Posts Tagged ‘Obama Scandals’
Thursday, April 6th, 2017
The fallout continues from the Susan Rice/Obama Administration domestic surveillance “unmasking” scandal:
The Trump campaign wasn’t the Obama Administration’s first use of America’s National Security intelligence gathering against domestic targets. They first used them against supporters of Israel and opponents of Obama’s Iran deal:
“At some point, the administration weaponized the NSA’s legitimate monitoring of communications of foreign officials to stay one step ahead of domestic political opponents,” says a pro-Israel political operative who was deeply involved in the day-to-day fight over the Iran Deal. “The NSA’s collections of foreigners became a means of gathering real-time intelligence on Americans engaged in perfectly legitimate political activism—activism, due to the nature of the issue, that naturally involved conversations with foreigners. We began to notice the White House was responding immediately, sometimes within 24 hours, to specific conversations we were having. At first, we thought it was a coincidence being amplified by our own paranoia. After a while, it simply became our working assumption that we were being spied on.”
This is what systematic abuse of foreign-intelligence collection for domestic political purposes looks like: Intelligence collected on Americans, lawmakers, and figures in the pro-Israel community was fed back to the Obama White House as part of its political operations. The administration got the drop on its opponents by using classified information, which it then used to draw up its own game plan to block and freeze those on the other side. And—with the help of certain journalists whose stories (and thus careers) depend on high-level access—terrorize them.
Two inquiries now underway on Capitol Hill, conducted by the Senate intelligence committee and the House intelligence committee, may discover the extent to which Obama administration officials unmasked the identities of Trump team members caught in foreign-intelligence intercepts. What we know so far is that Obama administration officials unmasked the identity of one Trump team member, Michael Flynn, and leaked his name to the Washington Post’s David Ignatius.
“According to a senior U.S. government official,” Ignatius wrote in his Jan. 12 column, “Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking. What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions?”
Nothing, the Times and the Post later reported. But exposing Flynn’s name in the intercept for political purposes was an abuse of the national-security apparatus, and leaking it to the press is a crime.
This is familiar territory. In spying on the representatives of the American people and members of the pro-Israel community, the Obama administration learned how far it could go in manipulating the foreign-intelligence surveillance apparatus for its own domestic political advantage. In both instances, the ostensible targets—Israel and Russia—were simply instruments used to go after the real targets at home.
In order to spy on U.S. congressmen before the Iran Deal vote, the Obama administration exploited a loophole, which is described in the original Journal article. The U.S. intelligence community is supposed to keep tabs on foreign officials, even those representing allies. Hence, everyone in Washington knows that Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer is under surveillance. But it’s different for his American interlocutors, especially U.S. lawmakers, whose identities are, according to NSA protocol, supposed to be, at the very least, redacted. But the standard for collecting and disseminating “intercepted communications involving U.S. lawmakers” is much less strict if it is swept up through “foreign-foreign” intercepts, for instance between a foreign ambassador and his capital. Washington, i.e. the seat of the American government, is where foreign ambassadors are supposed to meet with American officials. The Obama administration turned an ancient diplomatic convention inside out—foreign ambassadors were so dangerous that meeting them signaled betrayal of your own country.
During the long and contentious lead-up to the Iran Deal the Israeli ambassador was regularly briefing senior officials in Jerusalem, including the prime minister, about the situation, including his meetings with American lawmakers and Jewish community leaders. The Obama administration would be less interested in what the Israelis were doing than in the actions of those who actually had the ability to block the deal—namely, Senate and House members. The administration then fed this information to members of the press, who were happy to relay thinly veiled anti-Semitic conceits by accusing deal opponents of dual loyalty and being in the pay of foreign interests.
Snip.
The reason the prior abuse of the foreign-intelligence surveillance apparatus is clear only now is because the Russia campaign has illuminated it. As The New York Timesreported last month, the administration distributed the intelligence gathered on the Trump transition team widely throughout government agencies, after it had changed the rules on distributing intercepted communications. The point of distributing the information so widely was to “preserve it,” the administration and its friends in the press explained—“preserve” being a euphemism for “leak.” The Obama team seems not to have understood that in proliferating that material they have exposed themselves to risk, by creating a potential criminal trail that may expose systematic abuse of foreign-intelligence collection.
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
The question of which (if any) laws the Obama Administration broke is secondary to the bigger question of abuse of power:
Abuses of power are offenses against the public trust. They often overlap with a criminal offense, but they are not the same thing as a criminal offense. For example, a politician who accepts money in exchange for political favors commits both the crime of bribery and an impeachable offense of corruption. The jurors in the bribery case need not find that the politician breached his public trust; they need only find an intentional quid pro quo — payoff in exchange for favor. By contrast, the breach of public trust is central to the impeachment case: To remove the pol from office, there would be no need to prove the legal elements of a criminal bribery charge beyond a reasonable doubt, but it would have to be demonstrated that the politician is unfit for office. If it is a petty bribe, a prosecutor might ignore it, but the public should want to throw the bum out.
This is why a “high crime and misdemeanor” — the constitutional standard for impeachment — need not be an indictable criminal offense. It may be a chargeable crime, but it need not be one.
A famous example (though one not much remarked on during the last several years) is the second article of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon. It alleged (my italics):
Using the powers of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purpose[s] of these agencies.
The impeachment allegation went on to describe how Nixon had, among other things, directed the FBI, CIA, and IRS to investigate innocent Americans for reasons unrelated to national security or law enforcement. For the most part, these directives were not violations of penal statutes. But they were, individually and collectively, heinous abuses of presidential power warranting impeachment.
If the new reporting is to be believed, Rice orchestrated the unmasking of communications involving the Democrats’ political rivals — the Trump campaign. Her current stress on the lawfulness of the intelligence collection is a straw man. No credible commentator is claiming (based on what we currently know) that the intelligence-collection activities of the FBI, CIA, and NSA were illegal. As I explained yesterday in my aforementioned column, the surveillance and collection operations were undertaken pursuant to statute (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) as well as to the president’s constitutional authority to collect foreign intelligence (the exercise of which authority is laid out in a longstanding executive order, EO 12,333).
Susan Rice is a crummy liar.
“Funny how no ‘unmasking’ was done for the Hillary campaign:”
CNN and a lot of the media aren’t covering the Rice story at all, but when the Associated Press, the New York Times, and others report it, many say the Trump administration is trying to divert attention from the Trump-Russia collusion story. The media present the Trump-Russia collusion story as true even though there is absolutely nothing yet to show that. They present the claim that Trump was spied on as a false story even though we have 100% proof that Trump people were listened to and that the information was leaked to the press.
Anyone who believes that Trump wasn’t specifically targeted for political reasons probably still believes that the Benghazi killings were caused by a video, that Obama had no idea the IRS was targeting political opponents, that Obama had no idea Hillary was violating the law by using a non-secure server until three years after she left, that Obama had no idea his administration was gun-running to Mexico, and that Hillary and her aides had no intent to break the law.
The media and Democrats should be absolutely ashamed that they haven’t had any concern about facts for a long time. If there is any collusion, it is between the media and Democrats to destroy Trump, no matter what the facts are.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Why is mainstream media trying to cover up the Susan Rice story?”
The New York Times, for example, didn’t feature the Rice story at all on Monday. And in the piece it did publish buried on page A16 that was hilariously titled, “Trump Tries to Deflect Russia Scrutiny, Citing ‘Crooked Scheme’ by Obama,” the paper of record shrugged off the controversy because the story came from “conservative news media outlets.”
You know, “conservative” like the impossibly down-the-middle Eli Lake of Bloomberg View or via an objective reporter like Fox’s Adam Housley.
The Washington Post also failed to feature the story in any capacity either, instead relegating it to a blog post that referred to the Rice story as a “fake scandal.” Democracy dies in darkness, as they say.
“Fake scandal” was also the way CNN anchor Chris Cuomo described the story to viewers of “New Day” on Tuesday.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.) Of course, to ask the question is to answer it:
“The media only has an interest in intrigue when it involves Republicans.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
The House Intelligence Panel wants Susan Rice to testify.
Scott Adams: “We don’t know all the facts yet, but we do know that Trump’s claim of being “wiretapped” by Obama is starting to look dangerously close to something similar to the truth. CNN did not see that coming, and it would be awkward to walk-back all of their mocking. So they just sort of ignored it.”
Tags:2016 Presidential Race, CNN, Crime, Democrats, Donald Trump, Iran, Israel, Media Watch, New York Times, NSA, Obama Scandals, Richard M. Nixon, Susan Rice, Washington Post
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Media Watch | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 5th, 2017
After months of pushing the “Trump is a Putin stooge” fantasy, Democrats and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) have seen it blown up in their faces as an “Obama was using the national security apparatus to spy on his political opponents” scandal.
Andrew McCarthy on the scale of the scandal:
In general, it is the FBI that conducts investigations that bear on American citizens suspected of committing crimes or of acting as agents of foreign powers. In the matter of alleged Russian meddling, the investigative camp also includes the CIA and the NSA. All three agencies conducted a probe and issued a joint report in January. That was after Obama, despite having previously acknowledged that the Russian activity was inconsequential, suddenly made a great show of ordering an inquiry and issuing sanctions. Consequently, if unmasking was relevant to the Russia investigation, it would have been done by those three agencies. And if it had been critical to know the identities of Americans caught up in other foreign intelligence efforts, the agencies that collect the information and conduct investigations would have unmasked it. Because they are the agencies that collect and refine intelligence “products” for the rest of the “intelligence community,” they are responsible for any unmasking; and they do it under “minimization” standards that FBI Director James Comey, in recent congressional testimony, described as “obsessive” in their determination to protect the identities and privacy of Americans. Understand: There would have been no intelligence need for Susan Rice to ask for identities to be unmasked. If there had been a real need to reveal the identities — an intelligence need based on American interests — the unmasking would have been done by the investigating agencies. The national-security adviser is not an investigator. She is a White House staffer. The president’s staff is a consumer of intelligence, not a generator or collector of it. If Susan Rice was unmasking Americans, it was not to fulfill an intelligence need based on American interests; it was to fulfill a political desire based on Democratic-party interests.
Snip.
It appears very likely that Susan Rice was involved in the unmasking of Michael Flynn. Was she also monitoring the FBI’s investigation? Was she involved in the administration’s consideration of (bogus) criminal charges against Flynn? With the subsequent decision to have the FBI interrogate Flynn (or “grill” him, as the Times put it)? The second point is that, while not a pillar of rectitude, Ms. Rice is not an idiot. Besides being shrewd, she was a highly involved, highly informed consumer of intelligence, and a key Obama political collaborator. Unlike the casual reader, she would have known who the Trump-team players were without needing to have their identities unmasked. Do you really think her purpose in demanding that names be revealed was to enhance her understanding of intelligence about the activities and intentions of foreign targets? Seriously? I’m betting it was so that others down the dissemination chain could see the names of Trump associates — names the investigating agencies that originally collected the information had determined not to unmask.
Also this:
In publishing the illegally leaked classified information about former national-security adviser Michael Flynn’s communications with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the New York Times informs us that “Obama advisers” and “Obama officials” were up to their eyeballs in the investigation.
Susan Rice has conspicuously not denied unmasking Trump associates.
McCarthy also notes that Obama had the rules on unmasking changed late in his presidency so more people could be unmasked. How convenient.
It doesn’t help her cause that Rice’s own story has changed. “Back then Rice responded to allegations that the Obama administration was surveilling members of Trump’s camp for strategic gain by pleading ignorance. Hedging her bets after new reports from Bloomberg and the Daily Caller, Rice now says that any unmasking of identities was ‘absolutely not for any political purposes, to spy, to expose or anything.'”
The mainstream media, of course, is doing its lockstep best to avoid or downplay the scandal. “Notice they’re not calling it fake news. They’re not calling it untrue. They’re not labeling it made-up. They’re not saying that it isn’t accurate. They’re saying it’s unimportant. And, strictly speaking, their objectives being to get rid of Donald Trump, it is unimportant, and it is not helpful, and it is not useful.”
Also amazing is the speed with which the scandal has gone from “fake” to “real but not a scandal” among Obama’s defenders. “One minute it’s ridiculous to think that the Obama administration was doing surveillance on the Trump campaign. The next minute the Obama administration was doing the right thing if it did surveillance on the Trump campaign.”
The scandal also reminds us, yet again, of the incestuous relationship between the Democratic Party and the media, who are as intertwined as the Habsburgs and the Buorbons.
The scandal reminds us that former ABC news producer Ian Cameron is married to Rice, and yet was still working at ABC well into the Obama Administration.
Another thing the scandal reminded us was that CNN’s Jim Sciutto used to work for the Obama Administration. CNN being the network that hired Valerie Jarrett’s daughter to report on Trump.
Still another thing the scandal reminded us, yet again, that Maggie Haberman of the New York Times is a Clinton shill.
Trump won the presidency partially because he promised to “drain the swamp.” The unmasking scandal displays, yet again, just how badly the Democrat Media Complex swamp needs to be drained.
Tags:2016 Presidential Race, Andrew McCarthy, Crime, Democrats, Donald Trump, Ian Cameron, Jim Sciutto, Maggie Haberman, Media Watch, Michael Flynn, Obama Scandals, Susan Rice
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Media Watch, ObamaCare | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 4th, 2017
This seems to be the way the world works now:
- President Trump: Tweets something crazy.
- Democrats: Look at that! Trump’s crazy! And also SuperMegaHitler controlled by Putin!
- National Review writer: Trump must stop tweeting immediately.
- World: Hey look, that totally crazy thing Trump tweeted happens to be the truth! What are the odds?
The latest example is that Obama National Security advisor Susan Rice ordered surveillance of President Trump’s transition team:
White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The pattern of Rice’s requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government’s policy on “unmasking” the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like “U.S. Person One.”
The National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was conducting the review, according to two U.S. officials who spoke with Bloomberg View on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. In February Cohen-Watnick discovered Rice’s multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities. He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel’s office, who reviewed more of Rice’s requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy.
The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations — primarily between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition, but also in some cases direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials. One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.
That’s from Eli Lake at Bloomberg, but the person who first broke the story was Mike Cernovich at Medium. He was able to break the story because folks working at Bloomberg and the New York Times revealed that both Lake and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times were sitting on the story to protect the Obama administration. “‘Real journalism’ is that Bloomberg had it and the New York Times had it but they wouldn’t run it because they don’t want to run any stories that would make Obama look bad or that will vindicate Trump. They only want to run stories that make Trump look bad so that’s why they sat on it.”
It seems that Rice ordered preparation of detailed spreadsheets “of legal phone calls involving Donald Trump and his aides when he was running for president”:
“What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals,” [former U.S. Attorney Joseph] diGenova told The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group Monday.
“The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with,” diGenova said. “In short, the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the calls.”
Other official sources with direct knowledge and who requested anonymity confirmed to TheDCNF diGenova’s description of surveillance reports Rice ordered one year before the 2016 presidential election.
Also on Monday, Fox News and Bloomberg News, citing multiple sources reported that Rice had requested the intelligence information that was produced in a highly organized operation. Fox said the unmasked names of Trump aides were given to officials at the National Security Council (NSC), the Department of Defense, James Clapper, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, and John Brennan, Obama’s CIA Director.
Joining Rice in the alleged White House operations was her deputy Ben Rhodes, according to Fox.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit. Also Instapundit at Instapundit. “I’ll leave both up, because it’s that big a story.”)
So the Obama Administration was using the National Security state to illegally gather information on Trump and his associated a year before the election. A single break-in by Nixon’s bumbling plumbers are pathetically small potatoes by comparison.
What are the odds that Rice just out of the blue decided to start gathering surveillance information on Trump and his associates rather than being told to by Obama?
None of this should come as any surprise, since the Obama Administration has been caught conducting illegal domestic surveillance, including targeting Fox News reporter James Rosen, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Associated Press, to say nothing of their hacking Sharyl Attkisson’s computer.
And add the previously revealed Trump wiretapping as the cherry on top of the “using the national security apparatus to surveil domestic political enemies” cake.
Given all this, why on earth would President Trump stop tweeting? His hit rate seems higher than the Oracle at Delphi…
Tags:Ben Rhodes, CIA, Crime, Democrats, Donald Trump, Eli Lake, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, James Rosen, Joseph diGenova, Media Watch, Mike Cernovich, NSA, Obama, Obama Administration, Obama Scandals, Sharyl Attkisson, Susan Rice, Twitter
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Media Watch, Obama Scandals | No Comments »
Friday, March 24th, 2017
This week I started a new job and started working on my taxes, so expect scattered patches of Light Blogging for the next few weeks…
“Everyone in Washington hates Donald Trump’s new budget. So it must have something going for it. This is a budget plan that will surgically remove trillions of dollars of wasteful spending from the obese $3.9 trillion federal budget. Many agencies will have to live with cuts of 5, 10 and 30 percent, while other outdated, duplicative or unproductive programs will go to the graveyard.”
Neil Gorsuch appears to be headed toward confirmation to the Supreme Court.
The Obama Administrations was carrying out surveillance of the Trump transition team:
“First, I recently confirmed that on numerous occasions, the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition. Second, details about U.S. persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value, were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting. Third, I have confirmed that additional names of Trump transition team members were unmasked. Fourth and finally, I want to be clear, none of this surveillance was related to Russia or the investigation of Russian activities or of the Trump team.”
One wonders if his data collection was as “incidentally” as the IRS auditing conservatives…
Borepatch has a handy summary of the global warming controversy, with just enough technical details to provide a nice overview.
London: “You are entering a Sharia controlled zone. Islamic rules enforced.” Also this: “According to the Association of Chief Police Officers, every year 17,000 Muslim women in Britain become victims of forced marriages, are raped by their husbands or subjected to female genital mutilation.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Italians used to look to Europe as a kind of savior: the Italian state was corrupt and inept, but Brussels would set a higher standard, and by loyal support for the EU, Italy could rise above its own problems. These days, the EU looks more like an anchor than a lifejacket.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Philadelphia’s Democratic District Attorney Seth Williams indicted on corruption and bribery charges. Oh, he also allegedly stole more than $20,000 from his own mother’s Social Security and pension funds. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he appointed a general counsel to the NLRB after the Senate refused to confirm him.” Notable: 6-2 Supreme Court decision. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“I would argue that Pakistan’s history teaches at least three lessons. The first: Elections alone do not produce democracy. The second: Majority rule without minority rights leads to egregious illiberalism. Third: A state committed to the pursuit of religious ‘purity’ will always find some of its subjects in need of ‘cleansing.’ Down that path despotism lies.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Denmark doesn’t want to become Sweden.
The shape of battles to come.
Kurt Schlichter imagines how a second Korean War would unfold. Not so hot for the norks…
He came to America illegally with a dream…of raping a two year old. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
I’m still not tired of all the winning.
“Molecule kills elderly cells, reduces signs of aging in mice.” Faster please.
Texas to eliminate legal bribery in Brown County.
Karl Rehn on beyond the 1%. “93% of the 3.2 million adult gun owners in Texas likely do not train. 4% of them take the mandatory new permit course, at best 3% of them take some kind of NRA course, and only 1%, less than 30K, take any kind of post-CHL level course or shoot any kind of match, including all kinds of pistol, NRA high power, and all the shotgun sports.”
Dwight blogged about a case where a convenience store robber was found not guilty of aggravated assault because he was using an Airsoft pellet gun in the robbery. Evidently the reason for the verdict was the DA’s decision not to seek a lesser charge. It seems that the possibility of convicting on lesser charges is subject to instructions from the judge. The question that occurs to me: Is a criminal jury empowered to find a defendant guilty of one or more lesser charges if they were given no instructions regarding lesser charges from the judge?
London jihad-attack tweet:
Scott Adams describes how Bloomberg assembled a hit piece on him by taking things out of context, all because he was predicting a Trump victory in 2016. Remember: Every MSM hit piece on a conservative you see is constructed and slanted in similar ways.
Exit fat Barbie.
Statistical analysis of writer’s work. Elmore Leonard hates exclamation points, but James Joyce loves them…
Tags:Amy Schumer, Austin, Border Controls, Brown County, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Denmark, Global Warming, Guns, Jihad, Karl Rehn, Kurt Schlichter, London, Media Watch, Military, North Korea, Obama Scandals, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Scott Adams, Seth Williams, Supreme Court, Texas, UK
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Obama Scandals, Supreme Court, Texas | 1 Comment »
Monday, March 6th, 2017
The latest controversy began, as so many seem to, with a President Trump tweet:
My first thought was “Eh, Trump’s talking out his ass.” Which happens from time to time.
But then further reports came in, and the Obama Administration talking points started to take the form of “Ah, well, actually, here, have this carefully worded denial that dances around the main issue.”
Here’s Andrew McCarthy in National Review (hardly the most Trump-friendly outlet on the right) dissecting the non-denial denials about what actually happened:
To summarize, reporting indicates that, prior to June 2016, the Obama Justice Department and FBI considered a criminal investigation of Trump associates, and perhaps Trump himself, based on concerns about connections to Russian financial institutions. Preliminary poking around indicated that there was nothing criminal involved. Rather than shut the case down, though, the Obama Justice Department converted it into a national-security investigation under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA allows the government, if it gets court permission, to conduct electronic surveillance (which could include wiretapping, monitoring of e-mail, and the like) against those it alleges are “agents of a foreign power.” FISA applications and the evidence garnered from them are classified – i.e., we would not know about any of this unless someone had leaked classified information to the media, a felony.
In June, the Obama Justice Department submitted an application that apparently “named” Trump in addition to some of his associates. As I have stressed, it is unclear whether “named” in this context indicates that Trump himself was cited as a person the Justice Department was alleging was a Russian agent whom it wanted to surveil. It could instead mean that Trump’s name was merely mentioned in an application that sought to conduct surveillance on other alleged Russian agents. President Trump’s tweets on Saturday claimed that “President Obama . . . tapp[ed] my phones[,]” which makes it more likely that Trump was targeted for surveillance, rather than merely mentioned in the application.
In any event, the FISA court reportedly turned down the Obama Justice Department’s request, which is notable: The FISA court is notoriously solicitous of government requests to conduct national-security surveillance (although, as I’ve noted over the years, the claim by many that it is a rubber-stamp is overblown).
Not taking no for an answer, the Obama Justice Department evidently returned to the FISA court in October 2016, the critical final weeks of the presidential campaign. This time, the Justice Department submitted a narrowly tailored application that did not mention Trump. The court apparently granted it, authorizing surveillance of some Trump associates. It is unknown whether that surveillance is still underway, but the New York Times has identified – again, based on illegal leaks of classified information – at least three of its targets: Paul Manafort (the former Trump campaign chairman who was ousted in August), and two others whose connection to the Trump campaign was loose at best, Manafort’s former political-consulting business partner Roger Stone, and investor Carter Page. The Times report (from mid-January) includes a lot of heavy breathing about potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia; but it ultimately concedes that the government’s FISA investigation may have nothing to do with Trump, the campaign, or alleged Russian efforts to interfere in the U.S. election by hacking e-mail accounts.
Trump’s tweets on Saturday prompted some interesting “denials” from the Obama camp. These can be summarized in the statement put out by Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis:
A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice. As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.
This seems disingenuous on several levels.
First, as Obama officials well know, under the FISA process, it is technically the FISA court that “orders” surveillance. And by statute, it is the Justice Department, not the White House, that represents the government in proceedings before the FISA court. So, the issue is not whether Obama or some member of his White House staff “ordered” surveillance of Trump and his associates. The issues are (a) whether the Obama Justice Department sought such surveillance authorization from the FISA court, and (b) whether, if the Justice Department did that, the White House was aware of or complicit in the decision to do so. Personally, given the explosive and controversial nature of the surveillance request we are talking about – an application to wiretap the presidential candidate of the opposition party, and some of his associates, during the heat of the presidential campaign, based on the allegation that the candidate and his associates were acting as Russian agents – it seems to me that there is less than zero chance that could have happened without consultation between the Justice Department and the White House.
Second, the business about never ordering surveillance against American citizens is nonsense. Obama had American citizens killed in drone operations. Obviously, that was not done in the U.S. or through the FISA process; it was done overseas, under the president’s commander-in-chief and statutory authority during wartime. But the notion that Obama would never have an American subject to surveillance is absurd.
Third, that brings us to a related point: FISA national-security investigations are not like criminal investigations. They are more like covert intelligence operations – which presidents personally sign off on. The intention is not to build a criminal case; it is to gather information about what foreign powers are up, particularly on U.S. soil. One of the points in FISA proceedings’ being classified is that they remain secret – the idea is not to prejudice an American citizen with publication of the fact that he has been subjected to surveillance even though he is not alleged to have engaged in criminal wrongdoing.
Snip.
To be clear, there does not seem to be any evidence, at least that I know of, to suggest that any surveillance or requests to conduct surveillance against then-candidate Donald Trump was done outside the FISA process.
Nevertheless, whether done inside or outside the FISA process, it would be a scandal of Watergate dimension if a presidential administration sought to conduct, or did conduct, national-security surveillance against the presidential candidate of the opposition party. Unless there was some powerful evidence that the candidate was actually acting as an agent of a foreign power, such activity would amount to a pretextual use of national-security power for political purposes. That is the kind of abuse that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation in lieu of impeachment.
Moreover, it cannot be glossed over that, at the very time it appears the Obama Justice Department was seeking to surveil Trump and/or his associates on the pretext that they were Russian agents, the Obama Justice Department was also actively undermining and ultimately closing without charges the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton despite significant evidence of felony misconduct that threatened national security.
This appears to be extraordinary, politically motivated abuse of presidential power.
So as far as I can tell:
- The Obama Administration attempted to conduct wireless wiretapping involving Donald Trump, and was rejected by the FISA court,
- The Obama Administration sought, and was granted, a FISA application to conduct wireless wiretapping involving Donald Trump associates in the final month of a heated Presidential campaign, and
- This information was illegally leaked to the press.
That’s not a nothingburger.
The question at this point is not “Was a felony committed?”, it’s “How bad a felony was committed, who ordered it, and for what reason?”
More extensive discussing of the legal issues involved here.
Tags:Democrats, Donald Trump, FISA, NSA, Obama, Obama Scandals, Obamagate, wiretapping
Posted in Democrats, Obama Scandals | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 20th, 2017
Welcome to Inauguration Day, when Donald J. Trump is sworn in as the Forty-Fifth President of the United States of America! Celebrate the momentous day with a Friday LinkSwarm.
Trump plans to hit the ground running with a number of executive actions his very first day on the job. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Trump started planning his presidential run right after Romney lost. In fact, Trump registered his “Make America Great Again” slogan six days after Romney’s defeat. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Clinton Family Friend: “Yes, I will be at the review stand at the inauguration and I am going to kill President-elect Trump… what are you gonna do about it Secret Service?” Secret Service: “Enjoy these complimentary handcuffs.”
Much of the hatred against Trump is pure class bigotry:
I don’t think reasonable differences of opinion on the one hand, and the ordinary hypocrisy of partisan politics on the other, explain the extraordinarily stridency, the venom, and the hatred being flung at the incoming administration by its enemies. There may be many factors involved, to be sure, but I’d like to suggest that one factor in particular plays a massive role here.
To be precise, I think a lot of what we’re seeing is the product of class bigotry.
Snip.
Until last year, if you wanted to experience the class bigotry that’s so common among the affluent classes in today’s America, you pretty much had to be a member of those affluent classes, or at least good enough at passing to be present at the social events where their bigotry saw free play. Since Donald Trump broke out of the Republican pack early last year, though, that hindrance has gone by the boards. Those who want to observe American class bigotry at its choicest need only listen to what a great many of the public voices of the well-to-do are saying about the people who votes and enthusiasm have sent Trump to the White House.
You see, that’s a massive part of the reason a Trump presidency is so unacceptable to so many affluent Americans: his candidacy, unlike those of all his rivals, was primarily backed by “those people.”
Snip.
This isn’t just because so large a fraction of working class voters generally backed Trump; it’s also because Trump saw this from the beginning, and aimed his campaign squarely at the working class vote. His signature red ball cap was part of that—can you imagine Hillary Clinton wearing so proletarian a garment without absurdity?—but, as I pointed out a year ago, so was his deliberate strategy of saying (and tweeting) things that would get the liberal punditocracy to denounce him. The tones of sneering contempt and condescension they directed at him were all too familiar to his working class audiences, who have been treated to the same tones unceasingly by their soi-disant betters for decades now.
Much of the pushback against Trump’s impending presidency, in turn, is heavily larded with that same sneering contempt and condescension—the unending claims, for example, that the only reason people could possibly have chosen to vote for Trump was because they were racist misogynistic morons, and the like. (These days, terms such as “racist” and “misogynistic,” in the mouths of the affluent, are as often as not class-based insults rather than objective descriptions of attitudes.) The question I’d like to raise at this point, though, is why the affluent don’t seem to be able to bring themselves to come right out and denounce Trump as the candidate of the filthy rabble. Why must they borrow the rhetoric of identity politics and twist it (and themselves) into pretzel shapes instead?
Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
“In donated shoes and suit, a Trump supporter comes to Washington.”
Follow-up:
How ObamaCare helped destroy Medicare.
Physicians across the country have been firing Medicare patients; and according to a late 2015 study from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 21% of physicians are not taking new Medicare patients.
Much of this trend is based on stiff penalties and financial disincentives from the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and 2015’s Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization (MACRA) Act.
MACRA in particular is completely mystifying.
The law created a whopping 2,400 pages of regulations that Medicare physicians are expected to know and follow.
Many of the rules are debilitating.
For instance, MACRA changed how physicians can be reimbursed for their Medicare patients by establishing a bizarre set of standards to determine if a physician is providing “value”.
As an example, if a patient ends up in the emergency room, his or her physician can incur a steep penalty.
This explains why my step-dad was dropped by his doctor.
The healthcare system has been broken to the point that physicians now have a greater incentive to fire their Medicare patients than to treat them.
City journal has an extensive profile of George Soros.
Soros’s global reach and influence far outstrip those of the Koch brothers or other liberal bogeymen—and that underlying it all is a vision both dystopian and opportunistic. “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order,” Soros has declared, “is the United States.” Ergo, that constitutional republic must be weakened and its allies degraded. The Sorosian world order—one of open borders and global governance, antithetical to the ideals and experience of the West—could then assume command.
Snip.
n the United States, Soros bankrolls a broad range of political and cultural causes. One is to destabilize the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. In 2015, he dedicated $650,000 for the purpose of shaping Pope Francis’s U.S. visit, using left-leaning Catholic groups to promote gay marriage, abortion, and physician-assisted suicide. Leading the effort was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta, a self-professed Catholic. Bill Donohue, outspoken president of the Catholic League, vainly called for Podesta’s dismissal. “He is fomenting revolution in the Catholic Church, creating mutiny and is totally unethical,” Donohue said. “He is the front man for George Soros to create a host of phony anti-Catholic groups. These are not just bad comments, as some have suggested. These words are orchestrated, calculated and designed to create fissures in the Catholic Church.”
Another Soros favorite is Black Lives Matter, the radical protest group dedicated to the proposition that police are inherently racist. Working the streets with incendiary rhetoric, at odds with the truth about black-on-black crime, BLM has helped foster “depolicing,” as Heather Mac Donald describes it, in high-crime urban areas. In 2015, after days of rioting in Baltimore in response to the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, an Open Society Foundations memo excitedly commented that “recent events offer a unique opportunity to accelerate the dismantling of structural inequality generated and maintained by local law enforcement and to engage residents who have historically been disenfranchised in Baltimore City in shaping and monitoring reform.” Three straight acquittals of police officers involved in the matter left the prosecution’s case in shreds but made no difference to the Open Society Foundations. It has donated at least $650,000 to Black Lives Matter and pledged more assistance to antipolice factions across the country. These activities prompted the father of one of the Dallas police officers killed during a Black Lives Matter protest to sue Soros (along with other individuals and groups) for inspiring a “war on police.”
(Hat tip: John Tierney at Instapundit.)
I always thought George Soros was running Black Lives Matter, and now here’s some proof: “BLM leader lives in home owned by Soros’ Open Society board member.”
Don’t look now, but the Clinton/Sanders rift is still roiling the Democratic Party. Sadly, neither side seems to be willing to give up on Social Justice Warrior victimhood identity politics. (Hat tip: Hot Air, which notes “Democrats have to come to grips with the fact that they stopped speaking for most Americans over the past eight years, and started lecturing at Americans instead. The party got wrapped up in the progressive-academic social-justice agenda to the point that the party made diversity into an obsession at the expense of the real economic issues facing voters outside of the coastal enclaves and college campuses.”)
One college Democrat has had enough:
A National Councilman for the College Democrats of America is jumping ship and considering joining the Republican Party just before President-elect Trump takes the oath of office.
Michael J. Hout, a junior at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, told Campus Reform that he believes the contemporary Democratic Party is no longer the best place for an ideological moderate like himself, saying the Party is pivoting towards more extremist rhetoric and appealing more to those who often do not even consider themselves Democrats, such as socialists and independents.
Snip.
“This strategy of catering to the whims of those for whom identity politics matters more than anything else, and of allowing for even anti-white, anti-male rhetoric to find a home within the party, is a large part of its untenable strategy moving forward,” Hout explained, predicting that “it will continue to cause Democrats to lose, time and time again.”
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Former California Democratic Party chair argues that Democrats should move their headquarters to Detroit to reconnect with middle class voters. I agree, but for a different reason: So they can be forced to see the results of their handiwork firsthand every day.
A glimmering of a clue: “U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III, breaking ranks with other Democrats who are trashing President-elect Donald Trump and boycotting his inaugural, is imploring his party’s rank and file to figure out why middle American voters went Republican in November….’Folks, we lost their trust and being mortified and mystified about their vote doesn’t bring it back.'” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Tolerant left gets another Milo speech cancelled.
Ignore the shame mob and they’ve got nothing else to throw at you:
While [Steve] Harvey tries to use his celebrity for something selfless and useful and while the Talladega College marching band gets the world stage to show off the results of its hard work and school spirit, think of their detractors as the latter sit behind their cell phones and sling names like “coon” and “Uncle Tom”[i] in between posting their twerking and ghetto fight videos.
Ouch! (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Joe Bob Briggs takes aim at the “angry white male” concept.
Numero Three-o: Why is anger as a voting incentive limited to white males? Don’t black men get angry? When Louis Farrakhan holds a rally, why doesn’t Yahoo News say “Angry Black Men Gather in Chicago”? Why aren’t there any Angry Latino Men or Angry Chinese Men?
Numero Four-o: More specifically, how do you explain the fact that the Angry White Men who voted for Trump in 2016 are the same white men who voted for Obama in 2008? When they vote for Obama they’re not angry, but when they vote for Trump it can only be because they’re enraged hicks? Gogebic County in Michigan is 92 percent white and hadn’t voted for a Republican since 1972—until this election. The counties in southwestern Wisconsin, all heavily Democratic, went for Trump after a strong Obama vote in 2008 and 2012. Eastern Iowa, Democratic since 1988, went for Trump. Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, which is frequently used as the very definition of “working-class,” went for Republicans for the first time since 1988. Why are all these people classified as “angry” now, but in 2008, when they were angry at George Bush, they were just “voting for change”? Could it be, just perhaps, maybe, they feel betrayed by the Democratic Party? If we’re gonna call them angry, let’s define what they’re angry about.
Then again, fake outrage over non-issues is the stock in trade of the center-left.
Four reasons why nobody trusts the media. Including that nothingburger of a New York Times hit piece on Rick Perry that relied on no facts whatsoever.
For all that CNN flack global warming, they certainly don’t act like they believe it. In addition from moving CNN headquarters from Atlanta to New York City, “Time Warner, the company that owns CNN, just invested in SEVEN new buildings located in Hudson Yards, a part of Manhattan just a block or two away from the water. An area that, according to its own CNN, will soon be underwater, and therefore utterly and completely worthless.”
Speaking of CNN, they just hired Valerie Jarrett’s daughter to report on Trump’s Justice Department. “Valerie Jarrett’s daughter quietly joined CNN in September as a reporter in the network’s Washington bureau. She came to CNN with no experience in journalism.” Evidence suggests CNN has naked contempt for both objectivity and those not in the anointed liberal overclass. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“The primary aim of official propaganda is to generate an “official narrative” that can be mindlessly repeated by the ruling classes and those who support and identify with them. This official narrative does not have to make sense, or to stand up to any sort of serious scrutiny. Its factualness is not the point. The point is to draw a Maginot line, a defensive ideological boundary, between “the truth” as defined by the ruling classes and any other “truth” that contradicts their narrative.”
Post-Brexit, an economic boom in the UK. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
UK PM Theresa May aims at a “hard Brexit.” Andrew Stuttaford (and I) wonder why she isn’t going for the ‘Norway option’ of leaving the EU but staying in the European Economic Area.
Marine Le Pen cues up Frexit. “The euro has not been used as a currency, but as a weapon—a knife stuck in the ribs of a country to force it to go where the people don’t want to go.” I disagree with Walter Russel Mead: The EU, as currently constituted, is incapable of being reformed. Reform is impossible without scraping the European Commission, which is impossible without scraping Maastricht, which would scrap the EU. Better to start again from scratch or go back to just the common market.
Jihadwatch’s Robert Spencer had a minor piece at The Hill on why Lindsay Lohan’s (rumored) conversion to Islam was a bad idea. I wasn’t even going to link it. The The Hill took it down due to political pressure. Now I have to.
As one of his last acts, Obama commutes the sentence of convicted Puerto Rican terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera.
And it’s not just terrorists: Obama commutes the sentences of four South Texas druglords:
Four family members who ran one of the largest cartel smuggling operations in south Texas had their life in prison sentences commuted and will likely be returning to this border city from where they ran their criminal empire. One of the main destinations that the criminal organizations delivered drugs to was Chicago, Illinois.
This week, outgoing President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 209 convicted criminals and pardoned 64 others. The majority of the convictions were from drug trafficking or production offenses.
Four of those convicted criminals who had been sentenced to life in prison will be released by May 17. They ran a criminal organization made up of close to 80 men and women who worked with Mexico’s Gulf Cartel to move between 100,000 to almost 750,000 pounds of marijuana into the U.S. during a 10-year period. The drugs were moved into Houston and then distributed to Atlanta, Chicago, and other major metropolitan areas.
According to court records obtained by Breitbart Texas, brothers Cesar Moreno Sr., Eduardo Moreno, Lazaro Moreno, and Luis Moreno along with other relatives and friends had been at the helm of a large-scale drug distribution operation based out of the border city of Roma, Texas.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
A tweet:
Brian Krebs deduces the author of the Mirai worm.
Seattle kills bikeshare program. If it can’t make it in Seattle…
3D TV is dead again. Good. 3D always struck me as an annoying gimmick, even in IMAX.
“Woman stabbed man 9 times after he wouldn’t commit to relationship.” I’m pretty sure the guy made the right call there… (Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
Man gets head start on the epic douchebag Olympics. “28-year-old James Allen is facing a charge of driving while intoxicated. [He] drove a $385,000 Ferrari off a bridge in Westlake, went airborne for 40 feet and crashed into the woods while speeding on Friday night.” (Hat tip: Iowahawk’s Twitter feed.)
Oakland Raiders file papers to move to Las Vegas.
“It’s come to my attention that some of you Hollywood types are calling yourselves ‘the Resistance’. Stop. Now.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Graduate student sues after being kicked out of school for not supporting left-wing causes.
Scott Adams being unable to comment on his own blog due to a software bug has to be the most Dilbert thing ever…
Tags:2016 Presidential Race, Andrew Stuttaford, Austin, Brexit, Brian Krebs, California, CNN, Crime, Democrats, DeRay Mckesson, Detroit, Donald Trump, EU, European Economic Area, Foreign Policy, George Soros, Hollywood, Internet, Iowa, James Allen (Austin), Jihad, Joe Bob Briggs, Joseph P. Kennedy III, Las Vegas, Laura Jarrett, Lindsay Lohan, LinkSwarm, Marine Le Pen, Media Watch, Medicare, Michigan, Milo Yiannopoulos, Mirai worm, New York Times, Oakland, Oakland Raiders, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Oscar Lopez Rivera, Pennsylvania, Rick Perry, Rio Grande Valley, Robert Spencer, Roma (Texas), Scott Adams, Seattle, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Theresa May, Trump Cabinet, TV, Valerie Jarrett, Wisconsin
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Jihad, Media Watch, ObamaCare, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 6th, 2017
The James Quintero interview on Texas municipal pensions generated a lot of interest, including a piece on Zero Hedge. I mention it here because, being Zero Hedge, the firehose nudged it to page 2 before I could even take a look at it.
It turns out that the FBI never examined the “hacked” DNC servers”. Indeed, the DNC denied the FBI permission to examine the server. “The bureau tells Buzzfeed News that the Democrats’ organization reportedly ‘rebuffed’ multiple requests for physical access to the hacked servers, forcing investigators to depend on the findings of the third-party security firm CrowdStrike (which the DNC contacted after the hack).” (“Your honor, instead of the FBI crime lab testing the alleged cocaine sample, we had Morty’s Fly-By-Night Chemical Analysis and Pet Grooming Company do the analysis. I’m sure you’ll find that’s good enough…”) So how can FBI actually tell the Russians hacked them? Did they even try to get a warrant for the DNC servers? Since that’s one of the first things you would do if you really thought the Russians were behind the hack, and the hack had (by Obama Administration testimony) national security implications. This suggests that the DNC is: A.) Lying about Russian involvement, or B.) Is telling the truth about it, but has material far more illegal and/or damaging than what has already been released. Why should we give more credence to allegations that the FBI hasn’t even taken the most basic steps of criminal investigation to prove?
President-elect Donald Trump has told the Department of Homeland Security to start getting ready to build the border wall. Remember, the construction of 700 miles of border wall is already authorized by the Secure Fence Act of 2006. All it takes is Presidential will to have work started on it. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“For Me, Obamacare Means Paying All Your Own Bills And Never Getting The Doctor You Need.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
A look back at all those Obama Administration scandals that Valerie Jarrett can’t remember. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Liberal strategy for 2016 election: “1) Make sure the GOP nominates Trump 2) ??? 3) Victory!”
“John Podesta’s password was ‘password.'” What a tragedy it is that we kept the Democratic Party’s best and brightest out of the White House… (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
Reporters who colluded with the Clinton campaign? Not only did they not get fired, some got better jobs. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“If you thought 2016 was packed full of liberal foolishness, just wait until you get a load of 2017. As 2016 ends, progressives enter the new year terrified that Donald Trump will continue to run circles around them, and their epic meltdown is only going to get more epically meltdownier. They’ve been shrill, stupid, and annoying for the last two months, but brace yourself for the next 12. Fear is going to make them go nuts – not the fear that Trump will be a failure, but the gut-wrenching, mind-numbing fear that Donald Trump will be a success.”
Which is why Democrats are still in denial. “Republicans control the House, the Senate, 34 governor’s mansions, and 4,100 seats in state legislatures. But Democrats act like they run Washington.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Global warming critic at Georgia Tech resigns tenured position because “growing disenchantment with universities, the academic field of climate science and scientists.”
The reward system that is in place for university faculty members is becoming increasingly counterproductive to actually educating students to be able to think and cope in the real world, and in expanding the frontiers of knowledge in a meaningful way (at least in certain fields that are publicly relevant such as climate change).
Snip.
A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science. Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc.
How young scientists are to navigate all this is beyond me, and it often becomes a battle of scientific integrity versus career suicide (I have worked through these issues with a number of skeptical young scientists).
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Philadelphia’s new soda tax means that sometimes the price of the tax is more than the soda itself.
How the Washington Post pushed a fake “Russians hacked the power grid” story, then silently walked the whole thing back via silent edits. And the media wonder why the public no longer trusts them…
And speaking of the Washington Post being staffed with untrustworthy idiots, check out this cover plumping a “women’s rights” march:
And speaking of Fake News, the four different types of fake news.
Nothing says “delusions of grandeur” quite like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo booking 200 hotel rooms for a Hillary Clinton inauguration for theoretical supporters of his own future presidential run.
Speaking of Cuomo, he just commuted the sentence of left-wing cop killer Judith Clark. Clark participated in a Weather Underground robbery where three people, including police officers Waverly Brown and Edward O’Grady, were murdered. Maybe we should start calling him “Cop Killer Cuomo.” Evidently black lives, like that of Brown, don’t matter when they’re cops murdered by white leftwing radicals… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
This just in: Reporting on firearms still sucks.
Feminists have very little in common with the women they claim to represent: “Few feminists seem to be married with children, and comparatively few are heterosexual.” (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
Evidently Cuba is just as much a tourist paradise as it is a worker’s paradise. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Smugglers work across the Texas border to sell their addictive products. Only this time, it’s selling black market Krispy Kreme donuts from El Paso in Juarez… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
The time when James “Mad Dog” Mattis skipped dinner so a hungry soldier could eat. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Armed Texas grandma runs off would-be attacker. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Sears to sell Craftsman, close 150 stores. In other news, Sears still had stores to close.
Skynet conquers Go.
World’s largest dog. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Tags:Andrew Cuomo, Border Controls, border fence, Communism, cop killer, Cuba, Democrats, DHS, DNC, dogs, Edward O'Grady, El Paso, FBI, Guns, Juarez, Judith Clark, Krispy Kreme, Kurt Schlichter, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, Mexico, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Sears, Valerie Jarrett, Washington Post, Waverly Brown, Weather Underground
Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Guns, Media Watch, ObamaCare | No Comments »
Friday, December 23rd, 2016
I hope everyone has plans for the Christmas weekend, even if they’re only “eat as much food and watch as much football as humanly possible.”
Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
Suspect in Berlin jihad truck attack shot dead. I was going to do one of my increasingly irregular jihad updates, but Stuff and Things got in the way.
One possible benefit of a Trump presidency: a restoration of federalism:
America owes President Barack Obama an enormous debt of gratitude for showing how truly dangerous the federal government can be when our Constitution’s checks and balances start failing. With the active collusion of congressional Democrats, President Obama’s presidency has been one long series of body blows to the separation of powers that has protected our democracy since the Founding.
The results have been stark. Never has a president trampled so much on the prerogatives of Congress. Obama’s executive orders, suspending parts of our immigration laws and even his own prized Obamacare, have been sheer usurpations, going far beyond even the breathtaking delegations of legislative authority granted by the brief Democratic supermajority in Congress in 2009–10.
Sad to say, Obama’s trampling on the prerogatives of state governments has been even more unprecedented, and potentially far more damaging. His agencies’ “Dear Colleague” letters, addressing such sensitive issues as local school districts’ bathroom policies and the standards by which institutions of higher education review claims of sexual assault, have wrested away the core functions of state leaders, local boards, and even administrators.
The separation of state and federal authority is one of the most essential principles of our Constitution. It explains the Constitution’s structural allocation of powers as much as the division between legislative, executive, and judicial functions. If we lose the separate and independent existence of state governments, we will lose our Constitution.
And Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is walking point on the issue.
Trump’s election marks the overthrow of the media: “This election didn’t merely expose the failure of six months of campaigning by the Democratic Party. This election exposed the failure of SIX DECADES of leftist propaganda to have any cumulative effect at all.”
Ten ways Obama broke the American system. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Outside California, Trump outdistanced Hillary by 1.41 million votes, 47.8% to 46.6%. As I have noted before, Hillary’s support was so geographically narrow that she won a popular vote majority in only 13 states (plus DC), the fewest of any major-party candidate since Bob Dole.”
Remember how Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison looked like a shoe-in for DNC head after Howard Dean withdraw from the race? Yeah, not so much. Although some of the dirt (like his ties to Louis Farrakhan) are decades old, there’s enough of it that lots of Democrats are getting cold feet about his candidacy:
Despite the support of the first couple of populist progressivism — Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — the controversy has emboldened the opposition: Last week, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, a buddy of President Barack Obama (who called him “wicked smart” last week), jumped into the race. The effort to boost Perez, paradoxically and to Ellison’s irritation, is led by operatives allied with the country’s first black president, who view the Minnesotan as too tied to the identity politics they think cost Hillary Clinton the election.
“We like Keith,” one longtime Obama political ally, who was pushing Perez, told me in November. “But is he really the guy we need right now when we are trying to get all of those disaffected white working-class people to rally around our message of economic equality?”
Texas officially removes Planned Parenthood from Medicaid.
“Feminism Is a Synonym for ‘Shut Up.’
A major goal of feminism is to silence opposition. Because their ideology cannot withstand informed and articulate criticism, feminists therefore requires a dishonest vocabulary of jargon that functions to disqualify and discredit their opponents. A man expressing disagreement with a feminist will invariably be accused of “sexism” or “misogyny,” and if he persists in his criticism, he will be accused of “harassment.” What these terms actually mean — other than as pejorative labels, deployed to smear the movement’s enemies — is seldom examined. It is quite often the case that men who ostensibly support feminism engage in abusive behavior toward women (e.g., Jian Ghomeshi), whereas men who oppose the movement are branded “misogynists” for no other reason than their willingness to state their criticism honestly and openly.
“New York State Employee Demands Death For Trump Supporters, Still Employed.” Bonus: Openly calling for Republican women to be raped and cheering the death of American soldiers. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
5 Arrested After Egyptian Police Bust Staged Photo Shoot Of “Wounded Aleppo Children”.
Funny how “hate crime” hoaxes are the fake news the media wants to keep reporting:
n all four cases, there were reasons for the media to doubt the stories. In all four cases, the narrative of white and/or conservative and/or Trump-supporting and/or bigoted “people of privilege” persecuted and/or harassed and/or discriminated against some variation of minority. In all four cases, the hoax was reported before confirmed and later it was revealed by law enforcement or conservative media that we had all been duped.
Here’s the core of the problem. Mainstream media has a narrative agenda that has failed miserably. They did everything they could to hand the White House and Senate to the Democrats. In the past, that’s all that needed to happen; if the media united behind a cause, they could bend the will of the people. In the case of the 2016 election, their agenda backfired, so they now have two choices. They could learn their lessons and return to a bygone day when reporters actually reported and commentators made absolutely certain their perspectives would not be confused with news.
Predictably, mainstream media has chosen option two. They’re doubling down. The lesson they think they learned from their mistake is that they can’t allow a sliver of doubt to creep in. They actually think they were too easy on Donald Trump. They think they didn’t push enough of their narrative on Senate races. They think they now need to promote their agenda in full force, working overtime if necessary.
The media lies again.
Baby Boomers increasingly having their Social Security garnished to cover their student loans.
Snow falls in the Saraha.
Scott Adams on cognatize blindspots and worst-case-scenarios on global warming.
Obama to world: (10,000 word speech all about him.) World: (Ignores him). President Elect Trump: “Hey! Don’t do that! World: “Yes, Mr. Trump.” (Hat Tip: Chuck DeVore on Twitter.)
Of course, the entire issue is a final attempt for Obama to stick it to Benjamin Netanyahu out of personal vindictiveness, never mind how badly it might affect U.S. and Israel foreign policy. Because Obama is a spiteful, petty little creep.
Know who Obama doesn’t hate? Cocaine dealers. “President Barack Obama has commuted the sentences of 657 cocaine dealers since Aug. 3, a Daily Caller analysis reveals. That represents nearly 80 percent of the commutations the president has given since August.” I’m a “legalize it, regulate it, tax it” sort of guy, but the fact that admitted cocaine user Barack Obama would commute more cocaine dealers over mere mere marijuana users or dealers is more than a little odd. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Snopes Co-Founder Accused Of Embezzling Company Money, Spending It On Prostitutes.” And as Fark would say, “the rest he just wasted.” Bonus: Alleged prostitute is now allegedly a Snopes staffer. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Navy decision to use PC titles reversed. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
F4-J retired from flying. From aerial target to ground target. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
This is the sort of story headline writers live for: “Pensioner pleases neighbours with his massive flashing cock.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Cthuloid horror devours the Pope.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Tags:2016 Presidential Race, Aleppo, Benjamin Netanyahu, Berlin, California, cocaine, Crime, Cthulhu, DNC, Egypt, federalism, feminism, Germany, Global Warming, Israel, Jihad, Keith Ellison, LinkSwarm, media bias, Media Watch, New York, Obama, Obama Scandals, Planned Parenthood, Scott Walker, Snopes, Social Justice Warriors, Social Security, Texas, Tom Perez
Posted in Budget, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Obama Scandals, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »
Friday, October 28th, 2016
No sooner do I put up the latest Clinton Corruption update when all hell breaks lose:
FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers Friday the bureau is reviewing new information related to Hillary Clinton’s personal email server, a political bombshell that comes 11 days ahead of the election.
After recommending earlier this year that the Department of Justice not press charges against the former secretary of state, Comey said in a letter to eight congressional committee chairmen that investigators are examining newly discovered emails that “appear to be pertinent” to the email probe.
“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote the chairmen. “I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”
In an apparently paywalled story, the New York Times is claiming that the new emails came not from the zillions of WikiLeaks emails, but from Anthony Weiner’s personal electronic devices.
On top of that, Attorney General Loretta Lynch has now declined to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Iran money-for-hostages deal.
It appears as though people who claimed that Hillary had the election in the bag were a tad premature…
Tags:2016 Election, Anthony Weiner, Crime, Democrats, Elections, EmailGate, FBI, Hillary Clinton Scandals, Huma Abedin, Iran, Loretta Lynch, Obama Scandals
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections | No Comments »
Friday, October 28th, 2016
A huge Clinton Corruption update this week! And who knows how much bigger next week’s will be?
Newly leaked memo maps cash flows between the Clinton Foundation and Bill’s for-profit activities:
We have written frequently in recent weeks about a feud that erupted between Chelsea Clinton and Doug Band back in 2011 after Chelsea raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest between Band’s firm, Teneo, the Clinton Foundation and the State Department (see here, here, here and here). The feud ultimately resulted in Band being forced to draft a memo spelling out, in vivid detail, the many entangled relationships between himself, Teneo, the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. Fortunately, today’s Wikileaks dump included that memo which reveals, for the first time, the precise financial flows between the Clinton Foundation, Band’s firm Teneo Consulting, and the Clinton family’s private business endeavors.
The memo starts with a brief background on Teneo, which was created in June 2011, shortly after Declan Kelly resigned from his position as “United States Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland,” a position to which he was appointed by Secretary Clinton.
In June 2009, DK Consulting was founded by Declan Kelley. Mr. Kelly served as COO of FTI Consulting until June 2009, when he stepped down and established DK Consulting. At that time, he also became the United States Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland. Pursuant to the terms of his exit agreement with FTI and consistent with the ethics agreement of his uncompensated special government employee appointment at the State Department, Mr. Kelly retained and continued to provide services to three paying clients (Coke, Dow, and UBS) and one pro bono client (Allstate). In late 2009, Declan retained me as a consultant to DK Consulting to help support the needs of these clients.
Stop right there. Who takes Allstate, a Fortune 100 company, as a pro bono client?
Here’s a copy of the document Zero Hedge is relying on (though alas, whoever put that up through some encoding bullshit to keep you from copying from it). Band goes into detail about just how much scratch is involved in scratching the Clintons’ backs:
“Cognizant of the Foundation’s significant fundraising needs as well as my role as the primary fundraiser for the Foundation for the past 11 years, as a partner in Teneo, Mr. Kelley [sic] and I have asked and encouraged our clients to contribute to the Foundation,” Band wrote. “Through our efforts, we have brought new donors to the Foundation and garnered increased giving from existing donors.”
And let’s look at the donors (all amounts for the period 2004-2011 except where noted):
- The Coca-Cola Company: Total giving: $4,330,000
- The Dow Chemical Company: Total giving: $780,000
- UBS: Total giving: $540,000
- The American Ireland Fund: Total giving: $350,000 (all 2010-2011)
- The All-State [sic] Corporation: Total giving: $265,000 (with an additional $500,000 pledge)
- Barclays Capital: Total giving: $1,100,000 (2008-2011)
- Indo Gold: Total giving: $100,000
- BHP Billiton Limited: Total giving: $20,000
- Teneo: Total giving: $100,000
There’s a further list of Teneo clients (GEMS Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Laureate International Universities) who were already donating to the Clinton Foundation.
Even the Washington Post was forced to notice:
The memo, made public Wednesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, lays out the aggressive strategy behind lining up the consulting contracts and paid speaking engagements for Bill Clinton that added tens of millions of dollars to the family’s fortune, including during the years that Hillary Clinton led the State Department. It describes how Band helped run what he called “Bill Clinton Inc.,” obtaining “in-kind services for the President and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.”
That’s called “quid pro quo.” Also this: “Emails show that Cheryl Mills, who at the time was serving as Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, was deeply involved in the foundation’s proceedings.” Yeah, I think that’s been pretty well established at this point. (Hat tip: Powerline.)
And remember: Huma Abedin was working for Teneo while she was working for the State Department. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
The Wall Street Journal wonders: Why isn’t the IRS investigating the Clinton Foundation?
More Clinton pay to play: “The head of a for-profit university that donated up to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation was rewarded with an invite to a high-profile State Department dinner at the request of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The five most disturbing donations to the Clinton Foundation. Including the Saudis, the Russian uranium deal money, and Indonesian tobacco magnate Putera Sampoerna who “donated and worked with the foundation before he got the U.S. government to underwrite millions in loans offered by the foundation and secured high-profile support for its activities from Sec. Clinton and other senior federal officials.”
“Five mega-donors and their wives are responsible for one in every $17 dollars that have been spent on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Funny how right when Hillary Clinton came under FBI scrutiny:
The political backers of a longtime Clinton crony and fixer, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, made $675,000 in cash and in-kind contributions to the election campaign of the wife of the FBI official who later ran the investigation of Mrs. Clinton.”
As the Wall Street Journal reports, the contributions went to the 2015 Virginia state senate campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, the wife of then-associate-deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe. McAuliffe had recruited Dr. McCabe to run. After her campaign ended unsuccessfully (Dr. McCabe lost to incumbent Republican Dick Black), Andrew McCabe was promoted to deputy director, a role in which he assumed oversight of the Clinton e-mail investigation.
And Hillary headlined a fundraiser for her. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“The fact that Hillary Clinton’s inner circle was raising substantial funds for Gov. McAuliffe’s PAC and this same PAC gave close to a half-million dollars to the campaign of the wife of the senior FBI official involved in the Clinton investigation sure looks like a payoff – a major payoff.”
It’s not just the FBI. Department of Justice employees as a whole are hevaily backing Clinton:
Employees of the Department of Justice, which investigated Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of State, gave Clinton 97 percent of their donations. Trump received $8,756 from DOJ employees compared with $286,797 for Clinton. From IRS employees, Clinton received 94 percent of donations.
Which brings up the question: Why are federal government employees even allowed to make campaign donations?
Speaking of the FBI, a retired agent slams James Comey’s non-indictment of Hillary. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Watch Clinton campaign staff take an illegal $20,000 donation on camera.
The Clinton Foundation was set up to be corrupt. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Clinton State Department IT official John Bentel takes the Fifth Amendment 90 times. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Was EmailGate buried to protect Obama rather than Clinton?
Maybe that’s why the Clinton campaign coordinated with both the White House and the media on how to conduct the coverup.
More emails emerge of how Hillary’s secret private server was causing problems at the State Department. More emails that, yet again, Clinton failed to turn over to the FBI.
Despite all this, could all 33,000 emails from Hillary’s private serve still exist someplace? (Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.)
Yes, Donna Brazile did feed debate questions to the Clinton campaign while working for CNN. Of course, CNN is an extension of the Clinton campaign, so I don’t see how anyone can be surprised.
The Clinton campaign is coordinating with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Maybe that’s why some Facebook employees tried to remove a Trump post on Muslims as “hate speech.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
The Clinton Clan’s hunger for foreign campaign contributions goes back to at least the 1990s. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Scott Adams endorses Trump for all the bullying Democrats carried out against him and other Americans:
I’ve been trying to figure out what common trait binds Clinton supporters together. As far as I can tell, the most unifying characteristic is a willingness to bully in all its forms.
If you have a Trump sign in your lawn, they will steal it.
If you have a Trump bumper sticker, they will deface your car.
if you speak of Trump at work you could get fired.
On social media, almost every message I get from a Clinton supporter is a bullying type of message. They insult. They try to shame. They label. And obviously they threaten my livelihood.
We know from Project Veritas that Clinton supporters tried to incite violence at Trump rallies. The media downplays it.
We also know Clinton’s side hired paid trolls to bully online. You don’t hear much about that.
Yesterday, by no coincidence, Huffington Post, Salon, and Daily Kos all published similar-sounding hit pieces on me, presumably to lower my influence. (That reason, plus jealousy, are the only reasons writers write about other writers.)
Joe Biden said he wanted to take Trump behind the bleachers and beat him up. No one on Clinton’s side disavowed that call to violence because, I assume, they consider it justified hyperbole.
Team Clinton has succeeded in perpetuating one of the greatest evils I have seen in my lifetime. Her side has branded Trump supporters (40%+ of voters) as Nazis, sexists, homophobes, racists, and a few other fighting words. Their argument is built on confirmation bias and persuasion. But facts don’t matter because facts never matter in politics. What matters is that Clinton’s framing of Trump provides moral cover for any bullying behavior online or in person. No one can be a bad person for opposing Hitler, right?
More from Adams: The Crook vs. the Monster.
Clinton campaign staffer: So, how are we going to handle all this Bill Clinton/Bill Cosby comparisons? Response: [Silence] (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Erica Garner rips Hillary for trying to make political hay out of her father’s death.
“Hillary Clinton campaign aides had a frantic email exchange in August 2015 over who should call the candidate to ‘sober her up some’ at around 4:30 in the afternoon.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Another story on Hillary’s health:
Sources close to Hillary tell me that her doctors have discovered she suffers from arrhythmia (an abnormal heart beat) and a leaking heart valve. They have recommended that she consider having valve replacement surgery, but Hillary has refused because she does not want to risk the negative political fallout from stories about such a serious operation.
In addition to the arrhythmia and leaking heart valve, Hillary suffers from chronic low blood pressure, insufficient blood flow, a tendency to form life-threatening blood clots, and troubling side effects from her medications.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine attracts all of 30 people to a rally in Florida. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
And just before I clicked the Publish button, Wikileaks dropped another 1,400 Podesta emails. With the Clintons, corruption never takes a holiday…
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Allstate, American Ireland Fund, Andrew McCabe, Barclays, BHP Billiton Limited, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Cheryl Mills, Clinton Foundation, CNN, Coca-Cola, Crime, Democrats, Department of Justice, Donald Trump, Donna Brazile, Doug Band, Dow Chemical, Elections, EmailGate, Facebook, FBI, Florida, Foreign Policy, fraud, Hillary Clinton Health, Hillary Clinton Scandals, Huma Abedin, Indo Gold, Indonesia, IRS, James Comey, Jill McCabe, John Bentel, John Podesta, Laureate International Universities, Media Watch, Obama Scandals, Putera Sampoerna, Russia, Scott Adams, State Department, Teneo, Tim Kaine, UBS
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