RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273766/tlaibs-morbid-fantasies-palestinian-safe-haven-joseph-klein

Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is standing by her latest hate-filled statement, which is based on a monstrous falsehood. She said that she has a “kind of calming feeling” when she thinks about the Holocaust because her Palestinian “ancestors” tried “to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time.” In the same interview by hosts Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, Rep. Tlaib complained, according to her one-sided Palestinian victimhood narrative, “that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways…”

Rep. Tlaib’s Palestinian “ancestors” were in fact amongst the enthusiastic boosters of the Nazi genocide machine during World War II. Palestinian leaders sought to carry on the plan to exterminate as many of the Jews as possible who had managed to escape the Holocaust and reach the Holy Land following the war. Instead of accepting the original two-state solution proposed by the United Nations more than seven decades ago under which the Palestinians could have been living in their own independent state all this time, their leadership rejected the idea of a Jewish state existing side by side in peace with a Palestinian state.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/judicial-watch-obama-white-house-orchestrated-clinton-email-cover-up/

According to newly released emails obtained by Judicial Watch, the Obama White House was tracking a December 2012 Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) records request concerning Hillary Clinton’s unsecured, private email server. These new emails prove that the Obama White House knew about the scandal earlier than previously admitted, and attempted to cover it up.

Months after the Obama White House got involved, “the State Department responded to the FOIA requestor, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), falsely stating that no such records existed.”

Our discovery is centered upon whether Clinton intentionally attempted to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by using a non-government email system and whether the State Department acted in bad faith in processing our FOIA request for communications from Clinton’s office. U.S District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides, as well as E.W. Priestap, to be deposed or answer written questions under oath. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://spectator.us/doggedness-william-barr/

I am embarrassed to admit that when William Barr became Donald Trump’s Attorney General a couple of months ago, I did not remember that he had been here, done that as George H. W. Bush’s Attorney General back in the previous century.

They did have television back then, however, and students of history, as well as students of politics, can profit from watching Barr’s original confirmation hearings, presided over – drum roll, please – by a younger, much more acute Joe Biden, who, like the poor, we seem to have always with us. It’s a long clip, but very much worth sampling, especially for the adroit, no-nonsense performance of William Barr and mildly challenging but still respectful performance of Joe Biden.

What a difference a few decades make! William Barr, though he has gained a few pounds, is still the razor sharp and amusingly unflappable character he was in 1991. Joe Biden – well, charity requires that we draw a veil over that subject. Let’s just say that President Trump’s epithet of ‘Sleepy Joe’ (or ‘SleepyCreepy Joe’) is generous.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-why-was-fbi-so-wrong-in-trump-russia-wiretap-warrant

A huge controversy erupted last year when President Trump declassified parts of the FBI’s secret request to wiretap former Trump campaign volunteer foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Defenders and critics of the president argued over whether the October 2016 warrant application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court relied extensively on the so-called Steele dossier, which was a collection of anti-Trump allegations compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign. They also argued over whether the warrant adequately informed the court that the dossier was, in fact, a work of political opposition research, rather than legitimate intelligence gathering.

The arguments ended in impasse, with defenders and detractors set in their positions.

Now, however, we have new evidence, in the form of the Mueller report, to evaluate the Page FISA application. We can ask: Was the information the FBI relied on true? Were the FBI’s representations to the court accurate? The answers do not bode well for the bureau.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/11/who_were_the_mueller_reports_hired_guns_140289.html

Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent more than $732,000 on outside contractors, including private investigators and researchers, records show, but his office refuses to say who they were. While it’s not unusual for special government offices to outsource for services such as computer support, Mueller also hired contractors to compile “investigative reports” and other “information.”

The arrangement has led congressional investigators, government watchdog groups and others to speculate that the private investigators and researchers who worked for the special counsel’s office might have included Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, the private research firm that hired Steele to produce the Russia collusion dossier for the Clinton campaign.

They suspect the dossier creators may have been involved in Mueller’s operation – and even had a hand in his final report – because the special counsel sent his team to London to meet with Steele within a few months of taking over the Russia collusion investigation in 2017. Also, Mueller’s lead prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, had shared information he received from Fusion with the media.

https://townhall.com/columnists/alfredoortiz/2019/05/12/contrary-to-democrat-talking-point-the-economy-is-working-for-everyone-n2546152

With the unemployment rate at its lowest level in 50 years and wages growing at their fastest pace in a decade, even Democrats cannot deny that the economy is booming. But in an attempt to downplay President Trump’s economic success, they are claiming that these economic gains are merely going to the rich.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week that “the evidence shows that most of the economic gains continue to benefit those already well-off.” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer claimed, “wages aren’t growing fast enough to allow millions of workers to keep pace and feel that real economic security is within reach.” And Sen. Cory Booker broadly asserted that “Americans are struggling.”

This Democratic characterization of Trump’s economy is not new. Earlier this year, Kamala Harris said, “The economy is not working for working people.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer complained that “the state of the Trump economy is failing America’s middle class.” And for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the economy is perpetually “rigged” — whatever that means.

This diversion tactic fails on its merits. Start with unemployment rates, which are at or near record lows for Hispanic, black, female, and young workers. The unemployment rate for Americans without a high-school education, supposedly a group that’s been shafted in today’s economy, is hovering near a record low. The rate for those with disabilities has fallen by more than 20 percent over the last year to a mere 6.3 percent — the lowest level on record.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/trump-russia-investigation-partisan-politics/

This is an exquisitely planned political campaign.

Russiagate has always been a political narrative masquerading as a federal investigation. Its objective, plain and simple, has been twofold: first, to hamstring Donald Trump’s capacity to press the agenda on which he ran (immigration enforcement, conservative judicial nominees, deregulation, and a military build-up, along with skepticism about military interventions, free trade, and NATO); and ultimately, to render him unelectable come autumn 2020.

That’s it. That’s what FBI agent Peter Strzok so aptly called the “insurance policy.”

Yes, of course, if some grievous misconduct had emerged, something so egregious that Beltway Republicans could chance the wrath of the Trump base by hopping aboard the impeachment train, Democrats might take a shot at removing the president. But that, as they say in the Green New Deal biz, was just “aspirational.”

The real work in the here and now is hardball politics: Hem Trump in. Politicize the intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus. Signal to the public through intelligence leaks and suggestive official public statements that the president was suspected of conspiring with the Kremlin. Convince Trump that using the presidency’s arsenal to fight back would just bolster the obstruction case against him. Sic a special counsel on him if he lashed out anyway. Use the investigation as a rationale for slow-walking Trump nominees and for refusing to deal with him on such critical issues as border enforcement. Drive his numbers down.

It’s working.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/andrew-mccarthy-politics-is-front-and-center-for

Politics is front and center for the Russiagate probe, which has reached previously unknown heights of farce – and that’s saying something.

This week saw the spectacle of the House Judiciary Committee holding the attorney general of the United States in contempt for withholding Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report … notwithstanding that the report was actually provided to lawmakers.

Desperate to project the illusion of cover-up in the utter absence of cover-up, Democrats proceeded against the attorney general even though (a) Barr did not owe Congress a single comma in the report because federal law calls for it to be confidential (i.e., between the prosecutor investigating the case and his supervisor, the attorney general); (b) Barr nevertheless gave Congress about 95 percent of the report; (c) congressional Democrats did not avail themselves of the opportunity to read other unredacted portions to which he gave access; (d) all of the unsavory information about President Trump – i.e., the stuff in the report that Democrats truly care about – has been disclosed; and (e) Barr only withheld grand jury information which it would be illegal to disclose – meaning: Democrats put the AG to the untenable choice of violating the law or being held in contempt.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/just-who-is-or-isnt-above-the-law/90680/

“So who is seeking to be positioned above the law? It’s hard to read the precedent as suggesting Mr. Trump is doing that. Nor is the Justice Department, which is on the side of the president; nor has the Justice Department’s special prosecutor moved against the president. No, it’s starting to look like the party seeking to maneuver itself above the law is — wait for it — the United States Congress.”

Is — or is not — the President above the law? It looks like we are going to be quarreling over that question as the Congress moves to confront President Trump for the Mueller report. We are going to be popped this poser, too, in respect of Mr. Trump’s aides, Attorney General Barr and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, who are, among others, rebuffing subpoenas from the Representatives House.

Our sense of it — after reading up — is that both sides will want to avoid assumptions. That’s the gist, too, of an opinion just issued from the chambers of the New Yorker magazine’s constitutional maven, Jeffrey Toobin. He reckons that Mr. Trump is creating a “new constitutional norm” in which the only likely remedy for an executive defying the legislature would be the next election.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/10/nadlers-contempt/

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Thursday held a press conference responding to the effort by Representative Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for his testimony last week. McCarthy was relaxed and jovial as he approached the entrails of the self-destructing anti-Trump movement with a voracious appetite.

For too long the media and their client Democrats in Congress have operated in an environment in which the rule of law meant only one law: “Get Trump.” That “law” made everything done in service to that goal “legal” and everything in opposition to the goal “illegal.” Cries of a “constitutional crisis” are simply rehashing the received wisdom that there is a new, unwritten amendment to the Constitution called the “Get Trump” provision.

Thus, an exercise of delegated power by an elected president over the unelected subordinate branches could be called (without intended irony) an attack on democracy. The Obama era ushered in a convergence of power among the powerful federal agencies, the media, and the Democrats. In the early part of the Trump Administration, it even appeared strong enough to overcome the inconvenient election of a candidate who ran in opposition to the cabal.

But, as they say, something that cannot go on forever must eventually stop. With Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in charge of the Department of Justice and all “Get Trump” operations, there appeared to be no exception to the new law. Rosenstein dutifully used the Department of Justice against Trump’s allies while seeming to grant immunity to Trump’s enemies.