Attention residence of sanctuary cities and states.
Your elected leaders disobedience to federal law will now begin hitting your wallets. It is on your backs those officials will now put the shortages for their activism. Remember to vote accordingly next time.
Now that yet another activist judge has been overruled, let the gnashing of teeth begin.
“Appeals Court upholds Trump withholding Justice Department grants from sanctuary cities
2nd Circuit: “the plain language of the relevant statutes authorizes the Attorney General to impose the challenged conditions””
“Another day, another appeals court reversing a district court injunction which intefered with the legitimate constitutional and statutory powers of the president. We’ve covered this problem of such district court injunctions many times before.”
——–
“The Second Circuit Court of Appeals just reversed (h/t Adam Klasfeld). Here’s the summary from the Opinion (emphasis added):
The principal legal question presented in this appeal is whetherthe federal government may deny grants of money to State and local governments that would be eligible for such awards but for their refusal to comply with three immigration‐related conditions imposed by the Attorney General of the United States. Those conditions require grant applicants to certify that they will (1) comply with federal law prohibiting any restrictions on the communication of citizenship and alien status information with federal mmigration authorities, see 8 U.S.C. § 1373; (2) provide federal authorities, upon request, with the release dates of incarcerated illegal aliens; and (3) afford federal immigration officers access to incarcerated illegal aliens….
At its core, this appeal presents questions of statutory construction. In proceedings below, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Edgardo Ramos, Judge) determined that the Attorney General was not statutorily authorized to impose the challenged conditions and, therefore, enjoined their application. See New York v. Dep’t of Justice, 343 F. Supp. 3d 213 (S.D.N.Y. 2018). The thoughtful opinion of the district court requires us to examine the authorization question in detail. For reasons explained in this opinion, we conclude that the plain language of the relevant statutes authorizes the Attorney General to impose the challenged conditions.
In concluding otherwise, the district court relied on, among other things, an opinion of the Seventh Circuit in City of Chicago v. Sessions, 888 F.3d 272 (7th Cir. 2018). While mindful of the respect owed to our sister circuits, we cannot agree that the federal government must be enjoined from imposing the challenged conditions on the federal grants here at issue. These conditions help the federal government enforce national immigration laws and policies supported by successive Democratic and Republican administrations. But more to the authorization point, they ensure that applicants satisfy particular statutory grant requirements imposed by Congress and subject to Attorney General oversight.
Given what appears to be a conflict among the Circuits, it seems likely that the Supreme Court will take the case (where Trump likely will win again). But in the meantime, the crackdown can continue.”
“A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the Department of Justice (DOJ) could withhold funding from cities and states that refuse to cooperate with the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
A three-judge panel on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned a district court judge’s ruling that the department lacked the authority to impose immigration-related conditions on certain funding.
The panel’s opinion, written by Judge Reena Raggi, found that Congress had delegated authority to the attorney general to set conditions on the federal grant program it had created, called the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program.
“Repeatedly and throughout its pronouncement of Byrne Program statutory requirements, Congress makes clear that a grant applicant demonstrates qualification by satisfying statutory requirements in such form and according to such rules as the Attorney General establishes,” wrote Raggi, who was appointed to the court by George W. Bush. “This confers considerable authority on the Attorney General.”
A group of seven states and New York City sued the DOJ in 2017 after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the agency would start withholding funding from local governments that refused to share information about undocumented immigrants or provide jail access to federal authorities investigating inmates’ immigration status.
The states challenging the policy are New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Washington, Massachusetts and Virginia.”
“Trump Campaign Sues New York Times For Libel — Read The Full Complaint And Statement From Legal Adviser”
“President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign announced Wednesday a libel lawsuit against the New York Times.
The official complaint filed by the campaign states that the Times was “well aware” it published false information about collusion between the Russian government and Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“The Times’ own previous reporting had confirmed the falsity of these statements,” the complaint reads. “But the Times published these statements anyway, knowing them to be false, and knowing it would misinform and mislead its own readers, because of The Times’ extreme bias against and animosity toward the Campaign, and the Times’ exuberance to improperly influence the presidential election in November 2020.”
The campaign’s senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis added in a statement that the Times’ reporting was “100 percent false and defamatory.”
The piece in question, titled “The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo,” was published in late March, 2019. The statute of limitations in New York for libel cases is one year.”
“Wuhan Virus Watch: Rod Rosenstein’s Sister Gins Up Fear With Her CDC Statement
HHS Secretary Alex Azar gave a much calmer, more reasoned, and likely more factual risk assessment.”
“The Wuhan Coronavirus cases now stand at 80,598 distributed within 41 different countries and territories. The death toll is currently at 2,712.
Rod Rosenstein’s sister gins up fear with her CDC statement
Yesterday, I looked at how people have used news about COVID-19 as click-bait. Additionally, Professor Jacobson noted that the virus had merged with Trump Derangement Syndrome as a means of attacking President Donald Trump and tanking his outstanding economic success.
One of the challenges I face in analyzing reports about the Wuhan coronavirus is determining propaganda and reality. While I do not believe the Chinese have fully disclosed the number of deaths, I had not anticipated a member of the Center For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would use her platform to distort the risks associated with the pathogen to undermine the administration.
Today, reports stated that a CDC official has warned that the agency expects the novel coronavirus to begin spreading in the U.S. at the community level, and that “disruption to everyday life may be severe.”
Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the agency’s director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a press briefing on Tuesday that the time for Americans to begin preparing for a potential outbreak of the virus is now, although officials believe the immediate threat to the public remains low.
“As more and more countries experience community spread, successful containment at our borders becomes harder and harder,” Messonnier said. “Ultimately, we expect we will see community spread in this country. It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of when this will happen, and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”
The news has spooked investors and impacted the stock market. Imagine my surprise that Dr. Nancy Messonnier has a deeply deep state connection in the form of her brother, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.”
1) Earlier today Dr. Nancy Messonnier, an official in the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), held a conference call with media and pushed a panic narrative around the Coronvirus that ran counter to the Trump administration. https://t.co/tq4nY1Mz8q
“Being skeptical of all things on social media, I confirmed that this relationship was listed correctly.
Meanwhile, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar gave a much calmer, more reasoned, and likely more factual risk assessment than Messonnier.”
“Blagojevich Explains Obama’s Involvement in Scandal that Sent Him to Prison, Teases More Info”
“One of the eleven people who President Donald Trump granted clemency to last week was a controversial choice, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.
Blagojevich was locked up for his involvement in selling Barack Obama’s Senate seat after Obama won the presidency in 2008.
But Blagojevich isn’t repentant about his actions, he doesn’t think what he did was wrong, rather he terms it routine politics.
He had a few things he wanted to say about Barack Obama’s alleged involvement in the whole event that became a scandal and sent him to prison as he spoke to Jesse Watters during “Watters’ World” on Fox.
Watters asked Blagojevich to explain Obama’s alleged involvement in the event.”
—————
“Watters pried a bit and basically asked if he had any dirt on Barack Obama that he wanted to get off his chest. Blagojevich teased, “Well, let me say this generally, I know a lot of things about a lot of different people who I knew in politics, that I haven’t spoken about and I would not exclude him from that list.”
Watters pressed a little more.
From Fox News:
“Well, let me just say this, that the current president has trumped the former president when it comes to the testicular virility necessary to do the right thing and to undo injustice,” Blagojevich told host Jesse Watters. “I went to prison and spent nearly eight years in prison for things that aren’t crimes, routine politics.”
“A lot of the same fake stuff that they tried to do to President Trump, they’ve done to me and some of the very same people, some of the same characters who did it to me are involved in doing it to President Trump,” he added. [….]
“President Obama surely must have known something like that, that were the circumstances surrounding my situation, I think he could have acted at the appropriate time, considering the political implications when he left office,” he said.
“He didn’t do it,” Blagojevich added. “And how ironic that President Trump, who I met briefly on [‘The Apprentice] will become the first president American history to fire and free the same guy.””
“Attorney General William Barr recently took the unprecedented step of requiring any future investigation of a presidential campaign to get approval from him and the director of the FBI. But recent statements from the intelligence agencies suggest that political spying — on members of Congress as well as presidential candidates — may be more widespread than Barr himself realizes.
Barr’s laudable decision was in part a reaction to the report by Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz, which detailed the lack of adequate institutional oversight of electronic surveillance within the FBI, even about an investigation touching on a presidential campaign. Some civil libertarians also worry that the government may be playing fast and loose with “unmasking” – the practice of revealing within the intel community the identity of an American citizen whose conversations are incidentally caught up in the National Security Agency’s trawler of international calls. Sen. Lindsey Graham, then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, voiced concern that he might have been a victim of unmasking.
It would be easy to write off these stories as overhyped (if you dislike Trump), or proof that the intelligence community is out to get Trump (if you like Trump). But the threat of political surveillance should not be a partisan matter. After all, political surveillance hit a high point with the FBI and CIA in the (Republican) Nixon era, when both agencies were deployed to conduct domestic, political spying.
To determine whether such spying has recently occurred, our nonpartisan civil liberties group filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the prominent agencies in Washington’s intelligence community. We first asked about surveillance of members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in both parties.
The Office of the Director National Intelligence got back to us in just four business days. As often happens with FOIA requests, we received a boilerplate non-answer called a “Glomar response.” The agency said it “can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of records responsive to of [sic] your request. The fact of the existence or non-existence of the requested records . . . could reveal intelligence sources and methods information that is protected from disclosure.”
When we asked the same question about presidential campaigns going back to 1978, we got the same answer. Another FOIA request, about the possible targeting of members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, produced a Glomar response within two business days.
This method of institutional stonewalling originated from one of America’s most ambitious intelligence projects. In 1968, naval observers in the Pacific noticed a flurry of Soviet naval activity that could only have been a search for a missing submarine. The U.S. Navy located the wreck of the Soviet submarine K-129, capable of carrying nuclear missiles, 16,000 feet below the surface. Enlisting billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes to create an elaborate cover story, the CIA commissioned the state-of-the-art Hughes Glomar Explorer to recover the wreck. The project quickly generated rumors. Unwilling to acknowledge its project to the media, the CIA issued the first “Glomar” response. ”
———–
“But where possible political spying is concerned, even a Glomar response is revealing: If the agency is not engaged in political spying, no “sources and methods” could possibly be exposed from a straightforward answer to the question – are you now or have you been spying on presidential candidates or members of Congress? The agencies’ Glomar responses thus imply that at least some “sources and methods” for spying on presidential candidates and members of Congress have, at some point, been developed and deployed.
Such political surveillance, if it is still happening, would be a greater threat than anything Russia might have done. It is one thing for Moscow to use social media to try to meddle in our politics and culture. Far worse would be for our own intelligence agencies to think and act like Russian intelligence agencies.
Moreover, surveilling legislators would give the executive branch a whip to hold over Congress. Similarly, spying on presidential candidates and campaigns would create a danger of the kind of blackmail in which FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is believed to have engaged.
And if our nation’s leaders are not safe from surveillance by our own government, do you really think you are? “
“The Democrats claim Trump is mishandling the coronavirus threat and that they’d do better. They’re wrong. Their proposals are redundant, vapid, or dangerous.
During the recent debate, three candidates discussed coronavirus:
Amy Klobuchar urged treatment and quarantine – which is (a) obvious and (b) what Trump is doing. She accused Trump of ignoring the world (he hasn’t) and wants to improve education.
Biden did his inevitable “I already did that response,” referring to Ebola (which, thankfully for America, stayed in Africa).
Bernie Sanders accused Trump of idiocy for predicting the virus would end in April. What Trump said was that influenzas generally go away once winter ends, something that is scientifically correct. Bernie said he would work with WHO (which Trump has done).
In addition to those statements, all three say Trump cannot address coronavirus because he withdrew funds from the CDC and NIH.
On Wednesday, Pelosi issued a formal statement that also says Trump cannot fight the virus because he has shrunk government:
“The American people need a well-coordinated, whole-of-government, fully-funded response to keep them safe from the coronavirus threat. Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has mounted an opaque and chaotic response to this outbreak.
“The Trump Administration has left critical positions in charge of managing pandemics at the National Security Council and the Department of Homeland Security vacant. The Trump Budget called for slashing almost $700 million from the Centers for Disease Control. And even now, the Administration continues to devalue Americans’ health security by ransacking funding from other vital public health needs.
“The House will be advancing a strong, strategic funding package with transparency and accountability that fully addresses the scale and seriousness of this public health crisis.”
She held a short little press conference making the same point:”
"Hopefully we can make up for the loss of time…and not be using scare tactics about people coming back to our country."
“At a town hall on Wednesday, Elizabeth Warren insisted she’d stop work that is our southern border:”
"'I'm going to be introducing a plan tomorrow to take every dime that the President is now spending on his racist wall at our southern border and divert it to work on the coronavirus," Elizabeth Warren says #CNNTownHallpic.twitter.com/I3WTbNlBzV
“Warren seems to have forgotten that, when Obama allowed illegal immigrants to overrun America’s southern border, America was hit by a rash of contagious diseases that hadn’t been seen in America for decades.
Trump’s Thursday press conference destroyed this silliness. He attacked Pelosi for her unserious political attacks:
I think Speaker Pelosi is incompetent. She lost the Congress once. I think she’s going to lose it again. I think she’s incompetent and I think she’s not thinking about the country. Instead of making a statement like that, where I’ve been beating her routinely, at everything, instead of making a statement like that she should be saying, “We have to work together because we have a big problem, potentially, and maybe it’s going to be a very little problem, I hope that it’s a very little problem, but we have to work together.” Instead she wants to do the same thing as crying Chuck Schumer…it’s so bad for the country.
She’s trying to create a panic and there’s no reason to panic. All they’re trying to do is get a political advantage, This isn’t about political advantage. We’re all trying to do the right thing.
He also explained that his decision to cut deadweight in government health departments during the good times in no way hampered his ability to call on their resources in times of crisis.”
Scoop w/ @hollyotterbein NV Dem party chair & CA SoS called the police this wknd after svrl Bernie supporters came to their homes w/ bullhorns late at night to warn abt elections/2016 They FB live’d it Jeff Weaver condemned the tacticshttps://t.co/BxJPlm9Zn2pic.twitter.com/xAnyVcKzO7
“Bernie Supporters Show Up At Democrat Official’s House; Calls Police: ‘Crossed A Line’”
“The police have been called multiple times now on supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) over a series of protests targeting officials in the Democratic Party. A video posted online Wednesday shows one of these protests by self-styled “Berners,” who showed up late Friday night with a bullhorn and a flashlight at the house of the chair of Nevada’s Democratic Party to issue warnings against conspiring to undermine Sanders in next day’s caucuses.
In the video, which was initially live-streamed on her personal Facebook page and has since been posted on Twitter, Maria Estrada, a Los Angeles-based “Berner,” stands outside the home of William McCurdy, chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, at around 11 p.m. Friday night and makes a series of declarations through a bullhorn while shining her flashlight on the house. Another “Berner” films the protest, which, as Politico notes, is one of “at least three” such protests targeting individuals in recent days.
“William McCurdy, Chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, I want to make sure that you understand why we’re here!” Estrada declares. “I want to make sure that you know that we do not want to see the 2016 election.”
“I want assurances there isn’t going to be any shenanigans going on tomorrow!” she insists. “The Democratic Party does not control what happens. The will of the people is what controls what happens.””
Wandering Views 
Attention residence of sanctuary cities and states.
Your elected leaders disobedience to federal law will now begin hitting your wallets. It is on your backs those officials will now put the shortages for their activism. Remember to vote accordingly next time.
Now that yet another activist judge has been overruled, let the gnashing of teeth begin.
And yes, it was unanimous….
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/02/appeals-court-upholds-trump-withholding-justice-department-grants-from-sanctuary-cities/
“Appeals Court upholds Trump withholding Justice Department grants from sanctuary cities
2nd Circuit: “the plain language of the relevant statutes authorizes the Attorney General to impose the challenged conditions””
“Another day, another appeals court reversing a district court injunction which intefered with the legitimate constitutional and statutory powers of the president. We’ve covered this problem of such district court injunctions many times before.”
——–
“The Second Circuit Court of Appeals just reversed (h/t Adam Klasfeld). Here’s the summary from the Opinion (emphasis added):
The principal legal question presented in this appeal is whetherthe federal government may deny grants of money to State and local governments that would be eligible for such awards but for their refusal to comply with three immigration‐related conditions imposed by the Attorney General of the United States. Those conditions require grant applicants to certify that they will (1) comply with federal law prohibiting any restrictions on the communication of citizenship and alien status information with federal mmigration authorities, see 8 U.S.C. § 1373; (2) provide federal authorities, upon request, with the release dates of incarcerated illegal aliens; and (3) afford federal immigration officers access to incarcerated illegal aliens….
At its core, this appeal presents questions of statutory construction. In proceedings below, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Edgardo Ramos, Judge) determined that the Attorney General was not statutorily authorized to impose the challenged conditions and, therefore, enjoined their application. See New York v. Dep’t of Justice, 343 F. Supp. 3d 213 (S.D.N.Y. 2018). The thoughtful opinion of the district court requires us to examine the authorization question in detail. For reasons explained in this opinion, we conclude that the plain language of the relevant statutes authorizes the Attorney General to impose the challenged conditions.
In concluding otherwise, the district court relied on, among other things, an opinion of the Seventh Circuit in City of Chicago v. Sessions, 888 F.3d 272 (7th Cir. 2018). While mindful of the respect owed to our sister circuits, we cannot agree that the federal government must be enjoined from imposing the challenged conditions on the federal grants here at issue. These conditions help the federal government enforce national immigration laws and policies supported by successive Democratic and Republican administrations. But more to the authorization point, they ensure that applicants satisfy particular statutory grant requirements imposed by Congress and subject to Attorney General oversight.
Given what appears to be a conflict among the Circuits, it seems likely that the Supreme Court will take the case (where Trump likely will win again). But in the meantime, the crackdown can continue.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
More here…..
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/484715-appeals-court-rules-trump-administration-can-withhold-grants-from
“A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the Department of Justice (DOJ) could withhold funding from cities and states that refuse to cooperate with the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
A three-judge panel on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned a district court judge’s ruling that the department lacked the authority to impose immigration-related conditions on certain funding.
The panel’s opinion, written by Judge Reena Raggi, found that Congress had delegated authority to the attorney general to set conditions on the federal grant program it had created, called the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program.
“Repeatedly and throughout its pronouncement of Byrne Program statutory requirements, Congress makes clear that a grant applicant demonstrates qualification by satisfying statutory requirements in such form and according to such rules as the Attorney General establishes,” wrote Raggi, who was appointed to the court by George W. Bush. “This confers considerable authority on the Attorney General.”
A group of seven states and New York City sued the DOJ in 2017 after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the agency would start withholding funding from local governments that refused to share information about undocumented immigrants or provide jail access to federal authorities investigating inmates’ immigration status.
The states challenging the policy are New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Washington, Massachusetts and Virginia.”
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About time someone tries to hold them accountable for their lies.
And who better to demonstrate those lies than the guy they libel almost daily? Seems….. poetic.
https://dailycaller.com/2020/02/26/trump-campaign-sues-new-york-times-libel-full-complaint/
“Trump Campaign Sues New York Times For Libel — Read The Full Complaint And Statement From Legal Adviser”
“President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign announced Wednesday a libel lawsuit against the New York Times.
The official complaint filed by the campaign states that the Times was “well aware” it published false information about collusion between the Russian government and Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“The Times’ own previous reporting had confirmed the falsity of these statements,” the complaint reads. “But the Times published these statements anyway, knowing them to be false, and knowing it would misinform and mislead its own readers, because of The Times’ extreme bias against and animosity toward the Campaign, and the Times’ exuberance to improperly influence the presidential election in November 2020.”
The campaign’s senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis added in a statement that the Times’ reporting was “100 percent false and defamatory.”
The piece in question, titled “The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo,” was published in late March, 2019. The statute of limitations in New York for libel cases is one year.”
https://twitter.com/kathrynw5/status/1232752664489885697?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1232752664489885697&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com%2F2020%2F02%2F26%2Ftrump-campaign-sues-new-york-times-libel-full-complaint%2F
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Yesterday the question was asked “will the Deep State try to meddle in the 2020 election?”
We already have our answer, a resounding yes!….. and from a family name you already know. 🙂
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/02/wuhan-virus-watch-rod-rosensteins-sister-gins-up-fear-with-her-cdc-statement/
“Wuhan Virus Watch: Rod Rosenstein’s Sister Gins Up Fear With Her CDC Statement
HHS Secretary Alex Azar gave a much calmer, more reasoned, and likely more factual risk assessment.”
“The Wuhan Coronavirus cases now stand at 80,598 distributed within 41 different countries and territories. The death toll is currently at 2,712.
Rod Rosenstein’s sister gins up fear with her CDC statement
Yesterday, I looked at how people have used news about COVID-19 as click-bait. Additionally, Professor Jacobson noted that the virus had merged with Trump Derangement Syndrome as a means of attacking President Donald Trump and tanking his outstanding economic success.
One of the challenges I face in analyzing reports about the Wuhan coronavirus is determining propaganda and reality. While I do not believe the Chinese have fully disclosed the number of deaths, I had not anticipated a member of the Center For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would use her platform to distort the risks associated with the pathogen to undermine the administration.
Today, reports stated that a CDC official has warned that the agency expects the novel coronavirus to begin spreading in the U.S. at the community level, and that “disruption to everyday life may be severe.”
Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the agency’s director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a press briefing on Tuesday that the time for Americans to begin preparing for a potential outbreak of the virus is now, although officials believe the immediate threat to the public remains low.
“As more and more countries experience community spread, successful containment at our borders becomes harder and harder,” Messonnier said. “Ultimately, we expect we will see community spread in this country. It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of when this will happen, and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”
The news has spooked investors and impacted the stock market. Imagine my surprise that Dr. Nancy Messonnier has a deeply deep state connection in the form of her brother, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.”
“Being skeptical of all things on social media, I confirmed that this relationship was listed correctly.
Meanwhile, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar gave a much calmer, more reasoned, and likely more factual risk assessment than Messonnier.”
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Like I said…… Blago knows stuff. 🙂
https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/02/26/watch-blagojevich-explains-obamas-involvement-in-scandal-that-sent-him-to-prison-teases-more-info/
“Blagojevich Explains Obama’s Involvement in Scandal that Sent Him to Prison, Teases More Info”
“One of the eleven people who President Donald Trump granted clemency to last week was a controversial choice, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.
Blagojevich was locked up for his involvement in selling Barack Obama’s Senate seat after Obama won the presidency in 2008.
But Blagojevich isn’t repentant about his actions, he doesn’t think what he did was wrong, rather he terms it routine politics.
He had a few things he wanted to say about Barack Obama’s alleged involvement in the whole event that became a scandal and sent him to prison as he spoke to Jesse Watters during “Watters’ World” on Fox.
Watters asked Blagojevich to explain Obama’s alleged involvement in the event.”
—————
“Watters pried a bit and basically asked if he had any dirt on Barack Obama that he wanted to get off his chest. Blagojevich teased, “Well, let me say this generally, I know a lot of things about a lot of different people who I knew in politics, that I haven’t spoken about and I would not exclude him from that list.”
Watters pressed a little more.
From Fox News:
“Well, let me just say this, that the current president has trumped the former president when it comes to the testicular virility necessary to do the right thing and to undo injustice,” Blagojevich told host Jesse Watters. “I went to prison and spent nearly eight years in prison for things that aren’t crimes, routine politics.”
“A lot of the same fake stuff that they tried to do to President Trump, they’ve done to me and some of the very same people, some of the same characters who did it to me are involved in doing it to President Trump,” he added. [….]
“President Obama surely must have known something like that, that were the circumstances surrounding my situation, I think he could have acted at the appropriate time, considering the political implications when he left office,” he said.
“He didn’t do it,” Blagojevich added. “And how ironic that President Trump, who I met briefly on [‘The Apprentice] will become the first president American history to fire and free the same guy.””
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Nope…. no Deep Staters here…..
How Widespread Is Domestic Political Spying?
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/02/27/how_widespread_is_domestic_political_spying.html
“Attorney General William Barr recently took the unprecedented step of requiring any future investigation of a presidential campaign to get approval from him and the director of the FBI. But recent statements from the intelligence agencies suggest that political spying — on members of Congress as well as presidential candidates — may be more widespread than Barr himself realizes.
Barr’s laudable decision was in part a reaction to the report by Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz, which detailed the lack of adequate institutional oversight of electronic surveillance within the FBI, even about an investigation touching on a presidential campaign. Some civil libertarians also worry that the government may be playing fast and loose with “unmasking” – the practice of revealing within the intel community the identity of an American citizen whose conversations are incidentally caught up in the National Security Agency’s trawler of international calls. Sen. Lindsey Graham, then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, voiced concern that he might have been a victim of unmasking.
It would be easy to write off these stories as overhyped (if you dislike Trump), or proof that the intelligence community is out to get Trump (if you like Trump). But the threat of political surveillance should not be a partisan matter. After all, political surveillance hit a high point with the FBI and CIA in the (Republican) Nixon era, when both agencies were deployed to conduct domestic, political spying.
To determine whether such spying has recently occurred, our nonpartisan civil liberties group filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the prominent agencies in Washington’s intelligence community. We first asked about surveillance of members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in both parties.
The Office of the Director National Intelligence got back to us in just four business days. As often happens with FOIA requests, we received a boilerplate non-answer called a “Glomar response.” The agency said it “can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of records responsive to of [sic] your request. The fact of the existence or non-existence of the requested records . . . could reveal intelligence sources and methods information that is protected from disclosure.”
When we asked the same question about presidential campaigns going back to 1978, we got the same answer. Another FOIA request, about the possible targeting of members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, produced a Glomar response within two business days.
This method of institutional stonewalling originated from one of America’s most ambitious intelligence projects. In 1968, naval observers in the Pacific noticed a flurry of Soviet naval activity that could only have been a search for a missing submarine. The U.S. Navy located the wreck of the Soviet submarine K-129, capable of carrying nuclear missiles, 16,000 feet below the surface. Enlisting billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes to create an elaborate cover story, the CIA commissioned the state-of-the-art Hughes Glomar Explorer to recover the wreck. The project quickly generated rumors. Unwilling to acknowledge its project to the media, the CIA issued the first “Glomar” response. ”
———–
“But where possible political spying is concerned, even a Glomar response is revealing: If the agency is not engaged in political spying, no “sources and methods” could possibly be exposed from a straightforward answer to the question – are you now or have you been spying on presidential candidates or members of Congress? The agencies’ Glomar responses thus imply that at least some “sources and methods” for spying on presidential candidates and members of Congress have, at some point, been developed and deployed.
Such political surveillance, if it is still happening, would be a greater threat than anything Russia might have done. It is one thing for Moscow to use social media to try to meddle in our politics and culture. Far worse would be for our own intelligence agencies to think and act like Russian intelligence agencies.
Moreover, surveilling legislators would give the executive branch a whip to hold over Congress. Similarly, spying on presidential candidates and campaigns would create a danger of the kind of blackmail in which FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is believed to have engaged.
And if our nation’s leaders are not safe from surveillance by our own government, do you really think you are? “
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A rather pathetic response, but that’s what Dems do. Even on this, they act like hyper-partisan %#&hats……
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/the_democrat_response_to_the_coronavirus_is_scarier_than_the_virus.html
“The Democrats claim Trump is mishandling the coronavirus threat and that they’d do better. They’re wrong. Their proposals are redundant, vapid, or dangerous.
During the recent debate, three candidates discussed coronavirus:
Amy Klobuchar urged treatment and quarantine – which is (a) obvious and (b) what Trump is doing. She accused Trump of ignoring the world (he hasn’t) and wants to improve education.
Biden did his inevitable “I already did that response,” referring to Ebola (which, thankfully for America, stayed in Africa).
Bernie Sanders accused Trump of idiocy for predicting the virus would end in April. What Trump said was that influenzas generally go away once winter ends, something that is scientifically correct. Bernie said he would work with WHO (which Trump has done).
In addition to those statements, all three say Trump cannot address coronavirus because he withdrew funds from the CDC and NIH.
On Wednesday, Pelosi issued a formal statement that also says Trump cannot fight the virus because he has shrunk government:
“The American people need a well-coordinated, whole-of-government, fully-funded response to keep them safe from the coronavirus threat. Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has mounted an opaque and chaotic response to this outbreak.
“The Trump Administration has left critical positions in charge of managing pandemics at the National Security Council and the Department of Homeland Security vacant. The Trump Budget called for slashing almost $700 million from the Centers for Disease Control. And even now, the Administration continues to devalue Americans’ health security by ransacking funding from other vital public health needs.
“The House will be advancing a strong, strategic funding package with transparency and accountability that fully addresses the scale and seriousness of this public health crisis.”
She held a short little press conference making the same point:”
“At a town hall on Wednesday, Elizabeth Warren insisted she’d stop work that is our southern border:”
“Warren seems to have forgotten that, when Obama allowed illegal immigrants to overrun America’s southern border, America was hit by a rash of contagious diseases that hadn’t been seen in America for decades.
Trump’s Thursday press conference destroyed this silliness. He attacked Pelosi for her unserious political attacks:
I think Speaker Pelosi is incompetent. She lost the Congress once. I think she’s going to lose it again. I think she’s incompetent and I think she’s not thinking about the country. Instead of making a statement like that, where I’ve been beating her routinely, at everything, instead of making a statement like that she should be saying, “We have to work together because we have a big problem, potentially, and maybe it’s going to be a very little problem, I hope that it’s a very little problem, but we have to work together.” Instead she wants to do the same thing as crying Chuck Schumer…it’s so bad for the country.
She’s trying to create a panic and there’s no reason to panic. All they’re trying to do is get a political advantage, This isn’t about political advantage. We’re all trying to do the right thing.
He also explained that his decision to cut deadweight in government health departments during the good times in no way hampered his ability to call on their resources in times of crisis.”
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Bernie’s Brown Shirts…..
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https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-bernie-supporters-show-up-at-democrat-officials-house-official-forced-to-call-police
“Bernie Supporters Show Up At Democrat Official’s House; Calls Police: ‘Crossed A Line’”
“The police have been called multiple times now on supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) over a series of protests targeting officials in the Democratic Party. A video posted online Wednesday shows one of these protests by self-styled “Berners,” who showed up late Friday night with a bullhorn and a flashlight at the house of the chair of Nevada’s Democratic Party to issue warnings against conspiring to undermine Sanders in next day’s caucuses.
In the video, which was initially live-streamed on her personal Facebook page and has since been posted on Twitter, Maria Estrada, a Los Angeles-based “Berner,” stands outside the home of William McCurdy, chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, at around 11 p.m. Friday night and makes a series of declarations through a bullhorn while shining her flashlight on the house. Another “Berner” films the protest, which, as Politico notes, is one of “at least three” such protests targeting individuals in recent days.
“William McCurdy, Chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, I want to make sure that you understand why we’re here!” Estrada declares. “I want to make sure that you know that we do not want to see the 2016 election.”
“I want assurances there isn’t going to be any shenanigans going on tomorrow!” she insists. “The Democratic Party does not control what happens. The will of the people is what controls what happens.””
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Nah, that’s not threatening at all….. 🙄
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Them tricky Russians are interfering into our elections and nobody knows what they are doing.
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