Cologne, Germany Rape HQ by Refugee Jihad

One officer quoted an attacker as saying, “I’m a Syrian! You have to treat me kindly! Mrs. Merkel invited me.”

German vigilante group vows to protect women from migrant attackers as 34 suspects are arrested – including three for gang-raping two teenagers

Hundreds of women were sexually assaulted, robbed on New Year’s Eve

The attackers were migrants who taunted police saying: ‘Merkel invited us’

Three Syrians arrested for raping two teenage girls in southern Germany

Vigilante group ‘Dusseldorf is Watching’ has since gained 8,000 followers

Threatening notes in German were found on one of the arrested suspects Read more here.

Germany confirms most mob attack suspects were asylum seekers

Berlin (AFP) – Germany said Friday most suspects in the mob violence that marred Cologne’s New Year’s Eve celebrations were asylum seekers, fuelling calls to quickly deport criminal migrants.

Unsettled by a record refugee influx, Germany has reacted with shock to news that women had to run a frightful gauntlet of groping, insults and robberies in an aggressive and drunken crush of around 1,000 men.

A week after the chaotic scenes outside Cologne railway station, federal police said they had identified 31 suspects whose alleged offences were “mostly theft and causing bodily harm”.

Eighteen of them are asylum seekers, the interior ministry said.

Among the suspects are nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, five Iranians, four Syrians, two Germans and one citizen each from Iraq, Serbia and the United States, ministry spokesman Tobias Plate said.

Federal police had received several complaints about sexual offences, but “the perpetrators of these have not been identified,” he said at a press conference.

Cologne police have separately confirmed receiving over 120 complaints of assaults, ranging from groping to two alleged rapes, calling them apparently coordinated attacks during the year-end festivities.

About three-quarters of the cases involved sexual offences, while others related to theft or bodily harm.

– A question of criminality –

Victims and eyewitnesses had since the beginning blamed men of “Arab or North African” appearance, inflaming a heated public debate about Germany’s ability to integrate the nearly 1.1 million asylum seekers it took in last year.

Right-wing populists have charged that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal migration policy has fuelled crime and destabilised society.

Merkel’s spokesman George Streiter said it was “important that the whole truth comes out, that nothing is withheld or glossed over”, but also warned that migrants must not be put under general suspicion or collectively blamed.

“Primarily, this is not about refugees but about criminality,” he said, noting that most asylum seekers in Germany had come seeking protection.

Still, the mob attacks have stoked popular anger and fuelled doubts about the biggest influx of asylum seekers to any EU nation, most of whom are from the Middle East and Africa, and led to pledges of a law and order crackdown.

“We must do everything to prevent such incidents from happening again,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told the Rheinische Post daily, pledging “more CCTV cameras in places where many people gather, heightened (police) presence on the streets and harsher penalties”.

At the weekend, Merkel’s conservative party plans to agree on tougher policies, including cancelling asylum and refugee status for any convicted applicants with jail terms of any length, and the speeding up of deportations.

– Act with ‘full force’ –

“We need more police, a better equipped judiciary and tougher laws, among other things to more quickly expel criminal foreigners,” said Volker Kauder, the parliamentary leader of Merkel’s Christian Democrats.

Under current laws, asylum seekers are only sent back if they have been sentenced to jail terms of at least three years, and if their lives are not at risk in their countries of origin. And there is a backlog in carrying out officially-ordered deportations.

“Citizens expect that those without a right to stay really do leave the country,” Kauder told news weekly Der Spiegel.

“We have to act with full force,” agreed Katharina Barley, general secretary of the centre-left Social Democrats, calling the New Year’s Eve violence “a very dangerous mix of organised crime and sexual violence”.

Merkel herself has vowed to “re-examine if everything necessary has been done with regards to expulsions to send a clear signal to those who do not respect our law.”

****

A police report on the mass sexual assaults in Germany on New Year’s Eve has been leaked and shows that officers had a difficult time containing the situation which was described as “chaotic and shameful.”

Der Spiegel received the copy of the report, which describes officers as being overwhelmed as approximately a thousand men gathered outside a Cologne train station attacking and sexually assaulting women.

“The officers on the ground couldn’t gain control of all of the events, attacks and crimes – there were simply too many at the same time for that to be possible,” a high-ranking officer wrote. “On the square outside were several thousand mostly male people of a migrant background who were firing all kinds of fireworks and throwing bottles into the crowd at random.”

 

Cartel Leader Guzman Recaptured in Shootout

The Mexican Navy said in a statement that marines acting on a tip raided a home in the town of Los Mochis before dawn. They were fired on from inside the structure. Five suspects were killed and six others arrested. The marine’s injuries were not life threatening.

At the home marines seized two armoured vehicles, eight long guns, one handgun and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

BREAKING NEWS: Joaquin ‘Chapo’ Guzman recaptured in Mexico

FoxLatino: Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto confirmed on Friday that authorities have captured fugitive drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman  in his hometown of Sinaloa.

“Mission accomplished: we have it,” Peña Nieto tweeted Friday.” I want to inform Mexicans Joaquin Guzman Loera has been arrested.”

The arrest of Guzmán was followed by a raid at a home in the town of Los Mochis, before dawn by Mexican marines, the AP is reporting. They were fired on from inside the structure. Five suspects were killed and six others arrested, the AP is reporting. The marine’s injuries were not life threatening.

It is unclear if the this was connected to the arrest.

At the home marines seized two armored vehicles, eight long guns, one handgun and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

The statement said they believed a regional commander for a criminal organization was present, but escaped.

The area has been the site of other military operations in recent months as the government continues to search for Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa cartel.

Guzmán fled in July through a mile-long tunnel dug from what authorities say was a building especially set up for the prison break in plain sight of the prison. The tunnel was equipped with a ventilation system and even a customized motorcycle most likely used to remove the dirt while digging towards the shower area of the drug lord’s prison cell.

41 Cases in USA on Foreign Born Terror Cases, Growing

Take a look in part to the White House, Obama refugee program in 2011. At this point, the FBI is just barely able to do clean up and investigations that the Obama administration completely created and messed. Sheesh….

The 76,000 admissions numbers shall be allocated among refugees of special humanitarian concern to the United States in accordance with the following regional allocations (provided that the number of admissions allocated to the East Asia region shall include persons admitted to the United States during FY 2012 with Federal refugee resettlement assistance under section 584 of the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 1988, as contained in section 101(e) of Public Law 100-202 (Amerasian immigrants and their family members)):

Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,000
East Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18,000
Europe and Central Asia . . . . . . . . 2,000
Latin America/Caribbean. . . . . . . . 5,500
Near East/South Asia. . . . . . . . . . . 35,500
Unallocated Reserve . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000

The 3,000 unallocated refugee numbers shall be allocated to regional ceilings, as needed. Upon providing notification to the Judiciary Committees of the Congress, you are hereby authorized to use unallocated admissions in regions where the need for additional admissions arises.

Additionally, upon notification to the Judiciary Committees of the Congress, you are further authorized to transfer unused admissions allocated to a particular region to one or more other regions, if there is a need for greater admissions for the region or regions to which the admissions are being transferred. Consistent with section 2(b)(2) of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 (22 U.S.C. 2601(b)(2)), as amended, I hereby determine that assistance to or on behalf of persons applying for admission to the United States as part of the overseas refugee admissions program will contribute to the foreign policy interests of the United States and designate such persons for this purpose.

Consistent with section 101(a)(42) of the Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(42)), and after appropriate consultation with the Congress, I also specify that, for FY 2012, the following persons may, if otherwise qualified, be considered refugees for the purpose of admission to the United States within their countries of nationality or habitual residence:

a. Persons in Cuba
b. Persons in Eurasia and the Baltics
c. Persons in Iraq
d. In exceptional circumstances, persons identified by a United States Embassy in any location

You are authorized and directed to report this determination to the Congress immediately and to publish it in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA

Disclosure: Another 41 Foreign-Born Individuals Snagged On Terror Charges

FreeBeacon: Following the discovery of a terrorist cell in Texas allegedly operated by an Iraqi who entered the United States as a refugee, the Free Beacon has learned of an additional 41 individuals who have been implicated in terrorist plots in the United States since 2014, bringing the total number of terrorists discovered since that time to 113, according to information provided by Congressional sources.

Since August, however, the Obama administration has stonewalled Congressional efforts to obtain more detailed immigration histories of these individuals, prompting frustration on Capitol Hill and accusation that the administration is covering up these histories to avoid exposing flaws in the U.S. screening process.

The disclosure of these additional 41 individuals linked to terror operations—many already identified as immigrants, others shrouded in secrecy—has stoked further concerns about flaws in the U.S. screening process and is likely to prompt further Congressional inquiry into Obama administration efforts to withhold details about these suspects, sources said.

As the number of legal immigrants connected to terrorism continues to grow, the Obama administration has sought to quash congressional inquiries and rally its allies behind an effort to fund efforts to boost the number of immigrants and refugees from the Middle East.

Many of these immigrants have been caught by authorities planning terrorist attacks on American soil, while others were found to be involved in efforts to provide funding and material to ISIS, according to an internal list codified by congressional sources and viewed by the Free Beacon.

“A growing number of foreign-born terrorists are being identified operating within the United States, and yet the Administration will not provide any information about their immigrant histories,” said one senior congressional source apprised of the issue. “And one can only imagine that for every identified terrorist, there are many more individuals around them who are radicalized, extreme or otherwise detracting from American society in ways beyond the threat of terrorism alone.”

As congressional calls for increased screening methods go mostly ignored, local authorities are dealing with an uptick in terror-related crimes committed by legal immigrants.

On Thursday, the Justice Department accusedtwo Iraqi refugees legally in the U.S. of conspiring to provide support to ISIS.

Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, a 24-year-old Palestinian born Iraqi refugee who had been living in Texas, was charged with aiding ISIS. The man had been granted legal permanent residence in Houston in 2011, though it was later determined that he “swore untruthfully on his formal application when applying to become a naturalized U.S. citizen,” according to the Justice Department.

Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, also a Palestinian born Iraqi, allegedly“traveled overseas to fight alongside terrorist organizations and lied to U.S. authorities about his activities,”according to the Justice Department

Al-Jayab entered the U.S. as a refugee in 2012 and later travelled back to Syria, where it is believed that he resumed “fighting with various terrorist organizations,” according to the charges.

Late Thursday, a Philadelphia police officer was reportedly ambushed by an assailant sporting “Muslim garb and wearing a mask,” according to local reports.

Additional information viewed by the Free Beacon outlines another 20 previously unknown individuals brought up on similar terrorism-related charges in 2015 alone.

Those who have been charged were legally residing in the U.S. after entering from countries such as Egypt, Uzbekistan, Albania, Pakistan, and Syria, according to information provided by Congressional sources.

“The terrorism-related arrests of two more Iraqi refugees on American soil proves once again our screening process is weak and needs to be updated,” Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill,) said in a statement Friday.

With incidents and indictments of this nature continuing to rise, critics of the Obama administration’s immigration policy are expressing concern about a last-minute funding effort in 2015 to fully fund refugee resettlement and visa programs.

These priorities, which were granted full funding as part of a yearly spending bill approved by Congress last year, will permit around 170,000 new migrants from Muslim-majority countries to enter the United States in 2016, according to the Senate’s immigration subcommittee.

“The omnibus gave the green light for the administration to continue this failed immigration policy over the objections of the electorate,” the senior Congressional source quoted above said.

The Senate continues to uncover dozens of cases in which individuals accused of terrorism entered the country legally.

“Preventing and responding to these acts is an effort encompassing thousands of federal agents and attorneys and billions of dollars: In effect, we are voluntarily admitting individuals at risk for terrorism and then, on the back end, trying to stop them from carrying out their violent designs,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) warned last year as Congress considered the spending bill.

Who’s Calling the Shots in State Politics?

Exactly what else do voters need to be aware of? Who is winning the liberal-progressive agendas at the state level? Do you pay attention to the language on ballot initiatives? Do you know the background and the money and players behind them?

Read on….

National liberal groups to push ‘record’ number of 2016 ballot measures

Efforts to circumvent legislative logjam counter grassroots origins

PublicIntegrity: Paul Spencer, a teacher and part-time pecan farmer in Arkansas, drafted a ballot measure for 2016 to reform the state’s campaign finance laws so his fellow voters could know who paid for election ads on TV.

But he and fellow activists there knew they couldn’t do it alone. They sought the help of national election-reform groups because in Arkansas, as in many other states, initiatives can cost millions of dollars to pass.

Liberal groups working at the national level are using state ballot initiatives as their weapon of choice for 2016, but given the costs, they’re carefully planning exactly where to push these measures. And Spencer’s Arkansas proposal didn’t make the cut for 2016.

That top-down approach seems ironic. The initiative process was put in place at the beginning of the 20th century as a way for local citizens such as Spencer to band together to pass laws. And voters on the ground may not be aware that national groups are helping fuel the ballot fights in their backyards.

Still, national liberal leaders see state ballot measures as their best option for winning on some issues. Dismayed at their prospects in Congress and in Republican-dominated state legislatures, national liberal groups plan to use ballot initiatives to push raising the minimum wage in Maine, legalizing marijuana in Massachusetts, closing gun sale loopholes in Nevada, guarding endangered species in Oregon — and other campaigns in at least eight additional states.

National conservative groups, meanwhile, seem poised to play defense, setting up a battle of outsiders on state playing fields. In March, Republican-linked politicos launched the Center for Conservative Initiatives in Washington, D.C., to counter the liberal ballot measures they anticipate will arrive in record numbers nationwide in 2016.

“Liberal groups have been forced to spend heavily on ballot initiatives in an effort to circumvent elected representatives because in states around the country the public has overwhelmingly rejected their out-of-touch candidates and messages,” said the Center’s leader, Matt Walter, in an email.

The push from outsiders to pass pet policies via the ballot has occurred before, on everything from land conservation in North Dakota to how to cage chickens in California, sometimes leading to big-money fights between corporations, advocacy groups and others.

“There’s this perception out there that the initiative process is all about the little guy,” said Jennie Bowser, a consultant who for many years studied ballot measures for the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures. “But the truth of the matter is that it’s a big business. It’s really well organized, and it’s really well funded. And it is very, very rarely a group of local citizens who get together and try to make a difference.”

Passing popular ideas

In 2014, when a Republican wave gave conservatives more U.S. Senate seats and governors’ mansions, left-leaning activists still managed to notch victories for the minimum wage, gun control and marijuana legalization through ballot measures in Nebraska, South Dakota, Illinois, Arkansas, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia.

In 2015, they followed with wins for campaign-finance reform in Seattle and Maine.

Those successes, as well as the chance to draw more left-leaning voters to the polls, are encouraging liberal activists to push hard on the 2016 ballot.

 

Buckle up the POTUS at SOTU Address and Parolees

Who does a YouTube commercial about his last year as president?

Politico: President Barack Obama plugs his own State of the Union address in a video trailer the White House is releasing Wednesday afternoon as part of an effort to set expectations for the president’s speech next Tuesday, which unlike previous addresses won’t include a new legislative agenda.

Going into his final year as president, Obama plans to focus more on the big themes that have defined his presidency and eschew a laundry list of policy proposals His explanation: he’s got bigger things in mind than Congress, according to details shared with POLITICO.

“What I want to focus on in this State of the Union,” Obama says in the video the White House will release late Wednesday, is “not just the remarkable progress we’ve made, not just what I want to get done in the year ahead, but what we all need to do together in the years to come: The big things that will guarantee an even stronger, better, more prosperous America for our kids. That’s what’s on my mind.”

Standing in front of his desk in the Oval Office, Obama offers a broad preview of what he’ll say: where things were when he came in, and how much progress he’s led since.

Not mentioned: the Republican majorities in the House and Senate who would have stopped any legislative agenda from moving – especially in an election year- with the possible exceptions of the Trans Pacific Partnership and criminal justice reform.

In an email that will also be distributed on Wednesday, Obama chief-of-staff Denis McDonough echoes Obama’s more-optimistic-than-ever theme and lists some of what’s likely to be on Obama’s brag list: December’s budget agreement, the Iran nuclear deal, increased domestic oil production together with new environmental regulations, a peak in high school graduation rates and health insurance coverage, a drop in unemployment, crime and incarceration rates.

“What we have left to do is bigger than any one policy initiative or new bill in Congress. This is about who we are, where we’re headed, and what kind of country we want to be,” McDonough writes.

McDonough finishes with a plug for his new Twitter account, @Denis44, also inaugurated on Wednesday. His first tweet: “New Year’s Resolution: Join Twitter ✓And just in time for @POTUS’ final State of the Union,” with a link to the Obama video.

Oh, one more thing and it is a big one.

Obama Admin Boosting Staff for Massive Criminal Pardon Effort

FreeBeacon: The Obama administration is seeking to significantly boost the number of staffers in the Department of Justice’s pardon office, leading some to speculate that the president is getting set for an end-of-administration effort to grant clemency to a range of criminals.

The Justice Department recently posted on its website a job listing seeking 16 lawyers for new spots in its Office of the Pardon Attorney, which codifies petitions for clemency and makes recommendations to the attorney general for clemency.

The new lawyers will assist “the President in the exercise of executive clemency,” according to the job description.

The department’s move to beef up staff in the pardon office has prompted speculation that President Obama will pursue a final term effort to grant clemency to a range of criminals, particularly drug offenders.

The Justice Department has been working for more than a year now on a new clemency initiative that outside organizations predict could free up to 20,000 convicted inmates from federal prisons. The effort has been described in news reports as “an unprecedented use of clemency power.”

The department says the new pardon office lawyers will work on this initiative and focus only on non-violent offenders.

“The Justice Department announced a new clemency initiative to encourage appropriate candidates to petition for executive clemency in order to have their sentences commuted by the President,” the job listing states. “The Initiative invites petitions for commutation of sentence from non-violent inmates who are serving a federal sentence, who by operation of law, likely would have received a substantially lower sentence if convicted of the same offense today.”

Thus far, “thousands of inmates” have filed petitions to have their sentences commuted and “more are likely to do so,” according to the Justice Department. “Evaluating these petitions for recommendations to the President is a high priority for the Justice Department.”

The attorneys will “review and evaluate petitions” submitted by prisoners and confer with Justice Department officials, as well as other administration agencies, to decide who meets the criteria to receive a pardon, according to the job description.

Government oversight organizations and experts are questioning the administration about the possibility that it could release those in the country illegally or those who have committed major drug offenses.

One congressional source familiar with the effort criticized Obama for abusing the presidential right to grant pardons.

“This fits perfectly with the administration’s two-term agenda of eroding the rule of law in America,” the source told the Washington Free Beacon. “While the president certainly has the constitutional power to pardon, I shudder thinking about how he plans to use it, given his determination to release dangerous criminals.”

Judicial Watch, a legal organization that has sought disclosure on the issue, petitioned the Justice Department in July through a Freedom of Information Act request to release all records discussing the clemency project.

Judicial Watch has predicted that the major clemency initiative “would empower President Obama to grant mass clemency to as many as 20,000 convicted felons now serving time for drug-related sentences.”

The clemency program is just one “part of the Obama administration’s effort to end alleged racial discrimination in drug-related sentences,” according to Judicial Watch.

Republican lawmakers also have expressed concern over the initiative.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, accused Obama at the time of “abusing his authority” under the Constitution to pardon prisoners.

“This is an example of the imperial presidency at its worst, and the American people have a right to know who is behind his errant usurpation of power,” Fitton said in a statement at the time.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for more information on the initiative.