US intelligence official warns that Chinese government is running covert operation through LinkedIn

A top U.S. counterintelligence official is warning that Chinese espionage agencies are using fake LinkedIn accounts to attempt to get information from Americans with access to government and commercial secrets, Reuters news reported.

Intelligence and law enforcement officials have informed LinkedIn that China is aggressively attempting to recruit spies through the popular networking site, William Evanina, director of the U.S. National Counter-Intelligence and Security Center, told Reuters.

The Center’s role includes protecting the U.S. from intelligence and security threats, according to its website.

China’s campaign is contacting “thousands of LinkedIn members at a time,” Evanina told Reuters. He declined to indicate the number of fake accounts that U.S. intelligence has uncovered. He also declined to say how many Americans may have been contacted.

Targets of the recruitment campaign are often experts in the fields of super-computing, nuclear energy, nanotechnology, semi-conductors, stealth technology, health care, hybrid grains, seeds and green energy, the report states.

Chinese intelligence may also use bribery or phony business propositions to entice people, according to the report. One way this is done is by offering academics and scientists payment for scholarly papers. In some cases, they are later pressured into revealing U.S. government or commercial secrets, the report states.

Is this happening in other countries?

German and British authorities have previously warned citizens that Beijing uses LinkedIn to try to recruit spies. According to Reuters, this appears to be the first time a U.S. official has publicly discussed China targeting the U.S. in the same way.

Evanina suggested LinkedIn should follow the actions of Twitter, Google and Facebook — and purge fake accounts with suspected ties to Iranian and Russian intelligence agencies.

“It is highly unusual for a senior U.S. intelligence official to single out an American-owned company by name and publicly recommend it take action,” Reuters stated.

What has LinkedIn said?

Paul Rockwell, LinkedIn’s head of trust and safety, confirmed to Reuters that the company has had discussions with U.S. law enforcement agencies regarding Chinese espionage.

“We are doing everything we can to identify and stop this activity,” Rockwell told the news agency. “We’ve never waited for requests to act and actively identify bad actors and remove bad accounts using information we uncover and intelligence from a variety of sources including government agencies.”

The U.S. maintains that China’s Ministry of State Security works with outside contractors to set up fake accounts that are used to approach potential recruits.

Earlier this month, LinkedIn announced that it took down almosst 40 fake accounts with users who attempted to contact members associated with unidentified political organizations. Rockwell did not indicate if the accounts originated in China, according to the report.

China’s foreign ministry denied Evanina’s allegations, Reuters reported.

via TheBlaze.com – Stories

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Prominent Kentucky Democrat Indicted for Illegal Campaign Contributions

Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (L) and her father Jerry Lundergan (R) / Getty

BY:

Prominent and powerful Kentucky Democrat Jerry Lundergan was indicted Friday for making a series of illegal campaign contributions to his daughter’s campaign.

Federal prosecutors allege that Lundergan made corporate contributions that exceeded the $25,000 limit to Alison Lundergan Grimes’ failed 2014 Senate campaign against Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.). Lundergan has been indicted on 10 counts, while fellow political operate Dale Emmons was indicted on six.

Lundergan Grimes, who serves as Kentucky’s secretary of state and has hinted she might run for governor in 2019, responded to the allegations on Twitter, promising her father would be vindicated.

Lundergan served three terms in the Kentucky House of Representatives, and twice served as chairman of the Kentucky Democratic Party. His final state house term ended in 1989 after he was convicted of using his political influence to secure a no-bid government contract for his catering company. The conviction was late overturned on appeal.

The Lexington businessman soon regained political power by becoming an early supporter and personal friend of Bill Clinton. In 2008, he served as state chairman of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Both Clintons would later campaign for Lundergan Grimes in 2014.

via Washington Free Beacon

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Maine Officials Say No To PETA Request For Memorial Stone For Lobsters

Best way to memorialize them? Steamed with drawn butter. Update to this story.

Via Fox News:

Maine officials on Thursday denied a recent request from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to erect a memorial to remember the lobsters that were lost in a crash last week.

PETA had hoped to erect a 5-foot gravestone to memorialize the “countless sensitive crustaceans” who were killed during the Aug. 22 crash in Brunswick, the animal rights group said.

Police said 7,000 pounds of live lobsters were destroyed, and it’s suspected more than 4,500 lobsters died, according to the Portland Press Herald.

However, Maine Department of Transportation officials said they had to turn down the request, citing safety concerns and regulation rules for busy highways like Route 1, where the crash occurred.

Keep reading…

via Weasel Zippers

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Texas Man Indicted After Allegedly Grabbing Teen’s MAGA Hat at Whataburger

A grand jury in Texas returned a felony indictment against a man accused of grabbing a MAGA hat from a teen’s head at a San Antonio Whataburger in July.

Police arrested 30-year-old Kino Jimenez in July after he allegedly assaulted a teenage boy in a San Antonio Whataburger. The man was seen in a video that went viral, accosting a group of teens because one of them wore a hat showing support for President Donald Trump, Breitbart Texas reported. As the video begins, Jimenez allegedly says, “… supporting the president. You ain’t supporting shit nigga,” and then throws the drink in the face of a 16-year-old boy. With MAGA hat in hand, the man walks away saying “Bitch-ass motherfucker.”

A Bexar County grand jury indicted Jimenez on a State Jail Felony charge of “theft of person,” the San Antonio Express-News reported.

Kino Jimenez, Bexar County Jail mugshot.

Kino Jimenez, Bexar County Jail mugshot.

Hunter Richard, the 16-year-old boy who was allegedly assaulted is a resident of Orlando, Florida, but was visiting friends in San Antonio at the time.

Jimenez is currently out of jail on bond and is scheduled for trial in October. If convicted, the man could face between six months and two years in a Texas prison. He has a criminal history that includes misdemeanor offenses for drug possession and driving while intoxicated. Because he has no felony convictions, the man could receive probation or deferred adjudication, the local newspaper reported.

The accused attacker was also fired from his part-time job at Rumble, a popular San Antonio bar.

The incident drew national attention after Richard’s mother posted the video on Facebook.

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.

via Breitbart News

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Radicalized Democrats: Destroying the Country and Their Own Party

From the wee hours of the morning on November 9, 2016, as they grappled with the sting of President-Elect Donald Trump triumphing over the anointed Queen of the Swamp, Democrats have been radicalizing by the minute.


Objective Americans have witnessed the transformation of JFK-style classical liberals into Marxist protégés even the namesake himself would be proud to call his pupils, not to mention the hostile takeover of the Democratic Party by the “three home-owning multi-millionaire,” Bernie Sanders, and “I’m not an expert on American-Israeli policy, but let me comment on it anyway” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.



The Democratic Party is soon to be more aptly referenced as the Democratic Socialist Party.


And it’s not as if the Democrats don’t have the resolve to combat such a monumental shift to the left.  They’ve certainly been known to fight when something has truly mattered to them – like the times when they fought tooth and nail to unanimously oppose the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, giving citizenship to freed slaves and an equal right to vote for all, respectively.  Or the time when they overwhelmingly opposed abolishing slavery by fighting to kill the 13th Amendment.


If Democrats really opposed the radicalization of their own party, they would fight it, but the quiet truth is that they welcome it.


Whether by choice or necessity, radicalized Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters, and the rest of the bunch welcome the violence of groups like the Alt-Left Antifa thugs, the anti-Americanism being normalized for millions of impressionable young sports fans when athletes kneel during the National Anthem, and the anti-police mentality being homogenized within our inner-city and minority communities by political propagandists like Black Lives Matter. 


Radicalized Democrats welcome the intentional confusion and sexualization of our children through concepts like gender fluidity, pre-teen sexual experimentation, gender-neutral bathrooms and locker rooms, mandatory pornographic sex education, abortions on demand, and more.  These extremist concepts may fly in pockets of San Francisco – the city that hands out tens of thousands of needles each year to homeless drug addicts and has recently been described as dirtier than many third-world countries – but they are resoundingly unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of taxpaying, hardworking, freedom-loving Americans throughout the rest of the country.


Radicalized Democrats welcome the complete and utter degradation of law and order as documented abuses of power and rampant corruption go unpunished because the FBI agents are “with her.”  Just last week, Nancy Pelosi had the temerity to suggest that Democrats – the Party that failed to demand answers for even a single Hillary Clinton corruption scandal – are the party responsible for rooting out corruption.  Nancy has been known to say some idiotic things, but this truly exceeds all expectations of her lunacy.


Not only does the Democrats’ double standard damage their credibility as a party, but it threatens one of the foundational tenants of our society: rule of law.


Radicalized Democrats welcome the erosion of trust in the media and fan the flames of fake news-promulgators like CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.  Consider that even at a time when the distrust of the establishment elite is at an all-time high, a CNN producer was caught on video calling the Trump-Russia story “b——-” while the network continued to run with it as the top story for months.  The radical left, both inside and out of the mainstream media machine, has resorted to lying in an effort to achieve its political goals without regard for the negative consequences it has had and will continue to have on our nation.


Instead of engaging in vigorous and civil debate, radicalized Democrats welcome the totalitarian censorship of ideas they disagree with – whether on college campuses, in the public square, or online through social media.  The left, which claims to stand for freedom of choice, has yet to be held accountable for this censorship blunder.  Instead, leftists have created justification for even more aggressive censorship under the false pretext of fostering “conversational health” and “tolerance,” which is really just leftist code for “agree with me or you will be silenced.”


While political shape-shifters like Obama, Schumer, Pelosi and Clinton opined about the need for strong border policy as recently as 2009, radicalized Democrats now welcome the voluntary abrogation of our national sovereignty and security through unabashed open borders and amnesty-centric immigration policy that, according to data from the Government Accountability Office, equates to 438 “homicide arrests of criminal [illegal] aliens” each and every year since 1955 – more than 25,000 in total.


As opposed to retooling their party platform and political agenda to better appeal to a black community no longer inclined to vote by rote for Democrat, radicalized Democrats have instead continued to encourage the genocide of the black community through the ritualistic annual disbursement of more than 500 million taxpayer dollars to the nation’s largest abortion mill, Planned Parenthood. 


Despite the left’s laughable narrative on Russia, the only obvious subversion of our republic stems from radicalized Democrats’ own network of shadowy multi-billionaire donors like George Soros and Tom Steyer, among others, who seek to undermine and exploit our nation’s electoral process for their own gain.


Radicalized Democrats mandate that pre-teens and teens need parental permission in order to receive a Tylenol from a school nurse or participate in a school-sanctioned field trip to the zoo, while simultaneously demanding that those same girls have the incontrovertible right to a surgical abortion without their parents even being notified.


Radicalized Democrats believe that the same government that is demonstrably incapable of delivering quality health care to America’s approximately 20 million veterans should be responsible for providing health care for nearly 330 million Americans through a “Medicare for All” program – a decision that would lead to care rationing and British-style death panels, to be sure.


As if there weren’t a bridge too far for the left, radicalized Democrats now demand the abolition of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), an agency that, according to President Trump and Senator Lankford, in collaboration with Border Patrol, is responsible for apprehending on average ten terrorists per day trying to enter the United States illegally.


It doesn’t take a sociopolitical expert to follow the signs to the ultimately destructive end that the Democrats’ extremist positions and policies will have on our nation in both the short and long terms.  The real question is why.


Why would Democrats radicalize to the point that they run the risk of destroying the very nation that gives them refuge and prosperity?  The answer is simple: desperation.  The American people have largely woken up to the long con of the left, forcing radicalized Democrats to the realization that on the battlefield of ideas, they lose, and they lose big.


Democrats recognize that if they lose on the battlefield of ideas, they can win only through the smoky cloud of chaos and division, wherein Americans are pitted against each other like  gladiators in the Colosseum.  To this end, the left has been strategically dismantling the bedrock institutions that have made America the freest, most prosperous nation the world has ever known.


While all the eyes should have been focused on the Republicans and how we would embrace Trump’s brand of conservatism, the Democrats fumbled – in truly epic fashion – whatever opportunity they thought they might have had to regain their death grip on the levers of power.


As is common with addicts, the Democrats’ uncontrollable and intensifying desire to regain control and oppose everything coming out of the White House has caused them to reveal the sinister intentions of their party. 


Like drugs and pornography, their addiction to radicalization has become a self-perpetuating devolution, a race to the bottom of sorts, where greater and greater extremes are needed to continue satisfying their appetite for rage and division.  Sadly, society knows the ultimate outcome of addiction: an unyielding downward spiral into total self-destruction – a fate that Democrats may face sooner rather than later, given their current trajectory.


The pending implosion of the Democratic Party is not something that should make conservatives rest easy, as such chaos within a major political Party may ultimately spread to the rest of the country like a cancer.


The radicalization of the Democrats should only serve as further evidence that we are winning and must continue to fight harder on the battlefield of ideas, for freedom’s sake.


Jake Hoffman is the founder, president, and CEO of Rally Forge, one of the nation’s top conservative digital communications and media strategy firms.










From the wee hours of the morning on November 9, 2016, as they grappled with the sting of President-Elect Donald Trump triumphing over the anointed Queen of the Swamp, Democrats have been radicalizing by the minute.


Objective Americans have witnessed the transformation of JFK-style classical liberals into Marxist protégés even the namesake himself would be proud to call his pupils, not to mention the hostile takeover of the Democratic Party by the “three home-owning multi-millionaire,” Bernie Sanders, and “I’m not an expert on American-Israeli policy, but let me comment on it anyway” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.


The Democratic Party is soon to be more aptly referenced as the Democratic Socialist Party.


And it’s not as if the Democrats don’t have the resolve to combat such a monumental shift to the left.  They’ve certainly been known to fight when something has truly mattered to them – like the times when they fought tooth and nail to unanimously oppose the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, giving citizenship to freed slaves and an equal right to vote for all, respectively.  Or the time when they overwhelmingly opposed abolishing slavery by fighting to kill the 13th Amendment.


If Democrats really opposed the radicalization of their own party, they would fight it, but the quiet truth is that they welcome it.


Whether by choice or necessity, radicalized Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters, and the rest of the bunch welcome the violence of groups like the Alt-Left Antifa thugs, the anti-Americanism being normalized for millions of impressionable young sports fans when athletes kneel during the National Anthem, and the anti-police mentality being homogenized within our inner-city and minority communities by political propagandists like Black Lives Matter. 


Radicalized Democrats welcome the intentional confusion and sexualization of our children through concepts like gender fluidity, pre-teen sexual experimentation, gender-neutral bathrooms and locker rooms, mandatory pornographic sex education, abortions on demand, and more.  These extremist concepts may fly in pockets of San Francisco – the city that hands out tens of thousands of needles each year to homeless drug addicts and has recently been described as dirtier than many third-world countries – but they are resoundingly unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of taxpaying, hardworking, freedom-loving Americans throughout the rest of the country.


Radicalized Democrats welcome the complete and utter degradation of law and order as documented abuses of power and rampant corruption go unpunished because the FBI agents are “with her.”  Just last week, Nancy Pelosi had the temerity to suggest that Democrats – the Party that failed to demand answers for even a single Hillary Clinton corruption scandal – are the party responsible for rooting out corruption.  Nancy has been known to say some idiotic things, but this truly exceeds all expectations of her lunacy.


Not only does the Democrats’ double standard damage their credibility as a party, but it threatens one of the foundational tenants of our society: rule of law.


Radicalized Democrats welcome the erosion of trust in the media and fan the flames of fake news-promulgators like CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.  Consider that even at a time when the distrust of the establishment elite is at an all-time high, a CNN producer was caught on video calling the Trump-Russia story “b——-” while the network continued to run with it as the top story for months.  The radical left, both inside and out of the mainstream media machine, has resorted to lying in an effort to achieve its political goals without regard for the negative consequences it has had and will continue to have on our nation.


Instead of engaging in vigorous and civil debate, radicalized Democrats welcome the totalitarian censorship of ideas they disagree with – whether on college campuses, in the public square, or online through social media.  The left, which claims to stand for freedom of choice, has yet to be held accountable for this censorship blunder.  Instead, leftists have created justification for even more aggressive censorship under the false pretext of fostering “conversational health” and “tolerance,” which is really just leftist code for “agree with me or you will be silenced.”


While political shape-shifters like Obama, Schumer, Pelosi and Clinton opined about the need for strong border policy as recently as 2009, radicalized Democrats now welcome the voluntary abrogation of our national sovereignty and security through unabashed open borders and amnesty-centric immigration policy that, according to data from the Government Accountability Office, equates to 438 “homicide arrests of criminal [illegal] aliens” each and every year since 1955 – more than 25,000 in total.


As opposed to retooling their party platform and political agenda to better appeal to a black community no longer inclined to vote by rote for Democrat, radicalized Democrats have instead continued to encourage the genocide of the black community through the ritualistic annual disbursement of more than 500 million taxpayer dollars to the nation’s largest abortion mill, Planned Parenthood. 


Despite the left’s laughable narrative on Russia, the only obvious subversion of our republic stems from radicalized Democrats’ own network of shadowy multi-billionaire donors like George Soros and Tom Steyer, among others, who seek to undermine and exploit our nation’s electoral process for their own gain.


Radicalized Democrats mandate that pre-teens and teens need parental permission in order to receive a Tylenol from a school nurse or participate in a school-sanctioned field trip to the zoo, while simultaneously demanding that those same girls have the incontrovertible right to a surgical abortion without their parents even being notified.


Radicalized Democrats believe that the same government that is demonstrably incapable of delivering quality health care to America’s approximately 20 million veterans should be responsible for providing health care for nearly 330 million Americans through a “Medicare for All” program – a decision that would lead to care rationing and British-style death panels, to be sure.


As if there weren’t a bridge too far for the left, radicalized Democrats now demand the abolition of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), an agency that, according to President Trump and Senator Lankford, in collaboration with Border Patrol, is responsible for apprehending on average ten terrorists per day trying to enter the United States illegally.


It doesn’t take a sociopolitical expert to follow the signs to the ultimately destructive end that the Democrats’ extremist positions and policies will have on our nation in both the short and long terms.  The real question is why.


Why would Democrats radicalize to the point that they run the risk of destroying the very nation that gives them refuge and prosperity?  The answer is simple: desperation.  The American people have largely woken up to the long con of the left, forcing radicalized Democrats to the realization that on the battlefield of ideas, they lose, and they lose big.


Democrats recognize that if they lose on the battlefield of ideas, they can win only through the smoky cloud of chaos and division, wherein Americans are pitted against each other like  gladiators in the Colosseum.  To this end, the left has been strategically dismantling the bedrock institutions that have made America the freest, most prosperous nation the world has ever known.


While all the eyes should have been focused on the Republicans and how we would embrace Trump’s brand of conservatism, the Democrats fumbled – in truly epic fashion – whatever opportunity they thought they might have had to regain their death grip on the levers of power.


As is common with addicts, the Democrats’ uncontrollable and intensifying desire to regain control and oppose everything coming out of the White House has caused them to reveal the sinister intentions of their party. 


Like drugs and pornography, their addiction to radicalization has become a self-perpetuating devolution, a race to the bottom of sorts, where greater and greater extremes are needed to continue satisfying their appetite for rage and division.  Sadly, society knows the ultimate outcome of addiction: an unyielding downward spiral into total self-destruction – a fate that Democrats may face sooner rather than later, given their current trajectory.


The pending implosion of the Democratic Party is not something that should make conservatives rest easy, as such chaos within a major political Party may ultimately spread to the rest of the country like a cancer.


The radicalization of the Democrats should only serve as further evidence that we are winning and must continue to fight harder on the battlefield of ideas, for freedom’s sake.


Jake Hoffman is the founder, president, and CEO of Rally Forge, one of the nation’s top conservative digital communications and media strategy firms.




via American Thinker

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New Film on American Moon Landing Deletes American Flag to “Transcend Borders”

If one were to point to an iconic moment during the first moon landing in 1969, the primary moment to come to mind would probably be Neil Armstrong’s legendary words, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” However, a close second would probably be the planting of the American flag on the rock orbiting the third rock from the sun.

The flag was a sign that we had achieved a goal declared at the beginning of the decade by John F. Kennedy. The flag was a sign that American ingenuity had triumphed over collectivist ideology in the space race. The flag was a sign that we had set our aim as high as possible and hit it head on.

But alas, that sort of thought is too divisive in 2018 — at least according to Hollywood.

According to the U.K. Telegraph, “a new film about (Neil) Armstrong has chosen to leave out this most patriotic of scenes, arguing that the giant leap for mankind should not be seen as an example of American greatness.”

“The film, ‘First Man,’ was unveiled at the Venice Film Festival yesterday, where the absence of the stars and stripes was noted by critics.”

TRENDING: Watch: Ted Cruz Delivers Perfect Response To Heckler During Texas Campaign Event

“Its star, Ryan Gosling, was asked if the film was a deliberately un-American take on the moon landing. He replied that Armstrong’s accomplishment ‘transcended countries and borders.’”

Yes, yes it did. And it did so because of American greatness. I really don’t see how that fails to come across, but Gosling has some explanation that sounded a bit like Charlie Brown’s teachers to me.

“I think this was widely regarded in the end as a human achievement (and) that’s how we chose to view it,” Gosling said.

“I also think Neil was extremely humble, as were many of these astronauts, and time and time again he deferred the focus from himself to the 400,000 people who made the mission possible.

Do you think this is an insult to those Americans who worked on the moon landing?

“He was reminding everyone that he was just the tip of the iceberg — and that’s not just to be humble, that’s also true.

“So I don’t think that Neil viewed himself as an American hero. From my interviews with his family and people that knew him, it was quite the opposite. And we wanted the film to reflect Neil.”

Let’s dissect this nonsense. I agree, I don’t think most American heroes view themselves as American heroes. That’s what makes them American heroes.

Now, was he humble? Of course. Was he just the tip of the iceberg? Yes, absolutely. Did he defer “the focus from himself to the 400,000 people who made the mission possible?” Absolutely.

He is the very humble tip of a 400,000-person iceberg… that was American. Really, what’s so hard here?

RELATED: Watch: Bernie Supporter Brings US Flag Near Antifa, Gets Cracked Over Head for It

Yet it is hard — at least for the Hollywood left, who don’t quite see what made America great in the first place, along with its flag.

But maybe it’s because Ryan Gosling has a slight maple leaf-shaped hole in his understanding of just what the moment meant to America and the world.

“I’m Canadian, so might have cognitive bias,” Gosling quipped. The Telegraph also reported that the director of “First Man,” Damien Chazelle, “previously worked with Gosling on the Oscar-winning ‘La La Land’ (and) is French-Canadian.”

Huh. Maybe there is something to this whole “cultural appropriation” piffle after all.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

via Conservative Tribune

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Moped Thugs Hold Unarmed Police at Gunpoint in Sadiq Khan’s London

Armed criminals pulled up alongside a police van on a moped and aimed a gun at the officers in an attempt to free a suspected burglar detained in the back in Croydon, South London.

The trio was allegedly caught breaking into a mobile phone shop in the south-east of the capital in the small hours of Wednesday morning, with police arresting one 24-year-old male and then rearresting him after a struggle with his two accomplices which resulted in him briefly escaping, the Croydon Guardian reports.

The young man was taken to his home in Croydon so the property could be searched, after which two moped riders pulled up to the police van he was detained in and aimed a firearm at the officers.

The police van was able to drive away before any shots could be fired and without the 24-year-old being sprung from custody, but the incident left officers shocked.

“This once again demonstrates the bravery of officers who put themselves in harm’s way every day in order to protect the public,” commented Simon Messinger, Central South Area Commander for the Metropolitan Police Force.

“Fortunately the officers only received minor injuries [in the earlier struggle] and, thanks to the rapid support of colleagues, one of the suspects was detained.

“However, two suspects remain outstanding, and these are clearly reckless and dangerous individuals. Our priority now is to identify and arrest them.”

Gun crime is on the rise in London under the mayoralty of Labour’s Sadiq Khan, with recent statistics indicating that a weapon is discharged as much as every six hours despite draconian restrictions on legal firearms.

Carrying a firearm for self-defence is completely prohibited everywhere but the Province of Northern Ireland, where some serving and former members of the Armed Forces, police, and other sensitive individuals may carry a Personal Protection Weapon.

On the British mainland, ordinary citizens may not carry so much as a lipstick-sized pepper spray for protection, and even police officers are not routinely armed.

Nor is home defence considered a “good reason” to be issued a shotgun or other firearms licence, with permits largely restricted to hunters, shooting club members, people involved in vermin control, etc.

Handguns, while increasingly common among criminals, are almost entirely prohibited.

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Two confirmations in Florida: The endorsement powers of Trump and Bernie Sanders

Two big primary elections in Florida Tuesday, one showing President Trump’s endorsement power and the other an upset showing Bernie Sander’s political clout.

In the Republican primary for governor, Rep. Ron DeSantis, who trailed early, surged back with Trump’s endorsement to defeat Adam Putnam, the state’s agriculture commissioner.

On the Democrat side, progressive Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum rode Sanders’ endorsement to an upset win over a crowded field. It included Rep. Gwen Graham, who is the daughter of former Florida governor and Sen. Bob Graham. She had been leading in the seven-person field.

The primary victories set up a mega-duel on Nov. 6 for political control of the fourth most-populous state between a Trump favorite and a Sanders favorite, who is seeking to become Florida’s first black governor.

“Ron will be a fantastic Governor. On to November!” the president tweeted. For his part, DeSantis thanked the president for “viewing me as somebody who could be a great leader for Florida.”

Governors’ races this cycle are especially critical. Twenty-six of the GOP’s record 33 seats are up. State governors will play a key role in legislative reapportionments that emerge from the 2020 census.

The winner in this governor’s race will succeed incumbent Rick Scott. With Trump’s encouragement the term-limited Scott is seeking to oust  incumbent Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson, who was unopposed.

The wealthy Scott easily triumphed in the GOP primary and is expected to give the two-term Nelson a tough challenge. If he can pull it off, that would give the GOP an important Senate pickup and, with Marco Rubio, both senators from the Sunshine State.

Gillum’s win is yet another confirmation of the hard tack to the left among this cycle’s Democrat voters.

This race is shaping up as likely the nation’s most expensive. By early August, Scott, anticipating primary victory, had already spent more than $20 million of his own money going after Nelson.

In a political footnote, former Bill Clinton Cabinet secretary and president of the Clinton Foundation Donna Shalala won the House Democrat primary in Florida’s 27th District for the seat being vacated by GOP veteran Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Shalala will face Maria Elvira Salazar, a former TV news anchor who captured 41 percent of the Republican vote in a nine-person race.

The post Two confirmations in Florida: The endorsement powers of Trump and Bernie Sanders appeared first on Hot Air.

via Hot Air

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