Part Of The Swamp Currently Being Ignored

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted a story about Hina Alvi, wife of Imran Awan. Imran Awan and Hina Alvi were information technology staffers who worked for Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and other Democrat congressmen.

In case you have forgotten:

  1. Imran Awan was arrested on charges of bank fraud, but that is only a small part of the story.
  2. Mr. Awan and a number of members of his family were employed by multiple Congressmen. When Mr. Awan reached the salary cap for his job, he would hire another family member. This continued, evidently with little regard to the computer skills of the hired family member.
  3. Mr. Awan at one point set up an alias account that allowed him to access Congressional servers after he was denied access. At one point after he was denied access, a significant data download occurred under his alias account. Mr. Awan claimed that the data download was his elementary school child’s homework, but the download involved thousands of pages. Most elementary school homework does not involve thousands of pages. It was also noted that the size of the data breach was such that it could not have been done over the internet—it had to be done using a thumb drive or similar piece of equipment.
  4. It is quite possible that the leakage of information regarding the Democratic National Committee came from Mr. Awan. At the time Mr. Awan was employed by Representative Wasserman-Schultz, she was chairman of Democratic National Committee.

Hina Alvi was stopped at the airport on her way to Pakistan with a substantial amount of money. The FBI let her go.

The article reports:

For nearly a year since, the case has lingered despite the House Office of Inspector General (OIG) determining that the family of Pakistanis made “unauthorized access” to Congress’s data shortly before the election.

Following revelations about the FBI’s actions in the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email server and Department of Justice officials’ handling of the Trump dossier, attention has turned to the agencies’ apparently lax attitude toward the congressional cyber breach case as perhaps the most jarring failure to enforce laws in cases that overlap politics.

The OIG alleged Imran Awan and his family members logged into servers of congressmen for whom they did not work, logged in using members’ personal usernames, covered their tracks, and continued to access data after they’d been fired.

Though the findings place the case squarely into the category of political cyber-crimes that have otherwise been high-profile priorities, the lead FBI agent assigned to the Awan case was a first-year agent, and not from one of the FBI’s big-guns divisions. The charges brought by prosecutors are so minor that Awan’s own lawyer speculated they could be a “placeholder” for future charges.

Server logs of government computers backed up the OIG’s findings. Yet six months after the initial charges, no additional counts have been brought, raising the question of whether the DOJ is seriously investigating the potential national security breach.

The article concludes:

Hosko (Ron Hosko, the FBI’s former assistant director) said six months in, DOJ has all the tools it needs and cannot blame the House, and inaction can only indicate a lack of desire to pursue the case.

“I would hope the Capitol Police are being forthcoming with the U.S. attorney, not just telling them a part of what’s gone on here,” Hosko said, alluding to the House’s characterization of the incident as a “theft” case. “But with these circumstances, [DOJ] can’t put their head in the sand. You can’t just say, ‘Well, someone on the Hill said it’s Speech and Debate.’ There’s certainly a way around it. This is [ Attorney General Jeff] Sessions, and there’s a new mindset in DOJ.”

(Michael Marando is the prosecutor. Since the case began, President Donald Trump appointed a new U.S. attorney, Jessie Liu.)

“I don’t see it as [members] having the opportunity to press charges — the government is the victim,” Hosko said.

If prosecutors don’t act, Hosko said, higher-level officials could consider moving the case. “It could be the Eastern District of Virginia has jurisdiction as well,” he said.

Their next court date is March 8.

There are some familiar names in this case:

Ron Hosko, the FBI’s former assistant director, said the agent on the case is “getting marginalized on the thing, he doesn’t have the bigger picture.” He said the facts in the case plainly call for the resources of both the FBI’s counterintelligence division and the public corruption unit. Peter Strzok, who sought to close down the investigation into Clinton’s emails before the intelligence community IG found classified materials, and who repeatedly voiced his support for Democrats, was deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division.

It is becoming very obvious that the corruption at the top of the FBI has been there for a while and has been working against the interests of the American people. It is long past time to clean house.

Notice that we haven’t heard anything about this scandal from the mainstream media for a while.

This Is Not The Path To Peace

The Daily Wire is reporting today that the South African Parliament has voted to seize all land owned by white farmers.

The article reports:

On Tuesday in South Africa, a shocking vote in the National Assembly ruled that white South African farmers will be removed from their land. The vote, prompted by a motion brought by radical Marxist opposition leader Julius Malema, was not even close; 241 legislators voted for it with only 83 voting against it. Malema told his supporters in 2016 he was “not calling for the slaughter of white people — at least for now.”

…As The Daily Mail noted, “A 2017 South African government audit found white people owned 72 percent of farmland.”

The vote will be considered by the Constitutional Review Committee which must report back to Parliament by August 30.

South Africa has had a history of racial problems. It also has a Marxist history and possible tendencies toward repressive government. Taking the land from white farmers without compensating them is only going to increase the racial divide. It is a revenge move rather than an effort to solve the problem. I really don’t know much about the geography of South Africa, but might there be a way to equitably divide the land between black and white farmers while compensating people if you take part of their land?

Americans Tend To Think For Themselves–They Are Becoming Wary Of The Media Trying To Manipulate Them

Today The Washington Examiner posted the results of two polls regarding the National Rifle Association (NRA) and arming teachers in their classrooms. The results are somewhat surprising considering how the media has covered the recent school shooting in Florida.

The results of the first poll are shown below:

The next poll deals with the idea of arming teachers:

Gun-free zones are simply a message to those wanting to harm others that there will be no opposition to them in that zone. It creates an area where our children and their teachers are sitting ducks to a shooter. We have armed security guards in banks, at airports, and other public places where valuable things are. Shouldn’t we provide the same protection for our children? We should also make sure that any armed guards know to run toward the gunfire–not simply let it happen.

The “Dreamer” Spin

If your news sources are limited to the mainstream media, you may have the impression that President Trump is randomly breaking up families and deporting illegal immigrants. Stories in the mainstream show crying children whose parent or parents are being deported, and these stories just reek of sympathetic angles. However, when you look past the obvious, you often find out that what you are being told may not be the entire story.

Hot Air posted an article today about one such story about a deported illegal alien.

The article reports:

ICE agents took Armando Nunez Salgado into custody outside his home. According to family members, he was in the backyard when agents walked right in through the side gate. His 14-year-old daughter Isabel Salgado dissolved into tears.

“I cried. I got very emotional, I was really sad,” said Isabel. “I mean to watch someone who is part of your everyday life and then you just have to watch him leave without saying goodbye. It kind of hurts.”

Armando is a construction worker who has been in America more than 30 years. His wife Elena Ponce said his parents brought him to the U.S. when he was only four years old.

The article at Hot Air begins to tell us more of the story:

But it turns out, Armando does have a dangerous past. After our interview, his family members told KPIX 5 he was involved in gangs and drugs for a long time.

In fact, at one point, he was on ICE’s most wanted list for charges of felony force and assault with a deadly weapon.

…“On Sunday, Feb. 25, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) San Francisco Fugitive Operations Team arrested ICE fugitive Armando Nuñez-Salgado, 38, a citizen of Mexico and documented Sureño gang member, who has been previously removed by ICE on four prior occasions. Over the past 18 years he has accumulated criminal convictions in California that have resulted in more than 15 years of prison sentencings. His criminal convictions include assault with a deadly weapon (statutorily enhanced because of his gang member status), burglary, hit-and-run causing injury and evading a peace officer.”

The man had been deported four times and done fifteen years in prison! This is not an innocent man who is an asset to America.

Negotiating Just Saved Americans A Lot Of Money

The Gateway Pundit is reporting today that President Trump has reached a new deal with Boeing Corporation on the construction of two new Air Force One airplanes. The article states that the president reportedly saved the country $1.4 billion on the deal. Admittedly, $1.4 billion is only a small dent in national expenditures, but it is still a move in the right direction.

Some Perspective From Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at National Review today about Russia’s relationship to American politics. The timeline of the article begins about 2009.

The article begins with the following:

Start with two givens: Vladimir Putin is neither stupid nor content to watch an aging, shrinking, corrupt, and dysfunctional — but still large and nuclear — Russia recede to second- or third-power status. From 2009 to 2015, in one of the most remarkable and Machiavellian efforts in recent strategic history, Putin almost single-handedly parlayed a deserved losing hand into a winning one. He pulled this off by flattering, manipulating, threatening, and outsmarting an inept and politically obsessed Obama administration.

Under the Obama presidency and the tenures of Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, Russia made astounding strategic gains — given its intrinsic economic, social, and military weaknesses. The Obama reaction was usually incoherent (Putin was caricatured as a “bored kid in the back of the classroom” or as captive of a macho shtick). After each aggressive Russian act, the administration lectured that “it is not in Russia’s interest to . . . ” — as if Obama knew better than a thuggish Putin what was best for autocratic Russia.

A review of Russian inroads, presented in no particular order, is one of the more depressing chapters in post-war U.S. diplomatic history.

The article lists the missteps of the Obama Administration regarding Russia. It notes that Russia successfully annexed Crimea with little response from NATO. Russia essentially took control of eastern Ukraine. Russia also exerted enough pressure to prevent America from supplying the Czech Republic and Poland the missile defense systems they had been promised.

The article reminds us:

Russia since 2013 had sought to interfere in U.S. elections with impunity, so much so that as late as October 18, 2016, on the eve of the anticipated Clinton landslide, Obama mocked any suggestion that an entity could ever successfully warp the outcome of a U.S. election. (“There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections. There’s no evidence that that has happened in the past or that it will happen this time, and so I’d invite Mr. Trump to stop whining and make his case to get votes.”)

After a near 40-year hiatus, Russia was invited into the Middle East by the Obama administration. It soon became the power broker in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq and to some extent offered passive-aggressive support for Israel and Turkey — a position of influence that it retains to this day and that would now be hard to undo. It posed as a “helper” to the Obama administration with Iran and helped broker the disastrous Iran deal — and then used U.S. acquiescence to Iran to fuel the ascendance of the Iran-Hezbollah-Assad crescent.

Inviting Russia into the Middle East is not a recipe for peace. The article also cites other instances of Russia managing to create chaos in America. Please follow the link to read the entire article for the full picture.

The article concludes:

The verdict on Russia, the Obama administration, and the Clinton campaign is now becoming clearer. Russian reset resurrected Putin’s profile and hurt U.S. interests. It grew out of a partisan rebuke of the Bush administration’s perceived harshness to Russia and was later massaged to help Barack Obama’s reelection campaign by granting Russia concessions in hopes of a foreign-policy success that would lead to perceived calm. Russia deliberately inserted itself into the 2016 election, as it had in previous elections, because 1) it had suffered few if any prior consequences, 2) it wanted to sow chaos in the American political system, and 3) it saw a way to warp Clinton’s efforts to smear Donald Trump, first, no doubt to compromise a likely President Clinton, and, in unexpected fashion, later to undermine an actual President Trump.

 At very little cost, Russia has embarrassed American democracy, played the media for the partisans they are, completely discredited the Clinton campaign and name, and created a year of nonstop hysteria to undermine the Trump administration.

And it is not over yet.

I would disagree that the Russia has embarrassed American democracy–I think we have done that ourselves. The election of President Trump so unhinged the media and the Democratic Party that they forgot the rules of fair play. I understand that during political campaigns sometimes things go on that shouldn’t, but the Clinton campaign overstepped the bounds of running for office in ways that we have not seen before. At least during the Nixon administration when Nixon tried to use the government to collect information or government agencies as political weapons there were enough people in government agencies with integrity to tell him no. Evidently that is no longer the case.

 

 

We Might Want To Deal With This Before November

The Washington Times posted an article today stating that The Public Interest Legal Foundation has identified more than 100,000 noncitizens who are registered to vote in Pennsylvania.

The article reports:

More than 100,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in Pennsylvania alone, according to testimony submitted Monday in a lawsuit demanding the state come clean about the extent of its problems.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation, which has identified similar noncitizen voting problems in studies of Virginia and New Jersey, said Pennsylvania officials have admitted noncitizens have been registering and voting in the state “for decades.”

But state officials have stonewalled PILF requests for access to the data that could expose the problem, the group says in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Harrisburg.

“For months, Pennsylvania bureaucrats have concealed facts about noncitizens registering and voting — that ends today,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said.

He said Pennsylvania had already admitted to a “glitch” dating back to the 1990s that had allowed noncitizens applying to renew driver’s licenses to be offered the chance to register to vote. Mr. Adams said he now wants to find out how bad the problem is overall.

Pennsylvania officials wouldn’t respond to the lawsuit, nor to the 100,000 noncitizen number.

The article further reports:

The PILF did manage to obtain some records from county officials and filed some of their findings in the new court case.

One man, Felipe Rojas-Orta, canceled his registration last year, filing a handwritten note saying he was not a citizen. He had, however, registered as a Democrat and voted in three separate elections, including most recently 2016, the year of the presidential race.

Another woman had her registration canceled in 2006 as a noncitizen, yet re-registered to vote twice — and cast ballots in some elections. That woman is still active in the system, the lawsuit says.

The federal “motor-voter” law requires states to make voter registration available at motor vehicle bureaus, but also pushes states to try to keep their voter roles clean. Under the law, private parties can sue to press states to perform the cleansing.

It is time to end “motor-voter.” States need to confirm the citizenship of people who are registering to vote. Noncitizens voting in our elections is a much more serious problem than any interference by foreign governments. It is also time for states to purge their voting records of dead people. There was a situation locally where a person checked the voter rolls and found out that there were three people claiming her home as residence in order to vote that did not live there. It was very difficult to get those people removed from the voting rolls. If we want honest elections, one place to start would be to clean up the voter rolls.

Annoying Things Done By Politicians

Representative Adam Schiff released the Democratic memo about FISA surveillance on Saturday (when he assumed no one would be paying attention). The memo is an effort to deflect charges that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) were weaponized for political purposes during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. The memo itself was a purely political move, and the release of the memo on a Saturday night was also a political move. The release of the memo is interesting bercause the memo does not help the Democrats’ case.

Yesterday Andrew McCarthy posted an article at National Review explaining that the memo does more damage to the Democrats’ arguments than helps them. Because of his extensive legal background, Andrew McCarthy is the perfect person to dissect this memo.

The article is detailed, and I suggest that you follow the link to read the entire article, but I will try to summarize it.

The article reports:

The memo concedes that the FISA-warrant application relied on allegations by Steele’s anonymous Russian hearsay sources that:

Page met separately while in Russia with Igor Sechin, a close associate of Vladimir Putin and executive chairman of Roseneft, Russia’s state-owned oil company, and Igor Divyekin, a senior Kremlin official. Sechin allegedly discussed the prospect of future U.S.-Russia energy cooperation and “an associated move to lift Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia.” Divyekin allegedly disclosed to Page that the Kremlin possessed compromising information on Clinton (“kompromat”) and noted the possibility of its being released to Candidate #1’s [i.e., Donald Trump’s] campaign. . . . This closely tracks what other Russian contacts were informing another Trump foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos.

1) This was obviously the most critical allegation against Page. The Democrats attempt to make much of Page’s trip to Moscow in July 2016, but the uncorroborated Sechin and Divyekin meetings, which Page credibly denies, are the aspect of the Moscow trip that suggested a nefarious Trump–Russia conspiracy. That’s what the investigation was about. Far from clandestine, the rest of Page’s trip was well publicized and apparently anodyne.

2) Democrats implausibly insist that what “launched” the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was not Steele’s allegations but intelligence from Australia about George Papadopoulos’s contact with what Democrats elusively describe as “individuals linked to Russia.”

…Even if we assume for argument’s sake that these characters had solid regime connections — rather than that they were boasting to impress the credulous young Papadopoulos — they were patently not in the same league as Sechin, a Putin crony, and Divyekin, a highly placed regime official. And that, manifestly, is how the FBI and the DOJ saw the matter: They sought a FISA warrant on Page, not Papadopoulos. And, as the above-excerpted passage shows, they highlighted the Steele dossier’s sensational allegations about Page and then feebly tried to corroborate those allegations with some Papadopoulos information, not the other way around. (More on that when we get to Schiff’s notion of “corroboration.”)

The article also notes:

…because Page was an American citizen, FISA law required that the FBI and the DOJ show not only that he was acting as an agent of a foreign power (Russia), but also that his “clandestine” activities on behalf of Russia were a likely violation of federal criminal law. (See FISA, Section 1801(b)(2)(A) through (E), Title 50, U.S. Code.) It is the Steele dossier that alleges Page was engaged in arguably criminal activity. The Democrats point to nothing else that does.

Because of the way this whole story has been reported, I am not sure many Americans realize that the constitutional rights of one of their fellow citizens were violated by the FISA Court. All of us need to remember that this could happen to any one of us. We also need to note that if the use of the FBI and DOJ for political purposes is not dealt with and the guilty parties punished, we will see more of this behavior in the future.

The article continues:

How’s this for transparency? The FISA warrant application says that Steele, referred to as “Source #1,” was “approached by” Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, referred to as “an identified U.S. person,” who

indicated to Source #1 that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. Person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1’s [i.e., Trump’s] ties to Russia. (The identified U.S. Person and Source #1 have a longstanding business relationship.) The identified U.S. Person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified U.S. Person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign. [Emphasis in Schiff memo, p. 5]

The first thing to notice here is the epistemological contortions by which the DOJ rationalized concealing that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid for Steele’s reporting. They ooze consciousness of guilt. If you have to go through these kinds of mental gymnastics to avoid disclosing something, it’s because you know that being “transparent” demands disclosing it.

As I stated, it is a very long and detailed article. Please follow the link above to see the other problems with the Schiff memo.

 

Actions Have Consequences

The shooting in Parkland, Florida, was horrendous. There have been a lot of people placing blame all over the place for that shooting. I am not interested in getting into a blame game, but I think we need to look at a series of decisions over the past five years that created the environment for the shooting to take place.

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article yesterday about some decisions made during the past five years that explain some of the mistakes made in assessing the threat this student posed and dealing with that threat.

The article reports a conversation that took place on the Laura Ingraham show:

Within the conversation Mr. Bell (Broward County Sheriff Union President Jeff Bell) points to the 2013 Broward County School Board policy known as the “Promise Program“.  The Promise Program is the collaborative policy between all county officials the school superintendent, school board and law enforcement that instructs officers to not arrest high school students.

This policy sits at the center of understanding why Nikolas Cruz was not intercepted by law enforcement. 

A Broward County School Police Officer must: carry a political hat and be able to intercept anti-social behavior (ie. filter through “The Promise Program“); modify his/her action based on the specific policy need (no arrests); falsify documents (as needed), hide evidence (as needed), manipulate records (as needed); and engage inside the system with an understanding of the unwritten goals and school board/LEO objectives (improve stats).

As such, Broward County school law enforcement are given political instructions, and carrying out political objectives.  The 30 minute CCTV tape-delay is one unofficial consequence of that objective. School police are not given law-enforcement instructions.

This is political correctness run amok. If the statistics are kept under control, the school looks good. Meanwhile, the safety of the students is not a consideration.

Before we totally dismiss those responsible for The Promise Program as idiots, we need to look at what was reported by the media in the early days of the program.

On November 2, 2013, The Sun Sentinel reported:

Just two years ago, Broward County schools funneled the state’s highest number of students into the juvenile justice system, often hauling them away in handcuffs for minor infractions.

But the district this year dramatically altered its discipline policies and launched an intervention program to reduce the number of arrests for non-violent offenses. It’s already seeing results.

The number of students arrested for misdemeanor incidents from August to September dropped to 22 students from 54 in the same period last year, district figures show.

“We need to give students an opportunity if they make mistakes,” Superintendent Robert Runcie said.

On Tuesday, members of law enforcement, the public defender’s office, the NAACP, the state Department of Juvenile Justice and the State Attorney’s Office will join the School Board to sign an agreement to reduce school-based arrests.

It’ll be the first such agreement in the state.

“Unless we put in appropriate interventions to help these students address their behavior and get back on track, then as an institution, we fail,” Runcie said.

Essentially they didn’t stop the crimes–they just stopped arresting the students who broke the law and avoided letting them face the consequences of their actions. That’s not a great way to prepare students for a successful life. The media thought the program was wonderful and published a glowing report of it. So much for the wisdom of the media.

This is the place where common sense seems to have left our educational system. We need to go back to the days of winning and losing and facing the consequences of your choices. It’s time to put sensible people on our school boards to bring about the necessary changes that will make our schools safer.

The Latest Problem With Elections In Chicago

Chicago is not known for the integrity of its elections. There is an urban legend that is probably true that Chicago allowed John F. Kennedy to become President through creative voting methods. Keeping that in mind, I suppose I should not be surprised at the latest wrinkle in the election process in that city.

On Friday the Illinois News Network posted an article about a new ID card that will be available primarily as a municipal identification card for illegal immigrants. I have no problem with issuing identification cards to anyone who wants them, but unfortunately these cards can be used as valid identification to register to vote.

The article reports:

The CityKey will be a government-issued photo identification card available to all Chicago residents regardless of immigration status, criminal record, housing status, or gender identity, according to the city clerk’s website.

State Board of Elections spokesman Matt Dietrich says the final call on what documents to accept rests with local officials.

“There are 109 local election authorities in Illinois,” Dietrich said. “They’re the ones who actually handle the registration, the checking of IDs, and keeping the documentation. We maintain an electronic database of voter registrations that we get from them.”

Dietrich says there is no state requirement to prove citizenship while registering to vote. He’s not expecting a surge in potential voter fraud cases because the process will remain the same.

“When you go to register to vote, you do check a box that attests to your citizenship,” Dietrich said. “You are signing a legal document that says, ‘Yes, I am a citizen.’ But no one who registers to vote is required to bring in, for example, a birth certificate or other proof of citizenship. That’s something that you check the box, and you attest to it.”

Dietrich believes the penalty for illegally registering to vote is steep enough to discourage those who might be considering it.

“The main thing that would happen is deportation,” Dietrich said. “If you’re not a citizen, and you have any thoughts of ever attaining citizenship, registering to vote is almost an instant trigger that when you apply for citizenship, you will be deported. That’s one of the first things they check.”

I don’t mean to argue with Mr. Dietrich, but I am not convinced that voter fraud (from illegal aliens or dead voters) is not a problem. Why am I not convinced? Let’s take a look at some voter registration statistics from North Carolina. In early November of 2016, North Carolina had 6,864,841 registered voters. On January 2017, North Carolina had 6,733,025 registered voters. What happened to those 100,000 plus voters? Is it possible that at least some of them were fraudulent voters removed from the voter rolls before they could be investigated?

At any rate, we have an integrity problem with our elections, and the ID card that the city of Chicago is issuing is going to exacerbate that problem. The CityKey is another really bad idea from a city that has been poorly governed for a very long time.

Something To Consider

On February 18th, Kevin McCullough posted an article at Townhall suggesting seven ways to end school shootings.

Here is his list:

1. Metal Detectors In Every School

2. Enforce Everything

3. Perform Active Shooter Drills

4. Reinforce Doors, Windows, Buses, Locks

5. Recruit Retired Military & Law Enforcement

6. Arm All Appropriate Personnel

7. Publicize Consequence

Had the appropriate authorities followed up on the warnings about the shooter in Florida, things would have been very different. Had the armed police at the scene been willing to enter the building, things would have been very different. Had random teachers had training and weapons, things would have been very different. Any one of these things might have reduced the number of people shot. To me the most important item on the list is the enforcing of current laws. We don’t need more gun laws–criminals won’t follow them anyway. We need to enforce the laws we have, and our law enforcement agencies need to act on the leads they are given.

It Really Is Time To End This

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the latest maneuver by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. Their legal maneuvers are not illegal, but they are not really what this particular investigation is about.

The article reports:

Nothing about this has any relationship to President Trump; however, the DOJ cronies under Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Greg Andres and Andrew Weissmann, made a slick move today by unsealing indictments in Virginia against Paul Manafort opening up two legal fronts in an effort to wear down Manafort’s financial ability to defend his interests.

The maneuver comes after Team Mueller lost DC District Judge Contreras, who was replaced by a far more critical Emmet Sullivan, and who is forcing Mueller’s team to show all exculpatory evidence (Flynn case). The new indictments against Manafort were not in DC where they filed the first set but in Northern Virginia District Court.

If the new indictments were filed in DC it is likely they would have been consolidated under the current judge. Filing in Virginia makes Manafort fight in 2 separate courts. We’ll have to wait and see if Mueller moves to have the entire case transferred to Northern Virginia or if Mueller drops the initial DC case. Of course Manafort can, likely will, petition the court to move both cases against him into the DC circuit.

This is all about convincing Paul Manafort to testify that there was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign–it doesn’t matter that there is no evidence of any collusion of that there was no collusion, if Mueller can get Manafort to testify that there was collusion, then there is a witness to collusion. This case has wandered so far from what was supposed to be investigated it is ridiculous. Hopefully Congress will develop the backbone to put a stop to this charade soon. It is costing American taxpayers endless money and doing nothing but further divide the country. I guess that means the Russians have succeeded in creating the chaos they intended to create.

Watching The Media Use The Shiny Object

The current media shiny object is the parents and children impacted by the school shooting in Florida. These people are truly traumatized, I understand that, but they are being used to push a gun-control agenda which has no relationship to the horrific event in Florida.

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article today about some of the facts about the shooting in Parkland that are not getting the consideration that they should.

The article reports some comments made to the FBI by a tipstir:

“I don’t know how he got the debit card, but he did,” she said. “And he took it, and he bought all these rifles and ammunition and he posted pictures of them on the Instagram.”

Another of the woman’s stunning revelations: Cruz was obsessed with ISIS.

“He’s so into ISIS and, um, I’m afraid this is so something’s gonna happen,” she said, describing how Cruz would post pictures of himself dressed up as an Islamic terrorist. She also recounted how Cruz would frequently post pictures of himself donning a “Make America Great Again” cap.

The caller provided the agent with usernames for two of Cruz’s social media accounts, encouraging the FBI to comb through the pages.

“It’s alarming to see these pictures and to know what he’s capable of doing and what could happen,” she said. “He’s [been] thrown out of all these schools because he would pick up a chair and just throw it at somebody, a teacher or a student, because he didn’t like the way they were talking to him.”

The woman said she phoned in because she “wanted a clear conscience if he takes off and, and just starts shooting places up.”

Somehow the FBI did not sufficiently follow up on this lead.

It gets worse.

The article further notes:

In addition to the armed school resource officer, three other Broward County sheriff’s deputies were outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the shooting crisis and didn’t enter.

What????

Obviously neither the NRA, nor gun control was the problem in the Parkland shooting.

Helping The Victims Of ObamaCare

ObamaCare didn’t improve health insurance for Americans. ObamaCare required people long past child-bearing years to pay for insurance that covered children.. ObamaCare forced single men to pay for maternity care–it was the only way the program could be cost effective.  Other than that, if you chose not to buy insurance, you had to pay a fine. It is ironic to me that the fine was paid to the government–the insurance companies did not receive the money from the uninsured.

Well, Congress obviously was not interested in repealing ObamaCare, so we are still stuck with it. What can we do for people who can’t afford health insurance and yet are forced to pay a fine because they are not insured? That makes about as much sense as debtor’s prison.

Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about some temporary relief for people who cannot afford high-priced health insurance policies.

The article reports:

This week, Trump’s Health and Human Services department issued regulations that will let insurers sell short-term insurance plans that don’t have to comply with ObamaCare’s onerous market regulations and benefit mandates.

To prevent people from escaping ObamaCare, President Obama limited these plans to just three months. Trump would let them last just shy of one year.

“Americans need more choices in health insurance so they can find coverage that meets their needs,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement.

…As it is, ObamaCare isn’t working. Despite promises from Democrats that it would stabilize the individual insurance market, it’s had the opposite effect. Where there was healthy competition, there is often one insurer. Where double-digit premium increases were a rarity before ObamaCare, they’ve become a grim routine since.

This option isn’t likely to draw people away from ObamaCare, because millions aren’t enrolled anyway because they don’t want it or can’t afford it.

The article points out that one problem with ObamaCare is that young people did not sign up for it–the premiums were too high and the deductibles were too high. The young people signing up was supposed to impact the actuary tables in a way that would make ObamaCare cost effective. The changes in the new regulations will help bring free market principles into the health insurance picture and will allow people a wider range of insurance choices.

The Special Prosecutor Indicts…

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted Paul Manafort and Rick Gates according to The Gateway Pundit. As stated in the article below this one, Special Prosecutors indict people. It’s what they do. They indict people for anything they can find whether or not it is related to whatever they are supposed to be investigating.

The article reports:

Dirty Cop Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel indicted former Trump campaign manager with 32 bank fraud charges.
The charges were based on his business ventures from 2006 through 2013 and one from 2015.

The indictment is here.

The Special Counsel of liberal partisans is out to destroy this man.

What in the world does this have to do with Russian collusion in the 2016 election or with President Trump?

The following tweet from Mike Cernovich sums up the situation:

When It Hits The Fan, Who Do You Throw Under The Bus?

The investigation into the unlawful surveillance on the Trump campaign and transition team is beginning to uncover the things the deep state did to keep Donald Trump from becoming President and to hinder his presidency after he was elected. Other Clinton scandals have also surfaced—Uranium One, relief to Haiti, the Clinton Foundation and pay-to-play, etc. So what is the logical conclusion to all of this investigating?

Tuesday night I had the chance to hear a conservative speaker who belongs to a watchdog group speak about the deep state. At the end of his presentation, a person in the audience asked him if he thought anyone involved in the deep state efforts against Donald Trump would ever go to jail. He said he didn’t think so. The person then asked if there are no consequences for illegal deep state activity, how do we end such activity. The speaker then reminded us that the purpose of the deep state was to prevent Donald Trump from becoming President and to remove him from office if he did become President. The speaker stated that he felt that if those efforts failed, it would discourage those in the deep state from trying this again. I really did not like that answer. Frankly, I would like to see some people go to jail, but I am not sure I am being realistic.

The history of Special Prosecutors is that someone goes to jail. The person who goes to jail does not have to be someone directly involved in whatever initial crime was involved, but can be someone tangentially related to whatever is being investigated.

In Watergate, this is the tally:

  • H.R. Haldeman and John Erlichman (White House staff), resigned 30 April 1973, subsequently jailed
  • John Dean (White House legal counsel), sacked 30 April 1973, subsequently jailed
  • John Mitchell, Attorney-General and Chairman of the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP), jailed
  • Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy (ex-White House staff), planned the Watergate break-in, both jailed
  • Charles Colson, special counsel to the President, jailed
  • James McCord (Security Director of CREEP), jailed

 

In Whitewater, these are the convictions:

The Clintons were never charged with any crime. Fifteen other persons were convicted of more than 40 crimes, including Jim Guy Tucker, who was removed from office.

As you can see, Special Prosecutors tend to send people to jail. It will be interesting to see if things have changed.

So, if someone is to be thrown under the bus for spy gate, Uranium One gate, or the other scandals involving the Obama Administration and the Clintons, who will it be? It needs to be someone considered unlikely to turn state’s evidence—someone who will limit the damage to President Obama and Hillary Clinton. If the Clinton’s follow their past pattern, it will be someone who will be appreciative of financial support for their family magically appearing while they are in jail.

Stay tuned.

 

Representative Walter B. Jones Is Sounding The Alarm On The Deficit

Monday morning, a group of taxpayers and I were fortunate to sit down with Representative Walter B. Jones and ask him questions about his votes and his views. The interview will be aired on 107.1 WTKF The Talk Station on Sunday at 11am and 8 pm. You can stream the interview if you live outside the listening area. The interview will also be available on the Coastal Carolina Taxpayers Association website later in the week.

Representative Jones has been a warrior for responsible government spending since he has been in Congress. His voting record reflects that. He will not support a bill that increase the deficit, regardless of what is in the bill.

This is the handout he gave us about the deficit. I think all of us need to read it carefully. We need to understand the consequences of the unbridled spending that is currently the norm in Washington.

Americans need to learn to live within their means at home and at the federal and state levels. Most Americans carry some level of personal debt and do not realize that as the economy improves and the fed raises interest rates, the cost of that debt (and the cost of the national debt) will increase. It is time we all learned to spend responsibly–both at home and in government.

Evidently Guns Are Not The Only Problem In Our Schools

Todd Starnes posted an article on his website yesterday about a sixth grade class at North Richland Middle School in Texas.

The article states:

The Fort Worth Star Telegram reports the 41-question survey was part of the diversity curriculum for Black History Month. Students were instructed to rate their level of comfort with various scenarios:

  • A friend invites you to go to a gay bar
  • You go to the gay bar and a person of the same sex asks you to dance
  • Your sister invites her new boyfriend home to dinner. He is a female-to-male transsexual
  • Your dentist is HIV positive.
  • Your assigned lab partner is a Fundamentalist Christian

Parent Ashley Brent told the Star-Telegram her son was very uncomfortable with what he called a “weird test.”

“This is not something that is school-appropriate,” she told the newspaper.

And what HIV-positive dentists and transsexual boyfriends have to do with Black History Month is beyond me.

What are we doing to our children?

 

You Know You’re Over The Target When You Start Taking Flak

During World War II, allied bombers knew they were over the target when they started taking flax. That also applies to politics.

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article that illustrates that concept.

The article reports:

Fearless warrior Chairman Nunes is marching forward with his House Intel Committee exposing corrupt DOJ and FBI officials involved in FISA abuse to take down President Trump.

GOD House Intel Committee members just launched Phase Two of their dossier probe; Comey, Brennan and Clapper are in the hot seat.

Chairman Nunes fired off an inquiry to many current and former intelligence, law enforcement and State Department officials Tuesday, Fox News’ Catherine Herridge reported.

Nunes even threatened to issue subpoenas if he doesn’t receive a timely response on a voluntary basis.

The left hit the panic button. Petitions with over 600,000 signatures to have Rep Nunes removed from the House Intel Committee was delivered to Speaker Ryan’s Wisconsin office Tuesday.

We are about to see if Speaker Ryan truly intends to clean up the swamp.

The political left and their allies in the media have had a stranglehold on Washington for a long time. Representative Nunes is a serious threat to that stranglehold. He is doing an honest investigation into things that should never have happened, but were accepted as status quo. If the investigation by the House Intel Committee continues unchecked, it is quite likely that the political climate of Washington could be permanently altered. If people involved in deep state activities begin to realize that there may be negative consequences to them as a result of their actions, we may actually move closer to the representative republic our Founding Fathers established. If the deep state surveillance activities go unpunished, I don’t hold out a lot of hope for our country.

The Sad Story Behind Electric Cars

As the production of electric cars increases, the demand for cobalt for those cars increases. On Monday, Bloomberg News posted an article on some of the mines that supply that cobalt.

The article reports:

The appetite for electric cars is driving a boom in small-scale cobalt production in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where some mines have been found to be dangerous and employ child labor.

 Production from so-called artisanal mines probably rose by at least half last year, according to the estimates of officials at three of the biggest international suppliers of the metal, who asked not to be named because they’re not authorized to speak on the matter. State-owned miner Gecamines estimates artisanal output accounted for as much as a quarter of the country’s total production in 2017.

That’s a concern for carmakers from Volkswagen AG to Tesla Inc., who are seeking to secure long-term supplies of the battery ingredient but don’t want to be enmeshed in a scandal about unethical mining practices. Tech giants including Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. endured bad publicity after a 2016 Amnesty International report said children were being sent down some Congolese mines to dig for cobalt destined for their gadgets. Pit and tunnel collapses killed dozens of workers in 2015, the advocacy group said.

The article also notes that as much as $2.5 billion of cobalt a year is being smuggled across the border into Zambia.

I am sure there are safer ways to mine cobalt. The fact that children are being used in these mines in this dangerous work is horrendous. I realize that the culture of the countries involved may allow for children to do this work, but this is one situation where the United Nations might be useful. There are organizations within the United Nations that are supposed to protect children–they need to at least make a statement on the use of children to mine cobalt.

The idea of electric cars is intriguing; however, we need to look at the cost of creating this technology.

Do You Believe That Any Of These Questions Will Be Answered?

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about questions Representative Devin Nunes has submitted to a number of Obama Administration officials about the Clinton-Steele dossier.

The article lists the questions:

Get out the popcorn and stay tuned.

Manipulating The Next Generation

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about some of the events that have taken place and will take place as a result of the Florida school shooting. These events are anything but spontaneous, and they represent a manipulation of teenagers and of the news media that is truly disgusting. Please follow the link to read the entire article. I will try to highlight some of it here.

The article reports:

This afternoon, the Gateway Pundit received a tip from a father of one of the Parkland school shooter survivors. Concerned and enraged, he confirmed what Gateway Pundit previously reported: these children are being used as political tools by the far left to further anti-Conservative rhetoric and an anti-gun agenda. The students at the forefront of this agenda were all peers of his child, they were all members of the same drama club at their high school. This fact was verified and confirmed by Buzzfeed who sent a reporter to visit the student activists at their “command center” at one of their homes. Buzzfeed reported on, but left unexplored, the fact that these students are theater-trained:

…From our source: One of the students leading the current charge called the child of our contact up and asked if they were willing to workshop Anti-Trump/Anti-Gun lines, publish on their Twitter account, and possibly go on television with a similar statement.

The article reports the future plans of this group:

On March 14th, 2018, the largest of these groups, #Enough National School Walkout, is planning a 17-minute walk out and moment of silence scheduled for 10 AM across all time zones. Backing them are the folks behind Rock the Vote, Teen Vogue, Peace First, Rise To Run, The Gathering for Justice, and Justice League NYC.

The major force behind this walkout event is the radical far-left organization Women’s March Youth Empower. The leaders of this group are Ziad Ahmed, the youth advisor, Hannah Rosenzweig, Adam Jacobs, and Jackson Hyland Lipski. They are explicitly political in their messaging and aggressive in their stance.

The term “useful idiots” comes to mind. This is the reason we need to arm our children with critical thinking skills, otherwise they will wonder in fifteen years where their freedom is and what happened to their country.