HALF-FULL REPORT 03/31/17

Jack Wheeler is off to the Himalayas, so I’m filling in for him this week and next.

If you were tired of all the winning, you’re in luck. President Trump’s job approval has fallen to record lows since the Obamacare repeal/replace debacle.

Speaker Ryan is to blame for flawed strategy. But the portions of the bill to which conservatives objected were in it because they are what President Trump wants.

Candidate Trump spoke warmly about single payer national health insurance. The president blames the House Freedom Caucus for his humiliation, vows vengeance.

He’ll work with Democrats to pass a bill, Mr. Trump signaled. Ryan opposes this.

Thanks to the clumsy way it was drafted, he can repeal lots of Obamacare regulations, HHS Secretary Tom Price reminded Congress yesterday (3/30).

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The GOP is sweating the special election for Price’s former seat. Democrat Jon Ossof leads the jungle primary April 18. If he gets less than 50 percent, there’ll be a runoff in June.

If Ossof wins, we’ll never hear the end of it. If not, Emily Litella. In special elections to date, the GOP is plus one.

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“Trump has a strategy for destroying the Islamic State,” said Foreign Policy magazine. “It’s working.”

You may not have noticed – because there’s been so little reporting on it – things are getting really tense with North Korea. More so every day.

Sanctions aren’t enough to stop Iran’s missile program, senior State Department officials said yesterday (3/30).

Never have I been happier that in Tillerson, Mattis and McMaster, President Trump has the best national security team ever.

Look at “news” CNN and MSNBC deemed more important than North Korea.

Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving,” said Iowahawk.

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Britain formally began Wednesday (3/29) the Brexit process to leave the European Union.

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Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed a week from today, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) promised Tuesday (3/28).

He’ll have to nuke the filibuster to do it. That’s what Mitch plans to do. Even Susan Collins, R-ME, is on board.

Win-win-win. Gorsuch on the Court. The path smoothed for President Trump’s next nominee. (Here’s a hint as to who that will be.) If the filibuster is nuked for judicial nominees, it’s not a stretch to abolish it altogether.

Dems know it is suicidal to filibuster Gorsuch, who killed it during his confirmation hearings. But the moonbats, God bless them, are forcing them to.

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He’ll soon cut federal funds to so-called “sanctuary cities,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Tuesday (3/28). DOJ will dole out $4 billion in grants this year.

More than 300 cities, counties and states forbid cops from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They’ve protected more than 17,000 criminal aliens.

President Trump directed federal agencies to “ensure that jurisdictions that fail to comply with applicable Federal law do not receive Federal funds, except as mandated by law.”

Sanctuary cities got nearly $27 billion in federal grants in FY 2016.

Sanctuary cities threaten to sue if federal funds are cut, but 8 USC 1373 says a “state or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict… sending to, or receiving from (ICE) information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”

Sanctuary jurisdictions violate federal law, are therefore ineligible for federal funds, said the inspector general of the Justice department last July.

City officials who harbor and conceal illegal aliens should be arrested, said Bristol County, Mass Sheriff Thomas Hodgson.

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Sanctuary cities have been in the news, sort of, because two illegal immigrants, 18 and 17, raped a 14-year-old girl at Rockville High School in Maryland. They were brought to Rockville by the Unaccompanied Alien Children relocation program.

The answers school officials gave about the safety of their children dissatisfied most of several hundred parents who attended a meeting at Rockville High 3/21.

Parents who oppose allowing adult illegal aliens to enroll in Montgomery County schools are bigots and racists, said School Superintendent Jack R. Smith.

Illegal immigrants previously convicted of crimes committed 121 murders between 2010 and 2014, ICE statistics indicate.

There’s going to be a “sea change” in public opinion about sanctuary cities, as “even liberals are going to think they really ought to protect their own communities and their own children,” predicts Charles Krauthammer.

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“Historians of the near future will mark March 28, 2017 as the day extinction of human life on earth began,” tweeted Michael Moore.

That’s because on Tuesday, President Trump signed an executive order rolling back Obama’s climate change policies.

Humanity could be saved if cows were genetically engineered to fart less, said Bill Nye.

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Chelsea Clinton will receive a “lifetime impact award” at a luncheon next month for, I guess, being the daughter of Bill and Hillary. Can a Nobel Peace Prize be far off?

“Apparently the power of women is to be born to politically connected crooks and utterly fail at the jobs they get you,” said Sarah Hoyt.

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Rep. Devin Nunes, R-CA, should resign as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, say Democrats, the Lying Swine, and NeverTrump conservatives.

“Demanding recusal is framed as an effort to save the impartiality and integrity of the committee,” said David Harsanyi. “In reality, it’s mean to create the impression that Nunes has done something unethical or illegal to defend Trump.”

He got from a whistle blower evidence the IC “incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition,” Nunes said a week ago Wednesday (3/22).

He was alarmed by what he saw in several dozen intelligence reports.

“None of this surveillance was related to Russia or the investigation of Russian activities,” Nunes said.

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“Incidentally collected information” about Trump associates was gathered during surveillance of legitimate targets. (Former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn’s conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak was recorded because we tapped Kislyak’s phone.)

To avoid unmasking, transcripts “refer to the foreign target by name and refer to the other person simply as American No. 1 or American No. 2,” explains Andrew Malcolm. “A very small number of very senior American officials will know the actual identity of the American.”

“Unmasking” is, in most circumstances, a felony.

“I strongly suspect that someone in the Obama White House blew a hole in the thin wall that prevents the government from using information collected from surveillance to destroy the lives of citizens whose privacy it is pledged to protect,” said former NSC staffer Michael  Doran.

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Surveillance that led to the unmasking began before Trump was nominated, Adam Housley of Fox News reported today. (Hmm, did it begin shortly after Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch met at the airport in Phoenix?)

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It’s suspicious Nunes went to a SCIF (Secure Compartmented Information Facility) on White House grounds to view the documents, Democrats say.

Nunes went to the Eisenhower building because that’s where he had to go to read President Obama’s Daily Intelligence Briefing(s).

Nunes asked NSA and FBI for particular documents he’d read about in the White House SCIF. NSA will comply. The FBI is resisting.

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He has “more than circumstantial” evidence of collusion between Team Trump and the Russians, but won’t reveal it, or show it to Nunes, said the ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff, D-CA.

That “evidence” comes, apparently, from the discredited Steele dossier.

The difference between Schiff and Sen. Joe McCarthy — who kept changing the number of the Communists he said were in the State Department — is there actually were Communists in the State Department.

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Nunes screwed up by saying his source was in the IC, when in fact it was a lawyer in the White House counsel’s office who used to work for Nunes.

The suspect intel reports were discovered by the NSC staffer for intelligence, a former DIA officer, who was reviewing last minute changes Obama Justice made to make it easier to share identities of U.S. persons “incidentally” surveilled.

Neither Nunes nor his source(s) did anything wrong. But by being disingenuous about how he learned of the documents, Nunes has made it easier for those who want to discredit his evidence to smear him.

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Evelyn Farkas, a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration, inadvertently outed herself as a source for leaks about Trump and the Russians.

Times reporters concealed the identity of sources, because they were committing a crime.

Ms. Farkas left the Pentagon in 2015. If she had access to classified info about Trump last year, she has some ‘splainin’ to do.

Six of Hillary’s aides at the State Department retained their security clearances even after some of them joined her campaign, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA, said today.

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Russian hackers targeted Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla, and House Speaker Paul Ryan, former FBI cybersecurity expert Clinton Watts told the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday (3/30).

The Russians were messing with our democratic institutions, Watts said. The Russkies used social media to spread nonsense that helped Trump, he said.

“While it helped one candidate this time, they are not favoring one party over another,” said the ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee also held a hearing on Russian meddling Thursday. Top Democrats admitted they’ve seen no evidence of Team Trump collusion with Russkies.

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Mike Flynn has offered to testify about Mr. Trump’s connections to Russia in exchange for full immunity. Neither the FBI nor the Senate Intelligence Committee has taken him up on his offer.

Maybe Flynn just doesn’t want to be Scooter Libby 2.0.

“General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit,” his lawyer said. “No reasonable person, who has the benefit of advice from counsel, would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution.”

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Vice President Mike Pence cast the deciding vote Thursday (3/30) to permit states to deny Planned Parenthood “family planning” funds.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra indicted pro-life activists who exposed Planned Parenthood’s selling of baby parts for practicing journalism. Most “mainstream” journalists yawned, but the LA Times is appalled.

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Federal employees spent nearly 3.5 million hours on union business during working hours in 2014, according to a report from the Office of Personnel Management.

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Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired Marine general, is expected to appoint another general to head the Secret Service. Reforming this dysfunctional agency may save President Trump’s life.

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The crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a hoax, Rollins College Prof. Areej Zufari, a Muslim, told her humanities class.

Ms. Zufari had a student suspended for challenging her “facts.” The email he sent her is a must read.

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CNN commentator Angela Rye compared Obama to Jesus. We could find out if we crucify Zero, wait three days, see what happens.

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College rioters have wealthier parents than the average student, study finds.

Special snowflakes at Wellesley College created a database of “microaggressing” professors. Non-PC speech infringes on liberty, says the Wellesley faculty.

He wanted to “vomit” when a passenger in first class gave his seat to a soldier in uniform, said a Drexel University prof.

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It was more obvious than ever this week the leftist elite is attempting a coup, the Lying Swine are all in in support of it.

The only elected Democrat who hasn’t put partisan advantage ahead of the national interest is Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA. He’s the Hero of the Week.

Have a great weekend.