Politics & Stuff

[Vesper 30,361]

Trump Spiritual Advisor Now Very Sorry For Molesting A 12-Year-Old Girl

One of his lawyers previously claimed the 12-year-old girl seduced him.

https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-spiritual-advisor-now-very

Former megachurch pastor Robert Morris, who previously advised Donald Trump on matters of faith, spirituality, and we can assume morality, has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing Cindy Clemishire for several years starting when she was 12 years old — a situation he previously described as “inappropriate sexual behavior.”

Clemishire met Morris in 1982, when he was a 20-year-old married man just starting his ministry. The abuse began when he stayed with her family over Christmas and asked her to come stay with him in his room, after which he began fondling and kissing her. It lasted for four years, until he actually tried to have sex with her in his car and she finally told a friend, who told her father, which then led to Morris being “banned” from the ministry for about two years.

Morris, who founded Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, agreed to a plea deal in Osage County Courthouse in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, after having previously pleaded not guilty in March when he was indicted on five counts of lewd or indecent acts to a child.

In exchange for having pleaded guilty this time, he received a 10-year suspended sentence, of which he will serve six months and then be required to register as a sex offender. He is also required to pay Climishire $270,000 in restitution, which really does not seem like enough, given the many million dollar properties he owns. Especially considering that he demanded that Gateway Church pay him millions after he was forced to resign over the whole “being a child molester” thing last year. The fact that he stands to make more money from sexually abusing a 12-year-old than his victim will receive is rather galling.

Clemishire has been in therapy for years dealing with the abuse, but many experts thought Morris wouldn’t face actual criminal charges at all, due to the statute of limitations. However, a “frontier-era” Oklahoma law may have allowed him to be prosecuted anyway.

Via Dallas Morning News:

“When Oklahoma was formulating its constitution and statutory framework, we were ‘no man’s land,’ we were Indian territory,” [Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner] Drummond said [in March]. He said the state put a law on the books to prevent people from neighboring states like Arkansas and Texas from coming to Oklahoma, committing crimes and returning home.

The statute he referenced says: “If when the offense is committed the defendant be out of the state, the prosecution may be commenced within the term herein limited after his coming within the state, and no time during which the defendant is not an inhabitant of or usually resident within the state, is part of the limitation.”

“While he believes that he long since accepted responsibility in the eyes of God — and that Gateway Church was a manifestation of that acceptance — he readily accepted responsibility in the eyes of the law by virtue of his guilty plea,” Morris’s lawyer, Bill Mateja, said in a statement.

Well, not that readily, given his initial not guilty plea and the fact that he initially clearly did not see that he did anything all that wrong.

Since Clemishire first came forward, Morris and his lawyers have been seemingly confounded by the notion that sexually touching a 12-year-old girl is an actual criminal act. One of his lawyers even went so far as to claim that Clemishire was the one who seduced him, clearly neglecting to understand that — even if that were true, which very much does not appear to be the case — it’s still a crime.

It does not matter if we are talking about a 12-year-old who, as described in one article, “was dressed in flowery pink pajamas and still liked to play with Barbie dolls” or if we are talking about a 12-year-old who is fully developed, taking college-level classes, dressed up like Jessica Rabbit and actively trying to make out with you, a 20-year-old married minister. It’s a crime. It is not a mitigating factor any more than it would be if an especially precocious 12-year-old asked you to go murder someone or rob a bank. “I committed a crime because this 12-year-old really wanted me to” is not a valid excuse in any court of law, anywhere, even if the crime you committed was against said 12-year-old.

I very much doubt that Morris fully grasps this, even now. After all, his former advisee has reportedly expressed disappointment in his supporters who are still concerned with Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes being unable to understand that Palm Beach in the 1990s was a different time.

While it is factually true that it was a different time, just as any time other than this moment is a different time, it still was not okay for grown men to have sex with teenagers or preteens even then, particularly in the case of actual sex-trafficking. In fact, it was against the law. Just as it was against the law to molest a 12-year-old in Oklahoma in 1982.

Now 55, Clemishire said in a victim impact statement that “justice has finally been served, and the man who manipulated, groomed and abused me as a 12-year-old innocent girl is finally going to be behind bars. My hope is that many victims hear my story, and it can help lift their shame and allow them to speak up.” She added that “I hope that laws continue to change and new ones are written so children and victims’ rights are better protected. I hope that people understand the only way to stop child sexual abuse is to speak up when it happens or is suspected.”

 

 

 

 

[Fernando 6,611]

19 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Tucker Carlson the next one to be 'assassinated' ?

 

Probably, but I prefer to watch a full un edited video from Tucker about what he was talking as that girl just put a couple of minutes from him and spend the majority of the the show talking.... 

[Vesper 30,361]

wtf

Trump: anybody burning the American Flag will be subject to one year in prison. You will be immediately arrested.

 

[Vesper 30,361]

This is what the opening move of the U.S.’s attempted annexation of Canada could look like

A Trump annexation effort would likely start in the North. It’s time to take the possibility seriously and have a hard conversation about Canada’s maritime Arctic sovereignty

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-trump-us-annex-canada-arctic-maritime-sovereignty/

 

Franklyn Griffiths, C.M., is emeritus professor of political science at the University of Toronto and the co-author of Canada and the Changing Arctic: Sovereignty, Security, and Stewardship.

Canada needs to consider the possibility that U.S. President Donald Trump will soon, and without our permission, send American warships into and through the waterways of the Canadian Arctic archipelago, commonly known as the Northwest Passage.

We owe it to ourselves to imagine what an imminent show of American force (rather than an invasion) would mean. We should also use the prospect to deal with and not write off Mr. Trump’s threats to annex us.

If he were to order weaponry into Arctic Canada, the President would be doing vastly more than creating another Canada-U.S. flareup over the status of the Northwest Passage in international law. His move would mark the start of an attempted annexationist takeover, and eventually an autocratic makeover of Canada as a country and a people.

For Mr. Trump, a takeover must be well in hand by election day in November, 2028. In my view, it has to be dead in the water before then. Whether or not the U.S. Navy actually enters the Northwest Passage in the coming days, Mr. Trump’s takeover dream presents us with a real-life threat that commands attention and planning without delay.

Canada needs to consider the possibility that U.S. President Donald Trump may send American warships through the Northwest Passage.Alex Brandon/The Associated Press

First, we must try to understand Mr. Trump’s motivations, which I suggest are threefold. First, to double the land mass, vastly increase the natural resources (freshwater included), and suddenly to magnify the “greatness” of the United States, thus achieving a world-historic real-estate transaction; second, to improve his prospects for continued and unconstitutional occupancy of the White House after the end of his second term as President; and third, to normalize and brighten the outlook for autocratic rule and the deconstruction of democracy in the United States.

But opportunity will not be enough. To make annexation happen, Canadian permission – or acquiescence – will be required.

To have Canada take part in its own destruction, Mr. Trump would use changing combinations of intimidation, assurance, and constrained violence. Intimidation of Canadians would come from the prospect of having to stand up to – and even fight – a superpower. Assurance would be conveyed by his offer of security in return for an agreement to become the 51st state of the Union. And constrained violence may arise from something that is to his credit: his apparent belief that fierce warfare is painful for people and bad for realty.

A possible incursion would therefore be intended as the first in a series of measures to have us Canadians join the United States and put an end to our country as we know it.

In reality, however, Mr. Trump will not have us. He will antagonize us.

A chinook helicopter lands at an air strip during Operation Nanook, in Inuvik, NWT, March 1, 2025.COLE BURSTON/AFP/Getty Images

Coming our way, I believe, is a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) conducted by the U.S. Navy under Mr. Trump’s orders. FONOPs are standard procedure for navies around the world. These operations are done to contest activities that contravene the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and, if left uncontested, may become conventional international legal practice. Canada, for example, runs FONOPs in the Taiwan Strait in order to affirm that the waters concerned are an international strait, and not the internal waters of China. The United States has taken similar action in the Northwest Passage with the unauthorized voyages of the commercial oil tanker Manhattan in 1969 and 1970, and the Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea in 1985. Mr. Trump’s former secretary of state Mike Pompeo also favoured a FONOP in Canadian Arctic waters in 2019, but nothing came of it.

The Manhattan and Polar Sea transits were, in Canada’s view, unauthorized and illegal. Then, as we do now, we understood the Northwest Passage to consist of Canadian internal waterways that require prior request and receipt of Canadian permission to enter and transit. This time around, a U.S. FONOP in Canada will call for naval vessels. Bringing on the U.S. Navy will be essential because Mr. Trump needs to convince Canadians he’s serious. Already he has indicated a growing readiness to make political use of armed force, as seen in his deployment of the National Guard in American cities, the bombing of Iran, and the dispatch of nuclear-armed submarines toward Russia in response to unacceptable remarks by a senior Russian official. If Mr. Trump sends submarines toward Russia, why not directly into Canada?

A likely date for the start of this event would be the 250th anniversary of the creation of the U.S. Navy on Oct. 13, 1775, which is very soon. To Canadians, Mr. Trump’s FONOP, if indeed it happens this month, would advertise U.S. military power, signalling that it is there for us but only if we’ll join them, and that it spells trouble for us if we won’t. To Xi Jinping in China and Vladimir Putin in Russia, it would send a message that says, “Hands off. Canada is mine.” To attentive Americans troubled not only by Chinese and Russian intentions but also by Canada’s apparent inability to contribute to the Arctic security of the United States, a U.S. FONOP in Arctic Canada may be seen as very good news.

But enough about where Mr. Trump and his officials may be coming from. What happens in Canada if the armed forces of the United States intrude into our sovereign space?

U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of tariffs and talk of annexing Canada incited national pride in the form of 'Elbows Up' rallies such as this one in March, 2025.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail

Experience with the Manhattan and the Polar Sea voyages suggests that a FONOP would give rise to an unprecedented wave of nationalist sentiment and political energy to defend the Arctic maritime sovereignty of Canada.

This wave has already started, with Mr. Trump’s authorization of trade and tariff warfare, and the onset of “51st state” innuendo. It made possible an election victory by Prime Minister Mark Carney, and strengthened Canadian readiness to resist American economic domination. It will rise higher still if Mr. Trump proceeds to abrogate the USMCA. And Mr. Carney can be counted upon to make the most of the opportunities here. As the leader of a people who may soon feel they are all but at war with a United States gone bad, he will enjoy increased public support in appealing to our attachment to sovereignty.

But we should be clear: what do we mean by sovereignty, and how are we doing in defence of it in the maritime Arctic?

Following the late Peter Russell, a former colleague at the University of Toronto, I see sovereignty as a claim, rather than a thing in itself. In international affairs, it is the accepted claim of a state to exercise exclusive jurisdiction within a delimited space and in a manner consistent with international law. To defeat the claim is to defeat the arguments for it, or to defeat and remove the claimant. Conversely, to maintain or strengthen the claim is to secure its acceptance and the claimant. Acceptance is provided and withheld by states, by international institutions (courts included), and by public opinion.

Today, there is no direct foreign challenge to our claim of sole jurisdiction over our continental lands and our islands, Arctic islands included. Indirect threats have nevertheless been accumulating in the President’s annexationist language, the expansion of Russia’s Arctic military capabilities, and China’s prowling for opportunities in the region. But our Arctic sovereignty claim does suffer directly from a long-standing disability on our part. We are unable to gain widespread international acceptance of our claim to exclusive jurisdiction when it comes to our Arctic waters, as distinct from lands.

Canada has developed a claim that says the channels of the Arctic Archipelago are part of a far larger Canada, arguing that they are domestic and not international waters. Our claim relies heavily on a historic-waters argument based on the British occupancy and administration of Rupert’s Land dating from when it was awarded to the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1670, and continuing to its transfer to the Government of Canada in 1870. Focused on the drainage basin into Hudson’s Bay, the award of 1670 added about a third of the area that is Canada today, but did not extend far into the Arctic Archipelago. As such, it provides a limited basis for a claim to sovereignty over the waters of the Northwest Passage.

Canada's historic-waters argument provides a limited basis for a claim to sovereignty over the Northwest Passage.David Goldman

But maritime states – those with navies, commercial fleets, and large fleets of commercial vessels which bear their flag – have long been united on the necessity of maintaining freedom of navigation. They have resisted Canada’s Arctic maritime sovereignty claim because they believe it relies on a discourse of historic internal waters to justify the enclosure of international waters that are currently and must remain open. What’s more, these claim-resisting states hold values, principally the respect for law, that we share. We have not found ways to convince them that we are not enclosing open waters.

But if Mr. Trump were to succeed in annexing us, he would surely enclose the waterways of the Arctic Archipelago and take up our present position on the Northwest Passage as internal waters. The weird result would be a United States doubled in size, riven by an international waterway, and open to transit only by vessels of states that had not offended a President who charged exorbitant transit fees and otherwise suited himself.

Today, our stance on Arctic sovereignty serves to separate us from like-minded countries and to associate us with two of the most rapacious autocratic states of our time. If this were not enough, our prime ally is itself transforming into an increasingly autocratic adversary. All along, Canadians who are aware of the details about sovereignty have been carrying on in some degree of fear of being taken to court on the legality of our claim. Meanwhile, who knows what goes on underwater throughout the Archipelago without our knowledge and authorization, and therefore without the effective occupancy that’s also required of sovereignty?

Unfortunately, all this adds up to a dim outlook for Canada’s historic internal-waters claim. There is, however, progress to report that has not been cited by recent governments and has yet to become part of our general knowledge. Stemming from the affirmation of Canada’s claim by the Inuit of Nunavut, progress came in their negotiations with Ottawa for the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement of 1993 and the treaty that created the Territory of Nunavut in 1999. With these measures, the Inuit transferred to Canada their ancient title to a 2-million square-kilometre area centred on the Archipelago. In a striking contrast with the Hudson’s Bay arrangement, today’s Inuit added to the strength of Canada’s historic-waters title to Arctic maritime sovereignty and opened the way to its advocacy by direct descendants of our original inhabitants. This was, and is, quite an accomplishment.

On behalf of us all, the Inuit contribution to Canadian sovereignty should be fully acknowledged by Mr. Carney in presentations to international audiences and to southern Canadians who could do with a deeper understanding of our Arctic sovereignty claim. With Inuit leaders such as Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami president Natan Obed, Pauktuutit president Nikki Komaksiutiksak, and John Amagoalik, who is widely respected as the father of Nunavut, Mr. Carney would do Canada a service by thanking the people of Nunavut for enhancing Canada’s sovereignty.

And what then?

It is up to Prime Minister Mark Carney to lead our pursuit of Arctic maritime sovereignty.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press

Beginning today, Mr. Trump has about 40 months to vacate the White House and surrender his agenda, including the annexation of Canada. Before the end of 2028, he may also have disqualified himself in the eyes of a divided American public. But we cannot assume he will be ousted – nor can we proceed on the expectation that the United States we’ve long been allies with will somehow reappear.

In circumstances such as these, it is up to the Prime Minister to lead in adapting our understanding and pursuit of Arctic maritime sovereignty to a world that does not respond well to those who make internal-waters claims and enclose straits.

To this end, Mr. Carney might consider saying something like this: “Owing to the transfer to Canada by its Inuit people of their historic-waters title to waterways that comprise the Northwest Passage, and to the evolution of treaty-based and customary international law, differences between Canadian internal law on the regulation of its Arctic waters and international law as it applies to international straits have all but disappeared. The Government of Canada therefore welcomes the opinions of Canadians on the merits of an irrevocable decision to maintain our historic-waters title, and to apply it in governing the channels of our Arctic Archipelago, not as internal waters but as an international strait in full accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and subsequent treaties.”

The task here is obviously sensitive legally, politically, and in terms of the Canadian identity; it will take care and time. That’s all the more reason to open a public discussion of our claim now, and to consider how to pursue a two-track approach to the United States in the Arctic: simultaneously strengthening the power of those who value freedom including freedom of navigation, and resisting those who would coerce us into an acceptance of dictatorship and the enclosure of international straits. We can do both by offering leadership.

For example, we could call for the creation of an Assembly for Democracy in North America. In gathering nations as well as subnational and transnational entities that are threatened by Mr. Trump, Canada could start a regional movement against autocracy and for free trade among democracies. The basis for such a movement exists in Greenland and therefore in Denmark and the European Union, as well as in Mexico, Panama, California, Canadian provinces, Indigenous organizations, and small island states in the Caribbean and Central America. If Greenland is to be present, why not also include Trump-resisting Brazil and plan for an assembly that includes the entire hemisphere?

An initiative from Canada – a country threatened with erasure by the U.S. – should be of interest to a wide array of participants. It would of course anger Mr. Trump and present potential participants with a risk of retaliation, but Mr. Carney should still order an inquiry into the value and timing of a venture such as this. The Assembly’s first meeting ought to take place in Winnipeg.

To conclude, the quest for a Northwest Passage is a search not so much for an alluring waterway as it is for something that’s missing in ourselves. Call it imagination or willpower – the Passage appeals to us to take responsibility for our Arctic waters and ensure they are freely and respectfully used. It takes us only so far at a time, but we continue. It could move us to seek a consortium of straits states responsible for the Panama Canal, Suez, Malacca, and beyond, or bring southern Canadians new understandings of unknown parts of our own country. Meanwhile, our northern compatriots are already there, and we have much to learn from them. In summoning the will to achieve formidable goals together, we Canadians may continue to complete ourselves one moment after another in the search for shared ways forward.

[Fernando 6,611]

54 minutes ago, Vesper said:

wtf

Trump: anybody burning the American Flag will be subject to one year in prison. You will be immediately arrested.

 

I'm okay with that. Your in USA, you don't do that. 

Go to another country if you want to burn the flag.