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The FBI Tragedy: Elites above the Law
by Victor Davis Hanson or just left for unexplained reasons. The list is long and includes director scumbag-James Comey himself, deputy director Andrew McCabe, counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, attorney Lisa Page, chief of staff James Rybicki, general counsel James Baker, assistant director for public affairs Mike Kortan, scumbag-Comey’s special assistant Josh Campbell, executive assistant director James Turgal, assistant director for office of congressional affairs Greg Bower, executive assistant director Michael Steinbach, and executive assistant director John Giacalone. In short, in about every growing scandal of the past two years — FISA, illegal leaking, spying on a presidential candidate, lying under oath, obstructing justice — someone in the FBI is involved. We are told, however, that the FBI’s culture and institutions are exempt from the widespread wrongdoing at the top. Such caution is a fine and fitting thing, given the FBI’s more than a century of public service. Nonetheless, many of those caught up in the controversies over the Russian-collusion hoax were not recent career appointees. Rather, many came up through the ranks of the FBI. And that raises the question, for example, of where exactly Peter Strzok 22 years in the FBI learned that he had a right to interfere in a U.S. election to damage a candidate that he opposed. And why would an Andrew McCabe over 21 years in the FBI think he had the duty to formulate an “insurance policy” to take out a presidential candidate? Or why would he even consider overseeing an FBI investigation of scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton’s improper use of emails when his wife had been a recent recipient of scumbag/liar-Clinton-related PAC money? And why would McCabe contemplate leaking confidential FBI information to the press or even dream of setting up some sort of operation to remove a sitting president under the 25th Amendment? And how did someone like the old FBI vet Peter Strozk ever end up at the center of the entire mess — opening up the snooping on the Trump campaign while hiding that fact and while briefing the candidate on Russian interference in the election, interviewing Michael Flynn, preening as a top FBI investigator for Robert Mueller’s dream team, right-hand man of “Andy” McCabe, convincing scumbag-Comey to change the wording of his writ in the scumbag/liar-Clinton-email-scandal investigation, softball coddling of Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, instrumental in the Papadopoulos investigation con — all the while conducting an affair with fellow FBI investigator and attorney Lisa Page and bragging about his assurance that the supposedly odious Trump would be prevented from being elected. If a group of Trump zealots were to call up the FBI tomorrow and allege that a member of loose lips liar-Joe Biden’s family has had unethical ties with the Ukrainian or Chinese government, would that gambit “alarm” the FBI enough to prompt an investigation of loose lips liar-Biden and his campaign? How many career-professional Peter Strozks are still at the agency? In sum, why did so many top FBI officials, some with long experience in the FBI, exhibit such bad judgment and display such unethical behavior, characterized by arrogance, a sense of entitlement, and a belief that they were above both the law and the Constitution itself? Were they really just rogue agents, lawyers, and administrators, or are they emblematic of an FBI culture sorely gone wrong? How and why would scumbag-James Comey believe that as a private citizen he had the right to leak classified memos of presidential conversations that he had recorded on FBI time and on FBI machines?...
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/fbi-tragedy-elites-above-law/ .
Conservatives Are Waking Up at Last
by Christopher Chantrill What if the Mueller probe was the deep state’s last desperate effort to stop the populist steamroller from looting and plundering its bureaucratic fiefs and dissolving its plush academic monasteries? What if the offensive has now failed, and all the best lefty troops were ground up in the Mueller Battle of the Bulge? I know, I know. Don’t get cocky, kid. And what if the social media deplatforming of obscure “far right” actors -- people who would be heroic “activists” if they were lefties -- is in fact directing attention to them? And what if the vile actions of lefty activists on e.g., Gibson’s Bakery in Oberlin, Ohio, are sending secret coded messages to ordinary deplorable Americans? That there is noplace to hide from vile lefty activism unless we act now -- and reelect President Trump. But I get it. I get that the moral panics that engage our lefty friends are as human as apple pie. Back in the old days humans had moral panics about Old Scratch and marginal women living a mile out of town who might or might not be witches. But now we have moral panics about Victims: workers, women, minorities, LBGT. It really doesn’t matter who it is, just that we all agree -- or can be made to agree if we want to keep our jobs -- that the current victim du jour is the worst thing, like, ever. Now it’s migrants, and every lefty in the world is determined upon justice for migrants and refugees. I think we need to revise the Narrative. Up to now, the wise heads have taught us to believe that witch-hunts, religious wars, Great Awakenings, reigns of terror, great purges, McCarthyism, fighting Nazis, Sixties hippies, and political correctness, and Great Awokenings were all exceptions to the rule of peaceful cooperation and religious observance...
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Reince Priebus Joins The Navy
by Evie Fordham
{dailycaller.com} ~ Former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus is officially in the U.S. Navy... He was commissioned as an ensign, or entry-level officer, in a Monday ceremony officiated by Vice President Mike Pence. Since Priebus is a Wisconsin native, Republicans Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Bryan Steil attended. Sean Spicer, a Navy reserve officer who overlapped with Priebus in the White House while serving as press secretary, was also in attendance. It was great to be at the commissioning ceremony of Kenosha native @Reince. Today @VPPence swore him in as an Ensign in the United States Navy! Congrats, Reince!
pic.twitter.com/r5GsTRZFuG — Bryan Steil (@RepBryanSteil) June 10, 2019 Priebus, 47, is expected to serve as a human resources officer, reported The Hill. Priebus applied to join the Navy as a reserve officer months ago, The Washington Post reported in December 2018. The former Republican National Committee chair was motivated to join up after an Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump and the family of a slain Navy SEAL William Owens. “At that moment, the gravity of every action we take in the West Wing rushed down upon my shoulders,” Priebus said, according to WaPo. “Everything suddenly became extremely real and raw. As some time passed, a few other senior aides joined me in the Cabinet Room and we discussed the consequences, harsh realities and weight of what we do every day.” He received a recommendation from then-Defense Sec. James Mattis for his application...
https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/10/reince-priebus-navy-reserve/?utm_medium=email .
It's Time to Send a Message to Qatar
by Gregg Roman of "extremist ideology" and come "back among the unity of responsible nations." Exacting action in the spirit of these comments, this week U.S. senators will begin considering a resolution, introduced last month by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), to halt the sale of new military hardware to Qatar. Trump's statement came less than three weeks after he addressed a summit in Riyadh of more than 50 Arab and Muslim leaders, and just days after a coalition of Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar and closed their airspace, shipping lanes and overland transportation links to the emirate. ...The reasons for this split, a Saudi minister said at the time, were Qatar's support for terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda, Hamas and ISIS; its support for regional destabilizer Iran; and the role of Al-Jazeera and other government-funded Qatari media in fomenting unrestin the region. All of this has taken place amid an aggressive increase in Qatar's military spending during the past decade. Just last week, Qatar exhibited a Janus-faced approach to regional affairs by first signing onto the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Mecca Agreement focused on unifying the Arab world against Iran's encroachment in the region. A day later, Qatar's foreign minister expressed reservations with the agreement, noting, "Qatar has reservations on the Arab and Gulf summits' policy towards Iran because some of their terms are contrary to Doha's foreign policy."...
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CAIR 'Demands' US Army War College Cancel
My Lecture on Islamic History
by Raymond Ibrahim
{ americanthinker.com } ~ The "unindicted co-conspirator" Council on American-Muslim Relations "CAIR" and its Islamist allies are "outraged" because the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. has invited me to give a lecture on my recent book... Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. On May 28, CAIR's Pennsylvania leadership — namely, Jacob Bender, Timothy Welbeck, Ahmet Selim Tekelioglu — sent a letter to USAWC commandant Gen. John Kem and provost Dr. James Breckenridge urging them to revoke "the decision of the US Army War College to invite Mr. Raymond Ibrahim to deliver the prestigious 50th Annual Lecture Series of the US Army War College." The reason CAIR cites to disinvite me is that "Raymond Ibrahim's book ... advances a simplistic, inaccurate and often prejudicial view of the long history of Muslim-West relations which we find deeply troubling." Much of this is covered in a Task Force report, which contains some responses from me, titled "Army War College under fire over historian's upcoming lecture on 'clash of civilizations' between Islam and the West." As a reflection of the unprecedented and ongoing nature of this Islamist campaign against me, the Task Force notes, "The trend of disinviting speakers on controversial subjects has been on the rise at American universities in recent years, but this appears to be the first time that a speaker at U.S. military educational institution has been subject to such a campaign, according to a database maintained by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education."CAIR has since issued other screeds, including a Press Release and a petition that present me as a "notorious Islamophobe," and — despite my being of Egyptian descent — a "white nationalist," who, if allowed to speak, will cause "white nationalism, Islamophobia, and violence" against Muslims in America to break out. In another article, I may parse through these hysterical allegations to expose the arsenal of verbal duplicity and second-rate sophistry groups like CAIR rely on in order to keep inconvenient truths suppressed...
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WA Supreme Court Rules Against Religious LibertyCulture Beat: The Washington Supreme Court last week upheld its previous ruling in the case of a florist who refused to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding. The court had originally ruled against Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers, finding that she had violated the state’s anti-discrimination laws. Following the ruling last year, Stutzman appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the justices declined to hear the case, directing the Washington Supreme Court to review the case to determine if the state’s ruling was motivated by “religious animus.” The justices pointed to their own ruling in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.
It’s hard to see how the Washington court determined that there was no “religious animus” behind the state’s citation of Stutzman, as she clearly did attempt to comply with the homosexual couple’s request without at the same time violating her own religious convictions. Stutzman offered to sell the couple any pre-arranged floral bouquets they wished, while objecting to having to create art (speech) specifically for their wedding.
Meanwhile, The Daily Caller reports, “While state prosecutors sued Stutzman personally — an aggressive step that makes her personally liable for fines and damages — they did not take action against a coffeehouse owner who profanely expelled a group of Christians from his business. [Alliance Defending Freedom] argues this enforcement pattern is the kind of discrimination the Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling condemns.”
Again, just last year in a 7-2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state of Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission had acted with anti-religious hostility when it cited Christian baker Jack Phillips for violating the state’s anti-discrimination laws after he refused to bake a custom wedding cake for a same-sex wedding. The Supreme Court’s ruling did not address the larger issue — the question over the constitutionality of these state anti-discrimination laws — but rather ruled narrowly on the state of Colorado’s biased application of the law. As National Review’s David French put it, the Court “punted on the core First Amendment question at issue: Can the government compel a creative professional to exercise his artistic talents to advance a message with which he disagrees?”
Stutzman, who is being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, plans to appeal once again to the U.S. Supreme Court. ADF Vice President John Bursch explained, “Barronelle serves all customers; she simply declines to celebrate or participate in sacred events that violate her deeply held beliefs. Despite that, the state of Washington has been openly hostile toward Barronelle’s religious beliefs about marriage, and now the Washington Supreme Court has given the state a pass. We look forward to taking Barronelle’s case back to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
This is indeed a case the U.S. Supreme Court needs to take up and rule on definitively, not dodge the main issue like it did in Phillips’s case.
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/63515?mailing_id=4323&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4323&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body
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