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Suspended Broward Sheriff Scott Israel lost his best chance of getting his job back before the 2020 election when a judge ruled Thursday that Gov. Ron DeSantis had every legal right to remove him from office earlier this year. Broward Circuit Judge David Haimes did not indicate whether he agreed with the governor, but he affirmed that DeSantis was legally justified when he replaced Israel with acting Sheriff Gregory Tony in January.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright apologized to Mitt Romney on Tuesday for previously mocking his 2012 description of Russia as the country's top geopolitical foe. Reporters tweeted Albright offered a mea culpa to now-Sen. Romney (R., Utah), then the 2012 GOP nominee, at a House Intelligence Committee hearing, saying "we underestimated what was going on with Russia."

This year's Super Bowl was a relatively blasé affair by most accounts. The Patriots won for the six time in its career. There were no memorable commercials except for a "Twilight Zone" reboot tease and an ad celebrating 100 years of the NFL. The halftime show was pretty underwhelming except for a jarring "Spongebob Squarepants" transition. The one good thing that anybody could say about the game is that there were barely any politics throughout the proceedings. Barely. About an hour before the game proper started, Al Sharpton gave an accusatory address to the NFL and its fans on MSNBC's...

Top House Democrats on Sunday raised the prospect of impeachment or almost-certain prison time for President Donald Trump if it’s proved that he directed illegal hush-money payments to women, adding to the legal pressure on the president over the Russia investigation and other scandals. “There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him, that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the incoming chairman of the House intelligence committee. “The bigger pardon question may come...

BREAKING: Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee an anonymous and completely unsubstantiated accusation from a "Jane Doe" alleging Kavanaugh carried out a gang rape "in the back seat of a car." The letter omits place, date & alleged accomplices

Bill Mitchell: "Sessions has done SO MUCH to help the President's agenda in the past 18 months. Why does Trump NEVER praise him for ANY of that? Because it's all theater." #SlowWalker.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday said that the Senate Judiciary Committee should delay its confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in the wake of former President Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's guilty plea. "It's a game changer. It should be. ... In my view, the Senate Judiciary Committee should immediately pause the consideration of the Kavanaugh nomination," Schumer said from the Senate floor. He added that he thought Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had scheduled Kavanaugh's hearing "too soon" and he believed it should be delayed. Kavanaugh's hearing is scheduled to...

Barack Obama's campaign has booted from its airplane three reporters who work for newspapers that have endorsed John McCain. The campaign says that a limited number of seats forced it to make the tough decision of which journalists would be permitted to follow the Democratic presidential candidate in the last four days of the campaign, but the papers are calling foul, claiming they were targeted for their editorial-page positions and kicked off while nonpolitical publications like Glamour and Jet magazines remained on board. Eliminated from the plane's traveling press were the Washington Times, the New York Post and the Dallas...

Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said he regrets telling FBI agent Peter Strzok in Thursday’s House Judiciary and House Oversight committee hearing that he deserves a Purple Heart medal for his testimony. “I said something at the hearings yesterday about Purple Hearts which another network that is named for a four-legged animal has been making a big deal about,” Cohen told CNN, referring to criticism from Fox News. “I regret using the term ‘Purple Heart,’” he continued. “I used it metaphorically, not literally. I never literally thought the Purple Heart should be given to agent Strzok. But I do believe that...

The Waffle House is in the 1000 block of Northside Drive, a busy stretch near 14th Street that includes a row of restaurants. Police said a man in a black hooded sweatshirt was seen pacing the parking lot just before 6 a.m. He entered the restaurant and went straight for the bathroom. “When he came out, he had a (gold) mask on,” Atlanta police Capt. Andrew Senzer said. “He produced a gun and he essentially demanded the belongings of everybody of the store.” The masked man confronted a half dozen patrons and employees in the restaurant, though some of the...

FULL TITLE: 'I would have let that clown jump': Trump responds to woman who climbed the Statue of Liberty to protest the president's immigration policy at Montana rally President Trump has responded to the woman who climbed the base of the Statue of Liberty to protest his immigration policy saying he would have let 'that clown' jump. After appearing in court on misdemeanor charges Thursday, 44-year-old Therese Okoumou claimed that she had decided to scale the statue's base on the Fourth of July to protest the Trump administration's policy that has led to the separation of thousands of children from...

The woman who scaled the Statue of Liberty on Wednesday has been identified. Cops say Therese Patricia Okoumou — a 44-year-old immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo — was the person responsible for the Fourth of July protest. She lives in the St. George neighborhood of Staten Island and is currently in federal custody, according to police sources. Officers from the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit transported her to a federal detention center on Wednesday night following her three-hour standoff with authorities. Her case is being handled by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.

FULL TITLE: Who is Therese Okoumou, the woman who tried to scale the Statue of Liberty to protest immigration policy? The woman arrested for scaling the base of the Statue of Liberty on Wednesday as part of a protest against U.S. immigration policy is an immigrant herself and an active participant in the resistance movement against President Trump, according to fellow demonstrators. Therese Okoumou, 45, of Staten Island, was born and educated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but she has lived in New York for at least the last 10 years, records show.

FULL TITLE: BREAKING NEWS: Police swoop to grab woman with a 'Rise and Resist' t-shirt who climbed the Statue of Liberty on Independence Day and stayed there for two hours, as ICE protesters below unfurled an 'Abolish Ice' banner Police have snatched a woman wearing a 'Rise and Resist' t-shirt who climbed the Statue of Liberty on Independence Day and stayed there for two hours shortly after seven people were arrested for unfurling an 'Abolish ICE' banner. Police on ladders spoke to the woman just after 4.30pm but she refused to come down, so officers constructed a rope rescue system...

Liberty Island was evacuated Wednesday as a woman was arrested for trying to scale the iconic Statue of Liberty to protest President Trump. The woman, who appeared to be black and could be seen holding up a T-shirt displaying the words “Rise and Resist” and “Trump Care Makes Us Sick,” was able to scale the base of the statue. She was arrested by two rappelling police officers after an hours-long standoff on America’s Independence Day. The whole island was evacuated as a precaution.

NEW YORK — A woman is climbing the Statue of Liberty, police said. PIX11 reports park police and the NYPD are both on the scene. Two officers used a ladder to climb to the base of the statue and are talking to the woman. She is perched against the statue’s robes. Police have been talking with the woman. She’s taken off her shirt several times and shown a message on it off, but the message written on her shirt is not clear on video from the scene.

Video at link

Therese Patricia Okoumou, the woman who scaled the Statue of Liberty on Independence Day in protest of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, explained Thursday that former first lady Michelle Obama motivated her. Okoumou appeared in federal court Thursday, pleading not guilty on charges of trespassing, interfering with agency functions and disorderly conduct. Okoumou, who was surrounded by approximately 50 supporters during her roughly six-minute hearing, told a federal judge she understood the counts against her. Court papers also charged Okoumou with resisting arrest by refusing to leave the perch where Lady Liberty's feet stand, roughly 100 feet above ground. She was...

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that New York Rep. Joe Crowley "got his a– kicked" in his Democratic primary Tuesday by a 28-year-old Bernie Sanders supporter "who had a lot of energy." "Last night, we had a great evening," Trump told a rally in Fargo, North Dakota, for Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer, who is facing Democratic incumbent Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in November. "We watched that television — and we were winning left and right," Trump said. "They didn't know what the hell happened.

The head of President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign called for the revoking of CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta’s press credentials over the reporter’s questions to Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un while the leaders signed an agreement Tuesday. Brad Parscale, who previously served as digital media director to Trump’s 2016 campaign, lambasted Acosta as an “absolute disgrace” for shouting out questions during the signing ceremony while citing an article from conservative website The Daily Wire. “Jim @Acosta should immediately have his press credentials suspended. He is an absolute disgrace! @realDonaldTrump,” Parscale tweeted.