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In tense testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) on Friday, the inspector general for federal spy agencies refused to disclose why his office backdated secret changes to key whistleblower forms and rules in the wake of an anti-Trump whistleblower complaint filed in August

President Trump has announced that he is withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria. The reaction to this decision has raised cries of alarm across the political spectrum. I claim no expertise in international affairs but will share some thoughts on this latest noisy crisis of faith (and unfaith) in our president. Although it is easy to pick and choose quotes from America's founders and original thinkers, President Trump's actions seem to line up with the thinking of several of these men. Thomas Jefferson described what he saw as America's role in the world thus: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all...

Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued New York could have changed their law at any time in the past half-decade and only chose to do so in order to avoid defending the statute before the Supreme Court– which could lead to a win for gun rights. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rebuffed continued efforts by New York officials to hold off on a challenge to the City’s restrictive gun laws. New York had asked the nation’s high court to turn away the case brought by three local gun owners who argue the City’s “premises permit” scheme — which...

Twitter has apologized for briefly allowing a hashtag that translates to 'Die Trump' to trend in Turkey. '#MahvolursunTrump' began trending on Twitter on Monday after US President Donald Trump threatened to 'destroy and obliterate' the Turkish economy if he deemed the nation's military action in Syria 'off limits'. 'This phrase should not have appeared in trends, and we're sorry for this mistake,' a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement to DailyMail.com. 'At times, we do prevent certain content from trending and we have now done so with this trend.' The Twitter trend came hours after the White House announced Sunday...

Hillary Clinton refused to let global politics or a couple of debilitating earthquakes get in the way of her daughter's big day. Bryan Rafanelli, the event planner tasked with creating Chelsea Clinton's picture perfect wedding, said in an interview with Page Six that the former first lady made herself available for the 'three-hour tastings' - despite the fact that she was also serving as Secretary of State. 'It was amazing that’s how devoted they were in this one moment in time,' said Rafanelli. 'For their only daughter, they were like, "We’re gonna be present for this" … and they showed...

The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released volume two of its Russia investigation, which concluded that Russians sought "to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin," according to a committee press release. The committee in the report focused on Russia's use of social media to influence the 2016 election, led by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency (IRA). "The Committee found that IRA social media activity was overtly and almost invariably supportive of then-candidate Trump to the detriment of Secretary Clinton’s campaign," according to the...

(CNN)Dick's Sporting Goods has destroyed $5 million of the chain's gun inventory, its CEO said. After finding out that Dick's had sold the Parkland shooter a shotgun, CEO Edward Stack decided last year the company would no longer sell firearm to anyone under 21. Dick's announced it would destroy its inventory of weapons, rather than allow them to be sold by another retailer. Since then, about $5 million of the chain's gun inventory has been turned into scrap metal, Stack said in an interview with CBS. "All this about, you know, how we were anti-Second Amendment, you know, 'we don't...

Former "National Review" columnist Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes of the now-defunct Weekly Standard have launched a conservative media company called The Dispatch. “We aim to make The Dispatch a place that thoughtful readers can come for conservative, fact-based news and commentary that doesn’t come either through the filter of the mainstream media or the increasingly boosterish media on the right. Importantly, we want to build a genuine community, with regular engagement between those of us who work here and the readers and listeners who will pay our salaries," Goldberg and Hayes write on the company's website. Visitors of the...

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver issued a new statement Tuesday as the sports league battled accusations from lawmakers in both parties that it had bowed to pressure from China in expressing regret over an executive's tweet of support for demonstrators in Hong Kong. Silver said he recognized that the league's initial statement had left people "angered, confused or unclear on who we are or what the NBA stands for," and then insisted it would continue to offer support for free expression by players and executives. At the same time, Silver made it clear the NBA would not be taking sides in...

[Catholic Caucus] Synod’s day one features ecology, married priests, an Amazon rite and blowback Pope Francis walks in procession on the occasion of the Amazon synod at the Vatican, Monday, Oct. 7, 2019. Pope Francis opened a three-week meeting on preserving the rainforest and ministering to its native people as he fended off attacks from conservatives who are opposed to his ecological agenda. (Credit: Claudio Peri/ANSA via AP.) ROME - During the two-year run-up to the event, Pope Francis’s Oct. 6-27 Synod of Bishops on the Amazon was expected to generate strong ecological consensus, firm support for indigenous cultures and...

House Democrats are considering masking the identity of a partisan CIA officer behind a so-called “whistleblower” complaint regarding President Donald Trump’s telephone call with Ukraine from Republicans on Capitol Hill, according to a report. The Washington Post, citing three officials familiar with the matter, said Monday that Democrats are concerned Republicans will leak the so-called “whistleblower’s” identify upon testimony before House and Senate investigators. Democrats overseeing the logistics of the testimony for the House impeachment inquiry are discussing a location away from the Capitol as well as a staff-only session that would prevent lawmakers from attending and asking questions. Aides...

Despite being the start of meteorological autumn, September felt more like a summer swelter across much of the contiguous United States. The month was also drier than normal, but 2019 continued its soggy stretch with the wettest January through September period (YTD) ever recorded. The U.S. also experienced four new weather disasters since May, each exceeding $1 billion: Hurricane Dorian, Tropical Storm Imelda, a southern/eastern severe weather outbreak, and flooding of the Arkansas River that impacted Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas. Here are more highlights from NOAA’s latest monthly U.S. Climate Report: Climate by the numbers September 2019 The average temperature...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope Francis and Schism The Church, in her long history, has never been confronted with the situation like the one in which she now finds herself.  Pope Francis recently spoke of a possible schism within the Church, a schism that does not frighten him.  We have had many schisms in the past, he says, and there will be schisms in the future.  So, there is nothing to fear in the present.  However, it is the nature of the present possible schism that is new, and this unprecedented new schism is frightening.One cannot help but think that Francis is...

The Left to America’s Children: Your Past is Terrible, and Your Future is Terrible By Dennis Prager Published on October 8, 2019 • A rule of life is that everything the left touches it ruins: art, music, Christianity, Judaism, race relations, male-female relations, universities, high schools, elementary schools, late-night comedy, sports, liberty, journalism, the Boy Scouts, national economies, language and everything else it influences.The left, not liberalism. (I have written a column and done a PragerU video on the differences between liberalism and leftism.)To this list, we can now add childhood and children.The left robs children of their innocence and has...

With a camera hidden in a hollowed-out Bible, peeking through the “O” of the word “Holy,” and a pair of rigged reading glasses, Scott Whitney secretly filmed the world behind bars, inside one of Florida’s notoriously dangerous prisons. For four years, the 34-year-old convicted drug trafficker captured daily life on contraband cameras at the Martin Correctional Institution. He smuggled footage dating back to 2017 out of the prison, and titled the documentary “Behind Tha Barb Wire.” The video — given to the Miami Herald — allows the public to see with their own eyes the violence, rampant drug use and...

Protesters forced acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan to end his speech at a recent event in Washington, D.C. On Monday, McAleenan was invited to give remarks and then participate in a discussion session at an annual immigration policy meeting hosted by Georgetown Law. However, protesters kept standing up, holding banners and shouting to prevent the acting secretary from being heard by other attendees.

Some Republicans, including Trump allies such as Sen Lindsey Graham, have joined Democrats in sharply criticizing the president's decision to withdraw an unannounced number of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria. But Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) strongly supports the president's move, even if the "neocon war caucus of the Senate" -- Paul's words -- does not. "We haven't been able to find peace for 18 years in Afghanistan," Paul told Fox News's Neil Cavuto in a telephone interview on Monday. "So I certainly don't think we're going to find peace in Syria. But I do think a couple of hundred people...

President Trump has clearly been itching to leave Syria for months, once dubbing it nothing but "sand and death." As Trump himself was at pains to point out, he was elected on a promise to get out of "these ridiculous endless wars." But the speed of his decision to withdraw US forces from northern Syria threatens to wreck almost every goal the US has in the Middle East just now. Firstly, the sudden withdrawal of US forces -- designed to leave their erstwhile allies the Syrian Kurds as exposed to a Turkish advance as possible -- comes just as a...

VIDEO If a law firm is representing at least two supposed whistleblowers, why would they have the whistleblower with only second hand information come out first versus the supposed whistleblower who claimed to have first hand information? This video examines the ABSURD dynamics of this situation. A situation in which serial whistleblowers who are all intelligence officials are blowing the whistle on something OUTSIDE their own department. When has this ever happened before?

I introduce Surah XXX, and explain the historical context of Arab attacks and conquests of the Byzantine Empire.