The Serious Side - part 6

Carolhathaway, it is humbling and really sad.  Sad that this family and so many refugees for that matter haven’t known peace and security for years.  In the U.S. the refugee issue was front and center after Trump tried to impose a Muslim ban soon after he came into office.  Now he is succeeding with all kinds of different policies to keep Muslims out of our country.  People aren’t paying attention.  We don’t even talk about the refugee problem  anymore.  It’s not a headline story.  There are so many news stories bombarding us every day (mostly about idiot Trump) that it is hard to keep up.

Donna,
that's exactly my impression. I know that there are muslims who are committing crimes - so are Germans. And when politicians continue to say 'The islam us not part of Germany', 'Muslims are part of Germany, but their religion isn't' or 'Every muslim who works and pays taxes, is welcome but everybody else should leave our country' 'Every muslim child should learn at school about our christian values, laws and culture', this doesn't help at all. Because 
-We've got approx. 4.5 million muslims living in Germany (mostly not refugees but people who came here in the 1950s and 60s to work here because we needed them), so denying their religion doesn't work.
- To ban every muslim who doesn't work includes children and old people who have worked here their whole lives. And it doesn't work for refugees anyway.
- Every child learns at school about our laws, values etc. already. And my impression is that there are many young Germans who have no clue and don't seem to learn it at home either. And ask any German why we celebrate Good Friday or Pentecoste (christmas and Easter are parties most of us have at least a random impression about). The majority doesn't know about it.

Populism seems to be the poison of our times...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5626025/Trumps-Supreme-Court-justice-Neil-Gorsuch-votes-strike-tough-immigration-law.html

[size=34]Trump's Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch votes with liberals to strike down tough law on deporting 'violent' immigrants backed by the president[/size]

• Supreme Court voted 5-4 to strike down parts of a law on mandatory deportation of immigrants who had committed 'crime of violence'
  
  
• Neil Gorsuch, who was nominated by Trump, sided with the liberal wing to call parts of the law vague and therefore unconstitutional
  
  
• Justice Department had pushed for the law to be upheld and stepping up deportation of violent immigrants is Trump policy
  
  
• Case centered on convicted California burglar James Garcia Dimaya, a legal immigrant from the Philippines who was fighting deportation
  
  
• Obama-era law had been defended by previous administration 
  
  

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 11:14 EDT, 17 April 2018 | UPDATED: 12:40 EDT, 17 April 2018

    

The Supreme Court said Tuesday that part of a federal law that makes it easier to deport immigrants who have been convicted of crimes is too vague to be enforced.
The court's 5-4 decision - an unusual alignment in which new Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the four liberal justices - concerns a catchall provision of immigration law that defines what makes a crime violent. 
Conviction for a crime of violence makes deportation 'a virtual certainty' for an immigrant, no matter how long he has lived in the United States, Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her opinion for the court.
The decision is a loss for President Donald Trump's administration, which has emphasized stricter enforcement of immigration law. 


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Backed the liberals: Neil Gorsuch had been nominated by President Trump who has boasted of putting a conservative on the bench but his swing vote makes it more difficult to deport immigrants who commit felonies


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Liberal alliance: Gorsuch voted with reliable liberals including Ruth Bader Ginsburg (bottom left) and Sonia Sotomayor (top, second right) in a ruling written by Justice Elena Kagan (top left)
In this case, President Barack Obama's administration took the same position in the Supreme Court in defense of the challenged provision.

With the four other conservative justices in dissent, it was the vote of the Trump appointee that was decisive in striking down the provision at issue. 
Gorsuch did not join all of Kagan's opinion, but he agreed with her that the law could not be left in place. 
Gorsuch wrote that 'no one should be surprised that the Constitution looks unkindly on any law so vague that reasonable people cannot understand its terms and judges do not know where to begin in applying it.'
The case turned on a decision from 2015 that struck down a similarly worded part of another federal law that imposes longer prison sentences on repeat criminals. 
The majority opinion in that case was one of the last written by Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016 and whose seat Gorsuch filled.



The 2015 decision 'tells us how to resolve this case,' Kagan wrote.
Tuesday's decision involves James Dimaya, a native of the Philippines who came to the United States legally as a 13-year-old in 1992. 
After he pleaded no contest to two charges of burglary in California, the government began deportation proceedings against him. 
The government argued among other things that he could be removed from the country because his convictions qualified as crimes of violence that allowed his removal under immigration law.
Immigration officials relied on a section of immigration law that lists crimes that make people eligible for deportation. 
The category in which Dimaya's convictions fell is a crime 'that, by its very nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force...may be used in the course of committing the offense.'
Immigration judges would have allowed Dimaya to be deported, but the federal appeals court in San Francisco struck down the provision as unconstitutionally vague. The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling Tuesday.
The case was initially argued in January 2017 by a court that was short a member because of Scalia's death and the refusal of Senate Republicans to act on Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland. 
Deadlocked 4-4, the justices scheduled a new round of arguments once Gorsuch joined the court.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5625883/White-House-trying-Arab-force-U-S-soldiers-Syria-months.html

[size=34]White House is desperately trying to put together Arab force to take over from U.S. soldiers and Marines in Syria within months[/size]

• Trump said the 2,000 U.S. soldiers is Syria would be coming home soon 
  
  
• 'We’re knocking the hell out of ISIS. We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon,' he said at the end of March. 'Let the other people take care of it now'
  
  
• But then Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on his people
  
  
• White House says its 'policy hasn't changed' and the president wants to bring American troops stationed there home 'and that hasn't shifted'
  
  
• New report says the White House is actively lobbying Middle East nations to send in replacement troops 
  
  

By FRANCESCA CHAMBERS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 11:11 EDT, 17 April 2018 | UPDATED: 11:54 EDT, 17 April 2018



The White House is actively trying to put together an Arab fighting force that could replace American troops in Syria, allowing President Trump to make good on his promise that U.S. soldiers deployed there would be coming home soon.
Not only does President Trump want Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to donate billions of dollars to the war effort, the Wall Street Journal is reporting, he's asking them to commit troops to the war-torn Middle East country, too.
According to WSJ, the president's new national security advisor, John Bolton, asked Egypt's acting intelligence chief officer, Abbas Kamel, if Cairo would be willing to put boots on the ground in Syria.


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The White House is actively trying to put together an Arab fighting force that could replace American troops in Syria, like the ones seen here in March of 2017 in Aleppo


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Trump has asked Arab nations for billions of dollars for the war effort. Now, he wants them to send in troops, too


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A U.S. fighter stands near a military vehicle, north of Raqqa city, Syria in November of 2016. The U.S. has roughly 2,000 troops in Syria at present
A U.S. official also told the publication that 'Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the U.A.E. have all been approached with respect to financial support and more broadly to contribute.'

At an end-of-March event, Trump suggested that a plan was nearly in place when he said, 'We’re knocking the hell out of ISIS. We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon.
'Let the other people take care of it now,' he added.
But that was before Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad carried out a deadly chemical weapons attack on the rebel-held town of Douma.
On Friday, in conjunction with the U.K. and France, Trump ordered targeted strikes against Assad's forces. 
In a national address Trump argued that the airstrikes were vital to the national security interests of the United States.
'We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents,' he pledged.
But Trump also said the United States' friends in the Middle East needed to assist in the long-term effort to stabilize Syria.
'We have asked our partners to take greater responsibility for securing their home region, including contributing large amounts of money for the resources, equipment, and all of the anti-ISIS effort,' he said. 
'Increased engagement from our friends, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, and others can ensure that Iran does not profit from the eradication of ISIS.'
President Trump has met with or has plans to meet with heads of state from each of the countries, with the exception of Egypt, in recent weeks as he considers what to do when a deadline to extricate the United States from the Iran nuclear deal arrives next month.
European officials are begging the U.S. not to back out of the 2015 deal that gave Iran sanctions relief so it would halt its nuclear weapons program. However, Iran's illicit ballistic missile development, terror financing and support for Assad in Syria have tempted Trump to follow through on a campaign promise to tear it up.
Next week Trump will host French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House for the first state dinner of his 14-month presidency.
The Iran deal is likely to come up as the two leaders discuss the quagmire in Syria.
Yesterday, Trump's spokeswoman pushed back on a boast from Macron that he had persuaded President Trump to keep U.S. troops in Syria.
Sarah Sanders reaffirmed that the United States' policy has not changed, and it would still like to pull American soldiers deployed in Syria out as soon as feasible.
'We've talked about this for a while, but our policy hasn't changed. We still have troops on the ground,' she said. 'But the President wants to bring those people home, and that hasn't shifted.' 
At a National Security Council meeting Trump is said to have requested that the troops come home in the next six months.
Sanders wouldn't confirm that timeline to reporters on Monday. 
'We don't have a timeframe on it,' she said. 'It's not based on an arbitrary timeline, but on defeating ISIS and also getting the Gulf partners in the region to step up and do more both militarily and financially.'
 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5626635/Stars-join-Stoneman-Douglas-students-Parkland-shooting-benefit-concert.html

[size=34]Broadway and TV stars take to the stage with Parkland school shooting survivors for packed benefit concert in Florida[/size]

• Glee actor Matthew Morrison, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star Rachel Bloom and singer Deborah Cox were among those to peform in Sunrise, Florida on Monday 
  
  
• The show - 'From Broadway With Love: A Benefit Concert For Parkland, USA' - was to aid the victims of the February 14 shooting
  
  
• Nearly 5,000 people attended the benefit, including student activists David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez 
  
  
• Proceed from the benefit are going to the families of the victims and survivors
  
  

By EMILY CRANE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 14:08 EDT, 17 April 2018 | UPDATED: 14:37 EDT, 17 April 2018

    

Student survivors have joined Broadway and TV stars on stage in Florida for a benefit concert in the wake of the Parkland high school shooting massacre.
Glee actor Matthew Morrison, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star Rachel Bloom and singer Deborah Cox were among those to perform alongside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students in Sunrise, Florida on Monday night.
The show - 'From Broadway With Love: A Benefit Concert For Parkland, USA' - was to aid the victims of the February 14 shooting that left 17 students and teachers dead. 


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Singer Deborah Cox and Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg pose backstage at a Broadway benefit concert for shooting victims in Sunrise, Florida on Monday night


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The show - 'From Broadway With Love: A Benefit Concert For Parkland, USA' - was to aid the victims of the February 14 shooting that left 17 students and teachers dead
Nearly 5,000 people attended the benefit at the BB&T Center. 

Students David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, who have been among the most vocal activists against gun violence in the wake of the shooting, were among those to attend the benefit. 
Glee star Matthew Morrison and Stoneman Douglas senior Kali Clougherty took to the stage to perform a duet of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'.
Sawyer Garrity, a junior at the school, performed her original song Shine in memory of the 17 victims. She and another student had written the song based off a poem composed by victim Alex Schachter. 


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Glee actor Matthew Morrison poses with student activist Emma Gonzalez at the benefit attended by nearly 5,000 people


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Former American Idol contestant Justin Guarini (left) performed a song written by a student survivor, while Mamma Mia! actress Carrie Manolakos (right) sang Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah with the Stoneman Douglas choir


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Crazy Ex Girlfriend star Rachel Bloom also performed on stage during the benefit on Monday night
'This song is for him. He's going to live on through this song and through this poem he wrote,' Garrity told CNN. 
'In the end, everything that we're doing is for them and everything that we're doing is so that they'll be remembered - all the 17, and even the ones who were injured and anyone hurt by gun violence.'
Former American Idol contestant Justin Guarini also performed a song written by a Stoneman Douglas student survivor.
Mamma Mia! actress Carrie Manolakos sang Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah with the Stoneman Douglas choir and Deborah Cox gave a rendition of I Will Always Love You as images of the victims appeared on a screen behind her. 


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Deborah Cox (above) gave a rendition of I Will Always Love You as images of the victims appeared on a screen behind her


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Jersey Boys actor Erich Bergen posed backstage with student activist David Hogg during the benefit
The stars performed on stage with Stoneman Douglas students, as well as local arts groups, the Student Choir of Broward and the Dance Theatre of Broward. 
'The kids from Marjory Stoneman Douglas are doing what the arts are supposed to do - they are channeling their intense feelings and rage and thoughts into their art, which is a way to communicate with people and make the world better,' Bloom told CNN ahead of the concert.



'This is an example of why theater and the arts in schools is so important. It makes me proud to be a fellow theater kid seeing what all these people are doing with theater and music.'
All proceed from the benefit will be donated to the victims and survivors of the shooting, as well as Shine MSD - an organization set up after the shooting to help heal the Parkland community through the arts. 


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Students David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, who have been among the most vocal activists against gun violence in the wake of the shooting, were among those to attend the benefit

This is brilliant!

More good news.......

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/17/steak-aftershave-urine-tests-donald-trumps-merchandising-empire/

I love the inflatable Trump chicken.  Yes PAN.  Just desserts!

Proof you reap what you sow.

party animal - not! wrote:This is brilliant!

More good news.......

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/17/steak-aftershave-urine-tests-donald-trumps-merchandising-empire/

I hope it could be a good indicator about his fans

Barbara Bush passed away, aged 92. 

(I would have normally posted it in the April Chit Chat thread, but since somebody had posted on this thread that she's terminally ill, I thought it's the riggt thing to post about her death here as well.)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5627825/Barbara-Bush-dies-aged-92-two-days-falling-seriously-ill.html

[size=38]'I'm a lucky man that Barbara Bush was my mother': George W Bush leads tributes as former First Lady dies aged 92, two days after falling ill and saying she no longer wanted medical treatment[/size]

• Former first lady and wife of 41st president George H.W. Bush died at home on Tuesday, family said 
  
  
• Bush was loved by the American people for her plainspoken manner and campaigns to boost literacy
  
  
• George W Bush remembered his mother as a woman who 'brought levity, love, and literacy to millions' 
  
  
• President Trump paid tribute along with former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter
  
  
• Funeral service will be 11am Saturday at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston 
  
  

By RORY TINGLE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 19:44 EDT, 17 April 2018 | UPDATED: 02:17 EDT, 18 April 2018

    

George W Bush has led tributes to his mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush, who has died aged 92 two days after falling ill and saying she no longer wanted medical treatment. 
'My dear mother has passed on at age 92. Laura, Barbara, Jenna, and I are sad, but our souls are settled because we know hers was,' the 43rd US president said in a joint family statement on Tuesday. 
'Barbara Bush was a fabulous First Lady and a woman unlike any other who brought levity, love, and literacy to millions.'
Bush held the hand of her husband, 41st president George H.W. Bush, all day on Tuesday and had him by her side when she passed away. 

Scroll down for video 


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Barbara Bush (pictured left on March 18, 2005 and right with George W Bush at Fort Hood, Texas, on April 8, 2007), died on Tuesday, according to a statement from the office of former President George H.W. Bush


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Bush was the wife of the 41st president, George H.W. Bush. They are pictured together in the residence they shared when he was Vice President in 1983



George W Bush, the 43rd president, remembered his mother as a woman who 'brought levity, love, and literacy to millions'


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Bush is pictured as the chair of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy in an undated photo, left, and in Houston, Texas, on August 23, 2001
The snowy-haired first lady brought a grandmotherly style to buttoned-down Washington, often appearing in her trademark fake pearl chokers and displaying no vanity about her white hair and wrinkles.
'What you see with me is what you get. I'm not running for president — George Bush is,' she said at the 1988 Republican National Convention, where her husband was nominated to succeed Ronald Reagan.
Her death on Tuesday was announced in a statement from the office of George H.W. Bush.
'A former first lady of the United States of America and relentless proponent of family literacy, Barbara Pierce Bush passed away Tuesday, April 17, 2018, at the age of 92,' it read. 
Funeral services are planned for 11am Saturday at St Martin's Episcopal Church in Houston. She will lie in repose from noon to midnight Friday at the church, and the funeral service is by invitation only. Burial will be on the grounds of the Bush library at Texas A&M university in College Station, about 100 miles northwest of Houston.  
One of her 14 grandchildren, Texas land commissioner George P. Bush, tweeted: 'My grandmother's entire life was focused on others. For my grandfather, she was his top adviser and confidante. For her family, she was a steady, loving and guiding hand. And for her country, she was an inspiration and an example for all.
'My grandmother didn't just live life; she lived it well. And the sorrow of her loss is softened by the knowledge of her impact on our family and our country. I will miss you, Ganny—but know we will see you again.'  
President Donald Trump released a joint statement with First Lady Melania Trump praising Bush's 'unfailing' service to her country and family. he has ordered US flags to be flown at half-staff in her honor.



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One of his 14 grandchildren, Texas land commissioner George P. Bush, posted his own heartfelt tribute on Twitter


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Jeb Bush said in a statement the family looks forward to 'celebrating and honoring' Barbara Bush's life 


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George W Bush posted this charming image of his parents holding hands on Instagram next to his tribute to the former first lady
'As a wife, mother, grandmother, military spouse, and former first lady, Mrs Bush was an advocate of the American family. Amongst her greatest achievements was recognizing the importance of literacy as a fundamental family value that requires nurturing and protection. 
'She will be long remembered to her strong devotion to country and family, both of which she served unfailingly well.' 
Jeb Bush, who was governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007 and sought the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, said: 'I'm exceptionally privileged to be the son of George Bush and the exceptionally gracious, gregarious, fun, funny, loving, tough, smart, graceful woman.
'Thank you for your prayers, and we look forward to celebrating and honoring her life and contributions to our family and great nation in the coming days.' 
A raft of former presidential couples also paid tributes to Bush as the news of her death emerged on Tuesday evening. 
Bill Clinton praised her as a 'remarkable woman' who had 'grit and grace, brains and beauty', adding: 'She showed us what an honest, vibrant, full life looks like. Hillary and I mourn her passing and bless her memory.'
Barack and Michelle Obama said: 'Barbara Bush was the rock of a family dedicated to public service. We'll always be grateful to Mrs Bush for the generosity she showed to us throughout our time in the White House, but we're even more grateful for the way she lived her life - as a testament to the fact that public service is an important and noble calling; as an example of the humility and decency that reflects the very best of the American spirit.'


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President Trump released a statement praising Bush's 'unfailing' service to her country and family alongside an old photo of her with President George H.W. Bush


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George W Bush's daughter Jenna Bush Hager said she could miss a woman who 'adored her friends and family' and whose loyalty was 'unwavering' 
39th president Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, said: 'She touched the hearts of millions with her warmth, generosity, and keen wit. The matriarch of a family dedicated to servicing, she urged volunteerism as a way for all citizens to participate in our nation's progress.'
Former President Lyndon Johnson's daughter, Lynda Johnson Robb, said she smiles when she thinks of Barbara Bush, because her candor was always refreshing and her grace was endless.
Robb said Bush's love of family 'never wavered and she was always a true patriot.' She says her family was fortunate to know her and 'will always be grateful for her service to our country.'
Robb's sister, Lucy Baines Johnson, described Bush as a 'no nonsense' devoted mother to her family and the nation and was 'wit, wisdom, honesty, and character on two feet.'
Johnson said Bush inspired 'a 'thousand points of light' of service to our country and was a beacon to us all. We loved her for who she was and for what we became because of her example. Our hearts go out to her remarkable family and to all who loved her as we did. The world is a poorer placer without Barbara Bush.'
The Bush family had announced in a statement on April 15 that she was in failing health, had decided not to seek further medical treatment and instead would focus on 'comfort care.'
Bush reportedly had been battling chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart problems in recent years. 


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Bill Clinton praised Barbara Bush on Twitter as a 'remarkable woman' who had 'grit and grace, brains and beauty'


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Al Gore also shared his sentiments and condolences to the Bush family following the death of Barbara Bush 


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Mitt Romney: 'Barbara raised a family of service & character, stood by her beloved husband in the best & worst of times, and spoke her convictions with courage & passion' 


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Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, also tweeted his condolences to the Bush family Tuesday night 


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Apple CEO Tim Cook thanked Barbara Bush for her 'charity, literacy and love of country' 


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Clarissa Lockett holds a sign reading 'Prayers for the Bush Family' across the street from the gated community where former first lady Barbara Bush died earlier on Tuesday
Barbara Bush was dubbed 'The Silver Fox' by her husband and children due to her snow-white hair, and was known for being highly protective of her family.
Her uncoiffed, matronly appearance often provoked jokes that she looked more like the boyish president's mother than his wife. Late-night comedians quipped that her bright white hair and pale features also imparted a resemblance to George Washington. 
The Bushes married on Jan. 6, 1945, and recently celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary, making them the longest presidential couple in history.
She was first lady when her husband was in the White House from 1989 to 1993. Her son, meanwhile, triumphed in the disputed 2000 U.S. election and was president from 2001 to 2009.
The only other woman to be both wife and mother of US presidents was Abigail Adams, the first lady from 1797 to 1801.
Bush discouraged speculation that she wielded political influence with the president like her predecessors - Ronald Reagan's wife, Nancy Reagan, and Jimmy Carter's wife, Rosalynn Carter.
As first lady, she promoted literacy and reading but said she was more interested in running a household than in helping her husband run the country.
'I don't fool around with his office and he doesn't fool around with my household,' she once said.
'She'll speak her mind but only to him,' said Jack Steel, a longtime Bush aide.
The publisher's daughter and oilman's wife had an independent streak and could be sharp-tongued. But her public image was that of a self-sacrificing, supportive spouse who referred to her husband as her 'hero.'
In the White House, 'you need a friend, someone who loves you, who's going to say, 'You are great,' Mrs. Bush said in a 1992 television interview.
'I had the best job in America,' she wrote in a 1994 memoir describing her time in the White House. 'Every single day was interesting, rewarding, and sometimes just plain fun.'


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The Bushes mark their 60th wedding anniversary on January 6, 2005, with a family photo in the White House. Pictured on the front row (left to right): Marvin Bush, Laura Bush, George W. Bush, Barbara Bush, George H. W. Bush, Jeb Bush. Also pictured, from left: Georgia Grace Koch, Margaret Bush, Brian Berzins Walker Bush, Jenna Bush Hager, Doro Bush, Barbara Pierce Bush, Robert P. Koch, Pierce Bush, Maria Bush, Neil Bush, Ashley Bush, Sam LeBlond, Robert Koch, Nancy Ellis LeBlond, John 'Jebby' Bush, Amanda Bush, George P. Bush, and Columba Bush


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Paul Ryan shared a lengthy statement on Twitter saying Bush held a 'revered place in the hearts of generations of Americans' 


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Then governor George W. Bush gives his mother a hug after a family portrait session in Texas on June 10, 1999


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The news was announced on Tuesday evening in a statement from the office of former President George H.W. Bush


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Bush held the hand of her husband, George H.W. Bush, all day on Tuesday and had him by her side when she passed away, according to the former president's chief of staff




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Bush seen being sworn during his inauguration on January 20, 1989, while Barbara looks on lovingly and Ronald Reagan stands in the background


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The Bushes dance together at George H.W.'s Inaugural Ball, which was held in Washington DC on January 20, 1989


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Barbara Bush waves alongside her husband before boarding Air Force One in an undated photo

[size=18]Barbara Bush & George H.W. Bush visit UK Royals in 1989



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[size=34]'I can't say it, but it rhymes with 'rich'': The wit, wisdom (and wicked insults) of Barbara Bush[/size]

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Bush, right, playfully strains to hear a reporter's question while posing with other former first ladies, at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington on May 11, 1994
'She's a million dollar... I can't say it but it rhymes with 'rich''. 
Speaking to reporters about Geraldine Ferraro, her husband's Democratic rival for the vice presidency, and the first woman running for U.S. vice president on a major-party ticket.
'Poppy (Bush's nickname) told me later that he had begged his mother to let him use the Oldsmobile that night because it had a radio and their other car did not. He was so afraid we would sit in stony silence and have nothing to say to each other. For years he has teased me that there was no silence that night and I haven't stopped talking since. All I know is that I liked him a lot.'
On her first date with George H.W. Bush, in 1941. 
'Eventually the medicine that was controlling the leukemia caused other terrible problems. We called George, and by the time he got there after flying all night, our baby was in a coma. Her death was very peaceful. One minute she was there, and the next she was gone. I truly felt her soul go out of that beautiful little body. For one last time I combed her hair, and we held our precious little girl. I never felt the presence of God more strongly than at that moment.'
On the death of their 3-year-old daughter, Robin, in 1953.

'For the most part, I liked the reporters and found the lunches stimulating and fun. But I never got off scot-free. I always made news even though I swore I wouldn't. I must say, however, I found it was interesting that the fact George and I agreed on 99 percent of the issues never made the news!'
On meetings with reporters. 
'The butlers loved trying to make me guess whose china I was using. Imaging being served a meal on dishes that Abraham Lincoln ate from!'
On the White House butlers.
'Millie was a perfect mom. She knew exactly how long she should sleep with them, and after about a month she moved back in with us. I have wondered so when I read about parents abusing their children: If a dog's natural instincts are to protect her young, why, oh, why wouldn't we humans do the same?'
On her dog Millie. 
'Why did we lose? George Bush says it was because he didn't communicate as well as his predecessor or successor. I just don't believe that. I think we lost because people really wanted a change.'
On her husband's loss to Bill Clinton in 1992.   
 'Avoid this crowd like the plague. And if they quote you, make damn sure they heard you.' Advice to Hillary Clinton about speaking to reporters as first lady on August 24, 1992. 
Source: Barbara Bush: A Memoir.  [/size]




Barbara set up households in numerous cities as her husband moved from being a Texas oilman to being a member of Congress, Republican Party leader, U.S. envoy to China and the United Nations and head of the CIA.
The Bushes had six children. A daughter, Robin, died of leukemia in 1953 at age 3. Barbara Bush's hair began to turn prematurely white after the shock of the girl's death.
In a speech in 1985, she recalled the stress of raising a family while married to a man whose ambitions carried him from the Texas oil fields to Congress and into influential political positions that included ambassador to the United Nations, GOP chairman and CIA director.
'This was a period, for me, of long days and short years,' she said, 'of diapers, runny noses, earaches, more Little League games than you could believe possible, tonsils and those unscheduled races to the hospital emergency room, Sunday school and church, of hours of urging homework or short chubby arms around your neck and sticky kisses.'
Along the way, she said, there were also 'bumpy moments — not many, but a few — of feeling that I'd never, ever be able to have fun again and coping with the feeling that George Bush, in his excitement of starting a small company and traveling around the world, was having a lot of fun.'
In 2003, she wrote a follow-up memoir, 'Reflections: Life After the White House.'
'I made no apologies for the fact that I still live a life of ease,' she wrote. 'There is a difference between ease and leisure. I live the former and not the latter.'


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Barbara, above in 1988 with her husband, had been battling chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart failure
Along with her memoirs, she wrote 'C. Fred's Story' and 'Millie's Book,' based on the lives of her dogs. Proceeds from the books benefited adult and family literacy programs. Laura Bush, a former teacher with a master's degree in library science, continued her mother-in-law's literacy campaign in the White House.
George W. Bush made no secret that when he was growing up, it was his mother he had to answer to when he got into trouble.
Barbara Bush sometimes made biting remarks, particularly when she felt the need to defend her husband. One notable example came in 1984 when George H.W. was seeking re-election as vice president under Reagan, a post he held from 1981 until becoming president in 1989.
She told reporters that Geraldine Ferraro, her husband's Democratic rival for the vice presidency, was a '4 million dollar ... I can't say it but it rhymes with 'rich.' She apologized to Ferraro, the first woman running for U.S. vice president on a major-party ticket.
Texas Governor Ann Richards mocked her husband at the 1988 Democratic convention - saying 'poor George ... was born with a silver foot in his mouth' - and Barbara henceforth referred to Richards as 'that woman.'
In 2012, Bush dismissed the political ambitions of U.S. conservative darling Sarah Palin, saying, 'I think she's very happy in Alaska - and I hope she'll stay there.'
Daughter-in-law Laura Bush, wife of the 43rd president, said Mrs. Bush was 'ferociously tart-tongued.'
'She's never shied away from saying what she thinks. ... She's managed to insult nearly all of my friends with one or another perfectly timed acerbic comment,' Laura Bush wrote in her 2010 book, 'Spoken from the Heart.'
In her 1994 autobiography, 'Barbara Bush: A Memoir,' Mrs. Bush said she did her best to keep her opinions from the public while her husband was in office. But she revealed that she disagreed with him on two issues: She supported legal abortion and opposed the sale of assault weapons.
'I honestly felt, and still feel, the elected person's opinion is the one the public has the right to know,' Mrs. Bush wrote.
She also disclosed a bout with depression in the mid-1970s, saying she sometimes feared she would deliberately crash her car. She blamed hormonal changes and stress.
'Night after night, George held me weeping in his arms while I tried to explain my feelings,' she wrote. 'I almost wonder why he didn't leave me.'


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President Donald Trump released a statement praising Bush's 'unfailing' service to her country and family. The pair are pictured together at Mar-a-Lago during Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe's visit on Tuesday

[size=18]Former First Lady Barbara Bush through the years

[/size]
Bush generally refused to discuss publicly her personal views on controversial topics such as abortion, an issue on which she was believed to differ from her husband's more conservative stance.
But during her husband's 1992 re-election race, which he lost to Democrat Bill Clinton, she told reporters that abortion and homosexuality were 'personal things' that should be left out of political conventions and party platforms. 'I don't think that's healthy for the country when anyone thinks their morals are better than anyone else's,' she said.
Opinion polls often showed her popularity as first lady exceeding her husband's as president. 'I don't threaten anyone,' she said. 'That's because I'm everyone's grandma.'
A year younger than her husband, she was born Barbara Pierce on June 8, 1925, and grew up in Rye, New York. Her father was Marvin Pierce, publisher of McCall's magazine.
She was home from boarding school in 1941 when she met her future husband at a Christmas party in Connecticut. She dropped out of prestigious Smith College to marry Bush, then a young naval aviator home on leave from World War Two.
George Bush said marrying Barbara, whom he called 'Bar,' was 'the thing I did right.' But the marriage nearly did not take place. While they were engaged, his bomber was shot down by the Japanese in the Pacific in 1944. He bailed out and was rescued in the ocean by a submarine crew but his crew mates died.
'When you're 18, you think everybody is invincible. ... I mean, that was stupid - but I knew he was going to come home. He was Superman,' she told CNN in 2003.
After leaving the White House, she found time to write her memoirs. In 1990, she authored 'Millie's Book,' a humorous look at the adventures of the family's English springer spaniel in the White House.
In one of their last public appearances, the Bushes attended the 2017 Super Bowl in Houston with George performing the ceremonial pre-game coin flip. Only a few days before the couple had been released from a hospital where George had been treated for pneumonia and Barbara for bronchitis. 
Sons Marvin and Neil both became businessmen. Neil achieved some notoriety in the 1980s as a director of a savings and loan that crashed. Daughter Dorothy, or Doro, has preferred to stay out of the spotlight. She married lobbyist Robert Koch, a Democrat, in 1992.
In a collection of letters published in 1999, George H.W. Bush included a note he gave to his wife in early 1994.
'You have given me joy that few men know,' he wrote. 'You have made our boys into men by bawling them out and then, right away, by loving them. You have helped Doro to be the sweetest, greatest daughter in the whole wide world. I have climbed perhaps the highest mountain in the world, but even that cannot hold a candle to being Barbara's husband.'
Mrs. Bush was born Barbara Pierce in Rye, New York. Her father was the publisher of McCall's and Redbook magazines. After attending Smith College for two years, she married young naval aviator George Herbert Walker Bush. She was 19.
After World War II, the Bushes moved to the Texas oil patch to seek their fortune and raise a family. It was there that Bush began his political career, representing Houston for two terms in Congress in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In all, the Bushes made more than two dozen moves that circled half the globe before landing at the White House in 1989. Opinion polls taken over the next four years often showed her approval ratings higher than her husband's.
The couple's final move, after Bush lost the 1992 election to Bill Clinton, was to Houston, where they built what she termed their 'dream house' in an affluent neighborhood. The Bush family also had an oceanfront summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
After retiring to Houston, the Bushes helped raise funds for charities and appeared frequently at events such as Houston Astros baseball games. Public schools in the Houston area are named for both of them.
In 1990, Barbara Bush gave the commencement address at all-women Wellesley College. Some had protested her selection because she was prominent only through the achievements of her husband. Her speech that day was rated by a survey of scholars in 1999 as one of the top 100 speeches of the century.
'Cherish your human connections,' Mrs. Bush told graduates. 'At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a child, a friend or a parent.'


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Barbara and George H.W. Bush married in January 1945 at the First Prsbyterian Church in Rye, New York
 
 

A champion of children's literacy and AIDS activist: How Barbara Bush used her role as the second woman in US history to be both a wife and mother of a president to bring about change 
Valerie Edwards for Dailymail.com
Barbara Bush used her role as the first lady of the United States to become a champion of children's literacy and to fight against AIDS.
Bush, who died Tuesday at 92 years old while surrounded by her family, started her lifelong mission to improve the quality of life for children when her own son, Neil Bush, struggled with reading in elementary school. 
Neil said it began when she attended reading day at his school.
'So there's a reading circle and all the kids have a book and they're passing the book kid to kid and they passed it to me and I couldn't read,' he told KHOU. 
According to Neil, his mother was shocked and determined to bring his reading level up. 


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Barbara Bush used her role as the first lady of the United States to become a champion of children's literacy and to fight against AIDS. The former first lady is pictured in 1991 reading to children in Missouri


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Bush, who died Tuesday at 92 years old, started her lifelong mission to improve the quality of life for children when her own son, Neil Bush, struggled with reading in elementary school. She's pictured reading to children during a visit to the Capitol Children's Museum
Neil spent Saturdays attending various programs to help him learn to manage his dyslexia.
As first lady - between 1989 to 1993 - Barbara made her main focus literacy and became involved in a number of reading organizations.
She eventually founded the non-profit Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, which is based in Florida, to help increase literacy levels nationwide.
It was through Neil's struggle that she realized the alarming statistics of illiteracy in schools. 
The Barbara Bush Literacy Foundation will hold its 24th annual Celebration of Reading on Thursday, April 19, at the Hobby Center. 
'She will be long remembered for her strong devotion to country and family, both of which she served unfailingly well,' President Donald Trump and his wife and First Lady, Melania Trump, said in a statement that noted Bush's championing of literacy 'as a fundamental family value'.


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As first lady - between 1989 to 1993 - Barbara made her main focus literacy and became involved in a number of reading organizations. She's pictured chatting with Big Bird and children while taping a segment of PBS' Sesame Street for its 21st season in October 1989


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She eventually founded the non-profit Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, which is based in Florida, to help increase literacy levels nationwide. She's pictured in 2011 reading to children at the Maine Medical Center 
Not only was literacy a huge focus for Bush, she also took on issues such as homelessness, teenage pregnancy, and AIDS.
Paul Brandus with West Wing Reports reminded Bush's admirers of her commitment to these issues when he tweeted a photo of Bush in 1989 on Tuesday. 
'A First Lady has the power to make people think. In 1989 Barbara Bush visited a Washington hospice where abandoned infants with the AIDS virus were being cared for,' the tweet read. 
'Some folks were ignorant and thought you could get AIDS from touching someone. Mrs. Bush hugged and kissed the kids,' Brandus added in the tweet. 
Bush tried to make sure the public understood that AIDS wasn't contracted through hugs and handshakes at a time when many were worried that if they touched someone with the disease they would contract it. 
In her 1994 autobiography, 'Barbara Bush: A Memoir' Bush spoke about another visit with a young man who had the AIDS virus. 
'It was a wrenching visit. Besides having trouble finding housing and medical care, they all had personal problems. I especially remember a young man who told us that he had been asked to leave his church studies when it was discovered he had AIDS,' she wrote. 
'His parents also had disowned him, and he said he longed to be hugged again by his mother. A poor substitute, I hugged that darling young man and did it again in front of the cameras. But what he really needed was family,' Bush added. 


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Bush also took on issues such as homelessness, teenage pregnancy, and AIDS. Paul Brandus with West Wing Reports reminded Bush's admirers of her commitment to these issues when he tweeted a photo of Bush in 1989 holding a child who was born with AIDS 


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Bush tried to make sure the public understood that AIDS wasn't contracted through hugs and handshakes at a time when many were worried that if they touched someone with the disease they would contract it

[size=18]Former First Lady Barbara Bush through the years
[/size]



Bush was the only woman to see her husband and son both sworn in as president.
She was the wife of the 41st president, George H.W. Bush, and mother of the 43rd, George W. Bush.
The Bush family had said in a statement on Sunday that she was in failing health, had decided not to seek further medical treatment and instead would focus on 'comfort care'.
According to some media reports, Bush had been battling chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart problems in recent years.
Bush was dubbed The Silver Fox by her husband and children. She was known for her snow-white hair and for being fiercely protective of her family.
She was first lady when her husband was in the White House from 1989 to 1993. Her son, Republican George Walker Bush, triumphed in the disputed 2000 US election and was president from 2001 to 2009. 
The Bushes celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary in January.
Bush had an independent streak and could be sharp-tongued. As first lady, she promoted literacy and reading but said she was more interested in running a household than helping her husband run the country. 


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She was the wife of the 41st president, George H.W. Bush, and mother of the 43rd, George W. Bush


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The Bushes had six children. A daughter, Robin, died of leukemia in 1953 at age 3. Barbara Bush's hair began to turn prematurely white after the shock of the girl's death. In addition to George W. and Jeb, the other Bush children are sons Neil and Marvin and daughter Dorothy
She discouraged speculation that she wielded political influence with the president like her predecessors - Ronald Reagan's wife, Nancy Reagan, and Jimmy Carter's wife, Rosalynn Carter.
'I don't fool around with his office and he doesn't fool around with my household,' she once said.
'She'll speak her mind but only to him,' said Jack Steel, a longtime Bush aide.
The only other woman to be both wife and mother of US presidents was Abigail Adams, the first lady from 1797 to 1801. 
She was a major influence on husband John Adams, the nation's second president, but died before son John Quincy Adams was elected president in 1824.
Another of Bush's sons, Jeb, who served as governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007, sought the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and she campaigned for him before he dropped out of the race.
The Bushes had six children. A daughter, Robin, died of leukemia in 1953 at age 3. Barbara Bush's hair began to turn prematurely white after the shock of the girl's death. In addition to George W. and Jeb, the other Bush children are sons Neil and Marvin and daughter Dorothy.
The Bushes married on January 6, 1945, and Barbara set up households in numerous cities as her husband moved from being a Texas oilman to being a member of Congress, Republican Party leader, US envoy to China and the United Nations and head of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Barbara Bush generally refused to discuss publicly her personal views on controversial topics such as abortion, an issue on which she was believed to differ from her husband's more conservative stance.


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A year younger than her husband, she was born Barbara Pierce on June 8, 1925, and grew up in Rye, New York. Her father was Marvin Pierce, publisher of McCall's magazine


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She was home from boarding school in 1941 when she met her future husband at a Christmas party in Connecticut. She dropped out of prestigious Smith College to marry Bush, then a young naval aviator home on leave from World War Two
But during her husband's 1992 re-election race, which he lost to Democrat Bill Clinton, she told reporters that abortion and homosexuality were 'personal things' that should be left out of political conventions and party platforms. 'I don't think that's healthy for the country when anyone thinks their morals are better than anyone else's,' she said.
Opinion polls often showed her popularity as first lady exceeding her husband's as president. 'I don't threaten anyone,' she said. 'That's because I'm everyone's grandma.'
A year younger than her husband, she was born Barbara Pierce on June 8, 1925, and grew up in Rye, New York. Her father was Marvin Pierce, publisher of McCall's magazine.
She was home from boarding school in 1941 when she met her future husband at a Christmas party in Connecticut. She dropped out of prestigious Smith College to marry Bush, then a young naval aviator home on leave from World War Two.
George Bush said marrying Barbara, whom he called Bar, was 'the thing I did right'. 
But the marriage nearly did not take place. While they were engaged, his bomber was shot down by the Japanese in the Pacific in 1944. He bailed out and was rescued in the ocean by a submarine crew, but his crewmates died.
'When you're 18, you think everybody is invincible. ... I mean, that was stupid - but I knew he was going to come home. He was Superman,' she told CNN in 2003.
After leaving the White House, she found time to write her memoirs. In 1990, she authored 'Millie's Book,' a humorous look at the adventures of the family's English springer spaniel in the White House.
In one of their last public appearances, the Bushes attended the 2017 Super Bowl in Houston with George performing the ceremonial pregame coin flip. 
Only a few days before, the couple had been released from a hospital where George had been treated for pneumonia and Barbara for bronchitis.
 

A love that stood the test of time: From a holiday dance and WWII love letters to six children and 14 grandkids, how George and Barbara Bush's incredible romance lasted nearly 80 years
Charlie Lankston for Dailymail.com 
'Still in the love with the man I married 72 years ago,' Barbara Bush said of her incredible relationship with George HW Bush shortly before she passed away at her home in Houston on Tuesday.
The simple, yet poignant, statement is a testament to the couple's incredible love story, which began at a Christmas dance in Connecticut when they were both teenagers, and went on to span nearly 80 years.
During that time, the couple faced triumphs and heartache together, both personal and professional, had six children, including President George W Bush, and 14 grandkids, eventually becoming the longest-married couple in presidential history. 


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A love that stood the test of time: George and Barbara Bush, pictured in February 2017, were married for an incredible 73 years, having tied the knot on January 6, 1945
On Tuesday evening, the former president issued a short statement about his wife's death, paying tribute to the 'relentless proponent of family literacy'. 
The announcement came just days after it was announced that Barbara had been admitted to hospital for congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Soon after, she made the decision to refuse further treatment, and return home to be with her husband and family.  
As family, friends, and political leaders both past and present paid public tribute to Barbara, her enduring love for her husband and her phenomenal devotion to her family were given due respect and praise by many. 
Her grandson George P. Bush described her as a 'top adviser and confidante' to his grandfather, while President Donald Trump and his wife Melania spoke of Barbara's 'unfailing' service to her country and family. 
But it was Barbara herself who perhaps described it best, offering an intimate insight into her relationship with George in a romantic essay penned for her alma mater's magazine, which was published just last month.  
'I am still old and still in love with the man I married 72 years ago,' she wrote at the time, before later going on to say: 'George Bush has given me the world. He is the best — thoughtful and loving.'  
The couple's relationship is a true love story, which granddaughter Jenna Bush Hager described Monday as 'remarkable.'
Honoring her grandparents' rock-solid relationship on the Today show, the 36-year-old NBC correspondent revealed that Barbara was spending her final days by George's side, 'the man she's loved for over 73 years'. 


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First meeting: Barbara met George when she was 16 at a dance in Connecticut, when she was studying at Ashley Hall School (left) and he was at Phillips Academy in Andover (right)


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'My darling Bar': In one letter, pictured, George spoke of his 'immeasurable joy' at knowing he would one day marry Barbara and have children with her


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 Sentimental: He signed off his letters 'Poppy', and joked that he was her 'public fiance as of 12/12/43' after their engagement was officially announced in the newspaper
'They are surrounded by family, but I think the fact that they're together and that he still says, 'I love you Barbie' every night is pretty remarkable,' she added.      
The former president was a naval aviator in training when they met.
'I'm not much at recalling what people wear, but that particular occasion stands out in my memory,' he recalled of the moment in his autobiography.
The band was playing Glenn Miller tunes and he asked a friend from Rye, New York, if he knew the girl across the room in the green and red holiday dress. 
The friend introduced him to Barbara Pierce, a publisher's daughter from Rye who was studying at Ashley Hall finishing school in Charleston, South Carolina, and was in the area on a Christmas vacation.
Clearly captivated by Barbara, George immediately struck up conversation with her, revealing in his autobiography that they actually sat out their first potential dance together because 'he didn't waltz'. 
'[We sat out] several more after that, talking and getting to know each other,' he went on, before saying of their first night together: 'It was a storybook meeting.' 
When he returned to finish his education at Phillips Academy in Andover, she went back to school in Charleston, however it was just a matter of months before they had met each others' parents.    
While they were apart, George and Barbara kept up their long-distance romance by writing letters to one another - a tradition that grew when George went away to fight with the Navy in World War II in mid-1942, forcing them apart once again. 


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Making it official: The couple tied the knot in Barbara's hometown in Jnauary 1945, just a few weeks after George returned from the South Pacific, where he had been fighting in WWII


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Raising a family: George HW and Barbara had six children during their marriage, including future president George W Bush (pictured) 
During his time in the Navy however, George proposed, and he and Barbara became officially engaged in August 1943, a fact that was celebrated in a letter to 'My darling Bar' from 'Poppy' just a few months later.   
My Darling Bar, This should be a fairly easy letter to write,' George began, going on to say that 'it should be simple for me to tell you how desperately happy I was to open the paper and see the announcement of our engagement'.
'But somehow I can?t possibly say all in a letter I should like to,' he continued. 'I love you, precious; with all my heart and to know that you love me means my life. 
'How often I have thought about the immeasurable joy that will be ours some day. How lucky our children will be to have a mother like you. So the days go by, the time of our departure draws nearer. For a long time I have anxiously looked forward to the day when we would go abroad and set to sea. 
'It seemed that obtaining that goal would be all I could desire for some time, but, Bar, you have changed all that.' 
Barbara, meanwhile, responded with her own heartfelt messages, admitting that she was 'really excited' about the prospect of their marriage, but also 'scared to death too'. 
She joked in one note: 'If you hear a big noise up there, don't worry, it's just my knees knocking.' 
Her fears were not entirely unwarranted; in 1944, her husband-to-be, who famously named three of his planes after his future bride, was shot down near the Japanese island of Chichi Jima. He was the only one out of nine airmen who escaped from their planes to evade capture by the Japanese. 
Later reports revealed that those taken prisoner were tortured and beaten, before being beheaded or stabbed to death. 
George, who was the Navy's youngest aviator when he got his wings, was eventually rescued by a lifeguard submarine, and returned home at the end of that year, and married Barbara just a few weeks later, before he began his studies at Yale.
The couple tied the knot at the First Presbyterian Church in Rye, New York - Barbara's hometown, before moving to Texas.      
George then set out to make his mark in the oil business as the couple grew their family and then turned to politics, a journey that would take them around the world and into the White House.
'You have given me joy that few men know,' George wrote to his wife around this time in a letter that was published as part of a collection in 1999.
'I have climbed perhaps the highest mountain in the world, but even that cannot hold a candle to being Barbara's husband,' added.  
Photos taken of the couple by The Associated Press over the decades have captured moments of care, such as when Barbara Bush applied sunscreen to the 41st president's nose at a 2015 baseball game between the Houston Astros and Seattle Mariners; and candor, notably after Bush stepped on his wife's toe in 1989 while boarding Air Force One.


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The next step: George and Barbara, pictured in 1945, soon moved to Texas, where he began making his mark on the oil industry, and the couple grew their family together 


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Support system: Barbara was by her husband's side throughout his career. They are pictured on June 6, 1964 when George was running as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate
Their marriage also has endured more serious trials.
A daughter, Robin, died in 1953 of leukemia a few weeks before her 4th birthday.
Barbara Bush has recalled a bout of depression in the mid-1970s.
'Night after night, George held me weeping in his arms while I tried to explain my feelings,' she said. 'I almost wonder why he didn't leave me.'
Just last year, allegations surfaced that Bush, who for more than five years has used a wheelchair for mobility, inappropriately touched more than a half dozen women on their buttocks as they stood next to him to take photos.
Through McGrath, Bush issued repeated apologies 'to anyone he has offended.'
'George Bush simply does not have it in his heart to knowingly cause anyone distress,' McGrath said.
Also last year, they both wound up in the same Houston hospital - the former president with pneumonia; his wife with bronchitis.
In 2013, she told C-SPAN in an interview that they pray aloud each night 'and sometimes we fight over whose turn it is.'
In the same conversation, she said she didn't fear death for herself or 'my precious George.'
'I know there is a great God, and I'm not worried,' she said.

http://time.com/5244260/barbara-bush-death-obamas-condolences/



FORMER FIRST LADY BARBARA BUSH ISN'T SEEKING MEDICAL TREATMENT DESPITE 'FAILING HEALTH'


By ALANA ABRAMSON 
9:39 PM EDT
Barack and Michelle Obama were quick to offer condolences to the Bush family Tuesday night following the announcement that former First Lady Barbara Bush had passed away at 92.
“We’ll always be grateful to Mrs. Bush for the generosity she showed to us throughout our time in the White House but we’re even more grateful for the way she lived her life — as a testament to the fact that public service is an important and noble calling; as an example of the humility and decency that reflects the very best of the American spirit.”
“She’ll be remembered for passing those American values on to her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren — and to the countless citizens whom she and George inspired to become ‘points of light’ in service to others.”

Jim McGrath, a spokesperson for former President George H.W Bush, announced the former First Lady’s death on Tuesday night. McGrath had said Sunday that Bush had decided to forego any more medical treatment and instead focus on comfort care.


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Barack Obama

@BarackObama





[ltr]Our statement on the passing of Former First Lady Barbara Bush:[/ltr]




8:44 PM - Apr 17, 2018

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Although Obama ran in 2008 on a platform of reversing the policies of Barbara Bush’s son, then-President George W. Bush, the two families have remained friendly through both of their White House transitions. Bush’s granddaughters Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Bush, wrote Obama’s daughters Malia and Sasha a letter before they moved into the White House in 2009 about growing up in the spotlight, and again when they moved out in 2017.

The stupid of the day folks.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5628217/Trumps-trade-representative-spent-1MILLION-office-furniture-says-Obamas-fault.html

[size=34]Trump's trade representative spent almost $1MILLION on office furniture and then blamed OBAMA officials saying he was continuing their renovations[/size]

• Robert Lighthizer is President Donald Trump's top trade official in the cabinet
  
  
• Lighthizer spent $917,000 to furnish two trade offices near the White House
  
  
• Obama's first trade rep, Ron Kirk, spent $237,000 on furniture in same period
  
  
• His successor, Michael Froman, spent $151,000 in first 15 months of his tenure 
  
  

By ARIEL ZILBER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and REUTERS
PUBLISHED: 22:43 EDT, 17 April 2018 | UPDATED: 02:02 EDT, 18 April 2018

    


President Donald Trump’s trade representative spent nearly $1million on new furniture for his office – though he says it’s the Obama administration’s fault.
Robert Lighthizer shelled out $917,000 for furniture at the two trade offices near the White House, the New York Post reported on Tuesday.
That is a significant increase compared to his predecessors from the days of Barack Obama’s presidency.
Ron Kirk, who was Obama’s first trade representative, spent $237,000 on office furniture in the first year-and-a-half of his tenure.

During the same amount of time, his successor, Michael Froman, spent $151,000.
When Lighthizer’s representatives were asked about the excessive spending, they said the expensive furnishing was a continuation of Obama-era policies.
Scroll down for video 


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President Donald Trump’s trade representative spent nearly $1million on new furniture for his office – though he says it’s the Obama administration’s fault. Robert Lighthizer shelled out $917,000 for furniture at the two trade offices near the White House


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Ron Kirk (left), who was Obama’s first trade representative, spent $237,000 on office furniture in the first year-and-a-half of his tenure. During the same amount of time, his successor, Michael Froman (right), spent $151,000
‘The furniture purchases are the culmination of a longtime, planned project that began under the Obama Administration to replace two-decade-old furniture,’ Lighthizer’s office said in a statement.
‘The project to upgrade offices has been going on since 2014.’
But a former aide to Obama denied that the previous administration ordered a major overhaul of furniture.



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The aide said it was ‘laughable’ that Trump officials were adhering to policies put forth by Obama - even though the current president has rolled back a lot of his predecessor’s initiatives, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Trump signed an executive order cancelling American participation in the TPP during the first week of his presidency – following through on a campaign promise.


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Lighthizer’s office encompasses two locations – the Winder Building (above) and the annex at 1724 F St. NW
‘We told 11 other countries that we were going to do a trade deal with them, and the Trump administration found the power to unwind that,’ the Obama trade official told The Post.
‘So furniture purchases cannot be as binding as a trade agreement that the president of the United States signed.
‘It’s just laughable.’
Lighthizer’s office has spent $18,500 for 60 sit-stand desks; $290,000 for a movable wooden wall system; and 90 office chairs that cost a total of $54,000.
The office paid $475,000 to a furniture supplier in the DC area, Executive Furniture, which offers high-end products designed for executives.
Lighthizer’s office encompasses two locations – the Winder Building and the annex at 1724 F St. NW.
It employs a total of just 270 people – which makes the almost $1million spending spree seem exorbitant.
Trump came into office with a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ of political corruption.
Yet his administration has had to deal with numerous negative stories about cabinet officials spending freely on the taxpayers’ dime.


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The office paid $475,000 to a furniture supplier in the DC area, Executive Furniture, which offers high-end products designed for executives
Last month, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson canceled a $31,000 order for a dining table set that he bought for his Washington, DC office following a public outcry.
In September, Tom Price resigned as secretary of health and human services under pressure from Trump after an uproar over Price’s use of costly private charter planes for government business.
Last month, Trump ousted Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin.
Shulkin had drawn fire for a damning report from the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
It found that during a trip to London and Denmark he improperly accepted tickets to the Wimbledon tennis tournament and his chief of staff made false statements so Shulkin’s wife could travel at government expense.
The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) said on Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the law when it approved a $43,000 soundproof phone booth last year for Administrator Scott Pruitt without seeking approval from lawmakers.
And the Department of Interior’s Office of Inspector General said Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke took an unnecessary charter flight in June after a speech he made there to a professional hockey team that cost taxpayers more than $12,000.

There were those who though well of her and there are those who didn't

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5629641/Fresno-State-professor-sparks-outrage-tweet-saying-shes-happy-Barbara-Bush-dead.html

[size=34]'I'm happy the witch is dead': Muslim Fresno State professor sparks outrage as she celebrates the death of Barbara Bush - calling her an 'amazing racist' who 'raised a war criminal'[/size]

• Just an hour after Barbara Bush's death was announced Tuesday evening, a Fresno State professor wrote a tweet celebrating her passing
  
  
• English Professor Randa Jarrar wrote that the former first lady was an 'amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal'
  
  
• She added: 'Either you are against these pieces of s*** and their genocidal ways or you're part of the problem....I'm happy the witch is dead'
  
  
• Many called Jarrar out on Twitter, but she only continued to deride Bush 
  
  
• At one point, she tagged the president of the school in a post, explaining that she couldn't be fired because she was tenure 
  
  
• Jarrar, a Muslim, was born in Chicago in 1978, but was raised in Kuwait and Egypt before returning to the U.S. after the first Gulf War 
  
  

By ASHLEY COLLMAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 08:04 EDT, 18 April 2018 | UPDATED: 08:31 EDT, 18 April 2018

    

A Fresno State professor is under fire for her tweets deriding Barbara Bush posted just an hour after the former first lady's death was announced Tuesday evening. 
Randa Jarrar, who teaches in the English department, took to Twitter last night and wrote a series of tweets condemning Bush, who died at the age of 92 after a battle with lung disease and congestive heart failure. 
'Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal. F*** outta here with your nice words.


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Just an hour after Barbara Bush's (right) death was announced Tuesday evening, Fresno State Professor Randa Jarrar (left) wrote a tweet celebrating her passing


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Jarrar wrote that the former first lady was an 'amazing racist who, along with her husband, raised a war criminal'


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She added: 'Either you are against these pieces of s*** and their genocidal ways or you're part of the problem....I'm happy the witch is dead'
'PSA: either you are against these pieces of s*** and their genocidal ways or you're part of the problem. That's actually how simple this is. I'm happy the witch is dead. Can't wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million Iraqis have,' she wrote. 

The tweets generated controversy online, with many saying that her words against Bush were inappropriate.
'Randa Jarrar is a hate-spewing psychopath, yet she remains gainfully employed at Fresno State. This CANNOT be allowed to stand,' one user wrote.


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Many called Jarrar out on Twitter, but she only continued to deride Bush












Another user added: 'If you're a student in one of Randa Jarrar's classes please do the right thing and boycott her until she is forced to resign. Who would want to learn English when she spews this vile crap?'
But that only fueled Jarrar's rhetoric, and she continued to voice her opinion in several more tweets before eventually setting her account to private. 
In one tweet, she said she couldn't be fired because she has tenure, going so far as to tag the school's president in the post. 
The school has tried to distance itself from Jarrar, saying that her tweets were written as a 'private citizen' and they don't reflect the university. 
'Professor Jarrar’s expressed personal views and commentary are obviously contrary to the core values of our University, which include respect and empathy for individuals with divergent points of view, and a sincere commitment to mutual understanding and progress,” he added.
'On behalf of Fresno State, I extend my deepest condolences to the Bush family on the loss of our former First Lady, Barbara Bush.



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'We share the deep concerns expressed by others over the personal comments made today by Professor Randa Jarrar, a professor in the English Department at Fresno State. He statements were made as a private citizen, not as a representative of Fresno State.
'Professor Jarrar's expressed personal views and commentary are obviously contrary to the core values of our University, which include respect and empathy for individuals with divergent points of view, and a sincere commitment to mutual understanding and progrress.' the school's president, Joseph I. Casto, said in a statement. 
Jarrar, a Muslim, was born in Chicago but grew up in Kuwait and Egypt, before returning to the U.S. after the first Gulf War.  
Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Salon.com, The Rumpus, the Utne Reader, The Oxford American.
She is the author of two books, the coming of age novel 'A Map of Home' and a story collection - 'Him, Me, Muhammad Ali'.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5630849/Mattis-told-Trump-Congress-vote-airstrikes-Syria.html

[size=34]Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Trump he should get Congress to vote on airstrikes on Syria but was overruled because president didn't want to back down from his tweets[/size]

• Mattis made the recommendation after Trump had already tweeted to 'get Ready Russia 
  
  
• Trump also wrote that the U.S. munitions would be 'smart'
  
  
• Mattis urged a congressional vote, which some lawmakers urged as a way to get buy-in, add to the weight of strikes
  
  
• Trump wanted to be seen as backing up his tweets
  
  
• The tweets followed what the U.S. said was the use of chemical weapons on civilians
  
  
• Mattis also warned that a major attack could provoke a war with Russia
  
  
• 58 per cent of Americans backed the strikes in a new poll
  
  
• The U.S. ultimately fired missiles at just three targets 
  
  

By GEOFF EARLE, DEPUTY U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 13:19 EDT, 18 April 2018 | UPDATED: 13:26 EDT, 18 April 2018




Defense Secretary James Mattis wanted the Congress to sign off on military strikes on Syria before they were launched.
But President Donald Trump moved unilaterally anyway, partly because he wanted to be consistent with his own tweets on the matter, military and administration officials told the New York Times.
In one saber-rattling tweet, Trump had already warned a military response was on the way.


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Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wanted the Congress to sign off on military strikes on Syria
Trump tweeted April 11, 'Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!'

Russia is one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's primary allies. 
Mattis urged a congressional vote as some lawmakers argued in advance that any military strike without it would be illegal and not covered by the post-Sept. 11 authorization for the use of military force that preceded the war in Afghanistan.
The president got apparently conflicting advice from Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and has not felt pressure from the Republican Congress for acting ahead of a specific authorization.
'The president called me about it on Thursday morning. I told him I thought he had the authority as long as it's a surgical strike to do what he was doing,' Corker told DailyMail.com. 'My guess is most people in our conference would agree with that.'
He said Trump did not mention Mattis's posture, and added: 'There's a big difference between him feeling it was required and him feeling that it was the right thing to do.' 


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President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Trump's private Mar-a-Lago club, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, in Palm Beach, Fla.
Trump also was warned that a response deemed too aggressive could provoke a wider war with Russia. 
'I would say that striking Syria at this point would be illegal without Congressional authorization because Congress has the war declaring power. There’s no excuse,' said House Judiciary ranking Democrat Rep. Jerold Nadler of New York, speaking on MSNBC.


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White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and National Security Advisor John Bolton attend U.S. President Donald Trump's a bilateral meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe


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Former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster was fired and vacated his post before the strikes


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U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis arrives for a closed-door briefings on Syria for the U.S. Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 17, 2018


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PREPARED FOR ALL CONTINGENCIES: White House National Security Advisor, John Bolton, steps from Air Force One upon U.S. President Donald Trump's arrival in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., April 16, 2018



Damascus skies erupt with surface to air missile fire as the U.S. launches an attack on Syria targeting different parts of the Syrian capital Damascus, Syria, early Saturday, April 14, 2018. Syria's capital has been rocked by loud explosions that lit up the sky with heavy smoke as U.S. President Donald Trump announced airstrikes in retaliation for the country's alleged use of chemical weapons




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In the end, the U.S. launched about 100 munitions at three sites in Syria associated with chemical weapons, after what the U.S. says was a chemical weapons attacks on civilians. 
The background to the strike – the second attack on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces of his presidency – comes as a new Politico/Morning Consult poll shows 58 per cent of Americans backed the strikes. 
Just 23 percent of Americans opposed the strikes, with 19 per cent having no opinion.
Trump's decision to cast aside McMaster's advice came days after the departure of his national security advisor, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, and immediately after the installation of his hawkish successor, former UN Ambassador John Bolton.  
Mattis and chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. briefed lawmakers in the Capitol on the strikes on Tuesday.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/19/us/pittsburgh-police-mueller-riot-gear/index.html.......

Marvellous!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5631833/Robert-Niro-hits-Trump-Tribeca-Film-Festival.html

[size=34]'America is being run by a madman': Robert De Niro hits out at President Trump on the first night of the Tribeca Film Festival[/size]

• The 17th annual Tribeca Film Festival opened on Wednesday 
  
  
• Robert De Niro, the festival's co-founder, used the event's spotlight to complain about President Trump, calling him 'our Lowlife-in-Chief'
  
  
• De Niro has been among the most vocal and bluntest of Trump's critics, frequently excoriating the president 
  
  
• He has previously said he would like to punch the president in the face 
  
  

By ASSOCIATED PRESS and DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 17:56 EDT, 18 April 2018 | UPDATED: 12:05 EDT, 19 April 2018

    


The 17th annual Tribeca Film Festival opened Wednesday with pugnacious political words from Robert De Niro. 
As the curtain went up on the 17th Tribeca, De Niro couldn't help using the festival's megawatt spotlight to direct his considerable ire at Trump.
De Niro has been among the most vocal and bluntest of Trump's critics, frequently excoriating the president. He has, for example, previously said he'd like to punch Trump in the face. 
At a kickoff luncheon for press, De Niro referred to Trump as 'our Lowlife-in-Chief' and rejected what he referred to as the president's narrow definition of America.


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Robert De Niro (left) took shots at President Trump (right) Wednesday night as his Tribeca Film Festival had its opening night 

'The country has had a bad year, and you - the press - have taken a lot of hits,' De Niro told the reporters in attendance. 'America is being run by a madman who wouldn't recognize the truth if it came inside a bucket of his beloved Colonel Sanders Fried Chicken.'
Festival organizers said this year's Tribeca has been programmed with some of De Niro's fighting spirit.



'In the face of this inhumanity, we stand definitely against the forces that are tearing our country apart from the inside,' said Jane Rosenthal, who co-founded the festival with De Niro, said. 'We stand with Time's Up, Never Again and Black Lives Matter and underserved voices.'


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Jane Rosenthal, the festival's co-founder, wore a Girl Power shirt to the festival's opening. 'In the face of this inhumanity, we stand definitely against the forces that are tearing our country apart from the inside,' she said
Some elements of this year's Tribeca, which runs through April 29, are pointedly political. The closing night selection is Liz Garbus' 'The Fourth Estate,' an upcoming Showtime documentary series that captures The New York Times reporting on Trump's first year in office. The Jay-Z produced series 'Rest in Power: The Travyon Martin Story' documents the 2012 shooting of the 17-year-old in Florida.
The festival will also hold a daylong Time's Up event on April 28, featuring hours of conversations with the initiative advocating for gender equality. Of the festival's 99 features, 46 per cent are directed by women, the most in Tribeca's history. Rosenthal has credited that percentage in part with the makeup of Tribeca Enterprises, which she said is 80 per cent female.
The festival opened just days after De Niro appeared on Saturday Night Live as Special Counsel Robert Mueller in a sketch. Wednesday on the 'Today' show, De Niro said he would like to reprise the part.
'I hope there's a couple where I interrogate him then I arrest him and then I escort him to jail,' De Niro said, referring to President Donald Trump.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5635907/Barack-Obama-pens-tribute-Parkland-students.html

[size=34]'Our children are calling us to account': Barack Obama pens tribute to the Parkland student activists for the Time 100 issue[/size]

• President Obama wrote a tribute to the Parkland students, who were named one of the Time 100 Most Influential People of 2018
  
  
• The students pictured ed in the Time 100 are David Hogg, Cameron Kasky, Jaclyn Corin, Emma Gonzalez and Alex Wind
  
  
• The five students have become activists for gun control after more than a dozen of their peers were killed in a shooting at a Florida high school in February 
  
  
• Obama wrote that the students are 'as comfortable speaking truth to power as they are dismissive of platitudes and punditry'
  
  
• Obama promised gun control legislation after Sandy Hook but didn't pass any 
  
  

By ASHLEY COLLMAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 17:37 EDT, 19 April 2018 | UPDATED: 00:46 EDT, 20 April 2018

    

Barack Obama has penned a touching tribute to the Parkland students who have become gun control activists in the wake of the February shooting. 
The former president was chosen to write about the students for the Time 100 issue. 
In his essay, Obama says that students David Hogg, Cameron Kasky, Jaclyn Corin Emma Gonzalez and Alex Wind are changing the gun control debate, which had fallen stagnant. 
'This time, our children are calling us to account,' he says. 


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President Obama wrote a touch tribute to the Parkland student activists for the Time 100 issue. The activists are pictured from left to right: Cameron Kasky, Alex Wind, Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg, and Jaclyn Corin
Despite not having 'the kind of lobbyist or big budgets for attack ads' or even (for most of the them) the right to vote, the students are making changes.   


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In his essay, Obama wrote that the Parkland students are 'as comfortable speaking truth to power as they are dismissive of platitudes and punditry'
'They have the power so often inherent in youth: to see the world anew; to reject the old constraints, outdated conventions and cowardice too often dressed up as wisdom. The power to insist that America can be better,' Obama writes. 

He continues: 'Seared by memories of seeing their friends murdered at a place they believed to be safe, these young leaders don’t intimidate easily. 
'They see the NRA and its allies—whether mealymouthed politicians or mendacious commentators peddling conspiracy theories—as mere shills for those who make money selling weapons of war to whoever can pay. 
'They’re as comfortable speaking truth to power as they are dismissive of platitudes and punditry. And they live to mobilize their peers.'
Obama goes on to say that 'by bearing witness to carnage' and asking the tough questions, the Parkland students 'are shaking us out of our complacency'.
'Our history is defined by the youthful push to make America more just, more compassionate, more equal under the law. This generation—of Parkland, of Dreamers, of Black Lives Matter—embraces that duty. If they make their elders uncomfortable, that’s how it should be. Our kids now show us what we’ve told them America is all about, even if we haven’t always believed it ourselves: that our future isn’t written for us, but by us,' Obama concludes. 
Obama tearfully promised to do something in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 but failed, calling gun control laws the 'greatest frustration of my presidency' in 2015.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5637089/Hundreds-school-walkouts-planned-Columbine-anniversary.html

[size=34]Students at thousands of high schools set to walkout and stage Vote for Our Lives events to press for gun control on anniversary of Columbine shooting[/size]

• Organizers say more 2600 demonstrations are planned from Hawaii to Maine
  
  
• After walking out, many will march to state houses or discuss gun violence  
  
  
• Vote for Our Lives vigil held in Littleton, Colorado to remember Columbine
  
  
• Columbine itself will be closed and there will the traditional community event 
  
  

By TARIQ TAHIR FOR MAILONLINE and ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 00:11 EDT, 20 April 2018 | UPDATED: 07:42 EDT, 20 April 2018

    

Another wave of high school walkouts is expected as students honor victims of gun violence and push for gun control on the anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.
Organizers say more than 2,600 demonstrations are planned from Maine to Hawaii to commemorate the 19th anniversary of the shooting that left 13 people dead in Littleton, Colorado.
Ahead of the walkout, a 'Vote for Our Lives' rally and vigil was held in Littleton to remember victims of high school shootings, including the one that took place in Parkland, Florida on February 14.


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Nia Arrington of the Youth Power Collective, from Pittsburgh, speaks during the Vote For Our Lives rally and vigil in a park near Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.


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Former Columbine High School principal Frank DeAngelis stands next to a woman with a placard commemorating those who died in the 1999 shooting 


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Desiree Davis, second from left, who lost her daughter Claire in a shooting in Arapahoe High School in December 2013, hugs Melica Pourarfaie, a current student at Arapahoe, after they spoke the Vote For Our Lives event


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Three of the participants at the Vote For Our Lives event. High school students are set to walk out today to call for greater gun control 


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Isaac Slade, lead singer of The Fray, sings during the rally. Some 60 students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School took part in the event
Many students say they'll wear orange and leave class at 10 a.m. to take a moment of silence for victims of Columbine and other shootings. 

After walking out, some students will head to rallies at their statehouses, while others will stay at school to discuss gun violence.
Many New York schools are planning to rally at the city's Washington Square Park, despite the chancellor of New York City's education department urging them not to walk out.
Some schools in Houston and elsewhere will give students time to share their views but have warned them not to leave campus or return to class late.
Students in the Washington area are planning to march from the White House to the Capitol building, where they will rally and deliver letters to Congress calling for greater gun control.
The walkout will coincide with voter registration drives as part of the 'Vote for Your Lives' movement, which aims to pressure politicians to enact tighter restrictions on gun sales in the run-up to November's mid-term congressional elections.
Ahead of the rally and the anniversary, Colorado teenagers held a 'Vote of Your Lives' rally in a park in Littleton, near Columbine High School, which was joined by survivors of the Parkland shooting.


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Young demonstrators hold a rally in front of the White House in Washington during the national protest against gun violence held on March 14


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A student waves a placard as classmates gather during a student walkout to protest gun violence on the soccer field behind Columbine High School in Littleton during the March 14 walkout


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Student Leah Zundel, 15, (left) waves a placard during a student walkout to protest gun violence on the soccer field behind Columbine High School while class mate 16-year-old Kaylee Tyner (right)  listens to a speaker during the demonstration
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School junior Kayla Schaefer was one of 60 students who came to Colorado.
'I feel like we're both kind of going through the same thing,' the 17-year-old told CNN.
'They went through it a long time ago, but we're going through it now so they understand what we are going through.'
But there won't be protests at Columbine itself, which will be closed on the day as usual.
Instead students there will stick with their tradition of holding a day of service of commemoration in a community that includes gun control advocates and those who want to arm teachers.



Junior Kaylee Tyner, who helped organize a walkout at the school on March 14, said the anniversary is a day to remember the event and politicizing it could divide the community.
'Every other day can be a day to push for change,' said Tyner, who wishes organizers of the national walkout had reached out to the Columbine community first.
'But that is a day to respect victims and their families.'
In a letter to other high schools in its suburban Denver district earlier last week, current Columbine principal Scott Christy and the principal at the time of the massacre, Frank DeAngelis, suggested students join their tradition rather than participating in a walkout. 
Tens of thousands of students left class March 14 to protest gun violence in the largest youth protest movement since at least the Vietnam War.
Days later, hundreds of thousands of teens and their backers rallied across the U.S. calling for tougher laws on guns and ammunition.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5636989/Kushner-Cos-subpoenaed-feds-AP-report.html

[size=34]Jared Kushner's family real estate company is hit by federal subpoena, after report revealed it filed 'dozens of false documents' about its New York properties[/size]

• The real estate company was run by Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner
  
  
• It is now run by his brother Joshua, though the report is from Jared's time as CEO
  
  
• Report states Kushner Companies filed dozens of false documents in New York 
  
  

By DANYAL HUSSAIN FOR MAILONLINE and ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 23:06 EDT, 19 April 2018 | UPDATED: 06:40 EDT, 20 April 2018

    

The real estate company that was previously run by Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors after a report revealed it had filed dozens of false documents.
The report from the Associated Press revealed that Kushner Companies routinely filed false paperwork in New York that said it had zero rent-regulated tenants in buildings across the city when, in fact, it had hundreds.
In response, the real estate company issued a statement saying it has 'nothing to hide and is cooperating fully with all legitimate requests for information, including this subpoena.' 


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White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner speaks during the Saban Forum 2017 in Washington. The Kushner Companies confirmed it was subpoenaed by federal prosecutors

• The Kushner Cos. confirmed the federal subpoena came last month, just a day after the AP report, which covered a three-year period when the real estate company was run by Jared Kushner. 
  
  

The company is now run by Jared's brother Joshua.
According to expert tenant advocates, the false filings allow landlords to avoid regulations that are designed to stop lower-paying, rent-regulated tenants being harassed during construction and pressured to leave.
This harassment could then allow higher-paying tenants to move in and replace the previous ones. 


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Kushner Companies confirmed it had been subpoenaed in a statement. Pictured is the base of the company in 2006
Kushner Cos. told AP at the time of the report that the company outsources preparation of construction permit applications and fixes any mistakes immediately. 
Records show the company did file some amended documents, often more than a year later.
The AP report, based on work by nonprofit watchdog Housing Rights Initiative, has sparked an inquiry by the New York state attorney general's office and a city council investigation.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Thursday that the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn had subpoenaed housing paperwork from the company. 
The office declined to comment to the AP.
The Brooklyn attorney's office also has reportedly subpoenaed the Kushner Cos. over a visa-for-investment program to raise money from Chinese investors for its real estate projects.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5638609/Parents-furious-eighth-grade-students-asked-list-positive-aspects-slavery.html

[size=34]Fury as eighth grade students are asked to list the 'positive aspects' of slavery for a homework assignment[/size]

• The assignment 'The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View' was given to eighth grade students at Great Hearts Monte Vista, a charter school in San Antonio, Texas
  
  
• A parent, wishing to remain anonymous, posted the assignment on social media on Wednesday and quickly went viral
  
  
• Even U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro asked for a parent to send him a copy of the assignment
  
  
• Great Hearts Texas Superintendent Aaron Kindel released a statement stating that the teacher was place on leave until 'all the facts' were given
  
  
• The course textbook, 'Prentice Hall Classics: A History of the United States,' was taken out the class and is going to be audited
  
  

By MATTHEW WRIGHT FOR DAILYMAIL.COM 
PUBLISHED: 08:44 EDT, 20 April 2018 | UPDATED: 09:01 EDT, 20 April 2018







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The assignment 'The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View' was given to eighth grade students at Great Hearts Monte Vista, a charter school in San Antonio, Texas
Middle school students in San Antonio were asked to list the 'positive' and 'negative' aspects of slavery for a homework assignment, raising concerns from parents and members of the community. 
The assignment 'The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View' was given to eighth grade students at Great Hearts Monte Vista, a charter school in the area. 
A parent, wishing to remain anonymous, posted the assignment on social media on Wednesday and soon the post was shared by parents and others from the area. 

Even U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro asked for a parent to send him a copy of the assignment.   
Great Hearts Texas Superintendent Aaron Kindel released a statement on Thursday that said the assignment was only shared on the North campus and 'was very inappropriate and entirely inconsistent' with the school's 'philosophy and culture.'



'To be clear, there is no debate about slavery. It is immoral and a crime against humanity,' Kindel wrote in the statement obtained by The San Antonio Express-News. 'It was a clear mistake and we sincerely apologize for the insensitive nature of this offense.'


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Great Hearts Texas Superintendent Aaron Kindel released a statement stating that the teacher was place on leave until 'all the facts' were given
Kindel detailed that the teacher was placed on leave until 'all the facts' were properly assessed. The course textbook, 'Prentice Hall Classics: A History of the United States,' was taken out the class and is going to be audited.  
'If we deem this textbook imprudent, we will permanently remove it and replace it with a history book that accurately reflects our values,' Kindel's statement added.
The 'mistake' will be explained to students by the school's headmasters and teachers in hopes to 'engage them in lessons that are more thoughtful about this period  
'We fully intend to make sure something like this does not happen again and will keep parents posted as we address this issue further,' the statement said.


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The course textbook, 'Prentice Hall Classics: A History of the United States,' was taken out the class and is going to be audited

Positive stuff here:

https://twitter.com/dustingardiner/status/987468177884962816/video/1

https://twitter.com/i/moments/987291792872820736

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5641261/Syrian-President-Bashar-al-Assad-hands-Legion-DHonneur-missile-attack.html

[size=34]Syrian President Bashar al Assad hands back his Legion d'Honneur medal as he calls the French 'slaves of the US' after missile attack[/size]

• 52-year-old despot was given the award in 2001, soon after he took office 
  
  
• Award handed to the Romanian embassy in Syrian, which handles French affairs
  
  
• Syrians said decoration awarded by a 'slave regime of the United States'
  
  

By PETER ALLEN IN PARIS FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 04:19 EDT, 21 April 2018 | UPDATED: 07:26 EDT, 21 April 2018


Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has sent a prestigious French award back in the post - saying he does not want to be honoured by 'a slave regime of the United States that supports terrorism'.
The 52-year-old despot was made a top-ranking member of the National Order of the Legion d'Honneur in 2001, when he took office.
But the medal has caused considerable embarrassment in recent years, as Assad began massacring his own citizens during the on-going civil war in Syria.


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A picture released on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's Facebook page shows a foreign affairs official giving France's Legion d'Honneur Grand Croix award to a representative from the embassy of Romania, which represents French interests in Syria
A week ago French, American and British forces bombed chemical weapons facilities run by Assad, prompting fury from his regime.

President Emmanuel Macron's government began proceedings to have the Legion d'Honneur rescinded, but Assad has now got rid of the award himself.
An Assad spokesman said: 'The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates has officially returned the decoration of Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor granted to President Assad by former French President Jacques Chirac.'
He said that it was posted back to Paris via the Romanian Embassy in Damascus because it was 'a decoration awarded by a slave regime of the United States that supports terrorism.' 


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Syrian president Bashar el-Assad awarded French Legion d'Honneur medal by French president Jacques Chirac at the Elysee Palace





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The spokesman accused France in taking part in 'tripartite aggression alongside the United States and the United Kingdom'.
The Damascus strikes followed a chemical weapons attack carried out by Assad's forces on April 7 in the Syrian city of Douma.
Around 3000 people a year receive the controversial Legion d'Honneur, which was created by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802.
Other recipients include Russian president Vladimir Putin, and the late Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
Sex scandal Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein also got one, as did disgraced cycling drugs cheat Lance Armstrong.

So pleased Dump did not show up at Barbara Bush's funeral.......

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/987465434281725952

He didn't go out of respect , no he didn't go because they can't stand him.

He didn't go because:
     A. He knew he wouldn't be welcome
     B. He didn't give a damn anyway because it wouldn't be all about him

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5641759/Neo-Nazis-plan-rally-Georgia-celebrate-Hitlers-birthday-amid-fears-violent-clashes.html

[size=34]Heavily armed anti-fascists descend on Georgia town to clash with neo-Nazis during rally celebrating Hitler's birthday[/size]

• An estimated 400 police are on hand for white nationalist rally Saturday
  
  
• National Socialist Movement scheduled the rally one day after Hitler's birthday 
  
  
• The Atlanta Antifa and others have banned together to protest the event
  
  
• Anti-fascists were arrested before the rally for refusing to take of their masks 
  
  
• Georgia allows citizens to open-carry and some protesters brought their guns
  
  

By DANIELLE ZOELLNER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 09:56 EDT, 21 April 2018 | UPDATED: 16:05 EDT, 21 April 2018

    

Heavily armed anti-fascists descend on a Georgia town to clash with neo-Nazis who scheduled a rally on Saturday to celebrate Adolf Hitler's birthday.  
Newnan, Georgia, which is about 40 miles west of the state's capital, has permitted the National Socialist Movement to host a rally from 3 to 5pm to celebrate Hitler's birthday.
An estimated 400 law enforcement officers arrived early for the event to barricade the streets where the rally will take place. About 100 neo-Nazis are scheduled to attend, but most have yet to be seen. 
The Atlanta Antifa and other counter-protesters organized their own rally to start earlier in Newnan to outnumber the white nationalist group and challenge their beliefs.

Already, anti-fascist members have been seen armed with guns, masks and signs in protest.


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Police arrested counter-protesters Saturday in Newnan, Georgia, for wearing masks. The protesters were there to outnumber neo-Nazis who planned a rally in celebration of Adolf Hitler's birthday 


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Several counter-protesters were arrested as police attempted to keep the crowds under control during the rallies in Newnan Saturday afternoon 


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The anti-fascists and counter-protesters outnumbered the neo-Nazis who were nowhere to be scene during their scheduled rally Saturday


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Correction officers arrive hours before members of the National Socialist Movement are expected to arrive in Newnan for their rally Saturday 


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Christopher Mathias

@letsgomathias





[ltr]I just witness the most over-aggressive policing I've ever seen in #Newnan. Tackling protesters and arresting them... for wearing masks.[/ltr]



2:17 PM - Apr 21, 2018

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Early footage from the counter-protest before the white nationalist rally shows people getting arrested after they refused to take off their masks.
Citizens are allowed to carry a weapon in public under Georgia law, but they are not allowed to wear a mask.



According to Georgia law, a person is guilty of a misdemeanor if they wear a mask, hood or any other device to conceal their face. This law was passed in 1951 by the state as a measure to help unmask members of the Ku Klux Klan. 
These counter-protesters arrived in the town to object the group's ability to host a rally about their controversial beliefs. 
'The City of Newnan has a responsibility to protect free speech rights, the individuals and groups that chose to exercise those rights and the broader community in which those rights may be exercised,' the city said in a statement earlier this week. 
One member of the organization, Burt Colucci, told Atlanta Journal-Constitution before the rally that it was within the group's First Amendment right to talk about these racial issues, including illegal immigration. 
'We need to round (illegal immigrants) up and put them in camps if need be. Like we did the Italians, Germans and Japanese. We are at war with the illegals,' he told the newspaper.


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The police are expected to outnumber the 100 neo-Nazis who are expected to attend the rally


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Newnan, Georgia, has staffed an estimated 400 police officers for a white nationalist rally on Saturday in celebration of Adolf Hitler's birthday 


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Police are anticipated to outnumber the neo-Nazi members Saturday during their rally in celebration of Adolf Hitler's birthday
The National Socialist Movement obtained a permit for the demonstration last month and the event has since sparked counter-protesters to organize their own rally. 
The extra safety measures the city has implemented include road closures and more law enforcement staff available during the demonstration, which will be held in Newnan's Greenville State Park. 
In response to the neo-Nazi demonstration, Atlanta's Antifa and other counter-protesters began gathering in Newnan starting around 1.30pm.  
Another group called the No Nazi Newnan coalition has chastised the city for allowing the white supremacists to rally in the first place.
In a press release Tuesday afternoon, the coalition stated that 'city of Newnan authorities have lectured their residents about not protesting the National Socialist Movement', the Newnan Times-Herald reports. 


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Residents of the the Georgia town have spoken against the rally saying the area is 'no place for hate'. Some members of the community are concerned about potential violent clashes 


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Some local businesses have been closed an anticipation of the events Saturday to encourage residents to stay away from the demonstration 


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In preparation for the event, police officers have put up barricades around the area 
But members of the coalition disagree with about not counter-protesting because they believe 'turning a blind eye' is not going to stop 'bigotry, hatred or violence.'
'What is needed is a large-scale display of unity and community vigilance against organized white supremacists,' the statement said.  
Most businesses have shutdown amid the demonstrations and residents are worried that the protests could turn violent.
'It's scary that this is coming to our town because we didn't ask for this,' said Newnan resident Gina Godfrey to CBS 46. 
She was trying to go to the bank Friday, but the building was already barricaded in anticipation of Saturday's rally.
Residents' fears about the rally stems from the Charlottesville, Virginia, white nationalist event in August 2017.
The day turned violent when a vehicle slammed into counter-protesters killing Heather Heyer, 32, and injuring 19 people. The driver, James Fields Jr, was charged with second-degree murder.

https://www.indy100.com/article/donald-trump-us-president-maggie-haberman-new-york-times-pulitzer-prize-winner-journalist-tweet-8315886

https://www.indy100.com/article/donald-trump-us-president-maggie-haberman-new-york-times-pulitzer-prize-winner-journalist-tweet-8315886

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Picture: [size=17]JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES/ TWITTER[/size]

Donald Trump's dislike of the New York Times is one of his longest-standing feuds in his ascension to presidency. 
On Friday, they really rattled his cage when the published a story with the title: 'Michael Cohen said he would take a bullet for Trump. Maybe not anymore.'
The story, which covers the uncertain relationship between Trump and his personal attorney Cohen, clearly struck a nerve with the president, who fired out a series of tweets just a few hours ago in which he targetted Maggie Haberman, one of the main journalists who worked on the feature.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump





[ltr]The New York Times and a third rate reporter named Maggie Haberman, known as a Crooked H flunkie who I don’t speak to and have nothing to do with, are going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will “flip.” They use....[/ltr]



9:10 AM - Apr 21, 2018

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Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump




Replying to @realDonaldTrump

[ltr]....non-existent “sources” and a drunk/drugged up loser who hates Michael, a fine person with a wonderful family. Michael is a businessman for his own account/lawyer who I have always liked & respected. Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble, even if....[/ltr]



9:10 AM - Apr 21, 2018

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Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump




Replying to @realDonaldTrump

[ltr]....it means lying or making up stories. Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media![/ltr]



9:10 AM - Apr 21, 2018

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As you can see, all the typical Trump buzzwords are in there - such as "dishonest media" and "witch hunt" and "crooked H flunkie". However, he might regret calling Haberman a "third-rate reporter".
Earlier this month, Haberman - along with her fellow reporters at the New York Times - was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the highest honour that can be bestowed on any journalist for their work. 
It's safe to say that to win such an award, you have to be a little bit better than a 'third-rate reporter", and the New Times Communications Twitter account was more than happy to let the president know.


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View image on Twitter
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NYTimes Communications

@NYTimesPR





[ltr]We are extremely proud of @maggieNYT, who is a part of a team that just won a Pulitzer Prize. We stand by our story and our reporting. Here’s the link to the story by @maggieNYT, @SharonLNYT and @dannyhakim: https://nyti.ms/2HAt92z [/ltr]



9:10 AM - Apr 21, 2018

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Not only in this pretty embarrassing for Trump, it's made even worse that Trump actually spelt Haberman's name wrong initially, then had the entire three-tweet thread deleted and reposted with the correct spelling, which is a bit much really.
Furthermore, Trump appears to have met Haberman on several occasions since he has been in the White House - and there is photographic evidence to prove it.


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Michael S. Schmidt

@nytmike





[ltr]"who I don’t speak to and have nothing to do with.."[/ltr]



8:24 AM - Apr 21, 2018

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Jim Geraghty

@jimgeraghty





[ltr]How many on-the-record interviews as Trump done with Haberman? I've found January 2017, April 2017, July 2017... five interviews with the NYT in the first six months of this presidency... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/987679848284999680 …[/ltr]



10:17 AM - Apr 21, 2018

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Haberman, herself, also had a few thoughts about Trump's tweets.

Maggie Haberman

@maggieNYT





[ltr]One B, sir (or Dan?). Here’s the story that seems to have touched a nerve. https://nyti.ms/2vuwhYZ  https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/987666600194183168 …[/ltr]



8:27 AM - Apr 21, 2018

Michael Cohen Has Said He Would Take a Bullet for Trump. Maybe Not Anymore.

Roger Stone says Mr. Trump has long treated Mr. Cohen, his lawyer and fixer, “like garbage.” Now he could end up cooperating in a criminal investigation against Mr. Trump.
nytimes.com

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Maggie Haberman

@maggieNYT





[ltr]When I was reporting this story, I said to one person who’s observed the Cohen-Trump relationship that Trump has been abusive to him. The person replied, “He’s abusive to everybody.” https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/20/us/politics/trump-michael-cohen.amp.html#click=https://t.co/M34kkP0sQb …[/ltr]



9:33 AM - Apr 21, 2018

Michael Cohen Has Said He Would Take a Bullet for Trump. Maybe Not Anymore.

Roger Stone says Mr. Trump has long treated Mr. Cohen, his lawyer and fixer, “like garbage.” Now he could end up cooperating in a criminal investigation against Mr. Trump.
nytimes.com

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It also shouldn't be overlooked that Trump sent this tweets as mourners were gathering to pay their respects to former First Lady, Barbara Bush.

Jennifer Jacobs

@JenniferJJacobs




Replying to @JenniferJJacobs

[ltr]As mourners gather for Bush funeral at 10a ET, Trump, on way to go golf, sends out messages on:
—“lying”
—“flunkies”
—“drunk/drugged up” ex-aide
—chatter about whether ex-aide will flip on him in a criminal investigation
—his “crooked” Dem opponent in 2016
—“dishonest media.”[/ltr]



8:59 AM - Apr 21, 2018

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5643213/Parents-CHILDREN-join-heavily-armed-pro-gun-protesters.html

[size=38]Parents take their CHILDREN to join heavily-armed protesters angry at plans to ban assault rifles like the AR-15 used during the Parkland school shooting[/size]

• Boulder City Council bill, which has now passed first reading, would ban sale and possession of assault rifles
  
  
• Protesters wielded banners attacking measures, which pro-gun activists see as threat to second amendment
  
  
• One demonstrator, Jody Johnson, carried a Sig Sauer MCX rifle while walking hand-in-hand with son, Ryatt
  
  

By RORY TINGLE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 22:56 EDT, 21 April 2018 | UPDATED: 03:30 EDT, 22 April 2018

    

Young children were seen among dozens of heavily-armed protesters gathered in Boulder, Colorado, to show their anger at plans to ban assault rifles. 
Many people at Saturday's rally carried weapons that would become illegal if the proposed ban is passed by Boulder City Council, including AR-15 style rifles like the one used to shoot 17 dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
The ordinance, which has passed its first reading, would outlaw the sale and possession of assault weapons - defined as semi-automatic rifles or handguns with detachable magazines.


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Jody Johnson (left) carrying a Sig Sauer MCX rifle stands with her son Ryatt at a pro-gun rally on Saturday in Boulder, Colorado. The city is considering enacting an ordinance that will ban the sale and possession of assault weapons


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Protest organizer Jason Boros was joined by around 200 demonstrators carrying placards including 'I will not comply' and 'I love the second amendment'


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The ordinance, which has passed its first reading, would outlaw the sale and possession of assault weapons - defined as semi-automatic rifles or handguns with detachable magazines. These protesters openly carried rifles and pistols


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One man carries a banner with a verse from Luke 22:36 while another holds one stating 'guns are not an issue' at Saturday's rally
Protest organizer Jason Boros told the Daily Camera he sees the legislation as 'extreme'. He was joined by around 200 demonstrators carrying placards including 'I will not comply' and 'I love the second amendment'. 

Jody Johnson carried a Sig Sauer MCX rifle while walking hand-in-hand with her son, Ryatt, who held a sign which read, 'Gun free zones are sitting duck zones'. 
Another protester, who gave his name only as Brandon, came armed with an AR-15, as did his wife. 
They had decided to bring along their two young children, he said, to show that 'average families' owned rifles that would be banned under the new law. 






One man carried a copy of the US Constitution while another had the second amendment tattooed on his forearm.
Ty Lawson, meanwhile, claimed the planned ordinance was a 'knee jerk' to mass shootings, adding: 'I don't feel my Second Amendment rights should be infringed upon because of it.' 
Organizers had told protesters to avoid partisan political symbols, such as Confederate flags or pro-Trump merchandise, and this order was largely abided by. There was a similar rally on Saturday in Washington. 
There was no counter-demonstration, although some drivers swore at the protesters as they passed, and one man shouted 'stop killing kids'.  


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Organizers had told protesters to avoid partisan political symbols, such as Confederate flags or pro-Trump merchandise, and this order was largely abided by


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Johnson and her son, Ryatt, walk along the sidewalk past crowds of protesters. There was no counter-demonstration, although some drivers swore at the protesters as they passed, and one man shouted 'stop killing kids'


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Daniel Fithian holds his Scar 16S .556 rifle and a Gadsden revolutionary-era flag at a pro-gun rally in downtown Boulder on Saturday


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Men wearing shirts emblazoned with the words 'for God and county' and 'bleed red white and blue' stand by the road during a pro-gun rally in Boulder on Saturday


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Arguments in favour of controlling the sale of assault rifles have gained momentum in recent months but have been vigorously resisted by protesters including the ones gathered in Boulder on Saturday


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This man held a sign which read, 'Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you' as he joined pro-gun protesters in Boulder on Saturday
Arguments in favour of controlling the sale of assault rifles have gained momentum in recent months.
It was a key demand of the organizers of March For Our Lives, which saw hundreds of thousands of protesters converge on Washington DC and New York last month.
In February, the Florida state senate voted down a ban on assault weapons, although they did agree to raise the legal age for purchasing a firearm to 21.
But a ban was passed on April 4 in the town of Deerfield, Illinois, with supporters saying it was a direct response to the Parkland shooting. 


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A man shows off his tattoo of the second amendment to the US constitution at the protest against plans to ban the sale and ownership of assault rifles in Boulder, Colorado


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A demonstrator at Saturday's pro-gun rally carries a pistol inside a black holster with the Stars and Stripes sticking out of it 


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A protester carries a rifle and a pistol by his side on a holster reading 'alcohol, tobacco & firearms, should be a convenience store, not a government agency'


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A Humvee painted in the colours of the American flag, an assault rifle, and the words 'In God We Trust' parked at the rally on Saturday 


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Mark, a protester who declined to give his last name, holds a copy of the Constitution of the United States of America and the selected writings of the Founding Fathers

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5653193/Armenian-Americans-march-LA-genocide-recognition.html

[size=34]Armenian-Americans flood the streets of Los Angeles as they call on government to formally recognize 1915 genocide by the Ottoman Empire that took the lives of 1.5MILLION[/size]

• Thousands of Armenian-Americans marched in Los Angeles on Tuesday
  
  
• The march recognized the Armenian Genocide that took place a century ago
  
  
• Marchers demanded the 1.5million deaths be recognized by Turkey as genocide
  
  
• The demonstrators waved the Armenian and American flags and carried signs
  
  
• Mayor Eric Garcetti marched alongside thousands of demonstrators on Tuesday
  
  
• Garcetti was heard saying in a speech that the genocide was 'a human tragedy' 
  
  

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 16:02 EDT, 24 April 2018 | UPDATED: 05:17 EDT, 25 April 2018

    

Thousands of Armenian-Americans took to the streets of Los Angeles on Tuesday to commemorate the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire a century ago.
The demonstrations came hours after Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan resigned following 10 days of large anti-government protests in that country.
Marchers in Los Angeles demanded that the 1.5million deaths starting in 1915 be recognized by Turkey as genocide.
Although Armenians and many historians consider it to be genocide, Turkey - successor of the Ottoman Empire - contends those who died were victims of civil war and unrest.

Los Angeles demonstrators waved Armenian and American flags and carried signs that read '1915 never again' and 'Turkish denial must end.'


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Thousands attend a march in Hollywood, Calif., on Tuesday, April 24, 2018, to commemorate the 103rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide


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The demonstrations came hours after Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan resigned following 10 days of large anti-government protests in that country 


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The demonstrators waved the Armenian and American flags and carried signs


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Demonstrators protest outside the Turkish Consulate during a march and rally commemorating the 103rd anniversary of the Armenian genocide


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People attend a ceremony marking the 103rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide


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Mayor Eric Garcetti is speaking at the BANC of CALIFORNIA Stadium ribbon ceremony, the new home of the LA Football Club in Expo Park in Los Angeles on April 18, 2018
Marie Keshishian, an 18-year-old student at Glendale College, said all four of her great-great grandparents were killed in the genocide and that she was marching in their honor.
'I'm out here today to march for justice, to march for recognition, to march for the people - my ancestors, my great-great grandparents who lost their lives ... to hopefully get more people to recognize and accept that there was a genocide,' Keshishian said.



Andrew Antaramian, a 32-year-old Pasadena attorney, said he joins in the marches every year to honor his ancestors, who fled Armenia and escaped death.
'It's important to always commemorate what our ancestors have gone through because if this is not going to occur again, we have to remind the world what our people went through,' he said.


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Armenian Genocide: Hanging on tripods. Systematic killing of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I, 1915 - 1923. Also known as Armenian Holocaust


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Armenian Orphans are being deported in 1915, at time of Armenian Genocide


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Henry Morgenthau included this photograph in his 1918 book Ambassador Morgenthau's Story with the following caption: 'Scenes like this were common all over the Armenian provinces in the spring and summer months of 1915'
Mayor Eric Garcetti marched alongside demonstrators, saying in a speech that the genocide was 'a human tragedy.'
'To be a part of the human family we must accept our tragedies,' Garcetti said. 'And all of us will say, 'Never again.''
City Attorney Mike Feuer told demonstrators that 'today here in Los Angeles, we are all Armenians.'
'Look around,' he said as the crowd cheered. 'You are the answer to Hitler.'
Kim Kardashian West, one of the most famous Armenian-Americans in the U.S., tweeted an old photo of herself in Armenia and praised global demonstrations calling for the genocide to be recognized.
'It's so inspiring to see all Armenians united in peaceful protests making a difference,' she said. 'It's a historic day for Armenia.'


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Armenian-Americans march in protest through the Little Armenia neighborhood of Hollywood, California on April 24, 2018


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Thousands attend a march in Hollywood, Calif., on Tuesday, April 24, 2018, to commemorate the 103rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide


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Los Angeles holds the largest number of Armenians in the world outside of Armenia

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5653461/Protesters-greet-Amazons-Jeff-Bezos-Germany.html

[size=34]Hundreds of angry Amazon workers protest in Germany about their working conditions outside an event where founder Jeff Bezos is getting an award[/size]

• Hundreds of Amazon workers blew whistles and banged drums on Tuesday as they protested against working conditions in Germany
  
  
• About 450 workers gathered outside a publishing company where founder Jeff Bezos was set to receive an innovation in business award
  
  
• Union bosses representing the workers said Bezos wanted to impose American working conditions on the world
  
  
• Unions have been demanding that Amazon raise the pay for warehouse workers 
  
  

By EMILY CRANE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and REUTERS
PUBLISHED: 17:55 EDT, 24 April 2018 | UPDATED: 04:06 EDT, 25 April 2018

    

Hundreds of Amazon workers blew whistles and banged drums on Tuesday as they protested against working conditions in Germany where the megagroup's founder Jeff Bezos was receiving a prize.
Chanting and holding banners reading 'Make Bezos pay', about 450 workers gathered in front of the German publishing group Axel Springer in Berlin where the Amazon boss was to receive an award at a glitzy ceremony attended by politicians and celebrities.
The prize, given by the publisher of German's mass-selling daily Bild, rewards innovation in business, but the choice of Bezos was met with anger among unions and some politicians.


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Hundreds of angry Amazon workers blew whistles and banged drums on Tuesday as they protested in Berlin against working conditions in Germany


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About 450 workers gathered in front of the German publishing group Axel Springer in Berlin where Amazon boss Jeff Bezos (pictured above at the ceremony) was to receive an award
'We have a worldwide problem, a boss who wants to impose American working conditions on the world,' said Frank Bsirske, head of the Verdi union representing Amazon workers.

'It's like going back to the 19th century.' 
Andreas Nahles, head of the Social Democrats that are in coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel, said Bezos 'didn't deserve any prize', pointing to working conditions at Amazon sites in Germany.
Verdi has organized frequent strikes at Amazon in Germany since May 2013 to press demands for the retailer to raise pay for warehouse workers in accordance with collective bargaining agreements in Germany's mail order and retail industry. 
Organisers of Tuesday's rally said Amazon workers came from as far afield as Poland and Italy to voice their displeasure.
The French CFDT union said the gathering 'denounced illegal practices and disastrous working conditions' in the company.


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Amazon warehouse workers, including some holding an effigy of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (left), protest outside the Axel Springer building on Tuesday


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The Amazon workers blew whistles and banged drums on Tuesday as they protested their working conditions


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About 450 workers gathered outside a publishing company where founder Jeff Bezos was set to receive an innovation in business award


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The angry warehouse workers were chanting and holding banners reading 'Make Bezos pay'
It said there had been 'several undeclared workplace accidents' and accused Amazon of monitoring the computer records of employees.
Bezos - the richest man in the world, according to Forbes magazine - was quoted by the German DPA news agency as saying he was 'very proud of our working conditions' in response to the gathering.
In March, Spanish Amazon staff held their first work stoppage to protest new working guidelines.



Amazon boasts more than 560,000 employees, and reported a profit last year of slightly more than $3 billion.
The company has previously said that its salaries are at the higher end of the logistics sector range and employees enjoy attractive benefits. 
Amazon has repeatedly rejected Verdi's demands, saying it believes warehouse staff should be paid in line with competitors in the logistics sector, not as retail staff. 
An Amazon spokesman said on Tuesday: 'Amazon provides a safe and positive workplace for thousands of people across Germany with competitive pay and benefits from day one.' 


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Amazon workers and activists protest ahead of the annual Axel Springer award ceremony in Berlin on Tuesday where Bezos was receiving a business innovation award


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The unions have organized frequent strikes at Amazon in Germany since May 2013 to press demands for the retailer to raise pay for warehouse workers


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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos attended the glitzy award ceremony with his wife MacKenzie Bezos




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German musician Marius Mueller-Westernhagen and his wife Lindiwe Suttle were among the celebrities invited to see Bezos get his award


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German model Toni Garrn also attended the Axel Springer Award 2018 c

Macron is a class act!

https://twitter.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/989066553944629248/video/1

Love the way he outplayed Trump - and got him to plant a tree when the man has all but abandoned global warming policies!!

Fascinating pix of two men and their wives who have 24 years age difference

Some wit from across the pont........

https://twitter.com/haveigotnews/status/988744355786690560

Interesting NY Times survey says people don't support Trump for economic reasons, but because they are afraid of losing status. Does anyone find that surprising? He's doing everything he can to bring them back to the post-WW II good old days when everything was "perfect" (it wasn't - even if you were a WASP.) I guess everything looks better from a distance.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5654161/Judge-rules-against-ending-program-protect-Dreamers.html

[size=34]Federal judge rules AGAINST the Trump administration's decision to end DACA, calls program 'unlawful' and says it must resume in major blow to the White House[/size]

• Federal judge rules against Trump administration efforts to end DACA program
  
  
• Judge says decision to terminate program 'was unlawful and must be set aside'
  
  
• Government has 90 days to 'better explain its view that DACA is unlawful'
  
  
• DACA allowed children of illegal immigrants to stay and work legally in US 
  
  

By ASSOCIATED PRESS and DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 22:37 EDT, 24 April 2018 | UPDATED: 05:46 EDT, 25 April 2018

    

A federal judge ruled Tuesday against the Trump administration's decision to end a program protecting some young immigrants from deportation, calling the Department of Homeland Security's rationale against the program 'arbitrary and capricious.'
US District Judge John D. Bates in Washington wrote that the decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, 'was unlawful and must be set aside.'
Bates wrote that DHS' decision 'was predicated primarily on its legal judgment that the program was unlawful. That legal judgment was virtually unexplained, however, and so it cannot support the agency's decision.'
Bates gave DHS 90 days to 'better explain its view that DACA is unlawful.' 

If the department cannot come up with a better explanation, he wrote, it 'must accept and process new as well as renewal DACA applications.'


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In this January 21, 2018 file photo, demonstrators rally in support of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) outside the Capitol in Washington
DACA allowed immigrants brought to the US illegally as children, known as Dreamers, to stay and work legally under renewable permits. 
President Donald Trump announced last year that he would end the program started by President Barack Obama. 
It was officially rescinded in March, but DHS is continuing to issue renewals because of previous court orders.
Bates' ruling Tuesday night comes in a pair of cases whose lead plaintiffs are the NAACP and Princeton University. 
He is the third judge to rule against administration plans to end the program.
Earlier this month, Trump said the Obama-era program is a thing of the past – and blamed congressional Democrats for standing and watching while he ended it.



'DACA is dead because the Democrats didn't care or act, and now everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon,' the president tweeted.
That, he said, '[n]o longer works. Must build Wall and secure our borders with proper Border legislation. Democrats want No Borders, hence drugs and crime!'
The notion that a new wave of illegal immigrants could balloon the DACA-eligible population is unfounded, at least as President Barack Obama defined it: The program offers deportation protection to those who were brought to the U.S. as children, but only if they were already in the US on June 15, 2012.
Still, the White House is signaling that somehow a future horde of new border-jumpers could swell DACA's ranks.


+2


President Donald Trump announced last year that he would end the program started by President Barack Obama


Trump declared in September 2017 that he would end the program on March 5, giving Congress six months to codify it into law and essentially invalidating the limitations on who might qualify for a future version of it. 
But his gambit – dangling DACA as leverage to move Democrats toward his position on border security – backfired when federal courts intervened and stopped his administration from turning away applications for status renewal.
And when Congress inked a spending deal that included scant support for his long-promised border wall, the president was forced by circumstance to sign it.
Trump tweeted on Easter Sunday that there would be no new effort to push a deal with Democrats forward. 
He also threatened to pull out of a free trade agreement with Mexico unless it does more to stop people from crossing into the US.
'NO MORE DACA DEAL!' Trump tweeted, one hour after he began the day by wishing his followers a 'HAPPY EASTER!'
He said Mexico must 'stop the big drug and people flows, or I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA. NEED WALL!' 
The US, Canada and Mexico are participating in tense negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement at Trump's insistence. Trump says NAFTA is bad for the US.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5658025/Trumps-lawyer-Michael-Cohen-plead-Fifth-court-case-brought-Stormy-Daniels.html

[size=34]BREAKING NEWS: Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen says he will plead the Fifth in court case brought by Stormy Daniels - meaning he KNOWS he has committed a crime[/size]

• Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime personal attorney, said in a court filing that he will take the Fifth Amendment in a California legal case brought by the porn star 
  
  
• Move means that he would incriminate himself if he gave evidence in the case 
  
  
• Daniels is suing Trump and Cohen over the $135,000 gag order she signed before the election to buy her silence on claims of sex with Trump 
  
  
• Fifth Amendment move had been predicted by her attorney Michael Avenatti who called it 'a stunning development'
  
  
• Move by Cohen will intensify fears that he could flip on Trump if he is offered a lenient deal or even immunity for other crimes by special counsel Robert Mueller
  
  

By DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 19:05 EDT, 25 April 2018 | UPDATED: 19:31 EDT, 25 April 2018


Donald Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen will plead the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination in a law suit brought by Stormy Daniels, a court was told Wednesday.
Cohen, whose business dealings are under FBI investigation and whose office, home, hotel room and safe deposit box were raided this month, will make the plea in a California civil case.
It means that he believes he could incriminate himself when giving evidence in the case - a move which will raise fears in the Trump camp over what crimes he may think he could be charged with. 
The development was disclosed in a brief court filing in Los Angeles.

Cohen and Trump are both being sued there by Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, to try to end the $135,000 gag order she agreed to before the election, which stopped her speaking about her claim of sex with the then candidate.
Daniels' attorney, Michael Avenatti, said on Twitter that it was 'a stunning development' because it was a case involving 'issues surrounding the President'. 
He added a link to a report that quote Trump as saying in 1990: 'If you're innocent, why are taking the Fifth?'


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What does he know? Michael Cohen is pleading the Fifth Amendment to avoid incriminating himself when he takes part in a civil case brought by Stormy Daniels


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Key development: Michael Cohen has told a court in California that he will take the Fifth Amendment in civil litigation brought by Stormy Daniels - meaning that he could incriminate himself through evidence in the case


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Predicted move: Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels' attorney, said earlier this month that he believed Cohen would take the Fifth Amendment
Cohen told the judge: 'Based upon the advice of counsel, I will assert my 5th amendment rights in connection with all proceedings in this case due to the ongoing criminal investigation by the FBI and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
'On April 10, 2018, I first realized that my Fifth Amendment Rights would be implicated in this case, after I considered the events of April 9, 2018.'
The move was predicted earlier this month by Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti.
After the filing, he tweeted: 'This is a stunning development. Never before in our nation's history has the attorney for the sitting President invoked the 5th Amend in connection with issues surrounding the President. It is esp. stunning seeing as MC served as the 'fixer' for Mr. Trump for over 10 yrs.'
It will be seen by the president's defenders as a worrying indication that Cohen has committed a crime in some form - which could then be used by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, to turn on Trump in return for immunity.
Trump has ridiculed the idea that Cohen would 'flip', but taking the Fifth in the civil case is a sign of the attorney's growing fear that he could face charges.

The FBI raid was ordered by federal prosecutors in Manhattan after information was passed to them by Mueller. The nature of Mueller's tip-off has not been disclosed.  

Cohen asked the judge to delay the civil case after his office and residence were raided by the FBI.
At a hearing last week, U.S. District Judge James Otero said he needed more time to review the request for a stay, but he told Cohen's attorney 'there's some gaping holes' in the request. 
Daniels has been seeking to invalidate the nondisclosure agreement she signed days before the 2016 elections so she can discuss the alleged relationship - which Trump denies - without facing penalties.
She argues it invalid because Cohen signed it, but the president did not.
That did not stop her from describing her sex with Trump to Anderson Cooper on CNN, but her legal team say that she could be sued for doing so and want that threat lifted.
The development came as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani – the newest member of Trump's Russia-probe-focused legal team – sat down with Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Tuesday. 


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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (left), who is now representing President Trump in the Russia probe, sat down with Special Counsel Robert Mueller (right) on Tuesday


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The Washington Post reported that Giuliani reopened discussions on a potential interview between Trump and Mueller, conversations that had broken down in the aftermath of the FBI's raid on longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's office, hotel room and home. 
The ex-mayor, the Post noted, told Mueller that there was still great reluctance in agreeing to an interview, but did not rule it out.  
Giuliani also asked Mueller when the Russia probe might be done, the newspaper's sources said. 
Mueller, in turn, told Giuliani that he wished to ask the president about the decisions he made during the transition and early months of the administration. 
It is important for investigators to understand the president's intent as they look into potential obstruction of justice, Mueller noted.
Mueller, the head of the FBI before James Comey, and Giuliani, who stewarded New York City through the 9/11 terror attacks, have known each other for years thanks to their law enforcement backgrounds. 
Last week upon his hiring to Trump's legal team, Giuliani suggested he would be the individual to get the Russia probe resolved.  
'I'm doing it because I hope we can negotiate an end to this for the good of the country and because I have high regard for the president and for Bob Mueller,' the ex-mayor had told the Washington Post last week. 
Trump has vehemently and repeatedly denied collusion with Russia, calling it a 'witch hunt' and also slammed claims that Cohen would flip on him because he had not been treated well by the president.
He dismissed them as based on a 'drunk/drugged up loser', although officials would not say who that was.
One report in the New York Times which appeared to have caused Trump's ire mentioned both Roger Cohen, his long-time adviser, and Sam Nunberg, a former Trump adviser who went into rehab e after a series of television interviews on which he claimed he would not co-operate with Mueller.

[size=34]SPANKING, A $130,000 GAG ORDER AND SECRET DEALS - HOW CLAIMS OF SEX WITH STORMY DANIELS TURNED INTO A FULL-SCALE FBI RAID[/size]

July 2006: Porn star Stormy Daniels says she meets now President Donald Trump at a Nevada golf tournament. They have an alleged sexual encounter.
2011: Daniels gives an interview about her tryst with Trump to In Touch Weekly. In 2018 she tells 60 Minutes that she was threatened by a man in Las Vegas over the telling of her story, and so the interview never ran.
October 2016: In the weeks before voters head to the polls, Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen uses a Delaware-based LLC to make a $130,000 payment to Daniels, in exchange for her to sign a non-disclosure agreement to keep quiet about the alleged sexual encounter. 
May 17, 2017:  Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints former FBI Director Robert Mueller to take over the Russia probe on the heels of President Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey. 
January 12, 2018: The Wall Street Journal breaks the story that Cohen paid the $130,000 to Daniels, weeks shy of the 2016 presidential election.
February 13, 2018: Cohen publicly admits to paying the $130,000, but says he did so with his own personal money, and was reimbursed by the Trump campaign nor the Trump Organization. In referencing the payment, Daniels' attorney says the NDA is breached.  
March 6, 2018: The Washington Post reported that Mueller requested documents and interviewed witnesses about incidents involving Cohen.  Additionally, Daniels filed a lawsuit against Trump in California Superior Court claiming that the NDA never went into effect because Trump never signed it.
March 16, 2018: Lawyers for both Cohen and Trump attempt to get the Daniels' lawsuit moved from state to federal court. This marked the first time lawyers for Trump are actively involved in legal action over the Daniels' matter. 
March 28, 2018: The 60 Minutes' interview with Daniels airs.  She details spanking Trump with a magazine with his face on the cover and having sex with him once. 
April 5, 2018: For the first time, Trump speaks about the $130,000 payment telling reporters on board Air Force One that he had no knowledge of it at the time.  'You'll have to ask Michael,' the president responded when asked why Cohen made the payment
April 9, 2018: The FBI raids the New York City offices of Cohen. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan received a referral from Mueller, the New York Times reported. CNN reported that documents related to the Daniels affair were swept up in the search.

party animal - not! wrote:Macron is a class act!

https://twitter.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/989066553944629248/video/1

Love the way he outplayed Trump - and got him to plant a tree when the man has all but abandoned global warming policies!!

Fascinating pix of two men and their wives who have 24 years age difference

Some wit from across the pont........

https://twitter.com/haveigotnews/status/988744355786690560

After the all out love fest between Macron and Trump during the last couple of days Macron gave a rousing speech to Congress today that pretty much trashed Trumpism.  It was a great speech!  But Im not sure what Macron’s objectives were for this trip other than to play to Trump’s ego and at the same time try to soften Trump’s stance on the Iran deal.  Seems like it didn’t work ... according to Macron.  Macron is now saying that he thinks Trump will break the deal.  I wonder how the French took to Macron’s seemingly warm embrace of Trump?  Angela Merkel is supposed to meet with Trump on Friday.  Kinda doubt there will be hugs and kisses between these two .....

If Trump breaks the Iran deal does he really think North Korea is going to make a deal with the U.S. to get rid of their nukes??!!  Would North Korea be that stupid to trust us?

His speech was pretty good wasn't it? I see some commentators are saying that they wish they could vote for him!

I'll just leave this here...........

http://www.celebitchy.com/575250/unhinged_man_calls_into_fox_friends_and_starts_screaming_about_witchhunts/

http://www.celebitchy.com/575250/unhinged_man_calls_into_fox_friends_and_starts_screaming_about_witchhunts/

Unhinged man calls into ‘Fox & Friends’ and starts screaming about witchhunts

• April 26, 2018
   
  
• By Kaiser
   
  
  
•  Donald Trump, Politics
  
  

Every single day this week, my Twitter has been a mess. If it’s not royalty, it’s tennis, and if it’s not tennis, it’s politics. Well, in case you haven’t been on Twitter this morning, everyone in the political world is currently going crazy about Donald Trump’s call-in interview with Fox News’ morning show. Apparently he was just full-on unhinged. Here are some highlighted comments, some of which are “breaking news.”

Trump on Ronny Jackson, the candidate for VA Secretary who is apparently a messy drunk and pill-popper: “These are false accusations. These are false— They’re trying to destroy a man.” Trump blames Jon Tester for bringing out the allegations against Jackson, says Tester should have “a big price to pay.” Trump repeats his argument that “nobody has experience” to run an organization as giant as the VA so it doesn’t matter that Ronny Jackson had basically no experience.
On the fact that he now admits he stayed overnight in Russia: Trump tells Fox & Friends that he stayed overnight in Moscow, contradicting the claim in Comey’s memo: “I went to Russia for a day or so… of course I stayed there.” Trump, very agitated, says he never told Comey he didn’t stay overnight on that Russia trip. “I went to Russia for a day or so. A day or two…Of course I stayed there. I stayed there a very short period of time, but of course I stayed…I never said I left immediately.”
Trump on James Comey: “I did a great thing for the American people by firing him.”
On Michael Cohen: Trump confirms that Michael Cohen represented him on Stormy Daniels: “Michael would represent me, and represent me on some things. He represents me— like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal, he represented me.” Trump says Cohen represented him in a “tiny” amount of legal issues.
Trump on the DOJ: “Our Justice Department, which I try to stay away from, but at some point I won’t.”
On Republicans and African-Americans: If you go back to the Civil War, “it was the Republicans that really did the thing.”
On Melania’s birthday (which is today): Trump tells Fox and Friends that he decided to do an interview with them because it’s Melania’s birthday. Asked what he got her, he pauses and says, “Maybe I didn’t get her so much. I got her a beautiful card.” Trump explains that he got Melania flowers but not another gift because he’s very busy being president.

[size]
[Via @KyleGriffin1 and @DDale8, and some of my comments too]
Apparently, Trump was full-on screaming towards the end of the interview about how he was so persecuted and how everything is a “witchhunt” and he doesn’t even want to work with DOJ anymore. My bae Michael Avenatti was on MSNBC concurrently and he was super-interested in Trump’s admission that he knew that Cohen was representing him in the Stormy Daniels matter. Avenatti thanked Fox & Friends for their exclusive. Also: apparently, Fox & Friends shut down the interview!!! They were the ones cutting Trump off because even they know he is completely f–king bonkers and he can’t open his mouth without incriminating himself.[/size]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5660683/Michael-Cohen-DID-represent-Stormy-Daniels-case-says-Trump.html

[size=34]Trump now admits Michael Cohen DID represent him in the 'crazy Stormy Daniels deal' but claims the attorney is pleading the Fifth because of his OWN business dealings[/size]

• Trump admitted for the first time that Michael Cohen was his lawyer 'with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal' during half-hour telephone interview
  
  
• Cohen said in a court filing that he will take the Fifth Amendment in a California legal case brought by the porn star
  
  
• Move means that he would incriminate himself if he gave evidence in the case 
  
  
• Daniels is suing Trump and Cohen over the $130,000 gag order she signed before the election to buy her silence on claims of sex with Trump 
  
  
• Trump said Cohen was a 'good guy' but that he was pleading the Fifth because of his own business dealings
  
  
• Move by Cohen will intensify fears that he could flip on Trump if he is offered a lenient deal or even immunity for other crimes by special counsel Robert Mueller
  
  
• Prosecutors immediately used the president's admission to turn up the heat on Cohen in his bid to stop them using evidence seized in raids last week
  
  

By DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTER and GEOFF EARLE DEPUTY U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and FRANCESCA CHAMBERS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 09:38 EDT, 26 April 2018 | UPDATED: 12:47 EDT, 26 April 2018

    


President Donald Trump admitted Thursday that his personal attorney Michael Cohen represents him 'with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal' but distanced himself from the lawyer who is now pleading the Fifth Amendment.
Trump spoke by phone 'Fox & Friends' in an extraordinary half-hour appearance and said Cohen was one of his 'many attorneys,' adding: 'He represents me like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal.
''From what I see, he did absolutely nothing wrong. There were no campaign funds going in.' The telephone connection seemed to cut out for a few seconds after Trump mentioned Daniels.
The president has previously said he had no knowledge of the $130,000 payment Cohen made to porn actress Daniels in exchange for her silence just before the election about her claims of sex with Trump.

Cohen said Wednesday he will assert his constitutional right against self-incrimination in a civil case brought by Daniels, who is seeking to invalidate the confidentiality agreement.
SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO 


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Revelation: Trump phoned Fox & Friends and told co-hosts Steve Doocey, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade that Michael Cohen had represented him over Stormy Daniels


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Crowing: Stormy Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti said that the president's admission meant both Trump and Cohen had misrepresented the truth in the past



What does he know? Michael Cohen is pleading the Fifth Amendment to avoid incriminating himself when he takes part in a civil case brought by Stormy Daniels over her claims of sex with Trump. Trump said Cohen was pleading over his own business dealings


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Key development: Michael Cohen has told a court in California that he will take the Fifth Amendment in civil litigation brought by Stormy Daniels - meaning that he could incriminate himself through evidence in the case. He was on his way to federal court in New York Thursday


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Arrival: Michael Cohen eschewed a normal cab for his journey to court - although his business dealings include taxi medallion ownership - where a judge is deciding on how to deal with evidence seized from him in raids last week



Helping hand: Michael Cohen and his legal team arrive in federal court after he pleaded the Fifth amendment in separate litigation in California
But Trump told the Fox News morning show: 'This has nothing to do with me. I've been told I'm not involved.'
Instead he claimed that Cohen - whom he called a 'good guy' - was being investigated over his own business dealings.
'Let me just tell you that Michael is in business,' he said.
'He's really a businessman at fairly big businesses, I understand. And I don’t know his business but this doesn’t have to do with me. Michael is a businessman. He's got a business. He also practices law.
'I would say probably the big thing is his business and they're looking at something having to do with his business. I have nothing to do with his business. I can tell you he's a good guy.'
And he sought to distance himself from Cohen's legal work, saying: 'I have many, many, just so you understand, I have many attorneys. I have attorneys. Sadly, I have so many attorneys you wouldn’t even believe it. 
'He has a percentage of my overall legal work, a tiny, tiny little fraction.'
 'I have many, many, just so you understand, I have many attorneys. I have attorneys. Sadly, I have so many attorneys you wouldn’t even believe it. He has a percentage of my overall legal work, a tiny, tiny little fraction
Trump on Cohen 
The admission, however, was seized on by Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti who said on Twitter that Trump 'previously represented to the American people that Mr. Cohen acted on his own and Mr. Trump knew nothing about the agreement'.
'As I predicted, that has now been shown to be completely false,' he said.
Avenatti told the Associated Press: 'This is going to add considerable momentum to our effort to depose the president and place him under oath in an effort to discover which version of the facts is accurate.'
It was also seized on by federal prosecutors in New York, where Cohen was appearing in court in the wake of the raid on his home, office, hotel room and safe deposit box.
He has been trying to stop the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York and the FBI from viewing the evidence they seized and suggesting that an independent lawyer, known as a special master, look through it and only release documents which are not subject to attorney-client privilege. 
His only other two legal clients were revealed to be Sean Hannity - who himself denied he was a real client - and Elliott Broidy, a disgraced Republican fundraiser for whom Cohen arranged a $1.6 million hush payment to a Playboy model lover who aborted their child in the course of his two year adulterous affair.
In a court filing shortly after the president's interview, prosecutors said that the president's statement and that of Hannity meant little of what they seized could be subject to privilege.
'President Trump reportedly said on cable television this morning that Cohen performs 'a tiny, tiny little fraction' of his overall legal work,' they said in a submission to Judge Kimba Wood, who is hearing the case.
'These statements by two of Cohen’s three identified clients suggest that the seized materials are unlikely to contain voluminous privileged documents, further supporting the importance of efficiency here.' 
Avenatti had also predicted that Cohen would plead the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination in the law suit brought by Daniels.
Cohen, whose business dealings are under FBI investigation and whose office, home, hotel room and safe deposit box were raided this month, will make the plea in a California civil case.
It means that he believes he could incriminate himself when giving evidence in the case - a move which will raise fears in the Trump camp over what crimes he may think he could be charged with. 
The development was disclosed in a brief court filing in Los Angeles Wednesday.
Cohen and Trump are both being sued there by Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, to try to end the $130,000 gag order she agreed to before the election, which stopped her speaking about her claim of sex with the then candidate. 
Avenatti, said on Twitter that it was 'a stunning development' because it was a case involving 'issues surrounding the President'.
He added a link to a report that quote Trump as saying in 1990: 'If you're innocent, why are taking the Fifth?'


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Predicted move: Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels' attorney, said earlier this month that he believed Cohen would take the Fifth Amendment


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During an appearance on CNN on Wednesday night, Avenatti said he predicts that the Cohen investigation will result in Trump's resignation
During an appearance on CNN on Wednesday night, Avenatti said he predicts that the Cohen investigation will result in Trump's resignation.
Avenatti said he believes the government has evidence that Cohen was in touch until recently with Keith Davidson, the former attorney for Daniels who negotiated the $130,000 non-disclosure agreement. 
'There's substantial reason to believe that these two attorneys were continuing to communicate with one another well into this year about my client, the settlement, the negotiation, and documents relating to this payment,' Avenatti told CNN. 
Cohen told the judge: 'Based upon the advice of counsel, I will assert my 5th amendment rights in connection with all proceedings in this case due to the ongoing criminal investigation by the FBI and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
'On April 10, 2018, I first realized that my Fifth Amendment Rights would be implicated in this case, after I considered the events of April 9, 2018.'
The move was predicted earlier this month by Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti.
After the filing, he tweeted: 'This is a stunning development. Never before in our nation's history has the attorney for the sitting President invoked the 5th Amend in connection with issues surrounding the President. It is esp. stunning seeing as MC served as the 'fixer' for Mr. Trump for over 10 yrs.'
It will be seen by the president's defenders as a worrying indication that Cohen has committed a crime in some form - which could then be used by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, to turn on Trump in return for immunity.
Trump has ridiculed the idea that Cohen would 'flip', but taking the Fifth in the civil case is a sign of the attorney's growing fear that he could face charges.
One person who has taken the threat of Cohen flipping seriously is his former legal adviser, Jay Goldberg.






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Jay Goldberg, Trump's former legal adviser, told the president recently that it is virtually certain Cohen will 'flip' if he is indicted by the federal government
Goldberg told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month that it is virtually certain that Cohen will cooperate with federal investigators and turn over damaging information about Trump if he is faced with criminal charges.
Goldberg, who represented Trump in the 1990s and early 2000s, said he spoke with the president recently and warned him that Cohen would turn on him if it meant staying out of prison.
Goldberg said he told Trump that on a scale of 100 to 1, where 100 is fully protecting the president, Cohen 'isn't even a 1.'
The FBI raid was ordered by federal prosecutors in Manhattan after information was passed to them by Mueller. The nature of Mueller's tip-off has not been disclosed. 
Cohen asked the judge to delay the civil case after his office and residence were raided by the FBI.
At a hearing last week, U.S. District Judge James Otero said he needed more time to review the request for a stay, but he told Cohen's attorney 'there's some gaping holes' in the request. 
Daniels has been seeking to invalidate the nondisclosure agreement she signed days before the 2016 elections so she can discuss the alleged relationship - which Trump denies - without facing penalties.
She argues it invalid because Cohen signed it, but the president did not.
That did not stop her from describing her sex with Trump to Anderson Cooper on CNN, but her legal team say that she could be sued for doing so and want that threat lifted.
The development came as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani – the newest member of Trump's Russia-probe-focused legal team – sat down with Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Tuesday. 




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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (left), who is now representing President Trump in the Russia probe, sat down with Special Counsel Robert Mueller (right) on Tuesday


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The Washington Post reported that Giuliani reopened discussions on a potential interview between Trump and Mueller, conversations that had broken down in the aftermath of the FBI's raid on longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's office, hotel room and home. 
The ex-mayor, the Post noted, told Mueller that there was still great reluctance in agreeing to an interview, but did not rule it out.  
Giuliani also asked Mueller when the Russia probe might be done, the newspaper's sources said. 
Mueller, in turn, told Giuliani that he wished to ask the president about the decisions he made during the transition and early months of the administration. 
It is important for investigators to understand the president's intent as they look into potential obstruction of justice, Mueller noted.
Mueller, the head of the FBI before James Comey, and Giuliani, who stewarded New York City through the 9/11 terror attacks, have known each other for years thanks to their law enforcement backgrounds. 
Last week upon his hiring to Trump's legal team, Giuliani suggested he would be the individual to get the Russia probe resolved.  
'I'm doing it because I hope we can negotiate an end to this for the good of the country and because I have high regard for the president and for Bob Mueller,' the ex-mayor had told the Washington Post last week. 
Trump has vehemently and repeatedly denied collusion with Russia, calling it a 'witch hunt' and also slammed claims that Cohen would flip on him because he had not been treated well by the president.
He dismissed them as based on a 'drunk/drugged up loser', although officials would not say who that was.
One report in the New York Times which appeared to have caused Trump's ire mentioned both Roger Cohen, his long-time adviser, and Sam Nunberg, a former Trump adviser who went into rehab e after a series of television interviews on which he claimed he would not co-operate with Mueller.


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In a string of tweets on Saturday morning, President Trump defended Michael Cohen and said he did not think he would 'flip' on him as has been suggested. He deleted the tweets then reposted them shortly afterwards with the correct spelling of Maggie Haberman's name. Haberman published a report on Friday citing multiple unnamed sources who said it was a possibility that Cohen might turn on Trump 

[size=34]SPANKING, A $130,000 GAG ORDER AND SECRET DEALS - HOW CLAIMS OF SEX WITH STORMY DANIELS TURNED INTO A FULL-SCALE FBI RAID[/size]

July 2006: Porn star Stormy Daniels says she meets now President Donald Trump at a Nevada golf tournament. They have an alleged sexual encounter.
2011: Daniels gives an interview about her tryst with Trump to In Touch Weekly. In 2018 she tells 60 Minutes that she was threatened by a man in Las Vegas over the telling of her story, and so the interview never ran.
October 2016: In the weeks before voters head to the polls, Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen uses a Delaware-based LLC to make a $130,000 payment to Daniels, in exchange for her to sign a non-disclosure agreement to keep quiet about the alleged sexual encounter. 
May 17, 2017:  Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoints former FBI Director Robert Mueller to take over the Russia probe on the heels of President Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey. 
January 12, 2018: The Wall Street Journal breaks the story that Cohen paid the $130,000 to Daniels, weeks shy of the 2016 presidential election.
February 13, 2018: Cohen publicly admits to paying the $130,000, but says he did so with his own personal money, and was reimbursed by the Trump campaign nor the Trump Organization. In referencing the payment, Daniels' attorney says the NDA is breached.  
March 6, 2018: The Washington Post reported that Mueller requested documents and interviewed witnesses about incidents involving Cohen.  Additionally, Daniels filed a lawsuit against Trump in California Superior Court claiming that the NDA never went into effect because Trump never signed it.
March 16, 2018: Lawyers for both Cohen and Trump attempt to get the Daniels' lawsuit moved from state to federal court. This marked the first time lawyers for Trump are actively involved in legal action over the Daniels' matter. 
March 28, 2018: The 60 Minutes' interview with Daniels airs.  She details spanking Trump with a magazine with his face on the cover and having sex with him once. 
April 5, 2018: For the first time, Trump speaks about the $130,000 payment telling reporters on board Air Force One that he had no knowledge of it at the time.  'You'll have to ask Michael,' the president responded when asked why Cohen made the payment
April 9, 2018: The FBI raids the New York City offices of Cohen. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan received a referral from Mueller, the New York Times reported. CNN reported that documents related to the Daniels affair were swept up in the search.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5661091/Jury-asks-hear-testimony-Cosbys-star-witness-second-day-deliberations.html

[size=34]BREAKING NEWS: GUILTY! Bill Cosby could spend the rest of his life in prison after being convicted of drugging and raping Andrea Constand in sexual assault retrial[/size]

• The jury in Bill Cosby's sexual assault retrial found the disgraced comedian guilty of sexual assault after 14 hours of deliberation  
  
  
• He was convicted of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004 
  
  
• The jury found him guilty of all on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, and each charge carries a maximum penalty of ten years  
  
  
• Constand was in court to hear the verdict read at Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday afternoon 
  
  
• Cosby did not react to the verdict, and sat in silence with his eyes cast down
  
  
• The first trial ended in a mistrial when they declared themselves 'hopelessly deadlocked' after close to 53 hours of deliberation
  
  

By LAURA COLLINS IN NORRISTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and KELLY MCLAUGHLIN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM 
PUBLISHED: 11:30 EDT, 26 April 2018 | UPDATED: 14:36 EDT, 26 April 2018

    


Bill Cosby has been found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand.
Judge Steven T O'Neill repeatedly called for order as the court erupted as the jury delivered its shock verdict, unanimously finding Cosby guilty on all three counts of aggravated sexual assault: administering an intoxicant, rendering his victim unconscious and penetrating her without consent.
The seven men and five women reached their verdict after 14 hours of deliberation and a trial lasting 14 days.
Constand was in court to hear the verdict read at Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pennsylvania. The alternate jurors filed into the back of the gallery.

O'Neill requested everyone to respect the decorum order that has been in place throughout the trial and to keep order as the verdict was delivered.
The 80-year-old actor now faces spending the rest of his life in prison as each count carries a sentence of up to ten years imprisonment.  


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Bill Cosby has been found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in his home in 2004


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The jury of seven men and five women unanimously found Cosby guilty on all three counts of aggravated sexual assaul


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The 80-year-old actor now faces spending the rest of his life in prison as each count carries a sentence of up to ten years imprisonment


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Cosby grasped spokesman Andrew Wyatt's arm for support after hearing the news that he was found guilty


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Andrew Wyatt, Cosby's spokesperson who has spoken so vehemently in the disgraced actor's defense throughout the trial, sat in stunned silence as the verdict was read



Cosby accuser Lili Bernard let out a sob as the foreperson delivered the guilty verdict on each charge.
O'Neill thanked the jury for their service, 'for removing themselves from their families and lives.' He told them 'you have sacrificed much for you country and justice.'
Cosby did not react to the verdict, but instead sat sat in silence with his eyes cast down. His wife was not in court.
Andrew Wyatt, Cosby's spokesperson who has spoken so vehemently in the disgraced actor's defense throughout the trial, sat in stunned silence, leaning forward in his seat with his face a mask of misery. 
As DA Kevin Steele demanded the comedian's bail be revoked because he is a flight risk, Cosby yelled out  that he doesn't 'have a plane, you a**hole' in outrage. 
Upon Steele's request, Judge O'Neill asked: 'What is it that you're saying will occur? That he will flee? What evidence do you have …to revoke the bail of an individual who has shown up for every single hearing over the past two years.'
Steele argued" 'The defense said at the beginning that $3.38million this is an individual of limitless wealth.
'I don't think any amount of bail can assure his presence under these circumstances. We ask that jail be revoked.'
Asked where he thought Cosby would go, Steele said, 'Anywhere. He has a plane.'
At this Cosby yelled in sheer outrage that 'he doesn't have a plane you a**hole!'
O'Neill called for order but went onto angrily berate Steele who has not made any move to have bail raised throughout the past two years for seeking to have it revoked.
He said: 'Based upon his age and his medical condition I'm not going to simply lock him up at this stage.'
O'Neill said that Cosby was not to leave the courthouse until they had determined that the court held his passport but said that there was no reason why he should not then return home on the $1 million. 


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Cosby did not react to the verdict, but later lashed out when DA Kevin Steele demanded the comedian's bale be revoked


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Flanked by supporters, Andrea Constand smiled in court upon hearing Cosby was found guilty of sexual assault


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Cosby accuser Lili Bernard (left, with fellow accusor Caroline Heldman) let out a sob as the foreperson delivered the guilty verdict on each charge


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Bernard and Heldman have been protesting outside the Norristown courthouse during Cosby's retral


O'Neill told him he was not to leave his home unless for a bail hearing.
After the court cleared Cosby stood, huddled with his defense. He walked out aided by spokesman Andrew Wyatt and flanked by court officer. 
The verdict is a devastating blow to Cosby's lead attorney, Thomas Mesereau - the man famous for securing Michael Jackson's acquittal in 2005.
But it is vindication for Constand, the five other accusers who testified in this case and the more than 60 others who claim to have been assaulted by Cosby over the years.
It is a career-saving victory for Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele who rode to election on his promise to bring Cosby to justice.
Last June jurors failed to reach a verdict after hearing Constand's testimony that she lost consciousness after taking three little blue pills from Cosby who told her they were 'her friends' and would help her relax.
She claimed Cosby then digitally penetrated her and assaulted her while she was immobile and 'could not fight him off.'
After close to 53 hours of deliberation they remained 'hopelessly deadlocked' and O'Neill was forced to declare a mistrial.
Back then Steele vowed to re-try the case and promised that the re-trial would not be a re-run of the first.
And at the beginning this seemed to be true of both the prosecution and the defense.
For a start there actually was a defense. Cosby's previous defense led by Brian McMonagle, assisted by Angela Agrusa lasted just six minutes.
McMonagle painted Constand as a bitter ex-lover out to punish Cosby when their affair went south. 
'It's a relationship,' he bellowed in his closing statement as he urged the jury to 'end this madness'. 
This time Cosby had switched out McMonagle and Agrusa for a superannuated team led by Los Angeles attorney Thomas Mesereau, famous for getting Michael Jackson acquitted in 2005.
Joined by co-counsel Kathleen Bliss, Becky James, Lane Vines and associates Rachael Robinson, Jaya Gupta and Jason Hicks their sheer numbers made them a formidable presence. 


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Bill Cosby walks into Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pennsylvania, for the second day of jury deliberations in his sexual assault retrial


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Exhausted jurors ended day one of its considerations after rehearing excerpts from Cosby's old deposition evidence


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Cosby stands accused on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, and each charge carries a maximum penalty of ten years


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Cosby, pictured with spokesman Andrew Wyatt, is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004

[size=18]Jurors deliberate Bill Cosby's fate for second day in court


[/size]

According to Mesereau, a striking courtroom figure with his mop of snow-white hair, honeyed voice and hand-tailored suits, this case was all about 'money, money and lots more money'. 
Constand was a manipulative 'con-artist' out to extort a lonely old man.
He even had a witness - Marguerite Margo Jackson previously excluded on the grounds that Constand had claimed not to know her - who would tell the jury that Constand once shared an idea to falsely claim that a celebrity had assaulted her for the sole purpose of bringing a lucrative lawsuit.
That was always her plan according to the defense. And when she brought a civil suit and settled for $3.4 million in 2006, Mesereau crowed, 'She pulled it off'. 
He said the prosecution's attempt to depict Constand as 'some innocent babe in the woods' who naively took drugs from Cosby that night was ludicrous.
According to Mesereau she was a woman whose dreams fame and fortune had fallen flat. A career in sports broadcasting had come to nothing.
She was a misfit with a history of drug issues and financial problems, who stiffed former roommates on credit card and utility bills and once ran a pyramid scheme with her then close friend Sheri Williams.
The prosecution team was the same - Steele, deputy District Attorney M Stewart Ryan and Kristen Feden who is now in private practice in Philadelphia but returned as a special prosecutor.
But where last time O'Neill had permitted just one of the more than 60 other women to have accused Cosby of sexual assault to testify, this time he admitted five.


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Cosby appeared positive as he walked into court on Wednesday morning ahead of the verdict. At one point he pointed to the sky


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Cosby did not react to the verdict, but instead sat sat in silence with his eyes cast down. He's pictured above before jury deliberations on Wednesday morning


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Andrea Constand was in court on Wednesday (pictured above) as the jury started its deliberations and was there to hear the verdict on Thursday
The first to testify to his 'prior bad acts' was Heidi Thomas. She was a 24-year-old aspiring actress and model when, in 1984, Cosby invited her to a remote ranch house in Nevada with the promise of mentoring her. Asked to do a 'cold read' of a drunk woman he offered her a glass of wine to use as a prop.
She said she lost consciousness after sipping the Chablis and had only 'snapshots' of memories of the next four days. 
She recalled him on top of her trying to force himself into her mouth. And she remembered her head at the bottom of a bed and his voice telling her 'your friend's going to cum again'. 
Thomas called him 'a serial rapist' from the stand.
Chelan Lasha was next. She wept, barely able to breathe at points, as she said she was a 17-year-old-model when she took pills offered to her by Cosby that he said would help the cold from which she was suffering.
She had visited his suite in the Las Vegas Hilton on the understanding that he was her friend and mentor. Instead she lay helpless as he pinched her breasts, humped her leg and grunted until she felt something warm on her leg.
In a moment of high emotion Lasha had looked across the courtroom and said 'You remember don't you Mr Cosby?'
Cosby remained impassive.
Janice Baker-Kinney, the third woman to take the stand, was a 24-year-old bartender at Harrah's Casino in Las Vegas when she and a friend went to a 'pizza party' at Cosby's invitation when he was headlining there in 1982


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More than 50 women have accused the disgraced comedian, 80, of sexual assault and misconduct


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As Cosby walked into the courtroom on Wednesday morning, he appeared to have a tight smile on his face
She admitted to taking what she thought were two Quaaludes. Her next memory is of waking up naked in bed with Cosby, with a 'sticky wetness' between her legs and a certainty she had been violated.
The world's first super-model Janice Dickinson was the fourth on the stand. The prosecution's star witness of sorts, Dickinson was also a risky choice given her infamous volatility.
She once stated that if she ever came face to face with Cosby - whom she accused of drugging and raping her in Lake Tahoe - she would demand, 'How f*****g dare you?' and punch him in the face.
But she proved a poised witness as she recounted being 'jolted awake' to find Cosby entering her after going to his room following a dinner at Lake Tahoe during which he had given her pills that he told her would help menstrual cramps.
She recalled thinking how 'very, very wrong' it was to have 'America's Dad' on top of her. 
Maud Lotte Lublin, the fifth woman to take the stand, had no memory of any assault at all. 
But, 25 years on she told the jury that she had visited Cosby in his suite in the Las Vegas Hilton and lost consciousness after taking two shots of Amaretto he offered her to help her 'relax'. 
The prosecution hoped to show a sinister pattern of behavior with this parade of women. Steele spoke of 'design' and urged the jury to see that what happened to Constand 'was no accident'. 
Mesereau set out to destroy the credibility of Cosby's accusers. 


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Cosby, pictured with his spokespeople, twice said 'good morning' as he entered the courthouse on Thursday morning


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Cosby gave the deposition more than a decade ago as part of Ms Constand's civil suit against him, which he settled in 2006 for nearly $3.4 million


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Cosby greets a man inside Montgomery County Courthouse on Thursday before jury deliberations started
The only discernible pattern he saw was that each woman was out for fame and money - specifically a chunk of the $100 million fund that women's rights attorney Gloria Allred (who represents three of the accusers) has demanded Cosby establish for his alleged victims.
But before the jury had heard from any of the other women they had listened to forensic psychiatrist Dr Barbara Ziv.
She was there to dismantle our assumptions as to how a victim of sexual assault 'should' or does act. She referred to these largely erroneous beliefs as 'rape myths'. 
The assumptions that a victim will flee, immediately report and then shun all contact with her assaulter are wrong, she told the jury.
Eighty-seven percent of victims know their abuser and just seven percent, or less, report the crime. The vast majority retain some sort of contact with their assailant in an attempt to 'make sense' of what happened.
In the post #MeToo culture the prosecution hoped that jurors would be more open to the idea that women may not report an assault until long after the fact.
They also did their best to head off the issues last years' jury had with inconsistencies that peppered Constand's accounts to law enforcement.
Feden had Ziv explain this too and she duly said in 20 years of practice she had yet to encounter a woman who gave a coherent, chronological account of a sexual assault. 

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Before the jury settled into the reading Judge Steven T O'Neill announced that he was giving the alternate jurors an hour with Montgomery Court of Common Pleas' comfort dog - Turks, whose twitter page is pictured above


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Cosby accusers Lili Bernard and Caroline Heldman pose for a selfie while waiting in line before the courtroom opens at the Montgomery County Courthouse on Wednesday morning
Yet in a he said/she said the truthfulness of an accuser's claims is often judged on her ability - or inability - to give a clear and consistent account.
Knowing this, Mesereau honed in on what he presented as a particularly damning inconsistency.
In Constand's account of the assault in January 2004 she made a point of saying that she arrived at Cosby's home on an empty stomach. It was why she was reluctant to drink the wine he pushed on her, she said.
Yet when she made her first report to Cheltenham Township police she pinpointed the date as mid March. She said she had gone back to his house after a group dinner at a Chinese restaurant. She would have just had a 'big Chinese meal' Mesereau observed.
Challenged by him Constand said she'd just got 'confused' and that she was 'nervous.'
Mesereau went onto mock the notion that she was oblivious to Cosby's 'romantic interest' in her with relentless questioning about dinners alone with him at his home and one evening when she drove several hours to spend the evening with him at a casino in Connecticut.
She ended up in Cosby's room post dinner - to get some baked goods she said. Mesereau scoffed at the idea and reminded the jury that she ended up 'laying in bed with the defendant'. 
Last June, Constand had stridden into court, smiling and confident. This time her affect was very different.


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Judge Steven T. O'Neill of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas smiles while walking towards the courtroom for the verdict of Cosby's retrial


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Attorney Gloria Allred talks with members of the media during a lunch break in Cosby's sexual assault retrial on Thursday


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Defense attorneys Kathleen Bliss (in red) and Tom Mesereau (second right), walk into Montgomery County Courthouse on Thursday


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Defense attorney Tom Mesereau, who was caught snoozing in court on Wednesday, walks through the courthouse on Thursday


She seemed diminished, thinner and older. Her hair was cut more closely. Her jaw was set more tightly. There was, she said, 'no upside' for her in this prosecution.
She had been 'relieved' to think that it was all over when, in 2006, she signed her $3.4million settlement in the civil suit she brought against Cosby.
When a Federal judge granted a request to have Cosby's civil suit deposition unsealed in 2015 Montgomery County Detective Bureau chose to re-investigate the case they had set aside ten years earlier.
Steele took the unsealed deposition as new evidence, brought in just under the wire for Pennsylvania's 12-year statute of limitations and the stage for this high profile trial was set.
Cosby did not testify in either trial but the court heard section of his deposition read aloud. In it he admitted to giving Quaaludes to young women with the intention of having sex with them.
And he gave his account of the night in January 2004 on which Constand claimed he drugged and assaulted her.
What Constand described as assault Cosby said was consensual. He told investigator that they engaged in 'a petting and necking session' during Constand had an orgasm.
And for all the billable hours expended, the witnesses called, experts recruited and millions of dollars thrown at this case by both sides this is what it all boiled down to: He Said/She Said - that simple, complicated, dynamic and whether or not that left room for belief beyond reasonable doubt. 

[size=34]FIVE BILL COSBY RAPE ACCUSERS WHO HAVE TESTIFIED AT RETRIAL[/size]

Five women  who have accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault have testified at the comedian's retrial. 
It was a big increase from the first trial, where there were just two women who took the stand - plaintiff Andrea Constand and Kelly Johnson.
This time Constand was joined by Janice Baker-Kinney, Janice Dickinson, Chelan lasha, Lisa-Lotte Lublin and Heidi Thomas.
Prosecutors had been hoping to have 13 women testify alongside Constand to speak to a pattern of behavior exhibited by the defendant.
Cosby, 80, has been accused of drugging and raping over 40 women.







Janice Baker-Kinney claims that in 1982 (left)  she woke up naked in bed with the comedian - and he told her to keep their encounter to themselves
JANICE BAKER-KINNEY
Kinney said she was 24 in May 1982 when she and a friend met Cosby at the casino where she worked in Reno, Nevada.
She said the three of them went back to Cosby's apartment, where he gave her some pills.
Baker-Kinney willingly took two pills and said she began to get blurry vision while playing backgammon with Cosby. 
Hours later, she claims, she woke up naked in bed with the comedian - and he told her to keep their encounter to themselves.
'I was mortified at what had happened,' said Kinney back in 2015 when she went public with her allegations at a press conference. 
'All this time, and for many, many years, I felt that this was my fault.' 
The defense tried to deny Baker-Kinney's admission as a witness by arguing that her story is 'nothing like Ms. Constand's' because she only met Cosby once, 'voluntarily' took quaaludes and apologized for passing out.









Janice Dickinson (left in 1982) claims that Cosby sexually assaulted her in 1982 after giving her an unknown pill while they were in Lake Tahoe
JANICE DICKINSON 
The supermodel claims that Cosby sexually assaulted her in 1982 after giving her an unknown pill.   
Dickinson said in that 2014 interview that Cosby invited her to dinner to discuss a role on The Cosby Show and at one point offered her a glass of wine and a pill.
'The next morning I woke up, and I wasn't wearing my pajamas, and I remember before I passed out that I had been sexually assaulted by this man,' she told Entertainment Tonight.
'I remember waking up with my pajamas off and there was semen in between my legs.'
Dickinson said her last memory of the night was of Cosby taking off his robe and climbing on top of her, and that the next morning she remembers 'a lot of pain.' 
The supermodel claimed the incident occurred in Lake Tahoe, California in 1982.
In her memoir, Dickinson detailed some of her evening in Lake Tahoe with Cosby but told a very different story.
She said she was drinking with Cosby at dinner and after being invited back to his room told him she was tired, at which point he slammed his door in her face.
Legal claims made by Cosby and his team may be why she decided not to print her current version of the story.
She said back in 2014 that she came forward because she believes the other victims who have spoken publicly, and that it is the 'right thing to do.'
As for what she would say to Cosby if she saw him, Dickinson did not mince words.
'How dare you,' she said.
'Go f*ck yourself. How dare you take advantage of me. And I hope you rot.' 
She is also currently preparing to face off with Cosby in a defamation lawsuit filed because of his response to her allegations.
Soon after that 2014 interview aired, Cosby's attorney Marty Singer responded to requests for comment by disputing Dickinson's claim that she was drugged and raped by his client and calling the allegation 'an outrageous defamatory lie.'
A judge ruled in November that because he sent out that statement and a subsequent press release Singer will also face claims in the case.
'We fail to see how justice is served by granting Singer a windfall immunity based on Cosby’s pursuit of a meritless motion,' wrote California Second District Court of Appeals Associate Justice Laurence Rubin.
It was also ruled that Dickinson could recover all legal costs related to the appeal from Singer and Cosby. 









Chelan Lasha (left in 1986) claims that Cosby attacked her when she was just 17 in 1986 when she was an aspiring model
CHELAN LASHA 
Lasha said in a 2014 press conference that Cosby attacked her when she was just 17 in 1986 when she was an aspiring model.
She said her stepmother had sent pictures of her to the star and he called her at home in Las Vegas, inviting her to the Hilton Las Vegas, where he was performing and she had a job.
She then went up to Elvis Presley suite to meet him and after telling him she had a cold, he gave her a blue pill, which he said was an antihistimine, with a double shot of Amaretto. 
She said: 'He was rubbing my neck and saying that he might have to have someone come in and give me stress therapy.'
She claimed he told her to change into a Hilton bathrobe and wet her hair to see the modelling scout.
Someone did briefly come up to the room, pertaining to be from the Ford Modelling Agency -telling her to she needed to lose 10 pounds - and taking some pictures.
Then, Chelan said, Cosby walked her to the bedroom and gave her another shot of Amaretto, which he claimed would help her cold.
'I laid down,' she said: 'He laid down next to me on the bed and began pinching my left nipple and humping my leg while he was grunting.
'I could not open my eyes. I couldn't move or say anything. I felt something warm on my legs. Then I blacked out.
'Thirteen to sixteen hours later I woke up by hearing Mr Cosby clapping his hands and saying 'Daddy says wake up'. He gave me $1500. He said the money was to buy something nice for me and my grandmother and he also invited me to go to the Temptations show with my grandmother.
'My grandmother went but I did not go because I was too sick. Then he invited us to his show. My grandmother really want to go. I did not, but I went with her and heckled him. As a result, I was fired my from job.'





Lisa-Lotte Lublin (left in 1989) believes she was sexually assaulted by Cosby while passed out in his hotel in 1989
LISA-LOTTE LUBLIN 
Lublin said she met Cosby in 1989 at a hotel in Las Vegas and that he asked her to perform an improvisation so that he could evaluate her acting.
According to the ex-model, she and Cosby were in the Elvis Suite at the Hilton Hotel when he offered her two drinks and proceeded to pet her hair.
A short time later she passed out, but she remembered the color of the walls in the room and a flood of bright light she said in a 2015 press conference. 
She said that she believes she was sexually assaulted by Cosby while passed out in the hotel.
Prior to this, she and her mother had gone for a run with the comedian.
The defense argued that Lublin assumes she is a victim based on other media accounts but can only remember Cosby stroking her hair. 





Heidi Thomas (left in 1984) said she found herself in bed next to a naked Bill Cosby who was 'forcing himself' in her mouth back in 1984
HEIDI THOMAS 
In 1984, Heidi Thomas, nee Johnson, was a 24-year-old model from Denver, Colorado, who was dreaming of a career in acting.
Thomas was being represented by the city's top modelling agency, JF Images, but by 1984 she was questioning whether or not she wanted to stay in the business.
Then one day in the spring of 1984, she got a call from an agent who told her that a famous entertainer was searching for young talent to mentor.
Thomas said that Annie Maloney, of JF Images, instructed her to travel to Reno, Nevada, where she was supposed to meet with Bill Cosby, who allegedly had expressed interest in becoming her acting coach.Cosby greeted Thomas at the entrance and ushered her inside, according to the woman.
The aspiring actress began by performing a monologue for Cosby, who then asked her to do a cold read of a person who was intoxicated.
Thomas said Cosby was not impressed because to his mind, she was not convincing as a drunk. 
She recalled that Cosby wanted her to relax, so he poured her a glass of Chablis.
The married music teacher said that her memory of the next several hours is very hazy, but when she woke up later that night, she found herself in bed next to a naked Bill Cosby who was 'forcing himself' in her mouth.
According to the woman, the married comedian then got on top of her and said to her: 'I'm your friend... your friend is gonna [ejaculate] again,' according to the 54-year-old mother of three.
Thomas said she was confused as to what happened and eventually stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind her, but she later apologized to Cosby for being rude.
She spent three more days with Cosby and said they were all hazy and a blur. 
The defense argued she has given three versions of her story.

Finally some justice.  Cosby should have been taken into custody right then and there.  Not fair that he gets to go back to the comfort of his home after he has put all these women through hell.  I don’t care how old he is!

Trump called into Fox News this morning from his alternative universe!  What a doofus.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5663153/Trump-warns-countries-oppose-North-American-World-Cup-bid.html

[size=34]Trump warns countries who don’t support the combined 2026 North American World Cup bid that they could face political ramifications[/size]

• Morocco is the only other nation bidding against the US for the tournament 
  
  
• FIFA has often opposed politicians using World Cup bids as political currency
  
  
• Noel Le Graet, president of the French Football Association, said the nation plans to back Morocco
  
  

By ALEX GREEN FOR MAILONLINE and AFP
PUBLISHED: 22:13 EDT, 26 April 2018 | UPDATED: 05:26 EDT, 27 April 2018


President Donald Trump has tweeted in support of the combined North American soccer World Cup bid - hinting countries which oppose it could face political ramifications.
Morocco is the only other nation bidding for the 2026 soccer showpiece, placing it in direct opposition of the joint venture by Canada, Mexico and the US.
'The US has put together a STRONG bid w/ Canada & Mexico for the 2026 World Cup,' he tweeted.


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President Donald Trump (pictured) tweeted in support of the combined Canada-Mexico-United States 2026 FIFA World Cup bid


'It would be a shame if countries that we always support were to lobby against the US bid. Why should we be supporting these countries when they don't support us (including at the United Nations)?'
World soccer governing body FIFA will announce the winning bid after a vote on June 13 in Moscow, ahead of the start of this year's World Cup in Russia.
FIFA has historically opposed politicians using World Cup bids as political currency.
Noel Le Graet, president of the French Football Association, has said France plans to back Morocco.
Speaking this month, he said the continent 'has often been neglected' by the international soccer community.


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The 92,000 capacity Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California (pictured) is a contender for the opening match of the tournament should the bid be successful  


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The 61,000 capacity Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Quebec is the largest Canadian venue listed in the combined North American bid


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The bid proposes that Mexico and Canada each host seven group-stage games, two matches in the round of 32, and one in the round of 16. Pictured: Estadio Azteca soccer stadium in Mexico City
The World Cup has only been hosted once by an African state - South Africa in 2010.
Ahmad Ahmad, president of the Confederation of African Football, has urged European countries to support Morocco over North America.
In an exclusive interview with AFP this week, he appealed to European self-interest saying: 'Vote for us and we'll vote for you next time.'


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The possibility of a joint bid was first announced in December 2016 
While Morocco can expect widespread support from African countries, the 10 countries of the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) said this month in a joint statement they had decided 'unanimously' to support the North American bid.
The North American bid has long been viewed as the front-runner to stage the tournament, thanks to its well-developed infrastructure.
But there have been concerns that Trump's comments on issues like immigration and his so-called Muslim ban could hurt the bid.
US law enforcement were also responsible for exposing systemic corruption in FIFA in 2015.
But US Soccer Federation chief Carlos Cordeiro said in March he didn't believe anti-US sentiment would be a factor in the vote.
'This is not geopolitics this is football,' he said.
It comes as Morocco's bid faces scrutiny after an initial FIFA task force found deficiencies in their 2026 proposal.


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Morocco proposed the construction of the 93,000 capacity Grand Stade de Casablanca (pictured) by 2025 as the centerpiece of its bid 


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FIFA President Seb Blatter announced Qatar as the host of the 2022 World Cup - the first Middle Eastern hosts in the history of the competition
In a downbeat conclusion to a visit by inspectors last week, Morocco's bid leader acknowledged it needed to urgently improve the quality of the submission made to FIFA in March.
Last week's previously unplanned second inspection is an indication of a increasingly rigorous process introduced by FIFA following criticism in 2010 that World Cups were awarded to nations with poor human rights records, like Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022.
There will be closer scrutiny of human rights of the bidders before the vote on June 13.



Morocco did not declare its anti-LGBT law to FIFA in the human rights risk assessment included in the bid book. The documents - along with the North American submission - will now be scrutinized for any gaps by human rights experts.
'That process involves an expert third-party assessment of the robustness of the human rights content of both bids that will directly inform the administration's own evaluation,' Rachel Davis, who sits on FIFA's human rights advisory board, said. 
'We are confident that the process will result in a fair assessment of the human rights situation in all four countries involved in the bids, and a road map for how to deal with any deficiencies that FIFA will then require the successful bidder to commit to.'
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Fifa have issued a statement reminding the world of its ethics policy - which Trump has broken

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/soccer/2018/04/27/did-trump-violate-fifa-rules-and-put-world-cup-bid-danger-tweet/558383002/



Meanwhile Paul Ryan's not doing anything for the poor

https://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/989908543917756417

Got a kick out of reading the twitter comments from Takei’s tweet!  Pretty extraordinary that this is the first Chaplain to be removed from Congress.  And Ryan won’t even come clean as to why he was fired though it seems it was political which is just crazy.  Personally I don’t understand why the Congress needs a Chaplain anyway.  Maybe Members should just do their praying behind closed doors in their own offices.  Although I don’t think any amount of praying is going to help many of these sanctimonious and hypocritical wannabe legislators.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5670389/Parkland-survivor-gun-control-activist-David-Hogg-attends-White-House-Correspondents-dinner.html

[size=34]Parkland teen David Hogg attends the White House Correspondent's dinner with fellow gun violence survivor and reveals they got six congressmen to sign 'no NRA money' pledge[/size]

• David Hogg, 18, was the Daily Beast's guest for the yearly event on Saturday
  
  
• He attended the D.C. dinner with fellow gun violence survivor Zion Kelly
  
  
• Hogg has said he wants to be a journalist, and the Daily Beast's editor in chief John Avlon said he was 'delighted' to have him at the event as a guest 
  
  
• President Trump didn't attend for the second year in a row, held a rally instead
  
  

By GERMANIA RODRIGUEZ FOR DAILYMAIL.COM 
PUBLISHED: 01:53 EDT, 29 April 2018 | UPDATED: 02:14 EDT, 29 April 2018

    






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David Hogg, 18, was the Daily Beast's guest for the White House Correspondent's Dinner in Washington D.C. on Saturday
Parkland survivor David Hogg made an appearance at the White House Correspondent's Dinner on Saturday.
The 18-year-old gun control activist was a guest of liberal news site the Daily Beast and attended the event with fellow gun violence survivor Zion Kelly.
Kelly's twin brother was shot dead last year by a robber who had tried assaulting Kelly just hours before near their Washington D.C. home.

Hogg has become one of the leading voices for gun control and a constant media presence since a shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida in February.
Personalities such as Democratic Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan and former Obama Ethics czar and CNN commentator Norm Eisen posed for pictures with the young activist.
'We are counting on the next generation to lead us all—like David Hogg,' Eisen wrote on Twitter. 
Hogg has said he wants to be a journalist, and the Daily Beast's editor in chief John Avlon said he was 'delighted' to have him as the publication's guest at the event.


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The gun control activist attended the event with fellow gun violence survivor Zion Kelly



Personalities such as Democratic Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan (right)  and former Obama Ethics czar and CNN commentator Norm Eisen (left) posed for pictures with the young activist.
Earlier on Saturday he tweeted: 'I don't think I've had more of a productive day in my life.'
The teen said he was working with Kelly and got six congressmen to sign the NoNRAmoney pledge- a national campaign demanding that political candidates reject funding from the powerful gun lobby group.
Fellow Parkland survivor and activist Charlie Mirsky also attended the event. 
The White House Correspondents' Association dinner was the second in a row without the president and was held at the Washington Hilton while Trump went to a campaign-style rally in Michigan.





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Kelly's twin brother was shot dead last year by a robber who had tried assaulting Kelly just hours before near their Washington D.C. home


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Fellow Parkland survivor and activist Charlie Mirsky also attended the yearly event
Unlike last year's event, some of the top current White House staff are in attendance this year, signalling a possible thaw in Trump's often contentious relationship with the press. They included press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway.
Ex-White House staffers were also in abundance at the event, including former Trump advisor Omarosa Manigault-Newman, ousted Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn, ex-chief of staff Reince Priebus and former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
The DC journalism elite was also out in force, of course, including CNN personalities Jake Tapper and Don Lemon.
Comedian Kathy Griffin, who created uproar last year by posing with a fake severed Trump head, also made an appearance on the red carpet.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5669501/Congressman-says-Republicans-retiring-fear-assassination.html

[size=34]Congressman says Republicans are retiring because they're afraid they are going to be assassinated[/size]

• Rep. Mo Brooks spoke to The Dale Jackson show on Saturday about the risk 
  
  
• He said it was 'out of whack' that so many prolific Republicans were retiring
  
  
• He pointed to the June shooting of a Congressional baseball practice and said it has increased security fears
  
  
• Sen. Jeff Flake and Reps. Ryan Costello and Pat Meehan are all retiring this year
  
  
• They were all at the shooting in June where Majority whip Steve Scalise was injured  
  
  

By JENNIFER SMITH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 15:34 EDT, 28 April 2018 | UPDATED: 18:33 EDT, 28 April 2018

 




Republican congressman Mo Brooks has suggested that many of his colleagues are retiring because they are afraid of being assassinated. 
He made the suggestion on Saturday during a radio interview on the Dale Jackson show and cited the recent resignations of Sen. Jeff Flake, Reps. Ryan Costello, Pat Meehan, Dennis Ross and Tom Rooney. 
He did not mention him by name but Speaker Paul Ryan has also recently retired. 
Their fears stem back to a shooting at a congressional baseball practice last year when Majority Whip Steve Scalise was left in a grave condition after being wounded by a Trump-hating, Democrat gunman. 

Brooks was at the practice as was Flake and the others.  


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Rep. Mo Brooks said many of his colleagues are retiring in fear of being assassinated. He was at the June 2017 congressional baseball practice where a Democrat gunman opened fire on the politicians 



'We have multiple rings of security, plainclothes, uniform, Capitol Police, other police. 
'There was a medical vehicle nearby just in case there was a copycat. 
'One of the things that’s concerning me is the assassination risk may become a factor,' he said on Saturday of the heightened security risk.
The increased threat to congressmen and women is not limited to those who were at the baseball practice, he went on. 
'I have a congressman who is a friend here who has a three-year old daughter whose daughter was threatened with murder. 


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House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. Jeff Flake are both retiring from congress. Flake was at the shooting last year 



'Notice a trend here?' he said. 


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Gunman James Hodgkinson was passionately anti-Republican and had been planning his attack for weeks. He was killed by the protection officers who were accompanying the politicians 
Brooks conceded that none of the retirees would likely admit it, but that it seemed disproportionate. 
'I don't think any of these people who are retiring would say that, but just looking at the numbers. 
'That’s out of whack,' he said. 
James Hodgkinson, the gunman from last year's shooting, was passionately anti-Republican and has spent weeks stoking out the location of the practice in Alexandria, Virginia. 
He was shot dead by some of the protection officers who were accompanying the congressmen. 
In his interview on Saturday, Brooks said he was concerned about the apparently growing number of 'leftists' who think political issues can be resolved through gun violence. 
'There are a growing number of leftists who believe the way to resolve this is not at the ballot box but through threats and sometimes through violence and assassinations,' he said. 


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So apparently he thinks the left is taking lessons from the right? Almost all the politics-related violence we've had has come from his side of the aisle. Maybe that's what's really scaring them. They're finally figuring out that karma really is a bitch!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5670301/Trump-says-North-Korea-peace-breakthrough.html

[size=34]Crowd chants 'Nobel, Nobel' during Michigan rally as Trump says he had 'everything' to do with the North Korea peace breakthrough - and reveals his summit with Kim could take place in three weeks[/size]

• Trump told rally in Michigan on Saturday he helped engineer Friday's summit
  
  
• Prompted audience to call for the US President to receive the Nobel Peace Prize
  
  
• 'Very good meeting' saw President Moon Jae-in take Kim Jong-un across border 
  
  

By RORY TINGLE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 00:13 EDT, 29 April 2018 | UPDATED: 08:59 EDT, 29 April 2018

    


Donald Trump claimed at a rally on Saturday he had 'everything to do' with Friday's peace summit between North and South Korea, prompting chants of 'Nobel, Nobel' from supporters.
Addressing a rowdy crowd in Washington Township, Michigan, the President said the 'very good meeting' between the leaders of both countries had come about because of his own diplomatic skill.
'I had one of the fake news groups this morning. They were saying, "what do you think President Trump had to do with it?" Trump said. 'I'll tell you what. Like, how about everything?' 



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Addressing a rowdy crowd in Washington Township, Michigan, the President said the 'very good meeting' between the leaders of both countries had come about because of his own diplomatic skill
Friday's summit saw Kim Jong-un shake hands with President Moon Jae-in and then step into the south - the first time a North Korean leader has crossed the border since the Korean War. The pair then held a series of talks.

Trump told the rally Moon had phoned him on Saturday and thanked him for making the meeting possible, prompting crowd members to call for him to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. However, Trump did not go into any details about his contribution. 



He also revealed that his planned meeting with Kim would take place within 'three or four weeks', and added that he was intent on securing a deal that would lead to the dictator giving up his missiles. 
At Friday's summit, the North and South agreed to a common goal of 'complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean peninsula' - although many experts are wary about what Kim will demand in return for giving up his arsenal. 


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Friday's summit saw Kim Jong-un shake hands with President Moon Jae-in and then step into the south


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This was the first time a North Korean leader has crossed the border since the Korean War. The pair then held a series of talks

[size=18]North Korea and South Korea sign agreement during historic summit

[/size]
Trump insisted the progress made at the summit at vindicated his approach to the region. 
Referring to his critics, Trump told Saturday's rally: 'He's going to lead us into a nuclear war, they said. No, strength will save us from a nuclear war.'
The rally, which was deliberately timed to coincide with the White House Correspondents Dinner, saw the President discuss a number of other key grassroots conservative issues. 
These included appointing conservative judges, protecting tax cuts approved by the Republican-led Congress, and reforming US immigration laws, which Trump branded 'the dumbest in the world'.


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Trump also revealed that his planned meeting with Kim would take place within 'three or four weeks', and added that he was intent on securing a deal that would lead to the dictator giving up his missiles
It came as Seoul revealed the Kim regime plans to shut its nuclear testing site in May and reveal the process to outside experts and reporters. 
Revealing the pledge, South Korea announced Kim Jong Un said Donald Trump will get to know the North Korean leader is 'not a person' to aim missiles at US.
Seoul's presidential spokesman, Yoon Young-chan, said Mr Kim made the comments during his summit with South Korean president Moon Jae-In on Friday.
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