PrairiePundit

CNN: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room” just moments ago, claimed that Nicolás Maduro was preparing to leave Venezuela "this morning" but was talked out of it by the Russians. “We’ve watched throughout the day, it’s been a long time since anyone’s seen Maduro,” Pompeo said. “He had an airplane on the tarmac, he was ready to leave this morning as we understand it and the Russians indicated he should stay.” Pompeo later added, "He was headed for Havana." ... President Trump threatened that a “full and complete embargo, together with the highest-level sanctions” would be placed on Cuba if the country’s troops don’t stop its military operations in Venezuela. “Hopefully, all Cuban soldiers will promptly and peacefully return to their island!” the President said in a series of tweets. ... This adds some context to what looks like a failed attempt to topple one of the worse leaders of a country in history.  Un

Fox News: Iran’s economy is on the brink thanks to the Trump administration’s sanctions, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Iran is in a deep recession, with inflation at roughly 40 percent, the organization said, marking the highest such level since 1980. The crisis is intensifying a chasm between President Hassan Rouhani’s allies and those who oppose diplomatic exchanges with the U.S. government, the Financial Times noted. And Iran’s problems are expected only to worsen once President Trump’s promised sanctions on the leading buyers of the Islamic Republic’s oil take effect. They include Japan, South Korea, Turkey, India and China. ... Rouhani’s problems are by no means just triggered by international forces. Iranians have complained that jobs are harder to come by and the cost of living has risen. “Every day when I go shopping, I think yesterday I was better off than today,” one woman, identified only as Maryam, told the FT. “I wake up every morning and

Washington Post: Poll: Percentage of Democrats who see border ‘crisis’ jumps amid spike in migrant families The increase comes as Democrats have grown more sharply concerned about the issue, according to a Post-ABC News poll. The change in attitude follows Trump's threat to move the migrants to Democrat controlled sanctuary cities.  They appear to be shedding their willful blindness to the problem.  They still have offered no reasonable solution or compromise in dealing with the issue.

NY Times: Trump Pushes to Designate Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Group In a private White House meeting this month, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt urged President Trump to deem his opposition terrorists, officials said. The Egyptian leader is not the only Arab leader that holds that view.  The Saudis and other Gulf States have also taken action against the organization.  The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist supremacy organization that is hostile to any other religion.

Mike Huckabee: ... ... The FISA court has been looking into abuses of the FISA system and has communicated with the Justice Department about its findings. Their chief judge has already determined that for more than four years before the election of Donald Trump, there was an illegal spying operation (yes, spying — and, yes, illegal) going on by four FBI contractors to break the law to steal personal electronic information about American citizens and to use it against the Republican Party. ... The people heading up the Justice Department at that time — including Attorney General (AG) Sally Yates and Assistant AG John Carlin — apparently knew about it and lied to the FISA court. It seems that by the time they withheld the political origins of Christopher Steele’s Trump “dossier” to the court, it was already business as usual to deceive those judges, who no doubt have steam coming out of their ears. There will be grand juries and indictments, according to diGenova, who knows how th

CNBC: Robust demand for Texas oil and gas in the first two months of 2019 pushed the state’s export activity into high gear: triple the national rate and contrasting with a slight decline by California. The Lone Star State’s exports totaled more than $50.9 billion in the January-February period of 2019, increasing 9% from a year earlier, according to WISERTrade, a trade research firm. For California, total international sales dipped 1% to $28.1 billion in the two months compared with national export growth of 2.6% to $260 billion in the period. Texas represented nearly 20% of all U.S. exports in the January-February period while California accounted for about 11%. California has seen its share of total U.S. exports fall in recent years while Texas has been growing its share due mainly to the new oil boom. “Two-thirds of the U.S. increase in exports over these last two months have come from Texas,” said Michael Cox, a former chief economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Gary Shilling: The U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted at the very end of 2017, which limited the deduction of state and local taxes to $10,000, has focused attention on the vast differences among municipal levies. It also provided an incentive for high earners to leave high-tax states such as New York for lower-tax climes including Florida and New Mexico in a trend that will only intensify. From 2011 through 2015, New York was among the top three states exited by millennials, and more Americans are moving out than moving into the Empire State. New York faces a $2 billion tax shortfall and will, no doubt, speed the exodus with higher taxes on those remaining. Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York City’s spending has risen 20 percent this fiscal year to $61.3 billion. Pension obligations are up $1.2 billion from four years ago to $9.5 billion annually, the Wall Street Journal reported, with more to come due to new municipal union contracts. This strategy of tax increases that encour

Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing: ... Executive privilege is not specified in the Constitution, yet courts have consistently ruled that presidents have the right to withhold certain documents and information from the other branches. Two of those categories are the “deliberative process” — materials that reveal how government decisions are made — and the “confidentiality of presidential communications.” In an interview last month discussing the House subpoena for an unredacted Mueller report, Nadler claimed that President Trump cannot use “executive privilege” to hide behind anything in the report, citing the Supreme Court’s 9-0 decision in the Nixon tapes case. If Nadler reads that case, he will learn that the court ruled the White House had to produce evidence (tapes, not testimony) subpoenaed for a criminal trial, not for a congressional hearing. Even then, the court ruled that executive privilege had to be given deference, such that the tapes be provided in camera so the tr

S&P Global: Heavily discounted Permian Basin gas could soon access downstream markets in Mexico, following the recent startup of incremental gas deliveries to Fermaca's Wahalajara pipeline system. On Monday, updated electronic bulletin board flow data showed that a new downstream segment on Wahalajara, the El Encino - La Laguna pipeline, began receiving about 40 MMcf/d on April 17. In Tuesday trading, cash prices at Waha traded as high at 65 cents/MMBtu, up about 25 cents from weekend flow dates. Forwards prices for May jumped 32 cents on the day, rising to a $2.47/MMBtu discount to benchmark Henry Hub gas on the improving outlook for Permian supply. The startup of incremental demand on Wahalajara bodes well for Permian producers since all of the system's supply comes entirely from the West Texas play. Over the past month, about 185 MMcf/d of Permian gas production has flowed westbound on Roadrunner Gas Transmission Pipeline where it meets the border-crossing Tarah

Townhall: Democrats Remain Dumb, Deaf, and Blind On Ralph Northam's Infanticide Comments I know, I know. This headline may sound a bit strong, perhaps Democrats did not recognize Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam since he was not in blackface when he made his infamous radio show comments about infanticide. But, after President Donald J. Trump received backlash for rightfully characterizing Northam's remarks on what to do if a baby is born alive during an abortion at last night's "Make America Great Again Rally" in Wisconsin, perhaps somebody should remind Democrats that a sitting Governor in their party supports infanticide (other party members do, too). Caroline Orr, an associate editor of ArcDigital, tweeted "Holy hell. Trump just told the crowd at his Wisconsin rally that after women give birth, the baby is 'wrapped in a blanket' and then 'the mother and the doctor decide whether to execute the baby.'" This set off a media firestorm, rep

Karl Notturno: Why Biden and the Democrats Cannot Admit They Lied The same people who lied about Russian collusion for years are still lying about what Trump said about events in Charlottesville. ... But this level of nuance and reasonability was too much for the corporate leftist media to handle. They insisted that President Trump was a deranged simpleton who deliberately was stoking a race war and they would give no succor to any suggestion to the contrary which might shatter their facile narrative that Trump supporters were primarily motivated by bigoted animus. The truth flatly refuted the talking points that media pundits and political operatives had parroted for years. Can’t have that. And so, they simply refused to accept that Trump had said what he said. They took brief snippets out of context and ran them ad nauseam. With sanctimonious outrage, they browbeat anyone who dared to elucidate the full context of Trump’s remarks with such force and vigor that even many form

Washington Post: Rising tide of white nationalism is at forefront of 2020 presidential race The shooting at a California synagogue and President Trump’s defense of his Charlottesville comments have put Trump on the defensive and prompted even some Republicans to acknowledge that the president is taking a political risk by continuing to stand by his words. The California shooter hated Trump and his support of Jews so he hardly fits the narrative the Post is pushing.  As for Charlottesville, the Democrats continue to lie about what Trump actually said and omit language he used which contradicts their bogus narrative.  Why the Post defends the bogus claims against Trump tells you much about their continuing bias against the President. As for "white nationalist" you probably could not fill a small gymnasium with them.  There are probably more liberal fascists operating under the banner if Antifa who are more dangerous.

Wesley J. Smith: Canadian doctors committed thousands of homicides in 2018. According to an interim report published by the government, in the first ten months of last year, doctors lethally injected 2, 613 patients (with one assisted suicide) — and that doesn’t include the homicides committed by doctors in Quebec, Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut. This means well over 3,000 people are killed by their doctors each year in Canada, which — if my math is correct — is more than 250 a month, more than 58 a week, and more than eight per day. Heck, that’s about one every three hours. The report says that about 1.12 percent of all Canadian deaths were caused by euthanasia, a number that is increasing every year. No wonder. Efforts are increasing to normalize lethal injection as a way of death — and soon we are likely to see the killable caste expanded in Canada to include children, people whose deaths are not “foreseeable,” those with dementia who asked to be killed in an advanc

Clarice Feldman: ... Far more serious handicaps in my opinion, are his apparent corrupt acts to benefit his son, Hunter. He steered $1.8 billion dollars to the then-Russian-linked government of the Ukraine and in return his son Hunter  received millions of dollars  from a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.  He pulled  a similar stunt  with China. Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and author of the new book  Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends , joined SiriusXM’s  Breitbart News Tonight  on Monday to detail the involvement of Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden’s second son, in a China-backed private equity firm’s investment in a Chinese atomic energy company indicted for “ nuclear power conspiracy against the United States .” In an interview with Breitbart News Senior Editors-at-Large Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak, Schweizer highlighted the financial relationship

Joseph DiGenova: James 'Cardinal' Comey — the man who destroyed the FBI In the annals of U.S. law enforcement, no individual has reached such depths of disgrace as James “Cardinal” Comey. The “Cardinal” was a sobriquet that FBI agents used to denigrate their leader. As Deputy Attorney General, he was called “drama queen.” Known for his pomposity and self-regard, Comey cut a swath of arrogance unmatched in the histories of either of those illustrious organizations. He was the cult of personality. He surrounded himself with sycophants, people dedicated to his promotion and their advancement. The Bureau and the public became the losers. The Comey Memos, a 15-page suicide note, reveal a deeply tortured and troubled man. They have a hausfrau sentimentality. But they are telling nonetheless. As we watch in amazement the mendacious and fiction-laced Comey book tour (truly a tour de farce), one is struck by the utter phantasm he has created around and about him. With each succe

Oil Price: While European oil supermajors are yielding to investor pressure to set emission reduction targets and announcing investments in renewables and EV charging networks, U.S. majors ExxonMobil and Chevron are doubling down on oil production on their home turf, turning the ‘shale game’ into a ‘scale game’, as Chevron’s CEO Michael Wirth has recently said. The two biggest U.S. oil firms aim to boost significantly their respective production from the most prolific U.S. basin, the Permian, which now pumps more than 4 million bpd of crude oil. Both Exxon and Chevron hold vast acreage positions in the basin, and both have the financial resources to invest in ramping up shale production even through various oil price cycles, even at oil prices at which smaller independent drillers struggle to break even and scale back drilling and capital spending. The shorter-cycle shale production yields returns in two-three years, compared to many years of lag time from discovery to development

Bloomberg/Fuel Fix: President Donald Trump said he’s spoken to Saudi Arabia and other countries about increasing oil flow and that “all are in agreement.” Trump described the conversations in a tweet on Friday in which he also said a California tax on gasoline is causing “big problems on pricing for that state.” Oil on Friday slid by the most since December as Trump pressed OPEC to lower prices and doubts grew about the impact of supply squeezes from Russia and Iran. ... US oil production continues to climb and infrastructure bottlenecks decrease in the Permian Basin which along with OPEC easily make up for Iranian oil.  California has created its own bottleneck with increased taxes and hostility to oil and gas production making its prices easily the highest in the US.  However, the politicians that caused the restriction of supply and increased pricing act shocked at the results of their perfidy.

Daily Mail: Human rights lawyer who defends Muslim women who remove headscarves in public is sentenced to 148 lashes and 38 years in jail in Iran  Nasrin Sotoudeh, an internationally renowned human rights lawyer jailed in Iran, was handed maximum sentence for all of her seven convictions. This is inhumane cruel and unusual punishment for doing what defense lawyers are supposed to do.  The Mullahs are much like today's Democrats who think that resisting their agenda is obstruction.  I have seen no condemnation of this by Obama or Kerry who agreed to a nuke deal with this evil regime.

Washington Examiner: New Mexico county to block Democratic governor from releasing migrants in its backyard ... "The hypocrisy in what is going on today ... is Santa Fe, which declares to be a sanctuary county, their mayor recently said, 'We don't want them here.' They are not going to receive them in Santa Fe county, but yet they will raise the funds so you all can put them in your backyard. My position, if you'll declare yourself a sanctuary county put them on the plaza and let them live there," Griffin said. Local officials from the state's southeastern county had given the governor one week to take emergency action and said they will consider suing the state if nothing happens in that time. It's been 10 days since they requested help. ... Democrats continue to be hypocrites on the border crisis.

Grabian: IN LIEU OF COMEDY, WHCD OPENS WITH DARK SERMON ON TRUMP ENDANGERING JOURNALISTS It is ironic that the same people who are critical of Trump and conservatives can dish it but can't take it when they are criticized for their bias in reporting.  They seem to hate the fact that they are dealing with a President and administration that fights back.  In some ways, they are like the whiny Democrats in the House who think that resistance to their treasonous coup attempt was obstruction of justice.

Jeffrey Lord: Well, that didn’t take long. Former Vice President Joe Biden, well known for his gaffes, announced for president — and immediately stepped in it. Looking into the camera — with a prepared script no less — Biden said this of the violence in Charlottesville in 2017: Charlottesville is also home to a defining moment for this nation in the last few years. It was there on August of 2017 we saw Klansmen and white supremacists and neo-Nazis come out in the open, their crazed faces illuminated by torches, veins bulging, and bearing the fangs of racism. Chanting the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the ’30s. And they were met by a courageous group of Americans, and a violent clash ensued and a brave young woman lost her life. Yes, indeed, there were Klansmen, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis there. But they were not “met by a courageous group of Americans.” They were met by an equally violent prone group — the masked hoodlums of the notoriously violent and

Politico: Republicans have long believed that if only the economy held up, President Donald Trump could win a second term. Following another spate of positive economic news — and without a cohesive economic message of their own — many Democrats are starting to fear he might. Anxiety on the left reached new heights last week, with the government reporting that the nation’s economy had grown at an unexpectedly fast pace in the first quarter of the year. While Trump took credit for the surging economy, Democratic presidential contenders were immersing themselves in the Mueller report and debating whether incarcerated felons should be allowed to vote. By Thursday, prodded by former Vice President Joe Biden, they were revisiting the violence at a white supremacist rally in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. In his own campaign announcement video, Biden did not explicitly mention jobs or the economy once. “We don’t really have a robust national message right now” on the economy, sa

Derek Hunter: ... “I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect,” responded to question about his academic credentials during his first White House bid in 1987. “I went to law school on a full academic scholarship, the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship. In the first year in law school I decided I didn’t want to be in law school and ended up in the bottom two-thirds in my class, then I decided I wanted to stay, went back to law school and, in fact, ended up in the top half of my class. I won the International Moot Court Competition, I was the ‘Outstanding Student’ in the Political Science department at the end of my year. I graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school and 165 credits, only needed 123 credits, and I’d be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours, if you’d like, frankly.” As you can see, Joe Biden has always had the fire in his belly for politics. The only problem with the above response is none of it was tru

Michael Goodwin: No doubt you’ve heard a Democrat or two declare that President Trump is a “threat to our democracy.” Joe Biden used his campaign launch to up the ante, saying that the 2020 election is a “battle for the soul” of America and warning that if Trump gets a second term, “he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation.” Ho hum. The suggestion that the president is the personification of evil and is destroying all that makes America exceptional has become so routine that it’s easy to ignore it. In fact, it’s an ­extraordinary charge, even for our nasty, turbulent times. More remarkable, the charge and related talking points continue to thrive on the left despite the lack of facts to support them. Indeed, special counsel Robert Mueller shredded the heart of the wildest accusations — that Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election. So the collusion charge was a Big Lie, but it’s a lie that won’t die. A trip down memory lane shows how we

H.A. Goodman: James Clapper Knew There Was No Evidence of Trump-Russia Collusion In 2016 President Obama’s top intelligence official stated categorically that no evidence existed of Trump-Russia collusion. So why did Rosenstein appoint Mueller two months later? ... From July 2016 until Clapper’s appearance on “Meet the Press” in March 2017, not one shred of evidence linked anyone in Trump’s campaign to allegations listed in the Christopher Steele dossier or Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos’s meeting with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer. Clapper stated to Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on March 5, 2017 that the National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Central Intelligence Agency had collected “no evidence” regarding “improper contacts” between Trump and Russia.... ... Clapper sometimes appeared to claim otherwise on CNN.  But his early statement of Meet the Press turns out to have been correct as verified by the Muller Report.

Mollie Hemingway: Comey’s Memos Indicate Dossier Briefing Of Trump Was A Setup Newly released memos from former FBI director James Comey indicate that an early 2017 briefing for Trump on the contents of an unverified dossier was part of a setup to enable media to report on the the most salacious details of the dossier. I think this is more evidence that Trump was right to fire the duplicitous FBI chief.  He was not a man that could be trusted to act honorably.  Comey's treatment of Flynn is another example of how he tried to manufacture a crime and entrap him.

Monica Showalter: California spends $178 million per fish to bring back salmon ... Leftie greenies recently hailed the return of ... five ... salmon, swimming upstream to the San Joaquin river to spawn. Paradise restored! In water-starved California, that was quite an achievement, given that each salmon required 50,000 gallons of water to get the job done, coming at a price tag of $890 million at the low end and $2 billion at the high. And that water came out of the hides of California's farmers, who got very little of the water they were promised, and paid for, as a result. That's some use of resources to get those five salmon to swim upstream. ... California environmentalists appear to lack common sense as do its politicians who go along with these schemes.

Washington Post: Trump isn’t just defying Congress. He’s rejecting the whole idea of oversight. When you see Democrats in Congress demanding Trump's tax returns and use subpoenas to facilitate a coup attempt against eh President it seems clear they have lost their way and there are good reasons for the President to resist the Democrats' abuse of power.  The demand for his tax returns is without probable cause.  They have no evidence that the tax returns would contain any evidence of wrongdoing by the President.  In fact, they are seeking returns from before he even ran for President. This is far different from GOP investigations of Obama scandals such as Fast and Furious gun-running to narco-terrorists and Obam's IRS abuses against conservative political opponents. And BTW, how long is the media going to let Obama and Biden pretend there were no scandals when they were in office.  Those were real scandals and not manufactured ones like the bogus claims of Russian col

Houston Chronicle: Renewable energy has prospered in Texas over the years, supported by federal subsidies that have helped to make the state the biggest producer of wind power in the nation and lowered electricity prices for Texas household and businesses. But now Texas lawmakers are examining ways to undermine that support and strip away what fossil-fuel interests have long decried as unfair advantages for wind and solar industries. The state Senate on Wednesday passed a bill that would require state regulators to determine how to eliminate the financial advantages created by federal subsidies through measures such as new fees on renewable generators or higher rates for traditional generators — moves that would likely raise retail electricity prices. A similar measure was approved earlier this month by the House committee on State Affairs. The goal of the legislation’s proponents is to slow the development of the wind and solar generation that is taking increasingly bigger sha

Michael Knowles: Yes, President Trump committed obstruction. From the moment he defeated Hillary Clinton, Democrats have tried to overturn the 2016 election, but Trump has obstructed their efforts every step of the way. This was obstruction in the interests of justice . The president should be applauded for it. First, partisans within the Justice Department spied on the Trump presidential campaign. They used a mainstream news article to obtain a warrant to surveil Trump’s campaign staff by misleading a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge about the source of the article. In fact, the news story was based on unverified opposition research funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Recently uncovered text messages between disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page suggest this surveillance continued after the election, shifting its focus from the Trump campaign to the transition team of then-President-elect Trump. ... Accordi

Mark Mills: ... Scientists have yet to discover, and entrepreneurs have yet to invent, anything as remarkable as hydrocarbons in terms of the combination of low-cost, high-energy density, stability, safety, and portability. In practical terms, this means that spending $1 million on utility-scale wind turbines, or solar panels will each, over 30 years of operation, produce about 50 million kilowatt-hours (kWh)—while an equivalent $1 million spent on a shale rig produces enough natural gas over 30 years to generate over 300 million kWh. Solar technologies have improved greatly and will continue to become cheaper and more efficient. But the era of 10-fold gains is over. The physics boundary for silicon photovoltaic (PV) cells, the Shockley-Queisser Limit, is a maximum conversion of 34% of photons into electrons; the best commercial PV technology today exceeds 26%. Wind power technology has also improved greatly, but here, too, no 10-fold gains are left. The physics boundary for a w

Brownsville Herald: Edinburg Mayor Richard Molina and his wife Dalia Molina have turned themselves in to authorities after warrants were issued for their arrests on illegal voting charges stemming from the city’s November 2017 election, according to a law enforcement source with knowledge of the case. The Molinas are expected to be arraigned later today on multiple charges. The Edinburg mayor has been dogged by allegations of engaging in and encouraging voter fraud ever since he won the election in November 2017. Such speculation was only heightened by the arrest of more than a dozen people on illegal voting charges over the course of the last year as part of a Texas Attorney General’s office investigation into what Attorney General Ken Paxton has called an organized illegal voting scheme. Molina unseated Richard Garcia for the mayoral office in that election by 1,240 votes, which Molina’s critics allege were cast by people who were not Edinburg residents. ... Fifteen other

Jeff Dunetz: Why Did Dems’ Top Donor PAC Pay Buzzfeed $1.5 Million During 2016 Campaign? This also raises questions about how independent Buzzfeed is and why it published the Steele Dossier without verifying its content.  It looks like a deliberate attempt to unfairly attack the President for partisan reasons.

Washington Examiner: Economy grew at 3.2% in first quarter, beating expectations Exports were key factors.  I suspect that energy exports will continue to grow.  There was also a slowdown in imports which appears consistent with the President's agenda of keeping jobs in this country and pressing other countries to be fairer in their trade practices with the US.

Washington Examiner: Black Hawk Down veterans blast Ilhan Omar for 'smearing' US troops who died 'to help her people'   Veterans of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu have slammed Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., for accusing them of killing "thousands" of Somalis and ignoring the fact they were engaged in a United Nations mission designed to protect civilians from a murderous warlord following a devastating famine and civil war. She took the side of the terrorists trying to starve people in order to win a war.  One of the strategies used by warlords in that part of Africa is to use food as a weapon and try to starve those who do not support them.

Eric Holder: The Supreme Court can’t allow Trump to weaponize the census Holder gets it backward.  The Democrats have been using people in the country illegally to replace their shrinking base of support from citizens.  They fear an honest count of eligible voters.  It goes to their current policy of opposing anything to restrict illegal immigration into the country.  The Democrat base has been shrinking for several reasons including bad policy choices as well as aborting future Democrats by the millions since Roe v. Wade .

NY Times: Sri Lankan Accused of Leading Attacks Preached Slaughter. Many Dismissed Him. The man accused of masterminding the Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels never hid his hatred. “We all underestimated him,” a resident of his hometown said. It is curious that so many ignore open threats by radical Islamists.  If a man says he wants to commit mass murders, he should be taken seriously.  The reaction of other Muslims is also predictable:   After the Sri Lanka Terror Attacks, Muslims Fear Backlash They tend to play the victim rather than express anger at the perpetrators.  You can see it in this country too with the CAIR activists.  Rep. Omar is a classic example of this response.  If they reacted the way the West did to the attacks in New Zealand there would less chance of a backlash because it would be clear they opposed mass murder attacks.

The Hill: Massachusetts judge charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly helping man evade ICE arrest A Massachusetts judge has been charged with obstruction of justice after allegedly attempting to prevent an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer from taking custody of an immigrant. Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph and trial court officer Wesley MacGregor were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction of justice and obstruction of a federal proceeding. It also accuses MacGregor of perjury. ... I think the same charges would be appropriate for the officials of sanctuary states and cities.

Fuel Fix: Houston liquefied natural gas company NextDecade has entered into an agreement to deepen nearly half of Brownsville Ship Channel. During a Wednesday morning event, NextDecade CEO Matt Schatzman signed an agreement to privately fund deepening the South Texas waterway from its entrance at the Gulf of Mexico to company's proposed export terminal. The Port of Brownsville has held a permit to deepen the ship channel from 42 feet to 52 feet for years but lacked local, state and federal funding. Under the deal, NextDecade will fund the dredging project as well as widening a bend near the channel's entrance to improve navigational safety. If approved, the company's proposed Rio Grande LNG export terminal will be located near the halfway point of the 17-mile channel. ... This is good news for the Port of Brownsville and could also result in other projects tied to the export of natural gas and crude from the Permian Basin.  It would give the State of Texas another

Washington Free Beacon: A senior Iranian military officer affiliated with the country's Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, has fled the Islamic Republic with a cache of secret documents said to contain information on Tehran's military plans, according to reports. Ali Nasiri, a former IRGC brigadier general who once headed Iran's counterintelligence operations, is reported to have fled Iran and requested political asylum at a U.S. embassy in an unnamed Gulf country, according to a report carried in Iran Commentary, an online news portal that publishes information about Iran's human rights abuses and illicit activity. "Sources say a probe launched by IRGC counterintelligence units reveals that Nasiri fled a Persian Gulf country, requesting political asylum at the local U.S. embassy," the report claims. "Reports indicate Nasiri had in possession a large volume of documents recording the travels of senior IRGC commanders, intelligence personnel and ope

Jason Pye: ... The so-called “Green New Deal” resolution may not be taken seriously on Capitol Hill or anywhere else in America, but House Democrats are still trying to push climate alarmism. In late March, a day after the Senate rejected the Green New Deal resolution, House Democrats unveiled the Climate Action Now Act, H.R. 9, which would prevent the United States from leaving the Paris Agreement. ... The Climate Action Now Act may not be as blunt as the “Green New Deal,” but it’s still a radical notion because of the lost productivity and fewer jobs that would come as a result of meeting such an extreme reduction in carbon emissions for little to no real environmental benefit. The bill would require President Trump and his administration to develop a plan to meet the target reductions in carbon emissions and prohibit the use of funds from being used by the Trump administration to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. With many countries that signed onto the Paris Agreement faili

Tucker Carlson: Democrats Outraged a Terrorist Can't Vote   Some of them also are seeking the votes of illegals and objection to a citizenship question on the census.  They seem to be in a desperate attempt to replace their shrinking base after they have alienated much of middle America.

Benny Avni: ... Beyond shuttering the nuclear program, America wants to see an end to the Islamic Republic’s ­regional adventurism, worldwide terror networks, provocative missile tests and human rights violations at home. Bottom line, Iran must renounce ambitions that harm America and our allies and interests — not to mention the Iranian people. Putting the squeeze on oil ­exports, however, isn’t without risks. The administration calculates that any resulting spike in oil prices will be offset by increased production from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Iran’s regional archenemies. ... With its economy faltering, Tehran will be forced to make a do-or-die choice: Renegotiate the nuclear deal, this time with real curbs on its illicit programs, or face regime collapse. The only problem for Trump: Democratic presidential candidates threaten, as soon as elected and in office, to zag right back to the old nuclear deal. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Mini

Washington Examiner: A former top FBI official said a repository of Hillary Clinton's emails was obtained by the Obama White House. As part of a court-ordered discovery related to Clinton’s unauthorized email server, Bill Priestap was asked by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch to identify representatives of Clinton, her State Department staff, and government agencies from which “email repositories were obtained" by the FBI. He divulged a nonexhaustive list, which included the Executive Office of the President. Other people mentioned were former Clinton aides Cheryl Mills, Heather Samuelson, Jacob Sullivan, and Justin Cooper, former Clinton information technology staffer Bryan Pagliano, the State Department, Secret Service, and Washington-based law firm Williams and Connolly. Priestep answered questions in writing and under oath as part of U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth's ruling earlier this year that discovery could commence examining the former secr

Asia Times: Back in March of last year, the Kim Jong Un regime told a group of South Korean special envoys that it was willing to discuss denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and normalization of its relations with the US. According to the interlocutors, Pyongyang also promised that it would refrain from conducting further missile and nuclear tests so long as its prospective talks with Washington continued. That pledge was apparently intended to lock Washington into negotiations until the Kim regime got what it wanted. But the US has flipped the script, as it now appears that North Korea is the one bound to a negotiation process that can only move forward when Washington’s demands are met. If Pyongyang follows through on its recent threats to walk away from the negotiations and resume testing of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, it will destroy any chance it has of obtaining sanctions relief, and its actions could trigger a new round of international sanctions. On t

Sharyl Attkisson: ... Here are 10 reasons why Russia election interference seems set to become the most enduring scandal of the Obama administration. Missed opportunity. Perhaps the best shot at disrupting Russian interference came as early as fall 2015. That’s when the FBI supposedly detected successful efforts by Russian hackers to breach Democratic National Committee (DNC) computers. For reasons unknown, the systems and others remained vulnerable to further attacks. By July 2016, the DNC and FBI both had concluded Russians were responsible for additional hacks. Yet, the DNC reportedly refused to allow the FBI to examine its servers and data in a timely fashion and — for reasons unexplained — the FBI failed to confiscate them. Obviously, when national security is at stake, the FBI does not need permission to examine evidence. A senior law enforcement official told CNN the DNC’s withholding of crucial evidence “caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing