RUTHFULLY YOURS

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee went on the record yesterday on the latest issues surrounding the endless investigation of President Donald J. Trump and his associates. These comments from the chair of the House committee that conducted its own investigation of alleged Russian collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign (and concluded there was no collusion) came at the start of what promises to be another week packed with news about the ongoing efforts by opponents of President Trump, inside and outside of the government, to take him down.

From Fox News:

REP. DEVIN NUNES (R-CA) TELLS SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES WITH MARIA BARTIROMO “…THERE WAS NO INTELLIGENCE” IN REACTION TO THE FBI’S DECISION TO INVESTIGATE THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN

In an interview presented Sunday morning on FOX News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, discussed the intelligence behind the FBI’s decision to investigate the Trump campaign, former FBI Director James Comey’s memos that were recently released, and the Inspector General’s criminal referral against former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Highlights are below.

Video (11 minutes):

In 1993, Jay Simkin and Aaron Zelman of the group Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership published a document titled “Gun Control: Gateway to Tyranny,” which highlights the similarities between the Nazi Weapons Law of March 18, 1938 and the U.S. Gun Control Act of 1968. Dedicated to the “tens of millions of victims of Nazi ‘gun control,” the book maintains that “the Nazi Weapons Law is the blueprint for ‘gun control’ in America.” The following is a synopsis of their points:

Access to ammunition and reloading components (bullets, gun powder, brass, and especially primers) will be controlled.
Police-issued ammunition and reloading components acquisition permits will be required..
A Firearms Owner Identity card issued by the federal government will be required. (In fact, Massachusetts, Illinois, and New Jersey already have such cards.)

Copper, copper alloys, brass, and steel bullets are now classified as armor-piercing “cop-killer bullets” and so prohibited, and these restrictions will be justified based on health or environmental grounds.
Bans on ammunition sales may be imposed. In fact, temporary bans occurred throughout the early 1990s in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Access to firearms will be taxed, and the penalties for evading this tax will be severe.
Those who do not renew their permits will have to surrender their firearms to the government or sell them at distress prices to those who can still afford the permits.
The term “sporting purpose” will be redefined to slash the right to own whole classes of firearms. Thus, the right to own firearms will depend on a bureaucrat’s whim. Certain military features such as pistol grips, bayonet lugs, and flash suppressors will be removed.

Is this hyperbolic fear-mongering, or are these type of restrictions being implemented?

The Democratically controlled New Jersey Assembly under Governor Phil Murphy has passed the following measures to tighten already stringent gun laws. Murphy asserts that “he supports these measures as “a public health matter” and wants legislation to encourage the sale of so-called “smart guns” which use technology to restrict who can fire them.”

Conservative writer and commentator Candace Owens earned some celebrity cheers and jeers Saturday after she posted a must-see video of herself smacking down a group of Black Lives Matter protesters who were trying to disrupt a Turning Point USA event at UCLA Wednesday night.

Owens, the communications director for TPUSA and frequent guest on Fox News, was having none of it, and let the protesters know in no uncertain terms what she thought about their “victim mentality.”

“It’s embarrassing!” she exclaimed.

“There is an ideological civil war happening,” Owens told the audience. “Black people that are focused on their past and shouting about slavery, and black people that are focused on their futures.”

“I can guarantee you, what you’re seeing happening is victim mentality versus victor mentality!

“I love that!” TPUSA co-host Charlie Kirk interjected.

Owens continued, saying that there was “no doubt” in her mind that the conservative blacks in the audience would be better off in twenty years than the BLM protesters because they don’t have BLM’s victim mentality.

“Victim mentality is not cool!” she declared. “I don’t know why people like being oppressed! It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. ‘I love oppression, we’re oppressed, 400 years of slavery, Jim Crow!’ — which by the way, none of you guys lived through. Your grandparents did and it’s embarrassing that you utilize their history — you utilize their history, and you come in here with more emotion then they ever had when they were living through it!”

“It’s embarrassing!” she repeated. “You’re not living through anything right now! You’re overly privileged Americans!”

Among those praising her were rapper Kanye West and actress Roseanne Barr. Detractors included rapper Azealia Banks and actor Don Cheadle.

“Avengers” actor Cheadle chastised Owens over her sarcastic jab at the Black Lives Matter protesters.

Owens immediately challenged Cheadle to a debate. CONTINUE AT SITE

WASHINGTON – Malik Shabazz, former chairman of the New Black Panther Party and president of Black Lawyers for Justice, called on President Trump to provide reparations for slavery or designate territory solely for African-Americans.

“We must have reparations, full compensation for the theft of our land, the theft of our bodies, the theft of our people from Africa, the theft of our dignity; the desecration of our souls decade after decade after decade after decade. As I said, we don’t want your food stamps. We don’t want no government handout. We don’t want to be trying to fix up some paperwork so I can get Social Security. We want our own. Donald Trump, you don’t want us? You don’t want to be around us? Hot dammit, I don’t want to be around you,” Shabazz said during a “Save Our Sons: Stop the Killing” and “Condemn Donald Trump” National Black Men’s Convention march and rally outside of the White House on Saturday organized by the National Black Men’s Movement.

“We want land. We want our own. You don’t like us, Mr. Trump? Break us off some of this territory. You don’t like us, Mr. Trump? You don’t want to be around us? Then hand over the state of Florida,” he added. “You don’t want to be around us – make a trade. Give me Georgia. Give me Alabama. Give me South Carolina.”

President Trump promised to nominate judges in the mold of Antonin Scalia, and that thought was no doubt foremost in his mind when he chose Neil Gorsuch to fill Scalia’s vacant seat. On Monday Justice Gorsuch and his colleagues will consider whether the hiring of adjudicators deciding cases within federal agencies will also be subject to the kind of accountability that making an appointment entails.

So-called administrative law judges are not “principal officers,” so they are not subject to Senate confirmation under the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. The question in Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission is whether they are “inferior officers.” In that case, the clause requires them to be appointed by principal officers, such as commissioners acting collectively or a cabinet secretary, themselves appointed by the president. The alternative is that they are mere employees, who can be hired by lower-level managers with no presidential responsibility.

The dividing line, the Supreme Court has explained, is whether the position entails the exercise of “significant authority.” There shouldn’t be much doubt on which side of that line the SEC’s judges fall.

In this case, the commission’s Enforcement Division decided to bring fraud charges against investment adviser Raymond Lucia in its own administrative court instead of a judicial court. The SEC alleged that Mr. Lucia misled participants in his “Buckets of Money” seminars when he used slides showing hypothetical returns based in part, rather than in whole, on historical data (as the slides themselves disclosed). The SEC assigned the case to an administrative law judge, Cameron Elliot. According to the record, Mr. Elliot sided with the SEC’s Enforcement Division in every one of his first 50 cases.CONTINUE AT SITE

Expect the anti-Trump mob to be drinking heavily this weekend. The week has been filled with lots of bad news for them.

Sadly for Trump foes, the U.S. economy is thriving: Market indicators this week continued to rise, pointing to a “robust” 2018. Jobless claims are near a 45 year-low, and “job openings are near a record high, and scattered but growing shortages of skilled labor are forcing companies to increase pay or improve benefits to attract or retain employees,” according to an assessment by MarketWatch.

Several polls this week show the double-digit lead that Democrats had in the generic congressional ballot at the end of last year is nearly gone. Issues such as immigration and gun control are backfiring, while most voters credit Trump—not Obama—with the strong economy: The Democratic Party is bitter, listless, and devoid of any winning message or policy agenda.

Which brings us to the week’s worst news for the Left and NeverTrump Republicans, who have devoted 100 percent of their energy to taking down the president via Robert Mueller’s probe into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government before the 2016 election: The credibility of the investigation and the key players involved in the scam is disintegrating.

Let’s revisit the week’s lowest moments for the anti-Trump mob:

He changed his story about the FBI and the Clinton Foundation, lying about his lies.

The Justice Department’s inspector general has referred Andrew McCabe to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., for a possible false-statements prosecution. It was big news this week. But the story of how the FBI’s former deputy director lied to investigators, repeatedly, is mainly of interest to him. It is the story of what he lied about that should be of interest to everyone else.

He lied about leaking a conversation in which the Obama Justice Department pressured the FBI to stand down on an investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

That’s not getting much attention. The referral by Inspector General Michael Horowitz focuses us, instead, on the prospect of McCabe’s prosecution. That’s understandable. McCabe has it coming, as the IG’s 35-page report powerfully illustrates.

The report concludes that the former deputy director “lacked candor,” the standard for internal discipline at the FBI, from which McCabe was fired. It is a charge similar to those spelled out in the federal penal code’s false-statements and perjury laws. Specifically, the report cites four instances of lack of candor; more comprehensively, McCabe is depicted as an insidious operator.

About two weeks before Election Day 2016, the then–deputy director was stung by a Wall Street Journal story that questioned his fitness to lead an investigation of Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ nominee. McCabe’s wife had received $675,000 in donations from a political action committee controlled by the Clintons’ notorious confidant, Virginia’s then–governor Terry McAuliffe — an eye-popping amount for a state senate campaign (which Mrs. McCabe lost). It was perfectly reasonable to question McCabe’s objectivity: The justice system’s integrity hinges on the perception, as well as the reality, of impartiality.

The utility of the Mueller investigation has not been the uncovering of collusion, or even in the badgering of an Administration perceived as loathsome. Rather, it has allowed American elites to avoid facing uncomfortable questions about the factors that put Trump in the White House.

I cannot contemplate the havoc of Russiagate without a shudder of horror not only for my country, but also for myself. How very different my life would have been over the past year or more if I had been one of those Trump volunteers assembled in early 2016 to give the campaign the pretense of having a foreign-policy team. For that matter, it would probably have been enough for me to have volunteered as a neighborhood canvasser to get out the Trump vote (what precious little of it there was) in my community in Fairfax County, Virginia.

Once the charge of collusion with the Kremlin had been leveled against Team Trump, my 40-year association with Russia, much of it as a diplomat, would have made me a prime suspect. A swarm of reporters would have descended on my quiet suburban street, observing my comings and goings and pumping the neighbors for information and pithy sound bites (“He seemed like a quiet, unassuming guy; I would never have thought him capable of such a thing.”).

The fact that I am a nonentity would not have spared me, any more than it has spared Carter Page or George Papadopoulos. Certainly, all my personal and business contacts had been with ordinary, working-level Russians, not the ruling elites. Nevertheless, a few of the Russian diplomats I knew 20 years ago have by now risen through the ranks, and no doubt some of them have presumed intelligence links that could have been used to cast aspersions on my patriotism. And although I knew no one at, say, Rosneft or Gazprom, I’m sure I must have known someone who knows someone in those organizations. A veritable cottage industry could therefore have arisen to contrive a daisy chain of connections, however tenuous and improbable, linking me with the inner sanctum of the Kremlin—the conduit along which cash and information presumably flowed in the supposed collusion that many people deem the only plausible explanation for Trump’s electoral victory.

Perhaps some creative journalist would even have fingered me as the American who explained to the Russians what a purple state is.

My sudden notoriety would have come as a most unwelcome embarrassment to my employer, who might well have felt obliged, however reluctantly, to let me go. Combining unemployment with the imperative to “lawyer up,” I would have been staring bankruptcy in the face and contemplating the disheartening prospect of having to crowdfund my children’s college education, and perhaps even my own retirement.

Uncle Sam’s top tech team choked on game day.

The NFL has Super Bowl Sunday. Horses have the Kentucky Derby. The IRS has Tax Day. But not even 1,500 highly compensated tech employees at the IRS could keep the website running on the most important day of the year.

Although tax season is busy throughout March and April, it all comes down to one day. And this year, on April 17, when millions of taxpayers tried to file their 2017 tax returns on IRS.gov, they were halted by a system-wide computer failure, receiving the following notice:

“Planned outage: April 17, 2018 – December 31, 9999… We apologize for any inconvenience. Note that your tax payment is due although IRS Direct Pay may not be available.”

IRS Chief Information Officer Silvana Garza and her two deputy chief information officers, Karen Freeman and Marla Somerville, each made $185,100 in 2017. Additionally, Somerville received a $24,746 bonus, while disclosures show that Freeman received two bonuses totaling $61,766.

At the top of the list is the Director of Online Engagement, Operations Media. James Hammond held the position for five years before retiring to the private sector in 2017. As the senior executive in charge of the IRS website, Hammond made $240,100 – the highest base salary at the entire agency. Michele Causey was promoted to fill the spot. Ms. Causey left her executive officer position where she made $161,900 last year plus a $4,809 bonus.

The IRS handles plenty of confidential and sensitive information, and agency officials claim cybersecurity is a top priority. Rightly so, the cybersecurity employees at the IRS are highly compensated.

Former FBI Director James Comey revealed in a series of private memos that President Donald Trump and his then-chief of staff had doubts within days of taking office about national security adviser Mike Flynn, who subsequently left the administration after misleading officials about his contacts with Russia and later pleaded guilty to lying to law enforcement.

Mr. Comey’s previously unreported account of their take on Mr. Flynn was part of seven memos spanning 15 pages that were authored by Mr. Comey over a four-month period in 2017 and shared with Federal Bureau of Investigation leadership.

The memos were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday after being handed over to several congressional committees by the Justice Department.

Much of the material in the memos has been previously disclosed. Mr. Comey has previously said he documented several encounters with the president in contemporaneous written memos. He also testified in Congress that he eventually provided several of them to reporters through an intermediary.

Together, the memos provide Mr. Comey’s account of several meetings with the new president and his staff at a time when the FBI director faced uncertainty over whether he would be retained in his job by Mr. Trump.

They also provide a look at how the new president and administration grappled with a series of surprises, such as the leak of transcripts of Mr. Trump’s phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia and salacious claims made in an unverified dossier that Mr. Comey brought to the president’s attention. CONTINUE AT SITE