“This is a guy who is going to come in and shoot us”: Warnings missed on Annapolis shooter by Ed Morrissey – “this wasn’t just some guy with an unreasonable beef with one or more people in the building. This was a man who clearly constituted a threat, one that had already been addressed in the legal system — and clearly unsatisfactorily — years before the shooting.”

“This Fox panel had an interesting discussion this morning on security preparation and processes, but the lesson here (so far, understanding that it’s still early) seems to be that a lack of enforcement encouraged escalating responses. The same was certainly true in Parkland, where the school district and Broward County passed up literally dozens of opportunities to prosecute the shooter and at least keep him from being able to legally purchase the weapons he used to slaughter the people in the building. You can build all the layered security and hallway procedures you like, but if you’re not prosecuting a dangerous person for the gateway crimes, don’t expect a physical gateway to stop him once he has his mind set on the ultimate crime.

But, of course, it is Trump’s fault for calling out ‘fake news’ for asserting “they are the enemy of the people.”(Charles Glasser). Note that Trump labels but does not call for assault or harassment. Contrast with the ‘Maxine’ type call for harassment of administration staff and why the acceptance of such harassment is so dangerous. Hate festers violence. Trump is descriptive. The left is bigoted.

Little House on the Racist Prairie By J. Christian Adams – “The Left is going after another great American treasure: Laura Ingalls Wilder and her beloved Little House on the Prairie collection. They cite the same old reasons — racism, racism, and more racism.”

“Call them cranks. Laugh all you want. Consider the ALSC kooks — but this latest effort to eradicate Laura Ingalls Wilder from our collective culture should scare you to death.

It means the modern Left isn’t afraid of anything in their effort to fundamentally transform America. No target is too beloved by Americans to slow these gangsters down. No hill is too high for them to climb.
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In 2018, it’s comic that a brood of librarians take offense at the contemporary accounts of a pioneer mother on the American frontier 143 years earlier.
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It’s better to read about these very real events and understand why they were popular, and why they are not now — which brings us nicely back to the organized ideological interests leading the attack on Wilder’s great American books.
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Lindsay’s ALSC is no longer about having books on library shelves to check out. The ALSC is about politics. Lindsay wants librarians to be “media mentors” to direct “caregivers” on how they can “access and evaluate information.” Lindsay’s “Reading While White” blog pushes every demeaning, race-obsessed, deconstructive idea the nut-Left has invented recently — microaggressions, unconscious racism, white guilt, the necessity of capitalizing the “W” in white, and on and on — into the deepest, darkest fringe of dehumanizing racial psychosis.

In disappearing one of the most quintessentially American authors and the Little House series, Lindsay’s gang is off to a great start.

Progressives Should Back Up Their Rhetoric on Immigration by Victor Davis Hanson – “Liberals, invite illegal aliens to live in your communities.”

“despite the rhetoric of inclusion, and televised and tweeted fury at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the progressive left coast is among the most exclusionary of all American communities.
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It is almost as if the louder one rails about unfair border enforcement, the more likely one is to avoid encounters with illegal immigrants. Outrage has become a safe way for elites to signal their virtue, acting out in theory what they are uncomfortable doing in fact.
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It is easy to invoke the Nazis and the Holocaust to express anger at the temporary detention of children and their families who have entered the U.S. illegally. It would be far more meaningful if marquee journalists, actors, academics, and activists knew immigrants not just as a distant abstract cause, or as nannies and landscapers, but as their neighbors, their children’s school friends — and their social equals.

Judicial reasoning: and then there’s Janus v. AFSCME by neo-neocon – “The strange thing about the cases decided recently is that they don’t deal with difficult, complex, or esoteric legal principles, as so many SCOTUS cases do. These particular ones are relatively simple and easy for the layperson to understand.”

Elizabeth Warren on Janus: The system is rigged! By John Sexton – “one thing Elizabeth Warren never mentions is what the Janus decision actually means.”

“I wonder why Elizabeth Warren couldn’t fit this into her video clip somewhere? It’s probably because it shows her entire premise is a lie. When the left talks about “solidarity,” what they actually mean is compulsory solidarity where they take your money whether you like it or not. A system where workers choose whether or not to participate with their time and money is the opposite of a rigged system. But I guess it’s no surprise that the progressive left considers giving workers more control of their own money a national tragedy.

Supreme Court term finale: Targeting the gov’t compelled-speech archipelago by Ed Morrissey – “the court’s term — and Janus itself — have deeper implications for free speech and the relationship between individuals and the government, and for that matter between the judiciary and the legislature as well as the people.”

“This is striking in and of itself, as was the dissent against it, which focused on the disruption caused by overturning Abood rather than on the question of individual rights under the Constitution. Much of the media and analytical focus will fall on that disruption, and for good reason. However, it might leave the impression that undermining unions was a motivation for the majority.

That would be a shame, because the series of decisions at the end of this term makes it clear that they were thinking more broadly. Start with Masterpiece Cakeshop, a decision that initially disappointed conservatives, including myself. The Supreme Court overturned a punitive judgment against bakery owner Jack Phillips by the state of Colorado for refusing to take part in a same-sex wedding on the basis of his religious beliefs. Rather than rule on the compelled-speech argument, the court reversed by a 7-2 margin by focusing on the unreasonable hostility by regulators towards Phillips’ religious beliefs. They later reversed a judgment against Barronelle Stutzman and Arlene’s Flowers in Washington on the same basis, remanding it to the district court for retrial in what was certainly a win for Stutzman but seemed like thin gruel for the First Amendment fight.

That changed with NIFLA yesterday. Perhaps the majority stopped worrying about 5-4 splits or perhaps they understood that a case involving abortion would never get any support from the liberal wing, but Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas took the gloves off on compelled speech.
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And thus we come to Janus and the reconsideration of Abood. Seen in this context, the majority on the court has woven a clear thicket against the imposition of speech and limits on religious expression by government on individuals, whether or not it it gets imposed directly — as in NIFLA and Masterpiece Cakeshop — or indirectly, as in Janus and public-employee unions that ally themselves with a political party. To use a different metaphor, the combined effects of these three decisions create a sledgehammer against imposed speech that should — and likely will — stymie any further attempts to recreate them.

That’s a big win for free speech, religious expression, and freedom of assembly. To the extent that others lose in this exchange, it is only to the extent that they have illegitimately profited off of infringements on basic rights in the past. Stare decisis cannot be used to continue injustices and infringements, a point Alito explicitly makes in his ruling
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That’s not the only message sent by the court this term, either. As I wrote yesterday in The Week, the Supreme Court has all but shut down a new form of judicial activism that would have extended Article III authority far into the realm of electoral politics

Leftist Justices Don’t Like the Law By Andrew Klavan – “In a dissent on Janus, leftist Justice Elena Kagan accused the court of “weaponizing the first amendment“

“The left doesn’t like the rule of law much. If they legally lose an election, they take to the streets as if some injustice had been done to them. If we enforce our border laws, they become hysterical and try to intimidate and bully public officials. If they can’t get a law passed by constitutional means, they are perfectly happy to use regulation to exert extra-legal control over the citizenry.

All of which is bad enough in leftist media, leftist mobs and leftist officials. But in leftist Supreme Court justices, it’s even worse.
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In general, the leftist minority on the court has shown itself no friend to the law. It really is disturbing. In Hawaii, only the five conservatives agreed that the president had the legal power to bar travel from certain countries he deemed dangerous. Really? This is what the law says
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If the rule of law can be overridden by the emotions of the people, the machinations of officials or the prejudices of courts, we can no longer depend on equal treatment or representative government.

Mexico — What Went Wrong? By Victor Davis Hanson – “Mexico gets a massive cash influx in remittances, American corporations get cheap labor, Democrats get voters”

“Mexico in just a few days could elect one of its more anti-American figures in recent memory, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Obrador has often advanced the idea that a strangely aggrieved Mexico has the right to monitor the status of its citizens living illegally in the United States. Lately, he trumped that notion of entitlement by assuring fellow Mexicans that they have a “human right” to enter the United States as they please. For Obrador, this is an innate privilege that he promised “we will defend” — without offering any clarification on the meaning of “defend” other than to render meaningless the historic notion of borders and sovereignty.
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Facts are stubborn and reveal Mexico, not the United States, as a de facto aggressor and belligerent on many fronts.
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What is also unsaid is that many of the millions of Mexican expatriates in the United States who send remittances home to Mexico are themselves beneficiaries of some sort of U.S. federal, state, or local support that allows them to free up cash to send back to Mexico.
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Mexico plays the same role with the Unites States that North African countries play with Europe, except in the former’s case, it has a deliberate rather than chaotic emigration policy — and uses it as direct leverage over the U.S. Mexico’s sense of immigration entitlement is predicated on the assumption that corporate America wants cheap labor, that liberal America wants voters, that identity-politics activists need constituents, that a liberal elite expresses its abstract virtue by its patronization of the Other — and that until recently most Americans were indifferent.
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It is an act of belligerency for a nation to undermine the laws of its neighbor — and boast that more of the same is to come.
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So, what, then, is the new Mexico — a friend, an enemy, neither, or both?

Good News, Satan Wants to Destroy You! By Derek Rishmawy – “It may sound weird, but knowing we have an enemy is encouraging.”

“Many of us already feel like we’re in the middle of a battlefield, with an ancient foe wreaking havoc and destruction. The Bible says we’re right.
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the Bible says Satan is at work now and we dare not forget it. Indeed, it’s not enough to know we have an enemy. We need to know his “schemes” (Eph. 6:11) and what resources we have in Christ against him—what Puritan Thomas Brooks called our “precious remedies against Satan’s devices.”
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First, our Enemy whispers lies about everything, but especially about God.
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Second, Satan also whispers temptations to those of us who wander along, blithely unaware that “sin is crouching,” trying to destroy us by inflaming our desires.
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Finally, our Enemy whispers accusations.
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Yes, we have a foe looking to harm us, but even more, we have a mighty God of peace who has promised to “crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:20).

But can you avoid false witness and self deception?

Ace of Spades cites Glenn Reynolds: The Civil War Has Already Started. –

“He’s referring to an idea I’ve mentioned before myself, that there are “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” that predict divorce in a couple. Those Four Horsemen are criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt.

All of which are singularly present in modern American “discourse.”

Dear Judd And Kumail: You Have No Idea What A Nazi Really Was By David Harsanyi – “Please find another historical event to exploit. Because you sound like a bunch of hysterical know-nothings.”

7 Examples from the Last Two Weeks That Show How Dangerous and Insane Liberals Have Become by John Hawkins – “If you told any American ten years ago how badly liberals have behaved in just the last two weeks, they would have thought you were the crazy one for thinking this was possible.”

The Five commentary panel on Fox News had a segment to discuss problems in civil discussion. It was quite a dance around facts such as cited over and over again here to support the ‘both sides are the same’ fiction. As has happened so many times in the past, American will put up with a lot of abuse and bullying but only up to a point then watch out. That is what worries a lot of people.

Observations on the Travel Ban Decision by John Hinderaker – “The fact that four justices dissented is extraordinary. Their grounds are, in my view, pretextual.”

“Justice Sotomayor wrote the dissent that Democrats were hoping for. It is a fiery denunciation of President Trump, but one that includes little material relevant to the case. She quotes, at great length, statements that candidate Donald Trump made during the campaign about wanting to restrict all Islamic immigration. One problem, of course, is that the order at issue doesn’t bar all Islamic immigration–it affects only a tiny percentage of it. The fact (if it is a fact) that Trump would have preferred to issue a different order, obviously can’t make the order he did issue unconstitutional.

Justice Sotomayor and Justice Ginsberg, who joined in her dissent, do not shy away from the conclusion that if another president had issued the same order, it would have been valid and constitutional. It is only Donald Trump who can’t issue this proclamation, on account of various statements he made that the justices interpret as being hostile to Islam. If Hillary Clinton had issued the same order, it would have been fine.

I therefore see the Sotomayor opinion (and the Breyer opinion, too, although it is more circumspect) as political, not legal, documents. They reflect the Democratic Party’s continuing refusal to accept the result of the 2016 election. In their view, Donald Trump isn’t really our president: he doesn’t have the powers that any other president would have.
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The bottom line is that Trump vs. Hawaii came out the right way, but it is deeply disturbing that four justices were willing to put politics before jurisprudence.

NIFLA v. Becerra: free speech or pro-life by neo-neocon – “Headlines in the MSM dealing with the decision tend to emphasize that this is a win for pro-life clinics (see this, for example), whereas conservative media seems to have more of a focus on the free speech aspects (an example is this). The former is a political emphasis, whereas the latter is a constitutional and legal one.”

Where is academia? Prawf’s Blog cited Balkinization by Joseph Fishkin to explain why a ban on visitors from countries with poor identity laws is just as bad as rounding up a bunch of U.S. citizens for incarceration. The distinction between aliens and citizens is dismissed with the presumption that the rights of U.S. citizens apply to anyone in the world, U.S. citizen or not. Then there is presumption that the travel ban order was racist despite it being based on non-racial criteria. In trying to rationalize the concept that the travel ban was equivalent to the Japanese WW II internment, Fishkin also completely sidesteps the major case of the dissent that relied on elevating campaign speech to formal, courtroom testimony level testimony. The conclusion is that, for academia, ideology supersedes law.

Yelling in a theater is like earning a liberal merit badge by John Romano – “This is what today’s progressives don’t seem to understand. They believe they occupy the moral high ground, and somehow that excuses their own sins and intolerance.”

“As the narrative goes, Democrats are motivated in 2018 because President Donald Trump has made America a less tolerant place where decorum is nonexistent and anger is palpable.

So now the response is a liberal version of intolerance and indignation in spiffy made-for-Facebook videos?

And Democrats wonder why they don’t win elections.

The harassment of Attorney General Pam Bondi in a Tampa movie theater on Friday night was a sad example of today’s look-at-me moral outrage. Somehow, it seems befitting of our new era of reality-television politics.
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If you believe in a different kind of America, then you need to make a compelling case for your vision. And you don’t do that by yelling in a restaurant or movie theater. You certainly don’t do that by demeaning conservative voters by insisting their values are backward.

Mad Max and Nancy Pelosi: The twin faces of the Democratic Party by Patricia McCarthy – “How delicious is it that the face of the Democratic Party is that lovely duo, Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi?”

“So deluded as to why Trump won, they seem to think their particular brand of madness that includes the public shaming of anyone and everyone in the Trump administration is going to win back the House and Senate for their party.

It is by now undeniable that the hate-Trump left has gone stark-raving mad. Its members have lost all semblance of sanity, decorum, and class. With Mad Maxine Waters leading the way, they are encouraging public interference and assaults in the form of hastily assembled mobs to shame anyone connected to the Trump administration who has the temerity to venture out in public.
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It can be lost on no one that the Democrats care not one bit for American citizens.
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Just in the past week, we have incidents of leftist intolerant moonbattery writ large

Liberals’ Hatred Will Inevitably Turn Into Violence by Kurt Schlichter – “I see these leftist morons charging headlong down the same slippery slope I was stationed at the bottom of in Kosovo.”

“The bottom of the slope is really bad, and they should stop their descent. Now.

But there’s no sign of sanity.
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Maybe I missed the liberal outcry in defense of the right of conservative kids and women not to be abused. Or maybe there wasn’t one because no prominent Dem is willing to anger a liberal base that accepts both options if it helps get Trump out of power and them back in.
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When people tell you they want to hurt you, you should believe them. And we Normals are starting to listen to what liberals say.
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So the leftists attempt to intimidate us into submission, showing up at people’s houses and screaming at them in restaurants. Take that, Sarah! The idea is since the leftists can’t convince Normals with the power of their ideas – because leftists’ ideas inevitably involve Normals ceding more of their rights and money to leftists – the left wants to make submission and obedience the price for being able to participate in the culture. But what’s inevitable is that us newly militant Normals, whose power is political rather than cultural, are going to respond pursuant to the New Rules and demand that leftists bake us a cake.
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Intimidation isn’t working. It makes the libs quiver with joy, but it just makes us mad.
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we’d prefer the option the liberals have ignored – a return to a society where disputes are resolved via the processes outlined in the Constitution and the individual rights set forth within it are respected.

Don’t go with violence, progressives. It will end badly.

Not I, said the discriminatory Red Hen by Washington Examiner – “If the distinction between a person’s humanity and her politics is destroyed further, we will find it hard to maintain civic peace.”

“Ana Navarro, a conservative-turned-full-time-Trump-hater, argued that anyone who would “defend baker’s right to refuse service to gay couples” ought not to “whine” about people “refusing service to a person who’s the face of a deceitful administration. What’s good for the goose, is good for the Red Hen.”

But the analogy is inapt to the point of casuistry. Social liberals’ inability or refusal to see the difference is telling. Refusing to serve someone as an equal because of who he or she is is wholly different in kind from refusing to provide specialized services tailored to an event that in good conscience you find objectionable.
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Sanders, however, was there simply to have dinner. She was asking to be treated the same way as every other customer. Serving her dinner would not have expressed agreement or acceptance of her work. It would simply have been selling her the restaurant’s goods and services, the way it does to everyone else. Nobody was being asked to endorse or participate in anything Sanders was doing.

The restaurant flatly declared her unworthy of its service because of who she is. Tactically it might seem best to call the Left’s embrace of the Red Hen simple hypocrisy, and there is a heaping dinner plate full of that, for sure.

But there’s a more important insight here. The distinction made by most people between refusing to serve the person and refusing to participate in his activity is not one made broadly on the Left. The notion of a human as a human, separated from his or her politics, is not one that today’s revved-up Left tolerates. You are your politics.
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If the distinction between a person’s humanity and her politics is destroyed further, we will find it hard to maintain civic peace. That priceless commodity is already battered and derided. It is in the nation’s profound interest to preserve it and to repudiate the intolerance of those who seek to destroy it.

The misogynistic resistance: Pam Bondi becomes 4th female Trump supporter to be harassed in public by John Sexton – “It’s still early in this new phase of the resistance, but one noteworthy aspect of this is that, so far, the public harassment seems to mostly be targeting women.”

The Media’s Sickness Is Terminal by George Neumayr – “It has gone beyond a syndrome to a disease.”

“One of the media’s favorite refrains against Donald Trump in 2016 was that he lacked the “temperament” and “maturity” to govern. The charge was usually leveled by the most ill-tempered, immature journalists imaginable. It is typical of the left, which owns almost all of the media, to demand “civility” of its opponents while granting itself limitless incivilities.
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The relativism underpinning liberalism makes it hopelessly willful. Its relationship to civility is determined not by any principle independent of human will but by pure political opportunism. Insofar as civility is useful to gaining or preserving power, liberals pretend to honor it. But the moment civility becomes an impediment to holding or regaining power, they give themselves permission to violate it. The “ends” suddenly justify the means, and anyone who questions their uncivil behavior fails to see the “higher” good at stake.

and then there are court cases that came down this week. The truly frightening insight from these decisions is that clear Constitutional definitions don’t seem to have much weight resulting in narrow decisions or a split court.

Kidtrina by Clarice Feldman – “The advantage of having to write a column at the end of the week is that usually within seven days, the latest leftist meme has been thoroughly debunked.”

“And so it is this week with such bunkum as claims that crying toddlers and children at the border are being ripped from the arms of loving parents and held in concentration camp-style settings. My online friend Randy Bock has dubbed this propaganda ploy “Kidtrina,” and it certainly bears a great deal of similarity to the overwrought coverage of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath in New Orleans. And for the same reason: to deflect blame from Democrat politicians and to demonize Republican presidents.
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By any honest account, children caught in this web during this administration are being handled far more humanely and responsibly than they were under Obama’s.

Like the coverage of Katrina, the media handling of Kidtrina is short on fact but high on partisan emotionalism.

Why This Immigration Psychodrama Will Also Pass by Victor Davis Hanson – “A month from now there will be a new manufactured news story that Donald Trump is savage, represents an existential danger, or is unhinged.”

“We’ve already been through the dizzying odyssey of legal suits in three states over supposedly fraudulent voting machines, the nullification of the Electoral College effort, the meltdown on Inauguration Day, the Emoluments Clause tizzy, the 25th Amendment con, the various Russian collusion hysterias, the leaked phone call to the Australian prime minister, the Michael Wolff Fire and Furyfantasies, the Dudley Do-Right James Comey pre-indictment book tour, and all the surreal assassination chic stories, from Kathy Griffin’s beheading photo to the Shakespearean troupe’s ritual stabbing of Trump.
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In general, nothing hurts a cause more than going full French Revolution.

Trump says it’s time to deny entry to illegal immigrants. Can he? By Paul Mirengoff – “Rucker and Weigel do not mention this presidential power. But its existence undermines their suggestion that Trump would be denying “due-process rights” if he decided to deny entry to immigrants without granting them a trial or an appearance before a judge.”

“The plain language of §1182(f) and the case law involving it notwithstanding, one can easily imagine certain judges second-guessinging a determination by this president that the “detrimental to the interests of the United States” has been met. Maybe some judges would find that the crisis of family separation the left has been screaming about is not detrimental to the interests of the U.S. More likely, they would demand that some other “solution” (i.e., catch and release) be employed.

Such judicial activism would amount to an attack on our system of government. President Trump shutting down the border in response to recent developments would be nothing of the kind.

The left loses its cool by Marc Caputo and Daniel Lippman – “In the Donald Trump era, the left is as aggressively confrontational as anyone can remember.” Yeah, a town hall is the same as a dinner at a private restaurant and both sides are the same.

“What it means for 2018 — whether it portends a blue wave of populist revolt for Democrats or a red wall of silent majority resistance from Republicans — largely depends on one’s political persuasion. But there’s a bipartisan sense that this election season marks another inflection point in the collapse of civil political discourse.

Leftist Thugs Guarantee Another Scalise Tragedy by Daniel John Sobieski – “Someone is going to get killed.”

“we all know what happened to the Nazis. They were hunted down worldwide and executed. The left’s incitement of physical violence through rhetoric and mob action is excused or ignored by a leftist media who go into spasms of righteous indignation after every presidential tweet.

In the days of civil discourse, ideological opponents would target each other’s rhetoric, not each other. What you said was evil or inappropriate and must be denounced. Now, following Saul Alinsky’s playbook, it is not what conservatives stand for that is evil. Conservatives themselves are evil. They must be thrown out of restaurants, confronted at their homes and, yes, shot on baseball practice fields.
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This incendiary rhetoric and physical confrontation is a reminder of the heated leftist rhetoric that preceded and inspired a gunman to hunt down and shoot Republican congressmen at a baseball practice field in Arlington, Virginia. Then, too, it was suggested by some that the targets of the gunman had it coming, as some say of the targets of current leftist thugs.
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Joy Ann Reid’s litany of Scalise’s crimes against humanity for which he deserved being target for assassination reveal how skewed to left is the moral compass of those on the left
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Just as in the case of Steve Scalise, those on the left are suggesting that Sarah Sanders, Kirstjen Nielsen, and even young Baron Trump, deserve the vitriol and confrontation directed at them. Their hateful end-justifies-the-means rhetoric will likely inspire someone like the loon who shot up an Alexandria baseball field to take similar action.

After all, if you believe in securing the border and enforcing the nation’s laws, you have it coming.

Climate Policy Should Be Set By Legislatures, Not Courts by Donald J. Kochan – “Climate change advocates are undoubtedly frustrated that they cannot succeed in getting legislation or regulation that is broad enough to satisfy their policy preferences. So, with the support of some lawyers who see the possibility of a big payday in judgments or settlements, climate change advocacy is increasingly moving to the courts.”

“Public nuisance claims are very rarely brought and even more seldom won. It is hard to prove that someone has engaged in unreasonable or unlawful conduct that interferes with a right common to the general public, especially as each of those elements has been interpreted. Conduct which is lawful is seldom unreasonable and by definition not unlawful.

Furthermore, the hurdles for establishing the elements of a traditional public nuisance claim are purposefully high because it is usually seen as an extreme remedy. But, here, the municipal plaintiffs seek to break down these time-tested limits that have kept public nuisance claims narrowly tailored.
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The expertise of judges is suited to police the Rule of Law and to decide actual cases based on concrete facts and identifiable, existing legal standards. And the duty of judges is to avoid the temptation to create new torts or assist the mutation of existing ones beyond recognition rather than leave that creative enterprise to the legislative branch.

The media discovers another “scandal” around Scott Pruitt, producing nothing by Jazz Shaw – “If you ever get bored during the work week and are looking for some good scandal news out of Washington, all you really need to do is open up your favorite news search engine and type in the name of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt.”

“Odds are that no matter how crowded the news cycle may be with other pressing matters around the world, somebody on the Washington beat will have mysteriously discovered a new instance of supposed wrongdoing on Pruitt’s part.

This weekend was no different, with the Washington Post publishing yet another shocking revolution from Pruitt’s time heading the EPA. What was it this time? Another cafeteria worker saying that he ate at their facilities too often? A request to purchase another used mattress? No… this story is far more dark and sinister. Having gotten hold of even more of the Secretary’s private correspondence, the WaPo discovered that someone who knows Pruitt had made an inquiry about possibly landing a job at the agency for one of their friends.
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There you have it. The Scott Pruitt Scandal of the Week, courtesy of the Washington Post. A friend of the family inquired about a possible job for a kid they knew and he wasn’t hired.

Insurrection is Here; How Long do We have Until Civil War 2.0 Starts? by Peter Barry Chowka – “Organized lawlessness is spreading to cities across the United States but the news is almost totally ignored and blacked out by the mainstream media.”

“Meanwhile, neighborhood businesses, including restaurants, have had to hire private security because occupiers are stealing (or “borrowing”) everything that isn’t nailed down and trespassing on businesses’ parking lots, impeding commerce.

At a number of points, the mobs have literally taken over and closed down one or more streets as the police do nothing.

This wave of insurrection aimed at ICE is one element of a broader effort to frustrate and curtail law enforcement in many other areas and to intimidate government officials. The big picture agenda is to tie the hands of police at every level.
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In recent years, law-breaking from the streets to the political suites no longer carries consequences for the preferred classes – Democrat politicians, high-level Deep State bureaucrats, professional leftist and anarchist agitators and their fellow travelers, and now illegal alien invaders.

It’s Crazies All The Way Down by John Hinderaker – “Just in the last few days, the liberal outrages have been hard to keep up with”

“You will note that usually, when harassment takes place in person, the victim is a woman. I suppose members of the fascist “Resistance” are afraid of getting punched. They should be.

How many Americans know about these outrages? How many understand that the Democratic Party’s most stalwart supporters are stark, raving mad? Not enough. The liberal press generally covers up, downplays, or tries to portray in a positive light Brownshirt tactics by its allies. But it is important to understand that there is no “respectable” Democratic Party that is distinguishable from the disgusting Brownshirt “Resistance.”

Have you seen a single Democrat politician denounce, criticize, or try to distance himself or herself from any of the outrageous incidents itemized above? I haven’t. The fact is that Democrat politicians view “Resistance” Brownshirts as their storm troopers, leading the way to victory in November and beyond.
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We are rapidly approaching the point where there won’t be any alternative but to fight fire with fire.

If “social warfare” is the new norm, conservatives will be forced to play the game by Jazz Shaw – “We’re used to raucous town halls and counterprotests at rallies or when controversial speakers show up at college campuses, but this was something new.”

“It was so far outside the traditional rules of engagement on the political playing field that it defied description. Of course, that was just a group of Democratic Socialists, so I found myself reasoning that if the public expressed outrage or dismay at such an affront, things might calm back down.

Not only is that not the case, we’ve now learned that the “social warfare” on display in that instance wasn’t an accident. It’s part of the new leftist playbook.
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Now that the phrase “total social warfare” has been coined, it’s time for us to admit that this genie isn’t going to be put back in the bottle.
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This isn’t going to end unless there is an actual incentive for it to end. And the media isn’t going to supply that incentive since most of those folks either openly support social warfare or convey signals that they privately do.
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Nobody is going to get the message until Democrats and liberals find out that they don’t get a free pass to behave in this fashion and go unanswered.
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Will that end the problem or end the Republic? I have no idea. But this can’t be a one way street simply because one team decided to throw the playbook out the window.

George Will urges voters to oust the Republicans in November by neo-neocon – “George Will now appears to be vying for the leadership of the NeverTrump movement, and he’s taking it out on the entire GOP.”

“It is typical of people who are incensed about the family separation issue to outright lie or at least be so sloppy with the facts that they mislead, and to ignore the dangers faced by illegal immigrants on their journey. Therefore Will’s failure to have noticed the true story or to mention it is not the least bit surprising. He’s become a propagandist himself. And he’s got plenty of company.

Why the Left Is Having a Nervous Breakdown by Roger L Simon – “The Left is having the worst flu season ever. Almost all of them have been infected by Trump Derangement Syndrome to such a degree that they can’t see or think straight.”

Facing humiliation, Mueller backs away from prosecution of Russian entities by Thomas Lifson – “What on earth could cause a prosecutor to walk away from his central mission to focus instead on incidental and tangential matters?”

“Barrett’s use of the words “take responsibility” for the case is the answer. Though not a word of it appears in Barrett’s article, the prosecution of the Russian entities has already turned into a farce, as Mueller is caught in a trap of his own making with the hasty indictments of entities he never expected to defend themselves. So slipshod was the work that one of the inducted entities was not even an incorporated entity (i.e., it did not exist) at the time of the alleged offenses.
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Have you ever heard of anyone “farmng out” the central mission of a multimillion dollar operation in order to focus on tangents? Even though the Trump-hating media will refuse to mention it, this move is a confession that Mueller is cutting his losses and leaving others to take the blame when the case collapses.

Now It All Starts Making Sense – Deep State “Fixer”: Henry John Kerner, The Cover-Up Expert by sundance – “Thanks to the efforts of Judicial Watch, we now find a name at the very heart of some of the most controversial investigative collapses in modern political history.”

“The same John McCain staffer who told the IRS to weaponize their database to target Tea Party groups, was intimately involved in Fast-and-Furious, Benghazi, IRS and now -under the Trump administration- “Spygate”.

If you wanted to control or cover-up a DC scandal where would you need to be? What position(s) would you need to control? A) the witnesses, and the investigators. In essence, deep inside the agencies or committees doing the investigation. That’s exactly the functionality where Henry John Kerner comes in.

Yesterday it was revealed that Henry J Kerner (Henry Kerner), as a former McCain senior staff official, was part of a bipartisan DC team who constructed the IRS weaponization program to target the Tea Party. That’s bad enough. However, a little more digging, you’re not going to believe this: the same guy who was attached to the prior investigations, is now in charge of all DC “corruption” and “whistle-blowing” cases, including the current FBI and DOJ corruption.

Henry Kerner is Special Counsel in charge of all “whistle-blowing” witnesses and cases of government corruption. Henry Kerner controls the events as the lead official, the Special Counsel in charge of the Office of Special Counsel; and he is in the position to manipulate/control any investigative outcome.
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No wonder the Deep State feels empowered. With DC control agents ensuring the corruption and gross misconduct remains hidden, there’s not much fear of getting caught.

Unreal.

Why doesn’t PETA use its money to help animals? by Scott Walter – “PETA has spent the last few years carefully tracking every isolated incident at the over 1,500 PetSmart locations and fabricating a trend of neglect and abuse.”

“The smear campaign is not surprising, given the source of the allegations. PETA is not an association of concerned pet owners, but rather an extremist organization dedicated to eliminating all human use of animals and actually establishing animal rights.
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Long story short — PETA is an untrustworthy extremist group which does not represent mainstream approaches to animal welfare. Their hypocritical attacks on PetSmart might make flashy headlines, but they also reveal a striking double standard when it comes to actually helping all creatures great and small. When it comes to treating animals ethically, animal lovers should know that PETA doesn’t even put its money where its mouth is.

The Big Lie: Leftists Care about Children by Tom Trinko – “We know that leftists don’t really care about this because it happened under Obama, and they said nothing. It even happened under Bush, and they didn’t complain about it then, either, even though they hated Bush.” … and there’s more, a lot more.

Kids in cages: The fake news that made child separation a big story by John Sexton – “after each dishonest photo, we eventually get a fact-check, but by that point the outrage whipped up by the fake image has already taken hold. This is the “hands up, don’t shoot” approach to journalism all over again.”

Check Out First Lady Melania Trump’s “Beauty & Dignity” Photo That Is Now Going Viral by DCWhispers – “Those reporters appear sub-human while the First Lady sits inches away and yet far removed from them.”

Fake news scores another one: Crying migrant child in photo never separated from her mother by Monica Showalter – “Score one for the power of fake news.”

“We already know it was going on with the manufactured crisis over child separations of people caught breaking U.S. law by entering the country illegally. The policies were Democrat policies, yet Democrats and Jeb Bush-style #NeverTrumps were decrying it as a product of President Trump’s heartlessness, separating parents from children entering illegally as families, in order to keep the children out of their parents’ jail. Yet they were President Obama’s and President Bush’s and President Clinton’s policies, dating to 1997. The press pounded the drumbeat nonstop for days that President Trump was heartless and evil – the same way they did for President Reagan.
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Best of all in this feeding frenzy, there were the photos: The crying toddler, crying as toddlers do, wildly, for all the universe to hear them.
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Those crying toddlers were nothing but a bid to force President Trump to end his zero-tolerance policy for illegal border crossers by falsely portraying him as heartless.
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Now the facts come out, and pretty quickly, too.
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Any questions as to why the mainstream media is held in such low regard by the American public? Memo to the left: As the fake news filters out, this is how you get More Trump.

The Ignorance of Trump’s Moralizing Critics by Christopher DeGroot – “If there is one thing we can count on in our age of expert ignorance, it is that experts in their intellectual and moral smugness will offer opinions that, if acted on, would simplify complex issues and therefore harm the national good.”

“Let’s start with the claim that separating children from their families is “needless and cruel.” This is facile,
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Henderson Daniel finds this process “needless and cruel.” The trouble with such moralizing is that it’s not only ignorant of the law, it overlooks how difficult the illegal immigration problem is.
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As I argued in my column “Immigration and the Tragic Sense of Life,” the immigration problem is essentially tragic, like life itself. We are torn between the need to put our own citizens first and pity for people who, for whatever reason, wish to leave their native countries to live here. These ends are not wholly compatible, so assigning primacy to the first (as we surely must do) requires that we do much less for needful immigrants—a category that numbers millions if not billions, potentially.

It is precisely because it is tragic that nobody wants to see the immigration problem for what it is. How much easier it is to take refuge in utopian delusion.
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Neither have the critics shown any appreciation for Trump’s efforts to restore law and order, although that is one of the major reasons he was elected. For being grounded in reality, the president is lambasted by those who, like petulant children, demand comforting lies. What he will never get from such persons is gratitude. There is a lesson here about human nature itself, and it is not a pretty one.

About that Time Magazine “crying girl” cover … by Ed Morrissey – “The picture of a crying Honduran girl has become the symbol of family separation outcomes from border enforcement.”

“In other words, like so much of the media coverage of this issue, Crying Girl actually represents the opposite of the assumptions blasted around by outlets like Time. We’ve experienced a deluge of misinformation and a complete lack of context over the past week or so from media outlets that are clearly more interested in an agenda than an informed debate. Yanela Varela Hernandez is the poster girl for media’s appetite for activism over truth. And they wonder why people continue to accuse them of peddling “fake news”?

NY City Mayor Turned Away From Detention Center In Texas by John Sexton – “I’m guessing this publicity effort was put together a few days ago when it seemed this could drag on for weeks.”

“Trump’s signing of an executive order yesterday probably meant a lot of speeches had to be reworked in the last 24-hours. The executive order did get mentioned during the press conference but only as an incomplete effort. The point, as Move On and others were already noting yesterday, is to keep pushing and demand more and, most importantly, to keep this story in the news as long as possible.

Nancy Pelosi in 2014: Let’s not politicize all of these children in detention facilities by John Sexton – that was then. This is now.

UN accidentally rips Obama by Don Surber – “UN poverty report blasting Trump, US for ‘hatred for the poor’ uses data from last year of Obama’s presidency,” … another episode of trying to re-write history by being careless about timelines.

“The international anti-Americans are just as incompetent as their domestic counterparts, who used horrific pictures of children in custody — taken from Obama’s concentration camps for youths.

“The U.N. report’s main contentions read like an attack on the Trump administration by the Democratic Party …

“But, wait a minute: the U.N. report’s main contentions are based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s official poverty measure data for 2016 – the last full year of President Obama’s second term. So it would be absurd to say that private citizen Donald Trump had any responsibility for the many shortcomings of the Obama administration or any other administration in power before he became president.”

Of course, extreme poverty in America is considered middle class elsewhere in the world.

Media Lining Up to Defend Black Teen Shot in Carjacking, Attempted Murder by Taylor Lewis – “What’s it like to feel powerless?” Remember that SPLC story from a few days ago? Same idea.

“A lieutenant in the Chicago Fire Department may find out. The fireman committed the grave sin of defending himself and his property from an aggressor. Now he is the target of a social media campaign to ex post facto punish him for having the audacity to protect what is rightfully his.
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After investigating the lieutenant’s actions, the Chicago Fire Department found no rule violation or wrongdoing.

That wasn’t enough justice for Macklin’s sister, Janique. In a glowing profile that reads more like a KCNA summary of Kim Jong-un’s latest trip abroad than a real news account, the Chicago Tribune provided a platform for Janique’s feeling of unfairness. “When has it ever become legal to shoot someone because they’re pulling off in your car?” she asks, either unaware that her brother tried to run down the owner of the car he was jacking or dismissing the official police report entirely.

Then comes the most revealing quote: “Even if [Macklin] did that, if he did steal the car. You’ve got insurance – let him go to jail. I would’ve rather had to get a call to go bail him out of jail than to get a phone call that he’s dead.”

This is an abhorrent mix of demanded obeisance, willful duplicity, and wishful thinking.
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Macklin had a choice. He didn’t have to steal the vehicle. He didn’t have to threaten the lieutenant’s life with his own vehicle. He didn’t have to die.

That he did, and that there is credibility being lent to his sister’s dubious narrative of events, shows just how debased our conception of human life has become. Asking someone to lie down and die for the sake of another’s choice isn’t sympathy or understanding – it’s crude barbarity disguised as false compassion.

So IRS Tea Party persecutor Lois Lerner had help all along: John McCain by Monica Showalter – “Up until now, I had always been under the impression that some conservatives’ negative view of McCain was overblown, and he was far more good than bad. I was wrong.”

“How’s this for sneaky? Sen. John McCain, not too long after seeking conservative and Republican votes in his failed 2008 bid for the presidency, went right after those same conservative voters without telling them, by egging on the IRS to ruin them.”

Trump’s Message: Full Transparency to Restore Trust by Ned Ryun – A former presidential writer’s own manner of expressing frustration with the ‘deep state’ revelations. But, despite allegations from his opponents, dictat is not Trump’s style. He seems to understanding that educating the public takes much more than just transparency.

What You Missed from Michael Horowitz’s Testimony by Julie Kelly – “Horowitz’s public statements and responses this week should ease suspicions that he is yet another D.C. swamp creature playing politics at the expense of truth and transparency. He was candid and appeared more than willing to cooperate with Congress, a rare trait in this Justice Department.”

“But one reason Horowitz might have punted in his recent report is because he knows the real bombshells are yet to come: He is investigating the FISA warrant on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page; the cozy relationship between Justice and FBI officials and the media, including perks for scoops; ex-FBI Director James Comey’s handling of classified information; and the potential doctoring of official documents.

The Real Lesson of the Inspector General’s Report by Tadas Klimas – “You missed it. But that’s all right: everyone else missed it, too.”

“For whatever reason, it is clear from the report that the structure of the FBI/DOJ’s Clinton investigation was all off: the FBI was reduced to providing a set of runners (perhaps willing and even avid, because of their demonstrated bias, runners, but runners just the same) for DOJ attorneys.

Now, in our system of justice, this is not unlawful. It is “merely” highly unusual.

Did The FBI Frame Flynn? By John Hinderaker – “The criminal case against Gen. Michael Flynn for lying to FBI agents was incredibly weak.”

“Not too many years ago, a claim that the FBI fabricated evidence to facilitate a prosecution would have seemed incredible. Today, given what we know of the corruption of the Bureau under the Obama administration, such a claim appears entirely plausible. This is just one more thread in the slowly unraveling story of the misuse of intelligence and law enforcement agencies by the Democrats to try to frustrate the candidacy of Donald Trump, and to destroy his administration after his election. Whether it will come to anything remains to be seen, but in my opinion, there is little doubt that General Flynn was railroaded into a confession that was likely false by the brute force of federal power.

Liberals Are Crazy. Will Voters Notice? By John Hinderaker – “Over the last few days we have reached peak insanity, especially on Twitter. I can’t begin to recount all of the outrages.”

“This is a phenomenon we have seen repeatedly over the last year and a half. Liberals try to rule any support for President Trump out of bounds. Anyone who expresses even the mildest support for Trump is read out of polite society. He is shunned; he should be fired from his job; if he writes anything, it shouldn’t be printed; he is publicly denounced and inundated with hate; his home, in some instances, is besieged and his children terrorized. If he ventures out into public, he is harassed by bullies. This is the essence of 21st century liberalism.

And it is evil. It is incompatible with democracy or any kind of civil society. And, above all, it is completely crazy.

And it is evil. It is false witness.

SPLC Keeps Denying. Black-on-White Violence Keeps Happening by Colin Flaherty – “Just a few days ago, the SPLC declared that black-on-white violence is the “biggest lie” because everyone knows the real problem is white-on-black violence.”

“But what crazy luck: The more the SPLC says black criminality is a myth, the more it just keeps happening. Isn’t that what you would call a day at the races, where every winner went off at more than 100 to 1?

Maybe it’s just the World’s Greatest Coincidence.

Or maybe the SPLC’s work is odder than a nine-bob note.
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The SPLC never mentions how snakebit it is when it comes to talking about black-on-white crime. It has produced mountains of paper for battalions of talking heads, all denying that black criminality is a problem. But videos, victims, 911 calls, witnesses, and police reports are overwhelming SPLC’s fantasies with mountains of real stories.

Peter Fonda Take Note: We Are On The Verge Of Someone Close To Trump Getting Killed by Douglas MacKinnon – “Does someone from the Trump family, the Trump Cabinet, or even the Trump administration have to be assaulted or worse, killed, before we accept the fact that a growing number from the far-left have put a rhetorical bounty on their heads.”

“If has-been actor Peter Fonda suggesting Barron Trump be “ripped from his mother’s arms and put in a cage with pedophiles” does not horrify you with the obscene brutality of its message, nothing ever will.

From this cauldron of bubbling and putrid hate filled from the twisted minds of enraged liberal politicians, “journalists,” entertainers, and academics, spews forth the dangerously deranged like Fonda who have proven there is no line they will not cross to inflict “punishment” and harm upon anyone connected with President Trump.

Beyond the terrifyingly rhetorical, is the real.

Anarchists from the Democratic Socialists of America just confronted Kirstjen Nielsen — only the head of the Department of Homeland Security entrusted with the massive job of protecting us all — in a restaurant in Washington, D.C., and forced her to flee.

They assailed her with her full security detail around her.

Let that sink in for a second.

And other patrons at the restaurant applauded the assault …

Border Politics and the Use and Abuse of History by Victor Davis Hanson – “The media outrage usually does not include examination of why the Trump administration is enforcing existing laws that it inherited from the Bush and Obama administrations”

“Mexico’s policies of deliberately exporting its own citizens are decades-old and hinge on providing it a social safety valve in lieu of domestic economic and human-rights reforms.
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Finally, it is unfortunate that former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden and former first lady Laura Bush have both demagogued the issue by respective grotesque and ignorant comparisons of current border shelters to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and the forced Japanese internment during World War II.
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One can disagree with a current policy without stooping to distort history to smear an administration, especially when such tactics in the past have been used against those now employing them.

Border Patrol Agent Sets The Record Straight On CNN, Embarrasses Host by Amanda Prestigiacomo – “If the media were witnessing what he and his fellow agents have been witnessing, Cabrera said, they wouldn’t be advocating for policy which would act as an incentive for more parents and guardians to send their children to the border alone.”

“Cabrera explained that he’s witnessed pre-teens traveling to the border alone with their parents’ expectation that they would be raped in the process, and adolescents dying in front of him from heat stroke on the their journey.

“When you see a 12-year-old girl with a Plan B pill, or their parents put her on birth control because they know getting violated is part of the journey, that’s just a terrible way to live. When you see a 4-year-old girl traveling completely alone with just her parents’ phone number written across her shirt. I mean, come on now, something needs to be done,” he said. “We had a 9-year-old boy last year have heat stroke in front of us and die with no family around, and that’s because we’re allowing people to take advantage of this system.”
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Baldwin then claimed that it was President Trump who was separating families at the border, unlike the Obama Administration. As noted by Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro, that is false:

The Left and Children by Trevor Thomas – “In their latest attempt to swing this fall’s election toward the Democrats, the left now wants us to focus on “the children.” They haven’t really thought this through.”

“Liberals the world over should work hard to avoid any debate that significantly involves the lives and wellbeing of children. Most anyone armed with even the slightest bit of the truth when it comes to liberalism and “the children” can easily quiet the left in virtually any debate that involves children or the family.

How did Peter Strzok’s notorious text stay hidden so long? by Byron York – “lawmakers — and the public — did not learn of the explosive second part of the exchange — Strzok’s “We’ll stop it” answer — until last Thursday, when Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Clinton email investigation was released.”

“Turns out there was more to the story. Horowitz didn’t know about the text, either — for quite a long time. The Justice Department failed to turn it over to him, and he didn’t discover it on his own until the investigation was nearly over. At hearings before the House and Senate this week, Horowitz told how he found the text, and while he pointed no fingers, his account raised questions about the Justice Department’s actions.

The Stanford Prison Experiment: A lie that won’t die by John Sexton – “this was an experiment carried out in 1971 by Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo.” It looks to another case of corruption of the soul by ideological fantasies taking precedence over reality.

“There was always plenty of reason for skepticism of the methods and the results, but the findings fit with what social engineers on the left wanted to believe about crime and punishment and prisons. So the Stanford Prison Experiment was accepted uncritically and given a warm welcome from the media for nearly 50 years. It seems to me there are some lessons that can be drawn from this about people’s willingness to take advantage of the unearned authority presented to them but those lessons have nothing to do with prisons.

Fake news, fake research, deceit distortion, … this is what happens when you lose your grip on reality.

The Big Immigration Charade by Roger L Simon – “If you sought to preserve the violent, reactionary and undemocratic regimes of countries like El Salvador and Honduras — and, to a great extent, Mexico — into perpetuity, how would you do it?”

“One way would be by providing a permanent U.S. safety valve for all their poor and downtrodden, the victims.

Just as with Europe and the Middle East, open borders can salve the soul and make us all feel good about ourselves, but they come with a price.
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With everything for propaganda and almost nothing for reality, I don’t see the logjam being broken any time soon.

The real agendas behind the ‘separation of families’ PsyOp meme by Peter Barry Chowka – “This recent wave of immigrants, coming from poor countries with repressive backward regimes, as a rule do not believe in the laws and the importance and supremacy of the founding documents of this country, including the Constitution.”

“Our domestic politics are increasingly manipulated by, and now follow and reflect, this profound demographic shift. Soon, living in the United States will totally be like living in the s—t hole countries of Mexico and Central America. (In 2017, the most powerful Democrat in the California legislature — open borders activist and California State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Léon — bragged that “‘half his family’ was in the country illegally, using false documents, and eligible for deportation.” De Léon is now challenging fellow Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein from the left in the November election.)
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As we have seen in recent years, law breaking from the streets to the political suites no longer carries consequences for the preferred classes — whether they are entrenched politicians, high-level Deep State bureaucrats, or illegal immigrant invaders. Just ask Kate Steinle’s surviving relatives about that.

Top Senate Democrat Shoots Down Cruz’s Proposal to End the Family Separation Democrats and the Media Supposedly Care So Much About, In Order to “Keep the Focus on Trump” – spite is more important than solution.

The White House press corps is broken beyond repair by Joseph Curl – “His aggressiveness (read: bad behavior) made Donaldson one of the first “star” reporters at the White House.”

“And now, with Donald Trump as president, it’s all exploded. There’s no decorum at all at the White House anymore. “Journalists” routinely go on extended rants, yell at the press secretary, and grandstand in the briefing room with lengthy (and heavily biased) speeches.
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The new paradigm is attack — as crudely and profanely as possible — in the esteemed mission to “ask questions for those that have no voice.”

The idea now is, make headlines. BE the news. Yes, America, that’s the state of journalism today. Fake news indeed.

News Fatigue? Join the Club by Bob Maistros – “why wouldn’t the public be emotionally expended from the anger and accusations, bullying and backbiting, “fake news” and “fact checks,” insults and innuendo, posturing and protests, threats and trolling, and virtue-signaling and violent rhetoric and imagery spewed from every direction today?” The data is there in front of him yet still he cannot see and falls into ‘both sides are the same’ trap.

“And my educated guess is that the reason news fatigue affects one party more is that for most of that time, one side — progressives, abetted by allies in the media — has dominated this “perpetual outrage cycle” to wear down opposition to once-radical ideas and erode adherence to traditional American values.

In fact, as I once observed (presciently, if I do say so myself) in the same-sex marriage context, the whole idea of the left’s unabated and uninhibited assault is not to win debates. It’s to extend them ad infinitum, ad absurdum and ad nauseam, alongside extortion and intimidation — until opponents lose their grip on certainty and collapse in confusion, exhaustion and disarray.

It may seem that the objective in this unyielding, any-means-to-an-end onslaught is the triumph of liberal ideas. But it’s really power. Progressives recognize that by deploying rage to sow social and economic chaos, they open the door for Big Government “solutions.”

The Time I Got Punished for Hate Speech by Don Fisher, Jr. – “Hate speech changes on a whim, which is why we need self-appointed overlords to guide us toward correct and approved conversations.”

“So I rode out my time in Facebook jail, commiserating with friends via old-fashioned email because my Facebook Messenger was also turned off during this time, lest I spread more of my “hate speech.” Did I learn anything during my virtual incarceration? Yes. The Facebook admins are every bit as authoritarian and repressive in this digital world as the Gestapo were during their time, but without the spiffy uniforms. Will I modify my speech and behavior? Not a chance.

Mueller Has Strzok Out by George Neumayr – “The only thing Trump obstructed was a partisan railroading.”

“The other night MSNBC ran a fawning documentary about James Comey. It was full of howlers about the unfathomable depths of his “integrity.” None of the clips age well, but one in particular captured the utter lunacy of Comey serving as Mueller’s presumed chief witness — a clip in which Comey accuses Trump of “lies, plain and simple” for describing the FBI as “poorly led” and in “disarray.” Here is a former FBI director categorizing Trump’s opinion, and a manifestly correct one at that, as “lies.”

That’s the fatuous, un-rigorous level on which Mueller’s probe is proceeding. His forthcoming report will consist largely of his close friend’s hyperventilating grievances against Trump, as if the wounded ego of one of the worst FBI directors in American history, an FBI director the Justice Department’s Inspector General has found to be unprofessional and reckless, counts as a “constitutional crisis.”

The Mueller probe is like a Soviet show trial revolving around the hurt feelings of a pampered commissar.
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The toxic origins of the Mueller probe are impossible to expunge. His report will represent nothing more than the fulfillment of the “insurance policy” Strzok and his mistress discussed in Andrew McCabe’s office a few doors down from Comey’s — a plot to impeach Trump via harassing investigation if they couldn’t defeat him at the ballot box.

and this morning, Rush Limbaugh is talking about the wages of hate …

The elite embrace selfishness, bigotry and hatred of Trump and his supporters by Steve Hilton – “This time, the ideology has nothing to do with policy. The new elitist ideology is personal, visceral, emotional.”

“Until recently it was possible to discern a policy-based ideology of elitism. It was the establishment consensus around the benefits of globalization, automation, centralization and uncontrolled immigration.

Over the past few decades, this elitist policy agenda was implemented regardless of actual election outcomes.
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It starts with selfishness. … The next component of the new elitist ideology is bigotry.
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But perhaps the defining characteristic of the new elitist ideology – the one that truly brings them all together: from establishment Republicans in Congress, to the intellectually fossilized conservative “intelligentsia,” to the media overlords comfortably ensconced in their affluent hipster enclaves, to the arrogant tech titans of Silicon Valley, to the preposterous and vain Hollywood virtue-signalers like poor old Robert De Niro – is hatred of President Trump. Their brand is hate.

What do Republicans suspect really happened in the FBI Trump-Russia investigation? by Byron York – “The struggle to uncover the FBI’s conduct in the Trump-Russia probe has made some congressional investigators deeply suspicious of the bureau.”

“Congressional investigators came away with the impression that the FBI was hiding something. It was.
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investigators have discovered a number of times in which Trump figures were approached, sometimes by people with FBI connections, with offers of derogatory information on Clinton. Each incident was before the FBI says it began the Trump-Russia investigation, code name Crossfire Hurricane, on July 31, 2016.
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Some Republicans believe the FBI will, finally, comply. Maybe that will happen, and maybe it won’t. But the only thing that can reduce suspicion in the current atmosphere is more openness.

A Guide to Spygate by Mark Wauck – an insider tries to figure out what happened based on his knowledge of procedure and practice.

“These considerations may shed some light on the thinking that went on in the White House as these events unfolded, as suggested by Susan Rice’s “email to self.” If President Obama did, in fact, state that everything should be done “by the book,” that would help explain why the FBI jumped through all these hoops in the effort to cover their actions. To all appearances, the FBI and DoJ were operating “by the book.” It’s only when you examine the details — and especially the FISA details — that you begin to see what a threat their activities constituted to our republic.

Why the OIG Report Should Scare the Hell Out of You by David Catron – “The OIG is infected by a far more dangerous disease than political bias — fear.”

“The Justice Department’s tepid OIG report, with its risible assertion that there was no political bias in the FBI’s Clinton email probe, suggests that it was written by people afraid to tell the unvarnished truth about the conduct of the federal government’s police apparatus, an agency that openly defies congressional oversight and has participated in a vendetta against a sitting president. The FBI’s leadership clearly hopes that the Democrats will win majorities in Congress and put a halt to the investigations into its multifarious abuses of power. The OIG is loath to face the ruthless reprisals that would inevitably follow such a disaster.

In other words, the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General is filled with people who fear the FBI. Think about that for a minute. What is the usual term for a government whose members live in fear of its police arm?
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And, in the cause of halting further investigations into deep state skulduggery, the Democrats immediately used the OIG report to attack the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes

The IG’s Report May Be Half-Baked by Andrew C. McCarthy – “The cop-out is that we are dealing here with “discretionary” calls; therefore, the IG rationalizes, the investigators must be given very broad latitude.”

The Anti-Profiling Movement Is Killing Black Pedestrians by Jack Cashill – “From time to time, the media tell the truth about issues that have a racial edge, usually by accident.”

“A look at the actual report, however, suggests that the perceived disparity is much more likely to be a result of black driving habits than police biases. Yes, statistically, blacks were 85 percent more likely to be stopped than whites.

What the media did not report, however, is that blacks were 129 percent more likely to be stopped than Hispanics, 224 percent more likely to be stopped than Asians, and 400 percent more likely to be stopped than American Indians.
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the media ask their audiences to ignore all inconvenient statistics, all logic about police motives, and even the fatal consequences to black pedestrians for no better reason than to perpetuate the myth that law enforcement practices are “deplorable.” Cops have heard that word before, and that is one reason why Donald Trump is president.

The Dream and the Nightmare of Globalization by Victor Davis Hanson – “Yet what would become the globalized project was predicated on lots of flawed, but unquestioned assumptions”

“The end result of the last seven decades was a far more prosperous world of 7.6 billion than was ever thought imaginable. Stalin’s nightmare collapsed. So did Mao’s—sort of. Radical Islam was checked. The indigent in the Amazon Basin got access to eyeglasses. Amoxicillin made its way into Chad. And Beyoncé could be heard in Montenegro. The impoverished from Oaxaca became eligible for affirmative action the moment they crossed the U.S. border. Europe no longer tore itself apart every 20-50 years.

But soon a number of contradictions in the global order became self-evident. Consumer quasi-capitalism not only did not always lead to democracy and consensual government. Just as often, it enhanced and enriched authoritarianism.

Democracy and referenda became suspect, the moody fickleness of those who did not know what was good for them.

CA does it again, Hillary Clinton – Feminist, Banning guns and Dems promise tax hike by Bruce McQuain – “California continues to lead the country … in it’s descent into madness:”

“ This is simply more effrontery and “in your face” behavior by Democrats in California as they continue to do all they can to nullify federal law.

Lord of the Flies by Bruce McQuain – “nothing is more offensive to me than the exploitation of the various teens that survived the shooting and have become activists.”

“Many people were empathetic when they cried out after the shooting, more than willing to let them vent their rage and emotion and offer suggestions, no matter how ill-considered, on the problem at hand. That’s part of the process of grieving and healing. And it is certainly understandable in that context. But their exploitation, almost immediately for a political agenda, was as Megan Fox says above, done by an “evil, ruthless enemy with no scruples or boundaries.”
…
this tragedy has been a clinic on how exploitive, ruthless and evil certain parts of the left are and the fact that they will stop at nothing nor can they stoop low enough to pound their message home.

Exploiting children of a tragedy?

Just another day at the office.

Then there’s the children crossing the border …

Look who is mad at DeNiro and the C-worder by Don Surber – “Anger isn’t a strategy,” Frank Bruni of the New York Times wrote.”

“”You’re demeaning yourselves. Many voters don’t hear your arguments or the facts, which are on your side. They just wince at the din,” Bruni said.
…
Mind you, he does not say he disagrees with their statements. He just does not want them to say it publicly. Democrats need to fool people into believing they are not a bunch of raving maniacs.
…
His complaint about De Niro saying F— Trump was not because it is unAmerican to not accept the results of an election.

His complaint about De Niro saying F— Trump was not because it is wrong to expose children to such language.

His complaint about De Niro saying F— Trump was not because disrespecting the president is disrespecting the American people who elected him.

No, Bruni’s complaint about De Niro saying F— Trump was because De Niro was too honest about his feelings.

To Trump’s Critics: Where’s the Beef? By David Gayvert – “Never Trumpers across the political spectrum have been hysterically decrying the existential threat the president poses”

“Oh, and lest you haven’t heard, Trump is a racist, sexist, xenophobe, homophobe, Hitler, fascist (a word that has lost all meaning in modern popular discourse) and the dumbest man ever to be elected president.

Yet in all of these dire warnings and assertions, precious little evidence for such eschatological claims is ever offered, even as all data to the contrary is studiously ignored. Indeed, the only proof that his critics conclusively, if inadvertently, demonstrate is that they really, really, really dislike the guy.

The Silencing of the Inspectors General by Victor Davis Hanson – “For nearly eight years, the Obama administration sought to cover up serial wrongdoing by waging a veritable war against the watchdog inspectors general of various federal agencies.”

“In 2014, 47 of the nation’s 73 inspectors general signed a letter alleging that Obama had stonewalled their “ability to conduct our work thoroughly, independently, and in a timely manner.”

The frustrated nonpartisan auditors cited systematic Obama administration refusals to turn over incriminating documents that were central to their investigations.
…
Still, Obama was right in a way: A scandal does not become a scandal if no one acts on findings of improper behavior.
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Finding government abuse and doing nothing about it is worse than not finding any at all.

Union suing to stop Trump’s union reforms by Jazz Shaw – “despite fighting for a preposterous notion, the union will no doubt have a large, vocal cheering section among Democrats since they will be perceived as RESISTING Trump. And since they’re filing in DC, they’ll probably find a judge to back them up on the first round. I hope I’m wrong about that, but history is a harsh mistress.”

Silicon Valley has a problem with conservatives. But not the political kind. By Caroline McCarthy – “Silicon Valley is a young atheist’s world — and that’s becoming a problem.” But she does describe bigotry and numerous ‘isms’ that plague the Left. She describes a lack of self awareness and a tossing aside of the intellectual integrity that is necessary for entrepreneurial success. It can be tossed aside because of the wealth generated by others (but this isn’t a part of her story).

“when the fringes have enormous influence over the culture and its perception, there’s a problem. Silicon Valley holds vast economic influence, and it needs to be open to hiring and retaining employees who don’t fit its image. Without it, paradoxically, an industry and culture that professes progressivism, open-mindedness, and a devotion to science and empiricism ends up becoming the most exclusionary and prone to magical thinking.

McGowan and Argento inadvertantly explain Bourdain’s suicide by Monica Showalter – “It goes to show just how warped Hollywood’s values are.” This is a manifestation of the ‘Silicon Valley Problem’ described above.

“McGowan doesn’t even know how gross her statements sound because she has embraced the propaganda herself. After all, who could be in favor of dreadful borders in relationships and not embrace free birds? Probably just Trump-supporters.

The circumstantial evidence is actually pretty strong that this is what sent Bourdain off the deep end.
…
The problem was the free bird values. What she did was inadvertantly highlight that the embrace of “free bird” values, which so contradict human nature and human desire, is what took Bourdain’s life. Sadly, none of these people here can even see it.

Investor’s Business Daily: How Many Dems Agree With Bill Maher’s Recession Wish? – “Rather than rooting on the strong economy, Democrats have taken to ignoring it, belittling it or, like Bill Maher did over the weekend, rooting for a recession. The extent to which Trump critics will go is truly mind-boggling.” And, yes, this is also related to the Silicon Valley Problem.

“Dismissing this good economic news as meaningless — after spending eight years proclaiming how great the stagnant economy was under Obama — isn’t going to dispel the notion that Democrats are out of touch with working families.
…
Maher would, if he could, throw millions of people into unemployment and poverty, watch as hard-earned savings vanish, wages stagnate and hope gets crushed, if that might keep Trump from winning re-election.

Wow.

Of course, it’s easy for Maher to wish that, since he’s already made his millions attacking Republicans. But just how many of his fellow Trump-loathing Democrats secretly feel the same way?

Reporters love to force Republican politicians to answer for anything outrageous that a conservative says. Shouldn’t these same reporters, to prove their lack of political bias, press every single Democrat running for office in November to condemn Maher’s economic death wish?

The Democrats’ IT Scandal Cover-Up by Daniel John Sobieski – “Former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz subverted our democracy and interfered in the 2016 election in ways Moscow could only dream of”

“What the Democrats accused the Russians of doing, Debbie Wasserman Shultz’s DNC was actively doing. And considering what we have found out about the Pakistanis, not the Russians, that were brought in to run their IT operation, it makes sense as to why the DNC refused to turn over their servers to FBI forensic investigators. What else where they trying to hide?

One thing they tried to hide was Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s curious relationship with Pakistani Imran Awan.
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One suspects that if the case involved 40 or more Republican members of Congress things might be moving along more speedily. As it is, this may be the third time a curious relationship has jeopardized U.S. national security while mucking up our political and legal systems. FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page gleefully pursued a relationship as they sought an ”insurance policy” against Donald Trump assuming the presidency. Senate intelligence committee aide James Wolfe was caught leaking documents to New York Times national security reporter Ali Watkins, with whom he had a relationship. And now we have Wasserman Schultz and Awan’s curious relationship
…
This is just one of many shoes waiting to drop from the Democrat’s centipede of corruption. Crimes were committed here, possibly including Wasserman Schultz and leading Democrats. Yet a cover-up could be in the works. Let’s not take our eves off this corner of the swamp.

Jaws drop when Jim Acosta busts up historic moment for peace with disgraceful inappropriate questions by Renee Hayes – “Hours after Acosta’s antics, Trump held a press conference where he was able to take reporters’ questions at an appropriate time.”

Federal judge halts secret FEC plot to target GOP groups by Paul Bedard – “A federal judge has blown the whistle on a secret Federal Election Commission scheme to punish some Republican groups and their donors, the latest sign of an anti-GOP bias at the elections watchdog.”

“Asked if the cases before the FEC are biased, Ann Ravel said, “Absolutely. The cases have come primarily from watchdog groups, and most of those groups are on the liberal side.”

Graham to Trump: Better bring that agreement back to the Senate by Ed Morrissey – “Ratification would be a rather historic step.” This one is more about Lindsey Graham posturing and TDS than anything else.

“On the larger issue of ratification, though, there seems to be one big problem: what is there to ratify? At least as laid out at the moment, the “agreement” that the two leaders signed contains a series of aspirational goals, not concrete commitments to specific actions and objectives. It’s a good first step to have two men who were trading insults over the size of their nuclear capacities to shake hands and settle on a shared set of diplomatic goals, but it’s just a first step, unless there was more to the agreement than anyone’s letting on. That may be what Graham is worried about.

There’s a lot of anticipation of the negative despite anything to show it is warranted. Some are hoping for the negative to confirm their fantasies. So there’s a lot of self destruction – suicide – going on.

The Rocket Man and the Dotard by Richard Fernandez – “The public acrimony following the conclusion of the recent G7 summit only confirmed the breakup of the ‘international world order’.”

“No longer do people believe that Hillary Clinton’s defeat and Brexit’s passage was a fluke. They accept it as part of something larger.
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What went horribly wrong for Soros in 2018 was the future he believed in and poured his fortune into creating disappeared. The real future, to the anxious anticipation of Angela Merkel and many ordinary citizens is about to make its appearance. What will it be?

WOW – POTUS Trump Just Promised An End To The New World Order (VIDEO) by DCWhispers – “This bit of video is remarkable on so many levels. No U.S. president has so openly and boldly challenged the New World Order status-quo as is done here following Mr. Trump’s short visit to the G7 Summit.”

“He calls out the favorite news media tool of the globalists, CNN, and then proceeds to declare the old ways are done, that the United States will no longer allow the needs of its own people to be secondary to the manipulative demands of the globalists.

This man puts himself at terrible risk for saying such things. It is why his supporters revere him and why his enemies despise and fear him so much.

Credit service shuts down payments on all gun purchases by Lois Weiss – “Several gun-related businesses were suddenly — and without warning — disrupted in recent weeks when Intuit stopped processing credit card payments because sales were gun-related.” Intuit has gone bonkers with anti gun hysteria.

50 Media Mistakes in the Trump Era: The Definitive List by Sharyl Attkisson – “We the media have “fact-checked” President Trump like we have fact-checked no other human being on the planet.”

“That’s probably why it’s so easy to find lists enumerating and examining his mistakes, missteps and “lies.” …

Our repeat mistakes involve declaring that Trump’s claims are “lies” when they are matters of opinion, or when the truth between conflicting sources is unknowable; taking Trump’s statements and events out of context; reporting secondhand accounts against Trump without attribution as if they’re established fact; relying on untruthful, conflicted sources; and presenting reporter opinions in news stories—without labeling them as opinions.

What’s worse, we defend ourselves by trying to convince the public that our mistakes are actually a virtue because we (sometimes) correct them. Or we blame Trump for why we’re getting so much wrong.

Another Big Obama Lie by Jed Babbin – “And now Iran is bragging about its contribution to 9/11 — just the thing to keep in mind in Singapore.”

“The periodic revelations of scandalous behavior, usually to the detriment of our national security, provide needed remedial courses in the legacy of Barack Obama. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’ report last week, showing how Team Obama lied to Congress about money going to Iran for the 2015 nuclear weapons deal, is more instructive than most.

Trump, the NFL players, and the pardons by neo-neocon – “Although I often agree with Mirengoff, we’re going to have to disagree on this one.” You can’t interpret what Trump does without allowing for a nuance that went right past your considerations.

Booker: Trump the One ‘Playing the Race Card from the Very Start’ by Nicholas Ballasy – “a potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, pushed back against critics who have told him he’s “playing the race card” when speaking out against racial injustice.” Racism is when everything you see has a racist tint and it becomes an obsession.

“Booker said one of the best ways to tackle racial injustice is to have an “honest conversation and dialogue.”
…
Booker explained why he supports removing about a dozen Confederate statues from the Capitol building.

Why Democrats Hear a Secret Racist Dog Whistle and Republicans Don’t by Scott Adams – “Hardly a day goes by without some stranger on Twitter telling me in ominous tones that I will someday pay dearly for being a racist “apologist.” They assume I see President Trump the same way they see him.”

“In my book Win Bigly, I describe how the public is watching two movies on one screen. In Movie 1, Trump is a monster with many flaws, racism being at the top of the list. In Movie 2, President Trump ran on a platform of being a Republican who disdains political correctness, and the predictable outcome of that is non-stop accusations of racism. As a public service, I compiled some of the plot differences in the two movies, roughly in the order they happened, so you can compare the two scripts. I won’t try to convince you to switch movies. I’m only making the point that Trump supporters literally don’t see what anti-Trumpers regard as obvious.
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As I often say, we humans are not good at knowing which movie is the “real” one because the facts in evidence often fit more than one explanation of the past. So instead of looking to the past, I recommend seeing which movie best predicts future scenes.
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I realize no one reading this post will change movies because of it. My only point today is that mainstream Trump supporters are not knowingly supporting someone they believe to be a racist. It only looks that way to the folks trapped in Movie 1.

Movie 1 is where you see everything and anything from the ‘other side’ with the presumption it’s racist.

Sacramento County Votes To Cancel ICE Contract by Jazz Shaw – “This latest incident of Trump Derangement Syndrome is not only ineffective in terms of “protecting immigrants” but imposes yet another burden on the budget of the county which is home to the state legislature.”

“The contract they are canceling was worth millions of dollars per year to the already cash-strapped district. And all they had to do to collect the federal funds was briefly house criminal illegal aliens in a facility which was already in place and in need of funding to sustain it.

When asked how they would justify this refusal of federal funds, one county supervisor simply said, “Our budgets are reflective of our values.” That’s rather odd considering how hard Sacramento is fighting to demand federal funds continue to flow their way in the form of Justice Department grants which may be canceled due to noncompliance.
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If Sacramento County wishes to make this decision it’s up to them. ICE can simply haul the illegal aliens off to another facility, moving them even further away from their families, legal representation and support networks as their cases are processed. Good job, Sacramento. You’ve certainly shown President Trump who the boss is now, haven’t you?

The latest “boys beat girls in track event” story by Jazz Shaw – “One student not only took first place in both events but set new state records in each. The second place finisher was also head and shoulders above the rest of the field. The problem is that both of those competitors were boys, though they “identify” as girls.” It’s a war against girls as scholarships and honors are at stake.

99.99% Of The Pesticides We Eat Are Made By Plants by Josh Bloom – “If you are dwelling under the illusion that you can prance into Whole Foods and overpay for a bunch organic stuff without pesticides, this article will disabuse you of that fallacy.” Another obsession assigning evil to a ‘race’ which, in this example, is the human race.

“The divide between “natural” and “artificial” chemicals is meaningless – something many Americans do not know. The origin of a chemical is irrelevant. Your body cannot tell what is natural or synthetic – only the properties of the chemical matter.

It is hard to blame consumers; the organic food industry and Internet quacks have done a masterful job in creating a narrative that maintains that we are all being poisoned by tiny quantities of thousands of man-made chemicals, and the way to avoid this is to buy so-called “natural” products because they don’t contain chemicals. But the narrative is dead wrong. Great marketing. Terrible science.

Science-based medicine versus other ways of knowing by David Gorski – “Those who promote pseudoscientific or prescientific medicine, however, frequently appeal to other ways of knowing, often ancient knowledge from other cultures and pointing out deficiencies in SBM to justify promoting their treatments. Do their justifications hold water?”

“Unfortunately, promoting rigorous science remains as difficult now, if not more so, as it was in 2008. Scientifically unfounded health scares, antivaccine views, anti-GMO activism, and the increasing respectability of quackery like acupuncture, energy medicine, and the like leave SBM under assault as never before.
…
proponents of integrating pseudoscience into medicine—of course, that is not how they would characterize themselves—can’t win on the science, at least not when it is accurately represented. So instead they use other techniques, and one of the most common tropes to which they resort is the appeal to other ways of knowing.
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Unfortunately, there is one form of this special pleading that is gaining some currency, and that’s basically carving out an exception to the requirement for rigorous science for “traditional medicine,”
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Many of the cultures whose medicine is being promoted have a long history of having suffered predation and oppression under the colonialism of European and American powers. This cannot be denied and is a powerful force making claims for IWK sound more compelling.
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This is the basic narrative of IWK: “Western” biomedical science is a cultural construct whose dominance is due not to its success in diagnosing, treating, and, in some cases, eradicating disease but rather to past imperialism and colonization by European powers.
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There’s also more than a little bit of a racist tendency that has been called the “cult of the noble savage,” wherein indigenous peoples are romanticized as being “purer,” more in tune with nature.
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I also can’t help but point out that embracing other ways of knowing about medicine has become a business opportunity

Scott Pruitt and the Chemical Industry Collude to Deregulate Toxics by Steve Cohen – “At the end of the Obama Administration, Congress enacted its first significant piece of environmental law since the 1990s by revising the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act and requiring the assessment of the toxicity of a small number of new chemicals.” Notice the ad hominem, the anti-industry implications, and the ‘collude’ to see the bias. This is from a major university website yet intellectual integrity and evidence based conclusion are missing.

“Last week, the chemical industry colluded with Scott Pruitt’s Environmental Destruction Agency and proposed gutting the new law by limiting the assessment of risk to direct exposure and ignoring the persistence of chemicals in water, air, food or land. …

It is clear that America’s chemical companies are unwilling to allow the public the right to determine if their products are poisons that should be banned or in some way limited. It is also clear that Pruitt and Trump do not care if toxics are deregulated. Their actions put the health of Americans at greater risk.
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While climate change is the big dramatic issue that has captured so much of our attention and generates a wide range of emotional response, toxic chemicals may well be an equally pervasive problem in the modern world.

It’s all there, even the climate hysteria, population bomb, and evil politicians from the other party.

If you want to know why ‘civil discussion’ is just a pipe dream, see the reports about De Niro at the Tony Awards show and the audience reaction. Just how can you discuss anything with a hysteric? See also Bill Maher hopes for a recession, audience applauds by Karen Townsend – “Maher wishes an economic recession upon his fellow countrymen” and the audience applauds?

 

Trump exposes the G-7 summit as a total fraud by Ed Straker – “President Trump didn’t play along with the usual narrative at the G-7 summit, and the liberal media predictably characterized him as the villain”

“Lost in this breathless “transcription” of events is the question of whether America should lead on so-called “issues” such as climate change, oceans, and supposedly “clean” energy.
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Let’s step back and look at the larger picture. Most people have heard of the G-7, but very few people know what it’s actually all about. People are vaguely aware that the G-7 is a group of industrialized nations who get together every year, but few people know what actually goes on.
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You would expect a meeting of the leaders of the most important countries to be concerned about fighting terrorism, reducing taxes and regulations, and reducing trading barriers. That last issue was the one that President Trump focused on, to the dismay of the other attendees who wanted their usual painless photo op where they could virtue signal about women or the environment.

But to their surprise President Trump focused on the important things, reducing global trade barriers, even suggesting the total elimination of all tariffs in all G-7 countries. This would greatly spur economic growth, if agreed to.

But don’t expect the media to focus on that. Rather than honestly reporting that Trump focused on our top international economic priority, access to foreign markets, they will portray Trump as a boor and an unenlightened unenvironmentalist.

“It’s going to stop, or we’ll stop trading with them,” Trump said by Don Surber – “President Trump is the Great Clarifier who shows people for whom they are.” There’s a lot of critters hiding under the covers that Trump is ripping off the bed and they obviously don’t like the exposure.

“At the G7 summit, the globalists tried to treat President Trump as if he worked at Starbucks.

This greatly amused Our President.
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Unlike Starbucks, President Trump is not backing down. He will not open America’s bathrooms to bums just to appease the cool kids.

President Trump owned the summit.
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America would win a fair fight, but we do not have that.

The Left Achieves Perfection by Tom Trinko – “Leftists have achieved perfection, and for once not only in their own minds. Yes – for the first time, modern leftists have managed to be perfectly wrong on every single issue.” Here’s how on #MeToo, Free Speech, Racism, The Rule of Law, and Freedom of Religion. Peeking under the covers reveals a lot of ugly.

How Poisonous Politics And Social Media Managed To Even Ruin Sports by Jazz Shaw – “What was once just a pleasant, if pointless, afternoon of fun for the team and the White House staff has morphed into a toxic brew.”

“If anyone from a championship sports team goes to visit the President for a congratulatory visit, critics of the Oval Office occupant will swarm in and declare them to be evil incarnate and decry how they are ruining the sport.
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It’s a poison which didn’t come from the White House or the professional sports leagues. It came from the internet and a handful of players who decided to start an infection which turned into an epidemic.

This is one of the sadder statements about 21st century America in recent memory. This is why we can’t have nice things.
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Something has changed significantly for the worse. The game simply isn’t the same. It’s probably never going to be the same again. And it’s sad.

New York Times reporter broke the biggest rule in journalism by Michael Goodwin – “His [New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal] point was not about private conduct. It was about the credibility of the paper. When the two conflict, the paper must come first.”

“That lesson came rushing back to me as I read about the case involving James Wolfe, the longtime security director of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Federal prosecutors charged Wolfe with three counts of lying to investigators about his contacts with reporters, one of whom is Ali Watkins, who covers federal law enforcement for the Times.
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“All leak investigations — whether they directly target reporters or not — are a grave threat to press freedom,” the Freedom of the Press Foundation said …

I agree that any government action that chills free expression is worrisome, but the First Amendment is not a license to break the law. As such, the foundation’s condemnation is so wrong-headed that it serves only to undercut support for media freedom.

Its absolutism about the “grave threat” of all leak investigations is ridiculous and, if that were the law, it would be impossible for America to keep any secrets.

Moreover, the suggestion that Wolfe was a whistleblower is not based on known facts.

The “absolutism” is about a logical fallacy being used to rationalize improper behavior. The ‘whistleblower’ concept is another example.

Secrets Travel Fast in DC by Clarice Feldman – “Along with the massive breach of security in the still unresolved case of the Awan brothers, who had access to the email accounts of dozens of Democratic congressmen” … and there’s more, a lot more, in the Feldman list.

“You think so much coordinated skullduggery leaves any time for much else?
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Is Merkel’s fantasy very different from our notion that a large, lavishly funded intelligence bureaucracy using its enormous technological capabilities to spy on us all and manipulate the press keeps us safer from foreign intrusions and leaking of vital national security matters?

Still denying Trump’s election by Don Surber – “President Trump called for the G7 to reinstate Russia and become the G8 again.”

“There is no way this is administration policy. The president just says things. But when he says things like this, it has real and adverse effects on America’s geopolitical position,” Rothman tweeted.

You almost have to be Martian to be that out of touch, but in their little world, President Trump does not set policy for the Trump administration.

As far as the impact, what “has real and adverse effects on America’s geopolitical position” is the bitter clinging by the American press to the notion that even at this late date, they still can overturn the 2016 election and install Hillary Clinton as the rightful heir to the throne. They see themselves as Robin Hood defying Prince John.

Then there’s the Singapore Summit. 

Suddenly the media cares about privacy by Don Surber – “Seizing the records of President Donald John Trump’s lawyer — breaking lawyer-client privilege — is OK, but somehow a journalist’s records are sacrosanct.”

“Or better yet, what about Barack Obama wiretapping and planting spies on the Trump campaign? Are they not “damaging intrusions.”

As for “protecting news gathering,” her news gathering involved being Monica Lewinsky to a man twice her age. Watkins has not denied trading sex for secrets.

Serious journalists should condemn her. As Noah Pollak of the Washington Free Beacon tweeted: “She was dating her most important source, Senate Intel staffer now indicted for flagrant, years-long lawbreaking. Were her employers, Buzzfeed & NYT, aware of how she got her stories
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Seized records? She is fortunate not to be under arrest.

G7 is Donald Trump and the Six Dwarfs by Don Surber – “President Trump is pushing back in the trade war, which no American president has done since maybe Teddy Roosevelt.”

“The truth is, we are the Big Fish in the tiny G7 pond. Our economy outweighs the rest of them combined.
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We defend Europe through NATO, and Germany and others do not have the common decency to fulfill their promises to build their own defenses. The Cold War ended 27 years ago. We have no need to be in NATO. None.

Every one of those six G7 countries has protective tariffs slapped on the United States. Now they cry foul when we retaliate.

Wonder about capitalism? Here are two examples where the ‘market’ keeps alive fraud and deceit and people spend money towards their own destruction. That is what stimulates the idea that maybe somebody smarter should make decisions for them. That ‘cure’ is even worse than the disease.

Fact-challenged Michael Wolff fails upward, rewarded with a new book contract by Monica Showalter – “Is the publishing world overdue for a hosing out, or what? … You’d think someone who got that many things wrong on his first run would be a pariah in the book-publishing world, especially from a respected publishing house such as Henry Holt.”

“Why is Allen giving a serial fabricator like Wolff the time of day?

Well, probably for the same reason Holt is giving him a new contract: Wolff sells a lot of books.
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Obviously, for these guys, the rules about facts, credibility and a plan of action go out the window whenever the topic is President Trump. Trump has shaken up the political establishment in Washington. He’s also rattled the Hollywood establishment with the defection of Kanye West. But who could have guessed he’d shake up the publishing establishment, making it ruin its high standards in the interest of catering to the fears and fever dreams of leftists, all under the erroneous category of non-fiction? Have they gone nuts? Their credibility is on the line, and with Trump living rent-free inside their heads, they don’t seem to be perturbed in the least.

A New Low for Dr. Oz by Derek Lowe – “Nothing that a person like me can say will derail that juggernaut of TV viewership, publicity, and money. Sweet, sweet money. Oz has a fan base of the credulous and the underinformed”

“when he comes on his show talking about the latest all-natural extract that will Melt The Pounds Off or perhaps Fight Cancer, product moves off the shelves. And that’s what’s important, right? As long as the rubes reach into their pockets?
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It was Cicero who wondered how one fortuneteller could pass another in the street and keep a straight face. But that’s Dr. Oz’s main qualification – he keeps a straight face no matter what he’s holding up to the camera.

You Don’t Get to Rewrite the Constitution Because You Dislike Trump by David Harsanyi – “The president is actually strengthening the constitutional checks and balances undermined by the previous administration.” Harsanyi doesn’t like the Trump ‘style’ but he hasn’t bought the Wolf/Oz type dishonesty.

“At National Review, Victor Davis Hanson has it right when he argues that “elites” often seem more concerned about the “mellifluous” tone of leaders rather than their abuse of power.
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Partisans tend to conflate their own policy preferences with the rule of law, or with democracy or patriotism. But the pervasive claim that the Trump administration has uniquely undermined the law, a claim that dominates coverage, typically amounts to concerns about how he comports himself.
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Now, any defense of the Trump administration will, of course, meet charges of sycophancy and “anti-anti-Trumpism.” But none of this is to argue that the Trump administration is a paragon of lawfulness. It’s far from it. So stop exaggerating. The astoundingly terrible and hypocritical arguments of the president’s detractors often make it imperative to defend neutral principles and process.

You don’t get to fabricate a new Constitution every time there’s a president you dislike. American patriotism isn’t predicated on pretending that Russia can flip our election with a few Facebook ads, but it is certainly grounded in the idea that we all hold consistent constitutional principles.

Ace of Spades: “The Press Is Determined to Claim Trump Is “Polticizing” Football. Have They Not Noticed Their Leftist Allies Politicizing Football, and Everything Else, For a Decade? Half of the country is broken and in the middle of a nervous breakdown, and they can’t understand why the rest of us are sick of hearing their endless conniptions.”

“By the way, this isn’t just about the anthem: The NFL has, like the NBA, threatened states and cities that they might not get to host a championship game or even a draft if they do not toe the line of the NFL’s preferred Corporate Left politics.
…
When billion dollar heavily taxpayer subsidized corporations start threatening citizens and coercing them to political positions they reject, I think it’s time we started threatening these billion-dollar heavily taxpayer subsidized corporations right the hell back.

How do you get people to think?

Jeff Sessions Delivers: DOJ Nails Senate Intel Committee’s Security Chief as Deep State Leaker by Ian Mason at Breitbart. James A. Wolfe: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know by Jessica McBride at Heavy. Mata Hari journalism? Veteran Senate Intelligence Committee staffer, in romantic relationship with NYT reporter, arrested in probe of leaks by Thomas Lifson at American Thinker.

“This story has all the elements of a compelling drama, one that does not appear congenial to the major media. Watching the way this plays out will be one thread in what promises to be a summer of major revelations, including the release next week of the DOJ Inspector General’s report.

Leak Wars: A NY Times source is exposed by Jazz Shaw – “This was all the buzz last night on social media and for good reason.”

“The arrest is what it is, really. At least one of the subjects Wolfe is accused of leaking relates to the Russia investigation, which has been leaking like a sieve since the beginning. It’s a serious charge, and if proven, Mr. Wolfe is potentially facing some dire consequences.

What’s more interesting to me is the reporter’s role in all of this and the reaction coming from the media. Ali Watkins “declined to comment” last night, but she’s supposedly the one who had been dating Wolfe and then conveniently coming up with some big scoops. The seizure of her phone and other records related to her source brought swift condemnation from the Gray Lady, which released a statement saying such an intrusion would “endanger reporters’ ability to promise confidentiality to their sources and, ultimately, undermine the ability of a free press to shine a much needed light on government actions.”

The Freedom of the Press Foundation piled on with their own accusation, saying, “All leak investigations — whether they directly target reporters or not — are a grave threat to press freedom. Whistleblowers are the lifeblood of reporting, and the Trump administration is directly attacking journalists’ rights by bringing these cases.”

That seems to be the go-to allegation from the media when something like this happens.
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Digging out secrets from a committee engaged in that sort of work before they were finished and ready to release their findings isn’t whistleblowing or protecting the public. It’s damaging the process and risking other sources, all apparently in the name of generating bad headlines for the White House. I’m having a hard time feeling too much sympathy for either Wolfe or Watkins this morning, honestly.

The White House Press Corps: Pull their credentials by Earick Ward – “The White House Press Corps has jumped the shark and needs to be reined in.”

“Having a White House press credential is not a right; it is a privilege. The First Amendment prevents Congress from making any law … abridging the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press. It does not grant license to media sycophants to drive their agenda in the people’s house. For far too long, we’ve allowed the left free rein. It is time to take charge of the narrative and make it known that we will no longer tolerate the press obfuscating the news.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders needs to make an example of one or more of the Press Corps by yanking their credentials.

In the past week, we have seen at least three incidents where this action was more than justified.

The lawless, porn-respecting , MS-13-loving, humorless American left by Patricia McCarthy – “No one can be surprised that most members of the Democratic Party and its media farceurs have lost any semblance of a sense of humor.”

“As the brilliant Salena Zito wrote during the campaign, the left takes Trump literally but not seriously. His supporters take him seriously but not literally. Guess who is the smarter group!

This observation was the most astute of the entire campaign and election. But the lefties never learn. They still believe in their coming blue wave. Pelosi says the low unemployment is meaningless, the tax cuts are “crumbs,” and that consumer confidence is low despite it being at an 18-year high. They see, hear, think, and propagate what they want to be true, not what is true.
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One thing is certain. The American left has moved so far to the deranged radical left that even former liberals, like Alan Dershowitz, Mark Penn, and Doug Schoen, are frightened. So irrationally revolted by Trump’s election win, the Democrats have lost all sense of reason and reality. They are now motivated only by pure hate. They relentlessly accuse Trump of what they do as a rule: lie, cheat, and propagandize.
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Our left cannot abide the fact that the character traits they have assigned to Trump are false. They are in fact the left’s own habits of mind – projection and dissemblance, day in and day out.

Let us all pray that enough voters wake up to the fact of what the left has become by the 2018 midterm election. These crazy, humorless, gang-loving, porn star-adoring people must not be in charge of anything or anyone, least of all the greatest country on the planet.

Panic time at Camp Mueller By Wesley Pruden – “Some lawyers who have followed Mr. Mueller’s meandering pursuit of the president understand what he’s trying to do but are puzzled about how he’s going about it.” … “Drill deeper and it gets even thinner.”

“Direct evidence of witness-tampering against Mr. Manafort, in Prof. Rosenzweig’s telling, is mostly vapor. “Saying ‘we should talk’ is hardly the stuff that true witness-tampering charges are made of. More to the point, if the entire conversation in which Manafort participated lasted for less than a minute and a half, he would have to be a very, very fast talker to have accomplished anything.”
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But Mr. Mueller can’t blame the rest of us for wanting to know what he’s got. Indicting Paul Manafort again, or even sending him to jail to sweat out the needed evidence, won’t satisfy. The reason he’s having so much trouble finding evidence of collusion between Donald Trump and the Russians to cook the 2016 election may be because there isn’t any.

The Spying That Dare Not Speak Its Name by George Neumayr – “Be sure to read the fine print in the media’s propaganda. The media’s pooh-poohing coverage of Spygate grows more laughable by the day.”

“As stupid as this coverage is, it is still worth dissecting, if only for its propagandistic shadings, telling omissions, and inadvertent revelations.
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A spy who infiltrated the Trump campaign using means of low deceit is thus turned into a “source” who “reached out” to it.
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The reporters on the piece obviously had access to the government officials who know the whole story about Halper. So why don’t they tell it?

Mexico launches a new round of meddling in US elections by Monica Showalter – “For all the talk about Russia meddling in our elections, the real meddler, Mexico, is at it again.”

“The Mexican government is specifically striking out at Trump voters.

Vox, which seems to like this sort of news, has the report:
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Mexico has done amazing amounts of meddling in our elections, particularly the last one. It was the only nation that openly advertised to its nationals to come over to its diplomatic consulates (not places U.S. nationals are allowed to go to) and register to vote in U.S. elections, something that in California undoubtedly led to a lot of Mexican nationals voting and the resulting cancelation of Americans’ votes, meaning the disenfranchisement of American voters. That’s a foreign policy objective for them.

California, understand, does not check if voters are illegal and on its voter signature form and has slyly changed its “I certify I am a U.S. citizen” to “I certify I am a U.S. resident” to avoid prosecuting illegals for voting. Mexico knows this well.

Ten Paradoxes Of Our Age by Victor Davis Hanson – “The 21st century is reminding of us of some uncomfortable truths.”

“The Western world is in turmoil largely because of the widening gap between what the people see as true and the “truth” that their governing classes impose on them for the purported greater moral good. The result is a schizophrenia like that seen before the collapse of the Soviet Empire, in which no one believed that the reality they lived had anything to do with the reality delivered by the media and the state. Trumpism and popular movements in Europe are simply symptoms of another problem—that what the ruling elite said was true was often a lie.

Notice the “widening gap” and its relationship to intellectual integrity and cognitive dissonance. Exposing the gap and clarifying its parameters is very difficult for many to take.

The World As It Wasn’t by Matthew Continetti – “Barack Obama’s revealing reaction to Donald Trump’s victory” as described by Ben Rhodes.

“Obama’s words once again revealed his colossal lack of self-awareness. The passages of The World As It Is that Baker quotes in his piece reinforce the widespread impression of our forty-fourth president as an aloof, smug, vainglorious chief executive totally divorced from political reality. The shock, disgust, confusion, and horror with which Obama and his team greeted the election results exemplified the very attitudes toward democratic procedure and populist conservatism that fueled Trump’s rise. The only lesson Barack Obama drew from the election was confirmation of his own moral superiority.

Even the former president’s moments of “self-doubt” were framed as opportunities for lackeys to remind him of his greatness.

As the Wiseguys Turn: McCabe, Comey, and the FBI Boys by Michael Walsh – “what began as an investigation into Russian “collusion” on the part of the Trump campaign and perhaps the president himself, is now steadily being revealed as the sham byproduct of the fixed-fight “probe” of the Clinton email “matter” that allowed the former secretary of state to head into the 2016 election “cleared” of any wrongdoing by the Obama “justice” department.”

Prosecutorial Fanatics by James Black – “Messrs. Comey, Fitzgerald, and Mueller aren’t in the business of seeking truth and justice.”

“President Trump would be right to pardon Martha Stewart and Rod Blagojevich. They were both railroaded by overzealous prosecutors, James Comey and Patrick Fitzgerald, who along with Robert Mueller personify the prosecutorial fanaticism that cares more about high profile convictions than serving justice.

The preeminent American jurist, Robert H. Jackson, once said, “While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.”

Comey, Fitzgerald, and Mueller exemplify the latter.

They rely overwhelmingly on something else about which Jackson warned: “[A] prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone.” Mueller is currently testing whether that axiom extends to the president.
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In a departure from standard practice, rather than investigating a supposed crime, for over a year now Mueller has been searching for one.
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The double standards these three prosecutors epitomize are the product of pathological opportunism and professional expedience, or as Robert H. Jackson would put it, “base motives.”

Who leaked portions of the IG report, and why? By Thomas Lifson – “the leaks came from people anxious to minimize the impact of the report when it finally comes out, and to shape its impact in a direction favoring a narrative that is hostile toward conservative concerns.”

What to Expect from that IG Report, and When Do We Expect It? Let’s Ask Byron York at Ace of Spades HQ – “Oh, we’ve got some leaks about the upcoming report. It will not surprise you to hear that it’s Hillary partisans who appear to be doing the leaking, pushing out the story that if Comey erred, he erred in declaring she had acted with great carelessness in setting up her completely illegal, completely hackable secret server.”

Athletes Can No Longer Play Nice by Liam Warner – “The Philadelphia Eagles’ aborted White House visit shows it’s no longer possible to separate the office of the presidency from the incumbent.” i.e. for the Left, it is who you are and not what you do. This is a fundamental reason why the conversation has gone so sour.

“Thus while there may have been some on the Warriors or the Eagles who refused to accept Trump’s invitation because they thought he was bullying athletes on this particular issue, there are and have been others who declined such invitations because they hate Trump for any number of other reasons. In other words, they no longer think it possible to separate the office of the presidency from the incumbent of that office; respecting the former appears to them an approval of the latter.

In the good old days, this separation was possible.
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Not anymore. People who were falling over themselves to visit Barack Obama, our last cool president, will not visit Donald Trump.
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The blame for turning a harmless White House visit into a political stunt falls not on Trump but on the players and their miscalibrated moral sensitivities.

The Pruitt “scandal” watch continues: Lunchgate by Jazz Shaw – “Shark (jumping) Week continues as the media attempts to generate a new “scandal” about EPA Cheif Scott Pruitt on a near-daily basis.”

CNN’s April Ryan called out for fake news tweet by colleague by Karen Townsend – “It’s easy to understand why President Trump has found so many supporters of his fake news narrative about the mainstream media when a really blatant mistake is made due simply to the anti-Trump bias of a White House correspondent.”

The High Price of Stale Grievances by John Hinderaker – “That is the title of this essay by Columbia undergraduate Coleman Hughes. The piece is quite brilliant. More than that, Hughes must be one of America’s bravest young men.”

This is my *shocked* face: Amazon turns over policing of its charity program to SPLC by William A. Jacobson – “Relying on SPLC’s evaluation of groups reflects a corporate political culture that is hostile to conservatives.”

“As readers are aware from dozens of our prior posts, SPLC has become a primary tool to attack conservatives and stifle speech through its hate and extremist lists. Those lists are highly politicized, including in the past people such as Rand Paul, Ben Carson and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Being designated a hate group or extremist by SPLC can spell the end of campus and other appearances. In the case of the Family Research Council, it led to violence when an SPLC follower used the list as the basis to attempt a shooting at FRC headquarters.

An August 2017 Politico Magazine article, in which I was quoted, highlighted how SPLC has become politicized, Has a Civil Rights Stalwart Lost Its Way?:

What’s all this worry about net neutrality?

Google Walks Away From America’s Security by Michael R. Bloomberg – “It bowed to pressure instead of standing up for our country.”

“Google’s decision not to renew a contract to develop artificial intelligence for the Defense Department was a victory for the employees who had protested it. It was also a defeat for U.S. national security, patriotism, and the cause of limiting civilian casualties in war.
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The company understood all this as recently as April, saying in a statement that the technology “is intended to save lives and save people from having to do highly tedious work.” Yet some bad public relations and a handful of people walking out is apparently all it took to provoke the reversal. One of the roles of senior management is to do the right thing, even if it provokes criticism. That’s especially critical when our collective security is at stake.
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Helping to defend the U.S. is nothing to be ashamed of. That shouldn’t be a controversial idea among our nation’s business leaders.

Trump absolutely correct to rescind Eagles’ White House invitation by George Parry – “Being invited to the White House for public recognition of your achievements is an honor.”

“So, what happened when the Eagles were invited to the people’s house for a ceremony to honor them for their Super Bowl victory? Fewer than 10 members of the organization accepted the invitation. Apparently all of the other Eagles had something more important to do than to condescend to accept the accolades of their fellow Americans.
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The Eagles’ behavior is typical of the self-importance and narcissism that have been on display at NFL games as protesting athletes kneel during the national anthem. Everybody is entitled to his political beliefs and opinions. But, just as the White House is the people’s house, so too is the flag of our nation the emblem of the American people. Every time an overpaid, pampered athlete takes a knee in protest, it is plainly, simply, and inescapably an insult.
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The Eagles’ refusal of the White House invitation will only steepen the decline for the simple reason that treating the American people with arrogant disrespect is an imbecilic and self-defeating marketing strategy.

#Spygate and Leftists’ Lack of Patriotism by Tom Trinko – “Leftists, despite their continual condemnation of America’s values and their steadfast insistence that all international problems are due to America, become incensed if their patriotism is questioned.”

“The ongoing fake-news Russia-stole-the-election meme that the leftist establishment has been peddling since 2016 is a great example of how leftists put their own ambitions for power ahead of what’s best for America and are thereby unpatriotic.

Leftist lies about the impact of Russia on the election and Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia to steal the election have done far more damage to American’s trust in our electoral process than anything the Russians actually did. But the leftists continue to lie about it, because they don’t care if they destroy democracy in America so long as it means they get more power.

If we look, we can see that there is no evidence to support leftist groupthink.
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This, in turn, means that our job is to disabuse our friends, relatives, and neighbors – in a polite and caring way – of the lies they are constantly being fed. As Hitler pointed out, most people are honest and would never lie about anything major. Hence, they are reluctant to believe that the major media would constantly and repeatedly lie about issues that are critical to America. We need to break through that barrier and get them to realize that the mainstream media comprise liars who cannot be trusted.

Stop Sanitizing the Inspector General’s Report and Deliver It Now by Roger L Simon – “Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email “matter” (and other things, no doubt) has been completed for weeks. Nevertheless, you and I, the taxpayers who paid for it, have not been permitted to see it.”

“what we are witnessing in this slow-walk is what we can legitimately call an American nomenklatura digging in mightily to protect itself. No doubt, once the edited report is published, they can depend on their friends in the mainstream media doing their best to ignore, downplay or obfuscate its conclusions and significance. But this is no moment to relax or depend on third parties, even those as reliable as the MSM. The stakes are huge. People can go to jail. Reputations can be ruined and — this is the most intriguing though least likely part — politics could be realigned.

They are busy trying to do to the report what they had previously done to almost all emails, texts and documents requested by congressional committees and other interested parties in their investigations

McCabe Demands Immunity From Congress by Jonathan Turley – “The demand for immunity comes as Washington braces for the release of the Inspector General’s report on the conduct of McCabe, James Comey, and other high-ranking officials during the Clinton investigation.” … “The last thing that the Republicans would want is to create a barrier to McCabe’s prosecution. The answer therefore is likely to be “no.”

Wrapping It Up by J.R. Dunn – “How long will the “Russian collusion” circus continue imploding before it reaches critical mass and leaves nothing but wreckage across the liberal D.C. landscape?”

“At this point, no other outcome is conceivable. Any hope that the investigation would land a glove on Donald Trump has been long abandoned by any rational onlooker.
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What’s telling, and almost difficult to credit, is how flipped the whole operation has become. What must have appeared the slam-dunk of nailing the brash, boisterous Donald Trump has, in little over a year’s time, inverted itself, as if it had slipped through some other dimension, so that every shot fired at Trump boomerangs and hits somebody in the Mueller-Comey posse.
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What Collusiongate, this bizarre, grotesque, uncalled for, and historically unique episode, requires is a validation – for all sorts of reasons.

First, we need to gather and identify the loose ends – and playmates, as there are more of those in this story than they’ve got at the thread and yarn shop.
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A second reason is to inform the public. It is no less than astonishing how many citizens of this country have no awareness that an attempt has been made to snatch their government away from them.
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Lastly, we need to root out the last remnant of the people responsible. The Deep State is a characteristic of banana republics, and in examining their records, we find that they constitute a chronic and inheritable disease
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If any narrative ever needed a validation, it’s this one. There are many things that need to be said, many morals that need to be underlined: that the United States is not a plaything. That you defy its norms and traditions at your peril. That evil is fundamentally stupid. That career bureaucrats are a frail reed under all circumstances. And oh, yeah…that you should never try to take on Donald Trump. He’ll clean your clock every time.

Also in the news is that many are overwhelmed by the news. Consider it a war of attrition. 

Fake newsers never learn as Trump plays them again by Don Surber – “The president once again played the media for fools. He baited them. They snapped at it. They swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.”

“In short, Trump through Giuliani is saying either impeach or get off the pot. His plan for the midterm is to make it a referendum on impeaching him — and the press corps is ecstatic about that.

Just like they enjoyed making the 2016 election a referendum on Trump.

Slam-dunk video exposes CNN-MSNBC idiocy on Trump by Thomas Lifson – “Cable news Trump-haters, besotted with outrage, don’t sweat the details when it comes to venting their spleen on President Trump.” … “Watch the one-minute video from the GOP below and be rewarded with a dose of exquisite schadenfreude.”

Press in 2016: If Indicted, Hillary Could Pardon Herself by Don Surber – “Law and Crime reported on October 28, 2016. The piece came as Jimmy the Weasel Comey re-opened Hillarygate v7.0.”

Trump disinvites Super Bowl champs to White House reception. But, holy cow, he didn’t stop there! by Frieda Powers – “The Eagles wanted to send a smaller delegation, but the 1,000 fans planning to attend the event deserve better,” the president continued, announcing an even better plan.”

“The Philadelphia Eagles are unable to come to the White House with their full team to be celebrated tomorrow. They disagree with their President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country,” Trump said in a statement on Monday, according to The Daily Caller.
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“These fans are still invited to the White House to be part of a different type of ceremony—one that will honor our great country, pay tribute to the heroes who fight to protect it, and loudly and proudly play the National Anthem. I will be there at 3:00 p.m. with the United States Marine Band and the United States Army Chorus to celebrate America,” he added.
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Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney did not take kindly to the president disinviting the Super Bowl champions, and rudely blasted Trump as a “fragile egomaniac obsessed with crowd size.”
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Naturally, Pennsylvania Democrats fell right in line, acting more childish in their attempts to outdo Trump.

Then there’s NASCAR. Read Yo, Philly! Trump says your Eagles can go take a knee somewhere else by Andrew Malcolm – “This afternoon watch for Democrats on Capitol Hill to invite some Eagles over for a protest of Trump. Given the unexpected endurance of this fight, even more NFL fans may be disinviting the NFL into their homes come fall.” Last week it was protecting violent gangs. This week it is celebrating anti-patriotism. Then there’s opposing tax cuts, employment, law enforcement, and on and on.

Epitaph by Richard Fernandez – “Without fanfare elements of a new cold war are being put into place by the Trump administration, the European Union and China.”

“Although the disconnected components separately make headlines, the underlying pattern is evident despite the carnival-like distractions of the Mueller investigation and the reluctance to declare the old order dead.

The most obvious indicators are military.
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A second indicator is the growing restriction on the international movement of data, scientific personnel and the re-officialization of news.
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Even the nascent trade war has a cold war dimension.
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It did not happen overnight. The roots of today’s new tensions have roots deep in Obama’s and even George W. Bush’s term. Yet so great was the establishment’s commitment the post Cold War order it seemed irresponsible or unlucky to admit things were breaking down even when they manifestly were.

California and Conservatism by Victor Davis Hanson – “I share some of the sentiments of Jay Nordlinger’s Corner post expressing confidence that some day in the future there may be hope for California conservatism.” but the picture he paints right now is rather dismal.

Why Communism Always Devolves Into Heavy-Handed Authoritarianism at the Coyote Blog – “Every time one points out a historic failure of communism (most recently, for example, in Venezuela), Marxists will argue “well, that is not true communism.” Somehow they think that communism without heavy-handed exercise of state power is possible. It is not. Here is the latest example, from our own peoples’ republic in California.” It’s about water.

Something happening here? By Scott Johnson – “Lee Smith draws attention to “an important find in the Strzok-Page texts … Was it an investigation or a sting operation? There is so much we don’t know and so much those who know don’t want us to know.”

The Prison-House of Political Language by Neema Parvini – “Of all the stunningly awful attempts to explain away the reasons why the 2016 US Presidential election did not produce the result that the elites wanted, perhaps the worst – and certainly one of the most persistent – has been the claim that Donald J. Trump is a would-be Hitler leading his Nazi followers to power.”

“George Orwell once said that the “English intelligentsia…can swallow totalitarianism because they have no experience of anything except liberalism…So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.”
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if you are trapped in an echo chamber without anyone to challenge your ideas, it is difficult to be self-aware because there is no motivation to do anything other than revel in the righteousness of your cause.
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Given this fact, people who are part of the “Rebel Alliance” develop a way of speaking designed to circumvent the possibility of debate or even the introduction of evidence.
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Indeed, one of the ironies of Ridley’s piece is that he is forced to use the term “right” for “opponent of the left,” but I am not convinced that the “right-wing” exists except as a weapon of ridicule for the left to wield; it is a smear-word, another linguistic kill shot, a way of dismissing any counterpoint without the burden of engaging with the substance of what is actually being said.
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One side effect of dealing with political opponents in this manner is that the left has become increasingly accepting of straw man fallacies created out of their own righteous bigotry and refusal to respectfully address counterpoints.
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In the following table, I chart some of the newspeak ardent leftists have used over the years in order to avoid arguments, counterpoints and facts.

His idea of how to respond is strictly logical and rational. That approach doesn’t work when trying to address irrational intellectuall dishonesty as there is no common basis.

Modern Medicine Bullies Indigenous Knowledge, Journal Argues With Straight Face by Alex Berezow – “And now, a fourth front has opened: A war on biomedical knowledge itself.”

“One front has fought against long-standing practices of public health meant to prevent disease, such as vaccination, pasteurization, and water fluoridation. A second front rages against those responsible for treating disease, such as medical doctors and pharmaceutical companies, who have been accused of conspiring against patients, for instance by withholding cures for cancer. A third front wages battle against agricultural biotechnology, the goal of which is to increase the safety and reliability of the food supply while minimizing environmental impact.
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evidence itself is under attack. A new paper, published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, argues that modern medicine has bullied indigenous knowledge, and it needs to be protected. The authors write, “[T]raditional medicine treatments and practices have long been subjugated, devalued, co-opted, and in some cases decimated across the globe within the context of European colonization.” Furthermore, the authors lament that this issue “frequently goes unaddressed.”

There’s a reason for that: It’s historical revisionist nonsense.
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A diversity of human culture makes life far more interesting, but we are fooling ourselves if we conclude that all cultural practices are equal in worth. They are not.

We don’t need to think long and hard about this to reach that conclusion. Some cultures practiced ritual human sacrifice. Other cultures, to this day, preach ethnic and racial superiority or practice female genital mutilation. If it is right and proper to denounce these cultural practices (and it is), then it should also be right and proper to denounce bogus “remedies” that don’t actually work. That’s not racism or colonialism; it’s scientific progress.

Bill Clinton: If it were a Democratic president, impeachment hearings would be underway by Rick Moran – “Former President Bill Clinton told CBS “Sunday Morning” that if it were a Democratic president in office instead of Donald Trump, impeachment hearings would have already begun.” (He’s out pushing his new book)

“Clinton is delusional. The notion that the media wouldn’t go all out to protect a Democratic president is absurd. Besides, what “facts” is the media covering relating to Russian “collusion” by the president of the United States? Every indictment, every charge, and all guilty pleas have been totally unrelated to “collusion” – most of the charges against Trump aides cover crimes committed before Trump was even running for the office. They have nothing to do with an investigation into Russian “collusion.”

The Scandal on the Other Foot by Victor Davis Hanson – here’s a contrasting hypothetical to consider.

“Imagine that it is now summer 2024. A 78-year-old lame-duck President Trump is winding down his second term, basking in positive polls. His dutiful vice president in waiting, Mike Pence, is at last getting his chance to run for president. Imagine also that Pence is a shoo-in, facing long-shot, hard-leftist, and octogenarian Senator Bernie Sanders. Polls show an impending Pence landslide.

New York Post: There’s a huge difference between the Trump and Clinton probes – “Clinton’s core wrongdoing was publicly established fact from the start — whereas the Trump investigation has always been an effort to find out if there was any wrongdoing.” (This is regarding Hillary, not Bill, but the same concept applies)

“At this point, you have to assume that two years of investigations have yet to come up with any significant evidence of Trump campaign misdoing with Russia — at least, not by the president or anyone now around him. It boggles the mind that Mueller would keep quiet if he has serious reason to fear Kremlin strings on the White House.

The bottom line: Hillary Clinton’s black eyes were entirely self-inflicted — whereas Trump has real reason to complain about a witch hunt.

Cleaning up after Obama and Hillary by Richard Jack Rail – “The most extraordinary thing about both, especially Obama, is a capacity for self-delusion. Their only real skill is skirting rules, subverting institutions, playing on resentments, destroying lives.”

Left comes to grips with Obama’s failure by Don Surber – “Not only is Obama’s legacy melting, but Trump is starving the liberal beast.” … “Trump is everything Obama is not. Trump is patriotic, experienced, and successful outside of politics.” This is one of several responses to Maureen Dowd’s Obama hagiography (NYT).

The Democrats Descend Into Farce by Andrew Klavan – “A farce is a comedy marked by buffoonery and crude, ludicrously impossible events. So is the Democratic party.”

The New York Sun: Could Trump Pardon Himself? – The idea had the NYT, WaPo, and CNN in vapors over the weekend. “It turns out that when, in 1787, the Framers considered the pardon, they reckoned the president might, on occasion, be guilty. Yet they voted to leave the power to pardon offenses against the United States solely with him — and unrestricted.”

““If he be himself a party to the guilt, he can be impeached and prosecuted.” To which Rufus King of Massachusetts chimed in with the thought that, as Madison put it, “it would be inconsistent with the constitutional separation of the executive and legislative powers, to let the prerogative be exercised by the latter. A legislative body is utterly unfit for the purpose. They are governed too much by the passions of the moment.”

Can the President pardon himself? Obviously by Jazz Shaw – “This morning the cable news talkers are predictably up in arms over the question of whether or not President Trump could write himself a pardon, despite a complete lack of any indication that he’s even considering it.” Responding to hypotheticals in a feeding frenzy because facts and evidence have gone overboard.

“As far as I can tell, this is yet another “open question” because, as Turley pointed out, there is no case law so there is no precedent to draw upon. But we surely have enough clues to say that case against the President being able to do it has some holes in it you could drive a truck through. Article II, Section 2 provides no exceptions to the power of the pardon other than to say it can’t be used to prevent the impeachment of an elected official. But if a president or governor is in that much trouble, they might be far more interested in avoiding criminal prosecution after leaving office. In that sense, the president could probably pardon his or her self and immediately resign from office. You can’t impeach an ex-president and having been pardoned, you couldn’t take them to court on federal charges.

The NFL: It’s Game Over by Emerald Robinson – “As they used to say: Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

“At a political rally in Alabama, the President decided to wade into the controversy the way a bullfighter waves a red cape in the arena. Where any other conservative politician would equivocate or apologize, the President shouts “Ole!” He brazenly declared that NFLowners ought to fire players for “disrespecting the flag.” He then quipped that the owners should say, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. He is fired!” Got that?

This was the kind of masterful media pivot that PR firms will be discussing for the next hundred years. More than 200 NFLplayers were so “outraged” that the President said they should be fired for something that they were not doing at the time — they promptly did that very thing two days later. You read that right. The President, engaging in a bit of NFLfantasy football rhetoric, actually made the NFLcharge the red cape. …

Do I even need to tell you who won? Where others see only bad publicity, the President sees opportunity.

SCOTUS supports freedom of religion 7-2 (CNBC). “The closely watched case before the Supreme Court, which in 2015 legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, pitted gay rights against religious liberty.”

Border Security is also in the news. Texas Monthly reports on dealing with asylum seekers. Then there’s Interior Secy. Zinke orders park police and rangers to Mexico border by Andrew Malcolm – “Calling the border with Mexico an “environmental disaster,” Interior Secy. Ryan Zinke has ordered both U.S. park rangers and park police to Arizona and New Mexico to help stop the movement of illegal immigrants into the country.” … “He said two parks on the border — Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona and Amistad National Recreation Area in Texas — have become strewn with garbage and needles.”

California votes to expand Medicaid to illegal aliens by Jazz Shaw – “If they’re not careful, California is going to woke themselves right into bankruptcy.”

“Just one more example of the elected leaders in Sacramento scratching their heads and trying to think of anything else they can possibly do to bait the White House. But this program is going to cost them a bundle if they pass it. They’ll also likely attract illegal aliens from other states who want to move there and sign up for all the benefits.

On Global Warming, It’s Policy-Based Evidence by John Hinderaker – “Liberals often claim to be proponents of evidence-based policy, but when it comes to climate change, that formula has been reversed.”

“In the last forty years governments have become interested in universities’ finding academic support for what they are proposing or have in place. We are in an era of “policy-based evidence”. We are also in an era of a particular political correctness, where it is very difficult indeed to get funds for research if the purpose of the research seems antithetical to current government policy. “Curiosity-directed research” now comes with some serious barriers. Nowhere is this situation clearer than in the case of research on the Great Barrier Reef, in which Professor Ridd has been involved. A bucket-load of money has been devoted to “the Reef”, and another half-billion was forecast in the recent Budget, some of which will doubtless go the James Cook University, the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. The Reef, as is frequently said, is an Australian “icon”. An icon is a religious object. Professor Ridd is a scientist, not a priest.

But climate science is a religion. Worse, it is a religion that is also big business.

Then there’s the debate about snowmobile use in the Tahoe Forest. It’s an ugly argument, not a debate.