “mini-trial.” He explained, “[Manafort] could call witnesses. And only then do you put somebody in jail. You can get the grand jury to indict a ham sandwich as the chief judge of New York once put it. Prosecutors just play with grand juries. They tell them what to do. There are 23 chairs lined up to be moved around by prosecutors. And the idea that we now put people in jail based on what a grand jury does, hearing only one side of the case… really is obnoxious to our Constitution.”

SOURCE 

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LOL. The hostility never stops

Trump opens his mouth — and spews lies. His press conference was a cavalcade of lies, mischaracterizations, and breathtakingly inappropriate statements.

No middle road there! A heading above from the Boston Globe of June 16

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A great city ruined by Leftist policies

'The streets are filthy, there's trash everywhere - It's disgusting!': Tourists express shock and horror after visiting San Francisco, saying 'rampant drug use and violent crime' will keep them from ever coming back

Tourists traveling to San Francisco are shocked at the level of disarray the city is in as they complain about rampant crime and open injection drug use via the Internet.

Chances are that many of the residents living in the 'City by the Bay' have become desensitized to the worst aspects of the California community.

But for visitors looking to get a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge or snack on clam chowder at Fisherman's Wharf, the scenes can be jarring. 

'Is this normal or am I in a "bad part of town?,"' an Australian traveler recently posted to Reddit following a visit to the city, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

'Just walked past numerous homeless off their faces, screaming and running all over the sidewalk near Twitter HQ and then a murder scene. Wife is scared to leave hotel now,' the horrified Aussie added. 

Another Reddit message posted by a Canadian visitor expressed the same sentiment just days later, describing the city as 'terrifying.'

'I'd been there for probably less than a day, just wandering around the center, and already seen more than enough poverty and suffering to cause me wanting to leave desperately,' a tourist from London wrote last year.

'I saw many people talking to themselves, or to things that weren't there. Even in a Macy's, and there weren't any police officers to help them or do anything about it,' the British social media user added.

Those Reddit posts garnered a surprising reaction on the site's messaging broad, with more than 650 responses from people offering suggestions on how to stay safe and what neighborhoods to avoid.

Nearly all lamented over the fact that one of the most interesting and beautiful cities in America had fallen into such disrepute.

Even members of the city's own visitor's bureau expressed outrage over San Francisco's growing reputation as an unsafe tourist destination. 

'The streets are filthy. There's trash everywhere. It's disgusting,' Joe D'Alessandro, president of S.F. Travel, told the Chronicle earlier this year.

'I've never seen any other city like this — the homelessness, dirty streets, drug use on the streets, smash-and-grabs.' 

Kevin Carroll, executive director of the Hotel Council of San Francisco, told the paper that if something is not done soon, businesses are going to suffer from a lack of tourist dollars.

'People come into hotels saying, "What is going on out there?"' They're just shocked. People say, "I love your city, I love your restaurants, but I'll never come back.'"

SOURCE 

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African invaders sent back by Italy arrive in Spain

An Italian coast guard ship has arrived in the Spanish port of Valencia, carrying migrants rescued by the Aquarius charity-run vessel, which Rome refused to allow to dock a week ago.

The coast guard ship is one of two Italian vessels that took on some of the Aquarius's 629 passengers before escorting it to Spain, at the invitation of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

The ship's arrival ends the migrants' gruelling nine days at sea but leaves wide open a fierce debate in Europe over how to handle immigration.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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