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Without Consequences or Penalties, FISA Should Expire Julie Kelly

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/05/without-consequences-or-penalties-fisa-should-expire/

Most Americans no longer have faith in the government and political apparatus that fortifies the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Republican lawmakers shouldn’t either.

Two years ago, a controversial memo first alerted the public to the politicized use of a secret court to spy on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. At the time, most Americans—myself included—knew next to nothing about the clandestine workings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Most Americans trusted that the law enforcement, intelligence, and judicial “experts” involved in the process took the utmost care with their duties and sought a diligent application of the law to protect cherished constitutional rights while keeping us safe.

After all, most Americans had defended these surveillance tools as necessary weapons in the war on terror after the attacks on September 11, 2001. The notion that such a powerful, intrusive means of collecting information from suspected foreign terrorists instead would be weaponized against a volunteer for the wrong political campaign—a private U.S. citizen—was so far fetched that it would have bordered on tinfoil hat conspiracy nonsense conceived by the deepest corners of the far Left or Right had anyone said it out loud.

That’s why, when then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) issued his February 2018 memo detailing how Barack Obama’s Justice Department presented unproven political opposition research—the “Steele dossier”—as evidence to the FISA court in order to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, many detractors accused Nunes of acting as a “deep state” conspiracy theorist. (The FBI, by the way, objected to the memo’s release.)

Journalists and pundits on the Left howled that Nunes was promoting a Fox News-manufactured conspiracy theory lacking veracity. “Instead of evidence, the memo engages in the same dark and misleading conspiracy theories that have characterized other efforts by President Trump’s allies to discredit the Russia investigation,” wrote New York Times columnist David Leonhardt in January 2018.

Nunes’s intelligence committee counterpart, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), prepared his own memo to denounce the majority’s work, an official congressional document filled with distortions and outright lies. Schiff, too, accused his colleague of peddling right-wing quackery.

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Europe Must Not Fall Victim to Erdoğan’s Blackmail by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15682/europe-erdogan-blackmail

Turkey would apparently like to see more progress in the talks to grant it admission as a full member of the European Union…. Erdoğan would most certainly like the West overlook his massive democratic deficit, and to help Turkey secure even more dominance over the Greek islands off its coast, as well as its claims on the gas fields beneath the eastern Mediterranean.

Erdoğan needed to find a non-Russian adversary to attack, to distract Turkish anger away from him and toward a different chosen target. What better target than the EU, with which most Turks have a love-hate relationship? Opening Turkey’s border gates and flooding Europe with migrants would be sure to please the average Turk….

Europe, unfortunately, to protect its liberty and sovereignty, needs to fight back. It must refuse to accept Erdoğan’s hostages…. If the first groups in this mini-exodus from Turkey face a serious blockade rather than warm and welcoming locals, potential migrants would be discouraged from taking such a perilous trip. What Greece alone could achieve, without help from the EU, would be limited….

Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has threatened Europe several times with “sending millions of refugees your way.” Turkey would apparently like to see more progress in the talks to grant it admission as a full member of the European Union. At the moment, these membership negotiations have stalled. He may also wish for Western support — from the EU, the United States and all of NATO — for his ideal architecture to install Turkey in northwest Syria.

As Turkish servicemen were recently killed in Syria, with direct Russian military involvement, it is probably safe to assume that the support Erdoğan is seeking, both directly and indirectly, is “support for a NATO ally against Russian aggression”. In addition, Erdoğan would also most certainly like the West overlook his massive democratic deficit, and to help Turkey secure even more dominance over the Greek islands off its coast, as well as its claims on the gas fields beneath the eastern Mediterranean.

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Some people take tranquilizers for anxiety, but not Bill Clinton By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/some_people_take_tranquilizers_for_anxiety_but_not_bill_clinton.html

In an upcoming Hulu production about Hillary, Bill Clinton reveals the reason he used the Oval Office for unseemly conduct with Monica Lewinsky.

Many of us vividly remember 1998, when Bill Clinton shook his finger at Americans while earnestly declaiming, “I didn’t have sexual relations with that woman” (commonly remembered as, “I did not have sex with that woman”). That statement was a lie. Although stopping short of actual sexual intercourse, Bill Clinton had all sorts of sexual relations with the much-younger Monica Lewinsky. It was inexcusably sordid and, worse, Clinton used the Oval Office for these escapades.

Twenty-two years later, Bill is finally explaining what drove him to defile the Oval Office in this way, and his explanation is a doozy: He was stressed.

Bill Clinton claims that his affair with Monica Lewinsky was one of the ‘things I did to manage my anxieties’. 

The former President suggests, in an explosive documentary seen by DailyMailTV,  that he had the fling with the ex-White House intern while he was in office because it helped with his own issues.

Bill reveals that at the time he met Lewinsky the pressure of the job made him feel like a boxer who had done 30 rounds and he looked at Lewinsky as ‘something that will take your mind off it for a while’.

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Fighting the Muslim Re-Conquest of Europe on the Greece-Turkey Border By Jared Peterson

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/fighting_the_muslim_reconquest_of_europe_on_the_greeceturkey_border.html

As Americans remain riveted to the corona virus and the nauseating vicissitudes of the Democrats’ battle to choose a presidential nominee — a choice now apparently winnowed down to the Marxist or the moron — this writer’s thoughts once again are drawn to events in Europe. The critical situation now unfolding day by day on the Greek-Turkish border may at first seem of minor concern to America, but in fact it’s a critical part of the overall struggle by patriots on both sides of the Atlantic to preserve Western Civilization.

The same forces working here to dissolve American civilization through mass migration and deliberately inculcated cultural self-loathing are busy in Europe pursuing the same goal by identical means. And the same traditional, patriotic segment of the population, guilty of the crime of loving their civilization and wanting to preserve it, resists cultural dissolution in both Europe and America. The commonality of the struggle is striking.

European patriots, however, face worse odds. Their governments are more ruthless in condemning patriotism and love of country (who knew those feelings made one a Nazi?), and Europeans’ history of submission to authority, and consequent ingrained passivity, make them less inclined to risk social condemnation to save themselves.

Consider the events unfolding on Europe’s eastern border with Islam:  

Over the last week to ten days, the Islamist 21st century Sultan on the Bosporus, Recep Erdogan, has abrogated Turkey’s 2016 Agreement with the European Union, under which the Turks committed to preventing a repetition of the 2015 mass migration of Muslim migrants into Western Europe. During the 2015 fiasco, welcomed by German Chancellor Merkel, at least one million “refugees” (read “economic migrants”) from the Middle East and elsewhere streamed into Germany (hence, into all of Europe), following a route that crossed Turkey, the Greek-Turkish border, the Balkans and Austria. By today, the number in of Muslim newcomers in Germany has metastasized, through “family reunification” and continuing migration, to at least two million, with all the vast increases in criminality and sexual assaults, widespread overt loathing of European culture and traditions, and massive social welfare costs, all of which any even casual student of Islamic history would have predicted.

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It’s All in the Stars By David Solway

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/its_all_in_the_stars.html
There is no material evidence to substantiate the case against Harvey Weinstein

As I have previously argued at some length, moral ignominy does not fall within the purview of legal jurisprudence, and personal allegations do not constitute evidentiary certitude. Because a man is a scoundrel with predatory inclinations does not mean we have license to clap him in irons. It means we avoid him like the plague. It means we do not succumb to his blandishments. It means we refuse to accept the gifts and advantages he offers in exchange for our surrender to his wiles and demands. It means, as the theological lore has it, that we do not sell our souls to the devil — or, in Harvey Weinstein’s case, our bodies as well.

It also means that in a court of blind justice deriving from Magna Carta and established over a long evolution, predicated on the concept of “beyond a reasonable doubt” and grounded on factual evidence, Weinstein could not have been found guilty. What we have is a narrative of the acts and machinations of an obviously despicable person; hearsay, revelation, memory, tearful indignation and sundry testimonials do not constitute tangible and objective evidence. Criminal guilt cannot be established on the basis of the statements of the plaintiffs.

In addition, when one reckons that those who claim to have been assaulted or raped by Weinstein did not go to the police immediately after their ordeal when forensic evidence was fresh and may still have been gathered, and that many of these plaintiffs continued to seek out Weinstein’s company with letters of affection and adulation years after the events in question, the issue begins to grow clouded.

As The Washington Free Beacon reports in considerable detail, these prodigies of adoration were legion and, for that matter, were not confined only to women. Men also liked to flaunt their brotherly admiration for their great friend and benefactor. They too have conveniently joined the chorus of denunciation against their former patron and promoter, or have tactfully remained silent.

But in a culture obsessed with sex and the myth of female guilelessness, it is the women who are regarded as oracles. Their charges resonate in the courtroom, yet these consist of circumstantial depositions that are seriously compromised. Moreover, multiple attestations and what is called similar fact evidence  (or “criminal propensity” arguments) provided by corroborative witnesses who are not part of the actual criminal case are, at best, only differentially admissible and do not rise to the level of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”  Indeed, “similar fact” (sometimes known as “similar act”) remains controversial and is highly problematic. Spencer v. Texas (1967) established that such evidence “would violate the Due Process Clause.”

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Notable & Quotable: Macron on Islam and the Duties of Citizenship ‘Islamist separatism is incompatible with freedom and equality, incompatible with the indivisibility of the republic and the necessary unity of the nation.’

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-macron-on-islam-11583447996?mod=opinion_major_pos4

French President Emmanuel Macronspeaking on Feb. 18 (translation by Matthew King):

In the republic, it is not acceptable to refuse to shake hands with a woman because she is a woman. In the republic, we cannot accept that someone refuses to be cared for or educated by someone because she is a woman. In the republic, it is not acceptable to drop out of school for reasons of religion or belief. In the republic, one cannot demand virginity certificates to get married. In the republic, we must never accept that the laws of religion can be superior to the laws of the Republic. . . .

And now that I have said all this, this isn’t a question of stigmatizing any religion. And what we have to do is not, as I have sometimes heard from some people, a program against Islam. That would be a profound mistake. There are millions of fellow citizens, French citizens, who . . . believe in Islam and who live according to the laws of the republic and who want to live as French citizens. What we must fight is the separatism I have just mentioned and all the practices I have just mentioned with great calm, with great determination, with great respect. . . . The risk is that the whole society will say “the problem is our Muslim fellow citizens,” which would be a huge mistake. But this Islamist separatism is incompatible with freedom and equality, incompatible with the indivisibility of the republic and the necessary unity of the nation.

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Schumer and the War on Judges From court-packing plans to intimidation, the Democrats pursue a losing strategy. By Kimberley A. Strassel

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/schumer-and-the-war-on-judges-11583448040?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s verbal threats against two Supreme Court justices aren’t surprising, in light of three years of “resistance” hostility to Trump judicial picks. What is remarkable is that Democratic leaders continue to take such a losing approach to an issue that will be central to the 2020 election.

Mr. Schumer did hit a new low Wednesday, when he stood outside the Supreme Court and rallied a mob of abortion-rights activists by vowing that Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch would “pay the price” for releasing “the whirlwind.” “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions,” he thundered. When even liberal legal scholar Larry Tribe called the remarks “inexcusable,” Mr. Schumer made a halfhearted attempt to walk them back, saying he “shouldn’t have used the words.”

Yet the Schumer threats are of a piece with today’s standard Democratic approach to the court: Attack and intimidate. Of everything Democrats lost to Donald Trump in 2016, the forfeiture of the judicial branch still grates the most. They remain furious that Obama nominee Merrick Garland never got his Supreme Court robe. They are livid that the Kavanaugh confirmation provided the high court its first solid conservative majority in decades. They are outraged that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has confirmed nearly 200 Trump judges, including 51 on the appellate courts.

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The Democratic Disaster Just Got Even More Hilarious Kurt Schlichter,

Posted By on March 5th, 2020

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2020/03/05/the-democratic-disaster-just-got-even-more-hilarious-n2563068?

So, now the Democrats are choosing between a pair of doddering crustaceans. The Crusty Commie Curmudgeon and the Crusty Comedy Relief both did well enough Tuesday to keep going. Big Chief Warren, whose actual people call corn “corn” and not “maize,” may still go on because she’s an insufferable monster whose transcendent yearning to nag us into schoolmarm’d submission knows no bounds, plus because the establishment wants her in the race siphoning Chablis socialist votes away from her Marx brother.

 

 But the Hapless Halfling dropped out, a half-billion bucks lighter, and he’s not just returning to his burrow. He’ll want to remain a Dem player – he’ll keep spending like an NFL superstar in the Champagne Room at the Peppermint Pasty gentleman’s club after getting his signing bonus paid in singles, and the Lil’ Loser hopes to make it rain until he drowns Donald Trump in a sea of greenbacks.     But the battle is really for the shriveled heart of the Democrat Party, and no one better represents the yin and the yang of that dying collection of power-hungry elitists and grasping greedos than the doddering socialist Sanders and that Biden guy who should by all rights be chasing that damn know-it-all squirrel around the park.

 

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Why Trump Would Easily Beat Biden David Catron

Posted By on March 5th, 2020

https://spectator.org/why-trump-would-easily-beat-biden/

Tuesday’s primaries have, for all intents and purposes, transformed the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination into a slugfest between the establishment-backed Joe Biden and the insurgent populist Bernie Sanders. With the help of the party bosses — or superdelegates, as they have been euphemistically rebranded — Biden will almost certainly prevail. This will, however, be a Pyrrhic victory for the former vice president. It will not merely alienate millions of Sanders’ supporters, many of whom will be so disillusioned by a repeat of the Democratic National Committee’s 2016 skulduggery that they will sit at home next November. It will also render Biden’s intellectual infirmities and history of influence-peddling impossible to conceal.

Before delving into the details of Biden’s fatal weaknesses, however, it’s important to dispose of recent polls showing President Trump losing a hypothetical matchup with the erstwhile vice president. These surveys are no more reliable than the tsunami of 2016 polls that showed Hillary Clinton trouncing Trump without breaking a sweat. To gauge the credibility of their current counterparts, it will be useful to pull up this poll from ABC showing Clinton with a 12-point lead just two weeks before the election, or the NBC survey that showed her ahead of Trump by 10 points, or this one from Monmouth that showed a 12-point Clinton lead. Polls showing Biden beating Trump in 2020 are meaningless.

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WHAT WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS IS WHAT SCARES US-VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

Posted By on March 5th, 2020

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/4/what-we-dont-know-about-the

Fanning fears of a global plague

The recent spread of the coronavirus is causing a global panic. Our shared terror arises not so much from the death toll of the new flu-like disease — more than 3,000 people have died worldwide — but from what we don’t know about it.

Experts at least agree that the virus originated in China. But Beijing’s authoritarian government hid information about its origins, spread and severity for weeks.

Such duplicity only fanned the fears of a global plague — a hysteria not seen since the groundless fears of a YK2 global computer meltdown in the year 2000, or the political feeding frenzy during the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

Wild speculation followed that the coronavirus was a virulent or mutated superbug. Had it arisen naturally or escaped from a nearby military lab? Did it originate from a sick lab animal? A conspiracy theory arose that it was a manufactured virus that had escaped from scientists’ botched efforts to create either a vaccine or a biological weapon.

Is the outbreak an indication that China’s scientists are well behind their Western peers, at least in the areas of virology and bacteriology? Or is the problem that Chinese culture still features outdated traditions such as open-air “wet markets?” Unfounded rumors spread that the virus may have originated in one of these markets, where exotic mammals such as bats and pangolins are still sold for human consumption. For all China’s gleaming high-speed-rail lines and new airports, hundreds of millions of Chinese still live in places with suspect food safety and waste disposal — the historic incubators of epidemics.