RUTHFULLY YOURS

In movies, novels, music, and art, progressives murder their enemies, including presidents, in myriad ways.We live in a society in which gratuitous violence is the trademark of video games, movies, and popular music. Kill this, shoot that in repugnant detail becomes a race to the visual and spoken bottom.

We have gone from Sam Peckinpah’s realistic portrayal of violent death to a gory ritual of metal ripping flesh, as if it is some sort of macabre ballet. Rap music has institutionalized violence against women and the police — to the tune of billions in profits, largely as a way for suburban kids to find vicarious street authenticity. And this idea of metaphorically cutting, bleeding, or shooting those whom you don’t like without real consequences has seeped into the national political dialogue.

For example, why does popular culture wink and nod at the widespread metaphorical killing of Republican presidents? Liberals used to believe that words mattered and images had consequences; the casual glorification of carnage trivialized violence and only made it more acceptable — and likely.

In 2017, the obsessive hatred of Trump led, for instance, to many obscenities: Madonna told us she dreamed of blowing up the White House, comedian Kathy Griffin posed with a bloody facsimile of Trump’s head, Snoop Dog shot a Trump likeliness in a video, a Shakespearean company ritually stabbed Trump-Caesar every night on stage, Johnny Depp joked, “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president? … It has been a while, and maybe it is time.”

Much of the media coverage is hailing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russian trolls as stunning proof of foreign hacking of the 2016 election. Mueller may have other cards up his sleeve and the jury is still out. But the U.S. government likely duped far more voters than did the Russians on Election Day 2016.

Mueller revealed that 13 Russians and 3 companies were allegedly involved in attempting to sow dissent in the U.S. prior to and after the election. Most of their spending on Facebook ads occurred after the election, and they included spurring both pro-Trump and anti-Trump outbursts. Many of the ads were dopey even by Facebook standards, including a picture of Jesus getting ready to punch Hillary Clinton. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein declared that there is “no allegation in the indictment of any effect on the outcome of the American election.”

At least one of Mueller’s allegations blames Russians for a homegrown political debacle. Mueller charged that Russian trolls conspired to “defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the Federal Election Commission.” But this is akin to blaming panhandlers for the notorious unreliability of the Washington subway system.

The FEC has long been “borderline useless,” as a New York Times editorial scoffed in 2011. Federal Election Commissioner Ann Ravel complained last year that, thanks to FEC gridlock, “major violations are swept under the rug and the resulting dark money has left Americans uniformed about the sources of campaign spending … violators of the law are given a free pass.” Common Cause, People for the American Way, and other liberal groups complained in 2016 that the FEC “is a failed, dysfunctional agency … Campaigns, political operatives, parties, and independent spenders know they can operate with impunity … for campaign finance violations.” FEC negligence permitted far greater violations of campaign law than the $1.25 million a month the Russian trolls allegedly spent.

Democrats have a single goal when it comes to Donald Trump : impeachment. Their strategy is likewise clear: Resist! What no one seems to ask is whether resistance is really the best path to the House majority Democrats would need to pass articles of impeachment.

Democrats do have a few things going for them this year. On average, the party that holds the White House loses 30 seats or so in midterm elections—and the GOP has only a 24-seat majority. Moreover, 35 House Republicans are leaving their seats, more than twice the number of Democrats who are.

That’s not all. The intense dislike for Mr. Trump energizes the Democratic base the way Barack Obama energized the Republican one. Many swing districts will be in suburban areas where the vote margin may be decided by college-educated women, one of Mr. Trump’s weakest demographics.

But the idea that Mr. Trump’s unpopularity makes a blue wave inevitable overlooks some Republican advantages. Mr. Trump’s popularity is beginning to move upward with the growing economy, which points to a key weakness in the Resist! strategy:

Because the tax reform passed without a single Democratic vote, good news about the economy is bad news for Democratic candidates. It further means the Democratic message is rooted in enabling Washington dysfunction, because they cannot run as people willing to reach across the aisle to get things done.

It’s too early to know how last week’s failure to pass an immigration bill will play out politically. But if Mr. Trump goes around the country saying he offered to compromise but Democrats refused because they’d rather have a political issue, that could hurt them too. Especially because he will remind voters this is the same party willing to shut down the government for people here illegally.

There’s also the problem of candidates. Among this year’s crop of Democratic hopefuls are some military veterans. But it’s not a uniform message. A progressive Democrat backed by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is targeting seven-term Rep. Dan Lipinski in Chicago, a pro-life Democrat who voted against ObamaCare. If the goal is a Democratic majority, purity campaigns are a distraction. When Rahm Emanuel was engineering the party’s retaking of the House in 2006, his strategy was to settle on a candidate who would be competitive in the district (even if not as liberal as the party would like) and then reduce the primary bloodshed. CONTINUE AT SITE

Mitt Romney announced Friday that he’s running for the U.S. Senate from Utah, and the timing on the same day as the Justice Department indictments of Russians for meddling in the U.S. presidential election was apt. Mr. Romney was right about the Russian threat in 2012, and Democrats who are now echoing him when it serves their political purposes against Donald Trump owe the former GOP presidential nominee an apology.

Start with Barack Obama, who derided Mr. Romney’s claim that Russia was a major U.S. geopolitical foe in the third presidential debate in 2012. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years,” Mr. Obama said, to applause from the Democratic media establishment. In its endorsement of Mr. Obama, the Washington Post criticized Mr. Romney for “calling Russia America’s greatest foe” as an example of his lack of judgment.

Readers may recall that Mr. Romney made his comments about Russia after Mr. Obama was caught unaware talking on an open microphone with then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in March 2012:

“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important to give me space,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Medvedev, the Vladimir Putin stand-in.

“Yeah, I understand,” Mr. Medvedev said.

Mr. Obama then said, “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”

Mr. Medvedev: “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”

“Israel learned the hard way. A terrorist school shooting forty years ago took the lives of over a hundred elementary school children. Since then, any school in Israel with a hundred students or more has armed guards and staff with concealed weapons. Why do we in America value our air travelers, our congresspeople, celebrities, the employees and contents of all public buildings, museums, etc. more than we treasure our schoolchildren? Given the world we now inhabit, it seems that our schools would and should have the best security available today. Those of us with little Ring doorbell cameras on our front porches have more security than most of our schools. ”

Not only is it hard to imagine the anger and grief the families of those killed by Nikolas Cruz are in at their Florida high school; it is impossible. We can sympathize and empathize, ache for their loss and be grateful that our own children were not there, and then feel guilty for being relieved that our children are safe.

An event like this one focuses all parents and grandparents like laser beams on their own young people. That such a thing has happened yet again in our country is unacceptable, and yet it happened…again. Despite years of flashing neon lights that this boy was not only mentally ill, but potentially dangerous, he apparently had no formal record of mental illness. Even though he had been told he could not enter his school with a backpack and was later expelled, even though the police had visited his home thirty-nine times between 2011 and 2018, he was able to buy that AR-15 at age 18! Even though we have laws meant to prevent persons who are mentally ill from acquiring guns, this kid passed a background check! This is yet another catastrophic failure of a whole panoply of law enforcement agencies, social services, and school authorities.

Adding insult to injury, the FBI barely bothered to check out the YouTuber who reported Cruz’s comment about becoming a “professional school shooter,” and the bureau completely ignored a second, specific warning in January about his intentions to kill people. Both tips to the FBI included his full name. As Jeanine Pirro reported on her program, Judge Jeanine, there are only thirteen Nikolas Cruzes in the U.S.! The FBI did not even bother to do a database search, and now seventeen people are dead.

Given the bare facts above, it is hardly surprising that the American people want to blame someone for the colossal failure of law enforcement. Mistakes were made, to put it mildly. But now many of the young survivors, their parents, and the usual suspects on the left are blaming Trump. Why? Because he supports the NRA? Because he did not immediately speak out about gun control?

“The attacks on free speech on college campuses have just gotten so great that we couldn’t continue to sit idly by and do nothing abut it,” she said. “The freedom to test the merits of a position and sharpen one’s own views by debating opposing viewpoints is really at the core of a liberal arts education, and yet at too many colleges around the country administrators find it more important to make sure that students feel comfortable and affirmed.”
WASHINGTON – Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand said leaving the Department of Justice is “bittersweet” and she “would have been happy to stay much longer” but could not pass up a leadership opportunity at Walmart.

“I have loved working at DOJ, both in the Bush administration and now, and I would have been very happy to stay much longer but sometimes in one’s career, as many of you have experienced, no doubt, something comes up unexpectedly and you just can’t pass it up and that’s all there is to it. So, moving on,” Brand said to laughter from the audience at a Federalist Society luncheon on Thursday.

Brand is formally leaving DOJ this week to become Walmart’s executive vice president of global governance and corporate security.

NBC News reported last week that Brand decided to step down due to “fear” of being asked to oversee the Russia probe should President Trump decide to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein, according to anonymous sources.

Brand said on Thursday that it’s been “a pleasure” serving with Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“Jeff Sessions is focused every day on protecting us from foreign terrorist threats, from violent crime in our cities,” she said. “He’s tackling the opioid crisis, he’s fighting gangs like MS-13 and, importantly, he’s focused every day on ensuring everything DOJ does promotes the rule of law, and that commitment is carried out every day by all of us at the department.”

Brand told the audience her prayers go out to the victims’ families after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Fla., on Wednesday. The FBI was warned about a YouTube comment that the shooter had allegedly posted last year, which referenced carrying out a school shooting.

“Im going to be a professional school shooter,” read Nikolas Cruz’s comment.

After the tip, the FBI reportedly did not coordinate with local law enforcement. Separately, the FBI received a tip a month before the shooting from someone close to Cruz.

“The AG has already directed our office of legal policy to work with other agencies to study the intersection of mental health and criminality to try to prevent these kinds of crimes from happening again in the future,” Brand said during the speech.

Following her remarks, PJM asked Brand to explain what policy changes DOJ is exploring after the shooting but she did not respond.

Brand told the audience that DOJ has been using its “litigation authority” to protect First Amendment freedoms, particularly on college campuses.

“The attacks on free speech on college campuses have just gotten so great that we couldn’t continue to sit idly by and do nothing abut it,” she said. “The freedom to test the merits of a position and sharpen one’s own views by debating opposing viewpoints is really at the core of a liberal arts education, and yet at too many colleges around the country administrators find it more important to make sure that students feel comfortable and affirmed.”CONTINUE AT SITE

On Friday, Judge Emmet Sullivan issued an order in United States v. Flynn that, while widely unnoticed, reveals something fascinating: A motion by Michael Flynn to withdraw his guilty plea based on government misconduct is likely in the works.

Just a week ago, and thus before Sullivan quietly directed Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team to provide Flynn’s attorneys “any exculpatory evidence,” Washington Examiner columnist Byron York detailed the oddities of Flynn’s case. The next day, former assistant U.S. attorney and National Review contributing editor Andrew McCarthy connected more of the questionable dots. York added even more details a couple of days later. Together these articles provide the backdrop necessary to understand the significance of Sullivan’s order on Friday.
What’s Happened in the Michael Flynn Case So Far

To recap: On November 30, 2017, prosecutors working for Mueller charged former Trump national security advisor Flynn with lying to FBI agents. The following day, Flynn pled guilty before federal judge Rudolph Contreras. Less than a week later — and without explanation — Flynn’s case was reassigned to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan.

One of Sullivan’s first orders of business was to enter a standing order, on December 12, 2017, directing “the government to produce to defendant in a timely manner – including during plea negotiations – any evidence in its possession that is favorable to defendant and material either to defendant’s guilt or punishment.” Sullivan’s standing order further directed the government, if it “has identified any information which is favorable to the defendant but which the government believes not to be material,” to “submit such information to the Court for in camera review.”

The indictments are in.

Team Mueller indicted a bunch of Russians associated with a troll farm for interfering with an election in the United States. Russian troll farms generally don’t follow United States law. But foreigners are not allowed to interfere with elections in the United States. Unless they’re named Christopher Steele.

The Clinton campaign employed a British foreign agent who used Russian intelligence sources to put together opposition research meant to interfere with the results of a United States election. Collusion between the Clinton campaign, Steele and the Russians doesn’t require an endless fishing expedition.

Foreigners interfering in United States elections are not a new phenomenon. Muslims in Gaza famously ran a phone bank for Obama. A Hamas political adviser had declared that he hoped Obama would win.

There was no investigation. Nor did anyone indict the Gazans running the phone bank.

The indictment states that, “the Federal Election Campaign Act… prohibits foreign nationals from making any contributions, expenditures, independent expenditures, or disbursements for electioneering communications.” But Obama had chosen to accept untraceable donations from abroad. He had failed to ask for proof of citizenship and his website had even allowed donations from Iran and North Korea.

The chair of Nigeria’s stock exchange had organized an “Africans for Obama” fundraiser. The Albanian Socialist Prime Minister had been accused of a scheme to transfer $80,000 to an Obama fundraising committee. Gazans bought and resold Obama t-shirts from the campaign website. And no indictments.

None of that counts as election interference. And none of it generated an investigation of Obama.

Indicting civilians covertly employed by a foreign government to engage in propaganda in the United States is an unserious act. But Obama Inc. responded in the same futile way to Chinese hacking efforts. Responding to cyberwarfare with toothless indictments is not how you head off the next attack.

Let’s suppose for a minute that Hillary Clinton and all her fellow Resisters, along with all their allies in the Deep State, had accepted the results of the 2016 election, as has been the tradition and expectation. Remember Hillary’s sneering question to Donald at the debates – whether he would accept the election results? At that time, nobody thought Hillary would be the one to throw the temper tantrum when she lost, much less organize a resistance movement.

Suppose that, instead of anger and outrage over losing the election and launching what is turning out to be a suicidal frontal assault on Donald Trump, Hillary and her minions had set about to co-opt him with flattering news coverage and invitations to all the most glittering social events. In the past, that’s how it worked. The Powers that Be co-opted newcomers to the Executive and Legislative Branches of government with seduction – showering them with all the enticements within the political insider’s bags of goodies. It’s been done often before; the GOP is populated with legions of politicians who came to Washington promising the voters that they would be change agents. Instead, the so-called RINOs succumbed to the voices of the Sirens who control the media, the money, and the chairmanships. It is, as the saying goes, so much more pleasant and profitable “to go along to get along.” After all, who wants to endure a ceaseless torrent of negative coverage in the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, and the rest of the MSM?

This time, finding no sealed divorce proceedings to crack open at the last minute to rig the election and failing in destroying their opposition with character attacks, the Hillary forces’ insurance policy was to trump up charges of Russian collusion. I suppose it is the Arkansas-Chicago way. Plus, destroying your opponents does afford a certain amount of ego gratification. In fact, it’s been obvious for a long time that the Clinton way is akin to Conan the Barbarian’s – i.e., to “crush your enemies” is “what is best in life.”