RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/andrew-c-mccarthy-would-mueller-indict-trump-for-attempting-to-fire-mueller

With indications that special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report is imminent, talk of “no collusion” is dominating chatter by the president, his fans, and his critics. That is, a finding of no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia is widely anticipated. Yet, my sense is that, more than on collusion, Mueller may focus on the obstruction aspect of his investigation.

I want to examine an element of that, involving the status of Mueller himself.

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt have highlighted Trump’s purported “attempts” to fire Mueller, which mainly involved “trying to get” then-White House counsel Donald McGahn to fire him. What does this reporting tell us? Well, we know prosecutors are investigating whether the president obstructed the Russia investigation. How could bombast about firing Mueller bear on that issue when, of course, Trump never actually fired him?

The answer may be found in that word: attempt.

The Times reporting presages that Mueller has homed in on the parts of federal obstruction laws that address not only interference with a proceeding but also “attempts” to do so. Could the special counsel be poised to argue that Trump committed obstruction by attempting to fire the special counsel?

If that is the theory, it is meritless. In the context of the chief executive’s dismissal of subordinates, the concept of attempt is inapposite. A president either fires someone or he doesn’t.

Actually, there are at least three problems with trying to inflate Trump’s spasms of anger over Mueller into an obstruction felony.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/deep-state-nothing-new-american-politics/

The so-called deep state is often weaponized to reflect current orthodoxies.

All great empires of the past created deep states.

The permanent bureaucracies and elite hangers-on adapted as imperial conditions dictated. Imperial Spain’s El Escorial outside Madrid, the courts of Renaissance Venice, and Byzantium’s Constantinople, or the thousands who lived at 18th-century Versailles, were all thronged with court functionaries. They were the embryos of nonstop dramas of intrigue and coups, and often immune to periodic changes even in autocratic heads of state.

The Byzantine emperor Justinian savagely curbed the influence of his bureaucratic opponents only through the infamous slaughter of the Nika riots of AD 532. The key for the deep-state careerist was always survival, even more than public service. The ubiquitous fifth-century B.C. Athenian Alcibiades was variously an Athenian democratic imperialist, a suspected oligarchic sympathizer, a wanted outlaw of the Athenian state, a turncoat working for Sparta, a returning Athenian democrat, and an aristocratic exile under the protection of Persia — the common denominator being a manipulative skilled survivor of the politics of the Greek city-state.

Similar was the much later example of the “versatile” French minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. Talleyrand for more than 40 years was a fixture of the permanent Paris court and thus in succession an advocate and betrayer of the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution, Napoleon, and the restored monarchy. His loyalty was to the career of Monsieur Talleyrand rather than to France, much less to monarchy, the revolution, republican government, or dictatorship.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/anti-semitism-louis-farrakhan-democratic-party/

The ‘It’s anti-Zionism, not anti-Semitism’ dodge doesn’t wash.

The Democrats have a couple of problems: One is that they have spent many years complaining about being labeled “socialists” only to see their party come to be dominated by self-proclaimed socialists such as Senator Bernie Sanders (the gentleman from Vermont is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination but is not a member of the party) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, in spite of her pricey education, does not give the impression that she could be relied upon to spell bourgeoisie.

“Don’t call us socialists!” they used to say.

Now?

“Don’t call us anti-Semites!”

Well.

If the Democrats have a minor socialist problem, they have a major problem in the form of Jew-hating weirdos, preeminent among them the Reverend Louis Farrakhan of the so-called Nation of Islam. Farrakhan has been an out-and-proud Jew-hating weirdo for many decades now, but Democrats still feel the need to make gestures of obeisance before him: Anti-Trump leaders such as Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour of the Women’s March have embraced Farrakhan and courted his favor. Barack Obama came a-calling in 2005 when he was ramping up his political career. The Congressional Black Caucus has consulted him. Bill Clinton stood alongside him at Aretha Franklin’s funeral, implicitly elevating the cult leader. California Democrats Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters attend Farrakhan’s public events, and Obama-administration veteran Eric Holder recently posed for a picture with him.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/06/four-different-lies-james-clapper-told-about-lying-to-congress/

Five years ago to this month, former director of national intelligence James Clapper lied to Congress, and he has been scrambling to make excuses for the ongoing lies and leaks ever since.

In March 2013, Sen. Ron Wyder asked Clapper under oath if the U.S. government was collecting “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.” Clapper paused and said, “No, sir. … Not wittingly.” Three months later, Edward Snowden leaked documents revealing that the National Security Agency was in fact collecting in bulk domestic call records and other various internet communications on millions of Americans.

This was the first of many “untruths,” as Clapper likes to call them. Here are other lies Clapper has cooked up since trying to explain his false statements under oath.1. He Lied Because He ‘Simply Didn’t Understand’ The Question

In an apology letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein written about four months after the hearing, Clapper said he gave the “clearly erroneous” answer because he “simply didn’t think of” the call-record collection.

Even though Clapper had received the committee’s questions the day before his testimony, he maintains he did not realize that Wyden was asking about Section 215 of the Patriot Act, and was answering a question regarding a different program, specifically Section 702 of FISA.

“I didn’t realize what he was talking about,” Clapper said at the University of Chicago last May. He repeated the lie again to CNN’s John Berman on Tuesday after news broke that the Trump administration is planning to end the NSA’s spying program.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/432808-its-not-about-collusion-its-about-obstruction-and-impeachment

“There was no collusion!”

As President Trump demonstrated in his feature-length CPAC speech, he is that rare combination of bottomless energy, canny comic timing, disregard for norms, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The last manifests itself in manic refutation of the Democrat-media narrative that the Trump campaign was in a traitorous conspiracy with the Kremlin. At this point, if you ask the president what time it is, or to pass the salt shaker, he’ll tell you, “There was no collusion!”

Mr. Trump has always said this, even as evidence of non-criminal but indecorous Trump-Russia contacts mounted (the Trump Tower New York meeting with Kremlin-operative Natalia Veselnitiskaya, the Trump Tower Moscow project, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s ties to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs). Plainly, though, “no collusion” has become a mantra now because the president expects that special counsel Robert Mueller’s reputedly imminent report will conclude that there was no criminal collusion — no Trump-Russia espionage conspiracy to steal the 2016 election.

The White House is attempting to shape expectations: Even if the special counsel’s report catalogues unsavory conduct and connections, it will be portrayed as exoneration if there was no “collusion” in the sense of criminal collaboration.

Not so fast.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-big-lie-about-russian-hacking_2825871.html

Hearing Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) address former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen in committee last week was another grating reminder of how unproven theories—fantasies, even—become Big Lies: through constant, brazen repetition. At a certain point, they cut channels through the public mind and run through history evermore as “conventional wisdom.”

We now teeter at this point with the unproven theory—a.k.a. Big Lie—that “the Russians” “hacked” the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Something happened at the DNC in 2016, all right, and that “something” led to the WikiLeaks publication of thousands of DNC emails, and the swift disgrace and resignations of top DNC officials, including DNC “chair” Wasserman Schultz, over revelations of DNC favoritism toward Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders.

Nearly three years have passed, however, and no one has produced forensic evidence of a DNC “hack” by “the Russians”—and that includes special counsel Robert Mueller, whose 2018 indictment of a dozen or so Russians presents zero evidence to support his accusations. Not even the FBI discovered any “hack” evidence at the DNC because, in part, the nation’s federal law enforcement body never examined the DNC’s computer servers.

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Ilhan-Omar-Linda-Sarsour-anti-semitism-Pelosi-13665817.php

Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour ripped into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after House Democrats drafted a resolution condemning anti-Semitism in response to Rep. Ilhan Omar accusing pro-Israel lawmakers of pushing for “allegiance to a foreign country.”

Sarsour, who served as co-chair of the Women’s March in 2017 and 2019, accused Pelosi of “doing the dirty work of powerful white men” by condemning Omar.

“Nancy is a typical white feminist upholding the patriarchy doing the dirty work of powerful white men,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “God forbid the men are upset – no worries, Nancy to the rescue to stroke their egos.”

Sarsour, who has faced anti-Semitism accusations herself, said the resolution of condemnation gives Republicans an “easier path” in 2020.”Democrats are playing in to the hands of the right,” she wrote. “Dividing our base and reinforcing their narrative and giving them an easier path towards 2020… You want a resolution? Condemn all forms of bigotry. All forms of bigotry are unacceptable. We won’t let them pin us up against each other. We stand with Representative Ilhan Omar. Our top priority is the safety of our sister and her family.”

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/05/the-democrats-resolution-condemning-anti-semitism-is-a-transparent-joke/

Democrats’ draft measure condemning anti-Semitism, which the House will vote on this Wednesday, is a useless and transparent attempt to distract from a serious problem. The melodramatic resolution mentions Alfred Dreyfuss, Leo Frank, Henry Ford, and “anti-Muslim bigotry”—because, hey, even when Jews are being smeared it’s about Islamophobia—but not once does it condemn Rep. Ilhan Omar or the strain of Jew-hatred she is helping normalize on the left. The resolution, teeming with useless platitudes, is one that even Omar could probably support.

Omar argues that American “democracy is built on debate” and that she “should not be expected to have allegiance/pledge support to a foreign country in order to serve my country in Congress or serve on committee.” No decent person disagrees with this comment in theory. Also, no sane person believes this contention, perpetually repeated by anti-Israel progressives, is true of Omar.

No one asked her, or anyone else, to pledge allegiance to a foreign nation. It’s her belief that supporting the Jewish state, a long-time ideological and geopolitical ally of the United States, is an act of dual loyalty — either by Jews themselves, or by those they’ve hypnotized to do “evil” for them. She is the one who accuses Jewish Americans, a group that has played a robust role in the nation’s civic life for a long time, of doing the bidding of a foreign nation to the detriment of their own.