Displaying the most recent of 92389 posts written by

Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Cleaning Up Comey’s FBI Director Wray needs to restore the bureau’s fallen reputation.

By on January 30th, 2018

Donald Trump is his own worst enemy, and his Twitter attacks on the FBI are a good example. New FBI director Christopher Wray seems to be undertaking a much-needed house cleaning of officials from the James Comey era who have damaged the bureau’s reputation, but Mr. Trump’s bumbling catcalls make that task all the harder.

A case in point is the resignation Monday of deputy director Andrew McCabe, which every Never Trump conspiracy theorist is blaming on the President’s machinations. The same President they claim is an idiot is apparently pulling off a Nixonian cover-up. If you’ve lost your mind over Mr. Trump, you’ll believe anything about him, even if it’s contradictory.

Mr. Wray has no choice other than to install new FBI leadership after the Comey calamity if he wants to assert control. That means removing the Comey loyalists who botched the Hillary Clinton email probe and may have inserted the bureau into a presidential election campaign on the basis of Russian disinformation from the Christopher Steele dossier. Cleaning house isn’t a conspiracy. It’s a necessity to restore the reputation of America’s premier law enforcement agency.

We’ll learn more about what happened in the Clinton email case when the Justice Department Inspector General concludes his investigation. But Mr. McCabe had done more than enough to warrant removal when he supervised the Clinton probe after his wife, Jill McCabe, had run for the Virginia state Senate in 2016 with the financial help of Clinton loyalist and then-Governor Terry McAuliffe.

The FBI’s ethics office cleared Mr. McCabe to stay on the Clinton case, but anyone with any ethical sense would have understood the appearance of a conflict of interest. He didn’t recuse himself from the Clinton case until a week before the 2016 election. Mr. McCabe’s name has since also appeared in troubling references in the text messages between FBI paramours Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, the main agent on the Clinton probe.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

Stephen Karetsky: Ulysses Grant in “The Holy Land” 1878

By on January 30th, 2018

Reviews of Ron Chernow’s Grant omit the fact that this lengthy biography includes only one paragraph about the former President’s trip to the Holy Land in 1878 and that it is a misleading one. It implies that the only Jews there were in Jerusalem and that they were little more than beggars.

The reviewer follows suit. (Of course, Grant’s primary mission was not to visit and study the various Jewish communities there.) But, for some reason, Chernow omits an event of probable interest to many readers.

Finding that most of what is now the central area of Israel was almost entirely unpopulated, bleak, and consisting mainly of sand, Grant and his traveling companion, journalist John Russel Young, investigated what they were traveling over and determined that beneath the sand was fertile soil.

They both agreed that the area would be flourishing farmland if Americans had come there. This great development, of course, came very shortly afterwards with the arrival of Zionist Jews. Young’s contemporaneous accounts were printed in the American press as the trip proceeded.

His detailed, two-volume description of Grant’s worldwide tour was published soon after the two adventurers returned to the U.S. It is still in print and remarkably relevant to today’s headlines, e.g., China’s claims to Japanese islands.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

You Know Your Awards Show is Terrible When Hillary Clinton is the Star Daniel Greenfield

By on January 29th, 2018

Like most awards shows, the Grammy Awards exist to fill a narcissistic industry’s need for attention. And like most awards shows, it stopped making sense once most people began to stream shows, instead of being rooted to a television screen. And so the producers know quite well that aside from die hard fans and people who don’t have internet, most people will just see a few viral clips of their show.

And the highlight of the Grammy Awards is Hillary Clinton taking a shot at President Trump.

You know your awards show is terrible when…

1. Its highlight is Hillary Clinton

2. Hillary Clinton has nothing to do with your industry

3. The only thing anyone will remember from your autotune and lip sync party is a disposable comedy bit involving Hillary Clinton.

There. Now you don’t have to watch the Grammy Awards ever again.

Continue reading →
HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

ICE Troubles With Terrorism By Pedro Gonzalez

By on January 29th, 2018

An audit by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is facing a variety of challenges, particularly with implementing the Known or Suspected Terrorist Encounter Protocol (KSTEP). KSTEP allows a myriad of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to coordinate and streamline the “protocol for identifying and processing aliens who are known or suspected terrorists.”

ICE can only screen immigrants while they are in custody. As of June 2017, just 33,701 of 2.4 million—about 1.4 percent—of all immigrants actively monitored by ICE and Immigration Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) were subject to KSTEP screening for connections to known or suspected terrorists. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that “some law enforcement agencies will not honor ICE immigration detainer requests,” thereby preventing ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) from taking custody of criminal aliens for KSTEP screening.

From January 2014 through May 2017, approximately 675 jurisdictions nationwide refused to honor more than 29,269 ICE immigration detainer requests. When a state or local law enforcement agency declines to transfer custody of a removable criminal alien to ICE, the released alien may put the public and ERO personnel at risk and it then requires significantly more resources to bring the individual into ICE custody.

California denied 11 ICE detainer requests, the majority for immigrants convicted of violent crimes, between January and February 2017, taking the cake for most detainer requests declined, 3,348, between 2015 and 2017. So-called “Sanctuary Cities,” having been specifically designed to limit or prohibit immigration authorities, were the worst offenders.

Continue reading →
HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Border Wall is Necessary But Not Sufficient By Karl Spence

By on January 29th, 2018

Juan Leonardo Quintero was a pretty good yard man. His employer, Camp Landscaping of Deer Park, Texas, valued his services so much that the boss bailed him out of jail when he was arrested on a morals charge, and after Quintero pleaded guilty and was deported to Mexico, Camp lent him the money he needed to be smuggled back into the United States.

Then the bill for the yard man’s services came due.

Quintero knew that if found here again, he might go to federal prison for 10 years or more, so he took pains to avoid the authorities’ notice. But then, in 2006, while driving his employer’s truck along a street in Houston, he was pulled over for speeding.

“I knew I was in trouble,” he would say later. “Since I came back, I knew I was in trouble. I was worried about being put in prison.”

So Quintero drew a gun from his pants and put four bullets into Officer Rodney Johnson’s head.

The crime was a big deal in Texas. Quintero stood trial for capital murder and was sentenced to life without parole. His boss, Robert Camp, pleaded guilty to federal charges of harboring an illegal alien and went to jail, too. And the Houston police started cooperating more closely with federal immigration authorities.

In 2010, when Houston Mayor Bill White challenged longtime incumbent Rick Perry for Texas governor, Johnson’s widow appeared in a Perry campaign ad blaming White for the “sanctuary city” policies that had made it harder for those immigration authorities to detect and deport people like Quintero. White lost to Perry, bigly.

I remembered the Quintero case when I heard about the recent courtroom antics of California cop killer Luis Bracamontes. His performance has to be seen to be believed. Dropping F-bombs and N-words left and right, he cursed out the judge, insulted the surviving victims to their face, laughed at their families, and generally behaved as if he had just won the lottery. He finally was thrown out of the courtroom, to watch the remainder of his trial by remote TV.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

God and Football By Herbert London

By on January 29th, 2018

There were five seconds left in the playoff game between the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints. The Saints had a two point lead and a virtual lock on the victory. But in one of the strangest events in National Football, Case Keenum, the Vikings’ quarterback, threw a pass to Stefon Diggs in the flat. He jumped up and dashed to the end zone. What was a virtually assured Saints’ victory became a Vikings visit to the NFC championship game.

When asked about the circumstances surrounding his catch, Diggs said, “it happened so fast, I didn’t know what was happening.” He went on to note that he owes his success to God. “God made it happen.” Since this was a miracle of a kind that defies logic, there may be something to this argument. It is instructive that no one to my knowledge from the American Civil Liberties Union or Atheists of America have challenged Diggs’ judgement.

The reason this matter comes up at all is that football coaches across the country receive the wrath of the ACLU when they have asked their teams to pray to God before and after games. What was once a pre-game ritual has been ridiculed to the point where it is rarely employed. I doubt Mr. Diggs will start a trend–as an NBC official said, “religion and politics don’t mix.” Well they do mix in ways he will never recognize.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Rod Rosenstein Is Shirking His Duty to Supervise Robert Mueller A self-absorbed, unrestrained prosecutor can do a lot of harm. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on January 29th, 2018

Let’s say I’m an assistant United States attorney in, oh I don’t know, Montana. I get to work one morning and I say to myself, “Self, you know what would be really interesting? Why, to ask Barack Obama some questions.”

Sure, there are a lot of people who’d like to do that — Obama’s a very interesting guy. But see, I’m not just “a lot of people.” I’m a federal prosecutor, just like Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Thanks to this nifty federal grand jury we’ve empaneled here in Montana, I’ve got subpoena power, just like Mueller.

Let’s back up a bit. After my weekend column, it occurred to me that a hypothetical was in order, to demonstrate the sorts of things a self-absorbed, unrestrained prosecutor can do.

My column argued not only that President Trump should refuse to be questioned by Mueller’s alpha-prosecutors, but that it would be wrong for Mueller to seek to interview the president of the United States unless he can first show cause that (1) a serious crime implicating the president has been committed and (2) the president is possessed of testimony that is both essential to proving the crime and unobtainable by alternative means.

In response, some commentators who were sympathetic to this standard wondered how it would be enforced.

After all, what’s to stop Mueller from threatening to issue a subpoena compelling Trump’s appearance before the grand jury if he declines to submit to an interview? Even if Mueller should not do that, nothing says he could not do it. If he did, then Trump — despite the lack of just cause — would be put to an array of fraught choices — much to the delight, no doubt, of the Democratic partisans on Mueller’s staff. The president would have to (a) submit to questioning and risk that Mueller would decide his answers somehow incriminated him; (b) invoke executive privilege at the political cost of adversaries’ claiming he was concealing criminal misconduct or some kind of collusion with Russia; or (c) fire Mueller and risk comparisons to Watergate and calls for his impeachment — even though the Watergate special prosecutor had compelling evidence of President Nixon’s criminal culpability before demanding that the president submit to law-enforcement demands.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Peter Smith Burn the Rich, Cool the Planet

By on January 29th, 2018

Wind, solar and really big batteries aren’t cutting it. Were that the case atmospheric CO2 would be shrinking. So lets wallop well-heeled warmists Al Gore, Malcolm Turnbulls and the like with whopping taxes. They can bear the pain better than the poor can afford their green-inflated power bills.

Reportedly, 1700 private jets flew rich people into Davos. Energy guzzlers to a man and woman. Trump apart, you would be hard put to find a climate sceptic among them. I have it on reliable authority that all commercial flights served the wrong brands of caviar and champagne.

Al Gore is attending the talkfest. I don’t know his travel arrangements. However, as reported by Climate Depot in August 2017, Gore’s monthly electricity use at his mansion comes to 19,241 kWh. Apparently, this is 21.3 times more energy than is consumed by a typical American household. And this does not include the kilowatt appetite of other houses he owns, cars, boats and planes. He’s a guzzler.

This extravagance of the rich while the hoi polloi eat crumbs forms part of my theme, which I will come back to. My theme is why, as a non-scientist, I don’t fall into line with the official consensus. It’s a self-reflective exercise which might have more general applicability. It’s good to remind ourselves about “the consensus”, which is that burning fossil fuels has caused such an increase in atmospheric CO2 since the 1970s that an unparalleled rate of warming has occurred. The consensus goes on to say that unless the use of fossil fuels is very markedly reduced warming will continue and within a relatively short space of time will become catastrophic.

That sounds serious to me. But is it?

Suppose a friend tells you that his car is on the blink and in the same breath tells you he has bound some parts together with duct tape and is setting off across the Nullarbor. He has either exaggerated the problem with his car or he is mad or extremely cavalier. Suppose a friend tells you that his doctor told him he had early stage lung cancer caused by smoking, at the exact same time as he was buying a packet of extra-filter fags as a precaution. Suppose a friend told you he was intent on repairing the relationship with his wife by buying her some roses while, at the same time, buying his girlfriend a diamond bracelet.

It doesn’t stack up. Does it? If indeed we are on the brink of catastrophe why in the world would governments tilt at windmills by subsidising the building of them. We surely know, if we have half a brain, that wind and sun are not the answer. CO2 is rising steeply as we speak.

What’s happening is ‘solutioneering’, as coined by Roger James. Installing windmills and solar panels has become the objective. The real objective of lowering CO2 levels is hardly ever in the frame. It’s all about installing comparatively useless green energyAnd batteries, don’t forget the batteries.

If CO2 levels were in the frame, governments would consider how best to bring emissions down. This might mean replacing inefficient dirty coal power stations with new efficient cleaner ones. It might mean building nuclear power plants. It might mean extracting more coal-seam gas. It might mean all three which, taken together, is likely to be effective in curbing CO2 emissions. Oh, but we don’t like any of these options, comes the cry. But I say, so you would rather fry?

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hillary Clinton Draws Ire After ‘Fire & Fury’ Grammys Reading “Don’t ruin great music with trash.”

By on January 29th, 2018

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is drawing criticism from Donald Trump Jr. and US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley after participating in a pre-recorded reading of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury for the 60th Annual Grammy Awards on Sunday night, multiple outlets are reporting.

Hosted by James Corden, the comedian had multiple singers “audition” for an audio performance of Wolff’s book, ending on a surprise cameo from Clinton. Take a look at the responses from Haley — as well as the clip — below.
Nikki Haley
✔ @nikkihaley
I have always loved the Grammys but to have artists read the Fire and Fury book killed it. Don’t ruin great music with trash. Some of us love music without the politics thrown in it.
10:12 PM – Jan 28, 2018

Continue reading →
BOOKS, MEDIA Comments turned off

New Book: McCabe Initiated White House Meeting That Led To Leak This story gives a glimpse into how the original Russia narrative may have been spread around to overly compliant journalists and other members of the ‘resistance.’By Mollie Hemingway

By on January 29th, 2018

The FBI’s top brass initiated conversations with a White House official that were quickly leaked to CNN, according to a new book.

Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe asked to speak privately with White House chief of staff Reince Priebus following a February 2017 intelligence briefing. The scene is described in “Media Madness,” Howard Kurtz’s new book on the press and its relationship with the Trump administration. McCabe said he asked for the meeting to tell Priebus that “everything” in a New York Times story authored by Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzzo was “bullsh-t.”

The story was yet another one of those anonymous “bombshells” you’ve heard so much about during the Trump era. It was headlined “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence” and was sourced to not one, not two, not three, but four “current and former American officials.” It was just like every other similar story Americans have read or seen in the past year — no indication that the three reporters had verified, much less seen, the underlying evidence, but lots of threatening language insinuating treasonous collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, all sourced to high-ranking but anonymous officials.

CNN’s Pamela Brown, Jim Sciutto, and Evan Perez reported a very similar story, also sourced to anonymous officials. Sciutto is a former Obama administration appointee who is close to Obama administration officials. Perez has extensive ties to Fusion GPS, the Democrat-funded firm that created the Russia narrative.

McCabe claimed to want Priebus to know the FBI’s perspective that this story was not true. Priebus pointed to the televisions that were going non-stop on the story. He asked if the FBI could say publicly what he had just told him. McCabe said he’d have to check, according to the book.

McCabe reportedly called back and said he couldn’t do anything about it. Then-FBI director James Comey reportedly called later and also said he couldn’t do anything, but did offer to brief the Senate Intelligence Committee on the matter later that week, suggesting they’d spill the beans publicly. You’ll never guess what happened next, according to the book:

Now, a week later, CNN was airing a breaking news story naming Priebus. According to ‘multiple U.S. officials,’ the network said, ‘the FBI rejected a White House request to publicly knock down media reports about communications between Donald Trump’s associates and Russians known to U.

Continue reading →