Displaying posts published in

October 2019

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Serious Contender For Stupidest Litigation In The Country Goes To Trial Francis Menton

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-10-22-a-serious-contender-for-stup

From time to time here at this blog I have considered candidates for the title of “Stupidest Litigation in the Country.” For example, in this post in December 2017 I considered the candidacy of the litigation titled Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana v. United States, et al., brought in Oregon by a group of minor children claiming a “constitutional right” to a “stable climate,” and seeking a nationwide injunction forcing the phase-out of all use of fossil fuels in the United States. (That case is currently awaiting a decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.) Shortly thereafter, in January 2018, I evaluated the candidacy of various litigations around the country, including some in California and one in New York, brought by municipalities seeking to hold a collection of major oil companies responsible for a variety of future environmental calamities supposedly to be caused by “climate change.” (Many, but far from all of those cases have since been dismissed; others remain pending.)

Today I have a new candidate for the coveted title. I actually spent most of the afternoon today attending the opening statements in the trial of this case, so I can assure you that there is some serious stupidity going on here. The title of the case is People of the State of New York v. ExxonMobil Corp., currently pending in the New York State Supreme Court, New York County. (This is state rather than federal court. For those with access to the court electronic records system, the index number is 452044/2018.) Yes, it is another of the now many, many cases somehow accusing Exxon of destroying the world by causing climate change. But what is the case about, and what is the New York AG trying to accomplish? Excellent question.

Continue reading →
CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

– JESSE SMOLLET, ADAM SCHIFF, SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY LAWS

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://www.westernjournal.com/judge-denies-jussie-smolletts-request-throw-lawsuit-will-going-forward/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=conservativebyte&utm_campaign=dailypm&utm_content=libertyalliance

Judge Denies Jussie Smollett’s Request To Throw Out Lawsuit: ‘This Will Be Going Forward’

Actor Jussie Smollett lost a round in court Tuesday as part of his effort to avoid having to pay the city of Chicago for the costs of an investigation into his allegations that he was the victim of a crime.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/10/22/john-ratcliffe-adam-schiffs-media-leaks-to-frame-impeachment-narrative-are-false/

John Ratcliffe: Adam Schiff’s “Media Leaks to Frame Impeachment Narrative Are False”……

Representative John Ratcliffe appears with Martha MacCallum to discuss the ongoing closed-door testimony from officials upset about President Trump’s unorthodox approach to foreign policy.

www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/laws_against_seditious_conspiracy_have_real_legal_teeth.html

Laws against seditious conspiracy have real legal teeth

Ed Timperlake

News flash for all Deep State conspirators: we have a lawfully elected President who is at the top of the Executive Branch of US Government.  As such, President Trump represents one third of our constitutionally empowered leadership and is “the US Government.”

That reality has proven to be an issue for a lot of Deep State players inside the US Government, who from day one of his election or even earlier could not accept the will of their fellow citizens. Sadly, rather than focusing on changing administrations in our four-year cycle of peaceful revolution at the ballot box, many have engaged in violating the law through a conspiracy to remove President Trump. They have been using all their power for ill as US Government employees at the Department of Justice and FBI, and aided and abetted by senior members of the Intelligence Community and State and Defense.

Continue reading →
CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

Judicial Watch: New Benghazi Documents Confirm Clinton Email Cover-Up

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/judicial-watch-new-benghazi-documents-confirm-clinton-email-cover-up/

Judicial Watch today released new Clinton emails on the Benghazi controversy that had been covered up for years and would have exposed Hillary Clinton’s email account if they had been released when the State Department first uncovered them in 2014. The long withheld email, clearly responsive to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit seeking records concerning “talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack,” contains Clinton’s private email address and a conversation about the YouTube video that sparked the Benghazi talking points scandal (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). This Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit led directly to the disclosure of the Clinton email system in 2015.

The Clinton email cover-up led to court-ordered discovery into three specific areas: whether Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server was intended to stymie FOIA; whether the State Department’s intent to settle this case in late 2014 and early 2015 amounted to bad faith; and whether the State Department has adequately searched for records responsive to Judicial Watch’s request. The court also authorized discovery into whether the Benghazi controversy motivated the cover-up of Clinton’s email.  (The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”)

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

Politico Shills for the Deep State with Brennan Puff Piece Debra Heine

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/22/politico-shills-for-the-deep-state-with-brennan-puff-piece/

President Trump is “obsessed” with former CIA chief John Brennan and is seeking “vengeance,” according to a stirring new report in Politico.

Because of this, reporters Natasha Bertrand (aka Fusion Natasha) and Daniel Kippman say the president is on “a collision course” with the Justice Department’s ongoing probe of the intelligence community’s “actions” in 2016.

AG Barr and John Durham, the federal prosecutor he appointed to conduct the investigation, have recently made some overseas trips to meet with officials in countries that helped the Obama administration spy on the Trump campaign—and this fact is making many current and former intelligence officials very nervous, it appears.

They should be. US attorney John Durham, who recently expanded his investigation, is in the process of requesting interviews from both Brennan and former DNI James Clapper, according to multiple reports.

Barr has said little in public about the investigation, but it reportedly centers on FBI and CIA activities before and during the Trump-Russia collusion investigation. Durham is also reportedly looking into what involvement foreign governments might have had in intelligence-gathering against Trump associates.

But according to Bertrand and Kippman, Barr and Durham are just investigating a “conspiracy theory for which there is little if any evidence.”

The “conspiracy theory” being investigated is the wacky idea that “a key player in the Russia probe, a professor named Joseph Mifsud, was actually a Western intelligence asset sent to discredit the Trump campaign — and that the CIA, under Brennan, was somehow involved.”

Who would ever think such a thing?

Rather than retreating into a life of quiet retirement after Trump was elected, John Brennan quickly became a leader of “the Resistance,” firing off scores of scathing, name-calling tweets hammering the president. He also became a commentator for NBC News and MSNBC where he routinely accused Trump of being a “Russian asset” and a multitude of other sins “without evidence.”

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Universities Breed Anger, Ignorance, and Ingratitude By Victor Davis Hanson *****

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/universities-breed-anger-ignorance-ingratitude/

In turning out woke and broke graduates, they have a lot to answer for.

What do widely diverse crises such as declining demography, increasing indebtedness, Generation Z’s indifference to religion and patriotism, static rates of home ownership, and a national epidemic of ignorance about American history and traditions all have in common?

In a word, 21st-century higher education.

A pernicious cycle begins even before a student enrolls. A typical college-admission application is loaded with questions to the high-school applicant about gender, equality, and bias rather than about math, language, or science achievements. How have you suffered rather than what you know and wish to learn seems more important for admission. The therapeutic mindset preps the student to consider himself a victim of cosmic forces, past and present, despite belonging to the richest, most leisured, and most technologically advanced generation in history. Without a shred of gratitude, the young student learns to blame his ancestors for what he is told is wrong in his life, without noticing how the dead made sure that almost everything around him would be an improvement over 2,500 years of Western history.

Once admitted, students take classes from faculty who, polls reveal, are roughly 90 percent liberal. According to one recent survey, Democrat professors on average outnumber Republican faculty by a 12-to-1 ratio on the nation’s supposedly diverse campuses. But such political asymmetries are magnified by a certain progressive messianic self-righteousness that turns the lectern into the pulpit, the captive class into a congregation. The rare conservative professor is more resigned to the tragedy of the universe and, in live-and-let-live fashion, vacates the campus arena to the left-wing gladiators who wish to slay any perceived heterodoxy.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Reinstate Racial Preferences? Washington State Voters Will Decide. By Heather Mac Donald

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/racial-preferences-government-washington-state-voters-will-decide/

The state’s voters outlawed such preferences in 1998; legislators tried to bring them back last April. A new ballot initiative lets the people choose.

Voting in Washington has begun on a ballot initiative to overturn that state’s ban on racial preferences in government. Voters outlawed racial preferences in 1998, as part of a mini-wave of eight such state initiatives, led by California anti-preference crusader Ward Connerly in the 1990s. The momentum behind that push for color-blindness in government has long since petered out, as identity politics became ascendant. The advocates of race-neutral government hiring, contracting, and college admissions are now on the defensive, fighting relentless efforts to undo their work.

In April 2019, the Washington state legislature hurriedly passed Initiative 1000 to bring preferences back into government policy. Now voters are facing a confusing choice. Though the referendum currently before them, Referendum 88, was instigated by racial-preference opponents, overwhelmingly Asian, to overturn Initiative 1000, a yes on the referendum would confirm passage of Initiative 1000 and reinstate preferences, and a no vote would preserve the pre-Initiative 1000 color-blind status quo.

Initiative 1000 has adopted the specious rhetoric of “holistic” college admissions, rhetoric that the Supreme Court, to its discredit as a supposedly rational jurisprudential body, has embraced. Race cannot be the “sole qualifying factor” in awarding or denying a public benefit, according to the initiative. This requirement allegedly prevents racial preferences from turning into quotas. These are the same claims made on behalf of “holistic admissions,” a supposedly real and definable practice that is meant to keep racial admissions preferences constitutional by avoiding a quota system. We are supposed to believe that admissions offices in a “holistic” regime make highly individualized decisions about applicants that award only the slightest “tip” to candidates on the basis of race. We are supposed to believe that the admissions office has NO idea what number of minorities it is shooting for, even though the racial percentages of any class remain stable from year to year, as was shown in the ongoing litigation over Harvard’s racial preferences.

Continue reading →
IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Cali Governor Newsom Continues to Thwart Immigration Law Enforcement Putting the welfare of criminal immigrants before the welfare of California citizens.

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/cali-governor-newsom-continues-thwart-immigration-frontpagemagcom/

California Governor Gavin Newsom, who presides over the nation’s leading sanctuary state, decided last week that pardoning three immigrant felons to help shield them from being deported was more important than keeping the citizens of his state secure. One of the recipients of Newsom’s misplaced compassion was 42-year old Arnou Aghamalian from Iran. Aghamalian, a refugee in this country since the age of 15, was convicted at the age of 22 of helping to set fire to a car. The damage he did was most likely not as easily made to disappear as was his criminal record, thanks to Newsom. Then there was Thear Seam from Cambodia, a refugee admitted to the U.S at the age of 4 who managed in his late teens to be convicted of two felonies – second-degree robbery and acting as an accessory after the fact by helping someone evade police arrest. Finally, Newsom pardoned Victor Ayala from El Salvador. Ayala was only 2 years old when he was admitted legally to the U.S. He showed his gratitude by being convicted at the age of 21 for felony robbery after having been previously convicted for misdemeanor theft and hit-and-run. Newsom’s office claimed that the pardons were issued in part to “prevent unjust collateral consequences of conviction.” That’s doubletalk for saying the immigrants’ pardons were issued to remove one ground for their possible deportations – serious criminal records.

“They are now trusted employees, husbands, fathers to young children and sons to aging parents,’’ the governor’s office said in justification for the pardon grants. “Their deportation would be an unjust collateral consequence that would harm their families and communities.” In other words, just make their criminal records disappear and all will be fine for these poor souls, who years ago had “made bad decisions and broke the law” but “served their sentences and turned their lives around.”

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Pelosi’s Disinformation Campaign House Speaker issues bogus “fact sheet” full of blatant distortions. Joseph Klein

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/pelosis-disinformation-campaign-joseph-klein/

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who is currently leading the Ukrainegate probe, have refused to say when their so-called impeachment inquiry is expected to conclude. “The timeline will depend on the truth line, and that’s what we’re looking for,” Pelosi explained to reporters last week. More accurately, the timeline will depend on the success of the House Democrats’ propaganda line. To try and manipulate public opinion, as the closed-door star chamber proceedings move along, Pelosi decided to put out a jumble of out-of-context bits and pieces of cherrypicked quotes entitled “Truth Exposed.”  It purports to lay out how President Trump “betrayed his oath of office, betrayed our national security and betrayed the integrity of our elections for his own personal political gain” in his dealings with the Ukrainian government.” It is divided into three sections with these ominous headings – The Shakedown, The Pressure Campaign, and The Cover Up. What Pelosi’s office has billed as a “fact sheet” is a pathetic attempt to spin a false narrative.

1.      The Shakedown – Pelosi quoted selectively from the record of President Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Zelensky on July 25, 2019, falsely juxtaposing the following excerpts as if they came directly after each other and underlining certain phrases for emphasis:

“I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine…. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.”

 “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.”

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”

 “I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. I’m sure you will figure it out.”

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Canada Vote Forces Trudeau to Join With Rival to Govern Liberal Party, short of majority, has options on the left to form minority government By Paul Vieira and Kim Mackrael

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/canada-vote-forces-trudeau-to-join-with-rival-to-govern-11571754991

OTTAWA—Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, fresh off an election win Monday night that left him with a weakened mandate, must quickly turn his focus to finding common ground among rivals to maintain his grip on power.

Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party emerged short of a majority of seats in the Canadian Parliament, and his share of the popular vote fell to 33% from a 40% showing in 2015. The result partly reflected the hits Mr. Trudeau took from recent scandals—allegations that he and his aides interfered in a criminal prosecution, and images of the Canadian leader wearing blackface—that damaged his reputation as a champion of clean governance and diversity.

The task of managing a minority government should be made slightly easier by the distribution of votes. Results as of Tuesday morning showed the Liberals won or were leading in 157 seats, or 13 seats short of a majority. That means Mr. Trudeau would need the support of just one other party to get legislation passed.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

The Hillary-Tulsi Fault Line Their feud could foretell trouble for Democrats in 2020. By Ted Rall

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hillary-tulsi-fault-line-11571784603

Why would Hillary Clinton attack the 11th-place Democratic presidential candidate, currently polling at 1.2%? In an interview last week Mrs. Clinton said the Russians have “their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate.”

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii replied on Twitter: “You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain.” The Clinton-Gabbard spat illuminates the underlying conflict between the grassroots progressive left and the centrists who still dominate the Democratic Party’s leadership and donor class.

Democrats want to avoid a repeat of 2016, when enough progressives didn’t vote for Mrs. Clinton to keep her from winning. Beating Mr. Trump is all that matters, the blue-no-matter-who corporatists insist. Progressives reply by asking how that worked out in 2016.

One nearly invisible Democratic fault line concerns the president. Progressives don’t like Mr. Trump and disagree with most of his policies. But there is important common ground. Like the president, progressives favor economic nationalism—putting American workers first and bringing back high-paid manufacturing jobs. They also want to end the post-9/11 forever wars, close overseas military bases, and avoid new wars of choice.

Continue reading →