From the Trenches World Report

RT

The Trump administration is going to extreme lengths to disrupt as much oil from Iran as possible, and the implications for the oil market could be severe.

When the Obama administration sought to isolate Iran, it built an international coalition, put in place tight sanctions, and tried to curtail Iran’s oil exports. It worked, knocking around 1 million barrels per day offline. Still, the Obama administration granted leeway to an array of countries that depended on Iranian oil, including India, Japan and much of the EU, by granting them exemptions from sanctions as long as they did their best to reduce purchases.   Continue reading “Oil jumps as Trump asks allies to cut off Iranian oil”

Mail.com

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling upholding President Donald Trump’s travel ban may have a silver lining for people fighting other administration immigration policies after the 5-4 majority ruled that the president’s prior comments about Muslims were not off limits when evaluating the ban, legal experts said.

Trump — a prolific Twitter user— has had his words turned against him in lawsuits over his administration’s decisions to separate families at the border, end legal protections for young immigrants and revoke temporary status for people from particular countries.  Continue reading “Experts: Travel ruling could boost other immigration suits”

Mail.com

EAST PITTSBURGH, Pa. (AP) — A white police officer was charged Wednesday with homicide in the shooting of an unarmed black teenager who fled a traffic stop last week, and investigators said the officer gave inconsistent statements about whether he saw a gun in the teen’s hand.

East Pittsburgh officer Michael Rosfeld first told investigators that the teen turned his hand toward him when he ran from the car and he “saw something dark he perceived as a gun,” according to the criminal complaint.   Continue reading “Officer charged with homicide in shooting of black teen”

JTA – by Rob Gloster

SAN FRANCISCO (J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Breaking religious barriers is nothing new for Rabbi Daniel Lehmann.

Ordained at New York’s Yeshiva University, the flagship of Modern Orthodoxy, he most recently was president of Hebrew College near Boston, which is devoted to pluralistic Jewish education. During his tenure, Hebrew College became the first non-Christian member of the Boston Theological Institute, a consortium of nine graduate schools of theology.   Continue reading “Orthodox-trained rabbi makes history as head of a mostly Christian theology center”

News Observer

North Carolina will start offering an unusual escape clause for the thousands of North Carolina residents who complain that Duke Energy’s two-way communication utility meters give them headaches, ear-ringing and a case of the “brain fog.”

Residents who say they suffer from acute sensitivity to radio-frequency waves can say no to Duke’s smart meters — as long as they have a notarized doctor’s note to attest to their rare condition.   Continue reading “You can say no to Duke Energy’s wireless meter. But you’ll need a doctor’s note.”

NBC News

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a crippling blow Wednesday to unions representing millions of the nation’s public employees.

The justices said in a 5-4 opinion that state government workers who choose not to join a union cannot be compelled to pay a share of union dues for covering the cost of negotiating contracts. Unions had said such an outcome would cut off a source of income and diminish their political clout in the 23 states where they bargain for both members and non-members alike.   Continue reading “Supreme Court ruling deals major blow to public worker unions”

Breitbart – by Charlie Spiering

President Donald Trump threw his full endorsement behind Speaker Paul Ryan’s amnesty bill on Wednesday.

“HOUSE REPUBLICANS SHOULD PASS THE STRONG BUT FAIR IMMIGRATION BILL, KNOWN AS GOODLATTE II,” Trump wrote in all-caps on Twitter.

The president has struggled politically with the Republican leadership compromise bill, wondering on Twitter why the Republicans are even wasting their time when Democrats in the Senate plan to block it anyway.   Continue reading “Donald Trump Offers All-Caps Endorsement of Paul Ryan Amnesty Bill”

Fox News

A federal judge in California on Tuesday ordered the U.S. Border Patrol to stop separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border and to reunite families already separated within 30 days.

Any children younger than 5 must be reunited within 14 days of Tuesday’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego ruled.   Continue reading “Federal judge orders end of family separations at US border”

The Newspaper

Red light camera programs generate millions for local governments that, in turn, commission studies to bolster the case for their continued use. A study released last week by the Maryland Department of Transportation highlights the dramatic impact that have on the reported results.

“For example, if the crash data from the two years before period was used as the baseline to compare to the three-year crash data in the after period, then the conclusion was either ‘no change’ or ‘an increase’ in the frequencies of side-impact crashes,” researchers noted regarding the intersection of MD 355 and Halpine Road in Montgomery County. “A quite different conclusion, however, was reached if the crash data from the five years before period is used.”    Continue reading “Maryland DOT Study Shows How Camera Studies Are Gamed”

The Detroit News – by Mike Martindale

Two Michigan State Police polygraph experts have upcoming court dates after allegedly taking a bicycle on a late-night joyride between watering holes on Mackinac Island last month.

The two downstate troopers were visiting the picturesque island, where motorized vehicles are banned, to attend a training conference for Michigan lie detector examiners.  Continue reading “2 MSP polygraph examiners charged in Mackinac joyride”

Quora – by Jon Davis

Where civilians were concerned, Nazi Germany in the 1920’s was the model gun free society and by the late 1930’s, it was even better. By then it had evolved into a place where guns were much less regulated, but prevented the “wrong sorts of people” getting hold of them.   Continue reading “What were gun control laws like in Nazi-controlled Germany?”

Breitbart – by Bob Price

A sergeant in the Harris County Sheriff’s Office in Houston was treated for exposure to fentanyl after he touched a flyer left on the windshield of his car.

Officials with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said someone placed flyers on the windshields of patrol cars parked outside the sheriff’s office recruiting center in downtown Houston, the Houston Chronicle reported.   Continue reading “Fentanyl-Laced Flyers Placed on Texas Police Windshields — One Deputy Exposed”

Space.com – by Mike Wall

The U.S. Air Force’s robotic X-37B space plane has now been circling Earth for 700 days on its latest hush-hush mission.

That mission — known as Orbital Test Vehicle 4, or OTV-4 — began on May 20, 2015, with a liftoff atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.   Continue reading “Secretive X-37B Military Space Plane Marks 700 Days in Orbit”

Liberty Blitzkrieg – by Michael Krieger

If you vote for Trump, then you the voter, you, not Donald Trump, are standing at the border like Nazis going ‘you here, you here’.

– Donny Deutsch on MSNBC last week

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

– Friedrich Nietzsche   Continue reading “Where Do You Draw the Line in Today’s Crazed Political Environment?”