Tag Archives: American Greatness

The Roots Of January 6th

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The Constitution does not grant us our rights–it specifically states that our rights come from God. The Constitution is there to protect those rights. Unfortunately, many of our leaders have forgotten that. Those on the political left have begun to use our federal agencies as an arm of the Democrat party. They have also learned to use the media to blunt the blow when information about their questionable activities is about to come out.

Yesterday American Greatness posted an article that noted the role played by The New York Times in downplaying the pending indictment against Michael Sussman. Sussman, as you probably remember, was instrumental in getting the idea that Donald Trump was colluding with the Russians out into the public square. Well, The New York Times is at it again.

The article reports:

On Saturday, the Times published a carefully constructed bombshell intended to soften the blow of an explosive scandal in the making: the FBI had at least one informant among the group of Proud Boys who marched on the Capitol on January 6. The informant, according to “confidential documents” furnished to the paper, started working with the FBI in July 2020 and was in close contact with his FBI handler before, during, and after the Capitol protest. 

“After meeting his fellow Proud Boys at the Washington Monument that morning, the informant described his path to the Capitol grounds where he saw barriers knocked down and Trump supporters streaming into the building, the records show,” reporters Alan Feuer and Adam Goldman (the Times reporter most responsible for priming the ground for news that was unfavorable to the Russia collusion narrative) wrote on September 25. “In a detailed account of his activities contained in the records, the informant, who was part of a group chat of other Proud Boys, described meeting up with scores of men from chapters around the country at 10 a.m. on Jan. 6 at the Washington Monument and eventually marching to the Capitol. He said that when he arrived, throngs of people were already streaming past the first barrier outside the building, which, he later learned, was taken down by one of his Proud Boy acquaintances and a young woman with him.”

In other words, one of the informant’s Proud Boy “acquaintances” was removing temporary barriers to allow a crowd to enter the restricted grounds around the building.

Sounds legit.

The article also notes that there was another informant who took part in the sacking of the Capitol.

The article concludes with the following story:

In fact, after Beattie’s articles posted in June, Alan Feuer, the same reporter who co-authored this weekend’s spin story, wrote a piece disclosing Rhodes had been interviewed by the FBI in May. (Feuer’s article, conveniently, was posted after FBI Director Wray testified twice on Capitol Hill this week.)

Further, in my interview with him this week, Thomas Caldwell, one of the first people arrested in the Oath Keepers case, told me Rhodes approached him during a Stop the Steal rally in Virginia last November. Rhodes told Caldwell the Oath Keepers provided security for conservatives and asked if he’d be interested in assisting in the future.

Caldwell gave Rhodes his contact information, which led to Rhodes connecting Caldwell with other Oath Keepers; plans were made to travel to D.C. and meet near the Capitol after Trump’s speech on January 6.

Caldwell’s home was raided and he was arrested on January 19, just two weeks after the protest. Prosecutors already had a trove of evidence against Caldwell, which is highly curious considering Caldwell never entered the building and was charged with no violent crime.

How did the government get Caldwell’s information so quickly? It certainly suggests the involvement of someone working on the inside, someone who immediately provided investigators with incriminating evidence.

Someone like an FBI informant.

One thing is certain; the Times damage-control article is just the tip of the FBI iceberg. And more proof January 6 was an inside job.

How are the actions of the FBI considered Constitutional?

Why The Deep State Might Welcome Governor Cuomo’s Downfall

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Yesterday American Greatness posted an article about the charges against New York’s Governor Cuomo. The article points out that the sexual harassment charges have taken the focus away from the nursing home deaths caused by putting people recovering from Covid into nursing homes. If those charges were looked into, other states and other Democrat governors would have been involved.

The article reports:

The people running our government and fronting Biden had a great day Tuesday. In one fell swoop, with New York Attorney General Letitia James’ case—not even charges, merely a case—against Governor Andrew Cuomo for prolific, ridiculous sexual harassment, they solved a great many of the Biden Administration’s looming problems: political, personnel, and criminal. Indeed, there was lots of winning for the shadowy cabal. 

Despite his pugnaciousness and tenacity, these harassment charges, most of which will not pass legal muster should trials ensue, are still likely to push Cuomo from office, whether by resignation or impeachment. As of this writing, a majority of Democratic state legislators have announced support for impeachment, with hearings to begin at the end of August. For Democrats, that beats the alternatives. 

The national outrage at Cuomo’s handsiness and bullying—from feminists, Democratic officials, and others who have ignored Joe and Hunter’s actual criminal sexual depravity—and the expiation of sin to follow as he leaves the scene, has made it unlikely that Cuomo will ever face justice for the deliberate murder of roughly 15,000 seniors in New York nursing homes. That is a far more serious charge. Were that case to be unraveled, with evidence, in a court of law or even in a real newspaper, many people besides Cuomo would be in deep trouble. Particularly hard hit would be those for whom he acted in pursuit of unseating Donald Trump in the coming election. So that could not be allowed to happen. 

The article reports:

Cuomo will resign —or the extremely left-wing state legislature will impeach him. The woke, increasingly black-centric New York Democratic Party wants Attorney General Letitia James, a total progressive, to be the gubernatorial nominee. And hey, we already have many black, female mayors running big cities with escalated mayhem and murder. Time for a governor. 

(If the New York state GOP can’t capitalize on this, their obscurity is deserved.)

As if he knew this was coming, Cuomo secured his post-term book deal early. He banked the $5 million payoff for a book no one bought, about “leadership” during the pandemic, written by employees on the public payroll.

Of course, back then—a year ago, in the anxious boredom of the first wave of lockdown—newly single, aging Andrew, 63, with his visible nipple rings, was a sexual icon. Male and female celebrities prattled stupidly on air about “Cuomosexuality” (wink, wink). What a great candidate for president, the narrative went. In retrospect, it’s ironic—nay, hilarious—that New York liberals raved about the sexuality of a powerful, wealthy man who just could not get laid, no matter whom he pursued.

All gone. Biden and the cabal have just cleared the stage of their most compelling competition in 2024. (That need was not anticipated back when everyone expected Biden to die early, so Kamala could take over. But Kamala is such a disaster that even they see she has to go.) 

Meanwhile, for a moment we all get to pretend we’re back in a normal world, where powerful older men harass younger women, in actual workplaces. We can summon gratifying high dudgeon in amusing arguments, without thinking about the needless deaths, trashed economy, censorship, China’s control of our political class, and the end of liberty. So, lots of winning. 

Right now, everything for the Democrats is about 2022 and 2024. They are scared to death that President Trump or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will be the Republican candidate. As of now, the Democrat’s two best candidates (Governor Newsom and Governor Cuomo) are in serious trouble.

A New Low In American Justice

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Yesterday American Greatness posted an article about Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, an Army reservist arrested on January 15 for his involvement in the January 6 protest in Washington, D.C.

The article reports:

During a status hearing Friday afternoon for Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, an Army reservist arrested on January 15 for his involvement in the January 6 protest in Washington, D.C., an assistant U.S. attorney admitted the government will not meet its discovery obligations for all Capitol defendants until early 2022.

Kathyrn Fifield, the lead attorney representing the Justice Department, informed Judge Trevor McFadden that the “incalculable” volume of video collected by the government related to the Capitol breach investigation will prevent defendants and their lawyers from accessing the full body of evidence against them for several more months. “No system exists to wrap its arms around [all this evidence],” Fifield told McFadden. This includes at least 14,000 hours of surveillance video plus thousands of hours of body-worn camera footage from law enforcement.

Fifield resisted setting a 2021 trial date for Hale; McFadden and Jonathan Crisp, Hale’s court-appointed attorney, told the government last month that unless a plea arrangement was agreed upon, a trial would be set for later this year because Hale already has been incarcerated for more than six months. “If we do set a trial date, the government cannot meet discovery obligations until early 2022. That’s a conservative estimate,” Fifield said.

The article notes the strange handling of this case:

Despite the lack of evidence against him, Hale has been behind bars since January. He is not charged with any violent crimes but the Justice Department repeatedly—and successfully—has sought his pre-trial detention. (McFadden denied Hale’s release in March.) 

The article concludes:

On July 7, the D.C. Circuit Court denied Hale’s appeal seeking release.

McFadden scolded the government for its backwards process. “You would not arrest [someone] then gather evidence later. That’s not how this works.” When Fifield said full discovery is in the best interest of the defendant, McFadden shot back: “Freedom also is important to the defendant.” The Trump-appointed judge raised concerns over Sixth Amendment violations. “This does not feel what the Constitution [and] the Speedy Trial Act envisions.”

Despite the government’s confession that it is not prepared to make its case against Hale, McFadden set a trial date of November 9, 2021. (He did not release Hale, who has no criminal record, from prison.)

“No January Sixer should be made to suffer in a jail cell while the DOJ continues to delay discovery simply because it can,” one defense attorney told me by text this afternoon. “This is unprecedented, unreasonable, unconstitutional, and wrong.”

This is what a dictatorship detaining political prisoners looks like. Where are the people in Congress who swore an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution. This is a total violation of the Constitution they swore to defend, and most of Congress has been totally silent about the matter.

Not Surprising, But Sad

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On Wednesday, American Greatness reported the following:

The Wisconsin House of Representatives on Wednesday held a hearing to review election irregularities after newly revealed documents obtained by Wisconsin Spotlight revealed that Democrat activists, funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were able to infiltrate the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin’s five largest cities.

In Green Bay, a Democrat activist was actually given keys to the room where absentee ballots were stored before the 2020 presidential election.

The city received a total of $1.6 million in grant funding from the Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life, according to Wisconsin Spotlight. A Democrat operative from New York named Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein became a “grant mentor.”

Spitzer-Rubenstein was the Wisconsin head of the left-wing National Vote at Home Institute, and has worked for several Democrat Party candidates.  The Democrat mayor’s office gave the liberal activist access to Green Bay’s absentee ballots just days before the election.

The Wisconsin Spotlight’s report has prompted several Wisconsin lawmakers to call for the resignation of Green Bay’s mayor, and for an investigation into the city’s handling of the November presidential election.

According to the report, the emails show that Green Bay’s “highly partisan” Democrat Mayor Eric Genrich and his staff usurped city Clerk Kris Teske’s authority and let the Zuckerberg-funded “grant team” take over in “a clear violation of Wisconsin election statutes.”

The article concludes:

“Unable to learn from his mistakes, Mayor Genrich and his staff deliberately, forcefully, and repeatedly interfered in November’s election administration. Is that why Green Bay’s Clerk and Deputy Clerk resigned?,” Bernier said. “He has shown himself unfit as an executive and should himself resign immediately from the position of Mayor of Green Bay.”

State Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Green Bay),urged Brown County District Attorney David Lasee to examine whether “these allegations were part of any sort of pay-for-play scheme.”

“Every American should have confidence in how their elections are run. This massive abuse of power significantly damages that trust, and we must ensure that situations like this cannot occur in the future,” Wimberger said in a statement.

“I’m still shaking my head that the keys were given to someone who was not a municipal employee,” Juno testified at the hearing. “It doesn’t smell right.”

No kidding.

Changing The Rules One Rule At A Time

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Yesterday American Greatness reported that the Senate Ethics Committee will be investigating Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) because  of their objections to the electoral results of the 2020 election.

The article reports:

The two Republican senators were the most vocal advocates for challenging the results of the electoral college, after widespread evidence and allegations of voter fraud in key swing states that may have swung the election away from President Donald Trump and in favor of Joe Biden. The investigation comes after seven Democrats in the Senate filed complaints against Hawley and Cruz; chief among them was Chris Coons (D-Del.), who is the Chairman of the Ethics Committee, who called for both senators to resign.

The ranking Republican on the committee is James Lankford (R-Okla.), who said that no statements or leaks will be made regarding the investigation until it is concluded, saying “we don’t bring up anything on the ethics stuff at all. We don’t confirm anything and we’re pretty lockstop about that.”

A spokesperson for Cruz’s office condemned the investigation, declaring that “it sets a dangerous precedent when ethics complaints are used as a political tool to try to intimidate and punish.”

The last time the Senate Ethics Committee conducted an investigation of any kind was in 2017, against then-Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.), who was credibly accused of sexual misconduct in the past and ultimately resigned from the Senate. The committee previously failed to take any action against Senator Bob Menendez (R-N.J.), despite overwhelming evidence of corruption and bribery between Menendez and one of his top donors.

I have previously pointed out that Democrats have historically raised objections to electoral college votes when Republicans were elected. Somehow that did not result in an ethics investigation.

In case you have forgotten, I have previously posted on the subject:

On December 31, 2020, Fox News reminded us:

The last three times a Republican has been elected president — Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004 — Democrats in the House have brought objections to the electoral votes in states the GOP nominee won. In early 2005 specifically, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., along with Rep. Stephanie Tubbs, D-Ohio, objected to Bush’s 2004 electoral votes in Ohio.

That forced the chambers to leave their joint session and debate separately for two hours on whether to reject Ohio’s electoral votes. Neither did. But the objection by Boxer and Tubbs serves as a modern precedent for what is likely to happen in Congress on Jan. 6.

Notably, some Democrats lauded Boxer’s move at the time, including Durbin himself.

This is not a direction we should be heading. Our government in Washington is looking more like tyranny every day.

Common Core Math?

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On November 30, American Greatness posted an article titled, “Mathematician Says Biden May have Received 130 Percent of the Democrat Vote in Maricopa County, AZ.” I don’t claim to be a mathematical genius, but I find that rather amazing.

The article reports:

A scientist in the fields of pattern recognition in mathematical analysis, testified Monday that Biden may have received a weighted 130 percent of Democrat votes in Maricopa County, Arizona, to help him win the state.

Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai is an Indian-American scientist, engineer, politician, and entrepreneur who holds four degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including a Ph.D. in biological engineering.

Ayyadurai presented his findings via video to select members of Arizona’s legislature during a public hearing at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Phoenix. The event was put on by members of President Donald Trump’s legal team to gather and examine evidence of 2020 election irregularities and fraud in the state.

The point of the “fact-finding mission,” led by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, was to collect evidence for Arizona lawmakers that could justify holding a special session to investigate further.

The article explains how this might be possible:

He explained that his computer program changed variables such as the number of Democrats who voted for Trump or Biden, and the number of Republicans who voted for Trump or Biden in an effort to match the curve.

Ayyadurai said that the computer found that in order for Biden to have surged ahead of Trump in the vote count, 130 percent of the Democrat vote had to have gone to the Democrat and -30 percent of the Democrat vote had to have gone to Trump.

The scientist noted that there were only two things that could explain that improbable result.

He admitted that there could be a demographic within the Independent voters who voted for Biden that that he could not see in his model.

“Another possibility is that Mr. Biden’s votes were simply multiplied by 1.3, meaning each single vote Biden received became 1.3 reported votes,” Shiva explained. “And President Trump’s votes are reduced by that 0.3 or 30 percent gained by Mr. Biden. Simply put, you could call this vote swapping.”

Shiva testified that he believed Dominion voting machines have a weighted voting feature that would allow a Democrat candidate to receive 130 percent of the vote and for the Republican to receive 7/10ths of the vote.

I think we need to go back to hand-counted paper ballots with bi-partisan observers.

Undermine Or Steal–The Democrat’s Plan

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Election fraud is an issue. Mail in ballots or absentee ballots that are harvested are a problem The spotlight right now is on two states that are attempting election fraud.

Yesterday American Greatness reported:

A Biden Campaign operative in Texas is attempting to rig the 2020 election with the help of others in a massive ballot harvesting scheme, according to two private investigators who testified under oath that they have “video evidence, documentation and witnesses” to prove it. With the help of mass mail-in ballots, the illegal ballot harvesting operation could harvest 700,000 ballots, one Harris County Democrat operative allegedly bragged.

The investigators—a former FBI agent and former police officer—claim that Biden’s Texas Political Director Dallas Jones and his cohorts have been “hoarding mail-in and absentee ballots” and ordering operatives to them fill out for people in Harris County illegally, “including dead people, homeless people, and nursing home residents in the 2020 presidential election,”  Patrick Howley of the National File reported.

While law enforcement agencies are reportedly investigating these potential crimes, nothing will be done about it until “well after the November 3, 2020 election” the former FBI agent said.

Dallas Jones was appointed the Biden campaign’s Texas Political Director in late August.

Meanwhile in Minneapolis, Project Veritas uncovered a massive ballot harvesting scheme.

I am posting the two undercover videos before the censors take them down:

I have had some negative experiences recently with videos that show liberals in a bad light mysteriously disappearing from the Internet. That is the reason these two videos are embedded in this site.

Project veritas reports:

James O’Keefe, the founder and CEO of Project Veritas, said: “Ballot harvesting is real and it has become a big business. Our investigation into this ballot harvesting ring demonstrates clearly how these unscrupulous operators exploit the elderly and immigrant communities—and have turned the sacred ballot box into a commodities trading desk.”

O’Keefe said, “We are showing Americans what is really going on in one of our great cities—but, it’s not me saying—we have the operators on tape saying it all themselves.”

Our investigation found that among three locations inside Ward 6, a ballot harvesting triangle,  where the scheme operates: the Riverside Plaza apartments,  the senior citizen community at Horn Towers and the Minneapolis Elections and Voter Services office at 980 E. Hennepin Ave., which also functions as a voting location and ballot drop-off site.

Mohamed (Liban Mohamed )continued: “Money is everything. Money is the king in this world. If you got no money, you should not be here period. You know what I am saying.”

The videos are long, but you don’t have to watch much of them to realize that there is some serious voter fraud going on. The goal of the Democrats is either to delegitimize this election or to win in by fraud. The Democrat’s best case scenario is that somehow the Presidency would be decided by a vote in the House of Representatives, where they hold the majority. Please pray that voter fraud would be discovered and dealt with before the election.

This Could Get Very Interesting

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Yesterday Julie Kelly at  American Greatness reported that Lin Wood, the attorney who represented Nick Sandmann and the other Covington High School students in their defamation lawsuits against various media outlets, has been hired by Carter Page.

The article reports:

On Sunday, Wood confirmed he will represent another innocent person maligned and defamed by the American news media: Carter Page, the Trump campaign associate who James Comey’s FBI accused of acting as an agent of Russia. 

Page was the target of four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants. The most powerful, invasive government tools—usually reserved for suspected foreign terrorists—were unleashed against Page as a way to infiltrate and spy on Team Trump.

But the FISAs were only part of Page’s personal hell. Tipped off by Democratic operatives as a way to seed the concocted Trump-Russia collusion hoax before the presidential election, journalists started harassing Page in the summer of 2016. 

His first call, Page told me in 2018, was from a Wall Street Journal reporter hounding Page about an alleged meeting with a “senior Kremlin official” and the existence of compromising material that Russia allegedly had on Trump and Hillary Clinton. (Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson was a Journal reporter for years.)

In an interview with Page in 2018, he told me that his real nightmare began in September 2016 after Michael Isikoff, a veteran political journalist and writer for Yahoo News, reported that Page was under federal investigation for his ties to the Kremlin. 

“U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials—including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president,” Isikoff disclosed on September 23, 2016. “The activities of Trump adviser Carter Page, who has extensive business interests in Russia, have been discussed with senior members of Congress during recent briefings about suspected efforts by Moscow to influence the presidential election.”

The article includes a tweet from Lin Wood which lists the targets of the lawsuits he is planning. Please follow the link to the article to see a list of targets the author of the article thinks should be added to the current list.

This Needs To Happen

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Yesterday American Greatness posted an article about President Trump’s fiscal 2021 budget proposal.

The article reports:

In the proposal, “Trump will seek to make a 21 percent cut in foreign aid which seeks $44.1 billion in the upcoming fiscal year compared with $55.7 billion enacted in fiscal year 2020,” an administration official said. Aid to Ukraine would remain at its 2020 levels under the new proposal.

The White House wants to boost funding for the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to $700 million compared to $150 million the previous year, said Russell Vought, the acting head of the Office of Management and Budget.

…The DFC was formed in large part to counter China’s growing economic influence. It serves as a development bank that partners with the private sector to provide loans in developing countries. It also serves as an alternative financing option to what the United States sees as predatory practices from China.

U.S. officials want to counter the soft power China has wielded with such loans and help countries avoid what they consider Beijing’s “debt trap” diplomacy in which countries give up control of ports, roadways, or other major assets when they fund infrastructure projects with Chinese loans that they cannot pay back.

Obviously, based on the recent behavior of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, the proposed budget will be dead on arrival. However, there is something else in play here. Who is impacted by a cut in foreign aid? I have stated before that an investigative reporter with good contacts needs to look at the corporations involved in the construction projects paid for by foreign aid to see if family members of Congressmen are involved in those corporations. It is quite possible that a cut in foreign aid could directly impact the income of the extended families of our Congressmen. Peter Schweizer has done some of this investigation and written the book Profiles in Corruption. More investigations are needed.

If there is a serious discussion of cuts to foreign aid when the budget proposal is brought up in the House of Representatives, pay attention to which Representatives strongly oppose the cuts to foreign aid. That could be very telling,

Why Does The Establishment (Republicans and Democrats) Hate Donald Trump?

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Yesterday Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness titled, “Why Do They Hate Him So?” The article analyzes the reasons that President Trump is opposed by both the political left and the establishment right.

The article states:

Again, why the unadulterated hatred? For the small number of NeverTrumpers, of course, Trump’s crudity in speech and crassness in manner nullify his accomplishments: the unattractive messenger has fouled an otherwise tolerable message.

While they recognize in the abstract that the randy JFK, the repugnant LBJ, and the horny Bill Clinton during their White House tenures were far grosser in conduct than has been Donald Trump, they either assume presidential ethics should have evolved or they were not always around to know of past bad behavior first hand, or believe Trump’s crude language is worse than prior presidents’ crude behavior in office.

The article continues:

Had Donald Trump in his first month as president declared that he was a centrist Republican —as many suspicious Never Trumpers predicted that he would, true to past form—and promoted cap-and-trade and solar and wind federal subsidies, tabled pipeline construction and abated federal leasing for gas and oil production, stayed in the Iran nuclear deal and Paris Climate Accord, appointed judges in the tradition of John Paul Stevens and David Souter, praised the “responsible” Palestinian leaders, pursued “comprehensive immigration reform” as a euphemism for blanket amnesties, then Trump would be treated largely as a George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush: hated, of course, but not obsessively so.

More importantly, had Trump just collapsed or stagnated the economy, as predicted by the likes of Paul Krugman and Larry Summers, he would now be roundly denounced, but again not so vilified, given his political utility for the Left in 2020 as a perceived Herbert Hoover-esque scapegoat.

Had Trump kept within the media and cultural sidelines by giving interviews to “60 Minutes,” speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, bringing in a few old Republican hands to run the staff or handle media relations like a David Gergen or Andrew Card, Trump would have been written off as a nice enough dunce.

But Trump did none of that. So, the hatred of the media, the Left, the swamp, and the celebrity industry is predicated more on the successful Trump agenda. He is systematically undoing what Barack Obama wrought, in the manner Obama sought to undo with his eight years the prior eight years of George W. Bush.

But whereas the Obama economy stagnated and his foreign policy was seen by adversaries and rivals as a rare occasion to recalibrate the world order at American’s expense, Trump mostly did not fail—at least not yet. We are currently in an economic boom while most of the world economy abroad is inert. Had the economy just crashed as predicted, the Trump agenda would have been discredited and he would be written off a pitiful fool rather than an existential monster.

Again, hatred arises at what Trump did even more than what he says or how he says it.

The obvious conclusion:

The bipartisan Washington establishment? If an outsider Manhattan wheeler-dealer without military or political experience can at last call an appeased China to account, can avoid a Libyan fiasco, can acknowledge that America is tired of a 18-year slog in Afghanistan when others would not, or believes ISIS thrived as a result of prior arcane restrictive U.S. rules of engagement—and he is proven largely right—then what does that say about the credentialed experts who dreamed up the bipartisan conventional wisdom that with a few more concessions China would eventually become Palo Alto or that Libya would bloom at the heart of the Arab Spring?

The Left detests Trump for a lot of reasons besides winning the 2016 election and aborting the progressive project. But mostly they hate his guts because he is trying and often succeeding to restore a conservative America at a time when his opponents thought that the mere idea was not just impossible but unhinged.

And that is absolutely unforgivable.

Be prepared for a very nasty year before the election in 2020. There are a lot of very unhinged people in politics and in the media.

Searching For The Truth Regarding Guns

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Yesterday American Greatness posted an article detailing some of the lies the American people are currently being told about guns.

The article reports:

There’s a lot to unpack here about so-called “assault weapons.” The first challenge is the absence of any fixed legal definition of what constitutes an “assault weapon.” Numerous state laws have defined the phrase as everything from paintball guns to all semiautomatic firearms to Remington 11-87 shotguns, the latter famously used by former presidential candidate John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Labor Day in 2004 to demonstrate his legitimately good trap-shooting skills.

The vague term “assault weapon” is distinct from an assault rifle, however, which refers to a rapid-fire, magazine fed rifle that allows the shooter to select between semiautomatic (requiring you to pull the trigger for each shot), fully automatic (hold the trigger and the gun continuously fires) or three-round-burst modes. Assault rifles are, for all intents and purposes, already banned in the United States. More on that shortly.

The next lie is that the assault weapons ban worked:

Except it didn’t. “There is no compelling evidence that it saved lives,” according to Duke University public policy experts Philip Cook and Kristin Goss. A 2004 Department of Justice study found no evidence the ban had any effect on gun violence, stating “should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” Other studies have found no statistically significant relationship between “assault” weapons or large-capacity magazine bans and homicide rates.

There is also substantial misunderstanding surrounding what the Assault Weapons Ban, which passed in 1994 and sunset in 2004, actually did. It didn’t ban anyone from owning an “assault-style” (again, an undefined term) weapon. All magazines and weapons produced before the ban were grandfathered in, and some companies actually ramped up production of the soon-to-be-outlawed firearm components, drastically increasing ownership of what lawmakers were seeking to reduce.

The article mentions:

Also, given the frequently cited claim that “assault weapons lead to more murder,” it’s worth pointing out that at least 730,000 AR-15s (not an assault rifle, but more on that in a bit) were manufactured and legally sold while the Assault Weapons Ban was in effect, and the national murder rate declined.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. We are being sold a bill of goods by people who want to take our Second Amendment rights away.

The article concludes with information about the shooting that recently occurred in Odessa, Texas:

The shooter was also prohibited under federal law from owning a firearm because a court previously had found him mentally unfit. He evidently had tried to purchase a gun in January 2014 but failed because the nationwide criminal background check system had flagged the mental health determination.

The federal Firearms Transaction Record, form 4437, required for all gun purchases, asks “have you ever been adjudicated as a mental defective or have you ever been committed to a mental institution?” Falsifying the form is a crime.

It was later revealed the shooter had a criminal record that included pleading guilty to criminal trespassing and evading arrest, both of which are misdemeanors in Texas. He did not receive jail time, but instead got two years of probation.

The Odessa shooting was a horror. But existing laws prevented it from happening sooner. And the fact that he got a gun at all tells us what common sense already teaches: motivated criminals don’t abide by laws.

As my boss, former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said recently, the breakdown of the culture is more responsible for mass shootings than the availability of the guns themselves. There are myriad reasons for this, but lawmakers, he noted, need to set a better example for how to treat people before rushing to strip Second Amendment rights from the rest of us.

If guns are illegal, people who follow the law will not have them. If guns are illegal, people who do not follow the law will have them. It’s that simple.

Can’t Both Viewpoints Have A Parade?

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Last weekend there was a Straight Pride Parade in Boston. A group of people decided that since there have been gay pride parades, they should be able to have a straight pride parade. As expected, there were protestors in attendance. Some of them were not very nice.

The Washington Times is reporting today that some of the people who misbehaved during the parade, who expected to get off with a slap on the wrist after being arrested, are not necessarily getting off that easily.

The article reports:

Two Boston Municipal Court judges refused to throw out the charges against the 18 defendants who appeared Tuesday in court, frustrating defense attorneys and prosecutors who sought to have minor charges dismissed, as reported by local news outlets.

Judge Thomas Horgan also told out-of-towners that they risked 90-day jail sentences if they set foot in Boston for any reason other than court and lawyer appointments, rejecting one defendant’s request to visit relatives in the city’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood.

“Stay out of Boston,” said Judge Horgan, according to the Boston Herald.

The article continues:

Meanwhile, Larry Calderone, vice president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, praised the courtroom outcome, noting that many of those arrested came from outside the city and state and accusing them of coming to “create havoc.”

He said the four officers injured have not been able to return to work yet, and that the union wants the offenders “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

“A lot of the assaults that happened during the day, you only knew of a few of them,” Mr. Calderone told reporters outside the courtroom. “Many officers were assaulted throughout the day with bottles of urine being thrown at them, bottles of chemicals, bottles of unidentified material, rocks.”

The city is looking into complaints that police used excessive force during the event.

“Multiple times I asked why I was arrested, he said ‘for calling me a pig,’” Joshua Abrams, who was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, told WBZ-TV before his arraignment. “Well, that’s my First Amendment right to do so.”

If Mr. Abrams was resisting arrest, that is a crime. This is how protestors who cross the line from protest to assault need to be treated. Enforcing the law serves as a warning to those who want to cause trouble that they will be held accountable for the trouble they cause. The First Amendment allows protest; it does not allow assault.

As a side note, American Greatness reported the following yesterday:

Far-left Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley lent a helping hand to violent antifa agitators over the weekend after a number of them were arrested on assault and battery charges.

The two “Squad” members urged their followers on Twitter to contribute to the bail fund for the “counter-protesters” who tangled with law enforcement while protesting the Straight Pride Parade in Boston on Saturday. A masked Antifa protester told reporters that the violence was necessary in order to shut up Straight Pride marchers.

This is the fact of the new Democrat party. If you are for law and order, there is no way you can support this. I have not yet heard any Democrats denouncing these tweets.

When The Timeline Doesn’t Work

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One of the things generally cited by the media as justification for charging President Trump with obstruction of justice has been the memo written by James Comey claiming that the President asked him to go easy on General Flynn. Aside from the fact that most Americans would have agreed with the President’s request to handle a matter involving an American war veteran gently, the Inspector General’s Report brings the memo about that entire conversation into question.

Yesterday American Greatness posted an article that explains the problem with the memo.

The article explains:

According to Comey, during a private meeting in the Oval Office on February 14, 2017, President Trump asked the former FBI director to drop an inquiry into Flynn about his discussions with the Russian ambassador shortly after the election. (Flynn had resigned amid media reports he possibly violated an arcane federal law.)

“He misled the Vice President but he didn’t do anything wrong in the call,” Comey claimed Trump said to him. “[Trump] said, ‘I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.”

According to Russian collusion truthers, those alleged comments form the most convincing evidence that Team Trump not only conspired with the Russians and tried to cover it up, but that the president broke the law by asking his FBI director to halt an investigation into one of his top advisors.

The memo is cited numerous times in the second volume of the Mueller report to implicate the president for obstructing justice by interfering in the Russian investigation, although Comey’s memo is the only evidence of such an act. (Trump has disputed Comey’s description of the conversation.)

Note that James Comey’s memo is the only description of the conversation. There is no second source.

The article continues:

But that portrayal of events was never the truth. The conversation in February 2017 had nothing to do with the Russia investigation, as I’ve written before: Neither Trump nor Congress nor the general public knew at that time that James Comey’s FBI had been investigating Trump’s campaign, including Flynn, since July 2016.

And the new report by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) confirms as much.

The article also notes:

Further, in late January 2017, Justice Department officials refused to confirm to the White House that Flynn was under “any type of investigation.”

In fact, Comey himself admitted that the discussion about Flynn wasn’t related to the FBI’s Russia investigation.

“I had understood the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December,” Comey said in his June 2017 statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I did not understand the President to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign.”

The article concludes:

Further, in late January 2017, Justice Department officials refused to confirm to the White House that Flynn was under “any type of investigation.”

In fact, Comey himself admitted that the discussion about Flynn wasn’t related to the FBI’s Russia investigation.

“I had understood the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December,” Comey said in his June 2017 statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I did not understand the President to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign.”

It really is time to put as many of the deep state as possible in jail.

What They Actually Did

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Yesterday Sebastian Gorka posted an article at American Greatness about the recent dust-up about President Trump’s comments in an interview with George Stepanopoulos. The comments had to do with accepting information on an opposing candidate from a foreign source. Sebastian Gorka’s response to the dust-up is to list the offenses committed by President Obama and candidate Hillary Clinton that fit that description. I strongly recommend that you follow the link and read the entire article, but I will try to list the highlights.

The article lists what we know as fact so far:

  • Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with close ties to the Kremlin and an intense hatred for Donald Trump was paid by Hillary Clinton’s lawyers and the Democrat Party to compile a file of damaging information on candidate Trump. He did so without registering as an agent of a foreign power.
  • This file was replete either with unverifiable fabrications, old accusations that were already out in the open or which were deceptively repackaged to implicate Donald Trump, or outright propaganda Steele had “acquired” from his contacts associated with Russian intelligence.
  • Steele was deemed so unreliable and biased a political actor by the FBI and the State Department, that he was terminated as a source by the Bureau.
  • Senior DoJ official Bruce Ohr’s wife worked for Fusion GPS, the company that hired Christopher Steele, and he funneled anti-Trump opposition research from his wife to the FBI.
  • The DNC dispatched a contractor to the embassy of Ukraine to collect proffered opposition research on Donald Trump from the government in Kiev with a plan to coordinate a smear campaign with officials from that non-NATO nation, foreign power.
  • As the Trump campaign grew in strength, Clinton’s allies in the Obama Administration initiated an unprecedented cross-agency operation code-named CrossFire Hurricane to target Donald Trump and his associates.
  • This involved the exploitation of foreign “liaison services,” especially in the UK (and possibly Italy and Australia as well) in order to circumvent constitutional protection that forbid U.S. intelligence agencies from spying on Americans citizens for political reasons. John Brennan, Obama’s CIA director, was the pivotal actor driving these operations, which led in part to the sudden resignation of the director of GCHQ, the British equivalent of the NSA, and included FBI Director James Comey as well.
  • On multiple occasions, U.S. intelligence assets were tasked with penetrating the Trump campaign to lure its representatives into what they believed were attempts to connect with the Russia government.
  • This included targeting George Papadopoulos, a minor figure in the campaign, via the offices of the Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, and a female FBI “analyst” known as Azra Turk who no one has been able to locate. (Note: When Downer was Foreign Minister he funneled $25 million of taxpayer dollars to the Clinton Foundation).
  • The NSA’s massive database of surveillance intercepts was repeatedly accessed illegally, often by contractors with no authority to do so.
  • At a rate never seen before in the history of the U.S. Intelligence Community (I.C.), the identity of hundreds of American citizens innocently caught up in NSA intercepts were “unmasked” by senior Obama Administration officials. Some of the officials who authorized the unmaskings weren’t even members of the I.C. and who had no plausible reason for the unmasking, including Samantha Power, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations.
  • The fabricated allegations provided by Russian government sources that Clinton and the DNC bought from Christopher Steele were used to obtain a secret FISA Court warrant to spy on Carter Page and the Trump campaign. The unverified quality of the “Steele dossier” and the fact that is was opposition research paid for by Donald Trump’s political opponent was hidden from the secret FISA court.

The article concludes:

In sum: Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party paid a foreign agent to collect or manufacture damaging information about the Republican candidate for president, information that was sourced from the Russian government. The subsequent propaganda file was used to surveil members of the Trump campaign, illegally, as NSA and British assets were also used to spy on those associated with Clinton’s political rival, and as human intelligence assets were deployed in an attempt to entrap Trump advisers and members of his staff.

The fall-out of the Stephanopoulos interviews is great. But not in the way George and his allies would like it to be.

With one sentence, the president has yet again turned the nation’s attention to the real scandal that should claim our focus: how the Democrats willingly colluded with a nation that remains our enemy in an attempt to win an election and defraud the will of the American people, in the biggest and most successful information operation Moscow has ever deployed against us.

Now it is up to Attorney General William Barr to uncover the rest of their crimes before our next election.

Much of America is waiting for equal justice under the law.

 

Illegal Immigrants Can’t Reach The Southern Border Of The United States Without Traveling Through Mexico

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It seems a rather obvious point, but illegal immigrants entering America through our porous southern border have to go through Mexico to get to that border. That is the reason it makes sense to involve Mexico in the process of securing our southern border.

First of all, let’s look at the increase in the number of people attempting to cross our southern border. The chart below is from U.S. Customs and Border Protection:

As you can see, the total apprehensions have increased dramatically in the past two years.

On June 1st, American Greatness posted an article with some suggested solutions to the problem. The article includes a list of how Mexico can become part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

The article reports:

On Thursday, the administration rolled out a new policy aimed at encouraging Mexico to do more to crack down on the thousands of Central American migrants passing through their country on the way to the United States to claim asylum.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan described the three efforts the United States wants to see from Mexico:

    • More vigorous efforts by Mexico to secure the border between Guatemala and the Mexican state of Chiapas. The Guatemala-Chiapas border is approximately 500 miles—small as borders go. For comparison, the U.S.-Mexico border is close to 2,000 miles.
    • A crackdown on the organizations that help migrants travel through Mexico to the United States. These organizations range from the criminal—a RAND corporation study estimates that Central American cartels made $2.3 billion on human trafficking across the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017—to the activist groups organizing massive surges toward the U.S., to the bus lines that have arisen to facilitate entrance to the U.S. There’s a reason why more migrants are appearing in large groups—Customs and Border Enforcement report that they’ve found 180 groups of more than 100 people since October, compared to only 13 in the previous 12-month period, and only two the year before.
    • Finally, McAleenan says he wants “align with Mexico on asylum.” This is a reference to the “safe third country” agreement that is common practice throughout the rest of the world, but with which Mexico refuses to engage.

The article notes the rules on aslyum:

This is where the “safe third country” doctrine comes in. Under international law known as the Dublin Regulation, migrants seeking asylum are required to claim it in the first safe country they enter. The theory behind this is that if migrants are truly seeking shelter from persecution, rather than simply trying to use the system to reach a specific destination, they will stop in the first place they find relief.

One interesting aspect of this is that the migrants would be more culturally compatible with Mexico than America. Mexico speaks Spanish, their native language. America speaks English (or some form of it).

At any rate, it is time for a solution. I hope the tariffs the Trump administration is threatening to impose provide an incentive for Mexico to help stop the flow of illegal drugs and immigrants at our southern border.

High Crimes–Not Misdemeanors

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Yesterday Sebastian Gorka posted an article at American Greatness titled, “ObamaGate: No Misdemeanors, Only High Crimes.” I understand all of us are getting tired of hearing about any of the garbage that went on in the Obama administration in terms of spying on the political opposition. However, because that issue has not yet been dealt with, it will remain in the news until those guilty of misusing federal agencies are held accountable.

Sebastian Gorka points out:

…Or look instead at Anderson Cooper, CNN’s putative doyen, who can’t even garner 0.3 percent of the population as viewers for his “flagship” program, and who recently accused Jared Kushner of “gaslighting” the nation over Russia; in other words of making statements aimed at convincing the listeners that they are insane.

This from the network that has so stoked the flames of Russia conspiracy-mongering every day for two years, that they publish outlandish pieces on Robert Mueller’s sealing indictments against the president, and as Cooper’s fellow show host Chris Cuomo qualifies the president’s public statements as those made by a convict already wearing an “orange jumpsuit,” statements that are less gaslighting than full on tinfoil-hattery.

And why was Kushner so calumniated? What craziness was he trying to sell to America as fact? His “gaslighting” sin was to state early last week that the Mueller investigation and the rest of the related farrago had done more damage to our republic and democratic practices than the original illegal actions of Russian actors on Facebook. Yet, ironically, Kushner was lambasted all over the corporate leftist media as the majority of Americans actually agreed with the president’s senior advisor.

The article concludes with some troubling information:

It has been brought to my attention by a former CIA station chief of some prominence and who has a legendary reputation inside the community of pre-Brennan operators, that Hillary Clinton’s loss did not curtail the worst activities of the outgoing Obama team. In fact, through the use of a walled-off team of contractors working inside the Intelligence Community, and for political realms alone, with no FISA-authorization or other national security justification, the Trump White House was spied upon after the January 20 inauguration. (Those responsible for this on-going crime are known to more than one investigative journalist and I have been told that the first of the new revelations will be published in the coming week).

Simply put: the Obama Administration used the most powerful intelligence capabilities in the world to attempt a penetration and subversion of the presidential campaign of the the opposing party. When that failed, they used a special prosecutor to divert attention away from that activity, log-jam the work of the new president, and clean up the evidence of what had been done to him and his team. And most un-American of all: the former intelligence leadership of the Obama Administration continued to spy illegally on Donald Trump and his closest advisers after they had moved into the White House.

Many take offense at the way President Trump uses language, at his tweets and at what they see as his hyperbole. But this week when he called the operations against him and the will of the people who chose him, a “coup” and an “attempted overthrow” of the government, he was making a simple statement of fact. One that will soon make Watergate an irrelevance.

The spying that was done in the Obama administration more closely resembles Soviet Russia than it does America. It is frightening to think that someone whose administration had so little regard for the law or the civil liberties of Americans sat in the White House for eight years. I don’t think a lot of Americans realize that the same force of government used against individuals in the Trump campaign and transition team could someday turn against them for no reason. The punishment for the actions taken against the Trump campaign and administration needs to be severe enough so that another coup attempt will never happen.

 

The Week To Come

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Next week is shaping up to be an interesting week. On Tuesday we will hear President Trump’s State of the Union Address followed by a response given by failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.

On Tuesday Townhall posted an article about the choice of Ms. Abrams.

Some highlights from the article:

Abrams, who believes illegal aliens should be able to vote in elections, refused to concede to duly elected Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and repeatedly accused him of racism.

Interestingly enough, in addition to scheduling President Trump’s address for the coming week, the Democrats have now scheduled February 7 as the date to vote on the confirmation of William Barr as Attorney General, and scheduled acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee for February 8. There is a method to their plan. Part of the method is that the President’s speech is quite likely to be about the amazing economic achievements of his two years in office and he will probably talk about some of the problems on our southern border. The Democrats are looking for a way to blunt any positive impact of the speech.

Yesterday American Greatness posted an article about some aspects of the scheduling.

The article reports:

The committee’s vote is scheduled to take place one day before acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker testifies in front of the House Judiciary Committee on a number of topics, including the Mueller probe; Trump foes claim Whitaker should have recused himself from oversight of the investigation based on some of his past comments, even though a Justice Department ethics review cleared him of any conflicts.

This one-two punch has a purpose: To taint Barr’s impartiality and discredit his office on all matters related to Trump-Russia. Why? Because during his confirmation hearing, Barr agreed—at the behest of Republican senators—to begin his own inquiry into who, why, and how the FBI launched several investigations into Trump’s presidential campaign and, eventually, into the president himself.

As indictments unrelated to Trump-Russia collusion pile up, Republican lawmakers and Trump’s base increasingly are outraged that the culprits behind perhaps the biggest political scandal in American history remain untouched. Barr signaled that the good fortune of these scoundrels could soon take a dramatic shift under his stewardship.

The article notes a very interesting aspect of this whole Russian investigation:

A few days before Barr’s hearing, the New York Times reported that in May 2017, the FBI opened an investigation into the sitting U.S. president purportedly based on suspicions he was a Russian foreign agent. Then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe—whom the Times does not mention by name at any time in the 1,800 words it took to report this information—initiated the probe immediately after Trump fired his predecessor, James Comey.

McCabe was fired last year and now is under criminal investigation for lying to federal agents.

The article concludes:

Other materials of public interest include the initiating documents for Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s investigation into four Trump campaign aides—which Comey claimed he never saw—and any details about who at the FBI started the unprecedented counterintelligence and criminal investigation into a sitting U.S. president.

And while he’s at it, and before Mueller’s team is finished, Barr should begin a formal inquiry into why the special counsel’s office scrubbed the iPhones used by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page while they worked for Mueller for a brief time in 2017. The phones and the data contained on those devices are public property. Barr needs to find out why that information was not collected and archived since both FBI officials already were under scrutiny. Destroying potential evidence is a crime.

The enormousness of Barr’s task and the devastating consequences for those involved are now coming into clear view. The timing couldn’t be worse for Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans who are desperate to defeat Trump and the GOP in 2020. That’s why we can expect both parties to whip up more criticism of Barr over the next few months. One hopes he will resist that criticism—and both Trump and Graham need to reassure the new attorney general and the American public that his investigation will receive the same amount of protection that was afforded to the Mueller team.

Get out the popcorn, the show is about to begin.

Imagine If You Will…

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“Imagine if you will…” was the opening line of a television series “The Twilight Zone” which ran from 1959 to 1964. Rod Sterling was the host, narrator, and producer.

On January 20th, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness titled, “Should the FBI Run the Country?” The article reminded me of the opening to “The Twilight Zone” in that is imagines the scenario of the FBI running the country. I strongly suggest that you follow the link to read the entire article, but I will provide a few highlights here.

The article states:

During the campaign (2008), unfounded rumors had swirled about the rookie Obama that he might ease sanctions on Iran, distance the United States from Israel, and alienate the moderate Arab regimes, such as the Gulf monarchies and Egypt.

Stories also abounded that the Los Angeles Times had suppressed the release of a supposedly explosive “Khalidi tape,” in which Obama purportedly thanked the radical Rashid Khalidi for schooling him on the Middle East and correcting his earlier biases and blind spots, while praising the Palestinian activist for his support for armed resistance against Israel.

Even more gossip circulated that photos existed of a smiling Barack Obama with Louis Farrakhan, the Black Muslim extremist and radical pro-Gaddafi patron, who in the past had praised Adolf Hitler and reminded the Jews again about the finality of being sent to the ovens. (A photo of a smiling Obama and Farrakhan did emerge, but mysteriously only after President Obama left office).

Imagine that all these tales in 2008 might have supposedly “worried” Bush lame-duck and pro-McCain U.S. intelligence officials, who informally met to discuss possible ways of gleaning more information about this still mostly unknown but scary Obama candidacy.

The article continues:

But most importantly, imagine that McCain’s opposition researchers had apprised the FBI of accusations (unproven, of course) that Obama had improperly set up a private back-channel envoy to Iran in 2008. Supposedly, Obama was trying secretly to reassure the theocracy (then the object of Bush Administration and allied efforts to ratchet up pressures to prevent its acquisition of nuclear weapons) of better treatment to come. The conspiratorial accusation would imply that if Iran held off Bush Administration pressures, Tehran might soon find a more conducive atmosphere from an incoming Obama Administration.

Additional rumors of similar Logan Act “violations” would also swirl about Obama campaign efforts to convince the Iraqis not to seal a forces agreement with the departing Bush Administration.

Further, conceive that at least one top Bush Justice Department deputy had a spouse working on the McCain opposition dossier on Obama, and that the same official had helped to circulate its scandalous anti-Obama contents around government circles.

In this scenario, also picture that the anti-Obama FBI soon might have claimed that the Obama Iran mission story might have been not only an apparent violation of the Logan Act but also part of possible larger “conspiratorial” efforts to undermine current Bush Administration policies. And given Obama’s campaign rhetoric of downplaying the threats posed by Iran to the United States, and the likelihood he would reverse long-standing U.S. opposition to the theocracy, the FBI decided on its own in July 2008 that Obama himself posed a grave threat to national security.

More importantly, the FBI, by its director’s own later admission, would have conjectured that McCain was the likelier stronger candidate and thus would win the election, given his far greater experience than that of the novice Obama. And therefore, the FBI director further assumed he could conduct investigations against a presidential candidate on the theory that a defeated Obama would have no knowledge of its wayward investigatory surveillance, and that a soon-to-be President McCain would have no desire to air such skullduggery.

I am sure you can see where this is going.

The article concludes:

Obama, in our thought experiment, would have charged that the role of the Bush-era FBI, CIA, DOJ, and special counsel’s team had become part of a “resistance” to delegitimize his presidency. Indeed, Obama charged that conservative interests had long wanted to abort his presidency by fueling past efforts to subvert the Electoral College in 2008, to invoke the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, and the Emoluments Clause (based on rumors of negotiating lucrative post-presidential book and media contracts by leveraging his presidential tenure), as well as introducing articles of impeachment.

Celebrity talk of injuring Obama and his family would be daily events. Actor Robert De Niro talked of smashing Obama’s face, while Peter Fonda dreamed of caging his children. Johnny Depp alluded to assassination. It soon became a sick celebrity game to discover whether the president should be blown up, whipped, shot, burned, punched, or hanged.

Imagine that if all that had happened. Would the FBI, CIA, or FISA courts still exist in their current form? Would the media have any credibility? Would celebrities still be celebrities? Would there ever again be a special counsel? Would we still have a country?

Hopefully by now many Americans have awakened to the government abuses involved in surveillance of the Trump campaign, appointment of the Special Counsel, arrests of people associated with President Trump for things not related to any of what the Special Counsel is supposed to be investigating, and inappropriate use of force to arrest a 60-something-year-old man with a deaf wife. No wonder the FBI and DOJ are fighting so hard to prevent the truth of their abuses of power during the Obama administration from being revealed.

Have We Truly Lost A Government Where All Men Are Equal?

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Victor Davis Hanson posted on article at American Greatness yesterday which illustrates what has happened in America over the past decade or so.

The article begins with an interesting scenario:

Imagine the following: The IRS sends you, John Q. Citizen, a letter alleging you have not complied with U.S. tax law. In the next paragraph, the tax agency then informs you that it needs a series of personal and business documents. Indeed, it will be sending agents out to discuss your dilemma and collect the necessary records.

But when the IRS agents arrive, you explain to them that you cannot find about 50 percent of the documents requested, and have no idea whether they even exist. You sigh that both hard copies of pertinent information have unfortunately disappeared and hard drives were mysteriously lost.

You nonchalantly add that you smashed your phone, tablet, and computer with a hammer. You volunteer that, of those documents you do have, you had to cut out, blacken or render unreadable about 30 percent of the contents. After all, you have judged that the redacted material either pertains to superfluous and personal matters such as weddings and yoga, or is of such a sensitive nature that its release would endanger your company or business or perhaps even the country at large.

You also keep silent that you have a number of pertinent documents locked up in a safe hidden in your attic unknown to the IRS. Let them find it, you muse. And when the agents question your unilateral decisions over hours of interrogatories, you remark to them on 245 occasions that you have no memory of your acts—or you simply do not have an answer for them.

Anyone reading this scenario realizes that after doing all this, they would be sitting in a jail cell hoping someone would bake them a cake with a file in it.

The article goes on to list the various misdeeds of government officials in the past two or three years. It’s a well-known list–you can follow the link to the article to read it. But somehow no one is in jail.

The article concludes:

To this day, we have no idea which officials in government leaked the unmasked names of surveilled Americans to the media, or leaked the transcripts of a conversation between the Russian Ambassador and Gen. Michael Flynn. I say we have no idea, because no one in government has any interest in finding out, because for the few, who might, to do so would earn them media and partisan venom.

The message from the Clinton email scandal, the Mueller investigation, and the careers of Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and McCabe seems to be that if the government wishes a document then do not provide it. If you are finally forced to surrender it, either erase or destroy what you can reasonably get away with hiding. Or barring that, insist that it be heavily redacted, according to your own judgment, for the sake of America. If asked to explain such behavior or allegations of leaking information to the press, either deny or claim faulty memory.

Do all of that and be of the correct political persuasion and of Washington repute, and there is little chance of criminal exposure.

Such exemption so far is the message that we’ve learned from the behavior of high officials of the Obama Justice Department, CIA, FBI and National Security Council. Or put another way, our illustrious government officials are reminding us Americans, “We are better than you.”

We will not have equal justice under the law until all lawbreakers are prosecuted, regardless of their political standing.

Who Is James Wolfe?

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Who is James Wolfe, and why does it matter? On Thursday, American Greatness posted an article about James Wolfe, a former staff employee of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

The article reports:

Late Thursday, a federal judge sentenced Wolfe to two months in jail for one count of lying to the FBI; the prosecution had asked for 24 months. After a tearful apology to the judge, Wolfe essentially escaped with a slap on the wrist. Outrageous.

Wolfe, 58, was a key player in the leaking strategy employed by anti-Trump bureaucrats to seed bogus Trump-Russia collusion stories in the news media during the administration’s early months. Entrusted with safekeeping the committee’s most secret documents, Wolfe was caught passing off the information to four reporters. One of the journalists, Ali Watkins, was at least 30 years his junior; their three-year affair began when she was a college intern working for a Washington, D.C. news organization.

The first lesson here is don’t let your daughters be interns in Washington–there are a lot of older men walking around with evil intentions. The second lesson is more serious. James Wolfe was leaking classified information to newspapers with the intention of discrediting the Trump administration. He then lied about his actions when caught. He is looking at two months in jail. General Flynn has agreed to a plea of lying to investigators. He has lost his house, been financially ruined, etc. I realize that there is probably much more to that case than the public is aware of, but it seems to me that General Flynn’s actual crime was agreeing to be part of the Trump administration. His treatment by those in the ‘deep state’ was meant to send a message to anyone who was willing to be part of the Trump administration. The Mafia has been known to use similar tactics.

The article continues:

When confronted by the FBI about the affair and the disclosure of classified information to the other reporters, Wolfe repeatedly lied both during a personal interview and on a questionnaire. The investigation into Wolfe’s activities was so critical and risky that “the FBI’s executive leadership took the extraordinary step of limiting its notification to two individuals—the Chair and Vice Chair of the [committee]. Had this delicate balance not been achieved, this situation could easily have resulted in the possible disruption of information flow—an untenable degradation of national security oversight.”

Sounds a little bit more consequential than a phone conversation about Russian sanctions, right?

But here is the real injustice: While it was clear by both the original indictment and the sentencing memo that Wolfe was responsible for disclosing details about the FISA warrant on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, he was not charged with that crime—a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

The investigation into Wolfe began after the Washington Post published an explosive story in April 2017 confirming that the FBI had obtained a FISA order right before the election to spy on Page.

“There was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia,” the Post reported. “This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump associate was in touch with Russian agents. Such contacts are now at the center of an investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with the Russian government to swing the election in Trump’s favor.” The information was given to the reporters “on the condition of anonymity because [the sources] were not authorized to discuss details of a counterintelligence probe.”

James Wolfe belongs in prison for much longer than two months. Until we have equal justice under the law, we will not have our republic. The press is supposed to be holding elected officials and other bureaucrats accountable–not putting their thumb on the scales of justice.

Valid Perspective

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Dennis Prager posted an article at American Greatness today that I believe illustrates the proper perspective on the charges against Judge Kavanaugh.

The article states:

Those who claim the charges against Judge Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford are important and worth investigating, and that they ultimately, if believed, invalidate his candidacy for the U.S. Supreme Court are stating that:

a) What a middle-aged adult did in high school is all we need to need to know to evaluate an individual’s character—even when his entire adult life has been impeccable.
b) No matter how good and moral a life one has led for 10, 20, 30, 40 or even 50 years, it is nullified by a sin committed as teenager.

No decent—or rational—society has ever believed such nihilistic nonsense.

That about sums it up.

The article concludes:

In sum, I am not interested in whether Mrs. Ford, an anti-Trump activist, is telling the truth. Because even if true, it tells us nothing about Brett Kavanaugh. But for the record, I don’t believe her story. Aside from too many missing details—most women remember virtually everything about the circumstances of a sexual assault no matter how long ago—few men do what she charges Kavanaugh with having done only one time. And no other woman has ever charged him with any sexual misconduct.

Do not be surprised if a future Republican candidate for office or judicial nominee—no matter how exemplary a life he has led—is accused of sexual misconduct … from when he was in elementary school.

This is an important moment in American politics. If this accusation derails the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh, we can expect to see similar actions in the future. No self-respecting judge in America will be willing to put himself or his family through this kind of garbage. The woman making the accusations cannot even remember the year it happened or how she got home the night of the party. Does this sound logical? How much had she had to drink, and how clear was her memory? The fact that these accusations were even made public is a disgrace. The Democrats should be ashamed of the fact that they are willing to destroy a good man’s reputation for political ends.

 

Looking At The Complete Picture

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Every now and then someone comes along who sums up a situation beautifully–succinctly and with humor. Victor Davis Hanson has done that in an article posted at American Greatness yesterday. The article is titled, “The Circus of Resistance.”

Here are a few wonderful observations by Professor Hanson:

Democratic senators vied with pop-up protestors in the U.S. Senate gallery to disrupt and, if possible, to derail the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. U.S. SenatorCory Booker (D-N.J.) played Spartacus, but could not even get the script right as he claimed to be bravely releasing classified information that was already declassified. I cannot remember another example of a senator who wanted to break the law but could not figure out how to do it.

Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), former Harvard Law Professor who still insists she is of Native American heritage, called for the president to be removed by invoking the 25th Amendment. Apparently fabricating an ethnic identity is sane, and getting out of the Iran deal or the Paris Climate Accord is insanity and grounds for removal.

…To cut to the quick, the op-ed was published to coincide with the latest Bob Woodward “according-to-an-unnamed-source” exposé, Fear. The intent of anonymous and the New York Times was to create a force multiplying effect of a collapsing presidency—in need of the Times’ sober and judicious handlers, NeverTrump professionals, and “bipartisan” Democrats of the sort we saw during the Kavanaugh hearing to “step in” and apparently stage an intervention to save the country.

Had the Woodward book not been in the news, neither would be the anonymous op-ed. And of course, the Times, in times before 2017, would never have published a insurrectionary letter from an unnamed worried Obama aide that the president was detached and listless—playing spades during the Bin Laden raid, outsourcing to Eric Holder the electronic surveillance of Associated Press journalists, letting Lois Lerner weaponize the IRS, and allowing his FBI, CIA, and Justice Department to conspire to destroy Hillary Clinton’s 2016 opponent.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is beautifully written. The article takes the time to remind us of past events as well as the current lunacy. It also reminds us that although President Trump often refers to some members of the press as ‘fake news,’ he has not followed in the steps of the previous administration by monitoring on the sly the communications of Associated Press reporters or the private emails of a Fox correspondent, or using his Justice Department and FBI hierarchy to delude a FISA court in order to spy on American citizens.

President Trump was elected by ordinary people like you and me who decided that we wanted our country back. The elites who like running things their way instead of our way do not approve. We will continue to see evidence of that for as long as President Trump is in office.