ACLU Cartoon

Colorado ACLU official resigns after suggesting Trump supporters be shot

Loring Wirbel

 

 The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado said on Friday it had accepted the resignation of a co-chair who came under criticism for a Facebook post that said people who insist on voting for Donald Trump should be told they will be shot.

Loring Wirbel, who served as co-chair of the Colorado Springs chapter of the ACLU, also compared Trump, the current Republican presidential frontrunner, to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
Wirbel's Facebook comments were reported by the conservative website "The Daily Caller" and caught the ire of Trump supporters and members of the Republican Party in Colorado.
"The thing is, we have to really reach out to those who might consider voting for Trump and say, 'This is Goebbels. This is the final solution. If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before election day'," Wirbel wrote of Facebook, according to the Daily Caller.
"They’re not going to listen to reason, so when justice is gone, there’s always force," the post read.
The comments could no longer be found on Wirbel's personal Facebook page.
Daniel Cole, executive director of the El Paso County Republican Party, called for Wirbel to be replaced at the ACLU, saying the comments were irresponsible and especially insensitive coming two weeks after of a gunman killed three people and wounded nine at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.
"It's beyond belief that he would think it was acceptable to post something like that," Cole told the Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs.
Wirbel said the comments were not meant to be taken seriously.
"They are taking that stuff out of context. It's smear politics," he told the newspaper.
The ACLU said in a statement on Friday it had accepted Wirbel's resignation and did not condone the sentiments.

 

 

Carson threatens to leave Republican Party

Carson threatens to leave GOP: I won't be part of deception

Presidential hopeful Ben Carson threatened Friday to leave the Republican Party.   
The retired neurosurgeon lashed out Friday morning at reports of a recent closed-door meeting of Republican establishment leaders focused on deep divisions within the GOP electorate, particularly the continued strength of billionaire businessman Donald Trump.
The Washington Post reported that the group, including Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, discussed the possibility of a "brokered national convention" if there isn't a clear winner in the party's months long primary election season.   
"If this was the beginning of a plan to subvert the will of the voters and replace it with the will of the political elite, I assure you Donald Trump will not be the only one leaving the party," Carson said  in a statement that referenced Trump's repeated threats to leave the GOP if treated "unfairly."   
"I pray that the report in the Post this morning was incorrect," Carson added. "If it is correct, every voter who is standing for change must know they are being betrayed. I won't stand for it."
The Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to questions about the meeting and Carson's threat.   
A third-party run by Carson or Trump would be a nightmare scenario for the GOP. While Carson is slipping in recent polls, an independent bid that siphoned even a few percentage points away from the party's nominee could make it all but impossible for the Republican nominee to win the general election.   
Spokesman Doug Watts said Carson was appalled at reports suggesting that Republican leaders were trying to manipulate the party's presidential nominating process. He acknowledged that Carson, like Trump and the rest of Republican field, signed a pledge not to launch a third-party bid.   
"The pledge isn't meaningless," Watts said. "But he signed the pledge based on everybody playing by the rules."

Trump's name, image removed at Dubai development amid uproar

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates –  The image and name of American presidential hopeful Donald Trump was gone on Friday from parts of a Dubai golf course and housing development amid the uproar over his comments about banning Muslims from traveling to the United States.
A billboard showing Trump golfing had been at the Damac Properties' Akoya development, as well as an image of Trump's daughter Ivanka. All that remained Friday was the brown background, though another billboard declaring the development "The Beverly Hills of Dubai" remained.
Also, pieces of letters that appeared to spell out Trump's name had been pulled down from a stone wall, the letters left lying on the sandy ground.
Damac Properties declined to comment. It earlier said it "would not comment further on Mr. Trump's personal or political agenda, nor comment on the internal American political debate scene."
Trump has for years looked to do business in the Middle East, particularly in the Gulf and the emirate of Dubai. But some of his rhetoric about Islam on the campaign trail -- including his call to monitor mosques and his proposal this week to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the U.S. -- has led to increased wariness in the Arab world.
Earlier this week, Dubai-based Landmark Group pulled all Trump home decor products at its 180 Lifestyle stores over his comments.

1 billion dollar weapons deal from Obama, think about it ???

Feds warn of bogus batch of Syrian passports amid report ISIS can print them

Former FBI official: Fake Syrian passports a concern

 

 

Fake Syrian passports aren’t exactly a dime a dozen, but they can be had for as little as $200, according to a report from the Department of Homeland Security that could call into question the ability to screen Middle East refugees fleeing to the West.
The 18-page report, circulated to law enforcement agencies across the nation, warns that a certain batch of Syrian passports – those issued since June 2014 from two regions under the Islamic State control, Deir- ez-Zour and Raqqa – are likely to be phonies, based on the fact one was bought on the black market in Turkey.
“The person who was issued the passport did not have to travel to Deir- ez-Zour to obtain it,” the report states. “Therefore, it is believed that passport issuance code 014 pertains to Deir- ez-Zour.”

“The lack of ability to verify information with the Syrian government about how many passports may be vulnerable for exploitation in former provincial and regional government buildings will make attempts to analyze the scale of the problem difficult.”
- DHS report to law enforcement agencies

The report, developed with intelligence from Homeland Security Investigations and the State Department, also asserts ISIS is using its own passport printing machines to generate the bogus documents with covers printed in Russia, and then selling them for between $200 and $400.
Intelligence agencies have already flagged some 3,800 counterfeit Syrian passports, and will add data on another 10,000 fake Syrian passports recently intercepted in Bulgaria on the way to Germany. The sheer volume of fake passports flooding the market as refugees – or terrorists posing as refugees - pour into Europe has investigators on edge. The fake Syrian passports will add to an already challenging problem of vetting Syrian refugees, said Claude Arnold, a former DHS Investigations special agent in charge for Minneapolis and Los Angeles.
“In absence of specific intelligence that identifies the refugee as a member ISIS, we are not going to know they are a member of ISIS," Arnold said. "We don’t have those boots on the ground in Syria, no one is really gathering that information, it’s a no mans land. So their application is based solely on story that person tells. It is dangerous, it is idiotic."
Arnold said in the past, war criminals were able to get into the U.S. by telling convincing stories about being persecuted on religious or political grounds because they were actually involved as persecutors. Some war criminals became permanent residents and citizens of the U.S., before being caught, because there was a lag time to get information on what occurred.
“Now it’s much worse," he continued. "The war criminals were not coming here to wage jihad, they just wanted to hide out, but these terrorists are coming to do us harm. We have the same vulnerability, but the consequences are potentially much more dire.”
The report makes the same point, if in the language of bureaucrats.
“The lack of ability to verify information with the Syrian government about how many passports may be vulnerable for exploitation in former provincial and regional government buildings will make attempts to analyze the scale of the problem difficult,” the report said.
Adding to the problem, Homeland Security Investigations believes the police force in Deir ez-Zour, Syria, may be involved in issuing and distributing counterfeit passports, because a forged Syrian passport that turned up in Turkey in July displayed the signature of Zuhair Hamad saad Al deen, head of the Deir ez-Zour Police.

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The Homeland Security Investigations specifically has asked all U.S. government personnel to be on the lookout for former Syrian Ministry of Interior employees or former Syrian immigration officials applying for U.S. visas, refugee status, asylum, or green cards or who tries to enter the U.S. through Ports of Entry, noting “they should be thoroughly debriefed.”
They’ve also entered information on the 3,800 fake passports investigators have tracked into U.S. databases, although it wasn’t clear from the report if those 3,800 fake passports have turned up in the U.S.
Terrorists involved in the deadly Nov. 13 attack in Paris, which left 130 dead and 350 injured, used fake Syrian passports to enter France, the report notes.
The U.S. has already accepted 2,500 Syrian refugees into the country since 2011.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees continue to flee the war torn country, crossing into Turkey, Greece and Europe.
The Obama administration plans to welcome some 10,000 Syrian refugees to the U.S. in the coming year.
Governors of more than half of U.S. states, as well as many members of Congress, have expressed concerns about the Obama administration’s plan, because they are concerned terrorists may enter the country through the refugee resettlement program. Critics of the plan note many Syrian refugees often have little documentation or documentation that cannot be verified when they apply for refugee status in the U.S.
"That's the challenge we are all talking about, is that we can only query against that which we have collected," FBI Director James Comey testified in Congress last month. "And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home but ... there will be nothing show up because we have no record on that person."
However, the president has maintained his administration has a solid screening plan to accept the 10,000 refugees from Syria in addition to the 70,000 refugees fleeing war and religious persecution, the U.S. regularly accepts from around the world. Homeland Security Department, State Department and U.S. intelligence will head up vetting process.
Fox News is told through one such source that given this assessment, it is possible that individuals possessing these fake passports have travelled to the U.S. This source adds, however, that there is no evidence at this time to suggest that that is the case.
A Syrian looking to enter the United States would still be required to obtain a visa, since Syria is not one of the 38 “Visa Waiver” countries acknowledged by the U.S.
Through that visa process, that individual would be subject to screening procedures which would include background checks against U.S. terror databases, Fox News is told.

$1 billion weapons deal for Saudi Arabia

WASHINGTON -- Barring last minute opposition from Congress, Saudi Arabia is poised to receive a hefty $1.3 billion weapons package that includes 13,000 “smart bombs” from the United States by the end of the year. But don’t necessarily expect it to be used to fight ISIS.
Critics say the payload of sophisticated weapons will instead bolster the Saudis' continuing air war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. That campaign is drawing fire from human rights groups, who say the kingdom has been targeting civilians with American-made weapons, and may be responsible for war crimes.
“President Obama is poised to sell thousands of bombs and warheads to a government that unlawfully targets civilians,” Amnesty International, which has been lobbying hard for Congress to kill the deal, said in a statement Thursday.
More than 5,700 people, including at least 2,577 civilians — 637 of them children — have been killed in the eight months Saudi Arabia has led a coalition of Gulf States in the bombing campaign, according to the United Nations. Another 2.3 million have been displaced. Meanwhile, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found that "almost two-thirds of reported civilian deaths had allegedly been caused by coalition airstrikes.”
“By selling the Saudis the weapons included in the latest deal, the U.S. will be further implicated in possible war crimes committed in Yemen and it will be helping to fuel an unnecessary war,” charged Daniel Larison, senior editor at The American Conservative magazine.
“At the same time the Saudis are using U.S. weapons in Yemen, they and the other members of their coalition have withdrawn their small contributions to the campaign against ISIS and diverted their resources to the fight that they consider to be more important,” he added.
The coalition has denied the accusations in published reports. Saudi Arabia is determined to beat back the Houthis, who deposed President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, in February. The Houthis are said to be getting support from the Iranians, and the conflict is largely seen as part of a regional stuggle between the Sunni Gulf States and Shia Iran.
After strikes killed 70 people at a wedding in Yemen in September, Saudi officials warned not to jump to conclusions. They have since blocked an international inquiry into war crimes there.  “We need to be careful about facts and fiction,” Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir told reporters at the time.
The concerns, however, have not escaped members of Congress, which has had 30 days to review the deal before it goes through.
While Sen. Bob Corker, R-TN., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, supports the action in Yemen, he has requested “that the committee be notified of future weapons shipments to Saudi Arabia resulting from this proposed sale,” according to an email forwarded to Foxnews.com from the committee.
He is joined by ranking member Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., who has raised alarms about the human rights issue, along with other Democratic members.
They are not expected to stop the sale, however. It is the most recent in a long line of arms deals brokered with Riyadh -- $90 billion worth since 2010, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Reached for comment, the State Department, which engineered the sale, called Saudi Arabia “a key U.S. strategic partner within the region,” and that “the purchase of these munitions will rebuild Saudi Arabia’s inventory, helping them to meet their defense requirements over the long term.”
On the human rights issue, the State Department says it has “noted our concern several times regarding civilian casualties and deaths in Yemen,” and has encouraged the coalition to investigate “credible accounts of civilian casualties.”
“Ultimately, we want to see a diplomatic solution,” the agency said, and noted the start of peace talks in December, in concert with a seven-day ceasefire.
Saudi Arabia, a long time ally of the U.S. in the Middle East, has nonetheless been the subject of criticism on a number of fronts. In addition to its human rights record in Yemen, the kingdom has been cited for abuses at home, including beheadings over the last year for crimes such as “sorcery” and “apostasy” against Islam. The legal system is based on sharia law, and religious freedoms there are all but non-existent, say critics.
Saudi Arabia is also the birthplace of Wahhabism, the radical fundementalist strain of Islam practiced by global terror groups like ISIS today. While the kingdom has partnered in counterterrorism operations with the U.S. and its Gulf neighbors, it is also accused of turning a blind eye while the country’s elites pour billions into extremist mosques, madrassas, and terror-related organizations across the globe.
Tafheen Malik, one of the shooters in the recent San Bernardino attack, came to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia.
“At a minimum they have to stop aiding and abetting Wahhabism; I would hope that the administration would make that a condition,” said former Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., who is now the Jerry and Susie Wilson Chair in Religious Freedom at Baylor University, and lobbies often on Capitol Hill for protection of religious minorities in the Middle East conflict zones.
Saudi officials have long denied the complaints and have often pushed back against detractors. Early this year, they blocked an arms agreement with Sweden after its foreign minister Margot Wallstrom called the kingdom a dictatorship and criticized the sentence of 1,000 lashings it imposed on a blogger there. The kingdom called her remarks "offensive."
But the issue has become so pronounced in recent months due to the terror attacks in Europe, that world leaders are speaking out more. In a moment of candor this week, the German Vice Chancellor accused the kingdom of financing terror.
“We have to make clear to the Saudis that the time of looking away is over,” Vice Chancellor Gabriel Signar told Bild am Sonntag newspaper in an interview.
“Wahhabi mosques all over the world are financed by Saudi Arabia,” he added. “Many Islamists who are a threat to public safety come from these communities in Germany.”
Critics like Wolf say the U.S. has been trying to get Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to step up their game in the fight against ISIS and maybe such a lucrative weapons package sends the wrong message.
“You need American intelligence, American special ops, but you need boots on the ground from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan,” he said. “They need to start participating. This is absolutely critical before giving them weapons and aid.”
Corker is not as willing to blame Saudi Arabia so quickly.
“(Corker) also believes the U.S. should encourage greater involvement of our coalition partners in the fight against ISIS, but he thinks the perception of U.S. disengagement resulting from the Obama administration’s approach to the region, especially after the Iran nuclear deal, is hindering that effort,” his office said Friday.
A breakdown of the munitions being sold to the kingdom can be found on the State Department website.