Donald Trump's drive to secure peace in Ukraine must not let Vladimir Putin off the hook for war crimes committed by Russian forces, a top EU official has warned, effectively setting a new red line for a deal. Read more
Less than two weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, President Joe Biden traveled to Israel and held Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an embrace. The image captured the solidarity Americans felt with Israelis after they suffered such horrific violence. It also symbolized a political and governing reflex within the Democratic Party. During the Biden presidency, it was shorthanded the "hug Bibi" strategy " the idea that smothering Mr. Netanyahu with unconditional support would give the U.S. leverage to influence his actions. Read more
Juan Orlando Hernndez, whom Mr. Trump called a victim of persecution, helped orchestrate a decades-long trafficking conspiracy. It ravaged his Central American country. He once boasted that he would "stuff the drugs up the gringos' noses." He accepted a $1 million bribe from El Chapo to allow cocaine shipments to pass through Honduras. A man was killed in prison to protect him. Last year, Mr. Hernndez was convicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison. It was one of the most sweeping drug-trafficking cases to come before a U.S. court since the trial of the Panamanian strongman Gen. Manuel Noriega three decades before. But on Friday, President Trump announced that he would pardon Mr. Hernandez, 57, who he said was a victim of political persecution, though Mr. Trump offered no evidence to support that claim. It would be a head-spinning resolution to a case that for prosecutors was a pinnacle, striking at the heart of a narcostate. Read more
The Old State Saloon in Eagle, a suburb of Boise, Idaho, is rewarding snitches who collaborate with ICE: "Anyone who helps ICE identify and ultimately deport an illegal from Idaho gets FREE BEER FOR ONE MONTH at Old State Saloon!" The small-town watering hole added that it "may award multiple months to one person if multiple illegals are deported."
Rixi Moncada, candidate of Honduras' ruling Liberty and Restructuring Party (LIBRE), won Sunday's presidential election. This is according to exit poll data from Poll HN, published on the LIBRE party's Facebook page. According to the table, Moncada received 38.06% of the vote. Salvador Nasralla of the center-right Liberal Party of Honduras is second with 32.40%. Nasri Asfura of the conservative National Party of Honduras is third with 23.38%.
...and thieves
President Donald Trump on Sunday said he's invited the family of a National Guard member fatally shot last week to the White House, saying he spoke to her parents and they were "devastated." U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom died after the Wednesday shooting in Washington, D.C., while her seriously injured colleague, U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, remained in critical condition.
The letter congressional cowards will never send.
Mike Plante could hardly believe his eyes when he discovered how much his health insurance premiums will go up next year. The 64-year-old public relations consultant is paying $400 a month. But this will jump to $1,965 -- a nearly 400 per cent increase -- if he renews his existing plan. "Me and some 65,000 other West Virginians are about to be run off a cliff," he said. Plante is one of nearly 22 million Americans enrolled in health insurance under the Affordable Care Act -- or Obamacare -- who will see their premiums soar next year if their tax credits expire as expected on December 31. "It's a full-blown crisis," said Mike Pushkin, chair of the West Virginian Democratic Party. "Ours will be one of the states hardest hit by the failure of Congress and the Trump administration to extend these subsidies."
For a brief period, it looked like JaQuon Stembridge had a promising future within the Republican Party. He turned 19 this past July and was already the youngest member ever of the Georgia State GOP Executive Committee where he served as assistant secretary for the state convention. He was also the leader of the Georgia Teen Republicans. His rapid rise in state politics appears to have come to a quick end. He resigned just hours after a video was released online purporting to show him attempting to meet with a 14 year old boy from a dating app.
25,000 antifa volunteers converged on the western city of Giessen to protest the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD) which set up its new youth organization there, leading to clashes with police who deployed 5,000 officers to contain violence.
Using the Zohran Mamdani NYC mayoral win as a pretext to expand the police state in his jurisdiction, Nassau County Executive MAGA Bruce Blakeman is directing authorities to needlessly install hi-tech cameras and surveillance systems along the border with NYC.
this happened as described in the Post report, it was, at best, a war crime under federal law. I say "at best" because, as regular readers know, I believe the attacks on these suspected drug boats " without congressional authorization, under circumstances in which the boat operators pose no military threat to the United States, and given that narcotics trafficking is defined in federal law as a crime rather than as terrorist activity, much less an act or war " are lawless and therefore that the killings are not legitimate under the law or armed conflict. (See my Saturday column, with links to prior posts on this subject.) Read more
When a presidential administration abruptly stops releasing the most important economic indicators -- GDP, inflation, jobs, consumer spending -- Americans must ask a blunt question: What are they trying to hide?
David W. Chen talked to voters and Republican and Democratic activists in Hogansville, LaGrange and Valdosta, Ga., to unpack the recent elections for the Georgia Public Service Commission. Read more
The picture of weed shared by many older Americans, drawn from their own college years, helped ease the path of legalization. Weed, the mellow drug. The Cheech-and-Chong drug. The Grateful-Dead-road-trip drug. The munchies drug. The drug that, if anything, makes you overly cautious behind the wheel. Dowd thought of marijuana along similar lines " that is, until she tried the legalized stuff for herself and nearly lost her ever-loving mind. Since then, weed potency has only intensified, with some concentrates reaching near-pure levels of THC, the plant's primary psychoactive compound. Only now are policy makers and opinion elites reckoning with what Big Weed has wrought: "turning a drug that used to be 5% THC, and made people pass out for a few hours and eat Cheetos, into one that triggers psycho killers," as Kevin Sabet, a former drug adviser in successive Democratic and GOP administrations, tells me. Read more
