Congress

House panel lifts ban on slaughtering horses for meat

A House panel has voted to lift a ban on slaughtering horses at meat processing plants. The move by the House Appropriations Committee would reverse a horse slaughter ban that was contained in a huge catchall spending bill signed into law by President Trump in early May. A move to renew the slaughter ban, pushed by California Democrat Lucille Roybal-Allard, was defeated by a 27-25 vote. The Horse slaughter ban has mostly been in force for more than a decade. The ban is enforced by blocking the Agriculture Department from providing inspectors at meat plants that slaughter horses and is in place through Sept. 30. There are currently no horse slaughter facilities operating in the U.S. The vote came as the panel approved a Department of Agriculture funding bill.

Top Lawmaker Demands Investigation into Comey, Former Obama Officials for Leaks of Classified Intel

The chairman of the House National Security Subcommittee is calling on the Department of Justice to launch a formal investigation into former FBI Director James Comey’s alleged leak of classified information, according to an exclusive interview with the Washington Free Beacon in which the lawmaker also called on the Trump administration to purge all former Obama administration holdovers from government. Rep. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.), a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and chair of its National Security subcommittee, is urging Attorney General Jeff Sessions to launch a full scale investigation into Comey’s handling of a series of potentially classified memos that were leaked to the press earlier this year. Comey admitted in testimony before Congress that he leaked these memos in order to spur an investigation into the Trump administration’s alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign. Reports alleging these memos contained classified information has riled congressional Republicans and spurred new calls for an investigation into Comey. DeSantis also called on the Trump administration to purge all former Obama administration officials still working in the government, claiming that the holdovers and their allies outside the White House are responsible for an unprecedented series of national security leaks aimed at damaging the Trump administration’s national security apparatus. DeSantis named Ben Rhodes—the former National Security Council official responsible for creating an in-house “echo chamber” meant to mislead reporters and the public about the landmark nuclear deal with Iran—as a primary source of these leaks and urged the House Intelligence Committee to call Rhodes and other former Obama officials to testify publicly about any role they may be playing in spreading classified information to reporters. Comey’s behavior warrants a DOJ investigation due to the former FBI director’s admittance that he disclosed private information to the public in order to damage the Trump administration, according to DeSantis. “Congress needs to press Sessions and other people to make sure they are investigating this because the American people need the truth,” DeSantis told the Free Beacon in a wide-ranging interview. “If he did violate any laws, he needs to be held accountable. If you’re violating laws in service of doing political warfare, that is just absolutely unacceptable, particularly for someone who held such a high position in the government.” Comey has gone on record stating that he “leaked in order to trigger a special counsel, which in some ways is pretty extraordinary,” DeSantis noted. Comey’s actions raise further questions about his ethics, DeSantis said. “Not only is he leaking this stuff, not only were the memos done in the course of his employment and likely government property, he may have disclosed classified information in this quest to basically wage a vendetta against the president because the president fired him and to try and create a special counsel,” DeSantis said. “This guy is really a creature of the swamp. He maneuvers around D.C. in ways that are very similar to how D.C. insiders operate,” DeSantis said of Comey. “He’s one of the best in those regards.” DeSantis and other lawmakers are now seeking copies of Comey’s complete memos in order to review whether classified information may have been leaked to the press in violation of U.S. law.

Drip, drip…  This story continues to develop.  To read the rest of this article, click on the text above.

AG Sessions Urges House to Pass Measures Combating Criminal Aliens

Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a statement Wednesday urging members of the House of Representatives to pass two bills designed to crack down on illegal immigration. Both HR 3004, commonly known as Kate’s Law, and HR 3003, the No Sanctuaries for Criminals Act, were scheduled to be considered in the House Wednesday. Both laws seek to crack down on illegal alien criminality, a central policy aim of Sessions’s Department of Justice. Kate’s Law increases penalties for those illegally re-entering the United States, especially those, like the killer of the law’s namesake Kate Steinle, who racked up criminal records before being deported. HR 3003 seeks to reign in so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions by prohibiting them from preventing their own officials and law enforcement officers from inquiring about prisoners’ immigration status and reporting that information to the federal government. It also adds congressional backing to efforts by the Justice Department to limit federal grant money to jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement

Excellent!!  It’s about time!  To read the rest, click on the text above.       🙂

Pelosi: I Am a ‘Target’ Because I Am a ‘Master Legislator,’ ‘Politically Astute Leader’

Thursday when asked about criticisms that her leadership contributed to the recent special election losses for the Democratic Party, House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said she was a “target” because she is “a master legislator.” Pelosi said, “We believe there’s a real opportunity. Now, it’s not a slam dunk. History is on our side, but it takes strategic, unified and disciplined — to have harmony. It doesn’t mean we have anonymity, but we have unity when it comes to that fight. Should I sing my praises? Well, I am a master legislator. I am a strategic politically astute leader. My leadership is recognized by many around the country, and that is why I am able to attract the support that I do which is essential to our election, sad to say. “I am very pleased that the cooperation that we’re doing working with all the social media and small donor community to change how we communicate but also how we attract resources, intellectual and financial to the party,” she continued. “I have experience in winning the Congress. When people said to us in 2005, you don’t have a chance, be prepared for a Republican permanent majority, I said — Harry Reid and I said we don’t accept that. We proceeded. We took the president from 58 to 38. President Bush won the election. The fact is they will always make a target. Senator Reid was a target. Senator Daschle was a target. Tip O’Neill is a target. I am a target. They always want to choose our leaders and usually, they go after the most effective leaders because they want to take us, diminish the opportunity that we have.”

Wow..  You really can’t make this stuff up, folks.  Nancy is a “glittering jewel of collasol ignorance.”  I try not to actually listen to her talk, because when I do…I think I lose an IQ point or two.  And yet, she thinks she is the second coming for the Democrat party.  The Dems need to get together and figure a way to put that self-righteous, sanctimonious, hypocritical, narcissistic, entitlement-minded fossil out to pasture.  Unreal..

House Defense Panel Would Create Space Force

A House Armed Services panel intends to create a new fighting force called Space Corps within the Air Force to improve the U.S. military’s ability to address threats in space, according to a summary of the Strategic Forces panel’s forthcoming fiscal 2018 mark. “There is bipartisan acknowledgement that the strategic advantages we derive from our national security space systems are eroding,” said a joint statement from Mike D. Rogers of Alabama and Jim Cooper of Tennessee, the panel’s chairman and ranking Democrat, respectively. “We are convinced that the Department of Defense is unable to take the measures necessary to address these challenges effectively and decisively, or even recognize the nature and scale of its problems. Thus, Congress has to step in.” The Space Corps, they added, would be “a separate military service responsible for national security space programs for which the Air Force is today responsible.” The panel intends to mark up its portion of the sweeping defense policy measure on Thursday. Its mark also would establish U.S. Space Command as a four-star position under U.S. Strategic Command. The measure would bar the Pentagon from buying satellite services if there is a threat that they could be compromised by cyber vulnerabilities or because they are launched by or contained parts from adversary nations. The subcommittee also would authorize $705 million for missile defense systems in Israel that U.S. companies would develop or produce in conjunction with the Israelis. The panel would institute oversight mechanisms to ensure a capable nuclear command and control infrastructure. It would support several Missile Defense Agency priorities that were not formally part of the budget request but that were included on the agency’s first-ever unfunded priorities list, submitted to Congress earlier this month. These include requirement that the agency begin developing a new system of missile-tracking satellites and procure 24 additional interceptors for Theater High Altitude Area Defense batteries.

While it’s encouraging that the House is wanting to make Space a priority for our Dept of Defense (DoD), the devil is in the details..    They need to ensure that they get quality input from both the U.S. Air Force’s Space Command as well as the U.S. Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC).  As someone who spent a couple years in SMDC, I’m intimately aware of how important it is that we get such input and cooperation from BOTH agencies and military branches.  Definitely something to keep an eye on…

Tom Cotton slams probe of Sessions, Russia as ‘spy fiction’

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) comically mocked the allegations that Attorney General Jeff Sessions collluded with the Russians during a campaign event at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington during a campaign event last April. “Mr. Sessions, are you familiar with what spies call trade craft?” Cotton asked, prompting the attorney general to warily reply, “A little bit.” “That involves things like covert communications and dead drops and brush passes, right? Do you like spy fiction? Do you like Jason Bourne or James Bond movies?” Cotton continued before slamming the probe. “Have you ever, ever in any of these fantastical situations heard of a plot line so ridiculous that a sitting United States senator and an ambassador of a foreign government colluded at an open setting with hundreds of other people to pull off the greatest caper in the history of espionage?” he asked, prompting Sessions to laugh for the first time during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. “Thank you for saying that, Senator Cotton. It’s just like through the looking glass. I mean, what is this? I explained how in good faith I said I had not met with Russians because they were suggesting I as a surrogate had been meeting continuously with Russians. I didn’t meet with them,” he said.

Of course he didn’t.  This whole thing is beyond ridiculous; nothing but pure fiction.  And Comey’s recent testimony pretty much confirmed that.  It’s time to move on and stop this witch hunt by the Democrats in D.C. who have been colluding with the dominantly liberal mainstream media.

So far, so good: President Trump signed more bills into law than his four predecessors: report

House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy have issued a very promising report about President Trump so far in his presidency. Compared to his immediate predecessors, Mr. Trump is forging ahead in his bid to better the nation and move forward. “To date, President Trump has signed 37 bills into law, placing him ahead of the last four administrations,” the two Republican leaders noted in a report issued Thursday. At this point in his presidency, President Obama had signed off on 24 bills. President George W. Bush signed 15, President Clinton 33 bills and President George H.W. Bush 35. The two leaders had other news of interest to voters weary of a do-nothing Capitol Hill. “The Republican-led House has passed 158 bills, making it the most productive in the modern-era,” the pair said in their report, noting that during the equivalent passage of time in the Obama administration, the House passed 131 bills. The lawmakers had passed 67 bills at this point during the George W. Bush era, 60 during Mr. Clinton’s time in office and 41 during the George H.W. Bush administration. Mr. McCarthy says it’s “record Congressional productivity to date.”