Beet L. Jooz

The Baton Rouge native was arrested after a performance in Columbus, Ohio.

House GOP leaders plan to bring a Democratic measure calling for the abolishment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the House floor, hoping to force Democrats into a difficult vote.The Democratic...

Roy Moore is threatening legal action against Sacha Baron Cohen, adding his name to the list of political figures who say they were duped into appearing on the British comedian's new show.The former Alabama GOP Sen...

A Texas appeals court has affirmed the dismissal in its entirety of a defamation lawsuit filed by Mohamed Mohamed on behalf of himself and his son, the “clock boy” who took to school a device that looked like a briefcase bomb and then cashed in on the ruckus with multiple television appearances and the like.

The Texas Court of Appeals for the Fifth District in Dallas said the ruling was at least partly because of the links between “A.M.,” the boy, and his father and the Council for American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy organization founded by Hamas operatives.

The ruling closed down the effort by the father and son to collect damages from several media personalities who commented on the stunt when it developed, and to avoid paying their legal fees and charges.

“The purpose of this CAIR-driven lawsuit was to intimidate into silence those who might comment publicly on the connection between jihad, terrorism, Shariah and Islam,” said David Yerushalmi, co-founder of the American Freedom Law Center, which worked on the case.

“This case was a classic Strategic Lawsuit against Public Participation or ‘SLAPP’ case and should never have been filed. The Texas courts have confirmed this once and for all.”

Sued were the Center for Security Policy, CSP’s Jim Hanson and talk-radio host Ben Shapiro.

They were targeted by Mohamed because of statements they made “about the connection between the Clock Boy hoax bomb affair and the attendant media frenzy created in large part by his father Mohamed, and how this was all part of civilization jihad driven by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front group in the United States that promotes civilization jihad through lawsuits,” AFLC explained.

“The Texas appeals court specifically ruled that Mohamed had not made out a case for defamation because CSP and Hanson had based their statements in large part on the involvement of CAIR, which the court noted, quoting first Shapiro and then Hanson, was ‘an organization … the federal government had linked to Islamic terrorist supporters as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism case.’ The court also noted that ‘CAIR is known to be an Islamist organization with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.'”

The appeals court noted that the boy was arrested for the stunt, and the charges later were dropped, but he also was suspended from the school for the incident.

“Both Hanson and Shapiro relied upon the ties between Mohamed and CAIR,” the court found. Specifically, the court wrote, “Hanson stated in his affidavit that ‘This article made it clear in my mind that CAIR – through its executive director, Ms. Salem – was connected to the Mohamed family and was directing the public relations aspect of the controversy for the Mohamed family.”

The court noted that CAIR “co-hosted” a press conference about the incident almost as soon as it developed.

The comments the personalities made included that the clock incident was a “PR stunt” or “a staged event” and the objective was to create an “influence operation.”

Regarding the fees the lower court awarded the winners in the lawsuit, the appeals court said, “Mohamed argues that the trial court abused its discretion in refusing to reconsider its award of attorney’s fees.”

After a review, the court said, “we affirm the trial court’s denial of the motion for reconsideration. Mohamed’s documents fail to provide any evidence that the American Freedom Law Center agreed to represent Hanson and CSP on a pro bono basis in this case.”

Robert Muise, AFLC’s other co-founder, said: “AFLC was formed in large measure to take on Islamists like CAIR who use and abuse the legal system with their cynical form of lawfare to undermine our constitutional liberties – notably free speech. We have confronted these lawsuits across the country in federal and state courts and have defeated CAIR and its minions at every turn. When appropriate, we have won sanctions. This lawsuit has proven to be no different. We will continue to confront CAIR and other Islamists organizations in any and all legal fora.”

A lawsuit by the Mohameds against the city of Irving, Texas, and its school district also had been dismissed.

The case developed when the boy took to school a homemade device that looked like a bomb.

The youth, after his arrest, held news conferences, was invited by then-President Obama to the White House, bragged about his overseas travels and then alerted reporters when he was returning to the United States. The Council on American Islamic Relations, which was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror-financing case, was involved in the publicity campaign.

Mohamed claimed he suffered “severe psychological trauma” because of the case, which resulted in a month-long world tour that included:

1. Honor by then-President Obama on social media and an invitation to the White House, where he meets the president on the South Lawn at an astronomy event;

2. A meeting with Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, at a science fair;

3. Praise by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg;

4. Being named the beneficiary of a $20,000 fundraising campaign;

5. An invitation by a Canadian astronaut to visit;

6. An appearance with Dr. Oz;

7. Praise from MIT scientist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein for being “my ideal student”;

8. A proclamation by New York City of “Ahmed Day”;

9. A visit with Sudanese President Omar al Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide.

10. A visit with Turkey’s then-Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu;

11. A trip to the Middle East during which, as the Huffington Post described it, he “hung with Jordan’s Queen Rania”;

12. A visit to Mecca as an honored guest of Saudi Arabia King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

In “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance,” renowned activist Pamela Geller provides proven practical guidance on how freedom lovers can stop jihadist initiatives in local communities.

 

Sessions claimed that Strzok was stripped of clearance

A handful of Hollywood stars took to social media on Thursday to cheer on disgraced FBI agent Peter Strozk during his testimony on Capitol Hill before the Full House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Peter Strzok was already having a combative day during his House Judicial Committee hearing, but when Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) took his turn, things went from 0 to 200 in just 5 seconds.

Jordan began by asking the embattled FBI official if he ever spoke to or leaked anything to the media over the last three years pertaining to the investigations into President Trump and Russia. Eventually, Jordan brought up the infamous Trump dossier Buzzfeed released in 2016 and he also noted an email Strzok wrote where he compared it with two other versions of the same document: one from Senator John McCain, and another from Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson and Mother Jones‘ David Corn.

From there, Jordan peppered Strzok with questions to clarify the nature of his relationship with Corn and Simpson. The two ended up cutting each other off multiple times, which prompted an exasperated Strzok to ask “may I answer your question?”

Strzok insisted that he wanted to talk about the email, but Jordan accused him of dodging his questions.

“You can say that all you want, but you’re not talking about it, and you’re not answering my questions,” Jordan said.

The combative questioning continued with probes of how the FBI could’ve gotten a copy of Simpson’s dossier if no one in the FBI every spoke to him. Strzok denied having any contact with Fusion GPS, and that soon led to another committee meltdown when Jordan’s colleagues debated whether he was out of line by steamrolling Strzok and not letting him get a full response in.

Watch above, via MSNBC.

[Image via screengrab]

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>> Follow Ken Meyer (@KenMeyer91) on Twitter

A group of hungry woodchucks decided to shack up in Rep. Paul Ryan‘s Chevy Suburban. It did not end well for the car.

Speaking to the Economic Club of Washington D.C., Ryan admitted that he left his car at his mom’s house when a group of squatting wildlife decided to move in.

NPR recounted Ryan’s tale.

“My car was eaten by animals,” Ryan said, to laughs from an audience at an event hosted by the Economic Club of Washington D.C. “It’s just dead.”

The car was parked at his mother’s house in his hometown in Wisconsin, and when she came back from her annual trip to Florida for the winter, it wouldn’t start. As a top congressional leader Ryan has a security detail and hasn’t been allowed to drive in three years.

“So I towed it into the dealer, they put it up, and they realized that a family of woodchucks lived in the underbody of my Suburban,” Ryan said.

Sans wiring, the car was not revived.

It is unclear what Ryan is planning to do to prevent further encampments,  however, he will have more time to tend to his vehicle in the coming days. He is not running for reelection.

[image via screengrab]

‘Do you need your medication?’

‘That is a fantastic answer to a question nobody asked’

‘I separated out my personal beliefs from any action I took officially as an FBI agent ‘

‘Agent Strzok despite the plain language of his texts and emails and despite the inspector general’s report and despite common sense doesn’t think he was biased’

‘Based on that I will not answer that question’

Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert went after FBI agent Peter Strzok during a televised House committee hearing Thursday for cheating on his wife with colleague Lisa Page druing the investigations into Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

“I can’t help but wonder, when I see you looking there with a little smirk, how many times did you look so innocent into your wife’s eye and lie to her about Lisa Page!” Gohmert said.

“The credibility of a witness is always an issue,” Gohmert said, as the committee fell into momentary chaos.

“Do you need your medication?” a woman in the hearing shouted.

“Have you no decency!” shouted another.

You can watch the whole exchange here.

During their extramarital affair, Strzok and Page exchanged thousands of text messages to one another on their FBI phones — including numerous anti-Trump comments. In one exchange, Strozk vowed to “stop” Trump.

After reporting earlier this month that the Securities and Exchange Commission had joined the federal investigation into Facebook over its failure to disclose Cambridge Analytica's misues of user data, the Wall Street Journal revealed on Thursday exactly what the agency is investigating.

In keeping with its mission to police securities markets, the SEC is looking into whether Facebook's failure to warn investors about the potential for third-party developers to misuse their data represents a violation of disclosure laws.

The SEC has shown greater interest in recent months in probing data-security breaches and lapses. The agency has taken the position, most recently in a case filed against Altaba Inc., Yahoo Inc.’s successor company, that public companies must disclose material data leaks or breaches they know about. Telling investors that such incidents could happen isn’t good enough.

The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are also probing the data leak and how Facebook and other parties handled it. The FTC is probing whether Facebook violated terms of an earlier consent decree requiring the company to get user consent for collecting personal data and sharing it with others.

The SEC is probing whether Facebook should have disclosed to shareholders its knowledge of the Cambridge Analytica violation in 2015, when it learned that Aleksandr Kogan, a professor at the University of Cambridge, had improperly shared data in 2014 for as many as 87 million Facebook users with Cambridge Analytica.

Essentially, the crux of the SEC investigation is whether the fact that Cambridge Analytica improperly used Facebook user data represented material information that should've been disclosed to investors.

Facebook officials believed in 2015 that what they discovered wasn’t material information for investors, because the data shared with Cambridge Analytica wasn’t as sensitive as other types of user data that Facebook keeps, such as some users’ payment information, a person familiar with the matter said. The Cambridge Analytica data included information on people who downloaded a personality-test app Mr. Kogan developed as well as some details about those people’s friends.

One former SEC enforcement attorney told WSJ that if Facebook was "making money" from its developer relationships, then not disclosing the misuse could "raise red flags."

John Reed Stark, a former SEC enforcement attorney who is now a cybersecurity consultant, said the agency could find fault with how the company reported the incident. "If Facebook is earning revenue from contracts with third-party vendors that misuse private member data, yet failing to disclose that these contracts potentially violate global and U.S. privacy laws as well as whatever terms of use Facebook maintains with its members, this could raise a red flag for the SEC," Mr. Stark said.

While securities laws violations are never ideal, Facebook has much bigger things to worry about than an SEC fine which - judging by its treatment of the financial services industry - will amount to a few hundred million dollars, at most. The company should be far more concerned with the other agencies that are investigating the Cambridge Analytica "data breach". These include the FBI - which of course has the power to bring criminal charges - and the FTC - which could theoretically bring trillions of dollars in fines against Facebook for data privacy violations.

In other words, while the SEC can at most give Facebook a slap on the wrist, the other agencies participating in the investigation have the authority to potentially bring down the company.

Papa John's founder John Schnatter has resigned as chairman of the board. The company made the announcement late Wednesday, hours after Schnatter apologized for using a racial slur during a conference call in May.