Category: US Politics

On Tuesday, Saagar Enjeti of The Daily Caller uncovered a copy of a flyer for the farewell party for former FBI director James Comey’s assistant, Josh Campbell. Here it is:

Note the ridiculousness of the statement on the flyer that colleagues will “celebrate his new endeavor defending the Bureau as a CNN Law Enforcement Analyst!”

That’s a problem for CNN, and it’s a problem for the FBI. First off, CNN should be insulted to hire someone whose entire job will presumably be defending the FBI from outside assault – wouldn’t a law enforcement analyst, you know, analyze law enforcement? It’s also a problem for the FBI – your job at the FBI isn’t to defend the FBI, but to enforce the law. Once your job becomes “defender of the institution,” you’re at risk of corrupting the goal on behalf of the organization.

If you want to give the impression that the FBI serves the people and not itself, and that it doesn’t have its own political agenda, this isn’t the way to do it.

President Donald Trump ridiculed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Monday, calling her the GOP’s “secret weapon” in the upcoming 2018 midterm elections.

Speaking at a factory in Ohio, Trump slammed Pelosi for calling the $1,000-plus bonuses and wage increases that American workers are receiving from the GOP tax reform, “crumbs,” and “pathetic.”

“Nancy Pelosi again said that’s ‘crumbs’,” Trump told the crowd. “Well, she’s a rich woman who lives in a big, beautiful house in California who wants to give all of your money away.”

“She’s our secret weapon. I just hope they [the Democrats] don’t change her. She’s really out there. And I’m supposed to make a deal with her?”

WATCH:

A child sex abuse ring operating out of a circus school in western Sydney, Australia, forced young boys under the age of eight to undergo sadistic “blood rituals.”

According to The Sun, “four women, two men, and a teenage girl will face 127 charges relating to the alleged ongoing torture between 2014 and 2016 in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales.”

The Arcade Circus promotes itself as a “family friendly environment” that offers classes in juggling, aerial skills, acrobatics and unicycle riding. The circus training school website says: “All students are treated as equals and every student will feel welcome from their first day.”

After several reports of the sex abuse ring, detectives from the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad began investigating in July of last year. Arrests were made on Monday.

Details of the alleged abuse were not released, however the charges are staggering.

“A 58-year-old woman, is listed to appear in Penrith Local Court on today,” reports The Sun. “She has been charged with 43 offenses, including aggravated sexual assault of a child under 10, sexual intercourse with a child under 10 and aggravated kidnapping.”

A lawyer representing four of the people charged with the horrific crimes told a court they all say “we didn’t do it.”

More from The Sun:

Three women and a man will face 69 charges relating to the alleged ongoing abuse of the boys, who were all under eight years old and connected to the school, between 2014 and 2016.

The four accused are linked to a circus school in Katoomba, around 100 kilometres west of Sydney’s CBD in the New South Wales Blue Mountains.

Solicitor Bryan Wrench appeared on behalf of the arrested three women aged 58, 29 and 26 and a 52-year-old man at the Penrith Local Court this afternoon.

“My first application today is that I would like it specifically noted that we are entering pleas of not guilty for all sequences, in all matters,” Mr. Wrench told Magistrate Stephen Corry. “They simply say we didn’t do it and there’s another side to the story [presented] by police and the media.”

Earlier this year, the famous circus clown who played “Grandma” confessed to coercing a 16-year-old teenage performer to strip and pose naked for pornographic pictures in 2004.

NBC Sports analyst and former NFL coach Tony Dungy has been hit with a backlash after making approving statements about Philadelphia Eagle’s Quarterback Nick Foles’ Christian faith.

On-air, Dungy suggested Foles’ faith would help him play with confidence and boost his performance. He echoed this strain of thought on social media and reported what Foles, who is likewise open about his Christian faith, told him:

This was enough to set-off the perpetually offended. One Twitter user, for example, tagged Dungy’s employer and stated that it was “unbelievable” for the analyst to “spout this nonsense on the air.”

Dungy did not remain silent, but responded to the criticism.

“NBC pays me to express my opinion,” he wrote. “And it was my opinion that Nick Foles would play well because his Christian faith would allow him to to play with confidence. And that he’s a good QB. I think I was right on both counts.”

Houston-based sports writer Stephanie Stradley also chimed-in with discontent over the former coach’s comments. “I’m just not wanting it as a part of football analysis,” she said.

“But if he tells me Christ says that to him, I shouldn’t report it???” Dungy pointedly asked.

The backlash was not constrained to social media. Reacting to the mild Christian-centered commentary, Kyle Koster, writing at The Big Lead, said NBC and the public should check Dungy when his religious beliefs “seep into his analyst role.”

“Dungy expressing his beliefs on his personal time and platform is one thing. And even if I disagree with him sometimes, I appreciate his candor and willingness to open himself up for criticism. But when his beliefs seep into his analyst role — either unintentionally or otherwise — they should be checked, both by NBC and the public,” wrote Koster, in a piece titled, “Is Tony Dungy Analyzing or Evangelizing When It Comes to Nick Foles?”

At Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio, a satirical play about one Guatemalan illegal immigrant who wound up at the college drew an incendiary response, forcing the playwright to cancel the play’s production, while at the same time the students celebrate a new student group called “the whiteness group,” whose founder reportedly said at the group’s first meeting, “Racism is a white people problem.”

Professor Wendy Mcleod’s latest play, The Good Samaritan, was partly drawn from the real-life story of a group of men in Marion County smuggling Guatemalan workers and forcing them to work on an egg farm for up to 12 hours per day. Mcleod noted in an email to the college about the play that the immigrants “had been working without pay and living in dire conditions.” As the Kenyon Collegian reports, the play poses the question of what would happen if one of the illegal immigrants escaped from the egg farm and is found by a white student who finds him in the backseat of her car, prompting a discussion in a dorm room by white students deciding what to do.

After deciding to cancel the play after the fury expressed by members of the campus community over the portrayal of the illegal immigrant, Mcleod sent the student body an email, stating, “I know some struggled with script’s satiric elements, but Freud aptly wrote that humor is about ‘bringing the repressed to light.’”

That prompted this sanctimonious response from the editors of the Kenyon Collegian: “The issue here is not one of repression — which can be a self-inflicted act — but of systemic oppression. Mcleod fails to take responsibility for her role in perpetuating damaging stereotypes in a time when profound dangers face those who are undocumented immigrants in this country … In an age when the real lives of immigrants are used as bargaining chips in congressional budget meetings, isn’t it time we take responsibility for our own actions? Isn’t it time that those individuals who hold positions of power are held accountable?”

Meanwhile, a student named Juniper Cruz created a student group called “The Whiteness Group.” The group’s rules state, “No white person can ask a person of color questions; white people must try to answer their questions for themselves. And no spreading rumors about what people say during the meetings.” At the first meeting, some attendees defined whiteness as “power,” or as “lacking a historical perspective.”

Rachel Kessler, the priest-in-charge and chaplain of the Harcourt Parish, who attended the second meeting of the group, emailed the Kenyon Collegian, “As white people, we can become paralyzed by our sense of shame for our racial privilege or by our fear of accidentally saying something problematic. Neither of those impulses are actually productive for combating racism and white supremacy.”

When defenders of Mcleod’s right to produce her play articulated their concerns, they were shot down by students; after Professor Fred Baumann told a panel discussing the cancellation of the play, “Today is the end of [liberal education at Kenyon College],” one student stated on Facebook that if liberal education “necessitates the silencing of marginalized communities, the protection of racism, and our complicity with both, then let the damned thing die.”

Mcleod sent a January 6 email to the campus suggesting a public forum to discuss the play; she intended to explain “what inspired and informed the play, the story it tells, and how comedy can be a force for change.” She later said she would not attend “in the hopes that the community can get to issues larger than a single play.”

The Latinx student association Adelante issued a public statement reading:

It is inexcusable that you fail to offer an apology to the group directly affected by the representations in your play, those of us who, on top of constantly justifying and affirming our presence on this campus, have to now bear the emotional and psychological labor of expressing to the wider Kenyon community, within the confines of ‘civil discourse,’ why these misrepresentations are detrimental … it would be an opportunity for yourself, as well as everyone in attendance, to genuinely hear the voices of Latinx youths, voices that have been historically silenced.