National Shrine confirms report that Native American activist allegedly tried to disrupt Mass

Officials at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday confirmed earlier reports that a Native American rights activist led several dozen people in an attempt to enter the shrine during a Saturday evening Mass.
In a statement to Fox News on Wednesday, basilica officials said a Mass was being celebrated at 7 p.m. when Nathan Phillips and his group “attempted to enter the building while chanting and hitting drums.”
“At this time, Mass was being celebrated in the upper church where the individuals attempted to enter,” the statement read. “In respect and reverence for the Mass, the individuals were not permitted to enter the Basilica due to the disruption it would have caused during the solemn Mass. The individuals were asked to leave the property after it was determined they did not intend to share in the celebration of Mass.”
The group assembled across the street from the shrine, the Catholic News Agency reported. Video footage showed one demonstrator telling other protesters that they had been ordered off the property by police, according to CNA.
Phillips, 64, was thrust into the national spotlight over the weekend when video of an encounter with a group of students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky went viral. He was seen singing and playing a drum near the Lincoln Memorial as he stood face-to-face with Covington student Nick Sandmann while other students were standing behind Sandmann.
Other footage revealed the teens were being taunted by a third group nearby, leading to criticism of the media for a so-called rush to judgment.

Laura Ingraham rips Trump’s decision to postpone State of the Union

Laura Ingraham, the host of Fox News’ "The Ingraham Angle," called out President Trump for delaying his State of the Union address until after the partial government shutdown is over.
She called Trump's move a "bad decision" and said that she would give a series of three speeches as an alternative. She said she’d give the first speech in Detroit, the second at the border and a third at Ellis Island.
"Bad decision by @potus," she tweeted. "Go to America and give the nation a #SOTU. Sent the written form to petty Pelosi."
DOUG SCHOEN: PELOSI SHOULDN'T BLOCK TRUMP FROM DELIVERING SPEECH
Trump announced on Twitter late Wednesday that he will deliver a "great" State of the Union address after the partial government shutdown is over, ending a tense day in Washington where Republicans criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for blocking the president from giving the speech.
Pelosi told Trump that the House won’t approve a resolution allowing him to come to Capitol Hill until the government reopens.
Trump said he is not going to look for an alternative venue due to the long tradition of the speech being delivered in the chamber of the House of Representatives.
Pelosi responded to Trump's announcement with a tweet of her own. She said she hopes that "the near future" means that he is willing to support the "House-passed package" to end the shutdown that is affecting about 800,000 federal workers.

Trump says he will give State of the Union after shutdown is over

President Trump announced on Twitter late Wednesday that he will deliver a "great" State of the Union address after the partial government shutdown is over, ending a tense day in Washington where Republicans criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for blocking the president from giving the speech.
Pelosi told Trump that the House won’t approve a resolution allowing him to come to Capitol Hill until the government reopens.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a close Trump ally, said Pelosi’s action “sets a new low for American politics.” He called Pelosi’s decision “absurd, petty and shameful,” adding: “The judgment of history will not be kind.”
Trump said he is not going to look for an alternative venue due to the long tradition of the speech being delivered in the chamber of the House of Representatives.
Pelosi told Trump in a letter Wednesday that the Democratic-controlled House would turn down a measure for him to deliver the speech. Trump slammed Pelosi and called the decision a "great blotch on the country that we all love."
White House officials told Fox News they were preparing for two tracks for next week's speech. The preferred track is an address at the Capitol. The second track is a backup plan for a speech outside of Washington, D.C.
“There is no venue that can compete with the history, tradition and importance of the House Chamber,” he tweeted. “I look forward to giving a “great” State of the Union Address in the near future!”
Pelosi responded to Trump's announcement with a tweet of her own. She said she hopes that "the near future" means that he is willing to support the "House-passed package" to end the shutdown that is affecting about 800,000 federal workers.
"Please accept this proposal so we can re-open government, repay our federal workers and then negotiate our differences," she wrote.
House Democrats were prepared to possibly give Trump the $5.7 billion he wanted for security measures at the border with one caveat: The funds were not for a wall, The New York Times reported.
This year's State of the Union address had been scheduled for Jan. 29.

Stupid Media Cartoons

Anti-Trump social media mobs value ‘rapidity and extremism’: Victor Davis Hanson

Hoover Institute senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson weighed in on the “electronic lynch mob” that took place targeting the students of Kentucky's Covington Catholic High School after their confrontation with Native American elder Nathan Phillips that went viral last weekend.
In his appearance on Tuesday's "The Ingraham Angle," with Fox News' Laura Ingraham, Hanson began by accusing social media giants Facebook and Twitter of being “on the side of the mob,” so that members of the mob don’t see the “downside” in their rhetoric since they won’t be censored or punished.
MEDIA TREATMENT OF COVINGTON STUDENTS 'WAY WORSE' THAN KAVANAUGH COVERAGE, CRITIC SAYS
“When it was released that these were young, innocent kids, they’re not gonna be ready to fight back and they had MAGA hats on and they were white and they were Catholic, that was a turkey shoot for all of these bullies,” Hanson said. “And when you look at the upside, when you combined the electronic mechanism with the hate Trump, the result is two values; rapidity and extremism. So there was a race, like a dog race, almost. Who can get out first and virtue-signal, ‘I was the first one to attack these kids’? And the next incident was, Who can be the most extreme? ‘I said beat them up,’ ‘No, I said shoot them,’ No, I said burn them up.’… It was a race to the bottom.”
He told Laura Ingraham that there was “no downside” for the media to learn anything from the misreporting that took place early on.
“You see what’s happened is when you have Silicon Valley and you have the great fortunes in America -- whether the Bloomberg or Apple or Google -- all of that great money, and foundations and Hollywood and the media and the universities, this story starts out -- It’s a force-multiplying effect and it permeates our entire society,” Hanson continued. “And when you look at the other side, we don’t have those resources. And when Trump, our conservative ranks, are bifurcated, there were people in the Never Trump side that joined in because felt this was the magic key that will unlock my analysis of Trump.”

If ending shutdown truly is Dems' ‘top priority,’ they should take Trump’s offer: Guy Benson

If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, and congressional Democrats continue to play hardball during the partial government shutdown -- as President Donald Trump and the GOP continue to propose compromise deals in order to get funding for the border wall -- they themselves may face the consequences, Townhall.com political editor Guy Benson argued Wednesday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will be bringing two competing bills for a vote Thursday in hopes at least one of them passes to reopen the government. The GOP-proposed bill would provide $5.7 billion for the wall in exchange for a three-year extended protection for DACA recipients, disaster relief, and a renewal of the Violence Against Women Act. (DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is an Obama-era program for helping adults who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children avoid deportation.)
On Wednesday’s All-Star panel on "Special Report," Benson -- along with Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway and Washington Post opinion writer Charles Lane -- weighed in on whether a compromise bill could get passed and who would take responsibility if it fails.
Benson began by complimenting McConnell’s ability at “reframing an argument” to the American people.
“The Democrats say over and over again that their priority is reopening the government and getting these federal workers paid. If that were truly their top priority, they would be seriously engaging this proposal from the president, which I think is completely reasonable from the weekend, trying to improve it, making changes to it, negotiating around the clock and they’re doing nothing like that whatsoever,” Benson told the panel. “And at some point, I think the Democrats have to answer for that because they say out of one side of their mouth, ‘We have to get these people paid. It’s an ongoing tragedy for these families,’ and yet they will not negotiate anything, including some of these provisions that the president has made that are concessions like putting major elements in the bill from Sen. Dick Durbin that he introduced in late 2016. So McConnell is trying to make some lemonade out of lemons.”
Lane expressed that “any movement” from the legislative branch on border security would have to come from the Senate because the Dem-controlled House may be at the mercy of the leftwing members who seem to have the “upper hand.”
Meanwhile, Hemingway expressed that McConnell is “taking matters into his own hands,” calling his bill “ridiculously generous” to Democrats, insisting that $5 billion for the wall isn’t a lot of money in exchange for protection for DACA recipients.
“The only reason why it might be a problem for Nancy Pelosi is her own talking point is ‘We want to reopen the government.’ Well, as Guy said, you have to act like you’re serious about that if you really want to do it. If you’re not offering anything, not putting anything on the table, not putting forth any realistic compromise and not accepting any of these generous offers, it hurts your own talking point,” Hemingway told the panel.

Sarah Sanders: White House not listening to Ocasio-Cortez 'on much of anything,' including doomsday prediction

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders derided New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's recent claim that the world will end in 12 years due to climate change, and suggested the Trump administration has little need for the progressive firebrand's thoughts in general, in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview Tuesday night with Fox News' "Hannity."
Sanders also slammed what she called the "disgraceful" media coverage of the previous week, which included a discredited BuzzFeed News report on the Russia investigation and a social media harassment campaign against pro-Trump Catholic high school students -- based largely on incomplete and selectively edited videos of their encounter with a Native American man and other activists shouting homophobic slurs.
"I don't think we're going to listen to [Ocasio-Cortez] on much of anything -- particularly not on matters we're gonna leave in the hands of a much, much higher authority -- and certainly, not listen to the freshman congresswoman on when the world may end," Sanders said.
Speaking at an event commemorating Martin Luther King Day on Monday, Ocasio-Cortez asserted that climate change constituted "our World War II" and added: “Millennials and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us are looking up and we’re like: ‘The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change and your biggest issue is, how are we gonna pay for it?'"

A protestor leads a Native American prayer with a traditional drum outside the Catholic Diocese of Covington Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2019, in Covington, Ky. The diocese in Kentucky has apologized after selectively edited videos emerged showing students from Covington Catholic High School seeming to mock Native Americans outside the Lincoln Memorial on Friday after a pro-life rally in Washington. Later, unedited videos showed the students themselves were harassed and approached by other activists. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

A United Nations report on climate change warned late last year that the world will face several consequences from climate change – extreme drought, food shortages and deadly flooding – unless there’s an “unprecedented” effort made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Then, in November, the Trump administration released a federal report that found that the impacts of climate change are being felt across the country, and “extreme weather and climate-related events” are going to worsen in the years to come -- with a significant possible impact on the economy by the end of the century.
Some conservative commentators have argued that most proposed solutions would do more harm than good, and also have accused climate activists of crying wolf. In 2006, a NASA scientist and leading global warming researcher declared that the world had only 10 years to avert a climate catastrophe. Meantime, President Trump repeatedly has cast doubt on the risks posed by global warming, despite the report from his administration.
‘‘Large parts of the Country are suffering from tremendous amounts of snow and near record setting cold," Trump tweeted on Sunday. "Amazing how big this system is. Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!’’
In 2012, Trump famously wrote: "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
Now, Sanders said, the attention should be on pressing matters like the ongoing partial federal government shutdown over funding for Trump's proposed border wall.
CRITIC: MEDIA TREATMENT OF COVINGTON CATHOLIC KIDS 'WAY WORSE' THAN KAVANAUGH EPISODE
"We're focused on what's happening in the world right now," Sanders told host Sean Hannity. "We wish that Democrats like herself would engage in that conversation, help us fix some of the current problems we know exist, and work with us to get some things done -- particularly on the border, fixing the national and humanitarian crisis."
Sanders added, in an apparent reference to God: "That's the kind of stuff we're focused on, not things we're gonna leave up to the hands of something and someone much more powerful than any of us."

A man places a sign showing support for the students of Covington Catholic Catholic High School in front of the Catholic Diocese of Covington in Covington, Ky., Tuesday, Jan 22, 2019. (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston)

The president himself seemingly has little patience for Ocasio-Cortez. Asked last week outside the White House for his response to Ocasio-Cortez's claim that there is "no question" he's a racist, Trump responded simply: "Who cares?"
Separately, Sanders said it was "a sad day in America" when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., preemptively rejected Trump's compromise proposal to end the partial federal shutdown. The White House offered various immigration-related concessions to Democrats in exchange for border wall funding.
"Republicans have been in lock-step with the president, because we actually believe in getting something done," Sanders said. "[Democrats] are not looking to solve problems, but they're simply looking to kick the can down the road."
KENTUCKY HIGH SCHOOL CLOSED AFTER DEATH THREATS DIRECTED AT STUDENTS IN VIRAL VIDEO 
Sanders added, "The president is a leader, and Nancy Pelosi is nothing more than an obstructionist."
The White House press secretary said Pelosi's security concerns about the upcoming planned Jan. 29 State of the Union address were unfounded, and that the White House was "moving forward" with plans for the address in Congress.
"I don't know if there would be a place that all of those members would attend, but the president's focus is on speaking to the American people."
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told Fox News' "Your World with Neil Cavuto" on Tuesday that he would have no objections to Trump delivering a State of the Union address in the House of Representatives, despite Pelosi's repeated threats that the traditional speech be delayed.
"Sure," Hoyer, D-Md., responded, when asked if he'd be open to Trump speaking in person in the House for the State of the Union. Asked if Pelosi would agree, he added, "I don't know what the discussions have been."
"What happened for BuzzFeed is a great lesson for the news media. Quit trying to be first, and start trying to be right."
Sanders concluded by bashing BuzzFeed News, which authored a bombshell report alleging Trump directed his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress -- a report that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team dismissed as inaccurate. Sanders, like Donald Trump Jr. on Monday, said the episode was similar to the media coverage of a Catholic high school pro-life trip to Washington over the weekend.

A police car sits at the entrance to Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Ky., Saturday, Jan 19, 2019. The school has been besieged by threats of violence and was closed for safety reasons on Tuesday, after viral videos misrepresented the actions of its students at a pro-life march.  (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston)

The Covington High School students stood near the Lincoln Memorial as activists identified as Black Hebrew Israelites shouted homophobic slurs at them, and a Native American man approached them banging a drum. Initial videos of the episode suggested that the students were harassing the man.
Many liberal and conservative commentators criticized the students -- and, in some cases, called for them to be personally harassed and their school closed -- based on initial, incomplete videos, only to walk back their comments after a fuller video showed that the students themselves had been harassed, and that the students did not appear to approach the Native American man or the activists at any point.
"I've never seen so many people so happy to destroy a kid's life," Sanders said, referring to the social media response to the episode -- which included multiple death threats and verbal intimidation directed at the students.
Covington High School Principal Robert Rowe announced Tuesday that the school was closed for the day due to safety concerns.

White House announces 51 judicial picks, including two for liberal Ninth Circuit

The White House on Tuesday announced the re-nomination of 51 federal judicial nominees left over from the previous Congress, kickstarting the administration's effort to install more conservative judges after GOP activists worried that such appointments had stalled.
Nine of the 51 appointments are for spots on prestigious and influential federal appellate benches, including two on the mostly liberal San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which President Trump has often derided as "disgraceful" and politically biased.
Neomi Rao, the president's "regulatory czar," who would take now-Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh's vacated seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, is on the list.  Case Western University School of Law professor and Washington Post commentator Jonathan H. Adler wrote when Rao first joined the administration that "Trump's selection of Rao suggests the administration is serious about regulatory reform, not merely reducing high-profile regulatory burdens."
Also on the roll was Brian Buescher, for a seat as United States district judge for the District of Nebraska. In December, Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, raised concerns about the Omaha-based lawyer's membership in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic service organization -- prompting legal commentators to suggest the Democrats were engaging in religious discrimination.
“The Knights of Columbus has taken a number of extreme positions,” Hirono said in a questionnaire sent to Buescher. “For example, it was reportedly one of the top contributors to California’s Proposition 8 campaign to ban same-sex marriage.”
Harris, in her questions to the nominee, called the Knights of Columbus “an all-male society” and asked the Nebraska lawyer if he was aware that the group was anti-abortion and opposed to same-sex marriage when he joined.
The California senator and 2020 presidential hopeful also referenced Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson’s statement that abortion amounted to “the killing of the innocent on a massive scale” and asked Buescher if he agreed with the statement.
In his response, Buescher argued that the Knights of Columbus’ official positions on issues do not represent every one of the group’s members and said he would recuse himself from hearing cases where he saw a conflict of interest.
“The Knights of Columbus does not have the authority to take personal political positions on behalf of all of its approximately two million members,” Buescher wrote. “If confirmed, I will apply all provisions of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges regarding recusal and disqualification.”

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has long drawn the ire of President Trump, who has called it "disgraceful." (AP)

In an op-ed this week in The Washington Post entitled "Anti-Catholic bigotry is alive in the U.S. Senate," columnist  Michael Gerson wrote that questions like the ones from Harris and Hirono were inappropriate and "scare the hell out of vast sections of the country."
Missing from the list were three conservative judges the White House has said it will install on the Ninth Circuit without seeking what's known as a blue slip," or an opinion, from California senators.
In a snub to California Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Harris, the White House announced in October Trump had nominated Patrick Bumatay, Daniel Collins and Kenneth Kiyul Lee (all from the Golden State, and reportedly all members of the conservative Federalist Society) to the traditionally liberal Ninth Circuit. The court, with a sprawling purview representing nine Western states, has long been a thorn in the side of the Trump White House, with rulings against the travel ban and limits on funding to "sanctuary cities."
TRUMP SLAMS 'DISGRACEFUL' NINTH CIRCUIT, SUGGESTS THEY WOULD OVERTURN HIS TURKEY PARDON IF THEY COULD
The Judicial Crisis Network announced in a statement it would launch a $1.5 million national advertising campaign on both television and the Internet calling on Democrats to support the judges, and noting that there are an "unprecedented 163 judicial vacancies in the federal court system."
“Because of Democrats’ unprecedented obstruction of judicial nominees, we now have significantly more vacancies than when President Trump took office," Judicial Crisis Network Chief Counsel and Policy Director Carrie Severino said in a statement.
"Senator McConnell has restated his commitment to filling the vacancies and has maintained that this is a Senate priority. It’s time for Democrats to end the bullying and smear campaigns and confirm the judges," Severino added.
The nominations seemed poised to quiet growing conservative unrest about the relative lack of news on appointments during the ongoing partial federal government shutdown, which commenced Dec. 22. Six new appointments to federal district courts, which are effectively trial courts, were announced by the White House last week.
“People are starting to scratch their heads and wonder, ‘When are we going to start up again?" one source close to the White House told Politico earlier this month.
The White House, along with Senate GOP leaders, has made appointing conservative judges and justices a key priority. Under the Trump administration, 85 federal judges have been installed, including Associate Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, and 30 appellate judges.
Senate Democrats previously eliminated the filibuster for federal judicial nominees below the Supreme Court level during the Obama administration, meaning that each of the 51 nominees needs only a majority vote in the Senate to win confirmation.
Once they claimed their current Senate majority, Republicans, in response, eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees as well.

Global Warming Cartoons

Ocasio-Cortez calls climate change ‘our World War II,’ warns the world will end in 12 years

Praying Mantis

Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asking 2014 Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai a question at the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.  (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., spoke out on Monday about the urgency to take on climate change, comparing it to World War II.
Speaking at an event commemorating Martin Luther King Day, Ocasio-Cortez expressed how the issue of climate change is a “generational” issue that younger people are more focused on.
“Millennials and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us are looking up and we’re like: ‘The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?'" Ocasio-Cortez said.
The Democratic Socialist said the fight against climate change is war and that it’s “our World War II.”
In November, the White House released a federal report that found that the impacts of climate change are being felt across the country, and “extreme weather and climate-related events” are going to worsen in the years to come -- with a significant impact on the economy.
The National Climate Assessment finds that extreme weather disasters “ have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration and have cost the the U.S. nearly $400 billion since 2015.”
Ocasio-Cortez has made waves ever since she won the upset victory in New York against incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley, who was a top Democrat in Congress at the time. She is now the outspoken advocate of the Green New Deal, which is meant to address economic inequality and climate change.