Blake turns 4.
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We are told we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. I am sure everyone has his own ideas/interpretations about/of what that means. However, if we investigate the meaning behind these words I submit we might find they no longer mean what they once did.
Yes, we are free to do most things as long as we abide by laws which are increasingly encroaching on our freedoms and adhere to societal strictures circumscribed/dictated by PC'ism. The more we became an urbanized society the more we actually began to lose freedom of movement and now even thought and expression. I believe the protest movements of the '60's launched an attack on freedoms under the guise of protesting an unpopular war and it has simply spread .
Yes, America remains freer than most nations but compared to our past freedoms I believe the trends are not particularly favorable. We are no longer free to speak our minds, particularly on many college campuses, we no longer are free to express thoughts that others claim are offensive and impact their sensitivity. In many instances. perhaps, that is a sign of maturity but in others it is a return to puritanism Are we soon to be living in a land of "thought police?"
The criminalization of what were former freedoms is a Progressive political strategy whose very purpose is meant to silence. Ask any conservative professor on most college campuses are they free to speak their minds, to teach openly and what of the students?
I believe in very subtle ways our freedoms are being diminished by radicals who support causes that profess to be democratic in nature but are anything but. These radicals know America cannot be easily defeated from without so they resort to doing so from within. Like the Trojan Horse of old they are funded by those with devious and questionable goals who would love nothing better than to see America collapse. They seek power in order to destroy our freedoms because they do not trust free individuals. Bigger, stifling controlling government is their goal.
Consequently, whether they admit it or not, their efforts result in making government the enemy of the people and they use tax payer money to support their narrow goals and in ways that are not readily evident. Bureaucratic secrecy is becoming commonplace, stiffing legitimate Congressional inquiry is another method, ignoring the rule of law by the very government that creates laws is another way to choke our freedoms. The IRS deprives citizens of their rights, the EPA condemns personal property by fiat, the Justice Department stiffs Congressional oversight and the list of un-elected bureaucratic abuses grows.The power of lobbyists who fund political campaigns in order to get favorable legislation has become amoebic. We have the best government money can buy is not just a clever phrase.
As for the home of the brave, less than 1% of our citizens defend the remaining 99% and funding entitlements has taken precedence over funding those who serve and protect and the downside of this is becoming increasingly evident as more of our military die in accidents because they lack training etc.
The anti-police trend, increased attacks on those who defend us, the effort to restrict gun ownership are, in my opinion, manifestations of public contempt of bravery.
Education is failing to inculcate and teach what it means to be an American so that we understand the uniqueness of the American Culture. When you do not know who you are you become more susceptible and vulnerable to attacks and are, therefore less able to defend against them. Like all nations and peoples we have a history we have every right to be proud of and in some of our history, we admittedly, went astray and have sought to change. Fortunately, we are free to do so and that is one of the great distinguishing features of America. Change does not come by itself. It requires knowledge, desire and brave action and our history is replete with stories about those who possessed these traits, were motivated and we are a better nation as a result.
Trump's message of "Make America Great Again" found currency with a "uge" number of 'deplorables.' Thus, he became our duly elected president. For a variety of reasons, his victory did not sit well with a large number of many disgruntled Democrats, an assortment of extremely far left liberals and even a few fascists. In pursuit of their anti-Trump campaign they have come up with all kind of justifications and rationalizations to de-legitimize him and his administration. On of the most insidious is bringing scurrilous law suits against some of his supporters in order to cost them millions in legal fees, to drive them out of political involvement etc. Talk about a restriction on one's sacred freedom.
Trump's persona and unique style are not easy to defend and this lends questionable credence to the anti-Trumper's efforts but as long as we remain a nation of laws, a people free to make choices they eventually must yield. We cannot allow street rabble to dictate. For if we do, then kiss this Republic good bye.
The battle is ongoing and how the challenges will be resolved is anyone's guess.
Today a Federal District Court Judge challenged Mueller and his team to produce evidence they had not wandered off the reservation. Stay tuned. (See 1 and 1a below.)
Just some food for thought.
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Has the Justice Department decided it is no longer subject to the very laws the department is sworn to enforce? Does the Justice department and attorney Rosenstein believe they are above the law?
Is Atty. Gen. Sessions' totally out to lunch? (See 1b below.)
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Dick
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1)
Federal judge accuses Mueller's team of 'lying,' trying to target Trump: 'C'mon man!'
By Jake Gibson
A federal judge on Friday harshly rebuked Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team during a hearing for ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort – suggesting they lied about the scope of the investigation, are seeking “unfettered power” and are more interested in bringing down the president.
"You don't really care about Mr. Manafort,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III told Mueller’s team. “You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you to lead you to Mr. Trump and an impeachment, or whatever."
Further, Ellis demanded to see the unredacted “scope memo,” a document outlining the scope of the special counsel’s Russia probe that congressional Republicans have also sought.
The hearing, where Manafort’s team fought to dismiss an 18-count indictment on tax and bank fraud-related charges, took a confrontational turn as it was revealed that at least some of the information in the investigation derived from an earlier Justice Department probe – in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia.Manafort’s attorneys argue the special counsel does not have the power to indict him on the charges they have brought – and seemed to find a sympathetic ear with Ellis.
The Reagan-appointed judge asked Mueller’s team where they got the authority to indict Manafort on alleged crimes dating as far back as 2005.
The special counsel argues that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein granted them broad authority in his May 2, 2017 letter appointing Mueller to this investigation. But after the revelation that the team is using information from the earlier DOJ probe, Ellis said that information did not “arise” out of the special counsel probe – and therefore may not be within the scope of that investigation.
“We don’t want anyone with unfettered power,” he said.
Mueller’s team says its authorities are laid out in documents including the August 2017 scope memo – and that some powers are actually secret because they involve ongoing investigations and national security matters that cannot be publicly disclosed. Ellis seemed amused and not persuaded.
He summed up the argument of the Special Counsel’s Office as, "We said this was what [the] investigation was about, but we are not bound by it and we were lying."
He referenced the common exclamation from NFL announcers, saying: "C'mon man!"
The judge also gave the government two weeks to hand over the unredacted “scope memo” or provide an explanation why not -- after prosecutors were reluctant to do so, claiming it has material that doesn’t pertain to Manafort.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Ellis said.
House Republicans have also sought the full document, though the Justice Department previously released a redacted version, which includes information related to Manafort but not much else.
The charges in federal court in Virginia were on top of another round of charges in October. Manafort has pleaded not guilty to both rounds. The charges filed earlier this year include conspiring against the United States, conspiring to launder money, failing to register as an agent of a foreign principal and providing false statements.
Earlier this year, Ellis suggested that Manafort could face life in prison, and “poses a substantial flight risk” because of his “financial means and international connections to flee and remain at large.”
Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Judson Berger contributed to this report.
1a) Robert Mueller Issued A Threat To Trump That Revealed His True Colors
Steve Thompson, Editor (American Patriot Daily)
Robert Mueller has been waging a one man war on Donald Trump.
Some Trump supporters hoped he would have wrapped up his investigation by now.
But he just issued a threat to the President that revealed his true colors.
Mueller has been scheming to box Trump into sitting for an interview where he can trap the President into making a misstatement.
This will allow him to claim Trump lied to investigators and that Congress should impeach him.
The special counsel has been maneuvering to set up this encounter, and in a meeting with Trump’s legal team, he dropped the nuclear bomb of threatening to subpoena the President to appear in front of the grand jury.
Trump’s lawyers would fight such a measure and the issue could go all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Washington Post reports:
“ In a tense meeting in early March with the special counsel, President Donald Trump’s lawyers insisted he had no obligation to talk with federal investigators probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.But Special Counsel Robert Mueller responded that he had another option if Trump declined: He could issue a subpoena for the president to appear before a grand jury, according to four people familiar with the encounter.Mueller’s warning – the first time he is known to have mentioned a possible subpoena to Trump’s legal team – spurred a sharp retort from John Dowd, then the president’s lead lawyer.“This isn’t some game,” Dowd said, according to two people with knowledge of his comments. “You are screwing with the work of the president of the United States.”
Experts estimate that given the amount of ground Mueller wants to cover, the interview could last multiple days.
If the Mueller team has over 40 areas they would like to cover, that could end up leading to hundreds of questions.
Axios reports:
“A former U.S. attorney tells me how federal prosecutors approach such an interview: “For each of the questions, there is already an elaborate follow-up question tree, supported by marked exhibits ready to be presented to refresh Trump’s recollection, impeach him, or otherwise test his credibility.”
- The former fed continued: “The question tree has a flow: ‘If yes, then [follow up] down this branch. If no, then f/u down this branch. If maybe or non-responsive, then f/u down this branch.’ This is what we do. And no one is better at it than Mueller.”
No one in their right mind believes Mueller is conducting a fair investigation.
He wants to question Trump about what he thought when Mueller was appointed and what was going through his mind when he composed specific tweets.
Mueller is actually trying to criminalize the President’s thoughts.
The special counsel’s threat to subpoena Trump to answer these questions reveals he is a kamikaze pilot whose goal is to destroy not only the President, but the idea that the American people have the right to choose their own leaders.
1b) Why the Justice Department Is Defiant
A House subpoena, another missed deadline. What is the department hiding?
The feud that has simmered for months between Congress and the Justice Department erupted this week into a cage match. That’s because the House is homing in on the goods.
Until this week, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and fellow institutionalists at the department had fought Congress’s demands for information with the tools of banal bureaucracy—resist, delay, ignore, negotiate. But Mr. Rosenstein took things to a new level on Tuesday, accusing House Republicans of “threats,” extortion and wanting to “rummage” through department documents. A Wednesday New York Times story then dropped a new slur, claiming “Mr. Rosenstein and top FBI officials have come to suspect that some lawmakers were using their oversight authority to gain intelligence about [Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s ] investigation so that it could be shared with the White House.”
Mr. Rosenstein isn’t worried about rummaging. That’s a diversion from the department’s opposite concern: that it is being asked to comply with very specific—potentially very revealing—demands. Two House sources confirm for me that the Justice Department was recently delivered first a classified House Intelligence Committee letter and then a subpoena (which arrived Monday) demanding documents related to a new line of inquiry about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Trump investigation. The deadline for complying with the subpoena was Thursday afternoon, and the Justice Department flouted it. As the White House is undoubtedly monitoring any new congressional demands for information, it is likely that President Trump’s tweet Wednesday ripping the department for not turning over documents was in part a reference to this latest demand.
Republicans also demand the FBI drop any objections to declassifying a section of the recently issued House Intelligence Committee report that deals with a briefing former FBI Director James Comey provided about former national security adviser Mike Flynn. House Republicans say Mr. Comey told them his own agents did not believe Mr. Flynn lied to them. On his book tour, Mr. Comey has said that isn’t true. Someone isn’t being honest. Is the FBI more interested in protecting the reputations of two former directors (the other being Mr. Mueller, who dragged Mr. Flynn into court on lying grounds) than in telling the public the truth?
It’s hard to have any faith in the necessity of the more than 300 redactions in the House Intel report, most of which the Republican committee members insist are bogus and should be removed. On every occasion that Justice or the FBI has claimed material must be withheld for the sake of national security or continuing investigations, it has later come out that the only thing at stake were those institutions’ reputations. Think the Comey memos, which showed the former director had little basis for claiming obstruction. Or Sen. Chuck Grassley’s criminal referral of dossier author Christopher Steele, the FBI’s so-called reliable source, whom we now know it had to fire for talking to the press and possibly lying.
The Justice Department is laying all this at the feet of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which technically oversees redactions. But ODNI consults with the agency that “owns” the material, and the FBI is clearly doing the blocking. Again, many pieces of the House Intel report that are being hidden happen to relate to FBI conduct during the 2016 election.
The increasingly poisonous interaction between Congress and the Justice Department also stems from a growing list of questions Republicans have about leading Justice Department officials’ roles in the events Congress seeks to investigate. Mr. Rosenstein’s name was on at least one of the applications for a warrant on Carter Page to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Dana Boente’s name is on another, and he’s now serving as the FBI’s general counsel.
We can’t know the precise motivations behind the Justice Department’s and FBI’s refusal to make key information public. But whether it is out of real concern over declassification or a desire to protect the institutions from embarrassment, the current leadership is about 20 steps behind this narrative. Mr. Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe —they have already shattered the FBI’s reputation and public trust. There is nothing to be gained from pretending this is business as usual, or attempting to stem continued fallout by hiding further details.
This week’s events—including more flat-out subpoena defiance—put a luminous spotlight on Speaker Paul Ryan. The credibility of the House’s oversight authority is at stake. Mr. Ryan’s committee chairmen have done remarkable work exposing FBI behavior, and they deserve backup. The quickest way to get Justice and FBI to comply with these legitimate requests is for Mr. Ryan to state strongly and publicly that he has zero qualms about proceeding down the road of contempt or impeachment if House demands are not met. This is the people’s government, not the Justice Department’s.
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