The Unprecedented President Trump

Conrad Black discusses his new book about Donald Trump's presidency with TVO's Steve Paikin:

Today in sciencey stuff - Einstein proved right and blue sand on the Red Planet

Once again, Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity has held up — this time in another galaxy.

Using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, an international team of researchers found that gravity in a galaxy millions of light-years away behaves how the renowned physicist's theory predicted...

Crowds in Iran are chanting "Death to Palestine!" Not to Israel. Not to America. But to Palestine.

MUST-WATCH: Crowds in Iran are chanting "Death to Palestine!" Not to Israel. Not to America. But to Palestine.

Hamas and Hezbollah and Palestinian Jihad can kiss their Iranian funding goodbye if the regime falls. https://t.co/XM5CFAvjEH

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) June 25, 2018

#FakeNews and the Future of #MSM

An interesting discussion on TVO's The Agenda with my old pal Jon Kay, among others. Although some of the panelists are there to pontificate and dissemble to justify some of the absurd biases in mainstream media:

A note to readers - By Charles Krauthammer

This is tragic. I was lucky enough to meet and speak briefly with Charles Krauthammer at the Munk Debates a few years ago. A kind, thoughtful, good man. We need more like him, not fewer.

Obama Admin Granted Iran Access to U.S. Financial System Despite Sanctions

In selling the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran to Congress, the Obama administration assured lawmakers that Tehran would not have access to the U.S. financial system. But in 2016, the administration secretly granted Iran a license to do just that, according to a Republican-led Senate report released Wednesday.

The 53-page report by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), chaired by Ohio senator Rob Portman, also reveals the extent of Obama administration efforts to encourage foreign countries to do business with Iran. Its release comes after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would be withdrawing from the agreement and reimposing nuclear deal-related sanctions on Iran.

The lifting of those sanctions in January 2016 allowed Tehran to tap into its previously frozen assets abroad, including $5.7 billion rials held in an Omani bank, Bank Muscat. Iran wanted to convert those funds to euros, which could be done most efficiently by first converting to U.S. dollars as an “intermediary step.” In an effort to allow Iran to convert its once-frozen rials, the Treasury Department granted a specific license in February 2016 that authorized the Iranian assets to be converted using the U.S. financial system, according to the report.

“A conversion to U.S. dollars on behalf of the [Central Bank of Iran] was prohibited under U.S. sanctions,” the report says. “Other options existed to convert the funds from rials to euros without using the U.S. financial system. But using the U.S. dollar as an intermediary step was the most efficient means, even though U.S. sanctions prohibited it.”...