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Justice for Scooter Libby Trump pardons a man Bush left behind on the battlefield.

Posted By on April 14th, 2018

On April 7, 2015, these columns said the next Republican President should pardon I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby “in his first week in office.” President Trump waited a little longer, but in pardoning the former chief of staff to Dick Cheney on Friday Mr. Trump rectified a legal injustice and corrected one of George W. Bush’s worst decisions.

Above all, Mr. Trump pardoned an innocent man. In an op-ed nearby, David Rivkin and Lee Casey recount the story of Mr. Libby’s unjust prosecution amid the political uproar over the leak of the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald never did prosecute the leaker, who was Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. But in his zealous pursuit of Mr. Cheney, Mr. Fitzgerald railroaded Mr. Libby for lying to the FBI based in large part on the testimony of former New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

Ms. Miller says she testified truthfully at the time, but she later concluded based on new information that she had been led into false testimony by Mr. Fitzgerald. As the White House press secretary said Friday in a pardon statement: “In 2015, one of the key witnesses against Mr. Libby recanted her testimony, stating publicly that she believes the prosecutor withheld relevant information from her during interviews that would have altered significantly what she said.”

Mr. Fitzgerald had called her testimony “critical” to the case in his summation for the jury, and Ms. Miller says that the prosecutor twice said that he would drop all charges against Mr. Libby if he offered evidence against Mr. Cheney. Mr. Libby had no evidence to trade, and Mr. Fitzgerald then set out to ruin Mr. Libby for supposedly lying about a non-crime.

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U.S., U.K. and France Launch Strikes Against Syria Trump blames ‘Russia’s failure’ for suspected Syrian chemical attack By Nancy A. Youssef and Michael C. Bender

Posted By on April 14th, 2018

U.S., U.K. and French forces launched airstrikes targeting sites associated with Syria’s chemical-weapons capabilities, a reprisal for an attack last week that killed at least 43 civilians and injured hundreds more.

The decision to strike was aimed at cutting off the production and use of chemical weapons in the country, President Donald Trump said at the White House on Friday night.
Strikes on Syria
Beginning at 9 p.m ET, U.S., British and French forces struck three targets associated with chemical weapons in Syria:

Mr. Trump blamed “Russia’s failure” for the suspected chemical attack in Syria, saying Moscow had vowed to stop the use of such weapons in the country. He said Russia needs to decide whether it will continue down a “dark path” in Syria or become a force for “stability and peace.”

“Hopefully, someday, we’ll get along with Russia, and maybe even Iran—but maybe not,” Mr. Trump said.

The strikes were a culmination of a weeklong international push to punish the regime of President Bashar al-Assad after images and videos emerged last Saturday from the Syrian city of Douma suggesting civilians—including children—had suffered in the attack.

Syria and its chief patron, Russia, have denied that chemical weapons were used in Douma.

Mr. Trump said the operation would be “sustained” until the Syrian regime stopped using chemical weapons. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joe Dunford, said at a Pentagon briefing it was a single wave of strikes that is complete, for now.

“This is a one-time shot,” Mr. Mattis said. “Right now, we have no additional strikes planned.”

Gen. Dunford said manned aircraft were used in the attack on targets including a Damascus scientific research center and a storage facility for chemical weapons. He said the strikes would set back Syria’s chemical-weapons program for years.

President Donald Trump said the recent suspected chemical attack in Syria was the crime of a ‘monster’ and the airstrikes aim to deter the production and use of chemical weapons. Photo: AP

The U.S. didn’t give advance notice to Russia, which has forces in Syria, Gen. Dunford said. He said the only communication with the Russians leading up to the strike campaign was via a phone line designed for the two nations to communicate during the war against Islamic State, but those communications weren’t intended as formal notification.

U.S. and U.K. submarines armed with missiles moved within strike range of Syria. A U.S. destroyer, the USS Donald Cook, and the French frigate Aquitaine were in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, while three more American cruisers and destroyers are currently deployed in the Middle East.

The U.S. took pains to avoid civilian casualties and any targets with foreign personnel, Mr. Mattis said. He has expressed concerns that any airstrike operation not escalate the conflict in Syria with Russia or Iran.

The coalition used twice the number of weapons in the attack than were used last year in Mr. Trump’s first airstrike against a Syrian air base, Mr. Mattis said. CONTINUE AT SITE

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DOJ IG releases explosive report that led to firing of ex-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe By Adam Shaw, Brooke Singman

Posted By on April 14th, 2018

Andrew McCabe, onetime acting FBI director, leaked a self-serving story to the press and later lied about it to his boss and federal investigators, prompting a stunning fall from grace that ended in his firing last month, says a bombshell report released Friday by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz, appointed by President Barack Obama, had been reviewing FBI and DOJ actions leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

The report, handed over to Congress on Friday and obtained by Fox News, looked at a leak to The Wall Street Journal about an FBI probe of the Clinton Foundation.

The report says that McCabe authorized the leak and then misled investigators about it, leaking in a way that did not fall under a “public interest” exception.

“[W]e concluded that McCabe’s decision to confirm the existence of the CF investigation through an anonymously sourced quote, recounting the content of a phone call with a senior department official in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of department leadership, was clearly not within the public interest exception,” the report says.

McCabe was fired from his role as FBI deputy director last month by Attorney General Jeff Sessions just days before he would have been eligible for a lifetime pension after it was determined that he misled investigators reviewing the bureau’s probe of Hillary Clinton’s email server.

BOOKS Comments turned off

How Comey Lied About Spying on Trump Tower George Neumayr

Posted By on April 14th, 2018

Jim Comey deserves a special place in the annals of sanctimonious frauds in Washington, D.C. He leaked, lied, bent rules, treated FBI material as his own personal property, violated confidential conversations, and generally acted like a government unto himself. But now he has the gall to write it all up in the sonorous nonsense language of “constitutional crisis.” His forthcoming memoir amounts to nothing more than the sour grapes of a self-serving operator over a wholly justified sacking.

The media is already burbling over its fatuous contents. Ever the leaker, Comey tossed a pre-publication morsel of gossip from the book to the liberals at the Daily Beast — Comey’s claim that General Kelly commiserated with him over his “dishonorable” firing. The White House has denied the claim. So Comey is already cashing in on betrayed confidences, all while lecturing others about “loyalty” and probity.

What Comey calls “higher loyalty” is just adherence to the interests of an unaccountable ruling class and the needs of his own ego. Comey slithered out of the swamp and now plays the great conscience of Washington. He sighs, looks heavenward, quotes Reinhold Niebuhr, tries hard to look very thoughtful — only to relay low hearsay and peddle anti-Trump dreck. Who cares? Comey’s wounded ego is not a constitutional crisis. The scandal is not that he lost his exalted job but that such a pompous creep once held it.

To understand the depth of Comey’s leaking and lying, all you have to do is go back and look at his scummy maneuvering in response to Trump’s “wiretap” tweets. Those tweets turned out to be entirely accurate: The Obama administration was intercepting communications at Trump Tower, both during the campaign and the transition. Comey knew perfectly well that Trump was right — FBI agents had been sifting through the Trump Tower records of Carter Page and Paul Manafort — but he sent his team out to lie about Trump’s tweets anyways.

He had a story placed in the New York Times shortly after Trump’s tweets: “Comey Asks Justice Department to Reject Trump’s Wiretapping Claim.” It quoted Comey’s leakers, “senior American officials,” as saying that Trump’s assertion was “false” and that the FBI director had asked the Justice Department to refute it.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Threats to Power Grid Demand More Vigorous Response By J. Michael Barrett

Posted By on April 14th, 2018

Security, industry and government officials are increasingly warning that the U.S. electrical power grid faces potential widespread failure from broad-based, systemic threats such as a cyberattack or massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP) disturbance. Indeed, nations as varied as North Korea, Iran, China and Russia have hacked into the U.S power grid. As for EMPs, a senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official recently testified before Congress, “EMP can cause widespread disruption and serious damage to electronic devices and networks, including those upon which many critical infrastructures rely.” These so-called “grid-down” risks have yet to be met with the urgency they demand, but time is not on our side.

On the one hand, following growing awareness of the system’s vulnerability to such threats, Duke Energy recently added EMP threats to its emergency plans. Even Congress has gotten engaged by passing EMP-related provisions in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act which, among other actions, directs DHS to include various grid-down scenarios into its planning and exercises.

Yet there has been little progress beyond studies and assessments, many of which conclude that we need more studies and assessments. This is happening even as the potential of conflict this year with Iran and North Korea seems worrisomely high.

If so many authorities agree grid-down cyber and EMP threats are real, why isn’t more being done? The answer, regrettably, lies hidden somewhere in the conflicting roles and responsibilities held by multiple federal, state and local public-sector stakeholders and the thousands of private sector firms that actually run the power grid.

Who sets the standards, who pays for the research, who implements the remedies, and who is liable if they don’t work? The answers, according to most people in each camp, always seems to be the same: “someone else.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

Does Jim Comey Write YA Fiction Or Romance Novels In His Spare Time?By Joy Pullmann

Posted By on April 14th, 2018

Early reports out the former FBI director’s book indicate a penchant for purple prose and navel-gazing only rivaled by his emo Twitter posts.

Michael Wolff, move over. Early reports out about former FBI Director James Comey’s book indicate a penchant for purple prose and navel-gazing only rivaled by the “A Higher Loyalty” author’s emo Twitter posts. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the book a week early, and reports it contains gems like the following:

The 6-foot-8 Comey describes Trump as shorter than he expected with a ‘too long’ tie and ‘bright white half-moons’ under his eyes that he suggests came from tanning goggles. He also says he made a conscious effort to check the president’s hand size, saying it was ‘smaller than mine but did not seem unusually so.’

According to the AP, Comey’s book alleges this is how Trump repudiated opposition research allegations Trump had prostitutes urinate on a hotel bed the Obamas had used:

Trump said, ‘I’m a germaphobe. There’s no way I would let people pee on each other around me. No way.’

Comey writes that Trump raised the issue again, unprompted, during their one-on-one dinner at the White House and it bothered the president that there might be even ‘a one percent chance’ his wife might think it was true.

Comey then registers surprise, writing that he thought to himself ‘why his wife would think there was any chance, even a small one, that he had been with prostitutes urinating on each other in a Moscow hotel room.”

Hmm, I don’t know, maybe because the salacious (and later thoroughly discredited) story was all over every media outlet in the country?

The Washington Post reports more hilariously overpsychologized book excerpts, like this one about Attorney General Jeff Sessions: “Sessions just cast his eyes down at the table, and they darted quickly back and forth, side to side. He said nothing. I read in his posture and face a message that he would not be able to help me.”

Is this “Twilight”? Weirdly backwards fan fiction?

EDUCATION Comments turned off

ANTISEMITISM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Posted By on April 14th, 2018

When members of Columbia’s Students Supporting Israel campus group set up a memorial booth on April 11th, for Holocaust Remembrance Day, honoring the 6 million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis, the memorial was disrupted by the screaming chants of anti-Israel protesters.

The table for the commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day had testimonials from Holocaust survivors as well as memorial candles laid out. After an hour in which Jewish students shared the stories of holocaust survivors, a large group of anti-Israel protests gathered across the plaza from the SSI table.

INCIDENT REPORT

Students Supporting Israel at Columbia University
Incident Report on Harassment and Violations of University
Policies and State and Federal Rules by the Students for
Justice in Palestine (SJP)

As one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions of higher
education, Columbia University has an obligation both to its
students, and faculty constituency as well as the broader American
academic community to foster and protect nuanced and
constructive dialogue on complicated issues affecting New York, America and the world.
Unfortunately, groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP)
and Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) have monopolized the conversation on
campus relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict and have systematically maligned, harassed and
silenced groups like Students Supporting Israel (SSI) and other pro-Israel voices on campus, who
provide alternative — and critically important — views on these issues, in clear violation of their
rights under both Columbia rules and regulations, and U.S. law.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

ANTISEMITISM THEN AND NOW

Posted By on April 13th, 2018

http://edgar1981.blogspot.com.au/2018/04/nazis-then-and-now.html

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Michael Kile Climate Change on Trial

Posted By on April 13th, 2018

There is mounting pressure on warmist researchers to come up with arguments, if not evidence, that will stand up in court. As climate models continue to get it wrong, often spectacularly so, the carpetbaggers’ various lawsuits are in dire jeopardy, but that doesn’t mean they won’t stop trying

With the international political, financial and reputational stakes so high, it was only a matter of time before climate change appeared in the dock, handcuffed to its partner in prognostication, the dodgy discipline of extreme weather attribution.

Attribution, n., the art of evaluating the relative contributions of multiple causal factors to a change or an event, according to one’s prejudices.

To make sense of the climate change scene today, it is best to begin with the end game: the orthodoxy’s search for an argument, however abstruse, that will stand up in court. It needs one sufficiently “robust” to ensure developed countries—still effectively on trial in the United Nations, where a protracted “loss and damages” claim awaits resolution—and fossil fuel companies are legally liable to pay multi-billion-dollar “climate reparations” to the alleged victims of “carbon pollution”, be they in the developing world or in the path of a natural disaster.

Indeed, the credibility of the “relatively young science” of extreme weather attribution, the legitimacy of its ambition to “tease out the influence of human-caused climate change from other factors”, the whole alarmist movement and fate of the UN’s Green Climate Fund, all crucially depend on delivering such a legal argument.

How did we get to this point? When the climate change meme was planted successfully in the collective mind a decade ago as the most serious existential threat facing humankind, the orthodoxy wanted it to stay there. A sense of public anxiety had to be maintained, despite the risk of apocalypse fatigue syndrome.

So it created an Attribution of Climate-related Events (ACE) initiative. The international research agenda gradually shifted to the tricky territory of extreme weather attribution.

ACE’s first workshop was held on January 26, 2009, in Boulder, Colorado, at the Pei-designed National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesa Lab. Attendees included Myles Allen (Oxford University), Martin Hoerling (NOAA, USA), Peter Stott (UK Met Office, Hadley Centre), Kevin Trenberth (NCAR) and David Karoly (University of Melbourne). Its objective was to:

develop a conceptual framework for attribution activities to be elevated in priority and visibility, leading to substantial increases in resources (funds, people, computers) and both a research activity and a framework for an “operational” activity, that sets forth a goal of providing a lot more concrete information in near real time about what has happened and why in weather and climate.

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European Immigration: Nuns Out, Terrorists In by Douglas Murray

Posted By on April 13th, 2018

When the same Home Office that forbade Sister Ban even to enter the country discovered that the young male Iraqi was in Britain, he explained clearly that he had been trained by ISIS. He told the Home Office officials that the group had trained him to kill. The Home Office promptly found him a place to live and study, and treated him as the minor he said he was but most likely was not. He subsequently told a teacher that he had “a duty to hate Britain”.

Last year the Institute of St Anselm (a Catholic training institute for priests and nuns, based in Kent) closed its doors because of problems it had getting the Home Office to grant visa applications for foreign students. One nun last year was apparently denied entry to the UK because she did not have a personal bank account.

So, those who flee ISIS are turned away, while those who are trained by ISIS are welcome.

The behaviour of government departments in charge of immigration and asylum across Europe repeatedly demonstrate the truth of the late Robert Conquest’s maxim — his “third law of politics” — that the simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation “is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies”.

Last week it was reported in the Catholic Herald that a nun who was driven out of the town of Qaraqosh, on the Nineveh plains in Iraq, has been forbidden to visit her ill sister in the United Kingdom. Sister Ban Madleen was among those Christians who were forced to flee the largest Christian town in the area when ISIS entered it in 2014. She was among the thousands of Christians who fled the approaching jihadists and found refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan. There, she set up kindergartens to look after the children of other refugees who had also sought sanctuary in the Kurdish areas. A letter, seen by the Catholic Herald, from the UK Visa and Immigration division at the UK Home Office, stated that Sister Ban had not given evidence of her earnings as a kindergarten principal or shown enough evidence that her order of nuns would fund her visit.

The UK Home Office noted that Sister Ban had previously travelled to the UK and had on those occasions always complied with the terms of her visa. However, the Home Office pointed out that her visa was issued seven years ago, in 2011, and noted her lack of recent travel to the UK. It shows no understanding of why her recent travel might have been limited. Such as the possibility that events such as the rise of ISIS, the attempted annihilation of Iraq’s Christian community and that community’s quasi-Biblical flight to safety in the Kurdish regions might explain the nun’s otherwise inexplicable absence from the UK?