Tuesday Noon ~ TheFrontPageCover

[Rudy Tirre]

.

TheFrontPageCover

~ Featuring ~

Double Take on the Fifth Amendment

by Robin Smith  

.

Going Ballistic: What the Democrats' 

'subpoena cannon' means for Trump

by Ilya Shapiro

{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ With Democrats seizing the House and Republicans keeping the Senate, bills beyond the proverbial post-office-naming will be hard-pressed to make it out of both chambers in the next Congress... The threat President Trump faces from Democrats, then, isn’t legislative obstruction, but the ready-aim-fire of the opposition’s “subpoena cannon.” That’s the term one senior Democratic source used last month in describing to Axios the opposition’s main anti-Trump weapon. Not all of the investigatory weapon’s payload will be fired at once, but the appetite for “resistance” is strong and will tie up significant White House and agency resources. Full disclosure: My wife is a lawyer in the House general counsel’s office, but hasn’t participated in any discussions regarding the Democrats’ plans. In and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with spending time on congressional oversight. Indeed it’s a salutary check, flowing from the “legislative powers” that Article I grants Congress. The Framers assumed Congress would follow the lead of the British House of Commons in questioning executive action. James Wilson, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and future Supreme Court justice, had written that members of parliament were considered “grand inquisitors of the realm. The proudest ministers of the proudest monarchs have trembled at their censures.” Accordingly, George Mason argued at the Convention that members of Congress “must meet frequently to inspect the Conduct of the public offices.” When the first Congress convened in 1789, the House established a select committee to investigate the country’s accounts during the American Revolution, to clear Robert Morris, the superintendent of finances. In 1792, the House authorized a special committee to investigate the military defeat of General Arthur St. Clair. President George Washington ultimately agreed on rules of disclosure that formed the early basis of what we now know as “executive privilege.”...

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/going-ballistic-what-the-democrats-subpoena-cannon-means-for-trump?utm_source=WEX_News%20Brief_12/10/2018&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WEX_News%20Brief

.

Trump's White House chief of staff: Who's 

in the running to replace John Kelly?

by Kaitlyn Schallhorn 

{foxnews.com} ~ Nick Ayers squashed rumors he could be the next White House chief of staff over the weekend... leaving the question: Who will President Trump pick for the high profile job? Trump announced the departure of John Kelly, one of his first Cabinet picks, last week. “John Kelly will be leaving at the end of the year, we will be announcing who will be taking John's place, it might be on an interim basis, I'll be announcing that over the next day or two,” Trump said of Kelly, the former Homeland Security secretary. Ayers, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, was considered to be a shoo-in for the position, but he announced he’s leaving the administration at the end of the year instead. “I am in the process of interviewing some really great people for the position of White House Chief of Staff,” Trump said in a Dec. 9 tweet. “Fake News has been saying with certainty it was Nick Ayers, a spectacular person who will always be with our Make America Great Again agenda. I will be making a decision soon!”...

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trumps-white-house-chief-of-staff-whos-in-the-running-to-replace-john-kelly

VIDEO:  https://video.foxnews.com/v/5977174774001/

.

Judge Jeanine calls out ‘nonstop personal 

vendetta’ against Trump from dirty 

cop-Mueller’s team, the media

by BEN MARQUIS

{dailychristiannews.com} ~ Special Counsel dirty cop-Robert Mueller filed sentencing recommendation reports in court on Friday... against both former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who’ve run afoul of the law for things entirely unrelated to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign or Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.  Of course, the liberal media seized on the reports as the latest proof that “We’ve got Trump now!” — but Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro saw things differently and excoriated the “Trump-hating” media and dirty cop-Mueller himself for the “personal vendetta” being waged against the president and his associates. In the “Opening Statement” segment of her Saturday Fox News program, Pirro said: “It’s time for the left to fold up their fantasy tents. If they hate Donald Trump so much, maybe they should focus on winning the 2020 election instead of this Russia collusion delusion nonsense that’s been wasting our time, our money and dividing our nation for two years.” She continued: “The nonstop personal vendetta against the president by dirty cop-Mueller and his rabid team of Trump-hating prosecutors, breathlessly reported by the Trump-hating media at every turn, is so intense that they proudly beat their leftist chest any time they issue an indictment against someone, anyone, most are whom are living in Russia and will never be brought to justice here, or anywhere else, for that matter.”...

https://www.dailychristiannews.com/vendetta-trump-muellers-media/

.

Kavanaugh Joins Liberals To Protect 

Pro-Planned Parenthood Ruling

by Kevin Daley 

{thepoliticalinsider.com} ~ The Supreme Court declined to review three cases relating to Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood at the state level Monday... over a vigorous dissent from Justice Clarence Thomas. The dissent was significant because it indicates that Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with the high court’s liberal wing to deny review of a lower court decision that favored the nation’s largest abortion provider.“So what explains the Court’s refusal to do its job here?,” Thomas wrote. “I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named ‘Planned Parenthood.’” “Some tenuous connection to a politically fraught issue does not justify abdicating our judicial duty,” Thomas added. “If anything, neutrally applying the law is all the more important when political issues are in the background.” Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch joined the Thomas dissent, meaning there were three votes in favor of taking the case. Since four votes are needed for the Supreme Court to take up a case, the opinion indicates that Chief Justice John Roberts and Kavanaugh joined with the four liberals to deny review...  https://thepoliticalinsider.com/kavanaugh-planned-parenthood/?utm_campaign=TPI_Afternoon_Newsletter_12_10_2018&utm_source=criticalimpact&utm_medium=email&utm_content=4b4ea4948726422aa6473c7b9fa19141&source=CI

.

Republicans introduce new version of end-of-year 

tax bill with an eye toward speedy passage

by Colin Wilhelm

{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ House Republicans have gone back to the drawing board on end-of-year tax legislation... On Monday morning they introduced new legislative text to reform retirement savings, delay scumbag/liar-nObamacare-related taxes, and provide technical corrections to the tax overhaul law they passed last year. If enacted, the bill would also provide tax benefits for communities that have suffered through natural disasters, including last month’s wildfires in California.Much of the legislation, tucked into a separate but unrelated bill to clear its potential path to becoming law, resembles a similar bill introduced by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady R-Texas, two weeks ago. But gone are extensions of tax benefits for various industries, ranging from horse racing to NASCAR to clean energy, as well as text that would call for reform to the Internal Revenue Service. Senate Democrats balked at the tax bill when it was introduced last month. Republicans need several Democrats to support the bill in order to meet the 60 vote threshold to advance legislation and avoid a filibuster in the Senate.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/economy/republicans-introduce-new-version-of-end-of-year-tax-bill-with-an-eye-toward-speedy-passage?utm_source=WEX_Breaking%20News%20Alert_12/10/2018&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WEX_Breaking%20News

.

.

Double Take on the Fifth Amendment

by Robin Smith:  A Supreme Court case is getting a great deal of attention in part because it would be contrary to 170 years of precedent and practice. But more attention-getting, it may have an impact upon dirty cop-Robert Mueller’s case involving Paul Manafort in the vastly overreaching special investigation to determine the extent of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

             Oral arguments were heard Thursday in Gamble v U.S. The case involves an Alabama man who was arrested in 2015 for crimes that involved the illegal possession of a handgun. Terrence Gamble, a felon who had already served time in prison for a separate crime, faced both state and federal charges for this second failure to observe laws. The State of Alabama sentenced Gamble to one year in prison while an additional federal charge yielded a 46-month sentence on top of that. Gamble appealed this second sentence to the Eleventh Circuit Court, citing the Fifth Amendment.
               The relevant text states, “nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” Known more often for “pleading the Fifth” to avoid self-incrimination, the amendment, ratified with the original 10 in 1791, provides protections for citizens to prevent multiple trials for the same charge or offense. Specifically, one accused cannot be retried following an acquittal, following a conviction (without reversal on appeal), or after certain mistrials.
               Gamble’s legal team argues that federalism is permitting the duplication of the conviction and the punishment on the same charge. Yet because American courts have both a state and federal structure, such dual prosecutions are frequent occurrences.
               Each legislated body of law — one federal, the other state — governs the structure of the separate courts, their operations, jurisdictions, codes, regulations, and sentencing, and each is treated as a separated sovereign. Hence, the separate sovereigns doctrine permits the offense, in the case of Gamble, to have been acts against two separate sovereigns. Citing legal precedents in the appeals, in pre-Civil War era rulings the Supreme Court held to the standard of two different offenses. The Court, again, ruled in 1922 in United States v. Lanza that “an act denounced as a crime by both national and state sovereignties is an offense against the peace and dignity of both and may be punished by each.”
               The Wall Street Journal’s analysis of this case further includes Heath v Alabama(1985), which notes, “An offence, in its legal signification, means the transgression of a law. Consequently, when the same act transgresses the laws of two sovereigns, it cannot be truly averred that the offender has been twice punished for the same offence.”
               SCOTUSblog reviewed oral arguments and concluded  that the “majority appears ready to uphold [the] ‘separate sovereigns’ doctrine.” That analysis offered a bit of a play-by-play description of arguments and verbatims of the justices and the arguing attorneys. The conclusion here was pretty simple: It’s doubtful that the 170-year practice and precedent will be overturned. Yet Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Clarence Thomas spoke in favor of a review of the doctrine. Ginsberg has previously suggested a reconsideration of the sovereigns doctrine, while Thomas voiced support of a “fresh examination” of the almost two-centuries-old legal practice.
               Interestingly, all nine of the justices come from Ivy League law schools, where the discussion of double jeopardy is not a new one. Writings such as the Note from The Yale Law Journal, November 2014 edition, strain to separate the question to argue the duplication of punishment: “When the interests of a sovereign state are partially vindicated, the sovereign should be able to impart only as much additional punishment as is necessary to fully vindicate its interests.”
               It’s almost amusing to see the mainstream media and the political Left arguing against the cause of a minority stopped for a traffic violation that resulted in a felony gun charge. Why? Because if the Court holds the current observance of the separate sovereigns doctrine regarding the Alabama man’s case, Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for Donald Trump who is likely to face charges by dirty cop-Robert Mueller’s federal team for everything except collusion with the Russians, would still likely face state charges on tax evasion or corporate fraud, despite a possible pardon from Trump. The Left can’t abide that.
               The Supreme Court ruling is expected sometime in 2019. Based on opinions and analysis, it appears highly unlikely that such longstanding precedent would be overturned. Yet it is causing a double take on the Fifth Amendment and yielding some unlikely allies in wishing for a new look at an old doctrine.  ~The Patriot Post  

https://patriotpost.us/articles/59931?mailing_id=3932&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3932&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body