Article by Jonathon Van Maren in "Life Site News":
Only a few years ago, the aggressive “New Atheist” movement was on the march, with rhetorical brawlers like Christopher Hitchens
and renowned biologists like Richard Dawkins leading the charge against
religion and the last vestiges of Christian faith in the West.
Religion, Hitchens famously stated, “poisons everything,” and could only
be considered, at best, humanity’s “first and worst” attempt to solve
existential questions. If these cobwebbed superstitions could be blasted
away by the refreshing winds of reason and the Enlightenment, a
fundamentally better society would rise from the ashes—or so the
thinking went.
But as Christianity fades further and further into our civilization’s
rear-view mirror, many intelligent atheists are beginning to realize
that the Enlightenment may have only achieved success because it wielded
influence on a Christian culture. In a truly secular society, in which
men and women live their lives beneath empty heavens and expect to be
recycled rather than resurrected, there is no solid moral foundation for
good and evil. Anti-theists like Christopher Hitchens mocked and
reviled the idea that mankind needed God to know right from wrong, but
scarcely two generations into our Great Secularization and we no longer
even know male from female.
It would be interesting to know how the late Hitchens would have
responded to the insanities that have proliferated since his passing,
and whether he would have come to realize, as some of his similarly
godless friends have, that one does not need to find Christianity
believable to realize that it is necessary. Douglas Murray, who has
taken to occasionally calling himself a “Christian atheist,” has publicly argued with Hitchens’ fellow “Horseman of the Apocalypse” Sam Harris over whether a society based on Enlightenment values is even possible without Christianity. Harris holds out hope that such a society is possible. Murray is sympathetic, but skeptical.
Increasingly, Murray admitted, he believes the atheist project to be a hopeless one. When he joined me on my show recently to discuss his latest book The Madness of Crowds,
he reiterated that he believes that in the absence of the secularist’s
ability to hammer out ethics on fundamental issues such as the sanctity
of life, we may be forced to recognize that returning to faith is the
best option available to us. There is a very real possibility, he noted,
that our modern concept of human rights, based as it is on a
Judeo-Christian foundation, may very well outlive Christianity by only a
few short years. Cut off from the source, our conception of human
rights may shrivel and die very quickly, leaving us fumbling about in a
thick and impenetrable darkness.
Without the Christian underpinnings of our society, it will be up to
us to decide what is right and wrong, and as our current culture wars
clearly illustrate, our civilization will tear itself apart before it
regains consensus. Many optimistic atheists recently believed that once
God was dethroned and banished, we could finally live as adults and get
on with the utopian project of creating a society based on faith in ourselves.
These skeptics were unfortunately skeptical about everything except the
goodness of humanity, despite the fact that they had no metaphysical or
even Darwinian basis for this easily disprovable assumption. Jordan
Peterson’s phenomenal popularity is partially based on his recognition
that people are not generally good, and that the past century proves
this with the blood of millions.
It is the abject failure of this thesis that is leading some
prominent atheists to begrudgingly admit that perhaps Christianity was
more necessary than they thought. As recently as 2015, Richard Dawkins
(author of The God Delusion) was arguing that children needed
to be protected from the religious views of their parents, and made a
series of alarming comments regarding the rights of parents to educate
their children in the tenets of their religious faith. By 2018, however,
Dawkins was warning that the “benign Christian religion” might be replaced by something decidedly less
benign, and that perhaps we should take a step back to discuss what
might happen if the evangelical secularists are successful in destroying
or banishing Christianity. Other atheists and agnostics, from Bill
Maher to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, have echoed Dawkins’ sentiments. This is a
radical shift in only a handful of years—and the fact that atheists are sounding the alarm should be a warning to Christians about the consequences of our ongoing secularization.
Dawkins has now come out and repudiated his previous belief that
Christianity should be banished from society even more firmly. In fact,
he told The Times,
ending religion—once his fervent goal—would be a terrible idea, because
it would “give people a license to do really bad things.” Despite the
fact that Dawkins has long argued that the very idea of the God of the
Bible being necessary as a basis for morality is both ridiculous and
offensive, he appears to be backtracking. “People may feel free to do
bad things because they feel God is no longer watching them,” he said,
citing the example of security cameras as a deterrent to shoplifting.
One wonders if he has heard Douglas Murray remind people that the
Soviets murdered their millions in the firm belief that there was no
Judge waiting for them when the killing was over.
Dawkins discusses these ideas further in his latest book, Outgrowing God.
“Whether irrational or not, it does, unfortunately, seem plausible
that, if somebody sincerely believes God is watching his every move, he
might be more likely to be good,” he confessed begrudgingly. “I must say
that I hate that idea. I want to believe that humans are better than
that. I’d like to believe I’m honest whether anyone is watching or not.”
While this realization is not a good enough reason for him to
believe in God, Dawkins says, he now realizes that the affirmation of
God’s existence does benefit society. For example, Dawkins admitted, “It
might bring the crime right down.”
Dawkins’ conversion to the belief that Christianity is good—and
perhaps even necessary—for Western civilization to function in harmony
is nothing short of mind boggling. Dawkins has been one of secularism’s
most intolerant fundamentalists, a man who believed that parents should
be denied the right to pass on their faith and that the government
should actively side with the godless over the faithful. In a few short
years, he is changing his tune. Human beings, he seems to have
recognized, cannot be counted on to be automatically good and to operate
in the spirit of harmony and solidarity that he and his fellow New
Atheists treasure. And absent the inherent goodness of humanity, how can
we count on people not to tear apart a civilization built by men and
women of faith? The answer is a simple one: We need God.
The constitutional power to impeach a duly elected president was intended by the Framers of the Constitution as a neutral, non-partisan tool of last resort to be used against only criminal incumbents in extreme cases. Pictured: Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, oil on canvas, by Howard Chandler Christy, 1940. (Image source: The Indian Reporter/Wikimedia Commons)
The constitutional power to impeach a duly elected president was intended by the Framers of the Constitution as a neutral, non-partisan tool of last resort to be used against only criminal incumbents in extreme cases. It is now being deployed as a partisan weapon that can be used routinely against presidents of a different party from those who control the House of Representatives.
Under the views of some members of Congress, any time the House is controlled by one party, a simple majority can properly vote to impeach. As Congresswoman Maxine Waters put it: "Impeachment is about whatever the Congress says it is. There is no law." She is wrong. The Constitution is the law and she is not above it.
The recent partisan misuse of this emergency power began with the impeachment of former President William Jefferson Clinton by the Republican-controlled House in 1998. Clinton did not commit an impeachable offense, even if he feloniously lied under oath about his sex life. Such perjury, if it occurred, would satisfy the definition of a "crime," but not meet the required Constitutional criteria of a "high crime and misdemeanor." If President Clinton committed a crime, it would be a low crime related to his sex life and comparable to the low felonies — adultery and paying off an extortionist — committed by Alexander Hamilton when he was Secretary of the Treasury. Had Hamilton payed the extortionist from Treasury funds, as he was falsely accused of doing, he would have been guilty of an impeachable high crime.
To be impeached, a president must commit a crime (misdemeanor is a species of crime) and the commission of that crime must also constitute an abuse of office. An abuse of office without an underlying crime is a political sin, but not an impeachable offense.
This very issue was debated at the Constitutional Convention, where one delegate proposed "maladministration" as the criteria for impeachment and removal of a president. James Madison, the Father of our Constitution, strongly objected on the ground that so vague and open-ended a criterion would have the president serve at the will of Congress and turn us from a Republic with a strong president into a parliamentary democracy in which the chief executive can be removed by a simple vote of no confidence. Instead, the Convention adopted strict prerequisites for impeachment: treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. The House is no more empowered to substitute its own criteria for those enumerated in the Constitution than the Senate would be to change the 2/3 vote requirement for removal to a simple majority or a 3/5 super majority. Congress is not above the law. It is bound by what the Framers accepted and cannot now apply the criterion the framers explicitly rejected.
Those who characterize the impeachment and removal process as completely political are wrong as a matter of constitutional law, even if they are right in describing the reality of how it is being currently misused. Advocates of this view misquote Hamilton in Federalist #65.
Hamilton did characterize the criteria for impeachment as "political," but only in the sense that they relate to "injuries done immediately to the society itself." He then immediately rejected the view that the process should be partisan, based on "the comparative strength of parties," rather than on "the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt." He called that the "greatest danger" and demanded "neutrality toward those whose conduct may be the subject of scrutiny." Those who misquote and misunderstand Hamilton wrongly conflate the words "political," by which he meant governmental, and "partisan, " by which he meant related to the comparative strength of parties and factions.
It is difficult to imagine a greater breach of Hamilton's principles than the recent House vote along party lines (with two exceptions, both opposing impeachment) to open a formal impeachment investigation against President Trump. The vote was determined exclusively by the "comparative strength of parties," as was the vote to impeach President Bill Clinton two decades ago.
A partisan House vote to impeach President Trump, followed by a partisan Senate vote to acquit him, would not only hurt the Democratic Party — as the votes in the Clinton case hurt the Republican Party — it would damage our constitution and further polarize our already divided nation.
Most important, misusing the impeachment power in a partisan manner would pose, in the words of Hamilton, "the greatest danger" to our Constitution.
Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of The Case Against the Democratic House Impeaching Trump, Skyhorse Publishing, 2019.
When I viewed this video, I wondered if it was a hoax. I thought it must be a group of actors trying to make a point about how far restrictions on speech have gone. Unfortunately, the video captures reality in Scotland in 2019.
The video picks up an exchange between a Scottish high school teacher and a student. The class was asked to sign up for a website, and according to the student, the teacher commented on how old fashioned the website was for listing only two sexes. The student, Murray, remarked, “But sir there’s only two genders,” and the teacher insisted they continue the discussion outside the classroom.
National School Authority Policy
Murray recorded the encounter on his phone. Here are some of the lowlights of the recorded dialogue:
Murray: “Why did you kick me out of class? It’s not very inclusive of you.”
Teacher: “I’m sorry, but what you were saying is not very inclusive, and this is an inclusive school.”
Murray: (referring to the teacher’s viewpoint that there are more than two genders): “That’s your opinion.”
Teacher: “That is my opinion, and that is an opinion which is acceptable in this school.”
Teacher: “Will you please keep that opinion [referring to Murray’s view that there are two genders] to your own house, not in this room?”
Murray: “So you got to put your opinion out in class, but my opinion has to stay inside my house?”
Teacher: “I am not putting my opinion out. I am stating what is national school authority policy.”
Teacher: “I know what you think, and I know what the authority thinks.”
Following the UK “national school authority policy” on the number of genders, children are taught there are 100 “gender identities.”
Murray wasn’t sent to a reeducation camp, but the school suspended him for several weeks.
As for the teacher, he’s trying to be a proper government functionary. Perhaps he’s dreaming of retirement or at least the day when students like Murray will no longer dare to challenge him.
If you’re sure this sort of incident couldn’t happen in America, think again.
Support for Free Speech Is Dropping
A new survey conducted in the United States by the Campaign for Free Speech found 51 percent of Americans agreed with this statement: “The First Amendment goes too far in allowing hate speech in modern America and should be updated to reflect the cultural norms of today.” 48 percent thought, and a majority of millennials agreed, “hate speech” should be outlawed. An astonishing 54 percent of millennials thought jail time should be the consequence penalty for hate speech. Hate speech was not defined in the survey.
If you thought anti-free speech sentiment is limited to college campuses, you would be wrong.
57 percent of Americans are ready to have government “take action against newspapers and TV stations that publish content that is biased, inflammatory, or false.”
These findings are not out-of-line with earlier surveys such as a Cato Institute 2017 Free Speech and Tolerance Survey, which found that 40 percent of Americans think the government should prevent hate speech.
Recently, Richard Stengel, a former editor of Time, called for limits on the 1st Amendment. In a Washington Post op-ed, Stengel wrote “the intellectual underpinning of the First Amendment was engineered for a simpler era,” and without defining hate, he called for laws prohibiting “speech that incites hate.” For Stengel it’s a bad thing, not a strength of America, that our “First Amendment standard is an outlier.”
If you thought anti-free speech sentiment is limited to college campuses, you would be wrong.
Government Doesn’t Give Us the Right to Free Speech
Perhaps there are flaws in the survey design by the Campaign for Free Speech, yet the findings warn of waning support for our constitutional rights.
There is fundamental confusion on the source of our right to free speech. The right to free speech codified in the 1st Amendment is not a grant of the right of free speech; it is a prohibition against government interfering with an inherent right of Americans:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.…
When the first amendments to the Constitution—the Bill of Rights—were being debated, Madison and other Founders initially feared enumerating rights would later be interpreted to mean only rights named in the Constitution would be protected.
Madison addressed those fears with the 9th Amendment to the Constitution:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Madison was adamant on the absolute nature of the 1st amendment even when the results displease some or many:
Our First Amendment freedoms give us the right to think what we like and say what we please. And if we the people are to govern ourselves, we must have these rights, even if they are misused by a minority.
Just as you can’t be half-pregnant, there is no such thing as government regulated free speech. If government is the arbiter of what is acceptable speech, you are on the road to a dystopian nightmare. The Founders were clear: fallible individuals, limited in knowledge, were not be trusted with power to infringe on our rights.
Nor, Madison believed, would a democratic vote offer any protection for free speech. In Federalist Paper No. 10, Madison explains that democracy offers no protection against the passion of a faction opposed to liberty:
When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government…enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion…both the public good and the rights of other citizens.
North Korea, Where All Speech Must Glorify the Government
Masaji Ishikawa was born in 1947 in Japan to a Korean father and a Japanese mother. His father was a violent alcoholic. In 1960, Ishikawa’s family, mired in poverty, moved to North Korea as part of a mass repatriation movement that included almost 100,000 Koreans, lured by promises of a “paradise on earth,” a “land of milk and honey.”
When I lived in Japan, I never really pondered my life… I became obsessed with all the things I had taken for granted before, and all the hardships that marked my life now. But that didn’t last long. I soon learned that thought was not free in North Korea. A free thought could get you killed if it slipped out. If you were lucky, you might get sent to some remote mountainous region to do hard labor. Or you might get sent to a concentration camp for political prisoners because you were deemed a “liberal” or a “capitalist” with “bad habits.” And bad habits needed to be stamped out. By means of a jackboot to the genitals. Or then again, you might simply be executed.
Ishikawa’s family was a potential source of ideas dangerous to the North Korean police state:
We were constantly monitored by the goons of the State Security of North Korea and the secret police. I guess we posed a double threat. We’d brought some dangerous items with us from Japan when we moved—things like bicycles and electrical appliances and half-decent clothes. What if the local villagers came to realize that their standard of living was pitiful? Worse still, what would happen if they got wind of the concept of free thought from us? They might question the wisdom of Kim Il-sung. And that was verboten.
Education in North Korea consists mostly of studying the collected works of the despots Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il’s “revolutionary thought.” Their doctrine of Juche is the backbone of North Korean society. In his book, The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future, Victor Cha explains the indoctrination:
Juche was seared into the minds of every North Korean every day through repetitive indoctrination sessions. There was almost a biological and anatomical rationalization for loyalty that went along with the spiritual. Juche’s writings taught that the Great Leader (Suryŏng) Kim Il-sung was the brain, the party was the nerves, and the people were the arms, legs, muscle, and bone of the state. Two messages of obedience emerged: (1) without the brain, the rest does not function; therefore, there must be complete loyalty; and (2) independent thinking was not needed, since this was handled by the brain. The only critical thinking that was allowed was self-criticism based on guilt for not serving the leader well.
In North Korea, speaking your mind is incomprehensible.
Reading my essay, you might think I'm overwrought. Surely, those who want to restrict hate speech don’t want “complete loyalty” to a future presidency of, let’s say, Elizabeth Warren. They don’t want Americans to memorize her speeches or study her ponderings in school.
If you believe my worries are unfounded, read again the exchange with the Scottish teacher and Murray. The teacher thinks he is innocent in stifling dissent. He is merely spreading “national school authority policy.” The teacher knows what Murray thinks and he “knows what the authority thinks.” The view of the “authority’s” trumps the student’s opinions.
In a future democratic socialist administration mired in economic collapse, is it a stretch to predict that protection of free speech will continue to wane making criticism of government policies verboten?
If disagreement over the number of genders can’t be tolerated, surely disagreements on a debt jubilee or a wealth tax wouldn’t be tolerated either.
Ishikawa didn’t understand the freedoms he had in Japan until he lost freedom in North Korea. Like Ishikawa in Japan, today’s Americans don’t know we are swimming in the warm waters of liberty, with the freedom to speak our mind.
In degree, America is far removed from the world of North Korea. But when government is given the power to determine what is acceptable speech, we are operating out of the same totalitarian mindset that leads to dystopian hell.If totalitarianism comes to America, we will have no one to blame.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow, who recently released the blockbuster book “Catch and Kill,” said during an interview on Friday that an investigation into “credible” rape accusations that have been made against former Democrat President Bill Clinton is long “overdue.”
Appearing on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher,” Maher asked Farrow, “Could Bill Clinton, if he had done what he did in 1998, survive today — or would his own party have thrown him under the bus?”
“I think that it is very important to interject that Bill Clinton is a different conversation,” Farrow responded to Maher. “He has been credibly accused of rape. That has nothing to do with gray areas. I think that the Juanita Broaddrick claim has been overdue for revisiting.”
Late last year, as wildly salacious and completely unsubstantiated claims were leveled against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Broaddrick called for an FBI investigation into the multiple allegations of sexual assault made against Clinton.
“Again, I request the FBI investigate my credible rape allegations against Bill Clinton, in the hope that his ‘perks’, as a Former Pres, can be stripped,” Broaddrick tweeted. “It totals millions each year from mine and your tax dollar to support a rapist.”
“I further demand an FBI investigation into the sexual assault allegations against Bill Clinton by @kathleenwilley and Leslie Millwee @Astroluvr And many others,” Broaddrick continued. “WE deserve to be heard too.”
In an interview with Fox News, Broaddrick slammed Democrats for not believing her and not supporting her over the trauma she experienced in the attack.
“It’s not politically advantageous for them to circle around me and support me,” Broaddrick told Fox News. “These are the same people that refused to read my deposition with Ken Starr back in 1999. Not one Democrat would read it. Schumer, Feinstein, Durbin — they completely turned their backs on me.”
Recounting the horrifying incident, Broaddrick laid out the details to Fox News of what she claims happened when Clinton allegedly attacked her.
“It scared me to death. After the rape, after he left my room, I thought someone was going to come in to get rid of my body. That’s how I felt,” Broaddrick said. “My lip was swollen twice the size, I couldn’t even cover it up with makeup for three or four days.”
“After it was done, he coldly looked at me and said ‘you’d better put some ice on that.’ I’ll never forget it,” Broaddrick said. “I have so many witnesses. The lady that was traveling with me found me 30 minutes after the rape, and then I have five other people I told.”
Farrow’s comments about the former president on HBO are not the only comments that he has made about the Clintons in recent months or in his new book.
Farrow revealed that two-time failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had tried to pressure him into not publishing the bombshell sexual allegations made against Harvey Weinstein.
“Weinstein also attempted to leverage his long-term relationship with Hillary Clinton to pressure Farrow, he writes,” The Hollywood Reporter reported last month. “In summer 2017, while Farrow was trying to lock down an interview with Clinton for his foreign policy book — while also still working on the Weinstein story — he received a call from Clinton’s publicist, Nick Merrill, who told him that the ‘big story’ Farrow was working on was a ‘concern for us.'”
“She attempted to withdraw from an interview that she had committed to for a foreign policy book that I was working on, for which I interviewed every other living secretary of state,” Farrow told Fox News in an interview. “And, before doing so, her staff raised concerns about the fact that I was working on this story about one of her most significant donors — a big bundler of Hollywood money.”
Steve Bannon appears on Fox News to discuss the ongoing impeachment issues with Maria Bartiromo. Within the discussion Bannon highlights the larger position about how Trump’ America-First foreign policy is antithetical to the one-way interventionist model that ultimately provides U.S. politicians with a process to sell their office to the benefit of foreign governments. The Biden-Ukraine issue is a direct example of that process.
Everything about POTUS Trump’s policy is against the business model that allows DC politicians to trade U.S. foreign policy for their own financial benefit. Trillions at stake.
Bannon correctly points out that only public pressure is going to force change upon the swamp. President Trump is a vessel for a process to stop DC corruption; but the DC politicians themselves will never vote to diminish their own interests. That’s the issue with the republicans in the Senate during an impeachment trial.
On the Democrat race I agree with Bannon on 90% of his presentation, except I would replace “centrist” with Wall St (multinationals) and Hollywood. The Dem party is fueled by multinational interests and Hollywood support that is aligned with China and multinationals et al. With Biden falling they are trying Buttigieg; if that doesn’t work, they’ll need someone to hold/protect their interests.
Representative Jim Jordan discusses the current status of the Democrat impeachment plan with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. Mr. Jordan breaks down the Democrat resolution that was passed last Thursday and highlights the ridiculous nature of the Dem Scheme.
A herd of ravenous goats played a role in saving the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library after a fresh wildfire erupted Wednesday near Simi Valley in Southern California, forcing officials to order evacuations of nearby homes.
In addition the firefighters and aircraft crews that responded Wednesday, a hungry herd of as many as 500 goats had helped create a firebreak months ago in the brush that surrounds the hilltop complex, officials said. The goats last spring ate up vegetation that could have fueled the fire.
“One of the firefighters mentioned that they do believe the goats’ fire line helped them fight this fire,” library spokeswoman Melissa Giller said. “They just proved today how useful they really are.”
According to The Guardian, the goats came from a company specifically created to help combat forest fires by allowing the four-legged furry consumers to consume the brush that would otherwise be kindling for wildfires. They even come with funny names:
“We actually worked with the Ventura county fire department in May and they bring out hundreds of goats to our property,” Melissa Giller, a spokeswoman for the library, told ABC. “The goats eat all of the brush around the entire property, creating a fire perimeter.”
The goats were sourced from a firm called 805 Goats, which oversees an army of horned contractors, including Vincent van Goat, Selena Goatmez, Goatzart and, more prosaically, Oreo. The company charges fire-threatened clients about $1,000 per acre of goat-cleared land. It plans to expand its herd to cope with a growing wildfire threat in California, fueled by the climate crisis.
This makes the second story this month of how our furry friends are helping to make America a safer place.
Lower-tier Presidential candidate Kamala Harris likes to ask the question “Are voters ready for a woman of color as President?”
But that’s the wrong question.
If Kamala Harris had an ounce of self-reflection she would be asking herself, “Am I ready?”
That’s the question Kamala should have asked herself three years ago.
And the answer is obvious to everyone but Kamala Harris.
Harris, who just three years ago was running for the US Senate, is the one who isn’t ready to be President.
I’ve always believed that the only reason Kamala Harris ran for the Senate in 2016 was to position herself to run for the White House.
Shortly after Harris joined the Senate I noticed her penchant for staging what can only be described as sound-bite-ready speeches during hearings. In fact, six months after Kamala was sworn in, I called her “the resume-packing future Presidential Candidate.”
Kamala Harris is working her ass off to build a foundation for her 2020 run for the White House.
She reminds me of the high school senior who signs up to build houses for Habitat for Humanity.
That kid doesn’t give a tinker’s fart about building homes for the needy. He’s just indulging in a little resume-packing for when he applies to college.
Likewise, Kamala Harris isn’t interested in getting to the truth. She isn’t at all interested in getting her questions answered. And, really, she isn’t interested in being a United States Senator.
That’s not the point.
Everything she says as she preens and grandstands is all about running for President of the United States.
And in this desperate attempt at a little resume-packing, Harris goes out of her way to be as insufferable and obnoxious as humanly possible.
Hey, you don’t expect her to shut up and actually get her questions answered do you?
She needs to keep talking, talking, talking. Because somewhere in all that talking, she hopes to glean a few sound-bitable nuggets to use in campaign ads.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we learned that already last night her staff was poring over the video from yesterday’s hearing in search of just the right soundbite to file away for 2020.
And did you notice she always has a pen in her hand?
If I had to guess, I’d say that when Kamala isn’t prattling on like a peevish crank at the Returns counter of Walmart, she’s scribbling on a notepad — important things like “Madame President” and “President Kamala Harris” along with crude doodles of the Presidential Seal.
I wrote that in early June 2017.
And not one thing that has happened in the last two years has changed my mind.
If anything, Kamala’s flailing campaign itself proves my point.
The Senate was a springboard to launch this idiotic run for the White House.
But Kamala isn’t ready to run for President.
And it shows.
But since the only reason she ran for the Senate was to give herself a national platform from which to launch her 2020 bid, Kamala has no choice but go through with it — ready or not.
See, here’s my theory. And I’ll take this to the bank.
Remember back in 2013 when Barack Obama appeared at a fundraiser in San Francisco along with then CA Attorney General Kamala Harris? Sure you do. That was when
Obama called her “the best looking Attorney General in the country.”
At that fundraiser, Barack couldn’t say enough about Kamala Harris. He sang her praises. And I think that was deliberate.
I think Obama-aligned political operatives, big-money donors and campaign people believed Kamala would be the perfect heir to the Obama Legacy.
But outside of California, nobody heard of her. They needed to give Kamala Harris a national platform from which to kick off her bid for the White House.
Then in January 2015 the stars aligned when Senator Barbara Boxer announced she would not seek reelection in 2016.
And Kamala got just the boost she needed to launch herself onto the national stage.
So Harris ran for Boxer’s seat. She raised a whopping fifteen million dollars — outraising her competitor (Democrat Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez) by eleven million bucks.
That shows you just how much the Obama infrastructure was supporting her.
But the goal was never to serve as the junior Senator from California. The Senate seat was incidental — merely a means to an end. The goal was the Presidency.
Which explains why Kamala officially launched her quest for the White House after only serving one year in the Senate.
It was always about running for President.
Problem is, Kamala Harris wasn’t ready.
Her very limited tenure in the Senate consisted entirely of grandstanding, endless filibustering, and, most notably, smearing Brett Kavanaugh in hopes of getting some sweet, sweet soundbites to use in 2020.
Strip all that aside, and what are you left with?
You’re left with a candidate who is not ready for national office. She is inauthentic, belligerent, unsure, and unable to articulate a coherent message.
Or, as Daniel Greenfield put it today at Front Page Magazine, “What happened? Kamala opened her mouth.”
And there’s no there there.
From Greenfield’s column:
Instead of laying out a vision, the former socialite relied on the personal charm that made her a hit among San Francisco’s wealthy lefties. But the transparent phoniness that won over her old social set hasn’t translated well to a national stage. And her constant transformations, pretending that she’s about to move to Iowa, and then complaining that Iowans are racist, just make it obvious how fake she is.
Those Obama-aligned big money donors who heaped mountains of cash into her campaign before her January launch might as well have set fire to it for all the good it’s done.
Harris spent that money setting up campaign infrastructure in all the early primary states. And now because donors don’t want to pour good money after bad, Kamala’s coffers are running on fumes. So she’s “restructuring” by closing campaign offices, firing staff and pinning her hopes entirely on the Iowa caucus.
Where, by the way, she’s running at 3%.
Is it any wonder that Kamala is crying racism?
What else can she do but claim that voters aren’t ready for a woman of color to be President?
She certainly isn’t going to admit that the only one not ready is Kamala Harris.
From Greenfield’s column:
Trying to pretend that she’s polling at 3% because Obama voters aren’t ready to vote for black people, and women aren’t prepared to vote for women, and black people aren’t willing to vote for black people, is exactly the reason why even Democrats hate her. Voters have gotten tired of the lies, the flip-flopping, and the constant racial appeals as if she had come out of a ghetto in Detroit, Newark or Chicago, instead of being a privileged woman who grew up with her Indian scientist mother in Canada.
Eric Ciaramella, the alleged whistleblower, was a young man on a mission. This Ivy-league graduate, said to be fluent in Russian, Ukrainian and Arabic, a favorite among Obama Administration officials, was introduced to us by investigative reporter Paul Sperry on Thursday. Washington insiders, including the mainstream media, have known his identity for quite some time, and for obvious reasons, have remained silent. Even after Sperry outed him this week, we’re hearing crickets from those on the left. The conservative media, however, which understands that history is repeating itself, has gone into overdrive to expose the truth.
Here’s what we know about Eric Ciaramella (EC):
He submitted a whistleblower complaint on August 12th.
He is a registered Democrat.
He is a CIA analyst who specializes in Russia and Ukraine. He ran the Ukraine desk at the National Security Council (NSC) in 2016.
He was detailed over to the NSC in the summer of 2015 and worked for then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice.
He worked for former Vice President Joe Biden when he served as the Obama administration’s “point man” for Ukraine. He may have flown over to Ukraine with Biden on Air Force Two.
He worked for former CIA Director John Brennan and appeared to have been a highly valued employee.
In June 2017, then-National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster appointed EC to be his personal aide.
EC did not have direct knowledge of the July 25th conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It is very possible he learned about the call from NSC Director for European Affairs Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified last week before Adam Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee.
EC contacted at least one of Schiff’s staff members prior to filing his complaint. Two of EC’s colleagues from the NSC were hired by Adam Schiff this year, one of whom, Sean Misko, was hired in August.
He was posted to the NSC in the White House’s West Wing in mid-2017 and “left amid concerns about negative leaks to the media. He has since returned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.”
EC worked with hyper-partisan Ukrainian-American lawyer and activist Alexandra Chalupa in 2016 to dig up dirt on Trump. (Chalupa’s name will become very familiar as this scandal unravels.) The pro-Hillary Chalupa, a former DNC contractor, has worked in the Clinton administration and has held various staff positions for Democratic lawmakers. Sperry wrote: “Documentsconfirm the DNC opposition researcher attended at least one White House meeting with Ciaramella in November 2015. She visited the White House with a number of Ukrainian officials lobbying the Obama administration for aid for Ukraine.”
Sperry reported that “federal records show Biden’s office invited Ciaramella to an October 2016 state luncheon the vice president hosted for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Other invited guests included Brennan, as well as then-FBI Director James Comey and then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper. (Sperry: Several U.S. officials told RCI that the invitation that was extended to Ciaramella, a relatively low-level GS-13 federal employee, was unusual and signaled he was politically connected inside the Obama White House.)
Opinions and Theories about EC:
Independent investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson has a plausible explanation for why EC submitted his complaint. Attkisson posted Sperry’s report on her blog and wrote, “If the reporting is correct, it implies the “whistleblower” could have been worried Trump was getting close to uncovering Democrat links to Ukraine’s interference in US elections in 2016.
It’s very possible. Attorney General William Barr had publicly expressed his opinion that the Trump campaign had been spied upon. In May, he appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to begin looking into the origins of the Trump/Russia investigation. Being an intelligence community insider, he no doubt had access to non-public, classified information.
On a recent radio show, Rush Limbaugh told listeners he sees this as a race between impeachment and a Durham indictment.
EC may have come up with the original idea, but he required assistance. Recall the last minute whistleblower rule change to allow complaints based on secondhand or hearsay information instead of only firsthand knowledge. In addition, the Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson was very aggressive. Impatient with acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire’s inaction, he quickly wrote to Adam Schiff about this “very credible complaint.”
A former White House official who wishes to remain anonymous told Sperry, “He [EC] was moved over to the front office to temporarily fill a vacancy, where he saw everything, read everything…My recollection of Eric is that he was very smart and very passionate, particularly about Ukraine and Russia. That was his thing – Ukraine. He didn’t exactly hide his passion with respect to what he thought was the right thing to do with Ukraine and Russia, and his views were at odds with the president’s policies.”
A second anonymous former NSC official told Sperry that EC was “accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump.”
An editorial published in Issues & Insights offers an explanation as to why the mainstream media won’t report Sperry’s article aside from the fact that it argues against their narrative. The editors wrote: “If it did, it would have to admit that it’s known the “whistleblower’s” identity all along. And that it knows his biases. And that it’s under no obligation to protect his identity. And, finally, that it covered up his identity to keep the impeachment train rolling.”
And you’ve got to love Rush Limbaugh’s description of EC: “He’s lurking there in the West Wing as an Obama holdover. He’s essentially a spy for John Brennan, and he’s there to do the dirty work of the deep state.”
Limbaugh is not the only one to say EC served as a spy inside the White House.
Fox News contributor and investigative journalist Dan Bongino has a theory about the spy angle as well which he explained on his 10/31/19 podcast. He starts with an April 25, 2019 letter written by Senators Ron Johnson and Charles Grassley to Attorney General William Barr:
Emphasis: mine
Dear Attorney General Barr,
During your April 10, 2019, testimony before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, you stated that you are looking into the “genesis and conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016.”(1) You further stated that “spying did occur,” and that you believe it is your obligation to look into the question of whether surveillance activities by the Federal Bureau of lnvestigation (FBI) or other intelligence agencies were adequately predicated.
We share your concerns about these activities, and are troubled by the apparent unauthorized disclosures of surveillance efforts and other classified information during the same time period. We bring to your attention information that may assist your review.
First, in the course of our oversight work we have reviewed certain text messages that may show potential attempts by the FBI to conduct surveillance of President-elect Trump’s transition team. In text messages exchanged between former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and former FBI Attorney Lisa Page, the two discussed the possibility of developing “potential relationships” at a November 2016 FBI briefing for presidential transition team staff. Specifically, it appears they discussed sending “the CI guy” to assess an unnamed person(s) “demeanor” but were concerned because it might be unusual for him to attend. A few weeks after the presidential election, Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page discussed the logistics for the briefing.
Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page said the following:
Strzok: Talking with Bill(3). Do we want Joe(4) to go with Evanina(5) instead of Charlie(6 )for a variety of reasons?
Page: Hmm. Not sure. Would it be unusual to have [sic] show up again? Maybe another agent from the team?
1 Gregg Re and Brooke Singman, Dems rage against Barr for backing claims of Trump campaign ‘spying’ by FBl Fox News (April 10, 2019). Available at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dems-rage-against-barr-for-backing-claims-of-trump- campaign-spying-by-fbi; Nicholas Fandos and Adam Goldman, Barr Asserts Intelligence Agencies Spied on the Trump Campaign, The New York Times (April 10, 2019). Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/us/politics/barr-trump- campaign-spying.html; Philip Ewing, Citing ‘Spying’ On Trump, Barr Says He Is Looking Into Origins Of Russia Inquiry, NPR (April 10, 2019). Available at https://www.npr.org/2019/04/10/711852861 /citing-spying-on-trump-barr-says-he-s-looking-into- origins-of-russia-inquiry.
2 Id.
3 “Bill” most likely refers to E.W. Priestap, former Assistant Director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division.
4 “Joe” most likely refers to Joe Pientka III, FBI Special Agent.
5 “Evanina” most likely refers to William R. Evanina, Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center.
6 At this time it is unknown who “Charlie” is.
Page 2
Strzok: Or, he’s “the CI guy.” Same.might [sic] make sense. He can assess if thete [sic] are any news [sic] Qs, or different demeanor. If Katie’s husband is there, he can see if there are people we can develop for potential relationships
Page: Should I ask Andy(7) about it? Or Bill(8) want to reach out for Andy(9)?
Strzok: I told him I’m sure we could ask you to make the swap if we thought it was smart. It’s not until Mon so Bill can always discuss with him tomorrow. (10)
The nature of these communications, and the precise purpose of any attempts to “develop relationships” with Trump or Pence transition team staffare not immediately clear. Were these efforts done to gain better communication between the respective parties, or were the briefings used as intelligence gathering operations? Further, did any such surveillance activities continue beyond the inauguration, and in the event they did, were those activities subject to proper predication? Any improper FBI surveillance activities that were conducted before or after the 2016 election must be brought to light and properly addressed.
Additionally, we note that a number of news outlets have reported sensitive information related to the investigation into alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. Those reports have revealed sensitive information focusing on the FBI sending informants to meet with Trump advisors; a warrant to surveil Carter Page; and the United Kingdom signal intelligence agency briefing former CIA Director John Brennan on alleged communications between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials, among other things.( 11) Notably, the Justice Department Inspector General’s review of the Clinton investigation found “profound concerns about the volume and extent ofunauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel…”(12 ) It appears the same happened during the Russia investigation. Leaks to the media about ongoing investigations undermine the ability of investigators to properly investigate. Moreover, sensitive leaks to the media while members of congress performing constitutionally mandated oversight are kept in the dark is unacceptable.(13)
Accordingly, please contact our staff to schedule a briefing and answer the following no later than May 9, 2019:
7 “Andy” most likely refers to Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Director of the FBI.
8 “Bill” most likely refers to E.W. Priestap, former Assistant Director ofthe FBI’s counterintelligence division.
9 “Andy” most likely refers to Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Director of the FBI.
10 November 17, 2016, Strzok-Page Texts Part 2, p. 159, DOJ-PROD-0000325. Emphasis added.
11 Eli Lake, Focus on the Leaking, Not Just the Spying, Bloomberg Opinion (April 11, 2019). Available at
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-l l/spying-did-occur-but-barr-should-also-focus-on-the-leaking.
12 A Review of Various Actions by the Federal Bureau oflnvestigation and Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016
Electionat429(June14,2018). Availableathttps://www.justice.gov/file/l071991/download.
13 For example, former Deputy Director McCabe was fired for making unauthorized disclosures to the media regarding the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation and then lying about it. In addition, transcripts of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s phone calls with Russian Ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, were leaked. On February 15, 2017, the Judiciary Committee requested information from the Justice Department and FBI relating to that leaked information. On March 15, 2017, the FBI provided a briefing about the FBI’s Russia investigation which answered a few ofthe questions posed by the Committee, but most were not.
Page 3:
1. Please describe the nature and extent o f your review o f FBI surveillance of the Trump Campaign, President-elect Trump’s transition staff, Vice President- elect Pence’s transition staff, President Trump’s staff, and Vice President Pence’s staff, including your efforts to determine whether that surveillance was adequately predicated.
2. How many counter-intelligence briefings were provided to the Trump and Pence transition staffs prior to Inauguration Day? Please list the dates, all agencies involved, and each official that represented those agencies at the briefings.
3. Many of the FBI employees involved in these activities are no longer employed by the federal government. How will your review obtain information needed from these individuals?
4. Will you commit to providing the results of your review once completed?
5. What steps have you taken to investigate whether DOJ or FBI officials had unauthorized contacts with the media during the Russia investigation?
We anticipate that your written reply and most responsive documents will be unclassified. Please send all unclassified material directly to each Committee. In keeping with the requirements of Executive Order 13526, if any of the responsive documents do contain classified information, please segregate all unclassified material within the classified documents, provide all unclassified information directly to each Committee, and provide a classified addendum to the Office of Senate Security. Although our Committees comply with all laws and regulations governing the handling of classified information, they are not bound, absent prior agreement, by any handling restrictions.
Should you have any questions, please contact Joshua Flynn-BrowrI of Chairman Grassley’s Finance Committee staff at (202) 224-4515 or Brian Dowriey of Chairman Johnson’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee staff at (202) 224-4751.
Dan Bongino’s take:
Strzok and Page are talking about developing sources to spy on the White House. They’re talking about sending a CI guy and they’re worried about outing “Charlie.” They’re talking about leveraging an existing relationship with an FBI employee, Katie, who is working for Strzok. Her husband works as Chief of Staff for Mike Pence at the time. Bongino says he has asked repeatedly who Charlie is.
CI? One might think counter-intelligence. But what would a counter-intelligence agent be doing working in the White House? Bongino wonders if it might mean “Confidential Informant” instead.
Charlie? Bongino remarks that he’s never, ever seen Sperry include a “pronunciation note” in his pieces. And he finds it very odd. He wonders if “Char” in “char-a-MEL-ah” might be a code name.
Further, Ciaramella (pronounced char-a-MEL-ah) left his National Security Council posting in the White House’s West Wing in mid-2017 amid concerns about negative leaks to the media. He has since returned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
It could be a stretch. It might not be. Clearly, Senators Grassley and Johnson were concerned about it as well. A conservative watchdog group, The American Center for Law and Justice, led by President Trump’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow, has filed a series of FOIA lawsuits to obtain all of former FBI Director James Comey’s emails from April 1, 2016 through May 31, 2017, “seeking information about two bureau officials it accuses of being “spies” for former FBI Director James Comey in the White House.”
Bongino develops his theory in the video below. (Relevant segment begins at 6:45.)
Finally, also discussed in Bongino’s podcast, is an invitation for a series of events sponsored by major Clinton Foundation donor ($25 million) and Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk in the spring of 2016. It looks to be an Ukrainian outreach type of event. Ukrainian member of parliament Olga Bielkova is scheduled to meet with none other than Eric Ciaramella. She hates Trump. (This can be viewed at 22:08 in the video.)
The emerging image of EC shows him to be a hyper-partisan Democrat, well-connected within the ranks of the deep state, who was possibly spying on the Trump White House for the FBI. As voters see the individual behind the whistleblower complaint which has triggered an impeachment inquiry, they will “have thoughts” about the Democrats.
The Russian collusion hoax was, I have to say, audacious, creative, well-planned and executed. And it almost worked. The whistleblower scandal, by comparison, is bold, but, thrown together by necessity at the last minute, it lacks the planning, the coordination and the sophistication of its predecessor. Just months after their first coup attempt ended in failure, a scandal which preoccupied the news cycle for nearly three years, they’re trying to foist a new one upon us. Do they really believe American voters have such short memories?
The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkin’s, Jr. says this far more eloquently. “Democrats’ and the media’s astonishing and studied obliviousness to the bonfire they made of their own credibility with the Russia hoax. Unless I miss my guess, even many Trump-skeptical voters have no interest in giving victory to so corrupt an opposition.”
