Tag Archives: government

Reforming FISA

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One outcome of Special Counsel John Durham’s testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee is an apparently re-energized, at least by many in the Republican caucus and a few Progressive-Democrats, to reform The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That’s all to the good, to the extent any serious reform actually occurs.

The most important reform of this Act, though, is the complete elimination of the secret Star Chamber that is the FISA Court. Federal Judges have long known how to seal records that legitimately don’t belong in the public’s eye, at least in the moment. The court’s proceedings, though, are, and should be, public.

So it must be for any sort of FISA-related court. Relevant records can be sealed—primarily the warrants FBI agents are seeking, which process is old hat for any legitimate Article III court, as well as State courts—until the warrants are executed. But this FBI has demonstrated that it will openly lie to the FISA court and that it will fabricate evidence in order to get their warrants. That’s on the FBI. What’s on the FISA court judges is their blithe acceptance of further FBI blandishments after the FBI had been caught out in its dishonesty. That makes the FISA court complicit in the dishonesty.

That badly wants the elimination of the secret court. There is no alternative; there must be no secret courts in the United States.

Full stop.

“He needs to be shot”

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That’s the threat [skip ahead to ~3:30] the Progressive-Democratic Party’s US Virgin Islands Delegate to the House of Representatives, Stacey Plaskett, said on MSNBC Sunday about Party’s political opponent, former President Donald Trump (R).

She changed her phrasing right away and then followed her threat with her pro forma claim that Trump “should have his day in court,” but that’s just her claim that Trump should have his fast trial and prompt firing squad. What concrete, publicly accessible action has Plaskett taken since to indicate that she didn’t really mean her statement that Trump should be murdered?

This is the stuff of lower tier third world countries where political opponents routinely are murdered, when they’re not simply thrown in jail. And then murdered.

This is what the Progressive-Democratic Party wants to inflict on their political opponents here in our nation. Wait—she’s not typical of Party? It’s been three days since Plaskett made her threat. How many Party politicians have spoken publicly in repudiation or rejection of her threat? Their silence is their roaring approval.

A Progressive-Democrat’s Proposal to Combat Shoplifting

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At first glance, this looks like progress after California’s decision to completely condone decriminalize shoplifting if the amount stolen was less than around $1,000 on any single hit. But in reality, it’s just more progressivism.

New York City’s Progressive-Democrat mayor Eric Adams thinks it’s good to deal with shoplifters in the city whose mayoral mansion he occupies in this way, among others:

  • train the shoplifting victim’s employees to de-escalate
  • put kiosks in shoplifting victim stores so shoplifters, at the start of their spree, can call social service
  • allow shoplifters to avoid prosecution or incarceration by “meaningfully” engaging with those services

Unfortunately, this is just more Progressive-Democrat coddling of criminals; it’ll have no useful effect on shoplifting—or on any other NYC crime.

Now We Know

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Recall that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R, KY) subpoenaed the FBI for an FD-1023 form that is supposed to contain information concerning a potential criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden (D) and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions. The subpoena also required the FBI to advise the committee concerning what it did to investigate these allegations.

Both Comer and Senator Chuck Grassley (R, IA), who also wants the document and information so he can run his own investigation (however limited by being in the minority party in the Senate) into the doings of Joe Biden and his family, were confident of the document’s existence, but since their position was based on a so far unidentified whistleblower’s claim, there were doubts about the form’s actual existence.

When the subpoena’s deadline went by without the FBI’s producing either the document or the information, FBI Director Chris Wray wrote a letter to Comey explaining his refusal to produce them. That refusal, despite Wray’s standard “neither confirm nor deny” mantra, now confirms the document’s existence and emphasizes the importance of its production, along with what the FBI did—or didn’t—do about it to the Oversight Committee. Wray wrote a number of things in his letter, but one stands out.

[Y]our request for a single FD-1023 report that you say includes a “precise description” of an “alleged criminal scheme” risks the harms that our confidentiality rules protect against[.]

There are a couple of things about that standout. One is Wray’s naked insubordination in this. FBI “rules” do not supersede the House’s constitutional authority to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch and of Executive Branch agencies. Last I looked, the FBI was an Executive Branch agency. Wray knows full well that his agency’s “rules” are subordinate to that constitutional mandate.

The other thing is this: to the extent that producing the FD-1023 and its activities pursuant to it puts at risk the FBI’s needs for confidentiality regarding its sources and methods and any investigations the FBI may or may not have in progress—and the concerns themselves are valid—the form can be produced to Committee members in a SCIF in the House. The House already has a SCIF; that’s where classified intelligence documents get viewed by specified House members. Wray is fully aware of this, too; his refusal to produce the document and related information altogether rather than in the House’s SCIF is disingenuous at best.

That raises a question in my pea brain: who sent Wray? Who does he work for?

Government Attacks on Us Citizens

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First, it was Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland agreeing with a National School Boards Association letter to him labeling American parents who object to school board decisions regarding sexualizing their children’s education as domestic terrorists and his subsequent ordering an FBI investigation into our parents. The NSBA has since retracted the letter, and Garland insists he meant no such thing, but where is the evidence that he’s called off the FBI’s investigation, or that the FBI has stopped?

Then it was Biden’s DoJ’s FBI memorializing in an internal memo the FBI’s position that traditional Catholics should be considered, and treated consonantly, to be in the same category as violent extremists. FBI Director Chris Wray has since claimed to have ordered the memo’s rescission, but where is the evidence the FBI isn’t still investigating traditional Catholics—or any other Catholics, or any group of Americans of any other religious adherence?

Now it’s Biden’s Department of Homeland Security. The subheadline says it:

Clergy, spouses, bartenders should keep tabs on “middle-aged” women who are “increasingly fervent” against abortion, white men who rant about government online and go to rallies, domestic terrorism materials say.

This tab-keeping actually is an older assault, dating from 2021, but they’re only now being exposed, pursuant to an FOIA request by America First Legal.  The “concerns” are the outcome of a series of Choose Your Own Adventure videos intended by DHS to instruct us ignorant American citizens in identifying and mitigating “radicalization and potential violence.” Because pro-life Americans, along with white male Americans who disagree with the government and attend political candidate (or other) rallies, and (divorced) mothers suspecting government connections to child abuse and trafficking are domestic terrorists.

JtN notes that it’s not clear whether DHS ever actually made the videos, but DHS didn’t respond to JtN‘s Sunday (7 May) requests for comment. DHS’ decision to remain silent on the matter emphasizes the lack of clarity of whether the department did not make the videos or, more importantly, whether the department is acting sub rosa on the information garnered during the proposal stage.

This is part and parcel with Progressive-Democratic Party members constantly deriding the concept of MAGA—we’re all MAGA extremists, or MAGA Republicans—in their disdain for the concept of Making America Great Again. Instead, it’s disagree in any way with the Progressive-Democratic Party-run government and be labeled, in one form or another, an Enemy of the State.

Elections do, indeed, have consequences, and we need to inflict some in the fall of 2024.