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President Trump made small talk with the Irish prime minister as they sat in the Oval Office in mid-March, accompanied by a handful of senior American and Irish officials. Trump, who wore a green tie and filled his jacket pocket with a clump of shamrock to honor the Irish leader's annual St. Patrick's Day visit, turned with a half-smile to his hawkish national security adviser John Bolton, according to two sources who were in the room. "John," Trump asked, "Is Ireland one of those countries you want to invade?" Behind the scenes: The joke captured how Trump often privately interacts...

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said he has “no doubt” President Donald Trump is a racist following the president’s recent attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of color in which he told them to “go back” to other countries. “What I’m hearing over and over again from my constituents is, please save our democracy,” Cummings told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “They say, ‘Im scared.’ And I have never in my total of 37 years in public service ever heard a constituent say that they were scared of their leader,” Cummings said, referencing Trump. Asked if he believes Trump is a racist,...

Would you have charged Trump if it weren’t for the OLC opinion? Democrats want to know if Mueller would have charged Trump with obstruction of justice in the absence of an Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion from the Justice Department that says a sitting president can’t be indicted. Why did your office write a letter to Barr objecting to his March 24 memo? Mueller wrote to Barr on May 27 objecting to the attorney general’s four-page memo from a few days earlier outlining the Russia report’s principal conclusions, a revelation that sparked a firestorm in Washington on the eve...

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is revising the current naturalization test with improvements to ensure it continues to serve as an accurate measure of a naturalization applicant’s civics knowledge and that it reflects best practices in adult education assessments. The goal is to create a meaningful, uniform, and efficient test that will assess applicants’ knowledge and understanding of U.S. history, government and values. This spring, the former USCIS director signed the Revision of the Naturalization Civics Test Memorandum (PDF, 202 KB). This memorandum announces the revision of the naturalization test and formalizes a decennial revision schedule of the naturalization...

Russian President Vladimir Putin sat down on June 19, 2019, in the Kremlin, for an on the record interview with Oliver Stone. The Russian government has released a transcript of the interview. Below is Putin's discussion with Stone about the 2016 presidential election.-RW Oliver Stone: Yes. So recently, you know Russia has been obviously accused and accused over and over again of interference in the 2016 election. As far as I know there is no proof, it has not turned up. But now in the US there has been an investigation going on about Ukraine’s interference in the election. It...

WASHINGTON — A new short documentary film exposes the challenges North Korean Christians have endured in a nation where millions have never even heard the name of Jesus. Despite severely repressive conditions, pastors and scholars are envisioning a new future for the repressed nation. As the State Department's Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom was held just miles away, the film "Humanity Denied: Religious Freedom in North Korea" from the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission was shown for the first time at the Senate Dirksen building Thursday. Preceding the film, a panel of experts spoke on the situation in the Far...

President Trump made a surprise appearance at a wedding reception Saturday night that took place at his New Jersey golf club, prompting the bride, groom and attendees to break into chants of “USA! USA!” Video circulating on social media Sunday showed Trump walk out to the reception and the bride and groom rush over to join him. The crowd then erupted in the patriotic chant. Groom P.J. Mongelli later told CNN that Trump showing up at the wedding “was a complete and utter surprise.” He said that he and his then-fiancée Nicole Marie Mongelli sent Trump multiple invitations to...

Don't you just love it when the hackers get hacked?According to BBC Russia, the Russian intelligence agency's computer systems have been penetrated by an outfit calling itself "0v1ru$" and 7.5 terabytes of data has been stolen. 0v1ru$ then passed the data along to the larger, well known group Digital Revolution who then disseminated the information to various media outlets.BBC Russia also says no state secrets were exposed by the hack.The hackers were able gain entry to FSB systems through a contractor, SyTech.Forbes: BBC Russia  broke the news that 0v1ru$ had breached SyTech's servers and shared details of contentious cyber projects, projects that included...

Lost in the kerfuffle over Houston Congressman Al Green’s failed attempt to get an impeachment vote on President Donald Trump and the “send her back” chants is a rather interesting piece of news regarding Google’s censored search engine for China.It’s deader than Jacob Marley.Google’s Karan Bhatia told a U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday the company was no longer working on the project using the phrase, “we have terminated that,” when asked by Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley. A Google spokesperson provided a little more context to Buzzfeed. A company spokesperson pointed to its statement in a March 2019 story...

Congrats on finally becoming a capitalist, Bernie.If you missed Ed’s post on Friday about Team Bernie’s crash course in real-world economics, read it now for background. The campaign’s field organizers realized they’ve been working an average of 60 hours a week at a rate of $36,000 per year, which shakes out to a bit less than $15 per hour — the magic number Bernie himself has demanded be set as the new federal minimum wage. He can’t pay us less than what he wants every American to be paid, his staffers rightly reasoned. So they’ve complained to management and...

Two events happened last week — one profusely covered in the European and world media, the other hardly at all — that would have long-lasting and, in the second case, profound implications for generations to come. The first case had to do with the elections of Ursula von der Layen as the new president of the European Commission, the second with the publication of a study showing that the Germans increasingly are losing their majorities to those with a migrant background. The second study was vastly more important historically for the future of Europe, but that, predictably, was not the...

Our nation yesterday rightly treated itself to a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. Vice President Pence summed it up this way: "This may be the only event of the 20th century that will be remembered in the 30th. But it wasn’t celebrated by everybody. Even for an event like this, there are conspiracy theorists. They claim that the Apollo program never happened, that it was all faked by the United States government, as in the movie Capricorn-1. Examples: Some conspiracy theorists talk about the fluttering in the flag planted by Buzz Aldrin. (Explanation: it was vibrations in the wires...

Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders announced this weekend he will cut staffers' hours so that they can effectively be paid a $15-an-hour minimum wage, prompting mockery from critics who say the move is more evidence that Sanders' plan to raise the national minimum wage is hypocritical and would only lead to less work and more unemployment. The Washington Post first reported last Thursday that Sanders' field staffers were upset that Sanders championed a $15 minimum wage on the campaign trail, and made headlines for railing against major corporations who pay "starvation wages" -- even as his own employees made "poverty...

The notion of victimization is at the heart of progressive politics, regardless of the facts of any particular situation. The current darlings of the progs are the four female freshmen House members called The Squad, all of whom claim to be racial minorities – “people of color” in that odd expression that relegates Caucasians to transparency or colorlessness. And half of the Squad, Reps Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib, have skin color lighter than many Italians, Jews, and others who for some reason are not allowed to claim special status as inherently victimized “people of color.” So, clearly, dishonest fantasy and...

Quick! Call the diversity police!  For the fourth time in five years the US team placed first in the International Mathematical Olympiad, this year tying for first place with China.  The six U.S. team members also won gold medals for their individual high scores on the Olympiad, known as the world championship mathematics competition for high school students. However, this very dominating winning team does not look like America -- all members are males, 5 Asians and one Caucasian, judging by appearances.   Photo credit: Carnegie-Mellon University Pictured above: 2019 U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad team members from left: Edward Wan, Daniel Zhu, Brandon Wang,...

Is there a better foil for Donald Trump than "The Squad?" The Democrats have done Trump a monumental favor by enabling these screeching harpies, giving them a platform to spout their loony views and treating their outrageous comments with kid gloves. Trump's 2020 strategy became obvious this week, as tweet after tweet from the president targeted Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), making them the stars of his little patriotic play. In fairness to the radical ladies, they are truly asking for it. It's like they're all walking around with a sign...

In 2005, Donald Trump proposed a season of "The Apprentice" that would pit an all-black team against an all-white team. Trump then asked Stern's African-American co-host, Robin Quivers, the same question. "Well," she said, "I think you're going to have a riot." But Trump wasn't too concerned about the potential ramifications of the show. "I think that it would be handled very beautifully by me. Because, as you know, I'm very diplomatic," he told Stern, adding that while there would be a mix of light-skinned and dark-skinned black contestants, the white team would be strictly blonds.

Justice John Paul Stevens was the last of the greatest generation. Stevens enlisted in the Navy the day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his work as a cryptographer: his codebreaking team’s efforts led to the downing of the plane of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese navy and architect of the Pearl Harbor attack. Stevens would go on to reference his experience as a World War II veteran often in his Supreme Court opinions. Especially memorable was his defense of the American flag in Texas v. Johnson, the 1989 case...

Former President Bill Clinton’s connection to since-convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was established through British heiress and longtime Epstein pal Ghislaine Maxwell, who also became a friend of former first daughter Chelsea, according to a new report Sunday. Clinton’s family grew close with Maxwell after Clinton left office in early 2001, Politico reported. “The Clintons were relatively intimate with her,” a friend of Maxwell’s told the Web site. A person familiar with the relationship also described Maxwell as “the contact between Epstein and Clinton.” “She ended up being close to the family because she and Chelsea ended up becoming close,” the...

Alice Cooper will release a six-song EP, "Breadcrumbs", on September 13 via earMUSIC. Described as a "tribute to the garage rock heroes from his hometown Detroit city," the EP includes covers of MC5's "Sister Anne", Suzi Quatro's "Your Mamma Won't Like Me" and MITCH RYDER AND THE DETROIT WHEELS' "Devil With A Blue Dress". Joining Cooper on the recordings are MC5's Wayne Kramer, jazz singer Paul Randolph, former GRAND FUNK RAILROAD member Mark Farner, ex-DETROIT WHEELS drummer Johnny "Bee" Badanjek and Mick Collins. "Breadcrumbs" will be made available digitally as well as on 20,000 numbered 10-inch vinyl copies.