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Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the ranking Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, discussed his $150 million lawsuit against McClatchy News.

According to the California Republican, this was a part of a broader campaign to “clean up all of the mess.”

“[A] couple of reporters there were the biggest perpetrators of the Russia hoax,” Nunes said. “And don’t forget — they also targeted the National Rifle Association. They targeted a lawyer, Cleta Mitchell. So, all of this was done in concert while they were slandering and attacking me, defaming me, attacking Republicans. And the whole time, they were getting this information from someone. And so part of this lawsuit is not only do they need to retract everything they did against me, but they also need to come clean with the American people. Retract all of their fake news stories. And so this is part of the broader clean-up.”

“Remember a few weeks ago, I filed against Twitter — that they were censoring conservatives,” he continued. “McClatchy is one of the biggest offenders of this. But we’re coming after the rest of them. I think people are just beginning to wake up now. I’m serious. I’m coming to clean up all of the mess. So, if you’re out there and you lied, and you defamed, we’re going to come after you.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

Iranian lawmakers opened a new session of the country’s Parliament on Tuesday with chants of “Death to America.” The taunt was meant as a response to the White House’s designation of Iran’s elite paramilitary Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) a foreign terrorist organization.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council also registered its displeasure by calling the U.S. Central Command, also known as CENTCOM, and all its forces as “terrorists”, and labeling the U.S. a “supporter of terrorism.”

Iran’s parliament then played its part, with members dressed in the IRGC uniform as they chanted:

#Iran lawmakers wear uniform to support #IRGC https://t.co/4aLWIq3O0y pic.twitter.com/oLWYGbPaGu

— IRNA News Agency (@IrnaEnglish) April 9, 2019

#Iran‘s MPs chant “death to America” in today’s Majlis session, all in IRGC uniform following U.S. designating #IRGC a terrorist group pic.twitter.com/vPXYCwrYgp

— Sobhan Hassanvand (@Hassanvand) April 9, 2019

Monday’s decision to designate the Iranian corps as a terrorist outfit is the first time that the U.S. has designated an entity of another government as a terrorist organization, placing a group with vast economic resources that answers only to Iran’s supreme leader in the same category as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

“This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft,” President Donald Trump said in announcing the measure.

The response in Iran was swift and to the point just 24-hours later.

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani denounced the U.S. decision as the “climax of stupidity and ignorance.” Supreme National Security Council’s spokesman, Keivan Khosravi, said that going forward, “any unusual move by American forces in the region will be perceived as the behavior by a terrorist group.” He did not elaborate.

Iranian newspapers carried reports of the U.S. move along with bellicose commentary on their front pages.

The Guard-affiliated Javan daily said any attack on Revolutionary Guard bases and facilities will be “recognized as a right” for Iran to respond. The hard-line Kayhan newspaper said it gave Iranians “permission” to kill American military personnel.

State-owned IRAN daily went a step further, saying the U.S. move was a “designation of the entire Iranian nation” as terrorist.

AP contributed to this report

Follow Simon Kent on Twitter: Follow @SunSimonKent or e-mail to: skent@breitbart.com

 

Wall Street is not happy with President Donald Trump’s plans to nominate Herman Cain and Stephen Moore to the Federal Reserve board of governors, according to a CNBC Survey published Monday.

The survey asked fund managers, economists, and strategists employed at Wall Street firms whether Moore and Cain should be confirmed. Sixty percent said the Senate should not confirm Moore and 53 percent said it should not confirm Cain.

Just thirty-four percent said the Senate should approve Moore, with 6 percent saying they were not sure or did not know. Forty-percent said Cain should be confirmed, with 6 percent saying they weren’t sure.

Trump has not yet formally appointed Moore or Cain but has said he intends to do so.

Of course, being unpopular on Wall Street is not likely to hurt the chances of Cain and Moore to be nominated or confirmed. President Donald Trump has shown a willingness to buck Wall Street on immigration and corporate media mergers. And Wall Street overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton over Trump in the 2016 election.

Wall Street knows its influence over the president or the Senate here is limited. Fifty-one percent of respondents say the Senate will confirm Moore. Just 19 percent predict he would not be confirmed. Forty-nine percent expect Cain would win Senate approval, while 28 percent predict he would not.

Trump’s public criticism of the Federal Reserve is no longer as unpopular on Wall Street as it once way. Sixty-one percent of those surveyed said Trump’s remarks were inappropriate, with 39 percent saying they were appropriate.  In July, the last time CNBC asked about Trump’s Fed comments, 83 percent disapproved and only 15 percent approved.

On the other hand, Wall Street also is becoming more convinced that Trump may actually be influencing the Fed with his comments. Back in November, 83 percent said Trump’s comments had “no effect” on monetary policy. That dropped to 65 percent in the most recent survey. The number saying Trump’s criticisms make rate hikes less likely rose to 22 percent from 14 percent in November.

Between the two surveys, The Fed changed its approach to monetary policy, going from a policy of gradual rate increases to putting rate changes on pause until evidence of higher inflation or lower growth emerges. That brought the Fed more in line with the president’s views, although recently Trump said the Fed should actually cut rates to accelerate economic growth.

In other words, Wall Street took notice of the Fed changing its policies after Trump blasted last year’s hikes.

 

The Jakarta Post on Monday reported on a rash of desecrations directed at Christian graves in the city of Yogyakarta, a spree some local residents believe was a targeted act of intolerance rather than random vandalism. A rising tide of hardline Islamism has become a major factor in the impending Indonesian presidential election.

The Jakarta Post quoted speculation from local officials that homeless people might have taken the wooden crosses from at least 11 graves in the Bethesda Hospital cemetery and used them for firewood, but the families of the deceased were skeptical, noting crosses have never been stolen before even though homeless people have long made camp near the cemetery. The wooden crosses are temporary markers placed on graves for the first thousand days after a funeral, in accordance with local custom.

One family member thought his loved one’s grave might have been desecrated to “provoke Christians living in and around Yogyakarta,” which the Jakarta Post described as a “de facto Islamic sultanate once known as a beacon of tolerance.”

Some other crosses and gravestones were vandalized last December, including the graves of 19 Christians and three Muslims. The police captured the perpetrator of one incident, describing him as a “former psychiatric hospital patient” who used a hammer to destroy a cross.

The Jakarta Post explained the Yogyakarta region is uneasy after a viral video caught Muslims refusing to rent a house to Christians in a village called Karet, based on a long-revoked local ordinance that forbids non-Muslims from owning or renting property in the village.

Indonesia, in general, has been dealing with a rising tide of Islamist intolerance after years of being hailed as a positive example of pluralism in a Muslim-majority nation. Incumbent president Joko Widodo alarmed human rights groups by tapping a 75-year-old hardline Muslim cleric named Ma’ruf Amin as his running mate in the 2019 election, which is now less than two weeks away. Widodo’s old friend and successor as governor of Jakarta, Baskuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, was jailed for blaspheming against Islam in 2017 after massive demonstrations by angry Muslims.

The optimistic take on Widodo’s re-election strategy is that he is walking a difficult line between tolerance and Islamism, hoping to win over conservative Muslim voters with a few showy displays of Muslim piety and his choice of running mate while planning to keep a more moderate course if he wins re-election. In this analysis, Widodo is no longer the secularist he used to be, but he might at least be able to hold extremist elements at bay.

The pessimistic view is that Widodo has been captured by Islamism, either becoming more of a true believer himself or concluding he can only stay in office by courting hardliners – who have grown increasingly influential among young Indonesians through social media – and giving them, through Amin, a strong hand in shaping the next Indonesian government.

The crosses on graves in an Italian cemetery in Pieve di Cento have been covered with black cloth so as not to offend those who may come from another religion.

The cemetery, which is located in Bologna in a town of around 7,000 people, has also installed motorised blackout curtains in a local chapel following renovations to hide Roman Catholic symbols during ceremonies involving other denominations, Il Giornale reports.

Following the reports of the coverings of the symbols, many have expressed criticism including Forza Italia (Forward Italy) deputy Galeazzo Bignami who denounced the move saying those looking not to offend were disrespecting Christian values and he added, “even more so the memory of our dead, hiding them behind ‘motorised tents’ in a cemetery to avoid offending other religions.”

“If the administrators are ashamed of our tradition and our culture, they should go and hide themselves and not just behind a motorised tent. If they are not able to bring respect for the living at least they have the decency to leave the dead alone and not involve them in foolishness,” he added.

Italy’s League Party Proposes Law Requiring Crucifixes in All Public Buildings https://t.co/ChduQ5b8vm

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 26, 2018

Conservative-populist Brothers of Italy (FdI) leader Giorgia Meloni also commented on the case saying, “Using the excuse of respect for others, they lack respect for our Catholic culture and our traditions. Now the Left is beyond fanaticism. This is ideological delirium.”

The incident is also unlikely to have been well met by populist Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s League party which proposed in 2018 to require a crucifix be hung in all public buildings including train stations, airports, universities, and embassies.

The covering up of the crosses is also not the first time Italians have covered up statues and monuments so as not to offend those from different cultures.

In 2016, the-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had statues at the Capitoline Museum covered entirely so as not to offend Iranian President Hassam Rouhani who had come to Italy on a state visit. The move was met with widespread derision from the public on social media.

The Archbishop of Florence has announced he will be selling 86,000 square feet of property to a Muslim group in order for them to build a mosque in Sesto Fiorentino.

Cardinal of Florence, Giuseppe Betori, approved of the sale saying, “The transformation of Western societies into multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multi-religious societies is a fact and a future that inevitably awaits us.”

In the northern city of Bergamo, another Muslim association has spent nearly half a million euros on an old church, which they also plan to convert into a mosque.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com

In an astonishing instance of judicial activism, a federal judge has ruled that unvetted Central American caravan migrants seeking U.S. asylum no longer have to wait it out on Mexico. 

According to NBC News:

A federal judge in California issued an order Monday blocking the Trump administration’s policy of returning some asylum-seekers to Mexico while they wait for a court appearance.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg’s nationwide ruling will not go into effect until Friday, to give the administration time to appeal.

Outgoing Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen announced the launch of the Migrant Protection Protocols in San Diego, the country’s busiest border crossing, in January. Under the policy, Customs and Border Protection officers and agents have the authority to turn around asylum-seekers crossing in the San Diego and El Paso sectors. Families seeking asylum had previously been allowed to stay in the United States while awaiting their court hearings.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of 11 asylum-seekers from Central America had argued that being sent back across the border could expose them to “undue risk to their lives or freedom.”

So they can all come live and work here to wait out their nearly always meritless asylum cases in court, something that gives them a minimum of several free years of worry-free U.S. residency at zero cost. Legal immigrants, on the other hand, will continue to have to wait it out in their home countries with their applications to move here, with ten-year or more backlogs, as well as pay high administrative costs if they want to do it the legal way.

Any questions now as to why a million people are planning to enter the U.S. without papers in this year alone? With a ruling like that, it’s an open bar for those who want to enter the U.S. without vetting.

President Trump railed against the illogic of it all here:

 

A 9th Circuit Judge just ruled that Mexico is too dangerous for migrants. So unfair to the U.S. OUT OF CONTROL! https://t.co/XF8o3jMDle

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 9, 2019

 

Not only is it profoundly unfair to those who seek to enter the U.S. the legal way, it’s stunningly unfair to Americans here who will inevitably fall victim to the crimes and costs of this legally sanctioned unvetted migration. The judge’s ruling allows all askers in, premised on a pontification about asylum seekers being unsafe in Mexico. The reality is, they aren’t unsafe in Mexico, if they go to a city such as Guanajuato, which has less crime than the U.S., but yes, they have some risks in border areas, precisely because they have involvement with gangs, smugglers and cartels at the edge of the U.S. border. Fact is, all borderlands, worldwide, areunsafe. They’re unsafe because people there are unsorted and unvetted. The U.S. border areas of the U.S. are as unsafe as the ones in Mexico. Telling the asylum seekers – and the criminals they have paid to smuggle them in – that they can all come into the states now and everyone will just naturally be safe isn’t going to happen. What will happen is that the so-called asylum seekers will bring the unsafeness of the borderlands to the U.S. heartland. The judge doesn’t address that issue, or the rights of Americans to be safe in their homeland, too. Supposedly, we have invincible cops to take care of the whole thing and it’s not his job to consider whether they will be overwhelmed by a million unvetted people rolling in.

As Richard Fernandez notes in a must-read essay from a couple days ago, vetting matters, and walls matter – walls are there to rationalize information, to sort out people fleeing from people persecuting. A judge’s rejecting of the legitimacy of walls renders actual asylum meaningless:

What’s the use of fleeing to the United States if MS-13 murderers can simply follow in the victims’ wake? As someone noted on Twitter, ”If America is to be a place of asylum then there has to be a way to discriminate between those who flee danger and those who are the danger. The border is the only place for that to happen.”

With an open border and all askers now entitled by a leftist judge to enter, the question now is ‘asylum from what’?

 

 

 

Image credit: AFP via YouTube, screen shot

In an astonishing instance of judicial activism, a federal judge has ruled that unvetted Central American caravan migrants seeking U.S. asylum no longer have to wait it out on Mexico. 

According to NBC News:

A federal judge in California issued an order Monday blocking the Trump administration’s policy of returning some asylum-seekers to Mexico while they wait for a court appearance.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg’s nationwide ruling will not go into effect until Friday, to give the administration time to appeal.

Outgoing Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen announced the launch of the Migrant Protection Protocols in San Diego, the country’s busiest border crossing, in January. Under the policy, Customs and Border Protection officers and agents have the authority to turn around asylum-seekers crossing in the San Diego and El Paso sectors. Families seeking asylum had previously been allowed to stay in the United States while awaiting their court hearings.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of 11 asylum-seekers from Central America had argued that being sent back across the border could expose them to “undue risk to their lives or freedom.”

So they can all come live and work here to wait out their nearly always meritless asylum cases in court, something that gives them a minimum of several free years of worry-free U.S. residency at zero cost. Legal immigrants, on the other hand, will continue to have to wait it out in their home countries with their applications to move here, with ten-year or more backlogs, as well as pay high administrative costs if they want to do it the legal way.

Any questions now as to why a million people are planning to enter the U.S. without papers in this year alone? With a ruling like that, it’s an open bar for those who want to enter the U.S. without vetting.

President Trump railed against the illogic of it all here:

 

A 9th Circuit Judge just ruled that Mexico is too dangerous for migrants. So unfair to the U.S. OUT OF CONTROL! https://t.co/XF8o3jMDle

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 9, 2019

 

Not only is it profoundly unfair to those who seek to enter the U.S. the legal way, it’s stunningly unfair to Americans here who will inevitably fall victim to the crimes and costs of this legally sanctioned unvetted migration. The judge’s ruling allows all askers in, premised on a pontification about asylum seekers being unsafe in Mexico. The reality is, they aren’t unsafe in Mexico, if they go to a city such as Guanajuato, which has less crime than the U.S., but yes, they have some risks in border areas, precisely because they have involvement with gangs, smugglers and cartels at the edge of the U.S. border. Fact is, all borderlands, worldwide, areunsafe. They’re unsafe because people there are unsorted and unvetted. The U.S. border areas of the U.S. are as unsafe as the ones in Mexico. Telling the asylum seekers – and the criminals they have paid to smuggle them in – that they can all come into the states now and everyone will just naturally be safe isn’t going to happen. What will happen is that the so-called asylum seekers will bring the unsafeness of the borderlands to the U.S. heartland. The judge doesn’t address that issue, or the rights of Americans to be safe in their homeland, too. Supposedly, we have invincible cops to take care of the whole thing and it’s not his job to consider whether they will be overwhelmed by a million unvetted people rolling in.

As Richard Fernandez notes in a must-read essay from a couple days ago, vetting matters, and walls matter – walls are there to rationalize information, to sort out people fleeing from people persecuting. A judge’s rejecting of the legitimacy of walls renders actual asylum meaningless:

What’s the use of fleeing to the United States if MS-13 murderers can simply follow in the victims’ wake? As someone noted on Twitter, ”If America is to be a place of asylum then there has to be a way to discriminate between those who flee danger and those who are the danger. The border is the only place for that to happen.”

With an open border and all askers now entitled by a leftist judge to enter, the question now is ‘asylum from what’?

 

 

 

Image credit: AFP via YouTube, screen shot

Sometimes a story comes along that leaves you not knowing whether to laugh or cry. This is one of them.

It seems like something that was ripped from a satirical news site, like Babylon Bee or The Onion: Democrats in Washington have voted to help protect kittens from cruel treatment, just a month after voting down legislation to save live human children from even worse situations.

But it’s not a parody. It’s real life, and it just happened in our nation’s Capitol.

“Four Democratic senators who voted against protecting newborns sponsored a bill designed to protect baby cats,” the Washington Free Beacon reported on Thursday.

“Senators Jeff Merkley, Cory Booker, Gary Peters, and Tom Udall cosponsored (the KITTEN Act of 2019) designed to put an end to animal testing using kittens.”

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Recognize those names? They’re all Democrats, but they have something else in common.

The KITTEN Act “was introduced about a week after all of those Democratic senators voted to block legislation that would have required doctors to provide medical care to newborns who survive abortion,” the Free Beacon noted.

In February, nearly all Democrats voted against the Born Alive Abortions Survivors Protection Act. As you may recall, that measure wasn’t about “routine” abortions, but was meant to treat live-born children from failed abortions as human beings who have a right to emergency medical care.

Yes, we’re officially at a point where the left feels more compelled to protect baby cats than baby humans — something that several conservatives were quick to lament.

“There is nothing more valuable than human life, and as a society we must defend it at every stage,” noted Lauren Fine, a spokeswoman for Rep. Steve Scalise, the Louisiana Republican who almost lost his own life to a gunman in an attack in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2017.

“It’s unfathomable that Democrats can find time to defend the lives of kittens, but at the same time are vehemently opposed to even the consideration of legislation designed to protect infants born alive during an abortion from being killed,” Fine continued, according to the Free Beacon.

Follow the money, as they say. While animal testing is certainly something that should be reduced, the spending focused on continuing research using tissue from aborted human beings at the same time is rather sobering.

Over $100 million of taxpayer money is spent every year on projects involving fetal tissue — or to put it bluntly, research using organs and parts from aborted babies. Liberals want to increase it, while the current administration has pushed to cut that spending back.

“I find it appalling that Democrats are so out of touch that they refuse to stand up for defenseless babies but are more than eager to defend animals,” Rep. Sean Duffy, a Republican from Wisconsin, told the Free Beacon.

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“When Democrats want to talk about ending ‘taxpayer-funded kitten slaughter,’ they say it’s just common sense,” a Republican aide commented to Free Beacon. “When millions of pro-life Americans want to end taxpayer subsidies to the nation’s largest abortion business, Democrats rush to call it an extremist agenda.”

If there was any doubt about how messed up our society and representatives are in 2019, this should clear it up.

Something has gone terribly, appallingly wrong in Washington — and unless America changes course, we could be headed down a very dark path.

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