If you’re in the country illegally, don’t draw attention to yourself. Especially by unrolling banner proclaiming you’re an illegal alien.
Especially inside the Texas legislature.
Or someone (in this case Republican state representative Matt Rinaldi) might call immigration enforcement on you. Which is what happened.
Naturally, hilarity ensued.
(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Remember all those health concerns Hillary Clinton had in 2016? They’re back.
The beginning also reminds us, yet again, what an absolutely dreadful and inauthentic public speaker Hillary Clinton is. It’s only after her coughing fit that she delivers her speechwriter’s lines with anything resembling authentic human emotion. Which, of course, does not prevent the audience showering her with the now -ritual whooping and seal-honking at every designated applause line.
Finally, take note of the little “CNN Live” bug in the lower right corner. Can you think of any other failed Presidential candidate for whom that network choose to carry a college commencement address live? Of course not. But it’s only recently that CNN fully embraced its role as an extension of the Democratic Party…
The New York Times just published this Nicholas Kristof opinion piece on underage marriage in America.
It leads with an outrageous injustice designed to immediately rouse the reader to righteous anger:
When she was a scrawny 11-year-old, Sherry Johnson found out one day that she was about to be married to a 20-year-old member of her church who had raped her.
“It was forced on me,” she recalls. She had become pregnant, she says, and child welfare authorities were investigating — so her family and church officials decided the simplest way to avoid a messy criminal case was to organize a wedding.
“My mom asked me if I wanted to get married, and I said, ‘I don’t know, what is marriage, how do I act like a wife?’” Johnson remembers today, many years later. “She said, ‘Well, I guess you’re just going to get married.’”
So she was. A government clerk in Tampa, Fla., refused to marry an 11-year-old, even though this was legal in the state, so the wedding party went to nearby Pinellas County, where the clerk issued a marriage license. The license (which I’ve examined) lists her birth date, so officials were aware of her age.
Truly shocking stuff, right?
However, though Kristof takes pains to say he’s examined Johnson’s birth certificate, he’s also taken pains to hide one extremely important fact from the reader: Sherry Johnson’s underage marriage took place in 1972.
If the your leading example of injustice is 45 years old, and you deliberately hide that fact from the reader, it does rather undercut the alleged urgency of your cause.
This is not the only mistake in the piece: There’s a map showing the legal status of underage marriage in various states. Texas is shown as a state with no lower limit to the age of marriage. One tiny problem: That isn’t true. From Texas state statutes:
Sec. 2.009. ISSUANCE OF LICENSE. (a) Except as provided by Subsections (b) and (d), the county clerk may not issue a license if either applicant:
(1) fails to provide the information required by this subchapter;
(2) fails to submit proof of age and identity;
(3) is under 16 years of age and has not been granted a court order as provided by Section 2.103;
(4) is 16 years of age or older but under 18 years of age and has not presented at least one of the following:
(A) parental consent as provided by Section 2.102;
(B) documents establishing that a prior marriage of the applicant has been dissolved; or
(C) a court order as provided by Section 2.103
Section 2.103 makes clear that an age waiver can only come via a judge’s order, and only after petition to marry comes from the minor involved:
Sec. 2.103. COURT ORDER FOR UNDERAGE APPLICANT. (a) A minor may petition the court in the minor’s own name for an order granting permission to marry. In a suit under this section, the trial judge may advance the suit if the best interest of the applicant would be served by an early hearing.
(b) The petition must be filed in the county where a parent resides if a court has not awarded another person the right to consent to marriage for the minor. If a court has awarded another person the right to consent to marriage for the minor, the petition must be filed in the county where that person resides. If no parent or person who has the court-ordered right to consent to marriage for the minor resides in this state, the petition must be filed in the county where the minor lives.
(c) The petition must include:
(1) a statement of the reasons the minor desires to marry;
(2) a statement of whether each parent is living or is dead;
(3) the name and residence address of each living parent; and
(4) a statement of whether a court has awarded to a person other than a parent of the minor the right to consent to marriage for the minor.
(d) Process shall be served as in other civil cases on each living parent of the minor or on a person who has the court-ordered right to consent to marriage for the minor, as applicable. Citation may be given by publication as in other civil cases, except that notice shall be published one time only.
(e) The court shall appoint an amicus attorney or an attorney ad litem to represent the minor in the proceeding. The court shall specify a fee to be paid by the minor for the services of the amicus attorney or attorney ad litem. The fee shall be collected in the same manner as other costs of the proceeding.
(f) If after a hearing the court, sitting without a jury, believes marriage to be in the best interest of the minor, the court, by order, shall grant the minor permission to marry.
That’s quite different than “no age limit.”
That map is sourced from Tahirih Justice Center, which seems to be focused on ending sex trafficking and female genital mutilation. The editorial doesn’t mention that, probably because it only mentions the word “Muslim” once: “As in Africa and Asia, the reasons for such marriages in the U.S. are often cultural or religious; the American families follow conservative Christian, Muslim or Jewish traditions, and judges sometimes feel that they shouldn’t intrude on other cultures.”
While it might be possible to find individual instances of conservative Christian or Jewish marriage under the age of 16 in 1st century America, I would wager that the vast majority of underage marriage cases can be attributed to one of two faiths: Muslims and fundamentalist Mormons. Since New York Times and other left-leaning mainstream media outlets seem congenitally incapable of talking honestly about Islam or Muslim immigrants, they’re forced to pluck an example from 1972, then hide that fact from the reader.
Underage marriage may or may not be a significant problem in America today, but, thanks to a dishonest piece by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, we still don’t know…
Debbie Wasserman Schultz has long been the gift that keeps giving for Republicans. Her tenure at the top of the DNC saw dramatic declines Democratic Party officeholder at a time when Obama was still (theoretically) personally popular. Now her incompetence may be endangering not just the Democratic Party, but American security.
Remember earlier this year when three Pakistani brothers (Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan) who managed office IT for Democratic members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other lawmakers were abruptly relieved of their duties on suspicion that they accessed congressional computer networks without permission?
Refresher:
Jamal handled IT for Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat who serves on both the intelligence and foreign affairs panels.
“As of 2/2, his employment with our office has been terminated,” Castro spokeswoman Erin Hatch told TheDCNF Friday.
Jamal also worked for Louisiana Democrat Rep. Cedric Richmond, who is on the Committee on Homeland Security.
Imran worked for Reps. Andre Carson, an Indiana Democrat, and Jackie Speier, a California Democrat. Carson and Speier are members of the intelligence committee. Spokesmen for Carson and Speier did not respond to TheDCNF’s requests for comments. Imran also worked for the House office of Wasserman-Schultz.
Then-Rep. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, employed Abid for IT work in 2016. She was a member of House committees dealing with the armed services, oversight, and Benghazi. Duckworth was elected to the Senate in November, 2016. Abid has a prior criminal record and a bankruptcy.
Abid also worked for Rep. Lois Frankel, a Florida Democrat who is member of the foreign affairs committee.
Also among those whose computer systems may have been compromised is Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida Democrat who was previously the target of a disastrous email hack when she served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 campaign.
In addition to the brothers Awam, two more staffers, Hina Alvi (Imran Awan’s wife, who worked for Rep. Gregory Meeks (Democrat, New York) and Rao Abbas, were also fired. “The five current and former House staffers are accused of stealing equipment from members’ offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network.”
(Though reports often list five members, Natalia Sova, another Awan wife, also worked as a staffer.)
So when they were accused of stealing and improperly accessing information, they were fired, right? No. Because they were Muslims:
Meeks said he was hesitant to believe the accusations against Alvi, Imran Awan and the three other staffers, saying their background as Muslim Americans, some with ties to Pakistan, could make them easy targets for false charges.
“I wanted to be sure individuals are not being singled out because of their nationalities or their religion. We want to make sure everybody is entitled to due process,” Meeks said.
“They had provided great service for me. And there were certain times in which they had permission by me, if it was Hina or someone else, to access some of my data.”
[Rep. Marcia] Fudge [Democrat, Ohio] told Politico on Tuesday she would employ Imran Awan until he received “due process.”
“He needs to have a hearing. Due process is very simple. You don’t fire someone until you talk to them,” Fudge said.
On Wednesday, Lauren Williams, a spokeswoman for Fudge, wouldn’t provide details about Imran Awan’s firing but did confirm he was still employed in Fudge’s office as of Tuesday afternoon.
The bottom line is simple – these House Democrats decided it was better to be at risk of hacking and extortion than to be accused of racism.
Then it came to light that “House IT Aides Fear Suspects In Hill Breach Are Blackmailing Members With Their Own Data.” Turns out that the Awan brothers were incompetent at their jobs, but House Democrats refused to fire them or consider cheaper employees.
Also this: “Court records show the brothers ran a side business that owed $100,000 to an Iranian fugitive who has been tied to Hezbollah, and their stepmother says they often send money to Pakistan.”
More on that lovely individual the Awan brothers do business with:
The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has reported that while working for Congress, the Pakistani brothers controlled a limited liability corporation called Cars International A (CIA), a car dealership with odd finances, which took–and was unable to repay–a $100,000 loan from Dr. Ali Al-Attar.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, wrote that Attar “was observed in Beirut, Lebanon conversing with a Hezbollah official” in 2012–shortly after the loan was made. Attar has also been accused of helping provoke the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as a leader of Iraqi dissidents opposed to Saddam Hussein.
After moving to the U.S., Attar made his money practicing medicine in Maryland and Virginia and defrauding Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies by billing for non-existent medical procedures. The FBI raided his offices in 2009 and the Department of Health and Human Services sued his business partner in 2011.
Attar was indicted in March 2012 on separate tax fraud charges after the IRS and FBI found he used multiple bank accounts to hide income. He fled back to Iraq to avoid prison.
“He’s a fugitive. I am not aware of any extradition treaty with Iraq,”
Then the story of the Awan brothers’ security breech took yet another strange turn:
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz threatened the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police with “consequences” for holding equipment that she says belongs to her in order to build a criminal case against a Pakistani staffer suspected of massive cybersecurity breaches involving funneling sensitive congressional data offsite.
The Florida lawmaker used her position on the committee that sets the police force’s budget to press its chief to relinquish the piece of evidence Thursday, in what could be considered using her authority to attempt to interfere with a criminal investigation.
The Capitol Police and outside agencies are pursuing Imran Awan, who has run technology for the Florida lawmaker since 2005 and was banned from the House network in February on suspicion of data breaches and theft.
“My understanding is the the Capitol Police is not able to confiscate Members’ equipment when the Member is not under investigation,” Wasserman Schultz said in the annual police budget hearing of the House Committee On Appropriations’ Legislative Branch Subcommittee.
“We can’t return the equipment,” Police Chief Matthew R. Verderosa told the Florida Democrat.
“I think you’re violating the rules when you conduct your business that way and you should expect that there will be consequences,” Wasserman Schultz said.
As one of eight members of the Committee on Appropriations’ Legislative Branch subcommittee, Wasserman Schultz is in charge of the budget of the police force that is investigating her staffer and how he managed to extract so much money and information from members.
In a highly unusual exchange, the Florida lawmaker uses a hearing on the Capitol Police’s annual budget to spend three minutes repeatedly trying to extract a promise from the chief that he will return a piece of evidence being used to build an active case.
“If a Member loses equipment and it is found by your staff and identified as that member’s equipment and the member is not associated with any case, it is supposed to be returned. Yes or no?” she said.
Police tell her it is important to “an ongoing investigation,” but presses for its return anyway.
The investigation is examining members’ data leaving the network and how Awan managed to get Members to place three relatives and a friend into largely no-show positions on their payrolls, billing $4 million since 2010.
The congresswoman characterizes the evidence as “belonging” to her and argues that therefore it cannot be seized unless Capitol Police tell her that she personally, as opposed to her staffer, is a target of the investigation.
When TheDCNF asked Wasserman Schultz Monday if it could inquire about her strong desire for the laptop, she said “No, you may not.” After TheDCNF asked why she wouldn’t want the Capitol Police to have any evidence they may need to find and punish any hackers of government information, she abruptly turned around in the middle of a stairwell and retreated back to the office from which she had come.
Very curious indeed.
It seems that Wasserman Schultz (and very possibly other Democratic congressmen) would prefer to see American intelligence compromised rather than have embarrassing personal information revealed. One wonders if the dismissed staffers were conveying information to overseas jihadis, or if they had incriminating information on any of the DNC, Obama or Hillary Clinton scandals so much in the news.
Stay tuned…
While all eyes were on Manchester, fighters loyal to the Islamic State were launching a big attack half a world away:
A group of heavily-armed militants from a group linked to Isis have reportedly stormed a city in the Philippines and engaged in firefights with the national army.
Residents of Marawi City, in the south of the country, were urged to remain indoors as at least 15 gunmen from a Muslim rebel group called Maute stormed the streets brandishing assault rifles.
The group, which is also known as the Islamic State of Lanao, have reportedly received support from Isis.
Troops and a special police force were deployed to the city after residents in a nearby village raised the alarm and appealed for help.
Marawi City is the provincial capital of Lanao del Sur on the southern island of Mindanao.
Like many countries in Asia and the south Pacific, the Philippines has been fighting a Muslim insurgency on and off for quite a while. In fact, if you count the original Moro War fought and won by General Pershing, since 1899. Groups in the Philippines alone that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State include the Abu Sayyaf Group, Ansar al-Khilafah (also on Mindanao), Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (also on Mindanao), and Jemaah Islamiyah (a transnational Islamic terrorist group which which carried out the Bali bombing also has cells in in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia). And that doesn’t count the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (also on Mindanao), with which the government signed a peace agreement in 2014.
The fight against the Islamic State is one war that extends across the entire globe. Hopefully President Trump understands this fact better than Obama did…
(Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
Another week, another deadly jihad attack on Europe. Current numbers: 22 people were killed (including an eight year old) and 59 injured in an explosion at an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena. Many of the victims were under 16 years old. The explosion occurred where people were queued at the ticket office to get in rather than inside the concert venue.
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility.
The Mirror has continuing updates, including the name of the suicide bomber (AKA “some jihadist asshole”).
Jihad Watch put up a video of a woman whose legs were bleeding from nails from the bomb.
There was, as usual, the requisite outpouring of Emotional Expressions It Is Acceptable To Display Rather Than Actually Addressing the Problem of Islamic Terrorism:
Getting old folks.. "Manchester" pic.twitter.com/mIv26uy36j
— kill me (@ItsYaCowboy99) May 23, 2017
The children of Manchester are pulling pieces of other humans' flesh out of their hair and people are worried about 'Islamophobia'
— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) May 23, 2017
When will you ever wake up? pic.twitter.com/AMJex6cdZb
— Trump Texas (@3lectric5heep) May 23, 2017
And David Frum decided to be an even bigger tool than usual:
As we mourn Manchester, remember: for a moment of ignorant boasting, the president betrayed one of the West’s best sources inside ISIS.
— David Frum (@davidfrum) May 23, 2017
To which Instapundit replied:
Oh, fuck off. https://t.co/8V7AJW93sg
— Instapundit.com (@instapundit) May 23, 2017
Getting Instapundit to cuss at you is like being such an asshole that Mary Poppins has no choice but to pop a cap in your ass.
Posting sad Tweets and changing icons are the things that western liberals do in order to not feel bad about themselves rather than actually deal with the problem of radical Islam.
Feeling sad will not stop Islamic terrorism.
Compassion will not stop Islamic terrorism.
Candlelight vigils will not stop Islamic terrorism.
Pledging to fight “Islamophobia” will not stop Islamic terrorism.
Hashtags will not stop Islamic terrorism.
Changing your Twitter and Facebook icons will not stop Islamic terrorism.
The only things that stop Islamic terrorism are restricting the flow of terrorists and their enablers into your country, and destroying Islamic terrorist networks and the countries that support them. Completely and utterly destroying the Islamic State probably won’t end terrorism, but it will likely take the wind out of their sails for a while. When the west hits back hard (as in Iraq in 2003, or after Israel hit PLO targets in the Bekaa Valley in 1982), Islamic terrorism drops in the aftermath.
Until the west is serious about destroying radical Islam, many more attacks like Manchester (and Paris, and London, and…) lie ahead.
Apologies in advance, but I’ve got to use up this pallet of Anthony Weiner puns I got at Sam’s or they’ll all be expired by the time he gets out of prison. So let’s quit dicking around and talk about the details on the prick’s plea bargain.
Are the sentencing guidelines for Weiner’s underage sexting plea bargain too stiff or too soft? Both:
So the guidelines should be 10 years in federal prison, but because it’s Anthony Weiner he’s only going to get about 2? Isn’t that extremely suspicious? Is this preferential treatment for a connected Democrat?
Well, it’s got a very unfortunate appearance, I think.
Here’s what may be going on.
Fist, Weiner got struck by lightning, in a way. It’s quite rare for the feds to prosecute someone for sexting a teen like this. It’s vastly more common for the state to handle it, and generally the consequences would be much less severe if the state prosecuted. Weiner got caught up in this because of his prominence and connection to high-profile people and high-profile investigations. If he were Tony Weynor, married to a hairdresser in Brooklyn, he almost certainly wouldn’t get federally investigated or prosecuted for this. His social, political, and media prominence, combined with his idiocy and recklessness, made his actions the equivalent of doing something right in front of the cop — the cop feels duty-bound to arrest you. The U.S. Attorney’s office may have thought that he was facing unfairly disproportionate consequences — ten years instead of perhaps probation or a minor sentence stateside — because of who he was, and might have thought some leniency was appropriate.
Second, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are arcane. It’s a thicket of “use this guideline, but wait, cross-reference to that guideline if factor X is present.” Here, the base guideline applying to the offense dictates a far more lenient result — one in the 21-27 month range the government is going to recommend. But because Weiner apparently encouraged a minor to send him explicit pictures, the guideline cross-references to a far, far harsher guideline designed for “sex trafficking.” I suspect that the U.S. Attorney’s Office thought that the Sentencing Commission didn’t contemplate such a harsh guideline being applied to a sexting-a-minor offense that normally would not be prosecuted in federal court.
So are you saying he’s getting a sweet deal, or not?
He’s getting a terrible deal by being prosecuted federally for conduct that only very rarely would attract federal prosecution. But he’s getting an extraordinarily lenient, compassionate, humane deal within that context. I have only very rarely seen a recommendation for a sentence so dramatically below the guideline range when the defendant wasn’t cooperating in an important case.
Look, the system strikes some people with lightning. Those people normally get ground up mercilessly. Anthony Weiner’s getting struck by lightning but then treated with very unusual mercy. I don’t disagree with the arguments that the guideline sentence is too high, or that nobody intended for the sex trafficking guideline and its harsh results to be applied to sexting with a teen. But I’m troubled by who gets that consideration and who doesn’t. Federal court dishes out brutal mandatory minimum sentences and guideline sentences to people all the time. People like Anthony Weiner get sympathy and special consideration; people think about whether the law is fair as applied to them. People generally don’t ask that about most defendants.
(Most Shocking voiceover) “He used to be cock of the walk, but now Anthony Weiner is going to be doing…hard time.”
Keep in mind that the day before Weiner copped his plea bargain, former uniformed Secret Service officer Lee Robert Moore was was sentenced to 20 years in prison for “sending sexually explicit photos of himself to underage girls — while he was on duty at the White House.”
Weiner’s wife, former (and future?) Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, officially filed for divorce from Weiner. The only thing she can be criticized for (in this particular instance) is waiting so long. But I’m pretty sure it’s easier to get full custody of your child when the other party in the divorce is a registered sex offender.
She might have another reason: “So long as she remained ‘Mrs. Weiner,’ Abedin could claim spousal protection and dodge taking the stand in her husband’s underage sexting case. Now that Weiner has pleaded guilty, there can be no trial — so she has no need for the spousal protection.”
People in Hillary Clinton’s circle do seem to have an aversion to taking the witness stand under oath.
All in all, it’s a flaccid end to what Democrats once considered a rising political star…
And let’s not forget the first man who broke the original Weiner sexting story:
Andrew Breitbart was the first to publicly call out the sleazy pervert Anthony Weiner.#FlashbackFriday pic.twitter.com/q0aeorrEy3
— Pamela Moore (@Pamela_Moore13) May 19, 2017
Now some images:
