D.C. Gay Pride March Bans Israeli Flags, Allows Palestinian Ones.

YouTube To Run All Potentially Offensive Content Past Easily Spooked Possum

Is it really satire? It should read …Past Easily Spooked Progressive Possum.

Biden caves to critics, will support federal funding for abortion one day after saying he was against it.

Andrew Kerr:

• The wife of House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings used her charity to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars into her private LLC, according to new documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
• Maya Rockeymoore Cummings’s charity receives funding from organizations with interests before her husband’s congressional committee.
• Multiple charity watchdogs said the previously undisclosed financial arrangement between Rockeymoore Cummings’s charity and for-profit company raises red flags.

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Michael Barone:

“…“I’m amused,” Attorney General William Barr told CBS News’ Jan Crawford, “by these people who make a living disclosing classified information, including the names of intelligence operatives, wringing their hands about whether I’m going to be responsible in protecting intelligence sources and methods.”

He went on after further questions, “Well, the media reaction is strange. Normally the media would be interested in letting the sunshine in and finding out what the truth is. And usually the media doesn’t care that much about protecting intelligence sources and methods. But I do and I will.”

You don’t have to have been “in the business” for Barr’s nearly 50 years to understand what he means. Just flash back 13 years to June 2006 and read the New York Times’ revelations about the Swift bank procedures.

The Belgian-based Swift manages foreign currency transfers, and after 9/11, the CIA and Treasury conducted data searches to spot and ultimately stop terrorist financing. The Times’ story conceded that this program was successful in obstructing terrorist activity and it identified no abuses.

Top administration officials pleaded with the Times not to publish the story, and President George W. Bush said publication was “disgraceful.” Times editor Bill Keller’s justification: “the administration’s” — not the government’s, but the administration’s — “extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data … is a matter of public interest.”

In other words, the Times didn’t care much about weakening America’s fight against terrorism by disclosing classified information and revealing intelligence sources and methods. It was more interested in letting the sunshine in on a program which, to the best of its knowledge, had infringed no one’s rights.

Some called for prosecution of the Times for violating the Espionage Act of 1917, which criminalized the publication of classified information and was signed by President Woodrow Wilson two months after the U.S. entered World War I. But as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed out in his 1998 book Secrecy: The American Experience, the Espionage Act is over-broad and the government tends to over-classify information, including even newspaper articles.

Accordingly, successive administrations, up to and including George W. Bush’s, have declined to prosecute news media for publishing stories, including leaks of classified information, that seem clearly forbidden by the words of Woodrow Wilson’s Espionage Act.

Abandoning that precedent, perhaps surprisingly, was the administration of President Barack Obama, who described himself as “a strong believer in the First Amendment” and dismissed “stories about us cracking down on whistleblowers or whatnot” as “a really small sample.”

Actually, they were an unprecedentedly large number. James Risen, co-byliner on the Times’s original Swift story, wrote in December 2016 that the Obama administration “has prosecuted nine cases involving whistleblowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined.”

Obama’s Justice Department subpoenaed Associated Press phone records of AP trunk lines and 30 separate phones. It identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “co-conspirator” in an Espionage Act leak case. The supposedly liberal and pro-First Amendment Obama administration was actively pursuing what the Columbia Journalism Review called “a massive intrusion into newsgathering operations.”

It’s true that Obama did not emit as many tart words for the press in his eight years as president as Trump has in his two and a half. But Trump has come nowhere near to challenging Obama’s record as the president most inclined to sic law enforcement on the press since Woodrow Wilson himself. Liberal Democrats aren’t necessarily the best friends of press freedom.

Nor, it seems, are they necessarily friends of a citizen’s right of privacy or a candidate’s right to seek public office without government surveillance. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when Barr made the point that government “spying” had occurred on the Trump campaign, Democrats and the press expressed horror. You’re not supposed to say “spying,” apparently, even though Democrats and media such as the Times have routinely used that word as a conveniently short and understandable synonym for government surveillance.

As Barr told Crawford, spying is appropriate if it’s “adequately predicated,” and it’s unclear whether the spying on the Trump campaign was. Certainly, the contents of the partisan and unverified Steele dossier would not have provided legitimate grounds on their own.

Barr is old enough to remember when liberals did not take government legal or intelligence agencies’ word that spying on an administration’s opponents was justified, when they did not attack those who questioned it as unpatriotic.

He may be amused that such doings are self-righteously justified today. But it’s good that he’s willing to ask questions most of the media do not want asked, to determine how the Obama law enforcement and intelligence agencies set about spying on the opposite party’s presidential campaign…”

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Zachery Schmidt:

“…An investigation by Minnesota’s Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board into Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05) found she violated campaign finance laws dating back to when she served a single term in the State House of Representatives from 2016-2018.

But conservative Twitter quickly uncovered a more shocking detail in the report: she filed joint tax returns with a man she wasn’t married to. The report states that Omar filed joint tax returns in 2014 and 2015 with Ahmed Hirsi, even though she was married to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi from 2009-2017.

“One payment of $750 was made to De Leon & Nestor, LLC for obtaining immigration records and one payment of $1,500 was made to Frederick $ Rosen, Ltd. for services related to Mr. Hirsi’s and Rep. Omar’s filed joint tax returns of 2014 and 2015,” Thursday’s report states.

The Star Tribune, Minnesota’s most popular media outlet, picked up the story, but made no mention of the fact that Omar filed joint tax returns with Hirsi.

“Media has hid the truth about Ilhan Omar for three years. It’s about to ruin them all,” said PJ Media‘s David Steinberg, who explained the bombshell in a Twitter thread Thursday…”

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Related:

Only go here if you are prepared for the gut wrenching truth of our brave men who went ashore at Omaha. It is gut wrenching. God bless those men.

S. L. A. MARSHALL:

An account of the “epic human tragedy” that unfolded when Allied troops landed on the shores of Normandy on D-Day

Democrats live in fantasy land

Liel Leibovitz:

“…To put it briefly, the Never Trump argument is that they should be greatly approved of, while Donald Trump should rightly be scorned, because—while they agree with Trump on most things, politically—they are devoted to virtue, while Trump is uniquely despicable. The proofs of Trump’s singular loathsomeness are many, but if you strip him of all the vices he shares with others who had recently held positions of power—a deeply problematic attitude towards women (see under: Clinton, William Jefferson), shady business dealings (see under: Clinton, Hillary Rodham), a problematic attitude towards the free press (see under: Obama, Barack)—you remain with one ur-narrative, the terrifying folk tale that casts Trump as a nefarious troll dispatched by his paymasters in the Kremlin to set American democracy ablaze.

Now that this story has been thoroughly investigated and discredited, it seems fair to ask: Is championing a loony and deeply corrosive conspiracy theory proof of anyone’s superior virtue? The fact that these accusations were false implies that the Never Trumpers who made them early and often were among the political pyromaniacs, and are therefore deserving of the very obloquy that they heaped on Trump. And what about people like Carter Page, a blameless ex-Navy officer who was defamed as an agent of a shadowy, ever-expanding conspiracy headquartered in Moscow?

Conspiracy-mongering doesn’t seem like much of a public virtue. Certainly, the Never Trumpers should have known better than to join in the massive publicity campaign around a “dossier” supposedly compiled by a former British intelligence officer rehashing third-hand hearsay and paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. You can still find many faults with Donald Trump’s behavior in and out of office, including some cardinal enough perhaps to merit impeachment, without buying in to some moronic ghost story about an orange-hued traitor who seized the highest office in the land with the help of Vladimir Putin’s social media goons. All that should go without saying, especially for people who ostensibly devote their lives to elevating and enriching the tone of our public discourse…”

and

“…French and the other self-appointed guardians of civility, then, should do us all a favor and drop the civic virtue act. They’re not disinterested guardians of our public institutions; they are actors, working in an industry that rewards them for dressing up in Roman Republican drag and reciting Cicero for the yokels. This is why Bill Kristol, another of the Never Trumpers, could raise money for his vanity website, The Bulwark, and why he could expect his new creation be lauded on CNN as “a conservative site unafraid to take on Trump,” even as the site was staffed by leftist millennials and dutifully followed progressive propaganda lines. Like anyone whose living depends on keeping on the right side of a leftist industry, they understood that there’s only so much you can say if you care about cashing a paycheck—especially when the president and leader of your own party won’t take your phone calls.

The Never Trumpers, of course, aren’t the first Americans to hide cold careerism behind a wall of virtue-signaling. It’s why so many in the professional punditry went the way of Never Trump: More than anything else, the decision to align oneself with a movement that, ontologically, vows to reject the president a priori, no matter what he might say or do, regardless of your own supposed political beliefs, is a way of affirming one’s professional class loyalties, thus ensuring that your progeny will still be accepted and acceptable at Yale…”

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Destructive government must work overtime to ruin what others built

Kurt Schlichter:

“…California has morphed from paradise into a garbage state run by garbage people for their own garbage benefit and amusement. The “garbage” part is literal – once the Sierra Nevada mountains symbolized the state; now, towering heaps of trash and human waste do. Welcome to what the Democrats want for all of America. Just watch your step. Literally.

If it were not for the climate, something the liberals in charge of my state have nothing to do with as much as they think they do, it would likely be a nearly empty desert once again. But the sun shines, the beach beckons and the palm trees sway over a population of morons who keep electing proggy fascists to run the place. Which they are doing, right into the ground…”

and

“…And hate them Sacramento does, targeting Normals with petty and not so petty attacks, from bans on straws and gun grabs to the threat of lifting the Proposition 13 caps on property taxes that keep millions of retirees from being tossed out of their homes when their annual bills go up 4000%. What would that mean? Well, when that modest ranch style you bought for $100,000 in 1985 gets reassessed to its current $1,000,000 value (something Prop 13 prevents), and the 1% Prop 13 tax rate goes to 3% or 4%, your tax bill goes from $1,000 a year to $30,000-$40,000. Remember that retirement you worked for? Well, now it will all go to subsidize the deadbeat government workers and welfare cheats that the California Democrats really represent. “No, that’s crazy talk! That would never happen!”

Yeah? Just watch…”

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JONATHAN TURLEY:

“…With a crucial defeat in federal court this week, one would expect the House Democrats to be embarrassed at losing long protected precedent supporting legislative authority. Instead, as a federal judge in Washington was rejecting their challenge to the executive order by President Trump to build a wall along the southern border, House leaders have nonetheless moved ahead with an assortment of other inadvisable gambles.

The first step for compulsive gamblers is to admit they have a problem. Democrats have a serious and growing problem. The court defeat was particularly stinging to those of us who have tried repeatedly to persuade House Democrats to recognize that they are destroying themselves with reckless litigation. I have spent decades writing, testifying, and litigating in support of congressional authority. A typical Madisonian scholar, I favor the legislative branch in court battles with the executive branch. We have seen the steady erosion of legislative power over the years, and many of us have indeed tried to steer Congress away from reckless litigation…”

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Roosevelt was the only general on D-Day to land by sea with the first wave of troops. At 56, he was the oldest man in the invasion, and the only one whose son also landed that day; Captain Quentin Roosevelt II was among the first wave of soldiers at Omaha Beach.

Brigadier General Roosevelt was one of the first soldiers, along with Captain Leonard T. Schroeder Jr., off his landing craft as he led the 8th Infantry Regiment and 70th Tank Battalion landing at Utah Beach.

Throughout World War II, Roosevelt suffered from health problems. He had arthritis, mostly from old World War I injuries, and walked with a cane. He also had heart trouble, which he kept secret from army doctors and his superiors.

On July 12, 1944, a little over one month after the landing at Utah Beach, Roosevelt died of a heart attack in Méautis, 22 km from Sainte-Mère-Église in Normandy. He was living at the time in a converted sleeping truck, captured a few days before from the Germans. He had spent part of the day in a long conversation with his son, Captain Quentin Roosevelt II, who had also landed at Normandy on D-Day. He was stricken at about 10:00 PM, attended by medical help, and died at about midnight. He was fifty-six years old. On the day of his death, he had been selected by Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, now commanding the U.S. First Army, for promotion to the two-star rank of major general and command of the 90th Infantry Division. These recommendations were sent to General Eisenhower, now the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, for approval. When Eisenhower called the next morning to approve them, he was told that Roosevelt had died during the night.

Approaching Omaha Beach June 6, 1944.

Seated Roosevelt and Churchill. Standing front row left to right: General Arnold, Admiral King, General Marshall, Admiral Pound, Air Chief Marshall Portal, General Brooke, Field Marshall Dill, Admiral Mountbatten.

Casablanca Conference, (January 12–23, 1943), meeting during World War II in Casablanca, Morocco, between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and their respective military chiefs and aides, who planned future global military strategy for the western Allies. Though invited, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin declined to attend.

The work of the conference was primarily military—deciding on the invasion of Sicily (after completion of the North African campaign) rather than an immediate invasion of western Europe, apportioning forces for the Pacific theatre and outlining major lines of attack in the Far East, and agreeing on the concentrated bombing of Germany. Roosevelt and Churchill also found time to discuss nuclear bomb research, to consider competing claims between Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle for the leadership of the French war effort against the Axis powers, and, most important of all, to demand an “unconditional surrender” from Germany, Italy, and Japan.

 House Dems Expected to Vote on Mass Amnesty Bill

Philip Hamburger:

“…A 2014 analysis by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting found that from 1987 to 2012, the higher-education sector added more than half a million administrators. Their numbers have doubled relative to academic faculty. Financed in large part with federally subsidized tuition, this rise of administrators siphons money from the core functions of academic institutions. Colleges and universities have shifted teaching duties from full-time professors to part-time nontenured adjuncts who earn paltry wages.

Congress can combat this transformation of the university by reforming student-loan programs. The U.S. government offers student loans without regard to the ratio of administrators to full-time tenured faculty at the school receiving the funds. Congressional largess to students has thus changed the nature of the higher-education system. It has enabled colleges and universities to expand and entrench a class of employees whose interests often conflict with a serious education.

Administrators serve many valuable functions. They can help students and save time for faculty. But their growth in numbers has coincided with some disturbing trends. Governance of academic institutions traditionally rested with the faculty, especially full-time tenured faculty. But the relative decline of faculty has shifted the balance of power toward administrators, who increasingly control academic policy.

It’s no accident that as they have hired more administrators, these institutions have veered toward indoctrination and censorious intrusions into speech, opinion and personal life. These heavy-handed policies are often incompatible with traditional educational ideals, such as academic freedom, freedom of speech, open-mindedness and dispassionate judgment. To be sure, many faculty support such policies, but the most consistent pressure for them typically comes from the administrative bureaucracy. Congress should recognize that its funding helped create this threat to education.

When authorizing student loans, Congress should take into account the ratio of administrators to full-time tenured faculty. …

One might still protest that Congress should not be in the business of reshaping education. But that is precisely what Congress has been doing for decades. Its loans have facilitated the growth of the education-administrative complex and thereby undermined academic governance and values. Congress should reform its lending to stop subsidizing the rise of administrators at the cost of education…”

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Satire, but is it?

Left Vows To Topple Patriarchy By Allowing Biological Males To Dominate Women’s Sports

Liz Sheld:

“…Once this clown car passes a contempt vote they will be cleared to take legal action in subpoena battle, “sources” told Politico. Both McGahn are Barr are being tormented with nuisance subpoenas because the White House has claimed it is exercising executive privilege and refusing to let them testify. In McGahn’s case, he was White House counsel. In Barr’s case, he is prevented from turning over the unredacted portions of the Mueller report because the law prevents him from doing so. The House can certainly take this issue to court and have the court decided if the public interest is worth violating the promised anonymity of grand jury testimony, but they aren’t doing this. Why? Well, because the court will probably not side with congress and this isn’t about getting the redacted version of the report, it’s part of the congressional street theater operation. Trump has also covered the report under executive privilege, another reason Barr isn’t turning over the report without the redactions (less than 10%.) Oh one more thing, the entire report sans grand jury is available for congressfolk to view, but they aren’t taking the opportunity to do so. There’s no good faith here, it’s impossible to think that the congressional jokers are interested in anything other than a public, media-assisted, bitch fight…”