[Breitbart] Monday on Fox News Channel’s "Hannity," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sounded off on former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s claim Justice Department officials considered using the 25th Amendment to remove President Donald Trump from office in 2017.
The South Carolina Republican vowed to conduct oversight over "those who watch us."
"It’s one of the most significant moments in American history if it’s true," Graham said. "You had the acting head of the FBI talking to the deputy attorney general about replacing the president. So what I’ll do ‐ oversight is part of my job. We do have checks and balances, so the Congress will watch those who watch us. I’ll try to find out who was in these meetings and talk to all of them, and figure out who is lying because somebody’s lying."
Investigators purportedly know why Empire’s Jussie Smollett faked an attack involving a noose and a mysterious chemical.
Chicago’s CBS 2 reports that a racist letter addressed to Jussie was recently sent to the television program’s Illinois studio. According to the station’s source, when it didn’t make a louder noise in the press, the actor decided to create his own story:
"When the letter didn’t get enough attention, he concocted the staged attack," a source told CBS 2 Investigator Brad Edwards. Other sources corroborated that information.
The blockbuster revelation into at least part of Smollett’s potential motive comes two days after CBS 2’s Charlie De Mar reported Smollett and two brothers ‐ Ola and Abel Osundairo ‐ staged the attack on Jan. 29 in Streeterville.
De Mar spoke on the phone exclusively with the Osundairo brothers Monday afternoon. In a joint statement, they said: "We are not racist. We are not homophobic and we are not anti-Trump. We were born and raised in Chicago and are American citizens."
As per the CBS piece, on January 22nd, Jussie received mail featuring a drawn, hanged stick figure with a gun to his head, "MAGA" in capital letters, and ransom-note-style cut-out magazine letters spelling "You will die, black fag."
The powder was later determined to be aspirin.
But could Jussie have also participated in the letter sent to the show’s Chicago Cinespace Studios?
#3
And we know that Jussie didn't write the letter himself how?
Typical grand child behavior is to try something to gain attention, if that fails push the same button harder (louder) more obnoxiously until it does work.
#4
There was some talk and a few links on Instapundit yesterday pointing out some peculiar coincidences with the timing of Jussie's hoaxed attack and Kamala 'Knee Pads' Harris lynching bill in the Senate.
It seems that Jussie has campaigned with Kamala. There are definitely ties between the two. It was suggested that Jussie didn't plan the hoax all by his little lonesome.
#6
some peculiar coincidences with the timing of Jussie's hoaxed attack and Kamala 'Knee Pads' Harris lynching bill in the Senate.
The timing *is* curious. Never mind KneePads and Spartacus using the same modern day lynching phrase in their tweets.
I gotta ask: do we really need an anti-lynching bill? When was the last time anyone was lynched in the USA? Doesn't lynching fall under existing statutes for murder, assault or aggravated littering?
#7
Not to mention some lynching would be called 'hate crimes'.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/19/2019 10:02 Comments ||
Top||
#8
When the letter didn’t get enough attention, he concocted the staged attack
With all the other bullcrap going on in the world, I didn't think the attack was particularly newsworthy either. I mean, how many muggings happen every day in Chicago? Just like the Covington kids, if journalists in this country had the slightest bit of integrity left in them, they would have paid no attention when some crazy old Indian claimed he was harassed by a high school boy. But then, just like the Covington kids, it was a chance for the Lame Stream Media to blame a hate crime on Trump. There's your motive and that's why Smollett's story reeked of old fish from the get go. But even now, after the truth has been revealed, you can bet that the same snowflakes who bit on this bait will bite again whenever the same kind of bait is dangled in front of them. And the best way to discourage it would be to sentence Smollett to some serious jail time for filing a false report to the police.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/19/2019 12:19 Comments ||
Top||
#9
I wonder If Smollett has Harris's phone number and talked to her...
That may be why handing over the phone was a problem...
[WSJ] The American people have largely taken the disruptive Trump Presidency in stride, going about their lives and expressing their approval or not the constitutional way‐at the ballot box. The same can’t be said for many of the country’s panicked elites, as we are learning anew about the Federal Bureau of Investigation as former deputy director Andrew McCabe hawks a new memoir.
Mr. McCabe now says that, after Mr. Trump fired FBI director Jim Comey in May 2017, Mr. McCabe and senior Justice Department officials "discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet could be brought together to remove the President of the United States under the 25th Amendment." That’s according to Scott Pelley’s account of his interview with Mr. McCabe aired Sunday on CBS’s "60 Minutes."
In the interview, Mr. McCabe says Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein raised the 25th Amendment scenario "and discussed it with me in the context of thinking about how many other cabinet officials might support such an effort." Mr. McCabe says he didn’t contribute much but seems to excuse the conversation because "it was an unbelievably stressful time."
Continued on Page 49
[The Federalist] With six weeks left until election day in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race, several far-left organizations are using media outlets to amplify a smear campaign against a judge based on his Christianity. Brian Hagedorn, a current Wisconsin Court of Appeals judge and former Scott Walker legal counsel, is being publicly trashed for being on the board of a small Christian school, and for blog posts when he was in law school discussing court cases about abortion and gay sex.
In considering a run for the state Supreme Court, the father of five children says, "I expected to be attacked here because that’s what’s happening all across the country‐you know, ’Are you now or have you ever been associated with the Knights of Columbus?'" he said, chuckling. "Interrogating people [nominated for office] if they went to a Bible study or the Knights of Columbus, that’s where we are as a country."
The media characterization of his writing is often misleading. For example, a ThinkProgress hit piece claims that, in a blog post paraphrasing former Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent on a case about Texas sodomy laws, Hagedorn "compared homosexuality to bestiality." In fact, his post simply notes the U.S. Constitution has nothing to say about any supposed rights to sex with anyone or anything, then essentially paraphrases Scalia’s dissent, which two other justices joined.
That dissent said striking a law against sodomy on the grounds that states are constitutionally forbidden from banning any sexual activity citizens consider "immoral and unacceptable" also eliminates the legal basis for "criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity." Scalia instead invited LGBT activists to persuade their fellow citizens that sodomy bans were wrong and change the laws, rather than using courts to eliminate the legal basis on which states criminalize socially disapproved sexual behaviors.
While a law student in 2005, Hagedorn simply wrote he agreed with this legal analysis. It doesn’t compare bestiality and homosexuality in anything except the basis for former laws against them. That both were illegal on this basis until relatively recently is simply a fact. Yet like ThinkProgress, several Wisconsin outlets quoted context-free snippets of Hagedorn’s post in a rush to paint him as a bigot.
#1
his post simply notes the U.S. Constitution has nothing to say about any supposed rights to sex with anyone or anything, then essentially paraphrases Scalia’s dissent, which two other justices joined.
Which means, that the Federal government has/had no say in the issue. That thus by the 10th Amendment reverts to the states.
[DW] US President Donald Trump is pressuring Europe to take back its citizens who were captured in Syria while fighting for the Islamic State group. It's high time the continent address the issue.
The message came in typical Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... manner: lacking in style and bordering on extortion. But, like it or not, there is some validity to the United States president's demand that European countries take back their citizens who fought for the Islamic State group (IS) and are currently being held in Kurdish captivity.
Local Kurdish authorities have long been asking that the hundreds of European fighters imprisoned in northern Syria be taken off their hands. That request was intentionally ignored, but now the White House has stepped in.
There are hundreds of detained women from Germany, La Belle France and the United Kingdom who face an uncertain future, for instance ‐ many also have children born in IS territory. And after the fall of the last IS-held position in Baghuz, their numbers are likely to rise even further.
OVERWHELMED KURDS
The prisoners are becoming an overwhelming burden for the Kurdish authorities. That burden is only likely to increase after Trump announced the withdrawal of US military forces in Syria late last year ‐ a move which also brought with it larger existential questions for the persecuted Kurdish minority.
Washington's most important local military partner, the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), is regarded as a terrorist organization by Syria's northern neighbor, The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... . Ottoman Turkish President Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey... wants to quash hopes of Kurdish independence under the YPG in Syria as quickly as possible.
As soon as the US withdrawal clears the way for the Ottoman Turkish military, Erdogan intends to establish a 30-kilometer (18.6-mile) -wide security corridor along the Syrian border. But the most important Kurdish settlements ‐ and also the prison camps ‐ are in this zone. As the Kurds fight for their survival, they certainly have bigger concerns than taking care of their IS prisoners.
When it comes to this issue, Germany has been hiding behind formalities instead of actively seeking a solution, even one that could be addressed on a European level. In the hope that the problem might somehow resolve itself, the German Foreign Ministry retreated to a position of convenience; it says it has not been able to provide consular assistance in Syria since the closure of the embassy in Damascus in 2012, and there are no official diplomatic ties with the Kurds in northern Syria.
NOT WANTED ANYWHERE
Of course, no country really has an interest in accepting dozens of IS fighters, but that does not change the fact that these people still exist and need to be dealt with. And because Germany is a state that operates under the rule of law, its citizens who belonged to a terrorist militia still have rights and, as politically difficult to bear as it may be, this also includes the right of return. Every one of them must be individually proven guilty in order to be convicted.
The bottom line is that these people have come from the very midst of German society. They radicalized here ‐ we have to deal with them. Perhaps there could be room for some creative solutions: What about bringing IS members before the International Criminal Court in The Hague? Regardless, one thing is absolutely certain: Northern Syria cannot remain Europe's Guantanamo.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/19/2019 00:30 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
Why can't it be? Pay the SDF to keep ISIS prisoners where sunshine has to piped in.
[PJ] Amazon was about to deliver thousands of new jobs to New Yorkers, and billions of dollars in tax revenue to the city’s coffers ‐ but don’t you worry, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has proudly helped put a stop to all that. In flyover country, we’re a bit confused about why someone might not actually want all those jobs and all those billions for their constituents, and that’s a story Salena Zito has for you today. Her latest is headlined, "The populist sledgehammer kills Amazon jobs that Middle America would love to have."
Zito spoke with Tito Brown in Youngstown, Ohio, who said that he "can’t imagine driving a perfectly good thing out of a town that hasn’t had a perfectly good thing come its way in a very long time."
More:
Brown doesn’t really get that. He governs a city with a declining population, a 40 percent poverty rate, and would welcome the opportunity for a project such as Amazon to have considered locating here.
"Oh, any time I can get regional and/or economic growth in my community, I would absolutely want that here," he said. "It’s budget time."
But as Zito notes, "Ocasio-Cortez, who has become the leader of the left-wing insurgency within the Democratic Party, slammed the plan in a tweet the moment it was announced in mid-November last year." Why? Because NYC offered Amazon $3 billion in tax breaks to lure in billions and billions in new tax revenues. I’m not a fan of giving tax breaks to this company but not that company, or allowing tax shelters or credits to this kind of person but not that kind of person. My own outdated, naively republican preferences aside, the people and coffers in NYC had been looking at a real windfall. Had been, until the Permanently Pissed-Off Progs got their way.
Because it worked so amazingly well the first time.
[Montgomery Advertiser] The editor of a small-town Alabama newspaper published an editorial calling for "the Ku Klux Klan to night ride again" against "Democrats in the Republican Party and Democrats [who] are plotting to raise taxes in Alabama."
h/t Instapundit
[NationalReview] Jussie Smollett’s phony hate-crime story could have been taken apart in 24 hours, except for one thing: Nobody wanted to be the first to call bullsh**.
Who will bell the cat?
Not the police, and I don’t blame them. Smollett is a vocal critic of President Donald Trump who checks two protected-category boxes: He is gay and he is black. No police officer comes out ahead in any encounter in which he has to explain that he isn’t a racist or a gay-basher.
...Merciless sympathy is the stratagem by which our natural solicitous feeling toward those who have suffered some wrong or some injury is forcibly reconstituted into support for a particular political agenda grafted onto the unhappy episode. Those who don’t support the politics are treated as though they were victimizing the victim (genuine or hoax) rather than disagreeing about a policy question.
Merciless sympathy is how declining to oppose Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court is transmuted into callousness toward rape victims, how support for the Second Amendment is recast as contempt for the children killed in Parkland, how doubting the breathless accounts of the Covington Catholic matter becomes racist hostility to an elderly Native American veteran. As rhetorical stratagems go, it is obvious, shallow, and stupid ‐ and therefore effective in the era of Twitter-dominated discourse, in which shallowness and stupidity are weaponized.
...Merciless sympathy is simply one more weapon in the arsenal of contemporary mob politics.
...We have seen this often enough.
The plague of phony hate crimes on college campuses, often coinciding with controversial political events, isn’t the product of coincidence. It is a strategy. Fictitious, politically charged stories of rape ‐ Lena Dunham’s encounter with "Barry" the College Republican, the lies published by Rolling Stone, etc.‐are not the products of coincidence. These things happen in clusters for a reason. That is not to say they are being centrally directed as part of some kind of well-tempered conspiracy, but rather that they are the natural result of a certain kind of politics attached to a certain worldview.
Merciless sympathy is used not only to silence doubters but to silence dissent. That is the purpose of conflating victims with political agendas. And if there aren’t any particularly useful victims around, you can always make something up.
Jussie Smollett wasn’t the first. He won’t be the last.
[Breitbart] Political correctness is the only thing holding society back from declaring abortion THE hate crime of our era, according to the formidable archbishop of Durban, South Africa.
"Is there any good reason, other than political correctness, why abortion is not defined as & declared immoral & illegal, as THE hate crime of our era?" tweeted Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier early Monday morning.
The cardinal was responding to Live Action, a pro-life group, which was tweeting about abortion and racism in reference to Black History Month.
"There is no group that kills more black Americans than Planned Parenthood," Live Action noted. "Abortion is the most lethal form of racism."
Live Action was started in 2003, by pro-life activist Lila Rose, who was just 15 years old at the time. Lila began undercover investigations in 2006, while studying at UCLA at the age of 18.
Abortion accounts for a disturbing 61 percent of deaths of African Americans, according to researchers from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
A 2018 report analyzed research using data from the latest year for which all the pertinent information is available (2009) and found that induced abortion was responsible for 1.152 million deaths, making it the number one cause of death in the U.S. at nearly twice the number of deaths from heart disease (599,413) and cancer (567,628).
While abortion accounted for nearly a third of all U.S. deaths in 2009 (32.1 percent), more troubling still, it made up 61.1 percent of African American deaths, according to the study published in the Open Journal of Preventive Medicine (June 2016).
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey...
