RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/department-of-justice-congress-spying-jason-foster-empower-oversight-f2d6235e?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The Justice Department’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation is the fiasco that keeps on giving, and look no further than this week’s revelations of abuse of power. The latest news is that Justice snooped on the Congressional investigators who dared to conduct oversight of its snooping on the 2016 Trump campaign.

Numerous current and former congressional staffers have learned that Justice subpoenaed their personal phone and email records in 2017, likely under the pretext of a leak investigation. The targets included Republican and Democratic staffers in the Senate and House.

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They join staffers and Members of the House Intelligence Committee, who over the past two years said they were notified by Google or

Apple

that Justice seized their data. By our count, executive-branch prosecutors have now been caught fishing through the records of more than a dozen employees of the congressional branch. DOJ’s inspector general is probing the matter.

Last week Google notified Jason Foster, Sen. Chuck Grassley’s former chief investigative counsel on the Judiciary Committee, that Justice sought and received Mr. Foster’s personal records. In a subsequent Freedom of Information Act request to Justice, Mr. Foster’s nonprofit, Empower Oversight, lays out the scope of Justice’s search.

The FOIA letter to Justice says Google received a federal subpoena on Sept. 12, 2017, for records related to a Foster family telephone number, as well as other accounts that are redacted but that Empower Oversight believes belonged to other staffers.

“For each of the listed telephone and email accounts, the subpoena compelled Google to release customer or subscriber information, as well as subscribers’ names, addresses, local and long distance telephone connection records, text message logs, records of session times and durations, length of service and types of service utilized for the period from December 1, 2016 to May 1, 2017,” says the letter. DOJ wanted to know Mr. Foster’s sources and methods.

Recall what was going on at that time. The Washington Post in 2017 reported on a wiretapped phone call between incoming Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak—an egregious leak of classified information. The Senate Judiciary Committee sought answers from DOJ about the Flynn probe and the leak.

DOJ provided few answers to Congress, though in an effort to justify its snooping it revealed that it also had a surveillance warrant against former Trump aide Carter Page. Details of that classified Page warrant soon leaked to the press, via stories that sought to bolster the FBI’s narrative of Trump-Russia collusion.

At the time DOJ was essentially run by career officials, after then Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from Trump-Russia questions, while former FBI Director James Comey had been fired that May.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/democrats-are-showing-you-who-they-are/

I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn’t 1938; then, I had to check the books I owned to make sure they weren’t actually written in German. Once I confirmed it is 2023 and I live in the United States of America, I was left only to shake my head in disgust at what Democrats have exposed themselves to be.

Make no mistake, I never really thought they were great people. The party of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation isn’t suddenly going to pull a 180 and not be monsters; it’s who they are. They’ve never changed their objectives, only their tactics. Now, their embrace of segregation is done in the name of tolerance, of providing a “safe space” to minorities. But make no mistake, the end result is the same.

That’s the thing about the left – they’ll happily tell you who they are and the horrible things they hold dear; all you have to do is believe them.

The terrorist attack in Israel two weeks ago brought out the worst in the left, but it’s also their true self. You can’t cheer for the wholesale murder of innocent people and “really be a good person, deep down.” No, that’s not how it works. It’s the opposite – they are raging bigots and monsters who manage to tamp it down below the surface most of the time until there’s something to protest or celebrate. It’s really that simple.

I’m not Jewish, and I’m disgusted. I can only imagine the sense of betrayal and horror Jews feel, as friends, neighbors, and colleagues felt so compelled to defend the murderers of Jews, for the express reason that they were Jewish, 24 hours after the attack. The Democratic Socialists of America, who count Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, and pretty must every other Nazi scum “progressive” among their ranks and supporter, marched in support of Hamas in New York City, the next day, before there was anywhere near an accurate body count, let alone an understanding of the scale of the evil. They didn’t march against Israel; they marched in favor of Hamas, literally celebrating the paragliders in the posters promoting it.

That’s a special kind of evil.

In the face of that, how can any normal person care what they have to say or do anything but recoil in disgust at what they’re advocating? They can’t.

The examples of the aforementioned Members of Congress spewing their anti-Semitism or lying about 500 dead in the most densely populated hospital on the planet, when there was really just a small parking lot fire caused by “friendly” terrorist fire, are well known. What isn’t as well known are the examples of small people in positions that wouldn’t get the attention an MSNBC host would, showing people the monsters they are.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-pentagon-finally-admits-to-dozens-of-u-s-casualties-amid-iran-backed-attacks/

Israel isn’t the only target.

In the 18 days since the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hamas murdered over 1,400 people, the network of terrorist proxies aligned with the Islamic Republic that populate the Middle East have taken similar aim at U.S. forces throughout the region. U.S. positions in Iraq and Syria have come under at least 13 drone and missile attacks. Last week, the Iran-aligned Houthi militia fired off a fusillade of rockets and unmanned vehicles “potentially headed for Israel” that were intercepted by an American Navy destroyer in the Red Sea.

And yet, the U.S. emerged from these attacks relatively unscathed. At least, that’s what the silence from Joe Biden’s Defense Department regarding the fallout from these attacks implied.

On October 18, the Pentagon revealed that one American contractor in Iraq died after experiencing a cardiac event while trying to seek shelter from an incoming rocket attack, which turned out to be a false alarm. The following day, a Defense Department spokesman acknowledged the “uptick” in attacks from Iran’s Shiite militia groups, but assured reporters that there was “no direct linkage” between their activities and Israel’s war with another Iran-backed terrorist entity.

When asked about casualty figures, the Pentagon could only say with confidence that no civilians were injured in the attacks. As for U.S. service personnel, the “numbers” were “all over the map” and therefore unreliable. “That’s another aspect that we’re looking at right now,” Brigadier General Pat Ryder assured reporters on October 19.

This week, the Pentagon finally got its hands around the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Middle East, and its assessment is shocking. At least 24 U.S. troops were wounded in the attacks on American positions in the Middle East, Defense officials admitted on Tuesday. Most of those are classified as “minor injuries,” but they nonetheless jeopardize the readiness of America’s forward positions. Moreover, the Pentagon expects these figures will rise in the coming days. “What we are seeing is the prospect for more significant escalation against U.S. forces and personnel across the region in the very near-term coming from Iranian proxy forces and ultimately from Iran,” Ryder advised. The Defense Department is “preparing for this escalation” and for the eventual prospect of “responding decisively.”