#1
Original post from 2004, last update January 21, 2017.
I can see the utility of this, but the more people see things like this, the more likely the jihadis are to be skeptical of claims of being Muslim by Westerners and therefore the more demanding they will be of proofs. It's an endlessly receding goal. Better to destroy them definitively now.
[Breitbart] Jiří Ovčáček, spokesman for Czech president Miloš Zeman, says that the U.S. is now an ally of the Slavic republic in the fight against mass immigration, contending that President Donald Trump is, unlike "EU elites", concerned primarily "with the safety of his citizens".
Ovčáček was defending the swift implementation of an executive order by the U.S. president on ’Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals’, which temporarily prohibits all asylum seekers from entering the United States and indefinitely prohibits Syrian asylum seekers from entering the United States while a thorough review of the refugee vetting process is undertaken.
"Trump protects his country," Ovčáček wrote in a tweet, "he’s concerned with the safety of his citizens. Exactly what EU elites do not do".
[Daily Caller] PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. -- When likely EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt walks into his first day at the office, "He’ll have 16,000 employees working against him," Sen. James Lankford told a large gathering of libertarian donors Saturday evening.
"And I expect a flood of lawsuits over everything he does."
Pruitt, who has been nominated to lead the EPA by President Donald Trump, is the attorney general of Lankford’s state, Oklahoma. He has faced fierce opposition from the environmentalist left.
Lankford, who chairs the Senate Oversight Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Health Care and Entitlements, was joined on stage by Sens. Mike Lee and Pat Toomey. Their panel, moderated by Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips, was during a dinner on day one of Charles and David Koch’s libertarian Seminar Network in Palm Springs, Calif.
#2
...Or a 16K personnel cut. All the better if it's random.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/29/2017 8:16 Comments ||
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#3
If there are 1,600 dedicated employees who are not brainwashed into the global warming scam. the remaining 90% can sod off, and join the ranks of the unemployed.
#5
As I recall, during the Nixon administration RIFs (Reductions in Force) were used to get rid of entire segments of agencies in order to circumvent civil service rules. Those unaffected got the message.
#6
"And I expect a flood of lawsuits over everything he does."
Just a thought, but it may not be a great idea to play lawfare with a litigious pissed-off billionaire who also happens to be the president of the most powerful country on earth, doesn't give a rat's tail about the rules, and just appointed a guy named Mad Dog (call sign "Chaos") as his secretary of defense. The Sierra Club won't be able to afford a pencil sharpener by the time this is over.
Posted by: Matt ||
01/29/2017 9:59 Comments ||
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"Why would the text of President Trump’s Executive Order suspending travel visas be readily available on CNN (HERE), New York Times (HERE), Wall Street Journal (HERE), but not on White House page (HERE)?
I don’t think it’s accidental. The limiting Visa program was President Obama’s action, not President Trump.
If you review the actual text of the executive order (copied below in full) what you will immediately notice is the order doesn’t specify ANY countries to be included in the Visa suspension (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen).
President Trump is not suspending visas from countries his team selected, they are simply suspending visa approval from countries President Obama selected. Additionally, Trump is suspending ALL visa applications from those countries ‐ nothing to do with Muslim applications.
• In 2013 President Obama suspended refugees from Iraq for six months. • In 2015 Congress passed, and Obama signed, a law restricting visas from states of concern; • and in 2016 Obama’s DHS, Jeh Johnson, expanded those restrictions. .... all President Trump is doing is taking the same action as Obama 2013, and applying Visa restrictions to the nation states Obama selected in 2015 and 2016.
From the Executive order:
[...] to ensure the proper review and maximum utilization of available resources for the screening of foreign nationals, and to ensure that adequate standards are established to prevent infiltration by foreign terrorists or criminals, pursuant to section 212(f) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12), would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order (excluding those foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas). (link)
The President Obama Department of Homeland Security already targeted those seven listed countries for the past several years as nations of concern.
In February of 2016 the Department of Homeland Security announced that was continuing its implementation of the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 with the addition of Libya, Somalia, and Yemen as three countries of additional concern.
DHS: "limiting Visa Waiver Program travel for certain individuals who have traveled to these countries." DHS noted "the three additional countries designated today join Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria as countries subject to restrictions for Visa Waiver Program travel for certain individuals."
President Trump is carrying out an executive action in support of the US Customs and Border Protection Act of 2015, which relates to "the Visa Waiver Program and Terrorist Travel Protection Act of 2015". President Trump did not select seven countries ‐ the US Congress and Obama’s Department of Homeland Security had singled out these countries.
Nowhere in President Trump’s executive order does he single out any country for VISA suspension. Instead what his XO does is say he’s suspending visa approvals from countries already outlined by the Obama administration as representing a specific threat such that they were categorized for extreme visa vetting by: 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12)
[National Review] n Friday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for heightened vetting of certain foreign nationals seeking entry into the United States. The order temporarily suspends entry by the nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. It is to last for 90 days, while heightened vetting procedures are developed.
The order has predictably prompted intense protest from critics of immigration restrictions (most of whom are also critics of Trump). At the New York Times, the Cato Institute’s David J. Bier claims the temporary suspension is illegal because, in his view, it flouts the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
This contention is meritless, both constitutionally and as a matter of statutory law. Let’s start with the Constitution, which vests all executive power in the president. Under the Constitution, as Thomas Jefferson wrote shortly after its adoption, "the transaction of business with foreign nations is Executive altogether.
It belongs then to the head of that department, except as to such portions of it as are specifically submitted to the Senate. Exceptions are to be construed strictly." The rare exceptions Jefferson had in mind, obviously, were such matters as the approval of treaties, which Article II expressly vests in the Senate.
There are also other textual bases for a congressional role in foreign affairs, such as Congress’s power over international commerce, to declare war, and to establish the qualifications for the naturalization of citizens. That said, when Congress legislates in this realm, it must do so mindful of what the Supreme Court, in United States v. Curtiss-Wright (1936), famously described as "the very delicate, plenary and exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations ‐ a power which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress."
President Trump kicked over a hornet's nest by imposing a 90-ban on immigration from selected Muslim countries in keeping with his campaign pledges. Andrew McCarthy, the federal prosecutor who convicted the Blind Sheikh and his accomplices of the first World Trade Center bombing, explains why the ban is legal--despite a federal judge's restraining order against implementation of the order. I'll leave it to the legal experts to explain why this is yet another outrageous abuse of power by the judiciary.
The legal issues will be sorted out soon enough. It's the right policy, despite liberal whining and some conservative complaints.
The liberals claim that the immigration halt will convince Muslims that the US administration isn't fighting ISIS and other terrorists, but Muslims as a religious group. Some conservatives, e.g. Walter Russell Mead, call it "callous." The latter characterization is misleading. It is callous towards individual Muslims but merciful to American citizens, who have the right to go about their business without fear of mass terrorist attacks. In Europe, the elites accept a certain level of terrorism as the cost of doing business, and the people grudgingly accept it. Americans don't see why they should sacrifice their safety or sense of security to accommodate the hurt feelings of other people. Prof. Mead compares this to America's refusal to accept Jewish immigrants during the Holocaust. I respect Mead, but I find the comparison offensive: How many Jewish refugees from Hitler murdered civilians at random (the answer is, not one)?
[Free Republic] The American Civil Liberties Union announced Saturday evening that a federal court in New York had issued an emergency stay on President Trump’s executive order banning immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The court’s decision, which will affect people who have been detained in airports, came after the ACLU and other activist groups filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of two Iraqis who were held at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as a result of the order. Obama appointee Judge Ann Donnelly pictured here with Schumer wrote the stay.
"I hope Trump enjoys losing. He’s going to lose so much we’re going to get sick and tired of his losing," ACLU national political director Faiz Shakir told Yahoo News shortly after the decision was announced.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the court ruling.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/29/2017 7:07 Comments ||
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#5
Fortunately, Verizon is buying out Yahoo. In the past three days the news has shifted dratictly from leftist propaganda which was incredibly excessive to hard right reporting, going after Obama and positive for Trump. Thank God something in MSM is seeing the light.
Demand more than you actually want. Let the other party claw back the bits you don't really want. The other party feels they got a partial win, and you get almost all of what you wanted.
#8
Apparently DHS is only applying the order to the actual litigants and ignoring it otherwise. To quote Jackson, "John Marshall has made his decision: now let him enforce it!"
Except that the ban doesn't mention the seven countries. Do a search of the full text at the CNN site linked in the title of this post. You won't find them.
Seth Frantzman, someone with decidedly different views than many of us on the Burg, nevertheless demonstrates clearly that the seven countries were selected by President Obama and the Omnibus Bill of 2015. As Mr. Frantzman says:
The public should be suspicious of Trump’s policies and the media should speak truth to power and demand answers from the administration. But the media should also be truthful with the public and instead of claiming Trump singled out seven countries, it should note that the US Congress and Obama’s Department of Homeland Security had singled out these countries. It should have told us about theTerrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 rather than pretend this list was invented in 2017. Trump’s executive order said “countries of concern,” it didn’t make a list. That list was already made, last year and years before.
Puts things in a different light, doesn't it?
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/29/2017 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[11127 views]
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h/t Instapundit
He means it. The President of the United States of America Donald Trump says he will use the power of his office to tear up the post-WWII international and domestic settlements. No more world policeman, spending blood and treasure to protect nations that won't defend themselves. No more nation-building. No more hapless victim of a trading order that disadvantages American workers. No more stunting growth with confiscatory taxes and miles of red tape. No more allowing concern for the environment to outweigh the need to beef up our infrastructure and create jobs. This is to be a new post-globalized world order in which he will put America First.
And now, not tomorrow. In the past few days the president has cleared the way for construction of the Dakota Access and the Keystone XL pipelines, the latter a project to bring Canadian oil to the U.S. from Canada, and one that President Obama vetoed despite its approval by his own Hillary Clinton-led State Department. He has given his Commerce Department 180 days to develop a plan to ensure that the pipelines are built with made-in-America steel. He has told agents at the Department of Homeland Security that they are to enforce the law against illegal immigrants, starting with the deportation of criminals, and to join him in planning construction of "the beautiful wall" on our southern border. He has begun the unravelling of Obamacare. He has met with a few gaggles of CEOs, separately with those from the auto industry, and with heads of trade unions, the latter a group until now bound to the Democratic party with hoops of steel. He has fired the opening shot in a war to keep terrorists from entering the country. And more.
Some of these moves are of more symbolic than practical consequence. But the whole is greater than the sum of the parts: taken together, they make attending to every jot and tittle of Trump declarations and tweets a waste of time. We are on the road to a new world order.
#1
We kept sending into the swamp young, "promising", people who said they would stand up for us, only to watch them become corrupted by their new found power and their new desire for more selfish power (Paul Ryan running for VP).
Fortunately enough Americans were able to come out and overcome 800,000 illegal votes along with other leftist votes to put a strong man to destroy the swamp, at least for a while.
#3
It occurs to me that he was planning this for a long time.
I've read that President Trump registered his campaign slogan in 2012, g(r)omgoru, though I don't recall whether it was when Mitt Romney won the primary or when he lost the election. And it's been reported that he's already registered his campaign slogan for 2020.
Posted by: The Ruling Class ||
01/29/2017 22:48 Comments ||
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#8
i heard Trump decided to run after he was mocked by Obama at a journalist dinner (available on YouTube). Don't know if it's true that's where he made the decision but I love the myth.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Free Republic] The American Civil Liberties Union announced Saturday evening that a federal court in New York had issued an emergency stay on President Trump’s executive order banning immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The court’s decision, which will affect people who have been detained in airports, came after the ACLU and other activist groups filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of two Iraqis who were held at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as a result of the order.
