RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/15/how-the-justice-department-avoids-becoming-the-injustice-department/

The news Friday that the Department of Justice had decided not to charge former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe got me thinking once again about the legend chiseled into the façade of the Supreme Court: “Equal Justice Under Law.”

Is that what we have? Michael Horowitz, the Obama-appointed inspector general, concluded that McCabe had lied under oath. But as Andrew McCarthy noted last summer, “Government officials who leak while demonstrating their contempt for Donald Trump manage to land on their feet.” Like James Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence, McCabe left his government job to be a commentator on CNN.

Clapper, McCarthy pointed out,

is best known for lying to Congress about the government’s bulk collection of telephone metadata . . . and for discussing Steele dossier information with CNN shortly before the network published a report about it . . . CNN missed out on former Obama CIA director John Brennan, who falsely denied to the Senate that his agency spied on the chamber’s intelligence committee. Brennan, who said he was really sorry, was inked by MSNBC.

Contrast what happened with McCabe, Clapper, and Brennan with what happened to George Papadopoulos, who told the FBI he had met the international man of mystery Joseph Mifsud slightly before he had joined the Trump campaign when, in fact, it was slightly after he joined. Result: he is nabbed, disembarking from a plane at night, thrown into jail overnight, and was later sentenced to two weeks in jail.

Or contrast McCabe’s fate with that of Roger Stone, a former advisor to and pal of Donald Trump’s. Stone was subjected to one of Robert Mueller’s signature pre-dawn raids, hit with seven felony counts for allegedly obstructing Congress’s Russia investigation, lying, and threatening a witness (who later said he did not feel threatened). Prosecutors—including a couple who were on team Mueller—initially recommended a jail term of nine years—for a nonviolent first-offender.

A few days ago, news broke that the Justice Department had recommended a lighter sentence. The Left, true to form, went nuts.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/pelosi-names-first-head-of-house-whistleblower-office_3239173.html

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Saturday announced the first director of a new office, the House of Representatives’ Office of the Whistleblower Ombudsman.

The office was established at the beginning of the current Congress and is charged with developing best practices for whistleblower intake for House offices and providing trainings to House offices on how to safely and confidentially receive information from whistleblowers.

The office is meant to be independent and nonpartisan, according to Pelosi’s office.

Pelosi said the first director of the office is Shanna Devine, who most recently advocated for whistleblower and other occupational rights for Public Citizen, a public interest organization located in Washington. She began her career with the Government Accountability Project.

The director is selected by the speaker of the House with advice from the chairs and ranking members of the House Committees on Administration and Oversight and Reform.

Devine’s “deep policy experience will be vital, as the first-ever Director of the Office of the Whistleblower Ombudsman, as she works to ensure that the House has the support and tools to carry out our legislative oversight responsibilities for the American people,” Pelosi said in a statement.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the House Administration Committee, added in a statement: “The establishment of the House Office of the Whistleblower Ombudsman and the appointment of Shanna Devine to lead this new office is an important step to uphold our end of the bargain by providing offices of the House of Representatives with the resources and trainings necessary to protect and empower those who strive to bring about accountability and transparency for the American people.”

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68525-president-trump-keeps-promises-to-the-forgotten-americans-2020-02-12

In his 2016 victory speech, Donald Trump talked about “the forgotten men and women of our country,” declaring that they “will be forgotten no longer.” Today, after months of impeachment proceedings, accusations of wrongdoing and a media that has reported overwhelmingly negative stories about him for three years, his polling numbers are at their highest ever.

Why? Because the president kept his promise to remember the forgotten, and he’s continued to push ahead with policies to help them and every American.

President Trump’s “forgotten men and women” are the farmer, the factory worker, and the middle-class men and women who have been ignored or even sneered at by Washington politicians. They are the people of “flyover country” and “Middle America.” They are the people CNN host Don Lemon and his guests recently made fun of when they called Trump supporters rubes and used mock Southern accents to paint them as uneducated, illiterate and unable to find places like Ukraine on a map.

Mr. Trump’s “forgotten” are the average, patriotic hard-working Americans who pay taxes for government programs many of them will never use. Many are religious. Some are gun owners. A surprising number are Democrats, independents or political agnostics.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/02/14/remembering-daniel-pearl/

This Friday, I will be at a minyan for morning prayers. It will be the 19th of Shevat — 18 years since the journalist and musician Daniel Pearl was murdered in Pakistan by Islamic terrorists because he was a Jew. I will remember Danny’s warm, encouraging smile, and I will speak the kaddish in his memory.

Hating Jews is, sadly, an outsized and grotesque part of the human story. But, on that day in 2002, when evil embodied in man stole from us the future of Daniel Pearl, he left us with words that can help us shape and determine our future, yet unrevealed.

After Danny’s murder, his parents, Ruth and Judea Pearl, published a book, I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl. In it, Dr. Pearl recalls Danny’s last words: “Back in the town of Bnei Brak, there is a street named after my great-grandfather, Chayim Pearl, who was one of the founders of the town.”

Elizabeth Warren has run out of steam, danken gott (thank God), her professorial persona full of numbers that she equates with ethics failing…

In 1924, Danny’s great-grandfather knew he had to return to his ancestral home. He left behind the hatred endured in exile, purchased a sandy plot in the land of Israel, and brought his wife and four children to a place where he was free to build a better life for his family, and to help fashion a better future for the world.

Danny’s father, Judea, believes that Danny freely chose to recount the actions of his great-grandfather as a rebuke to those who were about to murder him and steal his life. Danny wanted his murderers to know that — in contrast to their destruction — Jews plant and build and toil to fashion a better world, a better future for all people.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/is_the_doj_the_us_department_of_injustice.html

It is ironic that just as the Democrats are losing their cookies (for the umpteenth time in the past few weeks) over a Trump tweet regarding the absurd sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, the DOJ says it is dropping charges against Andrew McCabe, the proven liar, leaker, and hoax conspirator who was part of the coup cabal at the FBI along with Comey, Strzok, Page, et al.  It seems also that Lt. Col. Vindman will not be investigated by the military.

There is one form of justice for Democrats — no charges ever — and a harsh form for any Republican.  Roger Stone is mostly a figure of fun, a wannabe player who exaggerated his proximity to actual players.  He is guilty of virtually nothing that warrants nine years in prison, but because the prosecutors, all attached to the Mueller team, had to have something to show for the $32M spent on their Russia hoax, they want him sent away to die in jail.

Is letting McCabe off the hook for lying and leaking a ploy?  Are there more serious charges coming?  He sure doesn’t think so.  He’s so self-absorbed that he is complaining about what his family has been through for two years!  His family!  He and his cohorts have ruined numerous lives with their baseless witch hunts; the families of all of them have endured far more hardship than the weasel McCabe.  Some have lost everything.  It is doubtful that McCabe and his team of traitors have ever given a thought to what they have put the president and his family through except perhaps with glee.  This bunch that tried to take down a candidate, then a president they decided should not hold that office are arrogant beyond belief; they’re smug, elitist white-collar criminals all, and it’s beginning to seem as if they are all going to get away with their treasonous crimes.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/bombshell-us-atty-john-durham-is-investigating-if-obama-admin-hid-or-manipulated-evidence-of-russian-meddling/

According to a bombshell report from the New York Times Friday morning, U.S. Attorney John Durham has been investigating whether Obama administration officials hid or perhaps manipulated intelligence about Russia’s meddling.

Of course, that’s not exactly how the New York Times wants you to see this story. From the very first paragraph, the NYT tries to spin the story as a partisan fishing expedition, not a legitimate investigation of Obama-era corruption. “Trump administration officials investigating the government’s response to Russia’s election interference in 2016 appear to be hunting for a basis to accuse Obama-era intelligence officials of hiding evidence or manipulating analysis about Moscow’s covert operation, according to people familiar with aspects of the inquiry.”

Mr. Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former director John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular result — and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest they interfere with that goal, the people said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/agony-of-the-democrats-11581723656?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Bernie Sanders’s victory in New Hampshire on top of his tie in Iowa makes him a favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination. Hard to believe, but in a winnable race against President Trump the opposition may nominate a socialist who wants the government to control energy production and health care, who wants nationwide rent control, and who calls America a “racist society from top to bottom.” No wonder Democrats like James Carville are in agony.

The Vermont revolutionary’s victory portends a long primary battle, unless Democratic voters elevate a single mainstream candidate who can challenge him. Mr. Sanders will get his 25% to 30% primary after primary, racking up delegates on his way to the convention. If other candidates keep dividing the other votes, he will be hard to stop, as Mr. Trump was for Republicans in 2016. Even if a single alternative emerges, Mr. Sanders won’t go down without a ferocious intra-party fight.

***

How did this happen? How did Mr. Sanders move from the socialist fringe to the brink of controlling the Democratic Party? The Senator’s dogged persistence across decades and especially the last four years is part of the explanation.

Yet Mr. Sanders wouldn’t be this close to the White House if not for the complicity of Democrats and the liberals who dominate the academy and media. Rather than fighting the ideas that animate him and his millennial voters, they have indulged and promoted them. They created the political environment in which he could prosper.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/483090-roger-stones-sentence-how-the-judge-will-really-decide-to-lock-him-up

Attorney General Bill Barr is undoubtedly right: The president’s ill-tempered tweets about pending criminal cases undermine the Justice Department’s mission. The rule of law depends not only on the reality but also the perception that prosecutorial decisions are driven by legal requirements and evidence, not political considerations.

For now, though, let’s table that and focus on what is actually at issue in the matter of Roger Stone’s sentencing.

The fact is, it was well within the legitimate power of the attorney general to countermand the Stone prosecutors’ submission to the court — i.e., to substitute a recommendation that the court impose a stiff but reasonable prison sentence on Stone, in place of the prosecutors’ suggestion of an excessive term.

More to the point, what we are witnessing in the media-Democrat commentariat is a manufactured controversy, reminiscent of their mau-mauing the president’s Ukraine indiscretion into an impeachable offense. Hence, the unhinged calls for Barr’s impeachment. The judge, not the Department of Justice (DOJ), will determine Stone’s sentence. The shrieking over DOJ’s Stone sentencing memos, topped by the theatrical resignation of the four prosecutors (who now want to be seen as stalwarts against politicized law enforcement after they conducted a patently politicized prosecution), is much ado about nothing.

Contrary to the misimpression so studiously peddled, Barr has not taken action that effectively slashes Stone’s potential sentence. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I have provided a broad overview of the controversy over the DOJ’s pre-sentencing submissions in the Stone case. Nevertheless, because the facts are a bit complicated and involve some legal esoterica, a simple point is being obscured: The only thing at issue in the two memoranda filed with the court by the DOJ is a non-binding recommendation about the sentence. It has no legal effect on the term that the judge will impose when Stone ultimately is sentenced, which currently is scheduled to happen on Feb. 20.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-progressi

A newly minted district attorney for a major American city vows to establish an immigration unit. At first blush, that would seem entirely normal for a prosecutor’s office. Immigration laws require enforcement, and prosecutors are in the law-enforcement business.

But no—the new San Francisco DA actually has in mind an immigration defense unit. He wants to assign a staff of prosecutors to protect undocumented aliens—those who are either illegal and thus deportable to begin with, or for whom a criminal conviction could result in loss of lawful status and thus eventual deportation. The unit’s enforcement target would be not the law violators but the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who enforce federal laws, along with any local police and corrections officials who have the temerity to assist ICE in that endeavor. The prosecutors’ mission, in the words of their new boss, would be to “stand up to Trump on immigration”—the president having made signature issues of border security and the stepped-up deportation of aliens who flout the laws.

That kind of immigration unit is not something you’d expect to find in a district attorney’s office. But of course, neither would you expect, upon this new DA’s election, a victory party marked by ear-splitting chants of “F*ck POA!” The POA is the Police Officers Association.