The Patriot Post® · Thursday Top Headline Summary
The ball officially gets rolling today on the bipartisan budget agreement reached earlier this week. “Lawmakers filed a broad border security spending bill early Thursday that is expected to clear Congress by the end of the day,” the Washington Examiner reports. Expectations are that President Donald Trump will sign off on the legislation while continuing to independently pursue additional funding for the border barrier.
According to Yahoo News, “Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe says that after President Trump fired his boss, FBI Director James Comey, there were discussions within the Department of Justice about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.” However, “In a statement released by the Justice Department, Rosenstein said McCabe’s account of a discussion of invoking the 25th amendment was ‘inaccurate and factually incorrect.’” This story needs to play out, but there’s certainly some evidence that the DOJ was gearing up to obstruct Trump.
According to Politico, “A federal judge ruled in favor of Robert Mueller on Wednesday that Paul Manafort intentionally violated the terms of his guilty plea by lying to federal prosecutors and a grand jury, clearing the way for the special counsel to push for a harsher sentence.” All told, Manafort, whose sentencing will occur on March 13, could face a decade behind bars.
A potentially significant move transpired courtesy of the Senate Rules Committee, which yesterday “approved a change to the rules to shorten the debate time for judicial nominees,” Townhall reveals. “Currently, up to 30 hours of debate time is allowed before a nominee is approved for service. But if the new rule … is approved in the Senate floor, it will reduce the maximum time to just two hours.” This could provide major inroads towards splintering the Democrats’ obstruction tactics.
“William ‘Brock’ Long, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the past two years, announced his resignation and retirement on Wednesday after an investigation into his misuse of government resources. … Long’s misuse of government resources became the subject of a federal investigation, after which he reimbursed the government for his personal use of government vehicles to travel from Washington, D.C. to his North Carolina home. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found that Long’s exploitation of official resources cost taxpayers $94,000 in staff salary, $55,000 in travel expenses, and $2,000 in vehicle maintenance.” (National Review)
According to The Washington Post, “The House Judiciary Committee passed a measure Wednesday that would require background checks for all gun sales and most gun transfers within the United States, the most significant gun-control legislation to advance this far in Congress in years. … The committee also voted 23 to 15 to advance a bill that would close a loophole in the current background-check law that allows a gun purchase if a check is not completed in three days.” For the record, new background checks still wouldn’t have prevented recent mass shootings.
On a related note, Red Flag laws, The Washington Free Beacon explains, “are intended to allow certain people to petition a court in order to have firearms temporarily taken from somebody they believe to be a threat to themselves or others.” In 2018, these laws resulted in 1,700 court orders — but that’s probably a lowball estimate due to deficient data. “The National Rifle Association … supports the laws but only if they meet certain due process requirements.”
Sadly, the Left won’t allow them to move on with their lives: “The Diocese of Covington’s investigation of an incident involving local high school students in Washington, D.C., that went viral has found that the students did not ‘instigate the incident.’ On Wednesday, Bishop Rev. Roger Foys said his hopes had been realized in that the Covington Catholic students were exonerated and that they ‘can move forward with their lives.’” (USA Today)
About that “peak oil” narrative… The Houston Chronicle reveals, “Crude oil production in Texas has beaten a previous record set in the 1970s, a new report from the Texas Independent Producers Royalty Owners Association stated. Texas oil wells produced more than 1.54 billion barrels of crude in 2018, beating the previous record of 1.28 billion barrels set in 1973… Natural gas production also grew, reaching 8.8 trillion cubic feet in 2018.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott observes, “As the national leader in oil and natural gas production, Texas is paving the way for America’s energy independence.”
Amazon is among the world’s elite corporations. It has hovered around $1 trillion in market value for some time now, yet it won’t be sending any income tax to Uncle Sam. The Week reports, “Amazon, which doubled its profits and made more than $11 billion in 2018, won’t pay any federal income taxes for the second year in a row, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reported on Wednesday. The company will not be required to pay the standard 21 percent income tax rate on its 2018 profits, and is claiming a tax rebate of $129 million, which ITEP describes as a ‘a tax rate of negative 1 percent.’” Some might say billionaire socialist Jeff Bezos isn’t paying his “fair share.”
Reports are surfacing that Amazon may renege on its headquarters arrangement in New York City. And according to Fox Business, commerce-friendly Tennessee — whose capital city of Nashville was a finalist — continues to be “very interested” in landing the new headquarters. Fox reports, “‘The question is whether it’s worth it if the politicians in New York don’t want the project, especially with how people in Virginia and Nashville have been so welcoming,’ said one person familiar with the company’s plans.” It’s almost like Amazon should have picked somewhere else in the first place.
With friends like these… “The Department of Justice announced early Wednesday that it had indicted Monica Elfriede Witt, also known as Fatemah Zahra, a former active duty U.S. Air Force Intelligence Specialist and Special Agent, for attempting to pass classified American information to Iran. … Witt had access to ‘classified information, including details of ongoing counterintelligence operations, true names of sources, and the identities of U.S. agents involved in the recruitment of those sources,’ according to the indictment.” (The Washington Free Beacon)
Humor: New Toyota Prius will remind you to check your privilege every 3,000 miles (The Babylon Bee)
Policy: “Unfortunately, one year after the tragic loss of 17 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, many lawmakers and advocacy groups still insist on offering ineffective measures to prevent school shootings based on a misguided diagnosis of the problem,” writes The Daily Signal’s Amy Swearer. Read how here.
Policy: The Mercatus Center’s Donald J. Boudreaux offers “6 Key Takeaways Every Student Should Receive from Econ 101.”
For more of today’s editors’ choice headlines, visit In Our Sights.