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At least 40 Iranians were crushed to death Tuesday in a stampede that erupted during the funeral for Qassem Soleimani, the general killed last week in a U.S. airstrike, the country’s state media is reporting.

Wildfires are raging in Australia. We’re going to get an earful about global warming again because Australia has never been hot or prone to wildfires until Donald Trump won the 2016 election, but that’s a separate matter. ABC News peddled some straight fake news about the natural disaster, superimposing the entire continent onto the United States to show the scale of the disaster. The problem is that it’s not accurate. As some, like Washington Free Beacon reporter Alex Griswold, noted this claim is contradicted in the ABC News article [emphasis mine]: The raging fires in Australia have burned over...

China announced it will soon implement harsh new measures requiring all religious personnel to support and implement total submission to the Chinese Communist Party, sparking concern among Chinese Christians. Asia News reports that the new administrative measures will be put in place for Chinese religious groups starting Feb. 1. The measures complete the "Regulations on religious affairs" revised two years ago and implemented on Feb. 1, 2018. The new measures include six chapters and 41 articles dealing with the organization, functions, offices, supervision, projects and economic administration of communities and groups at both a national and local level. Under the...

Actor Joaquin Phoenix asked celebrities to stop taking private jet trips as a way to fight climate change. “It’s really nice that so many people have come up and sent their well wishes to Australia but we have to do more than that. It’s such a beautiful gesture. I’ve not always been a virtuous man. I'm learning so much," Phoenix said when accepting the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama on Sunday evening for his role in JOKER. “It’s great to vote but sometimes we have to take that responsibility on ourselves and make changes and...

It is hard to understand Iran Supreme Leader Khamenei’s blunder in attacking the US Embassy in Baghdad. He either believed Trump was weakened by his impeachment, as western liberal Media breathlessly and continuously reported, or he might have been misled by John Kerry’s incompetent advice (apparently Kerry met again with Khamenei’s emissaries in Paris just few weeks ago). Whatever the reasons, his goal of triggering a limited war with America to rally his people around the regime has failed miserably. (my emphasis.)

Chart from California DOJ report, cropped and scaled by Dean Weingarten A study of the effects of California's institution of Universal Background Checks, along with a state ban of firearms ownership for people who had committed a violent misdemeanor, has been published in The Annals of Epidemiology, volume 30, February, 2020. The study covered a decade before the laws were passed to a decade after the laws was passed. It found the laws had no effect on firearms homicides or suicides. Here is the abstract of the paper,  from Science Direct: PurposeIn 1991, California implemented a law that mandated a...

The answer is exemplified by the 1980 to 1988 Iran-Iraq War, where we allow, even encourage, the fanatics to kill each other, given their seemingly insatiable appetite for internecine warfare, preferably, without an American presence. It is a foreign policy based, not on altruism or quaint notions of “breaking the cycle of violence,” but on leveraging the chaos. That is, the U.S. should begin a transition from policies relying on military intervention to strategically disrupting the plans of our adversaries by exploiting the instability of which the U.S. itself has often been the victim. Even without the Islamic State, the...

I saw my Iranian refugee friend Kaveh in church this morning and asked him what he thought of the killing of Qasem Soleimani. “I’m a little unhappy with it,” he said. “My wife’s unhappy, too. So are our parents in Teheran.” “Why”” “Because he didn’t suffer.” “You’re a Christian, right?” “Right.” “Trust me, brother, he’s suffering,” I said. I’m an ex-pat living next door to the Middle East, and I don’t think most Americans understand what a significant historic event this is. Most Iranians are completely fed up with the oppressive reign of the mullahs, and most Middle East countries...

Let's face it: 2019 is going to be a hard year to beat -- stocks and 401(k) plans up more than 25% on average, wage gains of 3% to 5%, 7 million surplus jobs and the lowest unemployment and inflation rates in nearly 50 years. That's a lot to celebrate. Booms like this don't happen by accident. The imperative is for Republicans to connect the dots between this banner year for the middle class and tax cuts, deregulation policies and pro-America energy production initiatives. So, will 2020 continue the winning streak? The only thing that we know for sure is...

If I learned anything growing up in the Bronx in the 1970s and 1980s it is this: When someone says they are going to kill you, you should believe them. Iranian leaders have been vowing, “Death to America” for four decades. Successive presidents have striven mightily to not only ignore their declaration but also to maintain it lacked the solemnity of true intent. Why else would the smartest president ever, Barack Obama, through his sham legacy foreign policy accomplishment, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agree to cede Iran a secured path to developing nuclear weapons? As a corollary,...

#BAFTAsSoWhite is trending on Twitter after a race row erupted over the all-white acting nominations. Academy boss, Amanda Berry, admitted she was 'very disappointed' over the lack of diversity following Tuesday morning's announcement, which saw not a single actor of colour honoured in the major acting categories. BAFTA was heavily criticised after the nominations were revealed, with movie fans taking to social media with the hashtag to call out Lupita Nyong'o's snub for Us, while Margot Robbie was nominated twice in the Supporting Actress category.

(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch and The Daily Caller News Foundation today released 11 pages of State Department documents revealing a discussion about the use of private email to transmit potentially sensitive information from Christopher Steele, the author of the Clinton-funded, anti-Trump dossier. Judicial Watch obtained the documents in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed on April 25, 2018, on behalf of itself and the Daily Caller News Foundation against the State Department after it failed to respond to three separate FOIA requests (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:18-cv- 00968)). The lawsuit seeks: All records of...

Addressing the British Parliament in 1982, President Ronald Reagan outlined a plan for placing the Soviet Union and Marxism-Leninism on the "ash heap of history." It is an objective President Trump might pursue against the mullahs in Iran, who are subsidizing terrorism in the Middle East and threatening to export it elsewhere. The latest military and verbal volleys between the United States and Iran started when a branch of the Hezbollah terrorist group (called "militants" by some reporters), attacked the American Embassy in Baghdad. Unlike the 2012 terrorist assaults in Benghazi, Libya, during which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Information Officer...

Mike Bloomberg's plan for California - export it. The Democratic presidential candidate and former New York City mayor likes a lot of what he sees in the Golden State and thinks its efforts on climate change, gun control and criminal justice reform seta benchmark for other states to emulate. “I think that California can serve as a great example for the rest of this country," Bloomberg told supporters at the opening of his Los Angeles campaign office. Yes, there are problems, including homelessness, struggling public schools and scarce, costly housing. But California “is something the rest of the country looks...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem (Music in The Bible) Psalm 79 Psalm 79 A psalm of Asaph. 1 O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance;     they have defiled your holy temple,     they have reduced Jerusalem to rubble. 2 They have left the dead bodies of your servants     as food for the birds of the sky,     the flesh of your own people for the animals of the wild. 3 They have poured out blood like water     all around Jerusalem,     and there is no one to bury the dead. 4 We are objects of contempt to our neighbors,     of scorn and derision to...

Obama’s first Secretary of State – before it was Hillary – was former US Senator and Presidential candidate, John Forbes Kerry. In 2009, Kerry’s younger daughter from his first marriage, Dr. Vanessa Bradford Kelly, married Iranian-American physician, Dr. Brian (Behrooz) Vala Nahid. The Best Man at their wedding, Mahdi Zarif, was the son of Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, who acted as Iran’s chief negotiator in official nuclear talks with the US. In other words, Javad Zarif was John Kerry’s counterpart in official Iran nuclear deal negotiations, the same negotiations that eventually ended up with Iran being given 150 Billion...

Iran is considering 13 'revenge scenarios' in retaliation for the US airstrike that killed General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, a top official has said. Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, vowed that even if Tehran opted for the weakest option, it will create an 'historic nightmare for the Americans'. While Shamkhani would not reveal any specific details of the plans, he said all US forces in the Middle East are being considered for strikes.

The Republican president, running for re-election, orders airstrikes against a foreign foe. Back home, street protests erupt, and TV pundits and newspaper editorialists rage; there are even new calls for impeachment. And it’s later learned that the president told his top diplomat, in regard to the aerial bombardment, “The bastards have never been bombed like they’re going to be bombed this time.” These words then provoke critics to call the president, among other epithets, crazy.

Matthew 5:8 "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." What does it mean to be "pure in heart"? The world would say that this is to be truthful in all that you do toward anyone, with no thought of receiving back of what you do to help those that you see need help. There are many, many multitudes of people on earth who do these things, and oh how wonderful this is to see and experience, and this is not the norm of this present age that is plunging further and further into the abyss of...

If you ... intend to be first in, and hit your enemy in the belly, and kick him when he is down, and boil your prisoners in oil (if you take any!), and torture his women and children, then people will keep clear of you." -- John Arbuthnot Fisher, Baron Fisher of Kilverstone (1841-1920).Well. Um. Yes. We can agree, probably, that the mighty commander of the Royal Navy at its mightiest (the early 20th century) was talking for effect, much to the relief of potential captives of the world's mightiest empire. What a point all the same: Don't cross...