With Tulsi Gabbard’s Resignation, the Right-Wing Conspiracy Machine Spins Into High Gear
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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced on Friday that she would resign, saying that her husband, Abraham, has been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer. “At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” Gabbard wrote in her resignation […]
Against the backdrop of Tulsi Gabbard resigning her position as Director of National Intelligence, there is an opportunity to explain how the Washington DC Intelligence Community functions in real life. ODNI Tulsi Gabbard has rightly been receiving a lot of praise for her efforts at removing the shroud of secrecy that is often used by […]
The post The Intelligence System and Why Tulsi Gabbard Was Essentially the First DNI appeared first on The Last Refuge.
Following redistricting in the South, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) delivered a passionate speech on voting rights and political organizing in Alabama, where she called on activists from northern states to “pull up” on their southern neighbors.During the speech, AOC argued that protecting voting rights leads to better schools, expanded health care, and broader political representation, while warning supporters that opponents fear people “coming together” across state lines.“It is time for the North to pull up to the South," AOC yelled, "It is time for New York to pull up to Alabama. It is time for all of us to come to Georgia, to Louisiana, to Tennessee, to Mississippi and let them know exactly what they have uncorked with this injustice."“Because when black Americans have the right to vote and that vote is protected, our schools get funded. When voting rights are protected, health care gets expanded. When voting rights are protected, our country moves forward,” she said.“And Montgomery, that’s what they’re actually afraid of. They’re afraid of us coming together. They’re afraid of us protecting one another. Alabama is the crucible. Georgia is the crucible. Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi is the crucible,” she continued.“It is time to pull up. Because what they thought was the final blow is actually just the opening silo,” she yelled.BlazeTV host Pat Gray laughs, saying, “Of course, she means salvo. It’s ‘the opening salvo.’”“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” he adds.Want more from Pat Gray?To enjoy more of Pat's biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
President Donald Trump revealed on Saturday that he is mulling a deal that would end his illegal war with Iran, and some hawks within the Republican Party are expressing alarm.According to a Sunday report in The New York Times, many details of the agreement to end the war remain murky, with the fate of Iran’s enriched uranium up in the air. US and Iranian officials have also given contradictory messages about the proposed deal’s contents, suggesting there is much work still to be done before any agreement is finalized.Regardless, three hawkish GOP senators on Saturday raised major concerns about the contents of the deal, warning against accepting any agreement that will leave Iran in a stronger position than before Trump illegally launched a war against it without any authorization from Congress in late February.“If it is perceived in the region that a deal with Iran allows the regime to survive and become more powerful over time, we will have poured gasoline on the conflicts in Lebanon and Iraq,” wrote Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who lobbied Trump to attack Iran repeatedly before the start of the war. “A deal that is perceived to allow Iran to survive and possess the ability to control the [Strait of Hormuz] in the future will put Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Shia militias in Iraq on steroids."Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), another longtime Iran hawk, said he was “deeply concerned” about what he’s been hearing about the deal and expressed particular worry about Iran getting relief from US sanctions while still maintaining the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.“If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime—still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America’—now receiving billions of dollars,” Cruz wrote, “being able to enrich uranium and develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake.”Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) was even blunter in his condemnation of the reported agreement.“The rumored 60-day ceasefire—with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith—would be a disaster,” Wicker wrote. “Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!”Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser for President Barack Obama, challenged Wicker’s claims that Trump’s illegal war had achieved anything of value.“Nothing was accomplished by Operation Epic Fury,” Rhodes wrote, “except putting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in charge of Iran and the Strait of Hormuz.”Rhodes’ criticism was echoed by Stephen Wertheim, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who wrote that “everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury is already for naught.”Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, accused the Iran hawks of being delusional for thinking further bombing would force Iran to capitulate.“DC’s Iran hawks got two wars, nearly every conceivable sanction designation, a blockade, threw a wrench in global economy,” Vaez wrote, “and will still claim that just a little more pressure and a touch more bombing will magically yield the concessions they still won’t be satisfied with.”
"Everything was fine until randomly he started talking about being in control of people and reality and how he could tap into a different frequency and hear and peep things that we couldn’t.''
The physician who administered the same cognitive screening that President Donald Trump keeps publicly bragging about says he sees something that should worry the country.Dr. Rob Davidson, head of the Committee to Protect Healthcare, walked former CNN reporter Jim Acosta through the Montreal Cognitive Assessment on Acosta's show this week. Davidson used the appearance to deliver a pointed message about Trump's repeated public claims that he has aced the screening multiple times.The test, Davidson said, is not a routine evaluation that doctors hand to every patient who walks in. It is administered specifically when a provider or a family member has raised a concern about possible cognitive decline. And once is generally enough."It is just not typical, right?" Davidson said. "It isn't typical. It isn't what you would just generally do for any individual when you didn't have a concern."The MoCA is designed to flag mild cognitive impairment, not measure intelligence or detect full-blown dementia. Davidson described it as a screening for someone who might be "slipping a little bit" and whose loved ones or physician are starting to take notice. It is not a test the average healthy adult ever takes, and it is not a test designed to be repeated for self-congratulatory purposes.Davidson stopped short of saying Trump has a diagnosable condition, calling that kind of remote evaluation unethical. But he did not soften the impression Trump's public behavior leaves on him as a physician."I won't make a diagnosis, we don't, it's not ethical to try to diagnose somebody," Davidson said. "And I don't know if the president has a condition, but something just seems not right."He went on to note that Trump's reported pattern of repeatedly requesting and bragging about the MoCA is itself an unusual data point. White House physicians, Davidson said, are typically not in the habit of administering the same impairment screening over and over to a patient when no clinical concern has been raised. That Trump appears to want to keep taking it, he said, is itself worth noticing.Acosta has himself been a frequent target of Trump's attacks, dating back to his days on the White House beat for CNN. He took the test on camera to make the case that no president should be in the position of needing to. By the end of the segment, Acosta was even more alarmed about the president.
The creation of an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” at the Department of Justice may have shocked a lot of people, but not Paul Figley, a legal scholar and former DOJ staffer who has spent years warning that taxpayer money could be used by an administration for political ends in just this way.The fund, the result of a settlement of legal claims by Donald Trump and his family against the IRS, aims to compensate those who “suffered weaponization and lawfare” at the hands of the federal government. It has already been called a “slush fund” by the New York Times editorial board, which noted – as many have – that it’s likely to pay much of its US$1.8 billion funding to Trump allies who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The money comes from what’s called the Judgment Fund, set up in the Department of Treasury by Congress in the 1950s to pay legal judgments and settlements involving the federal government. In doing so, Congress gave away a portion of its foundational, constitutional role: The power to control government spending. Figley, who worked at the Department of Justice and is also an emeritus professor of legal rhetoric at American University Washington College of Law, has warned Congress and others that by putting decisions about such huge payouts in the hands of the executive branch, the fund would inevitably be hijacked for political purposes. Naomi Schalit, The Conversation’s politics and legal affairs editor, spoke with Figley. What is the Judgment Fund, and why was it created?The Judgment Fund is a permanent, indefinite appropriation that Congress established to pay most judgments and settlements against the federal government. Prior to 1956, whenever a judgment or settlement was agreed upon or finalized, Congress would have to appropriate money to pay it. That meant the administration and Congress would have to go through kind of a karaoke: “Here’s a new settlement, here’s why it should be approved.” “OK, we approve it.” And it took up a lot of time and didn’t produce much good effect. So the old General Accounting Office recommended that Congress set up a system that would pay some claims automatically, and in 1956, Congress established the Judgment Fund. It allows payment of settlements and judgments if those payments were final and not authorized or provided for by some other legally available appropriation. Former Department of Justice lawyer Paul Figley spent years warning that presidents could use the little-known Judgment Fund as a political piggy bank. Congress essentially handed over responsibility for paying for settlements and judgments, which was taking up a lot of time, to the executive branch?Yes, the Department of Justice would do the paperwork and say this is final, or this is an appropriate settlement, send that to Treasury, Treasury then certifies that it was properly documented, and then orders the payment.From the constitutional perspective, it appears that Congress was getting rid of an annoying thing that it had to do, but wasn’t it also giving away its power of the purse?Yes, but only in a limited way to begin with. When the Judgment Fund was first established, any settlement or judgment that could go through the process had to be less than US$100,000. That worked so well that Congress increased the amount a couple of times, and then ultimately in 1977 said there’s no cap. It’s a permanent indefinite appropriation, and once it was established, nobody ever has to go back to Congress to ask that it be updated or refilled. It works automatically. You’ve written and given testimony about concerns you have with the Judgment Fund, over quite a few years and spanning several administrations. What are those concerns?The concern is that under our system, Congress should be responsible for – and is responsible for – appropriating money.Are you worried that this fund can be abused?It has been. For many, many years, it wasn’t abused very often. Occasionally, it was used for political purposes in the foreign policy context. President George H. W. Bush used it in 1991 to settle a claim with Iran for arms that had not been delivered. The Clinton administration used it to settle a similar claim with Pakistan in 1998. The Obama administration secretly paid Iran $1.7 billion for arms that the U.S. had not delivered, and $1.3 billion of that came from the Judgment Fund. Those all had a political context, and while they were arguably good decisions, they were decisions that, absent the Judgment Fund, would have had to go through Congress and have money appropriated after, perhaps, debate and discussion. The Obama administration also went much further in litigation involving claims of civil rights violations by the Department of Agriculture. The Obama administration’s use of the Judgment Fund in class action suits for discrimination in Department of Agriculture civil loan programs struck me as really bad policy.
