The country has done lost its collective mind. The Betsy Ross flag has now been dubbed racist by historically ignorant amoebas. Every symbol of America is now racist. The ‘thinking’ behind that is that if there was racism at the time these symbols were adopted, then they themselves are racist. That is, of course, the ‘logic’ of a simpleton devoid of any measurable intellect.
It’s now acceptable to protest the entire country because you don’t like what one police officer did during one arrest. Yeah … cuz that makes sense.
The country is full of professionally offended people. Their goal when they wake up every morning is to find some way to be a victim. After all, it pays to be a social justice warrior.
A Michigan school district is calling the historic “Betsy Ross” flag a symbol of hate and profusely apologizing after students displayed it at a recent high school football game.
During a football game on Sept. 9th between predominantly white Forest Hills Central High School and predominantly black Ottawa Hills High School, as Todd Starnes reports, Forest Hills students waved a “Betsy Ross” flag as well as a pro-Donald Trump banner.
Forest Hills Public Schools Superintendent Daniel Behm even wrote a letter to parents.
“To wave a historical version of our flag, that to some symbolizes exclusion and hate, injects hostility and confusion to an event where no one intended to do so.”
That … is a special kind of dumbass right there.
Todd Starnes even reports that at least one parent was ‘shocked’ to hear students chanting ‘USA.’ I’ve told you before that rooting for America is racist.
Goal #16 – Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
Goal #17 – Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
Goal #19 – Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
Goal #30 – Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
Goal #31 – Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.”
Although Hillary Clinton and her allies may be claiming that her private e-mail system is no big deal, Hillary’s State Department actually forced the 2012 resignation of the U.S. ambassador to Kenya in part for setting up an unsanctioned private e-mail system. According to a 2012 report from the State Department’s inspector general, former U.S. ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration set up a private e-mail system for his office in 2011.
We knew they could fix the Department of Justice; we suspected they could fix the FBI. What we didn’t know was that the fixes would be this transparent: the secret meeting with a chief culprit and the DOJ head; the next day announcement by Justice that the Clinton bribery investigations would be postponed until well after the election; the suspiciously brief FBI interrogation of the former Secretary of State who during her entire tenure had recklessly breached national security protocols, deleted 30,000 emails; burned her government schedules; put top secret information onto a hackable server in violation of federal law; and topping it all the failure of the FBI director after enumerating her reckless acts to recommend a prosecution – all within a single week, and just in time for the Democrats’ nominating convention. It was, all in all, the most breathtaking fix in American history.
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer— Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg will announce Thursday that free, public Wi-Fi is now available from more than 30 access points within a new, downtown wireless network.
If the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) statutory purpose is to protect public health, why is the agency using its regulatory power in a way that stands to undermine advances in public health?
“We’re looking at the flavor issue with e-cigarettes,” said FDA Tobacco Center Director Mitch Zeller during a news conference. Later, he said, that while the agency was aware of “anecdotal reports” that e-cigarettes have helped smokers kick their habit, those benefits were outweighed by concerns about youth using the devices.
The Obama Administration has launched a $35.7 million Food and Drug Administration anti-tobacco campaign focused on lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender youth.
The local company that’s turning the old assembly plant into a technology hub announced Wednesday that it has secured $22.9 million in financing to move ahead with the project. The complex consists of three connected buildings along Lafayette Boulevard, south of the railroad viaduct across from Four Winds Field and Union Station Technology Center.
No, not exactly, despite what CNN and The Hill reported last night. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer challenged Donald Trump in an interview yesterday about Trump’s claim that he would attract many of Bernie Sanders’ supporters in a general election by focusing on the minimum-wage hike promised by both Sanders and Hillary Clinton.
It has begun. Hillary ordered the media to start going after Trump today, and Wold Blitzer is the first one to oblige. He cut Trump off right when he was explaining that messing around with the minimum wage too much hinders competitiveness. He did it later when Trump correctly pointed out Hillary’s campaign was the first to float the Obama birth certificate story too. CNN cut from the interview to Blitzer saying Hillary never made that claim. Her campaign was the original source.
“I think he would be terrific on the Supreme Court, or I think he would be a terrific attorney general. Or he could be both,” Carson said. “He could be attorney general first, you know, go ahead and prosecute Hillary, and then go on the Supreme Court.”
“I apologize. Forgiveness is one of the greatest qualities that human beings have, is the quality of a compassionate leader. You have to be humble. You have to be compassionate. You have to love thy neighbor,” Fox explained to Breitbart News while sitting in the hotel of the J.W. Marriott in Santa Monica, California on Wednesday afternoon.
Publicly, John McCain insists Donald Trump will have a negligible effect on his campaign for reelection. But behind closed doors at a fundraiser in Arizona last month, the Republican senator and two-time presidential hopeful offered a far more dire assessment to his supporters.
“It was like an open orchid on the Internet,” Marcel Lehel Lazar, who uses the devilish handle Guccifer, told NBC News in an exclusive interview from a prison in Bucharest. “There were hundreds of folders.”
The debate has raged for some days now … was the killing of al-Awlaki in Yemen illegal?
Rep. Ron Paul says it was, but he says everything is illegal.
There are two primary arguments alleging the illegality of al-Awlaki’s killing.
First, he was a US citizen, and as such, was due a trial.
Second, the US violated international law by assassinating him in Yemen.
Neither argument holds up, both morally or legally.
First I’ll address international law.
Neither the Hague Convention of 1899, or the Protocol Addition to the Geneva Convention of 1949 forbid al-Awlaki’s killing by international law. Right off the get go, proponents of this argument are off to a bad start. In fact, the international law community has often taken the stance that killing an adversary can often fall within the confines of international law.
The clauses that traditionally have been construed as prohibiting “targeted killings” are far from clear prohibitions. In the Hague Convention (II) with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land (29 July 1899), Article 23b states that it is prohibited “to kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army.” Treachery is not explicitly defined, and it can be argued that using missiles to attack a car in which a target is traveling, while brutal and having a high probability of injuring bystanders, does not fall within the purview of treachery. Similarly, targeted killings can be argued to fall outside the Protocol I Article 37 prohibition on killing, injuring, or capturing “an adversary by resort to perfidy”—described as “acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence.” Article 37 gives examples of perfidy including “the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or surrender” and “the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status.”
Basically, you can’t ‘assassinate’ under false-flag circumstances. No such circumstance existed with the al-Awlaki killing. It should be noted that this provision addresses someone belonging to a hostile nation OR army. While al-Awlaki did not belong to a hostile nation, he did belong to a hostile army. This is important later when I argue the relevance of his US citizenship.
In addition to this international law, the US has NO LAW forbidding foreign assassinations. We do, however, have a policy of not undertaking assassinations. Policy does not equal law.
The second component to this operation is that Yemen fully approved, and supported the killing of al-Awlaki. So no argument can be made that we violated the sovereignty of a foreign nation.
The other argument making its way around is that al-Awlaki’s killing was illegal because he was a US citizen. As such, an assassination order by the President of the United States would violate his constitutional right of due process. It should also be noted that al-Awlaki was not the only American killed in the attack.
Al-Awlaki’s ties to terrorism are not in dispute, his actual influence is. So can the president order his killing, or not?
8 U.S.C. § 1481 addresses the issue of US citizenship in situations like this.
(a) A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention ofrelinquishing United States nationality –
(1) obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon his own application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized agent, after having attained the age of eighteen years; or
(2) taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen years;
The law also addresses taking up arms against the United States in section 7. Considering al-Awlaki’s Yemeni citizenship, which does not recognize dual-citizenship, and his taking up arms against the US, it would appear that he renounced his US citizenship long ago.
Section 7 automatically revokes his citizenship because of his terrorist activities, but requires capture and tribunal. Since he was in Yemen, we revert to international law which permits his killing in order to prevent a further loss of life. More relevant is local Yemen law. Again, they assisted in the killing of al-Awlaki.
Is his killing a gray area? Only in the perpetually unrefined laws of US citizenship. Laws that most Americans agree need to be revamped, but the law nonetheless.
The only component missing to classify al-Awlaki as a non-citizen appears to be a mere formality of choreographed theater that would only serve to satisfy the selfish needs of third party citizens, not the parties directly involved. It’s pretty clear that al-Awlaki, the US, and Yemen were all on the same page.
Both al-Alwaki and Yemen agree that he is a citizen of Yemen. The US agrees that he revoked his citizenship. Who are you to swoop in and negate those facts?
The only sources of outcry appear to come from the ignorant, and those with a vested interest in ideological pacifism. Not from a position of morality or legality.
Ultimately, this is a debate that will fall upon opinion. If you think al-Awlaki’s killing was illegal, you’ll likely never change your mind. Same goes for those who think it was legally justified. Each individual will have to decide for themselves if international law, US law, or Yemeni law should reign supreme.
