President Trump Exposed Iran's Weakness, for All to See

COMMENTARY By Rudy Giuliani

The last week presented a dramatic confrontation between two nations, one with nuclear power and the other hoping to have it or possibly possessing it. The commentariat was abuzz with the fear of war. Then within, it seemed, a day, the threat of war was over. The Trump administration’s handling of the Ayatollah seemed the most effective since Ronald Reagan’s inauguration forced the first Ayatollah to release our hostages. The strategy was brilliant. It exposed for all the world to see Iran’s fear of America. It laid bare the Regime of Terror’s dread of an all-out confrontation with the United States. There is no greater blow you can deliver to a terrorist regime than to expose its weakness, and President Donald J. Trump did it with the world watching.

After the United States eliminated Iran’s four-decade-long architect of terror, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and Iranians reacted like they lost their most inspiring leader, the world was ready for massive attacks on U.S. interests and Israel. Instead, a missile attack disrupting sand formations reaffirmed that the age-old wisdom of not appeasing, but standing up to, bullies is always the right approach. It avoids war. We have been coming to this point since Donald J. Trump, as a candidate, disavowed then-President Barack Obama’s agreement allowing Iran a path to becoming a nuclear power and giving it billions of dollars to help it.

Feed the people? Arm terrorists? Buy the missiles they used to attack us? Steal a lot for the billionaire Ayatollah and the millionaire mullahs? The answers, if they are not obvious, will be supplied at the end.

As soon as President Trump disavowed the agreement and ended the payoff, the Regime of Terror began testing us, slowly and carefully. Interfering with allied shipping, detaining allied seamen, firing on targets in Iraq and then taking out a U.S. drone. The latter presented a test. Although no one died, it was an attack on American military equipment and many wanted to respond militarily. But President Trump decided it would be disproportionate to react to an attack that cost no lives by launching one that was likely to kill innocent Iranians. It was, of course, criticized, but if you know him or the basics of negotiation, you could see it was a set-up for a later move if necessary. And so it was.

The Ayatollah still did not have his answer as to President Trump’s trigger point. He knew he had to take it up another level to see just how far he could go. So with his butcher Soleimani he created unrest in Iraq and then stormed the American embassy. They wanted to see just how far they could push us. By not taking over the embassy, as they did 40 years ago, they were calculating, trying to expose American weakness. However, they were playing right into President Trump’s hands. Iran had crossed a red line and a response was necessary, a very carefully chosen one with an objective. And in the response would be a clear sign of America’s strategy.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/01/14/president_trump_exposed_irans_weakness_for_all_to_see_142145.html

The silly smear of Bill Barr as an agent of a ‘Catholic cult’

Bill Barr is plugged into, and gets his marching ­orders from, a network of reactionary Catholics, whose tentacles reach into the highest echelons of power. At the center is a sinister, secretive organization with a Latin name: Opus Dei, “the Work of God.” That’s the impression you might take away from a new profile of the attorney general in The New Yorker. All that’s missing are the hair shirts, cilices and murderous albino monks — the kind of thing too many secular elites believe about the lives of devout ­Catholics generally and members of Opus Dei especially.

The winding and often tendentious essay paints Barr as President Trump’s wartime consigliere, out to dish payback to the US intelligence community for launching #RussiaGate — rather than, you know, look into real abuses recognized as such by foreign-intelligence judges and even FBI honcho Christopher Wray. Along the way, writer David Rohde dwells on Barr’s Catholic faith and worldview. He brings up Barr’s association with the Catholic Information Center, a small cultural nonprofit in Washington, where swamp denizens stop by to buy spiritual books, hear the Mass and generally find uplift. “Led by a member of the arch-conservative group Opus Dei, the center is a hub for Washington’s influential conservatives,” Rohde darkly suggests. “The center’s board of directors ­remains a nexus of politically connected Catholics. [White House counsel] Pat Cipollone and Barr have both served on the board, as has Leonard Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society.” It could be that these men meet at the CIC afterhours to plot how to install Melania Trump as the Most Catholic Empress of the Americas. … Or it could be that they, like members of any other faith, seek spiritual fellowship and give their nonworking hours to helping others find the same.

As far as Barr-Opus Dei conspiracy theories go, Rohde’s was relatively mild. The Guardian in October mentioned Barr’s connection to the CIC, which it said is “staffed by priests from the secretive, ultra-orthodox Catholic sect Opus Dei.” The same month, The Nation’s Joan Walsh sounded the alarm about Barr’s links to “extremist Catholic institutions,” while an article on the liberal Web site ­Alternet speculated that Barr may be an Opus Dei member. The group, it said, had taught Barr to “put away his scruples.”

This is egregious nonsense. For starters, Barr isn’t, in fact, a member, as the organization was forced to clarify in November, breaking its usual policy of not identifying members or non-members. More important, people who attend Opus Dei ­activities don’t show up for ­ominous conspiracies.

https://nypost.com/2020/01/13/the-silly-smear-of-bill-barr-as-an-agent-of-a-catholic-cult/

The Plot to Level the Administrative State

The Supreme Court's conservative majority could use an obscure legal doctrine to permanently kneecap the ability of progressives to govern.

The nondelegation doctrine, unlike most legal concepts, is less boring than it sounds. After the 1930s, it became constitutional esoterica, a relic of a bygone age in which the Supreme Court resisted efforts by Americans to regulate their own economic affairs. But it has the potential to overthrow most of the federal government if wielded in a certain way, and the Roberts court could soon give it startling new relevance. The doctrine’s puissance lies in the separation of powers. In the American constitutional order, it’s the role of Congress to write the laws and the role of the executive branch to carry them out. The doctrine bars any branch from handing its powers to another branch. Congress can’t pass a bill that gives the president the power to write his own legislation, for example. Nor can the president instruct the military to take orders from the House and Senate Armed Services Committee instead of himself. Sounds simple enough.

For more than a century, however, lawmakers have tackled complex issues of national governance by creating regulatory agencies within the executive branch to address them. Those agencies, empowered with a certain degree of discretion, relieve Congress of the burden of determining which drugs are safe for the marketplace and which pollutants can’t be released into the air or groundwater. This interplay between executive and legislative power might not be exactly what James Madison and Alexander Hamilton had in mind in 1789. But it has nonetheless formed the bedrock for modern American governance. Last year, all five members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority expressed a willingness to revisit the doctrine. It’s tempting to think that the justices might be onto something here. I’ve written extensively in the Trump era about how lawmakers have sometimes given the executive branch too much latitude, particularly when it comes to national security and immigration. But the movement to expand the nondelegation doctrine doesn’t seek a healthier relationship between Congress and the administrative state. Instead, it hopes to roll back the administrative state itself.

The justices called up the nondelegation doctrine from the constitutional minor leagues in 2018, when they agreed to hear Gundy v. United States. At issue was the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, or Sorna, which requires people on sex-crime registries to keep their registration current and notify states when they move. Congress gave the attorney general the discretion to determine whether those requirements would apply to people convicted before the law went into effect, which he did. Herman Gundy, who was convicted of sexually assaulting a minor in Maryland, was later convicted of violating Sorna’s requirements because he failed to register in New York. Justice Brett Kavanaugh had not been sworn in by the time oral arguments took place and thus missed the opportunity to participate in the case. Four of the court’s members voted to uphold the law, with Justice Elena Kagan writing for the plurality. Justice Samuel Alito voted in favor of that plurality’s outcome, perhaps to avoid a 4-4 deadlock that would have left the case unresolved. He also drafted a short concurring opinion to keep himself at arm’s length from their reasoning, writing that he would be willing to revisit the nondelegation issue in a future case. (Kavanaugh later expressed a similar stance.)

https://newrepublic.com/article/156207/plot-level-administrative-state

House Scheme Unfolds – Adam Schiff Transmits “New Evidence” to Nadler…

Yesterday’s ridiculous, albeit proactive, New York Times narrative about Russians hacking Burisma now makes sense. Today the Lawfare team (Mary McCord et al) within Adam Schiff’s impeachment crew send additional files of evidence (pdf below) to be included in the impeachment articles constructed by HJC Chairman Jerry Nadler. It is all coordinated. The “new evidence” relates to information turned over by Lev Parnas, an SDNY indicted former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. The Lawfare purpose is to bolster their premise that President Trump was trying to force Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden’s corrupt activity around the Ukrainian company Burisma.

The Lawfare crew behind Schiff waited until the last minute to push the new “evidence” because they didn’t want republicans to deconstruct it during the impeachment evidence gathering phase. Aditionally, the Lawfare crew anticipate a Trump impeachment defense surrounding actual evidence of the Biden corruption, which makes the Trump request to Zelensky valid. So the proactive democrat strategy was/is to use the New York Times presentation of Russia hacking Burisma to negate the provenance of the evidence against the Bidens. In essence, to cast doubt upon any documents that would show Joe and Hunter Biden participating in an actual influence and money-laundering scheme.

The SDNY created legal leverage upon Lev Parnas using the familiar strategy of charging “FARA violations”, as noted in the background of the House explanation. The purpose was/is to extract anything from Parnas that could be twisted or construed to show evidence that Rudy Giuliani was working on behalf of President Trump to pressure Ukraine into investigating Burisma, Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/01/14/house-scheme-unfolds-adam-schiff-transmits-new-evidence-to-nadler/

Several rockets fired at US base Camp Taji near Baghdad

Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, Iraq, has been targeted by rocket fire with no casualties reported at the bases where coalition forces are hosted including US Army troops

A military base hosting US forces has come under fire, according to Iraq's armed forces. Its military confirmed Camp Taji, where coalition forces are based along with Iraqi troops, has been targeted with rockets, Reuters reports. It was not immediately clear whether anyone had been injured in the attack, following conflicting reports. The Iraqi Military has since issued a statement saying there were no casualties after Taji was targeted by Katyusha rockets. Reports from the region say the camp came under heavy rocket fire.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. On Sunday, four people were wounded after eight Katyusha rockets were fired at Balad air base, which houses US personnel, located about 50 miles north of Baghdad, the Iraqi military said in a statement. Military sources identified the wounded in that incident as Iraqi soldiers to Reuters. Tensions are at a high in the Middle East after the US executed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.

Iran responded by firing missiles targeting two US military bases in Iraq a week later. There were no casualties in the attacks. A Ukrainian Airlines plane crashed shortly after Iran's attacks, killing all 176 aboard. Iran later admitted the aircraft was mistakenly shot down at the airport near Tehran amid the tensions.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/breaking-several-rockets-fired-base-21280539

>>7818340

VACCINE BOMBSHELL as U.N. health experts admit toxic vaccine ingredients are harming children worldwide – see video, transcript

Video

https://www.brighteon.com/3dec332d-fd96-4654-a72f-55b702bd9262

Video won't embed..it is on brighteon.com in the above captioned url.

>>7818828

>>7818541 (You) The Plot to Level the Administrative State (alt bias but good facts)

Agree with you the bias, I actually hesitated putting it up because of that.