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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Vladimir Putin, Meet Joe Biden Bob Maistros

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/10/vladimir-putin-meet-joe-biden/

Any remaining doubt that America is over was laid to rest Aug. 8, 2022 – 6 feet under.

With the not just “unannounced,” but unprovoked, unprecedented, unprincipled and unpardonable violation of the home and property of a former head of state and potential future presidential candidate, this nation is no longer the United States. It is die Deutsche Demokratische Republik, and the Justice Department and FBI are the Stasi, KGB and Chinese Ministry of State Security rolled into one.

And any question whether the Biden-Harris-Schumer-Pelosi occupation regime in Washington is illegitimate was equally dispatched by its latest outrage.

Legitimate governments, operating with the consent of the governed, do not (per Julie Kelly of American Greatness) feel the need to awaken “hundreds of Americans … before dawn” deploying “dozens of armed FBI agents and military-style vehicles to capture even nonviolent protesters.”

Nor hold these non-violent protesters – many escorted into the Capitol by the Capitol Police – in solitary confinement for 18 months or more.

Nor force these “broken men and women” to “plead guilty to low-level misdemeanors such as ‘parading’ in the Capitol in an attempt to end their legal torture, only to be sentenced to prison time by judges … who then berate them from the bench as if they had committed the most heinous of crimes.”

Do The Political Elites Intend To Starve People To Death?

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/11/do-the-political-elites-intend-to-starve-people-to-death/

Sri Lanka is the case study. Cruel and pointless green agricultural policy has caused a crisis of hunger, shortages, rising prices, a crippled economy, and violence. The country’s president and its prime minister were chased from the country, and have been replaced. It should be a lesson to the rest of the world. Instead, it’s more likely a preview of the future.

What happened in Sri Lanka – “the systematic destruction of Sri Lankan agriculture by a regime so focused on appearing environmentally conscious that it blinded itself to the humanitarian disaster it was creating” – is also taking place in the Netherlands, one of the world’s top producers of farm products. There, policymakers have placed limits on agricultural waste emissions, which the eco-zealots are now at war with. The “tractor-riding rebels” understandably rose “up against their government.” What else should be expected when the rules could force as many as 30% of producers out of business?

Farmers in Spain, Ireland, and New Zealand are also rising up. It’s more than enough for any open-minded lawmaker anywhere on Earth to look at these events and rethink the policies that have caused such turmoil. But not Justin Trudeau, Canada’s Boy Prime Minister, who like the rest of the immature left is fixated on making points with the “right” people, as if he never left high school. Despite the clear warning signs, he’s moving “ahead on fertilizer reduction as provinces and farmers cry foul,” the Toronto Sun has reported. There are factions that must be impressed.

Gary Baise, an Illinois farmer and trial lawyer, recently wondered in Farm Futures if the U.S. will be the next country to adopt hunger and higher food prices as public policy.

CT Port Authority Project Costs $255M, Corrupted by Unethical Gifts By Adam Andrzejewski

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/08/10/ct_port_authority_project_costs_255m_corrupted_by_unethical_gifts_846549.html

The Connecticut Port Authority’s remaking of New London’s State Pier is costing $255.5 million and is the subject of a wide-ranging federal probe of several construction projects that were overseen by Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration.

Connecticut newspaper The Day reported that Attorney General William Tong is investigating a controversial grant in 2020 — a $523,000 success fee given to a marine consulting firm, Seabury PFRA, “for its role in choosing the politically connected operators of the port of New Haven to run the competing New London port,” the newspaper said.

An employee of the consulting firm had served on the port authority board of directors until right before his firm got the large contract.

The Seabury firm agreed to pay $10,000 in fines for violating ethics codes by giving gifts to two port authority employees and a board member, the Office of State Ethics said.

The gifts came during 2017 and 2019, a time when agency spending was out of control, not properly recorded, with lavish expense accounts and payments made to insiders without competitive bidding, The Day reported.

Former board chairpersons, Old Lyme First Selectwoman Bonnie Reemsnyder and Scott Bates, deputy secretary of the state, both resigned at the request of the governor.

While the Ethics Office fined Seabury for the unethical payments, it won’t say who got the bribes and neither will the Port Authority.

Under Biden’s DOJ, The Rule Of Law In America Has Become A Farce By: John Daniel Davidson

https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/10/under-bidens-doj-the-rule-of-law-in-america-has-become-a-farce/

Biden’s Justice Department and FBI will do anything to keep Trump from regaining the White House, even if it means imitating Nicaragua.

The criminal indictment and imprisonment of former heads of state by ruling regimes in other countries is more common than most Americans probably realize. Today, former presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, Panama, Peru, Paraguay, and Costa Rica are all imprisoned — and that’s just in Central and South America.

The world is replete with corrupt leaders who criminalize the opposition and politicize domestic law enforcement. That’s why, for example, Daniel Ortega has been president of Nicaragua since 2007. When you jail your political opponents and potential rivals, as Ortega did with gusto ahead of Nicaragua’s 2021 presidential election, it’s easy to stay in office. One of the salient features of these so-called “developing countries” is that they have not developed a way to transfer power peacefully. Brute force, not free and fair elections, is how rulers of the Third World seize and retain power.

Soon, the United States might join their ranks. On Monday evening, dozens of FBI agents raided the Florida home of former President Donald Trump. The absurd pretext for the raid was a dispute over documents with the National Archives — a circumstance by no means unique to the Trump administration and one that no serious person believes could ever justify such a raid.

Mar-a-Lago Search Shows the Swamp’s Trump Obsession: Dan Henninger

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-swamps-trump-obsession-mar-a-lago-raid-fb

An FBI raid against a former president should never happen. End of discussion.

Let us assume that for 99.99% of the U.S. population in early August 2022, the last thing on their mind was Mar-a-Lago. Instead, a short list of real things preoccupying Americans would include inflation, crime, battles in Congress over spending, Ukraine fighting World War III for us in Europe, and China conducting massive live-fire military exercises around Taiwan.

So it came as a surprise to discover Monday evening that the Justice Department and FBI decided the most important thing in the world just now was raiding former President Donald Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Fla. Among other thoughts, a three-letter acronym starting with W comes to mind.

Forgive me for not spending more than a moment on the legal niceties of this event—the applicability of the Presidential Records Act, that it had be about “something big” involving classified documents, or that no one, including a former president, is above the law. They are all beside the point.

You can hate Donald Trump until your eyes pop out, but let us be clear: He was elected the 45th president of the U.S. He served four years in office. No former president who was disliked by many—not Clinton, Reagan nor FDR—had his home invaded by a squad of FBI agents. This should never happen in the U.S. End of discussion.

And Berger got a $50K fine for stealing classified intel? By Jack Cashill

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/and_berger_got_a_50k_fine_for_stealing_classified_intel.html

To understand how deep the corruption is at the Department of Justice, and not just at the top, all one needs to do is compare the treatment of former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and former President Donald Trump.

Whatever concoction the DOJ serves up to frame Trump, it will not match what Berger actually confessed to doing.

In April 2002, former President Bill Clinton designated Berger as his representative to review intelligence documents in advance of the various hearings on 9/11. As a 2007 report by the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform made clear, Berger did not exactly welcome this assignment. The archivists told the House committee, in fact, that Berger “indicated some disgust with the burden and responsibility of conducting the document review.”

To fulfill his obligation to the Clintons, however, Berger was prepared to sacrifice his reputation and very nearly his freedom. According to the House report, Berger made four trips to the National Archives. He did so presumably to refresh his memory before testifying first to the Graham-Goss congressional committee and then to the 9/11 Commission. He made his first visit in May 2002, his last in October 2003.

During at least three of those visits, he stole and destroyed an incalculable number of documents. “The full extent of Berger’s document removal,” said the House report, “is not known and never can be known.”

The Mar-a-Lago Raid is a Preview of a Rigged 2024 Election The Democrats will prosecute their way to victory. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/mar-lago-raid-preview-rigged-2024-election-daniel-greenfield/

On Thursday, FBI Director Christopher Wray cut short his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee to fly the FBI’s private jet to his family’s vacation home. At the hearing, Wray had admitted that disciplinary action against FBI personnel involved in Russiagate abuses had been “slowed down” and refused to call Russiagate a “hoax”.

On Monday, President Trump revealed that Mar-a-Lago had been raided by “a large group of FBI agents”. Any warrant for such a raid would have been signed off on by Attorney General Merrick Garland and his associates in the Biden administration which expects to face the former president in the next election. Wray, who quietly listened to complaints about the politicization of the FBI from Senator Grassley and Cruz, among others, would have known what was coming.

The New York Times reported that, “according to two people familiar with the investigation, appeared to be focused on material that Mr. Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, after he left the White House.”

Back in May, the paper revealed that a federal grand jury investigation had been convened over boxes of “government documents, mementos, gifts and letters” taken to Mar-a-Lago. There was no federal investigation when the Clintons left the White House with $190,000 worth of “china, flatware, rugs, televisions, sofas and other gifts”. The FBI didn’t come knocking at Chappaqua.

This isn’t about the documents. Just as Russiagate was not about the Russians. It’s not about the 15 boxes of documents, letters and assorted presidential records and gifts that were hurriedly packed up and sent off to Mar-a-Lago, most of which were later returned when the National Archives requested them, this is about the 2024 presidential election.

The assorted Trump investigations were not motivated by concerns about national security, political norms and they’re certainly not driven by sudden worries about mishandling classified documents. And yet the same media which spent years explaining why mishandling classified documents was no big deal when the Clintons did it will explain why it’s a big deal now.

Islamic Suspect Arrested in Killings of Fellow Muslims in New Mexico By Diana Glebova

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/suspect-arrested-in-killings-of-fellow-muslims-in-new-mexico/

Police identified a suspect on Monday believed to be responsible for murdering several Muslim men in the past few months in Albuquerque, N.M. The suspect, also a Muslim man, was identified as 51-year-old Muhammad Syed and was taken into custody Monday night, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

He was charged with the murder of Aftab Hussein and Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, and police believe two other murders may be connected to the string of homicides.

Hussein was found shot to death in the parking lot of his apartment building on July 26, and Hussain was shot and killed outside his apartment on August 1.

Police say evidence indicates that Syed knew the victims “to some extent,” and that there could’ve been a conflict before the shootings, according to the outlet.

FBI Seizes Representative Scott Perry’s Personal Cellphone a Day after Trump Raid By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fbi-seizes-representative-scott-perrys-personal-cellphone-a-day-after-trump-raid-report/

Representative Scott Perry (R., Pa.), an ally of former president Donald Trump, said Tuesday that the FBI confiscated his personal phone one day after federal agents searched Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, according to a new report.

“This morning, while traveling with my family, 3 FBI agents visited me and seized my cell phone,” Perry told Fox News. “They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish.”

Perry added that he is “outraged — though not surprised — that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ would seize the phone of a sitting Member of Congress.” 

He told the outlet that his phone “contains info about my legislative and political activities, and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents, and friends,” adding, “none of this is the government’s business.”

He called it an “unnecessary and aggressive action” and blasted the FBI for “banana-republic tactics.” 

Though it is unclear from the Fox News report why agents seized Perry’s phone, the action comes three months after the House committee on the January 6 Capitol riot subpoenaed Perry along with House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio, Mo Brooks of Alabama, and Andy Biggs of Arizona. All five Republican lawmakers had declined the panel’s requests to voluntarily cooperate. It is extraordinarily rare for a congressional committee to subpoena sitting members of Congress.

Perry condemned the panel’s dramatic move at the time, saying, “That this illegitimate body leaked their latest charade to the media ahead of contacting targeted Members is proof positive once again that this political witch hunt is about fabricating headlines and distracting the Americans from their abysmal record of running America into the ground.”

The FBI’s Dangerous Trump Search Merrick Garland is taking the U.S. down a perilous path.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fbis-dangerous-donald-trump-search-mar-a-lago-merrick-garland-justice-department-11660074118?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Monday’s unannounced Federal Bureau of Investigation search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home isn’t a moment for anyone to cheer. The Justice Department is unleashing political furies it can’t control and may not understand, and the risks for the department and the country are as great as they are for Mr. Trump.

As everyone knows by now, an FBI law-enforcement action of this kind against a former American President is unprecedented. Monday’s search needed a judicial warrant in service of probable cause in a criminal probe. The Justice Department has provided few details beyond what has been leaked to reporters, so it is hard to judge what the FBI was looking for.

The media leaks say the search is related to potential mishandling of classified documents or violations of the Presidential Records Act. If that is true, then the raid looks like prosecutorial overkill and a bad mistake. Document disputes are typically settled in negotiation, and that is how Mr. Trump’s disagreement with the National Archives had been proceeding.

Mr. Trump has already returned 15 boxes of documents, but the National Archives wants to know if the former President retained classified material he shouldn’t have. This is what appears to have triggered the FBI search, but it’s far from clear why this couldn’t be settled cooperatively, or at most with a subpoena.