Monthly Archives: April 2018

Who Gains If We Begin A War In Syria?

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A few days ago a friend sent me a video of what looked like a poison gas attack on a group of civilians. However, as the video continued, it became obvious that this was not a real attack. At the sound of a bell, everyone fell to the floor and began choking and writhing in pain and others with gas masks began administering aid. Then the bell sounded again, and everyone got up and began standing around talking and acting totally normally. I haven’t been able to locate the video again, but I have seen similar videos of other events. I have no idea who made this video, and I wonder what the person who made it had in mind in terms of using the video. Thus, I have no way of knowing whether the recent gas attack in Syria was real or staged, but not knowing raises some interesting questions.

If America goes in and bombs the assumed source of the poison gas attack, who are they bombing? Are they attacking some of Bashar al-Assad‘s forces or are they attacking the rebel forces? Who are the rebel forces? What is the rebel forces link to militant Islam? Why are Russia and Iran so interested in keeping al-Assad in power? If this turns out to be a proxy war between America and Russia with al-Assad watching as we fight his enemies, what are we fighting for?

The final question is who gains financially if America begins a targeted war against whoever initiated the poison gas attacks (if the attacks were real)? Is this the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower warned us about so many years ago? War costs money–weapons, ammunition, medical supplies, troops, etc. War also has geopolitical consequences. Who profits from our fighting?  If America can be drained of money and power through continuous wars, who gains? The globalists who are fighting President Trump see American power as an obstacle to one-world government (with them in charge, of course). That is also something that needs to be considered in decisions regarding Syria.

America has been at war since 2001. The Muslim Brotherhood has been at war with us since 1978, but their war uses different weapons than ours. This is a link to the Explanatory Memorandum: On the General Strategic Goal for the Group (the Muslim Brotherhood). The Memorandum explains their strategies for America–rather than use weapons of war, they are using weapons of influence. For a number of years there have been a number of members of the Muslim Brotherhood placed in high positions in our government. This has resulted in a purging of our national security resources of any references to Islamic terrorism. We need to spend more effort on combating the enemy within than the enemy without.

The Evidence Slowly Drips Out

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The American Center for Law and Justice posted an article yesterday about the documents they have begun to receive as the result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request regarding the unmasking of Americans in wiretaps.

The article reports:

We’ve all seen the reports of the unprecedented unmasking of U.S. citizens by senior Obama official, Ambassador Samantha Power, in the final days of the of the Administration – to the tune of more than one a day.  Now, through our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation, we have unearthed evidence of significant political bias during the same time period she was unmasking Americans.

Last fall the media began reporting that among other Obama Administration officials, former Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power made numerous requests seeking the “unmasking” (or unredacted identification) of names and other information about members of the Trump campaign team whose communications had been incidentally caught up in intelligence surveillance efforts. Power’s requests, reported to number in the hundreds, occurred mostly in the final days of the Obama Administration, that is between the election of President Trump in November 2016 and his inauguration in January 2017.

What the media has not reported, but the ACLJ has since discovered through one of our FOIA lawsuits, is that the clear political—and personal—bias of Power against the incoming President and the conservative agenda led her to undertake efforts aimed at undercutting support for the new Administration.

The article further reports:

We warned you about the 73 Days of Danger – the final days of the Obama Administration, and this new evidence confirmed what we said all along. The Administration was fully engaged in attempts to do whatever they could to undermine the conservative agenda and the will of the American voters.  But it was far worse than we thought.

Power goes on in this November 11th email to pitch a 60 Minutes episode to help lay a public foundation to undermine the incoming Administration. She wrote:

I am not sure exactly what I am pitching, but it seems there could be something interesting to show through USUN about this waning multilateral moment for the US, how we use these last two months, what we are trying to defend, how we are consoling other countries, etc. I wondered if there could be something in this that would hit home for viewers, even or perhaps especially those who support Trump. Let me know if you would like to brainstorm.”

The conversation continues four days later with Owens acknowledging and agreeing to help pitch the piece. He further stated, “I can only imagine the conversations you are having with some of our allies now and I would love a chance to brainstorm.”

The article concludes:

Further, and of critical importance, is that nothing in the unredacted portion of either email chain that day is responsive to our FOIA request. That means, that something in those redacted email chains – sent just 3 days before the presidential inauguration – is responsive to our FOIA request.

What is the Deep State hiding?

We will be challenging these redactions. The American people deserve to know the truth. 

In addition, we are pleased to report that late last week we secured a federal court order increasing the State Department’s required processing rate for production in this case by 33%. With nearly 9,000 pages that we know have yet to be processed, there is much more that we can and will learn about this situation.

Power’s political bias was palpable and calls into severe question any suggestion that Power’s unprecedented unmasking requests against U.S. citizens was done with anything other that political animus.  If this production is what the Deep State was willing to turn over to us, we can only imagine what remains to be turned over, litigated over, and be unredacted.

Stay tuned. The Freedom of Information Act may be the only way will be able to save our republic.

Undoing The Economic Damage Done By The Obama Administration

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Yesterday Fox News posted an article detailing some of the damage the environmental policies of the Obama Administration did to rural America. The article reminds us that President Trump and Scott Pruitt have ended the Waters Of The United States (WOTUS)  which attempted to give the government control over any mud puddle that appeared in your yard during heavy rains.

The article reports:

The far left will stop at nothing in their efforts to derail the presidency of Donald Trump. Still bitter about the outcome of 2016, the left claims much of their outrage toward the president is driven by his unpredictable personality, but ideological opposition to his administration’s reform-minded agenda is the real root of their anger.

Nowhere is this more evident than the furor surrounding Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  Trump’s opponents have seized on a number of recent unflattering news stories involving Pruitt and his agency. While admittedly not the best public relations for Pruitt, his “real sin is that he is one of Mr. Trump’s most aggressive reformers,” as the Wall Street Journal editorialized last week. President Trump expressed a similar sentiment over the weekend when he tweeted praise for his EPA chief’s “bold actions” and “record clean Air & Water while saving USA Billions of Dollars.”

Since taking office last year, Pruitt has boldly carried out the president’s campaign promises. In October, he moved to repeal Obama’s Clean Power Plan regulations, ending the War On Coal and providing a shot in the arm for coal country that had been decimated.

The article points out the double standard in the attacks on Scott Pruitt:

Pruitt’s “scandals” are exaggerated for political expediency: never mind that the Obama EPA spent just as much, if not more, than Pruitt’s team, according to a recent Fox News report.  Or that Lisa Jackson, Obama’s EPA chief, was caught using the email alias “Richard Windsor” to communicate with people outside the government. Or that one Obama-era EPA employee was caught downloading and watching pornography on the job. These issues prompted no outrage from Hill offices, and one questions if Congressional inquiry could possibly be politically motivated, or if left-wing outrage is a one-way street.

The article concludes:

Our message to Administrator Pruitt: American energy workers who are going back to work thank you. The American economy thanks you. And please remember these wise words: if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

The political left has become something of a joke with their attacks on the Trump Administration. Meanwhile, President Trump has boosted the economy, put people back to work, and continues to accomplish good things. It would be nice to see those in Washington support America rather than their own political interests.

 

 

What A Democratic Victory In The Mid-Term Elections Would Look Like

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It is no secret that the Democrats would like to overturn the 2016 election. Representative Maxine Waters has been running around the country yelling, “Impeach 45″ for a while now. There are also some very uneducated Americans who believe that if President Trump were to be impeached, Hillary Clinton would become President. The ignorance of Americans regarding the U.S. Constitution is a whole other article that would take more pages than I can imagine.

At any rate, what would happen if the Democrats were to take the House and the Senate in 2018.

A Forbes article from March 2018 lists the changes the Democrats want to make in the tax plan:

Increase the top marginal income tax rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent.

This is not only a tax on the wealthy, but it is a tax on small business–the main creator of jobs in America. This would begin to slow down the economic growth we have seen under President Trump.

Increase the corporate income tax rate from 21 percent to 25 percent.

American corporations compete on the world market. Before this tax cut, America had the highest corporate tax rate in the world. The rate cut under President Trump puts us in the middle of the pack. To undo this would slow economic growth and job creation in America.

Bring back the alternative minimum tax (AMT) for 4 million families.

This is a tax that hits two-income families in states with a high cost of living–New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, etc. Oddly enough, these are the states that generally vote Democratic–these voters who vote Democratic in these states are voting against their own interests.

Cut the “death tax” standard deduction in half.

This is a tax that hits small business and family farms. Again, it hits those least likely to afford it and hurts the continuing growth of business.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  * * * * * * * * * *

The other part of the possible Democratic takeover of Congress would be the impeachment of President Trump. This would further divide the country. It would also set the precedent that political use of government agencies against the opposing party is acceptable and can be successful. That would not bode well for the future of America.

I can guarantee that a Democratic mid-term victory would be the end of America as we know it. Political speech that does not agree with those in power will be labeled ‘hate speech.’ Those who publicly voice unacceptable opinions will be subject to harassment by an out-of-control government. We will see censorship of alternative news sources, and the American public will only have access to the news those in power want them to have access to.

A cautionary note to Democrats planning impeachment–remember what happened to the Republican party majority after they attempted to impeach President Clinton. The American people still vote, and they have a sense of fairness. It is very hard to watch the continuing attacks on President Trump and believe that the way the media treats him is fair.

 

Alan Dershowitz Is My New Hero

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted some comments by Attorney Alan Dershowitz regarding the raid on the offices of Michael Cohen, the personal attorney of President Trump.

The article reports:

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz warned Monday that special counsel Robert Mueller’s decision to raid President Trump’s personal lawyer’s office is an assault on the privileged lawyer-client relationship.

Dershowitz said on Fox News that he believes the decision to raid Michael Cohen’s office would be a sign that Mueller is trying to turn Cohen against Trump.

“This may be an attempt to squeeze Cohen,” he said. “He’s the lawyer, he’s the guy who knows all the facts about Donald Trump, and to get him to turn against his client.”

“This is a very dangerous day today for lawyer-client relations,” he added.

Dershowitz, who has drawn the ire of Democrats for defending Trump, said Mueller’s move is also dangerous because it gives the FBI the option of deciding what information seized from Cohen to pursue.

“I tell [clients] on my word of honor that what you tell me is sacrosanct,” he said. “And now they say, just based on probable cause … they can burst into the office, grab all the computers, and then give it to another FBI agent and say, ‘You’re the firewall. We want you now to read all these confidential communications, tell us which ones we can get and which ones we can’t get.'”

“If this were Hillary Clinton being investigated and they went into her lawyer’s office, the ACLU would be on every television station in America, jumping up and down,” he added.

“The deafening silence from the ACLU and civil libertarians about the intrusion into the lawyer-client confidentiality is really appalling,” Dershowitz said.

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution says:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I firmly believe that the raids conducted in coordination with the Special Prosecutor‘s Investigation were totally unconstitutional. This sets a very bad precedence for the future. It is also a very strong indication of the total politicization of the FBI and DOJ during the past administration.

In Case You Had Any Illusions About The Goal Of The Mueller Investigation

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The supposed theory behind the Special Prosecutor is that he is supposed to be looking for Russian interference in the 2016 election. Theoretically Robert Mueller would follow the trail of Russian interference wherever it led. Well, he seems to have overlooked a few things.

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article with the following headline, “Mueller Investigation Trump Over $150K Donation From Ukrainian Who Gave Clintons $13 Million.”

Seems a little odd.

The article reports:

The special counsel’s office is investigating a $150,000 donation a Ukrainian businessman made to President Donald Trump’s charity in 2015, according to a new report.

The donation, from steel magnate Victor Pinchuk, pales in comparison to contributions he gave to the charity Bill and Hillary Clinton set up. The billionaire has contributed $13 million to the Clinton Foundation since 2006 and had access to Hillary Clinton while she served as secretary of state.

But Special Counsel Robert Mueller is not investigating The Clintons. Instead, he is conducting a broad investigation of Donald Trump, including the flow of foreign money into various Trump-controlled entities.

Mueller began investigating the Pinchuk donation after receiving documents in response to a subpoena issued to the Trump Organization — the real estate company Trump ran before entering politics.

In September 2015, Trump appeared via video link at a conference Pinchuk hosted in Kiev. Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, negotiated details of the event with Douglas Schoen, a former consultant for Bill Clinton, according to The New York Times. Trump did not initially request payment for the appearance, but Cohen contacted Schoen at one point to request a $150,000 honorarium, The Times reported.

The last sentence of the article states:

The FBI reportedly investigated the Clinton Foundation over its foreign donations. The status of that investigation is unclear.

I may be cynical, but I suspect that 50 years from now the status of that investigation will still be unclear. If the FBI wants any credibility with the American people, they need to get their act together quickly. Right now their actions would be more appropriate in a banana republic than in an America that has a Constitution.

 

Rats Deserting A Sinking Ship…

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Katie Pavlich posted an article at Townhall today about an interview of Loretta Lynch by NBC’s Lester Holt. The discussion centered around James Comey‘s testimony that he was uncomfortable with being asked to call the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server a ‘matter.’

The article reports:

LESTER HOLT: But, so Comey says you want to call it, “The Clinton matter.” He wants to call it, “The Clinton investigation.” To the extent, though, that he noted it, that it bothered him did he go to you and question your credibility with regard to the Clinton case?

LORETTA LYNCH: Well, look I can tell you that, you know, it was a meeting like any other that we that we had had where we talked about the issues. And we had a full and open discussion about it.

LESTER HOLT: And he didn’t raise any concerns about?

LORETTA LYNCH: And concerns were not raised.

Note that she is not denying that she asked him to call it “The Clinton matter.” She is just saying that he was not overly concerned about calling it that.

There are also some other problems brewing in the investigation of FBI and DOJ activities under Obama:

Fired Deputy Director Andrew McCabe‘s story about leaking information to the press also conflicts with Comey’s testimony. McCabe says he had the permission of the Director to do so. 

“I chose to share with a reporter through my public affairs officer and a legal counselor,” McCabe said after he was fired for lack of candor. “As deputy director, I was one of only a few people who had the authority to do that. It was not a secret, it took place over several days, and others, including the director, were aware of the interaction with the reporter.”

Comey said under oath he was unaware of any authorized leaks to the media, besides his own of course.

I suspect the swamp is getting a little nervous right now.

Bringing An Out-Of-Control Agency Under Control

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On April  5, Steve Forbes posted an article at Investor’s Business Daily. The article deals with the changes being made at the Environmental Protection Agency under the leadership of Scott Pruitt.

The article states:

It should come as no surprise how the man who is boldly redirecting the EPA — a once rogue agency that operated far beyond its constitutional authority — is now the subject of routine attacks from liberal news outlets and activists who want him fired. Scott Pruitt has taken his job as EPA Administrator seriously and has done more to reinstate the EPA’s true, core mission than any of his modern-day predecessors.

Pruitt’s sharp focus is correct — to restore contaminated lands, safeguard our nation’s air and water, and do so by respecting real science rather than the ideologically driven fake science of his predecessors. He is demonstrating that we can both have a cleaner environment and greater economic growth and job creation. Contrary to the extreme environmentalist, prosperity and a safer environment can go hand-in-hand.

As Scott Pruitt observes, our nation can be, “pro-growth, pro-jobs and pro-environment.”

That is a statement of a concept that has been lost by the environmental movement in recent years.

The article concludes with the accomplishments of the EPA under Scott Pruitt’s leadership:

And the notion that enforcement under Scott Pruitt’s EPA is lacking is just plain wrong. In fiscal 2017, EPA collected $1.6 billion in administrative and civil judicial penalties. That figure is higher than any of the previous ten years of EPA enforcement operations, excluding fiscal 2016.

President Trump and Administrator Pruitt rightfully believe we can protect our environment without saddling American factories, manufacturing plants and energy operations with billions in unneeded regulatory costs while offering no way to measure any improvement to the environment or our quality of life.

By halting burdensome, often duplicative regulations, Pruitt’s EPA can focus on measurable environmental protection, guided by peer-reviewed science without hurting consumers or Americans looking for skilled jobs in the energy or manufacturing sectors.

Perhaps the most important change of all, Pruitt’s EPA is now operating under the proper rule of law and staying true to its mandate and defined authority by respecting facts rather than ideological fiction. The days of a rogue, agenda driven EPA are over. Pruitt is the right man for the job and it’s no wonder the radical left is screaming for his ouster.

Hopefully Mr. Pruitt will be able to stand firm and remain to complete the job he has begun.

Getting Closer To The Truth

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the ongoing struggle to get documents requested from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to the House Judiciary Committee.

The article reports:

Tomorrow Attorney General Jeff Sessions will announce the assignment of U.S. Attorney John Lausch to facilitate the production of documents from the DOJ (Horowitz/Huber) to the House Judiciary Committee, and Chairman Bob Goodlatte.

Mr. Lausch is a Trump appointed U.S. Attorney from outside Washington DC.  John Lausch currently heads the Northern District of Illinois which includes Chicago, and this specific U.S. Attorney has extensive experience in complex cases of conspiracy and political corruption; a key skill-set given the issues within the Horowitz/Huber investigation of potential politicization of the FBI and DOJ offices.

So what does this mean? This is the next step toward the release of the Inspector General‘s (IG) report and an effort to make sure the report that comes out is free of political meddling by the FBI and DOJ.

The article explains some of the process involved in releasing the IG report:

There’s a phase in the OIG report process where statements of fact go through an exhaustive draft vetting process within agency. The “source vetting” or “reference-audit” phase is part of the target -and internal review audit- prior to final draft & ultimately publication.

The raw investigative information, used as the foundation for the report, has to be vetted, re-checked, verified and reviewed for placement and footnotes in the draft report, before ANY of that source information is released.

FBI Director Christopher Wray previously assigned 54 staff to go through the IG source draft information (investigative documents) to validate baseline facts prior to release to congress. This process also scans for classified information.

These FBI staff are vetting the underlying evidence that’s noted in Horowitz’s draft notification document. Remember, many of these elements are also potentially criminal actions individually; and quite likely, in the aggregate, also the broad outlines of a criminal conspiracy amid all of the participants.

The activities illustrated by the already released emails indicate some criminal actions. There was a group of people working within the government to unseat a duly-elected President. That is not legal activity and needs to be dealt with by the appropriate authorities.

The article describes the activities under investigation:

However, given the reality that politicization of the FBI and DOJ underpins the origination of the investigation that generated the underlying evidence, in order to ensure any internal FBI conflicts do not arise amid document selection, John Lausch will be involved.

U.S. Attorney Lausch review will ensure the FBI does not hide, or marginalize any OIG investigative findings.

You can call it a soft-coup, or you can call it politicization of the DOJ and FBI, but the end result is the same – the intentional effort to manipulate, influence, and ultimately subvert an election for the presidency of the United States.

This needs to be dealt with severely so that it never happens again.

The Real Russian Collusion

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We are hearing a lot about Ted Kennedy with the release of the movie “Chappaquiddick” The man who was praised at his funeral for being a wonderful addition to American politics is being revealed for being a deeply flawed human being. Chappaquiddick was bad enough, but there were other things done by Ted Kennedy that were simply not right. His treatment of Robert Bork is one example, but there is another example of bad behavior that borders on treason.

The American Spectator posted an article today that reminds us of something Ted Kennedy did that was truly unacceptable.

The article states:

In 1991, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin opened the archives of the Soviet Central Committee, Western researchers quickly descended on Moscow to plow through the treasure trove of previously classified official documents.

Among those researchers was Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times and the BBC who found a May 14, 1983 letter from KGB chief Viktor Chebrikov to Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov. Bearing the highest security classification, it summarized a confidential offer by Senator Ted Kennedy to the Soviet leadership to help stop President Ronald Reagan’s aggressive, anti-Soviet defense policies.

The letter was written as the debate was heating up over Reagan’s proposed deployment of intermediate range missiles to counter the Soviets’ medium range weapons in Eastern Europe.

 Sebastian reported his find in an article titled “Teddy, the KGB and the top secret file” which appeared in the February 2, 1992, London Times. And there the story remained unheeded and unheralded until 2006 when historian Paul Kengor published The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism in which he discussed Kennedy’s secret approach to the Soviets.

In an appendix to his book, Kengor reproduced Chebrikov’s classified missive unedited and unabridged along with extensive documentation establishing its authenticity.

This is an example of partisan politics going well past the borders of the United States.

The article at The American Spectator illustrates that media bias is not a new thing:

So, what was the reaction of the mainstream media when this alarming document was made public? According to Paul Kengor, not a single American news organization picked up the London Times story.

Similarly, when Kengor published his book which discussed and reproduced the letter, he “couldn’t get a single major news source to do a story on it. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC. Not one covered it.” And “all mainstream sources” turned down his proffered op-eds regarding Chebrikov’s letter.

Think about that. Here is a classified document found in the Soviet archives from the head of the secret police to the General Secretary spelling out an outrageous and treasonous political plot by Kennedy to enlist the Soviet Union’s assistance in his campaign for the presidency. And not one major media outlet uttered so much as a peep about it.

So the voters of Massachusetts never had a chance to know that Ted Kennedy, their Senator, had attempted to work with the Russians to avoid the election of Ronald Reagan. Don’t you think they were entitled to know that? Well, wait a minute. These are Massachusetts voters, and he was a Kennedy.

The article concludes:

The media’s failure to even report or discuss the discovery and contents of Chebrikov’s letter is but one more example of their dishonesty. The fact that they have ignored this story should tell us all that we need to know about their integrity, fairness, and allegiance to the truth. How many more examples of their blatant bias and duplicity do we need before we completely discount all of their reportage as nothing more than progressive agitprop and propaganda?

As a wise man once said, if the mainstream media didn’t have double standards, they would have no standards at all. For further proof of that statement, one need only to compare and contrast the media’s fevered, unhinged coverage of the alleged Trump-Russia collusion theory with the protective cone of silence they have placed over “Teddy, the KGB and the top secret file.”

The silence on this story is one of many reasons Americans have turned to alternative news sources.

 

 

News From The Coming Week

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Clarice Feldman posted an article at The American Thinker today highlighting things that will be in the news in the coming week. That’s not as much of a challenge as it sounds as many of these stories were breaking late Friday and early Saturday.

The first story deals with the recent budget fiasco.

The article reports:

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, unhampered because of the filibuster rule, which allows them to block any budget not supported by a Senate supermajority of 60, and aware of the desperate need of our military for funding, publicly rejoiced that they were able to force through Congress a ridiculously extravagant budget.  Fiscal conservatives were furious, but the president had little choice but to sign the bill into law.  “He who laughs last laughs best” is the saying, and in this case, there may be no joy in Demville.  James Freeman at the Wall Street Journal explains:

The political left is getting nervous because a virtuous and lawful reduction in federal spending is suddenly looking much more likely.  This column is told that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.) is now on board.

Specifically, Mr. Ryan likes the idea of paring back the huge spending hikes in the recently enacted budget bill.  While the budget required 60 votes in the Senate and therefore Democratic support, a “rescission” bill to repeal the spending increases needs only a simple majority in each house.

If the Republicans plan to remain in the majority, they have no choice but to cut this budget. Otherwise the conservative wing of the party will happily vote them out of office for reneging on every promise they made while running for office.

The second story to watch for will be the beginning of criminally prosecuting illegal aliens as they cross the border. Crossing the border is no longer going to be taken lightly.

The third story is the end of the standoff between Congress and the FBI and DOJ.

The article reports:

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse broke the welcome news early Saturday morning.

Until today the only people allowed to review the full Title-1 FISA application were Trey Gowdy, Adam Schiff, Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Rep John Ratcliffe.

In an interesting development, the Department of Justice has responded to HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes notifying him the DOJ will allow all members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees full access to review the unredacted FBI/DOJ FISA application used to gain a Title-1 surveillance warrant against U.S. citizen Carter Page.

According to CNN: ‘Separately, Justice Department spokesman Ian Prior said the department on Monday will supplement its document production to the House Judiciary Committee by producing another 1,000 pages of materials in response to a subpoena issued by committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte.’

This will probably lead to the declassification of the FISA applications. That will probably tell us all we need to know about the Russian collusion investigation and its roots.

The final news article for the coming week will be information about the investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

The article reports:

The story of the Clintons’ misuse of charity solicitation, reporting, and accounting laws begins in 1997 and continues on past Clinton’s term as president where people familiar to us in the present DOJ-FBI investigations failed to prosecute the Clintons for obvious charity fraud and violation of federal and state law on charitable solicitations.  The most recent investigation of the Clinton foundation took place under Rod Rosenstein, then U.S. attorney for Baltimore.  He utterly flubbed the task, as Ortel (Charles Ortel, a retired investment banker) notes.

…At the moment, some state attorneys general are investigating Clinton foundation fraud and illegality.  So are some foreign governments whose laws were violated by the foundation.  While in the U.S. opportunities to prosecute longstanding frauds may be barred by the passage of time and the statute of limitations, this latest Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund transaction seems not to be.  If I were to speculate, I’d suggest that it is not unlikely (now that the Clintons are fairly politically neutered) that whistleblowers inside the foundation, the donors’ offices, and the government – particularly the IRS – may come forward, at long last, to expose the frauds which Rosenstein, Mueller, and Comey seem to have lacked the integrity and guts to do.

This week may be the week that some of the swamp gets drained.t

Confirmation Of The Obvious

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Newsbusters posted an article today about some recent comments by Joe Biden. The comments provide insight into the poisonous atmosphere that permeates Washington, D.C.

The article reports Joe Biden’s comments in an interview with Jon Favreau on “Pod Save America,” a liberal podcast.

This is part of the conversation:

FAVREAU: Well, sir, I wanted to start with the economy but, real quick, if Democrats take back the Senate and a seat opens up on the Supreme Court in the next two years, should Democrats hold that seat open like Republicans did to Obama?

BIDEN: I don’t think so.

FAVREAU: Even if it means they get another Gorsuch?

BIDEN: No, no, that’s a big difference. Remember, I’m the guy that kept there from being a guy who was maybe the most brilliant conservative who was nominated for the Supreme Court (Favreau snickers) and I kept him off the court. And I was able to … in the Judiciary Committee (to) defeat (Clarence) Thomas (nominated by the elder Bush four years later). Bork got flat defeated. Thomas got defeated in committee. But the Constitution says the Senate shall advise and consent, not a committee shall advise and consent. And so, you know, you can, I don’t think we should step away for a moment.

The article concludes:

…Biden lets the cat out of the bag. The biggest problem for liberals when it came to Bork was not his originalist views of the Constitution, or that he pulled the trigger for Nixon in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, but the fact that he was brilliant and could be expected to push the court to the right for generations to come — hence he had to be destroyed. How seemingly gracious of Biden to acknowledge Bork as legal exemplar, albeit long after it mattered and seeing how it is now beyond dispute.

Worth noting is that Bork’s months-long nomination battle in 1987 roughly aligned with Biden’s first doomed run for the presidency which ended amid growing evidence of propensity for plagiarizing remarks from other politicians. Also leading the charge against Bork that year was Senator Ted Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. This week, a movie comes out portraying how Kennedy left a woman to drown in his car while he waited 10 hours to report the accident and focused instead on saving his political hide. It’s taken Hollywood nearly 50 years to depict one of worst — and most dramatic — political scandals of the last century. But again, better late than never.

It is truly sad that we have reached the point in our government where the political leanings of a Supreme Court nominee are more important than his qualifications. Unfortunately, I am not optimistic that this is ever going to change.

 

 

Bad Decisions Based On Faulty Premises

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There are still some legislators that believe raising taxes increases revenue. Up to a point it does, but only up to a point. At a certain level, increased taxes result in people finding creative ways to avoid those taxes.

Hot Air posted an article yesterday about a proposed tax increase in the Rhode Island 2019 budget. The proposal would levy an 80 percent wholesale tax on all vapor products and related equipment in the state. There was an attempt to include this tax in the Rhode Island 2018 budget, but the attempt failed.

The article reports:

The tax would effectively label electronic nicotine delivery systems as tobacco products, despite containing no actual tobacco. Vaping advocates argue the tax will harm overall public health in the state by cutting off former smokers’ access to vapor products. They also note the proposal will fail to boost state revenues due to diminished sales, coupled with consumers crossing into neighboring states to buy their vapor products.

Rhode Island is a relatively small state–you don’t have to drive too far to cross into another state. That is what people will probably do to avoid this tax.

The article lists the problems with the proposal:

First, these are not tobacco products. The state plans to tax them under the same category, despite the fact that there is no tobacco involved in the process. Further, the tax applies to the equipment used to “vape” the liquid nicotine. Compare that to the tax system applied to tobacco. Even the worst sin taxing states haven’t tried applying that sort of a penalty to buying a pipe.

Next, as noted above, the damage to the nascent vaping industry will be epic just as it was in Pennsylvania when they instituted a 40% tax. After the tax went into effect, more than one hundred new businesses shut down just in the greater Philadelphia region.

In terms of health, not only will this likely push people who managed to quit cigarettes by switching to vaping back to tobacco, but new vapers who have probably developed a habit may feel compelled to go try smoking cigarettes for the first time. Rather than allowing this new technology to continue to help people quit smoking, a tax such as this will likely lead to the opposite effect, creating a new generation of smokers who find it more economically practical to light up rather than vape.

And finally, in terms of raising revenue for the state, this scheme never works. Every time states push for a big new sin tax on tobacco it blows up in their face and that’s what going to happen to a vaping tax as well. In 2016, New York State actually lost a half billion dollars in tax revenue on tobacco rather than seeing an increase.

This is a picture of the Laffer Curve:

The Laffer Curve is simply a representation of how human nature responds to increased taxes. When taxes reach a certain point, people begin to look for ways to avoid them, and tax revenue goes down. That is exactly what will happen if the tax on vapor products and equipment in Rhode Island becomes law. People will make the trip to neighboring states rather than pay the increased tax. As an unintended consequence, the vaping industry in Rhode Island will be destroyed, and more people will make the trip to Foxwoods to buy cigarettes to avoid the cigarette tax.

Sometimes The Misdirection Just Gets Old

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Remember the GoFundMe page set up by Andrew McCabe? Well, there was more to it than GoFundMe–it wasn’t really about the money.

The Gateway Pundit posted an article yesterday detailing some of the people behind setting up the fund.

The article reports:

The campaign, which has raised $554,520, ceased taking donations on April 2nd.

In response to the outpour of support, McCabe issued the following statement:

“The outpouring of support on GoFundMe has been simply overwhelming and has led to contributions that have left us stunned and extraordinarily grateful. The GoFundMe campaign began organically, with generous people spontaneously giving to accounts that others had set up. I never imagined that I would need to rely on this type of assistance. The fact is that if I am going to continue taking a stand against the unfair way I have been treated, I will need the help of a talented and courageous team behind me,” the statement read.

 “Hopefully our efforts, fueled by your incredible support, will encourage others to stand up for themselves, and the truth, as well. It is not lost on me that each contribution reflects not just someone’s well wishes, but also their acknowledgement that something in this situation is not fair or just. We wish to thank every donor from the bottom of our hearts for your support.”

 The article at The Gateway Pundit cites a report from a website called Law & Crime. That website states:

 Was this apparent “grassroots effort” actually a PR campaign put together by high-priced, well-connected, and experienced PR professionals in order to take advantage of the #Resistance’s seething anger at the Trump administration? A Monday report in Slate suggested as much. Law&Crime can now confirm that some of those allegations are true, while some of them appear to oversell the issues at hand. […]

Melissa Schwartz is a crisis and communications consultant who currently works for The Bromwich Group. After previously working for then-Senator Barbara Mikulski, the Department of Justice, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (where she served under her once-and-future boss), Schwartz joined The Bromwich Group as their chief operating officer in 2012. She’s also McCabe’s present spokesperson.

The Bromwich Group is a K Street consulting and PR firm headed by Michael R. Bromwich. Immediately prior to founding the firm, Bromwich served as the first director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management under President Barack Obama.

It seems that the corruption and cover-ups always lead back to the same inner circle.

 

Oversight Is Difficult When Needed Information Is Being Withheld

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Scott Johnson at Power Line posted an article today about the ongoing efforts of Devin Nunes, Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the U.S. House of Representatives, to obtain information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The article notes that Kimberley Strassel has entitled her weekly column at The Wall Street Journal “What is the FBI hiding?” It is beginning to look as if they are definitely hiding something.

The article at Power Line notes:

Strassel notes that House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes has just sent another letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray to demand yet again that they comply with an August 2017 subpoena and hand over, among other things, the electronic communication—“EC” in investigative jargon—that officially kicked off the counterintelligence investigation. In his letter, Rep. Nunes states that the FBI has provided only a “heavily redacted” version of the EC. Beyond that, the FBI would prefer not to give it up.

Rep. Nunes is not amused. He writes: “On March 23, 2018, the FBI’s Assistant Director for Legislative Affairs informed the Committee that the FBI would refuse to further unredact the EC based on its supposed sensitivity. The document in question is not highly classified, and law enforcement sources have apparently not been shy about leaking to the press information that the Department and Bureau refuse to share with Congress.”

The article at Power Line includes a copy of the letter sent by Representative Nunes. It is unfair to ask Congress to exercise Congressional oversight without giving them the requested information. Hopefully the FBI will cooperate in the near future.

Sara Carter has also been following this story. More details are available on her website.

Eventually The Truth Comes Out

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I lived in Massachusetts for a long time. Ted Kennedy was my Senator. There didn’t seem to be anything I could do about that. He was known to be a womanizer who did not always have the best interests of America in mind. At one point he wrote a letter to a Russian leader asking for help in making sure Ronald Reagan did not get elected. He also had addiction problems and was not noted for telling the truth. Nevertheless, he continued to get elected. I don’t know if the people of Massachusetts didn’t realize the kind of person he was or if they didn’t care. At any rate, the truth about Ted Kennedy is now coming out.

Yesterday The National Review posted an article about the movie “Chappaquiddick.” The movie deals with the events on Martha’s Vineyard the night Mary Jo Kopechne was killed. The movie is an honest portrayal (as honest as possible considering we really don’t know exactly what the chain of events was) of the events of July 18, 1969.

The article concludes:

Only the patriarch himself, Joe Kennedy (Bruce Dern), who is undone by a stroke and has only four months to live, reacts with the proper fury, slapping Ted on behalf of the nation. Imagine having sons like Joe Jr., John, and Robert and being left with only this one, the one expelled from Harvard for cheating, the one who was cited for reckless driving while a law student. Ted himself recognizes the futility of trying to match his legendary brothers: After what they did, he asks, what sobriquet does that leave for me? The fat one? The dumb one? An early scene of Kennedy racing his sailboat nails his personality: sloppy, vain, entitled, a man you wouldn’t trust to change your tire.

Yet in the end, aided by a confluence of forces both extraterrestrial (Apollo 11, which dominated the news that week) and tribal (Ted Sorensen, the family expert in blowing smoke), Senator Kennedy managed to save his career. All that Massachusetts voters required was a sincere apology, and he could fake that.

And so we had Ted Kennedy in the Senate from 1962 until 2009 doing untold damage to the country and to the U.S. Constitution.

 

What Second Amendment?

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CBS News reported yesterday that Deerfield, Illinois voted on Monday to ban the possession, sale, and manufacture of assault weapons and large capacity magazines to “increase the public’s sense of safety.” My first reaction to that is, “Exactly what is an assault weapon? What about assault knives, assault baseball bats, assault wasp spray, and maybe assault china?”

The article reports:

CBS Chicago reports, anyone refusing to give up their banned firearm will be fined $1,000 a day until the weapon is handed over or removed from the town’s limits. 

The ordinance states, “The possession, manufacture and sale of assault weapons in the Village of Deerfield is not reasonably necessary to protect an individual’s right of self-defense or the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.”

The law does actually define assault weapons:

So, beginning June 13, banned assault weapons in Deerfield will include semiautomatic rifles with a fixed magazine and a capacity to hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, shotguns with revolving cylinders, and conversion kits from which assault weapons can be assembled. And those are just a few of the firearm varieties banned. The list is long and includes all the following models or duplicates thereof: AK, AKM, AKS, AK-47, AK-74, ARM, MAK90, Misr, NHM 90, NHM 91, SA 85, SA 93, VEPR, AR-10, AR-15, Bushmaster XM15, Armalite M15, Olympic Arms PCR, AR70, Calico Liberty, Dragunov SVD Sniper Rifle, Dragunov SVU, Fabrique NationalFN/FAL, FN/LAR, FNC, Hi-Point Carbine, HK-91, Kel-Tec Sub Rifle, SAR-8, Sturm, Ruger Mini-14, and more.

Antique handguns that have been rendered permanently inoperable and weapons designed for Olympic target shooting events are exempt, as are retired police officers.

“We hope that our local decision helps spur state and national leaders to take steps to make our communities safer,” Deerfield Mayor Harriet Rosenthal said in a press release, after the ban on assault weapons passed unanimously.

At this point I should note that there was a federal assault weapons ban in effect from 1994 to 2004. Studies have shown that the ban had little impact on criminal activity. The action taken in Deerfield is in response to the recent school shooting in Florida. The actions in Deerfield do not line up with the facts. In 1990 the law was passed that created gun-free zones in schools. The law has had an effect opposite than what was intended–all but two of the mass shootings in school have taken place after schools were designated as gun-free zones. A gun-free zone simply tells the shooter that he will be unopposed until the police arrive.

So I guess Deerfield believes that guns are the problem and that making some guns illegal will solve the problem. How has that worked in Chicago and Washington, D.C.?

On April 2, ABC News reported:

London’s monthly murder rate has overtaken New York City’s for the first time in modern history, according to new figures from the Metropolitan Police and the New York Police Department.

…London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s office said it was “deeply concerned” by the latest figures of knife crime in the capital, but insisted that London “remains one of the safest [cities] in the world.”

New York and London have similar-size populations of around 8.5 million each. But the U.S. city’s murder rate has dropped dramatically, by about 87 percent, since its peak in the 1990s.

London’s murder rate has in contrast risen by 38 percent since 2014 when the city had 94 killings. There were 119 murders in 2015, 109 in 2016 and 134 in 2017.

If Deerfield takes all the guns away from legal gun owners who have committed no crimes, do they honestly believe that criminals will not have access to guns? I hope I never have to shoot a home invader, but if I am ever faced with a home invader, I would rather have a gun than wait for the police to arrive.

This Is An Old Article That I Missed At The Time

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In September 2016, The Federalist posted an article about the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring began as a movement that was supposed to bring freedom to some of the dictatorships in the Middle East. Unfortunately, what it brought was governments controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood and the attempted implementation of Sharia Law. Egypt is a prime example of that although they were able to get out from under the rule of the Muslim extremists.

The article reports:

The “Arab Spring,” as it was dubbed, was a series of protests across the Middle East that initially showed a growing resistance to tyranny and oppression of dictators throughout the region. In a rare regional uprising, the people of the Islamic world seemed to have had enough with dictatorship and oppression.

Only, they didn’t get freedom when they toppled these dictators.

The article notes that Glenn Beck (during his last month on Fox News) predicted the rise of the Islamic Caliphate. He was mocked for this prediction, which turned out to be accurate.

The article at The Federalist shows the role that Hillary Clinton played in the destabilization of the Middle East that led to the rise of the Islamic Caliphate. The article includes a memo detailing her involvement.

The article reports:

The United States government is believed to have utilized a program called the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit, co-founded by a close Hillary Clinton adviser, to provide networking opportunities for an activist plotting to overthrow Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak several years before the “Arab Spring” protests that led to widespread regime change in the Middle East.

Through the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit, the U.S. learned that the Muslim Brotherhood was supportive of a plan to overthrow Mubarak. The U.S.-supported Muslim Brotherhood later briefly ruled Egypt after Mubarak’s ouster.

It is important to recognize that the program was created before Clinton took office as Secretary of State, but she continued with it, and apparently not in a way that promoted peaceful protest in the region.

On November 18, 2008, two weeks after Barack Obama was elected U.S. president, the U.S. State Department announced the first Alliance of Youth Movements Summit at Columbia Law School in New York City. A permanent group called the Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) was developed by Summit leaders after the first Summit convened.

Bush State Department official Jared Cohen, listed as the “international press contact” for the Summit, described some goals of the conference before it convened in December.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes other information related to America‘s actions in the Middle East under President Obama. It does not paint a pretty picture.

When The Shoe Is On The Other Foot

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No person is entirely objective. No honest person claims to be. In the field of journalism, some of the people who claim to be objective are not, and some people simply admit their biases and go on from there. I have no problem with a reporter being biased as long as he is honest about where he is coming from. Tilted journalism occurs on both sides of the aisle. It is, however, interesting to see how far left of center most journalists have moved in the last thirty years. Up until the early 1990’s, there was one point of view being put forward–it began with The New York Times and continued through the three major television networks’ nightly news. When Rush Limbaugh began his national radio show, things began to change–conservative viewpoints were being heard. The monopoly was over. Fox News is actually slightly right of center, but is always being attacked as right wing. Actually CNN is so far left of center that it seems as if the center has moved. We will never have totally centered news–what we actually need is balance. A new network is attempting to bring that balance, and the cries of those in fear of losing their monopoly are getting loud.

Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about Sinclair Broadcasting, a network which forced its news anchors to read a promotional statement on air about fake news. The gist of the statement was that Sinclair was not going to be fake news and was going to endeavor to be fair and objective. The reaction by other media was telling.

The article reports:

Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” said that Sinclair appeared to running “Pravda-style propaganda” that he likened to the old Soviet Union. “So here you have an entire broadcasting system running a propaganda clip.

“People will say, ‘Oh, look at the conservatives reading their scripts,’ [but] it’s actually got nothing to do with conservatives, it’s Trumpian and it does smack of … state-run media for an autocrat,” Scarborough said.

The promo video did have one big booster: Trump tweeted his support.

One Sinclair insider said a news anchor at one station had objected when he read the script and said he felt “uncomfortable.”

Does anyone remember President Obama’s JournoList? On July 25, 2010, The Daily Caller posted an article about the JournoList.

The article reports:

In 2007, when Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein founded Journolist, an online gathering place for several hundred liberal journalists, academics and political activists, he imagined a discussion group that would connect young writers to top sources.

But in the heat of a bitter presidential campaign in 2008, the list’s discussions veered into collusion and coordination at key political moments, documents revealed this week by The Daily Caller show.

In a key episode, Journolist members openly plotted to bury attention on then-candidate Barack Obama’s controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman, for instance, suggested an effective tactic to distract from the issue would be to pick one of Obama’s critics, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

…Yet Journolist’s discussions show an influential left-wing faction of the media participating in a far more intentional sort of liberal bias.

Journolist’s members included dozens of straight-news reporters from major news organizations, including Time, Newsweek, The Associated Press, Reuters, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg, Huffington Post, PBS and a large NPR affiliate in California.

Aren’t these some of the same people who are going crazy because Sinclair Broadcasting spoke out against fake news? Seems like the pot calling the kettle black.

 

 

Fifty Years Later

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Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis, Tennessee. My husband and I were stationed there at that time. It was an ugly moment in time. Martin Luther King, Jr., had come to the city in an attempt to quiet things down during a garbage strike which began in February 1968. Two black men had been killed while sitting on the back of a garbage truck smoking a cigarette. Racial tensions were high. Martin Luther King, Jr., first came to the city to address the strikers in March. He supported peaceful protest, but there were people in his inner circle that wanted more drastic action.

Martin Luther King, Jr., believed in racial equality. He believed that men (and women) should be judged by the content of their character–not the color of their skin. I also think he believed in equal educational and professional opportunities for everyone, regardless of race. Some of these ideas have been lost in recent years.

On March 26, The Hill reported:

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke downplayed the importance of diversity in the workforce and at his department on multiple occasions, CNN reported Monday.

Zinke made a number of off-the-cuff remarks that insinuated he did not prioritize diversity within the Interior Department, multiple senior administration sources told the network.

The officials said that the secretary instead said multiple times that he valued finding the best people and most qualified applicants, regardless of their cultural or racial backgrounds.

Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift denied that Zinke ever made the comments about diversity and denied the claims in the report.

“The anonymous claims made against the secretary are untrue. As a woman who has worked for him for a number of years in senior positions, I say without a doubt this claim is untrue, and I am hopeful that they are a result of a misunderstanding and not a deliberate mistruth,” Swift said in a statement.

People should be hired on the basis of their qualifications. If there is a lack of diversity, we need to improve the educational system so that there will naturally be diversity in the best people qualified for a job. I believe that is what Martin Luther King, Jr., had in mind. Quotas and hiring people for the sake of diversity rather than for their qualifications is just as wrong as disqualifying people because of their race, sex, etc.

We still have a long way to go to achieve the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now This Is Finally Starting To Make Sense

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The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today that explains a lot about the Mueller investigation and the timing of various events in that investigation. It also explains where the team of partisan investigators was chosen. I am going to attempt to summarize the article, but I strongly suggest that you follow the link above and read the entire article.

The article includes a previously unknown letter from Asst. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to Robert Mueller outlining the specific authority of his investigative appointment. The letter is dated August 2, 2017.

The article asks several questions about the letter:

  • Question #1) Why did Asst. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein deliver a non-public outline of investigative authority to Mueller on August 2nd, 2017?
  • Question #2) Why would Robert Mueller be seeking a signed more specific outline of his investigative authority on August 2nd, 2017; a full three months after he was assigned the role of Special Counsel?
  • Question #3) Why would Robert Mueller need to redact the content of an official outline of his investigative instructions from the Asst. Attorney General?

The article also includes the original May 17th, 2017, Press Release announcing the appointment of a Special Prosecutor.

The article states:

So there we have the three areas of direct authority:  ¹Links or coordination between the Russian Government and the campaign of Donald Trump.  ²Matters that may arise from the investigation of the Russian government and the campaign of Donald Trump. And ³other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a). [<- ie. ‘Jurisdiction‘]

So there’s the instructions to Robert Mueller and his team on May 17th, 2017.

The article explains where the Special Prosecutor’s team came from:

Now, as we previously discussed: “Robert Mueller didn’t necessarily appoint or select a team of lawyers and investigators…. the previously assembled team of lawyers and investigators selected him.”  The key player in that assembly was FBI Chief-Legal-Counsel and personal confidant to Robert Mueller, James Baker. (pictured right)

Remember, the “small group”, career officials inside the DOJ and FBI needed to continue their group effort after the election.  Therefore they needed to stay assembled as a group; they needed to stay on task, to facilitate the original intent of their association.  The Special Counsel was merely a way, an approach, a tool for this specific team to continue their efforts after the 2016 presidential election, nothing more – nothing less.

The team already existed. The objectives already existed. The only thing they needed was a willfully-blind leader and an excuse to continue their ideological efforts. Robert Mueller became their selected willfully-blind leader because the small group already knew him and they knew they could manipulate/use him.

Their ideological association is why the same people behind Phase 1 (Clinton Exoneration ’15, ’16), and Phase 2 (opposition research, counterintelligence and surveillance against Trump ’15, ’16, ’17), became the same people in Phase 3, the post-election vast Russian-Trump Collusion Conspiracy; also known as “The Insurance Policy”.  In many ways Phase 3 was/is more of a continued opposition research endeavor, part of the “resistance” per se, with a good dose of self-preservation binding them all together.

The article concludes:

Because Mueller’s team, the small group of political officials and lawyers, know all of these people inside the DOJ apparatus.  These are their peers, their comrades in ideology… this is their crew and social circle.  The last thing their legal endeavors need is to be put in a position of intel or information about their brethren.

And for Team-Leader Robert Mueller, against the back-drop of this information; and with IG Horowitz giving him details about Page/Strzok messages; there’s a strong motive to ask for a signed letter from Rosenstein prior to continuing to investigate the President of the United States knowing President Donald Trump was also a target of this plan – and these details were going to surface at some point.

Lastly, and specifically about Rod Rosenstein, perhaps at a certain point in the spring and early summer 2017 he might have thought there was a substantive way for the assembly to carry out their plan.  Perhaps he even believed the popular leftist narrative and thought there might be something to these ‘Trump-Russia-Collusion’ claims.  Perhaps that’s why he directed the Muller investigative mandate in May 2017 to the exclusivity of President Donald Trump with no mention of any other campaign (Hillary Clinton) contact with Russian entities.

However, by August 2017 with full information coming from IG Horowitz about the likelihood of criminal conduct by FBI and DOJ officials; at the time Rosenstein wrote the more carefully detailed outline; he had to know the investigation into Trump was heading no-where.

This is the best explanation of what the ‘deep state’ does that I have seen. It puts clarity on the ‘meeting in Andy’s office to discuss the insurance policy.’ What we have here is an illustration of exactly how that insurance policy has worked and continues to work.

“We Don’t Want To Take Your Guns,” She Said

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There are millions of legal gun owners in America who have committed no crimes. They have guns because they hunt or because they feel the need to be personally responsible for their own safety. The vast majority of them have broken no laws and have no intention of breaking any laws. Unfortunately there is also a black market in America for guns where people who cannot pass background checks can obtain guns. If gun laws are made more strict, the legal gun owners will feel the impact–the illegal gun owners will feel no impact. In essence, restricting gun ownership only increases the number of unarmed potential victims. Somehow some members of Congress have forgotten the Second Amendment and ignored the consequences of taking guns away from law-abiding citizens.

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about one Congresswomen who has forgotten her oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution.

The article reports:

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) used an April 2 Fox News Live appearance to announce that she is preparing to introduce legislation to create a federal law allowing firearm confiscation orders.

Such laws, generally referred to as Extreme Risk Protection Orders, are already in place in California, Indiana, Oregon, and other states, and Dingell believes the ability to seize firearms is crucial for pubic safety.

…Dingell stressed that seizure of firearms must occur in a way that protects due process, but she did not explain how such protection is possible. In California an order to take guns can be issued without the gun owner even knowing. And in Indiana, the state on which Dingell is basing her federal legislation, individuals who have their guns seized have approximately 14 days to go to court to “make a case” to get them back.

The Salt Lake Tribune summed up the Indiana law, “In Indiana, law enforcement can confiscate weapons without a judge’s order. The gun owner must ask the court to get the weapons returned.”

Extreme Risk Protection Orders have proved a popular gun control response to the February 14 Parkland school shooting. However, it is difficult to believe such orders would have prevented that attack. On February 23, 2018, Breitbart News reported, “The family with which [Cruz] was staying repeatedly called the police on him in November 2017 but refused to file charges when sheriff’s deputies arrived. A member of the family with which Cruz was staying explained away Cruz’s erratic behavior by saying he ‘had been suffering significantly from the loss of his mother’ earlier in the month.”

In other words, Nikolas Cruz received sympathy from the family with which he lived and at least one member of that family, in turn, inclined police toward non-action as well.

Nikolas Cruz had a troubled history at school. Had this history been property reported, he would have failed a background check and been unable to buy a gun. We don’t need more gun laws–we need to better enforce the ones we have. Also–there is nothing to say that Nikolas Cruz would not have been able to obtain a gun illegally if he had been prevented from buying one legally. It should also be noted that the law that made schools gun-free zones was passed in 1990, making schools a soft target for a shooter. That is the law that needs to be re-examined–not the gun laws that were not correctly followed.

Does This Make Sense To Anyone?

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California has declared itself a sanctuary state. Frankly, that is unconstitutional–even under the Tenth Amendment.

The Tenth Amendment states:

The Tenth Amendment assigns all powers not delegated to the United States, or prohibited to the states, to either the states or to the people.

Securing the borders is one of the powers delegated to the federal government, so California’s declaration that they are a sanctuary state is unconstitutional. However, there are other aspects of the actions of California that need to be looked at.

Yesterday The Western Journal reported that California will raise tuition for out-of-state students by nearly $1,000, a hike that will not apply to illegal alien students. So an illegal alien will pay less for an education in California than a legal American citizen from another state. That seems a little odd to me.

The article reports:

California Assembly Bill 540 mandates that illegal alien students can obtain in-state tuition if they attend high school in the state for a minimum of three years and earn a California high school diploma.

…UC regent chair George Kieffer reported that UC students have 31 percent less funding each in 2018 when compared with their 2000 counterparts.

“California is perpetually broke,” Mehlman told TheDCNF. “And yet they manage to come up with services for illegal aliens.”

The immigration advocacy spokesman elaborated on services the state provides to illegal aliens, such as grants, public housing, as well as various other state and local services.

Mehlman postulated that about half of illegal aliens work “off the books” and the other half use “bogus social security numbers.”

The demographic costs California taxpayers over $25 billion per year, according to FAIR.

TheDCNF reached out to the California Immigrant Policy Center for comment but received none in time for press.

I think if I were a legal American student from another state I would sue for discrimination. This policy makes no sense.

I’m Not Sure The Editorial Was A Good Idea

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Townhall.com posted an article today that sheds a little more light on the firing on Andrew McCabe. As usual, there was more to the story than we were initially told. It should also be noted that his wife, Jill, recently posted an editorial in The Washington Post stating that there was not conflict of interest on his part because of her Senate campaign.

The article reminds us of Mrs. McCabe’s claim:

His wife, Jill, a doctor, penned an op-ed in The Post about her failed 2015 Virginia Senate run and how there was no conflict of interest. There have been allegations that McCabe’s donations from pro-Clinton Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s PAC during that run, which exceeded $400,000, was a sort of down payment for political protection since soon after her campaign ended, Mr. McCabe became deputy director, where one of his tasks was to oversee the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email fiasco…

The editorial was a preemptive strike. The Townhall article cites a Judicial Watch report that states:

The documents also show repeated use of the official FBI email system in connection with Mrs. McCabe’s political campaign. For example:

On March 13, 2015, Mrs. McCabe emails to her husband’s official FBI email account a draft press release announcing her run for state Senate.

In August 2015, McCabe uses his official FBI email account to advise a redacted recipient to visit his wife’s campaign website: “Jill has been busy as hell since she decided to run for VA state senate (long story). Check her out on Facebook as Dr. Jill McCabe for Senate.”

On November 2, 2015, Mrs. McCabe forwards an email to her husband – then the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Office – that accuses her opponent of extorting local businessmen. The email was sent to her husband’s official FBI account.

The documents include an October 2016 letter from House Government Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz to McCabe questioning a possible conflict of interest by noting that Clinton headlined a Virginia fundraiser on June 26, 2015, for Mrs. McCabe. “A significant amount was donated after the FBI had initiated its investigation and begun meeting with Secretary Clinton’s attorneys in August 2015.”

The documents also show that FBI leadership was sensitive to reports of FBI internal dissent with then-Director Comey’s handling of the Clinton investigation. On October 24, 2016, Mrs. McCabe forwarded to Director McCabe a True Pundit article titled, “FBI Director Lobbied Against Criminal Charges For Hillary After Clinton Insider Paid His Wife $700,00.” The story reported that former FBI Executive Assistant Director John Giacalone resigned in the middle of the Clinton email investigation because he saw it going “sideways” and that Jill McCabe received money from a PAC headed by McAuliffe, who was under investigation by the FBI for campaign finance law violations. McCabe forwarded the article to Comey, noting “FYI. Heavyweight source.” Comey replied to McCabe, copying Chief of Staff James Rybicki, saying, “This still reads to me like someone not involved in the investigation at all, maybe somebody who heard rumors …”

“These new documents show that the FBI leadership was politicized and compromised in its handling of the Clinton email investigation,” said Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch President. “It well past time for a do-over on the Clinton emails that requires a new, honest criminal investigation of her misconduct.”

So now we know that McCabe lied to the FBI, violated the Hatch Act, and was probably totally compromised in his investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails. I guess there were sufficient reasons to fire him.