Saturday, December 29, 2018

The federal courts have shut down our ENTIRE government

 

Amid the imbroglio over a partial furloughing of nonessential workers in a handful of federal departments, the political class has ignored that the government has already been shut down – in full and permanently. Individual district judges now control our national sovereignty, border policy, and every other political question. And now Chief Justice John Roberts has essentially barred the doors of the Supreme Court shut to any judicial redress of this judicial crisis.

Just as reporters were going offline last Friday for the Christmas holiday, the Supreme Court announced that it had denied the government’s request to overturn a universal injunction on Trump’s commonsense asylum policy directing the flow of “asylum requests” to our points of entry. Northern California District Judge Jon Tigar and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals violated all rules of standing, 200 years of precedent, and John Roberts’ own recent opinion on presidential power to regulate or exclude entry into the country, yet Roberts refused to join the four conservatives in summarily staying the injunction.

Carolina’s next cash crop?: Farm bill will add hemp into more growers’ rotation

Via Cousin John

Tony Finch, a Nash County farmer, shows off some of the CBD buds from hemp plants he has drying in an old tobacco  barn at his farm near Spring Hope.

With Congress’ passage of last week’s farm bill that decriminalized the hemp plant, North Carolina farmers will have the choice of adding a needed money crop to their rotations.

“I haven’t read the whole thing. It’s 800 pages and 6 inches thick, but I think it’s going to be a good thing for North Carolina,” said Mann Mullen, who has experimented with growing hemp and processing it.

Mullen is a farmer and the owner of tobacco warehouses in Wilson and Bunn.

President Trump signed the bill, also known as the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, on Dec. 20.

Trump Scores, Breaks Generals’ 50-Year War Record

 

His national security team had been trying to box him in like every other president. But he called their bluff.

The mainstream media has attacked President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria as impulsive, blindsiding his own national security teamBut detailed, published accounts of the policy process over the course of the year tell a very different story. They show that senior national security officials and self-interested institutions have been playing a complicated political game for months aimed at keeping Trump from wavering on our indefinite presence on the ground in Syria.

‘Angry White People with Money’


In the latest National Review cover story, Kevin D. Williamson writes an on-the-ground report from an “Abolish ICE PDX” march and explores the historical driving forces behind the “fascists styled as antifascists” who are running amok in Portland, Ore. Here he talks to Madeleine Kearns.

Madeleine Kearns: Other than some local yahoos, what did you see in Portland that’s worthy of national news coverage?

More @ NRO

How many more until we build the wall?

Via Dennis Le"Don't know what's in their brains. May be all tofu. Democ.....rats."

Dershowitz: A defense that might have freed Flynn — and still could

 Image result for Dershowitz: A defense that might have freed Flynn — and still could

Ever since former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn was arrested for lying to FBI agents, I have argued that he had a strong defense to that charge: namely, that his lies were not material because the FBI questioned him for an illegitimate purpose — to give him an opportunity to lie, rather than to obtain information it did not already have.

The question posed by the Flynn case is whether a lie can be material if the FBI already had indisputable evidence of the truthful answer and asked him the question for the sole purpose of giving him an opportunity to lie.

More @ The Hill

Franklin Graham Says He Was Banned from Facebook over 2-Year-Old Post

 The Rev. Franklin Graham speaks May 29 at the Stanislaus County Fairgrounds in Turlock, California.

I must admit I sneered at all of the “First they came for Alex Jones …” posts right after he was banned from every social media platform save Geocities.

True, I found it anomalous that every major tech company found him in violation of its terms of service with felicitous simultaneity for doing the same things that he’d been doing for nigh on a decade and a half, but even most conservatives would agree Jones was sui generis as a fringe voice. I disagreed with the decision but couldn’t summon any outrage; Jones was a singular figure and surely the banning was a singular occurrence — even as it was obvious to anyone paying attention that social media was cracking down on conservative voices in more covert ways.