Sunday Post

(Domo arigato)

American vice-president Mike Pence defends Trump after he lashed out against judge who blocked a ban from countries currently on the terrorism sponsorship list:

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday defended President Donald Trump's attack on a federal judge who blocked a travel ban on citizens of seven mainly Muslim nations, as the first major legal battle of the Trump administration intensified.

The new Republican president blasted U.S. District Judge James Robart as a "so-called judge" on Saturday, a day after the jurist in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order on the ban. A U.S. appeals court later on Saturday denied the government's request for an immediate stay of the ruling.

"The president of the United States has every right to criticize the other two branches of government," Pence said on NBC's program "Meet the Press."

It is unusual for a sitting president to attack a member of the judiciary, which the U.S. Constitution designates as a check on the power of the executive branch and Congress.

U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Trump seems intent on precipitating a constitutional crisis.

(Sidebar: yes, about that...)

Trump has not banned migrants from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, something that makes this ban lop-sided.

It should be noted that George W. Bush removed North Korea from the terrorism sponsorship list and it could be added. But as North Korea is not an Islamist state, it receives little attention from people who insist that the current ban is a Muslim one.



Also: Nexus cards have been revoked:

The Liberal government is trying to ensure Canadian dual-nationals can still use their Nexus trusted-traveller cards at the border following word that cards have been revoked, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale says.

 


The terrorist who attacked visitors at the Louvre has refused to speak:

The machete-wielding attacker who was shot by a soldier outside France's Louvre museum refused to answer investigators on Sunday after being formally placed into custody at a hospital, a source at the Paris prosecutor's office said.


Abdullah Reda al-Hamahmy, an Egyptian, was shot several times on Friday after attacking soldiers as he cried "Allahu Akbar" in what French President Francois Hollande described as a terrorist attack.

"The first interview took place this morning, but it turned out to be a short one. For the moment, he refuses to talk to investigators," the source at the prosecutor's office said.

Hamahmy's father told Reuters it was "nonsense" to suggest his son was a terrorist, saying that the youngest of four children was a law graduate who had been working in the United Arab Emirates for about five years and was in Paris on business.

And yet he attacked people with a machete.




A co-perpetrator of violence against his own flesh and blood is asking for an appeal:

Hamed Shafia, convicted of first-degree murder in the so-called honour killings of his three sisters and his father's first wife, is taking his request for a new trial to the Supreme Court of Canada.

His lawyers, Scott Hutchison and Samuel Walker of Toronto-based Henein Hutchison LLP, are arguing that the Ontario Court of Appeal erred when it refused to consider fresh evidence pertaining to Shafia's year of birth.

Shafia was believed to be 18 when he was arrested along with his mother and father for the deaths of Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13, and Rona Mohammad Amir, 50, in July 2009. 

Their bodies were found in the Montreal family's Nissan, which was submerged in a lock on the Rideau Canal in Kingston, Ontario.

Hamed Shafia, his father Mohammad Shafia and mother Tooba Yahya were convicted in 2012 and received automatic life sentences with no chance of parole for 25 years. 

After conviction and sentence, however, the family discovered documents that listed Shafia's birth date as Dec. 31, 1991, which would have made him 17 when the crimes occurred.

That means he could have been tried under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which would have subjected him to a less severe sentence.

How convenient.

However, he can still be imprisoned for a long time, no matter what his alleged age is.


Ahem:

Liberal MP Justin Trudeau said the government should not call honour killings "barbaric" in a study guide for would-be Canadian citizens. 

On Monday, the federal government updated its Discover Canada guide, a pamphlet given to new immigrants to help explain life in Canada and prepare them for the citizenship test. 

Among other things, it tells new Canadians that gay marriage is OK and forced marriages are not. 

But the guide also says: "Canada's openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, 'honour killings,' female genital mutilation, forced marriage or other gender-based violence." 

"Those guilty of these crimes are severely punished under Canada's criminal laws," it reads. 

Trudeau blasted the Conservatives for using the term "barbaric," even though it's been in the guide since 2009. Forced marriages are the only new item on the list. 

"There's nothing that the word 'barbaric' achieves that the words 'absolutely unacceptable' would not have achieved," Trudeau, the Liberal immigration critic, said.

And he can decry that term all over again if he lifts the sponsorship cap on migrants.

Carry on.




Oh, this must be embarrassing:

A Liberal MP said he had no idea he had posed at an event Friday beside a man the Canadian government is deporting for being a former member of a terrorist organization.

Photos posted on the Facebook and Twitter pages of Michael Levitt, the Member of Parliament for York Centre, showed the politician outside the Imdadul Islamic Centre with Jason Pippin.

The Immigration and Refugee Board ordered Pippin’s deportation last July, ruling he had been a “fully committed” member of the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Tayiba in 1996 and ‘97.

The encounter took place at one of several “ring of peace” events in the city. Jews and Christians surrounded the highly-regarded Islamic centre in a show of support for the Muslim community following Sunday’s deadly attack at a Quebec City mosque.

Yes, about that....

Dartmouth College students and faculty members protested President Trump’s executive order on immigration by wearing hijabs to show, as one professor wrote, that “we’re all Muslims now.”

 
When these broads are done playing Muslim and getting patted on the back for being "brave", they can go back to being silly creatures who can't shut their fool mouths for want of anything. A real apostate in Islam gets killed.

Or this.

Trump attended a fundraiser for people very much like this brave young woman (a real brave young woman, not a white liberal faker):

Nadia Murad escaped from her captors after three months, but said more than 6,500 women and girls have been taken and abused.

She was 19 when she captured when the Iraqi area of Sinjar fell to the extremists in August 2014.

Before her escape, she was raped by 12 men. Since fleeing to Germany, she has travelled the world raising awareness of the plight of Yazidi women enslaved by ISIS.

 



Maxime Bernier's proposed policies on equalisation payments are rubbing many the wrong way:

While opponents were attacking O’Leary for spending too much time in the U.S. or not being Conservative enough, they were hitting Bernier on his ideas about reforming federal equalization payments to provinces.

“They are afraid,” he said. “I think they think that they won’t be able to have support in Quebec and in Atlantic Canada.… My policy, it’s on principle.”

Bernier said he wouldn’t end equalization payments, which help poorer provinces compensate for their economic woes, relative to wealthier provinces.

Bernier is wrong.

He should cut everyone off.

Eastern provinces are extorting welfare from the rest of Canada and it has to stop.




The last time I checked, Rona Ambrose didn't participate in pay-for-play:

The Conservatives confirm their interim leader took a Caribbean vacation on a billionaire's yacht around the time members of her caucus were criticizing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for vacationing on a private island owned by the Aga Khan.

A spokesman for Rona Ambrose verified a report by political news website iPolitics that the acting Conservative leader and her partner J.P. Veitch soaked up the sun last month on the yacht of energy mogul Murray Edwards around the islands of St. Barths and Saint Martin.

However Mike Storeshaw told The Canadian Press in an email that Ambrose was far more open about her vacation than Trudeau was about his winter holiday.

"Ms. Ambrose has followed all rules that apply to her with respect to her holiday, and was open and transparent with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, unlike the Prime Minister," Storeshaw said.

Storeshaw said Ambrose paid for a flight on a charter along with a number of friends — none of whom, he said, are public office holders.

"Ms. Ambrose discussed her holiday with the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, who verified that it was within the rules," he added.

The iPolitics report said Ambrose took her vacation from Jan. 3-14. During the same time members of her caucus called for the ethic commissioner Mary Dawson to probe both Trudeau's stay at the Aga Khan's exclusive private island in the Bahamas and his use of the Aga Khan's private helicopter to the island after he and his family jetted down to the Caribbean.

The federal Conflict of Interest Act and Trudeau's own guidelines for his cabinet ministers bar the use of sponsored travel in private aircraft, allowing it only in exceptional circumstances and only with prior approval from the commissioner.

And now, prepare for your heart to be melted: