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Author: Leslie Eastman

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Leslie Eastman

I am an Environmental Health and Safety Professional, as well as a science/technical writer for a variety of news and professional publications. I have been a citizen activist since 2009, and am one of the co-founders of the San Diego-based group, Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition.

Last week, I reported that Immigration and Custom Enforcement officers had decapitated the brutal El Salvadoran gang MS13 in Southern California after they arrested more than 40 members using racketeering statutes. This week, they followed it up with a series of raids that brought in 188 illegal immigrants, most of whom were connected with crime in this region.

Egypt has launched an air assault on terror training camps in Libya, following the deadly bus attack that claimed the lives of over two dozen Coptic Christian men, women and children.
On Friday, Egyptian fighter jets struck eastern Libya just hours after a shooting that killed 29 and wounded 24 in the southern Egyptian province of Minya when masked militants boarded vehicles en route to a monastery and opened fire at close range. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest directed at Egypt's increasingly embattled Christian minority following two church bombings last month that killed more than 45, also claimed by the group.

President Donald Trump concluded his first trip abroad as Commander-in-Chief with a speech at the Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily before returning to Washington, D.C., saying that his the nine-day international tour was a home run.
“But we have been gone for close to nine days. This will be nine days. And I think we hit a home run no matter where we are,” Trump said in Italy. ...The president is heading back to Washington, D.C. following a trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Italy, and Belgium. After meeting with the Pope, Trump traveled to Brussels for a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit and concluded his trip in Sicily at the G7 summit.

Manchester suicide bomber's Salman Abedi's father and brothers have been arrested in Great Britain, all of them suspected of having links to ISIS and Al Qaeda. New details are emerging about recent arrests that indicate Minneapolis police may have averted another family-based terror plot in this country.
There are growing concerns about the arrest of two brothers with ties to the Middle East who authorities say had an arsenal with bomb-making materials, guns and ammunition in their car.

Hillary Clinton returned to her alma mater to give a commencement address that matched the tone and content of her 2016 campaign speeches: Full of attacks on Donald Trump and interrupted by coughing.
Hillary Clinton didn’t pull any punches Friday when she took several jabs at President Trump – at one point even comparing him to Former President Richard Nixon - as she delivered the commencement address at her alma mater, Wellesley College.

Before I begin the review of Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama by David J. Garrow, I feel the need to make a confession in the interest of full disclosure. Barack Obama has been very inspirational to me personally. He inspired me to help co-found the SoCal Tax Revolt Coalition. He inspired be to become an independent conservative blogger. He inspired me to re-register as "No Party Preference" in my home state of California. So, why did I order this 7-pound book on Obama?

I have been following the aftermath of the California legislature's massive gas tax hike, which is slated to be implemented in January. The Democratic Party supermajority swore up-and-down that the new funds would totally go to road repair and the essential infrastructure maintenance that this state desperately needs. The skeptical among us, recognizing that the state is facing an epic pension fund shortfall, suspected that the politicians were offering #AlternativeFacts.

The last time we ran an "insanity check" on the state of California, our state's legislators were laying out plans for a single-payer healthcare system. Subsequently, the state's money crunchers processed the numbers and the price tag is twice the state's annual budget!
Creating a single-payer health care system in California would cost $400 billion a year — including $200 billion in new tax revenue, according to an analysis of legislation released Monday by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The theory of "consensus science reliability" seems to have taken another hit, as a new report has been released that asserts government-based dietary fat guidelines "have no evidence base". Publishing in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Dr Zoë Harcombe of the Institute of Clinical Exercise and Health Science of the University of the West of Scotland researched both the origins and the results of following the dietary fat guidelines that have prevailed in the US and the United Kingdom for almost 40 years. The evidence provides no support for the assertion that low-fat diets are healthier, especially as the incidences of obesity and diabetes have escalated dramatically during the same four decades of the guidelines' implementation.

We recently reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions vowed to target the nation's law enforcement efforts on the barbaric and brutal El Salvadoran gang, MS13. While the elite media has been attempting to stage a coup-d'-press, it has nearly ignored significant developments that highlight exactly how effective President Donald Trump's administration has been.  For example, Sessions' plans were initiated during an early morning sweep of MS13 gangsters that hit its leadership.

The last time we checked in on Colorado after it legalized marijuana, the intoxicant was raking in $1.3 billion worth of sales for the state. Yet, as predicted, there have been some unintended consequences of decriminalizing recreational marijuana use. Recently, the residents of Durango have noticed a change in the type of visitors the lovely Colorado resort town attracts.
The town suddenly became a haven for recreational pot users, drawing in transients, panhandlers and a large number of homeless drug addicts, according to officials and business owners. Many are coming from New Mexico, Arizona and even New York.

When it comes to blocking President Donald Trump's plans for the Border Wall, the Democratic Party has displayed imagination, creativity, and enthusiasm rarely surpassed in the annals of human history.
Democrats opposed border wall funding in the latest government spending debate and the White House eventually backed off of its demand to secure the money this month. When the funding fight comes up again in September, Democrats are still likely to deem it a non-starter in negotiations. "I have said repeatedly and consistently, I will not support an omnibus that includes funding for a wall; not going to do it," said Rep. Joe Crowley, D-New York, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, at a recent press conference.

The last time we checked on Crazy California, many of its taxpayers were rebelling against the legislature-created gas tax and were mounting a recall challenge against one of the Democrats who made that hike possible. During a speech in Orange County earlier this month, and in response to taxpayers angered by the massive increase and those who are supporting the recall of State Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, Governor Jerry Brown had this to say (hat tip, conservative pundit Kira Davis):
“The freeloaders — I’ve had enough of them,” Brown said, adding that the approved tax and fee hikes bring those charges to the level they were 30 years ago if adjusted for inflation. “They have a president that doesn’t tell the truth and they’re following suit.”

By now, every Legal Insurrection reader will likely have been exposed to a deluge of media related to the Washington Post's assertions about President Donald Trump disclosing highly classified information in his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador. However, the intense media focus on the White House has meant substantially less ink, electrons and time have been spent covering two, significant class action lawsuits against the Democratic National Committee: 1) It's shenanigans during the primary to weigh the nomination in Hillary Clinton's favor. 2) Failure to pay its campaign workers for overtime. I was registered as a Democrat for a significant portion of the primary season, and voted for Bernie Sanders in the California primary. So, I thought I would spend a little time on each of these cases.

Upon taking the oath of office a few days ago, South Korea's new president, Moon Jae-in, indicated the he is willing to visit the nuclear-armed North.
Moon, who was declared the winner on Tuesday of the presidential election, said he will "sincerely negotiate" with the United States, South Korea's chief ally, and China, South Korea's top trading partner, over the contentious deployment of the US anti-missile system THAAD.

Back in 2011, as that season's presidential pandering was getting revved up, the President Obama said we can't drill our way out of energy problems.
President Obama called for the elimination of billions of dollars in oil industry tax breaks Friday, while stressing that the United States can’t drill its way out of high gas prices. “We can’t just drill our way out of the problem,” Obama said during an energy policy speech in Indiana Friday.
I hate to admit it: Obama is right. We didn't drill our way out, we fracked our way to a fuel surplus. There has been so much winning recently that OPEC is now complaining.

The last time Legal Insurrection visited the Land of the Nile, Pope Francis was refusing to use an armored car during his visit to Egypt. Fortunately, one was not needed, and the Holy Father must have made quite an impression, especially after meeting with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt's President and proponent of an Islamic Reformation. To start with, a noted Egyptian Islamic "scholar" has been canned from his television show and faces a trial after calling Christians "infidels".
Salem Abdel-Galeel, television show host and a former deputy minister at the Ministry of Religious Endowments, is set to face trial for contempt of religion after describing Christians as non-believers.