It’s taken me several days to get around to my follow-up report on SR 488 Canada’s new Prime Minister Jason Trudeau and his Muslim – at least tendencies. Here’s another suspect fruit of this new philosophical shadow over Canada – Islamic banking. A new study released by the Toronto Financial Services Alliance says that since Canada has a fast-growing Muslim population, it is just perfect to become the North American hub for Islamic banking. According to Janet Ecker, president and CEO of the TFSA: "Islamic finance is one of the fastest growing kinds of finance in the world.” "There are opportunities here which should be explored. Toronto is an international financial centre. ... This is another way to keep our reputation and our capabilities growing." Will all Canadians sell their national souls for a couple of extra bucks? What is Islamic banking? That’s a good question. I’ve been to two Islamic conferences in the last 3 years, and talked to a lot of advocates for Islamic banking and still can’t figure out who’s telling the truth. Advocates say, it bans interest, but even other Muslims would take me aside and say it really does not, they just call “interest” something else. It also is typically based on gold money, and, of course, gold always favors the rich at the expense of the poor – the consolidation of power and not a more democratic spreading of power. Of course, we already know that Islam is far from a democracy. The advocates explain it this way: lenders become quasi-partners in businesses. If the business makes money, the lenders share in the profits. Walid Hejazi, an associate professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management explained that the new government of Jason Trudeau has to signal their willingness to provide long-term support for the planting of an Islamic Banking Hub in Toronto: "If there is a risk that a change in government is going to change its view on that kind of investment, that spooks investors.” "So the government must be clear to say . . . 'We're open to Islamic finance, we welcome it."' Of course, if I was in charge, I’d worry that once you let Islamic banking in, it’s going to be that much harder to keep it from eventually gaining control over the entire nation. This will be my last report of 2015. My wife and I pumped out 136 Still Reports this year – a record – and another 186 Minute Memos, for a total of 322 reports. I figure that we’ll double that in the coming year. Again, thank you all for your support. I hope this has been helpful. We’re Still reporting from Washington. Good day.

Good morning, I’m still reporting on politics. I’ve liked Ted Cruz in the past when I have just read what he said, but every time I watch him speak, I get uneasy. I just can’t seem to trust him. Everything he says seems like a well-rehearsed act laced with faux emotion. So admittedly, my opposition to Cruz at this point began as an intuition in search of factual support. Cruz asks to be judged by his deeds, and he has done good work in the past. But here are some things to consider. Heidi Cruz, the wife of Ted Cruz, has worked for both JP Morgan and Goldman, Sachs as an investment banker. They met while they both were working on the George W. Bush campaign in 2000. They married a year later. From 2003 to 2004 she worked in the Bush White House as director for the Western Hemisphere at the National Security Council – a very cool job. She joined Goldman Sachs in 2005. According to one of her professors, she is hardly a Tea Party-style conservative, however. According to Professor Edward Haley, one of Heidi’s mentors at Claremont McKenna College, a highly-ranked small college in the Los Angeles area: “Absent Ted, I don’t think Heidi would be moving in that particular branch of the Republican Party.” No, I don’t think so. Haley is an interesting guy. He was responsible for a dustup in 2009 for recruiting Professor of Arabic Bassam Frangieh to the faculty of Claremont McKenna. Frangieh openly supports Hezbollah and Hamas and has labeled Hezbollah’s attack on Israel as a “heroic operation”. According to Frandieh: “For real change to come about thousands [of Arabs] must martyr themselves.” At some point, Heidi became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations – the CFR. In 2004 she served on a CFR Task Force on the Future of North America. This is modeled after the European Union and involves a trans-national alliance between Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. The task force supported an open border policy with Mexico to: “Lay the groundwork for the freer flow of people within North America. The three governments should commit themselves to the long-term goal of dramatically diminishing the need for … the governments’ physical control of cross-border traffic, travel and trade within North America.” By this time, Heidi, had served as a Vice President at Goldman Sachs for several years and had moved up the ladder to the second most important level – a managing director. She currently heads the Southwest Region in the Investment Management Division of Goldman, Sachs, the division that handles corporate accounts with deposits of $40 million or more. Of course, having an open border with Mexico is just dandy for corporations with accounts of $40 million or more. They would love nothing more than to completely destroy the high wages that built the robust, freedom-loving American middle class. It is also important to note that Senator Cruz was born in Canada and he only renounced his Canadian citizenship last year when that fact began to surface in the Texas media. Cruz is clearly not a “natural born citizen” of the United States - one of the eligibility requirements established in the United States Constitution for election to the office of President or Vice President. Interestingly, after all the legal arguments about the definition of “natural born citizen” are made, none of it matters much. Congress and Congress alone is in charge of deciding the definition of “natural born citizen” and who meets those qualifications. Anyone can run for President and the only thing that can stop them is that after the election, when it comes time to accept the votes of the Electoral College, Congress could then disallow any votes for a person they deem to not meet the definition of a “natural born citizen.” I have a sneaky feeling that if it came to a vote on Cruz’s eligibility on that count, a virtual river of lobbyist money would flow from the coffers of those $40 million-plus corporate accounts under Goldman’s oversight and straight into the campaign committees of key votes in Congress needed to ensure that Cruz was dubbed eligible – just as we now know occurred with the Fast Track vote. So it seems that Ted Cruz would be just the perfect candidate for the new North American Union a former Canadian, now dubbed a natural-born American. Ted Cruz has frequently tried to distance himself from his wife’s activities, saying that his opponents love to attack his wife. May I say, Senator Cruz, that laying out the facts that may influence the thought process of a candidate for President of the United States is the absolute duty of any American reporter.