Tag Archives: politics

What Are They Trying to Hide?

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The House of Representatives has voted to release a 4-pg memo delineating various misbehaviors of the FBI during its “investigation” of Trump campaign behaviors during the 2016 election campaign.  The FBI publicly demurs.

…the FBI [has] “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

This is rich, coming from an FBI that had to be threatened with contempt of Congress before it would end its year-long stonewall and turn over material (some of which is summarized in the memo) that had been long subpoenaed.  As House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R, CA) said in response to this particular ludicrosity,

The FBI is intimately familiar with “material omissions” with respect to their presentations to both Congress and the courts….

Nunes added

they are welcome to make public, to the greatest extent possible, all the information they have on these abuses[.]

The FBI also is claiming concerns about giving up methods and sources with the memo’s exposure.  They conveniently forget that the memo has been vetted for that sort of thing by the Intelligence Committee and is being so vetted by the White House, where the memo now sits being checked by the National Security Advisor.  Both of these agencies are fully capable of such vetting, and no less so than the FBI.

Hence my question.

Update: The memo was released, and the evidence is damning.  We hear from the hysteria in the Progressive-Democrats and the NLMSM their desperation after they failed to block the memo’s release.  And this bit of emphasis and clarification from Nunes on FoxNews‘ Special Report Friday afternoon after the memo’s release (via Richard Fernandez and a commenter):

(excerpt) “Just step back for a moment,” Nunes explained. “This is not trying to go after some terrorist. This is about — they opened, the FBI opened a counter-intelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016. That’s what happened.”

He continued: “And then they got a warrant on someone in the Trump campaign using opposition research paid for by the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign. That’s what this is about. And it’s wrong and it should never be done.” (end excerpt)

Why is that important?

The significance of the warrant against Carter Page, was made October 21st, 2016, under Title I of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. [Meaning the surveillance application was specifically stating, to the court, the U.S. individual was likely an actual agent of a foreign government, ie. “a spy.”] (by sundance, Conservative Tree House) And renewed every 90 day period three times.

Why is it significant?
(1) as explained, designating Carter Page as foreign agent (spy), intelligence committee can spy on ANYBODY in contact with Page, even after he’s no longer part of the Trump team;

(2) the FISA warrant continued well into the first year of Trump presidency. Let both points sink in for a bit.

The Obama administration manufactured an espionage beef against Page instead of getting an “ordinary” FISA warrant that would have limited the scope and duration of its own spying.  Keep in mind, too, that no evidence has been turned up to indicate Page really is, or was, a Russian spy.  He was approached, certainly.  Nearly any American with even the most minimal set of connections is going to be approached by an apparatus of the Russian government.  That’s who the Russians are.  The available evidence, though, indicates he either ignored the approach or rebuffed it.

 

A Thought on American Women’s Gymnastics

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Unless you’ve been vacationing unplugged under a rock for the last several months, you’re aware of the atrocities committed by Larry Nassar, the ex-pseudo-doctor for the US’ women’s gymnastics team.  Now we find out that

The US Olympic Committee didn’t intervene in USA Gymnastics’ handling of sexual-abuse allegations against longtime national-team doctor Larry Nassar in 2015, even after USA Gymnastics’ then-president told two top USOC executives that an internal investigation had uncovered possible criminal behavior by the doctor against Olympic athletes.

And pursuant to a lawsuit,

the organization [USOC] said it was “first made aware of the possibility that a USA Gymnastics physician had sexually abused USA Gymnastics athletes in the summer of 2015, when we were informed by USA Gymnastics.”

Gymnastics is a physically dangerous and mentally stressful sport, as are most competitive sports.  Our women, and our girls, who participate in this game don’t need the added stress, much less the added damage, of sexual misbehaviors, sexual harassment, sexual assault inflicted on them by those placed in positions of power or authority over them—trainers, coaches, doctors, anyone.

I think it has become necessary to shut down women’s gymnastics as a formal sport in the US for a significant period of time, perhaps 2-5 years.  The time is necessary to completely revamp the sport and purge the criminals and the merely misbehaving personnel, folks like the imitation doctor Nassar, just convicted of harassments and of assaults against our girls; folks like the Karolyis, whose “training” techniques at best don’t align with American values; others who mistreat our girl and woman athletes while pretending merely to “toughen up the buttercups” or who get their jollies from molestations.

USA Gymnastics and the women’s side of the United States Olympic Committee must cease to exist.  When the time comes, replacements for USAG and that portion of USOC must be created from the ground up.  Anyone associated with USAG and USOC and anyone associated with those personnel out to and including the second degree of association must be banned from participation also.

Full stop.

One more item: the boys and men’s side of this needs a full, deep, and independent investigation, too, on general principles.  What deeply nefarious affairs are going on there that we don’t know about?  Hopefully none, but it’s time to look closely.

Yet Another Mueller Leak

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As usual, it’s carefully crafted and timed (it came out Wednesday morning) to cast President Donald Trump and his administration in a bad light and to try to steal the headlines from Tuesday night’s State of the Union address.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is seeking an interview with Mark Corallo, the former spokesman for President Donald Trump’s legal team, according to a person with knowledge of the matter….

As usual, too, Mueller is carefully silent on the leak and refuses to do anything to halt further leaks.

Aren’t these investigations supposed to be secret until they’re dropped or charges revealed?  Hah. Naïve me.

Democrats

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…will not compromise.  The Progressive-Democratic Party refused President Donald Trump’s offer of compromise and bipartisan work during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address.  They booed Trump’s request that both parties work together on immigration reform, never minding that he offered DACA protections—via legislation, yet, rather than an ephemeral Executive Order—for one million more children brought here illegally and young(er) adults brought here illegally as children than ex-President Barack Obama (D) had.

They sat, refusing even to acknowledge with polite applause, our nation’s economic successes.

That subset of the Progressive-Democratic Party, the Congressional Black Caucus (a misnomer, since they refuse to allow black Republicans to join the group), sat on their hands, refusing to acknowledge black unemployment gains—the lowest level since the statistic began being recorded—and Hispanic unemployment gains—the lowest level since that statistic began being recorded.

The Progressive-Democrats refused to acknowledge a child whose efforts led to American flags being put, on Veterans Day, on the graves of veterans that otherwise would have gone begging.

They even refused to acknowledge the work done to redress Government’s failures regarding our veterans—they just sat, like bumps on a log.

Some of them boycotted the speech rather than respecting the occasion, rather than respecting their own constituents by representing them at the speech.

Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D, IL) even stalked out of the speech after the bulk of the Representatives and Senators present began chanting “USA! USA!”

This is the contempt in which the Progressive-Democratic Party holds us Americans.

Remember their intransigence and their arrogance this fall.

Another Biased Federal Judge

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US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, of the Eastern District of New York, blatantly and zealously does not like President Donald Trump, as many folks do not.  However, the judge is hearing a case concerning whether to block Trump’s withdrawal of ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) unconstitutionally applied DACA protections, and that overt bias may well feed into his ruling on what should be an open and shut question: the DACA protections were illegally applied, and apart from that, they were applied by DHS Memorandum, and so even were Obama’s DACA legal, the protections can be removed by Memorandum or by a President’s Executive Order.

Amazingly, Garaufis is considering the weight to be given to Trump’s campaign rhetoric as though that could be relevant, and the text of the law be damned.

Judge Garaufis appeared to struggle with how much to weigh Mr Trump’s prior comments in determining whether to temporarily block the unwinding of DACA, saying he couldn’t ignore them.

“I’m not sure what the answer is,” Judge Garaufis said.

If the good judge doesn’t understand the question, he should recuse himself.  If he doesn’t understand so basic a question, he has no business being on the bench at all.

It gets worse.

In a speech to the Heritage Foundation last year, Mr [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions cited a comment from Judge Garaufis at a hearing in the same case in which he said the government “can’t come into court to espouse a position that is heartless.” Mr Sessions said comments like this are “highly offensive and disrespectful” of the legislative and executive branches.

Getting visibly angry, Judge Garaufis said of Mr Sessions, “He seems to think the courts cannot have an opinion.”

Yewbetcha.  Courts cannot have political opinions.  Not a syllable of one.  It’s appalling that a Federal judge does not understand this, or pretends not to.