The Republican senators who have risen to defend Mitch McConnell are so friggin’ typical.  The entire Decepticon Crew… 

WASHINGTON DC – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republicans on Sunday criticized their colleague Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who on Friday accused McConnell of lying about a deal to revive the Expot-Import Bank.

Cruz hit McConnell hard on Friday for allowing a vote on Ex-Im, which expired last month. But McConnell said there should be nothing wrong with having a vote on the issue.

“I don’t see a reason why they shouldn’t be allowed a debate and then a vote,” the Republican leader said from the Senate floor. “When there is some overwhelming bipartisan support for an idea, even if I oppose it, it doesn’t require some special deal to see a vote occur on that measure.” (more…)

Cetera is an avid reader and friend of the Tree House, and an occasional commenter.  He currently resides in Wyoming, having given up on Colorado after 10 years and deciding to move his family to a more politically friendly state.  What follows is his effort at communicating Truths inspired by his Christian faith and the Spirit. The first two posts are linked at the bottom, this being the third in a series of five.

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We are all here to support each other, to keep a watchful eye on each other and our Republic, and to fight the good fight when and where it is needed.  Each of us shoulders responsibility we assign only to ourselves, that we pick up voluntarily, and in each of our own ways we promote Truth and Justice.  In short, we are here to keep the faith, because at some level each of us feels that faith under assault or under siege.

For a great many of us, we may never have put into words or closely examined the fundamental principles and truths that we feel inside of us, and what they mean.  I would like to have a discussion on these First Principles over this and several future posts.

Charity touches on a great many pieces of ourselves that we are striving to perfect.  Firstly, charity is an act or action.  We have to choose it and physically carry it out, making it at the very least an act of will. (more…)

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

DeRay McKesson is one-half of the most hate-filled, lying and manipulatively destructive force in the U.S.  It was/is DeRay McKesson and Shaun King who promoted all the lies from Ferguson, to Baltimore, to McKinney Texas and Charleston South Carolina.  And more recently the suicide of Sandra Bland….

(Via Mediaite) Few activists in the Black Lives Matter movement have received the sort of glowing accolades from the left as DeRay McKesson. The Huffington Post has declared him “among the most widely recognized and respected young black civil rights activists.” Fortune declared him among the “World’s Greatest Leaders,” The Los Angeles Times hailed him as one of the “new civil rights leaders,” and New York Magazine gave him a fawning profile. Even Hillary Clinton invited him to her campaign (re-re-)launch.

At the same time, few activists have provoked the ire of the right wing to the extent DeRay has. His announcement that he would visit Charleston after the racist murder of nine people spawned thousands of tweets with the hashtag #GoHomeDeray. (more…)

The Benghazi Brief <- Will these facts finally be made public?

(Via KTLA) Hillary Clinton will publicly testify before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Oct. 22, her spokesman said on Saturday.

Clinton was invited to appear before the committee investigating the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack earlier this week, Nick Merrill told CNN, and the former secretary of state and 2016 presidential candidate accepted that invitation on Friday.

Merrill said Clinton was “pleased” to receive the invitation to a public hearing from committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy. (more…)

Donald Trump delivers remarks at his “Make America Great Again Rally & Picnic” in Oskaloosa, Iowa:

~ Let’s go campaigning ~

Meanwhile… the GOPe can take Charles Krauthammer, Steven Hayes, Bill Kristol, George Will and all their collective airs-n-graces, on the road for GOP team Jeb.   We’ll take these two ladies for Trump, and guarantee that not only will we collect more votes, but we’ll have a heck of a lot more fun doing it. (more…)

The intended outcome here is two-fold.  ♦ #1 Any Inspector General will now have to ask a white house appointed cabinet head for approval to access investigative material; obviously this gives an automatic heads’ up to the White House.  ♦ #2 The investigative material is now subject to being hidden from the investigators; obviously this allows unlawful conduct to remain hidden.

WASHINGTON DC – The Obama administration formally announced that inspectors general will have to get permission from their agency heads to gain access to grand jury, wiretap and fair credit information — an action that severely limits the watchdogs’ oversight capabilities, independence and power to uncover fraud.

An opinion, issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, says the Inspector General Act of 1978 — which was written by Congress to create the government watchdogs in order to help maintain integrity within their agencies — does not have the authority to override nondisclosure provisions in other laws, most notably in regard to grand jury, wiretap or fair credit information. (more…)

WASHINGTON –  Hillary Clinton’s email problem, long on the back-burner, boiled over again this week as two important and related developments turned up the heat.

Late Thursday, The New York Times reported that the inspectors general of the State Department and intelligence agencies are seeking a criminal investigation into the handling of “sensitive government information” on Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

The reason emerged in a Friday report by The Wall Street Journal. Despite denying earlier this year that she sent any “classified documents” over email, the inspectors general found that Clinton had sent at least four emails containing classified information derived from the intelligence community. She did not, obviously, attach “classified documents” to her electronic messages, but she did send messages containing information that remains classified even to this day.[…] (more…)

And this is a surprise to who?

(CNN)  Two former detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba were arrested by Belgian police in a counterterrorism operation targeting a recruiting network for al Qaeda in Syria.

They were arrested Wednesday night along with three others as they were about to break into a house to raise funds in the town of Hoboken, near Antwerp, a senior Belgian counterterrorism official told CNN.

“We have dismantled a serious recruiting network for Syria,” the official told CNN. (more…)

Border walls won’t work, they say.  We don’t need a fence, they say. It only takes electronic surveillance, they say.  We can secure the border with enhanced electronic monitoring, they say.  Well here’s a clear $360,000,000.00 chink in that argument…..

Oh, and they want to waste $443 million more – (via Judicial Watch) Drones used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “guard” the U.S. border for nearly a decade are ineffective even though the agency has blown hundreds of millions of dollars on the failed program and wants Congress to keep funding it.

It’s yet another example of what government does best; waste money. In this case the frontline DHS agency—U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP)—that operates the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAC) is actually requesting more money from Congress to keep the futile drone experiment going. Imagine a private business that for years blew huge sums on a failed enterprise asking investors to pour more cash into the same useless project. (more…)