Sunday, July 9, 2017
Roy Moore: Former chief justice, fiery and outspoken, stirs far-right base in Alabama Senate race
In the blood-red state of Alabama, a fiery, outspoken jurist is running for U.S. Senate by standing up for what he believes.
Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy
Moore doesn’t shrink from telling voters he has twice been ousted from
the bench for defying federal courts over the Ten Commandments and
same-sex marriage.
Instead, he wears those rejections as a badge of honor, telling Republican voters that they are akin to battle scars.“I will not only say what is right, I will do what is right,” Moore said during a June forum in the east Alabama city of Oxford.
Moore is part of a crowded GOP field vying to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ old seat in the U.S. Senate. Moore’s iconic status in the culture wars gives him a strong GOP voter base and makes him a leading contender in the primary on August 15.
Incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, appointed last year by the state’s former governor and backed by Republican establishment, faces multiple challengers. Among them, in addition to Moore, is U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, a member of the House Freedom Caucus who has the endorsement of Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. The race could lead to a runoff between the top two primary finishers.
The Senate Leadership Fund, which has ties to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and tries to bank candidates perceived as winnable in general elections, has put its fiscal force behind Strange.
The Republican National Committee last week authorized its Senate campaign arm, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to spend $350,000 on the Alabama Senate race, money that is expected to benefit Strange.
Moore is a West Point graduate and former military policeman during Vietnam. He became a prosecutor, circuit judge and then state chief justice.
But Alabama’s judicial discipline panel twice stripped him of his chief justice duties. In 2003 he was removed for disobeying a federal judge’s order to remove a boulder-sized Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse.
He re-took the chief justice’s office in 2012, but was suspended for the remainder of his term last year.
The suspension — not, technically, a removal — came after Moore wrote a memo telling probate judges that they remained under a state court order to deny marriage licenses to gay couples even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled gays and lesbians have a fundamental right to marry. While he was suspended, Moore left the bench to run for Senate.
“I stood up to same-sex marriage legally by pointing out active injunctions. They didn’t like that. I opposed the agenda of the Supreme Court, and they came after me,” Moore said in Oxford.
Thirty-nine-year-old Emily Holland said she admires Moore. “He goes by what the Bible says,” said Holland. “He has been to war. He refused to take down the Ten Commandments.”
Jean Hobson said she watched the Oxford debate to learn more about the other candidates, but knows she’s not voting for Strange or Moore.
“Judge Moore has been elected twice and thrown out twice,” Hobson said.
Moore also discusses other issues on the campaign trail — including a call for increased military spending — but it’s his well-known history that appears to be driving both his support and his opposition.
For now, “The Judge,” as Moore is nicknamed, revels in his outsider status in a year of anti-Washington sentiment.
“Washington doesn’t want me, evidently, from the money they are pouring behind one of the candidates and from the message we received from Washington. That’s OK,” Moore said with a slight grin as he removed his sunglasses during a sweltering June campaign stop on the Alabama Capitol steps. “I’m looking forward to going and representing the people of Alabama, what they stand for. What they believe in is what I believe in and I’ll take it to Washington whether they like it or they don’t.”
Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner respond to meeting with Russian lawyer
President Donald Trump’s eldest son, son-in-law,
and then-campaign chairman met with a Russian lawyer shortly after Trump
won the Republican nomination, in what appears to be the earliest known
private meeting between key aides to the president and a Russian.
Donald Trump Jr. and Jared
Kushner’s attorney confirmed the June 2016 meeting of the men and
Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower. Then-campaign
chairman Paul Manafort also attended, according to the statement from
Donald Trump Jr.
“It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared
and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption
of Russian children that was active and popular with American families
years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a
campaign issue at that time and there was no follow-up,” said Donald
Trump Jr. in a statement released to Fox News. “I was asked to attend
the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I
would be meeting with beforehand.”Trump Jr. does not serve in the administration and is not required to disclose his foreign contacts.
Kushner lawyer Jamie Gorelick, told Fox News in a statement: “As we have previously stated, Mr. Kushner’s SF-86 was prematurely submitted and, among other errors, did not list any contacts with foreign government officials. The next day, Mr. Kushner submitted supplemental information stating that he had had ‘numerous contacts with foreign officials’ about which he would be happy to provide additional information."
"He has since submitted this information, including that during the campaign and transition, he had over 100 calls or meetings with representatives of more than 20 countries, most of which were during transition," said Gorelick. "Mr. Kushner has submitted additional updates and included, out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person, which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr. As Mr. Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to cooperate and share what he knows.”
Manafort helmed Trump’s campaign for about five months until August and resigned from the campaign immediately after the Associated Press reported on his firm’s covert Washington lobbying operation on behalf of Ukraine’s ruling political party. He is one of several people linked to President Trump who are under scrutiny by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and congressional committees investigating Russian attacks on the U.S. during the 2016 campaign and potential collusion with Trump associates.
Manafort has denied any coordination with Russia and has said his work in Ukraine was not related to the campaign.
U.S. Rejects UN Treaty on Nuclear Weapons
The United States, along with the other nuclear powered nations of the world, rejected the UN’s treaty to ban nuclear weapons on a global scale.
All of the world’s nuclear powers – including the U.S., France, Britain, and Russia – have refused to be part of the negotiations.
The vote was approved by 122 non-nuclear members of the United Nations Friday, with the Netherlands voting against the deal, and Singapore sitting out the vote.
The dissenting nations are also permanent members of the UN Security Council and stated the treaty was unrealistic.
They added countries like North Korea would never comply with a nuclear weapons ban.
Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May talks with U.S. President Donald Trump during the G20 leaders summit in Hamburg, Germany July 8, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria |
President Trump meets with British Prime Minister Theresa May in Hamburg to discuss the future of trade between the U.S. and the U.K.
The President told reporters he and the Prime Minister spoke on the sidelines of the G20 leaders summit and are working on a ‘powerful deal.’
While Britain can’t seal a separate trade deal with the United States until it has left the European Union, President Trump says, once that happens, the U.S. and the U.K. will get a deal done without hesitation.
The U.K. plans to exit the European Union in 2019.
Saturday, July 8, 2017
Sheriff exposes liberal columnist's traffic stop tale for the lie that it is
A sheriff in Missouri is firing back at a
now-suspended newspaper columnist who claimed to experience what
“minority motorists” must feel when getting pulled over by cops, saying
he was lucky he didn’t “get shot” during a recent traffic stop.
Boone County Sheriff Dwayne Carey
has refuted a June 30 opinion column by longtime Columbia Daily Tribune
columnist Bill Clark, who was stopped 10 days earlier for failing to use
his turn signal. Clark, an 84-year-old white man, suggested in the
column that he might’ve been pulled over because of his “liberal bumper
stickers,” an obvious sign of an “aging hippie with a weed habit,” he
claimed.
“I’m lucky I didn’t get shot,” Clark wrote. “Sirens wailed and when I
stopped, two officers were out of the sheriff’s vehicle. When I reached
over to turn off the radio and then take my wallet out of my pocket to
produce the driver’s license and insurance card, I realized my hands
were not at the top of my steering wheel. Danger lurked and official
arrogance was to follow.”Clark, who claimed he received a “good dose of arrogance” during the stop, said he understands how someone could lose respect for cops after the stop, saying his life “seemed to be in danger” during the interaction with two deputies.
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But a review of dashcam video told a different story, according to Carey, who contacted the newspaper’s managing editor, Charles Westmoreland, to disagree with Clark’s version of events. Carey also released the 11-minute video and penned an 1,800-word response to Clark’s column, blasting it as “sensationalism” and disputed the claims of “arrogance” on behalf of the deputies.
“In his column he indicates, ‘I’m lucky I didn’t get shot,’” Carey wrote. “There is never a weapon drawn, the deputies don’t take a position of cover, there are no loud verbal commands, no panic or anything else for that matter by the deputies. Would you agree this is sensationalism at its best? I say yes!”
2 US Air Force B-1 bombers fly near North Korean border in show of force
Two U.S. Air Force B-1 bombers on
Saturday flew near the Korean Demilitarized Zone in a show of force, the
Air Force said in a statement.
The two B-1 bombers flew 2,000
miles from Anderson Air Force Base in Guam to conduct a precision strike
training exercise with South Korean fighter jets. The bombers were also
joined by Japanese fighters during their flight.
These missions are called “Jungle Lightening” by the Air Force.Later, the Air Force called the mission a "demonstration of the ironclad U.S. commitment to our allies."
The bombers fired releasing inert weapons at the Pilsung Range. The mission took 10 hours, according to the statement.
"North Korea's actions are a threat to our allies, partners and homeland," Gen. Terrence O' Shaughnessy, the Pacific Air Forces commander, said. "Let me be clear, if called upon we are trained, equipped and ready to unleash the full lethal capability of our allied air forces."
This is the second 'show of force' by the US military since the July 4 North Korea test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, a first for the rogue, communist regime.
On the night after the launch, the US and South Korean military conducted a joint missile test using short range missiles into waters off the peninsula.
A North Korean test of an ICBM is a momentous step forward for Pyongyang as it works to build an arsenal of long-range nuclear-armed missiles that can hit anywhere in the United States. The North isn’t there yet — some analysts suggest it will take several more years to perfect such an arsenal, and many more tests — but a successful launch of an ICBM has long been seen as a red line, after which it would only be a matter of time — if the country isn’t stopped.
President Trump said North Korea’s plan to develop an ICBM capable of hitting the U.S. “won’t happen” and has since made tough talk on the issue a signature.
Amid heightened tensions with North Korea, the U.S. will conduct a flight test of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), an element of the nation’s ballistic missile defense system, Fox News has learned. The test, which will be conducted by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), is scheduled to take place this month.
The THAAD test will be conducted against an intermediate ballistic missile. THAAD is not a weapon used against ICBMs, but only short and medium range missiles.
There is currently a THAAD battery in South Korea but only two of the scheduled six launchers on the battery are operational as the South Korean government performs an "environmental impact" study at the golf course where the battery is deployed.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
Lucas Tomlinson is the Pentagon and State Department producer for Fox News Channel. You can follow him on Twitter: @LucasFoxNews
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