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Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS:
“…Federal employee Henry Kyle Frese was arrested today for allegedly leaking national security secrets to reporters at CNBC and NBC. One of the reporters was his girlfriend. Read the indictment here.
Frese was a federal employee at the Defense Intelligence Agency. It comes as no surprise that Frese — like so many other federal employees in Washington, D.C. — is full of hatred toward Donald Trump and willing to use his personal power and government job to attack the president and conservatives. Let’s peruse his Twitter feed before it disappears…”
You can’t make this stuff up!
Brent Bozell and Tim Graham:
“…Politico posted a curious headline by senior media reporter Michael Calderone the other day: “News anchors fight back against GOP senators’ refusal to condemn Trump.” At this point, is it really news that “news anchors” are fighting the GOP?…”
JOHN KASS:
“…Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the Democrat campaigning for president, has had two amazing creation myths to choose from.
One had her as a Native American, and the other as a young teacher forced out of her job because she was pregnant.
Many epic heroines, or heroes, have only one creation myth, as anyone who has who read Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” can tell you.
Warren has just the one face. But each of her stories cast her as a victim.
Yet when it comes to creation myths, Sen. Two Tales has none…
…The Democratic Party is ruled by identity politics, and victim status wins points and protection. Warren’s story gave her room to shape-shift, from the Native American who wasn’t to young mom victimized by the patriarchy…”
ROGER L. SIMON:
“…But most of the public doesn’t know the full story or anything close. The truth rarely emerges quickly. In Churchill’s words, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Eventually, however, it does. And when it does, in this case, if the Democrats have already impeached a president–if it turns out there was a coup plot or something close involving the CIA, the previous administration and others–there will be hell to pay in this country like we haven’t seen since the 1860s, maybe worse…”
Byron York:
“…In an Aug. 26 letter, the Intelligence Community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, wrote that the anonymous whistleblower who set off the Trump-Ukraine impeachment fight showed “some indicia of an arguable political bias … in favor of a rival political candidate.”
A few weeks later, news reports said the whistleblower’s possible bias was that he is a registered Democrat. That was all. Incredulous commentary suggested that Republicans who were pushing the bias talking point were so blinded by their own partisanship that they saw simple registration with the Democratic Party as evidence of wrongdoing…
…Now, however, there is word of more evidence of possible bias on the whistleblower’s part. Under questioning from Republicans during last Friday’s impeachment inquiry interview with Atkinson, the inspector general revealed that the whistleblower’s possible bias was not that he was simply a registered Democrat. It was that he had a significant tie to one of the Democratic presidential candidates currently vying to challenge President Trump in next year’s election…”
Democrats should be worried. The impeachment circus is a spoiling attack to deflect attention from the ongoing investigations. Democrats know the investigations could blow up the 2020 elections for them.
I have mixed views on President Trump’s decision to pull out. I could go through the perceived pluses and minuses, but I will cut to the chase.
Nothing we have tried in Syria or the broader Middle East in general has worked very well. Will pulling out of Syria change that, I don’t think so. Will pulling out make things worse, I don’t think so, at least not for us.
I think we have plenty of intelligence capacity in the area without a presence in Syria.
I am willing to try something new and see how it goes.
“…So, the Ukraine narrative has collapsed worse than Adam Schiff’s credibility because it was obvious that the alleged whistleblower (i.e. leaker) didn’t have first-hand knowledge of what he reported. In fact, the rules were changed in August, suspiciously close to the time he came forward, to allow second-hand knowledge to be used in whistleblower complaints. This is such an obviously phoney-baloney set-up that only someone as credulous as, well, pretty much anyone in the national media believe it.
So it became general knowledge that not having any first-hand knowledge does not make for a credible whistleblower complaint.
Guess what happened next?
You’re right, a *second* whistleblower has allegedly come forward. And, wouldn’t you know it, the lawyer is claiming that this whistleblower does have first-hand knowledge. Wow! What a fantastic coincidence! Just when the whistleblower criteria is settled in the public mind, Trump’s enemies pull one out of their ass that that precisely meets the now-known requirements.
If the rules were that whistleblowers had to be left-handed Lithuanian midgets who enjoyed eating pickles while wearing pink frilly dresses, you can be sure that somewhere, somehow, the Democrats would be able to dig one up. This is basically the same play they ran with Kavanaugh. When it became obvious that Christine Doctor Ford was pretty much lying her ass off, suddenly, a number of other “credible” witnesses suddenly materialized out of thin air, each one with a kinky Kavanagh story more unbelievably bizarre than the previous one, until finally they had Kavanaugh as the captain of a pirate ship doing rape runs up and down the eastern seaboard in between celebratory keggers…”
William A. Jacobson:
“…Circulating claims of Trump-Russian collusion prior to the 2016 election didn’t work.
Using foreign-supplied fake intelligence, from a British spy who utilized Russian sources, to obtain surveillance of the Trump campaign and transition team didn’t work.
Intimidating Electoral College Electors to change their votes after the election didn’t work.
Having the Director of the FBI lie to, set up and try to entrap the president didn’t work.
Having that same FBI Director leak memos to the media to manufacture grounds for a Special Counsel didn’t work.
Trying to invoke the 25th Amendment to declare the president unable to perform the job didn’t work.
Two years of the Mueller Investigation didn’t work.
Three years of a permanent crisis news cycle meant to paralyze the administration didn’t work.
After all these failures to unwind the 2016 election, Democrats and the mainstream media are trying a new tactic: Create a Star Chamber “impeachment” process fueled by anonymous whistleblowers and selective leaks that is not so much designed to remove the president, though they would if they could, but to manipulate the 2020 election.
The first intelligence community whistleblower is not so much a whistleblower as a politically biased operative (according to the Inspector General) who gathered information from various sources, went to Adam Schiff’s office for guidance, then filed a so-called Whistleblower Complaint that almost certainly was drafted by a team of lawyers. WhistleBlower No. 1, because he or she filed the claim as a whistleblower, is entitled to anonymity, there will not be the type of cross-examination and investigation of the whistleblower’s background and information that was so critical when Democrats rolled out a series of accusers against Brett Kavanaugh.
With Whistleblower No. 1 failing to fulfill the mission, there was a leak to the NY Times of a potential Whistleblower No. 2. That’s how this is going to work, there will be leaks to the media to frame the public narrative just like regarding supposed Russian-collusion.
That potential Whistleblower No. 2 is not actually a whistleblower, he or she is reportedly a witness already interviewed as part of the first Whistleblower Complaint. Whistleblower No. 2 is not blowing the whistle on anything.
But that witness now has invoked whistleblower anonymity and protection via the same lawyer representing Whistleblower No. 1…”