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When Cabin Boys Attack By Julie Kelly

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/13/

Victor Davis Hanson is about as accomplished and credentialed a commentator you can find. He’s an author, a military historian, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and a farmer in California. President George W. Bush awarded Hanson the National Humanities Award in 2007. By all accounts and appearances, he is a decent, humble man who spends a great deal of time analyzing our current political moment and discussing what it portends for the future.

Hanson also is a supporter of President Trump. This heresy has earned him scorn from quarters on the Left and the so-called Right. His new book, The Case for Trump, has generated a barrage of criticism from the cabal of NeverTrumpers. Embittered by their humiliating miscalculation of Trump’s candidacy and shamelessly contorting their previous views to be able to contradict the president, these anti-Trump “conservatives” viciously attack anyone who dares to support the president. This includes Hanson.

In a particularly vile hit piece posted on The Bulwark, the new blog of Weekly Standard refugees who were left unemployed after the publication was shuttered in December, Gabe Schoenfeld accused Hanson of defending evil—that evil being President Trump. Bulwark editor Charlie Sykes recently threatened to “raise the opportunity costs” for pro-Trump commentators, Hanson specifically. To do so, Sykes enlisted the facile services of Schoenfeld, an advisor for the failed Mitt Romney presidential campaign, to pretend to write a book review that was little more than an ad hominem attack on Hanson.

Schoenfeld intimates that Hanson is a racist, an anti-Semite, and a Nazi sympathizer.

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Bombshell: Strzok Told Congress Robert Mueller Never Asked Him About Anti-Trump Texts By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/bombshell-strzok-told-congress-robert-mueller-never-asked-him-about-anti-trump-texts/
On Thursday morning, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) published a transcript of a June 2018 interview FBI Agent Peter Strzok gave to members of Congress before he was fired in August 2018 over anti-Trump texts between him and his lover, Lisa Page. Strzok had worked on three important investigations: the FBI probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails, the FBI investigation into possible Trump-Russia collusion, and the Trump-Russia probe headed by special counsel Robert Mueller.

After the anti-Trump texts came to light, Mueller booted Strzok from the special counsel probe, but according to the FBI agent’s testimony, Mueller’s team never asked him whether the anti-Trump bias revealed in his text messages impacted his investigation of alleged collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.

In the June 2018 hearing, Strzok repeated over and over that Mueller’s team never asked him about the anti-Trump bias in the texts or whether that bias impacted his work. This news seems particularly damning since it suggests the special counsel’s team did not care whether Strzok’s work was colored by anti-Trump bias.

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) asked the FBI agent a long series of questions about the Mueller probe. Strzok told him that the FBI investigation began in late July of 2016, that he was “one of the senior leaders” on that team, and that he joined the special counsel investigation “within a month” after its inception in May 2017.

The FBI agent discussed “the existence of the text messages” in an August 2017 discussion with Mueller and another lawyer, he said.

“There was a sense that special counsel Mueller absolutely wanted to run an investigation that was not only independent but also presented the appearance of independence, and the concern that these texts might be construed otherwise,” Strzok said.

Ratcliffe pressed him, “Do you think it’s fair, as these texts have been characterized, do you think it’s fair to say that they were hateful texts with respect to Donald Trump?”

“I wouldn’t call them hateful. I would call them an expression of personal belief in an individual conversation with a close associate,” the FBI agent responded.

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A Dissident’s Testimony: Vladimir Bukovsky’s ‘Judgment in Moscow’ Now in English By Bruce Bawer

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/a-dissidents-testimony-vladimir-bukovskys-judgment-in-moscow-now-in-english/
It’s the United States of America, and the year is 2019, and a hard-bitten old Commie named Bernie Sanders is, for the second time in a row, a popular candidate for the presidency. Meanwhile, the youngest and most high-profile new member of Congress is a staggeringly callow woman whose fatuously utopian rhetoric has made her a media darling. At the same time, the Democratic Party center itself is quickly lurching leftward, with once sensible politicians now spouting foolish and dangerous socialist bromides.

Some observers profess astonishment at these developments. In fact there’s no reason whatsoever for surprise. For one thing, as the legendary Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky laments in his book Judgment in Moscow (Ninth of November Press, $24.99 hardcover) — which appeared in French in 1995 and in Russian and German the year after, but is only now being published in English for the first time — the fall of the USSR was not followed by the kind of conspicuous moral reckoning and housecleaning that went on in Germany after Hitler’s defeat. There was no post-Soviet equivalent of the Nuremberg trials. Politburo and KGB members like Vladimir Putin, instead of being imprisoned or banished or fleeing to the Brazilian rainforest or the mountains of Bolivia, simply altered their public profiles and retained or resumed power in the new, purportedly post-Communist Russia.

As Bukovsky puts it: “To bring to justice those who took part in Nazi atrocities is a sacred task, the duty of one and all. But God forbid that you should so much as point a finger at a communist (let alone his fellow traveler); that is improper, a ‘witch hunt.’” How to convince the Western multitudes that Communism is horrible when its avatars were let off scot-free?

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The Bulwark Embarrasses Itself Further With Attack on Victor Davis Hanson By Roger Kimball

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/the-bulwark-embarrasses-itself-further-with-attack-on-victor-davis-hanson/

Being of a charitable disposition, I early on decided that the kindest response to the Bulwark, the NeverTrump redoubt started by Bill Kristol following the implosion of the Weekly Standard, was silence. If this tiny cohort of bitter and unhappy souls were determined to embarrass themselves in public, the best we could do was turn away. Non ragioniam di lor, as Dante says in another context, ma guarda e passa. It would be cruel to let daylight in upon madness.

I said nothing when, for one of their opening acts, their Editor-in-Chief Charles Sykes pronounced anathema upon me and Henry Olsen, the distinguished Ethics and Public Policy scholar, for the sin of supporting the President of the United States on some issue or other. I was planning to continue to follow Wittgenstein’s advice at the end of the Tractatus and pass over in silence the twisted attack on Victor Davis Hanson’s new book on the president, The Case for Trump, by Hudson Institute Fellow Gabriel Schoenfeld, but the ad hominem viciousness of the piece together with its surreal mischaracterization of Hanson’s argument prompts me to weigh in.

Longtime readers will know that I have had my own innings with Schoenfeld over Donald Trump. I hesitate to speak again not only because calling attention to Gabe Schoenfeld is a little like calling attention to the disheveled fellow you find screaming at passersby on the street outside your office but also because Victor Hanson has himself delivered a devastating response to Schoenfeld’s attack. I cannot improve upon Victor’s definitive retort, but it is worth iterating one or two elements of the exchange.

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Rockets fired at Tel Aviv, triggering air raid sirens By Samuel Chamberlain

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

Two rockets were fired at the Israeli city of Tel Aviv Thursday night, triggering air raid warning sirens, the country’s military said.

Sources told Fox News one of the rockets was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. People living in the area reported hearing an explosion in addition to the sirens.

The Israel Defense Forces confirmed in a Hebrew-language tweet that two rockets were fired into Israeli territory from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.Israel’s Channel 10 news, citing anonymous military officials, said the rockets were Iranian-made Fajr rockets. It said one of the rockets were intercepted and the other landed in an uninhabited area, and that there were no reports of injuries.Tel Aviv has not been attacked by rocket or missile fire since a 2014 war with Hamas militants. There was no immediate claim of responsibility Thursday night.

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Peter Strzok: Clinton, DOJ struck deal that blocked FBI access to Clinton Foundation emails on her private server by Jerry Dunleavy

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/peter-strzok-clinton-doj-struck-deal-that-blocked-fbi-access-to-clinton-foundation-emails-on-her-private-server?utm_source=

Fired FBI agent Peter Strzok told Congress last year that the agency “did not have access” to Clinton Foundation emails that were on Hillary Clinton’s private server because of a consent agreement “negotiated between the Department of Justice attorneys and counsel for Clinton.”

That agreement was revealed in newly released congressional transcripts from Strzok’s closed-door testimony at the House Judiciary Committee on June 27, 2018.

When asked by then-majority general counsel Zachary Somers if “the Clinton Foundation was on the server”, Strzok testified that he believed it was “on one of the servers, if not the others.” But Strzok stressed that due to an agreement between the DOJ and Clinton, they were not allowed to search Clinton Foundation emails for information that could help in their investigation. The FBI would have been investigating Clinton’s emails in 2016, when former President Barack Obama was still in office and when Clinton was running for president against then-candidate Donald Trump.

Somers asked in the 2018 hearing: “Were you given access to those emails as part of the investigation?”

Strzok replied: “We were not. We did not have access,” according to the transcript.

The FBI’s investigation into Clinton, called the “Midyear Exam,” focused on whether she had mishandled classified information in emails that were sent and received through her private server.

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NY’s political prosecution of Manafort should scare us all By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/433989-nys-political-prosecution-of-manafort-should-scare-us-all

“The New York district attorney did not indict Manafort because he committed mortgage fraud. The DA indicted Manafort because he worked on the Trump campaign and could be pardoned during Trump’s presidency. That’s disgraceful.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has indicted Paul Manafort for mortgage fraud and more than a dozen other state felonies. This is a nakedly political prosecution. Democrats, who run the Empire State, are apoplectic that President Trump could pardon his former campaign manager, who has been sentenced to 90 months in prison in the Mueller probe.

The federal charges had nothing to do with the rationale for the special counsel’s investigation, which involves Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and any possible Trump campaign coordination in that effort. But there is no doubt that the convictions and sentences, which resulted from separate but related proceedings in the Eastern District of Virginia and the District of Columbia, are valid. In Washington on Wednesday, Judge Amy Berman Jackson added 43 months of incarceration to the 47-months of imprisonment Judge T.S. Ellis imposed in Alexandria last week.

The New York state charges, announced shortly after Manafort’s second federal sentencing, raise some interesting legal and strategic questions about double jeopardy and pardons.

Most of the time, a federal prosecution is no impediment to a subsequent state prosecution based on the same conduct or charges. Under the so-called dual sovereignty doctrine, there is no double-jeopardy protection because that constitutional safeguard only prevents the same sovereign from prosecuting a person twice for the same offense. In our system, the federal government and the states are deemed to be different sovereigns. It is a dubious proposition since it is supposed to be the people who are sovereign, regardless of whether we’re talking about federal or state government matters.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Mohammed’s Favorite Color by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/22455/mohammed-favorite-color

America has been sleeping while the long term globalist plan of one world government is quietly being implemented through United Nation’s policies promoting population control in America and then mass immigration to replace the declining population. The objective is to build a permanent progressive majority Democrat ruling class that will eventually impose the final solution of one world government at the voting booths.

The radical “progressive” faction that has overrun the Democrat party in the United States has been referred to as the Red-Green axis. Investigative reporter James Simpson details the progressive movement’s objective in his 2015 report “Red-Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration, and the Agenda to Erase America.”

The open borders agenda is not new. It was framed in the Vancouver Plan of Action at the 1976 United Nations Conference on Human Settlements. The UN envisioned redistributed wealth and redistributed populations as the great equalizer that would bring sameness to the world – their final solution. One merged global population, one merged global language, one merged global currency, and one ruling global government to control the infantilized global population.

What is wrong with this comprehensive global merger promoted in spiritual terms as the great humanitarian solution to the world’s instability and rapidly depleting resources?

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How Do You Solve a Problem Like Rashida? By Michael Walsh

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/13/how-do-you-solve

“The left has forged an alliance of convenience with the more respectable elements of Islamic activists in the West in order to attack their common enemy, Western Civilization.”

Upon her accession to the U.S. House of Representatives last fall, practically the first words out of Rashida Tlaib’s mouth were: “We’re going to go in there and we’re going to impeach the motherf—er.” The object of the freshman Michigan Democrat’s derision was, of course, President Trump. This sentiment naturally got whoops and cheers from the guests at a MoveOn.org reception, who were there to celebrate the election of the Muslima from Dearbornistan, one of two female followers of Mohammed—the other is Ilhan Omar—now occupying chairs in the Capitol.

The triumphalism was multi-layered: not only had the Democrats—thanks, Paul Ryan!—retaken the House by both hook (free stuff for everybody except old toxic-male white guys, served up piping hot by the media) and crook (ballot harvesting in California that delivered once solidly Republican Orange County over to the Democrats) but, in the guise of “diversity,” they had also put two more co-religionists of the 9/11 hijackers into the Congress. Tlaib and Omar have wasted no time in getting to work against American norms and the republic itself.

Omar, born in Mogadishu, has been getting most of the attention lately; her unfiltered mouth can’t help but spout anti-Semitic drivel, and a recent attempt by a flailing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to rein her via a resolution against Jew hatred wound up as a boilerplate denunciation of “bigotry”—thus handing Omar a propaganda victory. As Britain’s hard-left Guardian put it in a headline: “Everyone’s against bigotry, right? Not 23 House Republicans, apparently.” Well played.

But Tlaib may be the more dangerous of the pair, cannily redoubling efforts to blame some (Jewish) Democrats’ antipathy to Omar’s casual slurs on . . . you guessed it: “I think Islamophobia is very much among the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party. And I know that’s hard for people to hear, but there’s only been four members of Congress that are of Muslim faith. Three of them currently serve in this institution. More of us need to get elected, but more of us need to understand as we come into this institution that I have a lot of work to do with my colleagues.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Waging War Against the Dead By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/13

The 21st century is in danger of becoming an era of statue smashing and historical erasure. Not since the iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire or the epidemic of statue destruction during the French Revolution has the world seen anything like the current war on the past.

In 2001, the primeval Taliban blew up two ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan on grounds that their very existence was sacrilegious to Islam.

In 2015, ISIS militants entered a museum in Mosul, Iraq, and destroyed ancient, pre-Islamic statues and idols. Their mute crime? These artifacts predated the prophet Muhammad.

The West prides itself in the idea that liberal societies would never descend into such nihilism. Think again.

In the last two years there has been a rash of statue toppling throughout the American South, aimed at wiping out memorialization of Confederate heroes. The pretense is that the Civil War can only be regarded as tragic in terms of the present oppression of the descendants of Southern slaves—154 years after the extinction of the Confederate states.

There is also a renewed crusade to erase the memory of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. Los Angeles removed a Columbus statue in November based on the premise that his 1492 discovery of the Americas began a disastrous genocide in the Western Hemisphere.