NY Times: Trump’s Firing Of James Comey Was All About Russia Russia Russia

By William Teach May 10, 2017 – 8:05 am

By now you certainly know about President Trump firing FBI Director James Comey. Here’s the pink slip

https://twitter.com/spettypi/status/862061268714348544

You can see a more detailed rationale here, via Hot Air.

Of course, this has sent all the Democrats and media figures who wanted Comey fired last year to go Full Moonbat. Politico is wondering if this is a Constitutional crisis, a question not asked when President Bill Clinton fired his FBI director. And a crisis of American rule of law. And we’re getting stories about this being like Watergate and Nixonian. And all Russia Russia Russia. Here’s the freakout from the Editorial Board of the NY Times

Donald Trump’s Firing of James Comey

The American people — not to mention the credibility of the world’s oldest democracy — require a thorough, impartial investigation into the extent of Russia’s meddling with the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump and, crucially, whether high-ranking members of Mr. Trump’s campaign colluded in that effort.

By firing the F.B.I. director, James Comey, late Tuesday afternoon, President Trump has cast grave doubt on the viability of any further investigation into what could be one of the biggest political scandals in the country’s history.

So far, when asked, no federally elected Democrat, whether in the House or Senate, can answer that they have any evidence that links the Trump campaign to Russia. They have their talking points when in front of their constituents, but, when actually on the record, they say “nope, none.”

The media, from the NY Times to Washington Post to the Big 3 networks to all the smaller outlets to overseas outlets have spent lots and lots of time on this whole Russia thing, and, you can bet, lots of time attempting to investigate and find the smoking gun. After all these months, there is no evidence. Innuendo from partisans, but no evidence.

Did Russia attempt to influence the election? Well, sure. Just like they attempted with France. Just like Obama just attempted with France. Just like Team Obama attempted with Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries. Just like Team Obama tried with Brexit. Just like the sitting U.S. president attempted to get Hillary elected. The U.S., for right or wrong, has meddled in plenty of countries and elections, just like Russia did. Had Hillary won, there would have been lots of talking points about Russia getting her elected. It was a win win for Putin and Russia, causing more turmoil between the Left and Right.

The explanation for this shocking move — that Mr. Comey’s bungling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server violated longstanding Justice Department policy and profoundly damaged public trust in the agency — is impossible to take at face value. Certainly Mr. Comey deserves all the criticism heaped upon him for his repeatedmissteps in that case, but just as certainly, that’s not the reason Mr. Trump fired him. (snip)

Mr. Comey was fired because he was leading an active investigation that could bring down a president. Though compromised by his own poor judgment, Mr. Comey’s agency has been pursuing ties between the Russian government and Mr. Trump and his associates, with potentially ruinous consequences for the administration.

Obviously, the NY Times EB have a psychic on staff now. If Comey had any information, Trump would have been worried that firing him would allow Comey to speak out, would he not? Comey would become a whistleblower. Mr. Trump has no concerns, because there is no evidence, no matter how much the partisan media folks at the NY Times want there to be. Does anyone not think that the big shots at the Times aren’t spending lots of time and money on attempting to find evidence? You know they were pushing hard before the election, and now, 7 months later, they still have exactly nothing.

Time to move on, Democrats. This rabbit hole is empty.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: NY Times: Trump’s Firing Of James Comey Was All About Russia Russia Russia »

Posted in Donald Trump, Journalistic Malpractice, Unhinged Tools | 57 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach May 9, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is a wall needed to protect cities from rising seas,  you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Political Clown Parade, with a post on Trump being the love pirate.

BTW, I’m still cleaning out the IAYS folder. Amazing how it builds up with unused photos for weekly themes.

Did someone say clowns?

Read More »

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Posted in If All You See | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

ACLU Has Hissy Fit Over Texas Sanctuary Jurisdiction Bill

By William Teach May 9, 2017 – 12:47 pm

Apoplexy Level 10 (via Twitchy)

Talk about fear-mongering, but, hey, this actually helps keep the illegals out. Oh, and they should probably read the bill. Oh, and they should probably stand up for the rights of legal citizens and those authorized to be lawfully in the U.S. over those who are unlawfully present.

Read: ACLU Has Hissy Fit Over Texas Sanctuary Jurisdiction Bill »

Posted in Bad ACLU, Illegal Immigration | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Gore: Watching The News Is Like A Walk Through The Book Of Revelations Or Something

By William Teach May 9, 2017 – 10:30 am

It’s good hearing about the doooooooom from anthropogenic climate from a guy with multiple non-carbon friendly homes and travels around the world on fossil fueled private jets

(Hollywood Reporter) The former vice president spoke before an advance screening of his latest documentary, ‘An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.’

“Every night on the news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation,” Al Gore said Saturday night when asked his opinion of how the news media reports on climate change. “And I’ll wait for the newscasters to connect the dots,” he continued, adding that they rarely do.

Gore spoke about the state of the news media and its effect on the conversation surrounding global climate change at a Q&A before an advance screening of his his latest documentary, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, held at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.

In other words, “let me scare the snot out of people in order to make some money off my movie. Now I’m going to go back to my giant carbon footprint lifestyle made possible by scaring idiots like you.”

Read: Gore: Watching The News Is Like A Walk Through The Book Of Revelations Or Something »

Posted in Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

NY Times Seems Rather Shocked That Legal Immigrants Are Against Illegal Immigration

By William Teach May 9, 2017 – 7:13 am

It’s funny how this works. People spend lots of time and money, and have to follow every law, no matter how small, in order to earn the right to become an actual U.S. citizen, and they aren’t really fond of those who blow off American law by either coming here unlawfully or overstaying their visas, and then demanding that they be made citizens

Sanctuary Bills in Maryland Faced a Surprise Foe: Legal Immigrants

When lawmakers in Howard County, Md., a stretch of suburbia between Washington and Baltimore, declared their intention to make the county a sanctuary for people living in the country illegally, J. D. Ma thought back to how hard he had worked studying English as a boy in Shanghai.

Stanley Salazar, a native of El Salvador, worried that the violent crime already plaguing Maryland’s suburbs attributed to immigrant gangs would eventually touch his own daughters.

Hongling Zhou, who had been a student in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square uprising, feared an influx of undocumented immigrants, and their children, would cripple the public schools.

At first blush, making Howard County a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants had seemed a natural move: The county has twice as many Democrats as Republicans and a highly educated population, full of scientists and engineers. One in five residents was born abroad.

But the bill met stout opposition from an unlikely source: some of those very same foreign-born residents.

It’s only a surprise in Liberal World, where they feel that immigrants who did it the right way, the legal way, would be supportive of those who did it the wrong way, the unlawful way.

In passionate testimony before county legislators, and in tense debates with liberal neighbors born in the United States, legal immigrants argued that offering sanctuary to people who came to the country illegally devalued their own past struggles to gain citizenship.

Some even felt it threatened their hard-won hold on the American dream.

It is a long process to become a U.S. citizen. It involves filling out applications and having many documents and photos. Have your biometrics taken (which get submitted to the FBI for checking). Learn English, and take an English and civics test. Take a naturalization interview. And, finally, take the oath of citizenship. This process can be stopped anywhere along the way for numerous reasons, like missing deadlines and, get this, breaking laws. So, yeah, simply giving illegals lawful status, even citizenship, devalues those who did it the lawful way.

Their objections stunned Democratic supporters of sanctuary here and helped bring about the bill’s demise in March. A similar proposal for the state collapsed this month in the Maryland Senate, where Democrats also hold a two-to-one advantage. Some of the same immigrants spoke out against it.

Stunned! If you spent a lot of time and hard work to get to a certain position in a company, earning it, and the company brought in someone who had no experience, hadn’t done the same time or hard work anywhere else, and gave them the same salary and title and responsibilities, would you be a happy camper?

The rest of the article are the stories from four people who followed the process and became citizens, none of whom are happy about how Democrats think about illegal aliens. They see being here in America and being a citizen as an earned privilege. They blow up the Democratic Party talking points on illegal aliens, such as the whole separating families argument. How this article made it into print at the NY Times is shocking.

Read: NY Times Seems Rather Shocked That Legal Immigrants Are Against Illegal Immigration »

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ACLU: Why, Yes, The Travel Ban Would Be Constitutional If A President Hillary Enacted It

By William Teach May 9, 2017 – 6:47 am

Surprise?

(NTKNetwork) ACLU Lawyer Omar Jadwat, arguing against President Trump’s travel ban before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, admitted that the same exact travel ban “could be” constitutional if it were enacted by Hillary Clinton.

Jadwat argued that Trump’s campaign animus motivated the order, making it illegitimate. This claim was challenged by the Fourth Circuit’s Judge Paul Niemeyer.

“If a different candidate had won the election and then issued this order, I gather you wouldn’t have any problem with that?” Niemeyer asked.

Jadwat dodged on directly answering the question at first, but Niemeyer persisted, asking the question again.

Jadwat again tried to avoid the question, asking for clarification on the hypothetical, but Niemeyer once again demanded an answer.

“We have a candidate who won the presidency, some candidate other than President Trump won the presidency and then chose to issue this particular order, with whatever counsel he took,” Niemeyer said. “Do I understand that just in that circumstance, the executive order should be honored?”

“Yes, your honor, I think in that case, it could be constitutional,” Jadwat admitted.

So, essentially, this is all about Trump Derangement Syndrome, as well as Liberals, Democrats, and groups like the ACLU being against whatever a Republican president does simply because that person is a Republican. (there’s audio of the exchange at the link).

(Powerline) The Democrats who attacked President Trump’s travel order in front of carefully-selected Democratic judges made the extraordinary claim that the President’s statements on the stump, as a candidate, were somehow relevant to whether the order was constitutional. This claim implies that an order may be unconstitutional if issued by one president, while the exact same order would be perfectly fine if issued by another. This is an absurd result.

It may be absurd, but it is what the Democrats believe. ACLU lawyer Omar Jadwat, arguing today before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, told the court that President Trump’s travel order “could be constitutional” if it had been written by Hillary Clinton.

Also in the audio, Jadwat is asked if the order was valid, and answered no, because “the order was unprecedented”, to which a flabergasted justice answered “So the first order on anything is invalid?”

Unless it was President Hillary giving the order. Then it would have been cool with the ACLU and liberals.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: ACLU: Why, Yes, The Travel Ban Would Be Constitutional If A President Hillary Enacted It »

Posted in Bad ACLU, Donald Trump | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See Goes Dark

By William Teach May 8, 2017 – 10:09 pm

Had to take this one just a little bit evil.

Read: If All You See Goes Dark »

Posted in Like, Gnarly, Dude | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach May 8, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is wonderful low carbon sailboat, which will be needed when the whole world floods, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Last Refuge, with a post on a viral thug video.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Trump Looks To Fill Over 100 Federal Judicial Vacancies

By William Teach May 8, 2017 – 10:30 am

He hit what looks like, at least for now, like a grand slam with the appointment of Neil Gorsuch. How will the other appointments play out?

Trump to Announce Slate of Conservative Federal Court Nominees

Having filled a Supreme Court vacancy, President Trump is turning his attention to the more than 120 openings on the lower federal courts. On Monday, he will announce a slate of 10 nominees to those courts, a senior White House official said, the first in what could be near monthly waves of nominations.

The White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, said the nominations were a vindication of a commitment Mr. Trump made during the campaign “to appoint strong and principled jurists to the federal bench who will enforce the Constitution’s limits on federal power and protect the liberty of all Americans.”

The administration continues to draw on lists of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees, put together with the help of the conservative Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation, that Mr. Trump issued during the campaign. But it is looking at other sources, too, the White House official said. Mr. McGahn, who has supervised the selection of the nominees, is looking for scholarly credentials and “intellectual boldness,” among other qualities, the official added.

Those mentioned are supposed to be well with the norm for Conservatives and Republicans. Which has liberals freaked out

But liberal groups expressed alarm at the prospect of a federal bench filled with Mr. Trump’s appointees. “The Trump administration has made clear its intention to benefit from Republican obstructionism and to pack the federal courts with ultraconservatives given a stamp of approval by the Federalist Society,” said Nan Aron, the president of the Alliance for Justice, referring to the conservative legal group. “We’ll be scrutinizing the records of these nominees very carefully.”

Elections have consequences, guys/gals. And, as Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff points out, Senate Democrats are powerless to stop the appointments, as they did away with the filibuster on nominees for federal judicial courts.

Read: Trump Looks To Fill Over 100 Federal Judicial Vacancies »

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EPA Decides To Replace At Least Five Members Of Advisory Board

By William Teach May 8, 2017 – 7:43 am

There’s actually some confusion on the numbers. The NY Times says at least five. The Washington Post says half of the 18 were dismissed. Start with the Fish Wrap, as written by uber-Warmist Coral Davenport

E.P.A. Dismisses Members of Major Scientific Review Board

The Environmental Protection Agency has dismissed at least five members of a major scientific review board, the latest signal of what critics call a campaign by the Trump administration to shrink the agency’s regulatory reach by reducing the role of academic research.

A spokesman for the E.P.A. administrator, Scott Pruitt, said he would consider replacing the academic scientists with representatives from industries whose pollution the agency is supposed to regulate, as part of the wide net it plans to cast. “The administrator believes we should have people on this board who understand the impact of regulations on the regulated community,” said the spokesman, J. P. Freire.

Seems like an “OMG, this is horrible, Trump and Pruitt fired them, science is doomed!!!!” moment, does it not? Here’s what actually happened, once you get through many more paragraphs lambasting and fear-mongering, a point that most people have moved on to other stories

The scientists dismissed from the 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors received emails from an agency official informing them that their three-year terms had expired and would not be renewed. That was contrary, the scientists said, to what they had been told by officials at the agency in January, just before Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

Those officials, who would seem to be Obama officials, aren’t in charge anymore. These folks served their term(s), and serve at the pleasure of the President. And many of them are whining heavily in both the Times and the Post. Switching to the Post

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has chosen to replace half of the members on one of its key scientific review boards, the first step in a broader effort by Republicans to change the way the agency evaluates the scientific basis for its regulations.

EPA spokesman J.P. Freire said in an email that “no one has been fired or terminated,” and that Pruitt had simply decided to bring in fresh advisers. The agency informed the outside academics on Friday that their terms would not be renewed.

“We’re not going to rubber-stamp the last administration’s appointees. Instead, they should participate in the same open competitive process as the rest of the applicant pool,” Freire said. “This approach is what was always intended for the Board, and we’re making a clean break with the last administration’s approach.”

Twelve members of the board had their terms expire on April 27, which is why there is a discrepancy in the number of people whose services were not renewed. Furthermore, neither Trump nor Pruitt need all these people from previous administration.

House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) held a hearing on the issue in February, arguing that the composition of the Scientific Advisory Board, which was established in 1978, should be expanded to include more non-academics. It is primarily made up of academic scientists and other experts who review EPA’s research to ensure that the regulations the agency undertakes have a sound scientific basis.

“The EPA routinely stacks this board with friendly scientists who receive millions of dollars in grants from the federal government,” Smith said at the time. “The conflict of interest here is clear.”

All the people on the board are friendly to the continued expansion of the EPA’s powers and reach. How many actually dissent from what the EPA employees-slash-activists want to accomplish? Doesn’t seem like many, if any. The idea of the EPA is a good one: unfortunately, it has long exceeded its mandate and mission, continuously making rules which give itself more and more power over the nation.

Read: EPA Decides To Replace At Least Five Members Of Advisory Board »

Posted in Global Warming | 2 Comments | Trackback URL
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