Two of these articles were sort of emphasized at Drudge and the third was raised there some time ago.
EU BOMBSHELL: Macron admits France would vote to LEAVE EU if country held referendum
This is indeed an astounding admission from the French elites/establishment. Even reading the bit of walk back Macron offers as to how he would convince people otherwise. And as is so indicative of socialist globalization types the reasons for the lack of support is that the EU gives too much freedom! Macron also posits a ridiculous critique of the ballot regarding the British vote to exit the European Union (EU) i.e. “Brexit” . Imagine a “referendum” that was not clear as to yes or no but a rather a survey of responses to open ended questions. It would not be a referendum as no conclusion could be drawn, not to mention the structure of what Macron proposes assumes that the concept must be maintained. Bold our emphasis
January 22, 2018 UK Express article by Oli Smith
Emmanuel Macron has sent shockwaves throughout Europe after he conceded that French voters would quit the EU if France held an in/out referendum on the Brussels-led bloc.
No other European Union country has risked putting membership of the bloc to a public vote since Britain surprised member-states by voting to leave the bloc in 2016,
Macron conceded that French voters would quit the EU if France held an in/out referendum . . .
Asked about the Brexit vote, the candid president told (BBC correspondent) Marr: “I am not the one to judge or comment on the decision of your people.
“But, my interpretation is that a lot of the losers of globalisation suddenly decided it was no more for them.”
Marr then pushed the French president, regarded by many as the EU’s new leader, on whether Britain’s decision was a one-off.
The BBC journalist asked: “If France had had the same referendum, it might have had the same result?”
Macron responded: “Yes, probably, probably. Yes. In a similar context. But we have a very different context in France.”
He added: “I wouldn’t take any bet though – I would have fought very hard to win.
“My understanding is that middle classes and working classes and the oldest decided that the recent decades were not in their favour, and the adjustments made by the EU were not in their favour.
“I think the organisation of EU went too far with freedom without cohesion, free markets without rules.”
The French leader hit out at David Cameron for holding a referendum with a simple yes / no response on membership, instead of asking how to improve the situation.
Twitter lit up after the interview was aired, with many questioning if the French leader had just admitted that he “does not listen to his own people” since he has refused to hold a referendum on the EU.
Nixon erasing tapes anyone?
More texts turned over from FBI agent taken off Mueller team Bold our emphasis
It is an AP story but how widespread has it been picked up? As a straight news report it is pretty good. But you can bet the analysis would not be so reserved had it been a story undermining Republican linked operatives. We would see a run to the Democrats eliciting dark sinister quotes.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has turned over to Congress additional text messages involving an FBI agent who was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team following the discovery of derogatory comments about President Donald Trump.
But the department also said in a letter to lawmakers that its record of messages sent to and from the agent, Peter Strzok, was incomplete because the FBI, for technical reasons, had been unable to preserve and retrieve about five months’ worth of communications.
New text messages highlighted in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray by Sen. Ron Johnson, the Republican chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, are from the spring and summer of 2016 and involve discussion of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. They reference Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s decision to accept the FBI’s conclusion in that case and a draft statement that former FBI Director James Comey had prepared in anticipation of closing out the Clinton investigation without criminal charges.
The FBI declined to comment Sunday.
Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent who also worked the Clinton email case, was reassigned last summer from the team investigating ties between Russia and Trump’s Republican presidential campaign after Mueller learned he had exchanged politically charged text messages — many anti-Trump in nature — with an FBI lawyer also detailed to the group. The lawyer, Lisa Page, left Mueller’s team before the text messages were discovered.
The Justice Department last month produced for reporters and Congress hundreds of text messages that the two had traded before becoming part of the Mueller investigation. Many focused on their observations of the 2016 election and included discussions in often colorful language of their personal feelings about Trump, Clinton and other public figures. Some Republican lawmakers have contended the communication reveals the FBI and the Mueller team to be politically tainted and biased against Trump — assertions Wray has flatly rejected.
In addition to the communications already made public, the Justice Department on Friday provided Johnson’s committee with 384 pages of text messages, according to a letter from the Wisconsin lawmaker that was obtained by The Associated Press.
But, according to the letter, the FBI told the department that its system for retaining text messages sent and received on bureau phones had failed to preserve communications between Strzok and Page over a five-month period between Dec. 14, 2016, and May 17, 2017. May 17 was the date that Mueller was appointed as special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation.
The explanation for the gap was “misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s collection capabilities.”
In Johnson’s letter to Wray, he asks whether the FBI has any records of communications between Strzok and Page during that five-month window and whether the FBI had searched their non-FBI phones for additional messages. He also asks for the “scope and scale” of any other records from the Clinton investigation that have been lost.
One of the messages references a change in language to Comey’s statement closing out the email case involving Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the 2016 presidential election. While an earlier draft of the statement said Clinton and President Barack Obama had an email exchange while Clinton was “on the territory” of a hostile adversary, the reference to Obama was at first changed to “senior government official” and then omitted entirely in the final version.
In another exchange, the two express displeasure about the timing of Lynch’s announcement that she would defer to the FBI’s judgment on the Clinton investigation. That announcement came days after it was revealed that the attorney general and former President Bill Clinton had an impromptu meeting aboard her plane in Phoenix, though both sides said the email investigation was never discussed.
Strzok said in a July 1 text message that the timing of Lynch’s announcement “looks like hell.” And Page appears to mockingly refer to Lynch’s decision to accept the FBI’s conclusion in the case as a “real profile in courag(e) since she knows no charges will be brought.”
And then there is this report of an interview with pro-life champion Chris Smith Republican NJ. He of long tenure from a not so easy district offers some plain spoken analysis of the filibuster. Basically that the Dems would end it in a heartbeat if they were in charge but with out 60 votes in the Senate. How does he know that – because Harry Reid essentially said so.
Rep. Chris Smith Wants to Abolish the Filibuster. Here’s Why (excerpts)
Washington, D.C. – Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) told Townhall at the March for Life Friday that he believes the Senate legislative filibuster rule requiring a supermajority of 60 votes to break a filibuster and pass legislation is a “relic” and that abolishing it “would facilitate passage of a lot of good legislation in general and most of the pro-life legislation in particular.” . . .
“You know we did it with Gorsuch,” he added referencing the Senate GOP invoking the so-called “nuclear option” or Reid rule (former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was the first to use it) in April in response to the Democrat’s filibuster of the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme court. The Republicans allowed the filibuster to be broken with 51 votes rather than the normally required 60-vote supermajority.
Smith also pointed out that then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid argued in an August 2016 New York Times article “to either modify or eliminate the legislative filibuster” when Hillary Clinton got elected to get her agenda passed. “So the Democrats will do it,” he emphasized.
Here we provide the “money quote”
A Democratic Senate Might Need to Curtail Filibuster, Harry Reid Says
“Unless after this election there is a dramatic change to go back to the way it used to be, the Senate will have to evolve as it has in the past,” Mr. Reid told me, referring to a former tradition of rarely mounting filibusters. “But it will evolve with a majority vote determining stuff. It is going to happen.” . . .
However, he is the first to publicly express what other lawmakers and aides have talked about more quietly: the possibility that Democrats will take drastic action if they are triumphant at the polls only to be blocked by the gridlock that has plagued Washington in a new Clinton administration.
R Mall
