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Ruth King

Why the Russia hoax is a constitutional crisis By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/why_the_russia_hoax_is_a_constitutional_crisis.html

Mark Wauck, retired FBI agent and AT contributor, has written an important essay on the true dimensions of the Russia hoax, on his blog Meaning in History. Building on Andrew McCarthy’s close analysis of the redacted FISA warrants two days ago. I will take the liberty of quoting his argument, but urge those interested to read the whole thing:

McCarthy gets to the heart of the matter–the first of many important points he makes–right up front:

Page has never been charged with any crime, much less with espionage. That is a salient fact because to get a FISA warrant on an American citizen, the FBI is required to show that the citizen’s activities on behalf of a foreign power violate federal criminal law. The FBI and Justice Department went to the FISA court four times over nine months, from October 2016 through June 2017, claiming to have grounds that Page was involved in heinous clandestine activity. Why isn’t he in handcuffs?

I believe it is because they never had a case. All they appear to have had were the 2013 attempt by Russian spies to recruit Page as an asset, and the Steele dossier.

Now here’s what I want to make clear. The original FISA order, when the target is a US Person (USPER) such as Carter Page, lasts for 90 days. A FISA order can be renewed, but the renewal is NOTgranted on an “if at first you don’t succeed, try try again” basis. To get an extension on a FISA–and let me say here that I completely agree with McCarthy that the initial FISA was pure BS–the FBI has to either:

1) make a reasonable showing that it is making progress in its investigation as a result of its use of FISA, i.e., it is moving forward with additional evidence gained through FISA that tends to confirm the presentation of the case that was made in the initial application, or

Historic Midterm Trends Tell Us…Nothing By Doug Usher

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/09/17/historic_midterm_trends_tell_usnothing_138087.html

There’s one question on Washington’s collective mind that hovers above the never-ending swirl of Trump news: Who will control Congress after the midterms?

As with everything in politics these days, there are lots of predictions – and those who manage to be right will be celebrated. But here’s the problem: It’s almost impossible to figure out if a blue wave will happen – and how big it might be – until it happens.

A quick look at House turnover in midterms since 1960 reveals one thing: uncertainty. The average midterm House loss for the sitting president’s party is 22 seats. Yet the actual numbers have been all over the map, ranging from +8 in 2002 for George W. Bush to -63 in 2010 for Barack Obama.

But can’t we look at some key indicators today to figure out what’s going to happen? Sadly, no. Here are just a few “leading indicators” that indicate… almost nothing.

GDP growth was at 4.2 percent in the second quarter – the highest since 2014 – which should help Republicans, right? Yes, that’s a strong number. But looking at second-quarter GDP over the past 58 years shows no correlation to House gains or losses. Indeed, Obama’s large loss in 2010 came at a time when second-quarter GDP was 3.7 percent. And Bill Clinton’s 54-seat loss happened with GDP sitting at 5.5 percent. By contrast, George W. Bush gained eight seats in 2002 with GDP growth at 2.4 percent.

LINDA GOUDSMIT- IT DOES NOT TAKE A VILLAGE, IT TAKES AN ADULT

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/21621/it-does-not-take-a-village-it-takes-an-adult
http://goudsmit.pundicity.com and website: http://lindagoudsmit.com

Mammals, including humans, have a cycle of life with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The survival of the species requires that adult members of the group help newborns survive and develop into reproducing adults who can then help their own newborns develop into reproducing adults and the cycle of life continues. The growth process from the smallest to the largest mammals demands food, water, shelter, and a transfer of information from the knowledgeable adult to the uninformed young. The adults in the community teach their young how to survive. What happens when the process is impeded?

The United States of America and its social order was founded upon the principles of adulthood. Powers entrusted to the adult members of the family were gradually transferred to the children as they became adults themselves and began having families of their own. Parents taught their children survival skills and imbued them with their personal, moral, and religious values. What happened?

There has been a gradual shift in the established social order of America. Institutional “experts” pressured society toward regression, dependence, and mediocrity rather than growth, independence, and individual achievement. This movement has eroded parental authority and tilted young people away from independence and adulthood toward collectivism and middling both personally and professionally. The social order of adulthood is under attack. This is how it works.

Let’s begin at the beginning. Traditionally, when new babies are born young mothers turn toward their own mothers for guidance – grandmothers have standing in the transfer of knowledge about raising children. Grandma’s successes as well as her mistakes are a rich source of information for new moms – not anymore.

Authors Ari Brown, MD, Denise Fields, and Michele Hakakha, MD, have written an overbearing and incredibly condescending book titled Baby 411: Clear Answers & Smart Advice for Your Baby’s First Year. On the acknowledgements page of the 2014 edition they arrogantly state that, “It’s sad but true: any parenting book written before 2013 is already outdated.” REALLY?

Brexit Dilemmas Top Agenda at EU’s Salzburg Summit As U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May faces pressures at home over future arrangements, EU leaders see themselves able to go only so far to help her By Laurence Norman and Stephen Fidler

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brexit-dilemmas-top-agenda-at-eus-salzburg-summit-1537144448

European Union leaders will hold their first serious discussions on Brexit since March at a summit in Austria on Thursday as both the U.K. and the rest of the bloc step up preparations to reduce major economic disruptions if a deal isn’t reached.

On the face of it, negotiators are advancing toward an agreement that must be settled, drafted and ratified before Britain leaves the bloc next March 29. In reality, progress toward a deal has been minimal since April.

The informal gathering of EU leaders in Salzburg—the first of three likely summits over as many months at which Brexit will be discussed—has been preceded by warm words from the EU side, and British Prime Minister Theresa May could hear more of them once she gets there.

EU leaders are aware that Mrs. May is under pressure from anti-EU lawmakers in her Conservative Party. That has intensified after a proposal for future relations with the EU was agreed by her cabinet in July at the prime minister’s country retreat at Chequers, prompting the resignation of two prominent ministers. European leaders want to help Mrs. May ahead of a Conservative party annual conference starting Sept. 30, hoping to ward off more British political chaos that could further set back negotiations.

Behind the scenes, however, many in the EU say Mrs. May’s proposal—which aims to give British firms frictionless access to the EU market in goods—is unacceptable.

19 Aliens Charged With Illegal Voting In 2016 The tip of the illegal immigration iceberg — of unknown proportions. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271300/19-aliens-charged-illegal-voting-2016-michael-cutler

On August 27, 2018 the DHS website posted a report, 19 foreign nationals indicted for illegally voting in 2016 elections that began with this paragraph:

WILMINGTON, N.C. – Nineteen foreign nationals were charged with unlawfully voting in the 2016 elections Friday, and a U.S. citizen was charged with aiding and abetting an alien to falsely claim U.S. citizenship to register to vote. The indictments follow an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) as part of a newly created Document and Benefit Fraud Task Force (DBFTF) in the Eastern District of North Carolina.

On the following day, on August 28th, the Justice Department issued a press release about the very same case, Nineteen Foreign Nationals Charged for Voting in 2016 Election and added:

Multiple Defendants Voted In More Than One Election.

This press release reporting on the actions of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raises a number of significant issues that we will explore today.

First, however, I am compelled to note that I wrote about the newly-created Document and Benefit Fraud Task Force in my June 15, 2018 article, Trump Administration Opens Office To Find Naturalization Fraudsters in which I noted that this was a great first step, but much needs to be done.

The nineteen aliens who were the subject of the DOJ and DHS press releases were investigated by the Trump administration’s newly-created counter-fraud operation which hired additional attorneys and immigration officers to review the cases of aliens who had been ordered deported but then are believed to have assumed false identities to become lawful immigrants and subsequently acquire U.S. citizenship under their false identities by defrauding the naturalization process. Under the provisions of 8 U.S. Code § 1451 such alien’s naturalization can be revoked and the alien may also be criminally prosecuted for having committed such fraud.

Feds Indict New Mexico Terrorist Trainers Terrorist leader’s wife claims to be taking directions from the Angel Gabriel. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271347/feds-indict-new-mexico-terrorist-trainers-matthew-vadum

The five accused Muslim terrorists arrested in rural New Mexico near the Colorado state line this summer after an alleged school-shooter terrorist training facility was raided Aug. 3 were indicted last week on weapons and conspiracy charges by a federal grand jury.

This is the case in which five adults, including Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, were arrested after authorities found 11 hungry, filthy children living in squalid conditions in a terrorist training compound in Amalia, Taos County, a remote part of New Mexico. The children were reportedly being trained to commit school shootings. The remains of a three-year-old disabled boy, since identified as Wahhaj’s son, Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, were discovered on the property which was filled with weapons. The five individuals faced state-level child abuse charges but those were thrown out after local prosecutors failed to conduct preliminary hearings within state-imposed deadlines. The local district attorney said the charges will soon be refiled.

To the horror of law-and-order and counter-terrorism advocates, Judge Sarah C. Backus (D) of the Eighth Judicial District of New Mexico ordered the jihadist quintet released in August. Backus claimed a voter-approved state law left her no choice but to order the release of the defendants on a mere $20,000 bail per defendant with no up-front deposit. Feigning ignorance of the nature of Islamic terrorism, Backus wrote in her decision at the time that even though “[t]he state alleges that there was a big plan afoot … the state hasn’t shown to my satisfaction and by clear and convincing evidence what that plan was.” She added cutely that none of the defendants had a criminal record.

Dianne Feinstein’s Metzenbaum Moment Why the embattled senator really initiated the Kavanaugh smear campaign. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271345/dianne-feinsteins-metzenbaum-moment-lloyd-billingsley

Last week California Senator Dianne Feinstein kept confidential the individual who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh more than 30 years ago. On Sunday, the accuser came out of the closet in classic style.

Christine Blasey Ford, a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University in California, is an activist Democrat, who in June signed a letter denouncing President Trump’s border policy. The ACLU used the letter in a lawsuit against the Trump administration. Ford told the Washington Post she had been attacked by four individuals from an unnamed “elitist boys school.” The four attackers were all now “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington.”

The attack occurred at a private residence but Ford did not recall who owned the house or how she got there. On the other hand, she did recall that Brett Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were “stumbling drunk” when Kavanaugh tried to remove her clothes and put his hand over her mouth.

“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” Ford told the Post. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.” The attack left her with “anguish and terror about retaliation,” and “derailed me substantially for four or five years.” And so on, like the bogus University of Virginia rape story in Rolling Stone. For some observers the smear job on Kavanaugh may recall the 1991 hearings for Clarence Thomas.

The Last-Minute Character Assassination of Judge Kavanaugh Desperate Dems revert to their old playbook. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271343/last-minute-character-assassination-judge-joseph-klein

Using any despicable tactic at hand to derail Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation less than a week before the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on whether to approve his nomination, Senate Democrats have sunk to their lowest level of character assassination yet. They have resorted to peddling an allegation of sexual misconduct against Judge Kavanaugh that supposedly occurred while the judge was in high school. The accuser had refused to identify herself before and during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. She conveniently waited until this Sunday to come forward via an on-the-record interview with the Washington Post. The accuser’s name is Christine Blasey Ford, a registered Democrat who is currently a California professor teaching clinical psychology.

Judge Kavanaugh issued a statement on Friday in which he said, “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee that heard Judge Kavanaugh’s public testimony earlier this month during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, had received last July a copy of a letter written by the woman making the charge, who we now know was Ms. Ford. Even though Senator Feinstein had the letter in hand, she never brought up the charge during the public hearing, nor during her own meeting with the judge. Instead, Senator Feinstein sat on the letter until late last week, when she issued a cryptic release stating that she had received the letter but did not want to give more details in deference to the woman’s wish to keep the matter confidential. Senator Feinstein turned the letter over to the FBI. The FBI placed the letter in its background file on Judge Kavanaugh but decided not to pursue any further investigation. Senator Feinstein had initially resisted sharing the contents of the letter with her fellow Democrat members of the Senate Judiciary Committee or to go public with its existence because “the incident was too distant in the past to merit public discussion” and she had already “taken care of it,” according to a source quoted by The New Yorker. Nevertheless, Senator Feinstein evidently bowed to pressure from her leftist colleagues to find a way to insert the allegation into the cesspool of public gossip at the eleventh hour.

Professor accusing Kavanaugh is radical SJW with some damning student reviews By Selwyn Duke

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/professor_accusing_kavanaugh_is_radical_sjw_with_some_damning_student_reviews.html

It’s true that Bill Clinton’s liberal ‘90s apologists justified his sexual misconduct with the claim “Character doesn’t matter.” It nonetheless does, and since Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hopes are being influenced by accusations that may speak to his character, it’s only fair to examine the character of his accuser. And this woman, Palo Alto University psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford, is a radical social-justice warrior with some damning student reviews — including one from a person who wrote “I am honestly scared of her.”

Ford’s accusation goes back to her high-school days, in approximately 1982, when she would have been 15 and Kavanaugh 17. She claims that Kavanaugh laid on top of her and groped her while heavily intoxicated and that the incident ended when a friend of his, Mark Judge, jumped on both of them, sending them all tumbling (you can read a more thorough account here).

Whatever the truth of the matter, however, certainly true is that Ford is a radical leftist who’d be inclined to zealously oppose a Kavanaugh nomination. For example, Breitbart reports that she not only has attended anti-Trump events, but actually donned a pink “brain pu**y hat” for a 2017 anti-Trump march.

Just as telling, though, may be her student reviews. Consider the following screen grab of one of her reviews (now scrubbed) from the popular site Rate My Professors:

Yom Kippur guide for the perplexed, 2018 Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

bit.ly/2MCHiLl
1. The Yom Kippur-matchmaking connection. According to Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel, the 6th President of the Sanhedrin (the ancient Jewish Supreme Court of 71 Sages), during 50 CE – 70 CE, a direct descendant of King David and a great-grandson of Hillel the Elder: “Jews never had happier days than the 15th of the month of Av [the beginning of the grape harvest – Holiday of Love] and Yom Kippur [the end of the grape harvest]. On those days the daughters of Jerusalem would go out wearing white clothing… dance in the vineyards and say: ‘young man, lift up your eyes and see what you choose. Do not seek beauty… [since] it is a woman that is God fearing that should be praised.’”

Prof. Shalom Rosenberg, from the Hebrew University’s Department of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, suggests that the Yom Kippur-matchmaking connection attests to the centrality of marriage and family in Judaism. While Yom Kippur focuses the attention of Jews to core values, the marriage institution – which is increasingly threatened by modernity – focuses the attention of human beings to the core cell of the human society, the value-based family.

Yom Kippur aims at bringing one closest to God, while marriage aims at bringing man and woman closest to one another.

Yom Kippur aims at coalescing the entire Jewish public – not just observant Jews – around critical values. Hence the Hebrew word for “public” – צבור – which is an acronym for Righteous persons (צדיקים), Average persons (בינוניים) and Evil persons (ורשעים).

2. The Hebrew word Kippur, כיפור (atonement/repentance), is a derivative of the Biblical word Kaporetכפורת ,, the cover of the Holy Ark in the Sanctuary, and Kopher, כופר, the cover of Noah’s Ark and the Holy Altar in the Temple. Yom Kippur resembles a spiritual cover (dome), which separates between the holy and the mundane, between spiritualism and materialism. The Kippah, כיפה (skullcap, yarmulke’), which covers one’s head during prayers, reflects a spiritual dome. Yom Kippur is translated into “the day of Kippur.”