US Congress’ Demands on New START Treaty ‘Unacceptable’ - Russian Ambassador

The demands issued by the US Congress regarding the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia are not acceptable, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov told Sputnik.

US Senator Tom Cotton and Congresswoman Liz Cheney introduced a bill on Wednesday that prevents extending the New START until the US president certifies to Congress that Russia has agreed to verifiably reduce its stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons and include its new weapons systems under the limits of the accord.

"It feels like US lawmakers mix all these issues to make it unacceptable for Russia, so that we reject them at once," Antonov told Sputnik after the speech. "Additional obstacles and barriers are being created that prevent the extension of the New START. A tactical nuclear weapon has nothing to do with these questions."

Following the cancellation of the G20 meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, Antonov emphasized it is important to have a conversation between the two leaders concerning developments of nuclear arms control and the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

"It is high time for President Putin and President Trump to discuss strategic stability and the future of nuclear arms control, primarily the INF Treaty and the New START," Antonov said.

Russia still stands for continuing consultations with a view to preserve the INF Treaty as one of the cornerstones of international security, he added.

Antonov continued that reestablishing dialogue between the Russian and US defence ministries is also necessary to better bilateral ties and avoid possible conflict in the future.

Additionally, the Russian ambassador touched upon the development of a missile program by the United States and said it would impact the possibility of reaching new deals with Russia.

Antonov, who took his diplomatic post in August 2017, visited Princeton University on Thursday to give a speech as well as answer questions addressing current events on the political arena and US-Russian relations.

The New START Treaty entered into force in 2011 and covers a ten-year period with the possibility of a five-year extension. The treaty limits the number of deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, nuclear-armed bombers and nuclear warheads. The talks on extending the START Treaty have been delayed over mutual concerns about compliance.

The Trump administration has announced plans to withdraw from the INF treaty. The treaty, signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987, bans ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 300 miles to 3,400 miles.

https://sputniknews.com/military/201811301070262837-usa-russia-start-treaty/

They Give Us Poisoned Politics and Call It Justice

RUSH: Now, if you think I’m a little bit histrionic, I am. This stuff… I cannot tell you how this aggravates me. This is the criminal justice system. This is what we have all been raised and led to believe is where justice happens, where reality trumps any other attempt. We’ve all been led to believe that the Justice Department is above and beyond corruption, and we have come to find out that’s not the case whatsoever by virtue of the fact that this investigation itself has no basis in fact anywhere.

It should not have happened, and people’s lives are being ruined as a result of this. We’re watching what the people with power in the Washington establishment are able to do with our government, how they are able to subvert and ignore the United States constitution and how they are more than willing to do that to protect their fiefdoms of power, to deny the expressed will of the American people in a duly constituted and legal presidential election.

All of this is about undoing what the American people voted for — and, in the process, ruining anybody and their families and their careers who had anything to do with it, including Brett Kavanaugh, anybody Trump would nominate, Trump and his family. These all-mighty, powerful people couldn’t stop Donald Trump at the ballot box. They couldn’t stop him on the campaign trail. The brilliant Hillary Clinton — who was supposed to win in an eight- to 10-point landslide — couldn’t stop Donald Trump giving it her best shot.

Her brilliant husband, Bill Clinton, and the smarter-than-anybody-ever-born Barack Obama could not stop Donald Trump, damn it, and so this effort was undertaken to stop Donald Trump. And with all due respect to anybody out there in the legal community and the Justice Department, this is the most bogus bastardization of justice that I can remember seeing or that I know about in my lifetime. You know, there’s some people saying, “Well, there’s an investigation. We must follow it through.

“Well, there is a special counsel. We must follow it through. Well, the special counsel was appointed by a duly constituted deputy AG and we must…” No! Why? If the whole thing is bogus and fraudulent from the get-go, why do we treat it as in any way legitimate? “Well, because there are decent people in the Department of Justice, Rush, and they are working here trying to uphold the…” No, they’re not! None of that’s happening here!

This is a concerted effort to use the Department of Justice — Obama’s people at the FBI and so forth — to undermine the will of the American people as expressed in the presidential election of 2016! But if that’s not enough, in addition to undermining the express will of the people, we’re gonna destroy the lives and careers of as many people who screwed us by winning as we can. That’s what the Department of Justice appears to have become, to me. At least the people running it. To me, it’s not coincidental, and it all happens, and it all starts under the administration one Barack Hussein O.

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2018/11/29/they-give-us-poisoned-politics-and-call-it-justice/

Defrocked priest convicted of abusing another boy

ALFRED, Maine – A defrocked Roman Catholic priest who was a central figure in the clergy abuse scandal that rocked the Archdiocese of Boston was convicted Thursday of sexually abusing another boy.

Ronald Paquin, who was released from prison in 2015, was convicted of assaulting a boy in the 1980s in Kennebunkport, Maine.

The victim, now an adult, told reporters after the verdict that Paquin was "pure evil," thanking jurors for doing "the right thing."

Two men testified Paquin befriended them as boys at a parish in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and invited them on trips that included visits to Kennebunkport, Maine. They said he gave them alcohol, and let them drive his car without a license. One of them testified he was drugged.

Both said Paquin repeatedly assaulted them, but the jury reached a guilty verdict on counts involving only one of the victims. In the end, Paquin was convicted of 11 of the 24 counts against him.

David Clohessy, former national director of the Survivor's Network of those Abused by Priests, said the conviction was "long overdue."

"I feel sad that one of the victims was disbelieved, and that must hurt. But overall, kids will be safer, and hopefully, victims of other predators will feel inspired to come forward and report their abuse," he said.

In court, Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Heimbach told jurors this case "is about a priest who planned, plied and perpetrated."

But defense attorney Roger Champagne said the graphic testimony from the two men was "fluff" aimed at distracting them from the lack of physical evidence or witness testimony placing the boys in Maine in the 1980s.

Paquin previously spent more than a decade in a Massachusetts prison after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting an altar boy. He was released in 2015, and was taken into custody in Maine last year.

The Boston Globe reported Paquin admitted to medical evaluators that he abused at least 14 boys and said he was also abused as a child.

He was a key figure in a scandal that started in the Boston Archdiocese and rocked the church globally, which was featured in the movie "Spotlight" about the Boston Globe team that uncovered the abuse.

During the trial, several people testified about seeing Paquin with boys at a campground in Kennebunkport.

None saw anything inappropriate but one said she wondered why the boys stayed inside a trailer on a hot day instead of going to a pool or to the beach. She was told the boys liked to play Monopoly.

Clohessy said people shouldn't assume that serial abusers like Paquin become less of a threat as they age. In fact, he said, they can become worse because they appear to be less of a threat to children.

"The simple fact is that children are protected when child molesters are jailed. And today we're one step closer to that," he said.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/defrocked-priest-convicted-of-abusing-another-boy

Rahm Emanuel is not on the Beto 2020 bandwagon: ‘You don’t usually promote a loser’

Amidst all the fawning within the Democratic Party over Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s supposedly admirable loss in the Texas Senate race and his potential as a 2020 presidential candidate, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has a different take:

“You don’t usually promote a loser to the top of the party,” Emanuel said Thursday on MSNBC.

Here are his comments on Robert Francis O’Rourke’s potential candidacy, in full:

“Nancy Pelosi led the Democratic Party for the last two years from a really bad election in 2016. I’m from Chicago, maybe I’m really old school, but to the victor go the spoils. If Beto O’Rourke wants to go and run for president, God bless him, he should put his hat in and make his case. But, he lost. You don’t usually promote a loser to the top of the party and then take a winner and say ‘We’re going to cut your knees off.'”

Why did he say that?

Emanuel was discussing his support for Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for Speaker of the House, and he questioned whether Republicans would ever adopt a backward strategy of ousting a winner (as some Democrats want to do to Pelosi) and elevating an election loser (as some Democrats want to do for O’Rourke).

“Everybody in our party always says the Republicans are so much tougher, so much stronger,” Emanuel said. “Do you think they would take somebody that won and say, ‘You know what your reward is? We’re going to cut your knees off.’

“That’s not how you play politics to win,” he concluded.

Emanuel believes the Democratic Party needs Pelosi to remain in leadership over these next two years as the party prepares for the 2020 election, saying that this is not the time to have a rookie in leadership against someone as “ruthless” as Mitch McConnell.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/11/29/rahm-emanuel-is-not-on-the-beto-2020-bandwagon-you-dont-usually-promote-a-loser