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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Trump Looks to Uproot Numbers-Only Bias Test Widely Used in U.S. see note please

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/02/14/trump_looks_to_end_numbers-only_bias_theory_governing_american_life.html

This will be a courageous move by the administration. Quotas are contrary to democracy….rsk

In what would be one of the Trump administration’s most far-reaching moves regarding race relations, top White House officials are planning a sharp pullback from federal efforts to correct imbalances in outcomes for minorities in everything from housing to hiring. On the table: a ban on the use of a controversial numbers-focused racial-bias theory known as “disparate impact.”

Federal regulators and lobbyists familiar with the change say the White House management and budget office is reviewing a proposed executive order, originally drafted by two conservative Washington think tanks, that would prohibit the use of “the disparate-impact approach in the enforcement or application of any civil-rights law.”

A catalyst for the move is White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, who is currently also serving as interim White House chief of staff and who, while serving in Congress, was a longtime critic of disparate impact. It is not clear whether President Trump has decided to issue the executive order, which would repudiate the underlying rationale for scores of regulations and thousands of government lawsuits alleging racial discrimination, resulting in billions of dollars in fines. Doing away with it would engender fierce opposition from Democrats.

As The Russia Hoax Begins To Unravel, The Gaslighting Begins The media has started backing away from the Russia collusion hoax. Many seem to know a reckoning is coming. by Adam Mill

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/14/russia-hoax-begins-unravel-gaslighting-begins/

In episode 171 of “Seinfeld,” George Costanza makes up a story about having a house in the Hamptons in order to avoid attending an event with his dead fiancée’s parents, the Rosses. He soon learns they know of his deception but the Rosses nevertheless accept an invitation to the fictitious house.

George picks them up and begins driving towards a house that doesn’t exist. Both the Rosses and George maintain the pretense until George drives to the end of island past the last house in the Hamptons. George silently pleads for the Rosses to put an end to the charade. The lie’s momentum took on a life of its own as the players all continued acting their parts long after the truth was known.

The episode comes to mind as the media has started backing away from the Russia collusion hoax. Like Costanza, many of the media perpetrators seem to know a reckoning is coming. Politico warned Trump haters, “Prepare for disappointment.” Other examples of expectation managing can be found, such as here, here, here, and here. Mueller’s longtime top deputy at the FBI recently warned, “A public narrative has built an expectation that the special counsel will explain his conclusions, but I think that expectation may be seriously misplaced.”

Most recently, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that after almost two years of investigation, it has uncovered no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Attorneys assigned to the Mueller team have quietly begun to slip away before the outcome of the investigation is made public (here, here, and here).

Andrew McCabe Admits Top NatSec Officials Plotted Coup Against Trump By Madeline Osburn

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/14/andrew-mccabe-admits-top-natsec-officials-plotted-coup-trump/
After the James Comey firing, McCabe discussed removing Trump from office and began a counterintelligence investigation of Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.
February 14, 2019 By Madeline Osburn

Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe publicly admitted that after the firing of James Comey, national security officials strategized on invoking the 25th amendment to remove President Trump from office.

“There were meetings at the Justice Department at which it was discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th Amendment,” Scott Pelley said he learned in his “60 Minutes” interview with McCabe.

Pelley described the top bureaucrats as “counting noses,” and speculating on where various cabinet members might stand on the question of the president’s removal.

“These were the eight days from Comey’s firing to the point that Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel. And the highest levels of American law enforcement were trying to figure out what to do with the president,” Pelley said.

Schumer Defends Opposing Border Wall After Voting for Secure Fence Act of 2006 By Nicholas Ballasy

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/schumer-defends-opposing-border-wall-after-voting-for-secure-fence-act-of-2006/

“The lack of faithfulness in saying the border ought to be secured is appalling to me,” says Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.).

WASHINGTON – Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) defended his vote in favor of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and his opposition to President Trump’s proposed wall for open areas along the border.

In addition to Schumer, Democrats including former Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Joe Biden (D-Del.) voted for the Secure Fence Act but the fencing that the bill called for was not fully completed. Trump, who originally called for a concrete wall that was blocked by Congress, says his current border security plan would install “see through” steel barriers at open portions of the border that currently lack fencing. According to the Border Patrol, drug smugglers and human traffickers have cut more than 1,700 holes in the fencing along the border in San Diego since 2015.

PJM asked Schumer, “You voted for the Secure Fence Act in 2006. Will you support additional barriers on the border?” The Democratic leader replied, “No wall – didn’t have it then and doesn’t have it now.”

This Detroit Imam and Rep. Omar are Using the Same Anti-Semitic Stereotypes Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/272870/detroit-imam-and-rep-omar-are-using-same-anti-daniel-greenfield

It’s not about Israel. That’s just an excuse.

If you want to really understand where Rep. Omar is coming from, enjoy a few minutes of anti-Semitic ravings from this Detroit Imam.

On January 27, 2019, an antisemitic lecture by Michigan-based Shi’ite Imam Bassem Al-Sheraa was uploaded to the YouTube channel of the Al-Zahraa Islamic Center, which is in Detroit.

That means stuff like this.

Following the [Babylonian] captivity, when Nebuchadnezzar exiled them and destroyed the Temple, the Jews said: ‘Money and women are our most powerful weapons.’…

“So they would amass gold and money, and they would spread usury. Usury constitutes a peculiar Jewish philosophy… Even in the modern world, global banks are based on the culture of usury, which is a Jewish concept.

As Rep. Omar would say, it’s all about the benjamins.

These are commonplace beliefs within the Muslim sphere. And also the leftist sphere.

“What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in the face of which no other god may exist… The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world.” Karl Marx

Poll: ‘Medicare for All’ Support Craters When Voters Told It Eliminates Private Market By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/poll-medicare-for-all-support-craters-when-voters-told-it-eliminates-private-market/

When self-described supporters of a Medicare-for-all health-care system were told that the policy would eliminate the private insurance market entirely, more than half of them rescinded their support, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday.

Of the 50 percent of total respondents who said they supported a generic Medicare-for-all proposal, 51 percent rescinded their support when answering a subsequent question that included a definition of the policy as eliminating the private insurance market, with 22 percent retreating completely to “don’t support” while another 29 percent reverted to “don’t know.” Previous polls measured support for a generic “Medicare for All” proposal but did not define the policy.

The poll, which surveyed 1,991 voters from February 7-10, found that net support for a generic “Medicare for All” plan also fell 15 percentage points since January 19. The decrease was more significant among Republicans at 21 percentage points, but the policy’s popularity also suffered an 11 percent net decrease among Democrats.

FEC Still Refuses To Investigate Alleged $84 Million Clinton Campaign Money Laundering By Margot Cleveland

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/13/fec-still-refuses-investigate-alleged-84-million-clinton-campaign-money-laundering/

Tuesday evening the Committee to Defend the President (CDP) filed a motion in a D.C. federal court seeking to supplement the complaint it had filed against the Federal Election Committee (FEC) in April 2018. In its original complaint, the CDP alleged that the agency responsible for enforcing campaign-finance law failed to act on an administrative complaint the CDP had filed with the FEC. That complaint charged that, during the 2016 presidential election, Democrats illegally funneled approximately $84 million through the Hillary Victory Fund to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which then illegally coordinated with the Hillary Clinton campaign.

To understand the alleged scheme requires familiarity with controlling campaign-finance law and campaign contribution limits. As I explained at the time CDP sued the FEC last April:

Under federal law, ‘an individual donor can contribute $2,700 to any candidate, $10,000 to any state party committee, and (during the 2016 cycle) $33,400 to a national party’s main account. These groups can all get together and take a single check from a donor for the sum of those contribution limits—it’s legal because the donor cannot exceed the base limit for any one recipient. And state parties can make unlimited transfer to their national party.’

This legal loophole allows ‘bundlers’ to raise large sums of money from wealthy donors—more than $400,000 at a time—filtering the funds to the national committees. Democrats and Republicans alike exploit this tactic. But once the money reaches the national committees, other limits apply.

Senate has uncovered no direct evidence of conspiracy between Trump campaign and Russia “We were never going to find a contract signed in blood saying, ‘Hey Vlad, we’re going to collude,'” one Democratic aide said.By Ken Dilanian

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-has-uncovered-no-direct-evidence-conspiracy-between-trump-campaign-n970536

After two years and 200 interviews, the Senate Intelligence Committee is approaching the end of its investigation into the 2016 election, having uncovered no direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to both Democrats and Republicans on the committee.

But investigators disagree along party lines when it comes to the implications of a pattern of contacts they have documented between Trump associates and Russians — contacts that occurred before, during and after Russian intelligence operatives were seeking to help Donald Trump by leaking hacked Democratic emails and attacking his opponent, Hillary Clinton, on social media.

“If we write a report based upon the facts that we have, then we don’t have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia,” said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in an interview with CBS News last week.

Borking Neomi Rao written by Heather Mac Donald

https://quillette.com/2019/02/12/

At the height of the #MeToo ferment over Judge Brett Kavanaugh, hundreds of Harvard and Yale law students shut down their classes to protest Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The students demanded that Kavanaugh’s sexual assault accusers be believed unconditionally, simply on the basis of having made an uncorroborated accusation.

Many of these elite law students will end up as judges. Yet the media cheered them on, even though their rejection of the presumption of innocence, if carried to the bench, would demolish a cornerstone of Anglo-American jurisprudence.

However, if you argue that female college students have agency to prevent many cases of what feminists label as campus rape then you have unfitted yourself for a judicial career, according to a large segment of the media and the political class. Last week, Democratic Senator and presidential contender Kamala Harris contemptuously grilled a judicial nominee for having written that female students can control whether or not they get drunk, the usual prelude to the hook-up sex that the campus rape industry routinely classifies as rape. Neomi Rao, whom President Trump has selected to fill Brett Kavanaugh’s now-vacant seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, penned several op-eds as a Yale undergraduate questioning the idea that females are always helpless victims of the male libido, unable to avoid regretted dorm room sex. Rao’s treatment on Capitol Hill suggests that fealty to the narrative of perpetual female victimhood is fast becoming a prerequisite for a judgeship.

Dems’ Struggle With ‘MeToo’ Charges Extends to California . By Susan Crabtree

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/02/12/dems_struggle_with_metoo_charges_extends_to_california_139447.html

Nearly a week has passed since the first of two sexual-assault charges surfaced against Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, and national Democratic leaders are still grappling with how to respond amid the fallout.

But that fallout is not limited to the Old Dominion, nor to the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls who were quick to weigh in on the burgeoning scandal in Richmond. It has spread from coast to coast and is now roiling the politics here in Southern California as well.

Over the weekend, calls for Fairfax’s resignation continued to stream in, as did similar demands days earlier when a medical school yearbook surfaced with racist images on the page of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam. Democrats were quick to urge Northam to step down only to be confronted with a dilemma when rape accusations from credible-sounding accusers were leveled at Fairfax – the Democrat poised to take over from Northam. Some Democrats adhered to standards they’d adopted in previous cases – that is to say, when Republicans were accused – while others have not. California Sen. Kamala Harris, an announced presidential aspirant, unequivocally urged the lieutenant governor to resign, as did her Senate colleague Kirsten Gillibrand, who is also considering a run for her party’s 2020 nomination. Gillibrand termed the allegations “sickening and horrendous.”

But a Democrat-led effort to impeach Fairfax over the allegations fizzled on Sunday night when members of the Virginia House of Delegates held a conference call in which several members suggested hitting the brakes on such an irreversible, career-ending move.