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September 2020

Biden Report Shows Impeachment Was Election Interference by Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/23/biden-report-shows-impeachment-was-election-interference/

What if all the damning information in Ron Johnson’s report was revealed in September 2019 and not in September 2020?

With the release Wednesday of Senator Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) long-awaited investigation into the Biden family’s corrupt, possibly criminal, ties to Ukraine and other countries, one thing is clear: Had the information in the report been made public a year ago, it’s nearly impossible to believe Joe Biden would still be the Democratic nominee for president.

The fall of 2019 seems like a lifetime ago, but it’s worth revisiting to give context to this bombshell report. 

As the Democratic race for president took shape last year, the media started asking uncomfortable questions. “Will Hunter Biden Jeopardize His Father’s Campaign?” read the headline of a nearly 11,000-word exposé in the July 2019 issue of The New Yorker. 

Other news organizations followed suit. Senate Republicans finally were zoning in on the shady business dealings of their former colleague’s son. 

As damaging, potential campaign-ending coverage continued for months, Team Biden threatened social media platforms and journalists for spreading “disinformation” about Hunter Biden.

In October 2019, Biden, in a clip recirculated this week, lashed out at reporters for asking about Hunter Biden’s multimillion dollar overseas contracts. Even his Democratic opponents were piling on. Things were going downhill for the one candidate most establishment Democrats thought had the best chance to beat Donald Trump in 2020.

Questioning Supreme Court Nominees about Religion: A Delicate Task by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16540/supreme-court-religion

When Judge Amy Coney Barrett came before the Senate Judiciary Committee for her nomination to the court of appeals, Senator Diane Feinstein generated considerable controversy when she said to Barrett: “The dogma lives loudly in you.” … Under our Constitution, Senator Feinstein’s statement crossed the line. Ours was the first Constitution in history to provide that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Although Feinstein did not explicitly impose a religious test, she suggested that personal religious views — which she called dogma — might disqualify a nominee from being confirmed. That would clearly be unconstitutional.

Religious tests have no place in America. But what does have a place in the confirmation process are questions about whether a nominee will put faith before the Constitution and refuse to apply the Constitution if it conflicts with his or her faith. That issue would be true of any nominee regardless of their faith or faithlessness. President John F. Kennedy assured us that his Catholicism would not determine the nation’s policy. Justice Antonin Scalia said the same about his Catholicism and his jurisprudence.

One’s religion is a private matter, but one’s judicial philosophy is highly relevant in the confirmation process… Let us hope the Senate handles this nomination better than they have handled other recent nominations.

When Judge Amy Coney Barrett came before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary for her nomination to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Senator Diane Feinstein generated considerable controversy when she said to Barrett: “The dogma lives loudly in you.” This was a reference to Barrett’s deep Catholic faith. Under our Constitution, Senator Feinstein’s statement crossed the line. Ours was the first Constitution in history to provide that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Although Feinstein did not explicitly impose a religious test, she suggested that personal religious views — which she called dogma — might disqualify a nominee from being confirmed. That would clearly be unconstitutional.

In Florida’s Election: It May be ‘Legal,’ but is It Right? by Chris Farrell

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16541/florida-election-felons

Those are 32,000 votes deemed pro-Biden in a state where 537 votes decided the presidential election in 2000. Florida, a critical swing state, has 29 electoral college votes that could determine the presidency.

One is left to wonder about what appears to be a slick, well-financed, lawyered-up, manipulation of the electoral process. It appears to have less to do with a legitimate, grassroots campaign to rehabilitate persons who have paid their legal dues for past misconduct than it does as a cynical, orchestrated, vote buying and manipulation process.

Last week, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Florida’s law requiring convicted felons in Florida to pay court-ordered fines, fees and restitution before having their voting rights reinstated. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who raised more than $16 million for this purpose, has, together with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, “paid off monetary obligations for 32,000 felons in Florida” so that they can vote.

Those are 32,000 votes deemed pro-Biden in a state where 537 votes decided the presidential election in 2000. Florida, a critical swing state, has 29 electoral college votes that could determine the presidency.

The organization Bloomberg is working with in this reinstatement effort is the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC). The FRRC has received an unspecified amount of funding from the Open Society Foundations (OSF). There isn’t a specific grant listed in the OSF’s 2018 Internal Revenue Service filing, but it identified FRRC as a grantee in an April 2019 Facebook post.

Mueller Team Corruption Contaminates Justice by Chris Farrell

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16525/mueller-investigation-corruption

Are we truly supposed to believe that all of these phones just happened to erase themselves?

You will remember that these very same attorneys and investigators sought to imprison George Papadopoulos for 20 years simply for switching cell phones and deactivating his Facebook account. The government argued that Papadopoulos knowingly committed obstruction per 18 US Code section 1519, with the intent of impeding or otherwise influencing a federal investigation.

The flagrant, outrageous abuse of record-keeping and phone communications requirements by the Mueller team is a prime avenue for further criminal investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham. Attorney General Barr recently said there will be more indictments. Let’s hope so…. The only remedy is the rigorous prosecution of the offenders.

We now know the Mueller Special Counsel Investigation of the Trump-Russia “collusion” claims was a politically motivated hoax. The investigation dragged on for months. Despite increasingly hysterical Leftist speculation of criminal conspiracies and treason — not a single claim was ever made against the President. In the end, Robert Mueller appeared before Congress and seemed befuddled throughout his testimony — “Not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

Consequently, it appears necessary that Mueller and his team need to be the subjects of a criminal investigation. Last week, responding to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, the Justice Department released heavily redacted documents showing that several dozen phones belonging to members of Mueller’s team were “wiped” or disabled before they could be examined by Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz during his office’s review of the special counsel’s investigation.

U.S. Economy Continues Steady Recovery in September, Business Surveys Show

https://www.wsj.com/articles/faltering-service-sector-weighs-on-global-recovery-as-infections-rise-11600853490

The U.S. economy in September continued its steady recovery from the sharp declines in the second quarter as demand and output strengthened, according to new business surveys. But the pace faltered in Europe and Asia, where new infections have led to new restrictions on activity.

U.S. service-sector and manufacturing companies reported solid growth in September, a positive signal for overall economic growth in the third quarter.

Data firm IHS Markit said Wednesday its composite Purchasing Managers Index for the U.S.—a measure of activity in the private sector—was 54.4 in September, down slightly from 54.6 in August. A reading above 50.0 indicates that activity is increasing, while a reading below points to a decline in activity.

Growth in the services sector slowed slightly to 54.6 in September from 55 in August, while in the manufacturing sector it accelerated to 53.5 from 53.1.

The numbers suggest the U.S. economy continues its slow and steady climb from the deep declines seen in the spring due to lockdowns and other restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

A ‘Safe Space’ for Terrorists at San Francisco State Toxicity under the cover of free speech. Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/safe-space-terrorists-san-francisco-state-richard-l-cravatts/

If any area of the United States can be identified as the epicenter of anti-Israelism on campus, California, the nation’s most populous state, can certainly be said to have earned that dubious distinction. In fact, observers of out of control anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic activity on campuses consider California’s universities to be the veritable ground zero of such vitriol, with particularly troubling and persistent problems of radical student groups, venom-spewing guest speakers, annual hate-fests targeting Israel and Jewish students, entire academic units in the thrall of Israel hatred and anti-Zionism, and a pervasive mood on campuses in which Jewish students and other pro-Israel faculty and students regularly experience visceral and real “harassment, intimidation and discrimination,” as a 2004 Zionist Organization of America’s complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights described the situation on one California campus.

A particularly execrable record for radical anti-Israel, anti-Semitic campus activism is to be found at San Francisco State University, and specifically in the pseudo-academic machinations of Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, director of the school’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED) program. Abdulhadi, who, among other slurs, referred to Zionists as white nationalists during a 2019 UCLA lecture, is embroiled in controversy once again for the upcoming virtual speaking appearance, to be held on September 23rd, by Leila Khaled, a terrorist in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, whose resume includes her role in the 1969 hijacking of an Israel-bound plane and her arrest the following year during a failed hijacking of an El Al flight. 

Promotional materials for the roundtable discussion with Khaled, entitled “Whose Narrative? Gender, Justice, & Resistance,” (and which included a photograph of Khaled proudly brandishing an AK-47, with which she no doubt intended to murder Jews), glowingly describe her as a “Palestinian feminist, militant, and leader,” someone who Abdulhadi has described as a “Palestinian feminist icon,” an “icon in liberations movements and . . . an icon for women’s liberation.”

BLM, Antifa and the Communist Strategy to Destroy the United States Today’s woke violence – yesterday’s red tactics. Joseph Hippolito

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/blm-antifa-and-communist-strategy-destroy-united-joseph-hippolito/

The unprecedented violence perpetrated by Antifa and Black Lives Matter embodies two of the Left’s biggest tactics in its quest to fundamentally transform the United States.

One is to force a race war by radicalizing African-Americans to a violent degree. The other involves making mayhem more intimidating by spreading police and firefighters as thinly as possible, thereby limiting their ability to respond quickly.

Manning Johnson, an African-American, spoke about the first tactic from personal experience. Describing himself as a “dedicated ‘comrade’ ” and a “professional revolutionist,” Johnson belonged to the Communist Party USA for 10 years. He served as a union organizer, director of agitation propaganda, and a member of the party’s national committee. Johnson even ran as the party’s candidate for a Congressional seat in New York.

But when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany concluded their non-aggression pact in 1939 — nine days before Germany invaded Poland and began World War II — Johnson left the party. Following the war, Johnson testified about Communist activities to various legislative committees. In 1958, one year before his death, Johnson wrote about his experiences in Color, Communism and Common Sense.

Why did Johnson become a Communist at 21?

“Like other Negroes, I experienced and saw many injustices and inequities around me based upon color, not ability,” he wrote. “I was told that ‘the decadent capitalist system is responsible,’ that ‘mass pressure’ could force concessions but ‘that just prolongs the life of capitalism;’ that I must unite and work with all those who more or less agree that capitalism must go. 

Judge Amy Coney Barrett for her intellect instead of Catholic faith By Jonathan Turley,

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/517756-judge-amy-coney-barrett-for-her-intellect-instead-of-catholic-faith

The image was striking and unsettling with a line of women in red hoods under a Newsweek headline that read, “How Charismatic Catholic Groups Like Amy Coney Barrett’s People of Praise Inspired The Handmaid’s Tale.” Writer Lauren Hough responded immediately by declaring that Barrett, a potential Supreme Court nominee, belongs to a “f—–g cult,” and others labeled Barrett as some type of judicial Serena Joy, a character on the show who imposes virtual slavery on fellow women.

Few Supreme Court nominees, let alone a still unnamed nominee, have been labeled as threatening to reduce all women to handmaiden birthing machines in a theocratic hellscape. Of course, the extraordinary career of Barrett should be a celebration of feminism. She graduated at the top of her law class, became a national thought leader, and ascended to one of the highest courts in the nation. She did that in her career while raising seven children, including two children adopted from Haiti.

The Newsweek story happens to be untrue. The outlet ran a correction that author Margaret Atwood “never specifically mentioned the group as being the inspiration for her work.” The only connection was that a clip that referenced the People of Praise was found in her home. Newsweek said it “regrets the error” but did not retract the story.

Imagine if Newsweek published a picture of the Taliban with that type of picture for a Muslim nominee. But Barrett is a devout Catholic, and some liberals have found a certain release in voicing raw intolerance for certain groups. Recently, many of us criticized statements attributed to Attorney General William Barr seeking out the use of sedition laws against rioters. However, instead of raising constitutional objections, Harvard professor Laurence Tribe raised the Catholic faith of Barr, writing, “It’s way beyond monarchical. It’s paranoid and dictatorial. Opus Dei, anyone?”

The lack of Breonna Taylor indictments triggered riots all over the place By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/the_lack_of_breonna_taylor_indictments_triggered_riots_all_over_the_place.html

By now, it’s not news anymore. If something happens that the Biden-voting mob doesn’t like, it hits the streets, lusting to destroy.

In June and July, it was still news (kind of) whenever we read that leftist mobs, inspired by anti-white racism and anti-American hatred, ran riot in the streets, screaming, destroying people’s businesses, and attacking anyone who got in their way, especially police officers. By now, it’s predictable and, while disturbing, it’s also dull. It’s become a dog bites man story.

It was to be expected that the mobs would start to riot in Louisville. Indeed, practically within minutes of Daniel Cameron announcing that none of the police involved in Breonna Taylor’s death would be charged for her death and that just one police officer would have to face a reckless endangerment charge for allegedly discharging his gun carelessly, the mob was on the move.

Note, please, that this was no random mob. This was a carefully organized and well-financed mob:

Well-stocked U-Haul vans, ready with all the supplies a mob needs to destroy a city, don’t come cheap. It is to be hoped that the FBI is already following the money and working with the DOJ to charge with sedition those funding the mobs. Sedition can be punished with up to twenty years in federal prison.

Hunter Biden’s Business A Senate report reveals Joe’s passivity amid his son’s influence-peddling.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hunter-bidens-business-11600901745?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Joe Biden is running against Donald Trump’s character and supposed corruption, so a Senate report documenting the Biden family’s ethical swampiness certainly counts as news.

Senate committee Chairmen Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley on Wednesday released the findings of their year-long investigation into the problems that the business dealings of Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, presented to the Obama-Biden administration. The report makes clear Hunter was profiting off his father’s position—in Ukraine, and notably in China. Foreigners knew they were buying influence by association.

The Ukrainian gas company Burisma hired Hunter to “consult” on corporate governance in May 2014, only weeks after Vice President Biden took the U.S. lead in helping Ukraine fight corruption. Burisma was a top investigation target, and U.K. officials had seized the London bank accounts of Burisma’s owner. Hunter had no experience in Ukraine or natural gas. The report cites emails showing Hunter and his business associate, Devon Archer, requesting meetings with State Department officials after their Burisma appointments. A U.S. lobbying firm working for Burisma invoked Hunter’s name as it sought a State Department meeting.

Former State official George Kent wrote to superiors in 2016 that Hunter’s Burisma position made it “very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine.” He testified that officials had to worry about “opponents” saying “What about Hunter Biden?” State Department email chains show U.S. officials mulling how to handle the Hunter problem.