By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

A bi-partisan bill in the U.S. House of Representatives seeks to require Senate confirmation for the director of the Secret Service.

NPR reports that the bill was motivated by widespread concerns of the Secret Service’s performance this year. 

Listen to NPR report above.  

By Editorial Board
Sacramento Bee

If there’s one constant in the chaotic administration of Donald Trump, it’s that there’s always a reason to doubt what the president and his surrogates say about immigration policy.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement proved that just last week, when it released data showing that arrests of undocumented immigrants without criminal records were up a whopping 156 percent from last year. That’s 10,845 people whose immigration violations were the only marks on their record.

And that’s what happened after ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan promised, even during a visit to Sacramento, that his agency would focus on immigrants with criminal records.

It’s no wonder then that Sacramento, San Francisco and so many other cities in California have declared themselves so-called sanctuary cities, refusing to cooperate with federal authorities as the feds expedite deportations of people who haven’t committed serious crimes.

California isn’t a sanctuary state yet. But with its hateful rhetoric, confusing policies, secretive raids and deliberate deceptions, the Trump administration is giving the Legislature every reason to take that step.

The trickery from U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week certainly didn’t help. On Monday, he issued a policy memo to clarify parts of an executive order that would punish sanctuary cities by denying them millions of dollars in federal funding.

Now, only jurisdictions that “willfully refuse to comply” with immigration authorities will be considered sanctuary cities. The penalty would be that the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security would deny them grants. Still, it’s questionable whether any of that will come to pass for Sacramento or any other sanctuary city.

To read more click here. 

Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr., via Twitter

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

There are few law enforcement officials as controversial and divisive as Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke.

That’s why Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee urged Homeland Security Director David Clark to not appoint Clarke to a post within the agency, The Hill reports. 

“We understand that the Department [of Homeland Security] has yet to make an announcement about this position and strongly urge you not to consider Sheriff Clarke as candidate for this important office or any other within DHS,” they wrote in a letter to Kelly.

Among Clarke’s “troubling record” are allegations of plagiarism and “multiple inmate deaths” under his watch.

“Taken together, they warrant not only his immediate disqualification from consideration, but an unequivocal response from the department stating that neither Sheriff Clarke nor anyone with a similar record would be considered for a secretarial appointment within DHS.”

On Saturday, CNN reported that Clarke plagiarized parts of his master’s thesis on Homeland Security. 

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

DEA Acting chief Chuck Rosenberg said Thursday that “marijuana is not medicine,” despite new evidence that suggests that cannabis has medicinal benefits.

“If it turns out that there is something in smoked marijuana that helps people, that’s awesome,” he said, speaking at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. “I will be the last person to stand in the way of that. … But let’s run it through the Food and Drug Administration process, and let’s stick to the science on it.”

Although many states have approved the use of medicinal marijuana, the drug remains illegal federally because it’s classified as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substance Act.

Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said the country needs to research the medicinal benefits of marijuana.

“Should we be reducing the administrative and other barriers to researching that in the government? 100 percent,” he said. “But what we should not do is make policies based on guesswork. When we do that, what we do is put people at risk.”

Border Patrol Agent Issac Morales, via Gofundme.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

An off-duty Border Patrol agent has died after he was stabbed in the face early Saturday morning in front of his girlfriend in El Paso, Texas. 

Issac Morales, 30, was pronounced dead Wednesday.

Police said Morales was walking to his car in the parking lot of Union Drafthouse Bar shortly before 2 a.m. when 39-year-old Hisais Justo Lopez allegedly stabbed him. Police said the stabbing occurred after Morales identified himself as a Border Patrol agent.

Lopez was arrested and later charged with murder after Morales died.

To donate to the family, visit their Gofundme page. 

John Pistole/fbi photo

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

John Pistole, the former TSA chief who had been appointed by President Obama, is now being considered for the position of FBI director, CNN reports. 

Pistole, who was named deputy FBI director in 2014, met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to talk about the position over lunch. 

Former TSA Administrator John Pistole under consideration for FBI Director. He Rod Rosenstein recently discussed job over lunch.

— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) May 25, 2017

What’s unclear is whether Pistole is interested in the job, especially after President Trump has repeatedly attacked the intelligence community and tried to get the former FBI director to pledge allegiance to him. At least five people under consideration for the job have withdrawn their names.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Pistole ran the FBI’s counterterrorism division.

Jared Kushner. Photo by Lori Berkowitz Photography, via Wikipedia

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

When the CIA director began to notice in the spring of last year that the Russians were trying to influence the presidential election, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top advisor Jared Kushner met with senior Russians.

Now the FBI is focusing on a series of those meetings held by Kushner, who investigators believe may be key to helping them understand if the campaign was colluding with the Kremlin, The Washington Post reports. 

In a hearing on Russia on Tuesday, former CIA Director John Brennan explained why he was worried about collusion.

“Having been involved in many counterintelligence cases in the past, I know what the Russians try to do,” Brenna said. “They try to suborn individuals, and they try to get individuals, including U.S. persons, to try to act on their behalf, either wittingly or unwittingly. And I was worried by a number of contacts that the Russians had with U.S. persons.”

As Brennan kept watch, he was alarmed by the number of people tied to Trump meeting with the Russians. They were Michael Flynn, now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former campaign manager Paul Manafort and Kushner, among others.

Since April 2016, Kushner met at least twice with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.

And that is why Kushner has caught the attention of investigators.

Former FBI Director James Comey

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

As President Trump prepared for his overseas trip this month, he alerted reporters that he expected to “very soon” nominate a new FBI director.

For unknown reasons, those plans have been scrapped and the president is nowhere closer to replacing James Comey, whom Trump fired under suspicious circumstances on May 9.  At least 6 candidates have bailed out for various reasons. They include former Assistant United States Attorney General Alice Fisher,  ex-Sen. Joe Lieberman, New York State Court of Appeals Associate Judge Michael Garcia, Senator John Cornyn, U.S. Representative Trey Gowdy and former FBI official Richard McFeely.

The White House recently appointed a search team to look for fresh candidates for the top FBI job.