All of this talk about impeaching Trump is nonsense.
If you want to see a serious rebellion, try getting Trump impeached on some trumped up (HOW about that?) charge.
This was very funny. At the start of his show, Hannity attacked the accuracy of the NYT story printed above using the usual Trumpkin line about “anonymous sources”. Later in the show he admitted the story was true, and quickly switched to film of a car chase.
Nobody cares about Trump wanting to fire Mueller. I wish he would.
But this? This will lead today. Trump has managed to @#$% off everyone with this.
It’s pretty much a thumb in the eye to voters like me, and caving to the unappreciative left. They should take his offer, it’s probably the best they’ll get.
Seriously, why is the left upset? This will give a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million new Dem voters, and the prospect of millions more. Ungrateful louts, and still illegal. .
“I don’t attribute to Trump the mythical ‘three-dimensional chess’ sort of analysis. So when the White House officially floats the idea of a massive amnesty for 1.8 million ‘Dreamers’ in the form of a pathway to citizenship, plus nuclear family reunification that will ad several million more, I think that’s actually what he wants.
Conservative reaction has been furious, viewing it as the breach of a core campaign promise. Which it was and is.
It’s horrible policy that will encourage further illegal immigration. Ted Cruz weighed in:
“I do not believe we should be granting a path to citizenship to anybody here illegally,” the Texas Republican said in the Capitol. “Doing so is inconsistent with the promises we made to the men and women who elected us.”
On the open-borders left, there was an immediate and consistent portrayal of the proposal as racist, white supremacist, and holding ‘Dreamers’ hostage. That excessive rhetoric is coming not just from activists, but from leading Democrat politicians like Dick Durbin and Elizabeth Warren.
The extreme leftist reaction to the overly generous offer could doom it. Which leaves Trump with having offered a broad amnesty to save ‘Dreamers’ which failed because of leftist opposition.”
———————–
What do you do, as a Christian, when someone cites a “scientific study” allegedly proving that transgender kids do well with hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery? Well, you’ve got to ask questions.
That’s certainly the right strategy for a new $5.7 million study just commissioned by the National Institutes of Health.
Writing at Public Discourse, Jane Robbins and Erin Tuttle predict that this study, once completed, will become the go-to evidence for supporters of so-called “affirmation therapy.” In other words, it will be used to support chemically and surgically altering the developing and healthy bodies of children, to make them look like those of the opposite sex.
The study’s methodology, authors, and stated purpose all make it clear that it’s crafted to produce a predetermined conclusion: that “transgender affirmation therapy is safe and effective for gender-dysphoric youngsters.” The study’s authors all but admit this, writing in their abstract that their goal is “to use cross-sex hormones in order to induce development of desired secondary sexual characteristics that bring the body into closer alignment with the youth’s internal sense of gender.”
Notice the appropriateness of altering a child’s body to harmonize with his or her preferred gender is just assumed; it’s not evaluated. And this assumption is destructive, even sometimes deadly.
Let’s be clear about what “affirmation therapy” really means: Children are given high doses of puberty-suppressing drugs. Doctors then flood their systems with testosterone or estrogen to induce the formation of opposite-sex characteristics like breasts in males and facial hair in females. Some patients, partway through this process, will undergo “sex-reassignment surgery” in which their internal and even external genitals are removed or remodeled.
This so-called “treatment” will render them infertile for life and can create a host of side-effects, like cancer, infections, gallbladder diseases, and spikes in blood pressure. There is also no long-term research on how these high doses of hormones affect bodies in the long run—bodies that weren’t designed to handle them in the first place.
There is, however, abundant data on the psychological damage of medically “transitioning.” One study from Great Britain found that 20 percent of patients who’d undergone this procedure regretted it. Walt Heyer, a man who formerly lived as a transgender woman and now identifies with his biological sex once again, thinks that’s a serious underestimation.
He cites research showing that 41 percent of post-operative patients attempt suicide, 90 percent have a “significant form of psychopathology,” and half have depressive symptoms.
The NIH is apparently ignoring all this, and it’s clear even at this early stage that they’ve got a conclusion in search of an argument. All four of the doctors and clinics selected to conduct the research are deeply invested in transgender ideology. Two already conduct irreversible hormonal transitions, sometimes on children as young as 14 years old. And one calls therapies aimed at reconciling kids with their biological sex “dangerous.”
But what’s truly dangerous is that this deeply unscientific project will not only harm the children involved, it’s largely unnecessary. Robbins and Tuttle cite research showing that 80 to 90 percent of gender dysphoric children will accept their biological sex by late adolescence. In other words, they often grow out of it.
Yet the NIH is paying for research—with our tax dollars—to engrave these feelings irreversibly on children’s bodies—all at a time when they’re too young to fully understand the consequences.
Like almost everything, this comes down to worldview. Transgender activists believe that feelings define people. And if our feelings are out-of-sync with our bodies, then our bodies must change—through any chemical or surgical means necessary.
But beginning with this conclusion and then crafting a study to prove it isn’t science. In fact, it’s more like a religion that’s demanding child sacrifice.
Sacrificing Children to Trans Ideology: An Unscientific Federal Study
What’s Wrong with the New NIH Study on Transgender Kids?
Jane Robbins and Erin Tuttle | PublicDiscourse.com | January 17, 2018
AJ, Trump has said 20 different and conflicting things about immigration in the last 20 days. I am not certain that he has betrayed you for all time. As Scarlett said, “Tomorrow is another day.”
In reading the article linked @7:55 about the moral argument for free trade, I’m struck by a couple of things:
One, the author claims ” The most important moral argument against protectionism is that tariffs and trade barriers reduce the economic freedom of consumers. “ This argument assumes that freedom of consumption is a moral virtue and that reducing that freedom would be wrong. But economic freedom to consume is not a virtue. I would argue that such a freedom produces moral vice if it’s not restricted. Unfettered freedom of all kinds, working through human nature, naturally produces vice. It’s why God ordained government. So restricting freedom (including economic freedom) is actually necessary for virtue to thrive in a culture. The moral discussion must start with the assumption that economic restriction is actually necessary.
The real question is what economic activities should be restricted, where, and why. That’s where the moral issues and struggles reside. The author argues that tariffs should not be used because struggling Americans would struggle more to make ends meet. I guess that is one area of agreement: there are indeed many Americans who are struggling in the economy. But if that is a serious concern, why is there so little concern for the struggling ones when tariffs are not being discussed?
While it is true that new tariffs may bring a temporary pain as internal markets adjust, if one is actually concerned about struggling Americans, there are ways of temporarily subsidizing those who are struggling while a new market equilibrium is found. And once markets adjust, the internal stability produced by secure jobs and livelihoods, far outweigh the benefits of the over consumption of cheap foreign goods.
And that brings me to number two, the author says, ” Besides, it is certainly not the role of the Department of Commerce to decide who has a job and who does not.” Actually, it is the role of government to protect the welfare of all its citizens from foreign harm. In terms of our economic world order, it is precisely the government’s job to promote economic security HERE and job creation HERE, as opposed to incentivizing the creation of jobs in China or India (which our government has done for many years with the foreign reinvestment act and other policies). Noble-sounding goals of alleviating poverty worldwide are not our government’s duty. Benefits and welfare to other countries may be a positive side-effect of good government which protects its citizens here, but it cannot be said to be a purpose of our government. God has given us our government with its corresponding responsibilities for our welfare, just as each nation has been given their government for their own welfare.
I’m beginning to think that Ross Douthat’s observation a few weeks ago of intellectual disintegration may be deeper and more widespread than we’d like to think. From the assumptions implicit in this article, and from other arguments and comments that I have read, it seems that we do not properly appreciate the role of nations and their boundaries. Without that appreciation, there cannot be effective government. And while the unfettered freedom bordering anarchy may be appealing to some, it is really a curse in that it is the withdrawal of God-ordained government, in which everyone is left unconstrained to do what is right in his own eyes.
As a nation, if we are really interested in being a moral people, we should be less concerned about trying to morally justify our various economic ideologies, and more concerned about aligning our economic activities and policies with a biblical morality that requires both a personal work ethic and a business ethic.
“It is long past time for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appoint a special counsel to investigate the possibility of widespread and systematic corruption, obstruction, leaking, and collusion within America’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The leadership of the FBI and Department of Justice have made clear, through their ongoing obstruction of congressional investigations and oversight, that these agencies simply can not be trusted to investigate or police themselves.”
“In the last week, even more bombshells have dropped. In response, Democrats and their media allies have flooded the airwaves with the stuff Bess Truman wanted Harry to call horse manure. This makes sense. Many are so invested in the collusion narrative that a severe-enough blowback — where it is found that Hillary colluded with Russia, not Trump, for example — could destroy American institutions that wield enormous amounts of power.
Those at risk include the Democrat Party’s media appendages, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, Business Insider, The Hill, and Vox. Even the Democrat Party, at least the uber-corporatist manifestation that we see today, faces an existential crisis.
In other words, it will get much worse before it gets any better. In the meantime, to cut through all the media’s horse manure, here are five things we’ve learned about the so-called Russia investigation in the last week (and, at the end, what you can do about it).”
“5) Expect major pushback from surveillance state.
While the general public does not yet know the specifics contained in the report, we know that the alleged abuses by senior officials at the FBI and Department of Justice are significant enough to cause a wide variety of lawmakers extensive concern. Expect the FBI and DOJ to react the same way any other individual or institution reacts when indicted or charged with a major or heinous crime. They’ll assert their innocence, claim that the information is false, say that the oversight committee can’t prove anything.
Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) said, “While the report is classified as Top Secret, I believe the select committee should, pursuant to House rules, vote to make the report publicly available as soon as possible. This is a matter of national significance and the American people deserve the truth.”
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd strongly disagreed, sending a letter to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) saying releasing a memo alleging abuses at the Department of Justice and FBI would be “extraordinarily reckless.” This should surprise no one. No person or organization wants their dirty laundry aired in public, even if the letter’s claims that Americans can’t learn about law enforcement abuses lest it harm national security might be a bit overly dramatic. Transparency is difficult for everyone, even if it’s good for the country and these agencies in particular in the long run.
Even just the threat of the document’s release resulted in a new flurry of leaks regarding the investigations spurred by the dossier. Those will likely continue until the report is released, if past is prologue.
6) Expect major pushback from anyone who latched onto the Russia-Trump collusion theory over the last year.
The 4-page document will reportedly discuss FBI and DOJ handling of Democrat-funded opposition research that was used in official law enforcement work. The more Americans learn about the Russia-Trump collusion theory, the more it seems that the entire story was cooked up by that Democrat-funded opposition research. None of the substantive allegations in the infamous Steele dossier have been independently verified.
If there really is nothing to the Trump-Russia collusion theory, it poses something of an existential crisis for those who bought into the theory as their best hope for removing the elected president. That includes the activist left, the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, and also elements of the NeverTrump right. Among all the theories and attacks on the president, be they legitimate or illegitimate, the Russia theory is set apart and special because of its impeachment power and key to ousting him. While a few Republicans in Congress are working against those forces, the combined power and messaging coordination of the resistance is formidable.
You can see this already with how minor messaging points are blown up into large stories. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told journalists he was not allowed to see the House Intelligence Committee memo. That’s true, since the only legal access right now is for House members and Burr does not serve in the House but the Senate. It would at the very least require a vote of the entire committee to change those access protocols without violating rules. Still, a combined messaging campaign arose out of this talking point.
Earlier, resistance-allied journalists pushed the talking point that the FBI wasn’t allowed to see the memo alleging abuses at the FBI. These journalists were apparently confused as to which of the two entities has oversight of the other. The FBI is an inferior subordinate agency. Perhaps that’s a reasonable confusion in light of FBI behavior in recent years, but divided government is a real thing that remains. But the document might also encompass other agencies. Why would the FBI get a preview before other agencies? In any case, expect a lot of drama and pushback against the document.”
“Rep. Adam Schiff has many talents, though few compare to his ability to function as a human barometer of Democratic panic. The greater the level of Schiff hot, pressured air, the more trouble the party knows it’s in.
Mr. Schiff’s millibars have been popping ever since the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, on which he is ranking Democrat, last week voted to make a classified GOP memo about FBI election year abuses available to every House member. Mr. Schiff has spit and spun and apoplectically accused his Republican colleagues of everything short of treason. The memo, he insists, is “profoundly misleading,” not to mention “distorted” and “political,” and an attack on the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He initially tried to block his colleagues from reading it. Having failed, he’s now arguing Americans can know the full story only if they see the underlying classified documents.
This is highly convenient, given the Justice Department retains those documents and is as eager to make them public as a fox is to abandon the henhouse. Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes had to threaten a contempt citation simply to get permission for his committee to gain access, and even then investigators had to leave Capitol Hill to view them, and were allowed only to take notes. Mr. Nunes has no authority to declassify them. The best he can do in his continuing transparency efforts is to summarize their contents. Only in Schiff land is sunshine suddenly a pollutant.”
Racist chants rain down on Iowa high school basketball team
Authorities say some student spectators at a predominantly white school in northwest Iowa greeted a visiting rival boys’ basketball team with racist chants.
Fortunately, I was able to obtain the full text of one of Strzok’s text messages:
“Ye’ll take your Memo
And I’ll take my Memo
And I’ll be by Comey afore ye.
Me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonny, bonny banks of the Potomac.”
Wandering Views 
All of this talk about impeaching Trump is nonsense.
If you want to see a serious rebellion, try getting Trump impeached on some trumped up (HOW about that?) charge.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A very interesting and comprehensive article about the various conservative magazines:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2018/01/25/feature/why-conservative-magazines-are-more-important-than-ever/?utm_term=.d4362d613b4a
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My son sent me this article on the moral case for free trade:
LikeLiked by 2 people
This article by Haberman and Schmidt will be the big news of the day:
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This was very funny. At the start of his show, Hannity attacked the accuracy of the NYT story printed above using the usual Trumpkin line about “anonymous sources”. Later in the show he admitted the story was true, and quickly switched to film of a car chase.
LikeLike
I really wanted to see the new Western (Hostiles) until I read this review. My old rule is best: No movies made after 1960:
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Ricky,
Nobody cares about Trump wanting to fire Mueller. I wish he would.
But this? This will lead today. Trump has managed to @#$% off everyone with this.
It’s pretty much a thumb in the eye to voters like me, and caving to the unappreciative left. They should take his offer, it’s probably the best they’ll get.
Seriously, why is the left upset? This will give a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million new Dem voters, and the prospect of millions more. Ungrateful louts, and still illegal. .
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/01/immigration-activists-furious-over-trump-amnesty-offer-a-legislative-burning-cross/
“I don’t attribute to Trump the mythical ‘three-dimensional chess’ sort of analysis. So when the White House officially floats the idea of a massive amnesty for 1.8 million ‘Dreamers’ in the form of a pathway to citizenship, plus nuclear family reunification that will ad several million more, I think that’s actually what he wants.
Conservative reaction has been furious, viewing it as the breach of a core campaign promise. Which it was and is.
It’s horrible policy that will encourage further illegal immigration. Ted Cruz weighed in:
“I do not believe we should be granting a path to citizenship to anybody here illegally,” the Texas Republican said in the Capitol. “Doing so is inconsistent with the promises we made to the men and women who elected us.”
On the open-borders left, there was an immediate and consistent portrayal of the proposal as racist, white supremacist, and holding ‘Dreamers’ hostage. That excessive rhetoric is coming not just from activists, but from leading Democrat politicians like Dick Durbin and Elizabeth Warren.
The extreme leftist reaction to the overly generous offer could doom it. Which leaves Trump with having offered a broad amnesty to save ‘Dreamers’ which failed because of leftist opposition.”
———————–
More on this betrayal of the base here…..
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/01/white-house-offers-up-dreamer-amnesty-deal/
LikeLiked by 1 person
From the Colson Center:
What do you do, as a Christian, when someone cites a “scientific study” allegedly proving that transgender kids do well with hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery? Well, you’ve got to ask questions.
That’s certainly the right strategy for a new $5.7 million study just commissioned by the National Institutes of Health.
Writing at Public Discourse, Jane Robbins and Erin Tuttle predict that this study, once completed, will become the go-to evidence for supporters of so-called “affirmation therapy.” In other words, it will be used to support chemically and surgically altering the developing and healthy bodies of children, to make them look like those of the opposite sex.
The study’s methodology, authors, and stated purpose all make it clear that it’s crafted to produce a predetermined conclusion: that “transgender affirmation therapy is safe and effective for gender-dysphoric youngsters.” The study’s authors all but admit this, writing in their abstract that their goal is “to use cross-sex hormones in order to induce development of desired secondary sexual characteristics that bring the body into closer alignment with the youth’s internal sense of gender.”
Notice the appropriateness of altering a child’s body to harmonize with his or her preferred gender is just assumed; it’s not evaluated. And this assumption is destructive, even sometimes deadly.
Let’s be clear about what “affirmation therapy” really means: Children are given high doses of puberty-suppressing drugs. Doctors then flood their systems with testosterone or estrogen to induce the formation of opposite-sex characteristics like breasts in males and facial hair in females. Some patients, partway through this process, will undergo “sex-reassignment surgery” in which their internal and even external genitals are removed or remodeled.
This so-called “treatment” will render them infertile for life and can create a host of side-effects, like cancer, infections, gallbladder diseases, and spikes in blood pressure. There is also no long-term research on how these high doses of hormones affect bodies in the long run—bodies that weren’t designed to handle them in the first place.
There is, however, abundant data on the psychological damage of medically “transitioning.” One study from Great Britain found that 20 percent of patients who’d undergone this procedure regretted it. Walt Heyer, a man who formerly lived as a transgender woman and now identifies with his biological sex once again, thinks that’s a serious underestimation.
He cites research showing that 41 percent of post-operative patients attempt suicide, 90 percent have a “significant form of psychopathology,” and half have depressive symptoms.
The NIH is apparently ignoring all this, and it’s clear even at this early stage that they’ve got a conclusion in search of an argument. All four of the doctors and clinics selected to conduct the research are deeply invested in transgender ideology. Two already conduct irreversible hormonal transitions, sometimes on children as young as 14 years old. And one calls therapies aimed at reconciling kids with their biological sex “dangerous.”
But what’s truly dangerous is that this deeply unscientific project will not only harm the children involved, it’s largely unnecessary. Robbins and Tuttle cite research showing that 80 to 90 percent of gender dysphoric children will accept their biological sex by late adolescence. In other words, they often grow out of it.
Yet the NIH is paying for research—with our tax dollars—to engrave these feelings irreversibly on children’s bodies—all at a time when they’re too young to fully understand the consequences.
Like almost everything, this comes down to worldview. Transgender activists believe that feelings define people. And if our feelings are out-of-sync with our bodies, then our bodies must change—through any chemical or surgical means necessary.
But beginning with this conclusion and then crafting a study to prove it isn’t science. In fact, it’s more like a religion that’s demanding child sacrifice.
Sacrificing Children to Trans Ideology: An Unscientific Federal Study
What’s Wrong with the New NIH Study on Transgender Kids?
Jane Robbins and Erin Tuttle | PublicDiscourse.com | January 17, 2018
LikeLiked by 3 people
AJ, Trump has said 20 different and conflicting things about immigration in the last 20 days. I am not certain that he has betrayed you for all time. As Scarlett said, “Tomorrow is another day.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’d say it’s time to take down the velvet curtains and throw them around our shoulders, rod and all.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Sad things going on inside the FBI and DOJ. It really is having a negative affect on rank-and-file agents.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/01/23/digenova_a_brazen_plot_inside_fbi_to_exonerate_clinton_frame_trump.html
LikeLike
In reading the article linked @7:55 about the moral argument for free trade, I’m struck by a couple of things:
One, the author claims ” The most important moral argument against protectionism is that tariffs and trade barriers reduce the economic freedom of consumers. “ This argument assumes that freedom of consumption is a moral virtue and that reducing that freedom would be wrong. But economic freedom to consume is not a virtue. I would argue that such a freedom produces moral vice if it’s not restricted. Unfettered freedom of all kinds, working through human nature, naturally produces vice. It’s why God ordained government. So restricting freedom (including economic freedom) is actually necessary for virtue to thrive in a culture. The moral discussion must start with the assumption that economic restriction is actually necessary.
The real question is what economic activities should be restricted, where, and why. That’s where the moral issues and struggles reside. The author argues that tariffs should not be used because struggling Americans would struggle more to make ends meet. I guess that is one area of agreement: there are indeed many Americans who are struggling in the economy. But if that is a serious concern, why is there so little concern for the struggling ones when tariffs are not being discussed?
While it is true that new tariffs may bring a temporary pain as internal markets adjust, if one is actually concerned about struggling Americans, there are ways of temporarily subsidizing those who are struggling while a new market equilibrium is found. And once markets adjust, the internal stability produced by secure jobs and livelihoods, far outweigh the benefits of the over consumption of cheap foreign goods.
And that brings me to number two, the author says, ” Besides, it is certainly not the role of the Department of Commerce to decide who has a job and who does not.” Actually, it is the role of government to protect the welfare of all its citizens from foreign harm. In terms of our economic world order, it is precisely the government’s job to promote economic security HERE and job creation HERE, as opposed to incentivizing the creation of jobs in China or India (which our government has done for many years with the foreign reinvestment act and other policies). Noble-sounding goals of alleviating poverty worldwide are not our government’s duty. Benefits and welfare to other countries may be a positive side-effect of good government which protects its citizens here, but it cannot be said to be a purpose of our government. God has given us our government with its corresponding responsibilities for our welfare, just as each nation has been given their government for their own welfare.
I’m beginning to think that Ross Douthat’s observation a few weeks ago of intellectual disintegration may be deeper and more widespread than we’d like to think. From the assumptions implicit in this article, and from other arguments and comments that I have read, it seems that we do not properly appreciate the role of nations and their boundaries. Without that appreciation, there cannot be effective government. And while the unfettered freedom bordering anarchy may be appealing to some, it is really a curse in that it is the withdrawal of God-ordained government, in which everyone is left unconstrained to do what is right in his own eyes.
As a nation, if we are really interested in being a moral people, we should be less concerned about trying to morally justify our various economic ideologies, and more concerned about aligning our economic activities and policies with a biblical morality that requires both a personal work ethic and a business ethic.
LikeLiked by 1 person
No choice.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/01/24/sessions-has-no-choice-but-to-appoint-a-special-counsel-to-investigate-doj-fbi/
“It is long past time for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appoint a special counsel to investigate the possibility of widespread and systematic corruption, obstruction, leaking, and collusion within America’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The leadership of the FBI and Department of Justice have made clear, through their ongoing obstruction of congressional investigations and oversight, that these agencies simply can not be trusted to investigate or police themselves.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
5 things.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/01/26/5-things-learned-russia-investigation-week/
“In the last week, even more bombshells have dropped. In response, Democrats and their media allies have flooded the airwaves with the stuff Bess Truman wanted Harry to call horse manure. This makes sense. Many are so invested in the collusion narrative that a severe-enough blowback — where it is found that Hillary colluded with Russia, not Trump, for example — could destroy American institutions that wield enormous amounts of power.
Those at risk include the Democrat Party’s media appendages, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, Business Insider, The Hill, and Vox. Even the Democrat Party, at least the uber-corporatist manifestation that we see today, faces an existential crisis.
In other words, it will get much worse before it gets any better. In the meantime, to cut through all the media’s horse manure, here are five things we’ve learned about the so-called Russia investigation in the last week (and, at the end, what you can do about it).”
LikeLiked by 2 people
I am reading a book called Secrets of the Secret Service. At the end he has recommendations. One of them is’
“Congress should stop the practice of finding the fox in the henhouse and putting the fox in charge.” This cold apply elsewhere.
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The media and Dems have no choice now. They’re all in.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/01/25/what-to-expect-from-the-house-intel-memo-on-surveillance-abuse/
“5) Expect major pushback from surveillance state.
While the general public does not yet know the specifics contained in the report, we know that the alleged abuses by senior officials at the FBI and Department of Justice are significant enough to cause a wide variety of lawmakers extensive concern. Expect the FBI and DOJ to react the same way any other individual or institution reacts when indicted or charged with a major or heinous crime. They’ll assert their innocence, claim that the information is false, say that the oversight committee can’t prove anything.
Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) said, “While the report is classified as Top Secret, I believe the select committee should, pursuant to House rules, vote to make the report publicly available as soon as possible. This is a matter of national significance and the American people deserve the truth.”
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd strongly disagreed, sending a letter to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) saying releasing a memo alleging abuses at the Department of Justice and FBI would be “extraordinarily reckless.” This should surprise no one. No person or organization wants their dirty laundry aired in public, even if the letter’s claims that Americans can’t learn about law enforcement abuses lest it harm national security might be a bit overly dramatic. Transparency is difficult for everyone, even if it’s good for the country and these agencies in particular in the long run.
Even just the threat of the document’s release resulted in a new flurry of leaks regarding the investigations spurred by the dossier. Those will likely continue until the report is released, if past is prologue.
6) Expect major pushback from anyone who latched onto the Russia-Trump collusion theory over the last year.
The 4-page document will reportedly discuss FBI and DOJ handling of Democrat-funded opposition research that was used in official law enforcement work. The more Americans learn about the Russia-Trump collusion theory, the more it seems that the entire story was cooked up by that Democrat-funded opposition research. None of the substantive allegations in the infamous Steele dossier have been independently verified.
If there really is nothing to the Trump-Russia collusion theory, it poses something of an existential crisis for those who bought into the theory as their best hope for removing the elected president. That includes the activist left, the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, and also elements of the NeverTrump right. Among all the theories and attacks on the president, be they legitimate or illegitimate, the Russia theory is set apart and special because of its impeachment power and key to ousting him. While a few Republicans in Congress are working against those forces, the combined power and messaging coordination of the resistance is formidable.
You can see this already with how minor messaging points are blown up into large stories. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told journalists he was not allowed to see the House Intelligence Committee memo. That’s true, since the only legal access right now is for House members and Burr does not serve in the House but the Senate. It would at the very least require a vote of the entire committee to change those access protocols without violating rules. Still, a combined messaging campaign arose out of this talking point.
Earlier, resistance-allied journalists pushed the talking point that the FBI wasn’t allowed to see the memo alleging abuses at the FBI. These journalists were apparently confused as to which of the two entities has oversight of the other. The FBI is an inferior subordinate agency. Perhaps that’s a reasonable confusion in light of FBI behavior in recent years, but divided government is a real thing that remains. But the document might also encompass other agencies. Why would the FBI get a preview before other agencies? In any case, expect a lot of drama and pushback against the document.”
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Efforts are already underway.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/operation-sabotage-the-memo-1516925395?shareToken=st7fe19f860d0742fe9e4bb43b52ae99bd&reflink=article_email_share
“Rep. Adam Schiff has many talents, though few compare to his ability to function as a human barometer of Democratic panic. The greater the level of Schiff hot, pressured air, the more trouble the party knows it’s in.
Mr. Schiff’s millibars have been popping ever since the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, on which he is ranking Democrat, last week voted to make a classified GOP memo about FBI election year abuses available to every House member. Mr. Schiff has spit and spun and apoplectically accused his Republican colleagues of everything short of treason. The memo, he insists, is “profoundly misleading,” not to mention “distorted” and “political,” and an attack on the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He initially tried to block his colleagues from reading it. Having failed, he’s now arguing Americans can know the full story only if they see the underlying classified documents.
This is highly convenient, given the Justice Department retains those documents and is as eager to make them public as a fox is to abandon the henhouse. Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes had to threaten a contempt citation simply to get permission for his committee to gain access, and even then investigators had to leave Capitol Hill to view them, and were allowed only to take notes. Mr. Nunes has no authority to declassify them. The best he can do in his continuing transparency efforts is to summarize their contents. Only in Schiff land is sunshine suddenly a pollutant.”
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Imagine what this will do to morale at the FBI:
https://www.google.com/amp/www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/huppke/ct-met-fbi-secret-society-huppke-20180125-story,amp.html
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Uh-oh. this was my mom’s alma mater, though I’d like to see more context in the brief item AP posted. …
http://www.kcci.com/article/racist-chants-rain-down-on-iowa-high-school-basketball-team/15892455
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Racist chants rain down on Iowa high school basketball team
Authorities say some student spectators at a predominantly white school in northwest Iowa greeted a visiting rival boys’ basketball team with racist chants.
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There are Memos popping up everywhere:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/democrats-draft-memo-defending-fbi-and-doj-from-republican-attacks-2018-1
Fortunately, I was able to obtain the full text of one of Strzok’s text messages:
“Ye’ll take your Memo
And I’ll take my Memo
And I’ll be by Comey afore ye.
Me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonny, bonny banks of the Potomac.”
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Look! Trump must have read “The Moral Case for Trade”. I’m sorry, Debra. Today may be the day for betrayals.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/25/trump-says-he-would-reconsider-trans-pacific-partnership-trade-deal.html
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Mona still targets the Clintons when the need arises.
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