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March 2017

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 06, 2017 27 Comments
Trump has been accused of many things -- some deserved, some not. But this has to be a new one. Barbara Streisand recently blamed Trump for her decision to over-indulge in pancakes. Trump acts, Barbara eats. Or at least that's the impression her Twitter feed gives:

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 06, 2017 2 Comments
President Donald Trump has signed a new immigration order, exempting Iraq and those who already hold visas. It still prohibits people from six nations "from entering the U.S. for 90 days." From The Wall Street Journal:
The new order doesn’t ban citizens of Iraq, one of many changes made to an original order in hopes of putting the measures on stronger legal and political footing. The White House says the ban is intended to stop potential national-security threats.

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 06, 2017 46 Comments
The Supreme Court has chosen to send a Virginia transgender student's bathroom case back to the lower court after President Donald Trump's administration decided to do away with a directive from former President Barack Obama that stated students in schools can use which bathroom they want. The court should have heard the case later this month. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit had decided to allow transgender teen Gavin Grimm to use the bathroom of her choice.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on March 06, 2017 24 Comments
Morning Joe suffered a split personality today over President Trump's tweets alleging that President Obama had tapped his phones. On the one hand, Joe and Mika waxed apocalyptic, claiming the country is "in crisis" and questioning President Trump's "stability." At one point, Mika even seemed to choke up as she said, "this is really a dark time which could get worse." But at the same time, Joe Scarborough zeroed in on former Obama spox Josh Earnest's "very legalistic" responses to questioning by ABC's Martha Raddatz. On This Week, Raddatz cited former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau's tweet, warning "I'd be careful about reporting that Obama said there was no wiretapping. Statement just said that neither he nor the WH ordered it." Pressed by Raddatz, Earnest admitted "I don't know" whether the Obama Justice Department sought and obtained a court-ordered wiretap of the Trump campaign.

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 06, 2017 8 Comments
North Korea continues to defy the world. This time, the communist country fired four ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan as a way to show the world it will continue its missile program despite sanctions and threats. Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada stated that the missles "landed in waters as close as 300 km (190 miles) to Japan's northwest coast."

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 06, 2017 68 Comments
Former President Barack Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Chuck Todd on Meet The Press that evidence between President Donald Trump and Russia do not exist:
We did not include any evidence in our report, and I say, "our," that's N.S.A., F.B.I. and C.I.A., with my office, the Director of National Intelligence, that had anything, that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was no evidence of that included in our report.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 05, 2017 11 Comments
Snopes developed a reputation as a highly reliable debunker of internet hoaxes. It was one of the first sources I used to turn to. Now I find it often reads more like PolitiFact, a supposedly neutral fact checker that seems to lean left, or at least often seems to have a political angle on a fact check. I had noticed a change in Snopes a while ago, and even considered writing about it earlier, but Snopes coverage of Rasmea Odeh pushed me to a response. Rasmea has been in the news lately because of her involvement in launching the March 8 so-called Day Without A Woman.

Posted by David Gerstman on March 05, 2017 4 Comments
Last week Gen. (ret.) Michael Herzog (brother of Israel's opposition leader Isaac Herzog) wrote a remarkable article (.pdf) in The American Interest. Herzog, who has been involved in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since 1993 didn't write his article to place blame (though he does) for the failure of the 2013-2014 talks overseen by then-Secretary of State John Kerry but "it is my sincere hope that this analysis will inform a meaningful policy debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." But if you Google Herzog's name for the past week, precisely one news organization covered the article: The Times of Israel. Some blogs such as The Tower and Yaacov Lozowick have written about it too. One would think that an insider's view of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians would draw a lot of attention, but it didn't. Presumably that is because Herzog didn't blame Bibi first.

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 05, 2017 32 Comments
People marched in cities across the country Saturday to show support for President Trump. In a few places, anti-Trump protesters showed up and in Berkeley there was violence. The Reuters report below plays coy about who initiated the violence, but Trump supporters didn't show up to make trouble during the Women's March. Violence like this is the domain of the left:
In day of pro-Trump rallies, California march turns violent Supporters of Donald Trump clashed with counter-protesters at a rally in the famously left-leaning city of Berkeley, California, on a day of mostly peaceful gatherings in support of the U.S. president across the country.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on March 05, 2017 6 Comments
The number of Islamists leaving Germany to join the ranks of Islamic State fighters is on the rise, German news magazine DER SPIEGEL reports. More than 910 German residents have left the country to fight under the banner of ISIS including nearly 200 female fighters, DER SPIEGEL wrote citing Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, or BfV. What makes these revelations most disturbing is the fact that 300 ISIS members -- many of whom have active combat experience -- are already back in Germany. Most of these battle-hardened terrorists are now back in their communities and in many cases not even under full surveillance.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 05, 2017 20 Comments
Donald Trump's accusation that the Obama administration "wiretapped" his phones and/or Trump Tower, continues to reverberate. The accusations have refocused the argument over Trump's alleged Russia ties, which amount at this point only to innuendo, into a discussion of Obama surveillance practices. As discussed in my prior post, which is getting a lot of attention, the focus on the term "wiretap" and whether Obama "ordered" surveillance under FISA, may be a distraction, Some curious language in both Trump’s “wiretap” accusation and Obama’s defense. The media, however, is being dragged into another direction, one focusing on Obama administration surveillance practices. This morning Donald Trump, through Sean Spicer, called for a congressional investigation of Obama administration election surveillance.
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