Beet L. Jooz

Various NFL players are reportedly discussing different forms of protesting in response to a new policy requiring players to stand for the national anthem."I talked to a former NFL player yesterday who has said tha...

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a dramatic diplomatic turn, President Donald Trump on Thursday called off next month's summit with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, calling the cancellation a "tremendous setback" for peace and stressing that the US military was ready…

An Alexandria Police Department officer was charged after an investigation into an off-duty fight in which an officer was injured, according to a release.

It's a scam that reappears often in Alexandria and throughout Cenla — a call usually placed to elderly residents pleading for help because a grandchild has fallen into serious trouble.

BRUSLY- The FBI was called in to investigate a reported threat after a student said he was going to 'shoot up' Brusly High School.

The threat was reported Sunday to the Addis Police Department which contacted Brusly Police about it.

Brusly Police Chief Jonathan Lefeaux said, “ This is the first time we’ve called in the FBI.”

The FBI assisted with interviewing students and with the investigation. Chief Lefeaux says police initially found no proof of a legitimate threat. Over the course of the investigation however, officers found enough evidence to charge the juvenile.

Additional manpower was added to Brusly High by the police department and the Sheriff’s Office. Additional students are currently being interviewed and the student who made the threat is in custody. His cell phone and computers are currently being processed. Depending on what is found, additional charges could be coming.

This year at least two students have been charged with terrorizing in Brusly for making similar threats at other schools.

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Obama-era education leaders are urging parents to pull their children out of public schools until elected officials change gun laws. In the wake of the Houston-area school shooting, Peter Cunningham, a former U.S. Education Department staffer, tweeted Friday, “Maybe it’s time for America’s 50 million school parents to simply pull their kids out of school until we have better gun laws”:

Maybe it's time for America's 50 million school parents to simply pull their kids out of school until we have better gun laws.https://t.co/JCBYstcHEA

— Peter Cunningham (@PCunningham57) May 18, 2018

“This is brilliant, and tragically necessary,” responded Obama education secretary Arne Duncan. “What if no children went to school until gun laws changed to keep them safe? My family is all in if we can do this at scale. Parents, will you please join us?”

This is brilliant, and tragically necessary.
What if no children went to school until gun laws changed to keep them safe?
My family is all in if we can do this at scale.
Parents, will you please join us? https://t.co/Yo4wsFuJI5

— Arne Duncan (@arneduncan) May 18, 2018

The Chicago Tribune reported Sunday:

Duncan said in an interview Saturday that the idea was intended to be provocative, but that an aggressive approach like a school boycott is needed if gun laws are ever going to change. He has school-aged children and said if this idea were to gain traction, his family would participate.

‘It’s wildly impractical and difficult,’ Duncan said. ‘But I think it’s wildly impractical and difficult that kids are shot when they are sent to school.’

‘I’m open to other ideas, I’m open to different ideas, but I’m not open to doing nothing,’ he added. ‘We will see whether this gains traction, or something does, but we have to think radically.’

According to the Tribune report, the idea of pulling all public school children out indefinitely is garnering support.

“I’m in – let’s pick a date and start a movement no politician can ignore,” Jim Manly, the superintendent of KIPP Public Charter Schools in New York City, reportedly said.

The plan is an ironic twist coming from Democrats, who typically promote public education as a panacea as they put down private schools and homeschooling. It arrives as a national coalition of U.S. parents and state leaders has launched a petition to end the U.S. Education Department. The petition, created at whitehouse.gov, centers on the return of education policy back to parents and local communities.

While the Democratic leaders are calling for more federal involvement in education—this time federal laws that will upend the Second Amendment—United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) says they want the federal government out of education altogether and are “fed up with being ignored on education policy.”

Regarding school safety, USPIE states, “No one should accept school violence of any sort, from bullying to homicide.” It also recommends private education options to protect children from violence due to the rash of evidence public schools are not safe environments for children. The group asserts:

The current ‘School Walkout Movement’ purports to be concerned about preventing student deaths. But instead of being an authentic emotional response to shootings in schools or a genuine student-led movement, multiple reports have documented a well-financed, highly organized movement to advocate a specific political agenda — to restrict the Constitution’s 2nd Amendment to self-defense through firearms ownership.

“USPIE believes students, staff, and the public are being emotionally manipulated into supporting ‘Gun Control’ as the solution to the problem,” the group maintains. It offers three alternative solutions: investigating the local, state, and federal failed systems that allowed shooters to carry out attacks and holding accountable the officials who are negligent; eliminating “Gun Free Zone” signs that likely invite would-be assassins into school areas; and allowing private schools and local school districts to determine their own policies for staff concealed carry.

Another option would be reversing Obama-era policies that recent school shootings and research are showing have increased school violence by reducing penalties and records of dangerous acts committed by violent students, and keeping them in classrooms with peaceful students. The PROMISE program in Broward County, Florida, site of the February shooting, was one such program purported to end the “school to prison pipeline” for minority students.

Timothy Sternberg, a former assistant principal who helped run the PROMISE program from 2014 to 2017, told the Washington Times the failure of school district officials to follow up on why the confessed Parkland shooter did not show up for the program after being referred to it while in middle school amounts to possible “negligence.” Sternberg said Cruz should have been sent before the county delinquency court when he failed to show up for PROMISE.

Although the Parkland shooter was enrolled in 2015 at a district school for students with emotional and behavioral disorders, he was still found to have committed 58 rule infractions at Westglades Middle School and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, noted the Sun Sentinel. After each incident, Cruz was given either a detention or suspension for a day or two, without any attempt to review his multitude of infractions.

This is directly due to policies Duncan put into place to reduce penalties for misbehaving students under the guise of “restorative justice.” As RealClearInvestigations discovered:

[Broward County Superintendent] Runcie had been working closely with Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan on the reforms ever since landing the Broward job in 2011, using as a reference the name of the Cabinet secretary, his former boss in the Chicago school system.

Applications for federal grants reveal that Runcie’s plan factored into approval of tens of millions of dollars in federal funding from Duncan’s department.

In January 2014, his department issued new discipline guidelines strongly recommending that the nation’s schools use law enforcement measures and out-of-school suspensions as a last resort. Announced jointly by Duncan and then-Attorney General Eric Holder, the new procedures came as more than friendly guidance from Uncle Sam – they also came with threats of federal investigations and defunding for districts that refused to fully comply.

In 2015, the White House spotlighted Runcie’s leading role in the effort during a summit called ‘Rethink School Discipline.’ Broward, the nation’s sixth largest school district, is one of 53 major districts across the country to adopt the federal guidelines…

Consequently, the Florida school shooter never had a criminal record—a red flag in a background check. He ultimately was able to obtain a firearm. The parents’ coalition observes what appear to be defective policies based on social justice theory pushed by federal officials.

“Until policy makers implement proven school safety strategies, and until schools stop teaching politically-biased social justice values, the only way parents can raise children safely to be well educated American citizens is to teach at home or in good private schools,” USPIE asserts.

In the last week, as revelation upon revelation hit that Obama administration officials and career employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) spied on the Donald Trump campaign in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, the mainstream media, the Left, and Never Trump Republicans have fallen back on three ready responses.

A solid plurality of this contingent continue to avert their eyes from the facts and dismiss the claims of misconduct as peddled by tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists. There is not much you can say to this faction, because they refuse to consider the proof.

A second—and more extreme group—believes Trump conspired with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. There is not much you can say to this bunch either, because they are tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists.

But the final group sees things differently. While they don’t necessarily believe Trump was treasonous, they argue that the FBI and other intelligence-gathering agencies rightly targeted the Trump campaign. With Russian-leaning Paul Manafort and Carter Page involved in the campaign, and Trump trolling Hillary with praise for Vladimir Putin, the government could not just ignore the risk, they posit. And there was no impropriety in doing so.

I Was Once In Group Three, Too

For two years, I teetered between that third contingent and utter disinterest. But then we learned that the DOJ intentionally failed to inform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court that the Democratic National Committee had paid for the Christopher Steele dossier. That unverified and mainly false dossier formed a significant part of the government’s application for a wiretap for former Trump aide Page.

This admission changed everything for me: I had spent nearly 25 years reviewing challenges to warrants based on claims of withheld (or false) evidence. However, unlike the typical criminal case in which a defendant later has access to the warrant application, in the case of a FISA court order, the target cannot view the information the government used to obtain a wiretap, making FISA court proceedings ripe for abuse.

My rule of law alarms went off. Trump’s criticism of the Russia collusion investigation no longer sounded staged, and he no longer seemed paranoid. Then the revelations kept coming, as did leaks intended to harm Trump, change the narrative, or soften soon-to-be released news of other misconduct.

Meanwhile, what was not forthcoming was the information Congress requested, and when it belatedly arrived it was heavily redacted to protect “national security.” Then later releases revealed the national security excuse didn’t hold. So while claims that the FBI properly inquired of connections between the Trump campaign and Russia were valid to a point, that point has long since passed.

Was there good faith in the beginning? Did political appointees and career agents rightfully pursue leads to see if something was there? Or was the investigation always an insurance policy?

I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that there is a convincing mosaic of evidence that the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, and DOJ acted with improper motives—some related to the Obama administration’s general modus operandi, and some specific to Crossfire Hurricane.

Let’s Look at That Mosaic

For instance, we know that the Internal Revenue Service was weaponized to target conservatives under the Obama administration, and we know the media was easily manipulated to push the Iran deal. This makes it even more probable that intelligence agencies and DOJ were likewise politicized to target the Trump campaign and the press used to peddle the Russia collusion narrative.

The specifics known to date support this conclusion. We have former acting attorney general Sally Yates, whose disregard for President Trump rose to such heights she chose insubordination rather than resignation. Yates informed Trump that then-national security advisor Michael Flynn had not been honest in discussing his conversations with the Russian ambassador, leaving Flynn open to blackmail.

Yates later pushed the theory that this conversation potentially violated the Logan Act, an unused law that prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign powers. The DOJ later indicted Flynn for lying to the FBI about his conversation with the Russian ambassador, even though evidence shows the agents who questioned Flynn believed he was truthful.

One of those agents was Peter Strzok, whose texts to his partner in adultery, Lisa Page, revealed a clear anti-Trump animus and the existence of “an insurance policy” to protect against the unlikely event of a Trump presidency. Strzok and Lisa Page were involved in the Russian investigation, and Strzok later became part of the special counsel’s team, until the text messages were later “revealed.” By “revealed,” I mean barely revealed, as they were heavily redacted, even though when small snippets were later released, the blacked-out text served only one purpose: to protect the FBI from embarrassment.

Then we have James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, who instructed then-FBI director James Comey to brief Trump on the Steele dossier, with Clapper leaking the briefing to CNN’s Jake Tapper to legitimize the media’s coverage of the salacious (and false) details. The DOJ used that same dossier to obtain the first of four FISA court wiretap orders on Carter Page, without informing the secret court that the Democrats had paid for the opposition research. Comey, of course, would later leak at least one classified document to a buddy to prompt the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Trump.

It Goes Much Deeper

There’s more: We now have an admission that the FBI used an informant to spy on the Trump campaign beginning before the official launch of the Russia collusion investigation. We came about these details through leaks to The New York Times and Washington Post, while the DOJ continues to ignore congressional demands for the same information.

My point here is not to catalogue every piece of circumstantial evidence demonstrating impropriety. I’m surely missing some substantial threads. Rather, my goal is to illustrate why Crossfire Hurricane can no longer be assumed an apolitical and legitimate investigation. Those pointing out this reality are not Trump apologists: we are patriots.

On May 18, another tragic school shooting occurred, this time in Santa Fe, Texas. Like always, far-left liberals across the country immediately began clamoring for the federal government “to do something” to stop future shootings, which is merely code language for “take everyone’s guns away because gun owners are too reckless, stupid, or violent to have them.”

Perhaps the most ironic part of the gun control debate is that most of the time and energy spent arguing over whether people should be permitted to keep their God-given right to defend themselves and their families focuses almost exclusively on instances in which people are murdered by criminals who legally possess guns, and almost never on those much-more-common occasions when law-abiding citizens stop murderers or are the victims of gun violence perpetrated by people who don’t possess guns legally.

For instance, the gun-grabbing Left mostly ignored and downplayed the heroism of National Rifle Association instructor Stephen Willeford, who in November 2017 rushed barefoot from his home to save countless lives at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Armed with an AR-15 rifle, Willeford fended off the murderer, shooting him twice. The murderer fled in his vehicle, but Willeford hopped in a truck driven by good Samaritan Johnnie Langendorff and the two men chased him down. The evildoer eventually crashed his vehicle and took his own life before Willeford and Langendorff could get to him.

If all guns, or even most guns, were banned, how would Willeford have been able to fight off the mass murderer? How many more lives would have been lost?

The Left also ignores the overwhelming evidence that every year, tens of thousands of people use firearms to defend themselves against attackers. According to data from the Department of Justice, “In 2007–11, there were 235,700 victimizations where the victim used a firearm to threaten or attack an offender.” In another 103,000 instances, people used a firearm to defend their property against an offender.

That means over the five-year period from 2007 to 2011, there were more than 338,000 instances in which people defended themselves with a firearm, about 67,000 instances each year. Many researchers believe those figures are too low. A far-reaching survey conducted in the 1990s by Gary Kleck, a professor at Florida State University, found there are 2.1 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses annually.

By comparison, in 2011, the most recent year available in the Department of Justice data cited above, there were 11,101 firearm homicides, and in the overwhelming majority of those cases, the offender possessed the weapon illegally. Even if you add all instances in which a person was injured but not killed by an offender, there are more instances of guns being used to defend lives and property than to illegally harm people.

The data are clear: Legal firearms owners do not pose a public threat to safety. In fact, they save countless lives every year. Why don’t these lives matter to the far-left?

Firearm bans and restrictions designed to make it harder for law-abiding people to possess guns make it less likely people will be able to protect themselves against violent offenders. This is particularly disconcerting for the countless women who own guns to protect themselves against stalkers, violent ex-boyfriends or ex-husbands, or other men who might feel inclined to attack women.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports more than 29 million women have experienced “contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime and reported some form of [intimate partner violence]-related impact.” How many of these women would have been able to stop an attacker had they possessed a firearm at the time of the attack? Why don’t these women matter to the far-left?

Gun laws don’t have to be egregious and burdensome, and states have passed or should pass plenty of laws to keep guns out of the hands of violent men and women. But most “common-sense” gun proposals aren’t about keeping people safe; they are about taking freedom away from gun owners who could or have saved lives.

Proponents of gun bans argue the reason statistics show gun bans don’t work is because they aren’t enforced in every state equally. In other words, criminals purchase weapons in states where it’s easy to buy firearms then use them in states where it’s more difficult to do so.

Despite being widely repeated, this argument is devoid of reality and can’t be supported by any available evidence. Many of the states with the fewest gun restrictions are exponentially safer than states with numerous regulations and mandates. Even if you could argue states with restrictions aren’t safe because criminals are buying guns in states without restrictions, why aren’t those states without restrictions even more dangerous?

Additionally, evidence shows over the past two decades, the number of gun-related crimes has dropped dramatically, even though the number of guns bought and sold, as reflected by government-reported firearms background checks, has increased. If the presence of additional legal guns in society leads to more violence, there should have been more gun crime over the past two decades, not less.

It’s also worth noting that when applied logically, effective gun control plans necessitate massive border walls and other forms of security, because even if you could ban and destroy America’s 270 million firearms (an impossibility), guns could easily flow across America’s expansive borders. So, why aren’t the same leftists calling for gun bans and the end of the Second Amendment also calling for huge border walls?

Many evil people use guns illegally to commit crimes against innocent people, including children, but many more good people protect their friends, families, communities, and states with guns. Why should we punish them with absurd gun restrictions? It’s foolish to think doing so would magically stop people willing to commit mass murder, rape, or other horrific crimes from harming others. If a murderer doesn’t care about the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison or being executed for murdering others, how will an army of paper-pushing government bureaucrats convince him to do otherwise?

By taking guns away from innocent people, the government would not only be violating people’s basic human rights, it would also be putting everyone at greater risk. America doesn’t need additional gun bans, it needs more law-abiding gun-owner heroes like Willeford. The sooner the public realizes that, the better off we’ll all be.

A middle-aged man with a beard has been accepted to stand for a woman-only position in a local Labour Party branch because he “identifies” as female for a few hours a day once a week.

Bloomberg: “Taxes or life? Which do you want to do? Take your poison.”

Continuing his gloating from late Tuesday evening, President Trump taunted the FBI in an early Wednesday tweet musing "how things have turned around on the Criminal Deep State." Trump remarks on the irony of the FBI "getting caught in a major SPY scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before" after they went after "Phony Collusion with Russia," which he called "a made up Scam".

Look how things have turned around on the Criminal Deep State. They go after Phony Collusion with Russia, a made up Scam, and end up getting caught in a major SPY scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before! What goes around, comes around!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 23, 2018

Since the New York Times and Washington Post on Friday confirmed speculation that the FBI did, in fact, have a mole inside the Trump campaign, the president has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the Mueller probe, stating that if there was any evidence of collusion, the FBI's mole would've discovered it during the campaign.

Instead, the Mueller probe has dragged on for more than a year, with the intelligence community insisting they never deliberately spied on Trump. But in an embarrassing revelation, we now know that the bureau FBI enlisted Stefan Halper, a US citizen, political veteran and longtime US Intelligence asset, to befriend and spy on three members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 US election. In another reference to the spying revelations, Trump quoted Fox's Andrew Napolitano saying "it's clear that they had eyes and ears all over the Trump Campaign," before reiterating that "SPYGATE...could be one of the biggest political scandals in history."

“It’s clear that they had eyes and ears all over the Trump Campaign” Judge Andrew Napolitano

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 23, 2018

SPYGATE could be one of the biggest political scandals in history!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 23, 2018

Responding specifically to Obama-era Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (who has famously lied to Congress about the US's surveillance tactics), Trump said that "No, James Clapper, I am not happy. Spying on a campaign would be illegal, and a scandal to boot!" Apparently, Clapper thinks being under federal investigation for a year is a totally benign experience.

“Trump should be happy that the FBI was SPYING on his campaign” No, James Clapper, I am not happy. Spying on a campaign would be illegal, and a scandal to boot!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 23, 2018

Trump started tweeting about Spygate last night, questioning why Halper was paid so much money if he wasn't feeding information about the Trump campaign to the FBI. Trump also insisted that Bernie Sanders, an early contender for the Democratic nomination who ultimately lost out to Hillary Clinton, "got duped!" as the FBI used similar surveillance tactics on his campaign.

If the person placed very early into my campaign wasn’t a SPY put there by the previous Administration for political purposes, how come such a seemingly massive amount of money was paid for services rendered - many times higher than normal...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 23, 2018

...Follow the money! The spy was there early in the campaign and yet never reported Collusion with Russia, because there was no Collusion. He was only there to spy for political reasons and to help Crooked Hillary win - just like they did to Bernie Sanders, who got duped!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 23, 2018

Of course, the Spygate news isn't the only scandal plaguing the FBI this week. Emails recently obtained by Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson seem to suggest that former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe may have participated in the leaking of the Steel Dossier to CNN. The emails were from an exchange between McCabe and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, where McCabe gave Yates a heads up that CNN would be running with the story. It raises questions regarding how McCabe knew about CNN's plans.

With the European Parliament having passed some extremely tough privacy legislation, and many members being well-versed in the issues as they relate to tech companies, there were high hopes for yesterday’s grilling of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Tough and pertinent questions were indeed asked, far more so than in Congress – but Zuckerberg failed to answer more than 40 of them …

more…

A suspect committed suicide on Monday after a short chase with the Pineville Police Department. The suspect shot "multiple times" at the officer who had pulled the suspect over, according to the department. Officers did not fire any shots during the incident, say police.

A 25-year-old Alexandria man has been identified as the person who shot at a Pineville officer before he led a short chase and killed himself.