Link here. Kavanaugh’s track record places him no worse than middle-of-the-road Kennedy, whom he replaces, but more likely leaning more to the right. How far will remain for time to decide.
Expect a lot of slander, over-the-top attacks, and vicious opposition from the left, based not on facts but on their insane thirst for power, now certain to shrink significantly.
The swamp wins! The Department of Justice this week made a plea deal with former House IT specialist Imran Awan, allowing him to walk away free on probation.
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday entered a plea deal with Imran Awan, ringleader of the Pakistani family at the center of the House IT scandal, and in the process defied President Donald Trump and explicitly contradicted congressional investigators who described the group as “an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives.” In a statement to the court, Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors said they “found no evidence that [Imran] illegally removed House data from the House network or from House members’ offices, stole the House Democratic Caucus server, stole or destroyed House information technology equipment, or improperly accessed or transferred government information.”
The prosecutors told the court they would not object if Awan received probation, and they agreed to drop fraud-related charges against his wife. The deal means Awan is free to leave the country and won’t face prosecution in connection with his congressional employment.
The DOJ announcement flew directly in the face of Trump’s June 7, 2018, tweet saying, “Our Justice Department must not let Awan & Debbie Wasserman Schultz off the hook. The Democrat I.T. scandal is a key to much of the corruption we see today. They want to make a ‘plea deal’ to hide what is on their Server. Where is Server? Really bad!”
Trump is by law the boss of the Department of Justice, but prosecutors there continue to act as if they are in charge and the president is merely an annoyance who must be bypassed. Moreover, these prosecutors appear to have been working entirely in league with House Democrats to squash this investigation, from the beginning. Because Trump did not take control, they have now succeeded.
I should add that this case demonstrates clearly that Trump is not really acting to drain the swamp. He is cleaning out a few select agencies (EPA), but allowing the rest to remain, with the worst being Justice and the FBI. Trump is essentially a transitional president. The question remains: What are we transitioning to? To me, it increasingly appears we are transitioning to the fall of our democratic government and the freedom it formerly gave to all citizens, equal before the law. And that I write this on Independence Day is more than tragic.
Link here. Two different news sources of from opposite sides of the political spectrum come up with the same short list of five names:
Hardiman and Kethledge were also on Trump’s shortlist from which he picked Neil Gorsuch, and Hardiman’s background then made him, for me, a weak choice.
Kethledge was not given much attention in the previous nomination discussion, but the link above takes a quick look at one of his court decisions that suggests he could be a “wild card.” This is the kind of appointment I fear, because all too often such appointments immediately shift leftward, like Souter and Kennedy, once appointed.
It is clearly early in this process. More information will surely be forthcoming on these, and maybe other candidates.
Federal police today removed the protesters and their tent city that was blocking the entrance to the ICE building in Portland.
Though the action was generally peaceful, and did not interfere with protesters and tents not located on federal property, eight people were arrested.
What bothers me most about these protests is their hypocrisy and ignorance. The immigration law that the Trump administration is following was passed during the Bush administration, and was administered in much the same way by Obama. The only significant thing that Trump is doing different is that he has not been releasing illegals on their own recognizance.
Thus, the outrage by these protesters is purely partisan, has nothing really to do with any issue of right and wrong, and is aimed at gaining power, nothing more. That it is based on pure ignorance and an obvious and irrational hatred of Trump makes it even more disgraceful.
Satellite photos indicate that North Korea has been upgrading its nuclear research facility, despite its public claims that it is eliminating its nuclear program following Kim Jong Un’s meeting with Trump earlier this month.
The satellite photos indicate that North Korea is quickly progressing on several adjustments to the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center.
The improvements include a new cooling water pump house, multiple new buildings, completed construction on a cooling water reservoir and an apparently active radiochemical laboratory. It is unclear whether the reactor is still in operation, the report said.
38 North notes that North Korean nuclear officials are expected to proceed with “business as usual” until Kim orders official changes to procedure.
News reports have focused so far on the defusing of North Korea’s anti-American propaganda machine, but that’s just empty words. Upgrading this nuclear facility tells us what they really plan on doing.
On a partyline vote the House Judiciary Committee today passed a resolution requiring Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein turn over their requested documents in seven days or face impeachment or contempt.
I don’t think Rosenstein is worried, yet. The resolution doesn’t mean much, since the wimpy Republican leadership in the House has to get it passed there, and then it has to pass in the Senate, filled with even more cowardly Republicans and the obstructionist Democrats. However, this increasing pressure might make Trump reconsider Rosenstein’s employment. Or it might make Trump force Rosenstein to turn over the documents, as he is constitutionally required to do.
In a 5-4 ruling the Supreme Court today upheld President Trump’s constitutional powers to enforce immigration law by upholding his travel ban.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, made it clear that the court viewed the ability to regulate immigration as squarely within a president’s powers and he rejected critics’ claims of anti-Muslim bias. “We express no view on the soundness of the policy,” Roberts wrote.
Moreover, the court also ruled today that fascist California cannot force pro-life centers to advertise pro-abortion announcements.
“The unlicensed notice imposes a government-scripted, speaker-based disclosure requirement that is wholly disconnected from California’s informational interest,” wrote Justice Thomas. “California has offered no justification that the notice plausibly furthers. It targets speakers, not speech, and imposes an unduly burdensome disclosure requirement that will chill their protected speech.”
Thomas also wrote that the law not only forced pro-life centers to promote abortion, but to do so while diminishing their own message on pregnancy care. “As California conceded at oral argument, a billboard for an unlicensed facility that says ‘Choose Life’ would have to surround that two-word statement with a 29-word statement from the government, in as many as 13 different languages,” continued Thomas.
“In this way, the unlicensed notice drowns out the facility’s own message. More likely, the ‘detail required’ by the unlicensed notice ‘effectively rules out’ the possibility of having such a billboard in the first place.”
The left is on a bad losing streak at the Supreme Court so far this year. And with the strong possibility that at least one of its liberal judges might soon be replaced by Trump, the left’s ability to impose its will through the courts should be further diminished.
Years late: According to one Israeli news source, the United States has suspended all aid to the Palestinian Authority, beginning in May.
I24 News, which is based in Israel, reported Monday that the U.S. froze funding as part of the Taylor Force Act, which requires Palestinian officials to end payments to terrorist groups and take steps to stop those groups’ behavior.
The news outlet, citing a White House official and a Senate aide, also reported that certain Palestinian programs have been put on hold because the West Bank and Gaza office of USAID have not received a budget for the coming year. USAID provides funding for foreign development projects.
An official with one of those programs told i24 News that the U.S. stopped transferring funds at the end of May.
It appears that the Trump administration did this to underline the Palestinian leadership’s continuing support of terrorism and its unwillingness to accept any peace deal with Israel. It also appears that the Trump administration has successfully garnered the support of many Arab nations in this effort.
Without funds, the corrupt leadership in both the West Bank and Gaza will find itself very vulnerable. We could therefore see some very interesting and I think positive developments in the next year.
One more note: It is a disgrace that neither Bush nor Obama had the courage to do this earlier, even though it has been obvious for years that the Palestinian leadership was using U.S. aid to support terrorist acts. Their lack of action in this area suggests that neither was ever very serious about negotiating a peace deal.
Update: More information here concerning the Trump administration’s cuts to aid to Gaza.
According to one interpretation of a presentation by the Acting head of the Department of Commerce, the Trump administration to going to remove climate change from NOAA’s priorities.
Because of its work on climate science data collection and analysis, [NOAA] has become one of the most important American agencies for making sense of the warming planet. But that focus may shift, according to a slide presentation at a Department of Commerce meeting by Tim Gallaudet, the acting head of the agency.
In the presentation, which included descriptions of the past and present missions for the agency, the past mission listed three items, starting with “to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans and coasts.” In contrast, for the present mission, the word “climate” was gone, and the first line was replaced with “to observe, understand and predict atmospheric and ocean conditions.”
The presentation also included a new emphasis: “To protect lives and property, empower the economy, and support homeland and national security.”
The job of NOAA, if it should have any job at all, should always have been to make observations and collect data. The interpretation and predictions should be left to others. By inserting the issue of climate change into its core priorities the agency’s work was almost guaranteed to become distorted and corrupted by politics. And that is exactly what we have seen.
Expect this change to cause more howls from the left. Expect even more howls when this change forces the Trump administration to start to take a close look at NOAA’s data — something they have not yet done — and discovers the amount of unjustified tampering to it, all aimed at proving the existence of global warming.
Working for the Democratic Party: Newly released documents show that an official working for Senator John McCain’s (R-Arizona) joined the Democrats in encouraging the IRS to harass conservative groups.
Judicial Watch today released newly obtained internal IRS documents, including material revealing that Sen. John McCain’s former staff director and chief counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee, Henry Kerner, urged top IRS officials, including then-director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner, to “audit so many that it becomes financially ruinous.” [emphasis mine]
Want to what really stinks about this? The meeting where McCain’s staffer suggested this came only ten days before Lois Lerner “admitted that the IRS had a policy of improperly and deliberately delaying applications for tax-exempt status from conservative non-profit groups.” In other words, McCain was all-in with the idea of weaponizing the IRS for political purposes.
Want to know what stinks even more? Henry Kerner was appointed by President Trump in 2017 to take over the Office of Special Council, a federal office focused on protecting whistleblowers while acting as a watchdog to prevent partisan political action by government agencies, in violation of the Hatch Act.
Boy, that sure is draining the swamp, President Trump. Keep at it!
Congressman Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina) yesterday identified two of the FBI agents described in the inspector general’s report as having expressed anti-Trump and pro-Clinton biases in many texts.
The previously unnamed FBI officials — “FBI Attorney 2” and “Agent 5” — are Kevin Clinesmith and Sally Moyer, respectively, according to House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), who revealed their identities over the objection of the FBI during a hearing on the IG’s findings.
The two were assigned to the bureau’s Hillary Clinton email investigation, according to the IG’s report, while Clinesmith also later worked as a top lawyer on the Trump-Russia investigation and the special-counsel probe.
Clinesmith sent a number of pro-Clinton, anti-Trump political messages over the FBI’s computer system, which the report said “raised concerns about potential bias” that may have impacted the investigation. Likewise, the report cited Moyer rooting for Clinton and bashing Trump during the 2016 campaign.
Meadows noted that the reasons given by the FBI to inspector general Horowitz for hiding their identities were completely bogus.
Horowitz testified that the FBI was withholding the names of the other rogue agents from Congress and the public because “they work on counterintelligence” and can’t be exposed.
But Meadows argued that both Clinesmith and Moyer work for the FBI’s office of legal counsel, and are no longer in “counterintelligence,” as the FBI claimed. “They don’t work in counterintelligence,” Meadows said in an exchange with Horowitz. “If that’s the reason the FBI is giving, they’re giving you false information, because they work for the general counsel.”
Where is Trump? As far as I can tell, these agents are still employed at the FBI (as is Peter Strzok), despite the fact that their documented conduct violated numerous FBI regulations related to employee conduct. Strzok might have been escorted from the FBI yesterday, but he is still on the payroll.
President Trump yesterday issued an executive order replacing the oceans policy Obama had established with a policy that emphasizes “…the economy, security, global competitiveness, and well-being of the United States.”
The full executive order is here. The Science article at the link above not surprisingly provides quotes from a number of Trump opponents, including the head of NOAA during Obama’s administration, to express their opposition to this change.
One author of the Obama oceans policy is disappointed. The Trump policy “represents a significant step backward, a throwback to the 1960s when the primary focus was on aggressively expanding the use of the ocean with the assumption that it is so immense, so bountiful that it must be inexhaustible,” marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco, who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Obama, tells ScienceInsider. “We learned through painful experience that the ocean is indeed exhaustible, but we also learned that if we are smart about how we use the ocean, it can provide a wealth of benefits for decades and decades.”
Obama’s policy had emphasized “stewardship,” she notes—a word not used in the new order. Trump “blatantly rejects this all-important focus on stewardship,” Lubchenco says. “Put another way, the policy reflects a shift from ‘use it without using it up’ to a very short-sighted and cavalier ‘use it aggressively and irresponsibly.’”
Lubchenco is significantly overstating the negatives of Trump’s new policy. Its language is hardly “aggressive” or “irresponsible.” It does shift the focus from restricting the use of the oceans by regulation to encouraging their use for the “economic, security, and environmental benefits for present and future generations of Americans.” It that context the policy recognizes that “clean, healthy waters” are essential to provide those benefits.
I suspect that little will really change with this order. It will take years, if ever, to get the federal bureaucracy to shift its culture from controlling what Americans do to working with them. Nonetheless, this order demonstrates that Trump, unlike the past two Republican presidents, is serious about shifting federal policy in a conservative and less intrusive direction. The Bushes mouthed conservative ideas, but did little to stop the over-regulation imposed by the federal government. Bush Jr was especially worthless, as he did practically nothing to overturn the regulations that Clinton imposed, and in many ways supplemented or encouraged more regulation.
