Elliot Abrams:

“…I would add a third consideration. I cannot recall previous high intelligence officials acting the way Brennan and Clapper have in vocally assaulting the succeeding administration in a highly partisan manner. Think of Directors of National Intelligence John Negroponte, John McConnell and Dennis Blair, and think of CIA Directors like William Webster, Robert Gates, James Woolsey, John Deutch and George Tenet, and you’ll immediately see that what’s happening now is unprecedented. Brennan and Clapper may well believe that Trump is a threat to the country and as such, merits a break from the norms. They are entitled to their beliefs and can go on attacking—but they shouldn’t have access to classified information.

One has to assume that the partisan views Brennan and Clapper now express were the same views they held when in office, and it is impossible to believe such views did not affect their conduct of their offices. They have done real damage to the belief and expectation that partisan politics will not affect the way our intelligence agencies operate, or the advice they give. They have also led to a reasonable suspicion they might deliberately leak something that could in their view damage the administration or contradict its assertions…”

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The apparent trade deal between the US and EU is very important. Just a few days ago critics argued the president had isolated the US from the world economy and the EU would never negotiate. Oops!

Roger Simon:

“…They must be burning whatever gallons of midnight oil they have left at MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC, etc. — all the propaganda organs of the Democratic Party — trying to figure out how to downplay the agreement Donald Trump just made with European Union President Jean-Claude Juncker, but it’s not going to be easy. This is the beginning of a massive free trade deal between Europe and the U.S. with zero tariffs outside the auto industry.  If even half of it comes true, there will be a (okay, why not?) YUUUGE growth in trade benefitting both sides of the Atlantic.

Forget porn stars. Forget tapes. Forget evil Vlad and Rocket Man. Forget insulting our NATO partners (whatever that means). Forget that pseudo-socialist with the hyphenated name. Forget Mueller, sleazy Strzok , Adam “Leaker” Schiff, Fingers Clapper, Knuckles Brennan, Rocko Rosenstein, or any of the sordid crew.  Forget even Twitter! (well, maybe). By comparison, those are all sideshows. As everyone knows, in politics, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

Or, put another way, “It’s the art of the deal.”  And that’s what came through today and then some.  This is the most significant moment of Trump’s presidency since the tax law passed — and he’s had plenty, more than any president of any of our lifetimes if you actually think about it…”

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“…Let’s get right to the good stuff: In a new poll conducted by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, just 33 percent of those surveyed think the Democratic Party is ‘in the mainstream.’ More than half (56 percent) consider them out of step…”

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Outstanding analysis of the malfeasance at FBI and later DOJ relating to the Clinton e-mail scandal.

Gregg Jarrett:

“…In one of the more stunning revelations contained in the report compiled by the Justice Department’s watchdog, former FBI Director James Comey claimed he doesn’t remember the moment he decided – and put down in writing — that Hillary Clinton had committed crimes.

We know that on or about May 2, 2016, Comey composed a statement summarizing Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents, concluding that she was “grossly negligent.” Those pivotal words have a distinct legal meaning, and are drawn directly from a federal statute, 18 U.S.C. 793(f), which makes it a felony to handle classified documents in a “grossly negligent” manner.

Comey used the exact phrase not once, but twice.

Based on Comey’s finding, Clinton should have faced a multiple-count criminal indictment, since the FBI discovered that she had stored 110 classified emails on her unauthorized, private computer server.  Other people had been prosecuted for similar conduct that jeopardized national security in violation of the law.  Yet, Comey – despite characterizing Clinton’s actions with the clear language denoting violation of the law – saw to it that no charges were ever brought against Clinton.

Under questioning, Comey admitted to the Inspector General Michael Horowitz that he authored the May 2 statement and penned every word of it himself. But then he offered the implausible claim that “he did not recall that his original draft used the term ‘gross negligence,’ and did not recall discussions about that issue.”

Comey’s amnesia is preposterous. He would have us believe that, as FBI director, he memorialized in print his decision that the leading candidate for president of the United States had committed crimes, yet later could not recollect anything about the most important decision of his career.

The truth is that Comey well remembers what he wrote, because he participated in subsequent discussions with top officials at the FBI about Clinton’s “gross negligence.” Several meetings were held on the subject and contemporaneous notes prove that Comey was in attendance. Those records show that although Comey was convinced that Clinton was “grossly negligent” in violation of the law, he was determined to clear her notwithstanding. To achieve this somersault and absolve the soon-to-be Democratic nominee, the legally damning terminology would have to be stricken from his statement…”

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“California DMV worker slept thousands of hours on the job, state report finds”

It also finds unbelievable incompetence, and neglect from her superiors Think anybody was fired?

Government run healthcare would be great!

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Maxine Waters:

‘Americans should be out in the streets screaming’ for Trump’s head

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Related tweet of the day on Brett Kavanaugh nomination from Randy Barnett:

Make your own assessment of the Occupy ICE movement.

The City of Portland was getting ready to clear out the anti-borders Occupy ICE encampment set up by protesters who apparently missed the irony of building border walls around their little fortress made from old couches and other trash. If you missed it earlier, here’s video of their headquarters:

NOW: A look inside what remains at the #OccupyICEPDX camp after Portland Police forced the last protesters out. #KOIN6News pic.twitter.com/CYwZkNPJnK

— Elise Haas (@EliseKOIN) July 25, 2018

The same thing happens in communist nations. It’s almost as if the MSM are not straight news, but rather the communications arm of the democrat party.

“…During the 18 months of the Trump presidency, immigration has received more airtime on the three broadcast evening news shows than any other policy topic. The networks’ coverage has been relentlessly hostile to the administration (92% negative, just 8% positive), largely because these newscasts have framed nearly all of their coverage around the plight of those adversely affected by the administration’s enforcement agenda, and have virtually ignored law enforcement or anyone harmed by illegal immigration…”

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The Washington Free Beacon has compiled a highlight reel of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s greatest hits, framed by DNC chairperson Tom Perez praising Ocasio-Cortez as “the future” of the Democratic Party. I certainly hope so! Occupy the Democratic Party! Pretty funny pathetic:

U.S. Navy personnel, protected by Biological Isolation Garments, are recovering the Apollo 11 crew from the re-entry vehicle, which landed safely in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969, after an eight-day mission on the moon. 

John Hinderaker:

“…I follow the Rasmussen survey because it is currently the only presidential approval daily tracking poll, and because its consistent methodology makes it a good trend barometer. The Rasmussen poll–also significant because it samples likely voters–finds an almost imperceptible hit to President Trump’s approval as a result of the Helsinki hysteria, which already seems to be more or less over…It seems obvious that pretty much everyone has an opinion of Donald Trump that isn’t likely to change much. Certainly shrieking MSNBC hosts, Hollywood actresses and Bob Mueller aren’t going to have much impact. Still less will many voters change their minds about Trump if it emerges that he gave money to a Playboy Playmate, as his former lawyer now alleges. Ho hum. In all these matters, for the reasons Paul stated, the voters are far wiser than the leftist pundits….”

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“…Democrats are defending 26 Senate seats, Republicans only nine. Five Democratic incumbents are running in states that 21 months ago experienced Donald Trump swoons: He won Missouri by 18.6 points, Indiana by 19.2, Montana by 20.4, North Dakota by 35.7, West Virginia by 42.1. In New Jersey, which Hillary Clinton carried by 14.1 points, Menendez was supposed to be safe.

The Republicans’ most recent presidential victory in New Jersey was in 1988. In the subsequent seven elections, the Democratic presidential candidates’ average margin of victory was almost 13 points. This state last elected a Republican senator (Clifford Case) in 1972. This 46-year drought might end in November.

Robert Hugin, 63, grew up in blue-collar Union City, as did Menendez, with whom Hugin served as student representatives to the local board of education. Hugin became the first in his family to graduate from college (Princeton), served 14 years in the Marine Corps (his two sons are now officers), then went into business, rising to run a pharmaceutical company. This sin, although scarlet in the overheated public mind, might be less so than Menendez’s transgressions detailed in the letter.

With hilarious understatement, James Madison, who was not known for hilarity, said, “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” A unanimous Senate ethics committee (three Republicans, three Democrats) in its April 26 letter to Menendez said: “By this letter, you are hereby severely admonished.” Menendez, the letter said, brought “discredit upon the Senate” by the following:

“Over a six-year period,” Menendez “knowingly and repeatedly accepted gifts of significant value” from a friend (an ophthalmologist who, the letter did not say, is currently appealing a 17-year sentence for $73 million of fraudulent Medicare billings). The gifts included air travel on private and commercial flights, a luxury hotel stay in Paris (the committee’s letter is demurely silent about Menendez’s accompanying girlfriend) and 19 visits to a Dominican Republic villa. He neither publicly reported, nor received written permission for, these gifts. In addition, the committee said, Menendez improperly intervened with federal agencies with “persistent advocacy” for his friend’s business interests…”

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Liz Sheld:

“…Over the weekend, the Department of Justice released a very redacted versionof the FISA warrants used to spy on Carter Page and the Trump campaign. The warrant served not only to surveil Page but also those with whom he communicated. The FISA includes not just the communications that occurred following the warrant’s approval, but also past communications of the subject and those with whom he communicated. You can see how this would be very valuable for an opposition campaign in a presidential election.

Here are some key takeaways:

• Carter Page was asserted to be a RUSSIAN spy in the FISA. Not surmised, but asserted. Only months earlier before the FISA, in March 2016, Page was cooperating with the FBI to prosecute real RUSSIAN spies but all of the sudden, we are expected to believe he’s a RUSSIAN spy too? And why is he walking free almost two-years later if he is a RUSSIAN asset?
• The “unverified and salacious” dossier made up a substantial amount of the FISA warrant, contrary to the Democrats promising that it was just one among many pieces of supporting evidence.
• James Comey, Twitter personality and former Director of the FBI, signed one of the FISA warrants comprised largely of the dossier attesting that the information in the FISA application was true, yet testified under oath the dossier was “salacious and unverified.”
• The FBI swore FOUR TIMES that the Steele dossier was not used as the source for Isikoff’s September 23 article which itself was used as evidence in the FISA warrant. The contents of the dossier was in fact used for the Isikoff article and yet the Isikoff article was used to “verify” the dossier in the FISA.
• Harry Reid’s letter to the FBI, that was generated when violent anti-Trumper and former CIA honcho James Brennan approached Reid with “documentation,” was used as evidence in the FISA. Brennan, being CIA, was limited by the agency’s ability to meddle in domestic affairs so he went to Reid to write a letter to urge the FBI to make some moves.
• The FBI did not tell the FISA court that the dossier was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, despite identifying Trump as “candidate #1.” Why not say the dossier was funded by candidate #2 and her political party? And, as the Republicans have asserted, the misleading information they did supply was in a footnote. You decide whether FBI obfuscated the source of the dossier, here is the footnote: “”Source #1…was approached by an identified U.S. person [Simpson], who indicated to Source #1 that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1’s ties to Russia…The identified U.S. person hired Source #1 [Steele] to conduct this research. The identified U.S. person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.””

Fox News has obtained a letter from the House Republicans, asking President Trump to declassify further sections of the FISA…”

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John Hinderaker:

“…The Associated Press carries on a daily vendetta against the Trump administration, systematically misleading the American people in articles that appear in hundreds or thousands of newspapers. Thus, it is no surprise that the AP’s story on DOJ’s FISA application dump is nothing but Democratic Party spin. The AP’s headline: “Without evidence, Trump claims documents confirm misconduct.”

President Donald Trump asserted without evidence Sunday that newly released documents relating to the wiretapping of his onetime campaign adviser Carter Page “confirm with little doubt” that intelligence agencies misled the court that approved the warrant.

But lawmakers from both political parties said that the documents don’t show wrongdoing and that they even appear to undermine some previous claims by top Republicans on the basis for obtaining a warrant against Page.

In fact, President Trump’s assessment that the FISA documents “confirm with little doubt that the Department of ‘Justice’ and FBI misled the courts” was exactly correct, as I showed here. Permit me the liberty of quoting myself:

The DOJ’s statement that “the FBI speculates that the identified U.S person [Simpson] was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s [Trump’s] campaign” could only have been an intentional effort to deceive the FISA judge. The FBI was perfectly well aware that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC hired Simpson through their lawyers, and the purpose of doing so was to attack candidate Donald Trump. References to “speculation” about “likely” motives are entirely dishonest.

In a moment of epic dishonesty, the AP neglects to tell its readers about this blatantly misleading feature of the FISA application. As Trump said, DOJ and the FBI “misled the courts.” Further, if the AP reporters actually read the president’s tweets, as presumably they did, they must have seen that Trump referred to Andrew McCarthy’s analysis of why the FISA application was scandalously inept and misleading. Yet the AP also fails to acknowledge, let alone try to rebut, Andrew’s observations.

Instead of addressing the many cogent criticisms of the FISA application, the AP adopts an ipse dixit approach:

Visible portions of the heavily redacted documents, released Saturday under the Freedom of Information Act, show the FBI telling the court that Page “has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government.” The agency also told the court that “the FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government.”

Well, all right then!

With the AP, it is often hard to tell whether we are dealing with malice or ignorance. Thus, we have these three paragraphs, which follow one another with no articulated logical connection:

On Sunday, Page said on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “I’ve never been the agent of a foreign power.”

In a 2013 letter, Page had described himself as an “informal adviser’ to the Kremlin but now said “it’s really spin” to call him an adviser.

Page has not been charged with a crime, but he has been interviewed by the FBI and congressional investigators about his ties to Russia.

The AP cobbles these disparate statements together in an effort to create a negative impression of Page. But the AP obscures the relevant facts.

The AP seems to suggest that there is some inconsistency between Page’s denial of being an “agent of a foreign power” and his claim, back in 2013, to be an “informal adviser” to certain Russians. Any such suggestion is entirely false…”

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Victor Davis Hanson:

“…Actually, no. The economy is growing at rates that we have not seen in over a decade. Unemployment, especially minority joblessness, is at a historic low. Even The stock market is at record highs. The United States is now the world’s largest producer of oil, natural gas, and coal. Consumer and business confidence is at a near all-time high.

NATO is re-calibrating its military contributions to increase defense spending. North Korea has stopped talking about nuking ourWest Coast. The Iranian theocracy is panicking after the end of the Iran Deal. There have not been any incidents this year of Iranian hazing of U.S. ships. China is scrambling to find ways to readjust its lopsided trade surpluses induced by commercial cheating and dumping. Never has a Republican president appointed and had confirmed more conservative and stellar judges. The National Security team of Pompeo, Bolton, Mattis, and Haley is perhaps the most skilled since World War II.

Why then the hate, the furor, the sheer mania?

The Left lost what it thought was a sure-thing election. There is now no assured 16-year Obama-Clinton regnum that would complete what the Obamas had called the final “fundamental transformation” of the United States. It cannot accept that it blew certain victory. A huge fundraising advantage, a toady media, massive defections of Republican establishment intellectuals and pundits, the lack of prior military or political experience of candidate Donald Trump, and a popular vote plurality all proved for naught. The unimaginable then became all too real.

And fantasy was substituted for reality as smears, slurs, and denials ensued. Think of the 2000 election cubed.

Trump is not a George H.W. Bush or Mitt Romney. He knows no etiquette. He is no gentleman. He is a bruiser, brawler, exaggerator, and performer. What created President Trump was not just “The Apprentice” or the Manhattan real estate market (such a resume only honed his pugilist skills).

Rather, half the country was tired of Republicans grimacing as they were portrayed as throwing grandmothers off cliffs. They were tired of seeing political commercials of bodies of the murdered dragged behind trucks, or charges that Republicans cruelly put their pets on their car roof. They were tired of the anti-Semitic and racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a presidential candidate’s personal pastor, being off limits, but not the supposed senility of John McCain who in 2008 was pilloried as a doddering multi-millionaire who forgot how many houses he had owned. In 2012, it was Mitt Romney’s wife whose sins were wearing equestrian clothes.

Given the growing furor over half the country as demonized clingers, deplorables, and crazies, if Trump did not exist, a don’t-tread-on-me street fighter would have had to be invented. Progressives have gone ballistic that any opponent would reply to them in kind. Think of “Caddyshack,” when uncouth Rodney Dangerfield burst into smug Ted Knight’s country club.

The Left did not just lose the 2016 election, it lost the Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. And it lost them all to a rash, uncouth Queens-accented Manhattan billionaire reality TV star, who systematically planned to dismantle eight years of Obama Administration executive-orders. And unlike almost all prior politicians Trump when in office kept his promises and systematically went about to halt the supposed progressive future. Think of a liberal nightmare something akin to Sarah Palin as president in 2012.

The Obama apparat and the proverbial deep state never imagined Trump could win and thus to ensure that he would not just be defeated but humiliated, vied to use the power of government to destroy the Trump candidacy.

The National Security Council was weaponized and thus unmasked the names of surveilled Americans and leaked their names to the press to undermine the Trump campaign. The Department of Justice was weaponized to ensure Hillary Clinton was exonerated for her misdeeds concerning her email server and quid pro quo collusion with a variety of foreign and domestic influence peddlers and buyers. The FBI and CIA were weaponized to subvert the Trump campaign, by peddling an unverified smear dossier, paid for by Hillary Clinton, by implanting informants into the Trump campaign, and by undermining a FISA court through dishonest presentations of evidence for warrants to spy on American citizens.

All such behavior was assumed to ensure the landslide Clinton victory and thus would be seen as sacrifice beyond the call of duty to be rewarded by a President Clinton not as illegal behavior to be punished during a Trump administration. And as a result, the more culpability that was exposed, the more the culpable went on the offensive—on the theory that constant attack is the best defense against their own criminal liability. Think of the fears of John Brennan behind bars…”

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Joel Kotkin:

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A perfect example of Euro-Global-Weenie analysis and thinking.

“…How Europe Can Survive the Trump Era: Hibernation…”

John Hinderaker:

“…The application relies to an astonishing degree on anti-Trump news stories published in the Democratic Party press. Does the FBI really get surveillance warrants on the basis of partisan press accounts? Apparently so. . . . Amazingly, the FISA application relies on ‘speculation in U.S. media’ for the proposition that Russia was behind the phishing of DNC emails…”

Glenn Reynolds:

“…That multiple warrants could be issued against an American citizen on such shaky evidence calls into question the entire FISA process…”