TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Happy Indigenous People's Day!
Santa Maria in Portland Harbor
Tom McLaughlin
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Lindsey Graham Invites Rudy Giuliani to
Testify About His Ukraine 'Concerns'
By Susan Jones
{ cnsnews.com } ~ Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has invited President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani... to appear before the committee to air his concerns about Ukraine corruption. Graham made the announcement via Twitter on Tuesday: Have heard on numerous occasions disturbing allegations by @RudyGiuliani about corruption in Ukraine and the many improprieties surrounding the firing of former Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Given the House of Representatives’ behavior, it is time for the Senate to inquire about corruption and other improprieties involving Ukraine. Therefore I will offer to Mr. Giuliani the opportunity to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee to inform the committee of his concerns. No date has been set. Giuliani says Ukraine Prosecutor-General Shokin was told to drop an investigation of Burisma, the Ukraine natural gas company that put then-Vice President loose lips liar-Joe Biden's troubled son Hunter on its board in 2014. Giuliani, in a long Sept. 29 interview with Fox News's "Sunday Morning Futures," said he was "a lawyer defending a client" -- a client accused of Russian collusion -- when he started investigating what went on in Ukraine. He said he didn't go looking for dirt on the loose lips liar-Bidens -- it was "handed" to him as he probed the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Giuliani argues that the 2016 "collusion" wasn't in Russia, it was in Ukraine. "And it was bought and paid for. It was done by scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee," he said....
Trump administration blocks ambassador from testifying in House impeachment deposition
By Adam Shaw
{ foxnews.com } ~ The Trump administration ordered the U.S. ambassador to the European Union not to appear at a scheduled Tuesday deposition on the Ukraine controversy... triggering a fiery new clash with House Democrats amid their impeachment inquiry. President Trump dismissed the deposition as a "kangaroo court" as he defended the decision to block Gordon Sondland from appearing at the closed-door session on Capitol Hill. But the move, first reported by the New York Times, prompted new warnings from Democrats that such acts will be seen as an obstruction of their investigation into the controversy surrounding Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “The failure to produce this witness, the failure to produce these documents, we consider yet additional strong evidence of obstruction of the constitutional functions of Congress,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman scumbag-Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told reporters Tuesday morning. scumbag-Schiff and other top Democratic committee chairmen later released a statement saying they indeed consider the administration’s “interference” to be “obstruction of the impeachment inquiry” and they plan to subpoena Sondland “for both his testimony and documents.” The statement said they learned Tuesday morning from Sondland’s attorneys that the State Department left a voicemail at 12:30 a.m. telling them he could not appear. Further, they said the attorneys reported that Sondland turned communications sought by the committees over to the department, which “is withholding them from the Committees, in defiance of our subpoena to Secretary Mike Pompeo.” An attorney for Sondland also said in a statement that the order not to appear came from the State Department. Attorney Robert Luskin said Sondland, who had agreed to appear voluntarily for the closed session, is required to follow the department's direction. No reason for the direction was cited, he said. Luskin said Sondland "is profoundly disappointed that he will not be able to testify." His statement said: "Ambassador Sondland hopes that the issues raised by the State Department that preclude his testimony will be resolved promptly. He stands ready to testify on short notice, whenever he is permitted to appear."....
Decision to Block Sondland’s Testimony ‘Based
on the Unfair and Partisan Process’
scumbag-Schiff Has Been Running
By Melanie Arter
{ cnsnews.com } ~ Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said Tuesday that he understands why the State Department blocked U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland from testifying... before the House Intelligence Committee in a closed-door meeting as part of the impeachment inquiry. House Intelligence Committee Chairman scumbag-Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Sondland had documents related to Ukraine on his “personal device,” but the State Department is withholding it from the committee. “We understand the reason why the State Department decided not to have Ambassador Sondland appear today. It’s based on the unfair and partisan process that Mr. scumbag-Schiff has been running, you think about what the Democrats are trying to do impeach the president of the United States 13 months prior to an election based on an anonymous whistleblower with no firsthand knowledge with a bias against the president,” Jordan told reporters on Capitol Hill. “The guy running the process Chairman scumbag-Schiff didn't even tell us that he had met with the whistleblower prior to the whistleblower filing the complaint,” he added. “scumbag-Adam Schiff didn't tell us - the way he treated … Ambassador Volker in this interview last week, that treatment is the reason why the administration and the State Department said we’re not going to subject Ambassador Sondland to the same treatment,” the congressman said. Jordan said Republicans on the committee were “looking forward” to hearing Sondland’s testimony, because they thought it would “reinforce” what former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, who is also a former ambassador to NATO, told the committee....
Hey, Congress: Take Back Your War Powers,
Or Shut Up About Syria
By David Harsanyi
{ thefederalist.com } ~ If you want to stop Donald Trump from making unilateral decisions regarding war and peace, then stop letting all presidents make unilateral decisions about war and peace... It’s really quite simple. Trump can abruptly pull back U.S. troops from northern Syria because Congress, having abdicated its foreign policy responsibilities long ago, has no leverage to stop him. When Congress passed the War Powers Resolution as the Vietnam War was winding down, it gave presidents the power to send troops abroad for 60 days in response to any “national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” If the president failed to gain congressional support for the deployment, he would have another 30 days to pull back troops. Congress is the institution vested with the power to declare wars, to debate where we send troops, and decide which conflicts are funded. Presidents have been ignoring this arrangement, abuse authorizations for the use of military force (AUMFs), and imbue themselves with the power to engage in conflicts wherever they like, without any coherent endgame, and without any buy-in from Congress. Congress, in turn, has shown no interest in genuinely challenging executive power, because its members are far more concerned with political self-preservation. Ignoring abuse shields them from tough choices and ensuing criticism—even as they use war as a partisan cudgel. Even if you don’t believe all these conflicts rise to an Article I declaration, and I don’t, the more accountability there is in foreign entanglements the better. Right now we have little genuine debate or consensus building—in a nation that already exhibits exceptionally little interest in foreign policy—regarding the deployment of our troops, almost always in perpetuity, around the world. It’s a bipartisan problem. Barack scumbag/liar-nObama, whose political star rose due to his opposition to the Iraq war, was perhaps our worst offender, circumventing Congress and relying on a decade-old AUMF, which he invoked 19 times during his presidency, to justify a half-hearted intervention against ISIS not al-Qaeda in Syria not Afghanistan... https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/08/hey-congress-take-back-your-war-powers-or-shut-up-about-syria/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=87b36f4f23-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-87b36f4f23-83771801 .
The Democratic Primary Has Already Fallen Apart
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Iran to Sue U.S. Over Breach of Nuclear Deal
by Adam Kredo
{ freebeacon.com } ~ Iran is readying to sue the United States in the International Court of Justice over President Donald Trump’s decision to abandon the landmark nuclear deal... and reapply tough new sanctions on Tehran, according to officials in Iran’s judiciary. Laya Joneidi, Iran’s vice president for legal affairs, announced on Monday that Iran will bring charges against the United States and seek an undisclosed amount of monetary damages as a result of America’s "breach of the nuclear deal," according to the country’s state-controlled press. With Iran’s economy on the ropes as a result of the Trump administration’s sanctions, Tehran is seeking multiple avenues to recoup lost revenue. Iran has won monetary awards in the past for suits brought before the ICJ. The scumbag/liar-nObama administration sought to settle several pending cases at the court that resulted in Tehran being awarded hard currency. Iran also has sued the Trump administration in the ICJ over the recent imposition of sanctions, claims the United States has described as "baseless." Iran is ready to provide the court with documentation about its loss of revenue under the Trump administration sanctions and will argue that the country deserves to be compensated for these losses, according to the latest statements by Iranian officials. Meanwhile, Iran continues to breach key provisions of the nuclear accord, which remains upheld by multiple Western nations. This includes violations of the amount of nuclear materials it can stockpile in the country as well as revamped work on the advanced enrichment of uranium, the key component in a nuclear weapon....
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Happy Indigenous People's Day!
Santa Maria in Portland Harbor
Tom McLaughlin
{ tommclaughlin.blogspot.com } ~ What struck me most about the Santa Maria was how tiny she is. A replica sailed into Portland Harbor last month and I paid ten dollars to go aboard and look around. More astonishing still was remembering that the Nina and the Pinta — the two caravels sailing with the Santa Maria — were even smaller. There’s only one enclosed space on the biggest ship, and that was where the captain slept. Its fifty-two crew members slept on the open deck of the 117-foot ship, only going below with the cargo when the weather was bad.
Good Columbus
Americans my age were taught to revere Columbus for his intrepid maritime leadership sailing across uncharted waters, holding a mutinous crew together, and discovering what we call America. Now school children are taught that Columbus was a money-grubbing, European, white guy who slaughtered and enslaved innocent Native Americans who only wanted to help him and his men. When Democrats took over Maine government in 2018, they abolished Columbus Day and ordered Maine citizens to celebrate “Indigenous Citizens Day” instead.
Bad Columbus
Not only that, schoolchildren are now taught that Columbus was too dumb to know he had bumped into two previously unknown continents and thought he was in the Indies. So, he called the people he found “Indians,” and they continued to be called that for the next five centuries until progressives insisted they be called Native Americans. Whenever I meet someone who is a real American Indian and looks nothing like Senator Elizabeth dinky-Warren(liar), I ask whether he or she wishes to be called Indian or Native American. So far, all have said, “Indian.” Next time I’ll also ask: “How about calling you ’Indigenous Person’?” but I think I know what the answer will be.
Portland Progressives demonstrate
I didn’t see any left-wing demonstrators down there on Commercial Street while I was touring the ship and it doesn’t take much to get them cranked up enough to staple signs to sticks and march down the street chanting. I expected the arrival of Columbus’s ship would have been enough to turn them out. Doing research for this article, I learned that a replica of Nina sank last April in Corpus Christi Texas, but the articles I read said nothing about foul play and the ship was eventually re-floated.
And of course, Christmas has been under siege by the left for decades now. Public schools no longer mention the word, calling it “Winter Holiday” instead. People paying homage to political correctness are hesitant to say, “Merry Christmas” outside their own household, wish people “Happy Holidays.” It all makes me wonder: what’s next? Labor Day? The diminishing number of unionized workers still marks the occasion but most of our populace gives it a big ho-hum.
It’ll be up to the Spanish now to decide whether they’ll pay future voyages of the Santa Maria to Portland, Maine.
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