Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signs “sanctuary cities” bill into law
by Patrick Svitek
Gov. Greg Abbott signed a ban on “sanctuary cities” on Sunday, putting the final touch on legislation that would also allow police to inquire about the immigration status of people they lawfully detain.
Senate Bill 4 makes sheriffs, constables, police chiefs and other local leaders subject to Class A misdemeanor charges if they don’t cooperate with federal authorities and honor requests from immigration agents to hold noncitizen inmates who are subject to deportation. It also provides civil penalties for entities in violation of the provision that begin at $1,000 for a first offense and climb to as high as $25,500 for each subsequent infraction. The bill also applies to public colleges.
The final version of the bill included a controversial House amendment that allows police officers to question a person’s immigration status during a detainment — perhaps including traffic stops — as opposed to being limited to a lawful arrest. It has drawn fierce opposition from Democrats and immigrants rights groups, who are already gearing up for a legal battle against the law.
Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn weighs in on the Texas bill.
Abbott defended the legality of the law Sunday, saying key parts of it have “already been tested at the United States Supreme Court and approved there.”
That could soon come to a test. Sunday night’s signing prompted a fast and negative reaction from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, or MALDEF, which referred to the new Texas law as “a colossal blunder” and promised to fight it, “in court and out.”
As with most every rule and regulation, there was a distinct reason for its creation.
He had said it was especially needed after Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez announced earlier this year that her department would reduce its cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Governor Abbott, by the way, makes an excellent and purposely-forgotten and avoided point that almost half of the people crossing our southern border these days are not Mexican. They stem from a much wider variety of countries.
Meaning: the law isn’t racist — though Mexican groups would insist you think that — it is instead protecting lawful Americans within the United States, legal Mexicans included, from those who would act as criminals, do them harm, by simply barnstorming the nation in great numbers.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott takes a step in the proper direction.
As of this writing 65% for Emmanuel Macron and 35% for Marine Le Pen.
French unemployment is at 10%. French youth unemployment is at 23%. A French youth is three times more likely to be unemployed than if you walked across a line into Germany. French socialism isn’t working.
France has, it appears, decided that is the track with which they wish to continue.
They will continue to lamprey onto the European Union and they will continue to apologize for the terror attacks that will continue in France as well as the Islamization of the nation. The disaffection will continue as per normal. The EU will continue as will the Euro, for a time.
The French voters decided that this state of Paris is acceptable and doesn’t need to change.
The French voters decided that this state of France is acceptable and doesn’t need to change.
The French voters decided that this state of Paris is acceptable and doesn’t need to change.
Here is a quite interesting take on the French election, and what may be in store for the French in the future, by The Iconoclast.
Katie Hopkins speaks to Tucker Carlson about multiculturalism in general in the UK and the EU.
This election, in retrospect, must be viewed in a fashion similar to that of the current state of Germany — that is to say, in terms of national guilt and shame — national shame and guilt throughout the European Union as well. James McAuley wrote quite presciently about the French election at the UKIndependent.com:
The troubling history at the heart of the French election
‘If you don’t know the history of Algeria, you cannot understand France in 2017’
In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, France’s complicity in the Holocaust and, to a profound degree, its colonial crimes have been defining themes of the most contentious presidential campaign in recent memory. When voters go to the polls Sunday, they will choose between warring interpretations of France’s past as much as between different visions for its future.
You see? Guilt and shame.
Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, the two candidates in the final round of the vote, are distinct in many ways. Macron, a former investment banker and the darling of Parisian and academic elites, is a boyish acolyte of cosmopolitan Europe; Le Pen, a hard-line nationalist, is an advocate of economic protectionism and closed borders. But rarely are the two more opposed than when they talk about history, as they have done frequently throughout a long and bitter campaign.
Approximately 76,000 Jews were deported from France to the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Most never returned.
“If there were those responsible,” Le Pen said, “it was those who were in power at the time. This is not France.”
Marine Le Pen is absolutely correct. France now is as responsible for what occurred then as I am responsible for reparations to blacks due to the American Civil War — not to even consider that my forebears fought for the blue.
In one of Macron’s most controversial decisions on the campaign trial, he went in February to Algeria, which France had annexed for 132 years, and called on the French state to apologise formally for its crimes as a colonial power, especially in the bloody war for Algerian independence between 1954 and 1962. France’s history in that war, Macron said in an interview days later, represented “crimes and acts of barbarism” that today deserve to be labelled “crimes against humanity.”
For months, Le Pen has harped on Macron for those three words, accusing him once again in a televised debate Wednesday of “insulting” the French people.
It’s done, it’s over. Further breast-beating won’t change history nor will it appease those who are essentially unappeasable on the issue. Here is what holds France back and could likely quite seriously damage or destroy it in the future.
Benjamin Stora, France’s preeminent expert on colonial Algerian history and a founding member of Paris’s National Museum of the History of Immigration, said in an interview that the outcry over Macron’s declaration has highlighted the ways in which, at least in this election, the past remains present.
“For many people, colonialism has always been a distant abstraction, a peripheral problem,” he said. “But no one today who is honest can see it that way anymore. The question of immigration is a central question in our society and in many ways, the question.”
So many of the problems in French society today, Stora said, stem from the aftermath of France’s colonial history – and the French state’s struggles to integrate immigrants from across the once-expansive French empire.
“If you don’t know the history of Algeria, you cannot understand France in 2017,” he said.
At its height in the 1930s, the French empire encompassed some 60 million colonial subjects, from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia. But after decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s, the French relegated imperial racism, slavery and colonialism to the “historical back burner.” The eruption of the history wars finally broke this public silence in the mid-1990s.
Guilt and shame. In France and Germany, for somewhat similar reasons.
We may, overall, draw this conclusion of the European Union. It seems the EU believes there is nothing wrong with being completely subsumed and overtaken by what they call “refugees” and “migrants” — when in fact they are over 95% young Muslim males of combat age — for three massive and overarching reasons: that of 1. Guilt, 2. Shame, and 3. Failure to see the logical extension of this. Human nature.
Mix in GOWP Leftist political and administrative viewpoints and you have the volatile recipe required for the fall of Western civilization in Europe, the desire of which Islam isn’t afraid to say out loud to our collective faces.
This man has a serious warning for the EU and for the US.
You have to hand it to Islam. It’s not shy about telling you precisely what it wants and how it’s going to get there.
I repeat: Islam is not shy about telling you precisely what it wants and how it’s going to get there.
Islam’s leaders are not stupid. They play the Long Game. Western Civilizations frequently can’t see two feet in front of themselves.
This election was for the heart and soul of France. Emotions won and this is what France will get. France will also continue to get deaths by terror. French voters have indicated this is acceptable to them. I haven’t even addressed the “minor” issues such as employment, budget, defense and survival.
Italy has the lowest birth rate since 1861 with 8.4 per 1,000 people and much or Europe is following the same trend.
Birth rates are far higher in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, which is where most migrants are coming from.
The notion of using mass migration as a form of stealth jihad is outlined in the Koran, which states, ‘And whoever emigrates for the cause of Allah will find on the earth many locations and abundance.’
To move to a new land in order to bring Islam is considered a meritorious act.
A damaged ballot for Marine Le Pen. Torn or damaged ballots are invalid. This is purposeful as there are no damaged ballots being distributed for Emmanuel Macron. Were there, the French press would be all over the story.
No, not Sunday.
“S” stands for SURVIVAL Day.
Survival in terms of whether or not France will come to its senses and become sovereign once more, standing on its own two feet, or whether it will continue to be subsumed by Islam and the European Union as the EU relentlessly issues Surrender Monkey orders from Brussels, Belgium. This election is for the survival and the very soul of France.
France has also learned a few things from watching the United States because now, you see, it would appear — perfect timing and convenience, is it not, just two days away from the election? — the Leftist presidential candidate is claiming the campaign was hacked by Russia.
French candidate Macron claims massive hack as emails leaked
by Eric Auchard & Bate Felix
FRANKFURT/PARIS (Reuters) – Leading French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign said on Friday it had been the target of a “massive” computer hack that dumped its campaign emails online 1-1/2 days before voters choose between the centrist and his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen.
Macron, who is seen as the frontrunner in an election billed as the most important in France in decades, extended his lead over Le Pen in polls on Friday.
As much as 9 gigabytes of data were posted on a profile called EMLEAKS to Pastebin, a site that allows anonymous document sharing. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for posting the data or if any of it was genuine.
In a statement, Macron’s political movement En Marche! (Onwards!) confirmed that it had been hacked.
What is the kneejerk response to this allegation — unproven as it is? I know: proscribe covering the story in France! From the UKIndependent.com:
Emmanuel Macron hacked emails: French media ordered by electoral commission not to publish content of messages
by Lizzie Dearden
Journalists could face criminal charges for violating laws preventing influence on vote
France’s electoral commission has ordered media not to publish contents of Emmanuel Macron‘s leaked campaign emails to avoid influencing the election.
It warned news outlets in France that journalists could face criminal charges for publishing or republishing the material, under laws that came into effect at midnight forbidding any commentary liable to affect the presidential race.
There were fears the hack could swing Sunday’s final vote, where Mr Macron was expected to comfortably beat far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.
Question: would that hold if the reverse were true? Would that hold if it were believed that Le Pen was going to walk away with the election and she found her emails “hacked by Russians”?
I think you have the answer to that one.
Again, who has a First Amendment and who doesn’t? In this country, who wants to curtail the First Amendment? Just as in France: Leftists.
Let’s not forget, the far Leftist corruption is already occurring against Marine Le Pen, the “alt-right” candidate. When a vote appears to be “too close for comfort” for Leftists, the Cheating Gene kicks in. From GatewayPundit.com:
DIRTY TRICKS: French Voters Receive Invalid, Damaged Le Pen Ballots
by Damien Cowley
Reports are emerging of torn – and therefore invalid – Le Pen ballot papers being received by voters ahead of tomorrow’s all important French presidential election. In each case, the ballots of rival candidate, Emmanuel Macron, are intact.
David Rachline, Campaign Director for Marine Le Pen, last night called for vigilance on the part of voters receiving their election material, and for those concerned to notify authorities at polling stations of any damaged ballots.
Millions of packs have been sent out to French households in recent days, containing voting information and ballot papers for Sunday’s election. According to a press statement released by the Le Pen campaign, there have been thousands of reports of invalid ballots being received across such geographically diverse counties as Ardèche, Alliers, Savoie, Loire, Yvelines, Eure-et-Loire, and Hérault – a broad spread across the country.
Videos are being posted and shared on Facebook of registered voters opening their envelopes to reveal the contents – intact ballot papers for Macron, ripped papers in the case of Le Pen.
But wait, there’s more. Leftists can’t just cheat by ripping ballots, they also have to do this.
In other videos, voters are seen opening envelopes only to find that both ballots bear Macron’s name. Rather than an occasional anomaly, the same circumstances have been noted in the voter packs of multiple voters living within the same household.
But wait, there’s more. Leftists can’t just cheat by two methods, they must cheat by three.
Le Pen’s campaign has also accused certain mayors of breaking the electoral code by using officially headed notepaper and state resources for mail outs calling on voters to support Macron. Such violation of France’s electoral code, if prosecuted, can lead to a fine of €15,000 ($16,450) and up to one year in jail.
Because here is the crux of the biscuit: if it’s not close, Leftists can’t cheat. And cheat they do.
Despite polls giving Macron a significant lead, sources inform the Gateway Pundit that the race will be much tighter. If this turns out to be the case, a large number of disqualified ballots could make a difference.
Then there is this.
However, after Trump, what do we know about polls? Correct.
So we see Macron Leftists:
Lining up their Excuse Ducks beforehand, and
Cheating so they don’t have to line up said ducks
Tomorrow: do we say “welcome back” to France, or do we wave “goodbye” to France?
BZ
P.S.
Polls open at 8 AM in France on Sunday. What if Islam decides to show its ugly face tomorrow in France? What then?
My thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to broadcast in their studio and over their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as appear on the Sack Heads Radio Show™ each Wednesday evening.
This was BZ’s first night running the new SHR laptop, bristling as it does with a full 16 gigs of buttery RAM goodness and a nice sound card. Not particularly adept at technology (but better than Sack Heads Clint), BZ found himself challenged this night.
Tonight in the Saloon we discussed:
BZ has to deal with a new laptop, Windows 10, and trying to make Skype work;
BZ admits to being your basic Mark I, Model I Techno Luddite;
The studio is, oh joy, hot as hell once again;
Happy Stories: CCW holder in Texas kills man who murdered a bar employee;
Let’s larf our arses off at Leftists: revisiting liberal tears shed on November 9th;
President Trump signs religious liberty EO on the National Day of Prayer;
House passes AHCA by a squeaker; the good and bad of it all; 20 Republicans vote against it as did every Demorat;
Freedom Caucus member Tom Garrett voted for the ACHA; why would he?
Will the GOP ACHA screw over employer healthcare accounts?
Mike Pasqua and I talk comic books; who is better? DC or Marvel? Marvel, of course;
James Comey: “Lordy, that would be really bad;” we need to REMOVE James Comey;
I instigate official BZ Overtime in order to make my quite necessary point;
Please join me, the Bloviating Zeppelin(on Twitter @BZep and on Gab.ai @BZep), every Tuesday and Thursday night on the SHR Media Network from 11 PM to 1 AM Eastern and 8 PM to 10 PM Pacific, at the Berserk Bobcat Saloon — where the speech is free but the drinks are not.
As ever, thank you so kindly for listening, commenting, and interacting in the chat room or listening via podcast. My apologies for not monitoring the chatroom because the second screen wasn’t working yet; it will next week.
Want to listen to all the Berserk Bobcat Saloon archives in podcast? Go here.
Truer words, as above, have not recently been written. It’s all about James Comey.
And the testimony of FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on FBI Oversight only serves to underline and prove one thing: Mr Comey needs to be forced to resign, and immediately.
Certainly Hillary Clinton thinks so. It was Comey and the Russians who did her in despite saying she is taking “absolute personal full responsibility” for her loss. Uh, no. She doesn’t take full responsibility. She spoke to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.
“If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president,” she told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at a Women for Women International event in New York.
“I take absolute personal responsibility. I was the candidate, I was the person who was on the ballot. I am very aware of the challenges, the problems, the shortfalls that we had,” Clinton said, before adding that she was “on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off.”
This is the same Hillary Clinton who was enraged that the election wasn’t simply handed over to her as required by us underlings, proles. commoners, serfs and unwashed rabble.
[It’s interesting to note that Hillary Clinton is writing a book about her loss, Huma Abedin is writing a book and Barack Hussein Obama is making $400,000 speeches to Wall Street.]
The very next day following Clinton’s fuzzy softball interview, Director Comey’s testimony in the Senate was jam-gepacked with bursting volumes of self-serving and contradictory statements. (The full testimony can be read here. Full video is here.) Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley originally called the Wednesday oversight hearing of the FBI to examine what the agency knows about a 2015 terrorist attack in Garland, Texas. Things got a bit off-topic, however.
Comey: Anthony Weiner Received Classified Clinton Emails
by Kristina Wong
FBI Director James Comey hit back Wednesday against Democratic criticism of his decision to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails 11 days before the 2016 election.
He said although it made him “mildly nauseous” to think he could have had some impact on the election, he believes he did the right thing and to this day, would not change his mind.
In explaining his decision to reopen the investigation, he said investigators found metadata on the seized laptop of Anthony Weiner — top Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s husband — that showed there were “thousands” of Clinton’s emails on the device, including classified information.
Investigators believed the emails could include emails missing from her first three months as secretary of state.
Comey said after repeatedly telling members of Congress that the FBI had concluded its investigation into Clinton, the only right thing to do was to let Congress know the case was reopened.
“I could see two doors and they were both actions. One was labeled ‘speak,’ the other was labeled ‘conceal,’” he said.
But wait. Was classified information really involved in any of those emails?
He said Abedin forwarded “hundreds of thousands” of emails to Weiner, 40,000 of which they reviewed. Three thousand of those were work-related, and 12 of them contained classified information, he said.
But he said Abedin and Weiner were not charged with any wrongdoing since investigators did not find a general sense of criminal intent — a decision that Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) scoffed at.
The hearing conducted on Wednesday featured Senator Diane Feinstein asking a question that, in retrospect, she wished she never touched.
She received a lot more information, damning information, than she wanted. She opened the door and FBI Director James Comey walked right through it. I suspect she was hoping Comey would simply reply that the information was classified. Sorry, senator. Feinstein was just pissed, regarding 702 data**, that her Demorat ox got gored.
But what really happened here? Again, just like July of 2016, Comey makes an argument for prosecution — first, against Hillary Clinton now, here, against Huma Abedin — and then does nothing about it. How did Weiner come to be in possession of classified information? Huma Abedin sent it to him. This is a violation of 18 USC 793 — Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, to wit:
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
As I wrote in July of last year regarding Director Comey’s decision to refuse sending the Hillary Clinton case on to DOJ:
To me it is quite clear that FBI Director James Comey, about whose probity I wrote quite a number of times on the blog, has dishonored his law enforcement oath, showing that he has no fidelity, no bravery and no integrity with regard to his decision to not recommend prosecution of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But in today’s hearing with Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffetz as documented at Politico, James Comey revealed his flawed and craven, cowardly political thinking when one is familiar with law enforcement prosecutorial thresholds as I am.
Director Comey determined a manner in which to weasel his way out of recommending the prosecution of Clinton. At Thursday’s hearing he went out of his way — again, just like Wednesday — to make his own case and then fall back on a position/decision that isn’t his to make.
But the most insightful part has arrived. Comey outs himself:
Chaffetz then asked whether it was that he was just not able to prosecute it or that Clinton broke the law.
“Well, I don’t want to give an overly lawyerly answer,” Comey said. “The question I always look at is there evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody engaged in conduct that violated a criminal statute, and my judgment here is there is not. “
And this is how James Comey attempts to rationalize his decision. He states he does not believe his case established guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
NEWSFLASH: It is not UP to YOU, Director Comey, to assemble a case that yields a determination of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” That threshold is up to the DOJ or more pointedly a Grand Jury, not you or your organization. All you need to compile a case for submission is “probable cause.” That’s what real cops and real DAs in America do. Their jobs. They stay in their lanes and do their jobs.
As noted about Comey’s wrong-headed decision to give a pass to Hillary Clinton regarding the classified information on her server and in her emails, there are crimes of specific intent and general intent. Comey insists he must have specific intent before forwarding a case to DOJ. That’s wrong. There are sections, as above, that demand no such thing. Watch:
“She had no sense that what she was doing was a violation of the law.” Really, Mr Comey? “We couldn’t prove any sort of criminal intent.” You might try reading the law, Mr Comey. Federal law. The law you’re tasked with following and upholding.
Senator Ted Cruz had questions.
The fact patterns in Hillary Clinton’s case and Huma Abedin’s case do violate federal law as indicated by Senator Cruz above and common sense.
Director Comey’s job is not to be the attorney, but to be the compiler, and assembler of cases and, then, submitting a case to the Department of Justice. He essentially has and is usurping the function of prosecutors by withholding cases from the DOJ.
Tucker Carlson, below, interviews Democrat Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio and, more pointedly, former US Attorney Jim Digenova. Listen to Digenova’s clear and cogent case against FBI Director James Comey.
On Wednesday, for good measure, Director Comey decided to throw former US Attorney General Loretta Lynch under the bus — deservedly but quite willingly.
Now there is information from RightScoop.com, announced by Catherine Herridge of Fox News:
REVEALED: FBI found email that Lynch would do everything she could to protect Hillary from CRIMINAL CHARGES
Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge says this is one of the biggest headlines out of the hearing today with the FBI director, pointing out that the FBI had found an email was obtained by Russian hackers that indicated that former DOJ hack Loretta Lynch would do everything she could to protect Hillary from prosecution:
This was the story from Wednesday. And who covered it? Anyone but Fox?
Note how Director Comey refuses to answer. The fix was in. Comey is a disreputable political hack and has proven himself time and again to be so.
FBI Director James Comey must go. He is too self-centered, too much the political animal and, frankly, too narcissistic to continue in his current position. He insists he is apolitical but every movement he makes and statement he gives proves otherwise.
Section 702 permits the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to jointly authorize targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States, but is limited to targeting non-U.S. persons. Once authorized, such acquisitions may last for periods of up to one year.
Under subsection 702(b) of the FISA Amendments Act, such an acquisition is also subject to several limitations. Specifically, an acquisition:
May not intentionally target any person known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States;
May not intentionally target a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States if the purpose of such acquisition is to target a particular, known person reasonably believed to be in the United States;
May not intentionally target a U.S. person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States;
May not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States;
As with most every rule and regulation, there was a distinct reason for its creation.
As of this writing 65% for Emmanuel Macron and 35% for Marine Le Pen.
The French voters decided that this state of France is acceptable and doesn’t need to change.
What is the kneejerk response to this allegation — unproven as it is? I know: proscribe covering the story in France! From the 
My thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to broadcast in their studio and over their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as appear on the Sack Heads Radio Show™ each Wednesday evening.
Truer words, as above, have not recently been written. It’s all about James Comey.
But wait. Was classified information really involved in any of those emails?
The hearing conducted on Wednesday featured Senator Diane Feinstein asking a question that, in retrospect, she wished she never touched.