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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Pelosi, Schumer call on Mueller to Testify…. By Yaron Steinbuch

https://nypost.com/2019/04/18/pelosi-schumer-call-on-mueller-to-testify/

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer are calling for Robert Mueller to testify before Congress as soon as possible after what they described as Attorney General William Barr’s “partisan” handling of the special counsel report.

The top Democratic congressional leaders released a joint statement hours before a redacted version of the nearly 400-page report will be released and after The New York Times reported that White House lawyers and Justice officials have already discussed the report’s findings, according to The Hill.

“Attorney General Barr’s regrettably partisan handling of the Mueller report, including his slanted March 24th summary letter, his irresponsible testimony before Congress last week, and his indefensible plan to spin the report in a press conference later this morning — hours before he allows the public or Congress to see it — have resulted in a crisis of confidence in his independence and impartiality,” Pelosi and Schumer wrote.

Keep Digging Dems! You’ll Find that Pony Somewhere in the Manure Pile Known as the Mueller Report By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/trending/keep-digging-dems-youll-find-that-pony-somewhere-in-the-manure-pile-known-as-the-mueller-report/

Somewhere buried deep in the Mueller report is incontrovertible evidence that the president of the United States is a Russian spy. I know it. I just know it. It has to be there.

And I just know that Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice. How can he not be? He’s guilty of so much that the obstruction is, I’m sure, just the tip of the iceberg.

How do I know? Ask any Democrat.

I can’t decide whether it’s amusing or pathetic, this desperate desire by Democrats to will the Mueller report to say something it isn’t saying. An appropriate cultural reference might be that Democrats are searching for Captain Queeg’s missing strawberries even after they know the fruit has been eaten and the culprit found.

Classical? How about Democrat’s tearing the castle apart to find the emperor’s new clothes?

All of those “flipped” witnesses who Democrats believed would turn on their boss and dish the “real” dirt apparently had little to say. Kind of makes you wonder what Mueller got from these cooperating witnesses. Like Bullwinkle pulling a rabbit out of a hat: “Nothin’ up my sleeve…Presto!” (Wrong hat).

‘No Evidence’ Trump Was Aware of Don Jr.’s Meeting With Russian Lawyer By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/no-evidence-trump-was-aware-of-don-jr-s-meeting-with-russian-lawyer/

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation failed to produce evidence that then-candidate Trump was aware that his son, Donald Trump Jr., and other high-ranking campaign officials met with a Russian lawyer offering damaging information on Hillary Clinton in June 2016, according to the special counsel’s report released Thursday.

Donald Trump Jr., campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and at least five other people met with Kremlin-linked attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in Manhattan in order to obtain damaging information on Hillary Clinton from Veselnitskaya.

After news of the meeting broke in July 2017, Trump dictated a statement to be released on Trump Jr.’s behalf in which he falsely claimed the meeting was held to discuss sanctions that restricted the U.S. adoption of Russian children.

“The president then dictated a statement to Hicks that said the meeting was about Russian adoption (which the president had twice been told was discussed at the meeting). The statement dictated by the president did not mention the offer of derogatory information about Clinton,” the report reads.

Barr Press Conference: No Obstruction on the Facts of the Case By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/william-barr-press-conference-no-obstruction-on-the-facts-of-the-case/

The most interesting new disclosure to come out of Attorney General William Barr’s press conference on the Mueller report was about obstruction of justice.

As I pointed out in a Fox News column this morning, the obstruction issue was one of the main reasons why the media-Democrat complex’s caterwauling about Barr’s unremarkable decision to hold a press conference was ludicrous. Special Counsel Mueller declined to render a prosecutorial judgment on whether obstruction charges should be brought against the president. Since it is the attorney general who made the judgment, for that reason alone it was worth hearing from him this morning.

The attorney general stated that the special counsel evaluated ten incidents with an eye toward whether they amounted to an obstruction offense. Barr elaborated that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein disagreed with Mueller on whether these incidents even could have amounted to obstruction as a matter of law.

It is important to grasp what that means, and what it doesn’t, because I’ve heard some inaccurate commentary. Barr was not saying that Mueller found one or more of these incidents to constitute obstruction; Mueller was saying that the incidents involved actions that could theoretically have amounted to obstruction.

“President Trump Responds to Omar Accurately and Truthfully” Rabbi Arye Spero

https://nationalconferenceofjewishaffairs.org

 The following letter to President Trump was hand-delivered at the White House by Rabbi Spero, who was attending a special gathering for key Jewish leaders:

“President Trump tweeted the appropriate response to Rep. Omar, who described the bombing of the Twin Towers as merely ‘some people did something.’ Omar trivialized 9/11, referring to it in a cavalier fashion.

The President correctly demonstrated via his video the enormity and the devastating catastrophe of 9/11. This has nothing to do with racism, rather the correct response to a disrespectful statement made by Omar regarding this country, demonstrating her gross indifference to the suffering of Americans.“Those that impute racism to the President’s tweet are living in their own make-believe world or, worse, are themselves trying to incite an issue of racism where such is not the case. People of truth and historical awareness cannot remain silent out of fear that their opposition will fabricate claims of racism.

“Freedom of expression is a two-way street. Patriotic Americans are as equally free to respond and give their opinions as are those, like Omar, who weekly express some type of hateful indictment of America. Let us not forget that Omar repeatedly agitates and incites her audiences to go out and ‘make people uncomfortable’.“Thankfully we have a man of President Trump’s candor and stature, who is willing to fight against the rewriting of history and protect the free speech of Americans defending their country.

Mr. Trump has issued an Executive Order protecting free speech from the politically-correct censorship prevalent on campuses and is, by his example, giving support to all those who wish to exercise their right to tell historic truth.”

A LETTER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP FROM AMERICAN JEWISH LEADERS….SEE NOTE

One of the sponsors of this letter is Americans for a Safe Israel, an organization that I am proud to belong to since 1973.rsk

Dear Mr. President,

Thank you for your friendship towards the Jewish community in the United States and around the world, especially in Israel. Your unprecedented affinity for the Jewish People is all the more commendable, given the inexcusable and deplorable false accusations of Antisemitism which have dogged your presidency since its earliest days. We encourage the continuation of a warm relationship with the Jewish community built upon mutual respect.

We were distressed to read an open letter publicized by several American Jewish organizations, many of whom “boycotted” some of your previous overtures to the Jewish community, encouraging you to pressure Israel to compromise her rights as an independent democracy. One of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledges, made while campaigning for his recent re-election, was to extend Israeli sovereignty over Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
Throughout your presidency, you have done everything possible to keep your own campaign promises — with the move of the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, pledged by every President since Bill Clinton, being a prime example.

For decades, Israel has attempted to nurture coexistence with Arab communities which desire to live outside Israeli governance, while retaining control over its borders and national security in that very hostile part of the world. Both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama recognized that Israeli sovereignty would extend to Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria in any final peace agreement. It is unfair and unreasonable to hold these Jewish communities hostage to the continuing intransigence of the Palestinian Authority. And it is outrageous to suggest setting policy to kowtow to the Antisemitic, terrorist-financed effort to boycott the world’s only Jewish state.

Coalition of Pro-Israel Organizations asks President to Let Israel Decide on Sovereignty

https://coalitionforjewishvalues.org/2019/04/coalition-of-pro-israel-organizations-asks-president-to-let-israel-decide-on-sovereignty/

Twenty-one diverse pro-Israel organizations sent a joint letter to President Trump today, urging him to permit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a free hand to extend Israeli sovereignty over Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. The letter comes in response to one from left-wing groups, dominated by arms of the American Reform and Conservative Jewish movements, calling upon the President to indicate that he will “not support any Israeli proposals to annex the West Bank, in whole or in part.”

The new letter was organized by Rabbi Pesach Lerner and Rabbi Yaakov Menken of the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) and Rabbi Yechezkel Moskowitz of the Jewish Heritage Preservation Society. “It is important for those who believe in traditional values, who believe in a strong and safe State of Israel, who appreciate the actions of President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, to speak up,” said Rabbi Lerner, President of the CJV. “We cannot allow the liberal left to be the only voice.”

Ilhan Omar: A Hostage Situation By Kevin D. Williamson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/ilhan-omar-comments-criticism/

When the ‘victim’ is the victimizer

‘I t has to stop,” says Representative Ilhan Omar.

No, it does not.

Representative Omar, the Jew-hating Minnesota Democrat, is engaged in one of her usual games of misdirection, a pattern of hers that by now is familiar enough to be predicted: She says something outrageously stupid, offensive, anti-Semitic — or all three at once — and then attempts to parry the thrust of inevitable criticism by characterizing it as an attack on Muslims, women, women of color, Muslim women of color, etc.

In this case, Representative Omar characterized the events of September 11, 2001, this way: “Some people did something.” Someone assembled a video intercutting her blasé account of mass murder with images of that day’s events, and Donald Trump, who serves simultaneously as president of the United States and the nation’s social-media intern, tweeted the video, along with some vintage all-caps emoting: “WE WILL NEVER FORGET!”

The New York Times stepped on Representative Omar’s cue and uttered her lines itself, insisting that the criticism of Representative Omar is necessarily part of an attack on Muslims categorically. Trump of course has on more than one occasion treated Muslims categorically, for instance in calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” which, like so many of President Trump’s blustery promises, never came to pass and never even was given serious consideration. (The actual policy consists of restrictions on travel from six predominantly Muslim countries, along with North Koreans and officials of the Venezuelan government.) Representative Omar is not all Muslims, and she is not Muslims categorically: She’s a loopy left-wing identity-politics entrepreneur whom the Democratic party has carried to the U.S. House of Representatives. Criticism of elected officials is not only permissible but necessary.

The Progressive Revolution: From Democratic to Liberal to Progressive to Socialist By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/progressive-revolution-ends-in-socialism/

Obama kick-started a cycle that moves ever farther left — even he now seems passé.

Americans voted for Barack Obama in 2008 despite, not because of, his most partisan voting record in the Senate. They were once willing to look past his earlier dubious associations with abject anti-Semites such as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former terrorists like Bill Ayers, and unhinged characters such as Father Pfleger. They also averted their eyes from Obama’s often quite offensive commentary, in his autobiography and during the 2008 campaign (e.g., “typical white person” and “they cling to…” speech).

Instead, voters were tired of the Iraq War (which was over for all practical purposes by the time of the November 2008 election).

They were, of course, terrified by the September 2008 financial meltdown (which had been mostly stabilized four months later by the time of the inauguration) and irate at the kid-gloves treatment accorded often conniving banks and investors.

They were convinced that Obama might be healing and transformative as the first African-American president, supposedly only slightly to the left of a far steadier and more qualified Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell. And half the Democrats were already becoming sick of Hillary Clinton once they became reacquainted with her on the 2008 primary-campaign trail.

Behind the Obama administration’s shady plan to spy on the Trump campaign By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://nypost.com/2019/04/15/behind-the-obama-administrations-shady-plan-to-spy-on-the-trump-campaign/

In Senate testimony last week, Attorney General William Barr used the word “spying” to refer to the Obama administration, um, spying on the Trump campaign.

Of course, fainting spells ensued, with the media-Democrat complex in meltdown. Former FBI Director Jim Comey tut-tutted that he was confused by Barr’s comments, since the FBI’s “surveillance” had been authorized by a court.(Needless to say, the former director neglected to mention that the court was not informed that the bureau’s “evidence” for the warrants was unverified hearsay paid for by the Clinton campaign.)The pearl-clutching was predictable. Less than a year ago, we learned the Obama administration had used a confidential informant — a spy — to approach at least three Trump campaign officials in the months leading up to the 2016 election, straining to find proof that the campaign was complicit in the Kremlin’s hacking of Democratic e-mails.