https://www.theblaze.com/news/report-massachusetts-school-bans-the-odyssey
NEWS DECEMBER 28, 2020
Report: Massachusetts school bans 'The Odyssey' as progressives demand purge of classics
These people are teaching your kids
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/30/951334047/jonathan-pollard-cold-war-spy-who-spent-30-years-in-u-s-prison-arrives-in-israel
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/30/former-spy-jonathan-pollard-arrives-in-israel-from-us
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/pollard-israel-spy-trump-netanyahu/2020/12/30/76a52f38-4a59-11eb-97b6-4eb9f72ff46b_story.html
POLITICS
$2,000 Stimulus Checks,
Section 230 Repeal
Included in Mitch McConnell's Surprise COVID Relief Bill
BY BENJAMIN FEARNOW ON 12/29/20 AT 5:30 PM EST
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced a bill Tuesday evening which would offer increased $2,000 direct payments to individuals sought by Democrats and President Donald Trump, but adds legislation pertaining to social media companies and election fraud studies.
McConnell introduced the parallel pandemic relief bill on Tuesday, S.5085, which would include the $600 to $2,000 increase in checks to individual Americans, but tacks on a repeal of section 230 of the Communications Act of 1996 and funding for a commission to investigate voter fraud. Both of these additions to McConnell's surprise bill are demands which have been made by Trump for months. The Section 230 repeal would pull back protections for internet companies and allow such media companies as Twitter and Facebook to be sued if users feel wronged by messages on the platform.
McConnell has for months said he opposes added weekly unemployment benefits and only last week agreed with Democrats to add the $600 direct deposits for Americans struggling amid the pandemic.
Trump appeared to have predicted what McConnell's move would be this week after the White House came out in support, alongside Democrats, of the $2,000 stimulus relief checks to individual Americans. "The Senate will start the process for a vote that increases checks to $2,000, repeals Section 230, and starts an investigation into voter fraud," the president wrote in a Sunday statement, days before McConnell introduced nearly identical legislation.
"Big Tech must not get protections of Section 230!" Trump stated Sunday, in a request which McConnell appears to have granted by tacking the freedom of speech issue onto the $2,000 check stipulation. "Voter Fraud must be Fixed! Much more money is coming. I will never give my fight for the American people!"
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded to McConnell's introduction of the bill as a "cynical gambit." Unclear in what exactly McConnell's legislative motives are, Schumer said the GOP Senate leader is attempting to undermine the $2,000 by adding Trump's election fraud and Section 230 repeal demands.
https://www.newsweek.com/2000-stimulus-checks-section-230-repeal-included-mitch-mcconnells-surprise-covid-relief-bill-1557866
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-s-five-betrayals-of-jewish-spy-jonathan-pollard-1.9323125
Analysis | Israel’s Five Betrayals of Jewish Spy Jonathan Pollard
The U.S. decision not to extend restrictions against Jewish American spy Jonathan Pollard is the correct one. Israel now has the chance to do likewise for Mordechai Vanunu. An epilogue to the affair that shook Israel-U.S. relations in the 1980s
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/07/jonathan-pollard-was-one-of-the-worst-traitors-of-the-20th-century-he-deserved-his-30-year-prison-sentence.html
WAR STORIES
Just Punishment
Jonathan Pollard was one of the worst traitors of the 20th century. He deserved to languish as long as he did.
By FRED KAPLAN
JULY 29, 201511:06 AM
Jonathan Pollard, who’s been in prison the past 30 years for selling secrets to Israel, will be released on parole this November. Two things are worth noting. First, contrary to many skeptics, his release is not a political ploy to relax Israel’s opposition to the Iran nuclear deal. Second, contrary to claims by Pollard’s supporters, his punishment has been completely justified; he ranks as one of the 20th century’s most appalling American spies.
The first myth is easy to puncture. Pollard’s life sentence came with a mandatory-parole clause after 30 years. He started serving time in November 1985. So, 30 years is up in November 2015. It’s math.
The second myth takes longer to unravel. At his sentencing hearing, Pollard, who’d been a U.S. Navy intelligence official, painted himself as a devout Jew who’d stolen classified documents dealing only with Arab military might in order to help Israel stave off an invasion; none of his actions, he claimed, harmed American security.
Judge Aubrey Robinson Jr. called Pollard to the bench, showed him a classified affidavit that the Department of Defense had submitted, listing the range of sensitive secrets that he’d stolen, pointed to one of the items, and said, “What about this?” Pollard was silenced. Robinson sentenced him to life.
We now know (and M.E. Bowman, a senior counterintelligence officer who was working the Pollard case, has since confirmed) that the item in question was a National Security Agency manual called the RASIN, short for “Radio Signal Notations.” The RASIN was a guide to the physical parameters of every radio signal that the NSA was intercepting—a guide on how the NSA was tracking military communications, not just Israel’s but any and every country’s, including the Soviet Union’s. The RASIN was 10 volumes, and Pollard gave his Israeli handlers every single page of it.
An article by Seymour Hersh, in the Jan. 18, 1999, issue of the New Yorker, titled “The Traitor,” listed some other beyond-top-secret documents—among the tens of thousands—that Pollard had stolen and sold. They included the “National SIGINT Requirements List” (SIGINT standing for Signals Intelligence), which revealed which communications channels of which military powers, in which regions, the NSA was intercepting in what order of priority. In other words, it would give the reader a heads up on where and what actions the U.S. military might take next.
There is another disturbing element to this story. For more than 12 years after his arrest, senior Israeli officials told their American allies that Pollard had been a “rogue” who had no contact with the Israeli government. Finally, in 1998, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted to President Clinton that Pollard had been an Israeli agent all along, handled by senior officials in the Bureau of Scientific Relations.
McConnell introduced the parallel pandemic relief bill on Tuesday, S.5085, which would include the $600 to $2,000 increase in checks to individual Americans, but tacks on a repeal of section 230 of the Communications Act of 1996and funding for a commission to investigate voter fraud.
Both of these additions to McConnell's surprise bill are demands which have been made by Trump for months. The Section 230 repeal would pull back protections for internet companies and allow such media companies as Twitter and Facebook to be sued if users feel wronged by messages on the platform.