Saturday, February 13, 2016

Trump gets backing on 'end of Europe' warning Islam expert: GOP front-runner 'grasps big picture' on threat from migrants

WND EXCLUSIVE

Trump gets backing on 'end of Europe' warning

Islam expert: GOP front-runner 'grasps big picture' on threat from migrants

Published: 1 day ago

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Republican presidential primary front-runner Donald Trump is predicting the influx of Muslim migrants will lead to the “end of Europe” in an explosive interview with the conservative French magazine Valeurs Actuelles.

“France is not what it used to be, and neither is Paris,” Trump is quoted as saying.
Trump also bemoaned the existence of “no-go zones” avoided by police that have been created by mass Islamic immigration.
WND reported in January 2015 the French government listed 751 “Sensitive Urban Zones” the government does not fully control.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy of welcoming Muslim migrants into Germany is a “tragic mistake,” Trump said, predicting disaster unless there is a change in policy.
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“If you don’t treat the situation competently and firmly, yes, it’s the end of Europe,” Trump reportedly stated.
He also speculated that European nations could face “real revolutions” in response to the crisis.
In interviews with American media, Trump has blasted Merkel’s permissive immigration policy as “insane” and warned Islamic migration could be a “Trojan Horse” enabling future terrorist attacks.
Trump read the lyrics from the song “The Snake” at a campaign rally in January to illustrate the dangers of admitting millions of Muslim migrants.
The song describes a foolish woman who saves the life of a poisonous snake, only to be bitten and killed for her trouble.
G.M. Davis, an expert on Islam who directed the feature documentary “Islam: What the West Needs to Know” and authored “House of War: Islam’s Jihad Against the World,” praised the Republican front-runner’s strong stand against the Islamic invasion of Europe.
“At present, only Donald Trump seems willing to address the seriousness of the issues confronting the United States and Europe and the full implications of Islamic immigration into non-Islamic countries,” Davis told WND. “Whatever one makes of his delivery and tendency to personalize his criticisms, there is little denying that he grasps the big picture in a way that the other candidates do not or are too afraid to express.
“His recent comments to the European press over the dire situation in Europe where centers of Islamic power continue to send down roots and multiply, as well as the hysterical reaction on the part of much of Europe to his views, testifies both to Mr. Trump’s competence on the issue as well as the inability of the European establishment to come to grips with reality.”
Davis warned Americans they will not be spared from the crisis.
“All of what we are witnessing in Europe is in store for America if she does not adopt more sensible and restrictive immigration policies,” said Davis. “She must also realize her overseas campaigns to bring democracy to Islamic lands are futile and counter-productive. The only principle on which any sensible Western policy toward Islam can be based is one of containment, of realizing that Western and Islamic civilizations are best kept apart as much as possible.”
In response to reports of sexual assaults and other crimes by Muslim migrants, European governments, especially Germany, have cracked down on their own people rather than restricting immigration.
The German government is also working with American companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter to eliminate any online speech criticizing the government’s refugee policy or refugees themselves that “crosses the line.”
“European governments are desperate to cover up criticism of Islam and the crimes of Muslim immigrants because they cut at the heart of their open-door policies,” said Davis. “The multicultural assumptions underpinning modern Europe are disintegrating before our eyes. To face facts would require them to rethink decades of self-destructive immigration laws as well as to confront the truly alarming reality of a growing, increasingly hostile Islamic minority in their midst, which they are entirely unequipped to handle.”
Davis predicted progressives will never turn against mass Islamic immigration, even though the resulting demographic changes will doom their own supposed values regarding issues such as homosexual rights and feminism.
“The true left-wingers cannot face the reality that Islam cares nothing for their blandishments about tolerance and acceptance, which they have used, of course, one-sidedly to denigrate and destroy traditional, Christian European culture,” Davis charged. “By insisting on ‘tolerating’ the growth of Islam in their cities, they have permitted a violent, intolerant and very political ideology to take root. Should it ever get the opportunity, it will utterly eradicate the easy-going moral atmosphere now prevalent in European society.”
In “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance,” renowned activist Pamela Geller provides the answer, offering proven, practical guidance on how freedom lovers can stop jihadist initiatives in local communities.
Davis agreed with Trump that violence and revolution could be on the horizon if European leaders don’t change course.
“The specter of civil war is beginning to take shape over the European continent,” he warned.
At the very least, Europeans think something big is coming. In record numbers, they are scrambling to arm themselves as weapons sales soar across the continent.
Trump defended the right to bear arms in his interview with Valeurs Actuelles, suggesting the private ownership of firearms is an effective way to prevent Islamic terrorism. He also condemned French gun control laws.
Explaining he “always” has a gun with him, Trump said that had he been at the Bataclan theater in Paris where Islamic terrorists killed 89 people in November 2015, “I can tell you I would have opened fire.”
Larry Pratt, executive director emeritus of Gun Owners of America, told WND that Europeans are eager to arm themselves with whatever is legally available.
“The Muslim attacks on Europeans have been a problem throughout the European Union,” said Pratt. “Many people probably saw what happened in Cologne on New Year’s Day when Muslims went on a rape rampage. That turned out to be just the most recent example of what happens a lot in many German and other European cities.”
Pratt said Austrians, in particular, are arming themselves.
“France is as goofy as San Francisco or Chicago,” said Pratt in reference to the nation’s gun laws. “But in Austria, people are able to buy a shotgun over the counter the way an American would. Now in America, you can buy many other guns over the counter but at least [in Austria] the shotgun is available, even if it only has two shots in it or maybe three. You can walk out of the store with it.
“There were no shotguns available for sale in Austria around the turn of the year 2016. And particularly women were buying shotguns. That’s what’s available, that’s what they’re buying.”
The comments:

Davis suggested the Europe could become increasingly unstable as governments continue to dispossess their native populations.
"Should European governments succeed in effectively suppressing criticism of Islam, and should their native populations ultimately have nowhere to turn for their own protection, to me it seems inevitable that local, ad hoc groups will begin to form," said Davis.
"Call them militias for the defense of the populace. Should the national governments refuse to acknowledge the grievances of their peoples as represented by these groups, civil war would be the logical next step. Who can say when?"
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Friday, February 12, 2016

Hillary Clinton’s week just went from bad to worse

Losing New Hampshire by 22 points to an avowed socialist was bad enough for Hillary Clinton. But then came the news — that the State Department had opened a inquiry regarding the activities of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation during her time time as secretary of state. And bad went to way, way worse.
By my count, this latest State Department inquiry makes for three active investigations by the federal government that touch directly or indirectly on the 2016 Democratic presidential front-runner.
1. The newly revealed State inquiry into the Clinton Foundation and top Clinton aide Huma Abedin

2. The ongoing State inquiry into Clinton's private email server
3. The FBI investigation into Clinton's email server
And that list doesn't include the myriad looks Congress is taking into Clinton's time at State.
It's worth noting right at the top here that Clinton herself is not the target of any of these inquiries or investigations. Which from a legal perspective is very important, but which, from a political perspective, is far less convincing.
Here's why the latest revelation regarding Clinton's time at State is so problematic:
* It furthers the "where there's smoke, there's fire" argument. This hurts Clinton both coming and going. For Republicans, it hands them yet another way to suggest that something untoward is going on with Clinton. For Democrats, it increases their anxiety about the possibility of nominating someone who could fall under an ethical cloud just as the party is trying to elect them to the White House.
* It makes it increasingly difficult for Clinton, as she has done since the revelation that she had a private email server broke a year ago, to cast the questions raised about her time at State as simply a partisan fishing expedition. "There is a concerted effort to try to make partisan advantage by really trying to throw so much at me that even if little splotches of it stick, it will cloud peoples's judgment of me," Clinton told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow this week. "That is a burden I carry."
There is, without question, a desire on the part of many Republicans to cast Clinton in the worst possible light using almost any means necessary. But it strains credulity to believe that Republicans somehow concocted a way to get the State Department and the FBI to look into Clinton's tenure at State.

The revelation of another investigation will only further those concerns and worries — at a time when Clinton is trying to face down Bernie Sanders's increasingly robust challenge. Clinton will almost certainly be asked about the latest State investigation in the debate tonight. How she responds — and whether Sanders or the debate moderators push her on that response — could be a pivot point not just tonight but in the race more generally.

EPA missteps in Colorado mine spill

DENVER (AP) — A probe of a mine waste accident in Colorado that fouled rivers in three states with arsenic, lead and other toxic substances has found further evidence that government workers knew a spill from the gold mine was possible, according to documents released Thursday by a U.S. House committee.
Hays Griswold, a U.S. Environmental Protection agency official in charge of the Gold King mine at the time of the August accident, said in an email that he "personally knew" the plugged, inactive mine could contain large volumes of water.
The email was sent Oct. 28 to other EPA officials. It was provided Thursday to The Associated Press by the House Natural Resources Committee as it released the findings of its Republican-led probe.
An EPA cleanup crew triggered the spill during excavation work at the mine's entrance, unleashing a 3-million-gallon deluge that contaminated rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.
The release dumped more than 880,000 pounds of heavy metals into Colorado's Animas River, forcing the closure of downstream public water systems until the plume passed and raising concerns about long-term environmental impacts.
"I personally knew it could be holding back a lot of water, and I believe the others in the group knew as well," Griswold wrote in the email.
EPA spokeswoman Nancy Grantham said the agency was reviewing the House committee's findings but had no further comment at this time.
The committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Raul Grijalva of New Mexico, said Republicans were using the EPA's role in the accident to shift blame from the mining industry's responsibility for thousands of toxic mines across the U.S. that have been abandoned by their owners.
The spill occurred when workers for EPA and its contractor, Environmental Restoration LLC, started excavation work that was intended to allow them to safely drain the mine.
An Interior Department investigation pinned responsibility on the EPA for not checking to see if the mine held pressurized water. EPA officials previously said workers on site determined there was no or low pressure from water backed up inside the mine.
The email from Griswold suggests that the determination of low water pressure was based in part on mistaken assumptions about the location of the top of the mine's buried entrance, known in mining as the brow.
The excavation work was intended to clear away debris for the entrance before the mine was to be drained at a later date, he wrote.
"We and or I particularly thought we were four or maybe five feet above the brow," Griswold wrote. "However, as it turned out we inadvertently got to probably within a foot or two of the brow. That proved to be too close when rock at the exposed face crumbled out, providing an outlet for the water."
Griswold's email also raised new questions about the accuracy of the investigation by the Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation, which examined the causes of the spill. The email used such terms as "patently false" and "mischaracterization of the facts" to describe parts of the report.
Griswold wrote that the report, released in October, incorrectly described what his crew was trying to do at the mine, and that it understated how much water might be inside.
Griswold also wrote that bureau officials took soil samples from the wrong material at the mine site when they were investigating the spill, and that a bureau official "slept through my interview and presentation" about the incident.
Colorado officials have also disputed key parts of the report.
Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop of Utah said federal officials still have not turned over some information on Gold King requested by his committee, and that the government appeared to be engaged in "a pattern of deception" about events leading up to the spill.

A Bureau of Reclamation official had no immediate comment.

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Convention of States Activists Praise Gov. Abbott’s ‘Texas Plan’

Mark Meckler, president of Citizens for Self-Governance. (Convention of States Project)

(CNSNews.com) – Conservative activists hoping to convince 30 more state legislatures to pass legislation to convene a Convention of States to rein-in the federal government praised Gov. Greg Abbott’s "Texas Plan" to amend the U.S. Constitution, which he unveiled during a speech last Friday.
Mark Meckler, president of Citizens for Self-Governance, the parent organization of the Convention of States Project, noted that Abbott joined former Republican Governors Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin in calling for such a convention at a time when anti-Washington sentiment is running high in America, as evidenced by the surge of support for “outsider” candidates like Donald Trump.
“This is not a partisan fight. The question asked by a Convention of States is much more fundamental: Who decides?” Meckler told CNSNews.com.
“I’ve travelled to 34 states in the last 12 months and people say they want decisions to be made as locally as possible. They don’t like the federal government deciding,” he said, adding that “I was actually at that meeting, but I left before Gov. Abbott’s speech, so you can see what a surprise it was.”
“It was a surprise,” agreed project head Michael Farris. “We didn’t expect it, but we’re glad he did it. His nine proposed amendments exactly align with ours.”
“Governors officially don’t have a vote, but they have a major leadership opportunity,” Farris continued. “This was a very important step forward. I’d even call it a breakthrough.”
“All the branches – executive, legislative, and judicial – are in an open conspiracy to increase the power of the federal government. The public is ripe for this. An overwhelming majority of Americans are frustrated and dissatisfied with the federal government.
“More and more the national discussion is centered on this [issue], but we haven’t heard much from the many presidential candidates on how to fix it,” Farris said. “This is the solution to the problem, which is long-term and systemic.”
“If we really want to fix the problems we face today, we need to fix the fractured foundation of this country,” Abbott said in his speech to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, calling for an Article V Convention of States to rein-in “an overreaching federal government” that has exceeded its constitutional authority.
“Our government was founded on the rule of law, not the caprice of men,” he said. “That rule of law flows from our Constitution. The Constitution is our foundation that is now so often ignored that the Founders would hardly even recognize it.”
Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, two-thirds of the 50 state legislatures (34) can call a convention to propose constitutional amendments that limit the scope and jurisdiction of the federal government. The idea was popularized by radio talk show host Mark Levin in his best-selling book, The Liberty Amendments.
The legislatures of four states – Alabama, Alaska, Florida and Georgia – have already passed joint resolutions calling for a Convention of States. Similar legislation will be introduced in 34 other state legislatures this year, Meckler said.
Last January, the House of Representatives enacted a new rule proposed by Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH) that creates a formal system for documenting Article V petitions. The latest application was submitted by Kansas on January 6th.

Michael Farris, head of Convention of States Project. (COS)

Abbott pointed to President Obama’s unilateral gun control as one of the “cracks in our constitutional foundation.”
Obama “took action unilaterally that threatens Second Amendment rights even though the entire point of the Bill of Rights was to protect Americans from invasions of their liberties by the caprice of men just like that,” said Abbott, who bragged that he “sued Barack Obama 31 times” as Texas attorney general.
“Congress is no better,” Abbott went on, noting that “each branch of government has strayed from its intended role.” He called the Supreme Court a “co-conspirator in the abandonment of the United States Constitution.”
Abbott said his 90-page proposal would “put teeth into the Tenth Amendment” by specifically giving states authority to “sue the federal government when it assumes powers not delegated it by the Constitution.”
Some of the Texas Plan’s other proposed constitutional amendments would allow a two-thirds majority of the states to override federal laws, regulations and even Supreme Court decisions; require a balanced federal budget; and significantly reduce federal power by prohibiting unelected bureaucrats from creating laws or preempting existing state laws.
“The only true downside comes from doing nothing and allowing the federal government to continue ignoring the very document that created it,” the plan concludes.
Related: Coburn: Convention of States Needed Because Washington Will Never Fix Itself
Related: Mark Levin: State Legislatures Have ‘Duty’ to ‘Restore Our Republic’
Related: Conservative Activist: Momentum Building for a Convention of States

Resolution Calling For Article V Convention

Tennessee state capitol building in Nashville. (Photo: AP/WKRN)

(CNSNews.com) – Tennessee has become the fifth state in the nation – and the first in 2016 - to pass a resolution calling for an Article V Convention of the States to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
On February 4, the Tennessee House of Representatives voted 59-31 to approve Senate Joint Resolution 0067 calling for an Article V convention that would be “limited to proposing amendments to the United States Constitution that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of Congress.”
The Tennessee Senate passed the same resolution last April on a 23-5 vote.
Although the resolution went into effect as soon as it passed the House, it was ceremonially signed by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam on Tuesday.
Prior to the House vote, state Rep. Sheila Butt (R-Columbia) reminded her colleagues why an Article V Convention is needed:
“We all know that right now, we are in a position that the federal government is not delegating authority, they are not limiting authority, and our federal budget is ballooning, [bureaucrats in] the EPA are adding rules constantly, mandates that we have to follow that are costing our state millions, and it’s time for us to take advantage of this constitutional remedy for a federal government that is out of control,” Butt said.
“Congratulations to Tennessee on becoming the first state to pass in 2016 to reclaim state power,” said Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Convention of States Project. “An Article V Convention is the ultimate exercise of this power.”
Besides Tennessee, Alabama, Alaska, Florida and Georgia have formally adopted Article V resolutions.
They have also been introduced in 33 other state legislatures this year – including the presidential battleground state of South Carolina.
Last month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott endorsed an Article V Convention in his “Texas Plan”, stating that “each branch of [the federal] government has strayed from its intended role.”
Conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin, who popularized the idea of an Article V Convention in his best-selling book, The Liberty Amendments, has called a state-convened constitutional convention an exercise in “quintessential federalism”.
Republicans currently control 68 of the 98 state legislative chambers in the U.S., the most legislative seats the GOP has held since 1920, according to Real Clear Politics. Advocates for an Article V Convention say they are hopeful that many of these states will pass Article V resolutions during their 2016 legislative sessions.
Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, two-thirds of the 50 state legislatures (34) must adopt similar resolutions before a constitutional convention to draft amendments to the U.S. Constitution can be called. Three-fourths of the states (38) are then required to ratify any amendments passed by the convention.
Congress has no role in a Convention of the States other than to select the time and venue, but the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives maintains a public list of states that have passed resolutions in at least one legislative chamber.
In a 2013 article published in the Harvard Law and Public Policy Review, Robert Natelson, senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at the Independence Institute and an expert on Article V, wrote that “if recent history tells us anything, it is that we are not going to restore federalism…merely by choosing the right Presidents, members of Congress, or Supreme Court Justices. The state legislatures will have to do the job.”
Related: Convention of States Activists Praise Gov. Abbott’s ‘Texas Plan’
Related: Coburn: Convention of States Needed Because Washington Will Never Fix Itself

HUNTIN-N-SHOOTIN

Saturday, February 13, 2016