The war on the rule of law; the Deep State

[Crafty_Dog]

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/330516-federal-judge-blocks-trumps-sanctuary-cities-order

[DougMacG]

"BART takeover robbery: 40 to 60 teens swarm train, rob weekend riders."
"because the people who are seen committing obvious crimes appear to be minors, the video cannot be put up on line."

I've heard of protecting the privacy of minors but never above trying to solve a crime.  If a "teenager" hasn't seen a parent in 2-3 years, are they really still minors?

I wonder if this is another case of white on black crime or Christian on Muslim crime that we so far too often see.  Lutherans out wilding??

[G M]

"BART takeover robbery: 40 to 60 teens swarm train, rob weekend riders."
"because the people who are seen committing obvious crimes appear to be minors, the video cannot be put up on line."

I've heard of protecting the privacy of minors but never above trying to solve a crime.  If a "teenager" hasn't seen a parent in 2-3 years, are they really still minors?

I wonder if this is another case of white on black crime or Christian on Muslim crime that we so far too often see.  Lutherans out wilding??

Can't let the truth get in the way of the left's narrative.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447058/trump-administration-sanctuary-city-executive-order-activist-liberal-judge-william-h-orrick?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20Reoccurring-%20Monday%20to%20Thursday%202017-04-26&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives

[G M]

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/369544.php

May 01, 2017
Incredibly, Baltimore Advising Police Against Arresting Illegal Immigrant Criminals at All, Lest They Be Subsequently Deported
Trump says he's prioritizing illegals who commit other illegal acts for deportation.

If a blue city arrests and prosecutes an illegal, then, they make him more readily subject to deportation.

Solution? Just don't arrest or prosecute illegals for anything other than the most serious violent offenses.

Not only do they have immunity from our immigration laws, they'll now have immunity from almost every criminal law.

Amazing.

The Baltimore State's Attorney’s Office has instructed prosecutors to think twice before charging illegal immigrants with minor, non-violent crimes in response to stepped up immigration enforcement by the Trump administration.
Deputy State’s Attorney Michael Schatzow, in a memo sent to all staff Thursday and obtained by The Sun, wrote that the Justice Department's deportation efforts "have increased the potential collateral consequences to certain immigrants of minor, non-violent criminal conduct."

"In considering the appropriate disposition of a minor, non-violent criminal case, please be certain to consider those potential consequences to the victim, witnesses, and the defendant," Schatzow wrote.

Although the media tells us illegals don't vote, blue city and state Democrats sure act as if they do, and sure seem to think they have a sizable electoral influence.

[ccp]

"Although the media tells us illegals don't vote, blue city and state Democrats sure act as if they do, and sure seem to think they have a sizable electoral influence."

One can think of many comments to make about this but one thing is certain:

If all these people coming over here were far more likely to be Republican voters and not Dem party hacks we all know the borders would have been enforced and illegals deported the first day Brock was in office.

[G M]

"Although the media tells us illegals don't vote, blue city and state Democrats sure act as if they do, and sure seem to think they have a sizable electoral influence."

One can think of many comments to make about this but one thing is certain:

If all these people coming over here were far more likely to be Republican voters and not Dem party hacks we all know the borders would have been enforced and illegals deported the first day Brock was in office.

Exactly.

[DougMacG]

ccp: no loss  (politics)
The congressional hearings are such a waste of time anyway.  She is just going to lie her way through them even if she showed up so what is the point?
Have we ever seen any consequences that means anything from any of these things?  I can't recall any:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-obama-security-adviser-declines-invite-testify-220908322--politics.html
---------------

Congressional hearings are a waste of time because congress had no power (under Obama) to jail the people it held in contempt.  Eric Holder comes to mind.  Lois Lerner.  The IRS commissioner.

Having Susan Rice, who was at the center of some of the administration's lies, testify (falsely) under oath does have some potential value IMHO.
--------------
Comey and the Russians cost Hillary the election?  First it wikileaks, not the Russians, and what they were releasing was proof she broke the rule of law.

Comey went public when Loretta Lynch recused herself.  Why?  For meeting with Bill Clinton secretly.  Does that break the rule of law?  Of course.  Ex parte, interfering with a federal investigation, and for another thing, equal treatment under the law.  What other person under federal investigation gets to have one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, who got her her job and largely controls her future, meet in secret with the Attorney General SECRETLY right while she is making her decision of whether to go forward with criminal prosecution.  She shouldn't have 'recused herself' from the decision, she should have been escorted off the scene in handcuffs, read her rights and been given a fair trial.

Comey, who never asked HRC a question about intent, is still talking yesterday about finding no evidence of intent in the hidden and discovered emails.  Unmentioned is that the espionage act she broke dos not in any way require intent.

And what was the intent of the private server that BILL Cinton set up and Hillary used?  James Carville said it on national television.  To keep these committees from seeing these correspondences.  And what was the business, proven in all the hacked and released emails?  The co-mingling of the Clinton Foundation, State Department business, and the accompanying Clinton personal wealth gain tied to it as plain to see as the sunrise on a clear day.

And to jail goes no one.

Rule of law?  What rule of law!

If you or I (or George W Bush) did the same thing, we would be in jail now.

[G M]

I have discussed this with multiple people with law enforcement backgrounds. We are in agreement that the rule of law is dead in this country.

ccp: no loss  (politics)
The congressional hearings are such a waste of time anyway.  She is just going to lie her way through them even if she showed up so what is the point?
Have we ever seen any consequences that means anything from any of these things?  I can't recall any:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-obama-security-adviser-declines-invite-testify-220908322--politics.html
---------------

Congressional hearings are a waste of time because congress had no power (under Obama) to jail the people it held in contempt.  Eric Holder comes to mind.  Lois Lerner.  The IRS commissioner.

Having Susan Rice, who was at the center of some of the administration's lies, testify (falsely) under oath does have some potential value IMHO.
--------------
Comey and the Russians cost Hillary the election?  First it wikileaks, not the Russians, and what they were releasing was proof she broke the rule of law.

Comey went public when Loretta Lynch recused herself.  Why?  For meeting with Bill Clinton secretly.  Does that break the rule of law?  Of course.  Ex parte, interfering with a federal investigation, and for another thing, equal treatment under the law.  What other person under federal investigation gets to have one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, who got her her job and largely controls her future, meet in secret with the Attorney General SECRETLY right while she is making her decision of whether to go forward with criminal prosecution.  She shouldn't have 'recused herself' from the decision, she should have been escorted off the scene in handcuffs, read her rights and been given a fair trial.

Comey, who never asked HRC a question about intent, is still talking yesterday about finding no evidence of intent in the hidden and discovered emails.  Unmentioned is that the espionage act she broke dos not in any way require intent.

And what was the intent of the private server that BILL Cinton set up and Hillary used?  James Carville said it on national television.  To keep these committees from seeing these correspondences.  And what was the business, proven in all the hacked and released emails?  The co-mingling of the Clinton Foundation, State Department business, and the accompanying Clinton personal wealth gain tied to it as plain to see as the sunrise on a clear day.

And to jail goes no one.

Rule of law?  What rule of law!

If you or I (or George W Bush) did the same thing, we would be in jail now.

[DougMacG]

The left, the media or the rule of law, who knows?  Does anyone seriously believe firing Comey will make some impeachment level crime of Trump's go away, of which there is no evidence after almost 12 months of investigation...

They didn't kill him.  He can still speak, and make appearances. They didn't fire the whole department.  Was he working alone in secret on something? 

Did he (successfully) investigate leaks in his own department, or the leaks of the bureaucracy (deep state) or of the previous administration?

Did he investigate the IRS scandal that came to light under his watch?  Who did they charge?  (No one)

Is there ANYTHING he did right or got right?

[G M]

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/05/11/trump-cans-comey-like-a-boss-n2324865

Trump Cans Comey Like A Boss
Kurt Schlichter |Posted: May 11, 2017 12:01 AM 


 

We always knew Donald Trump was brassy, but until he sent half-stepping ex-FBI Director James Comey packing, we didn’t know that his manparts were made of brass. You gotta be hardcore to step up to that sanctimonious tool, that Kasich-With-A-Badge, and cut him off at the knees in the face of the inevitable monsoon of fake news media panic, girlish Democrat howling, and sputtering Menschian Russianoia.

No hesitation. No apologies. When it became inarguable that this pumped up functionary with delusions of omnipotence had finally passed his sell-by date, Trump pulled the trigger. That’s taking charge. That’s leading from the front. That’s regulating. Damn, it’s nice to once again have a chief executive who’s not a simpering femboy.

The pathetic Democrats were caught so utterly off-guard, and were so completely bought-into their spittle-flicking Comey hate, that their 180 from calling for Comey’s head to calling for his restoration will give them mental whiplash. They’ll be in figurative neck braces just like the one their hero Ted Kennedy wore after he left Mary Jo in the pond.

The morning of the day that Trump canned Comey, the Dems were in high dudgeon over Comey’s “correction” of his Senate testimony regarding how many classified emails Huma sent to her overexposed spouse. It was a lot less than what Comey told Congress…under oath…when everyone was watching. No biggie. He “clarified” it afterwards, so it was all good.

 
When normals give false testimony under oath, we call it “perjury,” and Comey’s former subordinates frog march them into federal prison. But when Comey does it, it’s merely an oopsie and he gets to shrug as the sad trombone blows.

Democrats have a beef about Comey telling Congress – which promptly leaked it – that he was reopening the Clinton investigation right before the election. But he was reopening it, and he assured Congress he’d let it know if he did, and it was a big deal. Hillary had no right to a free pass on the foreseeable consequences of her decision to flout the law. No toilet server, no hacks, no problem – this was all of her doing and no one should blame Comey for that. Nor was it Comey who kept her out of Michigan, Wisconsin, and the parts of Pennsylvania where people cling to their guns and religion.

But his “Free Pass for Hillary” press conference in July was perhaps the most transparently horrific decision by a Justice Department official since Janet Reno decided that she had to burn down the Branch Davidian compound to save its kids. Here’s the thing about Comey – he was arrogant. He was so arrogant that he took for himself the power to ignore the law because he determined, by himself, that if Hillary was treated like every other non-elite citizen the outcome would somehow be wrong. Voters might vote incorrectly if Hillary was held accountable and Comey, in his surpassing benevolent wisdom, could not allow that.


His press conference did incalculable damage to the American People’s faith in the rule of law. But he’s special, and his most-favored-felon treatment of fellow elite alum Hillary and her cadre of crooks was just professional courtesy.

His dedication to higher truth justified Jimmy lying to our faces. Any normal American, but not Hillary, would have been indicted over those classified emails – those of us who actually held security clearances understand that especially well. And that stuff about no prosecutor being able to prove the case? A first-year lawyer with a hangover could prove her U.S. Code violations to a jury of Kardashians with ADD.

Everything Comey said at that press conference after laying out that devastating indictment of Hillary Clinton was a lie. Everything. But he had his higher purpose. He was not bound by the petty rules that constrain lesser men.

It was never Comey’s job to determine whether to prosecute her. He was a cop – well, cops actually do cop things instead of ride a desk and stare lovingly into the mirror, but his role was law enforcement nonetheless. Comey was not a prosecutor. Yet he usurped that job because he felt that only St. Jim had the moral fortitude to see beyond and above our mere mortal laws. It was his obligation – nay, his duty – to ignore the statutes enacted by the People through the Congress and to do what he determined was right, not what the law required, not what his oath compelled, but what he felt good about.


Comey’s actions were not the actions of an officer of a democratic republic, but of an aspiring benign dictator who feels himself unbound by mere mortal laws. And history is replete with the heaps of bodies that lie at the far end of that slippery slope. Such men never stay benign long.

That pompous hack can never be too gone from office. He probably thought he was going to skate too, right up until the minute security showed up with an empty banker’s box to confiscate his access card and walk him out to the sidewalk.

The Democrats are fuming, enraged that President Trump dared to fearlessly exercise the power of every other president and dismiss those who serve at his pleasure whom he no longer finds pleasing. But he rejects the idea that because liberals disapprove, his every action is somehow illegitimate. Trump refuses to accept the narrative that he is The President*, America’s Asterisk-in-Chief.

Not a thing.

Savor this moment. You just lived through history. January 20, 2017, is when Donald Trump took the oath of office. May 9, 2017, is when he became President.

[G M]

http://www.bookwormroom.com/2017/05/12/cowards-fbi-comey/

The craven cowards at the FBI, starting at the top with Comey
MAY 12, 2017 BY BOOKWORM 12 COMMENTS

Comey pretended that his moral cowardice was a virtue, a dangerous attitude that empowers weak people and that permeates the entire FBI.

FBI Comey J. Edgar Hoover Building Federal Bureau of Investigation
As Comey’s firing as FBI director continues to roil the Left, all sorts of interesting things are emerging. For example, it was Comey who gave Bill Clinton a pass in 2002 following an investigation into Clinton’s Marc Rich pardon. Having been one of the Whitewater investigators, you’d think Comey would have figured out early that, where there’s a Clinton, there’s a rat to be smelled, but somehow . . . he didn’t.

Comey was also the one who authorized the FBI to spend $100,000 investigating Dinesh D’Souza’s $20,000 illegal campaign finance donation. One could say that keeping elections clean is so important that money is no object, but that’s not what the FBI and other government branches had said before they got D’Souza — a prominent Obama and Democrat Party critic — in their sights. Previously (and since then), for small dollar campaign finance violations, the government had handed out small punishments.

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
 Follow
 Dinesh D'Souza ✔ @DineshDSouza
WHY I'M SMILING TODAY: This capo James Comey allocated $100,000 to investigate my $20 K case--all to please his mob bosses Holder & Obama
3:35 PM - 9 May 2017
  7,176 7,176 Retweets   13,708 13,708 likes
Kimberly Strassel has written a scathing article detailing Comey’s ongoing corrupt practices, made all the more damning by the fact that she pretends to take Comey at his word — namely, that he sees himself as a model of virtue and rectitude constantly saving the day:

. . . t seems the head of the FBI had lost confidence—even before TarmacGate—that the Justice Department was playing it anywhere near straight in the Clinton probe. So what should an honor-bound FBI director do in such a conflicted situation? Call it out. Demand that Ms. Lynch recuse herself and insist on an appropriate process to ensure public confidence. Resign, if need be. Instead Mr. Comey waited until the situation had become a crisis, and then he ignored all protocol to make himself investigator, attorney, judge and jury.

By the end of that 15-minute July press conference, Mr. Comey had infuriated both Republicans and Democrats, who were now universally convinced he was playing politics. He’d undermined his and his agency’s integrity. No matter his motives, an honor-bound director would have acknowledged that his decision jeopardized his ability to continue effectively leading the agency. He would have chosen in the following days—or at least after the election—to step down. Mr. Comey didn’t.

Which leads us to Mr. Comey’s most recent and obvious conflict of all—likely a primary reason he was fired: the leaks investigation (or rather non-investigation). So far the only crime that has come to light from this Russia probe is the rampant and felonious leaking of classified information to the press. Mr. Trump and the GOP rightly see this as a major risk to national security. While the National Security Agency has been cooperating with the House Intelligence Committee and allowing lawmakers to review documents that might show the source of the leaks, Mr. Comey’s FBI has resolutely refused to do the same.

And where is the rest of the FBI in all of this? Some agents are taking a “brave” and “virtuous” stand too. In true FBI tradition, showing the backbone and strength for which they’re known, they’re changing their Facebook pictures to show Comey’s face, rather than their own [that’s sarcasm, in case you wondered]:

FBI agents are reportedly changing their Facebook profile photos to pictures of James Comey — or pictures of them with Comey — to show their support for the sacked FBI director.

The Daily Beast reported that at least a dozen agents had changed their photos, a gesture usually reserved for fellow agents slain in the line of duty.

According to Gateway Pundit, though, some agents are thinking of going public about their disagreements with Comey. The link in that article is to an October 17, 2016 article in which anonymous FBI agents say they’re displeased with Comey’s handling of matters.

You know what? I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for those agents to go public. I think FBI agents’ courage is limited to Facebook profile pictures.

I say that for the reasons I stated back in April 2016, when I predicted (accurately) that Hillary would get a pass. The basis for this prediction is my unchanging belief that middle class civil servants crave job security and will not allow principles to get in their way. (Please note that I don’t give myself any moral high ground as I have the same cowardly, middle class mindset.)

No matter how principled they’d like to think they are, most middle-class people will turn a blind eye to corruption in their midst rather than run the risk of being unable to pay their mortgage or fund all of the other payments necessary to support a middle-class lifestyle. They don’t think of themselves as dishonest or complicit in dishonesty. They think of themselves as cautious people who aren’t going to risk their children’s future for some grand-standing that, rather than resulting in applause, could leave them unemployed and desperate.

This episode from my past makes me doubt very strongly that Hillary Clinton will be indicted. I know that the rumor mill keeps saying that FBI agents, from Comey on down, will quit if Loretta Lynch lets Hillary walk. Some of the FBI agents whispering this to friendly reporters may even believe that they’ll quit.

Mostly, though, this is a bluff.  Why?  Because the people talking about quitting are middle-class people with mortgages, and school fees, and insurance, and all the other expenses that keep us in the middle-class living up to our own expectations. If Hillary really does walk, 99% of those “I’ll quit if she’s not indicted” agents will manage, very quickly and easily, to convince themselves to stay in their jobs, and get their salaries and pensions.

[snip]

We middle-class people — the ones who collect paychecks for showing up and doing our job — are not paying the piper. We’re not entrepreneurs who get to make our own decisions. Instead, we are dependent on the good will of the very people who may stand accused of corruption. It’s the government, the high-level management, the business owner, who pay the piper and call the tune. We just dance.  And if we miss a step, we’re out on our derrieres with nothing to show for all the skillful dancing we did for so many years before we alienated both piper and payor.

[snip]

Human nature is fixed. Those of us comfortable with our status are also trapped by our status. While there are people with sufficient moral courage or insufficient investment in their middle-class status who will take a stand, most of us will manage to tell ourselves a series of comfortable lies that enable us to live with the embezzler [and] the corrupt politician. . . .

Although I didn’t predict quite how Comey would ensure an outcome that protected Hillary, I was certainly right that a man craving both power and economic security would do what he did.

Ultimately, for all his public posturing, Comey is a coward — and, moreover, one who has managed to convince himself that his moral cowardice is a virtue. That’s a very dangerous mindset. The moment someone believes that about himself, he’s essentially anointed himself as King Rat. Moreover it’s been apparent for a while that this King Rat has been riding herd over a bunch of other cowardly, but morally superior, little rats.

Comey was a nascent J. Edgar Hoover, and those who work for him are either complicit because they support his methods and his ends or they’re complicit because they are too immersed in their delicately balanced middle class lifestyles to do anything that might harm them economically. Some will change their Facebook photos and some will murmur mutinously about “speaking out,” but that’s it. That’s all they’ll do.

The above is why those voters who pay taxes like President Trump. He’s not beholden to anybody and he reacts as a taxpayer would: This guy is doing a bad job, he’s abusing his power, and he shouldn’t be getting a salary. He needs to be fired.

No wonder Trump terrifies the resident rats in the D.C. Swamp.

[ccp]

"No matter how principled they’d like to think they are, most middle-class people will turn a blind eye to corruption in their midst rather than run the risk of being unable to pay their mortgage or fund all of the other payments necessary to support a middle-class lifestyle. They don’t think of themselves as dishonest or complicit in dishonesty. They think of themselves as cautious people who aren’t going to risk their children’s future for some grand-standing that, rather than resulting in applause, could leave them unemployed and desperate."

This happens all day long, everywhere sadly.

[ccp]

https://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2017/05/13/what-crime-would-a-special-prosecutor-prosecute/

[G M]

https://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2017/05/13/what-crime-would-a-special-prosecutor-prosecute/

Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.

Lavrentiy Beria

[Crafty_Dog]

I thought they were discussing grandchildren and golf?

http://freedomoutpost.com/nsa-wont-release-clintonlynch-tarmac-tape-claims-national-security/

http://bigleaguepolitics.com/nsa-blocks-release-loretta-lynch-bill-clinton-airplane-tape-national-security/

[ccp]

A tape exists???

Wow.

[Crafty_Dog]

Read with care-- it is a "refuse to confirm or deny".

[Crafty_Dog]

The Obama Library Smoking Guns?       
June 23, 2017
 
 
(Weekly Update: Live with Tom Fitton)

Obama Advisor Susan Rice’s Unmasking Material is at the Obama Library
Judicial Watch Sues for Obama Family Travel and Secret Service Costs
President Trump:  Please End the Obstruction on Benghazi Cover-up Documents
Supreme Court to Hear Big Case Against Proposed Wisconsin Redistricting
 
Obama Advisor Susan Rice’s Unmasking Material is at the Obama Library
Your Judicial Watch performed a massive public service this week.  We exposed how key Obama spying scandal documents, including the infamous Susan Rice unmasking records, were moved to the Obama Presidential Library.
 
The National Security Council (NSC) informed us by letter on May 23, 2017, that the materials regarding the unmasking by Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice of “the identities of any U.S. citizens associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team” have been removed to the Obama Library.
 
The NSC will not fulfill our April 4 request for records regarding information relating to people “who were identified pursuant to intelligence collection activities.”
 
The agency also informed us that it would not turn over communications with any intelligence community member or agency concerning the alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election; the hacking of DNC computers; or the suspected communications between Russia and Trump campaign/transition officials.  Specifically, the NSC told us:
Documents from the Obama administration have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library.  You may send your request to the Obama Library.  However, you should be aware that under the Presidential Records Act, Presidential records remain closed to the public for five years after an administration has left office.
Our April 4 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request sought:
 
1.) Any and all requests for information, analyses, summaries, assessments, transcripts, or similar records submitted to any Intelligence Community member agency or any official, employee, or representative thereof by former National Security Advisor Susan Rice regarding, concerning, or related to the following:
•   Any actual or suspected effort by the Russian government or any individual acting on behalf of the Russian government to influence or otherwise interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
•   The alleged hacking of computer systems utilized by the Democratic National Committee and/or the Clinton presidential campaign.
•   Any actual or suspected communication between any member of the Trump presidential campaign or transition team and any official or employee of the Russian government or any individual acting on behalf of the Russian government.
•   The identities of U.S. citizens associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team who were identified pursuant to intelligence collection activities.
2.) Any and all records or responses received by former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and/or any member, employee, staff member, or representative of the National Security Council in response to any request described in part 1 of this request.
 
3.) Any and all records of communication between any official, employee, or representative of the Department of any Intelligence Community member agency and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and/or any member, employee, staff member, or representative of the National Security Council regarding, concerning, or related to any request described in Part 1 of this request.
 
The time frame for this request was January 1, 2016, to April 4, 2017.
 
While acknowledging in its FOIA request that “we are cognizant of the finding by the Court of Appeals … that [the NSC] “does not exercise sufficiently independent authority to be an ‘agency’ for purposes of the Freedom of Information Act,” we argued:
The records sought in this request pertain to actions by the former National Security Advisor that demonstrate a much higher degree of independent authority than was contemplated by the court; specifically, the issuance of directives to the Intelligence Community related to the handling of classified national security information…
 
The recent revelations of the role of Susan Rice in the unmasking the names of U.S. citizens identified in the course of intelligence collection activities and the potential that her actions contributed to the unauthorized disclosure of classified national security information are matters of great public interest.
We have filed six FOIA lawsuits related to the surveillance, unmasking, and illegal leaking targeting President Trump and his associates (see here, here, here, here, here and here).
 
Prosecutors, Congress, and the public will want to know when the National Security Council shipped off the records about potential intelligence abuses by Susan Rice and others in the Obama White House to the memory hole of the Obama Presidential Library. We are considering our legal options, but we hope that the Special Counsel and Congress also consider their options and get these records.
 
As noted, the records could be squirreled away from the public for at least five years, but there are ways they can be obtained almost immediately under law.  The exceptions to Obama Library records restricted access are as follows:
“subject to any rights, defenses, or privileges which the United States or any agency or person may invoke, Presidential records shall be made available--

(A) pursuant to subpoena or other judicial process issued by a court of competent jurisdiction for the purposes of any civil or criminal investigation or proceeding;
(B) to an incumbent President if such records contain information that is needed for the conduct of current business of the incumbent President’s office and that is not otherwise available; and
(C) to either House of Congress, or, to the extent of matter within its jurisdiction, to any committee or subcommittee thereof if such records contain information that is needed for the conduct of its business and that is not otherwise available;
You can see that both President Trump and Congress can quickly get ahold of these records.  As JW considers it legal options, they should both move quickly to preserve, protect, and disclose the Obama spying scandal documents to JW and the American people.
   
Judicial Watch Sues for Obama Family Travel and Secret Service Costs
Our presidents are catered to 24/7, and nobody would deny them safety and tools to do the job. However, all too often they seem to be tempted to slip into occasional ostentation, to conflate their personal and political agendas with the duties of their office? You know it happens, and we do, too.
 
That’s why filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit (FOIA) against the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security seeking Air Force and Secret Service expense records for Obama family travel dating back to 2014. We filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security (No. 117-cv-01007)).

We also want Secret Service expenditure records for the kickoff to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign between April 1 and May 6, 2015. Additionally, we seek travel records regarding President-elect Donald Trump between November 9 and December 12, 2016, for residing in Trump Tower and then going on a “Thank You Tour” of six states.

We went to court after the Air Force and Secret Service failed to respond to multiple FOIA requests filed between October and December 2016.

Our requests to the Air Force are seeking records concerning mission taskings, transportation costs, and passenger manifests for:
•   Obama’s trip to Los Angeles in October 2016, which included two fundraisers and an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live”
•   Michelle Obama’s October 2016 appearance at a Clinton campaign rally in North Carolina
•   Obama’s November 2016 appearance at a Clinton campaign rally in Orlando, FL.
Our requests to the Secret Service are seeking all records of costs for providing security and other services for all VIPs for the following:
•   Obama Palm Springs vacation in February 2014.
•   Michelle Obama and her daughters on their yearly Aspen vacation in February 2014. The Secret Service expenditures totaled $121,876.21 for a similar vacation in 2015, which includes airfare.
•   Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from April 1, 2015 – May 6, 2015.
•   Michelle Obama’s trip to Morocco, Spain and Liberia in June and July 2016 to “promote education.”
•   Obama’s vacation to Martha’s Vineyard in August 2016.
•   Michelle Obama’s October 2016 Clinton campaign stop in North Carolina.
•   Obama’s October 2016 trip to Los Angeles.
•   Obama’s November 2016 trip to Orlando.
•   Security expenses for then President-Elect Donald Trump and Trump Tower in New York, New York from November 9, 2106 – December 5, 2016.
•   President-elect Trump’s “Thank You Tour” from November 9, 2016 – December 12, 2016.
•   Security expenses for Obama’s residence in Chicago, Illinois, between January 20, 2009 – December 7, 2016.
As you know, we monitored Obama family travel costs throughout his presidency. On May 17, we announced our latest figures showing Obama family travel cost taxpayers at least $99,714,527.82 during his two terms.

We are also demanding transparency from the Trump administration, tracking and suing for records of the travel expenses incurred by President Trump, the First Lady and other VIPs.

The government could not care less about giving taxpayers basic information about what it costs to provide travel and protection to our political leadership and candidates. Judicial Watch shouldn’t have to file federal lawsuits to get basic information about how much taxpayers spend on the presidency, but if that what it takes….
 
President Trump:  Please End the Obstruction on Benghazi Cover-up Documents
 
We have a new secretary at the State Department, but we apparently don’t have a new attitude in the agency about releasing information that might make even a former Obama official look bad.
 
You can find the background in the fine work of our JW staff attorneys who just asked a federal court to order the department to end its “slow dragging strategy” in producing documents regarding the handling of requests about the false talking points used by then-Ambassador Susan Rice to talk about the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.  (We’re in court as part of a FOIA lawsuit we filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch vs. Department of State (No. 1:17-cv-00205)).
 
You will recall that in the wake of the attacks in which four Americans were killed, Rice was dispatched to five Sunday news programs to falsely claim that the Benghazi attack was the result of a “spontaneous” protest against an “anti-Islamic” Internet video. Separate JW litigation into the Benghazi talking-points scandal led to the discovery of the Hillary Clinton email issue and to the creation of the House Select Committee on Benghazi.  Now we want to know how the Clinton email scandal was covered up the Obama State Department.
 
On May 26, the State Department informed us that the department’s “searches have uncovered in excess of 3,100 potentially responsive documents.”  On June 1, the State Department disclosed that the documents consist of approximately 51,329 potentially responsive pages.
 
The State Department initially proposed a production schedule that we argued would “carry out the rolling production of responsive documents by more than 30 months (to December 2019).” The State Department then amended the proposal to extend its production to October 2018.
 
But we aren’t happy with this delay so my attorney colleagues asked the court to order the State Department to produce all “non-exempt responsive records” in three monthly productions, with a final production on or before September 30, 2017.
 
Back on March 15 the State Department was ordered to produce documents. Judicial Watch argues in its new filing that:
The State Department’s two productions included a total of 22 documents released in full.  During the course of approximately 10 weeks, [the State Department] processed and reviewed only 108 documents in response to [Judicial Watch’s] FOIA request (as 86 documents were withheld in full) – an average of 10 documents per week or 4 documents per business day.
The Trump administration needs to put its foot down and stop the Deep State from protecting Hillary Clinton and the Obama gang. It is disheartening to see the Trump administration stall the release of documents about the Benghazi cover-up. President Trump needs to take direct action to ensure the truth truly and fully comes out about the Benghazi scandal.
 
We sued after the State Department failed to respond to a December 2, 2016, FOIA request seeking:
•   All records related to the processing of the FOIA request served on the State Department by Judicial Watch, Inc. on May 13, 2014. All tasking, tracking, and reporting records for searches conducted in response to the request should be considered responsive. Forms DS-1748 and any “search slips,” “search tasker,” and “search details,” also should be considered responsive.
•   All internal State Department communications that relate to the processing of or search for records responsive to the FOIA request, including any guidance about how and where to conduct the searches, whether and how to search the emails of then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and any issues, problems, or questions regarding the searches and/or search results.
•   All records that relate to the State Department’s discovery, prior to February 2, 2015, that additional searches for records responsive to the FOIA request were necessary. In this regard, the State Department represented in a February 2, 2015 status report filed in litigation regarding the FOIA request that: 
o   In the course of preparing additional information to provide to [Judicial Watch] for purposes of settlement discussions, [the State Department] has discovered that additional searches for documents potentially responsive to the FOIA [request] must be conducted.
•   All records that identify the location(s) or source(s) of potentially responsive records that necessitated the “additional searches …”
Previously, we filed a June 21, 2013, FOIA lawsuit about the Benghazi talking points that produced a declassified email showing then-White House Deputy Strategic Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes and other Obama administration public relations officials attempting to orchestrate a campaign to “reinforce” President Obama and to portray the Benghazi consulate terrorist attack as being “rooted in an Internet video, and not a failure of policy” (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-00951)).

[G M]

https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/06/29/campus-police-adopt-guilty-until-proven-innocent-approach-to-rape-accusations/

Campus Police Adopt 'Guilty Until Proven Innocent' Approach To Rape Accusations
BY TOM KNIGHTON JUNE 29, 2017

Imagine that you're a young man in college, eager to get the education you've been told your whole life was necessary for any degree of success. Then, there's a knock on your dorm room door. It turns out that a girl you know has accused you of raping her. You know you didn't do anything wrong, but the campus police don't seem to be particularly interested in your protestations of innocence. It's clear from the start that the police don't seem interested in right or wrong, only in making sure you get punished.

Sounds terrifying, right? It's also far too likely to happen now that several campuses are adopting something called a "victim-centric" approach to investigating rape accusations.

The College Fix notes:

It actively harms accusers to ask them basic factual questions about their accusations, according to Strand, former chief of behavioral sciences at the Army’s military police school:
The questions he teaches cops to ask are open-ended and center on the victim’s experience -- their thoughts before and during a crime, tactile memories such as smells, sounds and feelings, and details of the experience that they can’t forget.
UMinn police chief Matthew Clark says it’s important for officers to “learn how to adapt to victims’ experiences” before they have any clue whether an accuser is a victim, as adjudicated by a non-police body:

“When you start talking about your experience based on your senses, you actually start telling the tale of what happened,” Clark said. “But you can’t dictate it; you’ve got to let those victims go with it the way they experienced it.”
It’s not clear whether UMinn police are going as far as University of Texas police, which started explicitly refusing to collect evidence that may exonerate an accused student a year ago.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education warned that UT police were being politicized when they were told to avoid asking certain questions of accusers.

Those who have been raped experience significant trauma, and an officer with a disbelieving tone may not help the accuser feel that justice is being served.

But that doesn't mean that police officers can neglect our nation's laws when investigating. Their job is to gather evidence. All evidence. The only acceptable outcome is based on the entirety of the evidence.


When people ask why fewer men are going to college -- a question that brings up over 43 million hits on Google -- they should consider that colleges are now hostile environments for men. In addition to the constant indoctrination that Y chromosomes are the reason the whole world sucks, the mere accusation of sexual misconduct can ruin a man's life.

Now campuses are creating an environment where those expected to take an impartial gathering of the facts are explicitly told to not be impartial. It's enough to make many parents and sons reconsider college as an option.

Meanwhile, this abomination of justice is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1879&context=mulr

[G M]

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/370753.php

Plan accordingly.

[Crafty_Dog]

Indeed--where the rubber meets the road. 

[ccp]

This is bipartisanship  ->      (We rarely, and lately never  see bipartisanship when it is for conservative  causes . )

http://www.breitbart.com/california/2017/07/22/rand-paul-teams-up-with-kamala-harris-over-bail-reform/


FWIW Wikipedia on bail in the US
Wikipedia stuff is usually written I suspect  by libs especially on subjects that deal with progressive issues :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bail_in_the_United_States

[Crafty_Dog]

This is a matter on which people can disagree moving through the democratic process.  As such, it is not the thread for it.

[Crafty_Dog]

IRS Records Missing
The Obama IRS scandal continues.
 
You won’t read about in the liberal media but on July 13 the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration issued a devastating report finding that the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) records management practice resulted in lost records and incomplete IRS responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and congressional inquiries.  Here is the key finding:

IRS policies do not comply with certain Federal requirements that agencies must ensure that all records are retrievable and usable for as long as needed. For example, IRS e-mail retention policies are not adequate because e-mails are not automatically archived for all IRS employees. Instead, the IRS’s current policy instructs employees to take manual actions to archive e-mails by saving them permanently on computer hard drives or network shared drives. This policy has resulted in lost records when computer hard drives are destroyed or damaged. In addition, a recently instituted executive e-mail retention policy, which should have resulted in the archiving of e-mails from specific executives, was not implemented effectively because some executives did not turn on the automatic archiving feature.

For certain cases that TIGTA reviewed, IRS policies were not implemented consistently to ensure that all relevant documents were searched and produced when responding to external requests for records. TIGTA’s review of 30 completed Freedom of Information Act requests found that in more than half of the responses, the IRS did not follow its own policies that require it to document what records were searched. TIGTA also found that IRS policies for preserving records from separated employees were not adequate.

In short, records of IRS employees including top officials may have gone missing.  And the IRS never told anyone about it.
 
We’ve been on top of this issue for years. In fact, just this past April we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the IRS to obtain records relating to the agency’s “preservation and/or retention” of the email records of officials who have left the agency since January 2010 (Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue Service (No.1:17-cv-00596)).
 
We filed the suit as part of our continuing efforts to gain information about the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups and citizens during the Obama administration.
 
Our litigation forced the IRS first to say that emails belonging to Lois Lerner, former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit, were supposedly missing and later declare to the court that the emails were on IRS back-up systems. Lerner was one of the top officials responsible for the IRS’ targeting of President Obama’s political opponents. We exposed various IRS’ record keeping problems:

•   In June 2014, the IRS claimed to have “lost” responsive emails belonging to Lerner and other IRS officials.

•   In July 2014 Judge Emmett Sullivan ordered the IRS to submit to the court a written declaration under oath about what happened to Lerner’s “lost” emails. The sworn declarations proved to be less than forthcoming.

•   In August 2014, Department of Justice attorneys for the IRS finally admitted to Judicial Watch that Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe. The IRS’ attorneys also disclosed that Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) was looking at several of these backup tapes.

•   In November 2014, the IRS told the court it had failed to search any of the IRS standard computer systems for the “missing” emails of Lerner and other IRS officials.

•   On February 26, 2015, TIGTA officials testified to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that it had received 744 backup tapes containing emails sent and received by Lerner. This testimony showed that the IRS had falsely represented to both Congress, Judge Sullivan, and Judicial Watch that Lerner’s emails were irretrievably lost. The testimony also revealed that IRS officials responsible for responding to the document requests never asked for the backup tapes and that 424 backup tapes containing Lerner’s emails had been destroyed during the pendency of Judicial Watch’s lawsuit and Congressional investigations.

•   In June 2015, Judicial Watch forced the IRS to admit in a court filing that it was in possession of 6,400 “newly discovered” Lerner emails. Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the IRS to provide answers on the status of the Lerner emails the IRS had previously declared lost. Judicial Watch raised questions about the IRS’ handling of the missing emails issue in a court filing, demanding answers about Lerner’s emails that had been recovered from the backup tapes.

•   In July 2015, U.S District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan threatened to hold John Koskinen, the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, and Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court after the IRS failed to produce status reports and recovered Lerner emails, as he had ordered on July 1, 2015.
Obama IRS Commissioner Koskinen was nearly impeached in September 2016 for misleading Congress on Lerner’s emails.

So this new report is shocking but not surprising.  We have long battled the IRS in court over its obstruction in responding to FOIA requests about Obama era IRS abuses. It is a scandal that the Obama IRS did not tell Judicial Watch, the courts, or Congress about the loss of government records. Our attorneys will review this report to assess whether we should seek relief and accountability from the courts.  In the meantime, President Trump should finally fire IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and direct the Justice Department to reopen its criminal inquiry into the Obama IRS abuses and cover-ups.

[G M]

https://spectator.org/the-ferguson-effect-even-in-the-bronx/

The Ferguson Effect — Even in the Bronx
ALFRED S. REGNERY
August 22, 2017, 12:15 am

Under Bill de Blasio and Darcel Clark, a natural fit.
Imagine the scenario: a woman is making a threatening and very loud disturbance in a Bronx apartment building. The police are called. They find a 66-year-old “EDP” — an emotionally disturbed person — a black woman threatening neighbors and gripping a pair of scissors.

Led by a highly experienced sergeant who happens to be white, the police talk her into dropping the scissors and stepping out of her bedroom so emergency medical services can safely engage with her. The police don’t pull their guns, pepper spray her or use their Tasers. They just talk. But when the sergeant tries to grab her, she runs to her bed, picks up a baseball bat and winds up for a swing at the sergeant’s head.

Faced with the deadly weapon at close range, the sergeant pulls his pistol and fires twice in defense.

Inevitably, that brought out charges from the reflexively anti-cop left. Bill de Blasio, Black Lives Matter, and Al Sharpton weighed in. But they didn’t have much to go on. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman looked at the evidence and concluded that the sergeant adhered to NYPD guidelines, that his action fell well within the bounds of case law established by the U.S. Supreme Court, and declined to get involved.


 
Enter Darcel Clark, the troubled Bronx District Attorney, a 55-year-old long-time Bronx pol, a former judge who recently assumed the prosecutor’s job — with the loud support of Mayor Bill de Blasio — and who is already running for her 2018 re-election. Despite the fact that it would be virtually impossible to get a guilty jury verdict, if there were one, upheld on appeal, the prosecutor empanelled a grand jury, which indicted the sergeant for second degree murder — the first time a NYPD officer has been charged with murder since 1999. You have to think that politics, not justice, was what that was all about.

As for the sergeant — Hugh Barry — in his ninth year on the fabled New York Police Department, an honorable man without a blemish on his record and the recipient of five Excellent Police Duty medals, things are not so good. On administrative leave, his life is now in turmoil. If convicted, he could go to prison for the rest of his life. In any event, his case could be in the courts for years and he will likely be in dire financial straits by the time it’s over. His family life, as in so many of these cases, will be a far cry from where it was a year ago — before he responded to the call of duty. His emotional health will be taxed to the limit and under the best of circumstances his career — a career he loves — will never be the same.

And District Attorney Darcel Clark’s record? Not so hot. Her 2015 election was allegedly orchestrated by Democrats in order to avoid a primary after her predecessor resigned to become a judge. Her short term as District Attorney is rife with accusations — and lawsuits — of misconduct, cronyism, and complete politicization of her office.

But the larger, and longer-term tragedy is for the poor residents of the Bronx who rely on the police to maintain some semblance of peace and order in their lives. As the NYPD goes about its business in the Bronx, as they answer calls every hour of the day and night, there is little doubt that the “Ferguson effect” will play a role in how quickly they respond and what risks they are willing to take. A Pew Research Center national survey released in January concludes that more than half of all police officers say that recent high-profile fatal encounters between black citizens and police officers have made their jobs riskier, aggravated tensions between police and blacks, and left many officers reluctant to fully carry out their duties. Why, an officer would certainly ask, should I risk my career, my livelihood, my very freedom when, if I look the other way, or take a little longer to get to the crime scene, or make a traffic stop instead, the situation will work itself out one way or another?

[G M]

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/08/28/conservatism-is-not-a-suicide-pact-n2373543

Conservatism Is Not A Suicide Pact
Kurt Schlichter |Posted: Aug 28, 2017 12:01 AM

The whiny wailing and rending of garments (mostly bow ties) by the True Cons over President Trump pardoning Sheriff Joe Arpaio brings to mind another president’s choice when a loyal supporter was the victim of a liberal witch hunt. President Bush was an honorable man, but the way he allowed Scooter Libby and the Libby family to be ruined and impoverished over what everyone knew was a skeevy liberal political vendetta before issuing a partial commutation is to W’s lasting shame. His excuse: the Rule of Law or something.

But, as anyone willing to see knows, today the Rule of Law is a unicorn and it has been for a long time. I like the Rule of Law, and I’ve been warning for years about what happens when it goes away. Yet we are where we are, whether we like it or not. We’re in a land where the law is only intermittently and selectively applicable. Allowing allies to suffer in an effort to pretend that all is well is not going to bring the Rule of Law back. Nostalgia for the Rule of Law no excuse for tolerating an injustice to an ally. Hell, undoing injustices is what the pardon power is for.

What will bring the Rule of Law back? How do we get to the Conserva-Eden we are expected to act like we already reside it? Perhaps another statement of principle? Maybe another post on some unread conservajournal? I know – how about more complaining about how frustrated conservatives are uncouth and should just sit there and take whatever fascist garbage the left dishes out?


I always thought it was conservative to punish wrongdoers. The other side abandoned the Rule of Law, so I would think that they might – maybe – learn a lesson by experiencing the consequences of their bad choice. But apparently punishing wrongdoers is now off the table because some other principle, of which I was unaware during nearly four decades inside conservatism, requires we never ever retaliate.

You know, I’m not sure that’s a thing. And I have to say – it’s tiresome getting Rule of Law lectures from people who are perfectly happy to have the president ignore immigration laws that they don’t dig.

So, my finger-wagging True Con friends, what’s your plan? How do we go from liberals abandoning the Rule of Law, and such ancillary and associated components of a society based on liberty like free speech and free enterprise, to a liberty-based society operating under the Rule of Law? “Elect more True Cons!” isn’t a plan; it’s an aspiration, and not much of one. I don’t need another cliché, or another citation to general principles, or some variant of my new favorite, all-purpose get-out-of-having-an-actual-plan-free card, the old “We’re better than this” line.


My plan is to cause the left so much pain by applying their new rules to them that they give up trying to grind their Birkenstocks into our faces forever. Yes, as a practical matter that means allying with President Trump, guy I formerly criticized in detail and without restraint, and who was my 16th of 17 choices in the primary (Jeb! was last because he’s an insufferable wuss and I won’t suffer him).

See, I reject the notion we are ever somehow morally obligated by conservative principles to lose to liberals. If I have to swallow something awful, I’ll take half a loaf any day over an entire loaf of liberal dung like Felonia von Pantsuit. I think the new rules are terrible, and they are antithetical to everything I’ve worked for since before many of my Fredocon critics were a tinge of regret growing in their mommies’ bellies the morning after. But I refuse to sit back and allow libs to be victorious because I won’t dirty my hands fighting fire with fire. If that makes me not conservative enough for some, I can live with that. I can’t live with leftist tyranny.


So, now you True Cons know my plan. It might work, it might not. But it’s a plan. Now, what’s your plan to achieve that conservative utopia you keep talking about? Let me lay out the situation straightforward from here in three steps:

Liberals are attacking the foundations of a society based on the liberties enshrined in the Constitution.
?
A society based on the liberties enshrined in the Constitution.
So, what’s Step Two?

Come on, lay it out. In detail. Feel free to tweet it to me! But I want a plan. No clichés, no citations to Burke, no airy statements of general principle. A plan. Lay it on me. Step Two - what’s your plan?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.


Hmmmm. See, I don’t think you True Cons really have a plan.

Abstract principles are not a plan. A couple weeks ago I wrote about how, now that the tech companies that dominate the flow of information and discourse in our society have decided to insert their politics into their businesses, we should use our political power to ruthlessly regulate them back into neutrality if they persist. It’s an awful idea, in principle, and I’d like to avoid it. But I’d also like to avoid conservatives being utterly banished from the internet.

What was the True Con response? “Free enterprise, blah blah blah.” Yeah, okay, got it. I sure appreciate the 411 on this newfangled “free enterprise” thing. (I should totally learn about it – thanks, 22-year old marketing major with a subscription to The Weekly Standard!) Lots of cant, but no concrete, coherent solutions. My favorite was the guy who suggested the solution was to start my own Google in my garage, except my garage is full of junk. Oh, and by the time we collected a few billion in capital and built an entire new tech mega-corp that somehow escaped being smothered by Google as we grew, every search on Google would return a link to something approved by Hillary Clinton.

I think you want to rely on the power of conservative ideas and sort of hope they spontaneously erupt into a conservative paradise via a right wing Big Bang without you actually having to fight for them. After all, fighting is messy and unseemly, and you also have to ally yourselves with … those kind of people, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. It’s so embarrassing having to explain them to your liberal peers. Many of these misbegotten normals are baffled by fancy sandwiches and stuff.

Before you give me more grief for allying with the Republican in the White House – you know, that guy your party elected – I’m going to need your plan. See, we need real solutions, and my solution is fighting back hard and ruthlessly. I say make our enemies feel the pain they would inflict upon us because it might change their behavior – again, there was a time when conservatives believed in punishing wrongdoers. I also support fighting back because it denies them victory and dominance over us – do you have any illusions that Hillary Clinton and her pet Supreme Court would not be imposing/upholding “hate speech” bans that would silence anyone to the right of Angela Davis if we had not blocked her with Donald Trump? And I also support fighting back because you cannot simply sit back and allow yourself to be repeatedly beaten and humiliated without utterly destroying your side’s morale. Denying the enemy the head of Sheriff Joe had tangible value beyond its substantive justice (Jury? We don’t need no stinking juries to put an American citizen in prison!).

I’m looking for a plan, not another lecture, not another mournful dirge to my lack of True Conservativishness, not another spittle-flecked outburst from some nepotism-pumped hack whose influence has recently waned after years of ineffective “conservative leadership.” We have Trump, and at least he’s not Hillary. At least we aren’t actively losing, and we’re even winning occasionally. If you have a better idea, then stop sitting on the sidelines complaining and share your plan. The rest of us, the ones out on the field with dirt under our fingernails, are awaiting your insights.

[Crafty_Dog]

WSJ:
The Arpaio Pardon
Liberal hypocrisy doesn’t justify conservative disdain for the rule of law.
By The Editorial Board
Aug. 27, 2017 6:31 p.m. ET


Candidate Donald Trump promised to abide by the rule of law that took a beating under the Obama Administration, and that theme may have helped him win the election. President Trump’s pardon late Friday of deposed Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio undermines that promise and further politicizes the law.

The 85-year-old Mr. Arpaio became a hero of many conservatives with his brazen style and tactics targeting illegal immigrants. His aggressive enforcement drew a lawsuit and court injunction, culminating in a contempt conviction last month. While Mr. Trump praised Mr. Arpaio’s long career of public service, that hardly justifies the sheriff’s defiance of the law he swore to uphold.

In 2008 the American Civil Liberties Union sued the sheriff’s office for racially profiling Latinos during traffic and saturation patrols. After several years of litigation, federal Judge Murray Snow ordered the sheriff’s office to stop detaining individuals who had not committed a state crime merely based on the suspicion that they are in the country illegally.

Two years later the judge found officers had violated his preliminary injunction and ordered anti-bias training, a court-appointed monitor and patrol cameras, among other remedies. In 2016 Mr. Arpaio was held in civil contempt for flouting the judge’s orders. He was also reprimanded for withholding video evidence.

Then last August Judge Snow referred Mr. Arpaio to the Justice Department for criminal contempt proceedings. In his defense, Mr. Arpaio argued that the court orders were unclear to him or officers. Because his violations were supposedly unintentional, he said criminal charges were unwarranted.

It’s true there was some confusion as to what officers were allowed to do under state and federal law. A 2010 state law required officers to check the immigration status of individuals during a “lawful stop, detention or arrest” when there’s probable cause they’re in the country illegally. Federal judge Susan Bolton blocked the state law in 2010, but the Supreme Court in 2012 upheld a central provision obligating officers to check individuals’ immigration status.

In any case, the legal uncertainty doesn’t gainsay Judge Snow’s charge that Mr. Arpaio lied to him and judicially appointed monitors. Hence the criminal contempt citation, which Judge Snow said was needed “to vindicate the Court’s authority by punishing the intentional disregard for that authority.” Criminal contempt is the only way to hold government officials personally responsible for violating court orders.

Mr. Arpaio may be right that the Obama Justice Department relished his prosecution, and some evidence presented at the trial was irrelevant to the case. But Judge Bolton considered the merits and, based on the evidence, determined that Mr. Arpaio had demonstrated a “flagrant disregard” for the law.

Mr. Trump’s power to pardon is undeniable, but pardoning Mr. Arpaio sends a message that law enforcers can ignore court orders and get away with it. All you need is a political ally in the White House or Governor’s mansion. Down that road lies anarchy. Attorney General Jeff Sessions understands this, which is why he reportedly urged the President to let the judicial process play out. Mr. Trump short-circuited the courts by pardoning Mr. Arpaio before he was sentenced or granted an appeal.

Some of our friends on the right say Mr. Trump’s liberal critics had no problem dismissing Congress’s contempt citations against former Attorney General Eric Holder and IRS official Lois Lerner as political. The left also supported the commutation of Bradley Manning, who leaked military intelligence.

All true and deplorable, but since when does liberal hypocrisy justify conservative disdain for the law? Mr. Trump should be setting a better standard than imitating Barack Obama, but polarized politics is leading America to a bad place where policy agreement or political support makes right. You pardon your lawbreakers and we’ll pardon ours.

Mr. Trump may hope the pardon will energize supporters, but it is also dividing the GOP. Even before the contempt citation, Sheriff Arpaio’s aggressive tactics were becoming unpopular, and in November he was defeated by 13 points. Mr. Trump’s disdain for federal judges also isn’t making friends in the federal judiciary that will have to rule on his decisions in the coming years. The Arpaio pardon is a depressing sign of our hyper-politicized times.

Appeared in the August 28, 2017, print edition.

[Crafty_Dog]

second post

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/29/fbi-lack-public-interest-emails-justifies-withhold/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTTJNMU56VTJaRGN6WXpkaiIsInQiOiJNRFFFdnJ2T3NVamtTMHlZZU9qNWwrSlZNczh2S0NhNjNQR0F3N1hPbmplVkxwRDFzU29XVG9mUDQzcmUwVnR6dVozSFBZd0M5RkR0bGFlWnAzMWJ6M1hYU1h1VFd1TGRYVFhoXC9oQ1ZEUytjc2htODBQTGV2YURcL05iaHFEY0h5In0%3D

[Crafty_Dog]

http://truepundit.com/fbi-investigation-of-espionage-blackmail-charges-in-awan-case-blocked-by-obama-doj-appointee-who-worked-for-holder-lynch/

[G M]

http://truepundit.com/fbi-investigation-of-espionage-blackmail-charges-in-awan-case-blocked-by-obama-doj-appointee-who-worked-for-holder-lynch/

You'd almost think they were hiding something.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/10/security-guard-wounded-in-jihad-attack-at-muhammad-cartoon-event-sues-fbi-charges-coverup

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/5/irs-targeted-pro-border-security-groups-audit/

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvlGh_lDCyg&utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekend+playback&utm_term=members&utm_content=20171014123810

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/16/maryland-defend-hillary-clinton-lawyers-cheryl-mil/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWm1JMlkyUTBaRGxrTjJNNCIsInQiOiJyS0ZxUjNLUkVnOFIxNjJKQkFMWDZrTmpOaFFJalN6ZXdLUnZVTndBcEw1TEllSG41XC9Pbmt2UmlyZlVMYkwwTkZGY1VpUk5MSzBsVVd0QVBzMlhcL3c5Q0JyZVFSazg2ZjdXSlwvSWxiWFRKdFpHMHhXZHpCK1RyYXlkTktHUmJcL0IifQ%3D%3D

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/10/bombshell-revelations-about-russia-and-obamas-department-of-justice.php

[G M]

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/372751.php

Of Course: Judge Decides She's Commander in Chief and Orders Military to Continue Recruiting Transgenders, Because We're Now In a Lawless War of All Against All

It seems that judges should have some regard for the constitutional scheme of separation of powers, but apparently Social Justice imperatives trump any notion of democracy and lawful order.

The military must begin accepting transgender recruits Jan. 1 despite a ban ordered by President Trump this year, according to a D.C. district court judge.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly had already granted a preliminary injunction in the Doe v. Trump lawsuit filed by a group of transgender troops. She clarified this week that her order also blocks Defense Secretary Jim Mattis from delaying the recruiting.

Mattis had planned to begin accepting transgender recruits on the first of the year before Trump tweeted in July that they would not be allowed to serve in the military in any capacity. The president later followed up with an order telling the Pentagon to abandon the plan, which got underway during the previous administration.

"Secretary Mattis is a defendant in this case, he is directly bound by the injunction and he cannot change the policy that existed before President Trump issued his order," the judge said.

In other words, Obama's executive orders as president are still in force because this judge likes Obama better and elections don't matter.

I honestly don't see how the United States remains a coherent unified nation

[Crafty_Dog]

By The Editorial Board
Dec. 4, 2017 7:04 p.m. ET
32 COMMENTS

The Supreme Court almost never intervenes in a case that appellate courts are still considering, but on Monday it did precisely that to allow President Trump’s third travel ban to take effect. The 7-2 order (with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting) granted the Administration’s request to block the stay of the ban that had been issued by judges in Hawaii and Maryland. The Fourth and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeal had refused to block the stay, and the Supremes intervened to grant it after the Administration appealed.

This is an important moment for the rule of law. The Supreme Court had already intervened once to rebuke the lower courts over Mr. Trump’s initial travel ban, but judges ignored the warning and kept overturning modified versions with injunctions that blocked their implementation even before considering the merits. Yet the executive has considerable latitude on immigration and national security, as the Justices seem to recognize.

We don’t think the travel ban is wise or necessary policy, but opposition to a policy is not justification for judges to ignore the law.

[G M]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/12/11/governmental-accountability-board-more-like-wisconsins-secret-police-glenn-reynolds-column/938988001/

Governmental accountability board? More like Wisconsin's Secret Police
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Opinion columnist Published 3:40 p.m. ET Dec. 11, 2017 | Updated 4:46 p.m. ET Dec. 11, 2017

We talk about the recent revelation that the John Doe investigation into Gov. Scott Walker gathered millions of pages of records from Republicans

It was a partisan witch hunt masquerading as an inquiry into campaign irregularities. And it might presage the outcome of the Mueller investigation.


The “Cheesehead Stasi.” That’s what Twitter humorist IowaHawk called a long-running and politicized investigation organized by Democratic politicians in Wisconsin, targeting supporters of Republican Gov. Scott Walker. The mechanism for this investigation was an allegedly nonpolitical, but in fact entirely partisan, “Government Accountability Board.”

In the course of its secretive “John Doe” investigation, the GAB hoovered up millions of personal emails from Republican donors and supporters, and even raided people’s homes, while forbidding them to talk about it:

“I was told to shut up and sit down. The officers rummaged through drawers, cabinets and closets. Their aggressive assault on my home seemed more appropriate for a dangerous criminal, not a longtime public servant with no criminal history,” Archer wrote in a June 30, 2015, Wall Street Journal op-ed. The column was published a day before she filed her civil rights lawsuit.

When the agents finally left her home, Archer said she took inventory of the damage. She found drawers and closets ransacked, her “deceased mother’s belongings were strewn across the floor.” Like so many other targets of the secret John Doe investigation, Archer was forced to watch her neighbors watch her — the star of a very public search-and-seizure operation. . . .

And like her fellow targets, she was told she could say nothing publicly about being a target of Chisholm’s probe. Doing so could have landed her in jail and hit with hefty fines. The secret investigations come with strict gag orders."


Now an investigation by Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel on behalf of the overseeing court has spelled out a long list of misdeeds by the investigators, and has called for punishments including contempt-of-court holdings and possible disbarment. And the stuff that it has uncovered is pretty awful.

In short, it was a partisan witch hunt masquerading as an inquiry into campaign irregularities. And confidential information gathered during that investigation was deliberately leaked in an effort (unsuccessful) to influence a pending United States Supreme Court decision.

The prosecutors felt justified in these actions because they had already made up their minds about their targets’ guilt. As the report says, “After reviewing the emails exchanged between the attorneys at GAB, it is apparent that GAB attorneys had prejudged the guilt of Governor Walker, Wisconsin Republicans, and related organizations that they were investigating and this dramatically influenced their ability to give competent legal advice. GAB attorneys did not act in a detached and professional manner. The most reasonable inference is that they were on a mission to bring down the Walker campaign and the Governor himself.”

The investigation continued despite its failure to find anything like the sort of violations it was ostensibly intended to investigate. It continued despite court orders to stop. And prosecutors retained evidence (including medical and other records about Republican officials and donors, kept in a file labeled “opposition research”) even after being ordered by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to turn all the information over. It was a lawless exercise of prosecutorial power, for political ends.



Wisconsin Democrats took Scott Walker’s victory very hard. They tried to recall him, and failed. And they tried to undermine his term in office through the abuse of legal institutions. Now some of them will face professional discipline, and judicial punishment, as a result. (Criminal charges would be appropriate, except that, as the Attorney General’s report notes, record-keeping was — conveniently — poor enough that it’s hard to be sure exactly who did what.)

Given the vast powers with which prosecutors are entrusted, it’s easy for an investigation to get out of hand, especially when the investigators are a partisan bunch lacking in political diversity, and start out with the certainty, shored up by political resentment, that their targets must be guilty of something. But these abuses can ultimately turn back on the abusers.

It’s too early to say, as one account does, that the Wisconsin debacle prefigured the ongoing Robert Mueller investigation into Trump’s campaign, though there are certainly similarities between the attitudes of “The Resistance” in Washington and the Wisconsin establishment’s response to Walker. Writing in The Washington Post last week, Ed Rogers wrote that, though he’d supported Mueller in the past, Mueller needed to get a handle on the overwhelming partisan slant of his prosecutors or he’d be discredited. 

It’s good advice. Mueller and his investigators should take care not to get wrapped up in partisan politics while conducting a criminal investigation. Because that seldom ends well.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter: @instapundit.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/29/obama-ig-guy-admits-strategic-coordination-state-c/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newslink&utm_term=members&utm_content=20171213005413

[ccp]

" https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/29/obama-ig-guy-admits-strategic-coordination-state-c/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newslink&utm_term=members&utm_content=20171213005413 "

IF not for Fox or talk radio we would never be informed of this though it is obviously true

The MSM selectively ignores as always when it is their champion .

[Crafty_Dog]

A Major Victory: State Releases Clinton Server Emails from Weiner's Laptop!

Today, the U.S. Department of State began releasing Huma Abedin's work-related documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that were found on her estranged husband Anthony Weiner's personal laptop.

This is a major victory. After years of hard work in federal court, Judicial Watch forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents. We have been following this case closely because from our past experience we know that Abedin's emails include classified and other sensitive materials. 

The document are still being posted, but our team has seen enough to confirm that classified information from Hillary Clinton's email server has been found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman from New York who was married to Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The fact that classified information has been found from Clinton and Abedin on Weiner's laptop shows the urgent need for a criminal investigation by the Justice Department.

Back in October, in accordance with a court ordered production of documents, the State Department announced: "The State Department identified approximately 2,800 work-related documents among the documents provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation." The State Department told the court it expected to complete its review and production of the FBI records by December 31, 2017.

The production of these documents is the result of a May 5, 2015, lawsuit we filed against the State Department (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684)). We sued after State failed to respond to a March 18, 2015, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking: "All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non-‘state.gov' email address."

Abedin was former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's deputy chief of staff. Weiner is a disgraced former congressman and New York mayoral candidate who pleaded guilty to transferring obscene material to a minor. Abedin kept a non-State.gov email account that she used repeatedly for government business on Hillary Clinton's notorious email server(s).

We previously released 20 productions of documents in this case that show examples of mishandling classified information and instances of pay to play between the Clinton State Department and the Clinton Foundation. Also, at least 627 emails were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over, and further contradict a statement by Clinton that, "as far as she knew," all of her government emails had been turned over to department.

Perhaps Clinton and Abedin were expecting all of this to just go away with Clinton's election to the White House last year.  Let's hope the Justice Department finally gets it act together and proves that bet wrong.

=============================================
Judicial Watch Opposes Secrecy in Obama IRS Scandal

Judicial Watch continues the fight for accountability over the misdeeds tied to the Obama IRS scandal. We just asked a federal court to unseal the depositions of Lois Lerner, the former director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the IRS, and Holly Paz, her top aide and former IRS director of Office of Rulings and Agreements. Both played key roles in the targeting of conservative nonprofit groups opposed to Obama policies in the run up to the 2012 presidential election.
We made the request in an amicus curiae brief filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Western Division, supporting NorCal Tea Party Patriots' class action lawsuit seeking the unsealing of the depositions (NorCal Tea Party Patriots, et al. v. The Internal Revenue Service, et al. (No. 1:13-cv-00341)).
A federal judge sealed the depositions after Lerner's and Paz's lawyers claimed the two were receiving threats. Our brief argues that the documents sought may shed light on government misconduct, and the shielding of internal government deliberations does not serve the public's interest.
We detailed how the Lerner and Paz depositions may significantly impact our ongoing lawsuits seeking information about misconduct by government officials in the IRS targeting scandal:
In addition to the revelation of IRS employees' conduct in the emails uncovered, the records obtained by Judicial Watch [in the course of its FOIA investigation] also sparked investigations into Lois Lerner's emails and IRS' failure to preserve thousands of emails that were potentially relevant to the various investigations about the IRS' treatment of conservative groups. While the federal government has now admitted that the targeting "was wrong" and "for such treatment, the IRS expresses its sincere apology" the IRS continues to this day to withhold from the public in Judicial Watch's main IRS case … email communications with Lois Lerner and/or Holly Paz …
Lerner was actively engaged in the attempted cover-up of IRS misconduct. In July 2016, we revealed that both Lerner and Paz, knew the agency was specifically targeting "Tea Party" and other conservative organizations two full years before disclosing it to Congress and the public. They also knew donor lists of tax-exempt organizations were being used to target those donors for audits.
After refusing to acknowledge the targeting, the IRS was forced by Judicial Watch to finally admit that the agency had used "inappropriate political labels" to screen the tax-exempt applications of conservative organizations. IRS agents were targeting organizations requesting tax-exempt status based on "guilt by association" and "party affiliation." We brought to light the fact that the IRS was going to require 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations to restrict their alleged political activities in exchange for "expedited consideration" of their tax-exempt applications.
In April 2015 we released court ordered IRS documents that included an email from Lerner asking that a program be set up to "put together some training points to help them [IRS staffers] understand the potential pitfalls" of revealing too much information to Congress. The documents also contain a Lerner email from 2013 in which she says she is willing to take the blame on some aspects of the scandal. She also indicates that she "understands why the IRS criteria" leading to the targeting of Tea Party and other opponents of the President Obama "might raise questions."
In July 2015 we revealed that the IRS scandal also included the Justice Department and FBI as well. According to documents we obtained under court order, in an October 2010 meeting Lerner, Justice Department officials and the FBI planned for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity. As part of that effort, the Obama IRS gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing 1.25 million pages of confidential IRS returns from 113,000 non-profit, 501(c)(4) social welfare groups as part of its prosecution effort.
According to a letter from then-House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, "This revelation likely means that the IRS – including possibly Lois Lerner – violated federal tax law by transmitting this information to the Justice Department."
In response to our litigation, the IRS initially claimed that emails belonging to Lerner were missing. Later, IRS officials conceded that the "missing" emails were on IRS back-up systems. Throughout our litigation, we have repeatedly exposed a variety of IRS record keeping inconsistencies, erroneous claims, and failures to produce court-ordered records:
•   In June 2014, the IRS claimed to have "lost" responsive emails belonging to Lerner and other IRS officials.
•   In July 2014 Judge Emmett Sullivan ordered the IRS to submit to the court a written declaration under oath about what happened to Lerner's "lost" emails. The sworn declarations proved to be less than forthcoming.
•   In August 2014, Department of Justice attorneys for the IRS finally admitted that Lerner's emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe. The IRS' attorneys also disclosed that Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) was looking at several of these backup tapes.
•   In November 2014, the IRS told the court it had failed to search any of the IRS standard computer systems for the "missing" emails of Lerner and other IRS officials.
•   On February 26, 2015, TIGTA officials testified to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that it had received 744 backup tapes containing emails sent and received by Lerner. This testimony showed that the IRS had misled Congress, Judge Sullivan, and Judicial Watch that Lerner's emails were irretrievably lost. The testimony also revealed that IRS officials responsible for responding to the document requests never asked for the backup tapes and that 424 backup tapes containing Lerner's emails had been destroyed during the pendency of our lawsuit and Congressional investigations.
•   In June 2015, Judicial Watch forced the IRS to admit in a court filing that it was in possession of 6,400 "newly discovered" Lerner emails. Judge Emmet Sullivan's ordered the IRS to provide answers on the status of the Lerner emails the IRS had previously declared lost. We raised questions about the IRS' handling of the missing emails issue in a court filing, demanding answers about Lerner's emails that had been recovered from the backup tapes.
•   In July 2015, U.S District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan threatened to hold John Koskinen, the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, and Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court after the IRS failed to produce status reports and recovered Lerner emails, as he had ordered on July 1, 2015.
 
In a republic, citizens have a right to know what their government is up to, especially when officials abuse the powers entrusted to them. This effort to seal Lois Lerner and Holly Paz depositions for all time is affront to the rule of law and government accountability.
For the full history on our IRS battles, click here.

[Crafty_Dog]

second post

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455020/hillary-clinton-server-emails-erased-technician-should-be-pressured?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Saturday%202017-12-30&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives

[ccp]

"   Andrew McCarthy: Mueller should go after Hillary IT techie "

we know he won't because this in not about foreign influence or the law but about getting Trump for impeachment if the Dems win the House and Senate.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/sites/newyorklawjournal/2017/12/29/ex-brooklyn-prosecutor-convicted-of-illegal-surveillance-gets-disbarred/?slreturn=20171131031037

[Crafty_Dog]

A Moment of Contempt
Justice and the FBI continue to flout House subpoenas.
By The Editorial Board
Jan. 2, 2018 7:33 p.m. ET
201 COMMENTS

The House Intelligence Committee has set a deadline of Wednesday for the Department of Justice and FBI to turn over documents related to the Christopher Steele dossier purporting to investigate ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. If they fail to comply, Speaker Paul Ryan will need to back up Congress’s institutional prerogatives and hold the individuals responsible to contempt proceedings and possible impeachment.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray have had the subpoenas since Aug. 24, but they have responded with excuses, delays and misdirection. The Justice Department has refused to provide Congress with the most basic documents demanded under the subpoenas. These include reports detailing the FBI’s interactions with sources such as Mr. Steele, who was hired by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which was funded by associates of the Hillary Clinton campaign.


Justice also refuses to make available crucial witnesses, including FBI agent Peter Strzok (a lead investigator in the Trump-Russia probe), former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr (whose wife worked for Fusion GPS) and FBI attorney James Baker (former FBI Director Jim Comey’s right-hand man). Justice is also still sitting on months of anti-Trump text messages between Mr. Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

This isn’t acceptable, and neither Justice nor the FBI has offered a valid reason for their resistance. Senior Intelligence Committee members and staff are cleared to read classified information, and Congress has the constitutional authority to oversee the executive branch whose offices it funds. The excuse that such requests interfere with a Justice Department Inspector General probe wouldn’t pass a middle-grade separation-of-powers exam.

A contempt brawl would not be fun, but Congress has already abandoned too much power to the executive. Mr. Ryan risks turning oversight into a power without enforcement ability. A Republican Congress holding Republican office-holders responsible for flouting subpoenas would send a useful signal across the government. And it might give President Trump or White House Counsel Don McGahn new incentive to intervene with Justice and order compliance.

Appeared in the January 3, 2018, print edition.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/will-ice-arrest-guv-brown-for-violation-of-law-he-did-break-the-law/

[Crafty_Dog]

FBI, DOJ argue for dismissal of suit about their foreknowledge of Garland, Texas jihad attack
JAN 15, 2018 7:52 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER36 COMMENTS

This case should not be dismissed. I was co-sponsor and co-organizer of this event and spoke at it, and was there when the jihadis began firing. And this case is bigger than Bruce Joiner, which is not to say that his case is not of cardinal importance. The FBI clearly knew the attack was coming (although it didn’t bother to inform us or our security team), as the FBI agent was right there, following behind the jihadis, whom he had encouraged to “tear up Texas.” But even though they knew the attack was coming, they didn’t have a team in place to stop the jihadis. They had one man there, and one man only. The jihadis were not stopped by FBI agents, but by our own security team. If the jihadis had gotten through our team, they would have killed Pamela Geller and me, and many others. (They would no doubt have loved to kill Geert Wilders, but he left before they arrived.)

The Daily Beast wrote in August 2016 about how this undercover FBI agent encouraged the jihadis. The Beast’s Katie Zavadski wrote: “Days before an ISIS sympathizer attacked a cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, he received a text from an undercover FBI agent. ‘Tear up Texas,’ the agent messaged Elton Simpson days before he opened fire at the Draw Muhammad event, according to an affidavit (pdf) filed in federal court Thursday.”

What was the FBI’s game in telling them to “tear up Texas”? Why didn’t they have a phalanx of agents in place, ready to stop the attack? Or did they want the attack to succeed, so that Barack Obama’s vow that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” would be vividly illustrated, and intimidate any other Americans who might be contemplating defending the freedom of speech into silence?

We twice asked the FBI for an investigation into this matter. They ignored us. Of course. After all, it isn’t as if this happened to someone important, like Linda Sarsour.
Now that we are learning how corrupt and compromised the FBI really is, the last thing this case should be is dismissed. We need a full investigation of the FBI’s activities leading up to the Garland jihad attack.
 
“FBI, DOJ Argue for Dismissal of Suit About Garland, Texas Attack,” by Todd Shepherd, Washington Free Beacon, January 15, 2018:

The FBI and the Department of Justice are arguing for a liability case against them to be dismissed, while at the same time admitting to key details surrounding the bureau’s involvement in the 2015 terrorist attack on the “Draw Muhammad” event in Garland, Texas.

In that attack, the first in the United States for which ISIS claimed responsibility, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, drove to the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland in a car loaded with six guns and over a thousand rounds of ammunition.

The two men opened fire when they were stopped at a perimeter checkpoint. A security guard, Bruce Joiner, was shot in the leg and the two attackers were killed just yards away from where the shooting began.

Joiner filed suit last October, claiming the FBI was partially responsible for his injuries. His suit argues the bureau “solicited, encouraged, directed and aided members of ISIS in planning and carrying out the May 3 attack,” and is asking for just over $8 million damages.

Court filings from Thursday confirm that an undercover FBI agent was in a separate car directly behind the attackers when they opened fire, and that the agent, “was dressed in Middle Eastern attire and police almost killed him, but he saved his life by claiming to be an FBI agent.”

Lawyers with the Justice Department are asking the court to dismiss the case, arguing that the FBI is immune from liability under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

The origins of the attack stretch to Paris, France, in January of 2015 when radicalized Islamists killed 12 people at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for the magazine’s depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.  Fewer than two weeks after the Charlie Hebdo attack, an Islamic group held a conference at the Culwell Center in Garland, called, “Stand With the Prophet in Honor and Respect.”

As a counter to the Islamic conference, self-described “free speech advocate” Pamela Gellar organized the “First Annual Muhamed (sic) Art Exhibit and Contest,” also to be held at the Culwell Center, slated for May of 2015.

Simpson and Soofi were part of a small cell of radical Islamists in the Phoenix area, which the FBI had been monitoring. An undercover agent, identified in Thursday’s filings only as “UCE-1,” had infiltrated the group for some time and had been in communication with Simpson.  Documents from a separate court case shed light on just how deep the agent’s activity had been, which included the following messaging between “UCE-1” and Simpson abut the upcoming “Draw Muhammed” event:

UCE-1: Tear up Texas.
Simpson: Bro, u don’t have to say that…U know what happened in Paris…I think…Yes or no…?
UCE-1: Right.
Simpson: So that goes without saying…No need to be direct.

A 60 Minutes exposé last March first revealed that the undercover agent was in a separate car directly behind Simpson and Soofi when the attack began, that the agent was taking pictures of the pair just seconds before they opened fire, and that the undercover agent tried to flee the scene once the attack began but was apprehended by local police.

The government’s only comment in response to the 60 Minutes report last March was to say, “There was no advance knowledge of a plot to attack the cartoon drawing contest in Garland, Texas.”

Joiner’s attorney, Trenton Roberts, says his client sued in an effort to get to the bottom of the FBI’s involvement in the attack.
Roberts says there are only two explanations of what transpired that day with the undercover agent.

“It seems like it had to have been one or the other,” Roberts told the Washington Examiner. “Just a complete botched operation where they [the FBI] don’t want the attack to actually take place, or, it’s something where they need the attack to take place in order for this guy [the agent] to advance in the world of ISIS.”

“And that’s really what I think. I think that they thought, ‘he’s undercover and in order to advance, he needed to get pictures or video of this attack,’ and then that would bolster his street cred within ISIS,” Roberts said.

The government’s response claimed that Joiner’s lawsuit, “provides only rank speculation that UCE-1 met up with and followed Simpson and Soofi to the event, and provides no well-plead factual allegations regarding what exactly UCE-1 did at or immediately before the event that could constitute the assistance, direction, solicitation, or encouragement of an assault. Rather, the only communication Plaintiff can point to as a basis for the assault claim is the comment to ‘tear up Texas.”

The curiosities surrounding the case have drawn the notice of some congressional leaders.

Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, complained in April of last year that he was learning details of the FBI’s involvement in the attack only through the media, and two years after the fact….

[Crafty_Dog]

second post



https://patriotpost.us/articles/53383

[G M]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-22/whos-lying-fbi-says-5-months-texts-lost-yet-ig-horowitz-says-his-office-received

Nothing to see here, move along.