U.S.—Media outlets are issuing warnings that excessive displays of forgiveness and mercy could wreak havoc on hundreds of years of outrage progress. The warning comes in response to a high-profile case this week in which former police officer Amber Guyger, who is white, was found guilty of the murder of Botham Jean, a black man, in his Dallas home. Guyger was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Brandt Jean, Botham’s younger brother, made a victim impact statement, saying he forgave her, setting back race progress hundreds of years. Brandt then asked the judge if he could give Guyger a hug. The judge foolishly allowed it, setting back race relations hundreds more years.
"What people have to understand is, if we keep toying around with all this grace and mercy stuff, this whole racial divide could come toppling down," explained Brad Hunter of CBS News. "Are people really ready to say goodbye to that? I must say that, as a journalist, I, for one, am not."
"What Brandt Jean did in that courtroom sets black people back hundreds of years. If I had to put a number on it, I'd say it sets us back about 2000 years," said Janelle Taylor of ABC. "What year does he think this is? 33 AD?"
"This deals a heavy blow to the progress we have made toward peak outrage," said Jenson Hughs of CNN. " We have a lot of work to do in the wake of this mess."
Many reporters say that, while it is true that the Bible calls for forgiveness, there are no scriptures that say black people should ever forgive white people. "I don't know what Bible they are reading," said Hannah Corley of the Washington Post. "I've searched Bible.com for the term 'forgive white people' numerous times and nothing comes up. Sounds like bad Bible-ology to me."
"We will rebuild," said Roy Mathis, CEO of the LA Times. "Progress may have taken a hit today, but we've recovered from worse. We will survive."
(Pixabay)Free speech protects advocacy groups, not just individuals ranting on street corners
Throughout the 2000s, then–Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren wanted desperately to influence members of Congress. She wanted the government to enact stricter regulations on banks and home loans, and she vigorously advocated that policy. She testified before Congress, worked with a number of groups to promote her plans, and shared her perspectives with as many policymakers as possible. As she recounted in a presidential town hall this year: “I was waving my arms, ringing the bell, doing everything I could. I said families are getting cheated all over this country. . . . I went everywhere I could. I talked about it to anyone who would listen — a crisis is coming.”
“Anyone who would listen” included members of Congress. NBC News reported that Warren “bent the ear of [then-senator] Hillary Clinton,” and by the Democratic primary campaign in 2007 Warren was “lobbying candidates behind the scenes to create what would become the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.”
In 2019, Senator Elizabeth Warren is proposing legislation that would restrict, tax, regulate, and otherwise impede the activities of Americans who want to advocate public policies, just as she herself did ten years ago. She calls it a plan to end corruption. It won’t work; in fact it will hurt the very people it is supposed to help, and will establish deeply rooted government bureaucrats who can shut down — or even jail — Americans who speak out or support groups that speak out. Whether or not it becomes law, the proposal offers a window into the way all too many progressives (and even some conservatives) approach the regulation of politics and political speech.
Senator Warren frames her measure as an attack on the influence of the wealthy, but it is really an attack on the influence of anyone outside government. The proposed law would regulate as lobbying virtually any activity intended to influence any government action. It would tax any organization, no matter how large, that spends more than $500,000 per year on “lobbying.” Anything more than that is “excessive,” she writes.
Does that look good on paper? It won’t in practice. For comparison’s sake, note that the federal government spent over $4 trillion in 2018 alone. Federal regulations impose additional costs on Americans each year amounting to trillions of dollars. Major government projects are enormously expensive: The Trump administration recently diverted $3.6 billion in military funds for the construction of a border wall, and that only scratches the surface of the wall’s total projected cost.
Most Americans don’t hold a prestigious post at Harvard University and never receive an invitation to testify before Congress. They must make their voices heard by joining membership organizations, pooling their resources, and speaking as a group. Imposing a special tax on groups that spend less than 0.000012 percent of what the leviathan they’re up against spends insulates the powerful from critique and opposition, accomplishing exactly the opposite of the proposal’s anti-corruption goals.
Progressives imagine that such a law would sap the political strength of groups such as the National Rifle Association and the Chamber of Commerce. Then they would have a better chance of passing aggressive policies on gun control and climate change. But the same law would kneecap the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. Both organizations spend over a million dollars per year on lobbying. The proposed law’s expanded definition of lobbying would also harm groups with little involvement in partisan politics, such as the American Red Cross and United Way of America.
Senator Warren writes that “the goal of these measures is straightforward: To take power away from the wealthy and the well-connected in Washington and put it back where it belongs — in the hands of the people.” But what about the people who support groups such as the NRA or the ACLU — organizations with over a million members each — or any one of the thousands of groups that keep a watchful eye on the government while their members are busy living their lives?
Working together, those Americans have a real voice. Will the federal bureaucracy listen to them better when their voice is reduced to a whisper? Or will it turn to fellow bureaucrats and friendly “experts” — maybe university professors — to lead the way?
Senator Warren’s proposal tells the government to fill the gaps her plan would leave in civil society. It creates a “National Public Advocate” to “help the public engage” with the regulatory- rulemaking process. In the process for public comment on proposed regulations, it also would withhold any non-peer-reviewed research deemed to have “conflicts of interest.” What does that even mean? Groups that file comments with regulatory agencies have no decision-making power over those agencies, which is the standard that would traditionally establish a conflict-of-interest concern. Senator Warren’s proposal appears aimed at silencing those who stand to gain or lose from a proposed regulation. Shouldn’t the government hear from people who will be affected by its actions?
This gets to the fundamental flaw in Warren’s approach: It misdiagnoses the problems in our democracy. Advocacy groups are not the enemy of the people. They are the voices of the people, amplified so that government cannot easily ignore them. In aiming to restrict those voices, Senator Warren’s bill would weaken our democracy to strengthen the bureaucracy. What she calls power for the people is actually power for politicians.
True small-“d” democratic reforms would make it easier to participate in the political process. We should reduce and simplify the hundreds of pages of statutes and regulations that make up our federal campaign-finance laws. Americans should not need to consult an attorney to promote a policy idea or a campaign. This approach would put real power in the hands of the people. Maybe that’s why politicians shy away from it.
Instead, they propose plans that would wreak havoc on constitutional rights in order to limit the ability to oppose government action. But just as the government cannot tax the “excessive” exercise of religion, or the “excessive” publishing of newspaper editorials, it has no business imposing a special tax on groups that exercise their petition rights “excessively.” The Supreme Court has consistently struck down limits on how much private individuals and organizations can spend to promote or oppose a candidate for office. Similarly, bans on some types of lobbying and a tax on “excessive lobbying” are likely to face constitutional challenges. Senator Warren’s proposal also would ban lobbyists from making campaign contributions, serving as bundlers, or hosting fundraisers. Yet the First Amendment protects both the right to petition and the right to give to candidates. The government cannot demand that you sacrifice one First Amendment right to exercise another.
Far from being a bold path forward, Warren’s proposed law doubles down on the same flawed approach that has driven efforts to regulate campaign finance for nearly 50 years: regulate more activity and punish violations more harshly. This system has never worked. In fact, regulation is what has turned lobbying into a professional endeavor that average Americans by and large can’t participate in. Wealthy interests can always hire the cleverest attorneys and operatives to work through the rules to exercise influence. Grass-roots efforts are much more easily stifled by complex and punishing laws.
The consistent theme throughout plans such as Warren’s is that the federal government should be more muscular and more active in limiting political participation. That’s bad news for people who want a say in their government. The First Amendment is not just a permission slip to rant on a street corner. It protects the right to engage in effective public advocacy together with like-minded people.
Under Senator Warren’s proposed law, we would be left with a toothless First Amendment ill equipped to hold political leaders accountable. That is not a plan to end corruption — it’s a plan to let it run rampant.
Mr. Smith is a professor of law at Capital University, the chairman of the Institute for Free Speech, and a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. Mr. Wachob is the communications director of the Institute for Free Speech.
This article appears as “Silencing the Dissent ” in the October 14, 2019, print edition of National Review.
Amari Allen’s story was a hoax. Over the past week or two, almost every reading American became familiar with Allen, the dread-locked schoolgirl who claimed that “three white boys” snatched her from a slide on the campus of the prestigious Immanuel Christian School in Smithfield, held her down, and cut off some of her hair while mockingly calling it “nappy.”
Because of the alleged incident’s shocking nature, and te fact that Second Lady Karen Pence was an art teacher there, Immanuel Christian became (yet another) ground zero for a national discussion about race and “privilege.” And then, that discussion collapsed: Allen confessed to literally making the whole thing up.
Allen’s hoax was not some unique, one-off incident. During this past year alone, a number of internationally prominent hate crime and hate incident hoaxes have occurred in the USA. In July, popular Georgia State Senator Erica Thomas claimed that she had been shamefully attacked, in a Publix grocery store, by a white male who screamed at her and told her to “go back home.” In fact, the “white man” turned out to Cuban-American Democratic Party activist Eric Sparkes, who literally showed up at Thomas’ melodramatic press conference to rebut her story.
More recently, on September 12, 2019, someone wrote racial insults, swastikas, and the word “MAGA” throughout two restaurants owned by former NFL player Edawn Coughman. The perp turned out to be Coughman himself, who was spotted leaving the scene by witnesses. Most famously, on January 29, 2019, actor Jussie Smollett – famously mocked as the mad Frenchman ‘Juicy Smolliet’ by comedy legend Dave Chappelle – claimed that he had been attacked at 2am, in the middle of a Chicago blizzard, by two burly white men wearing Trump campaign MAGA hats. Smollett’s bizarre story was exposed as an almost certain lie when two Nigerian brothers, buddies of his from the local gym, confessed to having been paid by Smollett to stage his beating.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – MARCH 26: Actor Jussie Smollett after his court appearance at Leighton Courthouse on March 26, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois. This morning in court it was announced that all charges were dropped against the actor. (Photo by Nuccio DiNuzzo/Getty Images)
This year was not unusual. It was, in fact, a bit less active than average on the hate hoax front. Putting together my 2019 book Hate Crime Hoax, I was able to fairly easily compile 409 confirmed hate hoaxes, concentrated in the five years before publication. I defined a “hate hoax” as (1) an undisputed report (police report and/or reputable national or regional media story), of (2) a serious incident (generally felony or misdemeanor offense), that was (3) attributed to dislike of or bias against an out-group, where (4) the narrative of “hate” completely collapsed (with this collapse also being reported). My master list is now up to 611 case studies of hate hoaxes, containing more than 800 unique incidents. To put these numbers in context, less than 7,000 hate crimes are reported to the FBI by police departments in a typical year, and only 8-10% receive the media coverage that would make them potential candidates for my data sets.
Interestingly, hoaxes seem to be most common among the most high-profile, widely reported stories of “hate.” Of the 20-odd hate incident cases, mass shootings aside, that became truly international stories over the past decade and change, literally about half of them – Smollett, Allen, Covington Catholic, Yasmin Seweid and the ripped hijab, Air Force Academy, the “burnt Black church” (Hopewell Baptist), the little Black girl in Grand Rapids who said boorish white men literally peed on her, the Rolling Stone cover story about anti-woman rape gangs at U-Virginia, the Nikki Jolly house fire and the dead purebred dogs, the “nooses on campus” (Wisconsin-Parkside), Duke Lacrosse – turned out to be total fakes. Many hate hoaxers have a taste for the dramatic, which often betrays them in the end.
Why do hate crime hoaxers do what they do? My research uncovered multiple motivations. Many hoaxers seem to have the same mundane, tawdry motives as criminals in general, principally money. For example, the business owner who famously burned down Chicago’s Velvet Ultra Lounge nightclub in 2012 did so entirely to collect a large insurance payout. However, at least as many hoaxers seem to believe they are engaged in a little justifiable exaggeration in the service of fighting real problems (“institutional racism”). At Kean College in 2015, a student leader literally organized a large anti-racist rally, left it to set up a fake twitter account in the campus library, used the account to tweet out death threats to rally participants and other Black students on campus, and then decried those tweets to the rally crowd as examples of racism at Kean. Hashtag #well_played.
Importantly, those hoaxers in the second category often find that they have a preexisting set of natural allies. It no secret that there exists a large and well-funded grievance industry in the United States. The Southern Poverty Law Center alone – an organization which attracted some recent attention after labeling Majid Nuwaz, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Center for Immigration Studies, and the Family Research Council “extremists” or hate-mongers – has a well-invested endowment of $470,000,000, more than the state university I teach at. The SPLC is joined in the pursuit of justice and money by traditional civil rights groups like Rainbow-PUSH and Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, young lions like the literally thousands of Black Lives Matter and Occupy chapters, and even large fringe groups like the Nation of Islam and the #Abolish_ICE movement. Heavily promoted by these players and others, flamboyant stories of hate crime almost invariably go hugely viral on social media before being picked up by the national press.
WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 29: Richard Cohen, President of the Southern Poverty Law Center, speaks during a press conference November 29, 2016 in Washington, DC. During the press conference the Southern Poverty Law Center, in conjunction with additional human rights groups and education leaders, called on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to “immediately and forcefully publicly denounce racism and bigotry.”
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
What can be done about the recent wave of hate hoaxes? Several things. Academics such as David Kopel have proposed that the normal sentence – a month or so – for the crime of filing a false police report should be amplified in cases of false allegations of hate crime, just as the normal sentence for other crimes is enhanced in the case of a hate crime. I endorse this proposal. At the personal level, citizens can and should – while certainly retaining sympathy for legitimate victims of crime – engage in a healthy skepticism of alleged hate crimes with certain characteristics: (1) an unlikely, cinematic-sounding story, (2) an improbable setting (how many radical Trump supporters are there in downtown Chicago?), (3) the involvement of known left- or right-wing activists and (4) an immediate financial appeal via GoFundMe made before or instead of a report to the police.
One more thing we all can and should do is encourage the media to do their damn job. There is arguably no reason for serious national news outlets to be running feature stories about misdemeanor-level scuffles involving minors, such as the Covington Catholic incident, in the first place. There is certainly no reason for such stories ever to run before the accuracy of the claims underlying them has been reasonably verified – via physical evidence, camera footage, police reports, etc. The reading and viewing public should make this point, vigorously and as often as necessary, to the outlets we depend on for reliable information.
Doing so would help out not only the overall American conversation, but also one unexpectedly sympathetic group – very young hoaxers themselves. As a conservative writer recently told me, during a private conversation about the Amari Allen case: “I lied a lot as a kid too, but it never made the national news.” Frenzied media coverage of dubious hate attacks often makes troubled young people like Allen, or Yasmin Seweid, or the teenage cadet at the Air Force Preparatory School, into national figures – only to consign them to infamy when their stories collapse. By that point, alternative media sources have little choice but to chip in and debunk what have become famous and polarizing stories. However, responsible media coverage from the very beginning would help avoid such duels, and the predictable collapses that cause them.
Let’s hope we get that coverage. In the meantime, those judging the veracity of hate crime allegations should take a lesson from Ronald Reagan – trust, but verify.
In their effort to justify the so-called “whistleblower” not following SOP on his so-called “complaint,” the New York Times inadvertently revealed that this anonymous gossip colluded with House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff.
Adam fancies himself something of a super spy. He’ll look under every rock, secretly take any meeting, and lie like a two-bit hustler all in his ongoing effort to undo the 2016 election.
Does this latest scandal surprise you?
Because it certainly doesn’t surprise me.
Over the last two and a half years, Schiff has told so many lies and made so many unforced errors, it was only a matter of time before his tangled web would ensnare him.
This is the guy who tried to gather intel – including nude photos of Donald Trump – from what he believed were two Ukrainians. Only Super Spy Schiff was duped. They weren’t Ukrainians with dirt on President Trump. They were two Russian comedians with a track record of hoodwinking American politicians – including Maxine Waters and John McCain.
For two and a half years, Super Spy Schiff has been claiming to have explosive intel that would expose President Trump as a Russian asset. He’s just never gotten around to presenting this so-called intel.
And now the Super Spy who wasn’t is watching his latest coup attempt unravel faster than a cheap sweater in the spin cycle.
I bet he’s kicking himself for going on TV and spreading lies about this so-called “whistleblower.”
Flashback to when @RepAdamSchiff said on MSNBC that "we did not speak directly to the whistleblower."
He also admitted that it would be against the law for the whistleblower to communicate with Congress. pic.twitter.com/Gvv9QsyYh7
Then again, that would require a conscience — something Adam Schiff sorely lacks.
The irony here is Schiff’s grand scheme getting outed by one of the very news organization these Trump-deranged plotters have depended on to aid them in their ongoing coup.
So not only is Schiff an inept, irresponsible member of Congress, he’s also a really shitty spy.
Yet Super Spy Schiff actually thinks he’s a real-life Jack Bauer — the hero of his fevered espionage fantasy. So too do the hapless, angry, desperate members of the ResistanceLOL.
But the truth is, Adam Schiff isn’t the hero; he’s the villain.
Schiff isn’t Jack Bauer in this sordid story; he’s the guy Jack Bauer works for 24 hours straight to stop.
Fortunately for us, House Republicans are not taking the Mitt Romney route of playing the gentleman loser over this scandal.
Instead, they are pushing back hard.
It stands to reason that the media is tying itself into knots to shield their Congressional mole. But that shouldn’t come as a galloping shock. Schiff and his office have supplied them with so much juicy leaked information, the last thing these hacks want is for the honey pot to dry up.
Though, I’m just not certain a news media that is distrusted by the majority of Americans is in a position to pull Super Spy Schiff’s ass out of the fire.
The situation Schiff finds himself in is of his own making.
In his desperate haste to push impeachment over this sloppy hearsay complaint, Schiff not only pushed too hard and too far, he also put the cart before the horse. This plot was so badly stitched together, all it took for it to unravel was the President releasing the actual transcript.
But it’s too late for Nancy Pelosi to stem the bleeding.
Pelosi went all-in on impeachment based solely on Schiff’s say-so. And now, she and the rest of the Democrat House are dangling from the very hook Schiff baited to ensnare the President.
They can’t turn back now.
It isn’t the Democrats who control the House at this point. Impeachment does.
And thanks to Nancy and the Democrat majority buying into the lies of this seditious little bug-eyed puke, Republicans have more than enough ammunition to not only completely discredit this so-called “Impeachment inquiry,” but to also regain the House majority in 2020.
Meanwhile, the target of Super Spy Schiff’s specious plot walks away unscathed. And he didn’t even need Jack Bauer to clear him.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com.
Source: AP Photo/Evan Vucci
This column will explain the impeachment farce in two minutes. By the end, you will thank the media for demanding the release of Trump’s phone calls with the presidents of Ukraine and Australia.
What the phone transcripts demonstrate is that -- unlike the typical Republican -- Trump is not a let-bygones-be-bygones sort. He intends to find out who turned the FBI into a Hillary super PAC, using the powers of the nation’s “premiere law enforcement agency” (according to them) to take out a presidential candidate, and then a president.
The whole picture becomes clear when you have the timeline.
Instead of the FBI just admitting that it launched the Russia probe to help elect Hillary, the agency has given us a scrolling series of excuses for this partisan attack.
The FBI’s first claim was that it was merely investigating the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s email servers. As part of that effort, it was, naturally, obligated to spy on the Trump campaign.
Then we found out that the John le Carre theory of Hillary’s defeat was based exclusively on the word of a single cybersecurity firm. Yes, the FBI was SO frantic about the DNC’s servers ... that it didn’t bother examining them itself. I repeat: The FBI never touched the DNC's servers.
And who did? CrowdStrike. Who was CrowdStrike? A Ukrainian-backed cybersecurity firm.
That’s why Trump asked the Ukrainian president about CrowdStrike –- the company behind the first of the FBI’s many excuses for spying on Trump.
On Jan. 10, 2017 -- before Trump was even inaugurated -- FBI Director James Comey breathed new life into the Russian collusion story by leaking news about the infamous Russian “dossier.”
Hurray! The media were ecstatic. For the next 10 months, we got breathless reports about how this very important, totally credible, deeply concerning dossier might force Trump out of the White House! <
E.g.:
-- “I remember pretty distinctly that you supported President Trump’s criticism of this dossier ... Do you want to dial back that criticism now?” -- CNN’s Kate Bolduan to former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, April 19, 2017
-- “If the dossier is now about to be publicly defended and explained and backed up, I mean, that’s conceivably the whole ball game.” -- MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Aug. 23, 2017
After carrying on about the dossier for nearly all of 2017, on Oct. 24 of that year, we finally found out who had paid for it: the Hillary Clinton campaign. (And you wonder why they don’t want to give us the whistleblower’s name.)
This rather important datum was coughed up not by the media, but only in response to a court order. Good work, “watchdog media”! Nothing gets past you guys.
Suddenly the dossier wasn’t important at all. Where did Republicans get that idea?
At this point, the FBI had to scramble to come up with an all-new explanation for why the bureau had put more than 100 agents -- according to NBC News’ Ken Dilanian –- on an investigation of a presidential candidate. (Luckily, the bureau had lots of time, having already vanquished international terrorism.)
Within a matter of days, on Oct. 30, the media was bristling with the news that the real reason the FBI put G-Men on the Trump campaign was: George Papadopoulos.
(Don’t stop reading! The sun is about come out and all will be clear.)
Up until Oct. 24, the media had barely mentioned the young campaign aide. But starting on Oct. 30, Papadopoulos became the lynchpin of the whole Trump-Russia conspiracy.
It was a heavy lift. Papadopoulos had only met Trump once and, as The New York Times admitted, was “so green that he listed Model United Nations in his qualifications.”
A few months later, in December 2017, the Russian collusion fairy tale took a hit when texts from Peter Strzok and Lisa Page showed FBI operatives at the heart of the so-called “investigation” vowing to use federal law enforcement resources to “stop” Trump.
The FBI began frantically pumping up the Papadopoulos angle, telling the Times that it was their gob-smacking discovery in the summer of 2016 that Papadopoulos may have had “inside information” about Russia “hacking” the DNC’s email that was a “driving factor” in the bureau’s opening of the Russia-Trump investigation.
So THAT’S why the nation’s No. 1 law enforcement agency had 100 agents investigating the Trump campaign! It sure took them a long time to come up with a reason.
Pending results from Trump’s phone call with the Australian president, Papadopoulos remains the FBI’s current excuse for an “investigation” that wasted four years, millions of dollars and, in the end, turned up nada.
The story was, in the summer of 2016, Australian high commissioner to the United Kingdom Alexander Downer contacted the FBI claiming that Papadopoulos had admitted to him during a night of drinking that he knew the Russians had Hillary’s emails. Two months later, Wikileaks began posting the DNC's emails!
HOW ELSE CAN YOU EXPLAIN THAT, UNLESS TRUMP WAS COLLUDING WITH RUSSIA?
I can explain it.
When Papadopoulos was blabbing to the Australian about the Russians having Hillary’s emails, everyone was talking about the Russians having Hillary’s emails -- CNN, The Guardian, even ABC’s “The View.” (See Resistance Is Futile!: How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind.) Papadopoulos’ “source” probably read it in The New York Times.
Perhaps Downer is always completely oblivious to international news. Perhaps he spends too much time drinking with 28-year-olds.
Trump’s phone call with the president of Australia, released this week, suggests that we just might get to the bottom of the big Alexander Downer tipoff -- the FBI’s latest cover story.
Now you know why all of official Washington, D.C., is screaming: IMPEACH! They don’t want you to find out that America’s “premiere law enforcement agency” tried to throw a presidential election and destroy a presidency.
Johnson and Grassley sent a letter to the ICIG, Michael Atkinson, calling for more transparency about actions taken to investigate leaks of classified or sensitive information. They sent a letter in early May calling on the ICIG to investigate leaks from the Russia probe. Now, the senators have issued a follow-up letter about the Ukraine call.
“The IC complaint’s material and material relating to President Trump’s call with Ukraine were also leaked, and those leaks included classified information,” the senators wrote. “News reports used anonymous sources to report on information relating to the complaint and phone call that were classified at the time.”
According to Grassley and Johnson, the ICIG has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of an investigation into the leaks. They believe the IC should be just as transparent as the White House in releasing information regarding the whistleblower complaint.
There is no question that someone in, or close to, the intelligence community leaked classified information. Over the past two years there have been numerous leaks from government agencies, but without an investigation or accountability there seems to be no stopping the leaks.
The New York Times reported Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) learned about the whistleblower complaint before it was filed. That information was supposed to be classified.
In Johnson and Grassley’s letter addressed to Atkinson, the senators said they believe the leaks — regardless of whether they pertain to Russia or Ukraine — are a partisan interest game that inevitably impedes the president from executing his duties. Simultaneously these leaks undermine national security, the integrity of the federal administration, law enforcement, and counterintelligence investigations.
Johnson and Grassley request that Atkinson answer the following questions:
Is the ICIG investigating the classified leaks relating to the IC complaint and Ukraine call? If not, why not?
How many people within the ICIG office had access to the complaint and call transcript before they were made public?
The senators requested this information be handed to their respective committees by October 10.
“We immerse ourselves in the lifestyle of our host country. They corrupt it …
“We sip Val di Suga. They slurp Aperol Spritz …
“We contemplate Berthe Morisot at the Musée d’Orsay. They giggle while they pretend to prick their fingers for the camera on the tip of the Eiffel Tower …
“We are travelers. They are tourists.”
This contemptuous upper-crust attitude, never far from the surface among some travelers, has taken on a new prominence as of late, becoming once again socially acceptable. Though pure disdain for the middle class is no longer considered proper, it has been granted a new sheen of righteousness through its convenient union with the banner of environmentalism. With the winds of environmentalism in its sails and newfangled terms like “overtourism” and “sustainable travel” at its disposal, the exclusionary attitude towards tourists of lesser means has been rejuvenated.
Callous though the reaction may be, it has come in response to a remarkable phenomenon. International tourism, once a marker of class prestige, is now a reality for hundreds of millions of people globally. International tourist arrivals in Europe have skyrocketed from about 460 million in 2009 to over 700 million last year. In Asia the story is much the same, with an increase over the same period of 88 percent. The annual number of passengers boarded by the global airline industry has more than doubled since 2005 to over 4 billion people per year.
To those of us who value progress for humanity, these figures bring satisfaction. More people are pursuing new experiences, broadening their horizons, reveling in nature’s splendor, and familiarizing themselves with the world’s cultures than ever before. But to environmentalists, these figures bring displeasure. Emissions from aviation have spiked to an almost incomprehensible volume. Worldwide, flights produced 895 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2018. To the upper-crust jet set, these figures bring discomfort. From Wichita and Wuhan alike, the global middle-class surge has altered the travel experience for those who believe themselves alone to be capable of truly appreciating the world’s sumptuous offerings. From their perspective, the tourism boom means no formerly quaint Mediterranean port is safe from the cruise ship’s horn; no city center is free from the visual dissonance of a tour guide’s fluorescent hat.
And thus the upper-crust environmentalist union has emerged.
One example that — almost comically — highlights this trend is Travalyst, a new initiative the Duke of Sussex, Prince Harry, has launched to curtail the tourism boom. Partnering with Booking.com, Skyscanner, Ctrip, TripAdvisor, and Visa, His Royal Highness is taking what he seems to think is the moral high ground, to, in the words of the New York Times, “educate people about sustainable travel [and] overtourism and make it easier for them to understand whether their own travels are helping or hurting the planet and who is benefiting from travel dollars.” Travalyst will display prominently to prospective flyers their trip’s greenhouse gas emissions volume and offer them an opportunity to offset the emissions with a balancing deed — for a sizable extra charge. If behavioral economics holds true, this nudge will succeed in its intention to, as put by Booking.com’s Gillian Tans, “preserve local environments, welfare and cultural heritage.” Wrapping privilege in the warm robe of moral superiority, Travalyst will lessen the upper-crust environmentalists’ sense of guilt while heightening that of the middle class.
A related phenomenon is the emergence of the Swedish term flygskam — in English, “flight-shame.” Flight-shame reimagines an act once considered cosmopolitan and virtuous — moving about the globe to enlighten and enrich one’s life — as degrading to the allegedly superior value of the globe itself. While leaving free from castigation those who have the luxury of traveling languidly, by train or by boat on the high seas for two weeks, flight-shame targets those of us who want to make the most of the limited time we have to experience life.
Moral censure is a necessary but insufficient prong in the upper-crust environmentalist offensive; they are also reaching for the levers of public policy. The tool with which they most align is the carbon tax. By placing additional costs on the fuels that take us from place to place, the carbon tax puts a fiscal disincentive to travel alongside the moral disincentive of flight-shame. The carbon tax would suppress not only air travel but also ground travel, creating a virtual moat around the upper crust’s beloved city centers, surreptitiously excluding all but those who can afford to take up residence within them or on prime real estate near public transit.
It is not the hypocrisy of the upper-crust environmentalists that is most worthy of criticism — though that is certainly of note. What is most worthy of criticism is their cruelty. For wealthy travelers, these burdens, from Travalyst, flight-shame, or a carbon tax will not much matter. Instead of flying across the pond in first class they will opt for business. Consider it noblesse oblige. But for us lowly middle-class tourists, the burdens will matter indeed. Instead of a week on the Côte d’Azur, we will be spending a week on the couch at home. Consider it overtourism solved.
A friend of mine made a mistake. He spent the day watching the House hearings on the Democrats’ effort to impeach President Trump. After hours of watching the Democrats tossing nothingburgers on the grill, he said to me, exasperated: “Why are they even bothering? Don’t they realize everybody sees through this?”
The answer is a depressing one. Up to a point, I’d say, “Probably not.” People talk of Trump Derangement Syndrome. The Democrats (and NeverTrump Republicans) have decided not so much that Trump committed a crime as that he is a crime. His very existence is criminal, but especially his success in politics.
The fact that responsible parties in the GOP didn’t quash his candidacy with a few strategically placed phone calls. (Believe me, they tried.) The constitutional system that let absurd people in red baseball caps in flyover country decide to overrule their betters.
Let Them Eat Fentanyl
Elites are actually shocked that such voters themselves really exist, like some crazy aunt locked in the attic or a beaten dog chained in the yard. Let them eat Fentanyl, let them choke to death on lumps of their climate-poisoning coal. (If you don’t believe we face here genuine hatred, remember the lynch mob that gathered so quickly around the innocent teen Nicholas Sandmann.)
What provoked all this was simple. In the minds of our ruling classes, when Barack Obama got elected, that overturned everything. It was meant to be a permanent regime change in America, like the one the Democrats imposed on Libya. (Remember Rep. Eric Swalwell threatening Americans too attached to their gun rights with nuclear weapons?)
Recall how Obama promised that his job was “fundamentally transforming” the country? He wasn’t kidding, and his promise set expectations high. Remember the messianic fervor among the mainstream media and academia that greeted his win? And the prolonged, irrational hysteria that greeted Trump’s? Those two phenomena go together.
Our bi-coastal elites, many schooled in the same post-colonial theory that formed his worldview in college, treated Obama’s defeat of lackluster neocon John McCain as if it were the first election in a post-colonial country.
And we all know how those mostly go: One man, one vote, one time. Had Obama declared himself king, or “President for Life,” and set up a throne surrounded by peacock feathers in the White House, Ivy League political scientists would have stepped up and defended it. Those who cited the Constitution they’d slap down for relying on that “piece of paper written by white male slaveowners.”
The Deep State and its Secret Police
Thankfully, Obama didn’t go quite that far. He did the next best thing, though, ordering surveillance of all opposition candidates by the FBI, which obeyed like a troop of Stasi officers. The crooked FISA warrants and the entire Russia hoax were the result. Trump got no honeymoon, no first 100 Days. Instead, he met “the Resistance,” and learned that it extended all through media, academia, and the Deep State over which he supposedly presided.
Elites are actually shocked that such voters themselves even exist, like some crazy aunt locked in the attic or beaten dog chained in the yard. Let them eat Fentanyl, let them choke to death on lumps of their climate-poisoning coal.
The left “resisted” in America the same way it did in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, by burrowing into institutions and using their levers to cling to power by any means necessary. If that sounds overheated to you, listen to Speaker McConnell himself, commenting on last week’s onslaught, the fresh, “new” third-hand unverified charges against Justice Brett Kavanaugh:
Pavlovian Condition for the Subhuman Voters in Red States
What’s happening here isn’t politics. It’s vicious, old-fashioned dog training of the cruelest kind. Americans didn’t vote right, and now they will be punished. They refused to accept the regime change imposed on them. So now the Democrats will destroy the country’s government, so as to save it. They will obstruct every initiative, refuse any compromise, gin up every remotely plausible charge that can last for a few news cycles. (Then get stuffed down the Memory Hole with Jussie Smollett and Michael Avenatti.)
Every false charge refuted will give way to another. And then another. We’ll never have normal government or an end to this cold civil war, until we have learned our lesson.
Like Foreign Saboteurs
Our country’s establishment, both Democrat and NeverTrump GOP, will do to America what we see British elites doing to the United Kingdom, whose people disobeyed direct orders in voting for Brexit. That is, they’ll sabotage it and wreck everything in sight. They’ll behave like foreign saboteurs instead of fellow citizens. Not because they’re certain of winning in the short run. No, for a much darker reason they might not even admit to themselves.
They want to cause American voters pain, and make them associate that pain with having Trump, or anyone like him, in office. They don’t hope to convince us. That implies too much respect. These people want to condition us, like lab rats, to link conservatives and populists with stagnation and chaos. To flinch like mistreated pets, at the very sight of a newspaper, lest it smack us, HARD, on the nose. If we keep it up, they’re willing to beat us, lock us out, starve us.
What our elites won’t endure is being ruled by us, even when we outvote them. That indignity they will fight with every last milligram of malice in their cankered pagan souls.
Environmental campaign group Extinction Rebellion have used a fire
engine to spray the front of the Treasury building with fake blood.
The
group unfurled a banner urging the government to "stop funding climate
death" and said they had fired 1,800 litres of the "blood" at the
central London building - although most appeared to have ended up on the
street and pavement.
Massive failure for radical climate change activists with @ExtinctionR who lost control of a fake blood hose outside the Treasury in London. Four people were arrested for criminal damage. Footage published by the BBC. #ExtinctionRebelionpic.twitter.com/dbgGJMEM4v
While standing on top of the fire engine, protesters struggled to control the hose as it whipped around on its own accord.
Police later turned up to protect the building and four people were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage.
Campaigners said the fire engine they used is out of commission and the fake blood made with food dye that can be washed off.
Extinction Rebellion said it wanted to highlight the "inconsistency
between the UK Government's insistence that the UK is a world leader in
tackling climate breakdown, while pouring vast sums of money into fossil
exploration and carbon-intensive projects".
Protester Cathy Eastburn said the Treasury's decisions had
"devastating consequences" and included "huge subsidies for fossil
fuels, financing massive fossil fuels projects overseas [and] airport
expansion".
However, one government tsar has said Extinction
Rebellion's eagerness to cut the country's emissions by 2025 would do
more harm than good.
Dieter Helm, chairman of the natural capital
committee advisory group, said the net-zero target would mean an
increase in pollution through imports.
The University of Oxford
professor said the it would do "a hell of a lot of damage" as carbon
emissions would just be created elsewhere.
Prof Helm believes
instead that a carbon tax should be introduced and those who contribute
to a net reduction in pollution should receive payments.
Impeachment Is About Putting Down the Peasants’ Revolt
Trump must be publicly drawn-and-quartered because he is the leader of the uprising.
by DAVID CATRON
October 3, 2019, 12:11 AM
It should by now be obvious to the meanest intelligence that the Democrats are determined to impeach President Trump with or without credible evidence that he has committed any act resembling “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The “whistleblower complaint” that Nancy Pelosi used as the pretext for launching her ersatz impeachment inquiry contains little but hearsay and fabrication, while her claim that it proves Trump has “violated the Constitution” fails the laugh test. In the end, however, impeachment is less about offenses committed by the president than the desire of the Washington establishment to put down what they see as a peasants’ revolt.
Impeachmentis, in other words, an attempt to restore the old order that the voters overturned in 2016. It seeks to annul that election and return us to the nascent totalitarianism of the Obama era, an incipient autocracy the Democrats expected to be nurtured during the presidency of Hillary Clinton. Thus, when the hoi polloi got above themselves and put Donald Trump in the White House, his removal from office became the primary objective of Washington’s self-appointed Optimates. They began planningTrump’s impeachment before he was inaugurated because he is the leader of the insurrection, and they know full well that it can’t be put down until he is gone.
House Democrats must impeach the president despite the near impossibility of securing a conviction in the Senate. Indeed, their need to do so is more urgent now than ever because of the booming Trump economy and the weakness of their Democratic presidential candidates. As Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), who has introduced several abortive impeachment resolutions, put itin May, “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected.” This was reiterated by Professor Allan Lichtman, who has accurately predicted the outcomes of the last nine presidential elections. Lichtman says that the Democrats can’t win in 2020 if they failto impeach Trump:
It’s a false dichotomy to say Democrats have a choice between doing what is right and what is constitutional, and what is politically right. Impeachment is also politically right.… Right now, based on my system, there has to be six negative factors against the party holding the White House, the Trump party, to predict their defeat. They’re down only three. But an impeachment would nail down the scandal key, a fourth key, it might trigger other keys like a real challenge to his re-nomination.
This may, however, be the first presidential prediction that Lichtman gets wrong. His belief that impeachment would “nail down the scandal key,” for example, is probably incorrect. The Democrats and the media have been carpet-bombing Trump for more than three years based on false or wildly exaggerated accusations of wrongdoing. By now there is almost certainly a considerable amount of “scandal fatigue” throughout the electorate. The Democrats have cried wolf, to coin a phrase, with such frequency that the voters are likely to disregard further alarms, even in the unlikely event that an impeachment inquiry actually manages to produce a genuine canine.
Since the Ukraine story broke, the media have reported a spike in public enthusiasm for impeachment. The New York Times, for example, ran a story titled “Impeachment Polls Show a Steady Rise in Support.” Yet the first survey discussed, Monmouth, showsthat a majority of Americans (52 percent) don’t want Trump impeached. The percentage in favor of impeachment (44 percent) is only slightly higher than in March (42 percent). The uptick compared to March among Independents only increased from 40 percent to 41 percent, and it was equally underwhelming among Republicans and even Democrats. The Times does report what is probably a more significant trend from another poll:
The share of Republican voters expressing strong approval for Mr. Trump’s job performance rose by 12 points since last week, from two-thirds to nearly four in five, according to the Quinnipiac polls. And the share of Republican voters saying Mr. Trump is generally an “honest” person has spiked since March, when Quinnipiac last asked the question: from 66% then to 83%. This suggests that the Republican base’s support for the president might be hardening as he comes under increasingly serious fire.
Much of this “increasingly serious fire” is, of course, coming from the Times itself. This suggests that the Gray Lady, like most of the legacy media, has yet to discover that many Americans respond to their negative coverage of Trump as follows: “Anyone these characters dislike can’t be all bad.” When “sophisticated” journalists and “savvy” politicians gratuitously accuse Trump of racism, corruption, and insanity, they don’t seem to realize that they are also implying that his supporters are so dumb that they vote against their own best interests. Trump’s supporters know that such people regard them as ignorant peasants. That is what produces poll results like this:
President Trump’s approval ticked up to 49 percent — its highest mark this year, according to a new Hill-HarrisX survey released on Wednesday…. Trump’s disapproval rating, meanwhile, dropped to 51 percent, which marks his lowest level so far this year. The nationwide survey was conducted on Sept. 28 and 29, less than a week after House Democrats launched a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump over concerns raised in a whistleblower’s complaint about the president’s communications with Ukraine.
Trump’s supporters aren’t as dumb as their “betters” clearly believe them to be. They know the Washington establishment is out to get the president in order to disfranchise the 63 million “deplorables” who voted him into office for the purpose of effecting genuine change in the way things are done inside the Beltway. Trump’s supporters know the Democrats hate him because, despite the incessant harassment to which he and his administration have been subjected, he has fulfilled most of his campaign promises. They know Trump’s impeachment is really an attempt to suppress what Beltway insiders regard as a peasants’ revolt against the proper order of things.
