Category: US Politics

Twitter allowed Cesar Sayoc, the man who allegedly sent apparent bombs to public figures around the country this month, to post more than 240 threats towards 50 different people on its social network without sanction. Meanwhile, the media managed to temporarily force free speech social network Gab offline after it was revealed that the Tree of Life Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting suspect had an account on the platform.

According to CNN, an analysis discovered that “Sayoc tweeted more than 240 threats directed to at least 50 public officials, news organizations and media personalities.”

“The threats, and Twitter’s apparent inaction regarding them, raise new questions regarding social media and radicalization,” CNN declared, adding, “In this instance, Twitter may well have provided Sayoc with the material that radicalized him, and then it stood idly by as that radicalization led to hundreds of threats.”

Some of Sayoc’s threats reportedly included, “Your Time is coming,” “Your days are over,” “your (sic) next,” and “Hug your loved ones real close everytime U leave your home,” while he also sent pictures of decapitated goats to users.

CNN’s report did not include all of Sayoc’s targets on Twitter. Sayoc tweeted violent images of man-eating crocodiles to liberal Fox News contributor Rochelle Ritchie, a fact mysteriously left out by CNN, which instead focused on anti-Trump celebrity Kathy Griffin, who admitted she hadn’t even read the threat tweeted to her.

Free speech social network Gab, however, was forced offline this week after media outlets and figures blamed the platform for allowing Tree of Life Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting suspect Robert Bowers to make anti-Semitic comments on his account — where Bowers also made several posts attacking President Trump and the MAGA movement, which he perceived as Jewish.

Despite this, Gab has a strict policy against threats and illegal content, and in contrast with Twitter, immediately issued a statement condemning Bowers and expressing sympathy for the victims following the crime.

Gab is currently offline, after its web host Joyent gave the social network just 48 hours to migrate elsewhere.

Domain service GoDaddy also forced Gab to immediately move to another service.

Having mastered fake news, now the media are trying out a little fake history.

In the news business, new topics are always popping up, from the Logan Act and the emoluments clause to North Korea. The all-star panels rush to Wikipedia, so they can pretend to be experts on things they knew nothing about an hour earlier.

Such is the case today with “anchor babies” and “birthright citizenship.” People who know zilch about the history of the 14th Amendment are pontificating magnificently and completely falsely on the issue du jour.

If you’d like to be the smartest person at your next cocktail party by knowing the truth about the 14th Amendment, this is the column for you!

Of course the president can end the citizenship of “anchor babies” by executive order — for the simple reason that no Supreme Court or U.S. Congress has ever conferred such a right.

It’s just something everyone believes to be true.

How could anyone — even a not-very-bright person — imagine that granting citizenship to the children of illegal aliens is actually in our Constitution?

The first question would be: Why would they do that? It’s like being accused of robbing a homeless person. WHY WOULD I?

The Supreme Court has stated — repeatedly! — that the “main object” of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment “was to settle the question … as to the citizenship of free negroes,” making them “citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.”

Democrats, the entire media and House Speaker Paul Ryan seem to have forgotten the Civil War. They believe that, immediately after a war that ended slavery, Americans rose up as one and demanded that the children of illegals be granted citizenship!

You know what’s really bothering me? If someone comes into the country illegally and has a kid, that kid should be an American citizen!

YOU MEAN THAT’S NOT ALREADY IN THE CONSTITUTION?

Give me a scenario — just one scenario — where the post-Civil War amendments would be intended to grant citizenship to the kids of Chinese ladies flying to birthing hospitals in California, or pregnant Latin Americans sneaking across the border in the back of flatbed trucks.

You can make it up. It doesn’t have to be a true scenario. Any scenario!

As the court has explained again and again and again:

“(N)o one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in (the 13th, 14th and 15th) amendments, lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.”

That’s why the amendment refers to people who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States “and of the state wherein they reside.” For generations, African-Americans were domiciled in this country. The only reason they weren’t citizens was because of slavery, which the country had just fought a civil war to end.

The 14th Amendment fixed that.

The amendment didn’t even make Indians citizens. Why? Because it was about freed slaves. Sixteen years after the 14th Amendment was ratified, the Supreme Court held that an American Indian, John Elk, was not a citizen, despite having been born here.

Instead, Congress had to pass a separate law making Indians citizens, which it did, more than half a century after the adoption of the 14th Amendment. (It’s easy to miss — the law is titled: “THE INDIAN CITIZENSHIP ACT OF 1924.”) Why would such a law be necessary if simply being born in the U.S. was enough to confer citizenship?

Even today, the children of diplomats and foreign ministers are not granted citizenship on the basis of being born here.

President Trump, unlike his critics, honors black history by recognizing that the whole purpose of the Civil War amendments was to guarantee the rights of freed slaves.

But the left has always been bored with black people. If they start gassing on about “civil rights,” you can be sure it will be about transgenders, the abortion ladies or illegal aliens. Liberals can never seem to remember the people whose ancestors were brought here as slaves, i.e., the only reason we even have civil rights laws.

Still, it requires breathtaking audacity to use the Civil War amendments to bring in cheap foreign labor, which drives down the wages of African-Americans — the very people the amendments were written to protect!

Whether the children born to legal immigrants are citizens is controversial enough. But at least there’s a Supreme Court decision claiming that they are — U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark. That’s “birthright citizenship.”

It’s something else entirely to claim that an illegal alien, subject to deportation, can drop a baby and suddenly claim to be the parent of a “citizen.”

This crackpot notion was concocted by liberal zealot Justice William Brennan and slipped into a footnote as dicta in a 1982 case. “Dicta” means it was not the ruling of the court, just a random aside, with zero legal significance.

Left-wing activists seized on Brennan’s aside and browbeat everyone into believing that anchor babies are part of our great constitutional heritage, emerging straight from the pen of James Madison.

No Supreme Court has ever held that children born to illegal aliens are citizens. No Congress has deliberated and decided to grant that right. It’s a made-up right, grounded only in the smoke and mirrors around Justice Brennan’s 1982 footnote.

Obviously, it would be better if Congress passed a law clearly stating that children born to illegals are not citizens. (Trump won’t be president forever!) But until that happens, the president of the United States is not required to continue a ridiculous practice that has absolutely no basis in law.

It’s often said that journalism is the first draft of history. As we now we see, fake news is the first draft of fake history.

To test it, VICE News applied to buy fake ads on behalf of all 100 sitting U.S. senators, including ads “Paid for by” by Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer. Facebook’s approvals were bipartisan: All 100 sailed through the system, indicating that just about anyone can buy an ad identified as “Paid for by” by a major U.S. politician.

What’s more, all of these approvals were granted to be shared from pages for fake political groups such as “Cookies for Political Transparency” and “Ninja Turtles PAC.” VICE News did not buy any Facebook ads as part of the test; rather, we received approval to include “Paid for by” disclosures for potential ads.

Vice news contacted Facebook for comment on their most recent test, the company admitted that they had indeed made a mistake in approving the ads but still defended their verification system:

“If Facebook is going to claim to verify who’s paying for political ads, they need to actually do the work,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, in a statement to VICE News. “Clearly it needs to do far more to combat fraudulent and false content, both in paid advertisements and viral posts.”

Facebook confirmed that the 100 “Paid for by” disclosures in the names of U.S. senators should never have been approved. But the company argues that its “Paid for by” feature has brought a new level of transparency to political advertising, and cautioned it’s just one piece of its efforts, along with a searchable Ad Archive.

“We know we can’t do this alone, and by housing these ads for up to seven years, people, regulators, third parties and watchdog groups can hold these groups more accountable,” said Facebook Director of Product Management Rob Leathern in a statement.

Read the full article by Vice News here.

As Mexican authorities continue to deal with two separate migrant caravans on both sides of their southern border, a third began its journey from El Salvador on Wednesday.

While the first two migrant caravans began in Honduras, the third started north from the capital of El Salvador, Reuters reported. The group is believed to be made up of about 2,000 individuals including men, women, and children. The third caravan comes at a time of escalating tensions where the two previous groups clashed with Mexican police forces at the border with Guatemala.

The clashes led to Mexico’s warning about the deployment and further potential use of Molotov cocktails against federal police forces guarding the Mexican border, Breitbart News reported. Human rights groups and journalists also called out the Mexican government for its use of a helicopter to push back migrants that tried to wade across the Suchiate River border into Mexico.

#URGENTE Un helicóptero compresiona a la caravana de migrantes hondureños en el agua del rio Suchiate para impedir que llegue a la otra orilla. Numerosos padres de familias se encuentran en el río con sus hijos en brazos, según documentan reporteros de TeleSUR. pic.twitter.com/FQTIFWDhly

— Santiago Botón (@SantiagoteleSUR) October 29, 2018

This week, authorities arrested two Honduran men after they allegedly shot at Mexican federal police officers guarding the caravan. Mexico City unveiled a program to provide temporary employment, education, and healthcare to those who would agree to stay in southern region and follow proper procedure to seek asylum. Immigration officials reported that only 111 of the migrants accepted the offer while leaders of the first and northernmost caravan publicly declined.

The first two caravans became an international political issue as President Donald Trump stated that he would cut foreign aid to Central America if the caravans were not stopped. The U.S. is deploying more than 5,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico Border states in preparation for the eventual arrival of the caravans.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon.  You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com. 

Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.

During a Wednesday “Reality Check” segment for CNN’s New Day, senior political analyst John Avlon attempted to draw parallels between President Donald Trump’s criticism of dishonest journalism and mass murder committed by Soviet dictators Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.

Avlon began the segment by criticizing President Trump for pushing back against media reports falsely blaming him for the deadly Pittsburgh synagogue shooting on Saturday:

After the deadliest anti-Semitic massacre in American history, Trump returned to calling migrants 1,000 miles away from the U.S. Border an “invasion,” echoing the language that the alleged shooter used in a social media post before unleashing his AR-15 in the Tree of Life synagogue. So let’s take a closer look at those two phrases President Trump has decided to carry into the electoral ballot. Buckle up for a quick and disconcerting history lesson.

“The enemy of the people” isn’t a phrase you generally hear from the U.S. presidents. But it was used during the French revolution by radicals that accused their enemies of — get this — spreading false news, to divide or trouble the people. It was trotted out again during the Soviet era to justify mass murder, by Lenin and Stalin. When Khrushchev took over, he apologized for the state-run slaughter, explaining, “the formula ‘enemy of the people’ was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating” real or imagined political opponents. And while Donald Trump loves to accuse Democrats of wanting to make American like Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, you guessed it, called his political opponents “enemies of the homeland.”

BY: Natalie Johnson Follow
@nataliejohnsonn

October 31, 2018 4:55 pm

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton on Wednesday pushed back against criticism of the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from a bilateral nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, noting the Kremlin has been in breach of the agreement for at least six years.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Alexander Hamilton Society in Washington, Bolton echoed President Trump’s assertion that  due to Russia’s repeated violations the only country bound by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF, is the United States. While considered a critical step in diffusing the Cold War at the time of its signing, Bolton accused Russia and adversaries like China of taking advantage of the deal.

“We’re at a point in terms of Russian violations where the president has decided to get out of the treaty and people have said, ‘Oh my goodness, can’t you just try to bring the Russians back into compliance?'” Bolton said.

“Well, let’s review the bidding on that diplomatically: The American position is that the Russians are in violation of the treaty, the Russian position is they’re not in violation of the treaty. So how do you bring the Russians back into compliance when they don’t think they’re out of compliance to begin with?”

Bolton said Trump was likely to speak briefly about the decision to leave the INF with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Nov. 11 when the two leaders meet in Paris. Trump first announced the withdrawal earlier this month.

The Russian government has said it would be forced to take symmetrical measures if the United States follows through on Trump’s threat to develop new missiles. Critics of Trump’s decision, including the European Union, warn a U.S. withdrawal could provoke a nuclear arms race.

The future of the INF has been in question since 2014, when the Obama administration first charged that Moscow breached the treaty by testing a prohibited ground-launched cruise missile.

“The response by the Obama administration was zero, so what encouragement does that give to our adversaries? It says, ‘cheat and succeed,’ ‘don’t enter into treaties with the United States and succeed.'” Bolton said. “What we’re going to say is if you’re in a treaty with the United States, we’re going to abide by it … and anybody else who want to sign a treaty with the United States is going to adhere to it, or there will be consequences.”

“It was always burning, since the world’s been turning.”

Apologies to Billy Joel.  But Trump really didn’t start this fire of incivility.  Nor did he ever preach violence.  Or racial animosity.  Or economic injustice.  He doesn’t roll that way.  Never has.  Never will.  He fights.  Hard.  But the characterization and narrative of him being unfit, racist, and violent is absurd. 

Don’t tell that to your leftist friends and their biased media allies.  They want you to believe that Trump did start the fire.  All the fires.  Not only did he start them, but he’s responsible for everything the left perceives as wrong with our world.

Everything.

If you’re a leftist, and particularly a media leftist, think of what you’ve blamed him for.  It’s a staggering list.  A list of deceit from the left that may never end.  Treason with Russia, sexually assaulting numerous women, starting fights; he’s racist, misogynistic, hates immigrants, cheats on his taxes, cheated in business, uses the presidency to enrich his family and companies.  He incited the pipe bomb violence and the synagogue murders. 

Start with número uno: Trump colluding with Russia to steal the election from Hillary.  A more deceit-filled, stupid narrative may never have been pushed by the Democratic media slaves.  Ever.  Yet it’s still alive after two years of nonstop coverage and proclamation.  It’s like the return of the living dead.  It never stops coming – even though there is zero evidence of any such collusion happening.  Zero.  Yet the geniuses in our leftist media will never admit there is no evidence.  Jake Tapper, Joe Scarborough, and Rachel Maddow have gotten richer off this giant fake scandal than any con man ever could have.  They reported it daily, breathlessly implying treason, a stolen election, an unfit president, a man for no seasons.

Rumor has it there was a video of Trump telling a Russian official to go tell Putin that after the election, he would have more latitude to do what Russia wanted.  But CNN and our leftist media could never find it.  Oh, wait.  That was the video they never played because Obama was caught saying that on a hot mic.

As to the rest of the list, it was all made up as well; none of these things has any evidence to back it up.  The media meme they wanted us all to believe: orange man bad.  They have pretended there is a new scandal virtually every week, making it up out of thin air.  Often, they recycle them.

Nope.  Trump didn’t start the fire. 

The elite leftist Democrat-media-NeverTrump complex did.  And those within it did so in a manner that has virtually destroyed their credibility, their minds, perhaps their souls.  Recall if you will the many “journalists” and “news organizations” who made the claim they would not do objective coverage of Trump because he was so “dangerous.”  According to them, they saw a man so vile, so crude, so extreme, so awful, and so disastrous in his thinking that they would not give him the benefit of fair coverage.  This was an assault led by the so-called paper of record, by one Jim Rutenburg on August 7, 2016.  It became the default position of our leftist media.

Recall if you will the Sea Island Conference, where the tech lords, many major media figures, and a host of NeverTrumps met on a posh Georgia island in order to stop Trump from going farther.

Recall the day after the election, when the NYT actually apologized to its readers, and the nation, for being so biased and so awful with its lack of correct journalistic practice.  Quote the Times: ”[We will] rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.  That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor.”

Heh.  Anyone who believed that needs a share of my expensive bridge.  Ninety-two percent negative in the face of a great, ascending economy, and some of the most monumental foreign policy achievements in the past 40 years.

Do you remember the video some brave person released showing Google execs and some underlings lamenting the election of Trump?  We could have called it “The Day After.”  The video was as embarrassing as that movie.  My take: a bunch of self-serving, self-unaware tech nerd millionaires with propellers on their heads whining about what more they could have done, and about how they would have to suck it up and be even more dishonest.

So dear leftists.  Dear media malaprops.  Dear tech lords.  Dear Democrat ick Party.  Trump didn’t start the fire.  You did.  You and your vileness.  You and your self-proclaimed elite smarts.  Your self-projection of superiority.  Your pretense of smug self-righteousness. 

Recapping, consider Donald Trump’s opponents.  The Republican establishment.  The bloated Hillary machine.  The fake news old media.  And, of course, the tech lords and their platforms. 

Let me add: these tech lords went from “Don’t Be Evil” to (I paraphrase) “Let’s use our power and money to further the (evil) leftist agenda” in less than a decade.  They were, and are, all in with the destruction of Trump.  They are all in for the destruction of center-right thinking.  The current tech giants are embarrassing, using their power in a way far worse than Microsoft ever did.  They are getting away with it right in front of our eyes.  Their hubris has no end.  It’s too bad George Gilder’s new vision of a world without Google can’t come more quickly.  Let’s hope they are reined in before they do irrevocable harm to the U.S. and the world.

Coming back to the point, in order to win, Trump had to fight all these giants.  Big, ugly, powerful giants.

He won.  He beat them all.  It’s one of the true electoral miracles of our time.  As if God decided He would intervene.  A lot of us on the center-right pitched in.  Enough of us joined the Trump train early on.  And he keeps on winning. 

Thank God. 

He was clearly the right choice.  He didn’t start this rancor, but he sure fought all the right people to a standstill.  Many of them have ruined their own lives, professions, and reputations.  While Trump helps amazingly good things happen for our country in spite of them, they keep lighting fires. 

No, these are not Trump’s fires; these are the fires of the left.  They manufacture outrage to regain power.  The left’s ugliness is unprecedented in these times.  Leftists’ blaming Trump and the center-right for everything is sick.  It’s been an epic battle to watch as Trump builds things while they try to burn them, as Trump extinguishes one flame after another while they blame him for the fires they set.  When the smoke finally rises, like Churchill, Trump will be seen as one of the great men and movers of his times.

Image credit: Flickr.

“It was always burning, since the world’s been turning.”

Apologies to Billy Joel.  But Trump really didn’t start this fire of incivility.  Nor did he ever preach violence.  Or racial animosity.  Or economic injustice.  He doesn’t roll that way.  Never has.  Never will.  He fights.  Hard.  But the characterization and narrative of him being unfit, racist, and violent is absurd. 

Don’t tell that to your leftist friends and their biased media allies.  They want you to believe that Trump did start the fire.  All the fires.  Not only did he start them, but he’s responsible for everything the left perceives as wrong with our world.

Everything.

If you’re a leftist, and particularly a media leftist, think of what you’ve blamed him for.  It’s a staggering list.  A list of deceit from the left that may never end.  Treason with Russia, sexually assaulting numerous women, starting fights; he’s racist, misogynistic, hates immigrants, cheats on his taxes, cheated in business, uses the presidency to enrich his family and companies.  He incited the pipe bomb violence and the synagogue murders. 

Start with número uno: Trump colluding with Russia to steal the election from Hillary.  A more deceit-filled, stupid narrative may never have been pushed by the Democratic media slaves.  Ever.  Yet it’s still alive after two years of nonstop coverage and proclamation.  It’s like the return of the living dead.  It never stops coming – even though there is zero evidence of any such collusion happening.  Zero.  Yet the geniuses in our leftist media will never admit there is no evidence.  Jake Tapper, Joe Scarborough, and Rachel Maddow have gotten richer off this giant fake scandal than any con man ever could have.  They reported it daily, breathlessly implying treason, a stolen election, an unfit president, a man for no seasons.

Rumor has it there was a video of Trump telling a Russian official to go tell Putin that after the election, he would have more latitude to do what Russia wanted.  But CNN and our leftist media could never find it.  Oh, wait.  That was the video they never played because Obama was caught saying that on a hot mic.

As to the rest of the list, it was all made up as well; none of these things has any evidence to back it up.  The media meme they wanted us all to believe: orange man bad.  They have pretended there is a new scandal virtually every week, making it up out of thin air.  Often, they recycle them.

Nope.  Trump didn’t start the fire. 

The elite leftist Democrat-media-NeverTrump complex did.  And those within it did so in a manner that has virtually destroyed their credibility, their minds, perhaps their souls.  Recall if you will the many “journalists” and “news organizations” who made the claim they would not do objective coverage of Trump because he was so “dangerous.”  According to them, they saw a man so vile, so crude, so extreme, so awful, and so disastrous in his thinking that they would not give him the benefit of fair coverage.  This was an assault led by the so-called paper of record, by one Jim Rutenburg on August 7, 2016.  It became the default position of our leftist media.

Recall if you will the Sea Island Conference, where the tech lords, many major media figures, and a host of NeverTrumps met on a posh Georgia island in order to stop Trump from going farther.

Recall the day after the election, when the NYT actually apologized to its readers, and the nation, for being so biased and so awful with its lack of correct journalistic practice.  Quote the Times: ”[We will] rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.  That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor.”

Heh.  Anyone who believed that needs a share of my expensive bridge.  Ninety-two percent negative in the face of a great, ascending economy, and some of the most monumental foreign policy achievements in the past 40 years.

Do you remember the video some brave person released showing Google execs and some underlings lamenting the election of Trump?  We could have called it “The Day After.”  The video was as embarrassing as that movie.  My take: a bunch of self-serving, self-unaware tech nerd millionaires with propellers on their heads whining about what more they could have done, and about how they would have to suck it up and be even more dishonest.

So dear leftists.  Dear media malaprops.  Dear tech lords.  Dear Democrat ick Party.  Trump didn’t start the fire.  You did.  You and your vileness.  You and your self-proclaimed elite smarts.  Your self-projection of superiority.  Your pretense of smug self-righteousness. 

Recapping, consider Donald Trump’s opponents.  The Republican establishment.  The bloated Hillary machine.  The fake news old media.  And, of course, the tech lords and their platforms. 

Let me add: these tech lords went from “Don’t Be Evil” to (I paraphrase) “Let’s use our power and money to further the (evil) leftist agenda” in less than a decade.  They were, and are, all in with the destruction of Trump.  They are all in for the destruction of center-right thinking.  The current tech giants are embarrassing, using their power in a way far worse than Microsoft ever did.  They are getting away with it right in front of our eyes.  Their hubris has no end.  It’s too bad George Gilder’s new vision of a world without Google can’t come more quickly.  Let’s hope they are reined in before they do irrevocable harm to the U.S. and the world.

Coming back to the point, in order to win, Trump had to fight all these giants.  Big, ugly, powerful giants.

He won.  He beat them all.  It’s one of the true electoral miracles of our time.  As if God decided He would intervene.  A lot of us on the center-right pitched in.  Enough of us joined the Trump train early on.  And he keeps on winning. 

Thank God. 

He was clearly the right choice.  He didn’t start this rancor, but he sure fought all the right people to a standstill.  Many of them have ruined their own lives, professions, and reputations.  While Trump helps amazingly good things happen for our country in spite of them, they keep lighting fires. 

No, these are not Trump’s fires; these are the fires of the left.  They manufacture outrage to regain power.  The left’s ugliness is unprecedented in these times.  Leftists’ blaming Trump and the center-right for everything is sick.  It’s been an epic battle to watch as Trump builds things while they try to burn them, as Trump extinguishes one flame after another while they blame him for the fires they set.  When the smoke finally rises, like Churchill, Trump will be seen as one of the great men and movers of his times.

Image credit: Flickr.