Posts on Tuesday, May 12, 2020
D.C. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan issued an order Tuesday indicating he'll soon accept "amicus curiae," or "friend of the court" submissions, in the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn--drawing immediate scrutiny and a planned ethics complaint against Sullivan, who had previously refused to hear amicus briefs in the case.(Snip)Flynn's legal team indicated in a filing Tuesday that a sealed amicus brief has already been submitted by a group known as the "Watergate Prosecutors."
In a major showdown over presidential powers, U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday appeared divided over President Donald Trump’s bid to prevent congressional Democrats from obtaining his financial records but seemed more open toward a New York prosecutor’s attempt to secure similar records. The court’s conservative majority signaled concern about improper “harassment” of Trump - who is seeking re-election on Nov. 3 - by three Democratic-led House of Representatives committees seeking his records. In the New York case, the conservative justices joined the court’s liberals in indicating skepticism toward broad arguments by Trump’s lawyer for complete immunity from criminal investigation for a sitting president.
The Department of Justice, after concluding that the prosecution of Michael Flynn was the product of misconduct by FBI and DOJ officials, moved to drop the case against Flynn.(Snip)A judge has discretion whether to allow a case to be dropped, but normally if the prosecution doesn’t want to prosecute, a judge will not force a prosecution. But where a guilty plea has been entered and accepted by the court, and a motion to withdraw the plea rejected by the court, the court has a lot more power because the prosecution, in a sense, is over already. Only sentencing remains.
L.A. County could keep stay-at
-home orders in place well into
summer, depending on conditions replies
-home orders in place well into
summer, depending on conditions replies
Los Angeles County’s stay-at-home orders will “with all certainty” be extended for the next three months, county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer acknowledged during a Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday. Ferrer later added that even if the orders remain in place through the summer, restrictions will be “gradually relaxed” under a five-step plan. “We are being guided by science and data that will safely move us forward along the road to recovery in a measured way—one that allows us to ensure that effective distancing and infection control measures are in place,” Ferrer said, adding that the county is counting on
In early March, two sisters, ages 8 and 10, walked across a busy international bridge and presented themselves to US border officers in Texas. Usually, unaccompanied minors are sent from the southern border to a shelter while sponsors, such as a parent already in the US, are vetted. The children are then released to the sponsor with a future immigration court date. In the case of the two sisters, however, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is trying to quickly deport the girls to El Salvador, where they have no close family. Because the girls and their father had previously lost their asylum case (snip) the girls already had their day
Behold, the epitome of laziness. On Tuesday’s MTP Daily, NBC News political director Chuck Todd offered a muddled and pathetic apology/non-apology for the deceptive edit Sunday’s Meet the Press carried out against Attorney General Bill Barr, saying that he was “very sorry for that mistake” but blamed CBS News clips for this kerfuffle.Only in the final seconds of the 65-second bit did Todd offer the magic words: “I obviously am very sorry for that mistake. We strive to do better going forward.” Translation? Todd admitted that he and his staff weren’t engaging in basic journalism or research. Somewhere, Lyin’ Brian Williams is giving Chuck two thumbs up.
Here’s how Kim Jong Un holds court. NBA legend Dennis Rodman dished on his longtime bromance with the North Korean despot — revealing how the pair partied with “hotties and vodka” when they first met. Rodman, now 58, went to Pyongyang in 2013 on a trip with the Harlem Globetrotters and “dignitaries,” he said on ex-boxer Mike Tyson’s HotBoxin’ podcast last week. “I’m thinking I’m going to do an autograph show or play basketball. I ain’t know anything about North Korea,
Some communities around the state have made it known they plan to open for business soon, despite a stay-at-home order and the governor's reopening plan.
Restaurants and bars have opened in Quincy. Police there say they will only issue warnings and let the state handle any further enforcement.
During his daily news conference on Tuesday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he would consider withholding federal funding to communities that won’t follow his plan. “These people do not follow science or data. They’re just listening to partisan rhetoric perhaps, and following their own instincts, but no science,” Pritzker said.
House offices will receive funding to buy new laptops for themselves and their staffers if the new $3 trillion coronavirus package passes as is, a draft of the legislation revealed Tuesday. In the seventh section of the massive package, there are only two stipulations for financial assistance for the legislative branch, including $5 million to increase technological advances and inventory for members of Congress and their staff. That number will include money to upgrading 'imaging solution' to meet the demand for 'House imaged laptops.'
Maxine Waters: Trump, Protesters ‘Should Be
Ashamed’—We Don’t Want Businesses
Opened Back Up’ replies
Ashamed’—We Don’t Want Businesses
Opened Back Up’ replies
Monday night on Spectrum News 1’s “Inside the Issues,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said President Donald Trump and the lockdown protesters should be ashamed of themselves for pressuring governors to reopen their states. Waters said, “You know our governors are under great stress. The protests that have been organized, the protests trying to intimidate our governors to open up everything are protests where the people participating in that should be ashamed of themselves. They should not be encouraged in any way. They should not be encouraged from the top leadership of this country to go out and do that.”
Senate Republicans will investigate the Obama administration’s decision to target national security adviser Michael Flynn following the 2016 presidential election, but they do not intend to subpoena former President Barack Obama or require him to testify in front of a panel, Politico reports. Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told media Tuesday that his committee is prepared to investigate former Obama administration officials, particularly officials affiliated with the Department of Justice, and the FBI over their targeting of Flynn in light of Attorney General William Barr’s decision to drop perjury charges against the former national security advisor. Barack Obama will likely be left off the list
Rush Limbaugh: Blue State Governors Want
To ‘Wreck The Economy’ To Hurt
Trump, And Make Red States Pay replies
To ‘Wreck The Economy’ To Hurt
Trump, And Make Red States Pay replies
Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh speculated that blue state governors are keeping their states locked down for “purely political” reasons.Discussing the issue of so-called red states being the majority of those opening up their economies on Tuesday’s “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” Limbaugh noted that, while that will serve to “get the economy kickstarted,” the capital they create will go to those who refuse to get things moving.“The red states are gonna create capital and money to transfer to pay these people their stupid welfare costs and whatever else they’re using to bleed this country dry, while their population sits home, doesn’t work,
Republicans are criticizing House Democrats for their newly unveiled coronavirus relief bill, which is packed with funding for projects such as $50 million in “environmental justice grants.”The $3 trillion package revealed Tuesday immediately drew the ire of Republicans, including a tweet from the official Twitter account of the Senate GOP, which accused Democrats of “trying to take advantage of a crisis.”“1,815 pages, 347,144 words, 44,803 paragraphs. It took us over 6 MINUTES just to scroll to the end. Even the media calls it a 'wish list' that will 'never become law.'
It's not just Elon Musk.
Small fry and little people who pay taxes are defying blue-state lockdown orders and reopening for business, with or without the state's blessing. And quite often, their local governments and more important, cops, are behind them.
Here are a few:
From Mid-Michigan NOW:
PERRY, Mich - The City of Perry issued an administrative order saying it will not have strict enforcement of Governor Gretchen Whitmer's executive orders.
Mayor James Huguelet said the city will not assist other law enforcement agencies in the strict enforcement of the executive orders.
"It is past time that government leadership treat the people
Ben Carson says recovery will happen
after covid: ‘America is home of the
brave, remember that’ replies
after covid: ‘America is home of the
brave, remember that’ replies
Dr. Ben Carson touted American spirit and tenacity in his forecast for the nation’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.The Housing and Urban Development Secretary and member of President Trump’s coronavirus task force spoke with Fox News host Martha MacCallum about the road ahead for the U.S. following the COVID-19 outbreak, countering state officials reluctant to reopen and offering an optimistic outlook for the “home of the brave.” (Video) Carson’s remarks came in response to a question about the president’s suggestion that states are resisting calls to reopen amid the pandemic in an effort to hurt him politically. “It’s sort of sad that everything is cast in a political arena
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Militants stormed a maternity hospital in the western part of Kabul on Tuesday, setting off an hours-long shootout with the police and killing 16 people, including two newborn babies, their mothers and an unspecified number of nurses, Afghan officials said.
While the battle was underway, Afghan security forces struggled to evacuate the facility carrying out babies and frantic young mothers, according to images shared by the Interior Ministry. The clinic is supported by the aid group Doctors Without Borders, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency.
But the day’s spasm of violence extended beyond Kabul. A suicide bomber in eastern Nangarhar province — a hotbed of the Islamic
Tucked inside House Democrats’ new coronavirus bill is language that would create a loophole in states’ voter ID requirements, allowing people to cast ballots without having to prove who they are. While the crux of the bill, revealed Tuesday, is a massive injection of taxpayer aid for states, localities and federal agencies dealing with the virus, Democrats also tackled some of their long-standing political goals. One section of the bill would require states to allow at least 15 days of in-person early voting before Election Day this year, and to also allow voting by mail for any reason, overriding states
The Disappeared
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For nearly 30 years, Dianne Gonsoulin Hastings tried to discover what befell her big sister.
Donna was petite, rail-thin, and had a distinctive dark-eyed charm. As a girl and young woman, she loved to go crabbing on Pleasure Island, standing for hours on a rocky jetty that poked out into the Gulf of Mexico until night fell and dawn broke. She loved Janis Joplin, another free-spirited Port Arthur native. And she loved to sing outside, belting out Joplin lyrics like “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
Then she disappeared, leaving no word with her siblings, her large band of close-knit Cajun cousins, or her kids—the two boys she loved.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) is "frustrated by the bureaucracy" in Washington and pines for the authority she enjoyed as attorney general of California, according to the New York Times.
In other words, she misses being able to lock people up—for minor drug offenses, for truancy, and so on. The Times reported Monday that Harris "has mused to allies about missing the control afforded to her" as a chief prosecutor. As attorney general of California, for example, Harris shunned progressive concerns about "criminal justice reform" in favor of a ruthlessly aggressive approach to law enforcement.
And this guy wants to colonize Mars.
COVID-19 has unmoored self-proclaimed genius Elon Musk like nothing since the dramatic 2018 cave rescue of 12 Thai children and their coach — a rescue Musk badly tried and failed to hijack, leaving him to slander one hero diver as a “pedo.”
Tesla’s market value immediately plunged by $2 billion.
In the aftermath, a chastened Musk did a fairly good job of keeping his head down, his mouth shut and meeting Tesla production numbers — his longtime bete noire.
And then came a global pandemic,
To understand why Mayor Nate Duckett wants Farmington, N.M., to reopen while the governor wants it shut, it helps to know something about what he calls his city’s “death spiral.”
Perched in a rural corner of northwest New Mexico, Farmington watched its wealth vanish as its oil and gas industries went elsewhere. Its population is one of the fastest-shrinking in America. What keeps the lights on in Farmington is a coal-fired power plant whose fate remains uncertain.
And all of that was before the virus leveled what remained of Farmington’s economy.
The House of Pain gyms are in danger of going out of business and declaring bankruptcy because St. Louis County Executive Director Sam Page wants to show everybody who’s boss.
St. Louis County filed suit in St. Louis County Court asking for an injunction to close two House of Pain fitness centers in Chesterfield and Maryland Heights, Missouri.
The suit alleges House of Pain is open for business despite an executive order by County Executive Director Sam Page (pictured below) that all persons must stay in their own homes and all businesses he deems “non-essential” must close.
We can keep debating the merits of keeping society locked down versus reopening the economy amid the coronavirus. There are no easy answers, as we must weigh economic ruin, increased deaths of despair, and a coming mental health crisis against the potential death toll from a raging pandemic. But at a certain point, the debate becomes null and void when people simply get fed up and stop doing it regardless of what the talking heads on television and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., have to say about it.
A new poll suggests we’re inching closer to that point.
On Tuesday morning, the latest Axios/Ipsos poll results were released.
As we discover the depths to which the Obama operatives and holdovers went to skewer the Trump campaign/administration from 2016-20, I find myself wondering just what the Nixon operatives were up to, back in the bad old Watergate 1970s.Back in the day the eeevil Republican Richard Nixon thought he needed to spy on the opposition in the run-up to the 1972 election. So he set up a nongovernmental Special Investigations Unit to go a-burgling.Just the day before yesterday the noble Democrat Barack Obama -- or his henchmen -- wanted to spy on the opposition presidential campaign. So they went to their pals at the FBI and Main Justice and
Presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani did not mince words in an interview Sunday regarding what he believes fired FBI Director James Comey tried to do to his client: Depose him in a soft coup attempt, which is an act of treason punishable by death.In an interview with host John Catsimatidis on his show, “The Cats Roundtable,” the former New York City mayor first offered his insights into the Justice Department’s decision to drop its case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn after it became evident that FBI agents, during the latter days of the Obama administration, attempted to entrap him.Giuliani said that actions taken by Comey —
White House coronavirus task members will testify on Tuesday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee about returning to work during the coronavirus outbreak.Members of the task force that will testify include: Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health - Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease for Control - Admiral Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department - Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Restaurant Renewal
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The Covid-19 lockdown gravely threatens New York City’s vast and indispensable restaurant industry. But while some of our 26,000 eateries won’t return, and some owners face economic ruin, it by no means follows that we’ll be left with nowhere to eat—or that new places will be inferior to old ones.No other business is as tightly woven into the urban fabric as restaurants. Forced closures cost 370,000 workers their livelihoods, the city tax revenue of $750 million, and residents a defining pleasure of New York life. Unlike sports or live entertainment, restaurant meals can’t be experienced in diminished form on TV or on YouTube. Restaurants have nourished our
On Monday, President Trump abruptly ended a press conference out of what seemed like sheer discomfort over questions coming from one particular reporter — a reporter whose name Trump has already dragged in the mud... (clip) This isn’t the first time that Trump has attacked women or refused to answer perfectly reasonable questions.
An FBI agent's newly released testimony undercuts top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr's denial of a conflict of interest between his Trump-Russia efforts and his wife’s work for Fusion GPS, producer of the discredited Steele dossier.The agent, Michael Gaeta, told congressional probers that Ohr had pressed him to make sure the FBI was “doing something” with the dossier. According to Gaeta, Ohr pushed Steele's collection of memos alleging nefarious ties between the Trump campaign and Russia in part because Ohr’s wife Nellie worked for the same company that had hired ex-British spy Christopher Steele.
Gaeta's testimony was released last week along with 56 other
As it became clear Mitt Romney would be the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, the Obama campaign fired up its Chicago-style machine to attack the incumbent president’s election foe. Team Obama identified several Romney donors to smear publicly; one was a wealthy businessman from Idaho.
A former Democratic Senate staffer, according to a 2012 editorial in the Wall Street Journal, contacted an Idaho courthouse seeking the divorce records of Frank VanderSloot, who had donated $1 million to Romney’s campaign. The operative was traced to a professional opposition research shop based in Washington, D.C.The name of the outfit? Fusion GPS. “Fusion GPS is run by a former Wall Street Journal reporter,
Education is continuing, more or less, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic – more for families with resources, less for those without.
And for an alarmingly high number of students in Spokane and the rest of the nation, genuine learning isn’t happening at all. Despite the efforts of Spokane Public Schools and other districts, many families have simply given up.
The reasons include a lack of internet connections and online expertise as well as poverty, pandemic-related unemployment and homelessness. (snip) Several teachers said last week they suspect as few as 10% of their students are fully engaged in distance learning.
Democrats are now the party of “closed” and Republicans the party of “open.” Generally speaking, Democrats believe we need to keep restrictions in place to slow the spread of COVID-19, and Republicans demand we open businesses to save the economy. Both have a point, and time will tell which side is advocating the wiser plan.
If the Republican states open up, and death rates do not spike, then President Donald Trump can claim that Democrats were overly cautious and demonstrated poor judgment. On the flip side, if the red states experience higher death rates after opening up, residents may lament their decision.
Can you feel it? Can you feel the pace quickening? More cars on the road, more people in the stores, more ads crowding your inbox?
Activity is picking up, even in my state of New York, where we’re still under lockdown. It’s palpable; Americans everywhere are going back to work.
Democrats don’t like that one little bit. The worse things are, the better their chances in November.After all, Joe Biden is blaming President Trump for having helped throw the country into a deep recession; he sure doesn’t want the hard times to end. A recent tweet from the former VP claims “Donald Trump spent the last three years undermining the core pillars
Last week it was noted that Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard “Ric” Grenell delivered a satchel of classified documents to AG Bill Barr. The exact content of the documents was unknown.
(Snip) Grenell has requested AG Bill Barr use the declassification authority, granted to him by President Trump in May 2019, to declassify the list of Obama officials who requested unmaskings of Trump campaign and administration officials. (Snip) […] Former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice has openly acknowledged unmasking the identities of some senior Trump officials during the presidential transition but has strenuously denied ever leaking any identities and said nothing she did was politically motivated.
In a remarkable pre-election open letter to Alabama, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended his decision to recuse himself from the so-called Russia collusion probe that led to his firing, explaining that it was what the “law required me to.”
Over three pages, Sessions, who is seeking to win the Senate seat he gave up to be attorney general in 2017, also said that he has never wavered from his support for President Trump, and he emphasized that even after leaving Washington he has remained a strong ally of the president.
Anticipating the first step in the phase-three effort to remove President Trump from office, today at 10am ET Dr. Anthony Fauci will appear before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. CTH anticipates Fauci will position the reopening of the economy as a likely public health catastrophe; thus paving the way for Trump removal 3.0.
In addition to sketchy Fauci, Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers on Disease Control and Prevention, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Health Adm. Brett Giroir and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn are scheduled to appear. However, the pre-planned media narrative will be led by Fauci.
A professor from the University of Arkansas has been arrested on charges of wire fraud over alleged close links to China. Simon Saw-Teong Ang, 63, who worked as a professor at the Fayetteville campus. Ang allegedly had close ties to the Chinese government and Chinese companies, and failed to disclose those ties when required to do so in order to receive grant money from NASA he complaint reads.(Snip) The charge says Ang received more than $5 million in federal funding for research projects but failed to disclose payment from Chinese universities and Chinese companies in violation of UA policy.
Moisés Escamilla May, a notorious Mexican gang leader, has died in prison after contracting coronavirus.
Escamilla, 45, was the leader of a group within the feared criminal cartel Los Zetas.
He was serving a 37-year sentence for organised crime, including his role in the decapitation of 12 people in Yucatán.
(Snip)
Moisés Escamilla May, also known as Gordo May (Fat May), led a group calling itself "Old School Zetas", which formed part of the Los Zetas criminal cartel.
He was the main supplier of cocaine in Cancún, smuggling it via maritime routes from Central America into the popular beach resort.
He also ran a network of informants which included members of the local police force.
The true scope of the Obama administration’s abuse of federal law enforcement and national security organs to spy on political enemies is going to come out as part of the Durham investigation. That’s the implication of a move by Interim Director of National Intelligence Ric Grennell late yesterday (snip) the unmasking was not of Flynn, but rather of the Trump campaign officials who communicated electronically with Flynn. (snip) In other words, a vast spy operation on the campaign of a political enemy – dwarfing Watergate in scale and importance – apparently was underway.
Elon Musk, CEO and founder of greenie auto manufacturer Tesla Motors, has stuck a thumb in the eye of California's petty tyrants. (snip) Unlike Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther who was basically a small fry, drawing global attention because of the disproportionate power of state slammed onto her for just trying to feed her family, Musk is a big fish, an innovator, a celeb, a hip greenie progressive, and the CEO of a closely watched publicly traded company that's one of the state's largest employers
An increasing number of Pennsylvania district attorneys are stating that their offices will not prosecute businesses for violating Gov. Tom Wolf’s (D) orders restricting them from reopening.
“People are being smart, wearing masks, and maintaining social distance. Using criminal sanctions would not be helpful,” Dauphin County district attorney Fran Chardo said in a Saturday press release, which indicated that prosecution would only occur in an “extraordinary circumstances.”
“The criminal law is a blunt instrument and is not ordinarily used for enforcement of a Governor’s decree,” Chardo added.
Dauphin County is one of several Pennsylvania counties that Wolf has failed to allow to move on to the next phase of reopening.
Members of Wisconsin’s Republican legislative majority are asking the state’s congressional delegation to oppose using any federal coronavirus relief package money to help bail out Illinois and other states with a history of “reckless budgeting.”(Snip) “After years of failing to fund their overly generous pension system, Illinois is already asking for the federal government to bail them out of these series of poor financial decisions,” the letter said.
“Wisconsin taxpayers should not be responsible for funding bailouts for irresponsible states across the country like Illinois, New York and California. Please stand with Wisconsin taxpayers and reject the multi-trillion dollar bailouts being considered by Congress,” it said.
Offer states vote-by-mail or else says Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).
That was the message from the Minnesota Democrat during an appearance on Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show on Sunday. According to Klobuchar, making funds available was necessary given the threat of COVID-19, and therefore funding must be included in future coronavirus legislation.
“We’ve got to get this done in this next package to get funding to the states so that you don’t have that situation where people in garbage bags and homemade masks are standing in line in the rain like we saw in Wisconsin while the President of the United States could simply request a mail-in ballot from Palm Beach, Florida,
A group of California inmates are accused of trying to intentionally infect themselves with the coronavirus — thinking they would be set free if they contracted the contagion, authorities said Monday.Prisoners at the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic were filmed sharing a disposable cup and sniffing a used face mask in order to accomplish their alleged plot, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva.“Somehow, there was some mistaken belief among the inmate population that if they tested positive, that there was a way to force our hand and somehow release more inmates out of our jail environment — and that’s not going to happen,”
The media establishment has become an absolute clown show, with CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang cast as the ringleader during Monday’s press briefing circus. Instead of asking President Donald Trump any relevant question as a means to better inform Americans amid the pandemic, Jiang opted for grandstanding with “Is Chinese food racist?”
“You’ve said many times that the U.S. is doing far better than any other country when it comes to testing. Why does that matter?” Jiang asked. “Why is this a global competition to you if every day, Americans are still losing their lives, and we’re still seeing more cases every day?”
Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley demanded answers from former President Barack Obama on the Senate floor Monday amid new revelations in recent weeks further exposing the Russiagate conspiracy claims as a deep-state coup attempt orchestrated by top officials in the previous administration.
“Last week, former President Obama said the rule of law is at risk because of the Justice Department’s dismissal of the [Michael] Flynn case,” Grassley said. “I believe the opposite is true. The rule of law is at risk if the federal government can get away with violating the Constitution to do what they did to Lt. Gen Flynn.
While the media continue to be obsessed by the New York virus, which they believe is the cudgel they need to destroy Trump’s reelection chances, Trump is signaling the end of the three-year drama that was the Russia Hoax, from its first appearance in January 2017, all the way through a frustrated Robert Mueller’s inability to find a smidgen of evidence showing that Trump or anyone else on his team had colluded with Russia to win the election.
All the while, Trump’s supporters, and those who are not Trump’s supporters but who still believe in the rule of law, having been waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Under fire for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump, his campaign and his party are moving to lay blame for the 80,000 U.S. dead at the feet of the Communist Party of China and, by extension, its longtime General Secretary, President Xi Jinping.
“There is a significant amount of evidence” that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week.
Trump himself seemed to subscribe to the charge:
The long-overdue cracking of the conspiracy to frame President Trump’s National Security Advisor has the Left wailing. To them, it was a “‘black day in D.O.J. history’” when Michael Flynn was no longer going to prison.
Faced with the emergency of defending the indefensible, progressives have been busy deflecting from the crookedness coming to light, either by refusing to mention any of it in their reporting, or howling over the unimaginable scandal of the government dropping charges against a defendant who has already pleaded guilty.
Since Thursday, progressives have been saying U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen’s motion to dismiss the case will go down in the annals of justice
It has always been a lie that Barack Obama was a distinguished constitutional law scholar, a professor of law at the University of Chicago. In fact, he was a lecturer brought in to teach a class on his theories of race and law, and he never published any scholarly work. That is not what a professor does.
But in his telephone call to "Obama alumni" that was immediately leaked to Michael Issikoff, he demonstrated appalling sloppiness and ignorance that reveal what a lightweight legal thinker he is.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board is slamming him this morning:
Angered at having his company shut down by local bureaucrats, fed-up California billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla founder Elon Musk says he might move his signature electric-car factory to Texas or Nevada. California’s progressive politicians beware: You can’t spend money if you have no companies left to tax.
California has gone through waves of corporate out-migration as local regulatory burdens, high tax rates and a generally unfriendly business environment spur disgusted owners and CEOs to head for more-business-friendly states, including Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Colorado and Texas.
Musk is a good example of this thinking.
Spygate has a new name under the trending Twitter hashtag #ObamaGate. It is being revealed to the public in a slow but systematic fashion, a treasonous plot to undermine a presidential election and subsequent presidency. When that failed, the plot twisted to destroying a duly elected president through leaks, innuendo, and outright lies.This was not simply a few rogue FBI or DOJ agents taking justice into their own hands. Instead a plot of this magnitude had the blessing of the big boss, the capo di tutti capi, as the Mafia like to say, the boss of all bosses, President Barack Hussein Obama. Hence the name ObamaGate.
After nearly two years of ambitious people announcing they want to be president, campaigning and then giving up, Americans are usually ready by this point in an election cycle for a change of pace. But this leap year with the country convulsed by the coronavirus and its economic reverberations, politics is actually the change of pace. [Snip] So, where do we stand in the 59th election of a commander in chief?
A frequently heard complaint about American politics is that there is little difference between our two major parties. As one libertarian publication recently put it, “Coronavirus Reveals Utter Sameness of Democrats and Republicans.” In reality, the pandemic has provided a particularly stark view of the growing chasm between their governing philosophies. This ideological rift is nowhere more apparent than in the reopening debate. If you reside in a Democrat-dominated state, for example, you probably still labor under the yoke of a stay-at-home order. If you live in a Republican-run state, your freedom of movement is likely to be far less restricted. This policy difference is not about science or public
The Indefensible Cult of Cuomo
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To hear left-of-center opinion-makers tell it, the model of good governance in the pandemic has been set by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The Empire State governor regularly ranks at the top of lists—a journalistic convention that translates subjective insights into something more authoritative—of executives managing the plague and its fallout. Cuomo’s daily performance before the cameras has been so well-received that it’s contributed to speculation about the governor (somehow) replacing Joe Biden at the top of the Democrats’ presidential ticket in November.
In a serial arson investigation, it is always the creeper who shows the most interest in the suspicious fires who becomes the primary suspect.
Likewise, from the earliest days, President Barack Obama has shown a curious — and unseemly — obsession with the case of Gen. Michael Flynn. The whole saga began six years ago when Mr. Obama fired the retired three-star general from his post as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Ordinarily, such a firing would seem like the routine prerogative of a civilian commander-in-chief. But after all we have witnessed and learned about the Obama administration over the four years,
Biden Wastes His Crisis
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Despite Rahm Emanuel’s infamous admonition to “never let a crisis go to waste,” Biden is doing just that. Coronavirus is an unprecedented crisis, simultaneously straining Trump’s presidency on the health and economic fronts. Biden should be pulling away under such circumstances. But he is not, and that is ominous for Democrats.
A school of thought exists that Biden’s non-campaigning strategy is separating him from a sinking Trump. That school is called “wishful thinking.” It is wrong.
On January 20, America had its first confirmed coronavirus case.
As it became clear Mitt Romney would be the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, the Obama campaign fired up its Chicago-style machine to attack the incumbent president’s election foe. Team Obama identified several Romney donors to smear publicly; one was a wealthy businessman from Idaho.
A former Democratic Senate staffer, according to a 2012 editorial in the Wall Street Journal, contacted an Idaho courthouse seeking the divorce records of Frank VanderSloot, who had donated $1 million to Romney’s campaign. The operative was traced to a professional opposition research shop based in Washington, D.C.
The name of the outfit? Fusion GPS. “Fusion GPS is run by a former Wall Street Journal reporter,
According to recently unsealed testimony, John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman, told the House Intelligence Committee in December 2017 that both he and Hillary Clinton were aware that her campaign had purchased opposition research on Donald Trump, hoping to uncover ties between him and Russia during the 2016 election.
Podesta’s testimony is “the most direct acknowledgment about what Donald Trump’s opponent knew in real-time about the effort that ultimately became known as the Steele dossier,” notes John Solomon of Just The News. According to Podesta, Hillary likely didn’t know specifically that Fusion GPS or former British spy Christopher Steele were involved
San Francisco officials deny direct involvement in a controversial program, funded by private sources, that provides free alcohol, cannabis, and cigarettes to homeless people living in the city’s hotels during the Covid-19 outbreak. After news about the special deliveries was leaked and caused embarrassment on social media, the city’s Department of Public Health issued a statement claiming that “rumors that guests of San Francisco’s alternative housing program are receiving taxpayer-funded deliveries of alcohol, cannabis and tobacco are false.”
Except they’re not false. DPH, which administers and oversees the program, is staffed by city workers, including doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, social workers, and security personnel.
It’s Time to Stand with Taiwan
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Last week, Taiwan announced a major donation of over seven million face masks to the U.S., Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia in response to the ongoing coronavirus crisis. In Wisconsin, we experienced this generosity firsthand in the form of 100,000 surgical-grade masks, which will help keep our state healthy. This donation marked the third tranche of substantial international assistance from Taiwan, which stands in stark contrast to behavior of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) throughout the crisis.
The CCP’s contributions to the pandemic have inspired legislation holding the CCP legally liable and rapidly reducing supply-chain dependencies on China. These are solid steps,
RussiaGate is now a complete dead letter — but ObamaGate is taking its place. Just how far did the then-president go to cripple his successor?
It’s now clear the Obama-Comey FBI and Justice Department never had anything more substantial than the laughable fiction of the Steele dossier to justify the “counterintelligence” investigation of the Trump campaign. Yet incessant leaks from that supposedly confidential probe wound up consuming the Trump administration’s first months in office — followed by the Bob Mueller-led special-counsel investigation that proved nearly the “total witch hunt” that President Trump dubbed it.
Information released as the Justice Department dropped its charges against Gen. Mike Flynn shows that President Barack Obama,
A Time to Hate
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; (Snip)Through eight years, I accepted the rules of the game. Obama was president. He won fair and square because the Republicans serially put up two milquetoast opponents who were incapable of offering a vision
For a while there, we were convinced that we’d discovered the next great plague of 2020 after the novel coronavirus. We were told that the Asian Murder Hornets had arrived in North America and they were going to finish wiping out the honeybees and potentially a number of us as well. But was it all just a bunch of hype designed to generate hilarious memes on social media? That’s the opinion of at least some entomologists. These alleged “bug experts” are telling the Washington Examiner that the insects aren’t really murderous and they’re “just another type of hornet.” While they may pose a threat to the honeybees,
The foreign minister of Mexico announced on Monday that he sent a diplomatic note to the U.S. requesting answers related to a gun-running sting that caused tension during the Obama administration, according to a report.
In a video posted on Twitter, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard quoted Eric Holder, the former U.S. Attorney General, as saying Mexican authorities knew about the ill-fated 2009-2011 scheme known as "Fast and Furious."
"The [Mexican] government requests that it be provided with all the information available regarding the 'Fast and Furious' operation," Ebrard said, according to Reuters.
President Trump abruptly ended his Rose Garden news conference on Monday after a round of exchanges with CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang and CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins.
In what ended up being the final question from the briefing, Jiang grilled Trump about his ongoing tout of coronavirus testing in the U.S. in comparison to other countries around the world.
"You've said many times that the U.S. is doing far better than any other country when it comes to testing. ... Why does that matter? Why is this a global competition to you if everyday Americans are still losing their lives and we're still seeing more cases every day?" Jiang asked.
The Trump administration on Monday approved the largest solar installation in U.S. history, giving its blessing to a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. subsidiary’s 690-megawatt project just north of Las Vegas.
When finished, NV Energy’s estimated $1 billion Gemini Solar Project is set to become the eighth-largest solar power facility in the world, spanning some 7,100 acres (2873 hectares) of federal land and generating enough electricity to power 260,000 homes in the region. The current record for a solar plant is 579 megawatts.
‘A bill has to come due for China’: White House
advisor Navarro threatens coronavirus retaliation replies
advisor Navarro threatens coronavirus retaliation replies
White House advisor Peter Navarro on Monday threatened retaliation against China for its role in the spread of the coronavirus pandemic as tensions between the world’s two largest economies continue to rise. “A bill has to come due for China,” Navarro said (snip). “It’s not a question of punishing them, it’s a question of holding China accountable, the Chinese Communist Party accountable.” Navarro is one of the chief China hawks in President Donald Trump’s administration and serves as the director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. He declined to say whether he was advising the president to impose new tariffs or scrap the “phase one” trade deal