CONNECTING THE DOTS ... ALWAYS A FAVORITE PASSTIME ... EXCEPT < CLICK
Saturday, June 30, 2018
TRUMP DOESN'T BEAT AROUND 'THE BUSH' ... THE STOVE IS HOT, DON'T TOUCH IT!
Trump ally Giuliani says end is near for Iran's rulers ... where their smoke there is probably fire.
VILLEPINTE, France (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will suffocate Iran’s “dictatorial ayatollahs”, his close ally Rudy Giuliani said on Saturday, suggesting his move to re-impose sanctions was aimed squarely at regime change.
Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City, delivers his speech as he attends the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), meeting in Villepinte, near Paris, France, June 30, 2018. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau
The former New York mayor who is now Trump’s personal lawyer was addressing a conference of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an umbrella bloc of groups of exiled Iranians opposed to the Islamic Republic.
“We are now realistically being able to see an end to the regime in Iran,” Giuliani said, pointing to recent protests in the country sparked by a currency collapse after Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal.
Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City, delivers his speech as he attends the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), meeting in Villepinte, near Paris, France, June 30, 2018. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau
Bolton, who at the time was with the American Enterprise Institute think tank, told Fox News in January: “Our goal should be regime change in Iran.”
But, freshly appointed to the Trump administration, he told ABC’s “This Week” in May: “That’s not the policy of the administration. The policy of the administration is to make sure that Iran never gets close to deliverable nuclear weapons.” [nL2N1SK088]
European countries which signed the 2015 Iran deal along with the United States, Russia and China, are sticking with it, saying the agreement prevents Iran developing weapons-grade nuclear fuel. But Giuliani said Europe should be “ashamed” of itself.
“This president doesn’t intend to turn his back on freedom fighters. The end of appeasement is over,” he told the conference of the NCRI, whose main faction is the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) once deemed a terrorist group by Washington and Europe.
Maryam Rajavi, who heads the group, told reporters: “Regime change in Iran is within reach as never before ... The wheels of change have started turning.”
In Tehran, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Trump would fail in any attempt to turn the Iranian people against the ruling system.
“They bring to bear economic pressure to separate the nation from the system ... but six U.S. presidents before him (Trump) tried this and had to give up,” Khamenei said on his website. [nL8N1TW082]
VILLEPINTE, France (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will suffocate Iran’s “dictatorial ayatollahs”, his close ally Rudy Giuliani said on Saturday, suggesting his move to re-impose sanctions was aimed squarely at regime change.
Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City, delivers his speech as he attends the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), meeting in Villepinte, near Paris, France, June 30, 2018. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau
The former New York mayor who is now Trump’s personal lawyer was addressing a conference of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an umbrella bloc of groups of exiled Iranians opposed to the Islamic Republic.
“We are now realistically being able to see an end to the regime in Iran,” Giuliani said, pointing to recent protests in the country sparked by a currency collapse after Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal.
Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City, delivers his speech as he attends the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), meeting in Villepinte, near Paris, France, June 30, 2018. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau
“When the greatest economic power stops doing business with you then you collapse ... and the sanctions will become greater, greater and greater,” he said.At the same conference last year, John Bolton, who was appointed Trump’s National Security Advisor in April this year, told NCRI members they would be ruling Iran before 2019.
Bolton, who at the time was with the American Enterprise Institute think tank, told Fox News in January: “Our goal should be regime change in Iran.”
But, freshly appointed to the Trump administration, he told ABC’s “This Week” in May: “That’s not the policy of the administration. The policy of the administration is to make sure that Iran never gets close to deliverable nuclear weapons.” [nL2N1SK088]
European countries which signed the 2015 Iran deal along with the United States, Russia and China, are sticking with it, saying the agreement prevents Iran developing weapons-grade nuclear fuel. But Giuliani said Europe should be “ashamed” of itself.
“This president doesn’t intend to turn his back on freedom fighters. The end of appeasement is over,” he told the conference of the NCRI, whose main faction is the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) once deemed a terrorist group by Washington and Europe.
Maryam Rajavi, who heads the group, told reporters: “Regime change in Iran is within reach as never before ... The wheels of change have started turning.”
In Tehran, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Trump would fail in any attempt to turn the Iranian people against the ruling system.
“They bring to bear economic pressure to separate the nation from the system ... but six U.S. presidents before him (Trump) tried this and had to give up,” Khamenei said on his website. [nL8N1TW082]
THERE'S ROOM AT THE INN ... RESERVATIONS ARE BEING TAKEN
Welcome to Saturday ... its visitation day ... are you going to visit your elected official on this 4th of July?
20 notable politicians convicted of crimes since 2000
PUBLIC SERVANTS SERVING
20 notable politicians convicted of crimes since 2000
PUBLIC SERVANTS SERVING
Friday, June 29, 2018
SOME ARE BORN GREAT, SOME ACHIEVE GREATNESS, AND THEN ...
... SOME ARE HOISTED INTO CELEBRITY OF ELECTIVE OFFICE AS A COMMODITY!
'Abolish ICE' goes mainstream as Gillibrand, de Blasio back calls
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| Their knowledge is a fading mirage in an ever expanding desert of ignorance. |
The idea was once relegated to the far-left. But the liberal push to abolish the federal agency that enforces federal immigration laws is going mainstream in the Democratic Party, with New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Mayor Bill de Blasio adding their support to the cause in the last 24 hours.
SO WHY STOP WITH I.C.E. WHY NOT ELIMINATE THE POLICE FORCE!
"I believe that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has become a deportation force … and that's why I believe you should get rid of it, start over, reimagine it and build something that actually works," Gillibrand said in a CNN interview Thursday night.
SO WHY STOP WITH I.C.E. WHY NOT ELIMINATE THE POLICE FORCE!
"I believe that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has become a deportation force … and that's why I believe you should get rid of it, start over, reimagine it and build something that actually works," Gillibrand said in a CNN interview Thursday night.
“We should abolish ICE,” de Blasio said Friday morning on WNYC radio.
Gillibrand's endorsement is notable as she's the first sitting senator to back the 'abolish ICE' push -- and is considered a potential 2020 presidential contender.
HERE'S MY QUESTION IF THERE ARE NO BORDERS WHAT WOULD "THEY" BE THE PRESIDENT OF?
HERE'S MY QUESTION IF THERE ARE NO BORDERS WHAT WOULD "THEY" BE THE PRESIDENT OF?
They join numerous other Democratic candidates, House members, liberal commentators and writers who have fought back against the Trump administration's immigration policies by calling to gut ICE -- which identifies, arrests and deports illegal immigrants inside the United States.
Left-wing Democrats push to abolish ICE
Democratic lawmakers and candidates are increasingly seeking the elimination of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Here's a look at some of the most prominent figures looking to dissolve the agency.
The growing influence behind the push was underscored earlier this week with liberal primary challenger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's shocking victory over Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., a member of party leadership.
Ocasio-Cortez emphasized her support for abolishing ICE during the campaign and even protested outside an ICE center in Texas.
“Its extra-judicial nature is baked into the structure of the agency and that is why they are able to get away with black sites at our border, with the separation of children,” the Democrat said in an interview this week.
The focus on ICE comes in the wake of the controversy over the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which called for all illegal border crossers to be prosecuted. This, in turn, led to the separation of families due to longstanding detention rules, until President Trump signed an executive order last week ordering families be detained together.
With that controversy in the headlines, the abolition of ICE -- which has long been the purview of far-left sections of the Democratic Party base advocating for open borders and no deportations -- has moved from being a slogan on protest placards to an idea being mulled by rumored 2020 hopefuls.
WITHOUT BORDERS ... WE NO LONGER HAVE A COUNTRY
"Every country needs reasonable law enforcement on their borders. ICE is not reasonable law enforcement. ICE is broken, it’s divisive and it should be abolished," de Blasio tweeted Friday.
Every country needs reasonable law enforcement on their borders. ICE is not reasonable law enforcement. ICE is broken, it’s divisive and it should be abolished.— Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) June 29, 2018
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo also has come under heavy pressure from the left to call for the elimination of ICE, particularly amid a far-left challenge from actress and activist Cynthia Nixon -- who called it a terrorist organization.
And Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who has been floated as a 2020 Democratic contender, said that the U.S. should consider “starting from scratch” for ICE -- though stopped short of calling to abolish it.
In Oregon, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who voted against the agency’s creation in 2002, doubled down on his opposition in a recent Medium post in which he called for it to be shut down.
“We should abolish ICE and start over, focusing on our priorities to protect our families and our borders in a humane and thoughtful fashion,” he said.
In January, the idea was endorsed by Brian Fallon, a former top aide to 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and Eric Holder, President Barack Obama’s attorney general.
“ICE operates as an unaccountable deportation force,” Fallon tweeted. “Dems running in 2020 should campaign on ending the agency in its current form.”
The idea isn’t limited to deep-blue Democratic enclaves.
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., announced Monday that he will introduce a bill to abolish the agency, set up during President George W. Bush’s administration in the wake of 9/11.
“I’m introducing legislation that would abolish ICE and crack down on the agency’s blanket directive to target and round up individuals and families,” Pocan said in a statement. “The heartless actions of this abused agency do not represent the values of our nation and the U.S. must develop a more humane immigration system, one that treats every person with dignity and respect.”
The shift to the left on immigration has some Republicans and conservatives delighted, thinking that it may move Democrats into unelectable territory.
"Based on the last week, Democrats apparently want to campaign on open borders, mass migration, & abolishing ICE," Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said on Twitter. "Give them points for honesty. Let's vote."
15 MINUTE NEWS CYCLE TESTING THE LIMITS OF IN YOUR FACE KULTURE
Freaked Out Americans Desperately Seek to UNPLUG THIS SUMMER ...
Claire Suddath29 June 2018, 9:19 AM
FAKE NEWS IS CHEWING AWAY AT THE FABRIC OF THE AMERICAN KULTURE ... WHEN SO MUCH GOOD IS BEING DONE SO FEW KNOW ABOUT IT! IT'S LIKE BEING IN A SMALL BOAT AND BAILING OUT THE FAKE NEWS EVERY HOUR FEARING THE BOAT WILL SINK AT ANY MOMENT. THANK GOD FOR "IN THE KITCHEN WITH DAVID" ON QVC. ITS REAL ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE CONSUMING PUBLIC WHO DESPERATELY WANT TO STAY AWAY FROM CROWDS.
Claire Suddath29 June 2018, 9:19 AM
FAKE NEWS IS CHEWING AWAY AT THE FABRIC OF THE AMERICAN KULTURE ... WHEN SO MUCH GOOD IS BEING DONE SO FEW KNOW ABOUT IT! IT'S LIKE BEING IN A SMALL BOAT AND BAILING OUT THE FAKE NEWS EVERY HOUR FEARING THE BOAT WILL SINK AT ANY MOMENT. THANK GOD FOR "IN THE KITCHEN WITH DAVID" ON QVC. ITS REAL ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE CONSUMING PUBLIC WHO DESPERATELY WANT TO STAY AWAY FROM CROWDS.
(Bloomberg) -- Last week, Jen Wrenn, a children’s literacy advocate in San Diego, attended her first political protest after reading about the Trump administration policy of separating small children from their immigrant parents at the border.
She had heard ProPublica’s audio of a little girl crying in the border camp and decided to do something about it. She shouted. She marched. And afterward, she decompressed by watching the Mr. Rogers documentary, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”
“As soon as I hear the theme song, my blood pressure goes down,” Wrenn said. “I think that kind of calm is what we all crave mentally right now.”
The film about Fred Rogers, the beloved figure of American childhood, has made $4.9 million at the box office since it opened on June 8—more than 20 times the typical haul for a documentary. In interviews, director Morgan Neville paints the documentary’s success as indicative of our times. “We’re in this period in our culture where I feel like nobody wants to be an adult anymore,” Neville recently told Deadline. “A character like Fred takes us back to how we should treat each other.”
Last fall, the American Psychological Association found that almost two-thirds of Americans listed “the state of the nation” as their primary source of stress, above both money and work. More than half believed that America was at its lowest point in history. Almost 70 percent of all Americans feel a sense of “news fatigue,” according to the Pew Research Center. The nation’s emotional exhaustion even makes an appearance in a recent Enterprise Rental Car survey: When the company surveyed more than 1,100 Americans about their summer travel plans, the top three reasons given for traveling were stress, the news, and the political climate.
“Just this morning I had a guy come in who is so distracted by the news that he can’t get his work done,” said Jonathan Alpert, a New York psychologist. “The levels of anxiety and stress I’m seeing are profound.”
“It’s way more relaxing than reading about Melania’s terrible jacket choice.”
Those heightened stress levels are reflected in Americans’ chosen leisure activities. Megan, a web developer in Nashville, has started re-watching “Parks and Recreation” because it’s about goofy, goodhearted people in politics. Jessica, a landscape architect in Boston, tunes out the news with obscure documentaries about the history of toys and cars. Dan, an editor in New York, now watches home renovation shows instead of the news while on the treadmill at the gym. And Rachel, a system designer in Massachusetts, loves “Aerial America” on the Smithsonian Channel.
“Basically, a drone just flies over and tells you cool things about pretty landscapes,” she says. “It’s way more relaxing than reading about Melania’s terrible jacket choice.”
Calm, a meditation app, said it’s averaging about 50,000 new downloads a day, up from 40,000 in December. Kampgrounds of America (KOA), the largest organization of private campgrounds in the U.S. and Canada, reports that about 4 million people have started camping since 2016, including an unprecedented number of people of color. Discovery Inc., which owns guilty pleasure networks HGTV, Food Network and TLC, has seen a 12 percent increase in the time viewers spend watching its networks since the 2016 election; the average is now 1.5 hours.
“We hear all the time that people use us to bring their anxiety levels down,” said Kathleen Finch, Discovery’s chief lifestyle brands officer.
Jess Agguire, head of research at the Hallmark Channel, agrees. “When we asked people why they watched Hallmark we used to hear things like, ‘I want an escape,’” he says. “Now it’s ‘I want to be reminded that there’s still love in the world.’”
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| I WANT TO GO HOME! |
The film about Fred Rogers, the beloved figure of American childhood, has made $4.9 million at the box office since it opened on June 8—more than 20 times the typical haul for a documentary. In interviews, director Morgan Neville paints the documentary’s success as indicative of our times. “We’re in this period in our culture where I feel like nobody wants to be an adult anymore,” Neville recently told Deadline. “A character like Fred takes us back to how we should treat each other.”
Last fall, the American Psychological Association found that almost two-thirds of Americans listed “the state of the nation” as their primary source of stress, above both money and work. More than half believed that America was at its lowest point in history. Almost 70 percent of all Americans feel a sense of “news fatigue,” according to the Pew Research Center. The nation’s emotional exhaustion even makes an appearance in a recent Enterprise Rental Car survey: When the company surveyed more than 1,100 Americans about their summer travel plans, the top three reasons given for traveling were stress, the news, and the political climate.
“Just this morning I had a guy come in who is so distracted by the news that he can’t get his work done,” said Jonathan Alpert, a New York psychologist. “The levels of anxiety and stress I’m seeing are profound.”
“It’s way more relaxing than reading about Melania’s terrible jacket choice.”
Those heightened stress levels are reflected in Americans’ chosen leisure activities. Megan, a web developer in Nashville, has started re-watching “Parks and Recreation” because it’s about goofy, goodhearted people in politics. Jessica, a landscape architect in Boston, tunes out the news with obscure documentaries about the history of toys and cars. Dan, an editor in New York, now watches home renovation shows instead of the news while on the treadmill at the gym. And Rachel, a system designer in Massachusetts, loves “Aerial America” on the Smithsonian Channel.
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| IF YOU CAN'T AFFORD THE PLANE TICKET, THEN DRIVE BUT DON'T STOP IN THE STATE OF TEXAS |
Calm, a meditation app, said it’s averaging about 50,000 new downloads a day, up from 40,000 in December. Kampgrounds of America (KOA), the largest organization of private campgrounds in the U.S. and Canada, reports that about 4 million people have started camping since 2016, including an unprecedented number of people of color. Discovery Inc., which owns guilty pleasure networks HGTV, Food Network and TLC, has seen a 12 percent increase in the time viewers spend watching its networks since the 2016 election; the average is now 1.5 hours.
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| YUP YOURS EYES ARE BROWN, I THINK YOU FULL NOW ... YOU CAN GO. |
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| WOW, I FEEL A LOT BETTER NOW ... |
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| UP, UP AND AWAY TO THE MIDTERMS! |
THE ART OF THE DEAL AND TRUMP'S NO. 1 DEALMAKER ...
Trump’s No. 1 dealmaker, Jared Kushner, takes winning streak to Wisconsin for 13,000 jobs
by Paul Bedard
June 26, 2018, 04:23 PM
Fresh from a whirlwind peace mission through the Middle East, the administration’s top dealmaker, Jared Kushner, is heading to Wisconsin with President Trump to celebrate the biggest jobs deal of his young White House career, the groundbreaking of the massive FoxConn Technology Group project.
While Trump will likely be the focus of the event to highlight the $10 billion investment from FoxConn, the Taiwanese manufacturer best known for making Apple’s iPhones, it will also be a crowning moment for Kushner who helped negotiate the deal, his biggest in the U.S. and set to create 13,000 jobs.
It joins a growing list of deals administration officials credit to Trump’s son-in-law:
As with most of the projects he runs, Kushner shunned fanfare around his FoxConn efforts. But his was the operation he runs for Trump, the Office of American Innovation, that helped nail down the job to bring TV and other technology manufacturing to Racine, Wisc.
Officials said that while Kushner hasn’t sought out attention for his dealmaking, they have been surprised by critics and the media that belittle his efforts or ignore it altogether. “No matter what Jared accomplishes, like with the World Cup or Olympics, he nor the White House get much credit,” said one administration official.
The trip to Wisconsin follows Kushner’s trip to five countries in six days in a bid to rewrite America’s blueprint for peace between Israel and Palestine. He went to Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Back home, he is also turning his attention to revamping the government’s digital operations, a “whole of government” approach.
His Office of American Innovation had decided to focus on health records and making them accessible to those who need them.
“Simply put, interoperability is about our shared bottom line: saving lives,” he said in explaining it in Las Vegas in March.
by Paul Bedard
June 26, 2018, 04:23 PM
Fresh from a whirlwind peace mission through the Middle East, the administration’s top dealmaker, Jared Kushner, is heading to Wisconsin with President Trump to celebrate the biggest jobs deal of his young White House career, the groundbreaking of the massive FoxConn Technology Group project.
While Trump will likely be the focus of the event to highlight the $10 billion investment from FoxConn, the Taiwanese manufacturer best known for making Apple’s iPhones, it will also be a crowning moment for Kushner who helped negotiate the deal, his biggest in the U.S. and set to create 13,000 jobs.
It joins a growing list of deals administration officials credit to Trump’s son-in-law:
- The emergence of a Middle East peace outline.
- Work bringing the 2028 Summer Olympics back to Los Angeles.
- A $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia.
- Securing soccer’s World Cup in North America in 2026, with an expected 75 percent of the games being played in the U.S., the rest in Canada and Mexico.
- Bipartisan support for criminal justice reform.
As with most of the projects he runs, Kushner shunned fanfare around his FoxConn efforts. But his was the operation he runs for Trump, the Office of American Innovation, that helped nail down the job to bring TV and other technology manufacturing to Racine, Wisc.
Officials said that while Kushner hasn’t sought out attention for his dealmaking, they have been surprised by critics and the media that belittle his efforts or ignore it altogether. “No matter what Jared accomplishes, like with the World Cup or Olympics, he nor the White House get much credit,” said one administration official.
The trip to Wisconsin follows Kushner’s trip to five countries in six days in a bid to rewrite America’s blueprint for peace between Israel and Palestine. He went to Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
During the trip, Kushner broke from practice and granted an interview with a popular Palestine newspaper and in it, he criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas willingness to negotiate.While some criticized Kushner, others said the interview and meetings with other Arab nations may prompt Abbas into action. Legendary Middle East peace negotiator Dennis Ross, for example, told one outlet that if the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan give a positive reaction to Kushner’s emerging peace plan, it would be difficult for Abbas to write it off.
Back home, he is also turning his attention to revamping the government’s digital operations, a “whole of government” approach.
His Office of American Innovation had decided to focus on health records and making them accessible to those who need them.
“Simply put, interoperability is about our shared bottom line: saving lives,” he said in explaining it in Las Vegas in March.
A SWAMP CREATURE ... THE FEEDING AND CARE THEREOF
How John Brennan led the CIA to hack the SenateTreasonous Acts of Brennan Exposed ...
Former CIA Director John Brennan said yesterday that President Donald Trump should be removed from office due to his mental stability. It Brennan who’s mental stability- and loyalty to the United States and it’s Constitution are in question.
As CIA Director Brennan penetrated and spied on a US Senate Committee investigating torture by the CIA.
As CIA Director Brennan penetrated and spied on a US Senate Committee investigating torture by the CIA.
- “Patently absurd,” said Senator Harry Reid.
- “It violates the US constitution,” is how Senator Mark Udall described it.
- Senator Angus King of Maine went even further and said that “it violated both the spirit and the letter of the constitutional separation of powers.”
It is hard to believe that these Democrats are talking about the Obama appointed CIA chief John Brennan under whose leadership the CIA hacked the computers of their Congressional overseers.
It happened in 2014 after the CIA suspected that the team from the Senate Intelligence Committee, investigating the CIA’s claim that their enhanced interrogation techniques or torture led to valuable information, had gained access to a classified report called the Panetta Review. Hackers from the CIA penetrated the Senate side of computers by using a fake id to perform keyword searches and read the emails of their Senate investigators. They were doing so under Brennan’s order who tasked to use “use whatever means necessary” to find out how Senate got hold of that document.
Brennan denied the existence of any such agreement (even though he acknowledged that it did in an unsent letter which was disclosed to VICE News by the CIA in error) but he did appoint the CIA’s Office of Inspector General to examine the conduct of his staff.
The OIG’s report, however, vindicated Feinstein and confirmed that the CIA secretly monitored the work of the congressional committee. The report also disclosed that the CIA sent a baseless criminal referral to the Justice Department to prosecute a member of the Senate staff who they claimed hacked into the CIA network to obtain the Panetta Review.
There was no “factual basis” to support the criminal referral, said the OIG. Instead, it was based on “inaccurate information.”
CIA had to accept fault.
“Some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between [the committee] and the CIA in 2009 regarding access to the RDINet,” said CIA spokesman Dean Boyd. Brennan apologizes to the Senators in a private meeting, but he never did it in a written statement as the Senators wanted him to so that it becomes part of the official record.
How did the Senate get hold of the Panetta Review?
Documents disclosed to VICE News by CIA under the Freedom of Information Act indicate that a technical glitch in the network that the CIA created for the Senate to study CIA documents related to torture revealed the Panetta Review.
“On November 9, 2010, a Senate staffer discovered the Panetta Review while searching on the committee’s side of the walled-off network — RDINet — it shared with the CIA at a building in Northern Virginia leased by the agency. According to the CIA, the Panetta Review wasn’t supposed to be shared with the Senate committee. But according to officials knowledgeable about the situation, the Senate staffer who discovered the review didn’t know this. (The Panetta Review was found on the same day that the Justice Department announced that a special prosecutor would not pursue criminal charges against CIA personnel who destroyed nearly 100 interrogation videotapes, one of which showed a CIA captive being waterboarded. The destruction of the videotapes is what led the Senate Intelligence Committee to launch its review of the CIA’s torture program.)” wrote Jason Leopold.
Britain’s The Guardian, however, reported that the review was left on the Senate side of the network by “someone at the CIA.” Feinstein also indicated that it was the doing of a whistleblower in her floor speech.
What is the Panetta Review?
Panetta commissioned the review in parallel to the Senate investigation. It was disbanded for some reason, and its finding was never released. News reports indicate that the findings of the review were so worrisome for the CIA that the agency decided to classify it as a “deliberative” draft to shield it from FOIA requests.
What prompted the CIA to suspect that Senate has got hold of the Panetta Review?
Feinstein alerted Brennan in November 2013 when she demanded in a letter that he turn over the Panetta Review. The next month, Udall publicly asked that the review is turned over in the confirmation hearing of CIA’s general counsel, Caroline Krass. Udall then sent a letter to Obama in January 2014 demanding the same. A week later Brennan called an urgent meeting with Feinstein and Senator Saxby Chambliss where he disclosed for the first time that the CIA had broken into Senate computers a few days back. That set off a chain of private and public meetings simmering the tensions between public officials and the spy agency.
In April 2014, Senate released the declassified version of their investigation. Parts of the report “concluded that the techniques yielded little valuable information and that C.I.A. officials consistently misled the White House and Congress about the efficacy of the techniques.” Republicans who had rejected the report as “partisan smear and without credibility” joined Democrats to embrace it.
Brennan had set up a board to examine the OIG’s finding and recommend “potential disciplinary measures” and “steps to address systemic issues.” In December 2014, the board, led by a former Democratic senator, Evan Bayh of Indiana, overturned the OIG’s report and said that no agreement ever existed between the Senate and the CIA that stipulated that the CIA will not monitor the work of the Senate. The board added that because the Senate staffer accepted a pop-up message every time they logged onto their computers indicating they needed to consent to monitor the CIA never “spied” on them. The board acknowledged that there was an understanding between Panetta and Feinstein but that only protected the Senate’s work and not the walled-off computer network that the CIA created for the Senate investigators.
The Obama White House defended Brennan throughout the fiasco.
“He is somebody who has a very difficult job, who does that job extraordinarily well,” the White House press secretary said of Brennan.
To everyone’s surprise and to the astonishment of Harry Reid who was on the phone with Obama when he said that the CIA was right to do what it did because Senate staffers stole their documents.
“Mr. President,” Reid said, “I wish you could hear yourself.”
It happened in 2014 after the CIA suspected that the team from the Senate Intelligence Committee, investigating the CIA’s claim that their enhanced interrogation techniques or torture led to valuable information, had gained access to a classified report called the Panetta Review. Hackers from the CIA penetrated the Senate side of computers by using a fake id to perform keyword searches and read the emails of their Senate investigators. They were doing so under Brennan’s order who tasked to use “use whatever means necessary” to find out how Senate got hold of that document.
That was in clear violation of the committee’s relationship with the CIA laid down when the Senate started their investigation in 2009. Leon Panetta was heading the spy agency at the time.“When I spoke on the Senate floor in March 2014, I outlined the agreement between Director Panetta and the Intelligence Committee that committee staff would review CIA documents in an offsite CIA facility and their work would not be monitored,” Senator Dianne Feinstein said to VICE News. “These documents and letters prove the agreement existed, an agreement unfortunately broken by the CIA.”
Brennan denied the existence of any such agreement (even though he acknowledged that it did in an unsent letter which was disclosed to VICE News by the CIA in error) but he did appoint the CIA’s Office of Inspector General to examine the conduct of his staff.
“When the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong,” Brennan said at the time.Brennan was reacting to Feinstein remarks that she made on the Senate floor that how the matter was resolved “will show whether the Intelligence Committee can be effective in monitoring and investigating our nation’s intelligence activities, or whether our work can be thwarted by those we oversee.”
The OIG’s report, however, vindicated Feinstein and confirmed that the CIA secretly monitored the work of the congressional committee. The report also disclosed that the CIA sent a baseless criminal referral to the Justice Department to prosecute a member of the Senate staff who they claimed hacked into the CIA network to obtain the Panetta Review.
There was no “factual basis” to support the criminal referral, said the OIG. Instead, it was based on “inaccurate information.”
CIA had to accept fault.
“Some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between [the committee] and the CIA in 2009 regarding access to the RDINet,” said CIA spokesman Dean Boyd. Brennan apologizes to the Senators in a private meeting, but he never did it in a written statement as the Senators wanted him to so that it becomes part of the official record.
How did the Senate get hold of the Panetta Review?
Documents disclosed to VICE News by CIA under the Freedom of Information Act indicate that a technical glitch in the network that the CIA created for the Senate to study CIA documents related to torture revealed the Panetta Review.
“On November 9, 2010, a Senate staffer discovered the Panetta Review while searching on the committee’s side of the walled-off network — RDINet — it shared with the CIA at a building in Northern Virginia leased by the agency. According to the CIA, the Panetta Review wasn’t supposed to be shared with the Senate committee. But according to officials knowledgeable about the situation, the Senate staffer who discovered the review didn’t know this. (The Panetta Review was found on the same day that the Justice Department announced that a special prosecutor would not pursue criminal charges against CIA personnel who destroyed nearly 100 interrogation videotapes, one of which showed a CIA captive being waterboarded. The destruction of the videotapes is what led the Senate Intelligence Committee to launch its review of the CIA’s torture program.)” wrote Jason Leopold.
Britain’s The Guardian, however, reported that the review was left on the Senate side of the network by “someone at the CIA.” Feinstein also indicated that it was the doing of a whistleblower in her floor speech.
What is the Panetta Review?
Panetta commissioned the review in parallel to the Senate investigation. It was disbanded for some reason, and its finding was never released. News reports indicate that the findings of the review were so worrisome for the CIA that the agency decided to classify it as a “deliberative” draft to shield it from FOIA requests.
What prompted the CIA to suspect that Senate has got hold of the Panetta Review?
Feinstein alerted Brennan in November 2013 when she demanded in a letter that he turn over the Panetta Review. The next month, Udall publicly asked that the review is turned over in the confirmation hearing of CIA’s general counsel, Caroline Krass. Udall then sent a letter to Obama in January 2014 demanding the same. A week later Brennan called an urgent meeting with Feinstein and Senator Saxby Chambliss where he disclosed for the first time that the CIA had broken into Senate computers a few days back. That set off a chain of private and public meetings simmering the tensions between public officials and the spy agency.
In April 2014, Senate released the declassified version of their investigation. Parts of the report “concluded that the techniques yielded little valuable information and that C.I.A. officials consistently misled the White House and Congress about the efficacy of the techniques.” Republicans who had rejected the report as “partisan smear and without credibility” joined Democrats to embrace it.
Brennan had set up a board to examine the OIG’s finding and recommend “potential disciplinary measures” and “steps to address systemic issues.” In December 2014, the board, led by a former Democratic senator, Evan Bayh of Indiana, overturned the OIG’s report and said that no agreement ever existed between the Senate and the CIA that stipulated that the CIA will not monitor the work of the Senate. The board added that because the Senate staffer accepted a pop-up message every time they logged onto their computers indicating they needed to consent to monitor the CIA never “spied” on them. The board acknowledged that there was an understanding between Panetta and Feinstein but that only protected the Senate’s work and not the walled-off computer network that the CIA created for the Senate investigators.
The Obama White House defended Brennan throughout the fiasco.
“He is somebody who has a very difficult job, who does that job extraordinarily well,” the White House press secretary said of Brennan.
To everyone’s surprise and to the astonishment of Harry Reid who was on the phone with Obama when he said that the CIA was right to do what it did because Senate staffers stole their documents.
“Mr. President,” Reid said, “I wish you could hear yourself.”
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
DEMOCRATIC SELF PITY PARTY ... ITS A PITY YOUR CANDIDATE DIDN'T WIN ... INCITING VIOLENCE
Sarah Sanders to receive Secret Service protection ... Stephen Miller may be next!
(CNN) — White House press secretary Sarah Sanders is expected to receive Secret Service protection as soon as Wednesday, two sources familiar with the decision tell CNN, but they did not specify how long it will last.
The Secret Service declined to comment, telling CNN: "For operational security purposes the Secret Service does not comment on its protective operations."
The news comes days after Sanders was asked to leave a small Lexington, Virginia, restaurant because of her role with the Trump administration, a move that has since sparked a national conversation on civility and public service in the age of Trump.
NBC News first reported that Sanders would begin receiving protection.
Sanders did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.
Speaking about the restaurant incident during Monday's White House press briefing, Sanders said she and her husband "politely left."
"I was asked to leave because I worked for President Trump," she said, adding, "We are allowed to disagree but we should be able to do so freely and without fear of harm, and this goes for all people regardless of politics."
She continued: "Healthy debate on ideas and political philosophy is important, but the calls for harassment and push for any Trump supporter to avoid the public is unacceptable."
CNN's Betsy Klein and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.
Judicial Watch Files House Ethics Complaint Against Maxine Waters For Inciting Violence Against
(CNN) — White House press secretary Sarah Sanders is expected to receive Secret Service protection as soon as Wednesday, two sources familiar with the decision tell CNN, but they did not specify how long it will last.
The Secret Service declined to comment, telling CNN: "For operational security purposes the Secret Service does not comment on its protective operations."
The news comes days after Sanders was asked to leave a small Lexington, Virginia, restaurant because of her role with the Trump administration, a move that has since sparked a national conversation on civility and public service in the age of Trump.
NBC News first reported that Sanders would begin receiving protection.
Sanders did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.
Speaking about the restaurant incident during Monday's White House press briefing, Sanders said she and her husband "politely left."
"I was asked to leave because I worked for President Trump," she said, adding, "We are allowed to disagree but we should be able to do so freely and without fear of harm, and this goes for all people regardless of politics."
She continued: "Healthy debate on ideas and political philosophy is important, but the calls for harassment and push for any Trump supporter to avoid the public is unacceptable."
CNN's Betsy Klein and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.
Monday, June 25, 2018
A LOW INFORMATION VOTER
Why is this man smiling?
A month from now there will be a new manufactured news story that Donald Trump is savage, represents an existential danger, or is unhinged. We will hear of another Trump official cornered and driven out from a liberal-owned Beltway or New York City restaurant. An unhinged Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) will rant some more about impeachment.
And then the current hysteria over the border detainments will be filed, and go the way of the “s—hole countries” frenzy or Melania’s jacket melodrama.
We’ve already been through the dizzying odyssey of legal suits in three states over supposedly fraudulent voting machines, the nullification of the Electoral College effort, the meltdown on Inauguration Day, the Emoluments Clause tizzy, the 25th Amendment con, the various Russian collusion hysterias, the leaked phone call to the Australian prime minister, the Michael Wolff Fire and Furyfantasies, the Dudley Do-Right James Comey pre-indictment book tour, and all the surreal assassination chic stories, from Kathy Griffin’s beheading photo to the Shakespearean troupe’s ritual stabbing of Trump.
One day the president is supposedly going to blow up the world by calling Kim Jong-un “little rocket man,” and the next he is a partner in genocide for not blowing up the world but reaching out to Kim.
One moment Trump will tank the economy and wreck the stock market, the next the undeniable Trump boom is not really his own but Obama’s. Give the media credit: it found a way to explain why 3.8 official unemployment and greater than 3 percent GDP growth is a bad thing (it will heat up the planet, lead to a crash, mask Trump’s crudity and make impossible impeachment, etc.)
Almost every Hollywood grandee has after 500 days weighed in on Trump to showcase his unique talents—the periodic “F–k Trump” rants from Robert De Niro, the Jim Carrey paint-by-numbers kindergarten drawings, the doped-up Johnny Depp hope of a John Wilkes Booth redux, or the Madonna foul-mouthed dream of an exploded White House. We cannot get much creepier than Stephen Colbert’s reference to “Putin’s c—holster” or Peter Fonda’s call for Baron Trump to be caged with pedophiles. The ossified Democratic grandees have had their say, from Joe Biden’s adolescent threat to beat up Trump and Eric Holder’s inane talk about a knife fight to Senator Kamala Harris’s “joke” about exiting an elevator alive, leaving a dead Trump behind in it.
NeverTrumpers have called for the GOP to lose the midterms, have castigated an “oily” Mike Pence, have called for the deportation of “contemptible Republican cowards” and the welcoming of illegal aliens in their place, and have suggested crazy theories about why Melania Trump was out of the public eye for weeks. Nothing they say on MSNBC or CNN shocks anymore.
Over the Top . . . and Beyond
So last week’s Holocaust/Japanese Internment hysteria narrative at the border will soon fade, too.
In particular, the charge that the border holding areas are akin to Nazi extermination camps does not resonate well with the public, even as Trump polls on illegal immigration better than do his critics.
Second, the fake news epidemic has discredited much of the attack on Trump, the supposedly cruel-hearted nativist restrictionist—from the “fake but accurate” Time magazine cover to using Obama-era photos of “cages” to impugn ongoing Trump policies. What is going on in the United States is akin to the popular pushback in Italy and Germany to the insanity of elites opening up borders, virtue signaling, smearing their critics, and then ensuring themselves the influence, power, and money to navigate around the consequences of their own policies.
Third, once Trump recalibrated the policy to allow illegal alien parents to stay with their kids as they pursue their mostly falsely constructed amnesty pleas, progressives have fallen back to the essentially nihilistic position that no one should be detained. That is tantamount to a call for the destruction of the border itself and an end to national sovereignty. The call to abolish ICE, and to expose their agents to harm, is not a winning issue. If Trump was still winning a majority of support in clumsily following the law, the Democrats will not win majority support by smugly breaking it.
Fourth, the tactic of storming restaurants to shout down and expel government officials in their off-hours, and the media screaming and crying on the air is rich fuel for a Trump reelection, not repudiation. Once Black Lives Matter started pouring into restaurants, or immigration activists shut down freeways, or a few of the #MeToo accusers went back 30 years to redefine as rape an unwise, unpleasant, and creepy act of coitus with current repugnant Hollywood and journalistic grandees, the public began to become confused over means and ends.
In general, nothing hurts a cause more than going full French Revolution.
Fifth, Mexico is certainly not a sympathetic player. The likely upcoming election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador will crystalize the absurdity of a supposedly aggrieved Mexico, as the beneficiary of a $71 billion trade surplus with the United States (such imbalances were not supposed to happen according to the architects of NAFTA 34 years ago).
Americans are not in sympathy with the $30 billion in remittances sent home to Mexico by its expatriate community in the United States, knowing many of them are beneficiaries of America’s generous local, state, and federal social welfare aid that frees up such cash. Americans do not like the idea of a would-be foreign leader boasting that the United States has no rights of sovereignty inside its own country. In the midst of a contrived transit of Central Americans across Mexico to the U.S. border, Obrador is calling for more Mexican citizens to crash into the U.S. For a country, a people, and a leader who feign to dislike their neighbor to the north, they certainly do not seem to be able to live without it.
Sixth, too often an old photo of the same detention centers used in the same way, or a quote from President Obama (“Do not send your children to the borders. If they do make it, they’ll get sent back.”) or Hillary Clinton (“We have to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”) pops up that makes even the best efforts at mock outrage pretty much just mock.
Distractions from the Coming Storm?
Finally, there are some bombshell stories coming up on abuses of the Obama Justice Department and FBI relating to the fraudulent information used to obtain FISA warrants, the planting of FBI informants in the Trump campaign, the unmasking and leaking of names of surveilled Americans by the Obama national security apparat, and likely indictments of some former FBI officials for their illegal behavior relating to the Clinton email scandal.
Various hearings, lawsuits, and IG reports likely will confirm the Obama Administration “knew” Hillary was going to win the 2016 presidential election and therefore did not worry much about breaking the law to ensure she did. In other words, the Obama Administration systematically used the agencies of the federal government to interfere with a U.S. election campaign in order to help the candidate of its own party win. That fact marks one of the most sordid political scandals in U.S. history and explains both why these anti-Trump hysterias will continue to be contrived to deflect attention from Obama’s own culpability in such government-wide abuse, and yet why eventually the sheer magnitude of such wrongdoing will overshadow all of these melodramas.
Glossing over the attempting to destroy a free and open election will force the Left into a position of supporting the idea of government surveilling U.S. citizens, planting spies into the campaigns of political opponents, peddling opposition research dirt to federal courts to deceive them into granting warrants to spy on U.S. citizens, and weaponizing federal bureaucracies to pursue political enemies. Even fake news cannot make John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strzok into sympathetic Time magazine cover victims of Trump.
Progressives do not praise anymore, as they did a year ago, Robert Mueller’s “All-Stars” or “Dream Team” of Ivy League whiz kids who were supposed to draw and quarter the uncouth Trump in a matter of weeks. Now some of the dream teamers have left under a cloud of bias, and more may soon follow. Mueller himself has gone from the dreaded Inspector Javert to the comical Inspector Clouseau. According to his absurd mandate, Mueller was asked to investigate a crime that did not exist, while ignoring plenty of crimes that most certainly did.
The American people know that there was not a Holocaust on their border and that their often slandered border patrol officers are not the Waffen SS, that Mexico does not act like a particularly friendly power, that illegal aliens will do almost anything to enter a country illegally, which, otherwise, many do not seem especially fond of once they make it in, and that the progressive movement must somehow abort Donald Trump’s presidency before a booming economy and a more secure world abroad make that impossible.
Content created by the Center for American Greatness, Inc. is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a significant audience. For licensing opportunities for our original content, please contact licensing@centerforamericangreatness.com.
A month from now there will be a new manufactured news story that Donald Trump is savage, represents an existential danger, or is unhinged. We will hear of another Trump official cornered and driven out from a liberal-owned Beltway or New York City restaurant. An unhinged Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) will rant some more about impeachment.
And then the current hysteria over the border detainments will be filed, and go the way of the “s—hole countries” frenzy or Melania’s jacket melodrama.
We’ve already been through the dizzying odyssey of legal suits in three states over supposedly fraudulent voting machines, the nullification of the Electoral College effort, the meltdown on Inauguration Day, the Emoluments Clause tizzy, the 25th Amendment con, the various Russian collusion hysterias, the leaked phone call to the Australian prime minister, the Michael Wolff Fire and Furyfantasies, the Dudley Do-Right James Comey pre-indictment book tour, and all the surreal assassination chic stories, from Kathy Griffin’s beheading photo to the Shakespearean troupe’s ritual stabbing of Trump.
One day the president is supposedly going to blow up the world by calling Kim Jong-un “little rocket man,” and the next he is a partner in genocide for not blowing up the world but reaching out to Kim.
One moment Trump will tank the economy and wreck the stock market, the next the undeniable Trump boom is not really his own but Obama’s. Give the media credit: it found a way to explain why 3.8 official unemployment and greater than 3 percent GDP growth is a bad thing (it will heat up the planet, lead to a crash, mask Trump’s crudity and make impossible impeachment, etc.)
Almost every Hollywood grandee has after 500 days weighed in on Trump to showcase his unique talents—the periodic “F–k Trump” rants from Robert De Niro, the Jim Carrey paint-by-numbers kindergarten drawings, the doped-up Johnny Depp hope of a John Wilkes Booth redux, or the Madonna foul-mouthed dream of an exploded White House. We cannot get much creepier than Stephen Colbert’s reference to “Putin’s c—holster” or Peter Fonda’s call for Baron Trump to be caged with pedophiles. The ossified Democratic grandees have had their say, from Joe Biden’s adolescent threat to beat up Trump and Eric Holder’s inane talk about a knife fight to Senator Kamala Harris’s “joke” about exiting an elevator alive, leaving a dead Trump behind in it.
NeverTrumpers have called for the GOP to lose the midterms, have castigated an “oily” Mike Pence, have called for the deportation of “contemptible Republican cowards” and the welcoming of illegal aliens in their place, and have suggested crazy theories about why Melania Trump was out of the public eye for weeks. Nothing they say on MSNBC or CNN shocks anymore.
Over the Top . . . and Beyond
So last week’s Holocaust/Japanese Internment hysteria narrative at the border will soon fade, too.
In particular, the charge that the border holding areas are akin to Nazi extermination camps does not resonate well with the public, even as Trump polls on illegal immigration better than do his critics.
Second, the fake news epidemic has discredited much of the attack on Trump, the supposedly cruel-hearted nativist restrictionist—from the “fake but accurate” Time magazine cover to using Obama-era photos of “cages” to impugn ongoing Trump policies. What is going on in the United States is akin to the popular pushback in Italy and Germany to the insanity of elites opening up borders, virtue signaling, smearing their critics, and then ensuring themselves the influence, power, and money to navigate around the consequences of their own policies.
Third, once Trump recalibrated the policy to allow illegal alien parents to stay with their kids as they pursue their mostly falsely constructed amnesty pleas, progressives have fallen back to the essentially nihilistic position that no one should be detained. That is tantamount to a call for the destruction of the border itself and an end to national sovereignty. The call to abolish ICE, and to expose their agents to harm, is not a winning issue. If Trump was still winning a majority of support in clumsily following the law, the Democrats will not win majority support by smugly breaking it.
Fourth, the tactic of storming restaurants to shout down and expel government officials in their off-hours, and the media screaming and crying on the air is rich fuel for a Trump reelection, not repudiation. Once Black Lives Matter started pouring into restaurants, or immigration activists shut down freeways, or a few of the #MeToo accusers went back 30 years to redefine as rape an unwise, unpleasant, and creepy act of coitus with current repugnant Hollywood and journalistic grandees, the public began to become confused over means and ends.
In general, nothing hurts a cause more than going full French Revolution.
Fifth, Mexico is certainly not a sympathetic player. The likely upcoming election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador will crystalize the absurdity of a supposedly aggrieved Mexico, as the beneficiary of a $71 billion trade surplus with the United States (such imbalances were not supposed to happen according to the architects of NAFTA 34 years ago).
Americans are not in sympathy with the $30 billion in remittances sent home to Mexico by its expatriate community in the United States, knowing many of them are beneficiaries of America’s generous local, state, and federal social welfare aid that frees up such cash. Americans do not like the idea of a would-be foreign leader boasting that the United States has no rights of sovereignty inside its own country. In the midst of a contrived transit of Central Americans across Mexico to the U.S. border, Obrador is calling for more Mexican citizens to crash into the U.S. For a country, a people, and a leader who feign to dislike their neighbor to the north, they certainly do not seem to be able to live without it.
Sixth, too often an old photo of the same detention centers used in the same way, or a quote from President Obama (“Do not send your children to the borders. If they do make it, they’ll get sent back.”) or Hillary Clinton (“We have to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”) pops up that makes even the best efforts at mock outrage pretty much just mock.
Distractions from the Coming Storm?
Finally, there are some bombshell stories coming up on abuses of the Obama Justice Department and FBI relating to the fraudulent information used to obtain FISA warrants, the planting of FBI informants in the Trump campaign, the unmasking and leaking of names of surveilled Americans by the Obama national security apparat, and likely indictments of some former FBI officials for their illegal behavior relating to the Clinton email scandal.
Various hearings, lawsuits, and IG reports likely will confirm the Obama Administration “knew” Hillary was going to win the 2016 presidential election and therefore did not worry much about breaking the law to ensure she did. In other words, the Obama Administration systematically used the agencies of the federal government to interfere with a U.S. election campaign in order to help the candidate of its own party win. That fact marks one of the most sordid political scandals in U.S. history and explains both why these anti-Trump hysterias will continue to be contrived to deflect attention from Obama’s own culpability in such government-wide abuse, and yet why eventually the sheer magnitude of such wrongdoing will overshadow all of these melodramas.
Glossing over the attempting to destroy a free and open election will force the Left into a position of supporting the idea of government surveilling U.S. citizens, planting spies into the campaigns of political opponents, peddling opposition research dirt to federal courts to deceive them into granting warrants to spy on U.S. citizens, and weaponizing federal bureaucracies to pursue political enemies. Even fake news cannot make John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strzok into sympathetic Time magazine cover victims of Trump.
Progressives do not praise anymore, as they did a year ago, Robert Mueller’s “All-Stars” or “Dream Team” of Ivy League whiz kids who were supposed to draw and quarter the uncouth Trump in a matter of weeks. Now some of the dream teamers have left under a cloud of bias, and more may soon follow. Mueller himself has gone from the dreaded Inspector Javert to the comical Inspector Clouseau. According to his absurd mandate, Mueller was asked to investigate a crime that did not exist, while ignoring plenty of crimes that most certainly did.
The American people know that there was not a Holocaust on their border and that their often slandered border patrol officers are not the Waffen SS, that Mexico does not act like a particularly friendly power, that illegal aliens will do almost anything to enter a country illegally, which, otherwise, many do not seem especially fond of once they make it in, and that the progressive movement must somehow abort Donald Trump’s presidency before a booming economy and a more secure world abroad make that impossible.
Content created by the Center for American Greatness, Inc. is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a significant audience. For licensing opportunities for our original content, please contact licensing@centerforamericangreatness.com.
NO PURCHASING OF BEER OR WINE WITHOUT A LICENSE ...
The big picture: The SCOTUS decision enabling voting restrictions
Exactly five years ago, the Supreme Court eliminated a key provision under the landmark Voting Rights Act, exempting nine states — mostly in the South with a history of racial discrimination — from seeking federal approval before changing their voting laws.
Why it matters: The 5-4 ruling in Shelby v. Holder paved the way for a deluge of restrictive voting laws that voting rights advocates say disproportionately limit racial minorities' and other marginalized communities’ access to the ballot box. Meanwhile, those championing the restrictive polices, claim it help curb what they say is widespread voter fraud.
The backdrop: The 2013 ruling left minorities' voting rights in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia — as well as counties in seven other states, vulnerable to suppression.
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote in 2013, "Our country has changed" — citing the racial progress the country had made since the Voting Rights Act was put in place in 1965 — and urged a bitterly divided Congress to come up with a new formula to determine which states need federal oversight. But five years later, there hasn't been much progress from lawmakers.
Today, 34 states have wide-ranging laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification at the ballot box, per the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, and Virginia, are among those with the country's strictest laws. A federal court ruled last year Texas' restrictions are racially discriminatory, but a federal appeals court overturned the ruling in April.
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, the GOP-controlled legislature is set to approve a voter ID ballot measure. In 2016, a federal court struck down its previous voter ID law, saying it “target[s] African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”
Proof-of-citizenship
Only Arizona enforces a law requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. But the state reached an agreement earlier this month to remedy the system that disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters.
Alabama, Georgia, and Kansas had similar laws, but they were blocked. However, Kansas' Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an immigration hardliner who led President Trump's now-disbanded voter fraud commission and championed the law, plans to appeal.
Between 2013-2016, the North Carolina counties once under federal oversight closed an average of 12% of voting locations, as well as early voting hours, which a Republican election board official said would allow pollsters to “monitor voter fraud more effectively," per The News & Observer.
Election officials in places including New York City, Florida, and North Carolina have come under fire for illegally removing hundreds of thousands of voters. WNYC reported that Hispanic voters in Brooklyn were hit the hardest.
A 2016 Reuters analysis found that Ohio's system, the most aggressive in the nation and recently upheld by the Supreme Court, had removed tens of thousands of voters, which disproportionately affected minorities who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. That's because Republicans are more likely to vote in both congressional elections and presidential contests, the report said.
Exactly five years ago, the Supreme Court eliminated a key provision under the landmark Voting Rights Act, exempting nine states — mostly in the South with a history of racial discrimination — from seeking federal approval before changing their voting laws.
Why it matters: The 5-4 ruling in Shelby v. Holder paved the way for a deluge of restrictive voting laws that voting rights advocates say disproportionately limit racial minorities' and other marginalized communities’ access to the ballot box. Meanwhile, those championing the restrictive polices, claim it help curb what they say is widespread voter fraud.
The backdrop: The 2013 ruling left minorities' voting rights in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia — as well as counties in seven other states, vulnerable to suppression.
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote in 2013, "Our country has changed" — citing the racial progress the country had made since the Voting Rights Act was put in place in 1965 — and urged a bitterly divided Congress to come up with a new formula to determine which states need federal oversight. But five years later, there hasn't been much progress from lawmakers.
State of play:
Voter ID
Just hours after the 2013 ruling, Alabama and Texas announced plans to implement voter identification laws previously stymied under the VRA, since they no longer needed federal approval.
Just hours after the 2013 ruling, Alabama and Texas announced plans to implement voter identification laws previously stymied under the VRA, since they no longer needed federal approval.
Today, 34 states have wide-ranging laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification at the ballot box, per the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, and Virginia, are among those with the country's strictest laws. A federal court ruled last year Texas' restrictions are racially discriminatory, but a federal appeals court overturned the ruling in April.
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, the GOP-controlled legislature is set to approve a voter ID ballot measure. In 2016, a federal court struck down its previous voter ID law, saying it “target[s] African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”
Proof-of-citizenship
Only Arizona enforces a law requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. But the state reached an agreement earlier this month to remedy the system that disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters.
Alabama, Georgia, and Kansas had similar laws, but they were blocked. However, Kansas' Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an immigration hardliner who led President Trump's now-disbanded voter fraud commission and championed the law, plans to appeal.
Polling closures:
A report from the Leadership Conference Education Fund found that 381 of the roughly 800 counties previously under federal oversight have closed 868 polling places between 2012 and 2016. Those closings have been attributed to budget constraints, but a Reuters investigationalso found racial disparities in closures in Georgia.
A report from the Leadership Conference Education Fund found that 381 of the roughly 800 counties previously under federal oversight have closed 868 polling places between 2012 and 2016. Those closings have been attributed to budget constraints, but a Reuters investigationalso found racial disparities in closures in Georgia.
Between 2013-2016, the North Carolina counties once under federal oversight closed an average of 12% of voting locations, as well as early voting hours, which a Republican election board official said would allow pollsters to “monitor voter fraud more effectively," per The News & Observer.
Voter roll purges:
States periodically update their voting rolls, but seven choose to remove voters for being deemed inactive and failing to respond to a mailed notice from state officials.
States periodically update their voting rolls, but seven choose to remove voters for being deemed inactive and failing to respond to a mailed notice from state officials.
Election officials in places including New York City, Florida, and North Carolina have come under fire for illegally removing hundreds of thousands of voters. WNYC reported that Hispanic voters in Brooklyn were hit the hardest.
A 2016 Reuters analysis found that Ohio's system, the most aggressive in the nation and recently upheld by the Supreme Court, had removed tens of thousands of voters, which disproportionately affected minorities who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. That's because Republicans are more likely to vote in both congressional elections and presidential contests, the report said.
CAN YOU SUPERSIZE THAT FOR ME
Democrats face own battles after Sarah Sanders' rejection from Red Hen
Put aside the policy fights for a moment: The debate over whether Trump administration officials deserve to peacefully eat a meal in public tells us a lot about Democratic politics in 2018.
Why it matters: Public shaming and incivility isn't just a nasty expression of outrage. It's targeted at making life difficult, and even serving as a deterrent, for public servants who carry out controversial agendas, writes Brian Beutler, the editor of The Pod Save America website.
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