June 2-5, 2019
Jun 02 11:30 Independence principles, impeachment talk Jun 02 12:08 Tim Ryan, king of BS? Jun 03 07:22 Mueller, political hack? Jun 03 09:30 Alarming post-session review Jun 03 15:22 What isn't being said Jun 04 07:11 Exposing Mueller's fraud Jun 05 09:03 Katyal's Mueller spin sickening
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Independence principles, impeachment talk
With Independence Day approaching faster than imagined, I've spent time reading the Declaration of Independence . As often as I read it, though, one line keeps jumping out at me. Here's that part that I can't get rid of:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
The men who declared their independence from England understood that governments "shouldn't be changed for light and transient causes."
The AOC wing of the Democratic Party won't hesitate in dissolving their government for light and transient causes if it means acquiring or increasing political power. It's apparent that the AOC wing of the Democratic Party isn't just foolish. These Democrats are nuts. These Democrats are power-hungry maniacs who won't hesitate to do corrupt things if it'll help them win an extra election.
The truth is that Democrats haven't thought about principled governance. They've only thought about power-filled governance. There's a reason why Democrats prefer federal governance. It's the furthest from the people. The people who debated and wrote the Constitution loved government closest to the people. In fact, the Tenth Amendment says "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
AOC Democrats would likely side with the British in the Revolutionary War. AOC Democrats prefer control. They definitely are tyrants. Jerry Nadler is chief amongst the Democrats' tyrants:
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Nadler knows that President Trump broke the law without the special counsel listing a single instance when they found probable cause that President Trump had committed a crime. If a prosecutor can't get a grand jury to find that there's probable cause that a crime was committed, then there definitely isn't proof beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime has been committed.
Finally, the media continues saying that impeachment is a political matter. Alan Dershowitz disagrees, saying that the first threshold impeachment must meet is whether the articles of impeachment constitute high crimes and misdemeanors.
In this instance, Mueller didn't have his failed investigation obstructed. President Trump cooperated with Mueller's investigation, handing over 1,400,000 documents, letting his White House Counsel answer questions for more than 30 hours and, generally speaking, cooperating with Mueller. If that sounds like obstruction, then you've got a warped sense of obstruction.
Posted Sunday, June 2, 2019 11:30 AM
Comment 1 by Rex Newman at 02-Jun-19 12:23 PM
I liked Dana Perino's translation: the Mueller probe was unable to find any proof that Trump is innocent.
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 02-Jun-19 06:50 PM
I know it's a lot to ask but wouldn't it be nice if Democrats understood constitutional principles?
Tim Ryan, king of BS?
The first paragraph of Tim Ryan's opinion piece sounds reasonable. It's a statement of why he wants to be president. It's actually semi-coherent.
It says "Like many Americans, my family and I have spent our entire lives at the epicenter of de-industrialization. We've watched as urban and rural communities have been hollowed out -- good paying jobs have gone overseas, too many people have died from opioid addiction and our neighborhoods have crumbled from failing infrastructure."
Unfortunately for Ryan, the next paragraph is pure BS:
We are fed up. I am fed up. And that is why I am running for president. I'm going to lead a revolution for working people in America. This includes all workers: white, black and brown, men and women, gay and straight, urban and rural. In other words, I want to fight for all the Americans left behind by Trump's elitist economic agenda that puts the well-being of millionaires, billionaires and corporations above that of hardworking Americans.
What the hell is he talking about? Trump's elitist economic agenda? This is the lie that Democrats will peddle. And yes, lie is exactly the right word. President Trump's economic policies have brought manufacturing jobs back in large numbers. The small coal-mining communities of southern Ohio and also Pennsylvania are significantly better off today than they were 4 years ago. That's why Ohio went from being a swing state to being a solid red state in 4 years (2012 to 2016.)
Further, as Larry Kudlow frequently highlights, wages for the lowest wage earners are growing fastest:
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The Democrats' goal is to paint the economy as rigged for "millionaires and billionaires" while giving President Obama the credit for the great economy. The Democrats want it both ways. Imagine that!
The Democrats' economic message, including Tim Ryan's, is BS on steroids. Listen to Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or Tim Ryan. You'd think we were living in Soupline America when we're actually living in fantastic economic times.
I'm tired of Democrats criticizing this economy. Each month for a year, I've read articles predicting a recession is near. That's BS too. That's the Democrats' fear-mongering. Democrats hate prosperity when Republicans are in office.
Ultimately, Ryan has an economic message, which puts him ahead of most Democrat presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton in 2016. Unfortunately for him, his message, like most Democrats' economic message, is BS, aka fiction.
UPDATE: Tim Ryan complained about jobs being exported. This article addresses that issue:
Robbie Hunter, president of the state Building and Construction Trades Council, which represents more than 400,000 workers, says that dozens of his members plan a major 'Blue Collar Revolution' demonstration Saturday morning at the California Democratic Party convention in San Francisco, which will be attended by 14 of the Democratic presidential contenders and 5,000 delegates and guests.
The effort aims to send a message that the party is in danger of eroding a critical base if it continues to back the Green New Deal resolution being pushed in Washington, D.C. by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her allies. Hunter argues the measure's goals could endanger thousands of jobs in the Southern California oil industry alone. "All it does is do what the Democratic Party seems to be very good at lately - which is export our jobs , while doing nothing for the end game, which is the environmental," Hunter said.
Until Democrats push environmental extremists out of their party, they'll continue losing blue collar voters.
Posted Sunday, June 2, 2019 12:26 PM
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Mueller, political hack?
Anyone who objectively watched Robert Mueller's 'press conference' knows that Mr. Mueller did some shady things. Rest assured that Mr. Mueller won't like Jonathan Turley's op-ed .
Professor Turley nails Mr. Mueller by saying that "His press conference captured his report perfectly. It was an effort to allude to possible crimes without, in fairness to the accused, clearly and specifically stating those crimes. Mueller knew that was incrimination by omission . By emphasizing he could not clear Trump of criminality, Mueller knew the press would interpret that as a virtual indictment."
I wrote here that Democrats (and Mueller) have a "presumption of innocence problem." They don't seem to accept as fact that people are presumed innocent until a prosecutor presents evidence that proves that they're guilty. They only accept it as fact when the person is a Democrat's ally. Otherwise, the presumption of innocence is a relic from an outdated document (the Constitution.)
Mueller was appointed almost two years before he released his report. He was fully aware that Congress, the Justice Department, the media, and the public expected him to reach conclusions on criminal conduct, a basic function of the special counsel. He also was told he should do so by the attorney general and deputy attorney general. Yet, he relied on two highly controversial opinions written by a small office in the Justice Department.
Over those two years, Mueller could have asked his superiors for a decision on this alleged policy barring any conclusions on criminal conduct. More importantly, he could have requested an opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel. That is what the Office of Legal Counsel does, particularly when its own opinions are the cause of confusion.
Mueller knows this. Why is he acting like a new hire fresh out of law school? He was the director of the FBI. Now he wants us to believe that he didn't understand how main Justice functions? That's insulting.
It's also what political hatchet men do. Barr stung Mueller when he informed Mueller that special counsels weren't hired to conduct Congress's investigations. If Congress wants to investigate impeachment, they're supposed to pay for the investigation. They're also suppose to hire the investigators. Democrats insist that Mueller's team was there to do their investigation. Democrats shouldn't be taken seriously. They're weasels, just like Mueller is.
Alan Dershowitz has a great idea on special counsels:
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Restructuring the DOJ to include a special counsel's unit is, potentially, a great idea. Otherwise, the special counsel needs to go the way of the passenger pigeon. Also, Mueller can go to hell if he thinks he served honorably as special counsel.
Posted Monday, June 3, 2019 7:22 AM
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Alarming post-session review
This article contains some frightening information. It says that the "largest budget bill was not publicly released until several hours after the special session had begun." I'm guessing that they're talking about the HHS bill though I don't know that for certain.
This highlights the DFL's failures on multiple fronts. First, the House DFL leadership wasn't ready for primetime. Kurt Daudt highlighted how various bills didn't have spreadsheets whatsoever while other bills had the spreadsheets intended for other bills. That's disgraceful, especially for a special session. It's one thing if these mistakes were made at the start of a session with a new majority. It's another when the DFL majority had the entire session to learn how to make the ship run right.
The DFL failed miserably.
Second, the DFL promised unprecedented transparency. Having the governor, the speaker and the Senate majority leader negotiate the budget when they're the only ones in the room isn't the portrait of transparency that Minnesotans were looking for. Blame DFL Speaker Melissa Hortman for that failure.
In most years, the negotiation includes the House and Senate majority leaders, the House and Senate minority leaders, the commissioners and committee chairs in both the House and Senate. That didn't happen this year. That's another DFL failure.
This GOP press availability highlights the DFL's failures:
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That's before talking about the DFL's tax increases, especially the DFL's proposed $12,000,000,000 tax increase over the next 4 years. That's before talking about the DFL's unsustainable spending increases.
It's time to fire these DFL jackasses. The DFL's policies were terrible and ill-advised. The DFL's managerial skills were horrible. What's worth keeping?
Posted Monday, June 3, 2019 9:30 AM
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What isn't being said
This article highlights the things that the leftists want us to ignore.
It opens by saying "President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that his administration is the 'most transparent in history,' and that it has 'cooperated totally' with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, or words to that effect. But the truth is quite the opposite. No prior administration has pushed the envelope of the law to deflect outside scrutiny to the same degree as this one. In a recent letter from the White House to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, the president, in effect, rejected the entire notion of congressional oversight as illegitimately political: 'Congressional investigations are intended to obtain information to aid in evaluating potential legislation, not to harass political opponents or to pursue an unauthorized 'do-over' of exhaustive law enforcement investigations conducted by the Department of Justice.'"
This Democrat apparently thinks that whatever House Democrats do in investigating is fine even if the Mueller Report was supposed to be the be-all-end-all of investigations. When the report didn't deliver the impeachment goods that Democrats were looking for, House Democrats launched a full frontal assault on the Trump administration, issuing 81 subpoenas for documents from people who either haven't been in office ever or who aren't in office anymore.
That's the definition of a fishing expedition. Feel free to call it a witch hunt instead if that's your preference.
By contrast, prior presidents understood that respect for the rule of law means, in the end, complying with the law, no matter what the cost. That was true even of those under investigation, such as President Bill Clinton. And I should know - I was a member of the team led by Independent Counsel Ken Starr that investigated him.
President Trump didn't utilize executive privilege while the Mueller investigation was happening. The Clinton administration invoked executive privilege frequently. President Trump made his personal staff available for interviews. President Clinton didn't allow his personal staff to meet with Mr. Starr's investigators.
Mr. Rosenzweig should stop trying to rewrite history.
Consider, by way of example and comparison, Clinton's use of executive privilege - a privilege that Trump has also invoked in recent days to frustrate the House's effort to get the unredacted version of the Mueller report. Just what is executive privilege, and why do we have it?
Notice the subtlety. President Clinton invoked executive privilege while the grand jury was seated. President Trump invoked executive privilege after Mueller had wrapped up its investigation.
That's a significant difference. President Clinton protected his high-ranking staff from grand jury exposure. President Trump didn't protect his senior staff in that way.
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It isn't a matter of if in terms of whether Mueller, Clapper, Comey and Brennan testify. Mueller will testify before Congress. Comey, Clapper and Brennan will testify before a grand jury. Sen. Graham and Mr. Durham will have them sweating bullets.
Democrats know that they're sort of fine if they stick to their talking points. Democrats know that they're in trouble the minute they're pushed off their talking points.
Posted Monday, June 3, 2019 3:22 PM
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Exposing Mueller's fraud
If John Dowd's accusations are accurate, then Bob Mueller is in trouble. This article contains the transcript of Dowd's voicemail left on Rob Kelner's phone. It says "Hey, Rob, uhm, this is John again. Uh, maybe, I-I-I-'m-I'm sympathetic; I understand your situation, but let me see if I can't ... state it in ... starker terms. If you have ... and it wouldn't surprise me if you've gone on to make a deal with, and, uh, work with the government, uh ... I understand that you can't join the joint defense; so that's one thing. If, on the other hand, we have, there's information that ... implicates the President, then we've got a national security issue, or maybe a national security issue, I don't know ... some issue, we got to-we got to deal with, not only for the President, but for the country. So ... uh ... you know, then-then, you know, we need some kind of heads up. Um, just for the sake of ... protecting all our interests, if we can, without you having to give up any ... confidential information. So, uhm, and if it's the former, then, you know, remember what we've always said about the President and his feelings toward Flynn and, that still remains, but - Well, in any event, uhm, let me know, and, uh, I appreciate your listening and taking the time. Thanks, Pal."
Here's what the Mueller report says of Dowd's voicemail:
The 448-page Mueller report, released last month with redactions, hints at the voicemail as part of a possible effort by Trump's team to influence Flynn, who assisted Trump's 2016 campaign and briefly served as national security adviser in 2017. "After Flynn withdrew from a joint defense agreement with the President and began cooperating with the government, the President's personal counsel left a message for Flynn's attorneys reminding them of the President's warm feelings towards Flynn, which he said 'still remains', and asking for a 'heads up' if Flynn knew 'information that implicates the President,'" Mueller's report said. "When Flynn's counsel reiterated that Flynn could no longer share information pursuant to a joint defense agreement, the President's personal counsel said he would make sure that the President knew that Flynn's actions reflected 'hostility' towards the President.'"
According to Alan Dershowitz, this isn't insignificant:
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In accurately citing a lawyer's quote, Mueller committed a terrible discretion. Portraying the edited voicemail as accurate and complete is unforgivable. Here's hoping that Judge Sullivan throws the book at Mueller's team, including Mueller himself. Whether he's that sloppy or that corrupt, Mueller needs to pay the price.
Posted Tuesday, June 4, 2019 7:11 AM
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Katyal's Mueller spin sickening
It's impossible to trust Neal Katyal's spin-piece . It's what you'd expect from an Obama official.
Katyal's piece starts by saying "There are two big questions about the now-completed investigation into President Trump, and the answers will determine what happens next. First, why didn't former special counsel Robert Mueller render a judgment on whether Trump had obstructed justice? And second, since Attorney General William Barr did render such a judgment, why isn't that the end of the matter?"
Then the spinning starts:
The public appearances last week of Mueller and Barr answer both questions. We saw a hyper-careful special counsel who bent over backward to be fair to Trump. And we saw an attorney general who was acting as the president's personal lawyer, not the lawyer for the American people.
Mueller explained in his news conference that he would not answer the obstruction question, just as his report didn't answer the question except to say he could not clear Trump because the facts would not permit him to. Justice Department guidance held that he could not indict a sitting president, he said, so he did not reach a conclusion as to whether the president committed crimes. He said it would be unfair to attack someone as a criminal without indicting them because there would be no legal process for them to prove the accusations wrong. That didn't mean Mueller was acting as some 'angry Democrat' (a hard thing for a Republican to do, in any event), it meant he was being careful to protect Trump's rights.
That last sentence is beyond laughable. Mueller trampled President Trump's rights by insinuating that President Trump had to prove he was innocent when, in fact, he's presumed innocent from the start. Supposedly, all Americans are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Mueller's team of partisan hack (Democrat) lawyers tried finding a crime to try Trump on but they couldn't find a crime that he committed. These partisan Democrats tried finding Trump guilty of conspiracy but failed. Then they tried finding Trump guilty of obstruction of justice but that didn't happen. (That's what happens when the defendant keeps cooperating with prosecutors.)
Katyal lied through omission in this interview:
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Katyal omitted the fact that Mueller later issued a joint statement saying that the OLC memo didn't play a factor in his decision. Further, Katyal omitted the relevant DOJ rule about prosecutors not holding press conferences to say that a defendant was almost indicted. That's what Mueller did. Mueller all but directed the House to start impeachment proceedings.
That's hardly the way to protect a person's civil rights.
Posted Wednesday, June 5, 2019 9:03 AM
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