After all his co-defendents (including California State Democratic Senator Leland Yee) had plead guilty to lesser charges, Chow is the one taking the fall for “arranging the murders of two gang rivals and overseeing crimes ranging from money laundering to drug trafficking.” I’m not able to find a list of all of those 162 charges against him, but presumably that includes the gun-running charge as well.
Authorities said Thursday that two Iraqi refugees have been arrested on terrorism-related charges in Houston and California.
According to the FBI’s Houston office, Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, 24, was charged with attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State, unlawfully attempting to gain U.S. citizenship and making false statements.
Al Hardan, a Palestinian born in Iraq, entered the United States as a refugee in November 2009 and has lived in Houston since being granted legal permanent residence in August 2011, the FBI said in a prepared statement.
Authorities said Al Hardan is accused of attempting to provide support and resources, including “training, expert advice and assistance and personnel — specifically himself — to a known foreign terrorist organization.”
The FBI also said that Al Hardan lied on his application to be a naturalized U.S. citizen.
“He allegedly represented he was not associated with a terrorist organization when, in fact, he associated with members and sympathizers of ISIL throughout 2014,” the FBI said.
Somehow all these terrorists and rapists keep slipping through that “rigorous screening” Obama likes to talk about…
King was sharp and funny, and well worth reading even at her most iconoclastic (she often claimed to be a monarchist). And she could take down puffed up political functionaries like nobody’s business.
Three of the top Bandidos leaders have caught federal charges.
National leaders of the Bandidos biker gang were arrested Wednesday on charges of racketeering and waging a deadly “war” on the rival Cossacks gang, federal authorities said.
An indictment announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Antonio accuses three Bandidos leaders of sanctioning a three-year fight that included violent clashes with rival gangs and distribution of methamphetamine.
The accusations focus on a rivalry that came under renewed attention in May, when a meeting of biker groups at a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas, ended in gunfire that left nine people dead.
Authorities believe that the fatal confrontation began when members of the Cossacks crashed a meeting of a confederation of biker clubs that included the Bandidos at a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco. The dispute ended in gunfire between the bikers and police standing nearby.
The federal indictment accuses John Portillo, the Bandidos’ national vice president, of using dues and donations to pay legal expenses of its members days after the Waco shooting. Portillo, along with national president Jeffrey Pike and national sergeant-at-arms Justin Cole Forster, are charged with racketeering, drug distribution and other crimes.
“Using dues and donations to pay legal expenses of its members days after the Waco shooting…” Is that illegal? I’m actually asking here. I’m not aware of that violating any specific law, but I could be wrong.
Federal charges are heavy, as Uncle Sam has essentially unlimited resources with which to investigate and make the case. As the Bandidos have been involved in drugs in the past, that may be the easiest charge to make stick. But it’s still mighty curious that no one has been charged with murder for a shootout that left nine dead….
Following up on yesterday’s report of up to 1000 Muslim men sexually assaulting women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, Cologne’s female mayor is taking action:
The Mayor of Cologne said today that women should adopt a “code of conduct” to prevent future assault at a crisis meeting following the sexual attack of women by 1000 men on New Year’s eve.
Mayor Henriette Reker attended an emergency meeting with Chief of Police Wolfgang Albers and Wolfgang Wurm to discuss how to deal with the attack, where dozens of women were repeatedly touched and groped, with one case of alleged rape in the center of town.
Snip.
The crisis management team said prevention measures should include a code of conduct for young women and girls, and Mayor Reker said the existing code of conduct will be updated online.
The suggested code of conduct includes maintaining an arm’s length distance from strangers, to stick within your own group, to ask bystanders for help or to intervene as a witness, or to inform the police if you are the victim of such an assault.
“Especially the area in and around the central station, the cathedral and the adjoining area towards the banks of the Rhine for tourists (and locals) is no longer considered even in normal times as safe. For months, there is in these areas numerous thefts, open drug dealing, robberies and harassment of all kinds… Dozens of women were sexually harassed in public and there was at least one rape.
“Neither the city nor the police are able to guarantee in the territory described the safety of tourists and locals. Especially for women it must be assumed that a high security risk is here in the evening and night hours. At New Year’s Eve there was a legal vacuum and a no-go area for women. With the climax of the Carnival season it is unfortunately expected to be a similar situation”.
And the “solution” to this problem? No-go areas and free western women self-imposing soft Sharia law on their own actions.
Remember how feminists were enraged by guidelines for women like “Don’t walk alone in bad parts of town late at night” or “don’t drunk from a punch bowl unless you know what’s in it” because they contributed to “rape culture”? Yet when it comes to the real rape culture that radical Islamists have carried with them to other countries, they remain silent, just as they remained silent on the Islamic pedophile rape gangs in Rotherham.
The reason is twofold, though both relate to leftwing political solidarity: Somehow Muslims have become the most sacred victims on the victimhood identity hierarchy, and leftwing political parties need Muslim votes.
They left has evidently decided that if reality doesn’t conform to their fantasies of peaceful, multicultural Muslim immigrants, then reality must be ignored, and anyone noticing this reality must be labeled a “racist” or “xenophobe”. If leftists continue to ignore reality, they are likely in for a rude awakening come election time…
At Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearing for secretary of state, she promised she would take “extraordinary steps…to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
Later, more than two dozen companies and groups and one foreign government paid former President Bill Clinton a total of more than $8 million to give speeches around the time they also had matters before Mrs. Clinton’s State Department, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
Fifteen of them also donated a total of between $5 million and $15 million to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the family’s charity, according to foundation disclosures.
Six things a Washington Post reporter found out following Ted Cruz around. “The majority of the undecided voters I have spoken with have said they were very impressed after hearing Cruz speak. Many of them said they were undecided coming into a rally and supported him when it was over.”
“Unfortunately, 2016, the little of it that we have so far seen, is already beginning to look like another year of Grim Slide, of a world stumbling down a slippery slope to become less secure, less stable, and less free.”
Iran and Saudi Arabia have severed diplomatic relations over Saudi execution of a Shiite cleric, and Kuwait has recalled their ambassador from Tehran; don’t be surprised if the other Sunni nations follow suit. Good thing we have a Nobel Peace Prize winner in the White House…
Turkey’s Prime Minister: Hey, you know who was a model of effective leadership? Adolf Hitler.
It looks like Karachi, Basra, and Mogadishu all rolled into one. People sell drugs openly just next to the Gronland subway station.
It’s not Norway or Europe anymore, except when there is welfare money to be collected. The police have largely given up. Early in 2010 Aftenposten stated that there are sharia patrols in this area, and gay couples are assaulted and chased away.
Mass sexual assaults involving up to 1,000 Arab men on New Year’s Eve in Cologne.
Rahm Emanuel’s failure in Chicago is emblematic of the blue model failure in America’s cities. “The city’s bloated pension obligations have already forced Emanuel to make severe education cuts. It will continue to force cuts in city services in various cities, making it harder and harder for mayors to govern, and increasing the antagonism among various constituencies.”
Confessions of a social justice warrior white knight. “Their communities thrive on self loathing disguised as elitism…SJWs insist their goal is to make everyone equal, and for a long time I believed it, but their communities actually enforce factionalism and division.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Happy New Year! Today the open carry law went into effect, meaning that if you have a Concealed Handgun License, you may now openly carry a handgun in most (but not all) locations where it was legal to conceal carry before. (It was already legal to openly carry rifles and shotguns without a CHL, and the open carry law didn’t change that.)
The Houston Chronicle has some pointers on open carry, though annoyingly, they are in slideshow form. Some highlights:
Open carry of handguns is only allowed for those who already hold a valid CHL.
You need a belt or shoulder holster to open carry, even in your car. Your gun must be holstered while driving or otherwise hidden.
Primary and secondary schools, hospitals, sporting events, and nursing homes are still “gun-free zones.”
Handguns cannot be taken into amusement parks, churches, hospitals and bars and public meetings if they post notice it’s a gun-free zone.
CHL holders can open carry unless it’s been prohibited by the private property owner. (I am given to understand that HEB is allowing concealed carry, but not open carry.)
“If you do not leave you could be charged with criminal trespass and/or unlawful carry. You will also most likely lose your rights to carry a handgun too.”
A 30.06 sign means no concealed carry on premises but open carry is allowed.
A 30.07 sign ONLY means no open carry on premises but conceal carry is allowed.
And you still can’t carry (open or concealed) in an establishment that derrives 51% or more of its income from the sale of alcohol:
You can’t open or conceal carry beyond the security checkpoint in an airport (duh).
Reciprocity still applies, so if you’re licensed to conceal carry by another state, you’re licensed to open carry in Texas.
The separate campus carry law which allows CHL holders to conceal carry in most buildings at most public universities does not go into effect January 1, but rather August 1, but you still won’t be able to open carry on campus then. Private colleges and universities may opt out, and junior colleges do not need to comply until August 2017.
I think the touches all the highlights. If you think I missed something important, let me know in the comments.
Using surveillance video from other area businesses to identify the arsonist, Gary Nathaniel Moore, 37, was arrested and charged with starting the Christmas Day fire that devastated a Houston, Texas mosque. Moore is a devout Muslim who attended this same mosque for years, praying up to five times a day every day of the week.
Funny how the majority of high profile “hate crimes” against Muslims or black activists seem to be committed by the supposed “victims”…
So the NSA spied on congress in the course of spying on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
NSA snooping allegedly found Netanyahu and his aides leaked details of the negotiations gained through Israeli spying, coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal and asked those lawmakers who were undecided on the deal how it could get their vote, according to the report.
The administration decided that monitoring Netanyahu served a “compelling national security purpose,” according to the Journal, which cited unnamed current and former U.S. officials.
Of course, the “compelling national security purpose” was that Netanyahu was making Obama look bad by opposing his asinine Iran nuke deal.
When you’re as lawless as the Obama Administration, and spy on as many people as the NSA spies on, Stuff Happens. Including, evidently, Separation of Powers violations.
Is there any abuse of power by the Obama Administration that would surprise us at this point?
