Monday on MSNBC’s “The Beat,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) criticized the one-week deadline in the expanded FBI probe of Supreme Court associate justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Blumenthal said, “It’s the right direction, but whether they go far enough and quickly enough remains to be seen. Those 25 witnesses that I sent to the White House and to the FBI along with almost all my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee, Democratic side, are the minimum that ought to be interviewed. As you well know, witnesses can lead to other witnesses that have to be pursued. So I believe that Jeff Flake truly wants a real investigation, not a check the box sham. And that’s what the FBI ought to be doing. Difficult, though, because as you said very well, this deadline is tight and arbitrary. In fact, too accelerated and too artificial to really get the job done.”
Trump scolded Obama for Syria and now he bombs them twice.
I don’t believe that President Trump should have went in and bombed Syria. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told the White House to wait until we had more details but The President and his people listened to France and the UK. See the stories below and check out the new video at https://commonsensenation.net/videos/ .
Check Out My Video On Why Trump Should Not Have Went Into Syria And Why He Is Being A Hypocrite.
Mattis Tries to Put Brakes on Possible Syria Strike, to ‘Keep This From Escalating’
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis sought on Thursday to slow down an imminent strike on Syria, reflecting mounting concerns at the Pentagon that a concerted bombing campaign could escalate into a wider conflict between Russia, Iran and the West.
During a closed-door White House meeting, officials said, Mr. Mattis pushed for more evidence of President Bashar al-Assad’s role in a suspected chemical attack last weekend that would assure the world that military action was necessary.
Despite the caution, two Defense Department officials predicted it would be difficult to pull back from punishing airstrikes, given President Trump’s threat on Twitter a day earlier of American missiles that “will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart.’”
Mr. Mattis publicly raised the warning on Thursday morning, telling the House Armed Services Committee that retaliation must be balanced against the threat of a wider war.
“We are trying to stop the murder of innocent people,” Mr. Mattis said. “But on a strategic level, it’s how do we keep this from escalating out of control — if you get my drift on that.”
Hours later, after Mr. Mattis detailed his concerns at the White House, the president’s top national security advisers ended an afternoon meeting without a decision to attack, said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary.
Diplomatic efforts continued deep into the evening, with Mr. Trump agreeing in a phone call with Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain that “it was vital that the use of chemical weapons did not go unchallenged,” Downing Street said in a statement. The two leaders committed to “keep working closely together on the international response,” the statement said.
Mr. Trump was also expected to speak on Thursday with President Emmanuel Macron of France, the other key ally weighing military action.
Defense Department officials said Mr. Mattis urged consideration of a wider strategy. They said he sought to persuade allies to commit to immediate help after striking Mr. Assad’s government in response to Saturday’s suspected chemical weapons attack on a suburb of Damascus, the capital.
Nikki R. Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, said that “we definitely have enough proof” of a chemical weapons attack.
“But now, we just have to be thoughtful in our action,” Ms. Haley told Andrea Mitchell of NBC News.
In the White House meeting, according to three administration officials, Mr. Mattis said the United States, Britain and France must provide convincing proof that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to attack the rebel-held town of Douma, where more than 40 people died and hundreds were sickened.
It was an acknowledgment of a lesson from the Iraq war about what can go wrong after a military assault without a plan, one senior Defense Department official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive plans. It also sought to ensure that the United States and European allies could justify the strike to the world in the face of withering criticism by Russia — Mr. Assad’s most powerful partner.
“Defense officials are right to worry about escalation,” said Kori Schake, a former national security aide to President George W. Bush and author of a book with Mr. Mattis.
“The Russians are heavily invested in sustaining Bashar Assad in power, have made their case as the essential power in the Middle East, and a U.S. or allied strike would be a reminder of how much stronger the West is than Russia,” Ms. Schake said.
Mr. Mattis also assured House lawmakers that they would be notified before any strikes against Syrian weapons facilities and airfields. The Pentagon alerted lawmakers before an April 2017 cruise missile attack on Shayrat air base after a similar chemical attack on Syrian civilians.
Before the White House meeting, Mr. Trump told reporters he would make a decision “fairly soon” about a strike. Earlier, in a tweet, he insisted that he had never telegraphed the timing of an attack on Syria, which “could be very soon or not so soon at all!”
“We’re looking very, very seriously, very closely at that whole situation and we’ll see what happens, folks, we’ll see what happens,” he told reporters at the White House.
“It’s too bad that the world puts us in a position like that,” he said. “But you know, as I said this morning, we’ve done a great job with ISIS,” Mr. Trump added. “We have just absolutely decimated ISIS. But now we have to make some further decisions. So they’ll be made fairly soon.”
In Paris, Mr. Macron cited unspecified proof that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in Douma, and said that France was working in close coordination with the Trump administration on the issue.
“We have proof that last week, 10 days ago even, chemical weapons were used — at least chlorine — and that they were used by the regime of Bashar al-Assad,” Mr. Macron said in an interview on TF1, a French television station.
But time may be of the essence in London, where Britain’s Parliament will return from its Easter vacation on Monday. Although Mrs. May is under no legal obligation to consult Parliament before ordering any military action,
Fire this Globalist metrosexual fraud. This is pure nepotism.
The White House said Jared Kushner will not be affected by any policy changes made regarding security clearances, even though he still has an interim security clearance 13 months into the job.
“Nothing that has taken place will affect the valuable work that Jared is doing,” Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said at the White House briefing on Tuesday.
Chief of Staff John Kelly last week ordered changes to how the White House manages security clearance investigations, after staffer Rob Porter continued to access top secret material even after claims of domestic abuse by two ex-wives were reported to the FBI.
Porter had been working under an interim security clearance, raising scrutiny over the 30 to 40 White House staffers who are also working with interim security clearances, including the president’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner.
The new policy limits new interim clearances to a maximum of 270 days, and cuts off any Top Secret or Sensitive-Compartmented-Information (TS/SCI) level interim clearances for individuals whose investigations or adjudications have been pending since June 1, 2017, or before.
That new policy would presumably affect Kushner, who currently holds an interim TS/SCI security clearance that has been pending since he joined the White House more than a year ago. Kushner has reportedly requested more intelligence information than almost every other White House official outside of the National Security Council. He is allowed to see the nation’s most-guarded intelligence, and access the presidential daily briefing.
On Monday, CNN reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s interest in Kushner had expanded beyond his Russian contacts, into meetings during the transition period with foreign investors to shore up financing for a building backed by his family’s firm.
Sanders batted down repeated questions from reporters over Kushner’s security clearance, given his many powerful roles in the administration and the sensitivity of some of his tasks, on everything from working on the Middle East Peace Process to modernizing the federal government’s use of technology.
“I”m not aware of any red flags,” Sanders said.
Trump critics have questioned Kushner’s access to the nation’s most secured intelligence despite his lack of a permanent security clearance for months. Last week, left-wing watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics filed a complaint, calling on the White House to revoke Kushner’s interim clearance.
California Democrat Rep. Ted Lieu has questioned Kushner’s lack of a clearance on a near-weekly basis:
Ted Lieu
✔
@tedlieu
Today is #PresidentsDay2018. That means we all need to ask again: Why does son-in-law of @POTUS still have a security clearance?
Also, did Kushner cause White House to initially turn against Qatar because they rejected his demand to finance the troubled loan at 666 Fifth Ave?
Last week, National Background Investigations Bureau Director Charles Phalen toldlawmakers that he had “never seen that level of mistakes” when asked about Kushner’s security clearance application.
Kushner has revised his security clearance questionnaire multiple times, to include meetings with foreign officials.
Some have also questioned whether Porter was allowed to remain in the job for so long due to his connection with Kushner. Porter attended Harvard with Kushner, according to multiple reports.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed the FCC’s “Restoring Internet Freedom Order” on Thursday, which will repeal the agency’s 2015 net neutrality regulation.
Chairman Pai told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday, “I think what net neutrality repealed would actually mean is we once again have a free and open Internet. The government would not be regulating how anyone in the Internet service providers, how anyone else in the internet economy manages their networks.”
The FCC’s Restoring Internet Freedom order will reclassify the Internet as an “information service” compared to the FCC’s 2015 net neutrality order, which regulated the Internet as a public monopoly. The order will also require Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast or Verizon to release transparency reports detailing their practices towards consumers and businesses.
The FCC’s net neutrality repeal order will also restore the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) traditional authority and expertise to regulate and litigate unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive telecommunications practices without onerous regulations and increased cost.
On Monday the FCC and the FTC agreed to share the responsibility to police unfair ISP practices regarding unfair or deceptive practices to block, throttle, or promote web content.
Chairman Pai explained in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal why repealing net neutrality will preserve a free and open internet.
Pai wrote:
We have proof that markets work: For almost two decades, the U.S. had a free and open internet without these heavy-handed rules. There was no market failure before 2015. Americans weren’t living in a digital dystopia before the FCC seized power. To the contrary, millions enjoyed an online economy that was the envy of the world. They experienced the most powerful platform ever seen for permission-less innovation and expression. Next month, I hope the FCC will choose to return to the common-sense policies that helped the online world transform the physical one.
The FCC’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order and Breitbart News’s Allum Bokhari argued that under net neutrality content providers such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter have censored the internet, stifled conservative and alternative voices, and serve as a greater threat to free speech compared to ISPs.
Pai charged in a recent speech that Facebook, Twitter, and Google serve as a greater threat to free speech and an open internet.
“I love Twitter, and I use it all the time,” said Pai. “But let’s not kid ourselves; when it comes to an open Internet, Twitter is part of the problem. The company has a viewpoint and uses that viewpoint to discriminate.”
In further comments, the FCC chairman specifically called out the censorship of Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s pro-life ad, which was blocked by Twitter for “inflammatory speech.”
Pai charged, “Two months ago, Twitter blocked Representative Marsha Blackburn from advertising her Senate campaign launch video because it featured a pro-life message. Before that, during the so-called Day of Action, Twitter warned users that a link to a statement by one company on the topic of Internet regulation ‘may be unsafe.’”
FCC Chairman Pai previously referenced Robert McChesney, the founder of Free Press, who remains a staunch supporter of net neutrality. Pai explained that McChesney openly bragged about taking over the internet. McChesney said, “At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet. But, the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”
Robert McChesney even said, “In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.”
To put McChesney’s influence on net neutrality in context, he was cited 46 times in the Obama net neutrality order.
Democrats and Silicon Valley companies argued that content providers cannot compete on an even playing field without net neutrality.
Congressman Mike Doyle (D-PA) said on Tuesday, “All you have to do is look at what went on over the last 10 or 15 years to see how the [internet service providers] repeatedly sought to crush potential competitors and challenged the FCC’s previous net neutrality rules in court to understand why the Open Internet Order was needed — and to see what will happen if the Open Internet Order is repealed.”
Net neutrality protesters gathered outside the FCC on Thursday morning to rally against the FCC’s repeal of the agency’s 2015 Open Internet Order.
At the FCC meeting Pai charged:
This bipartisan policy worked. Encouraged by light-touch regulation, the private sector invested over $1.5 trillion to build out fixed and mobile networks throughout the United States. 28.8k modems gave way to gigabit fiber connections. Innovators and entrepreneurs grew startups into global giants. America’s Internet economy became the envy of the world.
And this light-touch approach was good for consumers, too. In a free market full of permissionless innovation, online services blossomed. Within a generation, we’ve gone from email as the killer app to high-definition video streaming. Entrepreneurs and innovators guided the Internet far better than the clumsy hand of government ever could have.
Fellow Republican Commissioner Michael O’Reilly said, “No one can label more than a handful of examples of why we need this regulation.”
“Please take a deep breath. This decision will not break the Internet,” O’Reilly added.
Republican Commision Brendan Carr argued, “Americans will have robust Internet consumer protections.”
Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said at the FCC meeting, “Net neutrality is internet freedom. I support that freedom. I dissent from this rash decision to roll back net neutrality rules.”
Democratic Commissioner Mignon Clyburn announced that next Tuesday she will host a town hall meeting to discuss the future of net neutrality.
Chairman Pai and FCC Commissioner Michael O’Reilly have argued that Congres should enact a permanent, legislative solution to the issue of net neutrality.
Pai explained:
I think the best solution would be for Congress to tell us what they want the rules of the road to be for the FCC and the country when it comes to the digital world. Part of the problem is that we are consistently looking at 1934 laws and 1996 laws then we try to shoehorn our modern marketplace to some of those paradigms that frankly we didn’t anticipate a marketplace as dynamic as the internet. I really think that Congress, ideally looking at all the opinions, and all the constituencies they can come to a consensus. Because again as Commissioner O’Reilly pointed out we don’t want the regulatory winds to keep shifting every four or eight years we want to provide some level of consistency to the marketplace so that consumers and companies alike can enjoy the digital revolution.
Pai concluded his remarks at the FCC meeting, “Many words have been spoken during this debate but the time has come for action. It is time for the Internet once again to be driven by engineers and entrepreneurs and consumers, rather than lawyers and accountants and bureaucrats. It is time for us to act to bring faster, better, and cheaper Internet access to all Americans. It is time for us to return to the bipartisan regulatory framework under which the Internet flourished prior to 2015, it is time for us to restore Internet freedom.”
Help! I’m an old black man trapped in a little white boy’s body
Mitch McConnell’s Former Chief of Staff Calls Steve Bannon a ‘White Supremacist’
Mitch McConnell’s former chief of staff Josh Holmes grew increasingly desperate to stop the rising wave of populist candidates challenging the Senate Republican leadership by calling former White House chief strategist and Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon a “white supremacist.”
Holmes said, “In 2018 we ought to revisit this question and find out if these people are still happy to be associated with Bannon. When you’re facing voters, I’d take one of the most successful majority leaders in history over a white supremacist any day.”
Holmes’ and the establishment Republicans’ influence in the 2018 Senate election continues to fade. Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, whom Holmes’ labeled as their first choice for the 2018 midterm election, refuses to endorse Mitch McConnell for majority leader.
“He was our No. 1 recruit of the cycle,” Holmes charged. “We worked our tail off to recruit Josh Hawley.”
Hawley’s spokesman, Scott Paradise, responded in an email questioning whether Hawley would back McConnell.
“The Senate is broken and failing the people of Missouri,” Paradise said.
“Josh is running because he is not willing to tolerate the failure of the D.C. establishment any longer,” Paradise added. “He won’t tolerate Claire McCaskill’s failure. And he won’t tolerate Republican failure, either.”
Montana state auditor Matt Rosendale recently tweeted a picture with Steve Bannon and said that he will end the “D.C. status quo.”
Nearly two dozen Senate Republican candidates refused to openly back Mitch McConnell for majority leader.
Holmes’ statement echoed Sen. Sherrod Brown’s (D-OH) recent comments. Brown also called Bannon a “white supremacist.”
Andy Surabian, a former White House adviser and now a senior adviser to the pro-Trump super PAC Great America Alliance, said, “No amount of smearing can change the fact that not a single U.S. Senate candidate was willing to go on the record and say that they supported Mitch McConnell for Majority Leader. Everyone can see right through the clearly desperate, unfounded and pathetic attacks coming from McConnell Incorporated.”
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher said someone leaked information about his call this week with White House chief of staff John Kelly, possibly to undermine his ability to speak directly with President Trump about WikiLeaks.
The Republican congressman from California spoke with Kelly on Wednesday regarding his recent meeting with WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in London, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday evening, and broached a possible trade.
Rohrabacher reportedly used the word “deal” in his conversation with Kelly and said Assange would get a pardon or “something like that” in exchange for information files on a data-storage device showing that Russia did not hack Democratic emails that WikiLeaks published last year during the 2016 campaign.
“He would get nothing, obviously, if what he gave us was not proof,” Rohrabacher told Kelly, according to the Journal.
Rohrabacher told the Washington Examiner on Friday evening that he would not confirm quotes attributed to him, and said nobody in his office was responsible for disclosing the call.
“I have honored the confidentially of a very important business-related call,” he said, speculating that someone inside the White House or within U.S. intelligence agencies leaked the call.
“I don’t know who it is, all I know is I’m up against an array of very powerful forces, including the intelligence services and major newspapers that are basically allied with the liberal Left who have every reason to undermine communication on this issue,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Rohrabacher said White House leaks to the press are particularly bad during Republican presidencies, as staffers attempt to ingratiate themselves with reporters, and he’s not ruling that out as an explanation.
“You’ve got people who are obviously just trying to cover their ass for mistakes they have made,” he added, referring to the intelligence agency theory. “They will probably do their best to keep Trump from knowing about this and knowing about his options to expose this.”
Rohrabacher has for years been skeptical of U.S. policy toward Russia, defending its annexation of Crimea while former President Barack Obama was in office before refusing to accept that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump.
The congressman is celebrated by some groups for his maverick approach to politics, such as his leadership role pushing for marijuana reform legislation, but also is known for making sometimes head-turning remarks.
Rohrabacher was quoted earlier this week as saying he believed Confederate war re-enactors had been tricked into rallying in Charlottesville, Va., last month. He said he stood by those remarks.
“I don’t think I was misquoted, [but] there should be no implication that I believe Civil War re-enactors are stupid,” he said. Rohrabacher said he can’t recall the source of that information, but that he believes he heard it in a news report.
