Friday, August 30, 2019

Why Is The FBI Obstructing..

https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/30/fbi-obstructing-release-james-comeys-memos/

Why Is The FBI Obstructing The Release Of James Comey’s Memos?

Whatever harm releasing these memos might cause to the FBI’s crime-fighting ability is surely offset by the lack of accountability for one of the most controversial episodes in its history.

On August 27, the FBI scored another temporary victory to maintain the secrecy of the James Comey memos. It convinced a federal judge to delay his own order and has again thwarted the Freedom of Information Act passed by Congress to force government agencies to account to the voting public.

Former FBI director Comey is gone, and nobody within the government should be trying to protect him. Because of his recklessness, the nation is still grappling the aftermath of the most serious constitutional crisis of recent memory.
Why is the FBI obstructing the release of its disgraced former director’s memos? As they say, just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Whatever harm releasing these memos might cause to the FBI’s legitimate crime-fighting ability is surely offset by the lack of accountability for one of the most controversial episodes in the bureau’s history. The public must know that the FBI is not operating as a government unto itself.
Fellow son of Kansas City Harry S Truman wrote during his presidency: “We want no Gestapo or secret police. FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail… Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him.”
In spite of all the reforms, oversight, and internal regulations meant to protect the elected governance from the power of the unelected FBI, liberal journalist Michael Isikoff wrote this of Comey’s private meeting with Donald Trump, the subject matter of some of these memos: “Senior FBI officials were concerned then-director James Comey would appear to be blackmailing then-President-elect Trump – using tactics notoriously associated with J. Edgar Hoover – when he attended a fateful Jan. 6, 2017, meeting at which he informed the real estate magnate about allegations he had consorted with prostitutes in Moscow.”
He’s not the only one. The president-elect also thought the FBI director was using the occasion of a private pre-inauguration meeting as blackmail to gain control over the incoming president. Trump thought Comey used the Christopher Steele dossier story of Trump directing Russian hookers in a Moscow hotel room as “leverage“ to secure his job. Comey himself understood the appearance of his private briefing of the president: “I was very concerned that he might interpret it as an effort to pull a J. Edgar Hoover on him.”
Then, when the president fired Comey, the former FBI director retaliated by releasing some of the contents of memos for the stated purpose of prompting the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Trump. Isn’t that what unsuccessful blackmailers do when their targets balk? A few days later, somebody (possibly Comey’s partner in crime, then CIA director John Brennan) leaked the fact that Comey had briefed the president on details of the Russian prostitute allegations to create a hook for the media to justify publishing the otherwise unbelievable allegations against Trump.
Comey had another reason to want the swift appointment of a special counsel. He literally lost sleep over the prospect that the president had made an audio recording of their meetings. “I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night, because it didn’t dawn on me originally, that there might be corroboration for our conversation, there might be a tape.”
Comey testified that he wanted the special counsel appointed to “pursue the tapes,” because he “was worried the Department of Justice, as currently led, would not go after White House tapes.” What was Comey’s relationship to the person selected as special counsel? “Brothers in arms,” and longtime friends. That means a likely safe haven for potentially embarrassing audio recordings. Although no tapes ever surfaced, Mueller’s team kept faith by writing a report that ignored Comey’s misdeeds in the collusion hoax.
On August 12, 2019, Judge James Boasberg denied the FBI’s effort to reverse a prior order directing the release of the Comey memos. Until the release of the Robert Mueller special counsel report, the court sided with the FBI in keeping the Comey memos out of the public domain. According to the FBI, the disclosure of the Comey memos “could reasonably be expected to adversely affect the pending Russia investigation…[as the memos are Comey’s] contemporaneous notes about incidents that are of interest in that investigation.”
Allow me to translate: The special counsel didn’t want targets of the investigation (including the president, one can reasonably presume) to get their story straight by studying what Comey wrote. It would be a legitimate concern if so much of the Mueller probe were not a process-crime witch hunt that engineered traps to criminalize otherwise innocent people (think Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos, and Michael Flynn).
The end of the Mueller investigation made that argument moot. So the FBI attempted to change its basis for withholding the memos, to no avail: the judge quickly swatted the arguments away. Then, just days ago, the FBI asked the court to hold off on enforcing the order until the FBI could decide whether to appeal, arguing that, “the public interest argues more strongly in favor of a stay as the information at issue includes classified information (the redactions in the Comey Memos), the release of which the government believes could reasonably be expected to harm national security.”
National security? My definition of national security involves preserving a meaningful constitutional government in which elections confer real political power on the people’s representatives. If Comey or his FBI attempted to gain control of a president-elect with blackmail material, or attempted to undermine a duly-elected president by sponsoring partisan smears that it should have known to be false, that would present a direct threat to the security of our system of representative democracy.
I respectfully suggest that the preservation of self-government—where the people direct the government and not the other way around—should be the first responsibility of every government agency, including the FBI. That should be the “higher loyalty” of all public servants.
It’s reasonable to infer that everything in the memos that could be used as ammunition against Trump has already been leaked or released in the Mueller report. Conservative Treehouse wrote this regarding the balance of the unpublished memos: “In our opinion, the content of the diary by former FBI Director James Comey, as outlined in what has formally been called ‘The Comey Memos’, is devastating to the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI. How do we know? Because the FBI is fighting like hell to keep even descriptions of the memo(s) content from becoming public.”

As noted above, the FBI ultimately obtained that delay through sometime in October. This further delays the kind of transparency necessary for representative democracy to maintain control over its government.

Whatever spooks or spies might be outed by the release of Comey’s memos, the American people should have the right to insist upon the supremacy of constitutional interests over the reputations of career bureaucrats who might be embarrassed by a public airing of their misconduct. Attorney General William Barr should tell the FBI to pound sand. America deserves the truth.
Adam Mill is a pen name. He works in Kansas City, Missouri as an attorney specializing in labor and employment and public administration law. Adam has contributed to The Federalist, American Greatness, and The Daily Caller. 

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inspector General Rebukes...





The IG report rebuked Comey for mishandling official FBI records, and for his many violations of regulations, DOJ and FBI policies, and Comey’s employment agreement.

For two years, the same cabal that in 2016 ignored Hillary Clinton’s criminal handling of classified material and instead sprinted after an apparition of Russia collusion has assured us that politics didn’t matter. That tarmac meetings and private texts meant nothing. That the partisan preferences of career FBI and DOJ employees is merely personal and had no effect on their handling of the Clinton investigation or the targeting of the Donald Trump campaign.


The gig’s finally up. Yesterday’s Office of Inspector General Report on former FBI director James Comey’s creation, handling, and disclosure of memoranda he drafted about his conversations with Trump tells us all we need to know about Comey. It was personal—all personal.



“Through our investigation we learned that Comey considered Memos 2 through 7 to be his personal documents,” “like his will or his passport,” the IG wrote in reference to six of the seven memos Comey wrote between January 6, 2017 and April 11, 2017. Those memoranda memorialized one-on-one conversations between the then-FBI director and Trump. Of those six memoranda, four he kept at home in the safe he shared with his wife, and later, after Trump fired him, Comey shared the memos with his personal attorneys.


But as the IG report made clear, Comey’s memoranda were records of official FBI business between the president and the FBI director. Yet Comey viewed the memoranda as his private property! (One must wonder whether Clinton took a similar stance about “private” when deleting 30,000-plus “personal emails.”) However, the IG report concluded that “Comey’s characterization of the Memos as personal records finds no support in the law and is wholly incompatible with the plain language of the statutes, regulations, and policies defining Federal records, and the terms of Comey’s FBI Employment Agreement.”


Moreover, as the IG report stressed, “much of the content of the Memos was directly tied to FBI investigative activities,” such as memo two, which “concerned whether, at the President’s request, the FBI should open an investigation into the ‘salacious’ information ‘to prove it was a lie.’ Memo 4 included a reference to the president’s statement that he hoped Comey could ‘see [his] way clear…to letting Flynn go’ because the President believed Flynn ‘hadn’t done anything wrong.’” Memos six and seven discussed Trump’s efforts to encourage Comey to “‘lift the cloud’ created by the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.” Comey also memorialized his repeated assurances to “Trump that Trump had not been named as a subject in an FBI investigation.”


The IG report rebuked Comey for mishandling official FBI records, and for his many violations of regulations, DOJ and FBI policies, and Comey’s employment agreement with the FBI. “By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees—and the many thousands more former FBI employees—who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information,” the IG explained.
That is all true and a devastating indictment of Comey. But what should be equally ruinous to Comey’s reputation are the many times he admitted to OIG investigators that he conflated the personal with the professional—and prioritized the former.


In addition, to viewing his work-related summaries as his “’recollection recorded,’ like a diary or personal notes,” in explaining why he wrote his second memorandum summarizing his private dinner with the president, Comey said he viewed Trump as “fundamentally dishonest” and he was “worried very much that [Trump] would say I had said things at this dinner that were not true.” Comey told the IG that he saw that possibility as “dangerous to me, but also to the FBI.”


“But honestly, at this point I was thinking first about me,” Comey explained, adding “close second the FBI.” The memo then, served Comey, “as a personal aide-mémoire”—something Comey said he felt necessary “to protect himself.”


The IG report also censured Comey for leaking to The New York Times the content of the memorandum discussing his conversation with Trump about Michael Flynn, through his close friend and lawyer Daniel Richman. Although Comey violated controlling policies and his employment agreement in relaying the content of his memorandum to the Times, the former FBI director continued to justify his conduct, arguing he sought to prompt the appointment of a special counsel. It was an issue of “incredible importance to the Nation, as a whole” Comey told the OIG, and he felt that taking action was “something I [had] to do if I love this country…and I love the Department of Justice, and I love the FBI.”


But as the IG report stressed, “Comey’s own, personal conception of what was necessary was not an appropriate basis for ignoring the policies and agreements governing the use of FBI records.” The OIG then stressed that “even when these employees believe that their most strongly-held personal convictions might be served by an unauthorized disclosure, the FBI depends on them not to disclose sensitive information.” “Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility,” the OIG concluded.
He did: Instead of serving as the director of the FBI, Comey treated the FBI as his own personal fiefdom. And if the FBI director had no problem violating controlling policies and his employment agreement because of his “strongly-held personal convictions,” how much more risk was there that a lower-level FBI agent would similarly allow a personal disdain for the president to trump all else?


Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Cleveland served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge and is a former full-time faculty member and current adjunct instructor at the college of business at the University of Notre Dame. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
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Dear fellow white people:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/dear-fellow-white-people-heres-what-to-do-when-youre-called-racist/2019/08/20/6e31941a-beda-11e9-b873-63ace636af08_story.html?noredirect=on

Dear fellow white people: Here’s what to do when you’re called racist.

Rebecca Hains
Rebecca Hains is a professor of media and communication at Salem State University, where she also serves as a faculty fellow for diversity, power dynamics and social justice.
Trump supporters say they’re “tired of being called racists.” At a recent rally in Cincinnati, the Atlantic reported, white attendees defended themselves against the charge by citing the “evidence”: They had donated money to help black foster children; they deeply loved their black and mixed-race grandchildren.

Shortly after rejecting the “racist” label, however, these same rallygoers made racist remarks to the journalist who interviewed them. Regarding Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who came to the United States as a Somali refugee, one woman offered: “I don’t want her stinkin’ Muslim crap in my country.”

Making racist remarks while claiming not to be racist seems paradoxical. President Trump himself is a case in point. “I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world,” he told reporters last month, and he often name-checks black celebrity friends to support his contention. At the same time, he continues to take racist jabs at individuals and groups.

Even white people who consider themselves good allies of people of color can be unaware of their racial biases. From public figures to pundits to public intellectuals to politicians, it’s a pervasive, bipartisan, international problem. The white Democratic governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, for example, distanced himself from a photo of a person in blackface on his 1984 medical school yearbook page by talking about how he practiced medicine. “I can tell you I treat everyone the same way,” he said. “Nobody has ever thought or accused me of being racist, and if and when I practice again, I will continue that same direction.” White actor Liam Neeson confessed that decades ago, after a friend reported that she had been raped by a black man, he felt a “primal urge” to retaliate by harming black men in general. Responding to the backlash, he said: “I’m not racist. . . . If she had said an Irish or a Scot or a Brit or a Lithuanian, I know I would have had the same effect.” 

So, if you are a white person and someone calls you racist, and the charge perplexes you, what should you do? As a white college professor who teaches courses on media and race at a diverse public university, here’s my advice.

Step 1: Recognize that what matters most is what happened just now.
You can be called out for racist remarks even if you have black friends and relatives you cherish, donated to anti-racist causes and marched for civil rights. People have a tendency to respond to an accusation of racism by sharing this kind of personal history. It’s such a widespread phenomenon that the New Republic once looked into the history of the “token minority best friend defense.” “The Colbert Report” satirized it time and again (“I need a new black friend,” Stephen Colbert’s character says in an extended riff). As Psychology Today reported on a study of this phenomenon, “The threat of appearing racist leads people to overestimate how much their past non-racist actions — like making friends with somebody of another race — are indicative of their non-racist attitudes.”
So stay in the moment. What matters is:
1. What you said
2. How it was received by those around you (as reflecting a racist bias) and
3. How you respond to those who identified racism in your words or actions.

Step 2: Remember the broader context.
Even if you know in your heart that you are not racist, remember: It is possible to have implicit (or unconscious) racial biases. While studies show that we are aware of our explicit, declaratory biases, some prejudices arise without thought, in snap judgments, making them harder for us to detect. That is why our implicit biases don’t necessarily “align with our declared beliefs or even reflect stances we would explicitly endorse,” as Ohio State’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity puts it. The United States was built on the enslavement of black people, and some forms of structural racism persist in our laws and culture. If you grew up in the United States, you were socialized within this system. One recent study even found higher levels of implicit biases among people in states and counties that had more slaves in 1860 — suggesting that lingering inequalities in society can transmit historical forms of oppression, like slavery, into contemporary biases without our knowledge.

As a result, we have all developed biases that feel “natural” and “normal” but are grounded in racism. Recognizing this pattern can help make sense of being called racist when you feel certain that you are a good person.
Fortunately, data shows that people can overcome their socialization and reduce their implicit biases through various means. For example, MTV’s Look Different campaign, with input from the Kirwan Institute, has created an online bias cleanse program, a response to the question, “What can I do about bias?” It offers daily tasks for a week. But overcoming bias is a longer-term process that requires sustained work. If you’ve just been called racist, what should you do in the moment?

Step 3: Stay calm and ask for clarification.
Take a deep breath and pause after being called racist. You will probably feel attacked and defensive. Check those emotions and avoid argument.
Instead, apologize and consider asking someone — either the person who called you racist, or a trusted friend who understands racism and can chat with you about the situation — for help understanding what went wrong.
You can use language like this: “I didn’t realize that remark was racist. I am so sorry. Would you be willing to help me understand where I went wrong? I really want to learn and would be grateful.”
Important note: If possible, ask a white person to explain this to you. It isn’t the job of people of color to educate white people, and you are not owed a direct explanation, as much as you might like one. Don’t be entitled. Respect those boundaries. They’re healthy. Instead, explain what happened to a third party — one you trust will be insightful and honest. Taking ownership of the problem, ask for that person’s help in identifying and unpacking what you did wrong.

Step 4: Really listen to the answer(s) you receive.
Swallow your pride. It’s hard. Don’t interrupt or justify yourself; you’re not on trial. Your goal in this exchange is to listen and learn.
Being an open-minded, active listener is a useful interpersonal communication skill in many situations, but it often doesn’t come to us naturally. We can cultivate it. In Inc. magazine, Cathy Salit put it this way: “Do you have a friend or colleague you disagree with about something? Have a conversation in which (for once) you don’t try to convince them that they’re wrong, but instead find out everything you can about how they see the topic or issue.”

Also, don’t feel as if you have to instantly agree with the explanation you’re offered. For example, it may include a reference to white privilege, but you may not feel privileged because of various struggles you have faced in your life. This is a common area of misunderstanding and conflict.

Step 5: Express gratitude — then get to work. 
Be sure to thank the person who offers you an explanation. The fact that you were (1) called out and (2) offered an explanation may feel uncomfortable, but it is a valuable gift, and your discomfort is productive. Consider it as motivation: a growing pain that can spur you to think deeply about this new information, work to identify and overcome your harmful implicit biases, and help raise your fellow white people’s consciousness.

Tom Rademacher, an author and teacher, faced his own accusation this way: He explained that backlash from a community of black women on Twitter helped him realize that an imagined graduation speech he had published — in which he “playfully” taunted marginalized communities by saying that white people had mistreated them to “toughen them up” — was racist and harmful. “It was tough to read, all of it, but the pit in my stomach wasn’t there because anyone involved, most especially the women listed above, were being mean,” he wrote. “They are entirely right.”

Being a white anti-racist ally is not easy, but it’s important. Anyone can rise to the challenge — and pay it forward.
Twitter: @RCHains
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Thunderstruck – Flynn Attorney Sidney Powell Drops Atomic Sledgehammer of Truth on DC Court


Oh boy… how federal Judge Emmet Sullivan will handle this latest motion from Mike Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell is an unknown; however, the content is delicious.

In an explosive response filing today, which includes the phrase”sunlight is the best disinfectant”, attorney Sidney Powell has outlined the soup-to-nuts construct of the malicious government action taken during their targeting her client Michael Flynn. 

 
In the 19-pages, Ms. Powell walks through the history of the DOJ, FBI and intelligence apparatus weaponization against Mr. Flynn and lays out the background behind everything known to have happened in 2016, 2017 through today.

From the corrupt DOJ lawyers who were working with Fusion-GPS and Chris Steele, including Mr. Weissmann, Mr. Van Grack and Ms. Zainab Ahmad; to the 2015/2016 FISA database search abuses; to the CIA and FBI operation against Flynn including Nellie Ohr; to the schemes behind the use of DOJ official Bruce Ohr; to the corrupt construct of the special counsels office  selections; to the specifics within the malicious conspiracy outlined by hiding FBI interview notes of Mike Flynn,… all of it…. Is a stunning filing that many CTH readers are well prepared to understand. 



The September 10th hearing is going to be “spicy”…


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The Amazon Scam

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/amazon-fires-g-7-summit-misinformed-action/

The Amazon Scam




French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a news conference at the G-7 summit in Biarritz, France, Aug. 25, 2019. (Ian Langsdon/Pool via Reuters)
The G-7 Summit, insofar as it dealt with the fires, relied on a hysteria-induced misunderstanding of what’s happening in the Amazon.
Emmanuel Macron may not technically be a celebrity, but he tweets like one.

Prior to the G-7 summit, the French president declared on Twitter, “The Amazon rain forest — the lungs which produce 20% of our planet’s oxygen — is on fire.” He added that “our house is burning,” and called the fires an “international crisis.”

Macron’s tweet was deeply ill-informed, but indistinguishable from the misleading rants of sundry actors and singers.

At least Diddy and Leonardo DiCaprio don’t host multilateral meetings of Western heads of state. Macron does. He made the fires a major item of discussion at the G-7 summit, with the ready assent of other European governments.

The problem with the G-7 summit wasn’t that Donald Trump didn’t get with the program; it was that the program itself, insofar as it dealt with the fires, relied on a hysteria-induced misunderstanding of what’s happening in the Amazon.

The Amazon fires are catnip for proponents of radical action on the climate. They pine for a mediagenic, easy-to-understand planetary emergency and are happy to manufacture one as necessary.

It wasn’t just celebrities who hyped the fires. An NBC News headline declared, “Amazon wildfires could be ‘game over’ for climate change fight.”

According to CNN, “An inferno in the Amazon, two-thirds of which is in Brazil, threatens the rainforest ecosystem and also affects the entire globe.”

The meteorologist Eric Holthaus related the opinion of a specialist in prehistoric Amazon fires that “the current fires are without precedent in the past 20,000 years.”

This is the sense of imminent crisis that so moved Macron and his brethren. Some press reports, beneath the alarming headlines, related a more sober version of events, and a few isolated voices, most notably the environmentalist Michael Shellenberger at Forbes, resisted the dominant narrative.

The fires aren’t an epochal event. According to the New York Times, the Brazilian agency tracking fires by satellite reports that, at this point in the year, it’s the highest number of fires since 2010, which isn’t thousands of years ago — indeed, not even a decade ago.

The fires aren’t the spontaneous result of global warming. The program director of the group Amazon Watch told CNN, “The vast majority of these fires are human-lit,” noting that it isn’t easy for the rainforest to catch fire, even in the dry season.

Nor is it true that deforestation in the Amazon is spiraling out of control. Deforestation markedly diminished in the 2000s. It has picked up again under Brazil’s new populist president Jair Bolsonaro, a trend worth monitoring but hardly the onset of planetary catastrophe.

Is the Amazon the lungs of the world? No. This is drivel based on an erroneous understanding of how the atmosphere gets its oxygen.

At the end of the day, the offer that the G-7 made to Brazil of $20 million to help fight the Amazon fires was reasonable enough. The blustery Bolsonaro would be foolish not to accept it. The Amazon is a natural wonder worth preserving on its own terms, and it could at some point get caught in a cycle of drought and fire.

Still, Macron and Co. need to be aware of how their highhandedness comes across in Brazil. Advanced countries that deforested long ago should be humble when insisting that a poorer country not do the same. Proposals to buttress the Amazon have to run with the grain of Brazil’s interests, not against it.

This will require sobriety, care and a long view — in other words, exactly the opposite of what we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks. The most fervent devotees of climate change don’t really want science, no matter how often they invoke the word; they want drama and memorable images, believing they will catalyze action more than a properly modulated account of the best research.

If they have to blow their credibility, one faux emergency at a time, so be it.
© 2019 by King Features Syndicate






Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He can be reached via email: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com.  @richlowry

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CBP Agent’s Say New Border...

https://www.oann.com/cbp-agents-say-new-border-wall-in-smugglers-gulch-makes-a-difference/

CBP Agents Say New Border Wall In ‘Smuggler’s Gulch’ Makes A Difference

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 10:49 AM PT — Friday, August 30, 2019
According to California Border Patrol agents, new infrastructure in an area known as “smuggler’s gulch” is making a difference. On Thursday, the agent in charge — Justin De La Torre — stated a steep, open canyon between Tijuana and San Diego has been used for decades by immigrants attempting to smuggle drugs into the U.S. from Mexico.

The agent said when he first started working in “smuggler’s gulch” there needed to be at least five agents on patrol. He also noted that effective infrastructure there was lacking. However, De La Torre now says the wall’s formidable features have successfully bolstered Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) security efforts.

“It has an anti-climb feature, it’s made of steel, it also has a concrete base that prevents digging from underneath, and now we’re able to control this area with the new infrastructure,” he stated.

De La Torre added, the agents who patrolled “smugglers gulch” in the past only had a fence made out of landing mat to aid security efforts. He said the fence helped, but it was easy to climb.

Workers break ground on new border wall construction about 20 miles west of Santa Teresa, New Mexico, Aug. 23, 2019. The wall visible on the left was built in 2018 with money allocated by Congress, while the new construction is funded by money reallocated from Department of Defense funding. (AP Photo/Cedar Attanasio)


President Trump moved to replace the fencing along the San Diego border earlier this year as his administration sped up moves to build taller, stronger border reinforcement. During the State of the Union address, the president stated CBP agents are the ones who see how the wall is helping mitigate the crisis at the border first-hand.

“This is a smart, strategic, see-through steel barrier — not just a simple concrete wall,” said the president. “It will be deployed in the areas identified by border agents as having the greatest need, and as these agents will tell you, where walls go up, illegal crossings go way down.”

Border officials stated they are continuing their efforts to construct several miles of wall along the southwest border. The CBP confirmed several wall construction projects are underway in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

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The Supreme Court must save


https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-supreme-court-must-save-religious-foster-care-agencies-from-lgbt-activist-assault

The Supreme Court must save religious foster care agencies from LGBT activist assault

Liberals have ratcheted up their war on faith-based foster care and adoption services. Luckily, conservatives aren’t taking the assault on religious liberty lying down. 
This week, at least 10 states and 44 members of Congress filed briefs urging the Supreme Court to hear Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, a case two foster mothers brought against the City of Philadelphia. The suit challenges the
city’s discriminatory policies keeping faith-based foster agencies such as Catholic Social Services from operating according to their beliefs. Texas, Ohio, and Oklahoma, among other states, joined in an amicus brief agreeing that faith-based foster agencies play a vital role in addressing the national foster crisis and that their right to operate within their religious convictions should not be infringed.
Here’s how this all started. 
Last year, the city of Philadelphia stopped placing children with Catholic Social Services solely because the city disagreed with the agency’s religious beliefs on marriage and their policy of only placing children with heterosexual couples. They said Catholic Social Services’ faith-based stance violated their non-discrimination policy. Worse still, Philadelphia officials did this even though not a single same-sex couple had ever come to that agency seeking to foster children. 
Without new referrals, the number of children in CSS-affiliated certified homes has dwindled, leaving foster families’ homes empty and forcing the organization to reduce their staff. The only way CSS can care for foster children is through a contract and license with the city. They may eventually need to close the 100-year-old foster care ministry.

In July, Sharonell Fulton and Toni Simms-Busch, Philadelphia foster mothers, asked the Supreme Court to hear their case and ensure Catholic Social Services can continue to partner with parents and foster kids. Fulton has fostered more than 40 children over 25 years; Simms-Busch is a former social worker who fostered two young brothers through Catholic Social Services and has now adopted them. 

In the brief, 10 states argued that “[W]orking with a diverse coalition of child-placing agencies provides better services to children in foster care and the potential parents eager to care for them,” and asked the Supreme Court to take the case to protect their ability to work with diverse agencies, including faith-based agencies. 

Meanwhile, 44 members of Congress urged the Court to take the case because “Religiously motivated providers and parents have played a critical role in filling this need for centuries from coast to coast, and to drive them out ignores the critical need and the grave harm to children that would be caused by their loss.”

“The foster care system relies on agencies that reflect the diversity of our communities,” said Lori Windham, senior counsel at Becket, the organization representing the mothers. “That’s why it is so important to have faith-based agencies working alongside agencies that cater to ethnic and racial minorities, children with disabilities, and LGBT families.”

The court is expected to decide whether to take the case sometime this fall. And there are several other similar adoption cases pending at various levels of the judiciary. These growing attacks on faith-based adoption and foster agencies offer increasing evidence that attacks on religious liberty can lead to tangible harm in society. 
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.


Sent from my iPad

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Facebook Unveils New Pre-Crime Division

https://babylonbee.com/news/facebook-unveils-new-pre-crime-division

Facebook Unveils New Pre-Crime Division

August 29th, 2018
MENLO PARK, CA—In an effort to combat hate on its platform, Facebook has unveiled its new Pre-Crime Division, a department of the social media company that will identify and neutralize people likely to commit hate memes, violate the company’s terms of service, or engage in any other activity the company disapproves of.

Using advanced algorithms in conjunction with several psychics known as “Precogs,” Facebook will now be able to identify who will commit a terms of service violation before it happens and send them to Facebook’s state-of-the-art detention facility.

“You’ve already been giving us tons of data on yourselves, completely voluntarily,” Zuckerberg said at Pre-Crime’s unveiling. “I’m not sure why you dumb fools do that, but hey. Anyway, we’re using that data to figure out who the most dangerous threats are, and then we’re sending Facebook Enforcement Officers to their houses and taking them out before they can post that unapproved meme or status update.”

In a live demonstration, video feed showed a conservative Facebook user thinking about posting a meme featuring Donald Trump as Warhammer 40K’s Emperor of Mankind. Several futuristic helicopters bearing the Facebook logo hovered above his house as he uploaded the image, with assault troopers busting through his roof and neutralizing him just as he was about to hit the “Share” button.

“This is the future!” Zuckerberg added ominously as the man was dragged to a Facebook correction center.
Several of those identified as pre-criminals in the first wave of attempted arrests went on the run, going so far as to replace their eyeballs with new implants to get away from Facebook’s omnipresent facial recognition technology, but all of them were caught within a few hours.

“Welcome to a world with no more crime,” Zuckerberg said, smiling.
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Not one Mother F*cker

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Indiana Antifa Confronted and Scatter

WATCH: ANTIFA Disperse Like Cowards 
After Ticked Off Father Confronts Them for Blocking Traffic

https://bigleaguepolitics.com/watch-antifa-disperse-like-cowards-
Brad Clapper stood up to ANTIFA in the streets of 
Bloomington, IN.


When ANTIFA terrorists were blocking the roads of Bloomington, IN this weekend, 41-year-old father Brad Clapper said enough is enough and confronted the gang of masked cowards.
“Take the mask off,” Clapper said to one domestic terrorist as he attempted to remove their mask.
“Get off the f**king street! Get on the f**king sidewalk!” he shouted toward the anti-American group of communist agitators who immediately complied while yelling insults as they cowered.
The confrontation can be seen here:



But Clapper was just defending his family against a marauding gang of thugs who have been known to commit acts of terrorist violence against soft targets like journalist Andy Ngo of Quillette.

 He had to make his stand to protect his beloved children. “I got little kids, and you’re scaring them to death,” Clapper said to the terror group. “Maybe I’m naïve, I just never felt like it was going to lead to anybody getting killed or sent to the hospital,” Clapper told reporters.

  ANTIFA has had a sustained presence in Bloomington to disrupt the farmers market because of Schooner Creek Farm’s participation there. They hope to terrorize the farmers from being able to make a living because of their opposition to their political views.

  Perhaps they will be a little more reticent in the future, now that an ordinary individual with a spine has taken a decisive stand against their terror tactics.
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President Trump cancels trip to Poland as Hurricane Dorian heads toward Fla.

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 6:31 AM PT — Friday, August 30, 2019
President Trump has canceled his weekend trip to Poland. He said he wants to ensure federal resources are focused on Hurricane Dorian, which is expected to hit Florida in the coming days. While speaking to reporters at the White House Thursday, the president announced Vice President Mike Pence would go in his place.
The president was scheduled to spend the weekend in Poland to meet with President Andrzej Duda as well as attend ceremonies marking 80 years since the start of WWII. President Trump said he spoke to President Duda to explain the gravity of the situation, and discussed plans to visit his country another time.
“It’s something very important for me to be here — this storm looks like it could be a very, very big one indeed and Mike (Pence) will be going,” explained the president. “Our highest priority is the safety and security of the people in the path of the hurricane.”

Hurricane Dorian slowed a bit overnight, while the government in the northwestern Bahamas issued a hurricane watch. Weather forecasts Friday project the storm will pass over Great Abaco and Grand Bahama islands this weekend before heading toward southern Florida Monday or Tuesday.
Dorian is currently a Category Two hurricane and is likely to upgrade to a Category Three hurricane later Friday with winds of around 111 miles-per-hour. Weather experts expect it to strengthen into a Category Four storm as it barrels toward Florida.
 https://www.oann.com/president-trump-cancels-trip-to-poland-as-hurricane-dorian-heads-toward-fla/
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James Comey wants an apology? This is myth becoming madness


Rather than rave about who stole his strawberries, as Queeg did in "The Caine Mutiny," Comey claims someone stole a reputation that he tossed away two years ago.

Two years ago, former FBI Director James Comey came out with a book that celebrated himself as a paragon of "ethical leadership," a subject that he later taught at the College of William and Mary. Comey declared, "Ethical leaders lead by seeing above the short term, above the urgent or the partisan, and with a higher loyalty to lasting values, most importantly the truth." If that is the case, the new Justice Department inspector general report released on Thursday establishes that Comey is the very antithesis of the ethical leader he described. Comey was found to have violated both federal law and regulations for his own gain, and he made critical decisions that put personal over institutional interests.

Nevertheless, Comey released a statement portraying the scathing report as a type of victory and encouraged his critics to send their apologies to him. It was a "Captain Queeg" moment when myth borders on madness. Rather than rave about who stole his strawberries, as Queeg did in "The Caine Mutiny," Comey claims someone stole a reputation that he tossed away two years ago. The report states that Comey not only knowingly violated rules governing all FBI employees, but his decisions "set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees."

It details how Comey removed FBI memoranda and then used his friend, Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman, to leak the contents of one memo to the New York Times. Several of the memos were later found to contain privileged, sensitive, or classified information. The FBI seized the memos and had to "scrub" the computer of Richman to remove the unauthorized material provided by Comey. The report also says Comey later acknowledged that some of the classifications were "reasonable."

Of course, facts are largely immaterial in matters of mythology. When Comey removed FBI material and arranged for a leak to the media, the coverage stayed positive despite some of us noting that the "memos" removed by Comey were FBI material and potentially classified. At a minimum, he violated clear rules against leaking such information to the media, a curious decision for the person tasked previously with finding leakers. I noted that such leaks were entirely unnecessary, given other options for getting this information to investigators and to Congress.

Those points were met with furious objections from analysts who insisted that the memos were personal writings akin to diary entries. Legal expert and former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa said they constituted "personal recollections," and Brookings Institution fellow and CNN legal analyst Susan Hennessey wrote that it is "hard to even understand the argument" for how his "memory about his conversation with the president qualifies as a record, even if he jotted it down while in his office." When I wrote that the memos were covered by the Federal Records Act and by Justice Department rules barring their removal or disclosures, the arguments were dismissed by the experts on various cable networks.
When former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders described the conduct of Comey as "improper and likely could have been illegal," she was given two "pinocchios" as having falsely accused him. Comey then turned to social media, much like President Trump, to further pump up his record. He started with tweets under pseudonyms but later put his own name on tweets showing him walking through forests or standing alone while quoting sources like the Bible, "But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream."

Comey was building a personal brand, just like Trump, that culminated in his publishing his sensational book "A Higher Loyalty." Once again, the media was as unrelenting as it was uncritical. Few outlets mentioned the concerns over a former FBI director rushing out a book soon after leaving office in a sharp departure from his predecessors. Comey became an instant millionaire with a book tour where he was essentially met with palm fronds and cries of "hosanna." He knew that any final reckoning on his conduct would not come before months, if not years, of investigation.

The inspector general has confirmed what was clear and obvious. The memos were FBI material, and Comey did violate provisions of the Federal Records Act and FBI rules clearly barring their removal and disclosure. Moreover, the inspector general agreed that it was not necessary to guarantee an investigation into Trump. Investigations were ongoing and the report cites other "options" that Comey refused to use. The report concludes, "What was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome."

The reason Comey violated these rules was as obvious then as it is now. Leaking the memos was designed to improve his stature in the media and it worked. Comey transformed himself into a badly needed hero to use against the villain Trump. He knew the memos would change the focus of media coverage to his new role as a federal government whistleblower.

Forgotten were prior calls for Comey to be fired by Democrats and Republicans alike for his poor judgment during the investigation of Hillary Clinton and her use of unsecured servers for communications. There was little need to discuss how the review by former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein found "serious mistakes" by Comey. It was no longer breaking news that Rosenstein also cited a long list of former attorneys general, federal judges, and leading prosecutors from both parties who believed Comey violated his obligation to "preserve, protect and defend" the traditions of the Justice Department and the FBI.

Rosenstein also noted that Comey "refused to admit his errors," including his obvious violation of "long standing Justice Department policies and traditions." That was even before Comey decided to remove FBI material and leak information to the press, yet he is still refusing to admit his errors. Shortly after the inspector general report was released, Comey returned to spinning his conduct as somehow vindicated by the findings. He tweeted, "I don't need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a 'sorry we lied about you' would be nice."

Comey is referring to the Justice Department decision not to charge him with releasing classified information and no finding by the inspector general of an intentional release of classified, as opposed to sensitive, information. However, many of us who have been critics of Comey have long said that his prosecution was unlikely. Comey is relying on the fact that his memos were not found to have contained classified or sensitive information until after he gave the information to the New York Times.

The inspector general report says that, following the publication of the New York Times article, a classification review was conducted. The reason is that Comey never asked for such a review, any more than he asked for permission as a fired FBI employee to remove the material or leak it to the media. The report states that senior officials who worked for Comey used the adjectives "surprised," "stunned," "shocked," and "disappointment" to describe their reactions to learning that their boss acted on his own to provide the contents of his fourth memo through Richman to a journalist.

Comey knows that, ultimately for him, none of this matters. He has magnanimously accepted the apologies that no one has offered and claimed vindication that appears nowhere in the inspector general report. That is simply the benefit of being the author of your own mythology.


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