Day: January 28, 2017

Trump, Putin have long-awaited call; McCain urges continued sanctions

U.S. President Donald Trump’s first conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin since taking office is causing concern among European allies and consternation among fellow Republicans about the future of U.S. penalties imposed on Moscow. Trump was noncommittal before Saturday’s scheduled telephone call about whether he was considering lifting the economic sanctions.

Growing fallout from Trump’s new immigration crackdown

The fallout grew Saturday from President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown as U.S. legal permanent residents and visa-holders from seven Muslim-majority countries who had left the United States found they could not return for 90 days. It was a period of limbo for an unknown number of non-American citizens from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia or Yemen now barred from the country where they were studying or had lived, perhaps for years.

In wake of Trump, Holland pledges millions to international birth control fund

The Dutch government announced Saturday it’s putting 10 million euros into an international fund it has launched to finance access to birth control, abortion and sex education for women in developing nations after President Donald Trump cut U.S. funding for such services. Lilianne Ploumen, the minister for foreign trade and development co-operation, said she was making the initial contribution and launched the fund – “She Decides – Global Fundraising Initiative” – with a website .

Defense Secretary Mattis’ first message to the troops tells you…

Defense Secretary James Mattis put out his first all-hands message to everyone in the Department of Defense on Friday, and it tells you everything you need to know about how he intends to lead. Mattis, a retired Marine general revered by his troops, probably made a good first impression among the roughly three million men and women who make up the active duty, reserve, and civilian force.

A look at the reported top contenders for the Supreme Court

A look at Neil Gorsuch, Thomas Hardiman and William Pryor, the federal appeals court judges who are seen as the leading candidates to be President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court. Each was appointed to the appellate bench by President George W. Bush, appeared on Trump’s list of 21 possible choices that he made public during the campaign and has met with Trump to discuss the vacancy that arose when Justice Antonin Scalia died nearly a year ago.

When America was great

A Syrian woman gestures through her tent window at an informal refugee camp in the eastern Lebanese town of Marj on Jan. 28, the day after President Trump temporarily banned entry of refugees from Syria and six other predominantly Muslim countries. Daoud Kuttab, an award-winning Palestinian journalist, is a former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University, a columnist for Al-Monitor and the director of the Community Media Network in Amman, Jordan.

Federal court allows appeal for killer of TCU professor

A federal appeals court is allowing attorneys for a 44-year-old convicted killer to move forward with an appeal that questions whether he’s eligible for the death penalty for the 2004 suffocation of retired college professor abducted in Fort Worth. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled Edward Lee Busby may pursue arguments that he’s mentally impaired, making him ineligible for execution, and that he’s had deficient legal help at his trial and in earlier stages of his appeals.

Trump has two paths he can take on marijuana legalization – …

After his inauguration on January 20, Trump signed an executive order that directs federal agencies to start rolling back the Affordable Care Act, revived two controversial oil pipelines, staged a war on the media, and played a game of chicken with the president of Mexico. But we still don’t know much about Trump’s plans for marijuana legalization.

Women of courage at Trump’s inauguration

One of the most poignant moments in the entire event was the presence and demeanour of Hillary Clinton, who lost her presidential candidacy to Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries of 2008 and to Donald Trump in the presidential poll of 2016. Many observers say that one of the reasons she lost to both candidates is that she was unable to communicate directly to the people and feel their pain.

A mixed bag of letter writers

Often lacking the time or the mood to give an answer by letter, the possibility of writing a short comment was a great solution and very convenient to vent one’s opinion. Indeed, deleting this possibility is a hindrance to the freedom of expression.

Judge puts N.C. Medicaid litigation on hold Updated at

Litigation between Republican state lawmakers, federal officials and new Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration on his effort to expand Medicaid to hundreds of thousands of North Carolina residents has been put on hold for a couple of months. A federal judge delayed the proceedings Friday, as requested this week by GOP legislative leaders and federal health regulators now part of President Donald Trump’s administration.

CNN Has IDD

Or just CLICK THIS LINK to start shopping for anything. Don’t worry – anything you buy through it will pay Daily Pundit a commission! Thanks! CNN is again bemoaning President Trump’s lack of love for the media, and one of their panelists, Obama biographer Michael D’Antonio, even made the claim that our president has “attention deficit disorder” over his media strategy.

Republican lawmakers worry if ‘Trumpcare’ doesn’t deliver

Republican lawmakers are fearful about the potential political fallout if their eventual replacement of President Barack Obama’s health law doesn’t deliver, and they didn’t hold back at their recent policy conference. “We’d better be sure that we’re prepared to live with the market we’ve created,” Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., was quoted as saying in Saturday’s Washington Post, one of the media organizations that obtained an audio recording of a private session at last week’s GOP strategy retreat in Philadelphia, “That’s going to be called ‘Trumpcare.’

US suspends immigration program helping non-Muslim Iranians

In this Jan. 26, 2017 file photo, President Donald Trump speaks at the House and Senate GOP lawmakers at the annual policy retreat in Philadelphia. Many citizens of Muslim-majority countries affected by President Donald Trump’s curbs on travel to the United States say they were hardly surprised the restrictions rank among his first orders of business.

Donald Trump, the Religious Right’s Trojan Horse

This time a year ago, leaders of the old guard religious right were determined to stop Donald J. Trump from winning the Iowa caucuses. James Dobson, the founder and former president of Focus on the Family, and Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, joined Senator Ted Cruz as he campaigned in the state.

Monday, Jan. 30, 2017: Lead ammo ban on federal land wrong, Maine…

As a hunter and conservationist, I am disturbed to learn that one of the final acts of the outgoing director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was to ban the use of lead ammunition on federal land, including wildlife refuges, park lands where hunting is permitted, and other land the agency administers. Worse, the ban was effective immediately.

Execution in America: Capital punishment on decline as states struggle to find lethal drugs

The stop-and-start nature of U.S. executions in recent years hit another speed bump this week when a federal judge found Ohio’s latest lethal injection procedure unconstitutional. The ruling by Magistrate Judge Michael Merz went far beyond nitpicking the state’s procedures, and on one point raised potential problems for at least three other states that use the disputed sedative midazolam.

PM has strong message for SA

State Liberal leader Steven Marshall, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull with the Worlds Strongest Man Luke Reynolds in Port Lincoln. Picture: Ivon Perrin PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull was in SA on Saturday where he met one of Australia’s strongest men – but despite his optimism, it might not help him in his dealings with the world’s most powerful bloke.

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As we pointed out throughout the months leading up to the election, crowd size matters. President Trump was crushing Hillary Clinton in number of rallies and number of participants at his rallies when compared to Clinton.

Trump orders strict new refugee screening, citing terrorists

President Donald Trump has barred all refugees from entering the United States for four months, and indefinitely halted any from Syria, saying the ban is needed to keep out “radical Islamic terrorists.” The order Friday immediately suspended a program that last year resettled in the U.S. roughly 85,000 people displaced by war, political oppression, hunger and religious prejudice.

Mike’s Blog Round Up

Sidney Schwab : Eventually even Trump’s key people will tire of his lies, but will they have the guts to do anything? We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site.

The USPS will pay tribute to fashion designer Oscar de la Renta with an unusual 11-stamp pane.

The United States Postal Service will pay tribute to fashion designer Oscar de la Renta with an unusual 11-stamp pane that will be issued Feb. 16. The stamp pane includes a large background photograph of de la Renta with a single nondenominated forever stamp that duplicates the black-and-white portrait for its vignette. The remaining 10 forever stamps in the set are grouped together in the lower half of the pane as two horizontal rows of five, showing “details from several of his most exquisite gowns,” according to the Postal Service.

Codger column: Marching orders

Yet there he was last Saturday, stepping along toward Trump Tower with 500,000 like-minded citizens including his wife, Crone, and their pals from North Cartwright Road, Valerie and Marty Levenstein. Since the new president had already been inaugurated the day before, this was about reminding him, his appointees and other elected officials that there were issues we were concerned about and for which we would hold them accountable.

House to take first crack at repealing Obama-era regulations

Determined to reverse eight years of a Democratic administration, House Republicans are on track to overturn a handful of rules finalized in President Barack Obama’s final months in office to deal with climate change, federal contracting and background checks for gun ownership. Opponents criticize the regulations as job killers that will hold the U.S. economy back.

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A recent piece in The Atlantic – aimed at undermining the use of ultrasounds to convince people that infants in the womb are human – was so filled with errors that after its publication the magazine was forced to issue a slew of “we regret” addenda to the piece to apologize for the many inaccurate assertions made by the author. Thus far no less than four corrections have been added to the January 24 article, which tends to upend the author Moira Weigel’s political stance that a fetus isn’t fully human at certain stages of development.

Ap Fact Check: Trump Cites Man’s Dubious Voter Fraud Claims

President Donald Trump has pressed his widely debunked claims of massive voter fraud by encouraging the work of a Texas man who has offered no evidence to support his claim that millions of people illegally voted in the 2016 election. Trump tweeted on Friday: “Look forward to seeing the final results of VoteStand.

FBI request for Twitter account data may have overstepped legal guidelines

The FBI appeared to go beyond the scope of existing legal guidance in seeking certain kinds of internet records from Twitter as recently as last year, legal experts said, citing two warrantless surveillance orders the social media company published on Friday. Twitter said its disclosures were the first time the company had been allowed to publicly reveal the secretive orders, which were delivered with gag orders when they were issued in 2015 and 2016.