Police have detained a 19-year-old anti-Semitic terrorist shortly after responding to reports of a shooting near a San Diego synagogue on Saturday afternoon. One person has died and at least three others were injured, including the Rabbi, who was shot through the hand.
After shooting inside the temple with an AR-type assault weapon, the suspect was spotted by a Border Patrol agent who opened fire on the teen but missed, officials said. The suspect later turned himself over to police.
The synagogue was hosting its Passover holiday celebration, which was scheduled to begin at 11 a.m., just a half hour before the shooting incident. 10News reported. The celebration was set to end at 7 p.m. with a final Passover meal.
Trump’s only comment on the matter:
Bill Maher argued on his show last night that special counsel Robert Mueller created new legal precedents by refusing to recommend any charges against President Trump, pointing out that politicians will now have the green light to meet with foreign governments, invite them to hack opponents and break campaign finance laws.
He noted all Mueller had to do “is what people in the justice system do everyday — use the law to come to justice and not be so restricted by technicalities that the bad guys win.”
Said Maher: “That’s what law is — new precedents. It’s always evolving. You can’t indict a sitting president? It’s not in the Constitution. It’s not even a law, it’s a guideline. Like drinking wine with fish and not fucking your cousin.”
HuffPost: “Nevada, the westernmost state of the early-voting states in presidential primaries, can often feel like the neglected kid brother of New Hampshire, South Carolina and Iowa. The other three states have decades’ worth of traditions and earn mounds of media attention, with Jefferson-Jackson dinners and fish fries that candidates and reporters seemingly have no choice but to attend. But Nevada, which is three time zones away from the glare of the D.C.-to-New York media corridor, only earned early-state status in 2008.”
“But in 2020, the Silver State could play a decisive role because Nevada lacks a clear favorite among the Democratic contenders. Certain candidates, however, are the early favorites in the other three states – In Iowa, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg are polling well; in New Hampshire, Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, a fellow New Englander, have a leg up; and in South Carolina, Biden, along with Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, is expected to perform well among the state’s African American voters.”
New York Times: “It was emailed to 388 administration officials every night as an attachment: a copy of President Trump’s private daily schedule, outlining his upcoming meetings and their locations, helping the White House staff plan around his day.”
“But since that schedule — which revealed that Mr. Trump’s day was often made up of large blocks of unstructured and unscheduled ‘executive time’ — began regularly turning up in the hands of journalists, the White House has instituted a new system to crack down on unsanctioned ‘leaks.’”
“There are no more email attachments, according to two officials. Instead, the president’s daily private schedule is now shared on SharePoint, a Microsoft product that allows an administrator to monitor who has viewed the document. Based on how often people view the schedule, and when its contents become public, the White House has narrowed down its search for the schedule ‘leaker’ to three potential culprits.”
“Retired U.S. Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North will step down as president of the National Rifle Association, North said on Saturday, adding he was being forced out due to his allegations that NRA leaders engaged in financial improprieties,” Reuters reports.
The NRA also has suspended Steve Hart, its longtime top lawyer, in just the latest sign of the infighting that is splintering the group. According to the Daily Beast, Hart was suspended before Lt. Col. Oliver North announced Saturday that he would not serve a second term as NRA president.
The gun rights group has been imploding all week, with CEO Wayne LaPierre claiming that North is extorting him, a legal skirmish breaking out between the NRA and its advertising vendor and North’s dire warnings about the organization’s financial leadership.
Texas Secretary of State David Whitley (R) “has agreed to halt an investigation into the citizenship status of registered voters in a settlement agreement that will end three lawsuits filed by civil rights groups and naturalized citizens,” the Austin American Statesman reports.
“Under the settlement announced Friday, Whitley will rescind a Jan. 25 advisory that questioned the citizenship status of almost 100,000 registered voters but was determined to be based on flawed data that implicated a significant number of naturalized U.S. citizens who were legally eligible to vote.”
Washington Post: Texas agrees to stop effort to purge voter rolls.
Associated Press: “Biden’s campaign launch on Thursday ushered in a new phase in the nominating contest. With the field largely set, the leading candidates have begun to turn on one another, raising the prospect of an ugly fight for the future of the party that could have lasting consequences for Democrats’ quest to reclaim the White House.”
“Desperate to deny Trump a second term, Democrats can ill afford any lasting divisions that could depress turnout come November 2020…Yet the battle lines are quickly hardening. With emboldened liberals on one side, pro-Biden establishment leaders in Congress and labor unions are lining up on the other.”
New York Times: “On Saturday, Mr. Sanders’s campaign plans to kick off its national organizing program with what it says are roughly 5,000 events across every state. Mr. Sanders plans to address supporters via livestream.”
“The date for the organizing events was set weeks ago. But the timing is fortuitous. With Mr. Biden’s entry, the race has kicked into a new gear, and the organizing effort gives Mr. Sanders — who has been running second to Mr. Biden in most early polls — a fresh opportunity to lock up supporters and reassert his grass-roots strength.”
From a New York Times editorial: “While executive privilege is a common presidential tool, historians note that Mr. Trump’s usage is decidedly uncommon, if not unprecedented. Unlike his predecessors, who invoked privilege in specific cases, Mr. Trump has vowed that he will not cooperate with any congressional inquiry. He is effectively declaring lawmakers powerless over him. This, warn the experts, puts the nation in uncharted territory and threatens to erode its democratic foundations.
Presidents clash with Congress, at times fiercely. The founders wanted it that way. But in declaring war on congressional oversight, Mr. Trump is not looking to maintain a balance of powers. He is looking to blow up the scales.”
“As his 2020 campaign gears up, President Trump is putting an early focus on the three Rust Belt states that sent him to the White House after Republican losses in midterm elections showed his support in the region is fading,” Bloomberg reports.
“Despite dominant fundraising, an established campaign organization and the power of incumbency, Trump risks losing all three states in 2020: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”
“The president and his allies talk optimistically about expanding the electoral map to states he lost in 2016, such as Minnesota and New Hampshire. But his Rust Belt focus is an acknowledgment that he may spend much of the 2020 campaign on defense, depending on the strength and appeal of his eventual Democratic challenger.”
President Trump appeared to re-enact the 2015 Paris terror attacks in his speech at the National Rifle Association’s conference, claiming strict gun laws were to blame for the attack’s high death toll, the Daily Beast reports.
Trump said that if “there was one gun being carried by one person on the other side” who had “aimed at the opposite direction,” there “very well could’ve been a whole different result.” He then started making shooting gestures with his hands, complete with sound effects, while saying, “Get over here! Boom. Get over here! Boom. And then they left.”
The terror attacks killed 130 and injured 350.
Peter Buttigieg’s campaign announced that it would stop accepting “any money from lobbyists” and would return $30,250 he’d already gotten from 39 registered lobbyists, CNN reports.
All the other top tier Democratic candidates had already sworn taking money from lobbyists long ago.
NBC News: “In the wake of the $25 million college admissions cheating scandal in which 50 people were criminally charged, California lawmakers are attempting to crack down on the so-called side door that allowed wealthy parents to engineer their children’s acceptance to elite universities.”
“The six-bill legislative package, put forth in the State Assembly on March 28, takes aim at certain college admissions practices like the one exploited in the scheme, in which coaches can select a number of students who might not get in otherwise as athletic recruits, essentially guaranteeing their acceptance.”
I’m enjoying the goings on at the NRA immensely, that it involves assorted dirty dealings and unfettered greed makes it all the better, knew the lobbying group functioned as somewhat of a racket but not like this. Is implosion imminent? Probably not, but we can dream.
“Democrats can ill afford any lasting divisions that could depress turnout come November 2020”
And knowing that, “the battle lines are quickly hardening” so as to effect as much damage as possible to their opponents, hoping that they will have to time to unify after the smoke clears, but harboring ill will, along with festering wounds, that will drive them to write ins, sit outs, or nose holding, giving the election to a candidate who could literally shoot someone on NYC 5th with no wavering or loss of support.
There is only one real battle line. Too bad the Democrats, don’t know where it is.