Displaying posts published in

October 2019

Adam Schiff’s ‘Grand Jury’ The House Democrat justifies his impeachment secrecy as if he’s running a criminal trial.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/adam-schiffs-grand-jury-11571003444

Donald Trump is lucky in his opponents. Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate, and now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has chosen Rep. Adam Schiff to be the face of impeachment for Democrats.

Mrs. Pelosi took the impeachment reins away from Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler and handed them to Mr. Schiff, who has been running secret hearings as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Witnesses testify behind closed doors, and Democrats selectively leak the testimony or evidence to the pro-impeachment press in ways that are often distorted or incomplete. Republicans then offer a competing narrative, and the public is left to wonder what’s true. All of this is supposedly in service to the serious purpose of removing a President elected by 63 million Americans.

Mr. Schiff was challenged on his secrecy on Sunday by Margaret Brennan of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” and the Democrat’s response was extraordinary. “There’s a reason why investigations and grand jury proceedings for example, and I think this is analogous to a grand jury proceeding, are done out of the public view initially,” Mr. Schiff said. “Now we may very well call some of the same witnesses or all the same witnesses in public hearings as well. But we want to make sure that we meet the needs of the investigation and not give the President or his legal minions the opportunity to tailor their testimony and in some cases fabricate testimony to suit their interests.”

The Four Stages of Never Trump Republicans Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/10/four-stages-never-trump-republicans-daniel-greenfield/

There are four stages of Never Trumper Republicans, much like the four stages of grief, and the most pivotal of these is the open letter to lefties.

James Comey did one of those. As did Jennifer Rubin. Also, I believe Max Boot. And innumerable other quislings. Now Tom Nichols has one.

We don’t agree about everything; still, we get along pretty well, you and I, centered around the daily understanding that Donald Trump is a dire threat to the United States. That’s why I’ve been comfortable in my public commitment to vote for the Democratic presidential nominee, come hell or high water. You’ve mostly responded to this by…

Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? I feel like you’re not doing your part here.

We take our walks together and we discuss the importance of getting rid of Donald Trump. And yet, when we both leave for work in the morning, it feels like only one of us is really, truly serious about that.

Here we go.

Rashida and the law By J.R. Dunn

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/rashida_and_the_law.html

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/rashida_and_the_law.html

Rashida opens mouth, inserts foot.

It seems that the charming and attractive Rashida Talib is still running off at the mouth about arresting people, specifically administration officials who refuse to respond to the House’s “impeachment” subpoenas.

According to Rashida:

“There have been actual serious conversations about what the logistics would look like… if we did have to force someone through a court order to come before the Congressional committee… she said. “This is pretty uncharted territory for many of us and even for Congress.”

Of course there have been. Leftists yearn for police powers, for the ability to reach out and punish anyone they see, with a ferocity unknown to normal human beings. That was true during the French Revolution, and will be true of the Ganymede revolt of 2250.

There’s only one problem, as I see it. To arrest somebody, you have to be able to appeal to authority, and there’s no authority involved here. An impeachment process has not be formally begun, therefore, the House has absolutely no grounds for subpoenaing anybody. It’s quite similar to all the jabber about “obstruction of justice” surrounding the Mueller Report. If there’s no crime, there’s no obstruction. You’d figure an institution packed full of lawyers would have some grasp of actual law.

Rashida opens mouth, inserts foot.

It seems that the charming and attractive Rashida Talib is still running off at the mouth about arresting people, specifically administration officials who refuse to respond to the House’s “impeachment” subpoenas.

According to Rashida:

“There have been actual serious conversations about what the logistics would look like… if we did have to force someone through a court order to come before the Congressional committee… she said. “This is pretty uncharted territory for many of us and even for Congress.”

Of course there have been. Leftists yearn for police powers, for the ability to reach out and punish anyone they see, with a ferocity unknown to normal human beings. That was true during the French Revolution, and will be true of the Ganymede revolt of 2250.

There’s only one problem, as I see it. To arrest somebody, you have to be able to appeal to authority, and there’s no authority involved here. An impeachment process has not be formally begun, therefore, the House has absolutely no grounds for subpoenaing anybody. It’s quite similar to all the jabber about “obstruction of justice” surrounding the Mueller Report. If there’s no crime, there’s no obstruction. You’d figure an institution packed full of lawyers would have some grasp of actual law.

“The Appeal of Donald J. Trump” Sydney Williams

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Accusations fly furiously around corridors of power in Washington and in newsrooms across the country. Neighbor no longer speaks to neighbor; children are distanced from their parents; colleges promote ideologies rather than encourage debate. Doctors tell us we have become stressed due to harsh and unrelenting political attacks. Serious debate is ignored, yet issues remain: What kind of government do we want? A state whose tentacles reach deep into our lives, or one based on self-rule that values individual independence? Should we tilt toward socialism or rely on free-market capitalism?

For almost a century, the nation has moved away from small government and citizen representatives, toward big government and professional politicians, bureaucrats and administrators – toward a “deep state,” defined by Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal, as “consisting of career civil servants who have growing power in the administrative state but work in the shadows.” Both political parties have perpetuated this trend. Even under Reagan, for example, Washington bureaucracy continued to grow, albeit at a slower pace. But the Left has always been more aggressive. Think of FDR and the New Deal, LBJ and the Great Society and Barack Obama “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

As to when and where it began – the trust-busting policies of regulatory reformers in the late 19th Century, the appointment of J. Edgar Hoover as director of the Bureau of Investigation in 1924, or the Alphabet Agencies of Franklin Roosevelt’s thirteen-year reign – is less important than recognition that an unfortunate consequence has been the expanding influence and power of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats and administrators. It has been cozy, tacit arrangements that allowed both political parties to accommodate their special interests. It has permitted political and personal loyalty to germinate and expand within agencies – loyalty toward those who encourage the growth of their responsibilities and treachery toward those who challenge their positions.

LGBTQ Town Hall Showcased Democratic Extremism By Steve Cortes

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/10/14/lgbtq_town_hall_showcased_democratic_extremism_141484.html

Last week the Equality Town Hall held by my network, CNN, plainly revealed the radicalism that drives the Democratic Party today. In stark terms, candidates and audience members advocated for wholesale government-compelled social engineering to comport with their liberal secular-humanist agenda. Such proposals contravene foundational protections of our Constitution and also imperil Democrats’ electoral prospects for 2020.

Robert Francis O’Rourke continued his steady philosophical assault upon the Bill of Rights. Apparently, O’Rourke is no longer content to merely eviscerate the Second Amendment with his plan to confiscate tens of millions of firearms from law-abiding citizens. Like most leftists who disrespect the Second Amendment, he also promotes hollowing out the First Amendment as well. CNN’s Don Lemon asked if religious institutions should “lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage.” The candidate answered in the affirmative, stating, “There can be no benefit, no reward, no tax break for anyone, or any institution … that denies the full human rights, and the full civil rights of every single one of us.”

In a sense, O’Rourke did America a favor by stating plainly the true goal of social liberal activists: to bring private groups into full compliance with their postmodernist precepts, by compulsion if necessary. The practical application of such extremism would clearly bankrupt mosques, Catholic schools, and faith-based charitable service organizations across our land. But such destruction is not a side effect but rather the very goal of this fascistic statism.

Consider the perversion of the inverse policy: What if traditional conservatives had tried to revoke the tax-exempt status of pro-gay-marriage mainline Protestant churches before our laws totally changed the millennia-old definition of marriage? Liberals would have rightly condemned such an encroachment, and the courts would have surely protected the rights of progressive churches to privately define marriage according to their beliefs. After all, our government should have no more say in determining a faith’s doctrinal beliefs on marriage than it does regarding baptism or bar/bat mitzvahs.

WE’RE IN A PERMANENT COUP: MATT TAIBBI

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/were-in-a-permanent-coup

I’ve lived through a few coups. They’re insane, random, and terrifying, like watching sports, except your political future depends on the score.

The kickoff begins when a key official decides to buck the executive. From that moment, government becomes a high-speed head-counting exercise. Who’s got the power plant, the airport, the police in the capital? How many department chiefs are answering their phones? Who’s writing tonight’s newscast?

When the KGB in 1991 tried to reassume control of the crumbling Soviet Union by placing Mikhail Gorbachev under arrest and attempting to seize Moscow, logistics ruled. Boris Yeltsin’s crew drove to the Russian White House in ordinary cars, beating KGB coup plotters who were trying to reach the seat of Russian government in armored vehicles. A key moment came when one of Yeltsin’s men, Alexander Rutskoi – who two years later would himself lead a coup against Yeltsin – prevailed upon a Major in a tank unit to defy KGB orders and turn on the “criminals.”

We have long been spared this madness in America. Our head-counting ceremony was Election Day. We did it once every four years.

That’s all over, in the Trump era.

On Thursday, news broke that two businessmen said to have “peddled supposedly explosive information about corruption involving Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden” were arrested at Dulles airport on “campaign finance violations.” The two figures are alleged to be bagmen bearing “dirt” on Democrats, solicited by Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

CHARLOTTE’S NEWS WEB

The Madness of leftist zealots
Michael Goodwin

https://nypost.com/2019/10/12/goodwin-madness-of-leftist-zealots/?

Watching the daily attacks and counterattacks in Washington, the optimist in me searches for the bright side. Surely there will be resolutions soon on Ukraine and impeachment, as well as on the misconduct of the FBI and CIA during the 2016 election

Qatar Scam to Gain More Influence on US Universities By Ryan Mauro and Alex VanNess

https://clarionproject.org/qatar-scam-more-i

The latest Qatar scam to gain influence on America universities, with no accountability to the Department of Education: Over a million dollars in grants to an anti-American, anti-Semitic professor at Northwestern University.

On September 12, the president of Northwestern University, Morton Schapiro released a statementcondemning a tweet from one of the university’s professors, Justin Martin.

Schapiro described a recent tweet by Martin as “insensitive and deeply disappointing.”  Martin, an associate professor in residence at Northwestern’s campus in Doha, Qatar used the anniversary of 9/11 to downplay the heinous nature of this terrorist act.

Clarion Special Report: NY’s Sharia Patrol By Ryan Mauro and Martin Mawyer

When Muslim Community Patrol & Services rolled their police-cruiser-like cars onto the streets of New York City in November 2018, there was no prior media briefing, no public announcement, no ceremony or grand unveiling.

Not surprisingly, the sight of official-looking cars – made to look like police New York City cars — emblazoned with the words “Muslim Community Patrol” cruising the avenues of Brooklyn and Staten Island—in the United States of America—was quick to generate news coverage, commentary and alarm.

Most of the mainstream American media reacted in typical fashion. Ever fearful of offending radicalized Muslim communities or digging too deeply into unsavory truths, they gushed in glowing news reports about the new patrol cars and portrayed them as a “neighborhood watch” for Muslim-dominated areas.