Blinding Justice

Published 05-14-2020

My little corner of Twitter erupted over the past few days with news of Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell’s declassifying of who exactly in the Obama Administration unmasked American citizens from raw intelligence gathered before the 2016 election. And while the names have yet to be released, the delivery of that information to Attorney General Bill Barr added another piece to the puzzle of ObamaGate.

More than just an eruption, news of the declassification added to the volumes of information already publicly released, and paint a further picture of the depths to with partisan politics have failed the American people. In service to those partisan politics, to harnessing the power our government wields, the Obama Administration used every facet of the government structure and apparatus against those they perceived as enemies to secure that power consolidation.

When added to the Inspector General reports covering internal operation at institutions like the Department of Justice, the FISA Courts, the FBI, the IRS… I could go on, politicization and corruption of these apparatus are the most despicable, if only because of the power they hold over American’s lives.

Taking away someone’s freedom, the ability to jail someone or to take their life as punishment, while ensuring the public trust those making the claims of wrongdoing. These cornerstones of trust, of our very social contract, have been shattered by the actions of those we asked to lead. These cornerstones have been eroded throughout decades, not just by those greedy for power but also by blindness to injustice, apathy and evil. And it started long before anyone reading this was born.

It was done by administrations chipping away, from both the left and right, in service to their ends and not our own. But it was sharpened and honed all the same, and used unmercilessly against all who challenged it. Good people were caught up, like General Michael Flynn. Also some not good people, like Paul Manafort.

And it doesn’t make any of it right.

It does no service to justice, that it can be wielded capriciously, or for one’s personal ends. A system is only as good as what you put it into it, and, well, we didn’t choose well. Not that we had great choices, and some were necessary choices, but by and large we do not look for Washington and Adams, Jefferson and Madison. Men and women who make the hard choices, speak the hard truths and follow with the hard actions. Those who serve something bigger than themselves.

We elect personalities beholden to donors who serve the interests of those interested. We elect public relations creations, and pay no attention to the men behind the curtain. We allow cheap marketing and bumper sticker slogans to create division within our friends and family, outrage over problems created by the very government pledged to fight it and then outrage again over the solutions.

I know we still create those men and women. They lead our families, our churches, our communities. They serve when asked, or not, however they can. The quiet strength of Americans always survives. We value justice, and fairness. Bigger cornerstones that government corruption can not touch as long as there is an American public.

A government so vast, to have the ability to spy on it’s political domestic enemies undeterred, can be turned on any one of us, at any time. Beyond what that meant for President Trump, Senator Cruz, Senator Sanders, Senator Rubio and Secretary Carson, among others, who all were spied on in the course of the 2016 election season. Beyond the politics of it, as a citizen it is horrifying.

Unwinding all of it won’t be an easy task, nor will it earn a lot of accolades.

In fact, in certain circles it will be downright unpopular.

Doesn’t mean it all doesn’t need to happen.

We can not have a functioning country, at least one that isn’t completely dysfunctional, with a justice system that flourishes in injustice. And sadly, at this point, I don’t even know that everyone could begin to agree on what justice even is. But I do know that recent actions are just a start. Just as I know that it will never be enough to right all the wrongs.

That’s a sad commentary on the state of things, one I hope we can improve.

••••••••

Tuesday brought the release of Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats next attempt at Corona related relief. Weighing in at $3 trillion and 1,800 pages, only the staffers know what kind of garbage we are going to find wrapped up in relief dollars if the HEROES Act makes it to President Trump’s desk.

Unlike the usual order, which if I’m completely honest went out the window around the time the Dodo went extinct, no committee hearings or town halls were necessary for the formation of this legislation. In fact, I’d bet the number of Congressmen and women to read the whole bill before they vote on it could be numbered on one hand.

It’s not that I expect more from House Democrats, no, they are being pretty true to form. Or from Senate Republicans, as they too have been pretty true to form, most responsive to corporate and big business interests, Main Street be damned. At the end of the day, the American middle class can’t expect either side to actively work for their interests or well being. And we get shown that time and again. One of these times we might actually learn.

Maybe, just maybe, we could elect a Congress that has ideas to improve America instead of throwing money we don’t have to people who have access to plenty of it already. Maybe we can elect more people like Congressmen like Tom Massie (Kentucky) who introduced the PRIME Act to streamline burdensome regulations that constrict meat producers and processors, giving US farmers and ranchers more freedom to sell their product locally. Not that the legislation has any chance of passing in the current House, but more legislation like this is necessary for the America we will be after the crisis of COVID-19 has become part of the everyday experience.

We have to look ahead, to help be part of the solutions that will make our communities better, in spite of what our leaders do and say. We have to create the climate for self sufficiency and actual prosperity, not the corrupted version of reality that we have been sold.

Breaking the Cardinal Rule… and ultimately, why Trump wins

Published 01-30-2020

In politics, there are many rules. Rules of procedure, etiquette, campaigning – there are do’s and don’ts that cover even the unspoken rules. Of all the rules that have gone out the window in the Trump Era, the rule to never, ever disparage the voters seems to be the latest on the chopping block.

If you thought America was already divided, just wait until politicians of all stripes regularly malign and disdain those that have absolutely nothing to do with politics, other than their vote. If you think this is a harangue against Democrats, you’d be mistaken, as plenty of Republicans have also violated this Golden Rule of politics.

Romney broke it with his 47% comments in 2012.

Hillary broke it with her “Basket of Deplorables” speech in 2016.

In just the last week, CNN aired a segment where a Republican pundit and New York Times Reporter jokingly referred to Trump voters as Boomer rubes who can’t spell, speak coherently or read. Uneducated backwater hillbillies.

It still amazes me these people were able to keep the veneer of civility for so long, and in three short years have let the masks completely slip to show everyone what they really think of a somewhat large segment of the American public. And not just a general dislike, but with a venom and nastiness that they revel in.

This has been one of Trump’s greatest gifts to the American public, in addition to the record unemployment, the realization of there no longer being a noblesse oblige in America’s ruling class. It’s a breakdown of our better’s class, the idea of responsibility to do right by those you rule. To put the needs of those less privileged on the same level as those of the higher class, or at least, once again, pretend like there is consideration for them.

I see it more frequently now, and with more regularity. It’s not just a bad politician, or a terrible policy, but those that support Person X (let’s be serious, these day’s it usually Trump) who should be removed from the halls of respectable life.

It’s a bold strategy to call half the country treasonous racists, and will be interesting to watch play out over the course of the campaign.

Beyond the normal tribal party alliances, this disdain for everyday working Americans, who aren’t concerned about impeachment and politicians with hurt feelings, or pundits outside of power with axes to grind only adds to the disconnect and division that many Americans see when looking towards our capitol.

The political class points to President Trump and his insults as the excuse for the division, as apparently these smart people think that history began in November 2016. No thought given to the decisions made over the last 25, 50 or 100 years that brought us to this point in history. The decisions small and large, that brought us here.

We are lead by a class that sees no need for reflection, or correction. The mistakes of the past, repeating with a modern twist. In and out with a revolving door and cushy jobs in the connected sectors when out of office, there is no failure, just more policy papers and arguments.

Looking at the numbers for outsider candidates like Trump and Bernie Sanders, there’s a whole lot of people dissatisfied with the establishment and “interagency consensus” line of thinking that has pervaded D.C. Maybe it’s time for less name calling, and maybe, just maybe a reorienting of our politics more towards domestic issues and less towards international adventurism.

••••••••••••••

The left’s perineal Trump tantrum’s latest manifest is failing spectacularly in the Senate, with the Democrat case for impeachment well argued against by the President’s lawyers during the presentation phase of the case. I expect more than enough viral moments from the questioning phase of the impeachment trial… from both sides.

Beyond the results, the political nerd in me has been quite happy to watch the Constitutional Law arguments made by Alan Dershowitz and Jay Sekulow, as well as the rest of the President’s team. Monday’s nights presentation by Professor Dershowitz was skilled, based in both precedence and text, and was like sitting in on one of his lectures or seminars on impeachment law. It was a scholarly rebuttal, on both process and substance. I for one will go back to read it again, as a well reasoned approach to impeachment and the originalist reading of the background law at question.

Much of the President’s team’s arguments mirror those made by the President, although in a more scholarly fashion, and have been based in the constitutional arguments of the separation and oversight functions of the branches of government. The natural push and pull between the legislative and executive branches are necessary for the health of our republic. It was expected by the founders, and at it’s core is the reason for our judicial branch.

Political considerations should always be secondary to constitutional considerations. It’s unfortunate that congressman Schiff didn’t consider that while there may be more than a few Republicans who would be more than happy to rid themselves of the current president, many more might just be able to see past the Trump years, and how this new standard for impeachment could be misused and abused in partisan hands.

The Democrat’s desire to give President Trump an asterisk forever, which was an inevitable conclusion with this batch of leftist Democrats running Congress, superseded the idea that policy differences aren’t a matter for impeachment, nor for that matter is asking a court whether senior level advisors to the president can be compelled to testify about that counsel to Congress.

It’s a no from Mueller

So the Office of the Special Council released their final report to the Department of Justice Friday, and while it will take the for most of the report to be revealed to the public, the four page summary released Sunday by Attorney General Barr and Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein gives us a clear picture of Robert Mueller’s conclusions to whether President Trump, or his campaign, colluded with the Russian government to beat Hillary.

The answer… a resounding nyet.

For anyone paying attention over the last two years, this news is not surprising. It beggars belief that anyone actually still believes that Donald Trump actually colluded with Putin. What may come as a surprise is what will come next.

Shock and awe, or fire and fury if you prefer, will be next on the agenda if Congressman Devin Nunes and Senator Lindsay Graham have anything to say about it.

And as an aside, for those who would like to hold on Mueller not exonerating the President on the charges of obstruction, I have yet to meet a prosecutor who exonerates anyone at anytime. Common sense also tells you that if there was not collusion, how could there possibly be obstruction to protect said non-collusion.

Back to the fire and fury… because that is always where the “there” was in the Russian Collusion scandal all along, and what the Mueller Investigation was always providing cover for. Congressman Nunes has fully faced the onslaught of every sling and arrow that Establishment Washington could throw at him and refused to back down.

He stood alone in front of the microphones and told us exactly what happened. How it was orchestrated, even if the Congressman was not at liberty to tell us who exactly orchestrated.

What was the it, well, here’s what I said over a year ago… “The abuses of personal and civil liberties by national law enforcement, on a duly elected president no less, should have everyone’s head spinning – regardless of who that person is. The fact that directors and deputies of the FBI and DOJ thought nothing of lying to courts, hiding evidence continually and repeatedly from Congressional oversight and playing spy games with a complicit and willing media to ultimately impeach the new President moves this beyond a constitutional crisis.

Maybe a criminal court could help get to the bottom of it all.” 

Well, now is the chance for the Congressman to feel some sense of personal vindication. He has stated repeatedly that there will be criminal referrals from the House Intelligence Committee investigation he chaired. It is time for those referrals to be made and the DOJ to take action.

If there is any chance for America to think that there is equality under the eyes of the law and end corruption within our government an investigation into how this whole plot overtook our national sensibilities, without any pushback or questioning from the national media must happen.

And it all must be public.

We can not let one branch of government cover for another. We can not let former government officials, who most likely illegally surveilled American citizens, unmasked identities, and used our intelligence agencies not just for political purposes – but against their actual political enemies – stand without a response. We can not let presidential political aspirations and disinformation campaigns meant to cover for malfeasance stand over the rule of law.

We have a President with the backbone to see it through. He has shown the patience to wait it out. We have at least one Congressman who stood up to his own party, even after fighting baseless ethics charges to sully his reputation and sideline his efforts to bring light to what could only be considered a political coup. I am hoping Senator Graham will continue to press the DOJ, and the FBI, and where warranted file charges.

What the Hillary Clinton campaign unleashed, all while President Obama blithely ignored or tacitly encouraged irregular intelligence collection by political hires and appointments has not only divided this country, but sought to delegitimize the 2016 election and our election systems.

Russian social media trolls and hackers matter little compared to that.

It is time for actual justice and law and order, not political backbiting and insurance policies. It is time for those that wink, wink “assumed there was more there” to be called to account. These political actors have lied to the American public for two years, repeatedly and vociferously. And were paid by cable networks to do so.

Now, I want to know if they did more than just lie.

So while the politicians say they want to move on, doing so without any repercussions will not fix what is broken in our political culture.

Remember folks, if you want to take out the King, you better kill him… otherwise you just might make him stronger.

Published March 27, 2019

A Tale of Two Lawyers

President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was unceremoniously raided Monday morning, with the U.S. Attorney’s office and FBI serving warrants at Cohen’s office and residence. In quite a surprising turn, the news of these raids was leaked to major news outlets by unnamed sources close to the investigation (later confirmed by Cohen’s lawyer).

Cohen, according to these sources, is being investigated for possible campaign finance violations and bank fraud related to payments made to Stormy Daniels prior to the election. Not leaked was information on the basis for the search warrants, or why this investigation was referred from the Mueller Investigation to Manhattan.

Also not surprising was the confirmation that there is still no evidence of Russian collusion. Or that anyone close to President Trump has a target on their backs in the Mueller Investigation.

What happened Monday crosses a bright line. Searching privileged communications between a lawyer and client is almost never done. No-knock raids on a witness who has cooperated with investigators is also something new, considering other recent FBI political investigations.

Take, for example, attorney Cheryl Mills. Mills served as chief of staff for Hillary Clinton at the State Department. Mills served as an attorney for Clinton after she left State. During the email investigations and Clinton Foundation inquiries, Mills was allowed to decide what questions she would or would not answer – going so far to leave the interview room when agents deviated from the agreed-upon topics. While under investigation for obstruction charges relating to destruction of physical evidence (smashing of phones, laptops and hard drives used by Clinton) Mills was even allowed to sit in on Clinton’s interviews with agents.

In no instance was Mills subjected to any kind of raid, planned or otherwise. Nor was Huma Abedin, or Hillary for that matter.

Rumors have abounded since the raid. Make no mistake, though, this raid was about sending a message. Don’t help the president or you, too, will be a target.

And it is not a far stretch to figure that documents procured under this warrant will be leaked, whether incriminating or not, especially if they are embarrassing to the president. It is apparently not a worry that any of this was before the election and has nothing to do with Russia in any way.

But what is all of this really about? Is it about a New York lawyer?

Or is it about negating the results of the 2016 election?

From here in the cheap seats all I have seen is an organized assault on Donald Trump, from the moment Michigan and Pennsylvania were called in his favor. Direct assaults like the FISA warrants used to spy on Trump Tower during the transition and career DOJ officials refusing to defend the president’s policies, to softer hits, like Russian bots on the loose on social media stumping for Trump, in an effort to undermine the legitimacy of the votes of over 120 million Americans.

Who wouldn’t trust an investigation that is stacked with lawyers and investigators who overwhelmingly donated to the opponent of the person they are investigating? The special counsel has run for over a year and netted two charges of lying to the FBI. In the case of Paul Manafort, who was only hired after the Republican Establishment threatened a proxy fight on the floor of the convention, the alleged crimes happened before Trump ran for president, or even considered hiring him and Gates.

While the Senate pretends to know what the heck is going on with Facebook, maybe some curiosity is in order as to why everyone in D.C. is so dead set against President Donald Trump and the American voters.

 

 

Published: Thursday, April 12, 2018

Absolute Power Corrupts…. Absolutely

Everyone has been talking about “the Memo” (the House Intelligence Committee Majority report on actions taken by the FBI and Department of Justice) outlining details of the beginnings of the investigation into Russian collusion on the Trump campaign. For those who have been paying attention to the whole Russian narrative most of the information was already known and reported.

The real stunner was the lengths that the FBI and Justice Department went to be able to start collecting intel from within Team Trump.

So the Clinton campaign did opposition research on Trump after he won the primary. To do this research the campaign and the Democrat National Committee hired Fusion GPS through the law firm, Perkins Coie. Fusion GPS then begins the collection of Russian information on Trump, using former MI6 spy Christopher Steele. Steele puts together a dossier of information from Russian government sources. This dossier was unverified and unvetted. Steele himself admitted this in a court case currently happening in England.

Fusion GPS then proceeds to try to shop the dossier to friendly news sources that would disseminate the information.

Steele and Fusion GPS briefed the New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo News, the New Yorker, and CNN around September 2016.

Well, Yahoo News bit, and reporter Michael Isikoff published “U.S. Intel Officials Probe Ties Between Trump Adviser and Kremlin” on September 23, 2016. The subject of this article was Carter Page, alleging that Page was working with a former Russian deputy prime minister to remove sanctions. This information was all included in the dossier, in multiple locations.

These briefings to news outlets came directly from the dossier according to both Simpson and Steele, and others who were present at these meetings and testified before Congress.

Here’s where we get to the part of the story that stuns….

Fusion GPS employed the wife of an FBI Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr. Mrs. Ohr helped “in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump,” and then shared this information with her husband who passed it up his chain of command, and to high level agents within the FBI. (It is not certain if she worked on the dossier specifically though.)

This info, gained from questionable sources that have an agenda, ended up on the desks of the highest levels of national law enforcement.

So of course they were highly vetted, and the parts that could not be verified were tossed, right? Well, not so much.

The FBI ended up going to the FISA Court to open a warrant to spy on Carter Page, and associates, using the dossier as evidence of wrongdoing. The court was not happy with the level of evidence and turned down the FISA. Not to be deterred, the FBI went back to FISA after the Yahoo story was published, without telling the court that the story was based on the dossier. Well, that seemed like the magic ticket, gaining approval for spying sometime in October 2016.

This is where it all starts to get interesting. FBI Director Comey briefs President Elect Trump about the dossier after he won, even though it was “salacious and unverified” as he described it to Congress. With knowledge that it was unverified, the FBI represented it as vetted intel to the courts on three separate occasions when looking for extensions to the 90-day FISA warrant. The FBI went so far as to reimburse Steele for expenses to create a cover of legitimacy, only cutting off the funds when Steele admitted to lying to agents about leaking to the media about the dossier.

These warrants were necessary to collect intelligence within the Trump campaign at the end of the election, and well into the transition period. The collection of this intelligence was then passed through the alphabet soup of our Intelligence Community, and this is where the illegal unmasking of Trump World begins. Hundreds of unmasking requests came in, and were approved, leading the overseers of the FISA process to issue a ruling about serious abuses within the FISA system in April 2017.

Have you followed all of this? Because my head is spinning.

The abuses of personal and civil liberties by national law enforcement, on a duly elected President no less, should have everyone’s head spinning – regardless of who that person is.

The fact that directors and deputies of the FBI and DOJ thought nothing of lying to courts, hiding evidence continually and repeatedly from Congressional oversight and playing spy games with a complicit and willing media to ultimately impeach the new President moves this beyond a constitutional crisis.

Maybe a criminal court could help get to the bottom of it all.

 

Published February 8, 2017

Hollywood, America’s Moral Compass

For years most of middle America, or fly-over country as it were, has been lectured by our coastal elite. Doesn’t matter West Coast or East – you could be sure that in their eyes most of America was doing something wrong.

Our choices are wrong we are repeatedly told. We buy the wrong cars, take the wrong vacations, eat the wrong foods, use the wrong energy and most importantly choose the wrong candidates. Our betters, especially those that appear on our screens, repeatedly tell us this. Public Service Announcements, testimony before Congress, and super serious award show acceptance speeches are all approved venues for said lectures.

And none lecture like Hollywood.

We hear lectures about driving gas guzzler SUVs and trucks from actors who arrive to the podium via private plane. We see the glitterati applauding a light bulb ban as their spotlights shine ever brighter on their bloated egos and botoxed faces. We hear healthcare advice from a group of actors that played our favorite doctors on television. That one gets bonus points for a diverse lineup including women and multi-ethnic actors and actresses.

I’ve seen actors lecture people about owning guns, and movies devoted to demonizing the gun industry, while on the flip side Hollywood has done it’s damnedest to glorify those that live and die by gun violence. More misinformation exists about guns and shooting because of movie and television shows than the National Rifle Association could ever hope to fix.

Oh, and many of those same stars have no problems with their security guards carrying guns to protect them.

It’s especially precious when stars play up their “healthy lifestyle” and then leave a photo shoot and proceed to do enough cocaine to drop a thoroughbred.

The same people who have spent eternity reading other people’s words think they have some special knowledge that makes them better than the people they are supposedly trying to entertain?

Yeah, I’d say not so much.

I thoroughly love the lectures about female equality. Did you know that women only make 79 cents for every dollar men make? I am so tired of this line. If women make so much less money on average, how do any men even find a job? I mean these evil businesses that only look at the bottom line could totally maximize their profits by paying women less than their male counterparts.

That is why no talking head would ever ask one of these actresses spouting this line, or their male allies, to elaborate. Because they can’t. The reason men make more on average than women is because men are more likely to work jobs that are hazardous (like linemen working for the electric company). Shockingly to no one that understands basic economic principles, those jobs tend to pay more than your typical teacher or professional sitting at a desk. That is all that statistic is saying.

It is not degrading women, or saying women have less value than men. If statistics hold that much sway over your sense of worth, well, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe get a puppy.

What is also interesting, and not discussed, is that college graduate women, on average, earn more than their male counterparts. And more women are now graduating from college than men. Makes that whole equality argument a little different, doesn’t it.

When actors and actresses start talking politics, especially politics of the personal sort, it is always leftist. Many stick to the script of talking points, and won’t venture too far out past that. Now, there are rare exceptions to this, and some actors seem to be more informed than others. But by and large most of Tinseltown and The Big Apple conform to politically correct positions.

This elitist attitude has played out in many different ways over the course of the last few years, and none was more apparent than the 2016 election cycle. Every week a new star was telling us who to vote for… yep, Hillary, a new singer was appearing on stage… with Hillary, and of course who could forget the multitude of manufactured viral videos for…Hillary. It was quite clear that the coasts had made their choice. They were with Her. Get on board rubes!

Enter Democratic mega-donor and (now former) darling of democrat politics Harvey Weinstein. The bi-coastal producer, and former head of Miramax, was a golden boy. He could make or break a new face by casting them in his movies. He has gone from supposed strength to strength, making the movies that shaped our culture and lives.

He went all in for President Obama, big time, becoming a top bundler and fundraiser. Weinstein oversaw the merging of the political and entertainment wings of American culture, and helped their intersection stop directly at The White House. Obama was truly Hollywood’s first President. Here is a man that everyone projected their hopes onto, a blank canvas. A great speaker, when given beautiful words by writers who know their stuff. It was a match made in heaven. Weinstein was ready to go all in for Hillary too. Many of her big dollar fundraisers were hosted by Weinstein and his wife Georgina Chapman.

Who knew that all the glitz covered for someone who was anything but angelic.

Exposés by The New Yorker and The New York Times shattered a public image that was over thirty years in the making. And come to find out, it was Hollywood’s worst kept secret. Not only had the rumors of disgusting sexual harassment and worse behavior by Weinstein been around for over twenty years, but everyone – from agent to actor and reporter knew. Eight settlements. Eight non-disclosure agreements.

Now, actresses are all over social media and doing interviews patting themselves on the back for standing up to the disgusting mega producer. What is worse, half of the actresses are congratulating each other for standing up for these marginalized women when they knew it was happening all along.

I’m over here shaking my head and thinking these are the paragons of virtue we are supposed to look up to and listen to? No thanks.

These people sheltered a criminal, and accused rapist, to further their own careers. Reporters and editors killed stories. Other actors ran interference for him. Women cashed checks and signed non-disclosure agreements guaranteeing their silence. The result, more women victimized.

All the while Hollywood lectured the rest of America about our virtues and vices. Our racism, sexism and homophobia. How absolutely hypocritical and disingenuous to lecture others about the cleanliness of their houses while letting your own turn into a sty.

Our politicians who depended on the big checks that Weinstein and his friends could give them? It took Obama and Hillary five days from when the first story broke to even tepidly condemn the man. For all of Hillary’s talk of supporting victims of sexual harassment she sure was late to the party. Do you wonder if the public would have ever even heard this story if the Clintons were in The White House right now?

It’s high time that Hollywood realized that it’s influence over culture is what the fly-overs allow it to be. I’d imagine the lackluster summer box office dollars, down from last year’s totals, have just as much to do with sanctimonious lectures and regular Americans saying enough than the tired remakes that populate our movie screens.

 

Published October 12, 2017