In the News
Late last September, I moderated a discussion about North Korea with retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, whose 37-year military career included a stint running NATO, and Michèle Flournoy, the No. 3 official at the Pentagon during the Obama administration, who has helped shape US policy toward North Korea since 1993.
The racist insult against Dreamers by President Donald Trump's chief of staff was so toxic Tuesday that Fox News Channel ignored it in prime time while CNN and MSNBC played it up in heavy rotation.
The Trump enforcer, General John Kelly, told The Washington Post on a recording that some eligible residents did not file for DACA immigration status because they were "too lazy to get off their asses."
White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly on Tuesday suggested that some young immigrants eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program failed to apply for the legal protections because they were too afraid — or "too lazy to get off their asses."
Kelly's portrayal of young immigrants as "lazy" infuriated advocates, Democratic lawmakers and "dreamers" themselves. Critics called the statement "ignorant," "discriminatory" and "cruel." There are many barriers to applying to DACA, advocates say, including fear, cost and misinformation. But laziness?
Congressmen Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, and Justin Amash, R-Mich., have reintroduced legislation to block the use of civil asset forfeiture funds to support the Drug Enforcement Agency's marijuana eradication program.
The Stop Civil Asset Forfeiture Funding for Marijuana Suppression Act is a laudable proposal to limit the federal government's capacity to ramp up enforcement of what should be dealt with at the state level while also calling attention to the problem of civil asset forfeiture.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) of the House Judiciary Committee said the classified memo Republicans say indicates anti-Trump bias at the Department of Justice is "worse than a nothing burger."
"It's worse than a nothing burger, it's like having nothing mustard," Lieu told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "There is factual inaccuracies, it's misleading. If they're going to release that memo, then they have to release the Democratic memo so that the public has a full view of actually what happened."
Funerals in Yemen are traditionally large affairs. When prominent figures die, hundreds or even thousands of people come to pay their respects and to pray for them. Abdulqader Hilal Al-Dabab, the mayor of Sana'a, Yemen's capital, could expect such treatment. But Hilal used to ask for a simple burial. "If I get killed when I'm in office, I don't want a state funeral," he told his sons. He wanted to be buried in a grave he'd reserved next to his father's.
After a contentious debate, the House of Representatives has voted to extend a controversial government surveillance program that powers American spying operations, as it voted down a proposal to include new privacy measures.
More indictments are coming this year in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the presidential election, a Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee predicted.
WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) - A group of Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday wrote to Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser, asking whether in his talks with foreign officials he had ever discussed financing for a deeply indebted Kushner Companies property in Manhattan.
The property at 666 Fifth Avenue has a $1.15 billion mortgage due in less than two years, and has raised concerns among lawmakers that it could pose a conflict of interest for Kushner. (Full Story)
MOGADISHU, Somalia—New evidence in the Daily Beast investigation of a U.S.-led ground operation in Somalia last August further implicates U.S. Special Operations Forces directly in the death of 10 civilians. Among the new elements is an interview with a Somali National Army soldier who says he saw the Americans firing on unarmed victims. The Pentagon has said all those killed were "armed enemy combatants."