RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/09/10/southern-poverty-law-center-essentially-a-fraud/
The Southern Poverty Law Center has less to do with justice than with fundraising

It had to happen sometime. The Southern Poverty Law Center has made so many vile, unjustified, hysterical, and hateful accusations over the years, it was bound to pay a price. When it did, the bill due was $3.375 million. Such was the amount the SPLC agreed to pay the British Muslim Maajid Nawaz and his think tank, the Quilliam Foundation, after smearing them in a “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.” Nawaz, a former Islamist radical turned whistleblower who calls for the modernization of Islam in columns for the Daily Beast and on London talk radio, had threatened to sue the SPLC for defamation — traditionally and properly a difficult case to make in U.S. courts. Yet the SPLC caved spectacularly.

The amusing but uncharacteristically groveling tone of the SPLC’s apology suggests fear of Nawaz’s lawyers: “We have taken the time to do more research,” stated the SPLC (doing research — what a novel idea!), noting that Nawaz has made “valuable and important contributions to public discourse,” adding that he is “most certainly not” an anti-Muslim extremist, and concluding, “We would like to extend our sincerest apologies to Mr. Nawaz, Quilliam, and our readers for the error.” The settlement further stipulated that the SPLC’s president, Richard Cohen, would film a video apology, prominently display it on the outfit’s website, and distribute the apology to every email address and mailing address on the SPLC mailing list. Whether Cohen was further required to come over to Nawaz’s house every week and iron his laundry could not be learned.

The Nawaz settlement was the most damaging episode yet in what has become an increasingly dire situation for the SPLC’s floundering image. Image, painstakingly built since its founding in 1971, is its chief asset. Image is what keeps the dollars flowing in. The Right has long been calling attention to the SPLC’s questionable tactics, but these days even Politico, The Atlantic, and PBS are running skeptical pieces about the saints of the South. Politico wondered whether the SPLC was “overstepping its bounds” and quoted an anti-terrorism expert, J. M. Berger, who pointed out that “the problem partly stems from the fact that the [SPLC] wears two hats, as both an activist group and a source of information.” David A. Graham of The Atlantic wrote that the “Field Guide” was “more like an attempt to police the discourse on Islam than a true inventory of anti-Muslim extremists, of whom there is no shortage, and opened SPLC up to charges that it had strayed from its civil-rights mission.” PBS interviewer Bob Garfield suggested to its president that the SPLC is increasingly seen “not as fighting the good fight but as being opportunists exploiting our political miseries” and that this was tantamount to killing “the goose that lays the golden egg.” In 2015 the FBI dropped the SPLC from its list of resources about hate groups.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/judicial-watch-doj-says-no-fisa-court-hearings-held-to-get-warrants-against-carter-page/

Judicial Watch announced that documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that the Obama Department of Justice did not request a formal FISA court hearing to obtain warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

While a court hearing is not necessary to obtain a FISA warrant, it’s shocking that a request to spy on the campaign of the opposition party did not trigger extra caution that a court hearing would have demonstrated.

In the filing the Justice Department finally revealed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held no hearings on the Page FISA spy warrants, first issued in 2016 and subsequently renewed three times:

[National Security Division] FOIA consulted [Office of Intelligence] … to identify and locate records responsive to [Judicial Watch’s] FOIA request…. [Office of Intelligence] determined … that there were no records, electronic or paper, responsive to [Judicial Watch’s] FOIA request with regard to Carter Page. [Office of Intelligence] further confirmed that the [Foreign Surveillance Court] considered the Page warrant applications based upon written submissions and did not hold any hearings.

The Department of Justice previously released to Judicial Watch the heavily redacted Page warrant applications. The initial Page FISA warrant was granted just weeks before the 2016 election.

The arrogance of these people is astounding, as JW President Thomas Fitton points out:

“It is disturbing that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance courts rubber-stamped the Carter Page spy warrants and held not one hearing on these extraordinary requests to spy on the Trump team,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Perhaps the court can now hold hearings on how justice was corrupted by material omissions that Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the DNC, a conflicted Bruce Ohr, a compromised Christopher Steele, and anti-Trumper Peter Strzok were all behind the ‘intelligence’ used to persuade the courts to approve the FISA warrants that targeted the Trump team.” CONTINUE AT SITE