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As heavy smoke rolls out of the stricken USS West Virginia, a small boat rescues a crew member from the water after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Dec. 7, 1941 during World War II. Two men can be seen on the superstructure, upper center. The mast of the USS Tennessee is beyond the burning West Virginia. (AP Photo)
“…A U.S. judge ordered the Justice and State departments Thursday to reopen an inquiry into whether Hillary Clinton used a private email server while secretary of state to deliberately evade public records laws, and to answer whether the agencies acted in bad faith by not telling a court for months that they had asked in mid-2014 for missing emails to be returned.
The order risks reopening partisan wounds that have barely healed since Clinton’s unsuccessful 2016 presidential bid, but in issuing the order Thursday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act required it.
In a narrow but sharply worded 10-page opinion, Lamberth wrote that despite the government’s claimed presumption of transparency, “faced with one of the gravest modern offenses to government openness, [the Obama administration’s] State and Justice departments fell far short” of the law’s requirements in a lawsuit for documents.
Lamberth added that despite President Donald Trump’s repeated campaign attacks against Clinton for not making her emails public, “the current Justice Department made things worse,” by taking the position that agencies are not obliged to search for records not in the government’s possession when a FOIA request is made.
Lamberth wrote he took no pleasure in “questioning the intentions of the nation’s most august” Cabinet departments, but said it was necessary when their response “smacks of outrageous misconduct.”…”
Professor: Virgin Mary Didn’t Give Consent.
“…The virgin birth story is about an all-knowing, all-powerful deity impregnating a human teen. There is no definition of consent that would include that scenario…”
From: Glenn Reynolds
“The future is female.”
“…It’s a favorite slogan of the identity left that has now gone mainstream. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand tweeted it on Wednesday, adding that the future is also “intersectional” and “powered by our belief in one another.”
But if the future is female, what happens to our boys? And what message are we sending our present-day girls?
Gillibrand is one of about 30 Democrats considering running for president in 2020, and the tweet suggests she’s seizing some strategic left-wing ground (in a primary field crowded with lefties) by appealing to the Dems’ identity-obsessed base…”
Conrad Black:
“…Conditions in Germany are just as worrisome.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and her chief coalition partner, both leaders of shrinking parties, are now clinging like drowning people to each other but sinking together. The opposition is fragmented between the reasonable but limited pro-enterprise Free Democrats, the very eccentric and militant Greens (who have already pushed Merkel to roll back nuclear power and make Germany dependent on Russian natural gas), the Alternative party which is moving steadily farther right and may actually entertain some of the views falsely imputed to Donald Trump, and the Link—the shriveled and embittered detritus of the old East German Communists. No easily visible successor to Merkel in the grand coalition looks adequate to reverse trends and no combination of the opposition parties looks remotely capable of governing. An ungovernable Germany is a historic menace.
Germany and France have both shaken the world before. Britain and France have on occasion inspired it. All three could do either now. The United States has saved Europe before, too.
It would greatly improve the quality of political conversation in Washington, in this week when it says farewell to a man who was a pillar of service to the nation in war and peace, nearly 45 years from combat hero to commander-in-chief, to set aside Muelleresque intrigue and cable news inanities, and recognize the condition of our esteemed allies.
The G20 meetings over the weekend in Buenos Aires demonstrated what we already knew: Trump and Xi will work it out. Putin is a scoundrel and a gadfly, and there are strong regional players, especially Japan and India. But the stability of the world requires that Western Europe rediscover its talent for self-government, which it spent centuries trying to impart to others…”
https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/05/the-west-needs-to-rediscover-a-talent-for-self-government/
“…It wasn’t just a “Blue Wave” that swept over California on Nov. 6, according to former GOP state Assembly leader Kristin Olsen. She said it was more like a “Blue Tsunami.” Now, some California Republicans are afraid the only thing that can save their party is the extinction of the state GOP.
“The California Republican Party isn’t salvageable at this time,” Olsen wrote. “The Grand Old Party is dead.”
California Democrats, holding at least 60 out of 80 Assembly seats after the Nov. 6 election, will have a historic supermajority in 2019. Only eight of the 53 California U.S. House seats will be held by the GOP. In statewide races, no Republican got better than 40 percent of the November vote.
So, Democrats go into next year with the largest caucus since California’s legislature went full-time in 1966. “When the nation looks toward California, it will look like the sun is rising in the west. That’s our future, shining bright,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D) said in a statement.
But, the San Diego Tribune editorial board noted, “the bad news (for Republicans) doesn’t end there.”
“Republicans used to be able to count on anti-tax sentiment among state voters. But a measure to repeal gas tax hikes went down in flames this month,” the Tribuneeditorial board wrote. “Supporters can blame misleading ballot language if they want, but voters’ recent support of tax hikes is also telling.”
How could this be? Life in California is far from perfect. Californians are coping with a housing crisis. More than 130,000 California residents were homeless in September, according to the Sacramento Bee.
Californians also suffer under the yoke of the highest rate of poverty in the U.S. According to the California Poverty Measure, more than 19 percent of Californians, close to 7.4 million people, “lacked enough resources to meet basic needs in 2016.”
U.S. News & World Report in March ranked California’s quality of life as absolutely the worst in the U.S. The Best States ranking graded the 50 states on having a healthy environment and a sense of community.
But, paradoxically, San Diego Tribune editorialists said voters are not blaming the party in power, Democrats, for anything that’s gone wrong.
“Voters seem to endorse Democratic values so strongly that they don’t sweat the details about everyone’s lives improving,” the Tribune wrote…”
https://pjmedia.com/election/california-gop-is-it-too-late-to-save-this-elephant-from-extinction/
“…Goodlatte’s statement matches the June statement by Rep. Jim Jordan, who said: ‘If our leadership had put the same whip effort behind that immigration legislation, Chairman Goodlatte’s legislation, it would have passed.’ . . . Retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan made the decision to create the rival bill that blocked Goodlatte’s bill…”
“…The plan was straightforward: After years of being challenged by President Trump and others about a decades-old claim of Native American ancestry, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts would take a DNA test to prove her stated family origins in the Cherokee and Delaware tribes. But nearly two months after Ms. Warren released the test results and drew hostile reactions from prominent tribal leaders, the lingering cloud over her likely presidential campaign has only darkened. Conservatives have continued to ridicule her. More worrisome to supporters of Ms. Warren’s presidential ambitions, she has yet to allay criticism from grass-roots progressive groups, liberal political operatives and other potential 2020 allies who complain that she put too much emphasis on the controversial field of racial science — and, in doing so, played into Mr. Trump’s hands…”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-dna-test-2020.html
“…The latest Census Bureau data analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that about 72 percent of households headed by noncitizens and immigrants use one or more forms of taxpayer-funded welfare programs in California — the number one immigrant-receiving state in the U.S.
Meanwhile, only about 35 percent of households headed by native-born Americans use welfare in California.
All four states with the largest foreign-born populations, including California, have extremely high use of welfare by immigrant households. In Texas, for example, nearly 70 percent of households headed by immigrants use taxpayer-funded welfare. Meanwhile, only about 35 percent of native-born households in Texas are on welfare.
In New York and Florida, a majority of households headed by immigrants and noncitizens are on welfare. Overall, about 63 percent of immigrant households use welfare while only 35 percent of native-born households use welfare…”
“…BRUSSELS—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo brought the Trump administration’s voice to a gathering of European leaders, offering a stinging criticism of the European order’s capitulation to rogue nations such as Iran, China, and Russia.
Pompeo, addressing a gathering of NATO leaders on Tuesday, offered a sobering rebuke of the international treaty group, telling the crowd the Trump administration will not stand down in the face of rising threats from a host of rogue regimes.
Criticizing the rise of anti-Israel bias and complacency in the face of growing threats from countries such as Iran, Pompeo championed President Donald Trump’s foreign policy vision.
“This U.S. leadership allowed us to enjoy the greatest human flourishing in modern history. We won the Cold War. We won the peace. We reunited Germany,” Pompeo said. “This is the type of leadership that President Trump is boldly reasserting.”…”
https://freebeacon.com/national-security/u-s-asserts-authority-nato-stinging-criticism/
“…Amazon is getting ready for the new Democratic House — and building a wall of protection against any potential focus on its growth and influence.
In the last month the tech, commerce, and media giant has hired three key Democratic aides, who will help with legislation and diversity issues.
The trade outlet Legistorm reported the latest hire and blogged, “Amazon is continuing its hiring sweep of Congress, adding its third Democratic aide in a month.”
It reported the hiring of Tina Tower as a program manager for public policy. She was Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Ed Markey’s assistant to the chief of staff.
And Politico reported two other big hires, House chiefs of staff LaDavia Drane and Tony Clair to handle the company’s ties to the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.
The outlet said that Drane came from the office of New York Rep. Yvette Clarke and Clair from North Carolina Rep. G.K. Butterfield…”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/amazon-on-democrat-hiring-binge
