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Russia Reveals New Sub
Carrying Nuclear-Tipped Drone
by Bill Gertz
{ freebeacon.com } ~ Russia unveiled one of its nuclear superweapons on Tuesday launching its first submarine capable of firing high-speed underwater drones armed with massive nuclear warheads... The first Project 09852 submarine described as the "special purpose" nuclear powered Belgorod vessel was launched from Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk in northern Russia, the government news outlet TASS reported. The report included a photograph of a large underwater vessel with a twin tail and wings. According to the report, the submarine will be armed with six nuclear drones that have been labeled Kanyon by the Pentagon and Poseidon by the Russians. The new submarine appears to be a variant of one of Russia's Oscar-class, cruise missile-firing submarines first built in the 1992 and upgraded during the 2010s. The report said details of the new submarine remain secret. Mikhail Budnichenko, director of the shipyard, said during the launch ceremony that "the enterprise’s shipbuilders will fulfill all the tasks of building ships within the established timeframe and with high quality." The submarine will be finished while afloat and TASS quoted a defense source saying the nuclear reactor will be tested later this year, with sea trials set for 2020 and deployment by the end of that year. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who announced the nuclear drone weapon in March 2018, reportedly watched the submarine launch from Moscow via video. The Washington Free Beacon first reported the existence of the nuclear drone in 2015. Defense officials described the Kanyon as a weapon capable of blowing up entire ports and cities, such as Kings Bay, Ga. and Puget Sound in Washington state where U.S. nuclear missile submarines are based...
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Lockheed Martin Working $2.5B
in Hypersonic Weapon Contracts
by Sam LaGrone
{ news.usni.org } ~ Lockheed Martin is working through $2.5 billion in military contracts to develop a variety of hypersonic weapons in a bid to catch up with developments from China and Russia... company chief executive Marillyn Hewson said during a Tuesday earnings calls. The Pentagon has made moves to accelerate the development of hypersonic weapons in its latest guiding documents, and that has driven investment from the company, Hewson said. “We have been investing in hypersonics for many, many years, and as a result of that, that’s why we’re leading in this trend of being able to bring capabilities forward. In terms in how the market is developing, it’s basically threat-driven, if you look at what was in the National Defense Strategy, Missile Defense Review,” she said. “It’s clearly a need for us to not only address hypersonics but also counter-hypersonics as well.” In the Tuesday morning call, Hewson highlighted the late-February contract with the Navy for development and testing of the service’s conventional prompt global strike concept that would notionally create a hypersonic glide vehicle that would ride a ballistic missile launched from a submarine down to its target. “We received an order for over $800 million from the U.S. Navy to design, develop, build and integrate technologies to support the flight test demonstration of a new hypersonic boost-glide weapons system. Lockheed Martin was awarded the Navy’s conventional prompt strike weapons contract and will provide flight articles and support equipment for the systems flight test,” Hewson said...
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NRA: Supreme Court Should Move Forward on
Gun Case Despite NYC Attempt to Undercut Suit
by Stephen Gutowski
{ freebeacon.com } ~ The National Rifle Association on Monday called New York City's proposed change to the gun law set to be examined by the Supreme Court a "feeble attempt to stop the lawsuit over the city’s unconstitutional firearm travel ban... " that shouldn't prevent the Court from hearing the case. "New York City's problem is they think they're regulating a privilege instead of a fundamental, constitutional right," Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement. "The city's attempt to slightly modify its unconstitutional law is a nakedly transparent delay tactic. We are confident that the U.S. Supreme Court will reject New York's shenanigans and allow the case to proceed." The group's statement comes in response to dueling court filings from lawyers representing New York City and the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association. Earlier this month, the city filed a motion informing the Court that a proposed rule change would address the complaints made by the gun-rights activists suing the city. It said the restrictions on traveling outside of the city with a legally owned gun would be reduced and gun owners would be able to legally travel to a few new locations with their firearms. "If adopted in accordance with established procedures, the proposed rule would render this case moot before the parties complete the merits briefing in this case," Dearing said. "For this reason, I also write to request that the Court stay the current briefing schedule pending final action on the proposed rule."...
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Scam of the Century: Scientific
Study Destroys Electric Car Debate
by C. Douglas Golden
{westernjournal.com} ~ If you think you’re saving the environment by driving a Tesla, well, let me let you in on a bit of a secret... You could perhaps emit less carbon if you went with a diesel car. The findings of a new study by a group of German scientists seem counter intuitive at first. They found that electric vehicles in their home country accounted for more emissions than those smoggy diesels. Until, that is, you realize that “zero emissions” vehicles aren’t really so zero emissions.“When CO2 emissions linked to the production of batteries and the German energy mix — in which coal still plays an important role — are taken into consideration, electric vehicles emit 11% to 28% more than their diesel counterparts, according to the study, presented on Wednesday at the Ifo Institute in Munich,” the Brussels Times reported. “Mining and processing the lithium, cobalt and manganese used for batteries consume a great deal of energy,” the report said. “A Tesla Model 3 battery, for example, represents between 11 and 15 tonnes of CO2. “Given a lifetime of 10 years and an annual travel distance of 15,000 kilometres, this translates into 73 to 98 grams of CO2 per kilometre, scientists Christoph Buchal, Hans-Dieter Karl and Hans-Werner Sinn noted in their study.” When you factor in the energy needed to charge the batteries, this ups that total to 156 to 180 grams of CO2 per kilometer.The study’s authors recommended that instead of pushing for the adoption of “zero emission” electric cars, European officials should instead move toward other sources of power for automobiles — namely methane, “whose emissions are one-third less than those of diesel motors.” This, by the way, is hardly the only study that’s questioned whether electric cars are really as environmentally friendly as their proponents claim. A 2017 study by researchers at the University of Michigan found that the amount of CO2 emitted by electric cars varied wildly by country, but it certainly wasn’t zero...
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Sanctuary Jurisdictions Are Not Practicing FederalismLewis Morris: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has proven once again why it is a reliable rubber stamp for the Left. In a seriously flawed ruling late last week, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit unanimously upheld the majority of California’s laws making it a sanctuary state — laws that were deliberately designed to frustrate the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration law.
The ruling was in response to a Justice Department challenge to laws passed in the early days of the anti-Trump, pro-illegal immigrant hysteria. The three laws passed by the California legislature included the following: AB 450, which prohibits private employers from voluntarily cooperating with federal immigration officials; SB 54, which prevents state and local law-enforcement officials from providing information to the feds about the release date of deportable criminal aliens in their custody; and AB 103, which imposes a state-run inspection and review regime on the federal detention of aliens held in facilities under federal contracts.
U.S. District Court Judge John Mendez threw out the Justice Department lawsuit challenging the laws in 2018, and the Trump administration promptly appealed. It is likely to be appealed again, this time to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Ninth Circuit ruling did find that part of AB 103 improperly intruded on federal authority, claiming that certain portions of the law imposing additional economic burden on the federal government were invalid. As for the other laws, the appeals court ruled that California was well within its constitutional right to create laws that prevented it from being compelled to follow federal statute.
George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin agreed with this illogic, claiming that the Ninth Circuit ruling was a triumph for federalism.
They’re all wrong.
While it is a true and established legal principle that the federal government cannot “commandeer” state governments to enforce federal law, that is not what is happening here. In California, and many other state and municipal jurisdictions providing material comfort and legal sanctuary to illegal immigrants, the state government is actively pursuing a course of action to impede the federal government from enforcing federal law.
When states create laws within their jurisdictions that are meant to manage what goes on within their borders, that is federalism. When states create laws to deliberately block the federal government from doing its constitutionally mandated duty, that’s anarchy.
The Supreme Court established back in 1875 that the federal government is the final arbiter when it comes to immigration law, and that the federal government holds the power to enforce that law, partly through its regulation of interstate commerce. Until Trump became president, no one gave too much more thought to the matter. But now that leftists are determined to erase America’s borders in a diabolical attempt to grow their own ranks via illegal immigrants put on the government dole, Democrats will do anything they can to frustrate federal enforcement of immigration. And their friends and cohorts in the courts and the media are going along.
Somin, a usually reliable legal scholar, tried to further bolster his erroneous reading of the Ninth Circuit’s actions by mentioning that there was an “ideologically disparate group of judges” appointed by both Republicans and Democrats who challenged Trump’s actions on immigration. Apparently, this is supposed to add weight to the most recent Ninth Circus fiasco. The only reasonable response to this factoid would be, so what? Many of these judges who have rejected the opportunity to enforce immigration law were appointed by presidents who also failed to do anything to fix our immigration problem. scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack scumbag/liar-nObama all paid a lot of lip service to the issue, but none was willing to put their political reputation on the line to do anything. In fact, scumbag/liar-nObama did more than any previous president to actively subvert our immigration system.
The Trump administration is unlikely to give up the fight just because a “bipartisan” group of judges ruled against it. President Trump has vowed to do something about immigration since the heady days on the campaign trail in 2015 and 2016. By continuing to push for protected borders and enforcement of perfectly reasonable existing immigration laws, he has exposed the enemies of Liberty for their protections and material support for illegal immigrants at the expense of everyone else. ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/62537?mailing_id=4225&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4225&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body
by sundance
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