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Ruth King

What Is Justice for McCabe? By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/andrew-mccabe-sues-justice-department-seeks-clemency/

The former deputy director’s FBI coddled Clinton and addled Trump. Now he seeks clemency . . . even as he sues the Justice Department.

Hillary Clinton checked every box for a violation of the Espionage Act. So much so that, in giving her a pass, the FBI figured it better couch her conduct as “extremely careless,” rather than “grossly negligent.” The latter description was stricken from an earlier draft of then-director James Comey’s remarks because it is, verbatim, the mental state the statute requires for a felony conviction. It wouldn’t do to have an “exoneration” statement read like a felony indictment.

In point of fact, the careless/negligent semantic game was a sideshow. Mrs. Clinton’s unlawful storage and transmission of classified information had been patently willful. In contemptuous violation of government standards, which she was bound not only to honor but to enforce as secretary of state, she systematically conducted her government business by private email, via a laughably unsecure homebrew server set-up. Her Obama administration allies stress that it was not her purpose to harm national security, but that was beside the point. The crime was mishandling classified information, and she committed it. And even if motive had mattered (it didn’t), her purpose was to conceal the interplay between her State Department and the Clinton Foundation, and to avoid generating a paper trail as she prepared to run for president. No, that’s not as bad as trying to do national-security harm, but it’s condemnable all the same.

While Clinton’s mishandling of classified information got all the attention, it was just the tip of the felony iceberg. Thousands of the 33,000 emails she withheld and undertook to “bleach bit” into oblivion related to State Department business. It is a felony to misappropriate even a single government record. The destruction of the emails, moreover, occurred after a House Committee investigating the Benghazi massacre issued subpoenas and preservation directives to Clinton’s State Department and Clinton herself. If Andrew Weissmann and the rest of the Mueller probe pit-bulls had half as solid an obstruction case against Donald Trump, the president would by now have been impeached, removed, and indicted.

Sumantra Maitra:Bill De Blasio: Merit Is Racist, So We Won’t Allow It In NYC Public Schools

https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/29/bill-de-blasio-merit-racist-wont-allow-nyc-public-schools/

Merit is now racist, as far as Bill de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group is concerned. His new plans are just the next step in active discrimination against hardworking students, for the sake of equal outcomes.

Merit is now considered racist, as New York City Mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Bill de Blasio’s new education advisory committee suggests. A panel de Blasio appointed recently recommended ending selective merit-based programs in city public schools, even when no evidence supports the accusation of racial discrimination simply because people of some racial backgrounds fail to achieve as much as others do.

As Christine Rosen writes in Commentary, “The advisory panel describes merit-based testing and other screening procedures used in New York City’s public schools as ‘exclusionary admissions practices,’ not because they found any evidence of racial bias in the screening procedures but simply because the outcome of screening does not perfectly reflect the demographic make-up of the city.” The recommendation is therefore to “stop using academic criteria to screen applicants for admission to public middle schools, and to phase out elementary gifted-and-talented programs that now require a test.”

This is just the next step in active discrimination against hardworking students, for the sake of equal outcome. De Blasio and his schools’ chancellor, Richard Carranza, previously pushed to cut Asian enrollments. An absolute mindless discrimination is going on against selective “specialized high schools,” which are dominated by working-class Asian American students. The city’s Independent Budget Office conducted a study, finding that de Blasio’s plan would increase black and Hispanic enrollment from 10 percent to about 50 percent at these schools, while cutting Asian and white enrollment in half.

This Isn’t Limited to Crazy Blue NYC

The September Debate Is Set To Be A Discussion Of Who Can Hand Out The Most Free Stuff By Tristan Justice

https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/29/september-debate-set-discussion-can-hand-free-stuff/

Wednesday was the deadline to qualify for the third Democratic presidential debate in Houston next month, and only 10 candidates will participate making it the one-night event on Sept. 12.

In a race where progressives have dominated the top-tier field of candidates, few moderates qualified for the September debate, setting the stage for a debate of more versus more, who can offer the American public the largest welfare state.

Below are the candidates who met the DNC’s threshold to participate in the event hosted and moderated by ABC News:

Joe Biden, former vice president
Elizabeth Warren, U.S. senator from Massachusetts
Bernie Sanders, U.S. senator from Vermont
Kamala Harris, U.S. senator from California
Cory Booker, U.S. senator from New Jersey
Amy Klobuchar, U.S. senator from Minnesota
Beto O’Rourke, former U.S. representative from Texas
Julian Castro, former U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Andrew Yang, tech entrepreneur

The most moderate candidate on stage will be Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, outnumbered by progressive candidates promising “Medicare for all” and the radical expansion of the U.S. welfare state. While former Vice President Joe Biden has tried to brand himself as a moderate opposing Democrats new signature healthcare proposal and criticizing the idea of decriminalizing border crossings, a closer examination of Biden’s record reveals no moderate.

The Coming Climate Change Propaganda Tsunami By Tom Harris and Dr. Jay Lehr

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-coming-climate-change-propaganda-tsunami/

Batten down the hatches! Yet another tsunami of global warming and “clean energy” propaganda is approaching!

On September 23, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres will host the 2019 Climate Action Summit at UN headquarters. Guterres is calling on all leaders to come to New York City with “concrete, realistic plans” to increase their greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction pledges “in line with reducing GHG emissions by 45 per cent over the next decade, and to net zero emissions by 2050.”

The goal is to “hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C”, lessen sea level rise, reduce extreme weather, and other impossible objectives. The UN warns:

[T]he last four years were the four hottest on record, and winter temperatures in the Arctic have risen by 3°C since 1990. Sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying, and we are starting to see the life-threatening impact of climate change on health, through air pollution, heatwaves and risks to food security.”

This is all either nonsense or irrelevant (for example, sea level has been rising, at times much faster than today, for the past 15,000 years). But this won’t stop civil society, businesses, organizations, youth and other representatives from the public at large from joining heads of states and government from UN member states at the summit in demanding that we make “massive movements in the real economy in support of the [climate change] agenda,” to quote from the summit website. Currently sailing across the Atlantic on her way to address the conference is 16-year old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg in what she erroneously dubs a “zero-carbon” yacht. Thunberg is being brought in to help the U.S. climate delusion movement and to recruit more well-meaning but naive children into its ranks. 

James Comey is proof the ‘deep state’ is something to fear: David Harsanyi

https://nypost.com/2019/08/29/james-comey-is-proof-the-deep-state-is-something-to-fear/

For nearly three years now, those who promise to save us from the wicked clutches of President Donald Trump have bombarded America with lectures about the “rule of law.” Yet, over and over again, these self-styled champions of justice feel free to disregard the law whenever it suits them. The latest example is former FBI Director James Comey.

A new report by the Office of the Inspector General for the Justice Department found that Comey had written FBI memos, illicitly passed them on to a lawyer friend, who in turn leaked them to a friendly New York Times reporter who had been spreading the Russian conspiracy theory.

Why? Because Comey was interested in extracting revenge on the man who had fired him, Donald Trump.

Comey, the report found, had leaked “investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome.”

That outcome, as Comey had admitted to Congress, was to “prompt the appointment of a special counsel” to investigate the president’s alleged conspiracy with the Russian government to win the 2016 election. By doing this, the DOJ inspector general, who is widely considered both meticulous and unbiased, found that Comey had “set a dangerous example” and “releas[ed] sensitive information” to “create public pressure for official action.”

It worked. And by manufacturing an investigation into the president — one that he didn’t have enough evidence to pursue in an official capacity — Comey had not only abused his power but plunged the nation into two years of hysterics about Russian interference.

Polls, attempted putsches and ayatollahs By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-Wrong-Polls-attempted-putsches-and-ayatollahs-600127

With less than three weeks left before the September 17 Knesset elections, the only two issues on which the Right and Left seem to agree is that neither bloc will be able to form a coalition, and that voter turnout is going to be lower than ever. This sad consensus was born of, and continues to be bred by, polls.

The question of whether surveys reflect or shape public sentiment is not new. Nor is the discussion about their accuracy, particularly in the mass-communication age, when reaching voters can no longer be done by calling random numbers in what have become obsolete phone books. Furthermore, as post-election analysts around the world point out when faced with unexpected ballot-box outcomes, people lie to pollsters, or change their minds at the last minute.

The April 9 elections that ended in an impasse, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu ultimately unable to form a government, deserve to be relegated to a different category, however.

The surprise there was that Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman refused to join the right-wing camp to which he had previously belonged. Had he not pulled a stunt to thwart Netanyahu, his measly five mandates would have enabled the ruling Likud Party to lead a clear majority. This was not something that pollsters – whose pie charts had put Yisrael Beytenu on the same side as Likud – could have predicted.

At least this time around, they don’t need to guess. Liberman has made it clear since April 10 that he will only join a coalition that excludes the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties.

CHARLOTTE’S NEWS WEB

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/459197-trump-can-change-history-by-declassifying-three-obama-era-documents

Trump can change history by declassifying three Obama-era documents John Solomon, TheHill.com

My sources tell me President Trump is putting the finishing touches on a White House initiative to declassify documents that have remained hidden from the public for far too long.

This welcome effort to provide more public transparency and accountability almost certainly will focus early on the failings of the now-debunked Russia collusion probe. And I’m sure it will spread quickly toward other high-profile issues, such as the government’s UFO files that have been a focus of clamoring for decades.

But my reporting indicates three sets of documents from the Obama years should be declassified immediately, too, because they will fundamentally change the public’s understanding of history and identify ways to improve governance.

.

www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/08/must-see-trump-supporter-creates-interactive-trump-border-wall-map-on/?

Trump Supporter Builds INTERACTIVE Border Wall showing progress and details about the project

 

89 Miles Completed and Counting!

A new website “TrumpWallconstrution” went live last week with information on the current progress of the Trump Border Wall. The website includes an interactive map that has information on planning and current work in progress of the prominent sectors of the border wall:

SAN DIEGO
EL CENTRO
YUMA
TUCSON
EL PASO
BIG BEND
DEL RIO
LAREDO
RIO GRANDE VALLEY

 

www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/even_axios_gets_the_willies_about_bernie_sanderss_plan_to_restructure_your_life.html

Even Axios gets the willies about Bernie Sanders’s plan to ‘restructure your life’

Monica Showalter, AmericanThinker.com/blog

In a startling Axios summary list called “Bernie Sanders’ 2020 plan to restructure your life,” Axios publisher Jim Vanderhei (and Juliet Bartz) is sounding the alarm about the nightmare scenario of a potential Bernie Sanders presidency.

The piece was featured in Mike Allen’s widely read Top 10 — at the top.  It’s a piece that looks as if it belongs more at Issues & Insights than center-left Axios.  Axios warns that Sanders is surging in the polls and influencing other Democratic candidates with his ideas and they don’t sound happy.  Has a light switch finally been flipped on?  Vanderhei and Bartz write:

A Sanders government would take control of …

Your energy choices: His Green New Deal would spend $16 trillion to force you to stop using the energy mostly used today — oil, gas and nuclear. He promises cleaner power and air in return.
Your house and car: The Sanders government would pay to weatherize homes and small businesses, and to upgrade gas-powered cars for electric ones. He would mandate the end of conventional gas car manufacturing in a decade.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2019/08/29/savor-the-medias-outrage-at-being-held-to-the-same-standard-as-the-rest-of-us-n2552241?

Savor The Media’s Outrage At Being Held To The Same Standard As The Rest of Us

Kurt Schlichter, TownHall.com

You must have a heart of stone not to burst into uncontrollable, hysterical laughter at the agony of the failing New York Times and the rest of the media over how conservative activists are going to apply the same internet colonoscopy to lib journalistas as they apply to us.

A Centrist Debate Shutout The next Democratic debate is going to list hard to the left.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-centrist-debate-shutout-11567033452

Democrats on Thursday will announce the lineup for their next presidential debate, and the good news is that New Yorkers Kirsten Gillibrand (who dropped out Wednesday) and Bill de Blasio won’t be on stage to afflict viewers. The bad news: Neither will the centrists who dared in the first two debates to raise questions about the party’s leftward lunge.

By Wednesday 10 candidates had met the Democratic National Committee criteria of at least 2% support in four polls and donations from 130,000 people. That means no appearance in Houston on Sept. 12 for Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, former Maryland Rep. John Delaney and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock.

These candidates were truth-tellers on Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, free health care for undocumented immigrants from everywhere, slavery reparations and more. Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper have ended their campaigns, so Americans are likely to hear an unrelieved bidding war of spending promises and higher taxes. The centrist dearth will put more pressure on former Vice President Joe Biden to defend what is left of his moderate policy positions. But it might open running room for Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a liberal who understands the need for a private economy.

By the way, billionaire Tom Steyer might not make the stage despite having spent more than $325,000 a day on campaign advertising since entering the race. This would prove again that Democrats are wrong about money dominating politics.

Israel Faces a Serious Escalation in its Proxy War with Iran by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14784/israel-proxy-war-iran

The fact that Israel has found it necessary to attack targets so far from its traditional area of military operations close to its immediate borders is indicative of the alarming escalation that has taken place in recent months in the threat Iran poses to Israeli security.

Earlier this week, in Lebanon, an Israeli drone was reported to have bombed a Palestinian base that is said to be funded by Iran. Israeli warplanes were also reported to have bombed Iranian military bases on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus.

The very idea of Washington sitting down with the Iranians at a time when it is continuing to threaten the security of its closest Middle Eastern ally would be unconscionable.

The reality is that there can be no meaningful dialogue between Washington and Tehran on a future deal so long as Iran remains committed to its long-standing policy of seeking the wholesale destruction of the Jewish state.

The recent confirmation by US military officials that Israeli warplanes were responsible for the recent attack on an Iranian military base in Iraq demonstrates the alarming extent to which the so-called proxy war between Tehran and Jerusalem has escalated in recent weeks.

According to senior Israeli security sources, spoken to on an off-the-record basis, the base in the northern Iraqi province of Salaheddin was targeted because they believed it was being used to assemble Iranian-made medium-range missiles with the capability to hit targets in Israel.

The threat was deemed so important that senior Israeli officers decided to launch a daring bombing raid that required F-35 stealth warplanes to penetrate Saudi airspace to achieve their objective. It is unclear whether the Saudis, who oppose Iranian meddling in Iraq but do not have diplomatic relations with Israel, gave permission for the Israeli warplanes to enter their airspace.

Iranian Women Fight for Freedom by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14773/iranian-women-freedom

“The Islamic Republic authorities say ‘compulsory hijab’ is the law and must be obeyed. However, bad laws must be challenged and changed.” — Masih Alinejad, Iranian-American journalist and award-winning activist.

“The basis of this tyranny is the religious law that the government has been enforcing since the 1979 revolution. Women are second-class citizens, and essentially slaves in Iran. The international community needs to have the courage to delegitimize religious law and call it out for its tyrannical nature. Just as the free world delegitimized communism during the Cold War, it should do the same to religious law.” — Nasrin Mohammadi, author of Ideas and Lashes: The Prison Diary of Akbar Mohammadi, about the torture and death in prison of her late brother; to Gatestone Institute.

“The international community should also focus on Iran, struggle to end that regime and other similar governments across the world. With Iran, it should also point out the corruption, where religion is used as an excuse to steal money and power from the people.” — Nasrin Mohammadi.

“But we need support of the international community to raise this issue with Iranian authorities and take action.” — Masih Alinejad.

Three Iranian women held in Tehran’s notorious Qarchak prison were sentenced recently to what could amount to more than 10 years in prison. Their “crime”? Failing to wear headscarves, thereby defying the country’s Islamic dress code.

The women were apprehended after a video they posted online during International Women’s Day went viral. In the clip, they are seen walking bear-headed on a Tehran metro and distributing flowers to female passengers.