Is this Katy Barr the door?

So, Where’s All This Going?

Will Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham actually “get to the bottom of the government’s spying” on the Trump campaign and administration?

If they does, and it leads all the way to the Obama Oval Office, which we believe should be the obvious ultimate destination, will he expose it?

If he does, will the media insure that Obama is protected from the just repercussions?

What do you think?

Fox’s Juan Williams think this whole Barr “investigation” is ridiculous…”investigating the investigators. Harrumph!!”

The Democrats? Well, we all know what they think and what they’ll attempt to do. If Kirsten Gillibrand would publicly demand impeaching a Supreme Court Justice who votes against Roe v. Wade, what do you think she and her Party’s leadership, nominal and de facto, would do?

And how about that entire “Resistance” movement? You know. The one that readily resorts to violence when the traditional American ‘way’ of resolving differences doesn’t get them their way?

As we see it, here are the possible outcomes of the Barr investigation into the government plot to bring down the presidency, duly elected by the American people:

a) As media relentlessly attacks the investigation as purely political and “mean-spirited”, Congressional Democrats and, allowed or even joined by the traditionally timid Republicans, find Barr in contempt or at least succeed, at most, in having him removed from office as AG, or at least so discredited as to neutralize any effectiveness he could have. The resulting “findings” would be another ‘hyper-cautious’ statement like the last IG report which finds that there were”some within the DOJ and agencies who made some quite bad mistakes”, but there was no ‘political bias’ that was traceable to the Oval Office or even the highest levels of the then-administration.

b) Barr and Durham and the Inspector General, either due to continued successful stonewalling by the various law enforcement and national security agencies or, after learning how extensive and lawless the spying actions of those agencies and the nation’s highest political leaders were, will simply refuse to reveal it out of concern over` the horrendous damage to the national psyche such a report would produce . Some criminal referrals for various other “improprieties” may be made but none for the highest members of the various agencies, nor for the specific act of ‘treason’ implicit in their treacherous actions.

c) The Barr investigation will concur with the IG’s conclusions and will further conclude that serious criminal acts were committed by the leadership of the FBI and CIA, and some NSA officials. It will not go beyond that, however, to include the Oval Office nor to any of the highest ranking members of the Obama administration (Lynch, Brennan, Clapper, et al). Some criminal referrals and convictions will occur.

d) The IG’s report and the Barr investigation will find and report irrefutable evidence of widespread criminality among not only high ranking officials in the law enforcement and national security agencies but also on the part of the highest ranking members of the Obama administration up to and including Obama himself!

In our opinion, while it would be the truest justice for the insidious actions of the perpetrators, and, ultimately the most vital outcome for the preservation of all that the USA stands for, (d) is out of the question, easily the most unlikely to happen in the America we have become.

While (a) and (b) are not beyond the realm of possibility (in an age where a nasty buffoon like Joe Biden could be a front-runner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination and the rest of the field would advocate for Communism), we sincerely hope the Republic is not that far gone.

Despite the furious efforts by the media and the entertainment industry to discredit Barr and belittle the investigation and even promote physical assaults by “Resistance ” members on Trump supporters, and possibly the investigators, we believe that (c) is the most likely. The evidence uncovered by Barr, and the Inspector General that illegal spying by government agencies will be so irrefutable that a slim majority of the American people will demand action against the perpetrators (Comey , McCabe, Strzok, et al would most likely be the ones; probably not Yates, Rice, et al) .

The effect upon the nation, however, to take the scandal to to the logical conclusion as in (d) and result in indictments of Lynch, Brennan, and ultimately Obama himself, would have such far reaching and devastatingly divisive impact that it is unlikely the nation could survive in a form anywhere near its historic essence.

As a conservative, or even registered Republican you would find the neighbor you always considered ‘mildly liberal’, but a sober and friendly person, would overnight become your worst enemy, and rightfully feared as a violent threat! The national divisiveness resulting from a version of (d) would make the conflicts arising in and from the Civil War appear as mere parliamentary disagreements.
——————–

WHAT IS YOUR TAKE, READERS? WE’D LIKE TOP HEAR FROM YOU AND BE ABLE TO REFLECT A CONSENSUS AMONG VERITASPAC CONSERVATIVES, LIBERTARIANS, AND MODERATES.

DLH

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ANYBODY SEE WHERE POPE FRANCIS HAS SPOKEN OUT ABOUT THIS LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRY?

– His Holiness Never Fails to Remind the World of The USA’s ‘Shortcomings’, and those of “Capitalism”

– Perhaps Francis is Cherishing the Gift He Received From Bolivia’s Dictator Eva Morales (the Cross embedded in the hammer and sickle)

The NY Times reports the economic decline Venezuelans are now experiencing is unsurpassed in the past 45 years outside of countries in the midst of war:

Zimbabwe’s collapse under Robert Mugabe. The fall of the Soviet Union. Cuba’s disastrous unraveling in the 1990s.

The crumbling of Venezuela’s economy has now outpaced them all.
Venezuela’s fall is the single largest economic collapse outside of war in at least 45 years, economists say.

“It’s really hard to think of a human tragedy of this scale outside civil war,” said Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard University and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. “This will be a touchstone of disastrous policies for decades to come.”

To find similar levels of economic devastation, economists at the I.M.F. pointed to countries that were ripped apart by war, like Libya earlier this decade or Lebanon in the 1970s.

(Note to The Pontiff: Those “disastrous policies” were not capitalist!)

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WHEN WILL CHRIS WRAY BE JUSTIFIABLY FIRED IF NOT INDICTED?

This is an excerpt from a recent piece in the Conservative Tree House (CTH) blog site.

President Trump Highlights Climbing Arc of Flynn Story…

The reason we note this excerpt is only to once again highlight the fact that, obviously, we are not the only skeptics about FBI Director Chris Wray. We have asserted several times previously that this guy didn’t win hearty confirmation approval from all but 5 Democrats for nothing.

There is, in our opinion, more than ample evidence on the record for even casual readers to conclude that Wray is as “deep state” as they come, and from the beginning of his stint as FBI Director, he has tried to stymie any honest investigation of the bureau’s corrupt activities related to the undermining of the duly elected Trump presidency.      DLH

“To this day the FBI is still fighting to keep the Comey memo content hidden and away from public review.

“Judge Sullivan has now extended the DOJ deadline for filing a response to his request until May 31st. It will be very interesting to see exactly what happens.

“With AG William Barr making inquires, and with the FBI’s inability to explain to AG Barr what was going on, the potential for the DOJ and FBI to be in conflict is very real. We know the disposition to hide information is still inherent within the FBI due to their recent attempts to hide evidence of FBI corruption within the Kavalec State Department memos.

“FBI Director Chris Wray, FBI Deputy Director David Bowditch, and more specifically FBI chief legal counsel Dana Boente are in the cross-hairs of these issues. They, along with the corrupt Washington Field Office FBI investigators, appear to be working against the interests of U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr; and thanks to Judge Sullivan these background schemes and plots are likely to be exposed.”

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Grace — thy name is not consonant with Democrat

At Patriot Post:

Democrats Lose With Anything but ‘Grace’

“The grace with which she met that defeat on an unfair, unlevel playing field with the secretary of state perhaps rigging, in part, that election … is inspiring stuff at a time that our democracy is so badly broken.” So said Beto O’Rourke, the media darling who lost his bid to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas, about Stacey Abrams, the media darling who lost (and still refuses to concede) her bid to win the Georgia governorship last November.

Except that Abrams has been anything but gracious.

First of all, Abrams founded a nonprofit through which she flooded then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office with incomplete, inaccurate, and outright fraudulent voter applications — only to cry “racism!” and “voter suppression!” when some of those applications were thrown out. And that was before the election. In other words, she seeded the narrative for her loss even before her defeat.

Second, as our Louis DeBroux noted in November, “Democrat Abrams lost her race for governor with more votes (1.9 million) than current Republican Governor Nathan Deal won reelection with in 2014 (1.3 million).” Yet she stubbornly clung to her “voter suppression” narrative, frequently airing her phony grievances since the election. Indeed, she now insists record turnout among minorities only “led to even more of those voters being subjected to voter suppression.”

And Beto calls that “grace”? He does need the 2020 votes from minorities, after all.

That brings us to Abrams’s New York Times op-ed just yesterday, titled “Why I Am Determined to End Voter Suppression.” Spoiler alert: No she’s not; she’s committed to perpetuating and expanding the myth for nationwide political advantage.

She claimed, “My home state, Georgia, for example, suffered a vicious blend of electoral malfeasance, misfeasance and mismanagement during my race for governor last fall. But Georgia is not alone.”

Neither is Abrams alone. Democrats in general are sowing distrust in the American electoral system, all while claiming it is Republicans who are undermining elections. And Dems are pushing numerous rules changes — from dumping the Electoral College to blocking citizenship questions on the census — that would stack the deck in their favor. Meanwhile, people like Elizabeth Warren are telling the American people that “if all the votes are counted, [Democrats will] win every time.”

If this is “grace,” we’d hate to see spiteful, divisive partisan bitterness.

 

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HE CAME…HE SAW (an open Democratic interest group spot)…HE’S RUNNING !

LAS VEGAS,  — Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg described Saturday his public coming out as a gay man in 2015 and how the exclusion he experienced made him conscious of what it means to belong and the need to overcome divisions.

The 37-year-old described “a crisis of belonging in this country” experienced by LGBTQ people, women, immigrants, people of color, people with disabilities, workers and more and the need for “hopeful and audacious voices” to unite people in a changing time.

“What every gay person has in common with every excluded person of any kind is knowing what it’s like to see a wall between you and the rest of the world and wonder what it’s like on the other side,” Buttigieg said as he gave the keynote address Saturday night in Las Vegas at a gala for the Human Rights Campaign.

Brilliant political science analysis from the “Rhodes scholar”. Credentials? Other than maybe the gay thing any number of swamp dwellers have his credentials

“Mayor Pete” Buttigeig capitalizes on his ‘progressive appeal’; Runs as kind of a “Your Gay Next Door”, and wants you to know ‘the trouble he’s seen’.

The “good news” for aspiring Democratic presidential candidates? While ‘Mayor Pete’ has filled the “openly gay candidate” gap there’s still an opening for an attractive ‘Trans’!

Sorry Cory…Already had a black President, and Kamala has the looks over you.

“Pete” Tells LGBTQ crowd he “knows”exclusion”; Yet it’s hard to find what he’s been excluded from.

It is arguable that, as he puts it, he ‘knows’ what it’s like to “feel exclusion”, as every other gay person and to “wonder” what it’s like “on the other side”.

“Pete”  tells his listeners that he didn’t “come out” until he was age 33! Apparently, despite his announcement that he is gay, and thus, experienced “a crisis  of belonging in this country”, it would seem a mystery that he need wonder about the “other side” since he “lived it” for his first 33 years! He had already been elected mayor, received a commission in the Naval Reserve, and been accepted as a Rhodes Scholar!

And, having ‘come out’ hasn’t seemed to harm his political career, or his ‘attractiveness’ to the media.

But, I guess it makes a ‘good story’ and one with great appeal to all those “excluded” folks attending the LGBTQ “Human Rights Campaign” gala in Las Vegas Saturday. Expect to hear more about Pete’s sad ‘exclusion’ in the coming months.

—————————–

Our Commentary is not a “gay bashing”, nor do we wish to “exclude” on such a basis (The right, too, has some very able, accomplished people of that orientation who decline to seek recognition and professional accomplishment on a Buttigieg “exclusion” platform; (For example, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell; Fox News contributor, Tammy Bruce, even Fox’s liberal “Shep’ Smith makes no prominent play on “exclusion” ).

It is “Mayor Pete’s” radical left agenda on which we cast our ‘never ever vote’…and the Rhodes scholar’s off-putting self-righteous opportunism.

In a field crowded with equally self righteous, over-indoctrinated, under-educated hyper-progressive candidates who have resumes somewhat more impressive than chief executive of a relatively small, very liberal city, it’s hard to imagine “Pete” getting much attention without exploiting the heretofore unchecked ‘box’ in the far-left’s lineup… playing the “gay card”.

(I have a liberal acquaintance who was just bustin’ with pride over his own goodness and non-racist impulses with his votes for Obama. I am sure that he can’t wait to tell everyone he knows that he’s all in for “Mayor Pete” because of his ‘courage’ in coming out and marrying the ‘love of his life’ despite the ‘threat’ to his political prospects that those “homophobic GOP voters” represent. This liberal IS a good person…and he wants all to know it!)

We acknowledge that Buttigieg has impressive education and military credentials and has some record of accomplishment for the city of South Bend as its mayor. He is articulate, energetic, and seems to have a keen mind. He is described as an “active musician” and has performed with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra. None of which either qualifies or disqualifies him from the Oval Office.

Having worked on John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, however, does disqualify him as far as I’m concerned (what was that about a “keen mind”?). His campaign is an ‘all-in’ position on virtually every part of the far left’s social, economic, and foreign policy agenda. (Don’t say you weren’t warned!)     DLH

*****************************************************************

Some additional notes of interest about “Mayor Pete:

– My favorite “Pete” quote: “What the Green New Deal gets right, is it recognizes that there’s also an economic opportunity. Retrofitting buildings means a huge amount of jobs for the building trades in this country” … (Then why not ‘retrofit’ ALL buildings in America?!)

Wikipedia:

– South Bend, IN has not elected a Republican mayor in decades.

– Elected at the age of 29, Buttigieg has been profiled by the New York Times and was called “the most interesting mayor you’ve never heard of” by the Washington Post. An officer in U.S. Navy Reserve from 2009-17, Buttigieg took a leave of absence to serve in Afghanistan during a seven-month deployment in 2014, earning the Joint Service Commendation Medal for his counterterrorism work.

– An active musician, Buttigieg plays piano and guitar, and has performed with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra. He lives in the same neighborhood where he grew up and is restoring a formerly vacant home there.

– Buttigieg…was born in South Bend. Prior to winning election in 2011, he was an intern for Jill Long Thompson’s 2002 congressional campaign and worked on her 2008 gubernatorial campaign. He also worked on John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. As he notes on his Twitter page, the correct way to pronounce his last name is “BOOT-edge-edge.”

[55] He won the Democratic primary with 78% of the vote, defeating Henry Davis Jr., the city councilman from the Second District.[56] In November 2015, he was elected to his second term as mayor of South Bend with over 80% of the vote, defeating Republican Kelly Jones. –Wikipedia[57]

– In 2015, during the controversy over Indiana Senate Bill 101—the original version of which was widely criticized for allowing discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people—Buttigieg emerged as a leading opponent of the legislation, and shortly thereafter came out as gay to express his solidarity. –Wikipedia[58][59]  

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Read, boil blood, feel better, applaud, laugh . . .

All of the above*

21 Questions To Ask Robert Mueller If He Testifies To Congress

Robert Mueller is a loose cannon and may just blow through any presidential objection, as he has already shown a willingness to defy his boss. That’s great news.

Will China dump its $1.1 trillion of treasuries in retaliation for the 25 percent tariffs on $250 billion of goods? Why President Trump should say, ‘Bring it on!’

From the “have we been down this road before” file:

6 Things to Know About the Prosecutor Investigating Spying on Trump Campaign

Evil or a useful idiot?:

Zuckerberg’s Plan for the Internet Would Be a Disaster for Free Expression

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Lincoln had his Gen. McClellan; Trump has Kavanaugh

  • “If General McClellan isn’t going to use his army, I’d like to borrow it for a time.” (A. Lincoln)
  • “What kind of whisky does Gorsuch drink, send some to Kavanaugh”*           (D. Trump)

“On the Supreme Court, they were widely expected to be jurisprudential twins. But it turns out that there is more than a little daylight between Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who joined the court in 2017, and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who started in October after facing accusations of sexual assault, which he denied, at his confirmation hearings.

“They’re disagreeing more than we would have expected,” said Jonathan H. Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University. The two justices have found themselves on opposite sides in quite a few cases, including ones involving the death penalty, criminal defendants’ rights and Planned Parenthood.”   NY Times, 5/13/19

                                                      ********************

With more than a little glee, the NY Times happily reports that Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh don’t agree on a lot…and that the SCOTUS’ newest member seems least likely to rule from the conservative side, and, more likely than not, disagree with President Trump’s agenda.

We have suggested before that it appears that Brett Kavanaugh is not at all what he was portrayed as (a conservative, originalist who would help restore sanity and good jurisprudence to the Court which has suffered much under the liberal wing, Ginsberg, Kennedy, et al.)

The most ominous outcome of this is that the Left will interpret Kavanaugh’s striking difference between the solid jurist and “the go along to get along in DC and NY Times-land” type we’ve already seen with people like Chief Justice Roberts, a result of their all out assault on him in the confirmation hearings.

To us “know-nothings”, it appears that they may be right. It appears to us that the Justice may have been so intimidated by the treatment he received that he has resolved to show the nice folks like Feinstein, K. Harris, Cory,  Blumenthal, etc. that he really is a nice guy and wishes to convince them that he will not behave as “one of those right-wing nutcase jurists” like Gorsuch or Thomas, or Alito…nosir!

If so, watch what happens if Trump gets to make a third Supreme Court nominee!    DLH

Trump’s Justices, With Much in Common, Take Different Paths 

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s two Supreme Court appointees went to the same Jesuit high school in the Washington suburbs — at the same time. After attending Ivy League colleges and law schools, they worked as law clerks on the Supreme Court — for the same justice, in the same term.

They served as appeals court judges for more than a decade, turning out opinions that captured the attention of conservative legal groups like the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. They were confirmed by tight votes, mostly along party lines.

On the Supreme Court, they were widely expected to be jurisprudential twins. But it turns out that there is more than a little daylight between Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who joined the court in 2017, and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who started in October after facing accusations of sexual assault, which he denied, at his confirmation hearings.

“They’re disagreeing more than we would have expected,” said Jonathan H. Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University. The two justices have found themselves on opposite sides in quite a few cases, including ones involving the death penalty, criminal defendants’ rights and Planned Parenthood.

Both justices lean right, but they are revealing themselves to be different kinds of conservatives. Justice Gorsuch has a folksy demeanor and a flashy writing style, and he tends to vote with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., the court’s most conservative members.

Justice Kavanaugh is, for now at least, more cautious and workmanlike. He has been in the majority more often than any other justice so far this term, often allied with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is at the ideological center of the current court.

The two justices also have differing personal styles, said Elizabeth B. Wydra, the president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal group. “Gorsuch came on strong — some might say too strong — when he first joined the court, staking out his positions and finding a distinct voice quickly,” she said. “Kavanaugh has kept a lower profile among his fellow justices, perhaps reflecting the cloud under which he joined the court.”

Justice Kavanaugh has not yet completed a full term, and the court’s biggest decisions — on religious monuments, partisan gerrymandering and adding a citizenship question to the census — are yet to come. Neither of the newest justices is likely to disappoint his conservative supporters in those blockbuster cases.

But there is more to the Supreme Court’s work than the handful of big decisions issued at the end of June. It must also decide which cases to hear, how broadly to decide them and on what basis. In all three areas, the two justices appointed by Mr. Trump have taken different paths, with Justice Gorsuch for now veering further to the right.

There was little reason to predict those differences when the two men served as law clerks to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy starting in the summer of 1993. “We were in the middle of everything,” Justice Kavanaugh said in a 2017 interview, when he was still an appeals court judge.

The two clerks had already known each other for more than a decade, having attended Georgetown Preparatory School in North Bethesda, Md., together. Justice Kavanaugh, now 54, was in the class of 1983. Justice Gorsuch, 51, was two years behind him.

As justices, though, the two men can be a study in contrasts. “Gorsuch is clearly more willing to sweep with a broader brush, appears less concerned about precedent and does not seem to have the same pragmatic streak that we see a little bit in Kavanaugh,” Professor Adler said.

Justice Gorsuch is a formalist who is committed to the interpretive tools of originalism, which looks to the meaning of the Constitution when it was adopted, and textualism, which focuses on statutory wording. He is suspicious of arguments grounded in pragmatism and impatient with lawyers who will not address him on his terms.

“We hear a lot about what makes sense in this room,” Justice Gorsuch said at an argument last month over whether a criminal statute was unconstitutionally vague. “I’m curious about what the law is.”

When he failed to get a satisfactory answer, he dismissed the lawyer. “Off you go,” he said.

That same day, in a statute of limitations case, Justice Kavanaugh indicated that he was inclined to take account of what makes sense. “If the law is murky and we can choose one path or another reasonably as a matter of law, wouldn’t we choose the more orderly, practical approach?” he asked.

Ross Guberman, an authority on legal writing and the author of “Point Taken: How to Write Like the World’s Best Judges,” said that Justice Gorsuch possesses the showier writing style.

“Justice Gorsuch started his first opinion with a gust of alliteration and the odd phrase ‘and more besides,’” Mr. Guberman said, referring to a unanimous opinion in a decidedly minor case on the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. (The opinion’s first line: “Disruptive dinnertime calls, downright deceit and more besides drew Congress’s eye to the debt collection industry.”)

“Justice Kavanaugh began his own with a crisp but bland line about a federal statute,” Mr. Guberman said. “Gorsuch manages to make writing seem both fun and forced, while the early Kavanaugh seems happy to make writing just seem easy.”

The differences between the two justices are not only stylistic, as a March decision in a maritime case illustrated. Writing for the majority, Justice Kavanaugh announced a three-part test to determine when manufacturers may be sued over the injuries their products played a role in causing. In dissent, Justice Gorsuch said he preferred a bright-line rule to a fuzzy test that he said created uncertainty and unfairness.

“Headscratchers like these are sure to enrich lawyers and entertain law students,” he wrote of Justice Kavanaugh’s standards, “but they also promise to leave everyone else wondering about their legal duties, rights and liabilities.”

Death penalty rulings have also showed the two justices’ varying approaches. They were on the opposite sides, for instance, of a decision in March halting the execution of a Buddhist inmate whose spiritual adviser had been excluded from the death chamber although Christian and Muslim chaplains were allowed.

“In my view, the Constitution prohibits such denominational discrimination,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote. Justice Gorsuch dissented. He gave no reasons, though he may have believed the inmate waited too long to object.

In another death penalty case, the court ruled for Bobby James Moore, an intellectually disabled death row inmate in Texas. The majority opinion was unsigned, and Justice Kavanaugh did not note a dissent. Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch did.

In December, Justice Kavanaugh joined Chief Justice Roberts in voting to turn away appeals arising from efforts by states to bar Planned Parenthood clinics from the Medicaid program. Justice Thomas, writing for Justices Gorsuch and Alito, questioned the motives of the justices in the majority.

“What explains the court’s refusal to do its job here?” Justice Thomas wrote. “I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named ‘Planned Parenthood.’”

Ms. Wydra, of the Constitutional Accountability Center, noted that Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were on opposite sides of a February decision that said lawyers may not disregard their clients’ instructions to file appeals even when the clients had agreed to waive appeals as part of their plea agreements.

Justice Kavanaugh joined Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s majority opinion. Justice Gorsuch, along with Justices Thomas and Alito, dissented.

Still, Ms. Wydra said, “the fact is that this is a conservative court, and everything we know about both of these justices is that they are also very conservative.”

There are reasons to be cautious about early assessments of justices, as studies have demonstrated that there are “freshman effects” on the Supreme Court that make it perilous to predict long-term trends. Early in their tenures, for instance, justices are less apt to dissent, according to data compiled by Lee Epstein, a law professor and political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, and Kevin Quinn, a political scientist at the University of Michigan.

That could explain, Professor Epstein said, why Justice Kavanaugh has voted with the majority in 95 percent of the argued cases this term decided by the full court in signed decisions, while Justice Gorsuch was in the majority 82 percent of the time.

“After his controversial confirmation, Justice Thomas laid low, voting far more often with the majority in divided cases than he did in later years, as did Gorsuch,” Professor Epstein said. “Kavanaugh seems to be doing the same, hewing closely to the chief justice — the court’s new center. Whether, within a term or two, Kavanaugh joins Alito, Thomas and now Gorsuch on the far right remains to be seen.”

*The second quote at top attributed to Trump, may be apocryphal, or made up by us

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OH NOSTALGIA! Biden Times — Do You Remember These

The duplicity, the hypocrisy, the pandering, the devolution of liberals – never ceases to amaze —

But first

Flashback–Joe Biden in 2006: Border Fence, Mandatory E-Verify Necessary for Ending Illegal Immigration 

“Folks, I voted for a fence, I voted, unlike most Democrats — and some of you won’t like it — I voted for 700 miles of fence. But, let me tell you, we can build a fence 40 stories high — unless you change the dynamic in Mexico and — and you will not like this, and punish American employers who knowingly violate the law when, in fact, they hire illegals. Unless you do those two things, all the rest is window dressing.”

Mr.Nuance also referred to corrupt Mexico leadership and the tons of TONS of drugs. And to use the term “illegals” to refer to God’s children.  Well you know where my vote will be.

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Google’s bias no news to us

  • Confirmation OF bias

In addition to the undeniable left-wing bias in its so-called “Google’s Top Stories” box, try researching a story appearing in either the recent or long-ago past…one that many news outlets would have run.

We think you will find, that, if there is a possibility that each source might reflect its particular viewpoint…or even attempts to present the story as objectively as it’s possible to do, you will much more often than not that you will have to go through 5, 10, even 20 pages to get the story as reported by a reasonably objective outlet, much less a generally considered right-wing source. That is, if you find one at all.

Also interesting is the Daily Mail’s claim that the 20 media outlets surveyed in the “Google Top Stories” box were 62% left-leaning media sources.

But as you look for yourself through that list we think you’ll agree that maybe two or three (we are not that familiar with “The Verge” and it seems limited in scope) are not left leaning.

If one insists that Fox is right leaning (no mention as to what division they are referring to which makes such a conclusion arguable) and perhaps The Hill might be considered center right then the percentage is arguably 10% (two) not left-leaning and the rest  (90%) with the possible exception of The Verge are left leaning.

LESSON: If you want to be a researcher for conservative news and opinion media…find another line of work unless you have a lot of patience and an extraordinary tolerance for frustration.     DLH

Story by Jennifer Smith — excerpts from story below chart created by Northwestern University journalism researchers.

———————————————————————————————————-
Google’s left-leaning media bias revealed:

How CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post were promoted over their right-wing counterparts by the search engine which has more power than ever over what readers see

  • Stories from only 20 media outlets were featured in Google’s Top Stories box in November 2017
  • 62 percent of those outlets were considered to be left-leaning media sources
  • CNN accounted for 10 percent of the news promoted, The New York Times made up 6.5 percent and The Washington Post accounted for 5.6 percent
  • By contrast, Fox stories made up only three percent of the 6,302 articles
  • Google uses an algorithm to decide what goes in its Top Stories box
  • It is based largely on the popularity of a topic or of a viewpoint
  • The search engine has denied that it deliberately promotes left-leaning sites
  • It now has unprecedented power over what is promoted and how much traffic it sends to sites given Facebook’s recent scale back on news

. . .

Google’s left-leaning media bias revealed: How CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post were promoted over their right-wing counterparts by the search engine which has more power than ever over what readers see

Stories from only 20 media outlets were featured in Google’s Top Stories box in November 2017

62 percent of those outlets were considered to be left-leaning media sources
CNN accounted for 10 percent of the news promoted, The New York Times made up 6.5 percent and The Washington Post accounted for 5.6 percent

By contrast, Fox stories made up only three percent of the 6,302 articles
Google uses an algorithm to decide what goes in its Top Stories box
It is based largely on the popularity of a topic or of a viewpoint

The search engine has denied that it deliberately promotes left-leaning sites
It now has unprecedented power over what is promoted and how much traffic it sends to sites given Facebook’s recent scale back on news     . . .

Google’s bias towards left-wing media outlets has been laid bare by an algorithm which detected that it favors sites including CNN and The New York Times over others.

According to data compiled by researchers from Northwestern University, the search engine promoted those sites over others repeatedly in November 2017.

Of the 6,302 articles that appeared in Google’s ‘top stories’ page that month after a term was searched, more than 10 percent were by CNN.

The New York Times was the second most favored and accounted for 6.5 percent of articles. The Washington Post was third with 5.6 percent.

By contrast, Fox News, the most right-wing outlet in mainstream media, was the source of just three percent of the stories which appeared.

Nearly all (86 percent) of the stories came from just 20 sources and of them, 62 percent were considered to be left-leaning.

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Witchless Wray

We have remarked from time to time, that we suspected the Democrat Senators* knew what they were doing. They got just the FBI Director they wanted…since they couldn’t have “Big Jim” Comey.

 

Mr. Wray was confirmed by the Senate, 92-5, securing confirmation votes from all but 5 Democrats …a spectacular feat given the experience of every other Trump nominee to face a confirmation vote!

No surprise that the 5 Democrats voting against Wray were, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Eliabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley. Those 5 probably would not vote for any Trump nominee, regardless. They are founding members of the “cut off their noses to spite their faces” gang.

Since his ‘triumphant’ confirmation, Chris Wray has been seldom seen or heard from. Not much, it seems, has changed in the Bureau so far. Slow walking and stonewalling of requests from the then GOP-controlled House Investigating committees, continued under Wray and acting AG Rosenstein. The public revelation of the FBI’s reliance on the now discredited “Steele Dossier”, the “Strzok-Page” emails appears to not perturb him. Wray’s biggest “moment” was his appearance at a press conference at FBI headquarters in June, 2018.

Assessing the damage to the FBI under Comey, Wray ‘jumped right in there with his ‘solution ‘:

“Because change starts at the top—including right here with me—we’re going to begin by requiring all our senior executives, from around the world, to convene for in-depth training on the lessons we should learn from today’s report.

Then we’re going to train every single FBI employee—new hires and veterans alike—on what went wrong, so those mistakes will never be repeated.

“Third: We’re going to make sure we have the policies, procedures, and training needed for everyone to understand and remember what’s expected of us. “That includes:

Drilling home the importance of objectivity—and of avoiding even the appearance of personal conflicts or political bias in our work;
Ensuring that recusals are handled correctly and effectively—and are clearly communicated to the appropriate people;

Making all employees fully aware of our new policy on contacts with the news media, which I issued last November—and making clear that we will not tolerate non-compliance;

Ensuring that we follow all DOJ policies about public statements on ongoing investigations and uncharged conduct; and

Ensuring that our employees adhere strictly to all policies and procedures on the use of FBI systems, networks, and devices.

“I’ve also directed our associate deputy director to lead a review of how the FBI handles particularly sensitive investigations, and to make recommendations on how those should be staffed, structured, and supervised in the future—so that every sensitive investigation is conducted to the FBI’s highest standards.”

Aside from the keen insight on the issue he demonstrated, the Bureau under Mr. Wray has seemed to continue to function much as it had under AG’s Holder and Lynch, Acting AG Rosenstein, and FBI Director Comey, all as part of the “Deep State”.

No doubt because all this important ‘training’ was consuming Director Wray’s time, we’ve hardly heard a peep out of him since that press conference…until this past week. Here are just a few aspects of Wray’s reappearance that we would highlight:

– The Director seemed to be very anxious to assure the Democratic senators on the Appropriations subcommittee on Commerce Tuesday that he was no ‘puppet’ of his new boss, Attorney General William Barr

– “Spying”?…that’s not in Director Wray’s “colloquial wheelhouse”; General Barr may use the term, but not Chris Wray!

– No senator thought to ask Mr. Wray how he would define the term “spying”..or even if he ever heard of such a word.

– If anybody thinks that the ‘culture’ established and nurtured under the Holder, Lynch, Comey reign is going to change under the ‘leadership’ of Wray…think again, folks! DLH
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Here’s a few “highlights from Director Wray’s past that, maybe, should have been clues to the kind of FBI Director President Trump was getting. (No worries about Chris’s “loyalty” to the president!):

– Wray headed up the Justice Department’s criminal division from 2003 to 2005 under President George W. Bush (“expert” on “weird shit”)

– In 2004, Wray was among the top Justice Department officials, including Comey and then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, who threatened to resign after the Bush administration tried to bring back the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program that the organization found illegal.

– Wray also signed a 2015 letter to the Senate judiciary committee from a number of partners from his law firm endorsing Sally Yates’ nomination to become deputy attorney general. In the letter, the partners praise Yates for her “extraordinary legal skill and judgment.”

-Wray had given $53,350 to Republican candidates, committees and his law firm’s PAC since 2007, including to John McCain in 2008, Mitt Romney in 2012, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2016, FEC records show. There are no records of any contributions to Trump.

Coming into the Director’s job, Mr. Wray immediately identified the Bureau’s problems, as suggested by his “training agenda”, noted above:

– In his judgment, the 35,000 FBI employees did not realize the “importance of objectivity” in performing their vital duties ! Wow! Now there is an indictment!

– He strongly advocated that recusals be handled “correctly and effectively”. Again, Wow! Good thing Chris showed up when he did. You gotta wonder how those “recusals” had been handled !

– Director Wray also thought it a good idea that “all employees be aware of his new policy on ‘contacts with the news media’…and, that they should comply with that policy”! (Pretty groundbreaking concept, Chris.)

– The new boss also let it be known that he expected FBI employees to strictly adhere to “all policies and procedures on the use of FBI systems, nertworks, and devices”.

(DON’T YOU HAVE TO WONDER HOW THE FBI OPERATED BEFORE CHRISTOPHER WRAY ARRIVED?)      DLH

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