Anonymous ID: 93dcdf May 25, 2018, 5:31 p.m. No.1543051   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>3078 >>3079 >>3089 >>3220 >>3240 >>3284

Julian Assange seeks audience with Adam Schiff to prove ‘there is no collusion’

 

The intermediary between longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Friday that Assange is willing to meet with ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

 

During an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, New York radio personality Randy Credico said Assange instructed him to communicate to Schiff that he was prepared to interview with the California Democrat.

 

Credico said that Assange was interested in speaking to Schiff to show “there is no collusion," a reference to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

 

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/julian-assange-seeks-an-audience-with-adam-schiff-to-prove-there-is-no-collusion

Anonymous ID: 93dcdf May 25, 2018, 5:35 p.m. No.1543095   🗄️.is 🔗kun

Trump: Chicago police 'have every right to legally protest against the mayor

 

President Trump on Friday expressed for Chicago police officers who have been protesting the city government over contract negotiations.

 

“Chicago Police have every right to legally protest against the mayor and an administration that just won’t let them do their job,” the president tweeted Friday evening, just two days after police officers stormed Chicago City Hall in protest.

 

Chicago Police have every right to legally protest against the mayor and an administration that just won’t let them do their job. The killings are at a record pace and tough police work, which Chicago will not allow, would bring things back to order fast…the killings must stop!

 

“The killings are at a record pace and tough police work, which Chicago will not allow, would bring things back to order fast…the killings must stop!” he continued.

 

Several hundred off-duty officers and members of the Fraternal Order of Police marched to City Hall on Wednesday during a city council meeting to protest Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s lack of action on a police contract, which expired 11 months ago.

 

Several hundred Chicago police protest outside City Hall after telling Mayor Rahm Emanuel: “You have turned your back on police.” pic.twitter.com/H0STn9czxH

— Mark Brown (@MarkBrownCST) May 23, 2018

 

With growing frustrations, union members are accusing Emanuel, who is up for re-election, of turning his back on his city's police force.

 

Another source of strife has been the outrage surrounding Robert Rialmo, an officer who was placed on desk-duty following his involvement in the 2015 fatal shooting of a bat-wielding teenager and bystander — at the protest, some police chanted “Justice for Rialmo!” in support of their colleague.

 

“You are more concerned with consent decrees, settlements, pandering to police-hating groups than negotiating a contract with us,” FOP Vice President Patrick Murray said, according to the Chicago Tribune. “Our members are starting to believe you have no intention of negotiating a contract with us until after the next election.”

 

Trump has repeatedly denounced the high crime rates in Chicago over the course of his administration.

 

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-chicago-police-have-every-right-to-legally-protest-against-the-mayor

Anonymous ID: 93dcdf May 25, 2018, 5:42 p.m. No.1543167   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>3259

Mike Pompeo: US should expose wealth of corrupt Iranian leaders

 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wants to expose the wealth of Iranian leaders as part of a campaign to stoke frustration with the regime’s economic management and aggressive foreign policy.

 

“You have senior leaders that are pocketing money, using businesses that are nominally fronts, and frankly, just stealing,” Pompeo told the Persian affiliate of Voice of America, a U.S.-funded outlet, in an interview published Friday. “To the extent we can prove that and demonstrate that, I’d welcome the chance to expose it so the Iranian people can judge for themselves whether these are the individuals they want to lead their country.”

 

House lawmakers passed a bill in December requiring the Treasury Department to produce a report on the assets of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other regime officials. The legislation was opposed by most Democrats, who regarded it as a threat to the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal. With President Trump having withdrawn the U.S. from the deal, Pompeo is pursuing an aggressive sanctions strategy designed to force the Iranian regime to change behavior or risk popular revolt.

 

“This wealth is being squandered so that ordinary Iranian citizens are both sending their young men off to fight and die and living lives that aren’t as secure and as wealthy as they could be if Iran would simply change its behavior,” Pompeo, a former House Republican, said.

 

But Pompeo denied that the Trump administration is pursuing regime change, as such, and even discouraged expatriate Iranian activists from agitating for that outcome. “It’s not about changing the regime,” he said. “It’s about changing the behavior of the leadership in Iran to comport with what the Iranian people really want them to do.”

 

Rep. Bruce Poliquin, R-Maine, who authored the House legislation, made a similar argument during the debate on the proposal. “Reports have indicated these funds are being used to support and sponsor terrorism around the region and to undermine our own national security interests,” he said in December. “Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, cannot be trusted and it’s important for the security of the region and for the United States for these secret funds to be exposed publicly to the world.”

 

Such documentation of regime assets might strengthen U.S. efforts to deter international investment in Iran, if Democratic warnings hold true. “The true purpose of this legislation is to create reputational risk for companies that might seek to do legitimate business with Iran,” Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said during the debate.

 

Waters offered that prediction to argue that Iran would regard the bill as a violation of the nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. That’s a moot point, as far as U.S. policymakers are concerned, although European allies are trying to keep the pact intact. A companion to Poliquin’s bill is pending in the Senate, where it was co-sponsored by Utah Republican Orrin Hatch and Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton.

 

“We think it’s very important,” Pompeo said. “It’s just as important as an informational matter. The Iranian people deserve the truth.”

 

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/mike-pompeo-us-should-expose-wealth-of-corrupt-iranian-leaders

Anonymous ID: 93dcdf May 25, 2018, 5:45 p.m. No.1543194   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>3272 >>3317

Trump signs three executive orders taking aim at unions

 

President Trump signed three executive orders Friday containing sweeping reforms that weaken protections for federal workers and eliminate perks for the unions that represent them.

 

Under the new executive orders, estimated to save at least $100 million a year, unions will be charged rent for federal office space and will not be reimbursed for travel expenses or for hours spent appealing worker firings.

 

Going forward, federal workers must spend 75 percent of their time on government work – some currently spend none – and agencies must publicly post union contracts in an online repository.

 

Trump also ordered the termination of an Obama-era policy that says leniency for one worker sets a precedent protecting others from firing, and shortened review periods preceding discipline for poor-performing employees.

 

Although the changes make it easier for workers to get fired, White House officials said they expected largely positive response.

 

"Federal employees are sick and tired of having to carry the dead wood," one official said on an afternoon conference call. "It should not take a year plus appeals to remove someone from the federal workforce."

 

The orders also provide for the renegotiation of union contracts, officials said.

 

“These contracts make it harder to fire employees than the law requires,” a White House office said on the call.

 

An official said the orders will let Trump "come as close as he can to fulfill his vision" for civil service reform without legislation.

 

"Today the president is fulfilling his promise to promote more efficient government by reforming our civil service rules," said Andrew Bremberg, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.

 

The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act requires the government to pay federal workers for time they spend on union work, but White House officials said this essentially allows hundreds of workers to be full-time union employees.

 

"Over 470 Veterans Affairs employees spend 100 percent of their duty hours working for a labor union instead of serving veterans. This includes 74 full-time nurses," the White House said in a fact sheet.

 

The American Federation of Government Employees, a union for federal workers that claims 700,000 members, denounced the reforms in an afternoon call with reporters, vowing to rally political opposition and to review the documents for potential litigation.

 

"We will see him in court, we will see him in the street, we will see him wherever we can be," said AFGE President J. David Cox Sr., who called the reforms "a classic example of this administration's attack and assault on women, attack and assault on minorities."

 

Cox said the measures "clearly" were "modeled after the VA Accountability Act" that recently became law, allowing for expedited firing of VA workers. He said that the union fears the orders are a step toward making federal workers "at will" employees, allowing for political considerations in hiring and firing decisions.

 

"Everyone knows President Trump has no respect for the rule of law and this is just the latest case," Cox charged.

 

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/trump-guts-union-perks-speeds-up-civil-service-firings-to-save-100-million-a-year

Anonymous ID: 93dcdf May 25, 2018, 5:53 p.m. No.1543282   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>3385 >>3400

Ginsburg And Gorsuch Are Trolling Each Other In An Epic Way

 

Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Neil Gorsuch are trolling one another in opinion citations.

 

The high court released an important labor and contract decision Monday, in which the pair owned one another in the margins of their opinions.

 

At issue in the case are so-called mandatory arbitration clauses in employment contracts. Such provisions require employees to settle disputes relating to wages or benefits with their employers in private one-on-one settings. The proceedings themselves and the arrangements they reach often remain secret.

 

A coalition of workers challenged the lawfulness of such provisions, arguing they run afoul of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) which secures the rights of workers to engage in “concerted activities” for their “mutual aid and protection.” But a majority of the Supreme Court led by Gorsuch disagreed, finding the NLRA does not displace a separate federal law called the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), which requires enforcement of contractual agreements to arbitrate in all but a few circumstances.

 

Ginsburg led the four-justice liberal bloc in dissent, blasting the majority for reviving the so-called yellow dog contract, an antiquated and unlawful stipulation once common to employment agreements, which barred workers from unionizing as a condition of employment. In so doing, she accused the Court of regressing to the infamous Lochner-era, a period in the early 20th century in which a pro-laissez faire majority of the Supreme Court struck down a bevy of progressive legislation, like minimum wage laws or laws banning child labor.

 

Gorsuch found Ginsburg’s ominous diagnosis a little bombastic, and said so in as many words.

 

“Like most apocalyptic warnings, this one proves a false alarm,” Gorsuch wrote, before citing Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe’s 1978 treatise “American Constitutional Law.” “‘Lochnerizing,'” the citation reads “has become so much an epithet that the very use of the label may obscure attempts at understanding.”

 

Tribe is a leading light of progressive legal theorizing who has become a significant figure in the popular resistance to President Donald Trump. Gorsuch’s dig at Ginsburg’s dissent was meant to sting all the more by anchoring his barb in a treatise written by a prominent liberal.

 

But Ginsburg responded to the Gorsuch jab in kind. In her dissent, Ginsburg argued the high court has gradually weaponized the FAA through a line of cases expanding the law beyond its original context (contractual disputes between merchants) to allow business to protect itself from its own employees. Monday’s decision, she said, was the bottom of this slippery slope.

 

“As I see it, in relatively recent years, the Court’s Arbitration Act decisions have taken many wrong turns,” she wrote. “Yet, even accepting the Court’s decisions as they are, nothing compels the destructive result the Court reaches today.” She then cited a passage from Judge Robert Bork’s 1990 book “The Tempting of America” which reads: “Judges live on the slippery slope of analogies; they are not supposed to ski it to the bottom.”

 

Bork was at the vanguard of a conservative jurisprudential revival, and perhaps the foremost expositor of judicial minimalism during his lifetime. Therefore, it’s particularly spicy to cite Bork while accusing a conservative of expanding judicial power.

 

Though the Court prides itself on its vaunted comity, relations between Ginsburg and Gorsuch appeared somewhat icy at several junctures of the current term.

 

The Court will next release opinions Tuesday May 29.Gorsuch found Ginsburg’s ominous diagnosis a little bombastic, and said so in as many words.

 

“Like most apocalyptic warnings, this one proves a false alarm,” Gorsuch wrote, before citing Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe’s 1978 treatise “American Constitutional Law.” “‘Lochnerizing,'” the citation reads “has become so much an epithet that the very use of the label may obscure attempts at understanding.”

 

Tribe is a leading light of progressive legal theorizing who has become a significant figure in the popular resistance to President Donald Trump. Gorsuch’s dig at Ginsburg’s dissent was meant to sting all the more by anchoring his barb in a treatise written by a prominent liberal.

 

But Ginsburg responded to the Gorsuch jab in kind. In her dissent, Ginsburg argued the high court has gradually weaponized the FAA through a line of cases expanding the law beyond its original context (contractual disputes between merchants) to allow business to protect itself from its own employees. Monday’s decision, she said, was the bottom of this slippery slope.

 

http:// dailycaller.com/2018/05/25/ginsburg-gorsuch-are-trolling-each-other/

Anonymous ID: 93dcdf May 25, 2018, 5:57 p.m. No.1543317   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>3479

>>1543194

You should add this one of Trump, I love the smirk on his face and the gesture of his hand, says it all:) Both together would be quite a winning combination. kek, under the skin and over the top, haha