In New Series, Leah Remini Exposes Church of Scientology's Practice of Forced Abortions

Christine Rouselle

Since leaving the Church of Scientology in 2013, actress Leah Remini has been outspoken in her criticism of the organization and has written a book detailing the abuses of the church. Now, she's the star of A&E's new hit docuseries "Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath," which continues to expose some of the lesser-known things about Scientology through interviews with other former church members. In the latest episode, former Scientologist Claire Henley explains that women in the church's "Sea Org," or the group of the most dedicated Scientologists, would be forced to undergo abortions if they got pregnant.

According to Henley, Sea Org was "no kids allowed," and that if a woman were to get pregnant, they would "instantly" be scheduled to have an abortion. If the woman refused, she would then be shunned, separated from her husband, and forced to engage in heavy manual labor.

Watch the clip below:

Sadly, this isn't the first time former Scientologists have blown the whistle on forced abortions. Astra Woodcraft, one of the adminson an ex-Scientologists website, left Sea Org rather than abort her child, and knows of several women who were forced to abort their children.

Absolutely horrific.

The Church of Scientology is now pressuring A&E to cancel the series.

Democrats plan ways to delay Trump cabinet nominations

Ed Straker

Congratulations are in order for Senate Democrats. After eight years of being a rubber-stamp Soviet legislature, they have suddenly rediscovered the joys of congressional oversight. While Obama's cabinet nominees were approved quickly very early in his administration, Democrats want to drag Trump's out for a while:

Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell are heading for a showdown over Donald Trump's Cabinet.

Schumer, who will become Senate minority leader next week, has privately indicated to McConnell that Democrats may not be willing to go along with quick confirmations for Trump's nominees if the Senate majority leader's caucus doesn't meet several demands, according to sources in both parties familiar with the matter.

.... Schumer is calling for McConnell to not schedule simultaneous confirmation hearings for Cabinet nominees, so that members on multiple committees can attend each confirmation hearing. That could make it difficult for all nominees to be ready for floor votes by Inauguration Day.

Democrats can use Senate procedures to throw sand in the gears of the chamber, though a 2013 rules change prevents them from unilaterally blocking Trump's Cabinet selections. One strategy would force the Senate to go into recess in order to hold some committee hearings; Democrats could also deploy parliamentary tactics to force cloture votes on nominees and drag out debate for days. Democrats estimate they could make the confirmation process take as long as two months.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) is vowing to force a "full conversation" on the Senate floor as allowed by the rules, which allow up to 30 hours of debate on Cabinet nominations.

By contrast, Obama's cabinet picks were quickly approved on or after his inauguration. Hillary Clinton was approved as secretary of state the day after Obama's inauguration, January 21. Tim Geithner, despite having a little problem with unpaid taxes, was quickly approved on January 26 as treasury secretary. Ken Salazar was confirmed on January 20, Obama's inauguration day. Janet Napolitano became secretary of homeland security also on January 20. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was confirmed on January 23.

In most cases, Republicans meekly voted for Obama's ideologues. But Democrats aren't going to be as meek. While they were eager to rush Obama's nominees in during Obama's first week in office, look for them to push to delay as much as they can when it comes to Trump's nominees.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.

© 2011 AmericanThinker

Justice Department declines to prosecute VA employees who defrauded $400K, and who still have jobs

Thomas Lifson

The mainstream media have been ignoring a story of outrageous abuse by federal employees that has just been rubber-stamped by Loretta Lynch's prosecutors at the D.C. U.S. attorney's office. The first report was carried by the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday and picked up by the Washington Examineryesterday. It is enough to make any taxpayer's blood boil and has great potential as a news story. Yet for the moment, it exists in one Texas city and the conservative blogosphere only. Sarah Westwood reports for the Examiner:

A pair of Department of Veterans Affairsofficials who defrauded the VA for $400,000 will not face any criminal charges, despite an inspector general's request that they both face a criminal investigation.

In an inspector general report made public in September, Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves were both accused of manipulating a VA program meant to ease the strain of moving agency employees between cities. The watchdog referred the matter to the Department of Justice for a criminal inquiry.

But prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office for the District of Columbia ruled against pursuing charges late last week, the Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday, effectively eliminating any possibility that the two officials will face consequences for their actions.

The VA declined to fire Rubens and Graves in November. Although the agency planned instead to demote the embattled officials, a paperwork mistakespared the two from even that minimal punishment.

Wikipedia summarizes the caper:

In 2014 Rubens volunteered for a transfer from the D.C. regional office to the Philadelphia regional office to fill an opening that held considerably less responsibilities. She and her peer Kimberly Graves were allegedly informed by superior Allison Hickey, the former VA undersecretary for benefits, of loopholes within the VA's employee transfer program that would allow them to pocket large sums of taxpayer dollars.[2]

Isn't that great? Her boss told her how to game the system. Why, you'd almost think bureaucrats are a self-interested group who don't care about taxpayers at all, but regard them as suckers to be played.

Hickey resigned her post in October 2015 amid investigations into her role aiding the two women in their transfer scheme.[3]The VA announced it would review its transfer program due to the growing number of cases involving abuse of authority.[1][4][5]

Rubens expensed nearly $275,000 in moving fees to the VA while relocating to Philadelphia, attracting the attention of the VA's inspector general. Upon investigation, it was learned that Rubens had used her position to pressure a subordinate to leave their job at the Philadelphia office, thus opening that position. Rubens then volunteered for the position that held significantly reduced responsibilities, but managed to retain her $181,000 salary. Rubens and was transferred to a separate location and demoted while under investigation.[1][2]

Rubens and Graves both made appeals to the Merit Systems Protection Boardand pleaded the Fifth amendmentregarding the allegations. The Inspector General recommended the Justice Department proceed with criminal charges.[6]

A judge overturned Rubens' demotion in January 2016, sparking outrage. The court stated that punishing Rubens and Graves was inconsistent disciplining behavior by the VA, since it had not similarly punished other employees that had committed offenses.[7] The judge also cited her superiors' foreknowledge of her intent as evidence that no laws had been broken.[8] Rubens was reinstated effective immediately and was awarded back-pay.[9][10][4]

Diana Rubens

Kimberly Graves

This incident will be worth it to taxpayers if the two become the poster girls for pushing through civil service reform as an early priority of the Trump administration. As I wrote the morning after Election Day, civil service reform is an essential prerequisite for reining in the abuses of the federal bureaucracy and the administrative state that makes laws and issues subpoenas without any judicial or congressional sanction.

The federal government requires structural reform. Because it is very expensive and time-consuming to fire anyone, bad behavior is not just tolerated, but propagated. Civil service protections originally intended to guard against a politicized bureaucracy have now become guarantors of the high-handedness and lack of accountability we saw with Lois Lerner, now retired with a six-figure pension after pleading the Fifth Amendment.

Government employee unions have become a mainstay of the Democratic Party, with employee dues, harvested from taxpayers via salaries, laundered into the party's coffers. So the Democrats will fight like hell, up to and including a filibuster, mass demonstrations, and possible violence. Donald Trump will need to persuade the public, and mobilize public opinion against those Democrat senators who resist the reform movement. There are 23 Democrat senators up for re-election in 2018, and some of them must be made to get very nervous.

I would suggest beginning with a bill to fire any federal employee who takes the Fifth Amendment with regard to behavior related to duties in office. The Democrats will cry that the Fifth Amendment is a constitutionally guaranteed right, so no retaliation is possible, of course. But there is a well known precedent to the contrary: breath or blood tests for drivers suspected of driving under the influence. They retain their right not to incriminate themselves, but in most states, they lose their driver's license. That license is not a right. And neither is a federal job.

Lois Lerner is the ideal object lesson to close the argument. She persecuted ordinary Americans and got away with it.

We can now add Ms. Rubens and Ms. Graves to the list of object lessons. All of them should be subpoenaed to testify before committees on the nature of their actions and the benefits they still enjoy.

The DoJ handed us lemons, so let's make some lemonade.

© 2011 AmericanThinker

Jimmy Carter’s Lifelong Pursuit of a Palestinian State

A.J. Caschetta

Perhaps sensing that he would soon have to relinquish his position as America's worst ex-president, Jimmy Carter reminded everyone last month how he earned the title with yet another call for the U.S. to recognize a Palestinian state. Carter's call is a departure from American diplomacy, which insists, per UN Resolution 338, that an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement can only be reached through negotiations "between the parties."

Carter's presidency was mired in bad foreign policy decisions, and his post-presidency has been marred with excusing terrorism, attempting to revise history, and meddling in the affairs of every subsequent occupant of the White House, especially where the Middle East, which Carter considers his forte, is concerned. At each stage of his post-presidency, he has advocated on behalf of the Palestinians and against Israel, a nation he considers an apartheid state.

The Carter presidency is notable mostly for its failures: a 21.5% prime interest rate, the aborted April 1980 mission to rescue American hostages held in Iran, and dreary speeches to the nation, like the "crisis of confidence" or "malaise" speech. The only bright spot, and the one achievement upon which he has built his post-presidency reputation, is the Egyptian-Israeli peace deal known as the Camp David Accords. Were it not for that lone foreign policy success during his presidency, few would listen to Jimmy Carter today.

Unfortunately, Carter gets too much credit for Camp David. He almost botched the whole deal with two ill-advised strategies: bringing the USSR into the negotiations and insisting on a comprehensive deal that would create a Palestinian state.

Egypt had been moving out of the Soviet orbit long before Camp David. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat wrote in his autobiography: "I wanted to put the Soviet Union in its place… to tell the Russians that the will of Egypt was entirely Egyptian; I wanted to tell the whole world that we are always our own masters. Whoever wished to talk to us should come over and do it, rather than approach the Soviet Union."

In a secret meeting on September 16, 1977 in Morocco, Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister Hassan Tuhami conducted the second round of negotiations, without the assistance or even the knowledge of anyone in the Carter administration. At that meeting, Tuhami told Dayan that Sadat "do[es] not wish to be in touch with the Soviet Union, but only with the U.S."

The other flaw to Carter's plans was his attempt to involve the Arab states in a deal that would create a Palestinian state, even after Sadat made it clear that he was pursuing a bilateral arrangement with Israel. Sadat told the American ambassador in Cairo that the negotiations "are getting lost in the papers," meaning the process Carter was cooking.

A few weeks into his presidency, Carter spoke about the Palestinians in a way that no previous U.S. president had ever spoken. Abandoning the positions of every prior administration since Harry S. Truman's, he said: "There has to be a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years."

Though contrary to U.S. official policy at the time, Carter even reached out secretly to Yassir Arafat, only to be snubbed by the PLO leader.

Carter's two errors converged when U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko announced a return to the 1973 Geneva Conference in a joint statement. An incensed Sadat rejected the call and soon made his own historic trip to Israel. It was the defining moment that made bilateral negotiations possible, and Jimmy Carter had nothing to do with it.

In the best book on the topic, Heroic Diplomacy, Kenneth W. Stein describes the American reaction to Sadat's trip: "In Washington there was a sense of disarray and surprise, because Carter and Brzezinski were particularly immersed in getting to Geneva. The administration had not been consulted, and the American game plan was thrown out of kilter." Sadat went to Israel, breaking what Stein calls "the Arab psychological barrier by recognizing the existence and legitimacy of the Jewish state." Menachem Begin soon made his own historic trip to Egypt and the peace accord they eventually signed in 1979 bowed neither to Carter's comprehensive negotiating formula nor to his demand for a Palestinian state.

It is no accident that Begin and Sadat were co-recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 -- the year before the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty was signed. The brave actions each man took paved the way for the treaty. Jimmy Carter, whose advocacy for a Palestinian state almost made the treaty impossible, got his Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 -- largely because a politicized Nobel Committee sought to reward him for undercutting George W. Bush's response to 9/11.

Carter came into office believing he could personally arrange an Israeli-Arab peace deal. After losing his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan, he left office convinced that he could have finalized a deal in his second term, and has been, in Asaf Romirowsky's words, "practicing foreign affairs without an electoral mandate" ever since.

After Hamas won control of the Palestinian parliament in the 2006 election, Carter fretted in the Washington Post that, as Hamas is a terrorist organization, the West would henceforth be unable to distribute aid in the territories and thereby further "alienate the already oppressed and innocent Palestinians." Carter seemed unconcerned that these same "innocents" had just elected a terrorist organization to represent them.

In 2014 Carter wrote in Foreign Policy that the U.S. needs to recognize Hamas as a "legitimate political actor" in order to facilitate peace in Gaza. Here he was echoing his former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski's November 2007 open letter to President George W. Bush urging him to open "a genuine dialogue with the organization." This is the same Brzezinski who suggested in 2008 that a President Obama might order the downing of Israeli airplanes should they cross into Iraqi airspace on a mission to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.

Carter needs to ask himself why the world should accept a Palestinian state comprised of the highest concentration of Muslims who believe that suicide bombing is justified when carried out "against civilian targets in order to defend Islam from its enemies." Why should the U.S. accept a nation ruled by terrorists who have repeatedly killed Americans, even when we were there to offer scholarshipsto Palestinian students? And why should Israel to accept a state on its borders that does not recognize its own right to exist?

The world should not confuse admiration for Jimmy Carter's charitable and philanthropic work and joy that he beat brain cancer with the delusion that he was an effective president whose wisdom can see us through troubled times 37 years after he left office.

A.J. Caschetta is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and a senior lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

© 2011 AmericanThinker

Nearing exit, Obama seeks to tie Trump's hands

Nearing exit, Obama seeks to tie Trump's hands
By Jordan Fabian - 12-30-16 06:00 AM EST

President Obama has taken a number of unilateral actions in the waning days of his tenure that appear designed to box in President-elect Donald Trump.

Obama's decision Thursday to sanction Russian entities for election-related hacking is just the latest obstacle he has placed in Trump's way.

Days before the sanctions were unveiled, the Obama administration allowed the U.N. Security Council to condemn Israeli settlement activity - something that could have an indelible impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Obama has also permanently banned oil and gas drilling across large swaths of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, closed off 1.6 million acres of Western land to development and scrapped the last vestiges of a registration system used largely on Muslim immigrants.

Those actions, as well as Obama's claim that he could have won a third term, seem to have irked Trump and his associates as the transition period enters its final weeks.

Trump on Wednesday morning went on the attack against Obama.

"Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks," he tweeted. "Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT!"

Later in the day, Trump spoke on the phone with Obama and turned down the temperature on the spat, telling reporters roughly six hours after his initial comments that the transition is going "very, very smoothly."

Yet it's clearly not lost on Trump or his team that the president is using his power in aggressive ways.

Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Thursday said Obama's actions could hamper his successor, even as he praised the president's team for being "very helpful" with the logistical aspects of the transition.

"Both the regulatory stuff, the executive orders that are on the way out ... that [is] something that I believe, you know, makes it a little bit tougher in terms of the transition on the policy side," Spicer told conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt.

It's unclear how many of Obama's late actions Trump will able to reverse upon taking office.

Should Trump seek to scrap the sanctions on Russia next year, it could trigger a fight with congressional Republicans, who mostly praised the retaliatory steps Thursday even as they lambasted the Obama administration's foreign policy.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) calledthe sanctions "overdue." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called it a "good initial step, however late in coming."

Senior administration officials argued that any effort to roll back the sanctions would be "inadvisable" because they apply to Russian intelligence agencies working against America's national interest.

"Hypothetically, you could reverse those sanctions," one official told reporters. "But it wouldn't make a lot of sense."

The actions against Russia included booting 35 officials from the United States and closing down two compounds that were suspected of being used by Russian intelligence.

Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on claims of Russian election interference and has said the U.S. should try to "get along" with the country and seek to fight Islamic terrorists.

Yet his response to the sanctions Thursday was muted. While he called for the country to "move on" from the controversy in a statement, he also suggested he's willing to hear out the intelligence officials who say Russia targeted the U.S.

"It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things. Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation."

The U.N. vote on Israeli settlements is another late move by Obama that complicates Trump's policy goals.

Trump has vowed to break with past administrations on Israeli settlement activity and move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Those moves would align the U.S. closer with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But even if Trump follows through on changing U.S. policy toward Israel, it's unlikely he will be able to repeal the U.N. resolution condemning Israeli settlements.

To do so, he would need to convince nine members of the Security Council - and the four other members with veto power, China, France, Russia and the United Kingdom - to back a measure scrapping the resolution.

The settlement resolution passed the council 14-0, with the U.S. abstaining.

While the resolution has no direct, practical effect on current settlement activity, it could make peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians more difficult in the future.

The Palestinians could use it as leverage in negotiating land swaps and the final status of holy sites in East Jerusalem, which the resolution refers to as occupied Palestinian territory.

Undoing Obama's national monument designations - the latest protecting two massive areas in the American West - could prove a heavy lift as well, likely requiring a prolonged legal battle.

No president has ever reversed a predecessor's actions to create a monument under the Antiquities Act.

The Obama administration and environmental groups argue it can't legally be done, though some Republican lawmakers argue otherwise.

"In terms of whether it can be overturned, no," said Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "The Antiquities Act gives the president the authority to create monuments, but does not provide explicit authority to undo them."

Meanwhile, by dismantling the dormant National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, Obama could slow any possible effort Trump makes to set up a registry for Muslims in the U.S. The system could have served as a foundation for a new Trump program.

But Trump has signaled he plans to forge ahead with controversial counterterrorism efforts, including his proposal to ban immigration from countries with ties to Islamic extremism.

"You've known my plans all along and I've been proven to be right, 100 percent correct," Trump said last week in response to a string of attacks in Europe.

Trump says he will meet with intelligence leaders about Russia

Trump says he will meet with intelligence leaders about Russia
By Katie Bo Williams - 12-29-16 18:12 PM EST

President-elect Donald Trump will meet with the Intelligence Community next week to discuss Russian interference in the election, he said in a vaguely worded statement issued Thursday evening that did not mention sanctions announced by President Obama earlier that day.

"It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things," Trump wrote in the brief statement. "Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation."

The statement did not define "this situation," but the transition team earlier in the day had promised a response to the announced sanctions would be forthcoming.

Trump has repeatedly denied any Russian involvement in the hacks of the Democratic party that intelligence officials have said were an attempt to "interfere" in the U.S. election.

He has characterized any reports to that effect as an attempt by Democrats to delegitimize his election.

But amongst lawmakers, the intelligence community and most security experts, there's little question that Russian intelligence was behind the hacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

Obama on Thursday announced a slate of retaliatory measures against Russia, including economic sanctions targeted at the intelligence agencies and officials behind the attacks.

Simultaneously, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a joint report detailing some of the forensic fingerprints that led them to attribute the attack to Russia.

Trump's refusal to accept the IC's conclusions has put him at odds with congressional leaders in his own party, who largely praised the sanctions on Thursday.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) calledObama's action "overdue" and "appropriate," though he slammed Obama as having an "ineffective foreign policy."

Ryan added that "Russia does not share America's interests. In fact, it has consistently sought to undermine them, sowing dangerous instability around the world."

Trump has also faced scrutiny for declining some of the daily intelligence briefings normally given to incoming presidents.

"I'm, like, a smart person," the president-elect said during a recent interview. "I don't have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years."

The Terrorism We Refuse to Fight

The Terrorism We Refuse to Fight

American Spectator - Friday December 30, 2016

by Wlady Pleszczynski

If you open the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or turn on your TV or Internet, you are guaranteed to see stories of terrorism in Germany and France and England, in North Africa, in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, the Caucasus, the Philippines, all over the earth far away from here.

And you’ll read stories about what the leading statesmen and politicians of the USA are doing and plan to do to keep terrorism from slamming our shores again: “extreme” vetting, water boarding, keeping out immigrants from turbulent Muslim regions. These are all huge stories, and the subject of keeping terror far away from these United States is a vital subject.

There is one giant problem though. Terrorism is already here. Right here. In America. Every day. Every night.

There is terrorism by gun violence in the big cities and small cities throughout this nation. It’s not a threat for the future. It’s happening right now.

In Chicago, the murder capital of the industrial world, there were over fifty — not fifteen, FIFTY — shootings just over the Christmas holiday. Eleven of these resulted in deaths and more may be coming from the ICUs. The number of shootings and deaths in Chicago has risen by very roughly double just since last year. In dangerous neighborhoods, children hide in their rooms. People in cars ride by quickly with faces down, so as not to provoke anyone in the neighborhood by having the wrong look on their faces — which could easily get them killed.

In my beloved Los Angeles, almost every night’s newscast has stories of gun deaths by shooting in gang-infested areas. Even in beautiful Palm Springs and its suburbs, death by shooting of gang members or innocent bystanders has become commonplace.

The son of our housekeeper at our home near Palm Springs was just murdered by being shot in the back, as he stood in his driveway. He was 23. Our housekeeper, of course, is in shock.

Even in Sandpoint, Idaho, our summer home, we get the newscasts from Spokane, about ninety miles away, and it’s a rare night when someone has not been shot in that city.

In D.C., my home town, gang killings are a cruel fact of daily life.

This is not coming from ISIS or Al Qaeda. This is coming from American young men, almost always black or Hispanic, organized in gangs or as individual murderers. They kill for sport or to make themselves feel big or to claim turf for selling drugs or just because.

I’m not Hillary Clinton. I don’t blame the guns. Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. But the situation is totally out of control. I like the ability for decent people to own guns, but it’s just nonsense that people can buy guns who cannot fly on airplanes.

It’s also insane that we have demonized and humiliated the main weapon we have to save lives in the domestic terrorism that terrifies our non-white neighborhoods: the cops. We have allowed utterly confused groups to give the totally false impression that it’s the police who are at war against young black men. That’s a complete lie. The police are the ones who offer up their lives to keep black and brown neighborhoods safe. It’s the young black men who are killing the other young black men. More and more aggressive policing is the answer to the problem. It’s not the problem.

Our outgoing President did not lift a finger to fight gang gun violence. He was too PC to go up against Black Lives Matter and other entities who libel the police. Our new President is not afraid and has sworn to uphold the law — not to exalt the law breakers.

Mr. Trump won partly on a pledge to be strong against terrorists from Mexico and Syria. That’s fine. It’s great. But the real terrorism in real time is coming from a few miles from where I’m talking to you, in almost any city and town USA.

Non-white people were liberated from institutionalized racism by a civil rights movement decades ago. Now, it’s time to take action to liberate this generation of minorities from the oppression of gang terror. The time to start is today.

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