Greta Thunberg person of the year

STEPHEN GREEN: (from September 2019)

“…The Swedish teenager is not some science prodigy who graduated young from an Ivy League school with an advanced agree in physics or anything like that. Rather, the daughter (and granddaughter) of famous actors and opera singers suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and selective mutism. I’m no medical professional, but these things might have been brought on when (according to public sources), starting at the age of eight, Thunberg was subjected to such a barrage of climate panic that she eventually became depressed and lethargic, and also developed an eating disorder.

Now Thunberg is paraded around the globe as the voice of sanity on climate change…”

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FBI misconduct is horrifying

Washington Examiner Editorial:

“…The FBI sought a warrant to wiretap a U.S. citizen and, in effect, a U.S. presidential campaign, based on a shoddy Democrat-funded pile of conspiracy theories known as the Steele dossier. The dossier’s allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump were based on “multiple layers of hearsay upon hearsay,” and the document also took seriously comments made in jest.

In other words, the origins of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign was exactly as partisan and shoddy as Republicans said it was, according to the information released by the Justice Department’s inspector general. The inspector general released a report detailing a shocking account of rampant misconduct at the FBI. Agents there misled and lied to the FISA court to authorize and reauthorize their spying on Trump’s 2016 campaign.

It doesn’t matter what you think about Trump, the precedent these crooked agents set with their misconduct is horrifying…”

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Impeachment Farce

ALAN DERSHOWITZ:

“…House Democrats have announced the grounds of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on which they plan to seek the impeachment of President Trump. Neither of these proposed articles satisfy the express constitutional criteria for an impeachment, which are limited to “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Neither are high or low crimes or misdemeanors. Neither are mentioned within the Constitution.

Both are so vague and open ended that they could be applied in partisan fashion by a majority of the House against almost any president from the opposing party. Both are precisely what the Framers had rejected at their Constitutional Convention. Both raise the “greatest danger,” in the words of Alexander Hamilton, that the decision to impeach will be based on the “comparative strength of parties,” rather than on “innocence or guilt.”

That danger is now coming to pass, as House Democrats seek for the first time in American history to impeach a president without having at least some bipartisan support in Congress. Nor can they find any support in the words of the Constitution, or in the history of its adoption. A majority of the House is simply making it up as they go along in the process, thus placing themselves not only above the law but above the Constitution.

In doing this, they follow the view of Representative Maxine Waters who infamously declared that, when it comes to impeachment, “there is no law.” From her view, shared by some others, the criteria for impeaching a president is whatever a majority of the House says it is, regardless of what the Constitution mandates. This reductionistic and lawless view confuses what a majority of the House could get away with, if there is no judicial review, and what the mandated duty of all House members is, which is to support, defend, and apply the Constitution as written, not as it can be stretched to fit the actions of an opposition or controversial president…”

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The FBI spied on the Trump campaign

Byron York:

“…The proof is in the details of the report. In addition to the much-discussed wiretap of Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, Horowitz discussed the bureau’s use of what is called a CHS — a confidential human source, or, in more common terms, an informant, and a UCE — an undercover employee, or a secret agent, to gather information from at least three targets in the Trump campaign. One was Page, another was George Papadopoulos, also a member of the advisory team, and the third was an unnamed “high-level Trump campaign official who was not a subject of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

Horowitz described “multiple CHS operations undertaken by the Crossfire Hurricane team.” There were “numerous CHS interactions with Page and Papadopoulos.” There was the CHS contact with the high-level campaign official. And then there were “additional CHSs” who attempted to contact Papadopoulos but did not succeed.

All the meetings and conversations were secretly recorded by the FBI. Some were also monitored live, as they happened, by agents and supervisors. The Horowitz report quoted liberally from transcripts of the recordings…

…In short, the FBI, acting under false pretenses, spied on Trump and Flynn in plain sight.

The Horowitz report noted the potentially corrosive effect of what the FBI did. “We concluded that the FBI’s use of this briefing for investigative reasons could potentially interfere with the expectation of trust and good faith among participants in strategic intelligence briefings, thereby frustrating their purpose,” the report said.

Put it all together, and there was a lot of spying on the Trump campaign — by confidential informants, in a wiretap, even in a supposed intelligence briefing. Yet defenders of the Trump-Russia probe still maintain that no spying took place and that the FBI followed proper procedures. After Horowitz, that’s a difficult case to make. The fact is, the FBI not only spied on the Trump campaign, it did it in the worst way…”

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Russia hoax a coup attempt

Miranda Devine:

“…It took five hours of questioning about the FBI’s motivations but Horowitz, prudent and impartial as he is, finally delivered the money shot.

Asked by Republican Sen. Mike Crapo if the 17 “significant errors or omissions” he found in the FBI’s surveillance operation could possibly be “accidental,” Horowitz said: “I would be skeptical.”

He went on to explain “the answers we got were not satisfactory [so] we’re left trying to understand how could all these errors have occurred over a nine-month period on three teams hand-picked, on . . . the highest-profile case of the FBI, going to the very top of the organization, involving a presidential campaign.”

Horowitz described the conduct of the FBI as “inexplicable” when its operatives bent the rules to try to prove Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russia.

But sadly the FBI’s conduct is all too explicable. It can be explained by the proven anti-Trump bias of its personnel, hand-picked to run Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI operation to spy on the Trump campaign using salacious opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Horowitz’s testimony confirms suspicions that the Russia-collusion hoax amounted to an attempted coup against Trump and laid the groundwork for impeachment…”

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How far removed from reality is the MSM? This headline tells you how far.

The Person Of The Year Is Not Greta Thunberg. It’s The Hong Kong Protester

Headlines I like

Quinnipiac: Opposition To Impeachment And Removal Reaches 51%, Highest Number Since September

Related:

Liberal Media are Fearing Democrats Might Have Blown Up Their Impeachment Circus

Obama spied on an opponent and the FBI lied repeatedly. Trump is being impeached?

Charles Hurt:

“…When President Trump first blew the whistle — in a now-famous 2017 tweet that misspelled the word “tapp” — on the previous administration’s spying operation against his presidential campaign at the height of the election, Swamp creatures laughed. They ridiculed. They mocked.

It was a lie, they said. Never happened.

And the gaslight media backed them up. They whitewashed the whole thing for their friends in the Obama administration. And for their friends in the federal administrative state.

Today, after enduring two years of spinning, counter-leaks and relentless lies, we know officially what any sensible person knew from the beginning.

The FBI spied on an official they believed — or pretended to believe — was working inside the 2016 Trump presidential campaign on behalf of the Russian government to hijack the election and install a Manchurian candidate who would give America away to Moscow.

The FBI never alerted the Trump campaign to this grave inside threat, obviously, because the Department of Justice believed that the Trump campaign — including Mr. Trump, himself — was in on the giant con.

And therein lies the plotted coup.

Whatever you think of former President Barack Obama or Mr. Trump or Carter Page or James B. Comey or anybody’s foreign policy opinion regarding Russia or NATO or Mexico, only one thing matters in this situation. At the moment these decisions were being made to spy on the Trump campaign, Mr. Obama was president. His administration was at the controls of one of the most sprawling and sophisticated espionage apparatuses ever assembled on this planet.

At that time, Mr. Trump was an avowed political opponent. Any decision made by the Obama administration to spy on officials inside the Trump campaign was of massive, profound constitutional import. It is in these moments where a country is either a nation of laws or a banana republic.

It is either “equal justice under law” or a police state.

So, FBI agents — operating at the highest levels of DOJ authority — sought secret warrant applications normally reserved for our worst enemies such as active terrorists plotting to kill as many innocent Americans as possible.

They cobbled those secret warrant applications together with bad information supplied by — among others — Mr. Trump’s political opponents during the 2016 election. Much of that information was gathered abroad from America’s enemies seeking to sow discord in our elections.

The inspector general found specifically at least 17 “significant errors or omissions” in the FBI’s secret warrant applications.

Again, do not forget, the Obama administration took all these drastic and sloppy steps against a political opponent at the height of a presidential race — without ever alerting the campaign of this dastardly threat inside its campaign.

This is, literally, worse than Watergate. This is worse than the most egregious abuses of power by J. Edgar Hoover in his campaign of spying on political opponents.

The Obama administration officials responsible for this miscarriage of justice and trampling of the Constitution now step forward and admit they spied on political opponents at the height of an election — though they scramble to find softer-sounding terms for it.

And they bleat about how the inspector general found no evidence of “political bias” in their espionage campaign against the Trump campaign.

Give me a break.

First, there is plenty of evidence of deep-seeded hatred of Mr. Trump spewed these biased jackboots. Second, what on earth is “political bias,” anyway? Wearing an “I’m With Her” T-shirt while applying for a secret warrant to spy on the administration’s political opponents?

Yeah, well, I am sure John Wilkes Booth was not motivated by “political bias,” either.

But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?…”

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‘Corroboration Zero’: An Inspector General’s Report Reveals the Steele Dossier Was Always a Joke

I don’t agree with Matt Taibbi about much, but he is a straight shooter. This is just a little taste. Click over for the whole thing. It is worth it.

MATT TAIBBI:

“…The report throws water on one “deep state” conspiracy theory of the Russia investigation, but validates complaints about “fake news”…

…If the report released Monday by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz constitutes a “clearing” of the FBI, never clear me of anything. Holy God, what a clown show the Trump-Russia investigation was…”

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The Democratic Party is dying from its hatred of President Trump.

Daniel McCarthy:

“…The impeachment fiasco is just the latest symptom. After weeks of testimony, Democrats have not been able to come up with any charges more concrete than ‘abuse of power’ and ‘obstruction of Congress.’ Abuse of power is certainly a serious thing — but only if it’s real. Partisans think that almost anything a president from the opposing party does amounts to an abuse of power. For impeachment to amount to anything more than partisan harassment, an actual crime ought to be found somewhere along the line: an act of wrongdoing objectively contrary to the law. Otherwise, any procedural or policy disagreement — or any pretext whatsoever — can be construed by a party out to get an enemy president as an ‘abuse of power.’…

…Democrats fell so far short of the mark of proving that bribery took place in President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine that they dared not even make the accusation in their articles of impeachment. Instead, they used abuse of power simply to refer to actions they didn’t like, and they whipped up a new non-crime, ‘obstruction of Congress,’ in an act of desperation. But Trump’s refusal to let administration officials play along with the Democrats’ pantomime impeachment proceedings is simply a bold assertion of the Constitution’s separation of powers….”

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Impeachment headline of the day

Impeachment Boomerang: Trump Beats Dems in Three States That Shattered Democrats in 2016

Related:

Report: Moderate House Dems Grow Increasingly Concerned About 2020 Reelection Chances Due to Impeachment Push

Kim Strassel calls it straight

1) Key findings of Horowitz report:  Yup, IG said FBI hit threshold for opening an investigation. But also goes out of its way to note what a “low threshold” this is. Durham’s statement made clear he will provide more info for Americans to make a judgment on reasonableness.

2) The report is triumph for former House Intel Chair Devin Nunes, who first blew the whistle on FISA abuse. The report confirms all the elements of the February 2018 Nunes memo, which said dossier was as an “essential” part of applications, and FBI withheld info from FISA court.

3) Conversely, report is an excoriation of Adam Schiff and his “memo” of Feb 2018. That doc stated that “FBI and DOJ officials did NOT abuse the [FISA] process” or “omit material information.” Also claimed FBI didn’t much rely on dossier.

4) In fact, IG report says dossier played “central and essential role” in getting FISA warrants. Schiff had access to same documents as Nunes, yet chose to misinform the public. This is the guy who just ran impeachment proceedings.

5) Report is a devastating indictment of Steele, Fusion GPS and the “dossier.” Report finds that about the only thing FBI ever corroborated in that doc were publicly available times, places, title names. Ouch.

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More at link. Best summary I have seen.

Doug Santo