RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/10/of-ilhan-omar-anti-semitism-and-america/

It was only a matter of time. And in this case, it didn’t take long at all.

After Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) made her racist remarks about the “evil” and “hypnotic” influence of Israel, the undue influence of the Jewish lobby in Washington, (“it’s all about the Benjamins”), and the dual loyalty of American Jews, Democrats were on track to censure her by name from the floor of the House. But it never happened. Nancy Pelosi proved too weak.

After almost a week of wrangling, the committee that drafted the final statement on the scandalous freshman representative released a final text that never mentioned her by name, her statements, or any need for her to apologize for her bigotry. (Not coincidentally, Omar sits on this very committee.) In fact, the final language was such generic and anodyne boilerplate that it could have been issued at any time, by either party, for any reason or no reason at all.

That the Speaker of the House was so timid in the face of such shocking behavior should surprise no one.

Behold the face of the Democratic Party: minority, young, and racist. This is the fruit of identity politics. Be it Omar, who is on the cover of the current issue of Newsweek, Rashida Talib (D-Mich.) who signaled the need to obliterate Israel on her first day in office, or the leader of the pack, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.), a proud supporter of the anti-Israel BDS movement, the “new faces” of the DNC constitute a united front in their hatred for our Semitic brethren.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/10/will-william-barr-get-justice-for-carter-page/

It all started with Carter Page. The biggest scandal in the history of American politics originated with carefully cultivated public suspicions about whether Page, a Naval Academy graduate and campaign volunteer, was a conduit between Team Trump and the Kremlin.

In spring 2016, Page emerged as the first alleged culprit in the nascent Trump-Russia collusion plotline. Bogus allegations about him were included in the infamous Steele dossier; he was the subject of relentless media coverage and public harassment; the FBI enlisted an informant to gather information on him in secret; and his own government accused him of being a Russian agent as it wiretapped him for a year under false pretenses.

Now it appears Attorney General William Barr finally will get to the bottom of why Page first became the target of Trump foes on the Right, then ultimately, of the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Obama Administration. This comes two years to the day since the Washington Post first published illegally leaked details about the FISA warrant on Page, which was obtained by James Comey’s FBI in October 2016.

Barr is poised to hold Page’s antagonists accountable. “The office of the inspector general has a pending investigation into the FISA process in the Russia investigation,” Barr told the House Appropriations committee on Tuesday.

When asked specifically whether the Justice Department also was investigating who illegally disclosed the existence of Page’s FISA warrant, Barr indicated he would await the criminal referrals expected to come this week from Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) regarding the same matter.

Further, Barr has acknowledged that he believes the Trump campaign was spied on in 2016. “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. Yes, I think spying did occur,” Barr told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday. Page was one of a handful of Trump associates also pursued by an FBI informant during the campaign.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/10/california-has-become-americas-cannibal-state/

For over six years, California has had a top marginal income tax rate of 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation. About 150,000 households in a state of 40 million people now pay nearly half of the total annual state income tax.

The state legislature sold that confiscatory tax rate on the idea that it was a temporary fix and would eventually be phased out. No one believed that. California voters, about 40 percent of whom pay no state income taxes, naturally approved the extension of the high rate by an overwhelming margin.

California recently raised gas taxes by 40 percent and now has the second-highest gas taxes in the United States.

California has the ninth-highest combined state and local sales taxes in the country, but its state sales tax of 7.3 percent is America’s highest. As of April 1, California is now applying that high state sales tax to goods that residents buy online from out-of-state sellers.

In late 2017, the federal government capped state and local tax deductions at $10,000. For high earners in California, the change effectively almost doubled their state and local taxes.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/10/barr-confirms-multiple-intel-agencies-implicated-in-anti-trump-spy-operation/

“Spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Attorney General William Barr told a Senate committee on Wednesday morning. Barr’s comments came in the context of potential Justice Department reviews of the Trump-Russia investigation and how it began in 2016.

While it is important that the top law enforcement in the United States publicly acknowledged that the Obama administration and its intelligence agencies surveilled its domestic political opponents during the heat of a presidential election, it is what he said next that was most startling: that the CIA and other federal agencies in addition to the FBI may have been involved. “I’m not talking about the FBI necessarily, but intelligence agencies more broadly,” he said.

The FBI, which has incredibly friendly relations with the media, has taken the brunt of the public outcry against the anti-Trump operation. That project included the use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, national security letters, human informants, and strategic leaking to craft a narrative of treasonous collusion with Russia to steal an election from Hillary Clinton. It even included leaks of classified records from former FBI director James Comey, which he said was done for the purpose of launching a special counsel investigation as retaliation for his firing.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/spying-did-occur-11554932442

The Attorney General of the United States told a Senate subcommittee today that the federal government spied on a U.S. political campaign in 2016. Now Americans need to know which executive branch officials were responsible for turning Washington’s formidable surveillance powers against the party out of power.

The Journal reports:

Attorney General William Barr will ask a team inside the Justice Department to examine the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia, he told Congress on Wednesday, responding to lingering Republican concerns about law enforcement decisions during the 2016 election.

Mr. Barr characterized the law-enforcement activities that were directed at people affiliated with the Trump campaign as “spying,” telling a Senate panel that he will examine the gamut of intelligence activities that were directed at members of the campaign in 2016, looking at how and why surveillance decisions were made.

“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Mr. Barr said in a hearing, invoking Vietnam-era intelligence abuses, such as the surveillance of antiwar activists as a reason to raise these questions. “Spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated.”

It is a big deal, even if much of the press corps runs every development in this story through the filter of whether it is good news or bad news for Donald Trump. It is unconditionally bad news for the citizens of a free society if it becomes acceptable for the government to spy on domestic political opponents.