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Our task is not one of producing persuasive propaganda; Christianity shows its greatness when it is hated by the world.

Susan Rice's bizarre Inauguration Day email about that meeting helps explain the campaign of leaks, lies, and obstruction that followed. Information released in the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case it brought against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn confirms the significance of a January 5, 2017, meeting at the Obama White House. It was at this meeting that Obama gave guidance to key officials who would be tasked with protecting his administration’s utilization of secretly funded Clinton campaign research, which alleged Trump was involved in a treasonous plot to collude with Russia, from being discovered or stopped by the incoming...

Global scandals now labeled Russiagate, Spygate, and what President Trump calls “Obamagate” shook the political world, but hit me closer to home. I’m the reason the so-called FBI “spy” at the center of Spygate, Stefan Halper, met Carter Page, the alleged “Russian Asset” in Russiagate’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. On May 19, 2018, this realization blindsided me in London as I was about to fly out for my wedding. The New York Times, NBC News and other sources had outed my PhD supervisor, Stefan Halper, as a spy known to the UK’s MI6 intelligence service as “The Walrus.” It didn’t seem...

In their final encounter during the transition following the 2016 election, Donald Trump’s incoming national-security adviser surprised Barack Obama’s outgoing national-security adviser. Susan Rice writes in her memoir that the Michael Flynn she was dealing with had nothing in common with the firebrand she had watched leading a “lock her up” chant against Hillary Clinton at the Republican National Convention a few months earlier. Flynn, a retired general and the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was respectful and subdued, eager for her advice. When Rice extended her hand and wished him the best of luck, Flynn asked her...

Former spook John Schindler pronounced on Twitter Thursday night that the CIA is trying to take out President-elect Donald Trump before he is sworn in as president next Friday, January 20. Schindler has long accused Trump of being a Russian stooge. Schindler’s bio for his Observer column reads, “John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. A specialist in espionage and terrorism, he’s also been a Navy officer and a War College professor. He’s published four books and is on Twitter at @20committee.” Schindler made his comment about the CIA in reaction to...

Judicial Watch Exposes Deep State Leaks to Washington Post Judicial Watch Sues California to Stop Governor Newsom’s Initiative to Provide $75 Million in Cash Benefits to Illegal Aliens Judicial Watch Sues Pennsylvania to Force Voter Roll Clean Up Judicial Watch Exposes Deep State Leaks to Washington Post Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a distinguished public servant, was briefly national security advisor to President Trump until allegations surfaced in the Washington Postthat he had been in communication with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Flynn’s lawyers alleged in a November 1, 2019, court filing that James Baker, the Pentagon’s Director of the Office...

The attorney general has suggested that the Justice Department review of the Russia investigation has uncovered “troubling” findings without going into details. For years, President Trump has complained bitterly about F.B.I. officials who investigated his campaign’s ties to Russia, and about the “rogue bureaucrats of the Deep State” at the intelligence agencies, portraying them as enemies out to delegitimize his presidency. Now, a special Justice Department inquiry investigating those officials has taken on another of Mr. Trump’s irritants: leaks to the news media. Investigators for John H. Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut leading the investigation, have asked witnesses about...

The Obama holdover heading the Pentagon office reportedly under investigation by the U.S. attorney who is conducting the criminal probe of the Trump–Russia investigation was accused of leaking a classified document, in a recent court filing for retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. The connection hasn’t been previously reported. According to a Nov. 21 report by independent journalist Sara Carter, U.S. Attorney John Durham is questioning personnel in the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA). ONA awarded about $1 million in contracts to FBI informant Stefan Halper, who appears to have played a key role in alleged U.S. intelligence agency spying...

The Federalist has learned that the now-outed CIA and FBI informant Stefan Halper served as a source for Washington Post reporter David Ignatius, providing more evidence that the intelligence community has co-opted the press to push anti-Trump conspiracy theories. In addition, an email recently obtained by The Federalist from the MI5-connected Christopher Andrew bragging that his long-time friend Ignatius has the “‘inside track’ on Flynn” adds further confirmation of this conclusion.Svetlana Lokhova, the Russian-born English citizen and Soviet-era scholar, told The Federalist that she only realized the significance of her communications with and about Ignatius following the filing of attorney...

As the spotlight shines on ex-CIA Director David Petraeus' biographer-turned-mistress Paula Broadwell, journalists have uncovered a speech in which she may have revealed classified information about the attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Broadwell told a Denver audience in October: "Now I don't know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex [to the consulate] had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back."The CIA adamantly denied her the claim, which would have been a violation of laws prohibiting CIA detention....

The matter of Gen. Michael Flynn began with criminal conduct. But it was not committed by Flynn. The crimes were leaking the contents of classified telephone conversations between Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and revealing the identity of Flynn as a party to the conversations. The sorry saga began with a January 12, 2017 column about the Flynn/Kislyak conversations by The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, who described his source as a “senior U.S. government official,” i.e., an Obama administration functionary. Whoever told Ignatius the fact of and substance of the eavesdropped conversations committed a felony by leaking classified information....

White Double ALTHOUGH THE CYCLE of the time after Pentecost has shown us many times already the solicitude of the Holy Spirit for the defense of the Church, yet today the teaching shines forth with a new luster. In the sixteen century Satan made a formidable attack upon the holy city by means of a man who, like himself, had fallen from the height of heaven, a man prevented in early years by the choice graces which lead to perfection, yet unable in an evil day to resist the spirit of revolt. As Lucifer aimed at being equal to...

Red Double TWO DAYS MORE, and the happy season of Christmas will be over! This is the vigil of its termination, and lo! there comes to gladden us one of the grandest Martyrs of the year—Ignatius surnamed the Theophorus (“he that carries God,” or “he that is carried of God”), Bishop of Antioch. A venerable tradition tells us that this old man, who so generously confessed the faith before Trajan, was the child whom Jesus took into his arms, and showed to his Disciples as a model of that simplicity which we must all have if we would enter...

The Washington Post published a column Thursday night by David Ignatius that purports to clear leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing in exclusively using a home brew server kept in her home that held top secret classified information during her four year tenure as secretary of state. The column is entitled The Hillary Clinton e-mail ‘scandal’ that isn’t. Ignatius’ lead defense witness for Clinton is one Jeffrey Smith who is given four paragraphs of quotes defending Clinton. Ignatius identifies Smith as “a former CIA general counsel who’s now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where he often represents...

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola translated by Elder Mullan [1914] These are the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, a plan of contemplation to be carried out over about a month. St. Ignatius of Loyola (1419-1556) was the founder of the Jesuits, and was canonized by Pope Gregory XV in 1622. He published the Spiritual Exercises in 1548. The Exercises were intended for use during a retreat; and are a central part of the first year training of Jesuit novitiates. However, one does not have to be a Jesuit-in-training to take advantage of the Exercises:...

A young Egyptian journalist named Merette Ibrahim has come to question visiting Defense Secretary Bob Gates at a roundtable discussion. She’s passionately idealistic about Egypt’s new democracy, and you might think she would be enthusiastic about President Obama, who supports the political revolution underway here. But she isn’t: She says that Egyptians find Obama and his policies confusing. Welcome to a growing club. This is a president who promotes change but is failing to articulate it in a way that would convince young Arabs. The Egyptian journalists I met here cited these contradictions: Obama is against military intervention in Libya...

The Epistle of St. Ignatius of Antioch to the Philadelphians, translated by Charles H. Hoole, 1885 CHAPTER 0 0:1 Ignatius, who is also Theophorus, to the Church of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ which is in Philadelphia, in Asia, to her that hath found mercy and is established in the unity of God, and rejoiceth continually in the suffering of our Lord, and in his resurrection, being fully assured in all mercy, whom I salute in the blood of Jesus Christ, who is an eternal and abiding joy, especially if they be in unity with the bishop,...

Sometime around the year 107 A.D., a short, sharp persecution of the Church of Christ resulted in the arrest of the bishop of Antioch in Syria. His name was Ignatius. According to one of the harsh penal practices of the Roman Empire of the day, the good bishop was condemned to be delivered up to wild beasts in the arena in the capital city. The insatiable public appetite for bloody spectacles meant a chronically short supply of victims; prisoners were thus sent off to Rome to help fill the need. So the second bishop of Antioch was sent to Rome...

As President Obama takes his seat at the G-20 summit in London Thursday, the world's leaders will be curious what economic philosophy he represents. Is this the same America that celebrated go-go capitalism and resisted regulation of global financial markets, or is it a chastened nation? Is America still from Mars, to use the shorthand of the Bush years, or has it moved to Venus? I was curious myself about the vision that animates Obamanomics, so I put the question last week to David Axelrod, the president's senior adviser. He enumerated the usual list of specific policies — health care,...

Sometime around the year 107 A.D., a short, sharp persecution of the Church of Christ resulted in the arrest of the bishop of Antioch in Syria. His name was Ignatius. According to one of the harsh penal practices of the Roman Empire of the day, the good bishop was condemned to be delivered up to wild beasts in the arena in the capital city. The insatiable public appetite for bloody spectacles meant a chronically short supply of victims; prisoners were thus sent off to Rome to help fill the need. So the second bishop of Antioch was sent to Rome...