RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/10/california-has-become-americas-cannibal-state/

For over six years, California has had a top marginal income tax rate of 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation. About 150,000 households in a state of 40 million people now pay nearly half of the total annual state income tax.

The state legislature sold that confiscatory tax rate on the idea that it was a temporary fix and would eventually be phased out. No one believed that. California voters, about 40 percent of whom pay no state income taxes, naturally approved the extension of the high rate by an overwhelming margin.

California recently raised gas taxes by 40 percent and now has the second-highest gas taxes in the United States.

California has the ninth-highest combined state and local sales taxes in the country, but its state sales tax of 7.3 percent is America’s highest. As of April 1, California is now applying that high state sales tax to goods that residents buy online from out-of-state sellers.

In late 2017, the federal government capped state and local tax deductions at $10,000. For high earners in California, the change effectively almost doubled their state and local taxes.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/10/barr-confirms-multiple-intel-agencies-implicated-in-anti-trump-spy-operation/

“Spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Attorney General William Barr told a Senate committee on Wednesday morning. Barr’s comments came in the context of potential Justice Department reviews of the Trump-Russia investigation and how it began in 2016.

While it is important that the top law enforcement in the United States publicly acknowledged that the Obama administration and its intelligence agencies surveilled its domestic political opponents during the heat of a presidential election, it is what he said next that was most startling: that the CIA and other federal agencies in addition to the FBI may have been involved. “I’m not talking about the FBI necessarily, but intelligence agencies more broadly,” he said.

The FBI, which has incredibly friendly relations with the media, has taken the brunt of the public outcry against the anti-Trump operation. That project included the use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, national security letters, human informants, and strategic leaking to craft a narrative of treasonous collusion with Russia to steal an election from Hillary Clinton. It even included leaks of classified records from former FBI director James Comey, which he said was done for the purpose of launching a special counsel investigation as retaliation for his firing.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/spying-did-occur-11554932442

The Attorney General of the United States told a Senate subcommittee today that the federal government spied on a U.S. political campaign in 2016. Now Americans need to know which executive branch officials were responsible for turning Washington’s formidable surveillance powers against the party out of power.

The Journal reports:

Attorney General William Barr will ask a team inside the Justice Department to examine the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia, he told Congress on Wednesday, responding to lingering Republican concerns about law enforcement decisions during the 2016 election.

Mr. Barr characterized the law-enforcement activities that were directed at people affiliated with the Trump campaign as “spying,” telling a Senate panel that he will examine the gamut of intelligence activities that were directed at members of the campaign in 2016, looking at how and why surveillance decisions were made.

“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Mr. Barr said in a hearing, invoking Vietnam-era intelligence abuses, such as the surveillance of antiwar activists as a reason to raise these questions. “Spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated.”

It is a big deal, even if much of the press corps runs every development in this story through the filter of whether it is good news or bad news for Donald Trump. It is unconditionally bad news for the citizens of a free society if it becomes acceptable for the government to spy on domestic political opponents.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/barr-forms-team-to-probe-possible-fbi-abuses-in-trump-russia-investigation/

Attorney General William Barr has formed a team to investigate potential abuses by FBI and Department of Justice officials involved in the the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia in the summer of 2016, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

Congressional Republicans have for the past year called for a thorough accounting of the origins of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, which many of them believe began as a result of anti-Trump bias on the part of senior DOJ and FBI officials.

“I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016,” Barr told the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday.

The investigation that will reportedly be carried out by Barr’s newly-formed team comes atop the existing DOJ Inspector General investigation into the origins of the counterintelligence probe, which Barr has said should be completed as early as May or June.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) has emerged as perhaps the most vocal Republican calling for further investigation into whether FBI officials misled the FISA court by failing to disclose that the Steele dossier — an unverified opposition research file that was used as a pretext in the FISA application to surveil Carter Page — was initially funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/10/top-fbi-lawyer-testified-rosenstein-discussed-removing-trump-office/

James Baker, the former top lawyer of the FBI, testified to members of Congress last fall that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and other FBI officials discussed wearing a wire in meetings with President Trump and removing him from office, according to a transcript of Baker’s testimony released on Tuesday.

In a joint committee on October 3, 2018, Baker was questioned in a closed-door interview on his knowledge of the Christopher Steele dossier, classified information leaked to the media, and invoking the 25th Amendment against President Trump.

Baker’s testimony confirmed what former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe previously said about national security officials strategizing to remove President Trump from office. Baker said Rosenstein made a serious suggestion to wear a wire when near the president in order to collect evidence that the president obstructed the investigation on Russian collusion. Baker also said he suspected Rosenstein was acting in response to the firing of James Comey, and that he felt he had been “used” by the president in his justification for firing Comey.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273387/new-york-democrats-pass-tax-pain-daniel-greenfield

In the movie Escape From New York, the island of Manhattan was walled off and mined. For its fortieth anniversary, New York City will try to recreate its plot by walling off parts of Manhattan with toll booths. The walls of toll booths to impose congestion pricing on the locals will fulfill the dream of former Mayor Bloomberg whose wildest ideas now seem downright tame to the new Dem radicals.

You could try to bypass the toll booths along 61st Street by taking an Uber, but good luck.

New York City has also been leading a crackdown on ridesharing on behalf of taxi drivers who began committing suicide because they were no longer able to overcharge, rip off and rob tourists. Uber will be capped, taxed and pushed out of the city along with all the other cars to encourage people to use public transportation. Unfortunately, public transportation doesn’t work anymore.

You can still ride a bike, if you don’t mind suffering bruises, bumps and skull fractures.

The New York City subway is failing badly. To quote the New York Times, “Century-old tunnels and track routes are crumbling… Just 65 percent of weekday trains reach their destinations on time, the lowest rate since the transit crisis of the 1970s”. Cars are being taxed to help fund this collapsing system. But the problem isn’t a lack of money: the money is being diverted by unions and political sweetheart deals.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ilhan-omar-under-fire-after-describing-9-11-terror-attacks-as-some-people-did-something

Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar is facing backlash after her speech at a Muslim rights group’s event in which she described the September 11, 2001 terror attacks as “some people did something.”

Omar spoke at a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) fundraiser last month, where she called upon other Muslim Americans to “make people uncomfortable” with their activism and presence in the society and criticized the Jewish state.

But another part of the speech surfaced on social media earlier this week, in which Omar described the terror attacks perpetrated by al Qaeda.

“CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties,” Omar said at the event.

The comments from the Minnesota freshman Democrat, still reeling from a number of anti-Semitic controversies, prompted Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw to slam Omar for her description of the terror attacks.

“First Member of Congress to ever describe terrorists who killed thousands of Americans on 9/11 as ‘some people who did something,’” Crenshaw wrote in a tweet. “Unbelievable.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/ag-barr-the-obama-administration-was-spying-on-the-trump-campaign/

On Wednesday, Attorney General William Barr insisted that intelligence agencies under former President Barack Obama did spy on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. He did not declare that this spying was illegal, but the spying is unsettling regardless.

“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. It’s a big deal,” Barr said in a Senate hearing on Wednesday. “There are a lot of rules put in place to make sure that there’s an adequate basis before our law enforcement agencies get involved in political surveillance. I’m not suggesting that those rules were violated but I think it’s important to look at that.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) pressed him on the issue of spying. “You’re not suggesting, though, that spying occurred?” she asked.

“I think spying did occur. Yes, I think spying did occur,” Barr replied. “The question is whether it was predicated, adequately predicated.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-watchdog-fbi-informant-in-russia-probe

Attorney General Bill Barr testified Wednesday that he believes “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign in 2016, as he vowed to review the conduct of the FBI’s original Russia probe — and the focus of a related internal review shifted to the role of a key FBI informant.

“I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated. … I think it’s my obligation. Congress is usually very concerned with intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies staying in their proper lane,” he testified before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, while noting that “spying on a political campaign is a big deal.”

The comments follow a new report that the Justice Department’s internal watchdog also is scrutinizing the role of an FBI informant who contacted members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, as part of a broader review of the early stages of the Russia investigation. The New York Times reported that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is looking into informant Stefan Halper’s work during the Russia probe, as well as his work with the FBI prior to the start of that probe.

https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/brett-kavanaugh-rush-to-judgment-on-newest-scotus-judge/

A piece by Richard Wolf that ran over the weekend in USA Today posits that the anticipated “conservative takeover of the Supreme Court . . . has been stalled by a budding bromance between” Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court’s newest member, Brett Kavanaugh. The author’s principal evidence: Their disagreement in only one of 25 cases that have been decided so far this term with Kavanaugh’s participation. (The newest justice has not participated in six other cases decided to date.) They parted ways in Stokeling v. United States. There Roberts joined Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan in dissent from the majority’s holding that the Armed Career Criminal Act includes a robbery offense that requires a defendant to have overcome a victim’s resistance.

If that much agreement sounds remarkable, consider that most of those cases were decided unanimously and that no pair of justices disagreed with each other on the Court’s judgment over the course of those 25 cases more than nine times. For some perspective on just how early it still is, note that the Court’s previous term had 19 decisions in which the justices split 5–4. Most of this term’s decisions have yet to be issued, and the highest concentration of sharply divided ones tends to come later in the term.