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President Trump on Wednesday blasted California Gov. Gavin Newsom for halting executions for the state’s 737 death row inmates. “Defying voters, the Governor of California will halt all death penalty executions of 737 stone cold killers. Friends and families of the always forgotten VICTIMS are not thrilled, and neither am I!” Trump tweeted early Wednesday. The tweet comes hours before Newsom, a Democrat, is expected to sign an executive order that would halt all executions at San Quentin State Prison, closing a new execution chamber. The order would also withdraw lethal injection regulations. The order, though, would leave all convictions...

A group of conservative street artists hijacked a billboard in Hollywood on Friday morning and took aim at CNN, which so happened to be across the street. Known as The Faction, their latest project slammed CNN and its president Jeff Zucker for its coverage of this week’s summit in Hanoi, Vietnam between President Donald Trump and North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un. The billboard, which referred to CNN as “Communist News Network,” dawned the phrase “Keep Korea divided” with an asterisk that read “because OrangeManBad.” It also featured an image of Jeff Zucker, whose title was “CEO, CNNPC,” a reference...

Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday that he will propose an increase in the gasoline tax — and it could be a sizable one — to fix and improve Ohio’s crumbling roads and bridges. The first-year Republican would not reveal the size of the proposed hike. DeWine told reporters the recommended increase would maintain the status quo of highway maintenance and some major projects. That would require another $600 million per year, or an additional 14 cents a gallon — a 50 percent increase in the 28-cent tax — based on figures from the Department of Transportation. The elevation will be...

“At that time, [marching] from Tirtza, Menachem subdued Tiphsah and all who were in it, and its territory; and because it did not surrender, he massacred [its people] and ripped open all its pregnant women.” II Kings 15:16 President Trump held a conference call with 4,500 participants on Thursday in which he reportedly referred to late-term abortions as “execution.” During the invitation-only conference call, the president discussed recent attempts by Democratic lawmakers to advance a pro-abortion agenda. In particular, the president discussed a bill recently signed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo which allows abortions after 24 weeks if the...

US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell on Friday demanded an independent investigation into a German journalist who was caught making up key details in a series of reports for Der Spiegel news magazine. He said the revelations “are troubling to the US Embassy, particularly because several of these fake stories focused on US policies and certain segments of the American people.” He said he wrote to the editors of the respected news weekly calling for an “independent and transparent investigation.” He said it was clear the US had been the victim of institutional bias at the magazine, saying the outlet...

Archaeologists now know whodunnit — the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus — after uncovering a 2,000-year-old mass burial ground in the municipality’s backyard Evidence of a mass slaying, including cruel beheadings, committed during the bloody reign of the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BCE) was recently uncovered in a courtyard next to the Jerusalem municipality during excavations of an ancient water cistern. “We removed from the pit more than 20 neck vertebrae which were cut by a sword,” said Dr. Yossi Nagar, an anthropologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). “We discovered in the pit, bodies and body parts of infants...

""ISIS leader responsible for infamous execution of downed pilot who was burned alive in a cage is captured"" The ISIS commander behind the brutal execution of a Jordanian pilot who was burned to death in a cage in 2015 is among the four senior ISIS leaders captured last week in Iraq. Saddam al-Jamal is one of the most senior ISIS commanders to be detained so far and was tipped as a future leader of the death cult. He gained a reputation for brutality as an ISIS commander with a taste for personally beheading prisoners.

Execution by cannon was a method of execution in which the victim was typically tied to the mouth of a cannon which was then fired. The prisoner is generally tied to a gun with the upper part of the small of his back resting against the muzzle. When the gun is fired, his head is seen to go straight up into the air some forty or fifty feet; the arms fly off right and left, high up in the air, and fall at, perhaps, a hundred yards distance; the legs drop to the ground beneath the muzzle of the gun;...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Chinese government "systematically dismantled" CIA spying operations in China starting in late 2010 and killed or imprisoned at least a dozen CIA sources over the next two years, The New York Times reported Saturday. The newspaper cited 10 current and former U.S. officials, who described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades. They spoke on condition of anonymity. The report said U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies scrambled to stem the damage, but were bitterly divided over the cause of the breach. Some investigators were convinced there was a mole within the CIA,...

The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward. Current and former American officials described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades. It set off a scramble in Washington’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to contain the fallout, but investigators were bitterly divided over the cause. Some were convinced that a mole within the C.I.A. had betrayed the United States. Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the C.I.A. used...

A few months after lefty activists crowded Washington D.C. for the Women's March, activists from many of those same organizations went to bat for a serial rapist and murderer. Ledell Lee's victims were all women.  While he was on trial for the rape and murder of Debra Reese, the testimony of three of his rape victims was presented. Lee had made a habit of knocking on doors and asking to borrow some tools to see whether a woman's husband might be home. Debra Reese called her mother and told her that a strange man had tried to borrow some tools....

Two inmates received lethal injections on the same gurney Monday night about three hours apart as Arkansas completed the nation's first double execution since 2000, just days after the state ended a nearly 12-year hiatus on administering capital punishment. While the first inmate, Jack Jones, 52, was executed on schedule, shortly after 7 p.m., attorneys for the second, Marcel Williams, 46, convinced a federal judge minutes later to briefly delay his execution over concerns about how the earlier one was carried out. They claimed Jones "was moving his lips and gulping for air," an account the state's attorney general denied,...

Full title................... The U.S. Supreme Court is refusing to block the first of two scheduled Arkansas lethal injections in one night............

Almost two years after Texas tried to import an execution drug from overseas, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ruled Thursday that the drug can’t be admitted into the United States. In July 2015, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice tried to import 1,000 vials of sodium thiopental, an anesthetic that the state has previously used in executions, but the FDA seized the drugs at a Houston airport and has held them ever since. The federal agency has maintained that the import of the drug is illegal because it is not currently approved in the U.S. In a statement, the...

Among those convicted and sentenced to death on Monday was Mohamed Badie, the Brotherhood's spiritual guide. If his sentence is confirmed, it would make him the most senior Brotherhood figure sentenced to death since one of the group's leading ideologues, Sayed Qutb, was sentenced and executed in 1966. In announcing the 683 death sentences for violence and the killing of policemen, Judge Said Youssef on Monday also said he was referring his ruling to the Grand Mufti, the nation's top Islamic official — a requirement under Egyptian law, but one that is considered a formality. It does, however, give a...

Putting convicted criminals to death is an issue Sen. Tim Kaine said he had to “grapple” with when he served as governor of Virginia. Kaine chose the death penalty, not abortion, as the issue that posed the biggest conflict with his Roman Catholic faith. “For me, the hardest struggle in my faith life was, the Catholic Church is against the death penalty and so am I,” Kaine said at Tuesday night’s debate. “But I was governor of a state, and the state law said that there was a death penalty for crimes if the jury determined them to be heinous....

According to a report from Iraqi News, the Islamic State staged the public execution of six youths from a “resistance faction” in Mosul by handcuffing them and then killing them with a welding machine, before a large crowd of onlookers. “This came in order to create a state of fear and panic among the people,” said a source from within Mosul. The Toronto Sun explains that the Islamic State often uses the term “resistance group” to describe groups of young people who spray graffiti on the walls of occupied cities. Fox News reported the six boys, whose exact ages are...

ISIS has marked Eid by hanging prisoners upside down from meat hooks and 'butchering them like sheep' in a gruesome new execution video. In one sickening scene, men accused of being US spies are filmed having their throats cut in a slaughter house in Deir ez-Zor, north-eastern Syria. The video, named 'The Making of Illusion' was released on the first day of the Muslim holy time of Eid al-Adha and, bizarrely, features short clips showing actors Simon Pegg and Tom Cruise in the 2015 movie Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

A little, that is. Shadi Hamid writes in the LA Times about why Islam isn't like other faiths -- as I've long been explaining here. He explains the reason the Quran is different from the Bible in very articulate terms: Contrary to what many think, there is no Christian equivalent to Koranic "inerrancy," even among far-right evangelicals. Muslims believe the Koran is not only God's word, but God's actual speech -- in other words, every single letter and word in the Koran comes directly from God. This seemingly semantic difference has profound implications. If the Koran is God's speech, and...

The Iranian government is relying more and more on mass executions in order to control its citizens. Iranian officials used to keep their executions secret. However, over the last year since the nuclear agreement was reached, Iranian authorities have been showing no fear or concern when it comes to publicly announcing that they have mass-executed a group of people. Iran is ranked the first in the world, followed by China, when it comes to hanging people. The mullahs have started the month August by mass executing at least 25 people who are from a religious minority. Not only did Iran...