Ukrainian aircraft was shot down in Iran due to human error: Iran military statement

January 11, 2020
DUBAI (Reuters) – A Ukrainian aircraft which crashed earlier this week in Iran had flown close to a sensitive military site belonging to the elite Revolutionary Guards and was shot down unintentionally due to human error, the Iranian military said in a statement read on state TV on Saturday.
The responsible parties would be referred to a judicial department within the military and held accountable, the statement said.
All 176 people on board were killed in the crash. The Iranian military statement expressed condolences to the families of the victims.
The United States and Canada had said that the plane was shot down, a claim Iran had initially denied.

https://www.oann.com/ukrainian-aircraft-was-shot-down-in-iran-due-to-human-error-iran-military-statement/

Mo Brooks Identifies Reason He Thinks Officials Had to Hold Back During Congressional Briefing, It’s Not Good

  Article by Nick Arama in "RedState":

I posted that picture of Quisling because he is the sort who leaks information to the enemy. 

Nick Arama: "Some of the members of Congress were upset with the briefing that they received about the killing of IRGC terrorist leader Qasem Soleimani.

Democrats came out of the meeting complaining they weren’t told information. Here’s the video of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), claiming they weren’t presented with enough evidence there was an imminent threat.

Even a couple of Republicans, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) while supportive of President Donald Trump and his actions were disturbed they didn’t get more information in the meeting.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) thinks he knows the reason why the seeming reluctance of the administration to put certain things out on the table in the briefing.

Wow. But given the behavior we’ve seen, it seems a troubling, real concern.

Brooks told the Daily Wire more in an interview. 

Brooks said, “There were questions asked for specific information and the people on the dais simply did everything they could to get around providing the specific information, which allowed the inference that they had reservations about sharing that classified information with Congress in that kind of setting — which in turn leads to the inference that they had a reasonable amount of distrust as to whether shared classified information would in turn be shared by members of Congress with the news media or our enemies.”

He noted that Vice President Mike Pence had expressed the same concerns.

“To protect sources and methods, we’re simply not able to share with every member of the House and Senate the intelligence that supported the president’s decision to take out Qassem Soleimani,” Pence told Fox News. “I can assure your viewers that there was a threat of an imminent attack.”
Responding to Pence’s statement, Brooks said, “That’s very consistent with the concern that Congress cannot be trusted to keep classified information classified.”
“[It’s] also consistent with that concern is what you just got done seeing with Adam Schiff’s Intelligence Committee during the impeachment proceedings wherein that information that was collected in a SCIF was invariably leaked to the news media,” Brooks continued. “So if you just had that experience where members of Congress are quite clearly leaking information that was collected in a SCIF environment, how can you trust them not to leak classified information regarding Iran that could lead to the deaths of our intelligence sources, or empower terrorist organizations to avoid American retribution for the killing that they have done?”
Brooks concluded by telling The Daily Wire, “Quite clearly, there are some more visible members of Congress that caused greater concerns that others, but I’ll leave to you and the general public to figure out which ones those are.”

This is so disturbing. It’s bad enough when they were leaking in order to politically harm the president. But if you can’t trust whether or not they’ll leak in a potential military situation with a foreign enemy, that’s really problematic and dangerous.

As we noted not only have there been troubling statements, but you even have senators and other members of Congress doing a conference call with a pro-Iranian lobbying group the day after we’re attacked by Iran and encouraging protests against “war” with Iran, attacking Trump and military action.

All of this problematic, to say the least, when the first and only priority should be the protection and safety of Americans.

https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/01/10/763505/

Blink!

I think we’ve all learned a valuable lesson here. And that’s that years of botox injections do not impede one’s ability to blink.

Patriot Retort

Yesterday, Mitch McConnell announced that the Senate would begin the impeachment trial next week with or without Nancy Pelosi transmitting the articles.

And whattaya know:

Whelp.  I think we’ve all learned a valuable lesson here.  And that’s that years of botox injections do not impede one’s ability to blink.

Because Mitch got Nancy to blink.

So much for “Leverage.”

I sure hope it was a small wager, Mimi.  Because Mitch got Nancy to blink.

Yeah, all those “Pelosi’s got McConnell right where she wants him” takes all look a little stupid now, don’t they?

Of course for people who understand how leverage works, they all looked a little stupid long before Mitch got Nancy to blink.

Naturally Twitter is populated by people shrieking “She did not get owned! She did not get owned!”  Because reality never invades their personal spaces, so that’s hardly a shock.

Delaying sending the articles of impeachment was the stupidest thing Nancy did since the last stupid thing Nancy did.

The biggest winner in all this is Joe Biden.

Thanks to Nancy’s absurd delay, Senators Sanders, Warren, Klobuchar and Booker will now have to leave the campaign trail to attend the Senate trial.

From trail to trial just a few weeks before the Iowa Caucus. Thanks, Nancy!

I hope Joe sends Pelosi a fruit basket.

The only way to erase the advantage Nancy just gave Joe Biden is for the Senate to call him to testify.

But, sure. She’s a “master legislator” and she had all the leverage. Go with that.

President Trump Said You May Get Tired Of Winning!

Damn I never get tired of winning! Thank you President Trump for all you do for America:

In December 2018, George Luber, a top climate expert with the CDC, declared himself the latest victim of the Trump administration’s war on science.

As Luber later alleged in a whistleblower complaint filed to the US Office of Special Counsel, officials at the CDC tried to censor work on climate change shortly after the 2016 election; this included canceling a major climate conference he'd organized, trying to take away funds earmarked for the Climate and Health Program he oversaw, and even trying to stop him from using the words "climate change."

In response, Luber said, he fought back. Agency officials then put him under investigation, removed him from climate work, barred him from showing up unannounced to the campus where he’d worked for nearly 20 years, and tried to fire him.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zahrahirji/cdc-whistleblower-george-luber-investigation

This Liberal whined he had to quit the CDC because of President Trump and what they were doing.  Turns out he isthe Jussie Smollett of the CDC!

Luber’s powerful narrative, according to about a dozen current and former staffers and people involved in the investigation, was false. His ouster from the agency’s climate program, they say, was for a less heroic reason: He was behaving badly in the workplace, particularly toward women.

BuzzFeed News has learned that the scientist was kicked out of the CDC’s climate program shortly after five women on staff accused him of absenteeism, misuse of agency resources, and sexist behavior — including one instance in which he called a woman employee “a naughty girl,” another in which he shared a naked photo of himself with a subordinate, and several times when he joked about making an app for hooking up with twins and triplets. One black staffer alleged that Luber made inappropriate comments to her about race, and three others said that Luber repeatedly mistreated her.

As the CDC investigation expanded to include interviews with the rest of the staff, the allegations about Luber’s offenses increased.

Another Liberal bites the dust and another Liberal narrative is proven to be a lie, backed by the lying Media!

Oh and, Nancy "Tide Pod Nancy" backs down and will send the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate so McConnell and dumpo them in the toilet!

Who is tired of WINNING

Neil Peart, Drummer and Lyricist of Rush, Dead at 67

Neil Peart, the drummer and lyricist of progressive rock band Rush, has died, CBC News and Rolling Stone report. According to the reports, Peart died on January 7 in Santa Monica, California after a years-long battle with brain cancer. He was 67 years old.
Renowned for his technical expertise and unique performance style, Neil Peart was considered by many to be one of the best rock drummers of all time. He retired from professional drumming, and Rush, in 2015.
This is a developing story and will be updated in the coming hours.

https://pitchfork.com/news/neil-peart-drummer-and-lyricist-of-rush-dead-at-67/

4 Iranians detained for illegally crossing into Honduras

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 1:00 PM PT — Friday, January 10, 2020

Four Iranians were detained by authorities in Honduras after they allegedly tried to cross into the country illegally. Officials believe the migrants were traveling to the United States border when they were arrested earlier this week.
Their illegal cross-country attempt comes amid soaring tensions between the U.S. and Iran.
“Yesterday, our specialized immigration team and police special forces detained, in Southern Honduras, four Iranian citizens attempting to enter Honduras irregularly,” stated Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández. “These people are being transported to the capital to undertake a much more in-depth investigation.”
The U.S. is slated to send police to the Honduran border to help with immigration control. Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf visited the country this week to discuss the implementation of the ‘Safe Third Country’ agreement officials signed last year.

https://www.oann.com/4-iranians-detained-for-illegally-crossing-into-honduras/

The Media Is Always, Always Wrong About Trump And National Security

Erielle Davidson reporting for The Federalist

We should stop listening to the media on national security issues, since they are always wrong. As a captive audience, they make us accompany them through their stages of hysteria, and it's insufferable.

If anything may be gleaned from the recent hyperbolic reporting about Iran, it is that our media betters, particularly those reporting on national security issues, are deeply and inexorably challenged at providing reasonable and thoughtful analysis due to a blinding animus towards President Trump.

Nothing evinces this phenomenon more succinctly than the recent days in which supposedly serious national security reporters waxed poetic about the likelihood of World War III, while sharing unverified reports about tens of killings of Americans from Iranian state media. If we knew what was good for us, we would never offer the privilege of precious airwaves again to such individuals, but alas, they remain alert in the bunkers, waiting for the next national security issue to spin into full-blown crisis, if only to crush Trump. They have become the self-anointed soldiers of the Resistance, defending the Obama foreign policy legacy at all costs, even sacrificing their reputations to take up the mantle formerly assumed by Ben Rhodes.

The level of breathless misinformation and disinformation spread after Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani’s killing by the individuals we rely on supposedly to report facts and offer analysis in a responsible and undramatized manner was stunning. But this isn’t their first rodeo.

No, such grossly hyperbolic reporting for the sake of convincing people that Trump may have created an epically destructive policy quagmire has become the new calling card of the media. The media has shown that they cannot eviscerate Trump with factual, state-of-affairs reporting because those affairs are never quite dire enough for the media. Similarly, for the sake of avoiding flat-out lying entirely (although it is entertaining to watch the “mistakes” go in one direction), the media is forced to cabin their criticism in fantastic projections.

Trump almost started World War III. Trump almost catalyzed the entire destruction of the Kurds. Trump almost started war with North Korea. Trump almost started a full-blown war between the Palestinian-Arabs and the Israelis. Trump almost devastated the economy by slapping tariffs on Chinese goods. See how much heavy-lifting the word “almost” is doing? It’s utterly bizarre, because these predictions never happen.

The word’s subjunctive quality has become a shield for the media as they predict wild policy outcomes that have no grounding in the facts. When President Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, we were essentially promised insurmountable bloodshed and the irrevocable destruction of any hope at peace in the region. Thankfully, we got neither. But that didn’t stop reporters from sheepishly convincing themselves that, although their prediction never achieved fruition, it still could have happened.

That is the same dance being rehearsed now  on Iran. Our firefighting media know the steps so well. The beauty of almost – and its ugly step-child could have – is that these reporters never have to be right for something to be almost true.

By all accounts, President Trump’s performance vis-à-vis Iran was stunningly effective at reestablishing the policy of deterrence (rather than appeasement) in the region. However, media reporting as of late has made it abundantly clear that wild projections of what could have been will continue to far eclipse what actually was. And the only people who suffer from such bombastic “analysis” are those who are forced to rely on it, given most people’s understandably limited knowledge of Middle Eastern geopolitics.

There’s a gross irresponsibility in such “reporting” and signals the ever-growing credibility crisis of the American media. Contrary to what Time magazine published (and delivered as a push notification), there is absolutely no reason you need to “discuss” Iran with your children. The hysteria is based on lies those in the media continue to recite to themselves and are dangerously projecting upon the greater population.

No, perhaps it’s time to “discuss” Iran with our media betters  instead of children, if only not to be dragged along through their hysterical meltdowns. Indeed, we would be spared the ahistorical and insufferable nonsense. At least until the next manufactured apocalypse.

Russian warship ‘aggressively approached’ US destroyer in Arabian Sea

WASHINGTON — A Russian warship “aggressively approached” a U.S. Navy destroyer Thursday in the north Arabian Sea, the service said.
“While the Russian ship took action, the initial delay in complying with international rules while it was making an aggressive approach increased the risk of collision,” the U.S. Fifth Fleet said in a statement. “The U.S. Navy continues to remain vigilant and is trained to act in a professional manner.”

The USS Farragut was approached by the Russian ship. The incident is the latest in a string of close encounters between American and Russian warships in international waters.
In June, the USS Chancellorsville avoided a near collision with a Russian Udaloy I-class destroyer in the Philippine Sea, with the ships coming between 50 to 100 feet of each other.
"Farragut sounded five short blasts, the international maritime signal for danger of a collision, and requested the Russian ship alter course in accordance with international rules of the road. The Russian ship initially refused but ultimately altered course," according to the Fifth Fleet’s statement.
https://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/russian-warship-aggressively-approached-us-destroyer-in-arabian-sea-1.614287

Mitch McConnell Signs Onto GOP Proposal To Dismiss Impeachment Trial

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell endorsed a resolution Thursday to dismiss the partisan impeachment trial expected in the Senate following the passage of impeachment articles.

McConnell joins a dozen other GOP co-sponsors who have signed onto the resolution put forward by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.

The resolution comes as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has refused to hand over the articles of impeachment passed by the House days before Christmas over to the upper chamber for the next phase of impeachment to begin.

Pelosi has held the articles hostage to elicit concessions from Republicans on how a trial in the Senate ought to be run in a desperate effort to save the collapsing attempt to reverse the 2016 presidential election.

Throughout their rushed investigation in the lower chamber motivated by allegations that Trump is a clear and urgent danger to the republic, Democratic lawmakers failed to surface any incriminating evidence against the president, let alone actions worthy of a “high crime and misdemeanor.”

Instead, the House proceedings were a trainwreck for Democrats hoping to drum up enough public support to apply adequate pressure on Senate Republicans to consider ousting a president of their own party. To the contrary, public support for impeachment went underwater after the proceedings and three Democrats defected from the party on the measure. Despite the lack of evidence, Democrats voted to impeach the president anyway marking a major step closer to achieving the top item on their policy agenda since even before Trump took office.

Weeks after the articles have been passed, Pelosi has continued to withhold the articles from the Senate to allow a trial to begin undercutting the “urgent” nature of the process further exposing the malicious motivations of the proceedings. In a bid to save the effort, Pelosi has called on McConnell to pledge calling additional witnesses to testify in the trial before handing the articles over, though McConnell has shown no signs of bowing to Pelosi’s demands.

Pelosi’s Desperate Attempt To Save Impeachment Is Hurting Democrats

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist

For every day that Nancy Pelosi keeps her hand on the articles so they don't get to the Senate, Republicans’ case against impeachment grows stronger.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dug in this week on her strategy to save Democrats’ futile attempt to reverse the results of the 2016 presidential election through impeachment. Pelosi reaffirmed to Democrats behind closed doors Tuesday that she would continue to refuse handing over the passed articles of impeachment to the upper chamber until Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell caved to Democratic demands on how the trial will be conducted.

House Democrats passed two articles of impeachment days before Christmas last month, charging Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The articles, which were passed by a nearly uniform partisan vote with no Republican support, have since been on Pelosi’s desk waiting to be passed to the Senate for trial.

Directly after their passage, however, Pelosi announced she would hold the articles hostage until McConnell outlined procedures for the coming trial and has shown no signs of backing down. Pelosi’s decision to halt the process appears a desperate attempt to save the impeachment effort after a disastrous process rushed in the House failed to surface any incriminating evidence against president.

Democrats conducted only four weeks of public hearings, calling witnesses whose testimony either destroyed their own credibility or exonerated the president. As a result, public opinion went underwater on impeachment, dashing Democrat hopes of drumming up enough support to apply adequate pressure on Republicans to support impeachment. Real Clear Politics’ latest aggregate of polling on the issue shows a statistical tie among those who believe Trump should be removed from office and those who do not.

On the day of the impeachment vote, a majority of the American public paid little mind to the historic proceedings unfolding in the House, baffling media elites who couldn’t understand why ordinary Americans went on with their lives rather than focus on the predictable partisan circus in Washington.

“It was a momentous day in American history. But, by all indications, it was not a momentous day in the lives of most Americans,” The New York Times declared. “As history played out Wednesday amid the bombast and rancor of impeachment proceedings, many of them seemed intent on looking elsewhere.”

Now Democrats are turning to prolonging a Senate trial to unearth evidence the House failed to find, perhaps because the evidence doesn’t exist.

Pelosi Has No Leverage

By withholding the articles of impeachment, Pelosi is banking on McConnell agreeing to call additional witnesses to testify in the Senate trial. If Democrats had taken the process seriously, however, these witnesses would have been called at the start of the impeachment inquiry in September, when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California ran backroom secret hearings to pre-interview witnesses prior to its public proceedings.

Pelosi however, has no leverage on the issue. The worst consequences of Pelosi indefinitely withholding the articles of impeachment? The Senate doesn’t proceed with a sham partisan trial launched by Democrats who refused to accept the results of the 2016 election. That’s hardly an undesirable outcome for Senate Republicans, who have shown little appetite for entertaining Democrats’ bogus impeachment. More than a dozen GOP senators have already joined Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri in a motion to dismiss the coming trial altogether.

Alternatively, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has proposed the Senate change the rules dictating impeachment to begin the trial without Pelosi’s approval. McConnell has endorsed the idea and Graham has begun preparing the resolution, according to The Hill.

Whether Graham and McConnell have the votes yet remains to be seen. The fact remains that McConnell has no incentive to bow to Pelosi’s demands to receive articles that Republicans never wanted to see in the first place.

Senate Democrats Are Turning on Pelosi

Democrats are already turning against Pelosi’s losing strategy and publicly urging the House speaker to hand over the articles to allow the process to continue its next phase. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California became the latest Democratic senator Wednesday to abandon Pelosi on the issue and push for the speaker’s release of the articles passed last month.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Connecticut Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal agree that it’s time for Pelosi to move on and let the Senate take its turn.

“If we’re going to do it, she should send them over. I don’t see what good delay does,” Feinstein told Bloomberg. “I don’t see what good a delay does.” It’s not doing Democrats any good.

Republicans’ Case Is Only Getting Stronger

Pelosi’s desperate decision to keep the articles in her possession has undercut the entire premise of the Democrats’ rushed impeachment alleging Trump to be an urgent threat to the republic whose need for immediate removal prompted hasty action by the House.

Pelosi’s actions following the articles’ passage exposes for the impeachment process for what it really is: a partisan action taken for the sole purpose of achieving the top item on Democrats’ policy agenda since even before Trump’s triumphant victory. Had Trump really been a true threat to the survival of American democracy, Pelosi would have marched the articles straight across Capitol Hill the very moment they were passed.

Instead, for every day that goes by that Pelosi keeps her hand on the articles, the Republicans’ case against impeachment grows stronger as the American people realize how much of a farce the entire process against Trump really is. If Pelosi never allows the trial to move forward, why impeach the president in the first place?

Pelosi Is Interfering With the 2020 Democratic Primary

Five Democratic senators are currently still vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, and the coming impeachment trial threatens to trap leading candidates in Washington D.C. in the midst of what is likely to become a competitive primary following Iowa and New Hampshire.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Michael Bennet of Colorado are each threatened by the coming trial.

The longer Pelosi waits to allow a trial to proceed, the deeper into the primary Democratic senators seeking the nomination will be stuck on Capitol Hill rather than campaigning in subsequent contest states. That might grant an opening to former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is at the top of polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, but that’s bad news for Warren and Sanders, who are also top-tier contenders.

The race’s frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, is also not immune to the impeachment chaos. To the contrary, Biden is at the center of it. Democrats allege Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to interfere in the upcoming election by launching an investigation into the Biden family based on a July 25 phone call in exchange for the release of nearly $400 million in military aid.

An unredacted transcript of the phone call was declassified and released by the White House revealing no such arrangement. What the call did reveal was the American president urging the Ukrainian president to investigate the origins of its peddling the Russian collusion hoax in the United States and to root out corruption in his country. The Biden family is at the heart of the corruption Trump mentioned.

While dictating U.S. policy towards Ukraine as vice president, Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company earning $50,000 a month despite no prior experience in the industry. A Federalist analysis on Hunter Biden’s compensation exposes Hunter’s level of payment to be far, far higher than that of an experienced board member at a comparable company.

As Pelosi drags out impeachment, the Biden family’s questionable arrangement in Ukraine will remain in the spotlight while hampering senators’ ability to campaign at the height of the Democratic primary.

Fontainebleau palace 'plot': Chinese mafia link probed

French police have released details of how they thwarted an alleged plot to raid Fontainebleau palace near Paris.

Five Spaniards and a man thought to be Chinese are in custody. They deny any involvement in the post-Christmas raid.
Police believe the six were targeting Napoleon III's treasures from Empress Eugenie's Chinese Museum and are probing possible Chinese mafia links.
Fontainebleau was targeted only four years ago. Some 20 priceless artefacts were taken and never recovered.

How the suspects were caught

Spanish police were first alerted to a potential plot to target a French national museum specialising in Asian art.
They passed information to Europol, along with names and photos of some of the suspects.
The case was taken on by France's central office for combating the trafficking of cultural goods (OCBC). Six suspects were located staying in a hotel in Nemours, 16km (10 miles) south of the palace.
A French surveillance team tracked the suspects for several days. Trips were made to the palace and a series of objects were bought, including gloves, hoods, pickaxes and crowbars. Two cars were stolen, according to police.
Then in the early hours of 28 December, police moved in on the group in the hotel car park.
"We found photos that proved for us they were going to steal works of art of Asian origin that were on exhibition in the museum," Col Didier Berger of the OCBC told French media.

What we know of the alleged plot

The six suspects deny the allegations against them and insist they were staying in the area as tourists.
OCBC commander Jean-Luc Boyer told the BBC: "They're not saying much; they're not big talkers."
He added: "Right now I can't say whether it was triads or mafia, but it's a very serious lead for us."
It is too early to say if the alleged crime was commissioned by a group specialised in art theft.
"Was it ordered and ordered by an Asian country? We can't say that now," commander Boyer said.

Although the theory of a Chinese link is being actively investigated, another Asian country such as South Korea could equally be involved. Police are not even sure the sixth man in custody is Chinese as he had false papers from a foreign country.
Of the five Spanish suspects, some already have criminal records. Spanish police sources have already told national media that a seasoned criminal called Juan María Gordillo Plaza, also known as El Niño Juan, is among them.
One police officer was quoted by Journal de Dimanche as saying the order must have come from a Chinese triad. "Chinese mafia have a big presence in Spain and have big economic set-ups and enormous financial means."

What is at Fontainebleau?

The Chinese Museum there was built to house the Empress Eugenie's Far-Eastern treasures.
Some were, in the museum's words, revolutionary plunder from the imperial depository and other artefacts were seized when the Summer Palace in Beijing was sacked by French and British soldiers in 1860.
The artefacts stolen in 2015 included a replica of a crown of the King of Siam, now Thailand, given to Emperor Napoleon III in 1861.
The stolen pieces are now thought to have been moved abroad. The French team says some 90% of stolen art leaves France - and it leaves the country fast.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51062649

To The Liberal Media’s Dismay....

John Daniel Davidson writing for The Federalist

To The Liberal Media’s Dismay, 

There Will Be No Disastrous War With Iran

Only a mainstream media that’s been blinded by hatred of Trump could be this disappointed their predictions of all-out war with Iran haven’t come true.

The last few days have been an ongoing spectacle of media bias and incompetence in the coverage of the Qassem Suleimani strike and its fallout.

Mainstream outlets, suffering mightily from Trump derangement syndrome, practically rooted for a wider conflict with Iran in the hopes it might damage Trump, then evinced genuine disappointment when Iran backed down after half-heartedly lobbing a few short-range ballistic missiles in the direction of U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, which inflicted no casualties.

But just think what could have been! Three days ago, The Atlantic’s David A. Graham wrote a piece headlined, “It’s 2003 All Over Again,” in which he argues the recent killing of Iranian general Suleimani by U.S. missile strike last week is just like the runup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush.

“The U.S. stands on the brink of an unpredictable war in the Middle East,” Graham writes, then describes a scenario in which an American president, “untutored in foreign affairs,” is pushed into war by a hawkish vice president and a powerful Cabinet secretary seeking to “follow through on their deep-rooted ideological commitments.” Meanwhile, as civilian leaders “march toward war,” military officers seem unprepared and “startled by the administration’s belligerence.”

See the connection? Graham sure does. “Each new piece of information about President Donald Trump’s decision to assassinate Iranian General Qassem Soleimani produces sobering parallels with the situation 17 years ago.”

What a difference two days make. After a face-saving missile attack on an Iraqi airbase that houses some U.S. troops, which American officials were apparently told about in advance by Iraqi intermediaries, the fight seems to have gone out of Iran. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweetedTuesday night that Iran had “concluded proportionate measures” and that it does not “seek escalation”—an admission by Tehran that President Trump had called its bluff and the ayatollahs aren’t willing to risk a broader conflict.

Further confirmation came when Shiite Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told pro-Iranian militias in Iraq not to retaliate, saying in a statement, “the crisis is over.”

On Wednesday, Trump confirmed that no U.S. troops were injured in the missile attack and that Iran now “appears to be standing down.” Instead of ratcheting up the bellicose rhetoric, Trump gave the Iranians an off-ramp, saying America “is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it,” and calling for new multilateral negotiations to replace the defunct 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

So far, all of this is very unlike the leadup to the Iraq War, let alone the beginning of World War III. To the media’s dismay, Trump isn’t turning into Bush, and Iran isn’t turning into Iraq. In fact, the entire saga has been deterrence-through-strength 101. Trump surgically took out the world’s number-one terrorist and successfully managed a de-escalation with Iran, but all the liberal media can muster in response is fear-mongering, dissimulation, and what amounts to a collective sneer at Trump and his supporters.

The Media Will Do Anything to Hurt Trump

The Atlantic ran a column by David Frum on Wednesday crowing about how the American people still aren’t rallying around Trump. “The Trump administration and its supporters seem to have hoped for a ‘rally around the flag’ effect from the killing of Soleimani. This did not happen.”

Can you imagine Frum or any other mainstream pundit writing such an article after, say, Benghazi? Of course not. Yet that was a legitimate crisis of the Obama administration’s own making, a deceit-laden screwup brought on by a needless Libya campaign that turned the country into a failed state. Remember all the Atlantic think pieces on how Americans weren’t rallying around President Obama? Me neither.

It seems the media—along with no small number of Democrats—will say anything and take any position, no matter how asinine, if it might hurt Trump. They’ll even praise a murderous theocratic regime. Here’s the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel, with a case in point:

And here’s Joy Behar of ABC’s “The View,” touting the “good news” that Richard Spencer, the racist neo-Nazi provocateur, regrets supporting Trump because of the Suleimani strike—at which the audience applauded.

No wonder so many people hate the mainstream press. No wonder, for example, that in the aftermath of the shooting at West Freeway Church of Christ in Fort Worth, Texas, the church’s minister, Britt Farmer, refused to speak with anyone in the mainstream media. He gave only one interview to the editor of a Christian outlet, who said Farmer “feared how a conservative Christian minister in a pistol-packing congregation might be portrayed.” Smart man.

Of course, no one can predict what will come next in the Middle East. Perhaps Iran will retaliate further, maybe with a terrorist-style attack against U.S. targets somewhere. But for now, by any reasonable standard Trump’s gambit has worked. He dealt a harsh blow to Iran and the mullahs backed down. Just don’t expect the media to be honest about it.

Another Rogue Judge Is Slapped Down Hard Over Blocking the Border Wall

Bonchie reporting for RedState

This has been quite a two week stretch for the President. He’s essentially won the battle over impeachment, owned Iran, and now he’s getting another win for his border wall.

If you’ve been falling the fight over securing the border, several district court judges have gone rogue and have had to be slapped down by the appeals courts, or in some cases, the Supreme Court. One specific case involved a judge in Texas, which I wrote on here. Despite the highest court already green lighting Trump’s use of certain military funds to secure the border, this judge decided to give standing to pro-immigration groups and claim they would be “damaged” by such a move.

As I wrote back in October, that made no sense at all.

First, how does El Paso County and an activist group (who are the plaintiffs here) have standing to challenge federal agencies using federal funds on federal land? The simple answer is that there’s no legal reason they have standing. Yet, this judge decided they did based on the laughable notion that El Paso County would suffer “damage to their reputation.” By such a standard, anyone could have standing in any lawsuit against the federal government. It’s just ludicrous.

In short, it was a tortured decision that the judge massaged to meet his personal political goals, not to actually follow the law.

Now, it seems the appeals court agrees with my assessment.

A divided federal appeals court has lifted a lower court’s order blocking $3.6 billion in military construction funds that President Donald Trump planned to use to finance an expanded and improved border wall.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a brief order on Wednesday granting the Trump administration’s request to stay the injunction that U.S. District Court Judge David Briones, based in El Paso, Texas, issued last month…

The 5th Circuit panel’s majority did not provide a detailed explanation for its action, but noted that last July the Supreme Court stayed a similar injunction issued by a federal judge in Oakland, Calif.

Their reasoning was actually quite simple. They cited that the Supreme Court had already shot this Texas’ judges logic down and that he had ignored precedent. Therefore, the Trump administration got their wish of a stay of his decision.

In this decision by the appeals court, they also scoffed at the idea that El Paso County and some immigration activist group would have standing to challenge the distribution of federal funds. That should have been common sense from the beginning, but the original, partisan judge was clearly not acting within any semblance of logic.

Hopefully, this is the end of the stupidity dealing with Trump’s emergency declaration and the use of these military funds. There have now been multiple appeals courts and the Supreme court give it the green light. If another low-level district judge seeks to block it, they should be sanctioned. This has gotten ridiculous at this point.

But please Justice Roberts, do tell me how more about how there aren’t Obama judges or Clinton judges making decisions based on politics.

Nancy Pelosi’s Delusions

David Catron writing for The American Spectator

Nancy Pelosi’s Delusions of Grandeur

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly portrayed President Trump as an existential threat to the republic. As she put it when announcing the House impeachment inquiry, “The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution.” She later justified her mad rush to hold an impeachment vote in December by claiming it was necessary “to defend democracy.” In reality, by presiding over the hyper-partisan passage of two inscrutable articles of impeachment and holding them hostage until the Senate allows her to dictate how it will conduct the president’s trial, Pelosi has revealed that she is the genuine menace to our unique system of government.

The speaker of the House has no authority to impose conditions on the Senate in return for transmitting articles of impeachment to that body. The Constitution unambiguously invests the upper chamber with the sole power to conduct presidential impeachment trials, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it abundantly clear that he has no intention of acceding to Speaker Pelosi’s unconstitutional demands: “There will be no haggling with the House over Senate procedure. We will not cede our authority to try this impeachment. The House’s turn is over. The Senate has made its decision.” Yet Madam Speaker continues to issue high-handed ultimatums:

The President & Sen. McConnell have run out of excuses. They must allow witnesses to testify, and produce the documents Trump has blocked, so Americans can see the facts for themselves. The Senate cannot be complicit in the President’s cover-up.

By presuming to dictate what the president and Senate Majority Leader “must” do, Pelosi is deliberately undermining the checks and balances built into the system by the Framers. The Constitution provides for the separation of powers among the three branches of the government, and none of the three is constitutionally permitted to usurp the prerogatives of the other two. Likewise, each house of Congress has powers that may not be arrogated by the other. All spending legislation must originate in the House, for example, and only the Senate has the power to approve judicial nominations. More to the point, only the Senate possesses the power to conduct an impeachment trial.

Nancy Pelosi has evidently lost patience with such pesky constitutional limitations. As recently as Tuesday evening Pelosi, produced a “Dear Colleague” letter that takes issue with McConnell’s plan to conduct President Trump’s impeachment trial using the same rules that were followed in the Clinton impeachment trial: “Leader McConnell’s misleading claims about the Clinton trial process  are being used to justify the GOP’s decision to cover up witnesses and documentation that would fully expose the President’s wrongdoing.” This is a transparent stall tactic, of course, and that is abundantly clear to the voters according to the latest Harvard CAPS/Harris survey:

A majority of respondents said Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) should send the articles of impeachment against President Trump to the Senate, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill. The poll showed 58 percent of respondents believe Pelosi should send the articles, while 42 percent said Pelosi should hold up the articles in the House.

Even worse, Senate Democrats are growing impatient with Pelosi’s stall tactics. Politico reports that a number of them have admitted that they have very little real leverage and that Speaker Pelosi’s temporizing is undermining the party line that impeaching Trump is a matter of great urgency. As Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) put it, “The longer it goes on the less urgent it becomes. So if it’s serious and urgent, send them over.” Other Democratic senators noted Pelosi’s lack of leverage. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said, “I don’t know what leverage we have. It looks like the cake is already baked.” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) put it like this: “I do think it is time to get on with it.”

Madam Speaker received more bad news when Majority Leader McConnell announced that he had enough GOP votes (51) to approve rules for President Trump’s impeachment trial without acquiescing to Pelosi’s demands regarding which witnesses will be called and when. It won’t be hard to guess who the last two GOP holdouts were: “Centrist Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska publicly backed starting the trial, then deciding on witnesses.” Now that McConnell has the backing of these two senators, Nancy Pelosi’s attempt to usurp Senate prerogatives has failed. If she deigns to transmit the articles to the Senate, the trial will go more or less as follows:

• The Senate will vote on the general procedures to be followed. Because McConnell has secured 51 votes, the process will look much like the Clinton trial. This means there will be no decision about witnesses until after the arguments for and against removal are made.
• The trial will open with Chief Justice John G. Roberts presiding. The senators will swear an oath to listen impartially to the arguments of both sides. Opening arguments for removal will be made by the “House Managers,” and the president’s attorneys will make their arguments against removal.
• Mercifully, the senators are not permitted to talk during the opening arguments. Any senator who has a question will be required to write it down, whereupon Chief Justice Roberts will read it aloud, and it will answered by the appropriate party. There were over 100 questions during the Clinton trial.
• Only at this point will a vote be held on whether to allow witnesses or hear additional evidence. The Republicans will presumably vote against both motions, and they will prevail pursuant to the amorphous nature of the impeachment articles, their Senate majority, and the inevitability of acquittal.
• Finally, a vote to acquit or convict the president will be held, and the trial will end. This took about six weeks in the Clinton case. It will probably take less time to dispose of the frivolous  charges concocted against Trump.
• 
  

None of this will come to pass, however, until Nancy Pelosi realizes she has no leverage over the Senate and finally relinquishes the abstruse articles of impeachment that she and the Democratic caucus cooked up during their bizarre impeachment inquiry. In the end, her claims that the president constitutes a threat to the Republic and must be removed from office to defend democracy aren’t taken seriously by the electorate. Moreover, the result of the Senate trial is a foregone conclusion. The real danger to our uniquely successful system of government is Nancy Pelosi’s delusions of grandeur.

Nancy Pelosi Says She’s Not Withholding Articles of Impeachment “Indefinitely”

The nonsense is off-the-charts around this issue.   The DNC media apparatus are playing a game of willful blindness (Mamet Principle) and the RNC media appear genuinely oblivious…  It is beyond silly.

Today Pelosi stutters about releasing the articles sometime “soon”.

WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she’s not withholding articles of impeachment from the Senate “indefinitely” and will probably send them over “soon,” responding to mounting pressure to allow the Senate to open proceedings in President Trump’s impeachment trial.

“You will keep asking me the same question, I will keep giving you the same answer,” Pelosi said in her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill on Thursday morning. “As I said right from the start, we need to see the arena in which we are sending our managers. Is that too much to ask?” (more)

The House didn’t contract with two-dozen former Obama legal minds from in/around the Lawfare community (and the Mueller group) back in December ’18 and January ’19 including: Douglas Letter, Mary McCord, Norm Eisen, Barry Berke and Daniel Goldman, for a specific process; and now simultaneously get to pontificate that Speaker Pelosi is in charge of this process.  She ain’t.  Period.

This was/is an organized plan by all of the aforementioned with the goal of gaining legal authority to exploit the same team’s prior opposition research on Trump.  The House impeachment is a means to an end; not the end itself.

The House has a group of dozens of various DOJ and former Obama officialsworking on their behalf.  That House network also has several currently employed DOJ, FBI, State Department and Intelligence Community officials feeding them information on current real-time events.   The HJC are currently arguing the Mueller material and the McGahn testimony are needed for the impeachment trial of President Trump.

The rushed House articles were/are a means to an end. That is – a way for House lawyers to argue in court all of the constitutionally contended material is required as evidence for pending judicial proceedings, a trial in the Senate.

This would explain why all the prior evidence debated for inclusion and legal additions to “articles of impeachment” were dropped. Instead the House focused only on quickly framing two articles that could facilitate two pending court cases.

If the HJC team wins the argument to the three member DC Appellate Court, the DOJ will likely file for a full ‘en banc’ review by the entire panel.  If the HJC wins the ‘en banc’ argument the DOJ will likely appeal for an administrative stay by the Supreme Court.

However, if the HJC team loses, they will most likely not file an appeal and will quickly release the impeachment articles to the Senate.   The impeachment articles (Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress) are currently withheld in an effort to bolster the DC appeals court argument.

The primary goal is to gain the Mueller material; by design the impeachment process is a means toward that end.  Impeachment is not the end; impeachment is the means to an end.  Impeachment is the legal standing to exploit the Mueller material. [Background]

Remember, the Mueller evidence was gathered during a counterintelligenceinvestigation, which means all things Trump -including his family and business interests- were subject to unbridled surveillance for two years; and a host of intelligence gathering going back in time indefinitely. A goldmine of political opposition research.

The Mueller investigation itself was purposed to dig, legally, into every aspect of Donald Trump, his family, his friends, his finances, his companies, his legal holdings, his lawyers, his accountants, his history… all of it… and they did so under both Title-1 and Title-3 surveillance authority because the Mueller probe was a counterintelligence operation.

President Trump: travel records, phone records, electronic files, electronic communications, emails, electronic records, family files, medical records, bank records, tax records,… THE WORKS …all with unlimited surveillance authority as granted by former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the useful status of an unlimited counterintelligence operation. Think about the scale of the material Weissmann and Mueller gained access to.

Obviously if Jerry Nadler could get his hands on this material it would quickly find its way into the DNC, and ultimately to the 2020 democrat candidate for president. This material would also be fuel for a year of leaks to DC media who could exploit rumor, supposition, and drops of information that Andrew Weissmann and team left to be discovered.

Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy Discusses the Ridiculous Non-binding House “War Powers Resolution”

Speaker Pelosi is once again attempting to create the image of something that doesn’t actually exist; and her DNC media scribes are more than willing to sell it. We are living in Orwellian times.

The House war power’s resolution is ridiculous. It is a non-binding resolution, equivalent to a strongly worded letter, that holds no legal or congressional authority. However, to fool her sheeple base Pelosi pretends the “resolution” has some substantive value and the water-carrying media engineers sell the same intellectually dishonest narrative.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy discusses the nonsense with Lou Dobbs.

US edges more 'center-right,' - now just 24% liberal

Despite common belief among liberals, they're not even close to being the majority in America. In fact, in the past couple years or so they've lost a little bit of ground. This can very likely be attributed to the fact that they've gone batshit crazy. All they had to do to was not be insane, but they just can't help themselves. 

Paul Bedard reporting for Washington Examiner

They have an outsized voice in the media, pop culture, and politics, especially the 2020 Democratic presidential contest, but only 24% of the nation claims to be liberal, with the rest in the long-dominant “center-right” camp, according to a new survey.

In fact, Gallup today said that conservatives lead at 37%, followed by moderates at 34%, though more still identify as Democrat over Republican.

And, significantly, despite President Trump’s middling approval rating and the nearly second-to-second attacks on him and his team, the survey, which results from 29,000 interviews, showed that the conservative vs. liberal gap is growing.

“The percentage identifying as conservative in 2019 was up two points from the 35% measured in 2018, while the percentage liberal was down two points from 26%. While these changes are statistically significant, some two-point changes in the past were short-lived, so it will be important to see whether these trends continue in 2020,” said the survey analysis.

The poll should cheer the Trump reelection campaign and the White House as it readies for the 2020 battle because it shows that the president may have a larger base to tap.

Republicans, for example, are calling themselves conservative more and more while Democrats are taking the liberal label slightly less.

“The large majority of Republicans have consistently labeled themselves conservative in Gallup polling over the life of this trend, although the proportion has inched up from about six in 10 during the early 1990s to over seven in 10 more recently,” Gallup said.

Democrats are more politically diverse and overwhelmingly liberal, but that has seen a change under Trump. “The liberal wing of the Democratic Party has about doubled in size over the past quarter century, rising from 25% in 1994 to 51% in 2018. The slip to 49% in 2019 suggests that trend may be slowing or leveling off, at least temporarily,” said Gallup.

And it warned that independents are growing as some Republicans and Democrats adopt that label.

Even though more voters call themselves Democrats, Gallup said that the fighting among Democrats raises questions about their ability to capitalize on that voter lead.

“It's the combination of Americans' party and ideological preferences that injects variability into politics. Even within the parties, there is dynamism, although perhaps less so among Republicans, given their general conformity around conservatism. But the Democratic Party is more fractured. And even though liberalism has been on the rise among Democrats, it is not yet the clear majority position, perhaps leading to the strong intraparty clashes seen over the past year on the Democratic debate stages and throughout social media, as Democrats try to come together around a standard-bearer for 2020,” said the analysis.

(source)