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NYT Reveals FBI Retaliated Against Trump For Comey Firing By Mollie Hemingway

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/14/nyt-reveals-fbi-retaliated-against-trump-for-comey-firing/#.XDyD0qdFYeU.twitter
A Friday expose from the New York Times reveals that the FBI investigation of Trump for alleged treason was little more than retaliation against the president for lawfully firing an incompetent and ethically challenged FBI director.

In a Friday night news dump, the New York Times revealed the FBI’s surprisingly flimsy justification for launching a retaliatory investigation into President Donald Trump, their chief adversary during their recent troubled era.

Admitting there is no actual evidence for their probe into whether Trump “worked for the Russians,” FBI officials instead cited their foreign policy differences with him, his lawful firing of bungling FBI Director James Comey, and alarm that he accurately revealed to the American public that he was told he wasn’t under investigation by the FBI, when they preferred to hide that fact.

The news was treated as a bombshell, and it was, but not for the reasons many thought. It wasn’t news that the FBI had launched the investigation. Just last month, CNN reported that top FBI officials opened an investigation into Trump after the lawful firing of Comey because Trump “needed to be reined in,” a shocking admission of abuse of power by our nation’s top law enforcement agency.

The Washington Post reported Mueller was looking into whether Trump obstructed the Russia investigation by insisting he was innocent of the outlandish charges selectively leaked by government officials to compliant media. Perhaps because such an obstruction investigation was immediately condemned as scandalous political overreach, that aspect was downplayed while Mueller engaged in a limitless “Russia” probe that has rung up countless Trump affiliates for process crimes unrelated to treasonous collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election, and spun off various investigations having nothing to do with Russia in any way.

The latest Times report does provide more detail than these earlier reports, however, and none of it makes the FBI look good. In fact, it provides evidence of a usurpation of constitutional authority to determine foreign policy that belongs not with a politically unaccountable FBI but with the citizens’ elected president. More on that in a bit.

CNN’s Acosta Confirms Walled Part of the Border Is Crisis-Free

https://freebeacon.com/uncategorized/cnns-acosta-confirms-walled-part-of-the-border-is-crisis-free/

CNN reporter Jim Acosta confirmed no crisis existed along a walled portion of the U.S.-Mexico border during a visit Thursday.

In a video shared to Twitter, Acosta pointed to “some of the steel slats that the president’s been talking about.” Walking along the border in McAllen, Texas, Acosta noted that the president has warned of a national emergency at the unwalled portion of the southern border. Acosta observed that this emergency did not exist along the portion of the border that had already been secured with steel slats.

“As we’re walking along here we’re not saying any kind of imminent danger,” he remarked, patting the border barrier with his hand as he filmed himself. “There are no migrants trying to rush towards this fence.”

President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to “build the wall” and secure the border. Though the rate has decreased in recent years, hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals cross the southern border into the United States every year.

Democrats have refused to provide funding for the president’s border wall, though many have voted for it as part of larger immigration bills in the past. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) jokingly offered the president one dollar for the wall and called it immoral. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), have refused to accommodate Trump’s wish to build a border wall.

“He is not going to get the wall in any form,” Schumer said last month. Some Democrats, like Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), have agreed that “enhanced fencing” would in fact help secure the border. The estimated cost is between $2-5.7 billion dollars.

In an address to the nation from the oval office Tuesday, Trump stopped short of declaring a federal emergency to secure unilateral authority to fund the wall. Now in its twentieth day, the government shutdown is approaching the longest of its kind in American history.

Peter Schweizer’s “The Creepy Line” Takes Tech Giants to Task by Ruthie Blum

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13491/the-creepy-line

As if this were not “creepy” enough, there is another process going on that is far less transparent: “listing” — the order in which information appears on Google. The “list effect” on our cognitive functioning, Epstein explains, is that we believe that the items appearing at the top of a set of search results — whether the category is dog food or political candidates — are the most relevant, valuable or true. Google and Facebook are able, thus, to prioritize the information we receive, while pretending to be neutral platforms, rather than content producers exercising editorial control. It is this pretense that exempts them from being subject to the laws governing publishers.

“If they have this kind of power, then democracy is an illusion… There have to be in place numerous safeguards to make sure not only that they don’t exercise these powers, but that they can’t exercise these powers. The Internet belongs to all of us. It does not belong to Google or Facebook.” — Dr. Robert Epstein, American psychology professor; “The Creepy Line”.

“Today, we essentially have a totalitarian force in the world, and that is these large tech companies. But guess what? They didn’t use storm troopers…. We all opted in… We volunteered for this arrangement. And we live in a world today in which these tech giants have a level of control and an ability to manipulate us that Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Mussolini could only have dreamed of.” — Peter Schweitzer, producer of “The Creepy Line”.

A new documentary, revealing the way in which the major technology companies Google and Facebook manipulate consumers through the collection of users’ data, sheds light on current controversies surrounding privacy and political bias. Called “The Creepy Line,” the film argues that even the most intelligent people among us are serving as unwitting pawns in a power grab, enabled by mathematical algorithms, without our being aware of it.

The title of the 80-minute movie is taken from a phrase used by the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, who in a 2010 interview said:

“There’s what I call the ‘creepy line,’ and the Google policy about a lot of these things is to get right up to the ‘creepy line’ but not cross it.”

Produced by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer and directed by M.A. Taylor, the film both claims and illustrates that Google and Facebook not only crossed that line long ago, but continue to push it further away. Schweizer, author of the New York Times best-seller Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, is among the prominent interviewees in the film. Others include Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson and American psychology professor and researcher Dr. Robert Epstein.

NY Times: Manafort Sent Campaign Data to Russians, Oops, No He Didn’t Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/272512/ny-times-manafort-sent-campaign-data-russians-oops-daniel-greenfield

I’ll give the New York Times some credit. It may be a mostly worthless Democrat messaging machine that promotes racism and anti-Semitism, but at least, unlike the Washington Post, it still maintains some of its traditional habit of correcting errors after they appear.

A properly woke paper would embrace the errors, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez style, as being morally right, even if factually wrong.

A previous version of this article misidentified the people to whom Paul Manafort wanted a Russian associate to send polling data. Mr. Manafort wanted the data sent to two Ukrainian oligarchs, Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov, not Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch close to the Kremlin.

But this sort of thing happens when you keep spinning conspiracy theories.

Media Completely Ignores Isaam Akel, An American Brutalized Like Khashoggi . Ben Weingarten

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/07/media-completely-ignores-isaam-akel-american-brutalized-like-khashoggi/

A U.S. political establishment that was just months ago woke to anti-Semitism—it least when it might use that to dunk on Trump—has been missing in action about Isaam Akel.

An Arab man with deep ties to America dissented against an authoritarian Middle Eastern regime. As a consequence, he was held captive, reportedly beaten, and his life may be over.

No, his name is not Jamal Khashoggi. Unlike Khashoggi, this man is a U.S. citizen. And he was not consorting with or propagandizing on behalf of Islamists, but enraging them by consorting with America’s closest ally in the region.

While Issam Akel has not been made a cause celebre, perhaps he should be. An American resident of East Jerusalem, Akel was arrested by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in October 2018 and sentenced to life in prison with hard labor for allegedly committing the mortal sin of “selling a house to the enemy in Jerusalem.”

You see, according to the PA’s kangaroo court, Akel had the temerity to broker the sale of a house in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem to Ateret Cohanim. That organization seeks to acquire land to settle Jews in non-Jewish areas of the Old City, and in small pockets within heavily Arab neighborhoods.

Under “Palestinian” law, selling property to Israelis—namely, Jews—is punishable by death. There’s a long history of legal codification of such barbaric Jew-hatred, as catalogued by Rabbi Schmuley Boteach:

The concept of killing a man for doing business with a Jew was put into force by the Jordanians in 1948 during the kingdom’s occupation of Judea and Samaria. From there, it would be incorporated into the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)’s legal code in 1979, which enforced the penalty of execution on any of those ‘traitors’ caught ‘transferring positions to the enemy.’ Since then, the law has been further clarified. The term ‘positions,’ as it turns out, refer to any sort of land or real estate. ‘Transferring’ has been elucidated by PA President Mahmoud Abbas to include any act of ‘diverting,’ ‘selling,’ or even just ‘renting’ a property. As for the ‘enemies,’ this refers to ‘an enemy state or one of its subjects,’ which, coming from the PLO, refers explicitly to Jews. The law has been reaffirmed by Palestinian officials on several occasions — in 1973, 1979, 1997, 2010, 2014, and 2018.

It’s truly Nazi-esque. But a U.S. political establishment that was just months ago woke to anti-Semitism—it least when it might use that to dunk on Trump—has been missing in action.

The Times in the Gutter By Marilyn Penn

http://politicalmavens.com/

There were two firsts in the NYT of Jan 5, 2019. One was the pronouncement by new congressperson Rashida Tlaib (D Mich) to her young son who congratulated her on her victory by saying, “Momma, look you won. Bullies don’t win” to which she responded, “Baby, they don’t. Because we’re going to go in there, and we’re going to impeach the motherf—er.” The other was the fact that the word was spelled out completely, something I had never seen in the Times. I googled to see whether that had happened before but came up short with references only to the Times’ squeamishness about printing the word and numerous examples of what permutations they used to avoid it.

Several thoughts occurred to me. Would they have done so if it was used to refer to Obama? to Lewis Farrakhan? Would they even have printed the “n” word to refer to those two? The answer to those questions is obvious – they would not have printed motherf—er in reference to anyone but the man who gets trashed in their pages every day. The picture that accompanies the article shows the congressperson smiling as she is sworn in to office with the American flag behind her and her young son in front of her – the boy looks like he is under 10. I don’t know any educated mothers who teach their children to refer to people with that word, especially not when it’s a person holding the highest office in our country. I hope that her son would be seriously reprimanded at school for referring to his teacher or principal that way; if this is the congressperson’s judgment when it comes to dealing with the son she loves, what might we expect when she must talk with adversaries?

Rashida was fortunate to have been born in this country of free speech and on occasion, to have been the recipient of government welfare to her family of 14 children while she was growing up. As a Muslim woman, she was able to go to college and Law School and be elected to the legislature of her state and her country. Regardless of how she feels about our current president, he has been duly elected and the least that can be expected from other elected officials is respect for the office of president, if not its occupant. The example that she sets for her children does not bode well for her civility in dealing with political antagonists, something borne out by the map in her office displaying the word Palestine where Israel is located.

The NYTimes regularly refers to the Trump rhetoric, blaming that for the increasing divisiveness in our country No Republican was ever quoted in the press of in the media referring to a Democrat president with that word and I can’t think of another politician who would refuse to apologize if their insult became front page news. Lately, people have resigned from both public and private sector jobs for less. Who would have guessed that a single 12 letter word printed in the newspaper of record could push the level of discourse to a new low – a debasement as damaging to our culture as the unrestrained person who was quoted.

The New York Times Incentivizes Hamas Violence by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13498/the-new-york-times-incentivizes-hamas-violence

While Hamas is happy to boast openly about their fighters tearing at the border fences in Gaza and hiding behind civilians to evade Israeli soldiers—the New York Times makes no mention of this. Israeli soldiers are portrayed as faceless killing machines, without a single reference to the fire kites, terror tunnels, rockets or cross border explosive devices utilized by the Palestinians, or to the double war crime of Hamas targeting Israeli civilians by firing rockets from behind Palestinian civilians.

These Israeli civilians are not occupiers or usurpers. They live in Israel proper not in occupied or disputed territory. This area was built from scratch by Israelis on barren desert land and the Israelis have a right to be protected from fire bombs and mobs determined to breach the protective fence. How would other nations respond to such threats? Certainly not by treating these dangerous mobs as peaceful protestors merely exercising their freedom of speech and assembly.

The Times’s absurd conclusion that the shooter may have committed a “war crime,” ignores the law of war crimes.

Contrast what Israel does with how the Palestinians treat terrorists who willfully target and kill Jewish children, women and other civilians. The Palestinian Authority pays their families rewards – in effect bounties — for their willful acts of murder. Hamas promotes and lionizes terrorists who kill Jews. But you would not know any of that from reading the one-sided New York Times screed….All in all, it is a shockingly irresponsible report.

In the Sunday New York Times — the most widely read issue of the week — the lead story was about a young Israeli soldier whose bullet ricocheted off the ground and killed a young Palestinian medic who had admitted to being a human shield and who was videoed throwing a smoke bomb. The next day— in the less well-read Monday issue — the Times reported on the murder and torture committed at the hands Afghan troops affiliated with and trained by the American CIA. The piece opens with the troops shooting and burning an entire family including a three-year-old girl. The number of deaths associated with these units (who at times were mistaken for ISIS) could not be verified but accounts put them at hundreds in one month. Apparently, the Times’s editors believe that the Israeli story, involving one soldier who shot one Palestinian under questionable circumstances, deserves wider coverage than deliberate massacres perpetrated by Afghan troops trained by the CIA.

NYT Puff Piece On Democrat Ilhan Omar Again Whitewashes Her Apparent Anti-Semitism Ilhan Omar has tweeted, ‘Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.’ The New York Times didn’t see fit to discuss that in its profile. Warren Henry

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/03/nyt-puff-piece-democrat-ilhan-omar-whitewashes-apparent-anti-semitism/

The bad news is that The New York Times decided to close 2018 by whitewashing the anti-Semitic record of incoming House Democrat Ilhan Omar. The good news is that the Times and Omar apparently still believe the whitewashing is necessary.

“Glorified and Vilified, Representative-Elect Ilhan Omar Tells Critics: ‘Just Deal’” is a fairly representative headline for the story by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, a puff piece of the sort one might find at Teen Vogue instead of the Gray Lady.

In this telling, soon-to-be representative Omar is the plucky immigrant who transcends bullies, the sexism of Somali culture, and the intolerance of an unnamed Christian pastor to become one of the first two Muslim women in Congress. Indeed, a professor quoted in the article calls Omar “the epitome of the so-called American dream, but for much of white Christian America, she’s an American nightmare.”

The problem with this sort of propaganda is what was left unreported. According to the story, “Her support for the boycott, divest and sanctions movement to pressure Israel to improve treatment of Palestinians is making Jewish leaders nervous.”

This formulation is laughably incomplete, beginning with the failure to quote any Jewish leader detailing their issues with Omar. (Lonny Goldsmith, editor of TCJewfolk, a media nonprofit in the Twin Cities, says only that she’s a “politician,” and in paragraph 23 of the story.)

Bre Payton, Beloved Staff Writer At The Federalist R.I.P. (1992-2018)

http://thefederalist.com/2018/12/28/bre-payton-beloved-staff-writer-passed-away/

Bre Payton, our beloved staff writer for The Federalist, passed away on Friday in San Diego, California following a sudden illness.

Bre was born in California on June 8, 1992, to George and Cindy Payton.

She received her high school diploma from the Western Christian High School Private Satellite Program. She graduated from Patrick Henry College in 2015 with a degree in journalism.

Bre joined The Federalist in April of 2015. In the space of just a few years, she became a rising star on cable news, regularly featured as political commentator on Fox News Channel, Fox Business Channel, and OANN.

Bre brightened the lives of everyone around her. She was joyful, hard-working, and compassionate, and she leaves behind friends and colleagues for whom she brought nothing but sweetness and light.

Though we are heartbroken and devastated by Bre’s death, we are comforted in the knowledge that she was a woman who lived a life marked by deep Christian faith, trusting in her Savior, Jesus Christ – in the God who promises the way our story ends is that “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.”

Bre is survived by her parents, George and Cindy; siblings James, Jack, Christina, and Cheekie; and boyfriend Ryan Colby. Her family would appreciate privacy and your prayers as they grieve this loss.

Trump Works While NeverTrump Predicts Doom—Again By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/27/trump-works

While the president worked during the holidays—including surprise trips with the first lady to greet U.S. troops in Iraq and Germany—anti-Trump “conservatives” worked hard on their laptops to warn Americans of impending doom for Trump’s presidency.

Again.

In an uncharitable Christmas Day screed, National Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg served up some flashbacks from his NeverTrump past to yet again warn that Trump’s presidency will “end poorly.” Goldberg again condemned Trump for his lack of character; again blasted Trump supporters for emulating his bellicose style; and again unleashed a litany of alleged offenses—such as the president’s “rants against the 1st Amendment”—as evidence of why Donald Trump is, like, the worst president ever.

Goldberg is lashing out lately: From his borderline-misogynistic diatribe against a female journalist who outed National Review for accepting donations from Google while possibly suppressing negative stories about the tech giant, to an attack on his NR colleague Andrew McCarthy (which eventually elicited an apology from Goldberg), he seems more unhinged than usual.

Which makes his lazy harangue about Trump’s name-calling and mean-spiritedness all the more ironic. Please, Jonah, tell us more about character and manners just days after you called a woman reporter an “idiot,” a “McCarthyite,” a “failed-actress-turned-faux journalist,” and a “MAGA infomercial hostess.”

Goldberg isn’t alone. His fellow NeverTrump travelers are certain it’s really over for Trump this time.

“We should be deeply troubled,” insisted Goldberg’s sidekick, David French, after the December 20 resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis. “Now is the time for Republicans in Congress to declare their independence from the Republican in the White House and refuse once and for all to rubber-stamp Donald Trump’s whims and desires.”

Tom Nichols—who seizes on every real or imagined scandal du jour to warn his fellow Americans that the end is (again near—fumed over Mattis’s resignation.