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A partial U.S. government shutdown over President Donald Trump's demand for $5.7 billion to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border entered its 22nd day on Saturday, making it the longest shuttering of federal agencies in U.S. history, with no end in sight.

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says in an interview set to air Sunday that it is "ludicrous" to think that President Trump is a threat to national security.The Cabinet official was responding to ...

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

The Transportation Security Administration, a federal agency, is facing a no-show problem with employees, as paychecks are put on hold during the partial government shutdown. This is reportedly leading to longer lines and security problems at airports nationwide.  According to CNN ,

Hundreds of Transportation Security Administration officers, who are required to work without paychecks through the partial government shutdown, have called out from work this week from at least four major airports...

TSA spokespeople, meanwhile, insist everything is completely normal although absenteeism has "increased by 200% to 300%," according to Marketwatch.

Not everyone was as sanguine about the situation as government officials.

One frequent traveler complained “The lines were exceptionally longer than normal, especially for a peak departure time frame of 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.”

Given that the feds admit more employees are skipping work, it's hard to believe that everything's humming along normally - unless workers are lowering security standards to get more people through the line quickly.

But, that, of course, is something the feds insist they would never, ever do.

In any case, the whole affair reminds us of just one of the many pitfalls that come with federalizing airport security and making it all part of one giant, nationwide federal bureaucracy.

TSA screeners are federal employees, and their salaries are paid out of a federal budget — of now more than 7 billion dollars. In fiscal year 2018 , more than four billion of the TSA's 7.5 billion budget came from government appropriations, with the rest coming from fees on passengers and the industry. Since 2017, the Trump Administration has proposed to increasing fees " to cover 75% rather than 40% of the Transportation Security Administration’s costs."

But even if the Trump Administration were to get its wish, the TSA would still remain a federal agency with federal employees, and a substantial of its budget would still come from federal appropriations.

In other words, the next time there's a government shutdown, we'd be looking, yet again, at a situation in which the entire nationwide system of airports would be affected because a tiny number of politicians in DC couldn't agree on a nationwide budget.

It doesn't have to be this way. Nor were things this way prior to the federalization of airport security in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Thanks to the George W. Bush Administration, airport security was federalized only two months after 9/11, with Bush proudly declaring at the time: "For the first time, airport security will become a direct, federal responsibility." There were federal regulations in place dictating how security was conducted, of course, but the employees and the funding were largely decentralized in how they were distributed and used.

As a result, a federal shutdown under a system like this does not mean that the employees won't get paid or that "non-essential" personnel are simply sent home.

The TSA Doesn't Keep Us Safe

In response, supporters of the status quo are likely to respond that the TSA "keeps us safe" and only a federalized version of airport security can work.

Unfortunately, for them, there is no evidence to support this position.

First of all, that there has been no serious and successful terrorist hijacking since 9/11 does not prove the effectiveness of the TSA. After all, the creation of the TSA is just one change since 9/11.

Indeed, 9/11-style hijackings were obsolete by the afternoon of September 11, 2001. Their success rested largely on the fact that the airline industry and FAA regulators adhered to a policy of compliance when it came to hijackers. As a report from Stratfor notes:

Before 9/11, aircraft crews were trained not to resist hijackers but to comply with their instructions in an effort to calm the situation and land the plane. Once the aircraft was on the ground, hijackers would then either surrender or be killed by an aircraft entry team. The Federal Aviation Administration never dreamed that terrorists would commandeer an aircraft with the intent to use it as a weapon. Aware of this, the 9/11 attackers simply had to pretend to be typical hijackers to gain the crews' cooperation and take control of the aircrafts.

A compliance policy will never be used again:

But the advantage Mohammed [Atta] gained by shifting the hijacking paradigm was short-lived, as evidenced by the events that unfolded that morning aboard the fourth aircraft: United Airlines Flight 93.

The attackers who targeted the plane did not account for the fact that its passengers and crew were able to use their cellphones to talk to people on the ground. When they learned what had happened to the three other aircraft, they revolted and forced the hijackers to crash the plane before it could be used to target the U.S. Capitol.

In other words, a major reason that there haven't been any 9/11-type hijackings since 9/11 is that terrorists know people will react in a completely different way to a potential hijacking.

In the case of Flight 93, the hijackers only got as far as they did because the crew and passengers initially complied. Once the truth was learned, the situation changed dramatically. Now that 9/11 is common knowledge, not even initial compliance could be expected from terrorists. 

Other factors include the placement of air marshals on some planes, and better security for cockpits.

The maintenance of an an enormous corps of federally employed TSA employees has nothing to do with any of these factors.

And then there is the research which shows that the TSA has a 95-percent failure rate in detecting efforts by terrorists to place weapons on commercial flights. Dylan Matthews wrote at Vox in 2016:

The TSA is hard to evaluate largely because it's attempting to solve a non-problem. Despite some very notable cases, airplane hijackings and bombings are quite rare. There aren't that many attempts, and there are even fewer successes. That makes it hard to judge if the TSA is working properly — if no one tries to do a liquid-based attack, then we don't know if the 3-ounce liquid rule prevents such attacks.

So Homeland Security officials looking to evaluate the agency had a clever idea: They pretended to be terrorists, and tried to smuggle guns and bombs onto planes 70 different times. And 67 of those times, the Red Team succeeded. Their weapons and bombs were not confiscated, despite the TSA's lengthy screening process. That's a success rate of more than 95 percent.

Defenders of the TSA — much like defenders of the CIA and other "security" organizations — claim that the TSA surely succeeds in stopping terrorists quite often. Those successes, however, are secret and we can't know about them.

This sort of faith-based trust in government might be convincing for some, but it ought to strike most people capable of critical thinking as nonsensical.

The fact remains — if we exclude the hypothetical "secret files of amazing successes" maintained by government agencies — there is no empirical evidence that the TSA prevents terrorism, and even in theory, we can easily point to other factors that are much more important in the prevention of another 9/11.

On the other hand, the federalization of airport security does create a situation in which national politics can easily create a system-wide failure in airport security that would not be possible in a system without the centralization of the TSA system.

'Other projects were a priority'

Megyn Kelly has officially parted ways with NBC News, agreeing to be paid the rest of her $69 million three-year contract signed two years ago.

'I don't cast stones'

Read the rest of this entry »

Brazil's government on Saturday issued a statement saying it recognized Venezuela's Congressional leader, who opposes President Nicolas Maduro, as the rightful president of Venezuela.

'Jim Acosta proved the president's point, that having a wall can be pretty effective'

‘You know as well as I do this is a power grab by the left’

‘They might open an investigation into you without your knowledge into something appalling’

Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

It’s a new year and the American cold civil war has shifted to its next phase with the Petrograd Soviet (formerly the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens), a/k/a Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Democrat-controlled House of Representatives ensconced at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Pelosi leads the revolutionary “second pivot” and rival center of authority to the embattled Provisional Government headed by President Donald Trump, headquartered 16 blocks to the northwest.

As of this writing Trump is fighting for his political life. If he loses the Mexican standoff over the government shutdown and his border wall, he’s essentially finished. At this juncture, it looks as though he is prepared to declare a state of emergency and use Pentagon or FEMA funds to order the emplacement of a barrier as a military construction project. This is something for which he has the clearest black-and-white statutory authority under 10 US Code § 2802.

Nonetheless, if he goes that route, any such effort will be gummed up in the courts, just like his use of his plenary authority under 18 US Code 1182(f) to exclude “any aliens or … any class of aliens” whose entry into the US would in his judgment “be detrimental to the interests of the United States” – the germ of his campaign’s promised “Muslim ban” – was wimped down into supposedly “extreme vetting” of aliens from a handful of countries without much indication of what the “vetting” is supposed to filter. It’s likely such litigation would delay the wall or prevent its being built at all.

As of now, Trump states his preference to let the Democrats stew. After all, those immediately inconvenienced, such as federal workers and beneficiaries of some federal programs, are primarily Democrat constituencies. Let’s see how many more hysterical bleeding hearts like Cher pressure Pelosi to throw in the towel: “NANCY YOU ARE A HERO LET HIM HAVE HIS FKNG MONEY‼.”

In any case, as even Senator Lindsay Graham recognizes, if Trump loses this battle – one he should have fought a year and a half ago – “it’s probably the end of his presidency.” If Trump wins, or more properly he avoids losing, he only lives to fight another day.

And, fight he must, despite his defenders’ truthful and entirely irrelevant bleating that there was no Russian “collusion.” Notwithstanding Democrats’ tap-dancing during the 2018 campaign on whether or not they would seek to impeach Trump, right out of the box articles of impeachment were filed within days of the House’s changing hands. Trump’s disgraced lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen will testify before the House Government Oversight Committee in February. While the weight of opinion suggests that Grand Inquisitor Robert Mueller will wrap up his auto-da-fé in a few months if not weeks, that would seem to be throwing away a powerful synergy with a House that is just beginning to gear up for multiple investigations into every aspect of Trump’s private and professional life, as well as his kids’. Add to that New York State Attorney General Letitia James on the warpath against Trump and “anyone” associated with him. Given Trump’s years in the sharp-elbowed world of high-end New York real estate and numerous business enterprises, as well as the Trump Foundation, there’s no limit to the number of regulatory, tax, and other violations the putsch plotters will construe as federal and state crimes, the latter of which can’t be pardoned by the President.

In short, it’s now a question not if Trump will be impeached but when and on what accusations. Adding fuel to the Democrats’ determination to bring him down before he’s up for reelection is the fear that if Trump survives until then he might well win, something no other Republican is likely to be able to do given the GOP’s tin ear to working class concerns, especially in the Rust Belt states that were Trump’s margin of victory. If Trump is successfully removed before 2020, whomever the Democrats nominate will beat Mike Pence or any other Republican nominee in a romp. After that, especially if Trump’s wall hasn’t gotten built, a sufficient number of imported new voters, many of them illegal, will ensure a permanent Democratic lock hold on power.

When Trump is impeached there may not be enough GOP votes in the Senate to remove him – as things stand now. But never underestimate Republicans’ propensity to cut and run when the going gets tough. It is suggested that any Republican who votes against Trump would seal his own political fate. Don’t be so sure. Those not up for reelection until 2022 and 2024 (like Utah’s newly elected Senator Mitt Romney, who didn’t even wait to be sworn in to volunteer for the role of Brutus) will feel insulated. Besides, when the crunch comes establishment Republicans fear a harsh word from the Washington Post and New York Times editorial pages more than they do their own voters.

This is not to say that after impeachment Trump will be removed, just that it is well within the realm of possibility. But if it does happen, then what?

One anti-Trumper (who prides himself on “poking Trump’s meth-addled, under-educated fans with a pointy stick.” No elite contempt for the Deplorables there!) ponders whether there would be –

‘…a civil war if Trump is driven from office — e.g., conviction after impeachment, resignation, 25th Amendment -that depends on what happens after, and there is no denying there is a chance of it, but it is highly unlikely. Many — possibly a great many — would believe they were wronged by this outcome, but how many would take up arms, and start shooting? Very few, if any at all. Trump would leave, Pence would become President, and Pence would be given credit for calming and healing the nation.

‘There would be no civil war.

But what happens after? Suppose Trump is put on trial for criminal charges, and then convicted? Or suppose he is pardoned or let off the hook, and then begins a sore-loser populist campaign all over the country, complaining that the Presidency was “stolen” by the “deep state” and that Hillary and “fake news” are responsible? That is when we should reopen the question of civil war.’

Of course if Trump is forced out, it would be precisely a stolen election – in effect, a regime change operation of the sort the same US-UK Deep State has staged in so many other countries – abetted by the lying, fake news (no need for sarcasm quotes) worthy of the former USSR and the Democratic establishment, with the collusion of a substantial element of the GOP.

But the improbable suggestion of Trump’s leading a post-White House rebellion one raises a valid point: if Trump were removed, either politically or physically, what – or who – would be the Deplorables’ rallying point? What or who would constitute the second pivot in what would then aspire to leadership in a new revolutionary situation?

The answer is not obvious. Those threatening various degrees of violent or even “gruesome” responses if the ongoing, anti-constitutional soft coup were to succeed never seem to address the question of what, exactly, the revolt would intend to achieve. Reinstate Trump, assuming that’s even possible? If not him, who – Ivanka? Where and how would pathologically law-abiding middle class Americans, many of them older and in questionable health, vent their rage? March on Washington – and do what when they got there? Torch the local post office?

Sure, devotees of the Second Amendment own more private weapons, so Trump supporters are better armed. But that may change as the violent Left gears up its own paramilitary capabilities secure in the knowledge that authorities turn a blind eye to their violence while regarding even non-violent civic nationalism as subversive.

Unlike the circumstance when the Constitution was adopted and private firearms were as good or better than military ones, there is no comparison today in delivery of devastating, deadly force. Trump himself seems to anticipate that the military would come out on his side:

‘“These people, like the Antifa — they better hope that the opposition to Antifa decides not to mobilize,” Trump said recently. “Because if you look, the other side, it’s the military. It’s the police. It’s a lot of very strong, a lot of very tough people. Tougher than them. And smarter than them … Potentially much more violent. And Antifa’s going to be in big trouble.” [...]

‘Some on far-right social media sites are all excited about what they’re calling “Civil War 2.0.” As documented by Dave Neiwert, there are various “Proud Boys” and “Patriots” living a fantasy version of Hank Williams Jr.’s “Country Boys Can Survive” almost entirely online.

‘“If they succeed in impeaching President Trump, then we will back President Trump,” one Georgia militiaman told reporters. “With a use of force if need be.”’

Well, maybe. In a conflict that would look nothing like America’s organized and relatively polite War Between the States (1861-1865) and more like the brutal communal conflicts in Yugoslavia (1991-1995), Spain (1936-1939), or Russia (1917-1922) estimates vary widely on how the military would divide. The same can be said for police forces, some of them heavily militarized.

Or perhaps the historic American nation, whose last-chance champion Trump was elected to be, would give up without a fight and submit to a tyranny that would, eventually, result in some even more fundamental societal collapse.

Americans like to imagine ourselves as rough-hewn, freedom-loving, don't-tread-on-me rebels. But after decades of corruption and conditioning by politicians, judges, bureaucrats, educators, entertainers, media, advertising, pharmaceuticals, processed foods, etc., today’s Americans may well be among the most docile people on earth.

Maybe that’s how America ends: not with a bang but a whimper. Let’s hope we don’t have occasion to find out.

The only evidence presented against him at the time was an identification by the victim.

The shooting occurred outside a home in west Shreveport.

A 13-year-old Wisconsin girl who disappeared three months ago has been found alive, and authorities will give more details on the discovery Friday.

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3. Las Vegas police issue warrant for Cristiano Ronaldo's DNA in 2009 rape case  Yahoo Sports
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Jayme Closs, the 13-year-old Wisconsin girl who had been missing since October after her parents were found dead in their home, will soon be reunited with relatives after being found malnourished and dirty in a town 65 miles from her home.

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What is going on?

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has not yet announced a bid for the White House, but on Friday the California senator faced a line of inquiry from MSNBC host Joe Scarborough that he credits with dooming the presidential campaign of fo...

‘That’s democracy’