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Atheist Group Forces School to Cancel 3rd Graders’ Live Nativity Scene

An Oklahoma public elementary school removed its third-grade live Nativity scene from its annual Christmas production after receiving a threatening letter from an atheist group.

Christopher Line, staff attorney at the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), wrote to F. Andrew Fugitt at the Center for Education Law that the school district was committing a “constitutional violation”:

A concerned Edmond Public Schools community member has reported that each year, third grade teachers at Chisholm Elementary have students rehearse a live nativity scene, which students then perform at the school’s holiday concert in December. We understand that Chisholm students who participate in the nativity play various roles, including Mary and Joseph, etc.

…

While a public school can hold holiday concerts, religious performances and instruction that emphasize the religious aspects of a holiday are prohibited … A live nativity performance celebrating the story of Jesus’s birth is precisely the sort of religious endorsement prohibited by the Establishment Clause.

Line pressed the school district to “ensure that future school-sponsored performances will not include nativity scenes and that District teachers will not promote religion through class assignments.”

He added he expected the school district to respond to his letter in writing with an outline of steps it has taken to show it has submitted to FFRF’s demands.

Non-profit litigation organization Liberty Counsel, however, sent a letter to Bret Towne, superintendent of Edmond Public Schools, reassuring him that “a live Nativity scene as part of a balanced Christmas program is not an automatic Establishment Clause violation.”

Liberty Counsel observed in the case of Freedom From Religion Found., Inc. v. Concord Cmty. Sch., the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals stated:

Let us first start with the most inherently religious aspect of the show: the nativity scene. We are not prepared to say that a nativity scene in a school performance automatically constitutes an Establishment Clause violation. See Doe v. Wilson Cnty. Sch. Sys., 564 F.Supp.2d 766, 800–01 (M.D. Tenn. 2008) (finding a two-minute nativity scene in a 22-minute program acceptable because it “presented in a prudent, unbiased, and objective manner” “the traditional historical, cultural, and religious meaning of the holiday in America”). Each show must be assessed within its own context.

While many public school districts prefer to cave to similar threats from atheist groups, rather than incur legal costs to defend their positions, Liberty Counsel informed Towne it “stands ready … to provide assistance at no charge to Edmond Public Schools, if the District desires to resume a live Nativity in a school Christmas program.”

Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel said in a statement FFRF “continually bullies and threatens people every Christmas, and that includes even children.”

“This organization mocks Christianity and does not seem to know what the Constitution means,” he added. “I hope this school district will not cave to their threats and continues to allow these children to celebrate Christ’s birth in their school production.”

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Soros-Linked Group Gets Six GOP Governors to Resettle More Refugees

A pro-mass immigration organization with links to billionaire George Soros has successfully lobbied six Republican governors to resettle more refugees in their states.

For Fiscal Year 2020, President Donald Trump will continue cutting refugee admissions by reducing former President Barack Obama’s refugee inflow by at least 80 percent. This reduction would mean a maximum of 18,000 refugees can be resettled in the U.S. between October 1, 2019, and September 30, 2020. This is merely a numerical limit and not a goal federal officials are supposed to reach.

Coupled with the refugee reduction, Trump signed an executive order that gives localities, counties, and states veto power over whether they want to resettle refugees in their communities.

Executives at World Relief and the Evangelical Immigration Table — an organization with links to the Soros-funded National Immigration Forum — have been lobbying governors across the country to bring more refugees to their states. So far, six Republican governors have signed off to resettle refugees in their states, including North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

The New York Times notes:

Jenny Yang, vice president for advocacy at World Relief, an evangelical agency whose work includes resettlement, has been steering an effort to lobby governors to keep their states open to refugees. [Emphasis added]

She said about 16 governors have submitted written consent, six of them Republicans. Gov. Doug Ducey, Republican of Arizona, agreed after receiving a letter supporting resettlement signed by 250 evangelical leaders. Gov. Greg Abbott, Republican of Texas, who leads the state that received the most refugees last year, has not yet offered his view, despite a plea from the mayor of Fort Worth to continue accepting refugees. [Emphasis added]

Refugee contractors, like the Lutheran Social Services organization, have deployed a campaign to get mayors, local officials, and governors to admit more refugees to their states. Those contractors’ budgets every year are reliant on ensuring that as many refugees are resettled across the U.S. as possible.

It remains unclear which six Republican governors, aside from Burgum and Ducey, have been successfully lobbied by the Soros-linked group.

This week, the Evangelical Immigration Table sent letters to the governors of California, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin to ask them to bring refugees to their states.

The federally mandated refugee resettlement program has brought more than 718,000 refugees to the U.S. since January 2008 — a group larger than the entire state population of Wyoming, which has 577,000 residents. In the last decade, about 73,000 refugees have been resettled in California, 71,500 resettled in Texas, nearly 43,000 resettled in New York, and more than 36,000 resettled in Michigan.

Refugee resettlement costs American taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years, according to the latest research. Over the course of five years, an estimated 16 percent of all refugees admitted will need housing assistance paid for by taxpayers.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. 

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Historian: America’s Homeschooling Mothers Are Leading Our Next Revolution

“The leaders of the revolution are America’s homeschooling mothers,” said C. Bradley Thompson, professor of political science professor at Clemson University and author of America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It, expressing his concerns of deepening national political fragmentation in a Tuesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.

Thompson began by identifying the philosophical values of America’s founding and heralding American exceptionalism.

“[Americanism] is really an extraordinary concept,” stated Thompson. “The United States of America is the only nation in the world that I know of that is identified as an ism, right? We speak of Americanism, but we don’t speak of Frenchism, Italianism, Germanism, [or] Persianism. It’s only Americanism. Americanism is associated with an idea or with principles, and the idea of America, the ideology that is America, the ideology that has attracted tens — if not hundreds — of millions of people to this country over the course of the last several hundred years is, I think, associated with the principles of the Declaration of Independence.”

LISTEN:

As subscription to core American values erodes, Thompson warned, political fragmentation increases.

“So the question is: What is it, what ideas can Americans rally around?” asked Thompson. “If we cannot rally around these words — we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — then we can rally as a nation around no words.”

Thompson described the Democrats’ push for impeachment of President Donald Trump as a symptom of a deeper political and partisan divide across the nation.

“In my view, the problem that we are confronting now in 2019 is that America seems to be hopelessly and ideologically divided, so this show trial that is taking place in Washington, DC, right now, is just sort of the culmination of what I think are much deeper, subterranean ideological divisions that are taking place in this country,” said Thompson. “The problem is, part of the United States — one group in the United States — they seem to despise the principles on which this country was founded, and so we find ourselves in this very difficult position where one part of the nation really hates what this country has always stood for.” 

Mansour invited elaboration on which values could serve as America’s social glue. Thompson highlighted the philosophical divide between moral relativism and moral objectivism. 

“Those very simple but graceful words in the second paragraph of the Declaration,” replied Thompson. “So, just go through them: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident.’ The first thing to say is that in 2019, the intellectual class in the United States doesn’t believe in the concept of truth. In 2016, the word of the year in the Oxford dictionary was ‘post-truth.’ It said that we live in a post-truth society, that is to say, we live in a world where truth is allegedly subjective. Every person effectively has their truth, or every group has their truth, where as the Founding Fathers believed in truth with a capital T, that truth is absolute, certain, permanent, and universal.”

Thompson contrasted left-wing and conservative understandings of equality, with the former seeking state-driven equality of result and the latter allowing for variable outcomes given equality of opportunity and rule of law.

“The Declaration talks about four self-evident truths,” explained Thompson. “If you take just the first two, which are, I think, the moral principles of the Declaration — equality and rights — again, Americans seem to be divided on these two concepts. Part of America thinks, with the Declaration of Independence, that ‘rights’ means equal freedom or equal rights, that is, the freedom, the opportunity to govern oneself and pursue one’s own values, whereas the other half of the country thinks that ‘equality’ means that  we should all be the same, that we should be made the same, that we should be made the same economically, that is, we should have equal stuff.”

Thompson linked the erosion of American values with left-wing ubiquity across education and academia.

“The reigning intellectual and moral orthodoxy of American intellectual life, American universities would be the twin towers of moral relativism and nihilism, and the idea here, and the goal of the left over the last 50 or 60 years has been this long march through the institutions,” noted Thompson. “What they’ve tried to do — and in fact, have done quite successfully — is to take over America’s cultural institutions, particularly education, particularly K through 12 education, and colleges and universities, and that’s where the real battle is. It’s a battle of ideas.”

Thompson continued, “Unfortunately I think, too many libertarians and conservatives and classical liberals invest too much time in politics, whereas John Adams and Thomas Jefferson believed that — what really is the underpinning — the soul of a nation is how we educate our children. That’s the core issue, and so whoever controls the schools, and now also the universities, will control the culture.”

“As Andrew Breitbart once said, politics is downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from the universities, and so if we lose the battle for the universities — and our schools, K through 12 — then we find ourselves in a very difficult position,” warned Thompson.

Thompson remarked, “I, like many other people, do worry about a potential coming civil war. Now, obviously a civil war in 21st century America would be significantly different than the kind we had in 1861, but it would be a different kind of civil war, and it may not involve violence at all, but it might involve the fracturing of America. Now, unlike the 1850s and 1860s, this is not a regional [war]. It’s not north versus south. It’s really ideological, and how we deal with that issue is unclear.”

Decentralization of power away from Washington, DC, may mitigate growing political hostilities between political groups in America, speculated Thompson.

“One possible solution would be a kind of radical federalism, where we implode political power away from Washington, DC, down into the 50 state capitals, and this was Thomas Jefferson’s solutions, and then from the state capitals down into smaller political units; counties, and cities, towns and villages,” Thompson said.

Homeschooling may be an antidote to the advance of left-wing ideology fused into state-controlled education, estimated Thompson.

“I do have hope in homeschooling,” declared Thompson. “I think homeschooling is one way in which we can recapture this culture, and I would argue, and have argued, that the leaders of the revolution are America’s homeschooling mothers. They’re the ones at the forefront of this change, and I would strongly encourage people to pull their kids out of government schools and to homeschool their children.”

Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125 weeknights from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern or 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Pacific.

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter @rkraychik.

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Joe Biden’s Immigration Plan: Amnesty for Illegal Aliens, Free All Border Crossers into U.S.

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s national immigration plan includes an effort to provide amnesty to all 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States, freeing border crossers into the country, and restarting welfare-dependent legal immigration that would cost American taxpayers billions.

In a plan released on Wednesday, Biden vows to provide amnesty to every illegal alien currently living in the U.S., as well as end nearly all of President Trump’s cost-saving reforms such as restarting a welfare-dependent immigration pipeline, where legal immigrants are permanently resettled in the country despite immediately needing public assistance.

“Biden will immediately begin working with Congress to modernize our system, with a priority on keeping families together by providing a roadmap to citizenship for nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants,” the outline states.

Aside from mass amnesty, the plan commits to:

  • Releasing all border crossers into the U.S. interior
  • Restarting welfare-dependent legal immigration to the U.S.
  • Ending the National Emergency Declaration at the southern border
  • Ending a travel ban from foreign counties that sponsor terrorism
  • Providing amnesty to 3.5 million DACA-enrolled and DACA-eligible illegal aliens
  • Providing federal student loans and free community college to DACA illegal aliens
  • Cracking down on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents

Biden’s plan would drive up huge costs for American taxpayers. For example, Biden’s DACA amnesty plan would cost U.S. citizens at least $26 billion as about one in five DACA illegal aliens would end up on food stamps, and at least one in seven would go on Medicaid, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

This cost would be in addition to the billions that citizens would again be forced to pay by his restarting of the welfare-dependent legal immigration. This year, Trump announced that his administration would effectively end the resettlement of millions of legal immigrants who are known to be a public charge on taxpayers.

Biden, though, said he will reverse enforcement of the “Public Charge Rule,” writing:

Allowing immigration officials to make an individual’s ability to receive a visa or gain permanent residency contingent on their use of government services such as SNAP benefits or Medicaid, their household income, and other discriminatory criteria undermines America’s character as land of opportunity that is open and welcoming to all, not just the wealthy. [Emphasis added]

The open borders lobby has taken issue with Biden’s immigration agenda because it does not go far enough in ending all interior immigration and border enforcement. Pro-mass immigration activists have demanded, for example, that all 2020 Democrats endorse their plan to end all deportations of illegal aliens, even those convicted of murder, child sex crimes, and rape.

Thus far, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has vowed to end all deportations, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has said she is open to ending deportations.

Oppositely, Trump has raised America’s working and middle-class wages by tightening the labor market through increased immigration enforcement. Similarly, Trump’s economic nationalist agenda has sought to decrease overall immigration to the U.S. so foreign labor market competition is reduced for American workers, not increased.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. 

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De Blasio Deports Thousands of Homeless Families Across America

Cities across the United States are grappling with large homeless populations, but New York City decided to deal with the problem by relocating those sleeping in the streets or in shelters to other American cities.

The New York Post reported that city records show that homeless people have been sent to 373 American cities.

The Post also reported that since the program started in 2017, New York has relocated 5,074 families, or 12,482 people, to other areas in the city, the state, and around the country.

Cities selected for homeless relocation include several in New Jersey and Georgia, according the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

A New York City program that relocates its homeless to other cities around the country is drawing fire from Marietta leaders who say they learned it was happening from a newspaper article.

Marietta city councilmembers say they want answers about how New York runs its Special One-Time Assistance program, which provides one year’s rent for eligible clients to relocate within the city, other New York state cities or other states.

The program is the subject of a lawsuit filed Dec. 1 by the city of Newark, New Jersey, which is one of the destination cities for New York’s homeless. The lawsuit argues the program pressures desperate homeless to accept substandard housing conditions and that slumlords benefit from the city’s program that pays for a year’s rent with no checks on the living conditions.

AJC reported that Marietta City Councilwoman Michelle Cooper Kelly said she was “astonished” when she read of the NYC program in the Post.

The Post reported on the extent of the program across the country:

From the tropical shores of Honolulu and Puerto Rico, to the badlands of Utah and backwaters of Louisiana, the Big Apple has sent local homeless families to 373 cities across the country with a full year of rent in their pockets as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Special One-Time Assistance Program.” Usually, the receiving city knows nothing about it.

City taxpayers have spent $89 million on rent alone since the program’s August 2017 inception to export 5,074 homeless families — 12,482 individuals — to places as close as Newark and as far as the South Pacific, according to Department of Homeless Services data obtained by The Post. Families who once lived in city shelters decamped to 32 states and Puerto Rico.

The city also paid travel expenses, through a separate taxpayer-funded program called Project Reconnect, but would not divulge how much it spent. A Friday flight to Honolulu for four people would cost about $1,400. A bus ticket to Salt Lake City, Utah, for the same family would cost $800. Not only are officials in towns where the city’s homeless land up in arms, but hundreds of the homeless families are returning to the five boroughs — and some are even suing NYC over being abandoned in barely livable conditions. 

Sade Collington, her husband, and two children returned to a Bronx shelter after being relocated to an East Orange, New Jersey, apartment that lacked water, heat, or electricity.

“It was completely unlivable,” said Collington, who added she planned to sue the city.

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Josh Hawley: IG Report Shows ‘Our Own Government Meddling In The Election’ At Behest Of DNC

Brilliantly said.

Via Twitchy:

We’ve posted a lot of highlights from Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Hearing at which Inspector General Michael Horowitz was a witness, and the whole idea that the intelligence community was “exonerated” has crumbled all day long.

One of the highlights of the day was Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley asking which was worse: a foreign government meddling in our elections, or our own government meddling in our elections.

Keep reading…

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Mark Levin: Donald Trump ‘The First Jewish President of the United States’

Conservative talk radio star Mark Levin praised President Donald Trump while attending a Hanukkah party at the White House on Wednesday.

“It’s an honor to be here with the first Jewish President of the United States,” Levin said to the crowd. “And if he isn’t, he should be.”

Trump grinned in response.

Levin was a guest at the Hanukkah party, but as the president often does, he urged the conservative talk radio legend to say a few words to the crowd during his event address.

Levin thanked Trump for assisting the Jewish people and for supporting Israel:

I want to thank you for everything that you have done for the Jewish people. I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland. You are going to be remembered there for 1000 years.

Levin also thanked Trump for everything he had done for the United States as president and promised to continue fighting to defend him from the media and the Democrats seeking to impeach him for office.

“I want to thank you for what you’ve done for the United States of America, and I want you to know that we will not leave our general out on the battlefield without our support. Period.”

Trump joked that he was surprised at how well Levin did on television, since beginning his Fox News show on Sunday nights.

“You know he had a very successful radio show, who knew that face was going to work so well on television?” Trump asked. “What a great guy, what a great show.”

Trump held two Hanukkah receptions at the White House on Wednesday, the second one attended by Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson and his wife, and Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.

Others attending included first lady Melania Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his son-in-in-law Jared Kushner were present with their children as well as many members of the Kushner family, including Jared’s father Charlie Kushner.

“I’m truly grateful to have the Jewish faith woven so deeply into my family,” Trump said.

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BREAKING: Budget Office Releases New Legal Memo Indicating Delay In Ukraine Aid Was Routine

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a new legal memo on Wednesday indicating that the Trump administration’s decision to temporarily hold military assistance to Ukraine was a “routine” practice and that the administration was reviewing whether Ukraine complied with U.S. policy.

The memo indicated that the decision to withhold the aid was not a political action to block Congress’ spending decisions.

“The office first began discussing the aid on June 19, the day President Trump learned of the aid from an article in the Washington Examiner and questioned the wisdom of the spending,” The Washington Post reported. “That move sent aides scrambling, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal conversations.”

“The Office of Management and Budget extended the temporary hold on the aid eight times in August and September, the last time being Sept. 10,” the Post added. “Almost immediately after that hold, the money was released, according to the new memo, which was reviewed by The Washington Post.”

OMB general counsel Mark Paoletta issued the memo as a response to a request for information on why the aid was withheld, a request that came from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

In the memo, Paoletta wrote: “For decades, OMB has routinely used its apportionment authority to prevent funds from being used. Often, in managing appropriations, OMB must briefly pause an agency’s legal ability to spend those funds for a number of reasons, including to ensure that the funds are being spent efficiently, that they are being spent in accordance with statutory directives, or to assess how or whether funds should be used for a particular activity.”

The memo reportedly stated that the aid was put on hold due to an administration directive “pending a policy decision,” and discussions about how to proceed with the aid were set for mid-June.

The Post added, “The memo says that ‘at no point during the pause’ did Defense Department attorneys tell OMB the Ukrainian funding would be prevented from being spent before the end of the year.”

The move to release the legal memo comes as Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee held a markup hearing on Wednesday evening to weigh introducing articles of impeachment against the president.

Politico reporter John Bresnahan noted that Democrats were appealing to American’s feelings during the hearing while Republicans stuck to hammering home the message that Democrats have never gotten over the 2016 election and have searched for any reason imaginable to impeach Trump.

“Democrats are making very personal statements during impeachment hearings. They talk about being immigrants, or the child of immigrants, or being a minority, and how Trump allegedly improper behavior impacts other Americans like them. It’s an interesting tactic,” Bresnahan wrote. “Republicans repeatedly pound this message – Democrats have never acknowledged Trump’s victory in 2016 and have searched repeatedly for a reason to impeach Trump.”

Democrats have sought to impeach the president over a July 25 phone call that he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for allegedly engaging in a quid pro quo.

Despite Democrats’ claims, multiple witnesses in their impeachment hearings, including Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, Senior NSC official Tim Morrison, Ambassador Kurt Volker, and Ambassador Gordon Sondland have all testified that there was no quid pro quo during Trump’s call with Zelensky.

Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, who is Vice President Mike Pence’s National Security Adviser, released a statement last month stating that he was on the call and nothing improper happened: “I was on the much-reported July 25 call between President Donald Trump and President Zelensky. As an exceedingly proud member of President Trump’s Administration and as a 34-year highly experienced combat veteran who retired with the rank of Lieutenant General in the Army, I heard nothing wrong or improper on the call. I had and have no concerns.”

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Why are Democrats against the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis?

The meeting of the leaders of the Normandy Four countries in Paris became one of the most important foreign policy events of this year.  As a result of lengthy and rather nervous negotiations, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, and France, as well as the chancellor of Germany, adopted a final communiqué with three main highlighted points.  The first is immediate stabilization measures in Donbass.  It is about establishing a ceasefire before the end of 2019, as well as creating three new areas of withdrawal of forces by the end of March 2020.  The second point refers to measures for the political implementation of the Minsk Agreements.  Besides that, the extension of the law on the special status of Donbass is proposed.  The third one dwells on devising schemes for the further roadmap.  Here, leaders asked their ministers and advisers to ensure the implementation of the agreements reached and begin preparations for a new meeting in four months.  On the same day, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had a meeting with the U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, along with President Donald Trump.

The parties discussed a wide range of global security issues and came to a crucial conclusion: relations between America and Russia should not be paused.  Moreover, they should not become hostage to the intriguing conjuncture of individual forces.  Such an outcome is significant because the relations between these two great nuclear powers are crucial for the geopolitical well-being of all mankind.  Interstate dialogues are not just indicative events, but also important elements in maintaining the red lines.  Their violation can lead to unpredictable consequences.

As a result of the Caribbean Crisis of 1962, Moscow and Washington went through a serious test, which subsequently allowed them to develop a certain culture of strategic deterrence.  This still plays an important role when it comes to the most sensitive points of political competition.  Within the framework of the Ukrainian, Syrian, and Venezuelan crises, there are groups on both sides that seek to use any situation to bring America and Russia into open confrontation.  It is difficult to say what the world would be like if General Curtis LeMay had succeeded in persuading John F. Kennedy to take drastic measures against the Soviet Union.  Today, there are still many radicals, though the world lacks pragmatic and rational leaders.

The Ukrainian case is a difficult obstacle to normalizing the political dialogue between Moscow and Washington now.  President Trump inherited this problem from Obama’s administration, which completely failed regarding foreign policy in Eurasia.  Being a classic geopolitician and representative of the power elite, Putin has always made decisions based on rigorous political calculations.  From this standpoint, the fundamental priority of Russia’s foreign policy was to maintain balanced partnership relations with the United States and the European Union.  On the one hand, they are the most important actors from the point of view of the economic and technological future of Moscow.  On the other hand, it is the harmony in U.S.-E.U.-Russia relations that could determine the solution to the major problems of global security.  It is difficult to assume that at one point, the pragmatic Kremlin decided to sacrifice all this for the sake of dubious geopolitical adventures.  Moscow accepted recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia only after the Georgian side launched active hostilities, as a result of which Russian peacekeepers were killed, though they were deployed there based on international agreements.

In the end, Saakashvili, who actually launched the war, is now wanted.  Meanwhile, the current authorities in Tbilisi are trying to develop at least trade and economic relations with the Russians.  The same thing happened with Ukraine.  Leftist globalists did not know that this country has important political, economic, energy, cultural, and civilizational significance for Russia.

The philosophy of Putinism has never denied that Kiev should develop an active dialogue with the West.  However, at the same time, Ukraine must maintain non-aligned status and consider the particularities of economic and energy relations with the Russian side.  The figures show that the Ukrainian state cannot exist without Russian energy resources, and the supply of raw materials from other states is too expensive.  Instead of pragmatic negotiations, Kiev called to ignore the opinion of a significant part of the Russian-speaking population in Donbass and completely break off diplomatic relations with Moscow.  In fact, today, the new Ukrainian leadership has come to the conclusion that the country cannot have a political future without rational, good-neighborly relations with the Kremlin.

Only Democrats are interested in maintaining chaos.  They do not want this issue to be resolved during the presidency of Donald Trump.  Firstly, this would mean that Trump’s foreign policy strategy is more effective and viable.  Secondly, far-fetched reasons for impeachment would immediately disappear, and Trump’s opponents would lose.  Thirdly, any success could prove that the United States, the E.U., and Russia can find a common language and, together, find the keys to solving complex regional and global issues.  This, in turn, will lead to the understanding that political realism works, in contrast to the liberal theory, which so far creates new problems.  In the end, there will be no more barriers for the United States, the leading players in Europe, and Russia to begin the process of forming a new system of international relations.

Areg Galstyan, Ph.D. is a regular contributor to The National Interest, Forbes, and The American Thinker.

The meeting of the leaders of the Normandy Four countries in Paris became one of the most important foreign policy events of this year.  As a result of lengthy and rather nervous negotiations, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, and France, as well as the chancellor of Germany, adopted a final communiqué with three main highlighted points.  The first is immediate stabilization measures in Donbass.  It is about establishing a ceasefire before the end of 2019, as well as creating three new areas of withdrawal of forces by the end of March 2020.  The second point refers to measures for the political implementation of the Minsk Agreements.  Besides that, the extension of the law on the special status of Donbass is proposed.  The third one dwells on devising schemes for the further roadmap.  Here, leaders asked their ministers and advisers to ensure the implementation of the agreements reached and begin preparations for a new meeting in four months.  On the same day, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had a meeting with the U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, along with President Donald Trump.

The parties discussed a wide range of global security issues and came to a crucial conclusion: relations between America and Russia should not be paused.  Moreover, they should not become hostage to the intriguing conjuncture of individual forces.  Such an outcome is significant because the relations between these two great nuclear powers are crucial for the geopolitical well-being of all mankind.  Interstate dialogues are not just indicative events, but also important elements in maintaining the red lines.  Their violation can lead to unpredictable consequences.

As a result of the Caribbean Crisis of 1962, Moscow and Washington went through a serious test, which subsequently allowed them to develop a certain culture of strategic deterrence.  This still plays an important role when it comes to the most sensitive points of political competition.  Within the framework of the Ukrainian, Syrian, and Venezuelan crises, there are groups on both sides that seek to use any situation to bring America and Russia into open confrontation.  It is difficult to say what the world would be like if General Curtis LeMay had succeeded in persuading John F. Kennedy to take drastic measures against the Soviet Union.  Today, there are still many radicals, though the world lacks pragmatic and rational leaders.

The Ukrainian case is a difficult obstacle to normalizing the political dialogue between Moscow and Washington now.  President Trump inherited this problem from Obama’s administration, which completely failed regarding foreign policy in Eurasia.  Being a classic geopolitician and representative of the power elite, Putin has always made decisions based on rigorous political calculations.  From this standpoint, the fundamental priority of Russia’s foreign policy was to maintain balanced partnership relations with the United States and the European Union.  On the one hand, they are the most important actors from the point of view of the economic and technological future of Moscow.  On the other hand, it is the harmony in U.S.-E.U.-Russia relations that could determine the solution to the major problems of global security.  It is difficult to assume that at one point, the pragmatic Kremlin decided to sacrifice all this for the sake of dubious geopolitical adventures.  Moscow accepted recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia only after the Georgian side launched active hostilities, as a result of which Russian peacekeepers were killed, though they were deployed there based on international agreements.

In the end, Saakashvili, who actually launched the war, is now wanted.  Meanwhile, the current authorities in Tbilisi are trying to develop at least trade and economic relations with the Russians.  The same thing happened with Ukraine.  Leftist globalists did not know that this country has important political, economic, energy, cultural, and civilizational significance for Russia.

The philosophy of Putinism has never denied that Kiev should develop an active dialogue with the West.  However, at the same time, Ukraine must maintain non-aligned status and consider the particularities of economic and energy relations with the Russian side.  The figures show that the Ukrainian state cannot exist without Russian energy resources, and the supply of raw materials from other states is too expensive.  Instead of pragmatic negotiations, Kiev called to ignore the opinion of a significant part of the Russian-speaking population in Donbass and completely break off diplomatic relations with Moscow.  In fact, today, the new Ukrainian leadership has come to the conclusion that the country cannot have a political future without rational, good-neighborly relations with the Kremlin.

Only Democrats are interested in maintaining chaos.  They do not want this issue to be resolved during the presidency of Donald Trump.  Firstly, this would mean that Trump’s foreign policy strategy is more effective and viable.  Secondly, far-fetched reasons for impeachment would immediately disappear, and Trump’s opponents would lose.  Thirdly, any success could prove that the United States, the E.U., and Russia can find a common language and, together, find the keys to solving complex regional and global issues.  This, in turn, will lead to the understanding that political realism works, in contrast to the liberal theory, which so far creates new problems.  In the end, there will be no more barriers for the United States, the leading players in Europe, and Russia to begin the process of forming a new system of international relations.

Areg Galstyan, Ph.D. is a regular contributor to The National Interest, Forbes, and The American Thinker.

via American Thinker

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The Truth about the Horowitz Report

The long-anticipated Inspector General Report, aka the Horowitz Report, was finally released on December 9th.  After two years of investigation, the report was probably a disappointment to some, a thrill to others, and misunderstood by most.

The liberal media immediately latched on to the report and claimed that it validated their breathless reporting of evil doings by the Trump administration when it said the FBI had adequate cause to open its investigations and that there was no documented political bias evident.  Conservative media noted that the report proved the whole investigation was a farce from beginning to end.  The reality is that this is an inconclusive report because of the limitations of the inspector general.

The Department of Justice inspector general works for the department he is investigating. His job is to keep order in the house.  His task was to see if FBI guidelines were followed.  In many cases these guidelines were not even written guidelines.  He was tasked with determining if there was sufficient basis for opening an investigation.  The threshold for opening an investigation is so low there is not much to find.

The question of political bias, from the IG investigation perspective, is almost a non-issue since it pertains almost exclusively to the decision of whether to open the case or not.  Since the threshold is so low, it’s hard to imagine anything keeping them from opening a case if they wished to -– and they did wish to. Anything that followed shared the stain of bias.

The key to the IG report was not whether it explicitly said there was or wasn’t reason to open the four investigations.  The really important part was the 17 significant errors or omissions in the Carter Page FISA applications and the many additional errors contained in the Woods Procedures (a procedure requiring the vetting of every fact submitted to a FISA court for permission to spy on an American.)  The IG report found that many significant facts were withheld from the court and others were altered.  It is a damning assessment of the veracity of the FBI and the fundamental basis of the entire investigation.  It is also a felony crime.

Of the 17 major errors found in the Page FISA application information, all the errors favored Hillary Clinton and the Clinton campaign.  This is incalculably beyond coincidence.  It is facial political bias. 

The many errors and omissions were never satisfactorily explained to the Office of Investigations.  The report stated that it appeared agents were substituting their own judgements in place of the OI judgements.  If this isn’t investigatory bias, what is?  The FBI knew that the Steele Dossier contained many errors and much questionable data but never asked Christopher Steele who funded the dossier, even though there was fairly open speculation that it was the Clinton campaign.  Why not, other than political bias?

So, when Horowitz answers the question about possible bias by saying there was no “documentable” political bias, what did anyone expect he would find?  Clinton’s army were all high-ranking FBI bureaucrats who know how not to leave footprints.  There is no question as to their personal bias against President Trump, but Horowitz was not asked to look at personal bias and, like a good bureaucrat himself, only did as instructed.  Of course there was personal bias.  That is documented in every action and utterance.  While the press is trying to portray the IG report as some sort of absolution for the FBI, quite the opposite is true.  It portrays a frightening picture of bias, bad judgement, and violations of essential process that should worry every American.  The FBI, without doubt, corrupted the FISA Court process and obtained warrants to spy on an American it had no right to obtain.  It obtained those warrants by using false information supplied by a duplicitous agent of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.  The crowning evidence is that the FBI was, in their own testimony, “so concerned that Russia would interfere with the 2016 election that they ramped up their investigation.”  They were so concerned that they didn’t bother to tell one of the two candidates.  No bias here. Move along.  Nothing to see.

The initial FISA warrant was obtained with tainted information and the renewals were obtained with outright doctored and falsified evidence. 

As the Horowitz investigation proceeded, a number of lawyers working on the FISA applications were fired, resigned, or were referred for criminal prosecution.  As the Russian hoax imploded, the stench of rot grew stronger.  The report cites “countless examples of corruption and deceit committed by employees throughout the FBI and DoJ confirming the investigation against Trump was aggressive, politically tainted and bore no fruit.”

So here we have it, the first of two investigations of the FBI and the Clinton campaign attack on Trump.  This is supposedly the “toothless” report.  Yet to come is the John Durham Report, which is now a wide-ranging criminal investigation that is able to go places the Horowitz investigation was not.  Durham and Barr have clearly indicated that they intend to hold people accountable where Horowitz did not.  This may well imply a lengthy list of indictments reaching well up the food chain in the FBI and elsewhere.  Watch how political bias is converted into felony actions.

The long-anticipated Inspector General Report, aka the Horowitz Report, was finally released on December 9th.  After two years of investigation, the report was probably a disappointment to some, a thrill to others, and misunderstood by most.

The liberal media immediately latched on to the report and claimed that it validated their breathless reporting of evil doings by the Trump administration when it said the FBI had adequate cause to open its investigations and that there was no documented political bias evident.  Conservative media noted that the report proved the whole investigation was a farce from beginning to end.  The reality is that this is an inconclusive report because of the limitations of the inspector general.

The Department of Justice inspector general works for the department he is investigating. His job is to keep order in the house.  His task was to see if FBI guidelines were followed.  In many cases these guidelines were not even written guidelines.  He was tasked with determining if there was sufficient basis for opening an investigation.  The threshold for opening an investigation is so low there is not much to find.

The question of political bias, from the IG investigation perspective, is almost a non-issue since it pertains almost exclusively to the decision of whether to open the case or not.  Since the threshold is so low, it’s hard to imagine anything keeping them from opening a case if they wished to -– and they did wish to. Anything that followed shared the stain of bias.

The key to the IG report was not whether it explicitly said there was or wasn’t reason to open the four investigations.  The really important part was the 17 significant errors or omissions in the Carter Page FISA applications and the many additional errors contained in the Woods Procedures (a procedure requiring the vetting of every fact submitted to a FISA court for permission to spy on an American.)  The IG report found that many significant facts were withheld from the court and others were altered.  It is a damning assessment of the veracity of the FBI and the fundamental basis of the entire investigation.  It is also a felony crime.

Of the 17 major errors found in the Page FISA application information, all the errors favored Hillary Clinton and the Clinton campaign.  This is incalculably beyond coincidence.  It is facial political bias. 

The many errors and omissions were never satisfactorily explained to the Office of Investigations.  The report stated that it appeared agents were substituting their own judgements in place of the OI judgements.  If this isn’t investigatory bias, what is?  The FBI knew that the Steele Dossier contained many errors and much questionable data but never asked Christopher Steele who funded the dossier, even though there was fairly open speculation that it was the Clinton campaign.  Why not, other than political bias?

So, when Horowitz answers the question about possible bias by saying there was no “documentable” political bias, what did anyone expect he would find?  Clinton’s army were all high-ranking FBI bureaucrats who know how not to leave footprints.  There is no question as to their personal bias against President Trump, but Horowitz was not asked to look at personal bias and, like a good bureaucrat himself, only did as instructed.  Of course there was personal bias.  That is documented in every action and utterance.  While the press is trying to portray the IG report as some sort of absolution for the FBI, quite the opposite is true.  It portrays a frightening picture of bias, bad judgement, and violations of essential process that should worry every American.  The FBI, without doubt, corrupted the FISA Court process and obtained warrants to spy on an American it had no right to obtain.  It obtained those warrants by using false information supplied by a duplicitous agent of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.  The crowning evidence is that the FBI was, in their own testimony, “so concerned that Russia would interfere with the 2016 election that they ramped up their investigation.”  They were so concerned that they didn’t bother to tell one of the two candidates.  No bias here. Move along.  Nothing to see.

The initial FISA warrant was obtained with tainted information and the renewals were obtained with outright doctored and falsified evidence. 

As the Horowitz investigation proceeded, a number of lawyers working on the FISA applications were fired, resigned, or were referred for criminal prosecution.  As the Russian hoax imploded, the stench of rot grew stronger.  The report cites “countless examples of corruption and deceit committed by employees throughout the FBI and DoJ confirming the investigation against Trump was aggressive, politically tainted and bore no fruit.”

So here we have it, the first of two investigations of the FBI and the Clinton campaign attack on Trump.  This is supposedly the “toothless” report.  Yet to come is the John Durham Report, which is now a wide-ranging criminal investigation that is able to go places the Horowitz investigation was not.  Durham and Barr have clearly indicated that they intend to hold people accountable where Horowitz did not.  This may well imply a lengthy list of indictments reaching well up the food chain in the FBI and elsewhere.  Watch how political bias is converted into felony actions.

via American Thinker

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