Don’t Be Mad at Wolf’s Sanders Jokes if You’ve Never Been Mad at Trump by Katherine Timpf – “He has gone just as low, but she’s a comedian, not president, so she does deserve a bit more leeway when it comes to making jokes.” This is the typical apologia for the White House Correspondence Dinner – Trump does it so it’s OK. The problem is not President versus comedienne but rather one of accuracy in perceptions and an inability to make critical distinctions in tone, tenor, context, and accuracy. Then there’s the moral preening on top of logical fallacies.

“You don’t have to like all of her jokes, and you can think that some of them were too mean. You cannot, however, only have a problem with jokes when they’re making fun of the other side and consider yourself to be logically sound.

My Take on the “Comedy” Routine at the White House Correspondence Dinner Is Simple by Patterico illustrates the social problem – “I enjoyed watching Sarah Sanders called out for lying, on account of her being a paid liar.” He misses the hate and vulgarity and commits the ‘both sides do it’ fallacy in casting a judgment that is not supportable in any meaningful sense.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner Is Everything Wrong With The Media by Daniel Greenfield – “The free press has been tied up and locked in the basement by the crooked media.”

“The Dinner is, in theory, a charity event. But the only people who know that are reporters and Jeopardy trivia champions. In between the celebrity appearances and the obscene taunts aimed at women who work in the Trump administration, the media orgy is supposed to be fundraising to send kids to college.
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The Dinner does much better when the president shows up. That’s why the media is fuming that Trump stood them up twice. If the President is a Dem, he merits a bootlicking. If he’s a Republican, then his daughter gets compared to a box of tampons.

The WHCD and the WHCA have the same relationship to good journalism that vampires have to sunlight.
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The crooked media of a corrupt party knows its business. Smear the opposition and get feted.

Trump chose wisely, ignoring the White House Correspondents Association hatefest by Patricia McCarthy – “As everyone knows, the night is meaningless, an open-mic night for anti-Republican jokes that are really just insults. But the jokes have become cruder and ruder year after year.”

“One thing about the left is certain, written in stone: they are vicious, malicious and filled with hatred for all things not radically leftist. This year was, as last year, a doubling down on the vulgar.
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Nothing Michelle Wolf said last night can be quoted here. She should not be quoted anywhere. Her verbal abuse of the President and the people in the room was nothing short of degenerate. The left has always been caustic when attacking conservatives, but with this event they crossed a line into gutter obscenity. Ms. Wolf is an embarrassment not only to the left but to all of America.

Dickens pretty much summed up the political mess that is the American scene today. While Trump was raising the spirits of his supporters in Michigan, Michelle Wolf was hoping for a winter of despair and a season of darkness. Only when Americans are desolate, is the left happy and proud.

For the sake of journalism, stop the White House correspondents’ dinner by Margaret Sullivan – “It never has been a particularly good idea for journalists to don their fanciest clothes and cozy up to the people they cover, alongside Hollywood celebrities who have ventured to wonky Washington to join the fun.” Sullivan has a point although she shows her anti-Trump bias (“Trump rarely sets a good example for anyone”) and blindness (“Journalists do not present false stories. When they get something wrong, they correct it.”) so her point on the WHCD misses the mark. Again, excuses absent reality: “They are simply trying to do their jobs of informing the public, a job often made difficult by the obfuscation from the briefing room podium and the president’s own lies.” She thinks “are in the trenches digging out the truth. Not schmoozing in the swamp while the president hustles the heartland.” and that rather misses the WCHD vulgar hatefest demonstration that destroys the credibility of the media. Glen Reynolds, in response to a Glenn Greenwald ‘Trump v media’ Tweet says “All they have to do to be immune to Trump’s attacks is to not be preening, brazenly partisan, and openly crazy. And they can’t even do that.”

The New York Times’ Hatchet Job On Devin Nunes Is Riddled With Errors By Mollie Hemingway – “The New York Times article is riddled with errors that multiple sources publicly deny. It fails to include information easily found in the public record.” This is another example of the blindness Sullivan illustrates above. Hemmingway provides a case study of digging out the truth by dissecting a MSM report that was more about ignoring and obfuscating truth to provide propaganda support. Compare and contrast this analysis and its support with what you see from the likes of Margaret Sullivan.

“Jason Zengerle publicly announced his profile of Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., in today’s New York Times Sunday Magazine with the snarky tweet, “My latest for the @NYTmag on Devin Nunes, who’s been propagating, not to mention falling for, conspiracy theories since before the Deep State was even in a gleam in Donald Trump’s eye.”

It’s an accurate summation of the hit he attempted to place on Nunes, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). The only problem is the case he attempts to make is riddled with errors and full of embarrassing and deliberate material omissions
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Not only did Nunes not come up empty-handed in his dogged pursuit of transparency with the bin Laden cache, he was completely vindicated about the need to not bend the knee to intelligence officials when they claim to know better than their congressional overseers about transparency.
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The campaign against Nunes by the media and Democrats can be traced to his announcement that the Obama administration had engaged in worrisome collection and distribution of information on the Trump team during the transition.
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Many in the media responded by downplaying or denigrating his news, distracting with process complaints or quickly thrown-together stories from anonymous sources with no evidence claiming more breathless wrongdoing with Russia.

Showdown builds between Comey, House: Just what did FBI director say about Michael Flynn? by Byron York – “so far, the intelligence community has prevented that proof from seeing the light of day.” This is related to the objections about the redactions that were made to the House committee report. It may also be related to the recalcitrance to comply with FISA requests and Congressional subpoenas.

“In addition, Republicans pointed out that the intelligence community quickly removed proposed redactions from the House Intel Democrats’ counter-report. “The Democrats got all the redactions on their minority views lifted within a day,” said House Intel spokesman Jack Langer Sunday evening, “while we’re still struggling to get our concerns addressed.”

Now, in light of what Comey has said in recent interviews, Republicans are particularly eager to remove the blackouts. If that happens, the public will finally learn just what Comey said to the committee in March of last year.

Campaign 2018: Nevada Dems file 5th complaint against Heller by Ramona Giwargis – “Nevada Democrats filed another ethics complaint against U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, alleging the Republican is exploiting his official position to boost his campaign for re-election.” It’s a lot easier to smear and slander than it is to persuade and win elections.

“This latest frivolous complaint shows just how weak Nevada Democrats perceive their anointed candidate, Jacky Rosen,” Heller spokesman Keith Schipper said. “If Rosen respected our tax dollars, she would demand her political party quit wasting them in shameless attempts to distract Nevadans from the fact that she has been a complete failure in Congress.”

It also illustrates how Democrats assume guilt and go to any extreme to prove their point no matter how petty.

Here Are Three Scary FBI Scandal Factors You Must Know by Mark Tapscott – “There’s an old Washington maxim about being careful because ‘what goes around almost always comes back around‘”

“During the three years between Holder’s blatant subversion of the 1978 Inspectors General Act and passage of the 2016 law, James Comey succeeded Mueller as FBI chief. He continued, however, to wall off Horowitz’s access to documents essential to doing his job until the new law was passed.
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As more facts are uncovered about the lengths to which former FBI Director James Comey, his then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and a half-dozen other pro-Hillary Clinton bureau insiders went to protect the Democratic nominee in her email scandal, the least discussed element is Obama’s role in the affair.

A David Horowitz Hillsdale lecture Rules for Radicals: What Constitutional Conservatives Should Know About Saul Alinsky (YouTube February 2014)) identifies the nature of the conflict. He notes that conservatives accept the fallen nature of man and seek government that will limit human faults. Heaven is left to the hereafter. Liberals thinks government can avoid human frailties and bring about heaven on earth. The implication that the end is ‘heaven on earth’ justifies any means to achieve it and that separates the two camps in this social conflict.

James Comey, the smiling weasel by Thomas Lifson – “Have you ever wondered how people of the caliber of James Comey ever rose to the lofty heights of the Department of Justice and the FBI?” It’s a tale of dissonance starting with Andrew McCarthy trying to deal with the behavior of a good friend and colleague.

Comey Confirms: In Clinton Emails Caper, the Fix Was In by Andrew C. McCarthy – “He knew Obama’s Justice Department would sweep Hillary’s violations under the rug, so he played along.” Yes, McCarthy has a problem and is showing that he has difficulty in its resolution. Taking umbrage at the President’s tweets and applying court standards to public communications goes only so far. Describing crimes and then claiming that a person who did those things did not commit a crime only goes so far.

Losing Patience with the Rollup of the Rogue Ruling Class by Clarice Feldman – “More information came to light this week about the extensive, illegal operations of Obama’s rogue bureaucratic corps.”

“Having seen the criminal justice system misused as a vicious political weapon against Lewis Libby, Ted Stevens, and now General Michael Flynn while manifest lawbreakers, including both the Clintons, McCabe, and Comey waltz home free, inspires depths of distrust that only the enemies of a democratic state could hope to accomplish,

Here are some of the highlights of this week’s many disclosures.
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There is a camp that believes that the attorney general has allowed the Mueller investigation to continue only as a public distraction while his own team has been amassing evidence and securing indictments of the bureaucratic miscreants. I’m not fully in that camp, but there is one good thing to be said for the long walk through the nomenklatura: the table has now been well-set for their fall. Had it come earlier, it might have simply been dismissed as a tit for tat counter-series of political prosecutions.

What happens when the patience ends? That could be ugly.

Time to admit that Trump is doing a good job by Russ McSwain – “However bad Trump’s pre-election behavior is perceived to be, it has almost no value in evaluating the obvious success of his presidency.”

“Just as there are naïve investors who are incredulous when a surefire opportunity becomes a money-loser, there are pundits who, in their own minds, know that a person or a policy will lead to disaster. They are unable to grasp when reality makes their predictions worthless.
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Trump’s negotiating style is the key to understanding his success.
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Trump moves in mysterious ways. Some of his moves are likely to fail, but some of even the oddest of them work.
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it will add to the health of our republic if we judge our president by what he does as president rather than by what people predicted he would do or predict that he will do. There are people who call this approach being reality-based.

John Hinderaker’s tweet of the day: “How long before a federal judge in Hawaii orders the Korean War must continue” — Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) April 27, 2018

The High-Tech Lynching of Diamond and Silk by Daniel John Sobieski – “Zuckerberg could sit back and watch Democrats engage at Thursday’s House Judiciary Committee hearings in the character assassination they level at any blacks who express conservative opinions or otherwise stray off the Democratic plantation, just as they have done from Clarence Thomas to Kanye West.”

“The bottom line here is that the Democrats, already in panic mode over the phony Russia collusion probe evaporating in futility as true Democratic collusion and corruption are revealed, and as the Trump agenda, both domestic and foreign, is succeeding, are terrified that blacks are peeling away from their coalition. Even a 5-percent swing among blacks would doom the Democratic Party. Their ideological slavery must be maintained, and black conservatives speaking the truth must be destroyed.

Food stamp usage is in decline, as is black unemployment. Wages are rising, as is black homeownership.
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Diamond and Silk must be destroyed by Democrats who call Republicans racist and sexist. They and others like them who want to be judged by the content of their character and the truth of their ideas can appreciate the words of Clarence Thomas during his confirmation hearing:

The New York Post: The ugly attack on Ronny Jackson just set a new low – “Democrats this week claimed another scalp when Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson withdrew his nomination as secretary of veterans affairs under an avalanche of anonymous allegations from a red-state Democratic senator in a tough re-election fight.” It’s what they do. It’s who they are.

“Sadly, the decorated combat vet, inexperienced in DC’s often-treacherous ways, never got the chance to answer his accusers — or even to learn their names.

And because this most vicious character assassination succeeded in taking down Jackson, future nominees will face the same, or even worse.

Reuters: Trump calls on Democratic senator to resign after VA pick drops out – “the U.S. Secret Service said it had no records to back allegations that its personnel intervened to stop Jackson from disturbing former President Barack Obama during a foreign trip in 2015.” No support for smear allegations? No problem. Just pretend. See Instapundit for more – “What’s interesting is that in order to block a Trump nominee the Democrats were willing to portray the Obama White House as a drunken, chaotic mess. And Obama, who said so many nice things about Jackson, kept quiet for it instead of coming out to defend him.”

Declassified Congressional Report: James Clapper Lied About Dossier Leaks To CNN by Sean Davis – “A newly declassified report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections reveals that former intelligence chief James Clapper lied to Congress about information he shared with CNN on the infamous Steele dossier.”

“In one of the findings within the 253-page report, the House intelligence committee wrote that Clapper leaked details of a dossier briefing given to then-President-elect Donald Trump to CNN’s Jake Tapper, lied to Congress about the leak, and was rewarded with a CNN contract a few months later.
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The revelation that Clapper was responsible for leaking details of both the dossier and briefings to two presidents on the matter is significant, because former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James Comey wrote in one of four memos that he leaked that the briefing of Trump on salacious and unverified allegations from the dossier was necessary because “CNN had them and were looking for a news hook.”
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As The Federalist‘s Mollie Hemingway noted after Comey’s memos were finally made available to the public, the fired FBI director’s account of the briefing of Trump suggested that the entire briefing was a setup from the beginning, and that it was scheduled and held just so it could be leaked to journalists who wanted an excuse to publish a dossier nobody had verified.

In their coordinated response to the full intelligence committee’s findings, committee Democrats defended Clapper, claiming that he broke no laws while acknowledging that he did leak information about the dossier to CNN’s Jake Tapper.

Here Are The Republican Senators Who Voted For The Mueller Coup Bill by Daniel Greenfield – “With every committee Democrat backing the legislation, only one Republican was needed to secure passage. … But they got four.” … “And we’ve already seen federal courts playing this game before. The latest DACA ruling among them. It amounts to giving federal judges the power to keep a special counsel going indefinitely.” It’s an effort to hogtie executive branch powers enumerated in the U.S. Constitution. Congress is colluding with the judiciary to overthrow the third branch of government and squelch the checks and balances built into the Constitution.

Video: The Mueller investigation is “irretrievably tainted” says… Mark Penn? By Jazz Shaw – “As you see in the interview, it doesn’t take much prompting to wind up Penn and send him off to the races. He tags all manner of people involved in the investigation without even being specifically asked about them.”

“Then, when you add in all the material about Clapper and the dossier which has been dropping this month, well… the entire thing takes on a definitely swampy feel. The problem is that none of this changes the political realities we’re dealing with. Ending the probe before Mueller says he’s finished creates the image of a coverup whether there was anything to actually cover up or not. Firing him has even worse optics. But if Mueller is determined to drag this out through the midterm elections and beyond with nothing productive to show for his efforts, this becomes a case of the absolute worst of Washington on display.

The “legend” loses his way by Paul Mirengoff – “Berkowitz fairly concludes, Comey did not tell the president the truth when he assured him he doesn’t do sneaky things, he doesn’t leak, and he doesn’t do weasel moves.”

I agree with Peter’s conclusion: “The misconceptions and falsehoods that Comey perpetuates about the misbegotten prosecution of Scooter Libby provide further confirmation that, despite his private assurance to the president and public boasts, Comey can’t be counted on to tell the truth.”

If there’s a silver lining in the Comey saga, it’s this: The man has bought so fully into his self-legend — is so convinced of his own righteousness — that he takes no care to consult the facts. This leaves him vulnerable to the kind of questioning Bret Baier presented on Thursday, questioning that produced a fiasco for Comey.

Thus, Comey’s pompous pronouncement in March of this year — “Mr. President, the American people will hear my story very soon, and they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not” — may prove prophetic in a way the “legend” did not anticipate.

A Tale of Two Bills by Mark Steyn – “By strange serendipity, Bill Cosby was convicted of three counts of sexual assault on the day Juanita Broaddrick marked the 40th anniversary of her rape by Bill Clinton. Mr Cosby is eighty years old and likely to die in prison; Mr Clinton is still, in every sense, at large.” So much of this and now Tom Brokaw is in defense…

Who tipped off police to the Golden State Killer? By Ed Morrissey – “Authorities used genealogical websites to track down the suspected serial killer known as the “Golden States Killer,”

“Normally, law enforcement would need a warrant to seek out that kind of data if it wasn’t offered willingly. Of course, the unwitting tipster in this case chose to make their DNA information public in these genealogical databases in the first place, has have many, many others. This has created a powerful and perhaps dangerous tool for government to use, thanks to our own curiosity and the commercialization of our private data. In this case, it was used to apprehend a monster, but who will it be used to find in the future? And for what purpose?

this is not meant to take anything away from investigators who found a despicable monster after his victims had suffered for decades. As far as is known now, they broke no laws in accessing information that people published willingly. But it’s worth asking ourselves if we are becoming so eager to be entertained by own data that we’re not creating Big Brother by accident, and whose power will almost assuredly not be used by accident.

Come And See The Violence Inherent In The Leftism at Instapundit – “Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks suggested in a radio interview that Republicans are retiring en masse because of assassination fears.” Follow the links.

The War on Reason by Ben Voth – “We are living through an all-out war on truth, facts and reason,” said presidential candidate and former secretary of State Hillary Clinton in New York recently.” … “The urgent intellectual problem of our time is, what is reasonable? The war on reason has substantially damaged our public sphere.”

“All of this leads us back to a reconsideration of what is reason? It appears that “reason” is whatever suits the powerful at any given moment. Would Samantha Power “stoop to anything” in order to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president? Someone who is a monster at one moment may at another moment be an imperative ally. What might seem like a plain breaking of the law in one case may appear different to someone being employed by that lawbreaker in the future.

Hillary Clinton decries the war against reason. The American public’s war against “reason” is reasonable, and fully consistent with a republic founded upon limits on government rather than its ruthless expansion for selective self-gain.

Thomas Sowell’s Last Word? By Richard Kirk – “Few works on politically explosive topics maintain such a consistent focus on empirical evidence while avoiding rhetorical jabs at opponents.”

“On the other hand, empirical evidence cuts deep, especially when critics can’t protest the author’s “nasty” style. As radio talker Larry Elder observes, “[f]acts are to liberals what kryptonite is to Superman.”
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Sowell shows that many or most of the disparities that afflict black Americans are due to behaviors to which even other blacks have objected.
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Sowell also provides surprising examples of cases where the desire for profit actually won out over racial discrimination.
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Overall, Sowell’s book is a protest against the unfounded assumption that “there would be no disparate outcomes unless there were disparate treatment.” Sowell observes that this ideologically driven assumption “seems almost impervious to evidence.” Accordingly, those who cling to this dogma with religious fervor will likely avoid Sowell’s fact-filled book like kryptonite. Folks with less dogmatic proclivities, however, would do well to peruse this concise work.

Here’s Why Jeff Sessions Might Be Playing 4-D Chess by Larry Schweikart – “From early 2017, Jeff Sessions realized that he was engaged in both a legal/criminal battle and a public relations fight. He could never succeed in the former without simultaneously winning the latter.” There’s a lot of evidence that both the battle and the fight are in play. Both are massive with many soldiers and it will take time to settle matters. Think Germany v Russia in 1942 on. What’s to come out of the action remains to be seen.

In Rendering Guilty Verdict, Did The Cosby Jury Rely On Policy Or On The Facts And The Law? By Marina Medvin – “The government was shaming Cosby for confronting his accuser, for exercising a Constitutional right enumerated in the Bill of Rights.”

“The effect of the argument is that the prosecutor signaled to the jury that the fait of future victims feeling confident in reporting crimes rests in the hands of this jury.

This was a policy argument. A way to implant into the mind of the jury the idea that making a societal change will start with a Cosby conviction. … Yet, it is a dangerous road, making an individual set of allegations of a trial into a representation of society’s problems with this type of accusation. Surely an individual should not be the scapegoat for the ills of society as a whole.

The government’s proposition that the defense lawyer did something wrong by showing that the victim lacked credibility is absurd, but yet that is what the prosecutor did … The law permits and encourages fact finding in a trial. That’s the point of the trial!

The importance of this being an enumerated trial right cannot be brushed aside. The Bill of Rights only enumerates some rights, and leaves the others unenumerated. The Sixth Amendment is enumerated. This means it is of utmost importance. According to the Supreme Court, the essential purpose of the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment is the opportunity to cross-examine a complaining witness.
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Cosby was shamed by the government for asserting his Constitutional rights. Should the government shame individuals for exercising their right to trial, their right to cross examine witnesses, or their right to present a defense to a jury?

Is Comey telling the truth about his memos? by Byron York – “fired FBI Director James Comey is leaving a trail of confusing statements about how he handled the memos he wrote after conversations with President Trump” or, at Ace of Spades, “Breathtaking Duplicity:” Comey’s Claims vs. Reality – That characterization from Joe DiGenova.

Ken Bone: My son was suspended from school and the police are investigating because he went to the gun range — with me by Allahpundit – “It’s been a bad, bad week for parental rights in “free” countries.”

“If Kashuv’s and Bone’s schools had a problem with their activities, why the hell weren’t their parents brought in for a conference with administrators instead of the kids being disciplined? In both cases they were with their fathers, engaged in perfectly legal behavior. And actually learning something useful, do note. A common critique from gun-grabbers is that too many gun owners aren’t properly trained in how to handle a weapon responsibly. Well, here are Kashuv and Bone at the range, under a watchful eye, instead of taking potshots at tin cans in the woods.

What exactly is the offense here? Absent some credible suspicion of mental instability, this reeks of harassment.

Judge rejects Berkeley’s request to dismiss free speech lawsuit by John Sexton – “What’s happening here is a kind of heckler’s veto two-step.”

“Berkeley is forbidden to discriminate based on content, but not based on security. So if the left threatens violence every time a conservative is invited to campus, Berkeley has a legal reason to raise the cost of hosting the conservative speaker. The far-left is literally making speech more expensive for the right. Since what the far-left really wants is to “no-platform” (silence) conservative speakers, this is a win for them. Meanwhile, Berkeley can claim it’s not their fault the right is treated differently and that they haven’t done anything wrong.

Legally, this argument may fly but no one should be fooled about what’s happening here. It’s still giving the far left a way to veto (or at least discourage) conservative speech, just using the intermediary of security costs rather than the more direct action of throwing punches or breaking glass.

The Latest Battle In The Statue Wars: Stephen Foster by John Hinderaker – “A famous statue of Stephen Foster, often referred to as the father of American music, has stood in Pittsburgh for more than 100 years. Today Moretti’s statue of Foster was carted away by Pittsburgh authorities.”

“Wikipedia says that Foster was the first songwriter to refer to an African-American woman as a lady, in “Nelly Was a Lady.” It occurs to me that contemporary songwriters–rappers like Paradise Gray–typically don’t refer to African-American women as ladies.

Grammar is too mathematical: SJWs will turn Czech into gym, too by Luboš Motl – “SJWs are gradually replacing the kids’ classes of mathematics by dumb, repetitive, mechanical exercises that every kid can solve without any help or leadership.”

“while the leadership itself (and any insight that is communicated from the teacher to her student) is presented as crime. For approximately 24 hours a day, fans of these methods repeat the proposition that mathematics is “unpopular” and must therefore be “reformed” – and their reform is basically equivalent to the elimination of any nontrivial mathematical thinking from schools.
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So make no mistake about it. These SJWs want to reform classes of Czech in order to eliminate all traces of logical, mathematical, abstract, general, nontrivial thinking from those classes. Some of the kids – mainly the spoiled kids of rich parents who can’t swallow that their kids are weak at something despite the parents’ wealth – couldn’t understand XY. So it must be true that XY is useless, tyrannical, politically incorrect, disgusting, racist, homophobic – it has to be eliminated from schools.
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Ladies and Gentleman, what we’re seeing is a systematic attack on the rationality, meritocracy, and the Western civilization in general. We have to stop it and if we can’t stop it without firearms, we will have to stop it with firearms.

Steve King: Democrats raised the standards too high for Cabinet appointments by Sally Persons – “If these standards are applied to the next president, it’s going to be really hard to get anybody to serve in the next administration,” Mr. King said. This is from observing the Pruitt Smear currently in vogue.

Catherine Rampell / Washington Post: Trump is running America just like his businesses — right into the ground – this is an example of the sort of assertion that illustrates just how far off the rails the anti-Trump faction has become. Trump’s businesses made him a billionaire and a celebrity and that is a strange definition of “right into the ground.” The U.S.A. is recovering from stagnant economic growth, showing better employment (especially among minorities), and showing significant progress in international affairs (e.g. North and South Korea ending their war after 65 years). The curious definition of running an enterprise into the ground is only one aspect of this headline. The other is the hubris showing in the certitude of allegation and judgment. Such positions are why these people eschew any honest discussion or inspection of their ideas and perceptions. As Scott Adams notes in Episode 33: Hate versus ideas and the illusion driving hate. With coffee, “Democrats are focusing on people while Republicans focus on ideas.”

Donald Trump and the Star Chamber of Horrors by Michael Walsh – “Fifteen months into his administration, Donald Trump remains the object of a dedicated attempt by the Democratic Party, the media, NeverTrump Republicans, and rogue members of the deep state to take him down.”

Two lectures on YouTube address controls on a federal government. One is about the problem with the Judiciary and current issues of rogue judges. The other is the opposing views of a state’s role in a federal government contrasting and comparing a Jeffersonian view with a Lincolnian one.

“Judicial Power and Virtue” by Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society, gave this lecture about judicial virtue at Hillsdale College on April 4th, 2018.

The Real Reason the South Seceded by Donald Livingston at the Abbeville Institute Stone Mountain Conference, October 2015.

The Double Standards of the Mueller Investigation by Victor Davis Hanson – “The more Mueller searches for hypothetical lawbreaking, the more he ignores the actual lawbreakers.”

“The country is about to witness an investigatory train wreck.

In one direction, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation train is looking for any conceivable thing that President Donald Trump’s campaign team might have done wrong in 2016.

The oncoming train is slower but also larger. It involves congressional investigations, Department of Justice referrals, and inspector general’s reports — mostly focused on improper or illegal FBI and DOJ behavior during the 2016 election.
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Mueller has searched far and wide for wrongdoing but so far has found little. Meanwhile, there is plenty of other wrongdoing already found, but no one seems to be looking at it.

Flynn, Cohen, and other Trump aides are considered small enough fry to go after. Clinton, Comey, McCabe, and others seem big enough fry to leave alone.
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The more Mueller searches for hypothetical lawbreaking, the more he is inadvertently underscoring that actual lawbreakers must be subject to the same standard of justice.
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For over a year, we have had two standards of legality when there can only be one.

A reckoning is near.

Destroy Trump! The deep, dark shame of the left by Patricia McCarthy – “The Russia collusion hoax and the Mueller investigation have been exposed for what they are: a criminal attempt to prevent the inauguration of a duly elected president, then to see him driven from office by any means necessary.”

“For the left, the ends always justify the means, no matter how nefarious. This plot to undo the results of an election is the most serious, most villainous political scandal in American history, but masses of Americans know little or nothing of it thanks to our equally criminal mainstream media. So arrogant are the Jim Acostas of the MSM that they actually believe that if they do not report it, no one will know it.

The truth about the shameful left has been obvious for years and years. Harry Reid regularly lied to defeat opponents and was openly proud of himself when his lies worked. Obama lied over and over again about what Obamacare would do. The list of devious, deceptive persons in Congress is long. There are far too many crooks among them spending our money and seeking ever more control over our lives.

Leftists are masters of projection, always accusing those with whom they disagree of what they are actually doing.
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For leftists, rules don’t apply. They consider themselves to be above the law.
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the left cares not at all about the country and only about its own power and its members’ place within it. They have no shame – none at all.

If Obama could start DACA, Trump can end it by W. James Antle III – “The problem is that setting up an official program modeled to some extent after a law Congress rather pointedly failed to pass and then issuing work permits to its beneficiaries goes beyond merely setting enforcement priorities. It usurps the powers of the legislative branch of the federal government.”

“House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte went a step further.

“For a federal judge to rule that the current administration cannot change a memo from the previous administration is absurd,” the Virginia Republican said in a statement. “The DACA program was unilaterally created by the Obama Administration in a memo penned by former Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano. Just as easily as it was issued, it can be rescinded — presidential policy is not set in stone and often changes from one administration to the next.”
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When it comes to DACA, Obama could rightly tell Congress: You did not build that. Now Democrats must rely on judges to keep Trump from tearing it down.

Federal Judge: To Hell with Trump! Long Live Barack Obama’s DACA Program! Even Patterico? – “But this decision is worse than the previous ones.”

Dr. Ronny Jackson and the Curious Case of Sudden Journalism by Stephen Kruiser – “No one was interested in Jackson for several years, but now that Trump wants him to have higher profile job the “journalism” knives are out and wrecking him has become a media priority.”

“Whether true or untrue, it seems pretty clear that we wouldn’t know about any of this unless Jackson were about to become a member of President Trump’s cabinet. The clear signal from the Democrats and the MSM (redundant, I know) is that they are willing to destroy anyone who dares accept a job offer from this president.

The MSM spent the three weeks leading up to the attacks on Jackson by trying to get Scott Pruitt fired. Quick — name the last two EPA directors.
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Even George W. Bush’s cabinet members weren’t subjected to public character assassination like this, and the MSM — despite its revisionist history — really hated President Bush.

Should even one or two of the allegations be completely proven true we should have known about them before. There is no way Jackson could have been squeaky clean, then become 2018’s Greatest Monster merely through professional contact with President Trump.

If they aren’t true, it is just another nail in the coffin of journalistic integrity, all of which are being provided by the press themselves.

Reporters Without Borders ridiculously declares press has diminished freedom under Trump by Larry O’Connor – “Reporters Without Borders is a noble and proud organization that does very good work representing journalists across the globe engaged in fights against totalitarian regimes. That’s why their latest “Press Freedom Index” is an outrage for declaring that the free press is under assault in Trump’s America.”

“According to the index, America has fallen to 45th out of 180 nations when it comes to press freedom. The reason? President Trump says mean things about reporters.
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If Reporters Without Borders wants any level of credibility they probably should report the full and accurate truth when describing Trump’s statements. For the record, President Trump has NOT “referred to reporters ‘enemies of the people,’” he referred to “fake news media” as “enemies of the American people.”

That’s right, while decrying President Trump’s rhetoric against reporters who sloppily or willfully report false or misleading information for their own political purposes, Reporters Without Borders has reported false and misleading information for their own political purposes.
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While actual dictators kill reporters around the world for exercising their craft, Reporters Without Borders diminishes their own important and essential work by crying wolf on the nation that invented freedom of the press in the first place.

The NY Times’ fake fake news by neo-neocon – “No, that doubling of “fake” is not a typo. Irony, they name is NY Times.”

“although the idea of truth may be mutable in the post-modern relativistic world of the university, the newspaper world is still at least somewhat subject to fact-checking. That means that the Times was ultimately forced to issue the following retraction, which you can find if you scroll down to the end of the very long article
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But never fear, the Times soldiers on with the “far-right conspiracy programming” accusation about Watch, even though it can no longer seem to offer a single example of the fake news it wants to spotlight. But I would wager that the vast majority of its readers don’t require examples and take the Times’ authority on faith.

At war and with the separation of powers by Andrew P. Napolitano – “A popular way to begin the first day of class in constitutional law in many American law schools is to ask the students what sets the U.S. Constitution apart from all others.” But he’s going after the Syria retaliation and, in doing so, destroys the value of his argument. The idea that Congress must declare war for any military action is a long standing debate with much nuance. Exploring that nuance could be educational but using the either/or logical fallacy is not.

“the overarching and most important unique aspect of the Constitution is the separation of powers. The constitutions of many totalitarian countries pay lip service to free speech, privacy and due process, but none has the strict separation of powers that the U.S. does.

In the south it is ‘the war between the states’ and it was all about separation of powers. The struggle continues.

Revolution and Worse to Come by Victor Davis Hanson – “When legal bloodhounds and baying critics fail to take out Trump, what’s next? The Resistance wants Trump’s head — on the chopping block.”

“the aim of the so-called Resistance to Donald J. Trump is ending Trump’s presidency by any means necessary before the 2020 election. Or, barring that, it seeks to so delegitimize him that he becomes presidentially impotent. It has been only 16 months since Trump took office and, in the spirit of revolutionary fervor, almost everything has been tried to derail him. Now we are entering uncharted territory — at a time when otherwise the country is improving and the legal exposure of Trump’s opponents increases daily.
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As the Resistance goes from one ploy to the next, it ignores its string of failed prior efforts, forgetting everything and learning nothing.
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Insidiously and incrementally, we are in the process of normalizing violence against the elected president of the United States.
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The danger to the country this time around is that the Left has so destroyed the old protocols of the opposition party that it will be hard to resurrect them when progressives return to power.

We are entering revolutionary times. The law is no longer equally applied. The media are the ministry of truth. The Democratic party is a revolutionary force. And it is all getting scary.

The Weekly Standard: Rand Paul’s Dangerous Exhibitionism – “Leave aside the partisan hackery of those Democrats who supported Pompeo as CIA director and now purport to believe he can’t lead the State Department. We’ve come to expect as much from them.” Democrats are a very solid block. Republicans often seem to be a flock of turkeys.

“while conservatives may agree or disagree with Paul’s stated aim on a particular issue—we often share his views on fiscal questions, though we loathe his tactics and attitudinizing—his self-righteous exhibitionism isn’t just silly and off-putting. It’s dangerous.
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One wonders what the point of all this gesturing was, but Paul has long made perverse and pointless obstructionism his brand.
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Paul is entitled to take strong libertarian views on counterterrorism and health care policy. His views aren’t the problem. The problem is that he advances those views, not by proposing alternatives and leading his colleagues to embrace them, but merely by blocking whatever he can find to block. Rand Paul’s perverse and increasingly dangerous naysaying affords him copious attention from the news media—and that, we’re left to conclude, is the point.

The curious DACA order from a DC District Court judge by Jazz Shaw – “At the heart of the matter, since when does a program instituted by an executive order take on the same level of durability as a federal law?”

Elizabeth Warren unloads another 100 CFPB questions on Mick Mulvaney by Joseph Lawler – “The questions add to the 105 that Mulvaney previously brushed off while telling Warren that it was essentially her fault that he didn’t have to answer her, based on her role in designing the structure of the agency.” See VDH cited above for what this is about.

Lankford: It’s time to reimpose Democratic limitations on confirmation debate by Ed Morrissey – “Lankford told C-SPAN that he plans to introduce a rule change that will copy, word for word, a temporary changed pushed by Harry Reid and Senate Democrats to keep Republicans from stalling Barack Obama’s judicial nominations.”

Investor’s Business Daily: Turns Out, The Rich Will Pay A Bigger Share Of Income Taxes Under GOP Tax Cuts – “The most frequently repeated complaint about the Republican tax cuts is that they are a massive “giveaway” to the rich. New evidence shows that this claim, like almost every other attack on the tax bill, is false.”

“So, thanks to the GOP tax cuts, the rich will pay either the same or a greater share of the nation’s income tax bill and millions more will pay zero income taxes. How exactly is this a “giveaway” to the rich?

Indeed, by the Democrats’ own definition, the Republican tax reform — which zero Democrats voted for — has made the tax code more fair, not less.

Just don’t expect them to ever admit this.

A Further Perspective by Jeffrey Lord – “The Hannity Rule.” Yellow journalism isn’t new, it just has been mainstream. Here’s one way to summarize the current phenomena (satire).

What Randa Jarrar Teaches by Craig Bernthal – answers to questions being asked about how a faculty can be smeared and allow it to happen.

“What can Randa Jarrar teach our students? That hate is efficacious? That it does something positive? That grenade-throwing terrorism is good? I don’t want Fresno State to stand for that. I want a university where everyone can thrive and no one is made to feel guilty because of their color. I want a country where white women belly-dance, Arab women rock and roll, Venezuelans knock baseballs out of the park, and the Chinese come to play basketball. I want a world where love wins out over hate.

A positive perspective on electric vehicles by by Jan Kjetil Andersen – “let us take a look on the more theoretical and technical constraints of electric versus fossil fueled cars.” good summary with numbers and calculations, even.

How Solar And Wind Are Causing Electricity Prices To Skyrocket by Michael Schellenberger – “That leaves us with solar and wind as the key suspects behind higher electricity prices. But why would cheaper solar panels and wind turbines make electricity more expensive?.”

“In a paper in Energy Policy, Leon Hirth estimated that the economic value of wind and solar would decline significantly as they become a larger part of electricity supply.

The reason? Their fundamentally unreliable nature. Both solar and wind produce too much energy when societies don’t need it, and not enough when they do.
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Part of the problem is that many reporters don’t understand electricity. They think of electricity as a commodity when it is, in fact, a service … the price of services like eating out and electricity reflect the cost not only of a few ingredients but also their preparation and delivery.

This is a problem of bias, not just energy illiteracy. Normally skeptical journalists routinely give renewables a pass.

Teachers With Guns by John Stossel – “What should be done about school shootings?”

“After the horrible shooting in Parkland, Florida, President Trump suggested that some teachers carry guns. “We need to let people know, you come in to our schools—you’re gonna be dead.”

Anti-gun activists were horrified.

But they probably didn’t know that many teachers have brought guns to work with them for years.

The New York Times Corrects by John Hinderaker – “If the journalist’s best example of “far-right conspiracy programming” on Facebook turned out to be wrong, why should we believe that Facebook’s Watch is “flooded” with such content?”

Is ‘can’t prove untrue’ new standard in Trump probe? by Byron York – “the generally accepted standard of justice has been turned on its head. Now, the question is: Can the accused prove the charges false?”

“ Chuck Todd, moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” asked former CIA Director John Brennan, “So far with this dossier, nothing yet has been proven untrue. How significant is that?”

“As Jim Comey has said, I think very famously, these were salacious and unverified allegations,” Brennan responded. “Just because they were unverified does not mean they were not true.”

That’s where the Trump dossier story stands today. No one has proved that the most serious allegations are true. But since no one has proved them false, either, some in the political class act as if they were true.
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“Setting aside the absurd and patently unfair ‘guilty until proven innocent’ standard that thinking requires, it also ignores the fact that the FBI has never tried to disprove it,” Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe, a former federal prosecutor who now serves on the House Judiciary Committee, said in a recent text exchange. “When the president asked the FBI to do exactly that, one of Jim Comey’s secret memos documents the response: [Comey] told him it is ‘very difficult to disprove a lie.'”

From Don Surber: Comey admitted breaking the law – “Good people should not allow the bad people to define things.” Mueller’s harassment of Hannity may be criminal – “Mueller is a real fascist who uses the power of the state to attack individuals.”

At Instapundit, “Broward county law enforcement seems to be a real hive of contemptible weasels” Anti-Gun Control Parkland Survivor Kyle Kashuv Questioned By School Security For Visiting Gun Range With His Father.

Russiagate’s Epic Fail vs. Watergate’s Windfall by Deroy Murdock – “Mueller’s barely productive odyssey is an enormous embarrassment compared with the mass ichthyocide that was the Watergate investigation, even at the equivalent stage in that long, national nightmare.”

“In a humiliating contrast to these legendary law-enforcement victories, Mueller has yet to prove that the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin. If there were as little to Watergate as there is to Russiagate, Nixon would have finished his second term, South Vietnam most likely would have stayed free, and Cambodia’s killing fields never would have opened.

John Brennan’s Secret Trip to Moscow by Daniel John Sobieski – “there are plenty of legitimate reasons for a CIA director to make a trip to Moscow, but when a Russian deputy foreign minister says he didn’t visit the Foreign Ministry itself but did visit the KGB’s successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB), it raises some eyebrows..”

“Consider that John Brennan is a Trump-hating perjurer who lied to Congress about secret surveillance. He is the crown prince of a Deep State fiefdom that has its own agenda. The end justifies the means in their world, and Brennan may have been up to his eyeballs in developing that “insurance policy” against a Trump victory.

But Mueller’s epic fail has not dampened his overzealousness or that of other prosecutors who follow his lead.

Mark Levin and His “Great Patriot” by Mark Steyn – “Time for Conservatism, Inc to clean up its act.” He’s got a bone to pick.

“Trump came along and snaffled the GOP nomination away from the donor class because Conservatism, Inc had proved itself largely impotent. In the hands of Cary Katz, it’s both impotent and corrupt. Katz is not a “great patriot”: right now, he’s a great scofflaw and a great deadbeat. And anyone who makes the mistake of subscribing to his “wonderful network” is just roadkill in the path of his fleeing limo.

Us and Those Bushes by William Murchison – “The death of Barbara Bush reminds us of the decencies and civility that are long gone from our politics and public life.”

“The spirit of which “The Bushes” partook, as mentors, was the spirit of a culture generally content, when it came to engaging problems, to consult the resources of inner character — getting things done, rather than yelling and scoring points. American culture still had a sense of humor. It didn’t fly into rages. It put a low premium on venomous modes of expression. It appeared to value human achievement, both honoring and promoting it. It had by present standards good manners; it tended, with little show of latent Puritanism, to value honesty, dignity, and personal restraint.

I think “The Bushes” lived — continue to live — in this spirit. They are poor haters, reluctant revilers. They do not storm about looking for people to beat up and malign. They would rather encounter people to work with, or to help.

Is the Bible Overrated? by John Hinderaker – “GQ, which stands for Gentlemen’s Quarterly, ran a feature on “21 Books You Don’t Have to Read.” Number 12 is the Bible. … Spoken like an ignorant liberal, the exact opposite of the truth.”

More Contemptible Behavior By Liberals by John Hinderaker – “We haven’t yet written about the fact that the Left is engaging in the despicable tactic of “demonstrating,” i.e. committing vandalism, at the home of Chris Cox of the National Rifle Association, and harassing his wife’s business.”

“Democracy presumes a certain level of civility and accommodation among citizens. But how can we coexist with people this awful? Probably the only way to stop liberals from engaging in these disgusting tactics is to do the same to them, but I doubt that we can find conservatives who can match the Left for obnoxiousness, even if we want to.

My only other comment is this: it may be the NRA today, but if Leftists think the tactic is working, they will deploy it against conservatives of all stripes. It is important for all conservatives to stand with Chris Cox and anyone else who is subjected to this contemptible form of “protest.”

It’s wrong to summarize the multiverse as “left-wing” by Luboš Motl – “And Keating’s proposed Nobel prize reforms are left-wing lunacy.” It’s a long slog through the weeds with a few pretty things here and there.

“If God could have created (the laws that produced) a round Earth, small planets and large planets, one galaxy and billions of other galaxies, He could have created laws that produce a single patch of the visible Universe, a trillion of patches, googol to the 5th power of patches, or infinitely many patches. What is the problem? I think that you must imagine a very weak, anthropomorphic God if such things are a problem for you.
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OK, Susskind stood on the opposite side than Keating but the underlying logic is equally unscientific and both of them “politicize” a topic that shouldn’t be political.

Cambridge Analytica researcher: We didn’t hack Facebook — we played by their rules by Ed Morrissey – “Did Cambridge Analytica hack Facebook and steal data from tens of millions of users? That’s what Mark Zuckerberg led Congress to believe, but the researcher behind the app accused the Facebook CEO of being “flat-out wrong.”

“Kogan’s not wrong about that, even if he does minimize the intrusiveness of Cambridge Analytica’s actions. The guilt of others does not minimize one’s own responsibility, but the bigger issue here is whether Zuckerberg has been honest with Congress and the public about what happens to user data. Both Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have tried to evade the obvious in denying that users are the commodity by which Facebook has made itself and its executives filthy rich in a little over a decade.

That is the fundamental business model of Facebook and other “free” internet services. If anything good can come out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the education this moment provides users might be it. Don’t want to be the product? Pay for your services. Otherwise, don’t act shocked to discover that you’re the one being sold.

J.J.Sefton over at Ace of Spades has The Morning Report 4/24/18 with a list of stories with links to follow if you need to mess with your mind and get the blood stirring. – “So there you have it. A nation that is all but completely rotted from within and by its own hand. As George Bernard Shaw once quipped, “the English and Americans are two peoples separated by a common language.” The question is, are we to be two peoples united by a common fate? The world wonders…”

Fusion GPS co-founders signal next phase in attempted Trump takedown has started by William A. Jacobson – “When Fusion GPS speaks, newsrooms, Democrats, and prosecutors listen.”

“What is known about the Fusion GPS role in stoking and implementing an attempted takedown of candidate and ultimately president Trump is one of the greatest political scandals in memory. But it’s a story that only partially has been told.
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What is less known, but almost certain, is how Fusion GPS pushed Russia conspiracy stories through its close relationship with reporters, and likely continues to do so. Fusion GPS not only was tight with reporters, it was tight with DOJ officials involved in pushing the Russia conspiracy narrative.

Manipulating the political process and media on Russia was Act I, playing out in the Mueller investigation.

Act II, as I’ve previously written, is the SDNY investigation of Michael Cohen on a referral from Mueller. That Act II, even more so than Act I, is a more direct attack on Trump’s business dealings and history than Mueller could justify keeping under his jurisdiction.
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Right up front they posit an ulterior motive for the prosecution, and a willingness to circulate rumors of criminality much like they circulated rumors of Russian collusion.

They continue to put forth their suspicions, while admitting they have no hard evidence

Devin Nunes: DNC lawsuit is a ‘fundraising scheme’ by Daniel Chaitin – “This is about the extreme left, the socialist left, wanting to never accept that the president of the United States was rightfully and duly elected, carried a number of states that nobody expected him to carry,”

“Trump has said the DNC lawsuit is “good news” and his 2020 campaign has listed out a plan to draw out emails and evidence of “corruption” and “collusion” during the legal process.

Devin Nunes On Russia Probe Origin: “Major Irregularities” At State Dept, Sidney Blumenthal Involved By Tim Hains – “potential “major irregularities” exist at the State Department with regard to how the FBI found out about the George Papadopoulos meeting with a Russian national that led to the FBI’s original investigation into potential Trump/Russia collusion.” See also Analyze this by Scott Johnson.

Hardly a Stir When Starbucks Denied a Cop by Daniel John Sobieski – “We live in a world where black lives matter but blue lives matter not so much.”

“Starbucks did somewhat apologize for the incident, but there was no national mea culpa by the executive officers of Starbucks or the shutting down of its 8,000 stores and turning them into temporary re-education camps for employees who for the most part probably don’t have a biased bone in their bodies and who depend on police for their safety inside and outside their stores.
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Self-survival and political correctness are prime motivators for Starbucks, but not the indignity and disrespect shown a Philadelphia officer in 2015. No grandiose mea culpas, no mass closings, and no employee re-education. Starbucks’s social conscience did not extend to those who risk their lives for the safety of its employees and customers.

Jack Goldsmith on the deep state by Paul Mirengoff – “His assertions carry weight for two reasons.”

“All of this notwithstanding, Goldsmith lamely suggests that special circumstances might have justified the deep state’s assault on the Trump presidency. What special circumstances? Sally Yates (an anti-Trumper temporarily in charge of the Justice Department) thought that Michael Flynn might become a Russian agent, or something. Plus, there were hints of collusion between Russia and Trump, a matter already being investigated (by anti-Trumpers in the deep state).

Goldsmith makes no attempt to show that these circumstances did, in fact, justify the deep state’s assault on the president. He simply allows it as a possibility.

But the deep state will always be able to cite, or gin up, “special circumstances” to justify its interference in our politics — just as, to return to the analogy with which Goldsmith begins his article — South American military leaders were always able to some up with special circumstances to justify military coups.

I think Goldsmith understands this. Maybe that’s why the alarmist portions of his discussion of the deep state’s conduct are so ringing while his suggestions that the deep state acted with justification seem so perfunctory.

For SJWs in education, I became a template for villains by Luboš Motl – “The people who demonize any hard education – as “pressure” that brings kids away from the “playful” paradise – are really enemies of the nation’s future, enemies of the Western civilization.”

“What’s manipulative is the emotional encapsulation. The choice of the words “pressure” and “playful” was clearly made with the desire to associate the “playful” guys with the common good, and the “pressure” guys with the evil. You know, I am against most types of pressure and in favor of playful approaches in many contexts. But here we’re discussing a serious particular question – what the mathematics classrooms should look like.
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In the previous generations, kids obviously had to do lots of things they didn’t naturally like – everyone assumed that this is how things have to be. And to compensate for these duties, the kids also did other things that could have been seen as “somewhat rebellious”. Because the first side of the equation was largely neutralized, the second side has largely disappeared, too.

The “progressive” transformation of the society and the education system has gone very far and the question “whether the teachers may exert any pressure at all” is really the question we’re solving these days – or, if you’re just slightly more optimistic, a question we will be solving very soon. That’s where the society seems to be heading.

The False Teachings of the National Council of Churches by E. Jeffrey Ludwig – “The momentum of non-biblical Protestant Christianity picked up more than 100 years ago with the publication in 1907 of Walter Rauschenbusch’s book Christianity and the Social Crisis.”

“Rauschenbusch, shortly after his return from studies in Germany, introduced what came to be known as the Social Gospel. This Social Gospel became the basis for the Federal Council of Churches, which, in 1950, became the National Council of Churches (NCC). The dogma of the National Council of Churches has been regularly updated and is now available online here.
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The NCC briefly and vaguely asserts a belief in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit and then goes on to discuss its true purpose, which is salvation by works not by grace. Their “creed” is right out of the playbook of the progressive left, where righteous living is based on commitment to the entire “social justice” program.

A two-hour introduction to the climate change by Luboš Motl – “One may talk about lots of the sociology and history of the movement and it’s interesting – and often infuriating. But I still think it’s more relevant to focus on the hard science and the physical basis of all the phenomena.” His “collection of topics” list is phenomenal. It illustrates the point that climatology is not a simple ‘greenhouse gas’ thing and just how broad science can really be.

BREAKING: Lawmakers Make Criminal Referral on Clinton, Comey, Lynch to DOJ on Steele Dossier by Sara Carter – “Obama officials and FBI embattled agents also targeted for possible violations of federal law.” Note this is reporting on a letter from Congress, not the prosecutor and grand jury process. If the report is correct, it will be up to the DoJ to determine whether to press charges.

“House Oversight and Government Reform Committee member Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Florida, along with ten other colleagues sent the letter Wednesday to Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray criminally referring former FBI Director James Comey, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for their involvement in the investigations into President Trump and alleged violations of federal law. FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and his paramour FBI lawyer Lisa Page, whose anti-Trump text messages obtained by the DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, were also included in the referral.

“We write to refer the following individuals for investigation of potential violation(s) of federal statutes,” states the letter obtained by this reporter. “In doing so, we are especially mindful of the dissimilar degrees of zealousness that has marked the investigations into Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, respectively. Because we believe that those in positions of high authority should be treated the same as every other American, we want to be sure that the potential violations of law outlined below are vetted appropriately.”

After Barbara Bush’s Death, Left’s Torrent Of Bile Shows Who The Real Hatemongers Are, Investor’s Business Daily – “the progressive left turned it into a political hate-fest. We need a safe space for civility.”

“These are just some of the many other routine expressions of hate found on Twitter following Barbara Bush’s death. There were many, many others. One can only hope that their authors’ ObamaCare coverage includes mental health.

Nor are these aberrations or out of the ordinary. In fact, the far left has steadily ratcheted up the hate quotient of its speech for years. The goal is to continue to shrink the space in which basic decency, conservative or even moderate political thoughts can flourish, by constant public attack, threats, noisy demonstrations, name-calling, derision and ridicule.
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those who engage in this type of routine demonizing and character assassination claim absolute moral superiority for their own beliefs as the reason why they’re fully justified. No need to have a conscience.
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We hope most Americans agree: It’s time to reclaim the civility that once was part of American public life. The response to Barbara Bush’s death should be a wake-up call. If we can’t return to decency and respect in public discourse, we’ll bequeath our children and grandchildren a meaner, angrier and far less free America.

In the meantime, rest in peace, Barbara Bush.

Progressive professors behaving badly by Thomas Lifson – “I believe that both are exemplars of the moral hazard that accompanies the exalted status accorded professors, often aggravated by the practice of granting tenure.”

“While I am not familiar with the terms of her contract, I do know that tenure is not an absolute guarantee of lifetime employment. A number of factors, including the closing of an academic department due to low enrollment (aka, market forces), sexual misconduct with a student, or inflicting harm on the employing institution can be grounds for termination in some cases. Nonetheless, Jarrar’s presumption of job invulnerability is apparently what led her to believe that publicly inflicting emotional pain on very prominent people when they are most vulnerable was cost-free. …

It is quite obvious that anger is a prominent part of her self-expression. At least in this case, she was not inflicting that anger on students. I have far greater issue with anther professor whose behavior took place in a classroom and was directed at a student.
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If this account is accurate, Finkelstein clearly is abusing his position as a professor. Students are graded by professors, with serious consequences for their future academic and career prospects, meaning that they are very vulnerable. There is an absolute obligation on anyone who has such responsibility to act on the basis of personal detachment from any emotional response to disagreements over political, or moral, or other contentious issues of the moment.

I began my work life as a professor, and found that the moral challenges of responsibly dealing with the power over students bestowed upon that position were quite serious and demanding.
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To some degree, Professors Jarrar and Finkelstein are unwittingly “progressive” in that their despicable actions are advancing the progress of the inevitable collapse of the bubble.

James Comey goes stale fast, hits end of his shelf life by Monica Showalter – “with little more than florid descriptions to speak for his otherwise content-free book, and no big revelations, what we get from it is that he has a high opinion of himself, he’s mad about getting fired, and he wants revenge.”

“So now we see just about nobody showing up for the book’s launch at the prestigious Kramerbooks, at the heart of the capital, on Dupont Circle at its opener. The Weekly Standard noted that there were more cameras than customers for this washed up bureaucrat’s hectoring dialectic about his own virtue, and the store sold only about a dozen books, many to the reporters.
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Apparently, people in Washington, D.C., who are often swamp things, can see the game he is playing well.
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Maybe worst of all, the voters are beginning to notice that Comey’s act is all an act.
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This is not the makings of a bestselling book. For the publishers, this big rollout represents a lot of bad judgment clouded by life in a left-wing bubble, given that they paid Comey reportedly millions in an advance. For the rest of us, the popped bubble represents a victory: people aren’t as stupid as their supposedly betters make them out to be.

Cycle dealership ordered to remove military flags goes viral. When rude city worker disrespects troops, all hell breaks loose. By Frieda Powers – “When it comes to defending American patriotism, it seems it always pays to fight for what’s right.”

“A Florida motorcycle dealership found itself facing penalties and allegedly rude behavior by city employees when it was ordered to take down military flags flying atop its store. After a now-viral Facebook video posted by the shop, the flags are being allowed to continue flying, the store has been spared the fines and the city employees suspended.

A growing awareness prompted by arrogant professors, rude city employees, and the twitterverse.

Trump ends 68-year war by Don Surber – “Today news leaked that North Korea and South Korea will reach a peace agreement.” There’s also news that the ex CIA director, SoS nominee met secretly with North Korean leaders. But this sort of news is rather hard to find from the swamp’s propaganda machine with is focused on Cohen and Daniels.

“”North and South Korea are in talks to announce a permanent end to the officially declared military conflict between the two countries, daily newspaper Munhwa Ilbo reported Tuesday, citing an unnamed South Korean official,” CNBC reported.

You won’t believe what tax reform will cost wealthy Californians in 2019 by Ed Morrissey – “Lots of people just talk about soaking the rich, but Donald Trump and the GOP actually did it”

“The controversial phase-out of the state and local tax deduction (SALT) will drop like a bombshell on high-tax-rate blue states, which is one reason why Democrats so staunchly opposed it.
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Not only do other taxpayers end up subsidizing the wealthy, they also indemnify blue-state politicians against the consequences of their tax policies. Next year, taxpayers in California, New York, and other high-tax states will have to truly pay for their own taxes rather than foist them off on everyone else.

Minnesota Public Radio: Anatomy of a Smear by John Hinderaker – it’s how that propaganda machine works described in detail.

“Katherine Kersten is a Senior Fellow at Center of the American Experiment, the think tank that I run. In the Fall 2017 issue of our magazine, Thinking Minnesota, she wrote a long, thoroughly documented expose of leftist political indoctrination and bullying of nonconforming students, teachers and staff in the Edina, Minnesota public school system. She did a follow-up story in the Winter 2018 issue of the magazine. Because of their quality and depth of reporting, these articles (along with an op-ed by Kathy in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on the same subject) triggered a vigorous local debate.

The issue of left-wing indoctrination in the schools is, of course, of national interest, and Kathy’s articles began to attract attention from national news outlets, as well.
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It is obvious that the principal purpose of MPR’s story was to smear Katherine Kersten and Center of the American Experiment by associating us with the Daily Stormer (“neo-Nazi!”), Stormfront (“white supremacist!”) and 8chan. No mention of mainstream conservatives like Dennis Prager, Brit Hume, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Dana Perino, Power Line, InstaPundit, Independent Women’s Forum, Hot Air, the Drudge Report, Legal Insurrection, Frontpage, Intellectual Takeout, Education News, American Conservative, PJ Media, as well as neutral outlets like Real Clear Politics and the Kansas City Star. These mainstream sites have traffic that is, what? 100,000 times greater than the Daily Stormer and Storm Front? 1,000,000 times greater? Obviously, Ms. Wastvedt featured the obscure, extremist sites as a politically-motivated smear.
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I think it is telling that MPR is quick to smear those with whom its reporters disagree politically, but refuses to make its reporter available for an interview. Transparency is, apparently, a one-way street.

I am asking Minnesota Public Radio for an apology on behalf of Center of the American Experiment.

More on the Cohen investigation from Andrew C. McCarthy, Neo-neocon has a bit more on the ‘trust your government’ McCarthy dissonance noticed yesterday. The Hannity exposure is a hard fact arguing against non-political prosecutors.

CNN’s Brian Stelter Has a Lot of Nerve Getting Snotty About Sean Hannity’s Conflict of Interest by Patterico – “You see the problem? If not, let me sum it up in two words: Corey Lewandowski.”

“You did not see anything like that in any of Brian Stelter’s pieces. You did not see him calling Lewandowski’s arrangement a “glaring conflict of interest.” You did not see him claiming that CNN is not a normal newsroom. Instead, you saw him praising the Lewandowski hire.

What do you know? He has a different standard for Fox News than he has for his own employer!

Which is to be expected. Just don’t expect us to take your moral preening seriously, Brian Stelter. You guys are hardly the angels you’re trying to appear to be. And we all know it.

The compare and contrast is pulling up a lot of reference events but that only creates the need to deny, refute, ignore, or impugn to rationalize the new assault.

Ace: Judge Forces Michael Cohen to Disclose Name of Client Who Had Instructed Him to Keep It Secret – “Cohen was forced to disclose this in court. Why it wasn’t disclosed in the judge’s private chambers and kept secret, I don’t know.”

A quick look at Michael Cohen’s judge by Henry Percy – “Judge hands defeat to Trump and Cohen,” blares the headline.

“Kimba Wood…Kimba Wood…where have I heard that name before? Well, look at this. She was Bill Clinton’s second choice to be attorney general, after the Zoe Baird nomination blew up. Kimba’s blew up, too, because she forgot to tell the White House she had employed an illegal as a nanny.

Is this amazingly great luck for the Mueller-U.S. attorney tag team or what?

Mueller Targets Sean Hannity Following Cohen Raid, DCWhispers – “While the court proceedings took place in New York, make no mistake those proceedings were being guided by the hand of D.C. Special Counsel and former FBI Director, Robert Mueller.”

“The U.S. District Court raid on Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen’s offices was a direct offshoot of the Mueller investigation. Today that Mueller-influenced (and many feel highly illegal) raid forced Mr. Cohen to start disclosing names on his client list. First and foremost was Fox News personality and avid Trump supporter, Sean Hannity.

The abuse of power by the federal government today is a clear example of something a Congressional staffer source indicated to D.C. Whispers some time ago – that Trump is to be destroyed and those who supported him are to be punished/destroyed as well.
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Like Trump, Sean Hannity is a fighter. Look for him to come out swinging against this abuse of power.

He’s in for a fight. We all are.

Colluders on the Loose by Victor Davis Hanson – “Comey, McCabe, Clapper, Brennan, Lynch, Andrew Weissmann, Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Harry Reid, Samantha Power, Clinton attorney Jeannie Rhee … f collusion is the twin of conspiracy, then there are lots of colluders running around Washington.”

“Robert Mueller was tasked to find evidence of Trump and Russia collusion that might have warped the 2016 campaign and thrown the election to Trump. After a year, his investigation has found no concrete evidence of collusion. So it has often turned to other purported Trump misadventures. Ironically, collusion of all sorts — illegal, barely legal, and simply unethical — has been the sea that Washington fish always swim in.
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Some sort of collusion likely occurred when the Obama DOJ and FBI sought FISA-court requests to surveille Carter Page and, indirectly, possibly many other members of the Trump campaign.
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Apparently, a number of government officials must have been in cahoots to get all their stories and agendas straight ahead of time. They certainly agreed on talking points to keep embarrassing facts from FISA judges, and they did so on a number of occasions. Does that behavior fall under the definition of some sort of colluding obstruction?

Trey Gowdy: Comey was willing to put all of his supposed problems with Trump aside to keep his job by Allahpundit – “His [Trey Goudy] point isn’t made often enough about Comey even though to some extent it’s self-evident.”

“If you can spare the time, start from the beginning and watch the whole Gowdy interview as he has thoughtful things to say about the Michael Cohen raid, Mueller’s and Rosenstein’s respective duties, and the Russiagate probe, whose justification he’s never doubted. The Comey segment is actually the only part of the interview where Gowdy took Trump’s side. HIs point on the Cohen raid is simple: Once Bob Mueller thought he had probable cause of criminal activity by Cohen, what else was he supposed to do except do what he did?

Oh My: Congressional Leader Calls For Impeachment Of Rod Rosenstein Over Uranium One Scandal, DCWhispers – “During that highly controversial agreement that sold 20% of U.S. uranium stock to Putin-controlled interests in Russia then-U.S. attorney Rod Rosenstein was charged with investigating the deal as allegations of bribes, extortion, and money laundering involving the Clintons and Obama-related figures, quickly mounted.”

“And guess who was the FBI Director at the time? None other than Robert Mueller, the man now charged with investigating Donald Trump.
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To date, the only real evidence of any Russian collusion has been between the Obama White House, the Clintons/Clinton Foundation, Robert Mueller, and Rod Rosenstein (among other Obama-era figures)
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Should the truth ever break free it might very well reveal how the Obama years were among the most dangerously corrupt in the history of America. The Mueller investigation has nothing to do with finding the truth but doing all it can to destroy it.

The McCabe Report is Just an Appetizer by Roger Kimball – “Horowitz will follow up with entrees on the FBI’s partisan activities in the 2016 presidential election and, later, another report on (if I may employ the term) collusion with the State Department.”

“We’ll have to wait for Horowitz to serve up the additional courses he has cooking. But right now we can enjoy his refreshing treat of McCabe-kabob, grilled to perfection.

Andrew McCabe, you might recall, was a central player in the pseudo-investigation of Hillary Clinton’s misuse of classified information and self-enrichment schemes while Secretary of State. He was one of the people who made sure that went nowhere. He was also a central figure in the get-Mike-Flynn operation and, later, the Great Trump Hunt that has been occupying Robert Mueller for nearly a year.

McCabe leaked information about an investigation to a Wall Street Journal reporter, lied about leaking in casual conversations with superiors as well as under oath.”
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This meal is far from over. But I suspect that Michael Horowitz will be filling out the menu at least as robustly as that fisher of men, Robert Mueller.

Ace: Inspector General Report Into Hillary Email Investigation to be Released In May – “A lot of investigations into Hillary Clinton died on McCabe’s desk.”

Judge rules to unseal 11 cases related to Starr’s Clinton investigation, following CNN request by Katelyn Polantz – “Though Chief Judge Beryl Howell’s opinion Monday deals with secret legal proceedings from 20 years ago, it could offer a road map for making court records in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation public eventually.” This has the appearance of grabbing at straws after a long series of dry holes at CNN. It is also an attempt to rationalize Mueller’s tactics by smearing previous special prosecutors.

Jonah Goldberg’s Suicide of the West by John Sexton – “The story of Western civilization, and really civilization itself, is the story of productively sublimating human nature.”

Court shoots down Acosta DOL’s attack on religious freedom by Paul Mirengoff – “What is perhaps most troubling about the Department’s position in this case, however, is the conceit of unlimited agency power that lies behind it. The power of a federal agency is no more than worldly. The Department should tend to what is Caesar’s, and leave the rest alone.”

Is It History, Or Is It Propaganda? By John Hinderaker – “This sort of ignorance and bias is rampant throughout American education. Some have suggested that it is parental malpractice to send your children to a public school. In many areas of the country, that proposition is hard to deny.”

The air is full of “Trump morally unfit” assertions what with the Comey book but it is difficult to figure out what exactly these people consider support for their views. Here are two – immigration and tax policy. Another looks to be opposition to abortion. The sad part is that these people disagree not by challenging opinions and values but by casting judgment. Surber lists 52 examples of this despicable behavior by Trump opponents. Let’s start with a counter example.

Parkland Survivor’s Mom: Trump Hugged Him, but School Didn’t Even Know He’d Been Shot by Tom Knighton – “The media has focused plenty of attention on Parkland survivors since the February 14 massacre, but mostly on the survivors who A) were not wounded and B) demand gun control.”

“I actually had to show a district staff member Williams x-rays to verify them. How could the district fail to contact each of the students in the classrooms where murders and injuries occurred. This borders on negligence.”

I have to disagree with her. It “borders” on nothing. It is negligence.
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Lisa Olsen sure appears to have the evidence for her criticism. We’ve seen non-stop media squabbles rather than a total focus on all the kids with physical wounds and emotional struggles.

Apparently this district’s priorities were so off that administrators needed x-rays for proof, somehow missing that President Trump had visited him in the hospital.

Starbucks feels the Trump Effect by Don Surber – “Starbucks is the latest to learn not to mess with Trump.”

“When the president imposed a legal and constitutional moratorium on visas from six countries, Schultz attacked Trump.
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The instant backlash forced Starbucks to promise to hire 10,000 veterans and military spouses.

Then Schultz attacked the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

‘Global warming’ claims a victim by Thomas Lifson – “After some reflection, I see that this is a tragedy the Greek sense of the word, being based on a fatal human flaw.” These Trump haters take it seriously, even to the point of self immolation.

“Buckel was no loser with no prospects. He is someone who had a big hand in changing the way American law and public opinion regard same sex marriage
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Reportedly, Buckel recently “turned his attention” to apocalyptic predictions of climate disaster, which he fully bought into, presumably based on the phony scientific consensus propagated by the fraudsters who have to “adjust” real data in order to make their hypothesis slightly plausible. The fraudsters know well that the human mind is vulnerable to predictions of apocalypse, and that encouraging panic is a great way to generate money.
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I am actually very sad for Buckel, and for his friends and families. He is a victim of hucksters who scared him and countless school children into panic. The fraudsters continue to fly on private jets and occupy multiple lavish residences, which people genuinely convinced that the end is near would shun. His death is tragic, but it is also really, really stupid, once again proving that smart people, when beyond their sphere of expertise, can be deeply dumb, because they have no humility. The Greeks called it “hubris.”

Sen. Cory Booker Violating Constitution: Voting Against Pompeo for Religious Beliefs by Ken Klukowski – “announced on Friday that he will vote against CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s nomination to become secretary of state because of Pompeo’s beliefs on marriage and sexuality — beliefs consistent with Pompeo’s Christian faith.”

“Booker sharply questioned Pompeo on Thursday during the nominee’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, referring to words Pompeo spoke at a church in his district when the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was still serving in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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Article VI of the U.S. Constitution provides, “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office of public Trust under the United States.”

Trail of James Comey’s Dirt on Loretta Lynch Discovered Within IG Report on Andrew McCabe by sundance – “keep in mind, that at the time the book was written, Mr. Comey had no idea exactly where the ongoing Inspector General investigation might lead; nor did he know the timing of release.” The analytic examination of recently released evidence in the greater context is explained.

Comey’s last stand for the deep state by Mark Penn – “The post-election actions of these former officials makes suspect their actions as officials.”

“They were among the most powerful men of the last decade. They commanded armies of armed agents, had the ability to bug and wiretap almost anyone, and had virtually unlimited budgets. They were the leadership of the FBI, the CIA and the director of national intelligence under President Obama. Each day, it becomes clearer that they are the real abusers of power in this drama.

The book by former FBI Director James Comey and the daily hyperbolic John Brennan sound bites are perhaps the final reveal of just how much hubris and vitriol they had. Comey’s book, according to reports, contains nothing new of legal consequence to Trump (while suggesting that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch has something to worry about), but it unmasks the hatred that Comey had for Donald Trump from the beginning. It impeaches Comey’s fitness to have ever held high, nonpartisan office.
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The Mueller investigation bears all of the hallmarks of prosecutorial overreach: pre-dawn raids, denial of reasonable bail, threats to prosecute family members, investigations of unrelated business matters. He didn’t appropriately subpoena selected transition emails but collected every email in the entire transition without notice, prying them from holdover employees at the General Services Administration.
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Moreover, the double standards being applied here are undermining the rule of law.
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As these deep staters turn into paid talking heads profiting through books, speeches and clicks, they undermine any notion that they acted professionally instead of politically while in office, and the evidence continues to mount that the foundation for turning the country upside down for the last year was most likely two parts politically tinged hubris and one part sketchy evidence.

Max Boot: Sure Andrew McCabe lied under oath…but Trump by John Sexton – “When FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired, Boot was one of the people who came out swinging.” Illustrating confusion about what is moral and what isn’t?

“In short, there was nothing that could possibly justify the firing of Andrew McCabe. It was a Trumpian plot. So when the DOJ Inspector General released his damning report on McCabe which concluded he had lied to James Comey, to FBI investigators while under oath, to the IG, and had even lied about his lies to FBI investigators when changing his story, suddenly Max Boot had some backtracking to do.

The recommendation from the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility was that McCabe should be canned for his repeated and intentional “lack of candor.” And that’s what happened. But having already blasted this as an attempt to “undermine the FBI” etc., Max Boot couldn’t bring himself to admit he got this one wrong. Instead, he wrote a blog post yesterday titled “Sure, McCabe and Comey made mistakes. But that’s not why they were fired.”
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I think the problem here is that Boot insists on treating everything as a subset of the one story that he is focused on: blasting President Trump. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that two things could be independently true here. First, Trump really did go after McCabe and celebrate his firing. Second, McCabe is a self-serving liar who deserved to be fired.

About that Syrian scientific research center by Paul Mirengoff – a bit more about the response to Syrian use of chemical weapons. This one isn’t headed towards “aspirin factory” irrelevance.

“Claudia Rosett takes up the question for PJ Media. Based on the Pentagon’s description, she believes with a very high level of confidence that the target was the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC).

According to Rosett, the SSRC is “an incredibly high-value target, an outfit central to some of the worst depravities of Assad’s weapons programs, and — as it happens — a longtime client of North Korea and Iran.”

Trump pacifies Cory Gardner on marijuana issue by Paul Mirengoff – There was a story that Trump instructed Sessions to back off on marijuana law enforcement in states that legalized the recreational drug. Here’s another part of the story. It has something to say about what Trump’s opponents consider moral and honorable and valuable.

“For months, Sen. Cory Gardner has been blocking the Trump administration from staffing key positions at the DOJ. Among these position are Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division; Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division; Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division; and, until Gardner was finally shamed into relenting, Assistant Attorney General, National Security Division. In all, around 20 positions reportedly were affected.

You might think that Gardner’s obstruction leaves these key divisions directionless, or at least without the degree of direction they should have. It’s actually worse worse than that. As Christian Adams has shown, the absence of presidential appointees at the Assistant Attorney General level can leave left-wing Obama holdovers with enormous sway at the Justice Department.

Why has Gardner done this significant favor for the left? Because of marijuana.

Instapundit on Carl Cannon: Special Prosecutorial Abuse. “Since the day Trump entered political life, liberals, Democratic activists, and media pundits have issued ominous warnings about the coming authoritarianism.”

Feminists don’t care about the gender gap in ballet. Why should we care about the one in tech? – Publications – AEI by Mark Perry – “That’s the excellent title of an excellent op-ed in the Washington Examiner by ballet dancer Madison Breshears”

Jim Comey’s bid for vengeance is ruining his reputation, New York Post – “There are two important things worth noting about fired FBI Director James Comey’s new tell-all”

“First, it has almost nothing in the way of real news. No bombshells, almost no dramatic factual revelations. The book, for all intents and purposes, simply repeats his past congressional testimony.

Second, all the headline-grabbing details are either Comey’s petty criticism of President Trump’s tan, height and hand size; unpleasant and deeply personal denigrations of his character; or dishonest or salacious (and unprovable) speculation about the state of his marriage and his sex habits.
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The book, in short, is a work of revenge by someone convinced he was badly wronged for trying to save the country from an unworthy president.
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In the end, Comey’s “Higher Loyalty” looks to be fully devoted to his own ego.

It’s all downhill for Comey now by Thomas Lifson – “The day that James Comey cashed the multi-million dollar advance check from MacMillan Publishers will turn out to mark the date that we can call “Peak Comey.”

“ He and his ghost writer suddenly faced the unenviable task of making him look like the righteous warrior he had always portended to be, but with the need to fill 300 pages with something. Self-serving rationalizations can’t sustain reader interest over that many words, so apparently they decided that prose about physical appearances drawn from the bodice-ripper school of novels grafted onto Trump-hatred would do the trick.

The result was so awful that even the Washington Post, owned by arch-enemy of Trump Jeff Bezos, felt the need for a satire.
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Comey, after a career of manipulating, backstabbing, and ingratiating his way up the federal legal and law enforcement bureaucracy, is discovering that karma does eventually catch up to you. So far as I know, Reinhold Niebuhr never contemplated that concept.

IG Report Outlines How Obama DOJ Worked To Shut Down Investigation Into Clinton Crime Syndicate, DCWhispers – “Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitten caught the Clinton Foundation information within the IG report and is doing his best to get the word out even as the Establishment Media covers the eyes and ears of the American public in order to keep that information largely unknown”

“Lost in the haze of the Syria bombing, the Establishment Media’s purposeful ignorance, and the ongoing ripples following the stunning FBI raid on the offices of President Trump’s longtime attorney, is the scathing outline by the Inspector General regarding how the Obama Department of Justice aggressively shut down what was to be a widespread investigation into the Clinton Foundation looking into allegations of widespread financial crimes.
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The Deep State continues to believe it controls the narrative. It’s up to all of you to prove them wrong.

Investigators reveal bias against Trump, Boston Herald – “While the Russian collusion investigation seems to be withering away, having yielded no evidence that might impugn President Trump, a new investigation has been spun off in New York City, targeting his attorney, Michael Cohen.”

“It is best that these investigations continue to play out in public view. What we have already learned about the integrity of our intelligence services, the ethical lapses of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, as well as the dubious maneuverings of the Obama administration, is that Washington, D.C., rewards nefarious behavior.

It is ugly to witness, and Americans across the spectrum reject it when it is exposed, as it is now.

The perpetrators are so deeply entrenched and comfortable in their day-to-day shadiness that they’ve stopped cloaking themselves for public consumption.

What’s been splayed out in front of the American people is a sham political investigation and third-rate propagandizing by a complicit media.
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It’s all nonsense. We are so far from anything to do with Russian collusion that the pursuit of Trump has become almost comical.
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Let the media, Democrats and Washington bureaucrats keep piling on him in clear view. It reveals more about them than him. Right now, investigators are looking into Michael Cohen’s time in the taxi cab business years ago.

The swamp is investigating taxis.

The president is lowering taxes.

We will make our conclusions based on the indisputable facts in the light of day.

Trump’s Red Line by Clarice Feldman – “The Mueller Special Counsel appointment is predicated on the notion that President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to assure the defeat of Hillary Clinton — a notion so ludicrous only a Democrat could fall for it.”

Typical of the biased coverage, however, which uniformly ignored the stated basis and sound facts underlying the pardon, was Saturday’s Washington Post front-page article authored by Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey, and Matt Zapotsky, The hard copy headline states “Critics question the pardon of Libby.” In the online version, the header is more blatantly partisan: “Trump grants pardon to former Bush official; some say he is using the law as a political tool”

The lead sentence is a model of partisan opinion masking as news:
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The latest nonsense from the special counsel’s office includes interfering with the press again.
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The next person who suggests the appointment of a special counsel under the now existing law where there is no court oversight ought to be committed. Twice now they’ve devolved into unconstitutional, partisan witch-hunts.

Mick Mulvaney teaches Elizabeth Warren some constitutional law, Washington Examiner – “Mulvaney has earned Warren’s ire because he is the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was her brainchild. While she hasn’t backed down in their colorful exchanges, Mulvaney has been winning on points.”

“When the senator lobbed the tired accusation that Mulvaney was forgoing stricter regulations because payday lenders had bought the GOP, (for the record, the payday industry spends about half as much on politics as, say, the abortion lobby) Mulvaney responded wryly: “Prior to receiving your letter, I never would have thought to consider, for instance, whether your vote against repealing the bureau’s arbitration rule was influenced by campaign donations you may have received from trial lawyers or other parties who stood to gain financially from the rule. Perhaps I should reconsider.”
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Mulvaney is a rare public official with the wit to match Warren in both policy and dramatic flourishes, which is why it would be entertaining to have him stand toe-to-toe with every Senate committee featuring a Democratic presidential wannabe. If he can run the CFPB while heading the Office of Management and Budget, why not give Mulvaney some more jobs?
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Ambitious Democrats deserve someone willing and able to trade blows with them. You know, to test their mettle.

But here’s the serious point about Mulvaney’s sparring with Warren. The Senate also deserves answers and accountability from federal agencies such as the CFPB. That’s because Congress, under our Constitution, is supposed to oversee the federal government.

That authority, however, was denied to Congress deliberately when Warren and her ilk established the CFPB.

The Real Investigation by Andrew C. Mccarthy – “as an alum who spent nearly 20 years as an SDNY prosecutor, I’m always inclined to assume my old office is up to serious business.”

“The one in the Southern District of New York, involving Michael Cohen and apparent hush-money payoffs, is a serious peril for Trump.
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I’ve never thought “collusion with Russia” posed jeopardy.
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I’ve also never thought Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s other known angle, obstruction, posed a great risk.
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Much of the commentary about the SDNY investigation puts the cart before the horse.
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It seems evident that prosecutors are investigating on the theory that Clifford, McDougal, and perhaps others were defrauded or extorted into silence. The fact that they accepted money does not foreclose the possibility that their agreement to remain silent was procured, in part, by trickery or threats.
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No wrongdoing has been established at this point. But the SDNY investigation is a serious matter.

McCarthy is struggling with dissonance as many with close ties to the swamp do. His friends and colleagues are doing strange things and it is difficult to believe these things might not be all above board and honest. As he points out, this latest ‘investigation’ is a third attempt to get Trump via malicious prosecution. The pains he goes through to try to rationalize what he sees is an indicator of just how far afield the efforts have gone. His warning, though, is worth considering. Just ask Scooter Libby or some of Mueller’s current victims.

Michael Wolff hurt the country and he’s proud by Eddie Scarry – “Michael Wolff inflicted immeasurable damage on the country and, like an idiot child proud of getting expelled from school, he’s still bragging about it.” … and he’s not alone in this effort.

“The fantasies are endless in Wolff’s book, which would be retracted by the publisher if we weren’t living in a time where it’s perfectly acceptable to throw the nation into a crisis, so long as it makes money.

There’s one honest thing Wolff says in his Hollywood Reporter column. “My book, with its trove of Trump,” he writes, “became no longer a mere book but a seismic political event.”

True. Wolff now has a sick place in history, helped along by a national media eagerly pushing his fraud and fiction.

Feds: Michael Cohen is barely even a lawyer by Ruth Brown – “Michael Cohen is a fraud of a lawyer who works exclusively for President Trump, federal prosecutors charged Friday.” Playing games with the meanings of words is a common behavior when rationalizing behavior that cannot otherwise be considered honest and proper.

Ace has another example. Jake Tapper Falsely Claims Scooter Libby “Leaked” Noted Anti-Semite Conspiracy Theorist Valerie Plame’s Name to Press; Refuses to Correct – “If Jake Tapper is now so down on leaking, are there any highly-placed former Obama officials, like maybe someone with a last name who rhymes with his own, he’d like to denounce for leaking highly confidential national security information to him…?”

When the Lie Becomes a Pillar of the State by Fay Voshell — “It was the film’s most wonderfully stirring scene.”

“But the fact that a scene never happened did not matter to the Soviet propagandists who wished to make up truth to bolster the Communist Party’s goals of transforming Russian society and indeed, the entire globe. The whole Soviet system was built on lies. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn was later to write, “In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.”
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It is to the West’s great shame that its top intellectuals believed and still believe in the great lies that nearly annihilated Russia.
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But the new radical Left has completely lost any idea of what the truth actually is. They have absorbed the Lie completely; but like Stalin, they prefer speaking only power to truth tellers who expose their Lie. Power alone is seen as truth.

Now is the time for all good men and women to stand up and tell the Truth.

 

To do otherwise is to grant the victory to people who are pathological liars who see no distinction between good and evil or the truth and the lie; and who are intent on silencing those who see the difference.

The OIG Report is About McCabe’s Leaks Against Obama Officials and Hillary Clinton, Not About Trump. – “leak against Hillary or Obama’s minions, and they hop into furious action.” … “And “Commenter,” aka Jack Straw, says this isn’t the report, but one of several report, and those, I hope, will get at the Trump leaks.”

Never trust a Never Trumper by Don Surber – “Decades of chatter about civil rights turn out to be a facade. They no more care about the Constitution than a Canada goose does.”

How Comey Lied About Spying on Trump Tower by George Neumayr – “While he was intercepting its communications, he had aides deny the story.”

“Jim Comey deserves a special place in the annals of sanctimonious frauds in Washington, D.C. He leaked, lied, bent rules, treated FBI material as his own personal property, violated confidential conversations, and generally acted like a government unto himself. But now he has the gall to write it all up in the sonorous nonsense language of “constitutional crisis.” His forthcoming memoir amounts to nothing more than the sour grapes of a self-serving operator over a wholly justified sacking.
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In a just age, Comey would have the book thrown at him, not be writing one. It is a measure of our skewed times that an unelected charlatan could subvert the elected chief executive and then emerge from his subversion as a celebrated expert on constitutional loyalty. Samuel Johnson would call Comey’s “higher loyalty” the last refuge of a scoundrel.

‘Chappaquiddick’: The Grim Record of a Kennedy Cover-Up by John Podhoretz – “The existence of Chappaquiddick, the new movie about the 1969 car accident from which Ted Kennedy walked away while his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne likely suffocated slowly inside his partly sunken Oldsmobile, is a miracle of a kind.”

“Damore’s account isn’t ideological. It is, rather, a meticulous, hour-by-hour rendering of the accident and what followed. Nor did screenwriters Allen and Logan come at the subject ideologically. They were attracted to it because they thought the tale fit nicely into the recent pop-culture appetite for controversial true-life crime stories; they were especially taken with Foxcatcher, the Steve Carell movie about the murder of an Olympic wrestler by a du Pont heir.
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Rereading Damore’s book after seeing the movie, I was struck by something that hadn’t made an impression on me 30 years ago. Damore shows how the media of the day—with the shameful exception of the slavering Boston Globe—were overwhelmingly skeptical about Kennedy’s tale and deeply critical of his conduct. In fact, what makes the cover-up so startling in retrospect is that it took place in the teeth of this nationwide media skepticism. It was a raw power play. Teddy and his henchmen felt free to flex their muscles in any way necessary. That is how completely their home state had become a vassal state. You get only a taste of this from the movie.
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For the Kennedys, there will always be those progressives in thrall to a bizarre dynastic delusion and ready to proffer their excuses in a staggeringly inappropriate tone of moral offense. For them, it is an offense that Chappaquiddick exists. For those who long ago threw out their original-cast album of Camelot, the existence of Chappaquiddick is a welcome moment of American cultural sanity.

Mueller and Bulger by neo-neocon – “that’s regarded in Boston as one of the great scandals of modern judicial history. And Mueller was right at the center of it“

Ace has the ‘news of the day’ summary: GOP “Representatives” Have Contempt for Their Voters and Lie to Them All Day While Revealing Their True Beliefs to Fellow NeverTrumpers –

“We gave them the Senate, the House and the White House. And because one of their own didn’t get the WH, they instead have thrown a snit, slow-walking confirmations, obstructing major Trump platform initiatives such as killing Obamacare, cutting spending, and building the wall (initiatives they were all for up until Trump got the nomination).

They are affirming the growing certainty among the electorate that every single principle they campaign on is situationally applicable. It is only to be offered, pursued and defended if it is politically advantageous to their own fortunes.

David Brooks: Anti-Trumpism Has Failed, Largely Because of the Inability of Its Members to Stop Sneering at Their Enemies – “Which is how you got Trump in the first place.” Neo-neocon chips on Brooks with Taking stock of Never-Trumpers – “Two fascinating pieces came out recently about the phenomenon of the Never-Trumpers, now that it’s a year-plus into the Trump presidency.”

“Trump is uncouth, coarse, nasty, seemingly inarticulate (although on close observation he actually communicates bluntly and directly and rather effectively). In other words, Trump is oh-so-many things Brooks doesn’t like, and I don’t care for either. But style is far less important to me in a president than what that person does in terms of action and policy.
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But Brooks doesn’t seem to be saying that’s what he thinks, or at least he’s giving no details, at least not in that column. He says Trump has done damage (but is it the Resistance that’s done damage?). He cites Trump’s incompetences (at what?) and scandals (but are they real, or trumped (!) up, and are they important?). But he offers no evidence in the column itself of the sort of corruption or dangerousness that would warrant the depth of the Newer-Trumpers’ opposition.
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The second article is a riff on the first one. It’s by Jon Gabriel, an editor at Richochet. Here’s an excerpt from it in which he talks about his own decision to leave the Never-Trumper camp:

Alan Derschowitz: Trump Shouldn’t Fire Rosenstein. Instead, He Should File a Motion to the DoJ Requiring Rosenstein to Recuse Himself – “if the DOJ refuses to recuse Rosenstein, then Trump could/should seek a similar order from a judge” … “Meanwhile, now that the Electronic Communication (EC) that sparked the Trump probe has finally been released to Congress, people can start making judgments about it.”

“Lyin’ Comey” Website Debuts, Paid for by GOP; NeverTrump Spastics Freak Out – “The Federalist is now offering Comey t-shirts. They’re not complimentary. I wonder how The Expert and the rest of the NeverTrump gang will react to these.”

Mick Mulvaney: I Told You That Making the Consumer Financial Protection Board Completely Indpendent From Congress Was a Bad Idea. Now That I’m Head Of It, Let Me Prove That. You Can Ask All the Questions of Me You Like and I Can Just Ignore Your Asses. – “Some Republicans enjoyed Mulvaney’s use of the Democrats’ own stupid rules against them.” Also see Ed Morrissey Mulvaney to Congress: Thanks to you, I don’t have to answer any of your questions — ever – “This attempt to force Congress to reckon with its own bad ideas didn’t just start yesterday.”

Diamond & Silk: Mark Zuckerberg Lied, Facebook Didn’t Contact Us – interesting poster girls for this cause …

DoJ coughs up FBI memo to House Intel chair after impeachment threat by Ed Morrissey – “House Intelligence chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) had demanded access to the full memo for months, issuing subpoenas that the Department of Justice had ignored.”

“This is no mere technicality. The FBI sought a FISA warrant to surveil someone connected to a presidential campaign. If that turns out to have been requested improperly and/or under false or misleading pretenses, it would make the nation’s top law enforcement agency look politically compromised. That falls squarely under Congress’ authority to investigate, constitutionally much more so than a special counsel operating under the same DoJ authority as the FBI itself. Stonewalling this oversight certainly rises to the level of a contempt charge, and eventually a congressional removal through impeachment of executive-branch officials that refuse to cooperate with such oversight.

California Progressives Go Full Authoritarian, Coyote Blog – “I almost titled this article “go full fascist” but the f-word is so used and abused in public discourse that I now try to avoid it.” … “Because having the government decide what is and is not true, and what can and cannot be criticized, always works out so well.”

Anchorage looks to be thinking it OK to allow perverts into women’s bathrooms; the ACLU applauds violation of attorney client privilege on the presumption of guilt; the NYT says objecting to excessive prosecutor behavior is implying guilt;

Bipartisan Senate effort: Operation Protect Mueller begins by Ed Morrissey – “The intent is to head off Donald Trump from provoking a “constitutional crisis,” but …”

“The president has the right to hire and fire people within the executive branch of government without Congressional interference, especially high-ranking political appointees. Firing a special counsel is in itself not a constitutional crisis; it is the constitutional exercise of the authority of the presidency. The bill seeks to change that for one particular office, which is in itself a recognition of the president’s current authority.
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Special counsels have inevitably proven to be disastrous to due process and accountability, which is why they should only be deployed when (a) a demonstrable crime has occurred, (b) explicit conflicts of interest prevent the Department of Justice from investigating them, and (c) stringent limitations are put on the scope of the probe. The issue with special counsels isn’t that they are too accountable, but are almost entirely unaccountable and grossly expansive by their nature. They exist mainly for political reasons, which means any attempts to enforce boundaries on their probes will generate accusations of politically motivated interference, and that means hardly any control at all is achieved. That leaves no effective check at all on a special counsel that strays far beyond his mandate (whether or not Mueller has is a matter of debate, of course) short of termination through the executive-branch chain of command.

This bill makes special counsels, now and in the future, even less accountable for their actions. If the report is true, it inserts both the judiciary and the legislature into the personnel decisions of the executive branch, which is itself a potential affront to the constitutional separation of powers. Congress’ upper chamber has a role in confirming political appointees that reflects the shared authority of many federal agencies, but they have no role in firing them other than through impeachment.

That is the proper remedy for a president that abuses his authority, too. If Trump fires Mueller and Congress perceives it to be an abuse of power and/or an obstruction of justice, they can impeach Trump and remove him from office. However, the better option all along would have been to form a select bipartisan committee under their own authority to investigate the Russia-collusion issue, one which Trump would have no authority to disband or to obstruct at all. Instead of passing the SCIIA, Congress should eliminate special counsels altogether, and bear the political costs of investigations themselves rather than hide behind special counsels.

Washington Lies In a Parallel Universe by John Hinderaker – “In a battle between reality and fantasy, it usually is prudent to bet on reality. Here, I am not so sure. The Democrats have a near-monopoly on the organs of perception, and they may be able to bend a majority of Americans to their topsy-turvy view of things. We will find out in November.”

“In the real world, the Trump administration is humming along. Its domestic policies are sensible and have been remarkably successful in a short time. Abroad, the administration has pursued American interests, again with considerable success. It has also made progress, at least, at cleaning up the appalling messes left behind by Barack Obama in Iran, Syria, Russia and North Korea. By any objective standard, the Trump administration is, so far, a major improvement on its predecessor.

But our “news” organizations have little interest in any of those topics. They are obsessed with tweets, with ten-year-old liaisons, with non-existent collusion and with investigations of nothing that apparently will never end. In their parallel world, Trump is such a failure that he might as well quit and save the Democrats the trouble of impeaching him. (For what? is a question that rarely seems to be asked.)

parallel universe or different planet?

Guess Whose House Wasn’t Raided by the FBI by Daniel John Sobieski – a compare and contrast of the sort that is becoming quite common to illustrate the corruption in the FBI and DOJ.

“This is the FBI of Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok, whose mission was to keep Hillary Clinton out of prison and Donald Trump out of the White House. They never raided the home and office of Cheryl Mills, did they? They never raided Hillary’s house or seized the acid-washed server, did they? But Michael Cohen is a threat to our democracy warranting brute force? Why wasn’t Michel Cohen offered the immunity deal given to Cheryl Mills and other Clinton cronies?
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The facts and the lack of an actual crime will not stop Robert Mueller. Just show him the man, or woman, and he will show you the crime, whether it be Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, or now Michael Cohen. As with the pre-investigation exoneration of Hillary Clinton by Comey, the facts don’t matter. Neither does, apparently, attorney-client privilege. Sentence first, trial later. These individuals are merely collateral damage in Mueller’s vendetta against Trump.

Lost amid all the ‘noise’ over Scott Pruitt is the very real damage Obama’s EPA did to rural communities by Daniel Turner – “The far left will stop at nothing in their efforts to derail the presidency of Donald Trump. Still bitter about the outcome of 2016, the left claims much of their outrage toward the president is driven by his unpredictable personality, but ideological opposition to his administration’s reform-minded agenda is the real root of their anger.”

“Pruitt’s “scandals” are exaggerated for political expediency: never mind that the Obama EPA spent just as much, if not more, than Pruitt’s team, according to a recent Fox News report. Or that Lisa Jackson, Obama’s EPA chief, was caught using the email alias “Richard Windsor” to communicate with people outside the government. Or that one Obama-era EPA employee was caught downloading and watching pornography on the job. These issues prompted no outrage from Hill offices, and one questions if Congressional inquiry could possibly be politically motivated, or if left-wing outrage is a one-way street.
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Lost amid all the noise is the extreme damage the previous EPA did to rural communities.

The Ideology of Illegal Immigration by Victor Davis Hanson – “Gang members next door and dead dogs dumped in your yard? Don’t complain, or you’ll be called racist.”

“Illegal immigration has become so deeply embedded for so long within contemporary power politics, demography, and cultural change, so charged with accusations of racism, nativism, and xenophobia, that we have forgotten its intrinsic contradictions
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The ideology of illegal immigration rests on certain illogical assumptions that must not be questioned.
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In the absence of intellectual honesty about the need for political and economic reform in Latin America, mythologies can abound.
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The entire vocabulary of illegal immigration has become Orwellian.
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Talk of race has approached something like Lewis Carol’s Through the Looking Glass, in which everything is upside down.
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In rural California, the law as it once was is now often inoperative, if not sometimes nonexistent.
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Illegal immigration and environmentalism war with each other. But the former usually is exempted from any green audit.

EDITORIAL: All’s fair in love, war and the pursuit of Donald Trump – Washington Times. “Alas, these are not happy days for the fundamental civil rights we’ve always taken for granted in America.”

“The U.S. government raids a lawyer’s office at daybreak to fish for evidence against a designated target, and on Capitol Hill the CEO of Facebook testifies that he has been colluding with Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor in hot pursuit of Donald Trump, hoping to collect whatever evidence, or reasonable facsimile thereof, they can find to destroy a duly elected presidency.

This has never been tried before, not even in the hoary past, but who’s to say it won’t work. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook told Congress Tuesday that his company is working with Mr. Mueller as “part of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.”
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Mr. Mueller has had a distinguished career and is held as decent, honorable and well-regarded by his peers, but if he winds up his investigation with nothing to show for it he knows he will never be forgiven. The mob, which has been unable to come to terms with losing the election, wants somebody’s blood. Mobs always do.

More on the Michael Cohen seizure by neo-neocon – “One of the things about the lawfare against Trump is that it has four related effects that are not directly legal.”

“The first is that anyone considering a job in the Trump administration would have to think twice about accepting it, unless that person is ready to have his or her entirely life scrutinized
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The second effect also would tend to handicap the president’s ability to govern, and that is just the stress and anger he is likely to feel.
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The third effect is to gain access to all of Trump’s correspondence with his lawyer.
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The fourth effect is on the public. The constant pounding on associates of the president—where no crime by Trump has ever been shown to exist in the first place—has the effect of indicating to many people that with all this smoke there must be fire.

It may also be that there is a violation of a ‘sense of fairness’ that will surface as a reaction to all of these events.

Civilization – Is The West History: Episode 06 Work [YouTube 47 min] by Niall Ferguson “argues that the real threat to our survival is our loss of faith not in religion but in ourselves.” In the series he bumps up against everything from slavery to eugenics to climate alarmism. In the last few minutes of his last episode, he crawls over the bumps and barriers to his “is the West history” worry. Read the comments and you can see his worry has justification.

The Limits of American Patience by Victor Davis Hanson – “Not being willing any longer to be manipulated is not succumbing to isolationism.”

“Wondering whether the United States can afford another liability is not mindless nationalism. Questioning whether America can afford the status quo here and abroad is not heresy. Assuming we can borrow our way out of any inconvenience is largely over.

What helped elect Trump was a collective weariness with demands put on a country $20 trillion in debt. America is currently running a $57 billion a month trade deficit.
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Donald Trump’s presidency is many things, but there is one common denominator with all that has transpired since November 2016. The once unimaginable can become normal. When the veneer of conventional wisdom and practice is torn off, Americans learn that was not much there underneath after all, whether that idea is that we can never question open borders or Chinese commercial cheating—or whether it is complacency in our penchant to keep borrowing without worries over tomorrow.

Can we just say it? Loretta Lynch is lying by Jazz Shaw – “What’s most insulting here is the way that Lynch can shrug off the obvious and simply smirk at the nation, knowing that she will never be definitively exposed. And she has to know it. Captain Louis Renault would be more believable saying that he had no idea about gambling going on in the casino.”

The raid on Trump’s lawyer: Why? And why now? By Thomas Lifson – “we can only speculate as to the motives for a thermonuclear escalation of tactics being used against President Trump, in the effort to reverse the presidential election of 2016.”

“They have extended the fishing expedition to include seizure of protected communications between the president and his lawyers, now in the hands of the FBI, the same agency that has been stonewalling Congressional investigation into its behavior in launching the surveillance of the Trump campaign on charges of collusion with Russia. It should be noted that no evidence whatsoever of such collusion has been developed and made public, which has to be a deep embarrassment at a minimum.

‘Deafening Silence of ACLU’ After Raid on Trump Lawyer ‘Really Appalling’ As seen on Hannity – Alan Dershowitz reacted to a federal raid on the office of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen. Dershowitz said it is a “dangerous day today for lawyer-client relations.”

The Mueller coup by Don Surber – “Robert Mueller’s unconstitutional raid on the president’s lawyer — with Democratic Party operatives grabbing privileged communications — is the last straw. Mueller should not be fired“Mueller should be arrested and charged with political espionage.”

“Sadly, this unconstitutional spectacle is only the latest attempt by the Democratic Party to invalidate the last election and overthrow the president.

If you vote for any Democrat from senator down to county surveyor this year, you are condoning this un-American activity

The FBI Escalates Its War on the Trump Administration by John Hinderaker – “It is blindingly obvious that this whole story, and the leak thereof, is a political attack on President Trump by the Democratic Party.”

“So here’s the situation: the Special Democratic Party Prosecutor and the Department of Justice, in the person of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, have nothing better to do than investigate a 12-year-old, one-night consensual encounter involving Donald Trump. Apparently, actual crime in New York is a thing of the past. Organized crime is extinct; political corruption is non-existent; illegal immigration has ceased; violent crime is unknown. Stormy Daniels is the most pressing item on the law enforcement agenda.
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We are witnessing, as Scott says, “a political death struggle with the authorities operating under [President Trump’s] nominal control.” President Trump and his loyal appointees need to assert the powers that the voters have given them.

The President’s Trump Card For Spending Restraint by Stephen Moore and James Carter – “The White House is seriously considering a strategy to cancel tens of billions of dollars of wasteful spending in the $1.3 trillion budget.” It’s easier to rescind than it is to allocate.

“a political death struggle with the authorities operating under [President Trump’s] nominal control.”

Springing Forward By Clarice Feldman – “What seemed as though it was going to be a dull news week – punctuated by sometimes fanciful articles from “sources” about what Special Counsel Mueller was up to – ended with a plethora of important news late Friday.”

“James Freedman at the Wall Street Journal explains: “The political left is getting nervous because a virtuous and lawful reduction in federal spending is suddenly looking much more likely. … a “rescission” bill to repeal the spending increases needs only a simple majority in each house. …”

Upset about the budget deal? Get on the phone to your congressmen and senators and support rescission.
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Friday the president ordered an end to the “catch and release” Obama policy, where border-jumpers were captured and released with a rarely kept promise to return for an immigration hearing to determine whether they had a legal basis to remain here.
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The Congressional-FBI/DOJ Standoff Is Broken
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Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Corrupt International Charity Network Faces Countless Legal Challenges

Wait–Did Twitter’s CEO Just Share A Post Calling For ‘Civil War,’ Wiping Out The GOP, And How We Should Be Like CA? By Matt Vespa – “Well, if there were any lingering doubts about Twitter’s perceived bias against conservatives, look no further than what CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted out last night.”

“Apparently, a “good read” is a post co-written by a Center for American Progress senior fellow that calls for “civil war,” the destruction of the GOP, and the adoption of how California runs everything from sea to shining sea. Yeah, bipartisanship is dead, so mob rule is what’s needed.

EPA says ‘unprecedented’ number of death threats against Pruitt by Joseph Weber – “His statement follows reports Pruitt has spent millions on security despite no proof his life was in danger.”

“According to EPA’s Assistant Inspector General, Scott Pruitt has faced an unprecedented amount of death threats against him and his family,” agency spokesman Jahan Wilcox said late Friday.
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President Trump tweeted his support for Pruitt on Saturday evening. “While Security spending was somewhat more than his predecessor, Scott Pruitt has received death threats because of his bold actions at EPA. Record clean Air & Water while saving USA Billions of Dollars. Rent was about market rate, travel expenses OK. Scott is doing a great job!”

A nationwide search of state and federal court records by the Associated Press found no case in which anyone was arrested or charged with threatening Pruitt, the wire service said Friday.

It looks like another scalp hunting ‘gotcha’ effort, spending money on ‘unneeded’ security.

James Woods Pulverizes Deranged Psychologist Who Hoped For “Major Damage” Following Blaze at Trump Tower by Cristina Laila – “Liberals immediately cheered and spread absurd conspiracy theories after news broke of the blaze.”

“A sane person prays for everyone’s safety and hopes firefighters put the blaze out as quickly as possible.
Vile liberals on the other hand cheered after Trump Tower caught on fire.
Mental Health Counselor Jeffrey Guterman immediately cheered the blaze and ‘hoped for major damage.’
The backlash from Trump supporters was intense.
James Woods pulverized the deranged psychologist in a ferocious tweetstorm.

Chappaquiddick Wasn’t the Only Scandal by George Parry – “There is nothing like historical context to help evaluate and better understand current events.” It’s a collusion story, first class.

“In 1991, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin opened the archives of the Soviet Central Committee, Western researchers quickly descended on Moscow to plow through the treasure trove of previously classified official documents.
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Think about that. Here is a classified document found in the Soviet archives from the head of the secret police to the General Secretary spelling out an outrageous and treasonous political plot by Kennedy to enlist the Soviet Union’s assistance in his campaign for the presidency. And not one major media outlet uttered so much as a peep about it.
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The media’s failure to even report or discuss the discovery and contents of Chebrikov’s letter is but one more example of their dishonesty.
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As a wise man once said, if the mainstream media didn’t have double standards, they would have no standards at all. For further proof of that statement, one need only to compare and contrast the media’s fevered, unhinged coverage of the alleged Trump-Russia collusion theory with the protective cone of silence they have placed over “Teddy, the KGB and the top secret file.”

Widely known, little reported, fits the pattern.

Don’t miss Chappaquiddick! By Thomas Lifson – “The movie Chappaquiddick exceeded my very high expectations.”

“Not only is it a truthful exploration of the events that led up the death of May Jo Kopechne and the criminal cover-up of Ted Kennedy’s culpability therein, it goes deep into the character of the man, and how he got to the depraved state of indifference to the life of a young woman who had devoted herself to “the cause” of the Kennedy family.

Response: ‘Chappaquiddick’ Distorts a Tragedy New York Times, by Neal Gabler – Here’s the Lucianne page with the ‘social commentary’ discussing the situation. See also Twitchy: REALLY!? One word in this ‘Chappaquiddick’ review at NBC News has sent eyes rolling. And then there’s Flashback: Watch Ted Kennedy’s 1969 Statement About Chappaquiddick at Legal Insurrection.

The media don’t really care about Scott Pruitt’s ethics — just his reversal of Obama policies by Jack Hellner – “The media are going after Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt for traveling first class and only paying $1,500 per month for a condo, pretending it’s all a matter of ethics. It’s nonsense.”

“They actually are going after him because he dares reverse some of the rules the Environmental Protection Agency implemented without going through Congress. Dissent is just not allowed from Democrat policies and the media are the method of choice for Democrats, using it to go after any Trump administration person they don’t like. Here’s a typical headline:
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That wasn’t even the half of what went down during the Obama administration.
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But even as the press reported these things, there was no feeding frenzy calling for firings, such as we are seeing now with Scott Pruitt. Dpuble standard, anyone?

Then there’s Slate. Why Are Republicans Defending Scott Pruitt? By Mark Joseph Stern – “Pruitt’s apologists are not disturbed by these eye-popping ethics scandals. Instead, they’ve settled on a rather extraordinary narrative: that the journalists who’ve uncovered his misdeeds did so because they oppose his agenda.” The logic in this column is … interesting. Note the modifiers (e.g. “eye-popping”). It illustrates why there is a problem in honest public discussion.

“Pruitt was tasked with dismantling every environmental regulation imposed by the Obama administration. Alas, he’s also done so much more. Pruitt hasn’t been able to resist exploiting the perks of his power, allegedly renting a room from an energy lobbyist under market value, spending an exorbitant amount of public money on lavish travel, improperly giving big raises to political appointees, replacing security guards who would not indulge his whims, and demoting officials who questioned his waste of public funds. And the list goes on, and gets longer by the day.”

What Is a Militia, Anyway? By J.L. Woodruff – “It is safe to say the protester waving the sign meant it as a rebuke to those who think the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to own firearms.”

“As a simple declarative sentence, despite the unnecessary use of commas typical of 18th-century writing, the amendment is perfectly clear to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of English. Yet in recent decades, it has become the source of lies, distortion, and obfuscation by assorted opponents of the Bill of Rights who claim that only members of a militia may own guns.
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Most of them, unlike the mawkish teens pumping their fists like Weathermen at a Viet Cong rally, are real grown-ups in coats and ties, many with law degrees and lots of official-sounding titles that make them seem like authoritative folks who really know what they’re talking about. But they don’t.
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That is one of the greatest public frauds in U.S. history. Fortunately, no one needs a law degree or even extensive knowledge of what America’s Founders thought about militias to see through the fraud and to understand the 2nd Amendment. Knowing rudimentary English will do just fine.
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The people pushing the nonsense that firearms ownership depends on membership in a militia are smart, well educated people. They can read English very well. They know what the 2nd Amendment means. They have chosen to distort that meaning.

Then there’s the judge who thinks scary looking guns or anything with potential military use should be banned.

Citizen’s Righteous Rant Defending 2nd Amendment Goes Viral by Debra Heine – “Robinson’s rant is a thing of beauty.” See the video.

A North Carolina gun rights advocate gave an impassioned speech defending the Second Amendment earlier this week, and the video of his speech quickly went viral. His passion was especially impressive considering the Greensboro resident isn’t even a gun owner.

Mark Robinson’s unplanned and unscripted comments came during a city council meeting Tuesday evening, where residents were debating whether a gun show should be canceled in the wake of the Parkland high school massacre.

The Politicization of the MCAT by Devorah Goldman – “Why should we care about the opinions of aspiring doctors?” Do you want ‘woke’ doctors or skilled and knowledgeable ones?

“Dr. Darrell Kirch, president and CEO of the AAMC, expressed his vision in a candid 2011 speech at the University of California, Davis: “I am a man on a mission. I believe it is critical to our future to transform health care. I’m not talking about tweaking it. I’m not talking about some nuanced improvements here and there. I’m talking about true transformation.”
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Kirch has also praised the AAMC’s political advocacy efforts, which lean left on most issues.
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But it is Kirch’s reform of the MCAT that raises the most concern. … “The goal is to improve the medical admissions process to find the people who you and I would want as our doctors. Being a good doctor isn’t just about understanding science, it’s about understanding people.”
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Taken on their own, these questions may not seem particularly invidious.
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In response to questions about these developments and their effects, the AAMC’s executive vice president, Dr. Atul Grover, referred to a set of core principles guiding the organization’s recent work. An AAMC report outlining those principles describes the organization as “a powerful voice for compassion, equity, and justice” on behalf of the nation’s academic medical institutions, and stresses the importance of “advancing a well-trained, culturally competent, and diverse health and biomedical workforce.”
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If the AAMC’s objective were merely to improve the bedside manner and general sensitivity of physicians, or even to increase diversity in the medical field through conventional affirmative-action policies, few people would likely object. Unfortunately, what Kirch in particular seems to want to create is a medical community that aligns as closely as possible with his particular political views—and to insist that future doctors accept those views as settled fact. …

The AAMC is not alone among accrediting institutions seeking to steer professions leftward.

The Week in Pictures: Special Walkout Edition by Steven Hayward – “This week it appears that K-12 teachers in more and more states looked at the recent high school walkouts intended to stamp out the 2nd Amendment and said, “Hold my cigarette butt—we can do that too!”

Mark Perry gets in on the act, too, but he gets bogged down in the weeds and misses the big picture. Cartoons of the day on Trump’s trade war and its potential adverse effects on his base puts the focus on the immediate economic effects as determined by simplistic economic models perhaps coupled with ‘never Trump’ fantasies. It does not consider the strategic effects in international relationships or the issues involved in only letting the other side enjoin the battle or the bargaining process in general.

Niall Ferguson does a 2012 refresh of a popular 1969 BBC series with Civilization, is the west history?. He has his ‘killer apps’ after all. In part 3 he goes off the rails (YouTube) on another modern theme, slavery, which he takes as a particularly American “sin.” He does note that most of the early immigrants to North America were indentured servants. That is contrasted to the South American situation where most immigrants, and the natives, were serfs. As a diversion, he calls the South American immigrants conquistadors and only mentions the slave imports to crow about how they, and the rest of the serfs, made for a mixed society. In making his point, he bypasses the fact that slavery still exists in some areas, the British handling of slavery such as on sugar plantations, and the general demise of a world wide cultural phenomena by the developments of Western Culture. Instead of using slavery to illustrate his theme, he chose to use it to bash a selected target.

The corruption of the mind is an insidious affair.