RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/08/barbara_jordan_on_impeachment.html

With the constant cries for impeachment that swirl around Donald J. Trump, it is incumbent upon us to remember the wise and reasoned words of Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, who on July 25, 1974 gave an eloquent and dispassionate speech concerning the impeachment hearings against then-president Richard M. Nixon.

It behooves us all to bear in mind Jordan’s words today. Even though she reminds the nation that in 1787, when the Constitution was completed, African-Americans like herself were “left out,” she also explains that “through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision,” she was finally and irrevocably included in “we, the people.”

Thus, she firmly asserts that her “faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total.” She refuses to “be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution” as it concerns “those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men.”

In the strongest of terms, Jordan asserts that “the jurisdiction comes from the abuse or violation of some public trust.” In fact, “it is a misreading of the Constitution, for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President should be removed from office.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-was-bruce-ohr-doing-1534462447

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department have continued to insist they did nothing wrong in their Trump-Russia investigation. This week should finally bring an end to that claim, given the clear evidence of malfeasance via the use of Bruce Ohr.

Mr. Ohr was until last year associate deputy attorney general. He began feeding information to the FBI from dossier author Christopher Steele in late 2016—after the FBI had terminated Mr. Steele as a confidential informant for violating the bureau’s rules. He also collected dirt from Glenn Simpson, cofounder of Fusion GPS, the opposition-research firm that worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and employed Mr. Steele. Altogether, the FBI pumped Mr. Ohr for information at least a dozen times, debriefs that remain in classified 302 forms.

All the while, Mr. Ohr failed to disclose on financial forms that his wife, Nellie, worked alongside Mr. Steele in 2016, getting paid by Mr. Simpson for anti-Trump research. The Justice Department has now turned over Ohr documents to Congress that show how deeply tied up he was with the Clinton crew—with dozens of emails, calls, meetings and notes that describe his interactions and what he collected.

Mr. Ohr’s conduct is itself deeply troubling. He was acting as a witness (via FBI interviews) in a case being overseen by a Justice Department in which he held a very senior position. He appears to have concealed this role from at least some superiors, since Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified that he’d been unaware of Mr. Ohr’s intermediary status.

Lawyers meanwhile note that it is a crime for a federal official to participate in any government matter in which he has a financial interest. Fusion’s bank records presumably show Nellie Ohr, and by extension her husband, benefiting from the Trump opposition research that Mr. Ohr continued to pass to the FBI. The Justice Department declined to comment.

But for all Mr. Ohr’s misdeeds, the worse misconduct is by the FBI and Justice Department. It’s bad enough that the bureau relied on a dossier crafted by a man in the employ of the rival presidential campaign. Bad enough that it never informed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of that dossier’s provenance. And bad enough that the FBI didn’t fire Mr. Steele as a confidential human source in September 2016 when it should have been obvious he was leaking FBI details to the press to harm Donald Trump’s electoral chances. It terminated him only when it was absolutely forced to, after Mr. Steele gave an on-the-record interview on Oct. 31, 2016.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/double-religious-jeopardy-1534460961

Maybe it’s baked into the cake of modern American progressivism. What else could drive Colorado to go after the same Christian baker less than a month after losing a similar case against him at the Supreme Court?

In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the commission violated Jack Phillips’ free-exercise rights when it sought to punish him for refusing on religious grounds to bake a custom cake for a gay couple’s wedding. That decision was handed down June 4 after six years in which Mr. Phillips was dragged through the courts.

On June 28 the state found probable cause that Mr. Phillips had unlawfully discriminated in another case—by refusing to bake a custom cake (blue on the outside, pink on the inside) to celebrate the transgender transition of Autumn Scardina from a man to a woman. The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Mr. Phillips in his first case, is now suing Colorado’s Governor, attorney general, Civil Rights Division and Civil Rights Commission for what it says is Colorado’s “continuing persecution” of its client.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/paul-manafort-trial-mueller-team-focuses-on-documents/The prosecution wants the jury to focus on Manafort’s document trail.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, the star witness in this case is the documents.” That is the theme prosecutor Greg Andres hammered home in his summation at Paul Manafort’s bank- and tax-fraud trial in an Alexandria, Va., federal court.

It is a theme that much of the media coverage has glossed over, though it is unlikely to have been overlooked by the jury of six men and six women that sat through the case presented by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

So will jurors stay focused on the documents — the financial records that prove tens of millions of dollars in income that Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, stashed in overseas accounts, failing to report the accounts or the income to the IRS?

The defense, of course, has a strategy to help the jury overlook the documents. The strategy even has a name: Rick Gates. The idea is to portray Mueller’s case as rising or falling on Manafort’s longtime business partner and accomplice.

Gates was the trial’s most prominent witness, and he is a scoundrel. Indeed, the only fraud that has been proved so far is Gates’s prodigious embezzlement from Manafort — during the time prosecutors allege that they were both cheating the government. According to the defense, embezzlement just scratches the surface of Gates’s loathsomeness, which also includes extramarital flings and other betrayals. Gates, then, is the star witness, according to Richard Westling, the lawyer who summed up on Manafort’s behalf. If the jury sees him as a fallen star, he just might take the prosecution’s case down with him.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/15/bruce-ohr-implicate-high-ranking-obama-officials-spygate/

Investigative reporter John Solomon broke news last week of texts and emails between former associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr and Trump dossier author Christopher Steele regarding the Russia investigation, and revealed the content of notes Ohr took during a December meeting with Steele’s boss at Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson.

Solomon’s reporting confirmed the FBI used Ohr to continue gathering information from Steele, even after the former British spy was terminated as a source by the bureau because he leaked word of the investigation to the press. Ohr’s role as a conduit allowed the FBI to continue to use Steele as an indirect source, even after Trump was elected and inaugurated.

Ohr lost his high-ranking slot at the Department of Justice in December 2017, when the Trump administration learned of his connection to Steele, and with it his office just doors away from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. He briefly retained a high-ranking position as the director of Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, but was demoted a second time in January 2018. He still works for the DOJ, but no longer holds a top leadership position.

Rep. Devin Nunes, who chairs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), said last week Ohr “is going to become more and more important” to the investigation into the DOJ’s use of Steele’s dossier on Trump to obtain permission to spy on his former campaign advisor, Carter Page. That’s the understatement of the year.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271050/new-evidence-emerges-ellison-domestic-abuse-matthew-vadum

Minnesota Democrats have chosen an in-your-face Muslim lawmaker who has been accused of serial domestic abuse as their official candidate for the top law enforcement post in that state.

Minnesota is an important state for President Trump and Republicans. Trump barely lost the state in 2016 and is hoping to put it in his column in 2020. Democrats there are still traumatized over Sen. Al Franken’s resignation over sexual harassment allegations.

In voting Tuesday, Ellison won 49.8 percent or 280,282 votes, besting his nearest rival, Debra Hilstrom, who garnered 19.1 percent or 107,794 votes. An admirer of convicted cop killer and leftist folk hero Mumia Abu Jamal, Ellison will face Republican nominee Doug Wardlow in the general election Nov. 6.

Ellison is a former co-chairman of the Communist-linked Congressional Progressive Caucus. He is also a former member of the Nation of Islam who described its Hitler-loving leader Louis Farrakhan as “a role model for black youth.”

Ellison said he was “honored to have earned the overwhelming support” of Democrats.

“As the People’s Lawyer, I will be on the front lines to defend the rights and freedoms of all Minnesotans,” said the alleged serial girlfriend beater. “As your Attorney General, I will fight every day to put Minnesota families ahead of powerful special interests, to increase access to affordable health care, make our economy more fair, and expand opportunity for all.”

https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/16/the-double-standards-of-

The New York Times recently hired as a writer and board member Sarah Jeong. The Times knew that in recent years Jeong had posted a series of unapologetically racist anti-white tweets. She had offered wisdom such as “#CancelWhitePeople” and expressed hatred for males.

Yet when the Times discovered less graphic versions of such tweets from newly hired technology writer Quinn Norton earlier this year, the newspaper immediately fired Norton.

The message of disparate treatment was that what bothers the Times is not racism per se, but who is the racist and who are her targets.

Over at The Atlantic, there are also no ostensible rules concerning who is and is not fired, and for what reason. Essayist Kevin Williamson was allegedly dropped by The Atlantic for his prior incendiary suggestion that abortion might warrant the death penalty.

Fine, it is a free country, and private companies can fire whomever they chose. But The Atlantic had no problem hiring writer Julia Ioffe. She been let go at Politico for tweeting that President Trump might have engaged in incest with his daughter Ivanka.

Again, the impression conveyed is that The Atlantic is not so concerned with inflammatory speech as with calibrating at whom the venom is directed. If Ioffe had tweeted the same perversities about Barack Obama and his daughters, The Atlantic surely would have fired her immediately.

The American people are losing confidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation not just because after 15 months, he has not charged anyone with Russian collusion—the original reason he was appointed. Instead, the pushback is due to the growing sense that rules are made up ad hoc.

https://pjmedia.com/video/gov-andrew-cuomo-shocks-audience-america-was-never-that-great/

Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) “drew gasps from the crowd” on Wednesday when he belittled America in response to President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

“We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great,” Cuomo said during a speech in New York. He went on to argue that only when Democrat priorities like women’s rights are realized will this dark, oppressive dystopia known as the U.S.A. ever become great.

“We have not reached greatness, we will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged, we will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping against women, 51 percent of our population, is gone and every woman’s full potential is realized and unleashed and every woman is making her full contribution,” he said.

Cuomo, the son of former New York governor Mario Cuomo and older brother of CNN Anchor Chris Cuomo, is widely believed to be a contender for the Democratic nomination for the White House in 2020.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Marc Molinaro called on Cuomo to apologize, saying, America “with its imperfections, has always been great.”

“This governor is so determined to distract voters from his failed policies and corrupted administration that he’s willing to dismiss the steady, determined march of the American people, making and remaking the greatness of America. Mr. Cuomo owes the nation an apology,” he said in a statement. “He should be ashamed of himself.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/john-brennans-security-clearance-revoked-by-trump/

WASHINGTON — A day after the former CIA director fired off a tweet criticizing President Trump for calling Omarosa Manigault Newman a “dog,” the White House said Trump revoked the security clearance for John Brennan.

Former top intelligence and national security officials retain clearances in case an instance arises in which they’re called to consult with their successors in a classified setting. Last month, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he’d encouraged Trump to revoke the clearance of Brennan, who had just tweeted that Trump’s press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki “rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.”

“John Brennan and others partisans should have their security clearances revoked. Public officials should not use their security clearances to leverage speaking fees or network talking head fees,” Paul tweeted after he met with Trump.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at the time that Trump was “also looking into the clearances” of other critics: FBI Director James Comey, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe — though Comey and McCabe no longer have clearances to revoke, per exit procedures at the FBI.