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Dems Resurrect Russia Collusion in Announcing Articles of Impeachment By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on December 10th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/dems-resurrect-russia-collusion-in-announcing-articles-of-impeachment/

On Tuesday, House Democrats announced two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. They accused him of abuse of power and of “obstruction of Congress.” The poll-tested “bribery” charge was nowhere to be found. Yet they also resurrected the skeleton of the Russia collusion narrative, despite Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s finding of no collusion and an Inspector General report revealing the many errors in the FBI investigation. The announcement was a clear political attack on Trump, more calculated to undermine his chances in 2020 than to actually hold him accountable for any alleged crimes.

“The first article is for abuse of power,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) began. “It is an impeachable offense for the president to exercise the powers of his public office to obtain an improper personal benefit, while ignoring or injuring the national interest. That is exactly what President Trump did when he solicited and pressured Ukraine to interfere in our 2020 presidential election, thus damaging our national security, undermining the integrity of the next election, and violating his oath to the American people.”

This claim twists the facts of Trump’s engagement with Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has insisted, over and over again, that he felt “no pressure” on the July 25 call at the center of the impeachment inquiry. In that call, Trump asked him to investigate Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election and potential corruption regarding the notoriously corrupt energy company Burisma, which had given Joe Biden’s son Hunter a sweetheart job on the board — despite his lack of experience in the industry.

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IG Report Confirms Schiff FISA Memo Media Praised Was Riddled With Lies Nearly two years later, the inspector general’s report vindicates the Nunes memo while showing that the Schiff memo was riddled with lies and false statements.By Mollie Hemingway

Posted By on December 10th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/10/ig-report-confirms-schiff-fisa-memo-media-praised-was-riddled-with-lies/#.Xe-auL_JUUM.twitter

The new inspector general report on FISA abuse settles the debate between Republicans and Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Both groups put out memos about the Department of Justice’s efforts to secure a warrant to wiretap Carter Page.

At the time of their release, the media praised Democrat Adam Schiff and his memo and vilified Republican Devin Nunes and his memo. Nearly two years later, the inspector general’s report vindicates the Nunes memo while showing that the Schiff memo was riddled with lies and false statements.

The memo from the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee reported:

A salacious and unverified dossier formed an essential part of the application to secure a warrant against a Trump campaign affiliate named Carter Page. This application failed to reveal that the dossier was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
The application cited a Yahoo News article extensively. The story did not corroborate the dossier, and the FBI wrongly claimed Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier, was not a source for the story.
Nellie Ohr, the wife of a high-ranking Justice Department official, also worked on behalf of the Clinton campaign effort. Her husband Bruce Ohr funneled her research into the Department of Justice. Although he admitted that Steele “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president,” this and the Ohrs’ relationship with the Clinton campaign was concealed from the secret court that grants surveillance warrants.
The dossier was “only minimally corroborated” and unverified, according to FBI officials.

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Controversy on phone records intensifies amid impeachment By Scott Wong and Juliegrace Brufke

Posted By on December 10th, 2019

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/473769-controversy-on-phone-records-intensifies-amid-impeachment

House Republicans are escalating their feud with Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, accusing the California Democrat of carrying out a “smear campaign” against his GOP counterpart, Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), by publishing his phone records in the panel’s sweeping impeachment report.

Collecting the phone data has been strongly defended by Democrats while Republicans have seized on the new controversy as unfair and a bad precedent.

President Trump’s Republican allies on Capitol Hill have sought to shine the spotlight back on Schiff as Democrats build their case against the president and continue marching toward an impeachment vote as soon as next week.

During Monday’s impeachment hearing, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Doug Collins (Ga.), spent several minutes ripping into the Democrats for including the Nunes records — something Collins argued added no value to the report and was only done as a “political vendetta” against one of Trump’s key defenders.

“It was a drive by. It was a gratuitous drive by that you wanted to smear the ranking member,” Collins told Schiff’s Democratic counsel, Daniel Goldman.

Schiff’s report detailed that Nunes had multiple communications with key figures in the House impeachment inquiry: Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, as well as with Giuliani’s Soviet-born associate Lev Parnas, who has been indicted on campaign finance charges. The records also show Giuliani was in communication with conservative opinion columnist John Solomon, who previously worked for The Hill.

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The Debate Over Salvation Army by Gerald A. Honigman

Posted By on December 10th, 2019

Before we really begin, please allow me to suggest that the reader take the enclosed links seriously. For the sake of limiting the length, I’ve included many important details that are key to understanding this subject matter within those linked articles.

There is currently renewed debate regarding the Salvation Army. Some of this came to light after a popular Christian restaurant chain cut its donations to it.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/prager-left-hates-salvation-army-thats-all-you-dennis-prager/

Dennis Prager, whom I most often agree with, claims that since the Left hates the Salvation Army, nothing else really matters in any conversation about it.  David Horowitz’ (another gentleman with whom I most often concur) FrontPage Magazine first published the piece. Horowitz has published several of my own analyses over the years as well. As a footnote of sorts, I’ve done extensive doctoral studies and am widely published in many of the same subject areas that both of these men frequently comment on themselves…so, I’m not just shooting from the hip.

I first took a liking to the Salvation Army like most other folks did—seeing volunteers ringing bells and collecting charity for the needy during the Christmas season….What’s not to like?

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Muslim jihad against US Jews has been constant since 9/11 Andrew Bostom

Posted By on December 10th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/muslim-jihad-against-us-jews-has-been-constant-since-9-11/

Since 2001 there have been incessant attacks and attempted attacks specifically targeting U.S. Jews and Jewish institutions and accompanied by the open profession of Islamic jihadist, anti-Semitic motivation.

Mohammed Alshamrani, the Pensacola Naval Air Station shooter, appears to have been “motivated,” in part, by an obsession with jihad against Israel. Just prior to the Dec. 7 attack, a threat was posted to Alshamrani’s alleged Twitter account: “You will not be safe until we live it as reality in pleastain [sic].” This was a reiteration of a threat against the United States made by Osama bin Laden  in a January 2010 audio message over American support for Israel’s right to self-defense.

Although Alshamrani’s lethal attack did not directly target Jews or Israel, jihadi terrorism directed unequivocally at U.S. Jews, and their institutions, has been a continuous phenomenon since Sept. 11, 2001. Moreover, the scope of this ongoing threat has not been enumerated, while the canonical Islamic religious incitement animating it—and the resulting disproportionate 2.4-foldrate of extreme anti-Semitism within the U.S. Muslim community, i.e., 34 percent of Muslims vs. 14 percent of non-Muslims—are almost entirely ignored.

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Ruthie Blum: The ayatollahs’ anxiety is showing Faced with internecine strife and external pressure from the United States and Israel, Iranian honchos appear to be growing agitated.

Posted By on December 10th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-ayatollahs-anxiety-is-showing/

Whether the uprising in Iran is leading to the ultimate collapse of the 40-year reign of the ayatollahs remains to be seen. But there is reason to believe that, unlike the protests of 2009-10 and 2017-18, the current unrest has weakened the regime’s grip irreparably.

One good sign is that today’s demonstrations have spread to rural areas of the enormous country, beyond the cities. And though they are being met with the same kind of violence as those that were quelled in the past, they do not seem to be abating. Indeed, even the mass arrests and gunning down of thousands of protesters by mullah-led militias and police have not succeeded in extinguishing the fire in the hungry bellies of the populace.

Another indication of cracks in the Islamic Republic’s armor is the panic that it has been exhibiting in relation to the assault on its hegemonic agenda by the United States and Israel.

The White House withdrawal from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the disastrous nuclear deal pushed through at all cost by the previous administration in Washington—and simultaneous increase in sanctions has made it more difficult for the Islamic Republic to keep up the pace of its spinning centrifuges without emptying its till and the pockets of its citizenry. Which is why the latter took to the streets on Nov. 15 in the first place, initially to decry a government hike in gas prices.

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TWOFER BY JONATHAN TURLEY

Posted By on December 10th, 2019

Horowitz report is damning for the FBI and unsettling for the rest of us
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/473709-horowitz-report-is-damning-for-the-fbi-and-unsettling-for-the-rest-of-us

The analysis of the report by Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz greatly depends, as is often the case, on which cable news channel you watch. Indeed, many people might be excused for concluding that Horowitz spent 476 pages to primarily conclude one thing, which is that the Justice Department acted within its guidelines in starting its investigation into the 2016 campaign of President Trump.

Horowitz did say that the original decision to investigate was within the discretionary standard of the Justice Department. That standard for the predication of an investigation is low, simply requiring “articulable facts.” He said that, since this is a low discretionary standard, he cannot say it was inappropriate to start. United States Attorney John Durham, who is heading the parallel investigation at the Justice Department, took the usual step of issuing a statement that he did not believe the evidence supported that conclusion at the beginning of the investigation.

Attorney General William Barr also issued a statement disagreeing with the threshold statement. Nevertheless, the Justice Department has a standard requiring the least intrusive means of investigating such entities as presidential campaigns, particularly when it is the campaign of the opposing party. That threshold finding is then followed by the remainder of the report, which is highly damaging and unsettling. Horowitz finds a litany of false and even falsified representations used to continue the secret investigation targeting the Trump campaign and its associates.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-12-09/opinion-trump-impeachment-hearings-democrats?_amp=true#click=https://t.co/FnzdfdzpOk

Jonathan Turley: Democrats need to connect more dots to impeach – Los Angeles Times

The problem with the evidence presented so far in congressional hearings on impeaching President Trump is that it can be viewed very differently depending on your perspective.

Last week artist Maurizio Cattelan reportedly sold his art piece “Comedian,” for $120,000. The work consisted of nothing more than a banana affixed to the wall with duct tape.
Some viewers of the piece saw art. Some saw hype. One person, performance artist David Datuna, saw lunch and proceeded to walk up and eat it. (It was later replaced by another banana and fresh duct tape).

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Europe No Longer Hides Its Hostility to Israel by Alain Destexhe

Posted By on December 10th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15264/europe-hostility-israel

The European Union seems deliberately to fail to recognize that Israel, a sovereign state, is regularly under threat — even extreme continuous rocket fire from Gaza and Syria — and, for that reason alone deserves its full support.

The statement [by the European Union]… fails to mention that Israel had killed a terrorist belonging to an extremist group about to launch another attack. The statement also fails to mention the number of rockets fired on the country, or the right of Israel to defend itself.

Four hundred and fifty rockets in under 48 hours is not a skirmish or a minor attack; it is a large-scale military attack. Any similar attack on France or Germany — if they received even a single missile — would have sparked a major crisis.

By comparison, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman tweeted: “Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Islamist terrorist org backed by Iran, is again attacking Israel with 100’s of missiles aimed at civilians. We stand w our friend & ally Israel at this critical moment & support Israel’s right to defend itself & bring an end to these barbaric attacks.”

The contrast speaks for itself. The United States is a friend of Israel. The European Union is not.

In other words, the EU, which is officially committed to fighting terrorism, supports the Palestinian Authority (PA), which supports terrorists and their families. Just try making sense of that.

The European Union, for its part, is proud to be “the biggest donor of external assistance to the Palestinians”. Since February 2008, more than €2.5 billion ($2.8 billion) have been disbursed. The EU provides core financial support to the Palestinian Authority, even though part of the PA budget is earmarked for terrorists and terrorists’ families, thereby actually incentivizing terrorism.

The European Union has, over the years, become increasingly hostile towards Israel. That attitude was confirmed in early November when the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that food products made in the so-called settlements of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights must be labeled as such and may not carry the generic label “Made in Israel.”

As rightly argued by the strategic studies expert Soeren Kern, there are many territorial conflicts all over the world, but the European Court singles out only Israel. Examples of the EU’s bias against Israel are numerous, particularly compared to the United States.

The EU seems deliberately not to recognize that Israel, a sovereign state, is regularly under threat — even extreme continuous rocket fire from Gaza and Syria — and, for that reason alone deserves its full support. No country in the world, especially one roughly the size of Vancouver Island, undergoes military attacks as perpetually as Israel does. On November 12 and 13, in under 48 hours, more than 450 rockets and mortars were fired from the Gaza Strip at Israeli towns. Rockets fired from Gaza caused countless damage, injuring at least 63 persons, and reached as far as the Tel Aviv area.

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Norway: A Fake “Translation” by Bruce Bawer

Posted By on December 10th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15262/norway-koran-translation

This 2013 Norwegian-language “Koran” is available online. A perusal of key passages, however, shows that it bears little or no resemblance to the actual Koran.

Let us hope that the word gets around that the book they are being handed is not really the Koran at all.

To borrow a phrase from Lewis Carroll, the news about the aftermath of a public Koran-burning in Kristiansand, Norway, on November 16, keeps getting curiouser and curiouser.

As explained in previous pieces here, the 30 or more police officers who were on hand at the event, which was organized by a group called Stop the Islamization of Norway (Stopp Islamiseringen av Norge – SIAN) were under secret orders from the chief of the Norwegian police, Benedicte Bjørnland, not just to douse any flaming Koran but to keep SIAN members from setting fire to a copy of the Muslim holy book in the first place. Bjørnland had maintained that the so-called “racism clause” of Norway’s criminal law gave her the power to issue such orders, while the Minister of Justice, Jøran Kallmyr, made the puzzling comment that while burning the Koran was legal, it could “become” a crime, a statement that made no more sense in Norwegian than it does in English.

To be sure, Bjørnland and Kallmyr, when confronted on a TV debate program on November 25 by politicians of the left and right as well as by a jurist, pulled back on their claims and acknowledged the primacy of free expression – although Bjørnland, apparently unable to shake off the idea that the intactness of any given copy of the Koran should be more sacred than free speech, clung to her line that the situation was “complicated.”

Nonetheless, the case seemed to be closed. Alas, not for long. Afterwards, Deputy Foreign Minister Jens Frølich Holte felt obliged to weigh in. He wrote an op-ed in which he condemned SIAN’s Koran-burning in the name of the Norwegian government and explained that whereas Norwegians do indeed have the right to say what they wish, their government also has the right to condemn what they say. The question Holte did not address in his op-ed was this: why, in a country with more than its share of newspaper op-ed pages, online news and opinion websites, and news discussion programs on TV and radio, does the government only feel obliged to refute publicly a private citizen’s point of view when that point of view concerns the topic of just one religion?

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TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!

Posted By on December 10th, 2019

On Friday, June 12, 1987 in  West Berlin President Ronald Reagan called for the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open the Berlin Wall, which had separated West and East Berlin since 1961″Mr. Gorbachev…Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

On November 9, 1989 The Berlin Wall came down.