In Case You Were Wondering If It Was Political…

On Monday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about the Democrats’ calls to make the entire Mueller Report public, including source information, Grand Jury testimony, etc. Well, there are some pretty strict rules protecting the secrecy of Grand Jury testimony, and it is quite possible that disclosing other information could be a problem for our intelligence services (and possibly some foreign intelligence services). It should be noted that in their calls for transparency I haven’t heard them ask that the FISA warrants and background information on those warrants be made public. However, this call for transparency on the part of the Democrats is an interesting contrast to their reactions to previous Special Counsel reports.

The article reports:

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is the leading Democrat demanding the release of the Mueller Report “in its entirety” without redactions.

His committee is planning to subpoena the Justice Department for the full report.

But back in 1998, as a member of the same committee, he vociferously opposed the release of the full Starr Report, saying that “as a matter of decency and protecting people’s privacy rights, people who may be totally innocent third parties, what must not be released at all.”

Ken Starr, the independent counsel investigating then-President Bill Clinton, delivered his report to Congress on Sept. 9, 1998. That night, Nadler went on Charlie Rose’s show to push back against the Republican demand that the voluminous report should be made public. “It’s grand jury material. It represents statements which may or may not be true by various witnesses,” Nadler said. “Salacious material. All kinds of material that it would be unfair to release,”

What Nadler, 71, said in 1998 echoes what Attorney General William Barr told Congress last week. Barr, 68, wrote that he might redact grand jury testimony, information related to ongoing investigations, sensitive or classified information, and “information that would unduly infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties” from the report that he provides to Congress and the public.

Representative Nadler does not want the entire report made public–he wants the Democrats to get the entire report so that they can leak misleading parts of the report and make the scandal last until the 2020 election. The is a political game.

The article concludes:

Special counsel Mueller declined to charge anyone associated with the Trump campaign of coordination with the Russians, but did not reach a decision on obstruction. Attorney General Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that Trump had not obstructed justice.

How can you have obstruction when there was no crime?

 

The Letter

Below is a copy of Attorney General Barr’s summary letter to Senator Lindsey Graham, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Representative Doug Collins. You can view the letter on Scribd by clicking on the link.

Barr’s Letter by on Scribd

Scott Johnson at Power Line posted an article about the letter today.

He notes a few basic facts about the letter:

This investigation is the product of a Clinton campaign fabrication. That’s why the investigation was a witch hunt. It is also why the finding of no collusion is unsurprising to anyone who has paid attention with a modicum of impartiality and critical intelligence. The finding of no obstruction is made by Attorney General Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. If there was no collusion, they suggest, there was highly likely no obstruction and in fact they find that Mueller did not identify any actions that in the judgment of Barr and Rosenstein constituted obstructive conduct. See page 3, paragraph 3.

While investigations and prosecutions will continue for the foreseeable future, we can turn out the lights on the Mueller investigation; the party’s over. Mainstream media hardest hit.

One thing to keep in mind is that a team of totally partisan Democrats looking under every rock they could find for two plus years not only could not find evidence of Russian collusion by President Trump, they somehow failed to notice the entanglement of the Clinton campaign in providing a dossier that paved the way for surveillance of a political opponent’s campaign. As the Democrats continue to investigate in the hope of turning public opinion against President Trump before the 2020 election, I hope the American voters begin to realize where the scandal was in this investigation–it wasn’t in the Trump campaign.

If You Voted Democrat, Was This What You Voted For?

Yesterday The Federalist posted an article about some of the plans the Democrats have now that they will be the majority party in the House of Representatives. The dominant aspect of their plans has been obvious for a while–do anything they can to derail the Trump Agenda. That is rather logical considering that they are the opposition party, but I think some voters will be surprised at how far they are willing to go with this.

The article reports:

Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., revealed plans for House Democrats to investigate and impeach Justice Brett Kavanaugh for alleged perjury and investigate and impeach President Donald Trump for alleged treasonous collusion with Russia.

In post-election chats with various callers while riding the Acela train from New York to Washington, Nadler gave advice to a newly elected representative and discussed potential 2020 Democratic presidential nominees with another. He also lamented identity politics and the thriving economy and worried about Democrats losing working-class voters while gaining elite former Republicans and suburban women.

Although I hesitate to give the Democrats good advice, I would like to remind them what happened when the Republicans impeached President Clinton–the American people did not view the efforts favorably and the Republicans lost Congress. If the Democrats want to take that chance, they are welcome to, but it is a fool’s errand. The House of Representatives needs a simple majority to impeach, but the Senate needs a two-thirds vote–67 votes. That is highly unlikely. A very wise man once said, “Do not strike the king unless you kill him.” The political repercussions of attempting to impeach a Supreme Court Judge and a President would be overwhelmingly negative.

There is one other aspect of this I would like to mention. In recent years, more government policy has been set by the courts than by Congress. The political left is well aware of that fact. The biggest danger to the left from President Trump is the fact that he is naming judges who will follow the Constitution. That is the reason for the attack on both President Trump and Justice Kavanaugh. Congress has given over so much of its power to the courts that Congress is very close to irrelevant.

Am I The Only One Who Thinks This Is Backwards?

Yesterday Gateway Pundit posted a press release and letter from Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Representative Yvette Clarke (D-CA) to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and California Attorney General Kamala Harris regarding the recent disclosure of the sale of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood. The letter demands an investigation of the group that took the video exposing the sale of baby body parts.

What in the world have we become?

 

Should The Federal Government Have Limits On Its Borrowing Or Spending?

This article has two sources–The Western Center for Journalism and CNS News. Both sources report that the Democrats want to repeal the debt ceiling that limits the amount of money that the government can borrow.

The Western Center for Journalism reports:

House Democrats are pushing legislation to repeal the federal debt ceiling, saying the borrowing limit has no practical purpose and has come to be used for political maneuvering that can have devastating economic repercussions.

New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler said the debt ceiling is arbitrary, doesn’t affect the deficit and has become a Republican means to “blackmail” the country to advance the GOP’s political agenda.

CNS News reports:

Nadler, [Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)],along with fellow House Democrats Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), held a press conference to introduce a bill that would repeal the debt ceiling entirely.

Nadler, taking questions for the group, said the debt ceiling should be taken “off the table” in any negotiations over federal spending, and he refused to say if Democrats should offer any bill that would solve either problem.

“Basically what we’re saying is that the debt ceiling should be taken off the table. There’s plenty to fight about, unfortunately, the levels of taxation, the levels of spending – there are real disagreements on that. You need both houses and the president to agree on that.”

Has anyone bothered to put this in the context of your personal finances? If you were thousands of dollars in debt, with no prospect of paying back what you owe, how would the bank react if you went to them and asked that they raise your debt ceiling? As American citizens, we are not able to continue to spend more than we earn, why are we willing to let the government do this?

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