He thinks he’s above all. I just saw Justice Roberts tell him his time was up and he just kept talking. Reminded me of how he threatened Kavanaugh with impeachment. I’ve never seen anybody like him.
“Ex-Trump aide Carter Page files suit against DNC over dossier: ‘This is only the first salvo’”
” Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court against the Democratic National Committee, law firm Perkins Coie and its partners tied to the funding of the unverified dossier that served as the basis for highly controversial surveillance warrants against him.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois’ Eastern Division Thursday morning, and was described by his attorneys as the “first of multiple actions in the wake of historic” Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse.
“This is a first step to ensure that the full extent of the FISA abuse that has occurred during the last few years is exposed and remedied,” attorney John Pierce said Thursday. “Defendants and those they worked with inside the federal government did not and will not succeed in making America a surveillance state.””
————
More….
“We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, no matter how high.”
The suit goes on to allege the parties named “misrepresented Dr. Page’s connections to and interactions with certain foreign nationals in order to create the false impression that Dr. Page —a law-abiding American citizen who served his country honorably in the United States Navy and in the private sector—was in fact an agent of a foreign power, Russia.”
The suit states: “Defendants leveraged these fabrications within the Federal Bureau of Investigation (‘FBI’) and the United States Department of Justice (‘DOJ’), leading these agencies to present false applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (‘FISC’).”
The suit alleges Page was then “wrongfully and covertly surveilled” and “has seen his reputation ruined and his personal safety threatened.”
Page and Pierce chose “Illinois because they allege the relationship with the firm behind the dossier, Fusion GPS, was ‘orchestrated’ through law firm Perkins Coie’s Chicago office.” They also claimed that “the DNC ‘has a historical pattern’ of making Chicago its principal place of business.”
Page seeks “compensatory, special and punitive damages in appropriate amounts to be established at trial” in the lawsuit.
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote in his report in December “that the FBI made repeated errors and misrepresentations before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as the FBI sought to monitor Page in 2016 and 2017.”
Horowitz also confirmed that the FBI used the dossier on its FISA applications.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) revealed last week two of the applications that lacked probable cause to monitor Page:
“In connection with an effort to counter the Trump campaign, Defendants undertook to develop opposition research regarding Trump and his campaign, including persons associated with that campaign,” the new lawsuit states. “As part of this effort, Defendants developed a dossier replete with falsehoods about numerous individuals associated with the Trump campaign—especially Dr. Page. Defendants then sought to tarnish the Trump campaign and its affiliates (including Dr. Page) by publicizing this false information.””
“DOJ relents, says it would accept probation for Michael Flynn as he moves to withdraw guilty plea”
“The Department of Justice backed down from seeking jail time Wednesday and made clear that prosecutors would accept mere probation in the case of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — a shift that comes as Flynn moves to withdraw his guilty plea leveraging accusations of government misconduct.
Just weeks ago, the DOJ said it would seek up to six months of prison time for the retired Army lieutenant general who spent just 24 days at his post in the Trump administration. Represented by an aggressive new attorney, Flynn days later had moved to withdraw his guilty plea for making false statements to two FBI agents in 2017 — statements that eventually wrapped him up in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“In truth, I never lied,” Flynn wrote in a new supplemental motion to withdraw his guilty plea filed Wednesday. “My guilty plea has rankled me throughout this process, and while I allowed myself to succumb to the threats from the government to save my family, I believe I was grossly misled about what really happened.”
Flynn also blamed his former lawyers for providing him with bad information that led him to plead guilty.”
“Feds Back Off Jailing Michael Flynn After Stunning New Evidence That Gov’t ‘Lied’ and ‘Framed’ Him”
“The government lied, “framed,” hid favorable evidence, and showed “contempt for the law at every turn” in their treatment of Michael Flynn, the retired three-star Army general and former Trump White House national security adviser.
Those charges were contained in a new filing in the government’s case against Flynn. And his attorney, Sidney Powell, was just getting started.
In the 27-page-filing, an add-on to her previous motions, Powell demanded charges be dropped against Flynn based on previously withheld exculpatory documents by the government and the IG report on FISA abuse.
The net result was that federal prosecutors publicly considered, for the first time, that Flynn would get no jail time and instead be put on probation for his previous guilty plea in what we now know was the beginning of the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” operation against the Trump White House.
Powell asserted that Flynn was innocent, claiming the “IG Report is replete with exculpatory information that, had it been know to Mr. Flynn, he never would have pled guilty.””
“On Sunday Ilhan Omar’s henchman — one Guhad Hashi — emitted a stream of terroristic threats against David Steinberg. They were numerous, they were vulgar, they were public, and they were intended to silence David and others.
I wrote about the threats here. David used Twitter to comment on the threats. I documented David’s comments here (with link to archived screenshots of the threats) and here.
If you have followed the story so far, I want you to know that Hashi has now wiped his Facebook page. It has come to this.”
“Steyer, Soros-Funded Groups Part of New Coalition Launched to Attack McConnell”
“Liberal groups heavily financed by Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer and billionaire George Soros are part of a new coalition launched to attack Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and Republicans ahead of the 2020 elections.
Fix Our Senate, an alliance of liberal groups launched Tuesday, said that it intends to “shine a light on McConnell and every ally who supports him,” Axios reported. The group plans to push out damaging research against McConnell in hopes of pinning responsibility for “wealth inequality,” drug prices, conservative judicial nominations, and legislative gridlock on the Kentucky senator.
Despite their focus on “inequality,” the groups behind Fix Our Senate are themselves fueled by some of the wealthiest and most powerful donors to the Democratic party. The new effort is part of a wave of dark money being poured into progressive coffers by deep-pocketed financiers, activist networks, and labor unions in advance of the 2020 election. It also indicates that these groups see McConnell—who has repeatedly frustrated the left’s agenda in the Senate—as a prime target in November.
Fix Our Senate will be registered as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, which will allow it to hide the identity of its donors. It will be led by Joshua Karp, a former communications director at American Bridge, the opposition research group founded and run by liberal operative David Brock.
Fix Our Senate did not respond to requests for comment on the project and its coalition.”
“AG Barr: ‘Militant Secularists Are Trying to Impose Their Values on Religious People’”
“In a recent discussion on the Catholic Channel, Attorney General William Barr warned that there is an organized effort to drive religion out of the public square and that “militant secularists” are trying to impose their secular values on religious people.
During his January 28 appearance on the Sirius XM talk show “Conversation With Cardinal Dolan” with Dolan and co-host Father Dave Dwyer, Barr contended that the First Amendment is under assault,
He began by pointing out that the Founding Fathers viewed religion as “essential to maintaining a free country.”
“The reason they felt they could grant so much freedom in the Constitution and only provide for limited government was because they felt that religion was there and the people were religious people who could largely govern themselves,” Barr said. “All the founders, and as you pointed out earlier to me, Your Eminence, Alexis de Tocqueville observed the centrality of religion, to the health of American democracy.”
To placate those who fret about the looming threat of “religious totalitarianism,” Barr stressed that he was not talking about mixing church and state, but about allowing people space to live their lives according to their moral values.
“We believe in the separation of church and state, but what permits a limited government and minimal command and control of the population and allows people to have freedom of choice in their lives, and trust in the people is the fact that they are a people that are capable of disciplining themselves according to moral values.”
The attorney general went on to say that the real threat to civil liberties was not coming from religious people, but from what he called “militant secularists.”
“I feel today religion is being driven out of the marketplace of ideas and there’s a organized militant secular effort to drive religion out of our lives,” Barr told Dolan. “To me the problem today is not that religious people are trying to impose their views on nonreligious people, it’s the opposite — it’s that militant secularists are trying to impose their values on religious people and they’re not accommodating the freedom of religion of people of faith.””
“The House of Representatives voted 320–88 on Wednesday evening to extend a federal ban on fentanyl and its analogs, despite the dissenting votes and voices of 86 Democrats.
The bill, S.3201, passed the Senate unanimously, but languished in the House for almost two weeks, running dangerously close to a Feb. 6 deadline after which the Drug Enforcement Administration’s blanket scheduling of fentanyl and its analogs was set to expire. Such a lapse would have made it substantially harder for federal law enforcement to prosecute dealers of the drugs responsible for tens of thousands of deaths over the past several years.
Even as they debated the bill Wednesday morning, however, some House Democrats still voiced concerns over a bill they saw as too tough on crime. Such arguments, alongside the dissenting vote from within the Democratic caucus, raise serious questions about Democrats’ commitment to using all tools available to fight the deadliest drug crisis in American history.
There are a number of different chemical variations—called “analogs”—of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. In 2018, faced with a wave of new analogs, many of which were not technically illegal under the Controlled Substances Act, the DEA used its administrative authority to temporarily place them all in schedule one, the strictest control category in the CSA.
That scheduling lasts only two years, which is where S.3201 comes in. The bill—which, according to a Senate GOP aide, was “watered down” from a full ban—extends the scheduling by a year and instructs the Department of Justice to issue a report on the effects of continuing it further. This version passed the Senate unanimously, and garnered the support of law enforcement officers across the political spectrum, including all 50 state attorneys general.
The bill’s extended stay in the House is due to Democratic opposition even to the weakened version. House Democrats managed to kill a similar provision in last December’s spending bill. On Wednesday it became apparent why House Democrats have been largely mum on the issue, as several caucus members indicated that they believed that enabling law enforcement to prosecute drug traffickers was a dangerous and wrong-headed approach.
“Let’s not enact another law that sends more people to prison while ignoring the root causes of the present crisis, which is substance abuse and which should be dealt with as a public health problem,” Rep. Bobby Scott (D., Va.) said. “That’s the approach we should take, and we can take that approach by rejecting this bill.””
—————-
Sorry folks, but we need to be tough on heroin/fentanyl dealers. It’s disgusting that these Democrats don’t see that yet.
Chas, funny. Yeah, when no one knows who you are as the primaries launch, it’s probably time to throw in the towel.
Is this him? Haha, I don’t know either!
~ John Kevin Delaney (born April 16, 1963) is an American attorney, businessman, and politician who was the United States Representative for Maryland’s 6th congressional district from 2013 to 2019. On July 28, 2017, Delaney became the first Democrat to announce his run for president in 2020. ~
VIDEO: 🇬🇧🇪🇺 British MEPs from the Brexit Party leave the European Parliament in Brussels for one last time on #BrexitDay, to the sound of bagpipes and waving a British flag pic.twitter.com/htDamwOTKs
She might as well have just asked him, Chief Justice….. when did you stop beating your wife……?
John Roberts was NOT happy with @EWarren's nasty question about whether the legitimacy of SCOTUS (and Roberts himself) would be sullied if there are no witnesses in the Senate trial pic.twitter.com/60fbiME3Db
Murkowski says she will vote no on calling witnesses: What also become clear some of my colleagues intend to further politicize this process, and drag the Supreme Court into the fray, while attacking the Chief Justice. I will not stand for nor support that effort.
"Given how it started, and how its continued, I don't think any new information changes anything. And so I don't think that we can provide a fair trial. We as a Congress have failed with this. We've degraded our institution. And now we're on track to take the Sup. Court with us."
(2/5) The House chose to send articles of impeachment that are rushed and flawed. I carefully considered the need for additional witnesses and documents, to cure the shortcomings of its process, but ultimately decided that I will vote against considering motions to subpoena.
#RIPAmerica happened in the House when Schiff, Nadler and Pelosi ignored constitutional law, historical precedents and THEIR OWN WORDS when they hastily pushed through a political impeachment based on lies. Pelosi knew this going in and tried to stop it.
The Senate Chaplain showing that he is furious because there's gonna be no witnesses. Democrats tweeting #RIPAmerica because whenever they do not get their way it is the end of Democracy. Thank you Sen. Murkowski for helping us laugh at them again. #WeWinYouLose. pic.twitter.com/N0wayfIqsE
NEWS: The U.S. Senate, 49-51, failed to agree to make in order consideration and debate motions to subpoenas or documents. Shorter: the all important witness vote officially goes down.
I admit I have not been following this closely, but I don’t understand why the Republicans will not allow (any more?) witnesses. To many, this will look like they are covering something up. (Not saying they are, but that’s what it will look like.) So if/when Trump is acquitted, it will not necessarily acquit him in the minds of many voters.
FTR, even if what Trump said was wrong (and it could certainly sound that way, as many think), I don’t think it rises to the “high crimes and misdemeanors” necessary for an impeachment conviction. But then again, as I said, I haven’t been following as closely and deeply as others here have.
Witnesses were the House’s job. They put up 18, and they allowed Trump and Republicans zero witnesses. Every attempt they made, Schiff and company refused. Them crying now is just total BS.
The Senate’s job is to look at the record (produced by Dems) and render a verdict. It’s not their job to put up additional witnesses that the House didn’t bother to legally subpoena and when refused, challenge executive privilege in court. They opted to skip all that and go straight to the impeachment vote. They were in a hurry to do this as quickly as they could in time to smear Trump with it before the election.
The Senate has no obligation to do so now, to make up for it.
If the left wants a boogie man to blame, look no further than the House leadership who badly botched this from the get go.
If the left is ticked now, just wait to McConnell and Graham start looking more closely at what those involved in this fiasco. Plus Durham indictments will hit soon from the last farce they put on. This is far from over.
But it should make the scheduled in the House SotU speech Tuesday night, the night before the now scheduled vote to acquit Wednesday, a real hoot. 🙂
Trump will need help to hold a smile as big as he’ll have come Tuesday night. 🙂
Democrats?….. Not so much I’m thinking. 🙂
And I hope he takes the time to publicly thank Roberts for his efforts. Again, just to drive the left crazy. 🙂
“President Donald Trump appears to have added another name to the list of terrorists that his administration has killed as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reportedly launched a drone strike that killed the leader of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.
“The officials expressed confidence that the Qaeda leader, Qassim al-Rimi, was killed in a January airstrike in Yemen but were awaiting confirmation before making a public announcement,” The New York Times reported. “If confirmed, his death could represent a significant blow to the Qaeda affiliate, which remains one of the most potent branches of the terrorist group. The Yemen branch, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has tried to attack the United States and Europe and is thought to still want to.””
Wandering Views 
Has she been drinking again?
Because that’s exactly what “acquit” means, and they already had their show trial in the House….. She has no clue how this works.
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I was checking Drudge to see if anything was happening today.
Nothing is.
Except impeachment. I want it to be over.
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The Toad let’s the mask slip.
https://twitter.com/TenNamesLater/status/1222720453736894464
———-
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Sue everyone involved. Discovery will be a hoot. 🙂
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ex-trump-aide-carter-page-files-suit-against-dnc-over-dossier-this-is-only-the-first-salvo
“Ex-Trump aide Carter Page files suit against DNC over dossier: ‘This is only the first salvo’”
” Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court against the Democratic National Committee, law firm Perkins Coie and its partners tied to the funding of the unverified dossier that served as the basis for highly controversial surveillance warrants against him.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois’ Eastern Division Thursday morning, and was described by his attorneys as the “first of multiple actions in the wake of historic” Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse.
“This is a first step to ensure that the full extent of the FISA abuse that has occurred during the last few years is exposed and remedied,” attorney John Pierce said Thursday. “Defendants and those they worked with inside the federal government did not and will not succeed in making America a surveillance state.””
————
More….
“We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, no matter how high.”
Which is right to Obama.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/01/ex-trump-aide-carter-page-files-lawsuit-against-dnc-law-firm-perkins-coie-over-dossier/
“There’s more:
The suit goes on to allege the parties named “misrepresented Dr. Page’s connections to and interactions with certain foreign nationals in order to create the false impression that Dr. Page —a law-abiding American citizen who served his country honorably in the United States Navy and in the private sector—was in fact an agent of a foreign power, Russia.”
The suit states: “Defendants leveraged these fabrications within the Federal Bureau of Investigation (‘FBI’) and the United States Department of Justice (‘DOJ’), leading these agencies to present false applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (‘FISC’).”
The suit alleges Page was then “wrongfully and covertly surveilled” and “has seen his reputation ruined and his personal safety threatened.”
Page and Pierce chose “Illinois because they allege the relationship with the firm behind the dossier, Fusion GPS, was ‘orchestrated’ through law firm Perkins Coie’s Chicago office.” They also claimed that “the DNC ‘has a historical pattern’ of making Chicago its principal place of business.”
Page seeks “compensatory, special and punitive damages in appropriate amounts to be established at trial” in the lawsuit.
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote in his report in December “that the FBI made repeated errors and misrepresentations before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as the FBI sought to monitor Page in 2016 and 2017.”
Horowitz also confirmed that the FBI used the dossier on its FISA applications.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) revealed last week two of the applications that lacked probable cause to monitor Page:
“In connection with an effort to counter the Trump campaign, Defendants undertook to develop opposition research regarding Trump and his campaign, including persons associated with that campaign,” the new lawsuit states. “As part of this effort, Defendants developed a dossier replete with falsehoods about numerous individuals associated with the Trump campaign—especially Dr. Page. Defendants then sought to tarnish the Trump campaign and its affiliates (including Dr. Page) by publicizing this false information.””
LikeLiked by 1 person
An interesting about face…..
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-relents-says-it-would-be-okay-with-probation-for-michael-flynn
“DOJ relents, says it would accept probation for Michael Flynn as he moves to withdraw guilty plea”
“The Department of Justice backed down from seeking jail time Wednesday and made clear that prosecutors would accept mere probation in the case of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — a shift that comes as Flynn moves to withdraw his guilty plea leveraging accusations of government misconduct.
Just weeks ago, the DOJ said it would seek up to six months of prison time for the retired Army lieutenant general who spent just 24 days at his post in the Trump administration. Represented by an aggressive new attorney, Flynn days later had moved to withdraw his guilty plea for making false statements to two FBI agents in 2017 — statements that eventually wrapped him up in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“In truth, I never lied,” Flynn wrote in a new supplemental motion to withdraw his guilty plea filed Wednesday. “My guilty plea has rankled me throughout this process, and while I allowed myself to succumb to the threats from the government to save my family, I believe I was grossly misled about what really happened.”
Flynn also blamed his former lawyers for providing him with bad information that led him to plead guilty.”
——–
More…..
https://pjmedia.com/trending/feds-back-off-jailing-michael-flynn-after-stunning-new-evidence-that-govt-lied-and-framed-him/
“Feds Back Off Jailing Michael Flynn After Stunning New Evidence That Gov’t ‘Lied’ and ‘Framed’ Him”
“The government lied, “framed,” hid favorable evidence, and showed “contempt for the law at every turn” in their treatment of Michael Flynn, the retired three-star Army general and former Trump White House national security adviser.
Those charges were contained in a new filing in the government’s case against Flynn. And his attorney, Sidney Powell, was just getting started.
In the 27-page-filing, an add-on to her previous motions, Powell demanded charges be dropped against Flynn based on previously withheld exculpatory documents by the government and the IG report on FISA abuse.
The net result was that federal prosecutors publicly considered, for the first time, that Flynn would get no jail time and instead be put on probation for his previous guilty plea in what we now know was the beginning of the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” operation against the Trump White House.
Powell asserted that Flynn was innocent, claiming the “IG Report is replete with exculpatory information that, had it been know to Mr. Flynn, he never would have pled guilty.””
LikeLiked by 2 people
Omar’s enforcer is busy purging his social media footprint after he lost it and went all anti-Semetic, vulgar, and made terroristic threats.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/01/hashi-wipes-his-facebook-page.php
“On Sunday Ilhan Omar’s henchman — one Guhad Hashi — emitted a stream of terroristic threats against David Steinberg. They were numerous, they were vulgar, they were public, and they were intended to silence David and others.
I wrote about the threats here. David used Twitter to comment on the threats. I documented David’s comments here (with link to archived screenshots of the threats) and here.
If you have followed the story so far, I want you to know that Hashi has now wiped his Facebook page. It has come to this.”
LikeLike
Once again Democrats collude with this foreigner to influence our elections. Yet they keep trying to project their crimes unto Trump.
Nothing to see….. move along….
https://freebeacon.com/politics/steyer-soros-funded-groups-part-of-new-coalition-launched-to-attack-mcconnell/
“Steyer, Soros-Funded Groups Part of New Coalition Launched to Attack McConnell”
“Liberal groups heavily financed by Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer and billionaire George Soros are part of a new coalition launched to attack Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and Republicans ahead of the 2020 elections.
Fix Our Senate, an alliance of liberal groups launched Tuesday, said that it intends to “shine a light on McConnell and every ally who supports him,” Axios reported. The group plans to push out damaging research against McConnell in hopes of pinning responsibility for “wealth inequality,” drug prices, conservative judicial nominations, and legislative gridlock on the Kentucky senator.
Despite their focus on “inequality,” the groups behind Fix Our Senate are themselves fueled by some of the wealthiest and most powerful donors to the Democratic party. The new effort is part of a wave of dark money being poured into progressive coffers by deep-pocketed financiers, activist networks, and labor unions in advance of the 2020 election. It also indicates that these groups see McConnell—who has repeatedly frustrated the left’s agenda in the Senate—as a prime target in November.
Fix Our Senate will be registered as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, which will allow it to hide the identity of its donors. It will be led by Joshua Karp, a former communications director at American Bridge, the opposition research group founded and run by liberal operative David Brock.
Fix Our Senate did not respond to requests for comment on the project and its coalition.”
——————
Get the money out of politics!
Well, not our money……
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Once again, the left is projecting…..
“AG Barr: ‘Militant Secularists Are Trying to Impose Their Values on Religious People’”
“In a recent discussion on the Catholic Channel, Attorney General William Barr warned that there is an organized effort to drive religion out of the public square and that “militant secularists” are trying to impose their secular values on religious people.
During his January 28 appearance on the Sirius XM talk show “Conversation With Cardinal Dolan” with Dolan and co-host Father Dave Dwyer, Barr contended that the First Amendment is under assault,
He began by pointing out that the Founding Fathers viewed religion as “essential to maintaining a free country.”
“The reason they felt they could grant so much freedom in the Constitution and only provide for limited government was because they felt that religion was there and the people were religious people who could largely govern themselves,” Barr said. “All the founders, and as you pointed out earlier to me, Your Eminence, Alexis de Tocqueville observed the centrality of religion, to the health of American democracy.”
To placate those who fret about the looming threat of “religious totalitarianism,” Barr stressed that he was not talking about mixing church and state, but about allowing people space to live their lives according to their moral values.
“We believe in the separation of church and state, but what permits a limited government and minimal command and control of the population and allows people to have freedom of choice in their lives, and trust in the people is the fact that they are a people that are capable of disciplining themselves according to moral values.”
The attorney general went on to say that the real threat to civil liberties was not coming from religious people, but from what he called “militant secularists.”
“I feel today religion is being driven out of the marketplace of ideas and there’s a organized militant secular effort to drive religion out of our lives,” Barr told Dolan. “To me the problem today is not that religious people are trying to impose their views on nonreligious people, it’s the opposite — it’s that militant secularists are trying to impose their values on religious people and they’re not accommodating the freedom of religion of people of faith.””
—————
And he’s right.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The House passed a fentanyl ban yesterday, despite the objections of numerous Dems who found it “too tough on crime.”
https://freebeacon.com/issues/house-passes-fentanyl-ban-over-democratic-objections/
“The House of Representatives voted 320–88 on Wednesday evening to extend a federal ban on fentanyl and its analogs, despite the dissenting votes and voices of 86 Democrats.
The bill, S.3201, passed the Senate unanimously, but languished in the House for almost two weeks, running dangerously close to a Feb. 6 deadline after which the Drug Enforcement Administration’s blanket scheduling of fentanyl and its analogs was set to expire. Such a lapse would have made it substantially harder for federal law enforcement to prosecute dealers of the drugs responsible for tens of thousands of deaths over the past several years.
Even as they debated the bill Wednesday morning, however, some House Democrats still voiced concerns over a bill they saw as too tough on crime. Such arguments, alongside the dissenting vote from within the Democratic caucus, raise serious questions about Democrats’ commitment to using all tools available to fight the deadliest drug crisis in American history.
There are a number of different chemical variations—called “analogs”—of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. In 2018, faced with a wave of new analogs, many of which were not technically illegal under the Controlled Substances Act, the DEA used its administrative authority to temporarily place them all in schedule one, the strictest control category in the CSA.
That scheduling lasts only two years, which is where S.3201 comes in. The bill—which, according to a Senate GOP aide, was “watered down” from a full ban—extends the scheduling by a year and instructs the Department of Justice to issue a report on the effects of continuing it further. This version passed the Senate unanimously, and garnered the support of law enforcement officers across the political spectrum, including all 50 state attorneys general.
The bill’s extended stay in the House is due to Democratic opposition even to the weakened version. House Democrats managed to kill a similar provision in last December’s spending bill. On Wednesday it became apparent why House Democrats have been largely mum on the issue, as several caucus members indicated that they believed that enabling law enforcement to prosecute drug traffickers was a dangerous and wrong-headed approach.
“Let’s not enact another law that sends more people to prison while ignoring the root causes of the present crisis, which is substance abuse and which should be dealt with as a public health problem,” Rep. Bobby Scott (D., Va.) said. “That’s the approach we should take, and we can take that approach by rejecting this bill.””
—————-
Sorry folks, but we need to be tough on heroin/fentanyl dealers. It’s disgusting that these Democrats don’t see that yet.
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Who is Tom Delaney? You ask.
I have no idea, but I notice he has dropped out of the presidential race.
Wise decision.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Chas, funny. Yeah, when no one knows who you are as the primaries launch, it’s probably time to throw in the towel.
Is this him? Haha, I don’t know either!
~ John Kevin Delaney (born April 16, 1963) is an American attorney, businessman, and politician who was the United States Representative for Maryland’s 6th congressional district from 2013 to 2019. On July 28, 2017, Delaney became the first Democrat to announce his run for president in 2020. ~
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Last one out, kill the lights….
————-
LikeLiked by 1 person
She might as well have just asked him, Chief Justice….. when did you stop beating your wife……?
————
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Jerry, Jerry, Jerry……
———
LikeLiked by 2 people
Did Warren seal the deal? 🙂
Sure sounds like it…. 🙂
————–
LikeLiked by 1 person
Historic!
And look! More free signing pens! 🙂
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The President handing out handfuls of pens afterwards is the ultimate trolling of Pelosi.
Well done! 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Murkowski explains her reasoning.
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2020/01/31/congress-has-failed-sen-lisa-murkowski-explains-her-no-vote-on-additional-witnesses-docs-in-brutal-thread-bonus-elizabeth-warren-slam/
———
LikeLiked by 1 person
The left is taking the news of no witnesses as you’d expect……
Badly….. 🙂
—————
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There’s that ugly truth again…..
————
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Enjoy the misery of the drama lamas. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Go ahead, click that blue #RIPAmerica link in the tweet above, and then sit back and enjoy the drama…… 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is serious and somber…..
So stop laughing, the cameras are on! 🙂
LikeLiked by 3 people
I think the Senate is putting the House under the bus. The House has thought too much of itself and has felt the backfire.
LikeLiked by 2 people
“I feel like I’m literally watching the death of my country”
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
LikeLiked by 4 people
(I meant “what she thinks it means”, in case that wasn’t clear.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
My fav….
https://twitter.com/maxmortis/status/1223317535820603400
LikeLiked by 2 people
Time to shut this down. 🙂
In flames……
No thanks to traitor Romney…….
Only one vote to go, the vote to acquit. 🙂
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I admit I have not been following this closely, but I don’t understand why the Republicans will not allow (any more?) witnesses. To many, this will look like they are covering something up. (Not saying they are, but that’s what it will look like.) So if/when Trump is acquitted, it will not necessarily acquit him in the minds of many voters.
FTR, even if what Trump said was wrong (and it could certainly sound that way, as many think), I don’t think it rises to the “high crimes and misdemeanors” necessary for an impeachment conviction. But then again, as I said, I haven’t been following as closely and deeply as others here have.
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Kizzie,
Witnesses were the House’s job. They put up 18, and they allowed Trump and Republicans zero witnesses. Every attempt they made, Schiff and company refused. Them crying now is just total BS.
The Senate’s job is to look at the record (produced by Dems) and render a verdict. It’s not their job to put up additional witnesses that the House didn’t bother to legally subpoena and when refused, challenge executive privilege in court. They opted to skip all that and go straight to the impeachment vote. They were in a hurry to do this as quickly as they could in time to smear Trump with it before the election.
The Senate has no obligation to do so now, to make up for it.
If the left wants a boogie man to blame, look no further than the House leadership who badly botched this from the get go.
If the left is ticked now, just wait to McConnell and Graham start looking more closely at what those involved in this fiasco. Plus Durham indictments will hit soon from the last farce they put on. This is far from over.
But it should make the scheduled in the House SotU speech Tuesday night, the night before the now scheduled vote to acquit Wednesday, a real hoot. 🙂
Trump will need help to hold a smile as big as he’ll have come Tuesday night. 🙂
Democrats?….. Not so much I’m thinking. 🙂
And I hope he takes the time to publicly thank Roberts for his efforts. Again, just to drive the left crazy. 🙂
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Trump takes out another terrorist.
Dems will be complaining about it I’m sure.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-takes-out-another-top-terrorist-in-the-middle-east
“President Donald Trump appears to have added another name to the list of terrorists that his administration has killed as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reportedly launched a drone strike that killed the leader of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.
“The officials expressed confidence that the Qaeda leader, Qassim al-Rimi, was killed in a January airstrike in Yemen but were awaiting confirmation before making a public announcement,” The New York Times reported. “If confirmed, his death could represent a significant blow to the Qaeda affiliate, which remains one of the most potent branches of the terrorist group. The Yemen branch, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has tried to attack the United States and Europe and is thought to still want to.””
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