Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appears on the ABC TV show “The View” June 29, 2018 (Screenshot)
Newly elected congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has bragged about her socialist ideas for the United States and has said she might run for president, has been publicly corrected for her misunderstanding of American government.
“The 3 branches of government: executive, legislative, judicial,” tweeted Ryan Saavedra in response to Ocasio-Cortez referring to three “chambers” of Congress in a video.
Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “If we work our butts off to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress — Uh, rather, all three chambers of government: the presidency, the Senate, and the House.”
The 3 branches of government: executive, legislative, judicial. pic.twitter.com/8rPSpzottE
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) November 19, 2018
“If we work our butts off to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress – uh, rather, all three chambers of government, the presidency, the Senate, and the House…” she explained.
Molly Prince at the Daily Caller News Foundation reported the “progressive darling” and self-proclaimed Democratic socialist “seemed to be confusing the two chambers of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate, with the three branches of American government, the Executive, Legislative and Judicial.”
The report points out she graduated cum laude from Boston University in 2011.
Radio host Rush Limbaugh on Monday called Ocasio-Cortez the “It Girl” of the Democratic Party “who doesn’t even know what the three branches of government are.”
“This is American public education at work,” Limbaugh said. “She’s a former bartender. You gotta wonder if she knows the difference between Scotch, bourbon and whiskey. You know, the three chambers of liquor.”
On Twitter, she responded angrily to criticism of her statement
“Maybe instead of Republicans drooling over every minute of footage of me in slow-mo, waiting to chop up word slips that I correct in real-tomd (sic), they actually step up enough to make the argument they want to make. That they don’t believe people deserve a right to healthcare.”
Shortly after she was elected to Congress, Ocasio-Cortez participated in a sit-in in the office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Townhall reported Ocasio-Cortez “met with members from the Sunrise Movement, a nationwide coalition of young liberals concerned with climate change, in an effort to send a message to Rep. Pelosi that this was the true base of the Democratic Party.”
“If the Democratic leaders wanted unity, they would have to listen and work with these young progressives.”
She also has talked about a run for the presidency and once stated the Electoral College, the constitutionally mandated process through which presidents are elected, must be abolished.
Ocasio-Cortez called the constitutional provision that allows states with small populations to play a role in elections “a shadow of slavery’s power on America today that undermines our nation as a democratic republic.”
The post Ocasio-Cortez wants to control '3 chambers of Congress' appeared first on WND.
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A 'Super Earth' – a planet much bigger and colder than our world – has been discovered in orbit around a nearby star, scientists announced Wednesday.
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
On October 1, 2018, Maryland’s new “red flag” gun law went into effect.
On November 5, 2018, the law claimed its first victim.
Officially called Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO), “red flag” laws permit police, healthcare providers, or family members (or pretty much anyone, really – let’s be honest here) to petition a state court to order the temporary removal of firearms from a person who may present a danger to others or themselves. A judge decides to issue the order based on statements and actions made by the gun owner. After a set period of time, the guns are returned to the owner unless another court hearing extends the period of confiscation.
Proponents of the law say it should not be seen as a “gun grab.”
As of November 8 – just a little over a month after the law went into effect in Maryland – 114 red flag warrants had already been served across the state.
Proponents of the law also claim it will “save lives.”
However, a life has already been lost because of the law.
Gary J. Willis, a 61-year-old Maryland resident, was killed by police when they showed up at his home at 5 am to serve him with a court order requiring that he surrender his guns.
Anne Arundel County Police said Willis answered the door with a gun in his hand. He initially put the gun down by the door, but “became irate” when officers began to serve him with the order and picked up the gun again, police said.
Sgt. Jacklyn Davis, a police spokeswoman, said “A fight ensued over the gun.” Police claim that as one of the officers struggled to take the gun from Willis, the gun fired but did not strike anyone. Then, the other officer fatally shot Willis, who died at the scene. Neither officer was injured.
Davis said she did not know who had sought the protective order against Willis.
But Michele Willis, the victim’s niece, said this was a case of “family being family,” reports The Baltimore Sun:
She said one of her aunts requested the protective order to temporarily remove Willis’ guns.
Michele Willis said she had grown up in the house and had been there Sunday night to move out her son, who had been helping to care for her grandmother.
She said her uncle “likes to speak his mind,” but she described him as harmless.
“I’m just dumbfounded right now,” she said. “My uncle wouldn’t hurt anybody.”
Willis said the officers should have continued to negotiate with her uncle.
“They didn’t need to do what they did,” she said.
Police Chief Timothy Altomare said the fatal shooting was a sign that the law is needed:
“If you look at this morning’s outcome, it’s tough for us to say ‘Well, what did we prevent?’ ” he said. “Because we don’t know what we prevented or could’ve prevented. What would’ve happened if we didn’t go there at 5 a.m.?”
Can you wrap your head around that statement? I can’t.
As far as we know, Willis never harmed anyone. Yet, he is dead…because of a law that was supposedly enacted to save lives. If Willis had a history of violence or a criminal record, the police department would surely be talking about it, using it as justification for the man’s murder.
In reality, red flag laws are ripe for abuse.
In an article titled Gun Owners Must Oppose Red Flag Laws, Greg Pruett of Gun Owners of America warns,
A new wave of dangerous laws is being pushed across the United States. These laws don’t require due process and your rights are removed without a crime ever being committed. If this sounds familiar, then it may sound like something out of “Minority Report” with Tom Cruise. Sadly, it isn’t a Hollywood blockbuster, it’s the new America. At least it will be if you don’t fight back.
“Red Flag” laws, also known as “Extreme Risk Protection Orders” or Gun Violence Restraining Orders,” have now passed in 12 states. Even some Republican-controlled states (Indiana and Florida) have passed these laws. They are dangerous to freedom, unconstitutional, and should be more properly termed, “Gun Confiscation Orders.”
As of the time of this writing, 13 states have red flag laws: Connecticut, Indiana, California, Washington, Oregon, Florida, Vermont, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Illinois. More are surely coming. Bad ideas tend to spread, and cries for stricter gun control have grown much louder and more common.
Red flag laws are implemented differently in states have have them. Some limit these gun confiscation orders to “immediate family” members, Pruett writes. “But some states, like Oregon, are already expanding their orders to include neighbors, medical professionals, teachers, and other school staff.”
There is one aspect of red flag laws that is particularly chilling, as Pruett explains:
Remember, no crime has been committed, and the person who loses their rights does NOT get to defend themselves before those rights are removed. Some have the audacity to call this “due process.” It’s not due process if you aren’t part of the process. Going to court after your guns have been removed, to petition to get them back, is also not due process.
According to the Capital Gazette (five people were murdered by a lunatic with a vendetta at the newspaper’s Annapolis location back in June), Altomare said of the 19 protective orders granted in Anne Arundel County, his officers have handled nine – and seized “around 33 guns” in the process.
The Capital Gazette also reports that Altomere said while he is “cautiously optimistic” the rate of protective orders won’t increase too rapidly, the department is building a storage facility specifically to accommodate the increase in seized firearms.
According to a report by the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, Maryland is expecting 1,342 red flag petitions in the first year of the law being in effect.
How many more deaths by cop will we see in Maryland by October 2019, then?
How many people who have never committed a crime will have their Constitutional rights violated due to this law?
As Scott Boyd of NOQ Report warns,
All it takes is a good story and a sympathetic judge to take away someone’s guns. In this case, it was a relative of the deceased who filed the petition after an incident that occurred in the beginning of the week. We don’t know the details so there’s no way to judge, but the notion that this incident is proof the law is working is the type of circular reasoning gungrabbers will use to encourage more confiscations.
Boyd concludes,
Gary J. Willis isn’t dead because he tried to shoot someone. He is dead because someone convinced a judge that he might shoot someone, and now police are hailing this as a success. The PreCrime Departments are pleased with the results.
Red flag laws only benefit the government, and render “we the people” defenseless against the ever-growing police state.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has just released a new 90-page CIA report, which was provided in advance to the Associated Press (AP), shows how the government's top spy agency considered using a drug it believed might work as a truth serum and force terror suspects to spill the beans about future attacks.
The spy agency determined that a drug called Versed, a sedative frequently prescribed to reduce anxiety, was “possibly worth a try.” But according to AP, the CIA did not ask government courts to approve its use.
The secret program was called “Project Medication” -- is now disclosed in a once-classified report that was provided to the ACLU under a court's order and was released Tuesday.
The CIA report revealed the internal struggle that medical personnel working in the agency's interrogation program - routinely breached their professional ethics with the chance to save lives by preventing future attacks.
“This document tells an essential part of the story of how it was that the CIA came to torture prisoners against the law and helps prevent it from happening again,” said ACLU attorney Dror Ladin.
CIA doctors, psychologists, physician assistants, and nurses were, directly and indirectly, involved in the interrogation program from 2002 to 2007, the report said. They evaluated and monitored 97 detainees in ten secret CIA bases overseas.
The report said the CIA completely hid the drug-assisted interrogations from the Justice Department because there were “some significant ethical concerns."
The Justice Department spent months approving various forms of interrogation tactics, including sleep deprivation, confinement in small spaces and the waterboarding. It was noted the CIA’s counterterrorism team “did not want to raise another issue with the Department of Justice,” the report said.
Before the agency selected Versed, the report said government scientist studied many reports of old Soviet drug experiments as well as the CIA’s discredited MK-Ultra program from the 1950s and 1960s that involved human experimentation with LSD and other mind-altering drugs, in the attempt to obtain the holy grail of truth serums.
“But decades later, the agency was considering experimenting on humans again to test pseudo-scientific theories of learned helplessness on its prisoners,” Ladin said.
Versed is marketed under the trade name Midazolam, is a medication used for anesthesia, procedural sedation, trouble sleeping, and severe agitation. It works by inducing sleepiness, decreasing anxiety, and causes a loss of new memories. It can help patients feel relaxed but can cause paranoid or suicidal thoughts and impair memory, judgment, and coordination.
“Versed was considered possibly worth a trial if unequivocal legal sanction first were obtained,” the report said. “There were at least two legal obstacles: a prohibition against medical experimentation on prisoners and a ban on interrogational use of ‘mind-altering drugs’ or those which ‘profoundly altered the senses.’”
The AP said the CIA had no comment on the report’s release, but government lawyers indicated in a 2017 court filing that the report, marked “draft,” was just one agency officer’s impressions of the interrogation program. The document is not the CIA’s “final official history, or assessment, of the program,” the lawyers wrote.
While the harsh interrogation program ended nearly a decade ago, the ACLU thinks it is critical to continue investigating government interrogation programs, since the Trump administration has said they would re-approve harsh interrogation tactics.
CIA Director Gina Haspel, who oversaw a secret CIA detention site in Thailand where detainees experienced harsh interrogations, told the Senate that she does “not support the use of enhanced interrogation techniques for any purpose.”
"The report cites many instances where medical personal expressed concern or protected the health of the detainees. Those who were thrown up against walls — a practice called “walling” — had their necks protected from whiplash by rolled towels around their necks, the report said. When one detainee, who had been wounded during capture, was confined to a box, care was taken not to force his legs into a position that “would compromise wound healing.” Physician assistants overruled using duct tape over the mouths of detainees during flights because air sickness could lead to vomiting and possible aspiration," said AP.
Ladin said that does not suggest that CIA doctors were cruel, "but it means they were complicit because this pseudo-scientific torture could not have happened without the doctors’ participation.”
Dr. Sondra Crosby, who treated victims of torture, including two who were held at CIA secret sites, said the torture was sometimes deadly.
“The enduring pain and suffering experienced by the survivors of the CIA program is immense, and includes severe, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, physical ailments, and psychosocial dysfunction,” said Crosby, of Boston University’s School of Medicine and Public Health. “At least one detainee was tortured to death. Their physical and psychological scars will last a lifetime.”
It seems “Project Medication” is just another failed MK-Ultra esque government program, in search of the holy grail of truth serums. With massive technological innovation in the last ten years and more recently, the Trump administration admitting that they are a fan of harsh interrogation tactics. We must ask this question: Is the CIA closer in finding the ultimate truth serum?
Brian Stelter led a discussion about whether or not CNN may have grounds to sue the Donald Trump administration over revoking Jim Acosta‘s press pass on Reliable Sources Sunday.
“I think it’s a really strong lawsuit,” said constitutional attorney Floyd Abrams after Stelter asked if CNN had grounds to sue. He cited several requirements, set by precedent, that the White House should have to meet to revoke a pass, none of which were met.
Stelter then asked if they should sue, and Abrams said yes. They both agreed that this will happen again, now that the White House is setting the position.
Former CNN Washington Bureau Chief Frank Sesno said that the president is in an “untenable” position, but is focusing on the Acosta/CNN battle anyway.
Stelter turned to veteran journalist Sam Donaldson and asked about that, whether they have to be careful about distraction. Donaldson took his response in a different direction first, though.
“I hope I’m not mistaken, but it’s my understanding that CNN and Acosta have sued, that there will be a court hearing on Tuesday on this very matter we’ve been discussing,” he said.
“Not that I know of. Not that I know of. You may be ahead of me,” Stelter replied.
“I’ve been told that because I’ve been asked to give an affidavit, which I’ve prepared, to be submitted to the court,” said Donaldson.
Stelter blinked quietly.
UPDATE: Donaldson jumped the gun in his remarks to Stelter, who tweeted a CNN statement later which said the network has not yet decided to file a lawsuit. “No decisions have been made,” they said. This post has been updated to reflect that.
On @ReliableSources, Sam Donaldson said he’s been asked to prepare an affidavit to support CNN. But no lawsuit has been filed. CNN said in a statement just now, “No decisions have been made. We have reached out to the White House and gotten no response.” https://t.co/UYIgNIB8eJ
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 11, 2018
Well they have a panel full of free legal advice, now, discussing on-air whether or not it’s a good idea.
Watch the clip above, courtesy of CNN.
[Featured image via screengrab]
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