RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-smoke-and-mirrors-11570746257

Democrats and the media for three years used a fog of facts and speculation to lull America into forgetting there was never a shred of evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. They flooded the zone with another flurry of scattershot claims in their campaign against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Republicans might bear these tactics in mind as they confront the left’s new impeachment push.

In the two weeks since the White House released the transcript of President Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the debate has descended into the weeds of process and people. This is unsurprising given House Democrats’ decision to keep hidden the central doings of their impeachment inquiry, and the media’s need to fill a void.

The press has responded by seeking to weave dozens of obscure Ukrainian and U.S. names into a crazy quilt of corruption. Readers have no time to keep track of all the Vlads, envoys and meetings in Spain, and that’s the point. The goal is to cover the Trump administration in ugly.

Republicans for their part are miffed at the highly irregular manner in which all this is unfolding. So they’re highlighting the anonymous whistleblower, his motives and his methods. They’ve pointed out the whistleblower’s admission that his information was secondhand. They’re drilling into whether he was biased on behalf of a current Democratic presidential candidate. They are (correctly) pointing out that the whistleblower has no legal right to anonymity.

Motive matters, but what matters more is the accuracy of the complaint itself. The real news of the past few weeks has been the steady accumulation of evidence that its central claim is totally wrong.

Which shouldn’t be surprising, given how many facts the complaint mangled about the call. It alleged, for instance, that Mr. Trump asked Ukraine to “locate and turn over servers.” He didn’t. It claims Mr. Trump “praised” a prosecutor named Yuriy Lutsenko and suggested the Ukrainian president “keep him in his position.” That didn’t happen either. There’s more, and when the whistleblower can’t get the facts of the call right, it’s no surprise he got his conclusion wrong too.

There is simply no evidence of what House Democrats have made the central claim of their impeachment inquiry: that Mr. Trump engaged in a “quid pro quo” by withholding aid to Ukraine unless it “opened an investigation” into former Vice President Joe Biden. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.openthebooks.com/openthebooks_oversight_report_-_the_congressional
Breaking.Why is it that 97% of Congress get reelected each year even though only 17% of Americans believe they’re doing a good job? 

Our latest breaking report on The Congressional Favor Factory investigates this suspicious phenomenon.

We followed the money and found a culture that has “conflict-of-interest” written all over it. 

Even worse, Congress writes their own rules to protect their re-election campaigns.

Click here to download our breaking report, free of charge.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/09/how-unreasoned-impeachment-dysfunction-is-trashing-democrats/

This puts the party in a new direction.”

These words were uttered by no less than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House of Representatives would formally seek President Donald Trump’s impeachment.

How prophetic, how true … and how deadly for the traditional Democratic Party of blue-collar workers and their families.

The socialist/progressives whom AOC represents are now in charge of the “blue” party, whose character is clearly defined by the most left-wing New York and California politicians and voters. While these progressives love their unfounded impeachment dreams, they have no sense of what it is doing to the traditional, common-sense, family-oriented center of the Democrat party.

Their claim that Trump committed an impeachable offense in his conversation with the Ukrainian president when the resident discussed Joe Biden and his son’s payoff to enormous personal benefit is not a Trump problem. It is a Biden problem that Biden must deal with. 

Neither the Ukrainian phone call transcript which the White House released, nor the whistleblowers’ version, suggest that the president sought a “payoff” for himself or anyone in his administration. The conversation just involved pursuit of Biden’s actions for a big Ukrainian “payoff” for his son, which is the actual violation of law.

The Ukrainian president had just won in a landslide on an anti-corruption platform, the U.S. has an anti-corruption treaty with Ukraine, and Trump is the top law enforcement officer in the United States. So the phone conversation was more than justified. Following Hillary Clinton with Biden as the nominee would cement Democrats as the party of corruption.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-10-6-the-bidens-stone-cold-crooked-2

After posting the first installment of this series last night, I had a few more inspirations that I thought deserved an additional post.

I’ll start with this Washington Post defense of Biden’s conduct with respect to Ukraine, that appeared September 27. It’s an unsigned editorial, headline “The Ukraine facts are clear. But does truth still matter?” As to the Bidens and Ukraine, here is the key quote:

Mr. Trump has thrown up a smokescreen of denials, insults — and blatant lies. Over and over, he and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, have repeated the easily disproved claim that Mr. Biden sought to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired to protect his son. Senior Ukrainian officials, including one of Mr. Giuliani’s own sources, have publicly stated that the story is false; multiple media investigations have definitively debunked it.

Recall that the issue we are examining here is whether Joe Biden had the corrupt motive of benefiting his son Hunter when he used the threat of withholding U.S. loan guarantees to force the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. The Post says that the allegation of Biden’s corruption is “easily disproved” because “senior Ukrainian officials” (unnamed) have “publicly stated that the story is false.”

And what is it that these “senior Ukrainian officials” have stated is false? Certainly not that Joe Biden forced Shokin’s firing by the threat to withhold U.S. aid; and certainly not that Hunter Biden got the $600,000/yr directorship at Burisma within 30 days after Joe Biden became the “point person” for U.S. policy to that country; and certainly not that after Shokin was fired the investigation of Burisma was disrupted and Hunter Biden continued to receive his director fees there for several more years.

amgreatness.com/2019/10/08/anti-trump-whistleblower-wrote-dramatic-memo-after-ukraine-call-has-ties-to-2020-dem-candidate/

The anti-Trump “whistleblower” is a registered Democrat who reportedly has a significant tie to one of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. Also, according to Fox News,  he wrote a “dramatic” but inaccurate two-page memo on July 26, the day after the Trump-Zelensky phone call.

Immediately following his chat with an unidentified White House official about President Trump’s telephone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,” the so-called IC whistleblower wrote what Fox News described as a “dramatic personal memo,” alleging that the White House official characterized the call as “crazy” and “frightening.”

The whistleblower alleged that Trump improperly pressured Zelensky to investigate potential 2020 election rival Joe Biden, whose son Hunter once sat on the board of a notoriously corrupt Ukrainian energy firm. The allegation helped spark House Democrats to launch a formal impeachment inquiry into the president, who is steadfastly denying any wrongdoing.

“The following is a record of a conversation I had this afternoon with a White House official about the telephone call yesterday morning between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,” the complainant wrote in his memo.

amgreatness.com/2019/10/09/sen-cotton-calls-intel-community-watchdog-evasive-insolent-and-obstructive-in-scathing-letter/

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) fired off a scathing letter to the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Wednesday, calling his recent testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee “insolent and obstructive.”

ICIG Michael Atkinson is under fire for secretly altering intelligence community whistleblower complaint forms in September and backdating those changes to August when the anti-Trump “whistleblower” complaint was filed.

Under the new rules, whistleblowers are no longer required to provide first-hand information to support allegations of wrongdoing.

The ICIG admitted to lawmakers that the whistleblower forms and rules were changed in September, even though the new forms and guidance state that the changes were made in August. When asked to explain why the changes were backdated to August, Atkinson reportedly had no answer.

“Your disappointing testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on September 26 was evasive to the point of being insolent and obstructive,” Cotton, a Republican member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), wrote.

Cotton added that Atkinson refused to disclose to committee members why Atkinson determined the anti-Trump complainant had a partisan political bias against Trump.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/can-we-keep-our-republic-bruce-thornton/

When asked the type of government the Constitutional Convention had created, Benjamin Franklin famously replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Franklin and the Founders understood that given a flawed human nature and its passion for power, no form of political order can survive if it is not continually maintained and defended against attempts to dismantle it in order to empower one faction at the expense of others, thus diminishing their freedom.

Since the election of Donald Trump, we have been watching one of the most serious assaults on the Constitutional Republic in our history. With the current efforts of the Democrat-controlled House to engineer public support for impeachment, this three-year attack is intensifying. The climactic battle will be fought on November 3, 2020 when America goes to the polls to select the president. On that day will be decided not just which party will take the White House, but which vision of government will rule us: The Constitutional order of popular sovereignty, federalism, and divided powers; or a technocratic oligarchy of centralized and concentrated power.

Or to put it more starkly: Can we keep our nation of free citizens, or will we become one of managed clients?

This competition of political philosophies is not about Donald Trump’s alleged violations of mythic “democratic norms” or “presidential decorum.” In fact, the bipartisan evocation of such codes of political manners reflects the preference for the technocratic oligarchy that has ruled and misruled the country since the Second World War. Its roots go back even farther than that. The first progressives of the late 19th century were frankly technocratic, disdainful of separated and balanced powers, and advocates of the new “human sciences” that they claimed had made obsolete the wisdom of the Founders, the guidance of tradition, and the lessons of history.

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

The Democrats’ impeachment show just keeps getting less and less credible, and more and more disgusting.

The latest is from Byron York at the Washington Examiner, who reports that the so-called “whistleblower” had a “professional relationship” with an unnamed Democratic Party presidential candidate:

Under questioning from Republicans during last Friday’s impeachment inquiry interview with [Michael] Atkinson, the [intelligence community’s] inspector general revealed that the whistleblower’s possible bias was not that he was simply a registered Democrat. It was that he had a significant tie to one of the Democratic presidential candidates currently vying to challenge President Trump in next year’s election.

“The IG said [the whistleblower] worked or had some type of professional relationship with one of the Democratic candidates,” said one person with knowledge of what was said.

“The IG said the whistleblower had a professional relationship with one of the 2020 candidates,” said another person with knowledge of what was said.

“What [Atkinson] said was that the whistleblower self-disclosed that he was a registered Democrat and that he had a prior working relationship with a current 2020 Democratic presidential candidate,” said a third person with knowledge of what was said.

All three sources said Atkinson did not identify the Democratic candidate with whom the whistleblower had a connection. It is unclear what the working or professional relationship between the two was.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/back-to-you-nancy-11570663218

The White House letter late Tuesday telling Speaker Nancy Pelosi that President Trump won’t cooperate with her impeachment inquiry is causing heartburn among all the usual suspects. Readers should ignore the fainting spells over “a constitutional crisis” and keep in mind that this is largely a political response to a political attack by House Democrats.

“Your inquiry is constitutionally invalid and a violation of due process,” wrote White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who lists the due-process protections that the House is denying Mr. Trump as it pursues impeachment. He’s right about due process but wrong to dress this up in constitutional clothes.

No doubt Mr. Cipollone is doing this for political effect, since he knows that under the Constitution the House can organize impeachment more or less as it wants. The House is under no constitutional obligation to allow Mr. Trump’s lawyers to cross-examine witnesses, as if impeachment were a criminal proceeding. Like the President’s pardon power, the House’s impeachment power is among the least fettered in America’s founding charter.

Mr. Cipollone is trying to make a political point about the unprecedented secret and unfair way the House is proceeding on impeachment, and on that he’s entirely correct. As we’ve been writing, Mrs. Pelosi has refused to let the House vote on a resolution authorizing an official impeachment inquiry with rules that define the scope and procedures.

This contrasts with how the House worked in both the Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton impeachments. Mr. Cipollone is now using the lack of a House vote to justify the White House refusal to cooperate with witnesses and documents “under these circumstances.” Mr. Cipollone holds out the prospect of cooperating if Mrs. Pelosi holds such a vote.

Think of this as a “back to you, Nancy” memo. She now faces a political choice of her own. She could treat Mr. Trump’s lack of cooperation as one more impeachable offense, add it to whatever the House decides to do about Mr. Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president, and impeach Mr. Trump on those grounds. Joe Biden endorsed impeachment on this basis Wednesday. But this rush to impeach might not persuade anyone who hasn’t wanted to oust Mr. Trump since January 2017.

On the other hand, Mrs. Pelosi could let the House vote to authorize an inquiry with regular order and rules that give the minority subpoena power and have everything done in public. This was the House standard for Nixon-Clinton. The risk for Mrs. Pelosi is that she might lose some House Democrats on such a vote without gaining many Republicans—which would make the partisan nature of the exercise clear and undermine its public credibility.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/extortion-liberal-mayor-tries-to-shut-down-trump-rally-with-outrageous-security-fee/

Minneapolis’s liberal mayor, Jacob Frey, has demanded $530,000 in security costs for a Trump campaign rally this Thursday — 26 times the cost of security for a 2009 Obama rally. In violation of its contract, the Target Center threatened to cancel the rally unless the campaign forks over the cash.

“This is an outrageous abuse of power by a liberal mayor trying to deny the rights of his own city’s residents just because he hates the President,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. “People want to hear from their President, and no mayor looking to beef up his resume for a run for higher office should stand in the way.”

College campuses have imposed outrageous security costs as a pretext to shut down controversial speakers, often conservatives. In 2018, the University of Wisconsin tried to charge its College Republicans club $17,000 in security fees for a rally. The College Republicans sued, claiming a violation of their First Amendment free speech rights, and the college settled, paying the club $122,500 in legal fees.

The Trump campaign alleged that Frey “is abusing the power of his office and attempting to extort President Trump’s re-election campaign by conjuring a phony and outlandish bill for security in an effort to block a scheduled Keep America Great rally. Democrat Mayor Frey is using the bogus security charges to pressure the Target Center, site of the contracted October 10, 2019 rally, into preventing Minnesota residents from exercising their First Amendment rights in support of President Trump.”