Lying Cartoon

Ouster of Marine officer overseeing female boot camp training sparks controversy

Crazy Eyes?

The Marine officer who made female recruits better shots at boot camp has been relieved of her command, igniting controversy.

Military Times reports that Lt. Col. Kate Germano served only a year as the head of the 4^th Recruit Training Battalion on Parris Island, S.C., before her dismissal.
She got bounced June 30 after a command investigation accused her of “toxic leadership” by berating and showing contempt for subordinates in public. The 300-page report found her to be “hostile, unprofessional and abusive “ and told recruits that sexual assault was preventable, and that those who drank put themselves in a position to be assaulted.
She also told recruits male Marines would never take orders from them and would see them as inferior if they couldn't meet men's physical standards.
But, according to the Times, her supporters say she was a blunt reformer only trying to make the unit better by holding women to tougher standards.
“What she did when she came is she changed the mentality of the Marines in the battalion and the recruits to not expect a historically lower performance than the male recruits at the battalion,” a female Marine officer stationed at the recruit depot told the paper.
Parris Island officials admitted rifle range qualification scores improved dramatically among female recruits under Germano’s tenure.
In May, Germano accused her boss of undermining her efforts to push female recruits to perform as well as their male counterparts.
The Times said Germano had filed a complaint alleging a hostile work environment and gender discrimination. That prompted an investigation by Marine Training and Command, which found no evidence to support the allegations.
Following her dismissal, Germano sent a letter to her battalion, saying the unit excelled in the face of strong opposition.
“Despite considerable active and passive resistance throughout all echelons of the Recruit Depot and the Marine Corps, we each worked incredibly hard to improve the performance of our recruits to make them stronger, faster, smarter and better shots -- all to better the institution," she wrote.
Germano is now petitioning Congress for redress, saying she was treated unjustly by Parris Island superiors, the Times said.

Done deal? Iran nuclear agreement to be announced Monday, report says

An agreement aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief will likely be announced Monday, according to a published report. 

Two diplomats involved in ongoing talks in the Austrian capital of Vienna told the Associated Press Sunday that final details of the pact were still being worked out. Once it is complete, a formal, final agreement would be open to review by officials in the capitals of Iran and the six world powers at the talks, they said. The diplomats involved demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the negotiations publicly.
The envoys had said that it was possible for a provisional agreement to have been reached Sunday evening. However, senior Iranian and U.S. officials told the AP there was not enough time to do so.
"We are working hard, but a deal tonight is simply logistically impossible," the Iranian official said, noting that the agreement will run roughly 100 pages.
The senior U.S. official declined to speculate as to the timing of any agreement or announcement but said "major issues remain to be resolved."
Despite the caution, the negotiators appeared to be on the cusp of an agreement.

ObamaCare Ruling May Stop Obama's Immigration Action

The Justice Department on Friday urged a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel to lift a lower-court injunction and let it start granting temporary legal presence to up to 5 million illegal immigrants.

The Obama administration is expected to lose this round because two Republican-appointed judges on the three-judge panel rejected an initial request to lift the injunction in May, writing that "the government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its appeal."
The case could be on a fast track to the Supreme Court, with a decision due in 2016. But last month's King v. Burwell opinion helping to preserve President Obama's signature health care law suggests that the justices may not uphold his administration's aggressive legal interpretations. That includes his controversial executive action to grant de facto legal status to millions of illegal aliens.The ObamaCare case hinged on whether the IRS was justified in providing tax subsidies to people in states that had never set up their own health insurance exchange. Conservatives argued that the plain text authorized subsidies only via an "Exchange established by the State" and not by the federal Healthcare.gov.
The Obama administration argued that the law's context was clear. But if the justices deemed the text unclear, then they should rely on the "Chevron deference" precedent. In the 1984 case Chevron v. NRDC, the court ruled that it should accept the executive branch agency's interpretation of what Congress meant as long as it is plausible.
'Deep Significance' Test
That was too much for Justice Anthony Kennedy, who called it "a drastic step" to let the IRS decide whether to award billions of dollars in subsidies without clear congressional intent.
Chief Justice John Roberts, in his opinion siding with the administration, agreed: The availability of billions in subsidies "is a question of deep 'economic and political significance'; had Congress wished to assign that question to an agency, it surely would have done so expressly."
Instead, Roberts wrote, it was up for the judicial branch to determine the statute's meaning.
"The Court's invocation of the 'major questions' doctrine, and various justices' increasingly vocal skepticism of judicial deference doctrines in general, could prove significant," said Adam White, counsel at Boyden Gray & Associates focused on regulatory law. "Certainly as to the immigration controversy, but also other unilateral actions by this administration, such as environmental regulation and Internet regulation."
Reasonable Discretion?
The Obama administration has said its deferred action program granting three-year legal presence is a reasonable form of the prosecutorial discretion to which it is entitled. Further, granting legal presence doesn't automatically legalize employment. That step is allowed based on prior legislation that permitted people applying for asylum and others to get work authorization as their status was determined.

Muslim hired as British government terror watchdog is extremist who called US ‘vicious world empire’

 

A British government worker who helped regulate the country’s anti-terror planning was fired after superiors learned of his Islamist sympathies, the Telegraph reported.

Abdullah al Andalusi said the brutal exploits of ISIS were “no different to the history of some Western armies” and supported the right of youths to venture to Syria to fight.
“If merely going to fight overseas is condemned as terrorism, shouldn’t the UK arrest British volunteers joining the Israeli Defense Force which kills civilians in Gaza in a war against the Gazan government?” al Andalusi wrote in a September 2014 article for the Muslim Debate Initiative, a group he co-founded.

"IS’s crime is being actually a good student of the West"
- Abdullah al Andalusi

He compared ISIS to Western armies “and even some of the ‘Founding Fathers’ of Western nations” in a June 2014 post on his own website.
“IS’s crime is being actually a good student of the West, right down to their corporate structure and organization and ability to use social media!” al Andalusi wrote.
During a Jan. 16 talk at Queen Mary University, he dismissed the 9/11 terror attacks as “the day a vicious world empire found a publicly-acceptable excuse to bomb others, invade non-threatening nations, torture political dissidents and kill at least 300,000 innocent people,” according to the Telegraph.
But al Andalusi says his words have been taken out of context, and on Sunday he posted to his website a full-throated, 2,300-word rebuttal.
“I have never worked in any government counterterrorism work, team or department,” he wrote, before offering a point-by-point refutation of the claims made in the Telegraph.
Even his denial, however, contained a few questionable passages.
“Do I support the re-establishment of a Caliphate? Of course, because a Caliphate is a part of Islamic belief, so integral is it to Islam that Sunnis and Shias originally split merely due to the question of who should be the Caliph,” al Andalusi wrote.
Al Andalusi, whose real name is Mouloud Farid and who has used at least one other alias according to the Telegraph, worked for nearly two years at the London office of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, which assesses police forces and activity “ranging from neighborhood teams through serious crime to the fight against terrorism.”
HMIC said al Andalusi passed an initial security vetting and had been promoted to a management-level position, according to the Telegraph. He didn’t handle classified material, HMIC said; however, a former MDI colleague told the Telegraph that al Andalusi talked about having access to sensitive information.
“His work did involve security areas,” said the colleague, who was quoted anonymously. “He said he had a role in overseeing the police response to terrorism and there were areas he couldn’t talk about.”
At least one member of parliament can’t believe al Andalusi’s statements didn’t raise a red flag earlier.
“The man’s unsuitability for sensitive work should have been obvious from the start,” Labour MP Khalid Mahmood said.

Walker announces 2016 White House bid

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker announced his bid Monday for the Republican presidential nomination, entering a crowded 2016 field amid high expectations. 

Walker, known for his high-profile battles with the powerful public-sector unions, announced his plans on social media and in a fundraising email. He becomes the 15th Republican candidate.
In his email to supporters, Walker pointed to his record in Wisconsin as a potential model, saying "it's time to take the successes we have created in Wisconsin and apply them to Washington."
Walker, set to kick off his campaign at a rally in Waukesha, Wis., later Monday, joins the race after signing a controversial budget. His tenure in Wisconsin has been turbulent, but the governor has enacted major changes in the state.
A campaign video released Monday is heavy on images of Walker speaking to a crowd in an Iowa cornfield, as well as his 2010 battle with unions. The video includes Walker speaking directly to the camera touting his willingness to take on big fights.
"We didn't nibble around the edges," he says.
Walker enacted policies weakening the unions' political power and became the first governor in U.S. history to defeat a recall election.
He also cut income and corporate taxes by nearly $2 billion, lowered property taxes, legalized the carrying of concealed weapons, made abortions more difficult to obtain, required photo identification when voting and made Wisconsin a right-to-work state.
His budget this year, which plugged a $2.2 billion shortfall when he signed it into law Sunday, requires drug screenings for public benefit recipients, expands the private school voucher program, freezes tuition at the University of Wisconsin while cutting funding by $250 million and removing tenure protections from state law.
Such achievements may appeal to conservatives who hold outsized sway in Republican primaries, yet some could create challenges in a general election should Walker ultimately become the GOP's nominee. Voter ID laws, abortion restrictions, liberal gun policies and education cuts are not necessarily popular among swing-state independents.

World Market Cartoon

Trump blasts US immigration policy, trade agenda

PHOENIX –  Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump criticized U.S. immigration and trade policies on Saturday in speeches that veered from accusing Mexico of deliberately sending criminals across the border to professing respect for the Mexican government and love for its people.

Speaking to a gathering of Libertarians in Las Vegas before headlining an event in Phoenix, Trump repeated his charge that Mexico was sending violent offenders to the U.S. to harm Americans and that U.S. officials were being "dumb" in dealing with immigrants in the country illegally.
"These people wreak havoc on our population," he told a few thousand people attending the Libertarian gathering FreedomFest inside a Planet Hollywood ballroom on the Las Vegas Strip.
In the 4,200-capacity Phoenix convention center packed with flag-waving supporters, Trump took a different view -- for a moment -- and said: "I love the Mexican people. I love `em. Many, many people from Mexico are legal. They came in the old-fashioned way. Legally."
He quickly returned to the sharp tone that has brought him scorn as well as praise. "I respect Mexico greatly as a country. But the problem we have is their leaders are much sharper than ours, and they're killing us at the border and they're killing us on trade."
His speeches in both venues were long on insults aimed at critics and short on solutions to the problems he cited. When he called for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, the audience in Las Vegas groaned.
In a break from the immigration rhetoric that has garnered him condemnation and praise, Trump asserted that he would have more positive results in dealing with China and Russia if he were president and said he could be pals with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Asked by an audience member in Las Vegas about U.S.-Russia relations, Trump said the problem is that Putin doesn't respect Obama.
"I think we would get along very, very well," he said.
Trump has turned to victims of crime to bolster his argument that immigrants in the U.S. illegally have killed and raped. In Las Vegas and Phoenix, he brought on stage Jamiel Shaw Sr., a Southern California man whose 17-year-old son was shot and killed in 2008 by a man in the country illegally. Shaw vividly described how his son was shot -- in the head, stomach and hands while trying to block his face -- and how he heard the gunshots as he talked to his son on the phone.
Shaw said he trusted Trump, and encouraged the crowds in both cities to do the same.
Trump's speeches were filled with tangents and insults leveled at business partners such as Univision and NBC that have dropped him in the wake of his comments that Mexican immigrants bring drugs and crime to the U.S. and are rapists. He also directed familiar barbs at other presidential contenders, including Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton ("the worst secretary of state in the history of the country"), news media figures ("lyin' Brian Williams") and President Barack Obama ("such a divisive person"). He called journalists "terrible people."
As Trump lambasted Univision for cancelling its broadcast of the Miss USA pageant, one of his many business enterprises, a group of young Latinos unfurled a banner pointed toward the stage and began chanting insults. They were quickly drowned out by the crowd, and nearby Trump supporters began to grab at them, tearing at the banner and pulling and pushing at the protesters. Security staff managed to get to the group and escorted them out as Trump resumed speaking.
"I wonder if the Mexican government sent them over here," he said. "I think so."
Arizona's tough-on-immigration Sheriff Joe Arpaio introduced Trump in Phoenix after outlining the things he and the candidate have in common, including skepticism that Obama was born in the United States. He went on to criticize the federal government for what he called a revolving door for immigrants, saying many of them end up in his jails.
"He's been getting a lot of heat, but you know, there's a silent majority out here," Arpaio said, borrowing from a phrase Richard Nixon popularized during his presidency in a speech about the Vietnam War.
A single protester standing outside the room where Trump spoke in Las Vegas was more concerned about the businessman being tied to the Libertarian Party.