Waking Up

On Friday, The New York Post posted an opinion piece by California Democrat Gloria Romero who has walked away from the Democrat party.

The opinion piece states:

I walked away from the Democratic Party and joined the Republicans.

I will vote for Donald Trump for president.

I’ve been a true-blue Democrat, a former California state senator who chaired its Senate Democratic Caucus and served as Senate Majority Leader.

I was a Democratic National Convention delegate for Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama, and state co-chair for President Obama’s re-election.

But I’ve said goodbye, adios, I’ve had enough.  

This is not the Democratic Party I once championed. I don’t recognize it anymore.

The so-called “party of democracy” eradicated 14 million votes, including mine, to install Vice President Kamala Harris as its nominee.  

Just for the record, the reason those 14 million votes were eradicated was that the party had been totally dishonest about the mental state of the candidate for the past three years. They didn’t eradicate the votes as much as they refused to give the voters a choice.

The piece continues:

Like a banana republic, the dedazo was used by political elites to tap the candidate they chose.  Essentially, they executed a political coup. 

As California’s attorney general, Harris was unimpressive.

She made an intentional choice to hitch herself to the powerful teachers’ union and was clearly being coddled by a power elite that was even then shaping her political future.

Her manipulated rise is in line with the Democratic Party’s giant leap toward authoritarianism and censorship.  

President Ronald Reagan warned that if fascism comes to America it will come as liberalism, and he was right: I have witnessed individual freedoms being trapped, silenced, censored. 

The piece concludes:

I watched the Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel with horror. 

The Democratic Party has forsaken our ally to placate the pro-Hamas wing and win a swing state.  

I have seen the best of America: a nation that went to the moon and beyond. 

But our American landing has become like quicksand under a Democratic Party that is sinking the hopes and lives of Americans.

So I finally walked away. I stayed for as long as I could: I tried reforms, I spoke out, I voted. 

Today, I turn toward the future — an America that still shines, despite inequities that need change; a blessed land of opportunity — and join the party of the greatest American, Abraham Lincoln. 

The challenges of rebuilding our republic will take all of us.

I join the Republican Party to make America great again.

I am free at last.

We CAN rebuild our republic, but we won’t be able to if Kamala Harris is elected.

Will Congress Actually Uncover What Happened?

On Tuesday, Real Clear Politics posted an article about some of the decisions that may have paved the way for the assassination attempt on President Trump.

The article reports:

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe was directly involved in denying additional security resources and personnel, including counter snipers, to former President Trump’s rallies and events – despite repeated requests by the agents assigned to Trump’s detail in the two years leading up to his July 13 attempted assassination, according to several sources familiar with the decision-making.

Rowe succeeded former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who resigned last week after bipartisan calls following her widely panned testimony before the House Oversight Committee. But both Rowe and Cheatle were directly involved in decisions denying requests for more magnetometers, additional agents, and other resources to help screen rallygoers at large, outdoor Trump campaign gatherings.

It was Rowe’s decision alone to deny counter sniper teams to any Trump event outside of driving distance from D.C., these sources asserted.

Rowe and FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate are set to appear Tuesday before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security and Government Affairs committees.

The article concludes:

America wasn’t a banana republic. Is it becoming one? After the years of hoaxes and lawfare, the only thing keeping us from saying it is the reserve of credibility is empty. 

Director Rowe must go. He is exactly the wrong person to be in charge of this investigation since he should be one of the people investigated. Don’t be fooled by his empty mea culpas. Admitting that there was a failure is the easiest thing to do because it is incontrovertible. He is engaged in a coverup of something, and we need answers from somebody not involved. 

Was there a government plot to assassinate the former president? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and unless you can prove that Majorkas or somebody similarly high up actually was involved in this event, I am not convinced. 

But he and those around him clearly were involved in stripping the security around Trump. They denied resources, incited violence, and waited for somebody to take an opportunity. 

And on July 13th, that happened. 

Will the security for President Trump be better in the future? I sure hope so.

Unequal Justice Strikes Again

On Thursday, The Washington Examiner reported the following:

At least 11 anti-Israel protesters arrested in Washington, D.C., had their misdemeanor charges dropped Thursday evening, one day after protesters scrawled graffiti across federal property and burned an American flag in the nation’s capital.

The charges for the 11 protesters who had their cases dropped included crossing police lines and disorderly conduct at the protest attended by thousands in Washington on Wednesday, according to the Washington attorney general’s office. Additionally, at least seven people charged by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington were released pending their next court hearing, according to Washington Superior Court records obtained by the Washington Examiner.

The protesters given release conditions face charges such as assault on a police officer, attempted assault with a deadly weapon, making threats, and attempted second-degree theft, and they have been issued a “Stay Away” order to avoid the Union Station grounds until they head to preliminary hearings in late August.

How many January 6th political prisoners are in jail still awaiting trial?

The article notes:

Protests against Netanyahu’s appearance in the District of Columbia marked the largest violent protest in the area since the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, where thousands of supporters of Trump descended on the complex and entered the building in anger and frustration over his 2020 election defeat.

More than 1,424 defendants have been charged since the Jan. 6 protest, the Justice Department said in May, and about 350 people from the event were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees, including approximately 110 people who used a deadly or dangerous weapon to cause serious harm to a law enforcement officer. At least 145 people have been sentenced to prison terms over 151 months and roughly 172 defendants have been sentenced to periods of home detention, including approximately 31 who were sentenced to a period of incarceration.

The dropped charges against anti-Israel protesters come as critics have accused the Justice Department of cracking down more harshly on Jan. 6 defendants than on protesters who engage in similar conduct but whose causes align with the Left.

Welcome to our banana republic.

Crime In America

Recently Daniel Greenfield posted an article about crime in America. It wasn’t an article about the crime rate or an article about statistics–it was an article about who gets arrested and charged with a crime.

The article reports:

On Wednesday, three teens were arrested for riding e-scooters over an LGBTQ ‘Pride’ mural painted on a crosswalk in Spokane, Washington. One of the teens was charged with a first degree felony and bail was set at $15,000.

On Saturday, in another Washington thousands of miles away, Hamas supporters rioted near the White House. They threw bottles at a park ranger and vandalized national monuments with graffiti reading “Death to America”. Islamic terrorist supporters waved banners and held up signs in support of Hamas. One man in a Hamas headband brandished a bloody Biden mask.

Two Park Police officers were injured in the pro-Hamas violence, but not one arrest was made.

Not a single arrest for the assault on a federal employee (1-20 years in prison), the vandalism of national monuments (10 years in prison) or the support for a terrorist organization (20 years in prison). If only they had done some donuts on a ’Pride’ mural, they might be in jail now.

I wonder how the January 6th political prisoners feel about this.

The double standard is becoming so obvious that even low-information voters are becoming aware that we are dangerously close to a police state.

The article concludes:

Crimes in free countries primarily punish assaults on property and persons while in totalitarian states they primarily punish crimes against the state. Pro-crime policies effectively decriminalized drug offenses, shoplifting and even some violent assaults because punishing crimes against persons and property was seen as upholding a racist and capitalist system.

But the police were never going to be truly defunded and crime was never going to go away. Instead in the last 5 years, crime has come to be defined as a political and social offense, an act of hate, a threat to democracy and an insult to the values and views of the ruling elite.

America’s justice system is being replaced by kangaroo courts and a banana republic system that selectively arrests, prosecutes and convicts political opponents for opposing the regime.

Whether or not something is a crime does not depend on the law, but on the politics of it. There could hardly be a clearer example of it when the day before Hamas supporters staged their attack near the White House. Steve Bannon joined another Trump adviser, Peter Navarro, in being dispatched to prison for contempt of Congress.

Is contempt of Congress a crime? It depends who is in contempt and who is in Congress.

If we don’t change administrations in November, we will be a police state.

Let’s Even The Playing Field

On Saturday, PJ Media posted an article titled, “Time To Fight Dirty.” Frankly, I was put off by the title, but when I read the article, I realized that there were some good ideas there.

The article notes:

After witnessing the banana republic court spectacle in New York City this week, I ask our elected Republicans… have you seen enough? Are you going to continue lobbing limpwristed slaps at your enemy’s shoulder as they continue to kick you below the belt? Are you still hiding behind the whole “civility” façade, which the Left abandoned decades ago? Or are you ready to actually man up and fight like our lives, our loved ones, and our liberties depend on it?

We need to start fighting dirty, like they do. If we don’t, what remains of our constitutional order will continue to dissipate until all that remains is the totalitarian state they’ve been working for generations to achieve, complete with state censorship, show trials, and political prisoners.

And when I say we need to fight dirty, let me clarify what I am not saying. I am not saying that we should persecute innocent people, like the Left does. I am saying that we need to go full-throttle, no-holds-barred lawfare against those who do break the law and smugly get away with it.

The article lists a number of times Democrats have broken laws and suffered no consequences. The author of the article believes that there need to be consequences for anyone who breaks the law. I agree.

The article concludes:

The fiercely abolitionist Quakers contributed absolutely nothing towards winning the Civil War, nor was slavery ended by peaceful legislative process. It was ended by the soldiers who slashed and burned their way through Mississippi and Georgia, backed by a Republican president who suspended habeas corpus, who emancipated slaves with a constitutionally-tenuous executive fiat, and who secured the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment via corruption and bribery. And they were right to do so. America is a better place because Larry Hogan’s forefather wasn’t president in 1860.

They all get away with it. They always get away with it. If we win in November, our leaders must ensure that they don’t get away with it, no matter how dirty the fight gets. We need to do to them what they’ve been doing to us, and we need the moral courage to do so. Fighting is dirty only if just one side is doing it.

Holding EVERYONE accountable for their misdeeds is the only way American can move forward. Our laws need to apply to everyone.

The Intimidation Of Conservative Journalists Continues

On Friday, Blaze Media reported that  investigative journalist Steve Baker has been released from a federal courthouse in Dallas after his arrest earlier Friday over his Jan. 6 reporting.

On Wednesday, The Federalist reported the following:

The FBI is expected to arrest a Blaze Media reporter on Friday for what appears to be his coverage of demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, without informing him of what charges he’s facing.

On Tuesday, investigative reporter Steve Baker revealed that following months of delay, federal authorities informed his legal team there is a signed warrant for his arrest and that he is to self-surrender for “alleged J6 crimes” in Dallas, Texas, on Friday morning. Baker has been at the forefront of reporting on the more questionable aspects of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

According to Baker, he is to turn himself over to the FBI at 7 a.m. on Friday, at which point federal officials will “transport [him] to the Dallas courthouse, where [he] can meet [his] attorney at 9:30 am.” An unnamed federal prosecutor reportedly told Baker’s attorneys that he is to wear “shorts and sandals” during his surrender, representing an effort by the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) to give Baker “a dose of the personal humiliation treatment.”

Steve Baker reported to the FBI dressed in a suit and looking businesslike. The FBI then placed him in handcuffs and shackles. This is disgusting. They later released him, but not before treating him like a common criminal.  Every day America looks more like a banana republic and less like the republic our Founding Fathers founded.

Please follow the link to the article at Blaze Media. It includes a number of Twitter screenshots that are very interesting.

Does America Have A Justice System?

On Thursday, The Epoch Times reported that Special Counsel Robert Hur has announced that President Biden will not be charged for mishandling classified documents. I suppose it would be petty to point out that as a Senator or a private citizen he was not entitled to have those documents in his personal possession, but I guess that really doesn’t matter.

The article reports:

Among the reasons stated for not pressing charges was that Biden would present to the jury ‘as sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’

I would like to point out that this elderly man with a poor memory is President of the United States. I also question the ‘well-meaning’ part.

The article continues:

“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” Mr. Hur wrote in a 388-page report to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The materials, stated the report, included “marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.” The FBI collected these items during a search of President Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, residence last year.

This is  unbelievable. President Trump’s house gets searched, and he gets charged while President Biden (because he is essentially considered a senile old man) gets away scot free. They searched Baron Trump’s room. Shouldn’t someone have searched Hunter Biden’s room?

I don’t know how (or if) we recover from the banana republic we have become.

 

The Politicization Of Justice In America

Welcome to the Banana Republic America has become. As many of you may remember, one of the people telling the crowds to go into the Capitol during the January 6th protest was Ray Epps. After the events of that day, he was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, but disappeared from that list rather quickly. It was only after social media asked a lot of questions that he was finally charged for his actions that day.

On Tuesday, The Gateway Pundit reported:

J6 Operative Ray Epps was sentenced on Tuesday to NO JAIL TIME!

Ray Epps, the only January 6 protester who actually told people to go into the Capitol, has been officially sentenced to one year probation, $500 restitution, and 100 hours community service.

Epps did not have to show up for court today – he called in via Zoom.

Little old grandmothers who did nothing more than peacefully walk through the Capitol after the police opened the door for them are spending time in jail, and this piece of work gets probation! There is something seriously wrong with justice (or the lack thereof) in America.

The article notes:

As reported by the Gateway Pundit, Epps was just sued by J6 defendant Eric Clark for “Conspiracy to Violate Civil Rights.” The case was filed in a Utah Federal Court.

Here’s where it gets shady.

The Gateway Pundit had a tip that Ray Epps was going to be served with the lawsuit at the courthouse during his sentencing. Process servers were hired by the Plaintiff and our reporters were scheduled to be there to capture the moment Epps was served on video. This was all discussed yesterday in private phone calls.

Then like magic, Ray Epps’ Fairy Godmother changed his PUBLIC IN-PERSON sentencing hearing to a REMOTE TELEPHONIC sentencing hearing.

Why isn’t Congress screaming about the violations of the civil rights of the January 6th dependents every day? Where is the outrage about the lack of accountability in the sentencing of Ray Epps?

Have We Reached Banana Republic Yet?

On Thursday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about recent legal activities that appear to be political.

The article reports:

A hallmark of banana republics is that those who lose power are apt to wind up in prison, or on the wrong end of a firing squad. Even more advanced countries, like Israel, sometimes have a regrettable tendency to prosecute former political leaders.

It is hard to think of anything more destructive to a democracy, and yet the Democrats are going down that path. It seems clear that they intend to bring criminal charges against President Trump over his keeping some White House documents at Mar-a-Lago–a trivial offense, as far as anyone knows.

And that’s not all. The Department of Justice has issued subpoenas to a large number of people who were associated in some way with the Trump campaign or administration. They generally seek information about efforts to challenge the reported election results in several states. A copy of one of the subpoenas, with the name of the person who was served redacted, is linked below. Take a look at the scope of the documents the subject of the subpoena is required to produce:

594129794-Redacted-Subpoena

In case you are wondering about John Hinderaker’s background in making the above statements, John Hinderaker practiced law for 41 years, enjoying a nationwide litigation practice. He retired from the practice of law at the end of 2015, and is now President of Center of the American Experiment, a think tank headquartered in Minnesota. He and two other lawyers founded Power Line Blog in 2002.

The article concludes:

So far, of course, no criminal investigations have been launched into Joe Biden’s shipping of illegal aliens to many points across the country, often in the dead of night, for the last year and a half.

More examples could be multiplied. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon likely will go to jail for contempt of Congress, the same offense that former Attorney General Eric Holder was held to have committed by a bipartisan 255–67 vote of the House of Representatives. But unlike Bannon, Holder was not prosecuted. He now makes millions as a partner in a prominent Washington, D.C. law firm.

Given the thorough corruption of the Department of Justice under Merrick Garland, there is a reasonable possibility that the Democrats will move to imprison both Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans. I suppose they think they are secure, because Republicans would never follow such a third-world precedent when they regain power. I don’t know about that. In any event, there is a more fundamental question: are the Democrats trying to trigger a civil war, as they did in 1861? Judging from their actions, I think the question must be taken seriously.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is frightening to see how corrupt the Justice Department has become.

Has America Become A Banana Republic?

In Friday Issues & Insights posted an article titled, “Biden’s Banana Republic.” That seems a rather harsh charge until you begin to look at some of the things that have happened in the past weeks.

The article notes some of the things the Democrats have recently done that are moving America into the direction of a banana republic:

    • How the Democrats want to turn the economy into one that’s “operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class.”
    • The Democrats’ retribution-filled, Reichstag-fire response to the breach of the U.S. Capitol by a group made up mostly of odd characters and some everyday Americans who got overheated and were shocked by their own behavior, all of them apparently unarmed.
    • How a summer of real riots was tacitly, and at times, overtly supported by Biden’s party.
    • The second impeachment of Trump that is not an attempt to seek justice but a campaign to prevent him from running again for president and marginalizing his supporters.
    • The lies about the promise of unity.
    • Phony charges against political opponents designed to dehumanize them. See: “Biden accused Trump of being a mass murderer, of killing hundreds of thousands of coronavirus patients because he ‘did nothing’ to fight the virus.”
    • Government by executive command rather than through proper legislative channels.
    • Shutting down politically unfavorable businesses. See: Biden’s Keystone XL pipeline decision.
    • The leader of a national government deciding alone what the property role of that government is. See: “Biden Proclaims ‘Racial Equity’ as Goal ‘Of the Whole of Government.’ ”

Elections have consequences. It’s time to make sure our 2022 congressional election is an honest election and to remove those politicians who are a threat to our freedoms from office.

Two-Track Justice

Yesterday The National Review posted an article with the title, “With Liberty and Two-Track Justice for All.” Unless things change quickly, we will officially become a banana republic.

The article notes the contrasts in the way similar charges against Americans were handled:

• President Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is doing seven and a half years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pa., for his pre-Trump tax and bank fraud. Manafort has endured solitary confinement.

• Former campaign aide George Papadopoulos served twelve days in the slammer for false statements to FBI officers. His steep legal bills and spooked clients drove him back into his parents’ house.

• Former national security adviser Michael Flynn awaits sentencing, and wants his charges dropped, after pleading guilty to false statements. Flynn reportedly took a plea after selling his house to pay his lawyers. DOJ prosecuted Flynn, although no less than Andrew McCabe acknowledged that “the two people who interviewed [Flynn] didn’t think he was lying.” Indeed, the G-men who spoke with Flynn later reported: “Throughout the interview, Flynn had a very ‘sure’ demeanor and did not give any indicators of deception. He did not parse his words or hesitate in any of his answers.” Never mind those details; Flynn still could wind up in an orange jump suit.

The article compares the above scenarios with the fate of James Comey:

As the OIG concluded:

Comey violated applicable policies and his Employment Agreement by failing to either surrender his copies of Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7 to the FBI or seek authorization to retain them; by releasing official FBI information and records to third parties without authorization; and by failing to immediately alert the FBI about his disclosures to his personal attorneys once he became aware in June 2017 that Memo 2 contained six words (four of which were names of foreign countries mentioned by the President) that the FBI had determined were classified at the “CONFIDENTIAL” level.

So, Comey did spill state secrets.

“By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action,” the OIG concluded in August, “Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees — and the many thousands more former FBI employees — who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information.”

So, is Comey breaking rocks? Awaiting his prison sentence? Preparing for trial?

The article notes the activities of Hillary Clinton:

Despite 588 security violations that the State Department attributed to Hillary Clinton and her associates in the Emailgate scandal, as well as her role in purchasing the “dirty dossier” that triggered the Russia hoax, the former first lady has suffered zero consequences for an entire career of professional misconduct. Anyone who survived her husband’s presidency recalls Hillary as a latter-day Ma Barker, or Bonnie to Bill’s Clyde. Regardless, Hillary always walks away, Scot-free. And she always gets paid.

Her 2014 book Hard Choices scored her some $14 million. The next year, Business Insider reports, she made $12 million in speaking fees to well-connected organizations and huge corporations. A sample of these for 2015 included:

California Medical Association: $100,000 (via satellite!)

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce: $150,000

Institute of Scrap Metal Recycling Industries: $225,000

National Automobile Dealers Association: $225,500

United Fresh Produce Association: $225,000

eBay Inc.: $315,000 (for a 20-minute speech)

Cisco: $325,000 (She reportedly sat onstage with the CEO)

Biotechnology Industry Organization: $335,000

Qualcomm Incorporated: $335,000

GTCR Private Equity: $780,000

Atop this steady cash, Hillary never stops playing presidential-campaign hokey-pokey: She puts her left foot in, she takes her left foot out, she puts her left foot in, and she shakes it all about. Rumors that Michael Bloomberg is considering her as a potential running mate gives this entitled woman yet another opportunity to show some West Wing ankle.

Lois Lerner also made the list of insiders with minimal consequences for breaking the law:

Lois Lerner ran the IRS unit that perpetrated the systematic political profiling of conservative groups that sought tax-exempt designation. IRS’s wingtip-dragging, relentless demands for paperwork, and Orwellian questions (“please provide the percentage of time your organization spends on prayer groups”) all subjected to extra scrutiny 94 percent of center-right and Tea Party groups that sought 501(c)(3) and (c)(4)status, versus 6 percent of analogous liberal outfits, the House Ways and Means Committee found in August 2013. Consequently, rather than educate citizens on limited-government principles before the 2012 election, scores of these organizations either failed to launch or did so, only to run out of fuel and tumble back to earth.

Lerner supervised this virtual gag-the-Right scheme. When GOP congressional overseers sought Lerner’s laptop hard drive, they learned that it was shipped to a Federal Bureau of Prisons recycling facility in Florida. As the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration testified in 2015, “this shipment of hard drives was destroyed using an AMERI-SHRED AMS-750HD shredder.” The industrial-strength machine chopped the drives into quarter-sized pieces. The Feds then sold this material as scrap.

Was Lerner punished? Reprimanded? Ordered to stand in the corner for 20 minutes?

Lerner was placed on administrative leave. This is Potomac for “paid vacation.” She received her $177,000 annual salary while she stayed home and relaxed. (If she were U.S. senator Lois Lerner, she would have earned $3,000 less.) According to the Washington Post, “Lerner has received a $100,000 annual pension since retiring from the IRS in September 2013, and she and her husband, an attorney with a national law firm, live in a $2.5 million home in Bethesda,” Maryland, where she walks her dogs and gardens outside her 6,500-square-foot house.

The article concludes:

America needs equal justice, but neither undue leniency nor undeserved cruelty toward Stone.

Given Stone’s sentence, McCabe, Comey, Clinton, and Lerner should be locked up.

But since those four got zero prison time, plus book deals, TV contracts, and a hefty pension, then Roger Stone deserves to walk into a green room at Fox News Channel. I would expect to congratulate him there on his new contributor agreement and hear all about his upcoming memoir.

Fair is fair.

I agree.

The Never Ending Story

Newsbusters posted an article today about the upcoming end to the Mueller investigation. The investigation is beginning to resemble the story of the man searching for his car keys on the opposite side of the street from where he dropped them because the light is better there. But that hasn’t slowed the mainstream media down a bit.

The article reports:

After news broke that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would be delivering his final Russia investigation report to Attorney General William Barr in the coming days, on Thursday, NBC’s Today show and CBS This Morning promised viewers that the investigation would continue regardless of Mueller’s findings.

Touting how “Several government officials say Robert Mueller is close to wrapping up” during a report for the Today show, correspondent Peter Alexander finished the segment by assuring: “….many legal experts say just because Robert Mueller is winding down does not mean the investigating stops, with federal prosecutors in Manhattan and elsewhere expected to follow up on pieces of the investigation.”

The article details some of the dialog between the news reporters and then concludes:

Co-host Bianna Golodryga tried to salvage the segment by concluding: “But as we showed, six people who are close to the President have pleaded guilty throughout this investigation.”

Even before Mueller has completed his investigation, the media are already gearing up for other investigations into the President as they prepare for the possibility that Mueller may not find Trump guilty of anything.

It should be noted that the six people who have pleaded guilty have been charged with crimes that either have no connection to either President Trump or Russia or are process crimes charging people who did not remember accurately facts that were totally unrelated to any investigation of Trump-Russia collusion. Generally speaking this has been an investigation searching for a crime and charging people close to the President with anything that might cause them to invent a crime rather than go to jail. The past two years of the Mueller investigation have given us a lot of insight into how things work in a banana republic.

Glossing Over The Actual Crime

This week we watched the Mueller investigation recommend that Michael Flynn not be incarcerated because of his extensive cooperation with the investigation. This creates more questions than it answers. Why was there any kind of continuing investigation of Michael Flynn? Notes released from the investigation show that no one who interviewed him thought he was lying. So why wasn’t the investigation dropped? But wait–there’s more!

Kimberley Strassel posted an article at The Wall Street Journal yesterday with the following title, “Mueller’s Gift to Obama.” The article reminds us that the charges against Michael Flynn were based on his telephone calls and interactions with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. As incoming National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn would have been expected to have those conversations. It is also expected that those conversations would be wiretapped because they involved a Russian Ambassador. What is not protocol is the unmasking of General Flynn’s identity.

The article reports:

But what about the potential crimes that put Mr. Flynn in Mr. Mueller’s crosshairs to begin with? On Jan. 2, 2017, the Obama White House learned about Mr. Flynn’s conversations with Mr. Kislyak. The U.S. monitors phone calls of foreign officials, but under law they are supposed to “minimize” the names of any Americans caught up in such eavesdropping. In the Flynn case, someone in the prior administration either failed to minimize or purposely “unmasked” Mr. Flynn. The latter could itself be a felony.

Ten days later someone in that administration leaked to the Washington Post that Mr. Flynn had called Mr. Kislyak on Dec. 29, 2016. On Feb. 9, 2017, someone leaked to the Post and the New York Times highly detailed and classified information about the Flynn-Kislyak conversation.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has called this leak the most destructive to national security that he seen in his time in Washington. Disclosing classified information is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison. The Post has bragged that its story was sourced by nine separate officials.

The Mueller team has justified its legal wanderings into money laundering (Paul Manafort) and campaign contributions (Michael Cohen) on grounds that it has an obligation to follow up on any evidence of crimes, no matter how disconnected from its Russia mandate. Mr. Flynn’s being caught up in the probe is related to a glaring potential crime of disclosing classified material, yet Mr. Mueller appears to have undertaken no investigation of that. Is this selective justice, or something worse? Don’t forget Mr. Mueller stacked his team with Democrats, some of whom worked at the highest levels of the Obama administration, including at the time of the possible Flynn unmasking and the first leak.

It is becoming very obvious that Robert Mueller’s investigation is wearing blinders. Their prosecution of Michael Flynn while ignoring the crime of leaking classified material and unmasking Americans on foreign phone calls  (not to mention ignoring the Clinton campaign’s relationship with Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, and the dossier) is a glaring example of the politicization of our Justice Department. The Congressional hysteria over the idea that Mueller could be fired or limited in any way is a glaring example of the ignorance on the part of some Congressmen of our Constitution. For the past two years we have had a taste of what it would be like to live in a country where justice is political. If we do not successfully deal with this, we will have taken a pretty big step toward becoming a banana republic.

 

 

Things Americans Were Not Supposed To Find Out

Have you ever considered how much information Americans would not have access to if Hillary Clinton had been elected President? At best we would have saved the cost of the Mueller investigation–if she won, why would anyone investigate Russian interference? We would never know about the FISA applications to spy on a political opponent (it would be nice to know exactly who came up with that idea). We probably wouldn’t know about Uranium One. The Clinton Foundation would probably still be raking in billions (political access is expensive).

Townhall posted an article today detailing some of the things we would never have found out if Hillary had been elected.

The article reminds us:

As various commentators predicted would be proven, the bulk of the information that formed the basis for the FISA warrant applications was the “dossier” of allegations about Donald Trump’s activities in Russia. This dossier was provided to the FBI by British spy Christopher Steele. Steele was hired during the 2016 presidential campaign by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, who was paid by Hillary Clinton’s law firm Perkins Coie, who was paid by the Clinton campaign and the DNC. The allegations in the dossier were scandalous and completely unverified, in violation of federal statutes and FISA court rules.

In other words, the FBI used oppo research paid for by the Democrats as justification for government spying on a political opponent and other Americans.

But there’s more. In another incredible coincidence, Fusion GPS had hired scholar and professor Nellie Ohr as a “paid Russian expert.” Nellie Ohr just happens to be married to Bruce Ohr, deputy attorney general in the Justice Department. Bruce Ohr is alleged to have passed along his wife’s anti-Trump research to the FBI. He was demoted for failing to disclose not only his wife’s employment with Fusion GPS, but also his own meetings with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson.

Evidently the people who filled out the FISA application neglected to mention any of the history of the dossier that formed the basis for the application.

The article lists something else we were not supposed to know:

When thousands of DNC emails were leaked to the public through Julian Assange’s organization WikiLeaks, we learned that Hillary Clinton had abused the primary process, nearly bankrupted the DNC and effectively stole the nomination from upstart candidate Bernie Sanders. We also learned that the press played favorites with Clinton, getting her approval before running stories and even forwarding debate questions to Clinton in advance. (The official line is that Russians hacked the DNC computers and gave the emails to WikiLeaks. Assange and former U.S. and U.K. intelligence officials vehemently deny this, and maintain that it was an inside “leak,” not a hack. The DNC refused to turn over their servers to the FBI for inspection.)

One of the biggest scandals out there has still been underreported by the mainstream media:

Nor is this the Democrats’ only problem with compromised computer servers. Imran Awan, IT aide to Florida representative (and former DNC chair) Debbie Wasserman Schultz was investigated after it was discovered that he and family members had improperly accessed the House Democratic Caucus’ computer server over 7000 times. Awan was arrested trying to leave the country to return to his native Pakistan, where he and his wife had wire-transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars. Earlier this month, Awan pleaded guilty to bank fraud on a home loan application; all other matters were dropped.

Consider the fact that if Democrats gain control of Congress, none of the investigations into these scandals will continue–those in power who used the power of the government for political purposes will not face repercussions for what they did. At that point we can expect to see the government being used to silence opposition as the norm. Our representative republic will have been replaced by a banana republic.

The Next Step

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about the upcoming testimony of FBI agent Strzok before Congress.

The article reports:

The House Judiciary Committee, Chairman Bob Goodlatte, has issued a subpoena for FBI Agent Peter Strzok to appear for testimony on Wednesday, June 27 at 10:00am.

However, a June 17th article at The Conservative Treehouse points out:

However, don’t get too excited…. remember, Peter Strzok is the primary witness in both the Trump-Russia investigation (ongoing Mueller probe), and the more recent OIG FISA Abuse/Campaign Spying investigation initiated by Michael Horowitz.

As such, dontchaknow, Mr Peter Strzok would have to politely refuse to answer questions about “ongoing investigations”, and could only testify issues specifically related to the Clinton-email probe which was the subject of the most recent IG report release.

And the administrative state, both inside government and outside government, have had over a year to assist Mr. Strzok in the coordination of his narrative and talking points.

We need to remember what the game is here. Donald Trump was not supposed to be elected, and all of the wrongdoing by the FBI and DOJ during the campaign and transistion of power was supposed to be buried by the Hillary Clinton administration. Since that did not happen, the new playbook is to stall the investigation until either the public gets so bored with it that no one is paying attention or until the Democrats can take over Congress and bury the investigation. Those are the primary goals right now. If the Democrats can take over Congress, they can impeach President Trump for whatever reason and make sure all records of FBI and DOJ activities in the 2016 election campaign and transition team are buried. At that point, we will no longer be a representative republic–we will be a banana republic.

A Republic Or A Banana Republic?

Yesterday Kelly Riddell posted an article at The Washington Times entitled, “The Obama-Clinton banana republic” with the subtitle, “The nation’s core values would continue to suffer under a Clinton presidency.”

In the article, she describes some of the traits of a healthy republic:

A fair, balanced, and independent Justice Department. Neutral diplomats, who serve the public over politics, at the State Department. An unbiased, honest, mainstream media.

She then notes that these values have eroded during the Obama Administration.

The article then cites examples of that erosion:

Two days after The Associated Press broke the story that Mrs. Clinton was using a private server in March 2015, John Podesta sent an email to her attorney Cheryl Mills, asking if they should decline to turn over emails between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama to Congress, invoking “executive privilege.”

The email clearly implies Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton had been exchanging emails on her private server — a huge potential security threat, given everything the president sends or receives is highly classified.

FBI notes also signal Mr. Obama was indeed aware and had corresponded with Mrs. Clinton on her private server long before the news broke.

In an April 2015 interview with Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide, the FBI alerted her of an exchange between Mr. Obama — using a pseudonym — and Mrs. Clinton from 2012, where she exclaimed: “How is this not classified?” the report says.

As I noted in a previous post, Ms. Abedin also asked for a copy of the email–an insurance policy?

The article continues:

The FBI’s documents expose there was a “shadow government” at the State Department that tried to protect Mrs. Clinton throughout the email probe.

“There was a powerful group of very high-ranking State officials that some referred to as ‘The 7th Floor Group’ or ‘The Shadow Government.’ This group met every Wednesday afternoon to discuss the FOIA process, Congressional records, and everything Clinton-related to FOIA/Congressional inquiries,” the FBI’s interview summary said.

…The media has responded to these scandals by largely ignoring them — they’re too concerned with Donald Trump’s rhetoric than they are with anything that would impugn Mrs. Clinton’s or Mr. Obama’s record.

Instead, Yahoo’s Katie Couric was looking to do pieces that “would showcase her [Clinton‘s] personality and has a lot of viral potential,” according an email she sent to Mr. Podesta.

Our Founding Fathers put in the U.S. Constitution the concept of equal justice under the law. Under the Obama Administration we have obviously lost that concept. Unfortunately under a Hillary Clinton Administration, it could be permanently lost.

To anyone who is reading this who is voting for Hillary Clinton because you are an upstanding citizen, remember that when justice is unequally applied, even a small mistake can be used to make war against an ordinary citizen. I remind you that the only person who went to jail because of the Benghazi attack was the filmmaker, and he was innocent. The legal action that sent Dinesh d’Souza to jail was totally extreme in relation to the crime he committed–an illegal campaign donation.

As America approaches banana republic status, any breach of any law, regardless of how minor, can be used to put any America who opposes the government agenda in jail. Are you ready for that?

 

 

Why We Need Informed, Educated Voters

David Limbaugh posted an article today at Townhall.com about President Obama’s continuing claim that the Republicans want to impeach him. Speaker of the House John Boehner has clearly stated that he is not interested in impeaching President Obama, so what is this about? A large part of it is about fund raising for the Democrat party.

On July 28, the Washington Post reported the following:

The Democrats’ congressional campaign arm pulled in $2.1 million in online donations over the weekend — the best four-day haul of the current election cycle — largely propelled by fundraising pitches tied to speculation that House Republicans could pursue the impeachment of President Obama.

That’s part of the story. Another part of the story involves the blatant flaunting of unconstitutional actions in an attempt to goad the Republicans into impeachment. Why impeachment? Because it energizes the far left of the Democrat party base.

David Limbaugh concludes:

So he is not only ratcheting up his rhetoric to accuse Republicans of a plot to impeach him, though House Speaker John Boehner has clearly indicated that is not in the cards, but also trying to force their hand into actually impeaching him. To this end, he is planning on upping the ante by issuing a far-reaching unilateral order granting amnesty to millions.

That’s right. The leader of the Free World is trying to provoke Republicans into impeaching him or otherwise stirring a constitutional crisis.

This is stunningly unprecedented. But more and more people are wising up to his serial abuses of power and his partisan agitation.

I don’t have a great track record as a prognosticator of elections, but I am strongly sensing his party, as a direct result of his policies and lawlessness and its shameless refusal to rein him in, is going to get a titanic comeuppance in November.

America is either going to be a representative republic or a banana republic. Voters in November will make that choice.