“An ISIS-linked operative is reportedly in federal custody for plotting to assassinate former President George W. Bush. NBC News’ Tom Winter, citing court documents and law enforcement officials, reported on Tuesday that Shihab Ahmed Shihab “is in custody after the FBI says he wanted to smuggle 4-6 individuals from Iraq into the United States through the Mexico border to kill” Bush. Forbes’ Thomas Brewster first reported on Tuesday that Shihab “had been in the U.S. since 2020 and had an asylum application pending, according to the FBI’s search-warrant application.” The outlet reported that “federal agents used two different confidential sources to investigate the plot, one who claimed to offer assistance obtaining false immigration and identification documents, the second a purported customer of the alleged people smuggler, who was willing to pay thousands of dollars to bring his family into the country.””
Category: Police / Law Enforcement / ICE
Pastor who resigned over adultery accused of taking virginity from teen on office floor
https://www.christianpost.com/news/wisconsin-pastor-resigns-claiming-adultery.html
John Lowe II stepped down as pastor of New Life Christian Church and World Outreach in Warsaw, Indiana, on Sunday, May 22, 2022. | Screenshot/Instagram /ihavenewlife
A Warsaw, Indiana, pastor who drew a standing ovation from his congregation after telling them he was stepping down because he committed adultery with one person at least two decades ago drew their wrath minutes later after a woman tearfully alleged she was only 16 when the pastor took her virginity on his office floor while she sported a purity ring.
Pastor John Lowe II told his congregation at New Life Christian Church and World Outreach on Sunday that he needed to make the confession because it was the “biblical” thing to do, according to a Facebook Live broadcast shared by Maisey Cook.
“I committed adultery. It was nearly 20 years ago. It continued far too long. It involved one person, and there has been no other nor any other situations of unbecoming conduct for the last 20 years. I will not use the Bible to defend, deflect, protect my past sin. I have no defense. I committed adultery,” Lowe said without sharing any specifics.
“I say it plainly. I didn’t have an issue. I didn’t have an affair. I didn’t make a misjudgment. I sinned. I need to say that, and you deserve to hear it,” he continued.
Lowe, who has been in full-time ministry for more than 37 years, confessed that he had no good reason for waiting for as long as he did to tell the congregation. He painted himself as a hypocrite who applied discipline to others for sexual failure while hiding his own.
He asked the church for their forgiveness and announced that he would step aside and face discipline from the church.
“In accordance with our church bylaws, I’m stepping aside, stepping down from ministry responsibilities,” he said to applause as he departed from the pulpit.
Soon after he stepped down from the pulpit, a woman and her husband went to the pulpit to address the congregation. The woman said that what Lowe did was not just adultery but a crime because she was only 16 when he took her virginity in his office 27 years ago.
While the age of consent in Indiana is 16, a person who is at least the age of 18 in a position of supervision or trust that engages in any sexual activity with a child over the age of 16 but under the age of 18 commits child seduction, according to state law. It comes with a maximum penalty of 1.5 years in prison; and up to a $10,000 fine. Prosecution for this crime must begin before the victim reaches 31.
“For 27 years, I lived in a prison. It was not 20 years. I lived in a prison of lies and shame, lied to protect the Lowe family,” the woman said. “For years, I thought I was a horrible person having suicidal thoughts, not realizing what had been truly done to me.”
The woman said she was triggered to confront her abuser after her older brother asked her two weeks ago about the time he saw her in bed with their pastor.
“I was a victim, and I would still be in a prison if my brother … had not approached me just two weeks ago with what he had seen as a teenager that bothered him all these years — his pastor in bed with his younger sister, a t-shirt and underwear on,” she detailed.
“People knew but were too afraid to come forward. And they have now. The lies and the manipulation they have to stop,” she added. “I was just 16 when you took my virginity on your office floor. Do you remember that? I know you do, and I have plenty of other stories that I can bring to your remembrance. You did things to my teenage body that should have never been done.”
“I tried to tell someone. But all that was done was cover-up,” she added. “No one ever came to me. No one ever got me counseling.”
The woman also alleged that other young girls were abused by other leaders in the church, and they were “sent away.”
The woman’s husband told the congregation that Lowe started grooming his wife at 15 or 16 and continued having sex with her for nine years.
“I will not let this man talk about my wife like that. It happened for nine years. When she was 15, 16, the sexual grooming started. And it lasted until she met me, and we started dating. This is the truth, and that’s all we’re going to say,” he said.
The husband presented a necklace his wife was given as a ministry gift by the pastor. He also gave back his wife’s purity ring to the church.
“We’re working through love and forgiveness, but people have to be held accountable,” he said. “They can’t just bamboozle people and say, ‘Well, I just committed adultery.’ It was far beyond adultery. So here’s your covenant purity ring back. I don’t want it in my home. We’re done.”
The husband concluded by dropping the microphone on the pulpit to the stunned congregation.
After the couple finished, the tide of support for the pastor quickly turned to anger.
Voices began erupting from the audience, saying, “If you did it, you need to admit it.”
An older woman is seen embracing the weeping victim.
Lowe took the microphone and confirmed that he began having sex with the victim when she was a teenager.
“You should have went to prison,” a voice shouted back at him.
“It was wrong. … I can’t make it right,” Lowe said. “All I can do is ask your forgiveness. … I’m doing what the biblical process is. I am stepping down, stepping aside. … I deeply hurt them, I deeply hurt you. I ask you to forgive me.”
As of Monday afternoon, the church’s website still lists Lowe as pastor. Other members of the Lowe family are also listed in leadership positions.
‘We’re Failing Ourselves’: 15 Die In Texas Before Buffalo Shooting Victims Are Buried
‘Why Are You Here?’ Sen. Murphy Begs Colleagues To Compromise On Gun Legislation
Let’s talk about renaming military bases….
Walker Busted In Lie About Founding Veterans “Charity”
This guy lies so often I think he wouldn’t know the truth if he tripped over it. How the Republicans in Georgia support him is beyond me. He has domestic abuse charges, admits pulling a gun on his wife, has lied about everything in his life, has a certified mental illness and brain damage. But he has two things they really want. He has an R next to his name and he is black which they need because the guy he is running against is a black man also. Hugs
The Associated Press reports:
In interviews and campaign appearances, the former Dallas Cowboy and Heisman Trophy winner takes credit for founding, co-founding and sometimes operating a program called Patriot Support. The program, he says, has taken him to military bases all over the world.
But corporate documents, court records and Senate disclosures reviewed by The Associated Press tell a more complicated story. Together they present a portrait of a celebrity spokesman who overstated his role in a for-profit program that is alleged to have preyed upon veterans and service members while defrauding the government.
But Patriot Support is not a charity. It’s a for-profit program specifically marketed to veterans that is offered by Universal Health Services, one of the largest hospital chains in the U.S. Walker wasn’t the program’s founder, either. It was created 11 years before Universal Health Services says it hired Walker as a spokesman, which paid him a salary of $331,000 last year.
Read the full article.
A lie is a feature not a bug for Republicans.
Herschel Walker lied about his role in a “charity” that turns out not to be a charity? It’s not the first lie he has told, and I’m sure it’s not the last. Walker should not be elected to Congress. There are too many lying Republicans there, already.
wmforr thatotherjean • 3 days ago
It’s a virtue, not a flaw. MAGAts long to be lied to.
Let’s see, he’s a liar, an idiot, sexual abuser, and of a criminal mind – makes him perfect for a Republican candidate – perhaps he can be Trump’s running mate or chief of staff in 2024.
He also has horrible parenting skills. His son is a spoiled brat
Jay S_E_P • 3 days ago • edited
She thinks that acting like a douchebag gets daddies love and approval.
He’s been busted for quite a few lies, that’s why Trump’s supporters love him. They love the lies.
20 Kansas Legislators are members of ‘far-right’ Facebook groups, report says
The Topeka Capitol-Journal reports:
A think tank found 20 state lawmakers, or 12% of the Legislature, were members of Facebook groups deemed to be “far-right,” including ones spreading COVID-19 misinformation and raising concerns about the integrity of the 2020 election.
Some groups began as a coalition of members pushing back on restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic but appear to have grown into a broader range of discussion on right-wing issues ranging from critical race theory to conspiracy theories about voter fraud.
The IREHR report, titled “Breaching the Mainstream,” said the survey was of particular importance given the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol and the increase in misinformation at statehouses nationally.
Read the full article. Among those found to be members of the groups is state Rep. Tatum Lee, who appeared on JMG last month when she co-sponsored a bill that would provide a blanket religious exemption for all childhood vaccinations required to attend public schools.
Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice, pressed Ariz. lawmakers to help reverse Trump’s loss, emails show
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/05/20/ginni-thomas-arizona-election-emails/
Just days after media organizations called the race for Biden in Arizona and nationwide, Thomas urged the lawmakers to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure.” She told the lawmakers that the responsibility to choose electors was “yours and yours alone” and said they had “power to fight back against fraud.”
Thomas sent the messages via an online platform designed to make it easy to send prewritten form emails to multiple elected officials, according to a review of the emails, obtained under the state’s public-records law.
The messages show that Thomas, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, was more deeply involved in the effort to overturn Biden’s win than has been previously reported. In sending the emails, Thomas played a role in the extraordinary scheme to keep Trump in office by substituting the will of legislatures for the will of voters.
Thomas’s actions also underline concerns about potential conflicts of interest that her husband has already faced — and may face in the future — in deciding cases related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Those questions intensified in March, when The Post and CBS News obtained text messages that Thomas sent in late 2020 to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, pressing him to help reverse the election.
The emails were sent to Russell “Rusty” Bowers, a veteran legislator and speaker of the Arizona House, and Shawnna Bolick, who was first elected to the chamber in 2018 and served on the House Elections Committee during the 2020 session.
“Article II of the United States Constitution gives you an awesome responsibility: to choose our state’s Electors,” read the Nov. 9 email. “… [P]lease take action to ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen.”
Thomas’s name also appears on an email to the two representatives on Dec. 13, the day before members of the electoral college met to cast their votes and seal Biden’s victory. “Before you choose your state’s Electors … consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don’t stand up and lead,” the email said.
It included a link to a video of a man delivering a message meant for swing-state lawmakers, urging them to “put things right” and “not give in to cowardice.”
“You have only hours to act,” said the speaker, who is not identified in the video.
By December, the claim that legislators should override the popular vote in key states and appoint Trump’s electors was also being pushed publicly by John C. Eastman, a former law clerk to Clarence Thomas, and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer.
Trump allies argued that pandemic-era changes in election administration and supposedly widespread fraud meant that elections had not been conducted in accordance with state legislatures’ directions and that, under the U.S. Constitution, the results therefore could be cast aside. Many legal experts have called those arguments unpersuasive and anti-democratic, and no state legislature complied. Efforts to persuade state lawmakers to name new electors are among the issues under examination by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Courts turned back dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies in an attempt to challenge the 2020 election outcome, and there is no evidence of voting machine manipulation or other widespread fraud.
Ginni Thomas did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court did not respond to messages seeking comment from Clarence Thomas.
Ginni Thomas has insisted that she and her husband have kept their work separate, but her political activism has set her apart from other Supreme Court spouses. About a decade ago, she and Stephen K. Bannon — who later became chief strategist in the Trump White House — were among the organizers of Groundswell, a group formed to battle liberals and establishment Republicans. Groundswell dedicated itself to “a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation,” according to emails uncovered by Mother Jones at the time. “Election integrity” was among the topics discussed in the group’s first months, the emails show.
Thomas’s influence in Washington grew during the Trump presidency as her views moved into the GOP mainstream. Clarence and Ginni Thomas had lunch with Trump at the White House in 2018, then attended a state dinner the following year. Also in 2019, she and fellow right-wing activists attended a White House luncheon, where the New York Times reported that they told Trump his aides were blocking their preferred candidates for administration appointments.
Over those same years, at annual luncheons, Thomas handed out “Impact Awards” to right-wing figures. Recipients have included Meadows, then a congressman chairing the hard-right Freedom Caucus; Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe; and Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Thomas is a member of the Council for National Policy, a network of prominent conservative activists, some of whom helped press claims of election fraud. She recently said she attended the pro-Trump rally at the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
Thomas sent the emails via freeroots.com, a website meant to give political organizers an efficient means of conducting email campaigns. The email address of the sender in Thomas’s emails is displayed as “Ginni Thomas<noreply@freeroots.com>.”
A representative of FreeRoots did not respond to a message seeking comment.
The Nov. 9 email carried the subject line, “Please do your Constitutional duty!” In addition to pushing the lawmakers to appoint electors, the email asked for a meeting to discuss pursuing an “audit” of the vote.
Under the U.S. Constitution, states appoint presidential electors “in such manner” as the legislatures direct. Historically, some state legislatures appointed electors directly, but in the modern era states have delegated that responsibility to voters. In urging Arizona lawmakers to “choose” electors after Biden had already prevailed, Thomas’s messages claimed lawmakers could intervene in that process.
The records obtained by The Post do not show any response from Bowers, whose refusal to help overturn Biden’s victory in Arizona made him the target of a recall campaign. When Trump’s legal team pressed to replace Biden electors with Trump electors, Bowers released a public statement explaining that they were asking legislators to do something forbidden by state law.
“As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election. I voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him,” it said. “But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.”
A spokesman for Bowers told The Post that hundreds of thousands of messages were sent to the speaker’s office in the post-election period. “Speaker Bowers did not see, much less read, the vast majority of those messages, including the form email sent by Mrs. Thomas,” said the spokesman, Andrew Wilder.
Bolick is married to Clint Bolick, an associate justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, who worked with Clarence Thomas early in his career and has said he considers the justice a mentor.
Shawnna Bolick wrote back to Ginni Thomas on Nov. 10, 2020, “I hope you and Clarence are doing great!” She gave Thomas guidance on how to submit complaints about any of her experiences with voter fraud in Arizona.
Fetus-powered street lamps? Republicans ramp up outrageous anti-abortion lies ahead of Roe’s demise
During a House hearing, the GOP demonized patients and doctors with QAnon-style conspiracy theories
By AMANDA MARCOTTE
PUBLISHED MAY 19, 2022 12:47PM (EDT)
Gas lamps (Getty Images/gyro)
It was only one half-hour into Wednesday’s congressional hearing on abortion access when it became clear that the Republican contributions to the day would be loonier than a QAnon message board.
“In places like Washington D.C.,” fetuses are “burned to power the light’s of the city’s homes and streets,” claimed Catherine Glenn Foster, who had, just minutes before, sworn not to lie under oath. The GOP-summoned witness let loose the wild and utterly false accusation that municipal electrical companies are powered by incinerated fetuses.
“The next time you turn on the light, think of the incinerators,” she said, apparently repeating a misleading talking point from the same anti-choice activists caught stashing fetuses at home. Everything on the right is psychological projection.
https://www.c-span.org/video/standalone/?c5015779/user-clip-anti-choicer-claims-fetuses-power-lights
So that’s where Republicans are these days: Arguing that we live in a janky version of the Matrix, except powered by fetuses instead of actual people.
RELATED: Samuel Alito’s leaked anti-abortion decision: Supreme Court doesn’t plan to stop at Roe
Foster is not some random nut that Republicans pulled off a soapbox at a subway station minutes before the hearing started. She is a Georgetown law school graduate who is paid $190,000 a year to be the president of Americans United for Life, one of the largest anti-abortion non-profits in the country. So it’s not surprising that Foster believed she would get away with this absurd nonsense. Hers was merely one of a truly overwhelming number of lies that poured out of Republican lawmakers and witnesses alike throughout the course of Wednesday’s hearing. When lies are coming out like chocolates on a conveyor belt aimed at Lucille Ball, the liars can be assured they’ve overwhelmed the fact-checkers beyond any hope of accountability.
The GOP contributions to the hearing were a blizzard of bullshit, meant to totally white out the efforts by Democrats and reproductive rights activists to remind the public of the great human cost that results from banning abortion.
As their actual political views become harder to defend on the merits, Republicans increasingly embrace conspiracy theories and urban legends to justify the unjustifiable.
Republicans pretended progressives don’t know what a “woman” is. They insisted that the mere existence of abortion shows that birth control efforts are useless. (On the contrary, the abortion rate has gone down as birth control access has improved.) They pretended, over and over, that the issue at hand was only late-term abortions. In reality, the abortion bans being passed start at two weeks after a missed period, if not sooner. And then there was the repulsive contributions of Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who pretended that women wait until they go into labor and then abort the pregnancy right before the baby is born. Having made this lie up, he then berated Alabama-based OB-GYN Dr. Yashica Robinson for the existence of a procedure that, quite literally, only happens in his bizarre fantasies. (Thanks to Charles Pierce at Esquire for the transcript.)
Johnson: Do you support the right of a woman who is just seconds away from birthing a healthy child to have an abortion?
Robinson: I think that the question you’re asking does not realistically reflect abortion care —
Johnson: In that scenario, would you support her right to abort that child?
Robinson: I won’t entertain theoretical —
Johnson: It’s not a theoretical, ma’am. You are a medical doctor.
RELATED: The goal of the GOP’s QAnon-influenced “groomer” troll: More political violence
Indeed it is not theoretical — it is entirely fantastical. Johnson’s showboating was the equivalent of berating a doctor over unicorn horn removal surgery. But Johnson, eager to talk about anything but the realities of abortion care, continued to play this game. He went on to insist that Robinson answer for killing a baby “halfway out of the birth canal,” forcing her to pointedly remind him that actual murder is already illegal.
When lies are coming out like chocolates on a conveyor belt aimed at Lucille Ball, the liars can be assured they’ve overwhelmed the fact-checkers beyond any hope of accountability.
Anti-choicers love this hypothetical of a woman who aborts during labor. In reality, it makes about as much sense as banning men from touching their penises out of fear one might one day he might cut his off. But of course, Republicans would rather talk about their lurid fantasy lives than the realities of abortion.
In the aftermath of the leaked draft opinion that indicates that the Supreme Court will be overturning Roe v. Wade in a few short weeks, the grim reality of what banning abortion means is just starting to dawn on the larger public. Poverty, child abuse, derailed lives, women trapped in abusive relationships, people mutilated or killed in attempted self-abortions, people being imprisoned for trying to get abortions, and even just the looming anxiety hovering over every sexual encounter: That’s what the GOP wants to inflict on Americans, and it is not exactly the most popular politics.
Sadly, there’s nothing surprising about this turn towards wild tales about fetus-powered street lamps and women demanding abortions during labor.
As their actual political views become harder to defend on the merits, Republicans increasingly embrace conspiracy theories and urban legends to justify the unjustifiable. Want to ban schoolchildren from reading about Martin Luther King Jr.? Just falsely claim that something called “critical race theory” is being taught to school kids and use that as cover. Want to deny trans kids the right to be treated with dignity in public schools? Roll out some wild story about how kids are now “identifying” as cats and using litter boxes in school. Want to rile up the GOP going into the midterms? Screw making any substantive arguments! Just claim that Democrats are conspiring to “replace” white Christians with people of different races and ethnicities, a conspiracy theory lifted directly from neo-Nazis, with the details barely tweaked before being repeated hundreds of times on Fox News.
Of course, in the latter case, the cost is paid in blood. We’ve seen repeated mass murders as a result of this “great replacement” conspiracy theory, with the latest in Buffalo, New York. This points to another, even darker purpose of the Republican reliance on urban legends instead of evidence: Dehumanizing the targets of their sadistic political views.
Lately, Republicans have accused their political opponents of “grooming” children, which is basically just a way of saying all Democrats are pedophiles. It’s an idea directly borrowed from QAnon, just like “great replacement” is borrowed from white supremacist groups. The purpose of this kind of rhetoric is to paint your opponents — or in many cases, your actual targets— as subhuman and therefore deserving of any abuse you dish out, including violence.
RELATED: Are women people? Why the Supreme Court just signed off on a Texas law that denies women’s humanity
Indeed, it’s arguable that the abortion debate is how conservatives honed the art of spooling out monstrous false accusations in order to dehumanize their opponents. Falsely accusing doctors and abortion patients of “murder” has been standard conservative rhetoric for decades, and the human cost has been staggering: Assassinations of doctors, the bombing of clinics, and mass shootings of patients. Yet Republicans never let up, because despite claiming to be “pro-life,” they can always be counted on to prioritize political point-scoring over actual human life.
So yes, laugh at the weird anti-choice lady raving during a congressional hearing about fetus-powered street lamps. But remember the almost unfathomably deep cynicism that fuels such lies. Republicans are determined to set back women’s rights by decades, punish people for having sex, and prop up racial inequities. They frankly do not care how many lives are ruined — or lost — in the process. And they don’t care how stupid they sound when they roll out urban legends, so long as they finish the sadistic task of making unwanted childbirth mandatory across much, if not all, of the United States.
https://www.c-span.org/video/standalone/?c5015779/user-clip-anti-choicer-claims-fetuses-power-lights
Schlapp: Abortion Bans Will “Solve” White Replacement
In his ruling Alito mentioned a lack of babies to adopt. He doesn’t care that there is lots of older kids needing homes, but he was only worried about the babies. Why? Could it be because as they grow they are the easiest to indoctrinate into religion and bigotry? Here one of the leaders of the right claims forcing white women to carry pregnancy to term will help stop the white people from becoming a losing their majority power. Make women forced to birth facing death and long-term physical damage so white babies may be born. But really what they are saying is that women mean nothing if they can possibly get a white male child or a girl child they can force to give birth to more kids. At what point do these people mandate how many babies / kids each white family has to increase the white race? Will there be a minimum number of children for the white women? How long until these people start insisting that people of color that have more than one child be sterilized? This seems to have been their plan for a long time. All due to fear of a time when they wont be the most powerful. Why would they fear that? Could it be that they have been so horrible to others while they have power they are worried that those they mistreated would respond in kind to them? Maybe they should just try to be nice and treat everyone fairly. Hugs
“Roe v. Wade is being adjudicated at the Supreme Court right now, for people that believe that we somehow need to replace populations or bring in new workers, I think it is an appropriate first step to give the enshrinement in law the right to life for our own unborn children.
“If you say there is a population problem in a country, but you’re killing millions of your own people through legalized abortion every year, if that were to be reduced, some of that problem is solved. You have millions of people who can take many of these jobs.
“How come no one brings that up? If you’re worried about this quote-unquote replacement, why don’t we start there? Start with allowing our own people to live.” – Matt Schlapp, speaking today at CPAC Hungary.
The majority of white people will be able to travel to states and still get abortions. Its poor black and brown that are going to be forced to give birth. JFC, these folks dont even understand basic economic reality.
Worse. They understand, but they also know it’ll force continued generational poverty for those unable to obtain abortions. Which will keep “those” people out of view (except for crime stats and other ways of making them seem lesser/undesirable), and continue the broadening difference between the haves and the have nots, both in terms of color and wealth/education/opportunity.
juanjo54 Lazycrockett • 5 days ago
There is a large underclass of Caucasian poor who will not be able to do so. It is important to keep a steady supply of poorly educated, impoverished white people to do menial work as well as to join the military to fight in our wars overseas. Running an empire requires a large pool of potential soldiers.
Nic Peterson Lazycrockett • 5 days ago
Legal weed is something conservatives can’t stop and they are shitting their pants about it because incarcerating young black non violent offenders is so incredibly profitable and provides a conveyor belt of cash back to conservative politicians. More poor black and brown kids are a guarantee that the cash flow doesn’t stop.
Conservative are heinous.
Longpole Lazycrockett • 5 days ago • edited
It will give them something to bitch about. More minority babies on food stamps and Medicaid.
Plus, its good for fund raising.
Adam Schmidt Lazycrockett • 5 days ago
Republicans aren’t worried about that. They can fuck over health care enough so that the poor (read black) people die.
“Forced pregnancies.”
That’s what he’s saying. That’s what he wants. Women are to be enslaved by the state for the purpose of pumping out babies. And the unspoken part is he wants them to be white babies.
