‘But Her Emails’? A Defense of ‘Whataboutism’ Mrs. Clinton should take her hat off. Treating like cases alike is crucial to the equal protection of the law.By Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.wsj.com/articles/but-her-emails-a-defense-of-whataboutism-trump-clinton-sandy-berger-fbi-equal-protection-double-standard-justice-presidential-records-act-11660482495?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

EXCERPT

Why didn’t the Justice Department seek to enforce the subpoena it apparently had issued, rather than seek a search warrant? Was this consistent with the “standard practice” Mr. Garland articulated in his statement—“to seek less intrusive alternatives to a search” whenever possible?

Why was the matter handled so differently from the prior investigations of Sandy Berger and Hillary Clinton, who were also suspected of mishandling classified material? Mrs. Clinton herself mocked that question by sporting a baseball cap with the logo “But her emails.”

Her hat is intended to deride the argument made by Trump supporters and some civil libertarians that the investigation of Mr. Trump’s alleged security breaches should be evaluated against the way in which earlier cases were handled. Berger and Mrs. Clinton were suspected of mishandling confidential materials—he by removing them from the National Archives in 2005, she by transmitting them over her private email server while serving as secretary of state. Berger was administratively fined, and Mrs. Clinton was rebuked by James Comey, then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which might have cost her the 2016 election. But neither was subjected to broad search warrants or criminal prosecution.

Those who reject this comparison accuse those who make it of “whataboutism.” But treating like cases alike is crucial to the equal protection of the laws. The way in which Berger and Mrs. Clinton were treated is highly relevant in determining whether Mr. Trump is being subjected to a double standard of justice.

Did the Justice Department Already Know That No Classified Docs Were at Mar-a-Lago? Matt Vespa

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/08/13/the-justice-department-knew-that-no-classified-docs-were-at-mar-a-lago-last-june-n2611704

As if the FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home wasn’t controversial enough, the Department of Justice might have known that there were no classified documents at the home of the former president since last June. One of Trump’s attorneys verified that no classified documents remained on-site, but someone at the Justice Department appears to have disregarded it as federal agents swarmed the residence last Monday (via NYT):

 At least one lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump signed a written statement in June asserting that all material marked as classified and held in boxes in a storage area at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and club had been returned to the government, four people with knowledge of the document said.

The written declaration was made after a visit on June 3 to Mar-a-Lago by Jay I. Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in the Justice Department’s national security division.

Despite Biden Denials, Most Say We’re In A Recession And Gov’t Is To Blame — I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/15/despite-biden-denials-most-say-were-in-a-recession-and-govt-is-to-blame-ii-tipp-poll/

While the big media and some economists might disagree, a majority of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is now in a recession, the latest I&I/TIPP data show. And voters, when asked what caused it, are clear in their response: Government.

Recently, a number of government economists, including Fed chief Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, along with non-economist President Joe Biden, have suggested that, despite two quarterly declines in U.S. GDP, the country is not in a recession.

“What is a recession? While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle,” a blog from the  White House Council of Economic Advisers noted in a typical response, calling a recession “unlikely.”

Well, most Americans don’t agree.

How to break up the FBI By Charles Sullivan

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/how_to_break_up_the_fbi.html

I suspect that August 8, 2022 will live in infamy.  Historians may conclude that it is the day that the United States became a banana republic.  It is the day that a politically weaponized FBI raided the Florida home of former president Donald Trump in an effort to knock him out of the 2024 presidential election.  Prior to the raid, opinion polls rated him as the favored Republican candidate.

No other president in the history of the United States has had his residence served with a federal court search warrant after leaving office.  News reports indicate that approximately 30 agents descended on Mar-a-Lago and that the raid lasted for nine hours.

I personally believe that President Trump has already been indicted by a corrupt D.C. grand jury and that the Democrats are planning a show trial against him in Washington, D.C.  I also expect, regardless of the evidence, President Trump to be convicted if brought to trial.  No prominent Republican can be acquitted of criminal charges in Washington, D.C. because of the anti-Republican bias of the trial court judiciary and the jury pool, where only 5% of the registered voters are Republicans.  If you think Steve Bannon got a raw deal, wait until you see what happens to President Trump.

The FBI tormented President Trump during his presidency and has continued to do so after his leaving office.  It has become a political weapon of the Democrat party and has forfeited its right to exist.

The FBI is beyond redemption.  It needs to be dismembered and its remains scattered to the four winds.  This article will offer suggestions of how to do so.

If Trump Decides to Not Run in 2024… By Rajan Laad

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/if_trump_decides_to_not_run_in_2024.html

Let’s consider the following hypothetical scenario.

It’s a sunny morning at Mar-a-Lago and Donald Trump is going through the morning papers as he sips a cup of coffee when Melania arrives with a ‘we need to talk’ look across her face.  Trump places the papers down and offers her his undivided attention.

Melania tells Trump that she after some serious contemplation over the past few days, she is sick of the hate and persecution from the media, government agencies, and depraved FBI agents rifling through her personal wardrobe.

She beseeches Trump not to run for president in 2024 for the sake of his young son and grandchildren. She also reminds him they deserve peace at this stage of their lives. She adds that she will support him if he strongly wants to run.

Later during the day, an emissary from the Biden administration arrives at Mar-a-Lago with a deal. The gist of the deal is, that if Trump stops telling the truth about them, they will stop telling lies about Trump and the thousand spurious probes will disappear.

The Mar-a-Lago raid is a dangerous moment for America Those desperate to lock up Trump are a menace to the republic. Tom Slater

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/11/the-mar-a-lago-raid-is-a-dangerous-moment-for-america/

“To say the institutions of American justice have become alarmingly politicised is not to indulge in deep-state conspiracy theories. Merrick Garland has been under intense pressure from Democrats to prosecute Trump for something, anything, since he took office. As the New York Times reported in April, Joe Biden has told confidants he believes Trump is ‘a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted’ over ‘January 6’ – a chaotic pro-Trump riot which has been transformed, in liberals’ feverish imaginations, into a serious coup attempt led by Trump himself.”

You know a nation is in trouble when its security services are raiding the residence of a former president. Doubly so when said nation’s supposedly liberal intelligentsia seem tickled pink about this unprecedented development, without a whiff of concern or scepticism about what the feds are up to. That’s where the United States is at the moment, in the wake of the FBI’s search of former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida on Monday, reportedly over a dispute about missing official documents.

There’s still much we don’t know about this bizarrely explosive dispute between Trump and the National Archives. But what we do know is puzzling, to put it lightly. According to the New York Times, officials had been after Trump for months over official and potentially classified materials he still had in his possession. After archivists retrieved 15 boxes of documents, including some sensitive material, the US Department of Justice was called in. A grand jury was convened. Federal investigators, including counterintelligence officers, were deployed. And, unsatisfied with what had been retrieved, officers then secured a search warrant.

Progressives for jihad The woke set’s sympathy for Palestinian Islamic Jihad is deranged. Brendan O’ Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/10/progressives-for-jihad/

Remember when progressives were opposed to hardline religious movements that use violence to try to destroy democratic states? Those were the days. As a godless humanist instinctively wary of religious fundamentalism, I miss them. They really are long gone. The sympathy offered by self-styled progressives to Palestinian Islamic Jihad in recent days has made that clear. Islamic Jihad is a thoroughly regressive movement. It says it will settle for nothing less than the obliteration of Israel. It wants to create an Islamic State of Palestine in which Sharia would rule and all who fall foul of it – uppity women, homosexuals, atheists – would suffer. For the right-on to sympathise with such an outfit is akin to chickens giving solidarity to KFC.

Progressives for Islamic Jihad – this is where we’re at now; this is the latest deranged alley wokeness has taken us down. Since Friday, when the Israel Defence Forces launched Operation Breaking Dawn to take out the leaders of Islamic Jihad, we’ve had oceans of Twitter tears from Western progressives and virtually no analysis. ‘Might a group called Islamic Jihad be a tad problematic?’ – you’ll be searching for a long time before encountering even a question as basic as that. Instead, the same old script has been dusted down: Israel is evil, Zionism is racist, the Palestinian people have the right to resist, etc etc. The dearth of curiosity over what Islamic Jihad represents has been appalling.

Islamic Jihad has been talked about in the sympathetic language of ‘resistance’. A UN special rapporteur on Palestine thrilled the online left by tweeting during the raining down of Islamic Jihad missiles on Southern Israel that ‘Palestinians’ right to resist is inherent to their right to exist as a people’. The BDS movement used the glowing terms of resistance, too. It shared an image of a CNN headline that said ‘Israel clashes with Islamic Jihad’, though BDS changed it to ‘Israel massacres Palestinians’. Do not dismiss ‘the resistance of a besieged and trapped population’, BDS warned the mainstream media. At a rowdy rally in New York City, protesters insisted that ‘resistance is not terrorism’. Palestinians should use ‘every means possible’ against Israel, one speaker declared. An Irish anti-war group went further, declaring ‘Victory to the Palestinian Resistance!’. Right now, that ‘resistance’ takes the form of religious violence from a group that has primarily targeted Israeli citizens. You want victory for that?

Eisgruber’s Emails A nine-month correspondence with Princeton’s president sheds more light on his administration’s deceitful embrace of woke fanaticism at the expense of excellence by Sergiu Klainerman

ttps://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/eisgruber-emails-princeton-katz

 

In a stirring recent address to the students of the startup University of Austin, Bari Weiss described the ideology that has taken over America’s institutions of higher education: “Forgiveness is replaced with punishment. Debate is replaced with dis-invitation and de-platforming. Diversity is replaced with homogeneity of thought. Inclusion with exclusion. Excellence with equity.” To change this calamitous development requires nothing less than a revolution.

All successful revolutions start with local rebellions, and one has been taking place over the last year at Princeton University—the prestigious institution where I have taught mathematics and made my home for the last 35 years, but which is being destroyed from within by an administration committed to the ideology that Weiss accurately identified.

The saga has been well documented in these pages: In July 2020, tenured classics professor Joshua Katz published an article criticizing several illiberal demands made by a large number of Princeton faculty members to correct the university’s alleged “systemic racism,” including the creation of a “committee composed entirely of faculty that would oversee the investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents, research, and publication on the part of faculty …” For his criticism of these demands, and for referring to a by-then-defunct student organization, the Black Justice League (BJL), as “a small local terrorist organization that made life miserable for the students (including the many Black students) who did not agree with its members’ demands,” Katz was smeared as a racist by the university in its own freshman orientation program, then fired earlier this year on what is recognized by every sane observer as a pretext: a disputed accusation from a former student with whom Katz had a consensual sexual affair in 2006-07—for which he was already punished in 2018—that Katz had discouraged her from seeking mental health care.

Have the Cheneys Forgotten the Deep State Hit on Scooter Libby? Self-awareness is not one of the Cheneys’ strengths. by Jack Cashill

https://spectator.org/have-the-cheneys-forgotten-the-deep-state-hit-on-scooter-libby/

“I have been ashamed to hear members of my party attacking the integrity of the FBI agents involved with the recent Mar-a-Lago search,” the perversely self-righteous Liz Cheney tweeted on Thursday. “These are sickening comments that put the lives of patriotic public servants at risk.”

Rep. Cheney seems to have forgotten one significant event in her family’s political life: the same weaponized deep state that okayed the raid on Mar-a-Lago convicted her father’s chief-of-staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby on charges that were as manufactured as those leveled against President Trump. If Liz has forgotten, former vice president Dick Cheney surely remembers.

Trump’s pardon should have gladdened Cheney’s heart. It certainly did Scooter Libby’s.

In June 2007, Libby was convicted in a D.C. court of one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of lying under oath, and one count of making false statements. “I believe firmly that Scooter was unjustly accused and prosecuted and deserved a pardon,” Mr. Cheney told CNN’s John King in 2009, adding, “I was clearly not happy that we, in effect, left Scooter sort of hanging in the wind.” By “we” Cheney meant President George W. Bush. Cheney did little to conceal his disgust with Bush for failing to pardon Libby.

The charges against Libby stemmed from an investigation into the leak of the name of the low-level, Langley-based, CIA agent Valerie Plame. The White House was alleged to have leaked her name to punish her husband, Joe Wilson, an international hustler and occasional ambassador. Wilson purported to be a whistleblower. He wasn’t. He was a showboater.

‘Where Is the Media?’: Persecution of Christians, June 2022 by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18771/persecution-of-christians-june

The Christians of Nigeria are, in fact, being purged in a genocide, according to several NGOs Every two hours, one Christian there is killed. — Nigeria.

“Heavily armed bandits, many of whom are said to be ethnic Fulanis, are waging their own form of Jihad; killing, abducting and terrorizing worship centers and educational institutions owned by churches as well as impoverished communities in the North and Middle Belt regions.” — Vanguardngr.com. June 19, 2022, Nigeria.

The Biden administration’s response to the jihadist onslaught against Christians in Nigeria…has been to remove Nigeria from the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern: nations that engage in, or tolerate, violations of religious freedom. — Nigeria.

“The landlocked Sahel state [Burkina Faso], one of the world’s poorest countries, is in the grip of a nearly seven-year-old jihadist insurgency. Thousands of people have died and nearly two million have been driven from their homes.” — Guardian.ng, June 28, 2022, Burkina Faso.

“Amoti came to our home very early in the morning and needed to know more of Issa [Jesus], whom she had seen in a dream…. she willingly accepted Jesus for the salvation of her soul….. then together we went to church in Nansana.” When she arrived home, her father “…ordered his sons to seize and beat her, then took a sharp knife and pierced her eyes,” one of her brothers who had tried to defend her later said. “I want to remove these eyes so that you stop seeing churches forever—even if you die, we are not going to bury you,” her Muslim father said. — Morning Star News, June 14, 2022, Uganda.

“After Bashir was ousted from 30 years of power in April 2019, the transitional civilian-military government… outlawed the labeling of any religious group “infidels” and thus effectively rescinded apostasy laws that made leaving Islam punishable by death. With the Oct. 25 [2021] coup, Christians in Sudan fear the return of the most repressive and harsh aspects of Islamic law.” — Morning Star News, June 20 2022, Sudan.

On June 6, a 15-year-old Christian girl told a court how she was kidnapped and raped by a Muslim accused of abducting and forcibly converting her to Islam and marrying her. — Morning Star News, June 7, 2022, Pakistan.

June 14 report tells the story of Rehmat Masih, a Christian man who, despite there being no evidence, “has been in prison for five months in a new fabricated blasphemy case. He is accused of profaning and desecrating the pages of the Koran, but in reality he allegedly simply refused an offer to change religion…. on January 3, “police arrested Rehmat Masih, accusing him of committing blasphemy and tortured him severely” in an effort to make him admit to desecrating the Koran, an offence punishable by life imprisonment under Section 295-B of the Pakistan Penal Code. On January 19, 2022, a bail application was filed for the defendant, but the judge rejected it. Rehmat has been in prison since, awaiting his trial. — asanews.it, June 14, 2022, Pakistan.

The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of June 2022: