Trump Adheres To The Law On Immigration, Shocking Lawless Democrats. Peter J. Ferrara – “The plan to deport about one million illegal aliens announced by Acting United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ken Cuccinelli is not a matter of discretion. Cuccinelli is just following the law, and already issued court orders.” No matter, another essay on the site details how the issue is being used to gen up partisan impeachment froth.

“Those subject to deportation under the plan have already had their cases adjudicated in the United States, with immigration judges ruling they have lost their cases, and ordering them deported. Cuccinelli is just the first federal official, besides President Trump, brave enough to follow and implement the law.
…
The Democrat’s continuing illegal resistance should not be surprising, because these same Democrats have refused to abide by the rule of law with the choice of American citizens to elect Donald Trump in 2016. Instead, they have engaged in what they call Resistance, which is actually an outright Insurrection.
…
Remember what Democrats did the last time they refused to accept the results of a democratic election. They started a Civil War, rebelling against the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, because he wanted to end slavery.

Pelosi Rejects U.S. Sovereignty – U.S. Immigration Subject to Laws of “A Global Society”… sundance – “While explaining why she will not allow congress to debate, change or modify U.S. immigration laws, Pelosi outlines how the United States is part of a global society, without borders and without any sovereign right to impede the “human society” from entering our nation. Therefore, according to her outlook and worldview, U.S. politicians have no right to stop any migration movement.”

“Keep this in mind as we approach the 2020 election. The Speaker of the House is essentially saying, openly, publicly and without any reservation or concern, the United States of America is no longer a sovereign nation.

Pelosi vs. AOC: It’s a Beautiful Thing. David Limbaugh – “everything about modern leftist ideology is extreme. It is extreme in substance, and its practitioners are self-absorbed, sanctimonious, uncompromising and often irrational.”

“Nancy, and so many progressives, use racial smears against conservatives to neuter them — not because they believe they’re racists. They know better. It’s simply a cynical power play, and it always has been.

While it is delicious to see this tactic thrown back in Pelosi’s laughing face by one with stronger intersectionality credentials, let us not allow ourselves the luxury of sanguinity over this blissful moment. In the long run, it won’t matter much in the scheme of things.

Don’t be fooled. This is not really a battle over ideology. Nancy Pelosi and the establishment wing of the Democratic Party are not — let me repeat, they are not — moderates. These people all embrace varying degrees of an extreme progressive agenda including radical environmentalism; socialized medicine; socialism writ large, evisceration of gun rights; abortion on demand; health care and welfare for illegal immigrants; open borders; confiscatory personal- and corporate-income tax hikes; softness on Iran and terrorism; leftist judicial activism; wholesale end runs around the Constitution to secure their power, such as abolishing the Electoral College and allowing 16-year-olds and felons to vote; and so much more.

Transcript of President Trump and AG Bill Barr Citizenship and Census Announcement… sundance – “Rather than listen to media pundits explain what President Trump and AG Bill Barr said today at the White House, here’s the transcript:” Fairly short, well worth reading to see what is actually happening, the barriers being faced in conducting proper government business, the complicity of the courts, the President’s abilities to find alternative solutions, and how the President’s opposition is stimulating government behavior his opponents say they abhor but engage in themselves (except in a legal way).

Why Wind And Solar Will Never Work. John Hinderaker – “This paper by Mark Mills of the the Manhattan Institute and Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, titled “The ‘New Energy Economy’: An Exercise in Magical Thinking,” does an excellent job of explaining why wind and solar energy will never replace fossil fuels or nuclear energy as a primary energy source.”

Bombshell Claim: Scientists Find “Man-made Climate Change Doesn’t Exist In Practice” Tyler Durden – “A new scientific study could bust wide open deeply flawed fundamental assumptions underlying controversial climate legislation and initiatives such as the Green New Deal, namely, the degree to which ‘climate change’ is driven by natural phenomena vs. man-made issues measured as carbon footprint.” See also Lubos Motl on this paper.

Fact-Check: Nevada’s Rep. Susie Lee Fearmongers Over Yucca Mountain. Alex Berezow – “While her counterargument is at least civil, it spreads disinformation about geology and public health.” When the children get dragged into an argument like this, Godwin’s rule of Hitler analogies comes to mind.

“An absolutely excellent, must-read article by physicist Dr. Richard Muller explains the science behind nuclear waste disposal. We routinely say that nuclear waste needs to be secure for about 10,000 years. That’s because, by then, most of the radioactivity has decayed away. But in reality, after merely 300 years, the level of radioactivity has declined by roughly 90%. So, the question isn’t, “Can we guarantee that Yucca is eternally secure forever and ever amen?” but “Can we ensure that Yucca is safe for about 300 years?” And that answer is yes.

Dr. Muller really slams the door shut by comparing the risk posed by a leak at Yucca Mountain to the risk posed by uranium found naturally in the soil: …

The science is utterly conclusive: Yucca Mountain is not a threat to Nevadans’ health. Grandstanding and fearmongering by politicians is why America has a completely backward energy policy.

Why Do Democrats Hate Jobs So Much? I & I Editorial Board – “The economic case against the minimum wage is robust. But the freedom argument is just as strong. It’s a shame we don’t hear it more in the only nation that was ever founded in the cause of liberty.”

Trump Right Again – More Puerto Rican Government Officials Indicted for Corruption, Wire Fraud, Money Laundering and Conspiracy… sundance – “This is the widespread corruption President Trump previously drew attention to. This overt and in-the-open corruption is why Nancy Pelosi took the entire Democrat caucus to Puerto Rico in January for a vacation with her favorite lobbyists.”

Barr Is Right: The Trump-Russia Conspiracy Is ‘Bogus,’ And Mueller Proved It. David Harsanyi – “Suddenly, investigations are bad.”

“The bogus Russia narrative, after all, caused tremendous damage. It consumed political media coverage for two years, leading to wild speculation and a string of outright false stories designed to undermined trust in the legitimacy of the electoral system for partisan reasons.

It was far more effective in interfering in American politics than anything a Russian Twitter army or hackers could ever accomplish. Simply because Democrats have now moved onto more politically useful obstruction charges doesn’t mean we don’t deserve an explanation about how a counterintelligence investigation against political opponents could make all of this happen.

Carlson versus Omar. Scott Johnson – Quotable quote: “Our country rescued Ilhan Omar from the single poorest place on Earth. We didn’t do it for the money, we did it because we are kind people. How did she respond to the remarkable gift we gave her? She scolded us, called us names, showered us with contempt.”

The Media Intentionally Mislead Americans on Trump’s Huawei Position… sundance – “The U.S. media are desperate to find something to criticize and openly cheering for failure, so long as it provides fuel for their anti-Trump narrative.”

“With President Donald Trump making massive strides toward peace and stability surrounding North Korea, the media cannot accept -nor allow- the common sense solutions to succeed. President Trump is clearly perceived as a risk because his success highlights just how useless and manipulative a professional political class of consultants, advisors and DC think-tanks really are.
…
DC journalism has evolved into reveling about the never ending process and, as a consequence, media completely ignore the end point, miss the bottom line, don’t actually SEE the subject matter, and never actually attempt to discover solutions.
…
As part of their unspoken strategy when they encounter a solution driven approach, the media (writ large) fall back on the Gruber Principle: relying on “the stupidity of the American voter” not to understand how the lies and talking points are being distributed.
…
Writing a trade agreement between a free-market (USA) and a controlled-market (China) is where the challenge lies. One of the inherent issues will always be how the free-market system can hold the controlled-market system accountable if they cheat.

See Maine, Medicaid, and the Gruber Principle by David Catron, 13 Nov 2017 for an example of the Gruber Principle. “The Democrats rely heavily on “the stupidity of the American voter,” as Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber famously phrased it.”

Sunday Talks: American Pravda Discuss North Korea… sundance – “Everything about this interview, including the narrative surrounding Kim Jong-Un, is pure CIA horsepucky…. all of it.” … “All of the opposition to Donald Trump is one long continuum of self-interest and risk management.”

Left-wing thuggery: The battle lines are being drawn in Portland, OR. Thomas Lifson – “When local officials appear to wink and nod as masked leftist thugs openly assemble and attack conservatives, it’s time for the feds to come in and protect civil rights.”

“Antifa is part of an interstate conspiracy to deny civil rights to conservatives. Thanks to the civil rights movement, there are established procedures for dealing with such malign groups. It’s time to start using those tools.

By Any Means Necessary: It Won’t Stop with Andy Ngo. Richard Fernandez – “the combativeness of the last few days alarmed those accustomed to regarding themselves as civilized. Nicholas Kristof tried to explain the savagery by explaining that the natural virtue of liberals had been infected by conservative hate and that consequently, some were succumbing to their baser instincts.”

“There was little consideration given to the possibility that liberalism — and Republican conservatism — had lost its soul long before Trump; that somewhere in the decades of media lies, PR myth-making, money printing, cynical foreign policy, abortion and political flirtation with foreign tyrants the establishment had done a deal with the devil quite without the assistance of the Donald.
…
It’s not surprising that the French Terror began with the purge of the moderates and the urgency of virtue.

Where the Democrats are Trying to Take Us. Steve McCann – “The primary threat to this nation is not Donald Trump nor his supporters but an evolving autocratic oligarchy made up of the hierarchy of American Left, which includes elements of the political class, the mainstream media, the education establishment and, most recently, the titans of Silicon Valley.”

“They are doing so by promoting a so-called benevolent and just central government (i.e. socialism) dominated in perpetuity by the “enlightened” while promoting their brand of socialism and obliterating any opposition. Additionally, their evolving position on abortion and euthanasia reflects the mindset that deems virtually all human beings as mere pawns of the state.

Elitist Vehicles: You Subsidize Them, But You Can’t Afford Them. Eric Peters – “And that’s not the worst of it.”

“The average person can’t afford this — in money or time. But he is forced to subsidize this, which is an interesting thing given the hardest pushers of EVs are affluent liberals— who used to be people who feigned concern about the economic troubles of the average person.
…
And no one seems to be angry about this.
…
Elitist Vehicles — the electric ones — are morally despicable.

California judge blocks even more border wall construction. Jazz Shaw – “Keep in mind that only a few weeks ago, a different federal judge rejected a separate suit brought by House Democrats attempting to the exact same thing and for the same stated reasons. In doing so, he cited the exact same sections of federal code I linked to in the previous paragraph. Since at least two courts are making opposite calls on the same question, it needs to be booted up the chain, and the quicker the better.”

The Democrat debate farce. E. Jeffrey Ludwig – “They featured hilarious, inconsequential, and pure bilge being passed off as serious political worldviews.”

“What characterizes a farce? A farce is a literary piece that contains highly improbable situations, stereotyped characters, violent horseplay, extravagant exaggeration.” Collinsdictionary.com suggests that “If you describe a situation or event as a farce, you mean that it is so disorganized or ridiculous that you cannot take it seriously.”
…
The answers were vapid and repetitive, yet there was an aggressiveness permeating the event that the interviewers could barely control.
…
Most of the debaters insisted that climate change is properly called a “climate crisis.” How anyone of them is qualified to deal with life-defying changes in nature of the magnitude claimed is never addressed.
…
It is hilarious to hear 20 persons boasting “I am the best” when their tirades and self-aggrandizement lacks substance and evidence. While laughing uproariously, we can reject them all.

In debates, Democrats move toward open borders. Byron York – “The Trump team was obviously delighted. But some Democrats were clearly concerned.”

“Raise your hand if you think it should be a civil offense, rather than a crime, to cross the border without documentation,” said NBC’s José Díaz-Balart.

All 10 candidates — Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg, Harris, Gillibrand, Bennet, Swalwell, Hickenlooper, Yang, Williamson — raised their hands in approval. That moment was perhaps the Democratic Party’s most significant step yet toward embracing a policy of open borders.
…
Democrats did not stop with opening the border. On Thursday night, they also unanimously supported a policy of offering health care to everyone in the country illegally
…
All that happened in just a couple of days. There is no indication it will be the end of such proposals in the Democratic race; after all, it is just the first debate in a long race.

A Democratic debate that ignores China and trade isn’t much of a debate. James Pethokoukis – “The core of Trumponomics is a protectionist trade policy built on tariffs, both threatened and implemented.” This is interesting in contrast to Mark Perry’s Happy 218th Birthday to French classical liberal economist Frederic Bastiat! – Bastiat’s biggest contribution to economics was “his fresh and witty expressions of economic truths made them so understandable and compelling that the truths became hard to ignore.” Pethokoulis and other economics could do well to set aside their bias and desire to oversimplify and consider Bestiat’s famous essay “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen” and comments about “legal plunder,” especially “from the viewpoint of the consumer.”

Right on Gerrymandering, Wrong on the Census. National Review – convoluted, complex decisions are an indication of a problem in decision making.

“Roberts’s work in the census case was far more troubling. Working in concert with the Court’s liberals in a decision with a confusing mishmash of opinions complementing and contradicting his own, he found that Trump had failed to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act.
…
as Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito spelled out in separate opinions, it is not the Court’s job to play psychoanalyst, and the decision paves the way for courts to scrutinize policymakers’ motives much more broadly.
…
Since Trump’s election, liberal judges have adopted the stance that the usual rules don’t apply; that the president’s unusual — and, yes, frequently lamentable — approach to governing requires abnormally high levels of judicial oversight, future consequences be damned. This time, Roberts joined in.

Roberts The Mind Reader Joins Liberal Justices On The Census. Thomas McArdle – “Chief Justice John Roberts is giving further sign that he is yet another unpleasant surprise in GOP appointments to the highest level of the Judicial Branch, following in the footsteps of David Souter (Bush 41), Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor (Reagan), and John Paul Stevens (Ford).”

“The Court’s holding reflects an unprecedented departure from our deferential review of discretionary agency decisions,” Justice Clarence Thomas warns in his dissent, joined by Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. “And, if taken seriously as a rule of decision, this holding would transform administrative law … the Court has opened a Pandora’s box,” Thomas declared.

Motivated by politics and ideology, lawyers would challenge all sorts of Executive Branch decisions “with accusations of pretext, deceit, and illicit motives” leading to “an endless morass of discovery and policy disputes,” Thomas cautions. “Now that the Court has opened up this avenue of attack, opponents of executive actions have strong incentives to craft narratives that would derail them. Moreover, even if the effort to invalidate the action is ultimately unsuccessful, the Court’s decision enables partisans to use the courts to harangue executive officers through depositions, discovery, delay, and distraction.”

The establishment media, of course, would dutifully report such endless haranguing as scandals.
…
“For the first time ever,” Thomas writes, “the Court invalidates an agency action solely because it questions the sincerity of the agency’s otherwise adequate rationale.”
…
In his majority ruling, Chief Justice Roberts claims that the law “calls for an explanation for agency action. What was provided here was more of a distraction.” In truth, what was provided was an explanation Roberts and the four liberals found unsavory.

SCOTUS rules against citizenship question on census … for now. Jazz Shaw – “In a long and rambling explanation,”

“Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the decision, and as you read through it you may find it frustrating. I’ve been making the argument here for some time now that adding a question that’s been asked repeatedly on one form of the census or another for virtually the entire history of the Republic should be a given. In part of the ruling, Robers writes precisely the same thing.

Roberts also goes on in other paragraphs to declare that the Secretary of Commerce is perfectly within his rights to add or delete questions from the census. So how is it that we’re not done with this and adding the question? In a long and rambling explanation, the court explains that the challenges brought to the addition of the question are based on the belief that certain individuals (illegal aliens, specifically) will be less likely to respond if the question is asked. They also openly admit that failing to respond would be the fault of the individual since a response is required by law.

But because the census results are used to apportion federal funding, a drop in response rates could reasonably be expected to impact the distribution of those funds adversely for certain communities. Still, the court doesn’t go so far as to say that the question can’t or won’t be added. What’s missing is an adequate explanation of why the Secretary wants to add it. In other words, it’s being tossed back down the line for a fresh look and a request for more details. In the meantime, since the risk exists that the petitioner’s fears might be realized, the lower court’s ruling that they can’t add the question yet is allowed to s

convoluted, contradictory, complex, rambling – all signs of dissonance and rationalizations of farce.

The FBI Tragedy: Elites above the Law. [warning, nagware site] Victor Davis Hanson – “In short, in about every growing scandal of the past two years — FISA, illegal leaking, spying on a presidential candidate, lying under oath, obstructing justice — someone in the FBI is involved.”

“In sum, why did so many top FBI officials, some with long experience in the FBI, exhibit such bad judgment and display such unethical behavior, characterized by arrogance, a sense of entitlement, and a belief that they were above both the law and the Constitution itself? Were they really just rogue agents, lawyers, and administrators, or are they emblematic of an FBI culture sorely gone wrong?
…
The entire Mueller investigation did not reflect highly either on Mueller or the number of former and current DOJ and FBI personnel he brought on to his team.
…
Mueller thereby established a new but lunatic precedent in American jurisprudence in which a prosecutor who fails to find sufficient cause to indict a suspect nonetheless releases supposedly incriminating evidence, with a wink that the now-besmirched suspect cannot be exonerated of the alleged crimes.
…
Fairly or not, the current FBI tragedy is that an American citizen should be duly worried about his constitutional rights any time he is approached by such senior FBI officials. That is not a slur on the rank and file, but the legacy of the supposed best and brightest of the agency and their distortions of the bureau’s once professional creed.

John Dean Blows Hole in Democrats’ Impeachment Push. Jonathon Moseley – “What the “Mueller Manifesto” needs, Democrats have all but admitted, is some Broadway razz-a-ma-tazz: A chorus line. Cheerleaders. Anything to try to get voters to listen.”

“So John Dean admitted to opposing Donald Trump before Trump was even elected. And Dean described his level of disgust as doubling him over with pain in his stomach at the thought of a President Donald Trump.

So Dean let the cat out of the bag. This has nothing to do with anything that Trump did after becoming President. Dean was already desperate to stop Trump from becoming President. This has nothing to do with the law, impeachment, obstruction of justice or anything else that Trump did. It is all about politics. Dean wanted Hillary Clinton to win — by his own admission. John Dean is just one of the many spoiled children of the Left who didn’t get his way.
…
Former U.S. attorneys Joyce White Vance (formerly of the Northern District of Alabama) and Barbara McQuade (formerly of the Eastern District of Michigan) spent the afternoon giving misleading answers. Time after time, these former federal prosecutors were asked about snippets from the Mueller Manifesto. These former federal prosecutors then repeatedly offered their mind-reading, clairvoyant speculation about what people referenced in the Mueller report were probably thinking. But they tried to hide this and make their answers sound like they were actually testifying to facts or legal procedures. Time after time, question after question, these frightening former prosecutors substituted their own wish-fulfillment for the actual words of the Mueller report. They gave testimony about what they hoped the people involved were thinking.

“We Build the Wall” border gate ordered locked open by international group. Jazz Shaw – “But the story isn’t as clear-cut as the coverage at The Hill suggests. Reading into some of the local coverage, a few more nuggets emerge.”

“And how did the IBWC get involved? You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the ACLU had been calling people in the local area and urging them to contact the commission to complain. The excuse being used was that the wall blocked access to Monument One, a structure marking the three-way border of Mexico, Texas and New Mexico. But according to Kolfage, it was always intended that both the IBWC and CBP would take charge of the gate and determine when it would be locked or unlocked for access to the monument and how CBP would staff the gate to prevent the entry of illegal aliens.

Democrats want to roll back protections for gun manufacturers. Jazz Shaw – “The only thing preventing liberal activist groups from litigating the firearms industry out of existence is the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005 (PLCAA).”

“Of course, if there were any honesty in the anti-gun movement, they would suggest that the major automotive companies could be sued every time a drunk driver kills someone or a case of vehicular homicide crops up. On an average year, according to the FBI, more than 1,500 people are stabbed to death and another 500 are beaten to death with blunt objects. I suppose Hillerich & Bradsby (the makers of the Louisville Slugger) and all manufacturers of kitchen knife sets should be sued out of existence as well.

It would be nice if we lived in a world where the PLCAA wasn’t necessary, but that’s unfortunately not the case. We are a nation full of duplicitous political actors who will abuse our system of courts to achieve goals they can’t manage through legislative action. If the PLCAA is weakened or removed entirely, the people who have failed to repeal the Second Amendment will stack up one lawsuit after another against firearms manufacturers until they are run out of business or are forced to price their products beyond the reach of most citizens. That’s what the Democrats want, after all, and the ends will justify the means.

After fighting Portland residents, Oregon department places boulders to discourage homeless campers. John Sexton – “Instead of applauding the neighborhood for cleaning up the area and trying to do something to prevent it becoming a mess again, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) that owned a portion of the land demanded the rose bushes be removed. But the best part was the reason that ODOT offered”

Outrage: California stiffed farmers over land seized for high-speed rail route. Ed Morrissey – “More than three years after the state of California seized land through eminent domain for its high-speed rail boondoggle, the state has yet to pay farmers expenses they owe them. And in some cases, they still owe them for the land as well”

Good news for Northern Virginia criminals. Paul Mirengoff – “Two veteran prosecutors in Northern Virginia were defeated yesterday by leftists backed to the hilt by George Soros’ money.”

“It’s not really the job of prosecutors to institute “criminal justice reform.” It’s their job vigorously to enforce the criminal laws adopted by the legislature.

In practice,of course, prosecutors have the power to undo the legislature’s will and to undermine proper law enforcement in other ways, as well. Dehghani-Tafti and Descano seem determined to do just that. Dehghani-Tafti has said as much. (She also attacked the police based on a bogus claim of “brutality.” Two local police organizations demanded an apology, but as far as I know received none. It will be interesting to see how, as the top country prosecutor, she gets along with those who keep the public safe).

In view of all this, it’s clear why Soros (along with Terry McAuliffe) backed the two lefty challengers so strongly. His PAC spent nearly $1 million on these two races. (Remarkably, this local news story about the Arlington County race never mentions Soros’ massive involvement).
…
Criminal justice reform may be “one of the civil rights issues of our time,” but if we aren’t careful law and order may become one of the central issue of the time to come.

Victory Over Communism! Texas Decriminalizes Lemonade Stands. Steven Hayward – “Reminds me a little of 1993, when Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan remarked that the most significant achievement of Congress that year was decriminalizing babysitting.” Some wins among the losses.

Just how deep and entrenched is the Deep State?. Dennis Jamison – “Despite MSM silence, or follow up denial of the existence of the Deep State, American citizens are getting bits and pieces of the overall puzzle of this insidious un-American leviathan that exists in the core of the proverbial swamp in our nation’s capital city.”

Leftism Makes People Meaner: Reflections on the Torture of Paul Manafort. Dennis Prager – “As Dershowitz said to me on my radio show, what Vance is doing reminds him of Stalin and Beria”

One Year Later: The Internet Thrives Without ‘Net Neutrality’. I & I Editorial Board – One of the Democratic commissioners on the FCC predicted that the net neutrality repeal would “green light our nation’s largest broadband providers to engage in anti-consumer practices, including blocking, slowing down traffic, and paid prioritization of online applications and services.”

“The internet is still functioning. … download speeds shot up almost 36%, and upload speeds climbed 22% … There are more users than ever. … During President Trump’s first year in office, in fact, the number of people without access to a broadband connection dropped by 18%.
…
And as to the warnings about free speech: To the extent that free speech is being impeded on the internet, it isn’t coming from the Internet Service Providers like Comcast or Cox, but from Big Tech companies like Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Twitter. They, not the ISPs, are the ones restricting access to content they don’t like, removing it altogether, or making it unprofitable.

Yet, incredibly, the net neutrality fight isn’t over.
…
Dozens of state attorneys general, advocacy groups and tech companies are suing the government to overturn the FCC’s repeal.
…
We can only hope that Congress remains gridlocked for the time being. After all, the case for imposing any net neutrality rules diminishes day by day as the horror stories about fail to materialize.

Net neutrality has been dead for a year: What you need to know. Marguerite Reardon – “A year after the Obama-era rules were wiped from the books, net neutrality supporters continue to pressure Congress and await a federal appeals court decision.” i.e. more lawfare based on imagined fears and ideological fantasies.

Jordan and Gaetz Expose Pelosi and Nadler’s Ridiculous Political Impeachment Stunt… sundance – “In an effort to create the appearance of hearing credibility the plan was to use testimony from former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean. The plan failed, miserably… Dean was showcased for what he is, a political prop for the left-wing base of MSNBC moonbats.”

“Worth noting, Chairman Jerry Nadler has not requested the appearance of the proclaimed author of the Mueller report, Mr. Robert Mueller himself. The reasoning is transparent; they can’t bring Mueller before the committee because the questioning would show the entire investigation was a fraud from day-one!

Instapundit – Exit quote from Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA): “It was brought up when one of our candidates talked about Russia being a threat, & former president Obama said the 80s are asking for their foreign policy back. Well guess what, this committee is now hearing from the ‘70s, and they want their star witness back.”

The Real Lesson of Watergate Ignored in John Dean’s Testimony and Media Commentary. John Dale Dunn – “the one real lesson of that era is still valid today: Don’t trust the government’s Administrative State bureaucracy — and in particular prosecutors, who are, too often, henchmen using their power and resources unethically, carelessly and ruthlessly.”

“Geoff Shepard, who was a Nixon Defense team member during Watergate events and who has spent 20 years researching original documents and memoranda as well as investigative materials and judicial transcripts on Watergate affairs and events, has found and documented prosecutorial and judicial abuses that tainted the Watergate trials and the Watergate hearings that resulted in Richard Nixon’s resignation.
…
The Shepard books go into great detail on the treacherous, deceitful and dissembling John Dean, who set up the criminal intelligence activities, then ran a botched coverup, and when in trouble for his perfidy, jumped ship and turned witness against his bosses, and therefore was portrayed by the Nixon haters as some kind of virtuous hero. Dean was horrified by the prospect of jail and became a liar and false accuser, never spending a day in jail.
…
Mr. Shepard is disinclined to use the words “deep state,” since he points out, correctly I think, that the deep state of today is just the imbedded partisan and corrupt government bureaucracy of the past.

Shepard shows in his work that judges and prosecutors in the Watergate matter were culpably unethical and allowed partisanship to corrupt justice.

Page Tells Bartiromo He Was A Source For CIA But Later Used To Spin False Narrative Against Trump. Sara Carter – “Edits and Omissions in Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel Report regarding President Donald Trump and Russia are being scrutinized as more information exposes that the report was skewed to make it appear that there may have been obstruction by the administration.”

“In God We Trust” to remain on our money. Jazz Shaw – “Newdow has been knocking around for going on twenty years at this point and always pushing variations of the same schtick. He mostly represents atheists and he doesn’t want the word “God” invoked anywhere in association with the government, citing freedom from religion being every bit as important as freedom of religion in constitutional terms.”

Again: Masterpiece Cakeshop sued for third time for refusing to make a cake that conflicted with owner’s religious beliefs. Allahpundit – “This is what this guy has had to put up with, off and on, for years. He’s been trolled repeatedly in increasingly crass ways in the interest of creating a test case that might vindicate the principle that religious liberty is no answer to public accommodations laws.” There are two other cases heading toward the SCOTUS similar to this one. “I wonder how many Christian business owners will be driven to bankruptcy by fines and litigation expenses before the Court finally settles the matter.”

Vatican: No, you can’t choose your gender. Jazz Shaw – “Reading through the details, this wasn’t really a document focused on transgender individuals so much as an expansion on the church’s teachings regarding marriage.” This emphasizes the the lawfare is indeed persecution of a religious minority

Mexico: We might have to adopt a “safe third country” protocol if this agreement doesn’t work. Ed Morrissey – “It’s fine to reserve judgment until we see whether this has any appreciable effect on the border crisis, but pretending — as the media has been all weekend — that nothing’s changed is silly beyond belief.”

In California, Coffee Is No Longer Carcinogenic. Was It Ever? Josh Bloom – “Only in California could coffee both cause, and prevent cancer.”

“The enforcement of Prop 65 is based on a “bounty hunter” system – any individual can sue a company for failing to “warn” shoppers that their product(s) contain one of the 900+ chemicals now on the list, regardless of whether there is an actual risk or not. The bounty hunters just happen to be law firms, which can make a very nice (but parasitic) living by ambushing company owners with lawsuits, supposedly on behalf of the state of California (hah!), because a product contains a trace of a chemical on the list, despite the fact that roughly 100% of the time the chemical will do no harm.

It’s Time The EPA Was Made To Respect Property Rights, Rule Of Law. I & I Editorial Board – “What has happened, and is still happening, to the Sacketts is further evidence that the federal regulatory machinery is an enabler of bureaucratic and political harassment.”

Democrats Give John Dean Another ‘Big Thrill’. I & I Editorial Board – “The House Judiciary Committee’s lead witness in its Mueller Report hearings this week will be someone who has nothing to do with Donald Trump, nothing to do with Russia, nothing to do with Mueller’s investigation, and who throughout his career could be trusted on virtually nothing.” What’s it about? Fake News and Propaganda.

“And Dean has been obsessed with President Trump. This week, this convicted felon who was spared serving any real time because he delivered big for the political enemies of his boss, may get “his big thrill for the month” once again. But what kind of thrill is it for viewers of a Judiciary Committee hearing to watch someone with a history of unethical behavior, who called for Reagan’s impeachment, then George W. Bush’s impeachment, now call today for Trump’s impeachment?

Carter Page Explains He Was “Decades Long” Source for FBI and CIA… sundance – “It never made sense that U.S. Person Carter Page was an FBI witness from 2013 through to March/May 2016 and yet in October 2016, to achieve a FISA warrant, the FBI called him an agent of a foreign government.”

Devin Nunes Discusses Next Week’s House Impeachment Hearings… sundance – “democrats are forming the foundation for impeachment as a political tool.” … “As part of the current construct, the Lawfare alliance of legal advisers and staff are writing specific language into the vote that will automatically allow more contempt votes against the Trump administration without hearings.”

“Additionally, the contempt vote will be written so that any arbitrary Trump administration official can also be held in contempt, without a committee vote, and thereby initiate a civil lawsuit against the executive officer that will have to be defended in court.
…
If they can win a civil award (they will carefully select the judge) Pelosi and Nadler can start issuing civil fines for contempt against individual cabinet members. Adam Schiff has previously stated his recommended target amount would be $25,000 per day/per person.

Now go back to December 2018 and the specific rule changes that Pelosi put in place, and you’ll see how this was planned out long ago.
…
When we approach the term “impeachment” we are not discussing it as the technical and legal approach for removal of a President; but rather the political use of the process to Alinsky (damage) President Donald Trump.

Professional political Democrats would not be using “impeachment” in the constitutional sense of the process (high crimes and misdemeanors); but rather weaponizing the process –as a tool itself– to: •target the executive office; •diminish the presidency (“isolate”/”marginalize”, Alinsky rules); •and position themselves for 2020.

Nancy Pelosi needs to stop her endless war against Trump. Michael Goodwin – “In neither case did Pelosi detail what crimes the president of the United States committed that constituted a coverup or would be worthy of prison. It’s also significant that she made both comments after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report that found no collusion and offered no conclusion on obstruction, with the attorney general ruling that there was no obstruction.”

“Her party’s continual denial of that reality is the dry tinder that makes Pelosi’s gamble so reckless. Mueller was their best shot and to talk of prison now smacks of third-world countries where there is no peaceful transfer of power.

It’s not hard to imagine the result if she continues down this path. The vile smears and hostility that have marked the left’s behavior since Trump’s election will continue to escalate and possibly lead to political violence going mainstream.

There is already too much talk of assassination. What if anger continues to build and some nut hears the secret whistle commanding him to kill the president?

Op-ed: When did GMO become a dirty word? University of Connecticut – “The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved GMO insulin for use in October of 1982 after rigorous testing, clinical trials, and review.”

“Scientists create GMOs by changing the genetic code of a living being in some way. Plant and animal genetics have been altered for thousands of years through breeding. New technology lets scientists select a specific trait, instead of changing the entire genetic makeup. The medical, agricultural, and environmental fields all have GMO products.

Accepting or rejecting GMOs is an individual decision. However, all decisions consumers make should be based on facts.
…
Consumers should form their own opinions about GMOs from the wealth of available science-based information and experts. Instead of accepting and spreading misinformation, shouldn’t we ask more questions, and turn to reliable sources instead?

Great Lakes Reveal a Fatal Flaw in Climate Change ‘Science’. I & I Editorial Board – “So what are scientists saying now? Simple. They’re now claiming that the fall and rise of Great Lakes’ water levels are due to climate change.” … “So if the lakes’ huge fluctuations in the past weren’t caused by mankind’s burning fossil fuels, why are scientists so convinced that the far more minor changes happening today are?”

Trump’s Latest on Climate: Right Again! (re UK’s Piers Morgan, Prince Charles). “On the meeting with Prince Charles, which went from a scheduled 15 minutes to 90 because of the Charles’s zealotry regarding climate change. Notice the politeness of Trump in the face of a doomsayer who obviously went on way too long”

Trump Doctrine – Border and Migration Agreement With Mexico Likely to Produce Significant Results… sundance – “Economic security is national security. Once again we see the ‘Trump Doctrine‘ at work. President Trump using economic strength as leverage to achieve national security objectives and solve national security problems.”

Judge Rules FBI Must Release Declarations from Lead Mueller FBI Agent…. Sundance – “In federal court yesterday (Friday, June 7). In a FOIA case ruling (full pdf below) Judge James Boasberg was deciding public release over two issues related to the memos of former FBI Director James Comey.”

Arrogant Conceit and Pratfalls. Clarice Feldman – “The Greeks used the word “hubris” to describe excessive arrogance and conceit. And they were wise to the fact that it leads to downfalls.” Two examples are provided: Oberlin v Gibson’s Bakery and the Mexico tariff deal.

Collins Warns Nadler About Rules Of Conduct In Upcoming ‘Mock-Impeachment Inquiry’. Kerry Picket – “Collins reminded Nadler in a letter that outside an official impeach inquiry, members are restricted from accusing the president of a crime.”

“The Rules of the House dictate minimum standards of decency and decorum, setting forth how Members must conduct themselves during debate. However, Majority Members of the Committee have demonstrated they either do not understand the Rules or simply are under the mistaken belief the Rules do not apply to them,” he said.

Rules? What rules?

Tired, Boring—and Dangerous—Celebrity Death Wishing. Victor Davis Hanson – “Our elite entertainers do not just limit themselves to imagining the violent demise of conservative presidents like George W. Bush and Donald Trump. Any conservative elected official or their family will do.” … “So why do left-wing celebrities express such political hatred?”

“If one believes the beachfront of Malibu reflects the norms of American behavior or thought, then he is seriously delusional. So expect celebrity-driven assassination chic to continue until either the country collectively says “enough”—or such sick rhetorical murder leads to the real thing.

Why Are Democrats Obstructing Justice? Julie Kelly – “In what can only be described as legitimate obstruction of justice, unlike the vague allegations against Donald Trump in the Mueller report, Democrats are frustrating Barr’s investigative efforts with a number of procedural maneuvers coupled with public ad hominem attacks against the attorney general.”

“So, for two years, we were told that any criticism of Robert Mueller met the legal threshold for obstruction of justice. The commentariat class insisted that any harsh tweet, comment, or facial expression by Trump about Mueller or his team was intended to thwart his investigation. Even a casual conversation allegedly documented by Comey about former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn is contained in volume two of the Mueller report as possible evidence of obstruction of justice by the president.

But now Democratic lawmakers are openly smearing the attorney general and no one objects?

The very subjects of a criminal investigation into abuse of power, illegally leaking classified information, misleading a federal court, and violating the rights of private citizens are permitted to publicly denigrate the man in charge of the investigation, and that’s not obstruction of justice? Imagine if Republican lawmakers had made the same comments about Robert Mueller: the outrage would have been nonstop.

Let’s hope Barr—or John Durham—gets the last word.

Scorched Earth’: Mueller’s Targets Speak Out. Paul Sperry – “They were clearly on a fishing expedition”

“Now that Mueller has ended his probe finding no election collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, 10 witnesses and targets of his sprawling, $35 million investigation agreed to speak with RealClearInvestigations because they are no longer in legal jeopardy.
…
Their firsthand accounts pull back the curtain on the secret inner workings of the Mueller probe, revealing how the special counsel’s nearly two dozen prosecutors and 40 FBI agents used harshly aggressive tactics to pressure individuals to either cop to crimes or implicate others in felonies involving collusion.
…
Former special prosecutors say the tactics used by Mueller’s team appear excessive.
…
But, the 10 witnesses swept up in the inquiry say those facts and figures, as well as the final determination that there was no conspiracy or collusion with the Russians, do not begin to account for the human toll of the Mueller probe.

They want their stories told as a public record of the broken lives Mueller’s team has left in its wake.

Trump’s Legal Authority to Impose Tariffs. David Post – “I suspect that because this issue is now seen as being all about Mr. Trump and is all entangled in the Trump/Anti-Trump miasma, there’s probably no chance of any revision in the law until a new Chief Executive is in place. But one can still hope.” What the Democrats and many economists appear to be missing is the alternative. Trump is using Tariffs as a replacement for more drastic and uglier methods. Consider Obama’s drone targeting or troop engagements, for example. If a war needs to be fought, tariffs are probably better than bullets.

Changing minds: How do you communicate with climate change skeptics? WUWT – “UNLV researcher develops new method for categorizing climate change beliefs and shares tactics for communicating with deniers”

“You don’t want to view your dialogue partner as inferior. I think it’s a problem when environmentalists or climate scientists are dismissive, or potentially patronizing to climate skeptics. I think that kind of dialogue can lead to climate skeptics feeling isolated and silenced. You may not agree with the skeptic, but you should still respect the person who holds the beliefs. We must listen, not just for a talking point to jump in on, but to understand the perspective they’re coming from, and what values or identities they feel are threatened by environmentalism.

This gets interesting because of the omission and the underlying assumption. The science part is missing. Not the science of climatology but rather the science of method and values: measurement, accuracy, precision, experimental verification, and careful definition of terms and concepts. There is a bad case of projection illustrated as well. Threatened by environmentalism? Deniers driven by religious belief? Just who is engaged in logical fallacies, distortion of evidence, and emotional outbursts, and who is plagued by outrageous claims of doom and catastrophe?

Lawfare Strategy – Pelosi House Sets Contempt Vote Against AG Barr for June11th…sundance – “In essence Pelosi is setting up her own Legislative Branch division of justice, to fight against the Executive Branch U.S. Department of Justice if needed.”

“Their collective goal is to use a legislative vote to open a civil lawsuit against Bill Barr for his failure to deliver the fully unredacted Mueller report to them. Additionally, the contempt vote will be written so that any other arbitrary Trump administration official can also be held in contempt, without a committee vote, and thereby initiate a civil lawsuit against the executive officer that will have to be defended in court.
…
If they can win a civil award (they will carefully select the judge) Pelosi and Nadler can start issuing civil fines for contempt against individual cabinet members. Adam Schiff has previously stated his recommended target amount would be $25,000 per day/per person.
…
This has been their plan all along. Pelosi’s poo-pooing of impeachment was always a head-fake to the compliant media, designed to fabricate a narrative around unlikely impeachment, and throw people off the scent of a plan that was designed even before the mid-term election of 2018.

So now it’s OK to destroy lives in the name of fighting Trump? Rich Lowry – “Journalists usually imagine themselves holding the powerful to account but now they are happy to punch down — and congratulate themselves on punching down — if their targets are politically uncongenial.”

Liberals are gunning for your 401(k). Ken Blackwell – “Shareholder activists are taking direct aim at companies — such as oil companies and gun-manufacturers — by abusing rules that publicly traded companies must follow to promote a far-left agenda.”

“Instead of trying to pass gun control laws through Congress, they are forcing public companies to bend to their will. What they are doing is dangerous.
…
Other asset-managers and hedge fund leaders are willing to cave to activists — in the form of “virtue-signaling” — because they fear retribution and take actions not in the shareholders’ best interest.
…
These shareholder activists are taking it a step farther, by sponsoring legislation (H.R. 2364) that would turn the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) into a political policing operation by forcing financial institutions to disclose significant investments with gun and ammunition manufacturers. The goal is to embarrass those investors while harming the manufacturers’ bottom line.

The reckless game played by shareholder activists makes it dangerous for shareholders who invest money that they will need to carry them through retirement.

FBI Failed to Document Four Clinton Witness Interviews. Barr Should Reopen Clinton Probe. Sara Carter – “These findings are significant, as they come at a crucial time when the Department of Justice under Attorney General William Barr is investigating the bureau’s handling of both the Clinton probe and the investigation into the origination of the bureau’s investigation into President Donald Trump’s campaign alleged – now debunked – ties to Russia.”

“The information obtained by Judicial Watch coincides with documents obtained by Congressional investigations. For example, Rep. John Ratcliffe, a former federal prosecutor who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox New’s Maria Bartiromo Sunday that Strzok’s involvement in the Trump campaign’s defensive briefing mired in conflict.

Dowd dings Mueller. Scott Johnson – “The report smears Dowd, we now know, by means of a deceptively edited voicemail message left by Dowd with Flynn counsel Robert Kelner. Following an order promulgated by Judge Emmet Sullivan in Flynn’s case, prosecutors filed the full transcript of the voicemail message with the court on Friday.”

“There needs to be some accounting for what happened here. The first step is fully understanding what the report does to Dowd.

Turley turns on Mueller … neo – “With Mueller recently, both Dershowitz and Turley have been deeply shocked by the behavior of a man they used to respect and have spent some time defending.” But the public will never hear this so why should Mueller worry?

It is interesting to note that, once again, Democrats are in full throat and solid block to defend their own to prevent proper consequence for political misbehavior.

Federal Judge Rejects House Bid To Stop Trump’s Border Wall. Kevin Daley – “While the Constitution bestows upon members of the House many powers, it does not grant them standing to hale the executive branch into court claiming a dilution of Congress’s legislative authority”

“Congress has several political arrows in its quiver to counter perceived threats to its sphere of power,” McFadden explained elsewhere in the decision. “These tools show that this lawsuit is not a last resort for the House. And this fact is also exemplified by the many other cases across the country challenging the administration’s planned construction of the border wall.”
…
“The court rightly ruled that the House of Representatives cannot ask the judiciary to take its side in political disputes and cannot use federal courts to accomplish through litigation what it cannot achieve using the tools the Constitution gives to Congress,” a DOJ spokesman said. “The Department looks forward to continuing to defend the administration’s lawful actions to address the crisis at the southern border.”

There’s a tremendous flaw (actually, several) in the reasoning of this article in Reason, comparing Trump’s tariffs to the Berlin Wall … neo – “What’s wrong with this? Let me count the ways (and I’ll probably miss a few).” Ilya Somin is a distinguished professor with a record on the Volokh Conspiracy as a pundit. His analogy in Reason only reinforces the view that he is grossly ideologically biased in his legal arguments. Here’s a case study to illustrate the point.

“Author Ilya Somin probably chose “Berlin Wall” as an analogy because it raises an emotional response; just about everyone knows something about the Berlin Wall and that is that it was a bad thing. But for the sake of accuracy, he should have at least written about the Inner German border which was the actual Cold War border between the countries of East and West Germany. It was a dangerous line to cross, and could (and did) get people shot:

Interesting how many of these gross distortions were in the media this week: taking “nasty” out of context to apply it to a person rather than a behavior, Trump’s hairstyle after a golf session, the missing bride of the prince, the Trump baby balloon… what else? Maybe this Brietbart headline provides a clue? NPR Fact Checks Trump: Sadiq Khan Isn’t ‘Half the Height’ of de Blasio, That’s Only 3 Feet!

Law enforcement, media changed standards for Trump. Byron York – “One of the more unfortunate effects of the Trump-Russia investigation — and there have been many — is the weakening of traditional standards of argument and proof in the public debate over allegations that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to fix the 2016 election. (Just for the record: It didn’t.)”

“In particular, angry disputes about the president have done terrible harm to the principle that an investigator, be it a journalist or a prosecutor, should meet at least some standard of proof before leveling an accusation.
…
Without evidence to prove any of the dossier’s most serious allegations, a new standard of proof emerged: The allegations were legitimate because they had not been proven untrue.

Leading figures in politics and journalism adopted the new standard.
…
The new Trump standard turned the old standard — can an allegation be proven true? — on its head.
…
Mueller, like Feinstein and Tribe and Todd before him, changed widely accepted standards, casting the shadow of guilt on Trump without formally accusing him of wrongdoing. Except Mueller, unlike the senator, the law professor, and the journalist, wielded the prosecutorial power of the United States. Given the length and thoroughness of his investigation, Mueller’s no-exoneration verdict carried a lot of weight in the public debate. Except that it didn’t mean anything, while at the same time suggesting to the public that the president had committed some unspecified offense.

Trump’s critics often accuse him of violating the norms that make our society and government work. Yet in their discussion of the dossier, some of those critics violated essential norms of fairness and accuracy. And in Mueller’s no-exoneration gambit, a storied figure in American law enforcement abandoned one of the most important standards of justice. The damage done could last a long time.

A new standard of proof has emerged.

Sidney Powell Discusses DOJ in The Lawfare Era: “Guilty Until Proven Innocent”… sundance – “The Lawfare group ensures you have the right to remain guilty until they verify your politics and determine your alignment with the tribe. If accepted, your disposition shifts to innocent and you receive a pass to avoid any legal jeopardy…”

How a Special Counsel Disgraced Himself and the US Government. Spike Hampson – “he failed to identify the specific crime being investigated and thus telegraphed the fact that for the purposes of his investigation, any crime would do.” It’s a careful dissection that contrasts with the bombast and hyperbole that one often sees from the left.

“It is good to remember that every governmental system — no matter how democratic — retains absolute power when it comes to investigating criminal activity and meting out punishment for it. Even for an enlightened government, this potential for evil is a specter that can never be eradicated. For those who believe that power corrupts, the absolute power that resides with any government must be constrained. If it is not, some of the humans who work for the government may exploit their power to serve their own personal beliefs and interests. This is one reason why our legal system is not supposed to ever search for a crime to attach to a person. That Mueller was willing to do so in his investigation of Trump is a clear sign of corruption.
…
Corrupt people often dress well and mouth deceits with the sincerity of a saint. Mueller fits the bill. His willingness to bring down untold pain and suffering on individuals who played no part in a crime that didn’t happen exposes him as a rotten book with a gilded cover.

6 Gun Lies (And One Truth) Obama Told In Brazil. Ryan Cleckner – “During a conversation with a host on stage during the digital innovation event, Obama took the opportunity to speak negatively about U.S. gun laws.” These are the sorts of deceit that make reasoned debate impossible.

sundance has a windup for the week with several stories with news and coup information. Flynn Filing Shows Mueller Team Manipulated Transcript in Report – “Today, the Mueller team released the transcript of the call (full pdf below). However, as originally noticed by RosieMemos the released transcript clearly shows the Mueller team selectively edited the transcript to weaponized their portrayal of the contact.” Adam Schiff Demands Authority Over Executive Branch Declassification, and Advanced Warning of Investigative Content – “The scale of obtuse, hypocritical and self-serving protestation is off-the-charts.” … “Apparently the declassification directive has Adam Schiff in a flitter…. perhaps connected to the sunlight on his own participation as part of the seditious group.” Rep. Collins Identifies Peter Strzok as Likely FBI Official Who Leaked Grand Jury Information and Prosecution Declined – why no prosecution of the crime?

Mueller dings Dowd. Scott Johnson – “And that’s not all. For some reason or other, the government has failed to produce additional documents responsive to Judge Sullivan’s order.” This provides some additional context for the sundance item.

Instapundit: (from behind the WSJ paywall) David Rivkin & Elizabeth Price Foley: Congress Can’t Outsource Impeachment: Democrats want to use Mueller’s probe as cover to oust Trump. They need to bring their own facts and charges so the public can hold them accountable. … “The desire to get rid of Trump through non-electoral means, when a Presidential election looms next year, is literally insane.” … “Once again, people who consider Donald Trump too impulsive, emotional, and vindictive to be President are instead revealing those qualities in themselves, and in the institutions they control and represent. So far, the defining feature of the Trump presidency has been the exposure of how hollow our institutions have become. In trying to delegitimize him, they demonstrate their own illegitimacy.”

Bill Barr opines … neo – “Even before this, I’ve liked just about everything I’d seen and heard from Barr so far. He’s exhibited a rare combination of traits: clarity and simplicity of expression, a straight-shooter who goes to the heart of the matter without being in the least offensive or careless. He’s precise without getting bogged down in arcane legalese. You can see all of this demonstrated in the interview, as well, and if you want the shorter version (it’s not short, though) go to Ace’s post.” This appears to have been an interview for the ages.

Doxxing: The Newest Strategy To Destroy Scientists. Alex Berezow – “FOIA is meant to uncover wrongdoing by elected officials and bureaucrats, but activists use it to selectively extract quotes out of context in order to create controversy where none exists.”

“Balter’s justification for his actions is that the information is old and no longer used, but Dr. Folta denies this. Even if Balter is telling the truth, disclosing somebody’s personal data without their consent is outrageously unethical. Credit checks and other systems used to verify a person’s identity often use older private information, such as the addresses of former residences. And what if some deranged person shows up to that address? What Balter did was a gratuitous act of pure malice.

Unsurprisingly, Dr. Folta announced that he intends to close his Twitter account. He says Twitter is not a safe place for scientists. Having personally received death threats on Twitter, I can verify that he is correct.

Green Policies Turned California A Charred Black. I & I Editorial Board – “More than half of California’s roughly 105 million acres are owned by the federal and state governments. It is on these sprawling parcels that the wildfires tend to rage before devouring private land, homes, and businesses.”

“Public lands “have proved far more vulnerable to forest fires than properties owned by private groups,” Hoover Institution scholar Richard Epstein wrote in California’s Forest Fire Tragedy. “Private lands are managed with the goals of conservation and production. The management of public lands has been buffeted by legislative schemes driven by strong ideological commitments.”

The loudest voices assign blame for the fires to man-made climate change. But the human activity primarily responsible for the destructive spread of wildfires is public policy favoring burned timber over harvested timber. While maybe well-intended, laws inspired by the 1970s environmentalist movement, which is determined to make sure saw blades and trees never meet, have stoked the furnaces.

Mueller’s ‘Dog Whistle’ Now a Foghorn – Because Obstruction Was Always His Target. Bob Maistros – “First, Mueller shamefully took up multiple decibel levels his report’s “did not exonerate” defamation: “If we had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” Many questions need answers and they are not questions about the President.

AG Barr: Mueller Could Have Reached A Decision On Criminal Activity…But He Didn’t. Jennie Taer – “Referring to the Justice Department policy, Barr said that “The [OLC] opinion says you cannot indict a president while he is in office…but he could’ve reached a decision whether it was criminal activity, but he had his reasons for not doing it, which he explained.”

Robert Mueller’s ‘no questions’ routine is absolute nonsense. Jonathan Turley – “The problem is that Mueller was uttering absolute nonsense about his inability to reach a conclusion. He likewise did not offer a principled basis for refusing to answer any questions.”

“Whatever space Mueller occupied in maintaining such a position, it was neither created nor countenanced by federal law or Justice Department policy. Instead, he accepted the job of special counsel and then radically redefined it, without telling anyone outside of his staff. In that sense, he failed as special counsel. Mueller was not appointed to be a chronicler of allegations. Mueller was appointed to perform a prosecutorial function in the investigation of a president and his associates. Moreover, he does not get to dictate what Congress can investigate, or to stonewall the media.

Dershowitz is completely fed up with Mueller… neo – “And that is why, whatever a person’s feelings are about president Trump, all people should be outraged at this. But they are not; not at all. And that’s a terrible sign of the ignorance of the populace, and the partisanship that would overrun basic guarantees of liberty to us all.”

HBO’s Chernobyl mini-series is remarkable and surprisingly political. John Sexton – “In his review of the show, Jim Geraghty says the show is “an epic five-part comprehensive denunciation of the Soviet Union.” But he also notes the flaws the show puts on display are human ones, not just socialist ones”

“Finally, the Federalist points out that quite a few of the mainstream reviews of the show seem to have skipped over all of the ways in which it indicts communism. They can ignore it all they want but it’s pretty hard to deny that’s one of the main things this show is about. The show got a very positive review from the Moscow Times.

Dan Bongino fires back at ‘Chernobyl’ writer/producer who took offense to him calling the disaster a ‘failure of socialism’. – “As was pointed out to us earlier, it’s interesting that for the Left the first person in government to come to their minds when watching “Chernobyl” was Trump, when it should have been somebody else entirely.” It’s a twitter case study.

If the psychiatrists and psychologists weren’t so buried in the mud themselves, they wouldn’t miss the opportunity to study the phenomena unfolding front of them. It is a years long process of people trying to come to grips with the enormity of the malfeasance and malice expressed by friends, colleagues, and others they once held in high esteem; the overturning and abandonment of values and ideas behind jurisprudence and a civil society developed over centuries; the idea that we are seeing a banana republic flavor in our government.

Both those trying to come to grips with a reality that is alien to them and those providing the stimulus are worthy of study. Take today’s case about an aircraft carrier being told to stay out of sight of the President. What is it that makes this story so important to some? The Mueller saga is another case to study.

Mueller’s Final Statement Turns Jurisprudence On Its Head. I & I Editorial Board – “This starkly politicizes presidential investigations going forward and indicts, if we may say so, the already-dubious system of weaponizing a lawyer with a blank check, no deadline, and an open-ended mandate for him to fish where he likes with minimal oversight.”

“What kind of strange new standard is Mueller setting here?

Mueller had all the time and money he could want, recorded countless hours of testimony, compiled a mountain of documents, got multiple plea deals, chased down out every conceivable lead, and then says he couldn’t prove the president didn’t commit a crime.

Since when is the job of prosecutors to determine innocence beyond a reasonable doubt? And, short of that, feel free to dump all the evidence that didn’t lead to a criminal charge, but that makes the defendant look a suspect nonetheless.

Robert Mueller is a Sleazy, Shameful, Partisan Hack. Patricia McCarthy – “Robert Mueller should have been disbarred decades ago, along with his enforcer Andrew Weismann; that is how egregious his record of malfeasance is, all matters of public record.”

“Much has been written already about the sheer pettiness of what Mueller did and said on Wednesday morning. Many actual legal scholars have commented; Alan Dershowitz, Sean Davis, the guys at Powerline and of course Mark Levin. Given their analyses, it is safe to say that Mueller stepped in a tar pit that may well fossilize this pathetic man. He has sacrificed his entire career on the altar of the unscrupulous politics of the Democrats, who refuse still to accept the results of the 2016 election.

I hope that they will suffer the consequences of their own bitterness.
…
So, what did Mueller hope to achieve? He did energize the legally illiterate, Trump-hating left and their candidates for the presidency but other than that, all he did was demean himself and his ridiculous report. If he had been interested in the truth and the burnishing his legacy, he would have brought to light the falsity of the dossier and its provenance but he did not. May we never see his kind again, the kind that abuses their positions of power for the indiscriminate destruction of innocents.

Shame on Robert Mueller for exceeding his role. Alan Dershowitz – “No responsible prosecutor should ever suggest that the subject of his investigation might indeed be guilty even if there was insufficient evidence or other reasons not to indict.”

“Until today, I have defended Mueller against the accusations that he is a partisan. I did not believe that he personally favored either the Democrats or the Republicans, or had a point of view on whether President Trump should be impeached. But I have now changed my mind. By putting his thumb, indeed his elbow, on the scale of justice in favor of impeachment based on obstruction of justice, Mueller has revealed his partisan bias. He also has distorted the critical role of a prosecutor in our justice system.

Robert Mueller and the Art of Innuendo. David Catron – “He used Wednesday’s presser to take a final cheap shot at Trump.”

“For all intents and purposes, Mueller accused the President of obstructing justice then hid behind obscure DOJ memoranda to excuse his failure to make that prosecutorial call in his report to the AG. It was an utterly disgraceful performance. First, as anyone who has bothered to read Mueller’s report knows, his reluctance to officially accuse Trump of obstruction was about the dearth of real evidence to support the charge. Moreover, his claim that it is unconstitutional to indict the President is widely disputed by legal scholars.

Robert Mueller, Partisan Fraud. John Hinderaker

“Here is my question. (I know it has been asked before, but it can’t be repeated too often.) If Mueller’s charge was to investigate “Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election…[including] investigating any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign,” why didn’t he look into the possibility that the false information fed by alleged Russian insiders to an agent of the Clinton campaign was a disinformation effort by the Russian government, meant to interfere in the 2016 presidential election–an effort in which the Clinton campaign colluded?

There is strong circumstantial evidence that the Steele dossier was exactly that, while there never was any evidence at all that the Trump campaign colluded in any way with Russians. So why was Mueller’s investigation confined to the wrong campaign?

Mueller Just Proved His Entire Operation Was A Political Hit Job That Trampled The Rule Of Law. Sean Davis – “At a hastily arranged Wednesday press conference, Special Counsel Robert Mueller proved that he was never interested in justice or the rule of law.”

“If it’s important for the work to speak for itself, then why did Mueller schedule a press conference in which he would speak for it weeks after it was released? The statement, given the venue in which it was provided, is self-refuting.

Let’s start with the Mueller team’s unique take on the nature of a prosecutor’s job.
…
The contradictions and double standards didn’t stop there, though.
…
In fact, DOJ guidelines expressly prohibit the actions of both Comey and Mueller in naming and shaming individuals who were never formally charged with any wrongdoing.
…
Nationwide bar rules governing all practicing attorneys in the United States also explicitly prohibit Mueller’s display during Wednesday’s press conference.

Funny how no one wants to look into that report that Omar married her brother… Monica Showalter – “You’d think they’d be all over this like tabloid papparazzi.” Echoing Johnson et al at Powerline. Yes, the mainstream propaganda machine is complicit in this whole family of scandals.

SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner Tells Intelligence Community to Defy Barr and Democrats Will Protect Them… sundance – “All of the same deep state actors/manipulators keep surfacing and resurfacing, like a game of whac-a-mole, as sunlight gets closer to revealing their corrupt behavior.” If you seek collusion, start here. If you want cover-up, start here.

The “Secret Research Project” – an IRS List, an NSA Database, and Resulting “Files” on Americans… sundance – “A carefully redacted footnote within a report by FISA Court Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer has always appeared to be a clue to a domestic surveillance program. Now details behind the redactions tell a concerning story.”

“A brief refresher is needed for those new to the story. In April 2017 Judge Collyer wrote a highly critical FISA Court opinion following discoveries by Director Admiral Rogers of government contractors accessing the NSA database, and extracting illegal search results from the electronic records of every American.

The scale of abuse was incredible [SEE HERE] and the surveillance issues had been covered up for years. Collyer cited the Obama administration as having “an institutional lack of candor” in their responses to her and the FISA court. The judge focused her criticism after a review of the period 2012 through April 2016.

Using the non-compliant admissions by NSA Director Mike Rogers and the results of the compliance audit, Judge Collyer used the period of November 2015 through April 2016 to gauge the scale of abuse at 85 percent.
…
Within the 99-page opinion from Judge Rosemary Collyer she noted none of this FISA-702 database abuse was accidental.

AG Barr Battles Intel Community And FBI. Illegal Surveillance Had Been Going On For Years. Sara Carter – “Despite the president’s order giving Barr authority over the declassification of the documents related to the bureau’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia, it won’t be met without a fight. And there’s a reason why.”

“This isn’t just about Trump. It’s about nearly a decade of abuse inside the intelligence community and bureau regarding foreign-intelligence-collection authority. Why? Because it was carried out to monitor communications of Americans inside the United States and the procedures meant to protect Americans either swept up in those calls or targeted were not followed. The Fourth Amendment was under attack and abused for political purposes, say several retired intelligence sources.

“If the full extent of the abuse is made public the powers granted these agencies powers could be scaled back and those who allegedly abused their power could face prosecution,” one former senior intelligence official told SaraACarter.com.
…
Barr will have numerous battles to get to the truth of what occurred but it is a war worth fighting. It is a fight for accountability, oversight and constitutional protections that were endowed by our founding fathers.

The Rise of Junk Science – Fake publications are corrupting the world of research—and influencing real news. Alex Gillis – “These companies have become so successful, Franco says, that for the first time in history, scientists and scholars worldwide are publishing more fraudulent and flawed studies than legitimate research”

“otherwise honest scholars cut corners and engage in junk publishing to further their careers without paying mind to the detrimental and sometimes dangerous effects on their fields of research.
…
That dark age may already be here. Increasingly, journalists, politicians, and the general public are—sometimes inadvertently, sometimes not—relying on fraudulent and flawed research to guide major decisions.
…
In a sense, the new open-access model offered a licence to print money—and studies—for unscrupulous entrepreneurs.
…
the junk industry is successful only because some academics are willing to participate. It’s hard to know how many are doing it out of ambition and how many, especially less experienced scholars, have simply been duped.
…
Revealing the corruption of junk, mediocre, and real publishers created a great deal of stress for Beall. His own university launched a misconduct case against him in early 2017, after an angry publisher complained that he’d fabricated information about it
…
The biggest challenge for universities is to find a way to differentiate between junk research and real work.
…
Canada’s big granting agencies could also do their part, some academics say.
…
Franco is happy that the worst has disappeared from his department. But he says that many of his colleagues across Canada still include mediocre journals on their CVs and evaluations—because some scholars still work in the grey zone between junk and real science, between ambition and integrity. “I’m sixty-five and happy to be getting old,” he says, “because this is the worst time in history to enter the world of science.” Franco’s department may have made improvements for now, but around the world, junk studies are increasingly drowning out real research—not the other way around. He is grateful for the courageous work of colleagues such as Lee, Pyne, Beall, Hanley, and Hawkes who are trying to change that reality. “There’s a nobility in generating knowledge to advance the world.” He hopes that more academics feel the same way.

The Lie That Will Not Die and the Truth about Black Mass Shooters. Colin Flaherty – “The lie that will not die: Most mass shooters are white.”

“At least one legacy media outfit figured out, however painful it was to report (and bury in the middle of the jump), that three quarters of mass shooters are black. That was the New York Times.

You read that right: mass shootings are a black thing. And we find them almost every day. Often more than one. In Philadelphia alone, they report one every eleven days.

Clarence Thomas Speaks the Truth for SCOTUS on Abortion. Mario Diaz – “Enshrining a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex, or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates, would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement,”

“The case dealt with an Indiana law that contained two provisions. The first dealt with the “disposition of fetal remains by abortion providers,” and the second barred “sex-, race-, or disability-selective abortions by abortion providers.” In a Per Curiam opinion (meaning it comes from the Court as a whole and not signed by any particular justice) the Court granted cert. on the first question and reversed the lower-court ruling that had invalidated the law. But it denied hearing on the second question, leaving in place the lower court’s ruling that invalidated it.

It is against this putrid backdrop that this Indiana law stepped in to humbly uphold the value of every human life. It was promptly challenged by none other than Planned Parenthood.

To their shame, the District Court and the Seventh Circuit went right along with “Big Abortion” without any precedent compelling them to do so, whatever legal, mental gymnastics they tried to do to justify their unjust rulings.

The lie that will not die.

No, Nancy. It’s the Dems Who Are Engaged in a ‘Cover-Up’. Roger L. Simon – “The Democrats are like a beehive that has lost their queen — only, in this case, the queen is not Nancy Pelosi, but Barack Obama.”

“Was it Machiavelli who said: When they accuse you of something, they’re the ones who are doing it? No, it wasn’t, not exactly anyway. But no question the brilliant Florentine saw that happening on a daily basis, as we do.

At this moment, since we know there was no Russia collusion, the big “cover-up” is the provenance of the Mueller investigation itself. And some of that, at least, is about to be revealed, as the Democrats are no doubt aware.

Trump called this investigation a “witch hunt,” but that appears to have been an understatement. It was a “treasonous coup plot” — unprecedented in American history — with many of the secret conspirators beginning to be known to those interested (Stefan Halper, Joseph Mifsud, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec).

New York State To Let Congress See Trump’s State Tax Returns. Jennie Taer – “New York State lawmakers on Wednesday gave their final approval to legislation that would allow Congress to obtain President Trump’s state tax returns.” There is something very wrong here. Laws are for all, not just one. 

New York Legislators Approve Double Jeopardy for Trump Cronies to Protect ‘the Rule of Law’. Jacob Sullum – “The bill allows dual prosecutions of people in the president’s orbit who receive pardons or commutations.”

“The low-minded rationale for Kaminsky’s bill is that Democrats who detest Trump want to take advantage of any weapon they can find to hurt him and people associated with him, especially since impeachment seems to be off the table. But in their eagerness to attack their political opponents, the Democrats who control New York’s legislature are compromising an important principle of justice.

Obama Judge: Congress Can Subpoena Trump’s Personal Finances. Ken Klukowski – “House Democrats argued that they wanted these records merely to inform their decision on whether to strengthen federal ethics and disclosure laws”

“House Democrats are pursuing members of the president’s family and private family-owned businesses, demanding banking records and financial statements. As part of this partisan attack strategy, two committees in the U.S. House of Representatives controlled by Democrats – the Financial Services Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence – issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Capitol One Bank for at least ten years of records involving President Trump’s children, the children’s spouses, and various family businesses including the Trump Organization.

AG Barr: Nationwide injunctions violate separation of powers and make district court judges far too powerful. John Sexton – “Barr went on to say that he wasn’t interested in arguing about specific policies. He wanted instead to argue that the use of such nationwide injunctions violated the separation of powers courts have traditionally observed:” … “Secondly, Barr argued that nationwide injunctions effectively made district court judges more powerful than even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, which was never the intent:”

Democratic congresswoman accuses DHS Secretary of intentionally killing kids crossing the border. John Sexton – “Freshman congresswoman Lauren Underwood crossed a line today during a hearing where acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan was testifying about the crisis on the southern border.” Last week, the word spy was subject to ‘interpretation’ and this week it’s murder.

Word by Word, SJW’s Are Changing America. Philip Carl Salzman – “Old illiberal bigotries, in which women and people of color were demeaned, have not been removed, they have simply been flipped and applied to men and white people, demeaning and vilifying them as women and people of color were demeaned previously. Is the new bigotry more righteous than the old?”

“Among common strategies for transforming society are elections, legislation, armed rebellion, terrorism, and undermining the culture. It is this latter strategy that special interest groups—feminists, racial minorities, and LGBT minorities—have pursued, in the hope of influencing public opinion and generating legislation in their favor. This stealth transformation of culture has involved redefining words and concepts to advance the special interests of these activists. Through disingenuous semantic manipulation, these special interests have succeeded in pushing the aside basic human rights and civil liberties of the majority and unfavored minorities.

Trump’s Rose Garden Presser. Scott Johnson – “As he reviewed his cooperation with the Mueller Switch Project, Trump bluntly stated: “Actually the crime was committed on the other side.” He got that right.” … and many other things, too.

Restoring the lost consensus. From Roger Kimball’s acceptance remarks at the Bradley Prize ceremony. “Looking around the cultural landscape today, I conclude that we are in the midst of a sort of negative religious revival: let’s call it America’s First Great Awokening.”

“Consider, to take just one example, the fate of our colleges and universities. Once upon a time, and it was not so long ago, they were institutions dedicated to the pursuit of truth and the transmission of the highest values of our civilization. Today, most are dedicated to the repudiation of truth and the subversion of those values. In short, they are laboratories for the cultivation of wokeness. …

There are two central tenets of the woke philosophy. The first is feigned fragility. The second is angry intolerance. The union of fragility and intolerance has given us that curious and malevolent hybrid, the crybully, a delicate yet venomous species that thrives chiefly in lush, pampered environments.
…
The fact that the Left celebrated free speech in 1964 and now abominates it as a token of white supremacist ideology suggests the issue is not really, or not only, free speech.
…
Kendall points out that all societies are founded on a “consensus,” what he calls “a hard core of shared beliefs.” This is especially true, he notes, for the United States, whose founding principles are of recent vintage and are clearly and deliberately set forth.
…
Conservatives have rightly lamented the assault on free speech that is such a conspicuous and disfiguring reality of life in America today. But that loss only achieves its true significance in the context of a more fundamental erosion: the erosion of that shared political consensus, that community of sentiment, which gives life to the first-person plural, that “We, the People,” which made us who we are. Should we lose that, we shall have lost everything.

Federal Rats Are Fleeing the Sinking Collusion Ship. Victor Davis Hanson – “The entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative was always implausible.”

“No wonder that special counsel Robert Mueller’s partisan team spent 22 months and $34 million only to conclude the obvious: that Trump did not collude with Russia.

Mueller’s failure to find collusion prompts an important question. If the Steele dossier—the basis for unfounded charges that Trump colluded with Russia—was fraudulent, then how and why did the Clinton campaign, hand in glove with top Obama administration officials, use such silly trash and smears to unleash the powers of government against Trump’s campaign, transition team and early presidency?

The question is not an idle one.

Democrats Are Painted Into a Corner. Conrad Black – “The turn of the tables has been exquisite and complete. The idea that anyone ever nominated by a serious American political party would collude with a foreign power to rig a presidential election is insane.”

“But in their desperation and denial after the unimaginable victory of someone pledged to clean out the entire political class that has ruled America since the Reagan years, the Democrats paid $10 million for a false dossier on Mr. Trump, corrupted and politicized the intelligence services and the FBI, set up an echo chamber of self-verification with the national media Trump had already reviled as dishonest, and provoked the creation of a special counsel to look into Trump–Russian collusion.
…
Mr. Mueller did his best, with a character assassination of the president from selected Star Chamber testimony of no legal relevance and an attempt to pull the pin on a damp grenade by citing a series of legally innocuous facts and declaring an inability to exonerate for obstruction, though collusion with Russia was hopeless.
…
Now, finally, comes a president armed with a decisive legal and political advantage who is happy to meet his accusers and massacre them if they charge.
…
The Democrats have painted themselves into a corner. They must put up or shut up, impeach or back down. The president has called their bluff and the game is about to end, either an embarrassing defeat for the Democrats or political annihilation.
…
One way or the other, the papier-mâché Damoclean sword of impeachment will disintegrate just as the prominent Democrats who grievously abused their offices in trying to destroy Trump get ready for their own trials. Both sides come to bat in this legal game, and the Democrats have struck out.

Will the Spygate perpetrators ever be held accountable? neo – “I used to think I was rather cynical. And I was. But in recent years I’ve become more so. I’ve seen people get away with much more than I had thought they’d be able to get away with (Lois Lerner, call your office). And what’s more, I’ve seen more of my friends wink at it because it suits their political ends.”

“Ah, but although Maddow’s rating have fallen, there is a substantial core still feeding on that sort of rhetoric and don’t find it empty at all. They have come to require it. They have become convinced it’s true, have been waiting for years for the big payoff, and cannot abandon it now because a mind is a difficult thing to change. Trump’s guilt is a given, and the people who tried to get him are heroes whatever method they used to accomplish it.

The NIPCC reports are actually amazing. Luboš Motl – “the left-wing media establishment – in some loose alliance with the governments – was capable of promoting the IPCC reports as if they were the Holy Scriptures while the NIPCC reports remained almost completely hidden from the world public.”

Marc Morano has a number of stories about the Congressional hearings on the UN Species Climate Report at the Climate Depot for 22 May.

A federal judge’s ‘tell’ in his order forcing Trump to turn over financial records to House committee. Thomas Lifson – “In effect, Judge Mehta has made himself the Supreme Court of the United States as far as litigant Donald Trump is concerned.”

“A stay of a ruling with irreversible consequences is standard operating procedure. In this case, once the records would be turned over before the appeals process could play out, any appeals reversal would be moot, since the records, once disclosed, cannot be made private and confidential once again. …

This is a “tell” – an unintentional indication that the judge is biased and willing to deny the right to appeal his decision in order to advance the political agenda of the House Democratic Caucus, as expressed through Representative Cummings’s committee’s subpoena.
…
I expect an immediate appeal of the order to the DC Court of Appeals requesting an immediate stay while the appeals process plays out.

One mystery in the Mueller report still needs solving. Greg Richards – “one of the questions we would have hoped to see answered in the report is, what, exactly, was the charge against President Trump; what, exactly, is he supposed to have done?”

“It is astonishing that the word used for his alleged activity has been, from start to finish, “collusion.”

“Collusion” is a characterization of a charge, not a description of one.
…
We can narrow things down because we know what did not happen and thus could not have been collusion with the Russians or anybody else.
…
Mueller cleared President Trump of all charges, but that still leaves his report a disappointment because we still don’t know what charges it is that Trump was cleared of!

But who cares. It’s the seriousness of the charge and nothing else matters.

What are the odds that the Durham investigation is for real and will bring the bad actors to justice? Thomas Lifson – “But we must concede that there are plenty of reasons to worry that that the biggest political scandal in American history – the political weaponization of both the federal intelligence and law enforcement communities to spy on political opponents of the sitting president and remove a duly elected president from office – would be swept under the rug.”

Even the NY Times finds bankrupt taxi drivers shouldn’t be blaming Uber. Jazz Shaw – “So who was it that buried the cab drivers financially? Uber and Lyft, the credit unions, or the municipal government that constructed this rolling scheme in the first place?”

Is Dentistry Science Based? Grant Ritchey – “As for me, I feel that it was a bit heavy handed and focused too much on the evil doings of one derelict unethical dentist who did horrible things” … “This accusation paints all dentists as greedy and uncaring, who only want to do expensive treatment on their hapless, powerless victims.”

Fact-checking can’t do much when people’s “dueling facts” are driven by values instead of knowledge. David Barker And Morgan Marietta – “Perhaps the most disappointing finding from our studies — at least from our point of view — is that there are no known fixes to this problem.” This is cognitive dissonance on display with the Mueller dossier as the stimulant. Barker and Marietta provide an illustration of the nature of the problem they try to explain. It is not in the evidence nor in the facts but rather in the psyche and a matter of false witness even unto one’s self.

“In other words, people do not end up with the same answers because they do not begin with the same questions.
…
Fact-checking tends to fall flat. The voters who need to hear corrections rarely read fact-checks. And for those who might stumble across them, reports from distant and distrusted experts are no match for closely held values and defining identities.
…
In our data, those with higher levels of education are more, not less, divided. And the higher the level of training, the more tightly values and perceptions intertwine.
…
Based on this evidence, we conclude that dueling fact perceptions (or what some have labeled “alternative facts”) are probably here to stay, and worsen.
…
Our conclusions are much more definitive than Mueller’s: We see clear evidence of collusion and obstruction. Collusion between values and facts. Obstruction of the capacity to observe and accept legitimate evidence.

Words mean things. Perceptions and facts are two different things. Opinions and values need careful clarification. Collusion and obstruction have distinct meanings, especially in law. If higher levels of education are “more, not less, divided” it means that education is failing (unless you think the goal of education is indoctrination rather than enlightenment). They say they see ‘clear evidence’ and judge others on that basis without any consideration of why others many not see the evidence they do. They don’t debate, they argue. They make no effort to clarify perceptions, allow for bias and error, identify the ‘evidence’ they see or explain the rationale and logic behind their conclusions. This is not scholarly behavior – or at least at as scholarly used to be. For comparison and contrast, read VDH:

Progressives Face a Bleak Post-Mueller Landscape. Victor Davis Hanson – “Both the Mueller report and Barr’s summation can be found on the internet. Anyone can read them to see whether Barr misrepresented Mueller’s conclusions.”

“The besmirching of Barr’s conduct is surreal. He certainly has not done anything even remotely approximating the conduct of former President Obama’s two attorneys general.

Has Barr dubbed himself the president’s “wingman” or called America a “nation of cowards,” as did former Attorney General Eric Holder?

Has Barr’s Department of Justice monitored reporters’ communications or ordered surveillance of a television journalist? Has Barr used a government jet to take his family to the Belmont Stakes horse race, as did Holder?
…
The Mueller report ignored the likely illegal origins of the Christopher Steele dossier, the insertion of an FBI informant into the Trump campaign, the unlawful leaking of documents, and the conflicted testimonies of former high-level intelligence officials.

All of those things were potential felonies. All in some way yielded information that Mueller drew on in his investigation. Yet Mueller never recommended a single indictment of any of the Obama-era officials who likely broke laws.

Excellent and clear summation of the central problem with the Mueller report. Neo – “To me, this “outrageous shifting of the burden of proof” should actually outrage all Americans, because it really is “a violation of our entire system of law.” But it obviously has not outraged all Americans, or perhaps even most.”

“And this is not the least bit surprising to anyone who has watched the decline of thought, knowledge, and discourse in this country. How many people even know how our system of justice works in the first place, or just why the system is set up so that a person does not have to prove his or her innocence, and how it is that it ultimately protects each individual, Democrats or Republican or anyone else?

And how many people who actually do understand those principles are still willing to suspend them if they can be weaponized against an enemy?

The malevolent vengeance of the Democrats and man’s inhumanity to man. Patricia McCarthy – “Watching and enduring the Democrats’ venomous drive to destroy President Trump brings the phrase to mind.”

“The Democrats in Congress now realize that the jig may be up, that the hoax is about to be revealed to all. I.G. Horowitz and A.G. Barr are on the case. But their two-year, multi-million-dollar attempt to unseat a president has done irreparable damage to the nation, to the numerous people they bankrupted and charged with process crimes, to the presidency, and to the Trump family. They should be ashamed, but they are not. They are doubling down on stupid.

Let us hope the nation can recover from this long national nightmare the Democrats have visited upon us. In the end, “Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn.” Indeed, it does.

“Traitors, searchers after novelty, and those who err out of light mindedness” Paul Mirengoff – A history lesson from a 1740 Hasburg Empress.