Are legal flood gates about to open? (See 1 below.)
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Trump versus Obama regarding Iran. (See 2 below.)
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My sentiments as well. Because liberal, radical progressive views have succeeded they are destroying our society.
When "man" moved off the farm, urbanized and disconnected his life from the soil he lost his ability to care for himself, his ability to be independent.
Family members became a burden more than a positive force because more bodies were not needed for labor. Family ties disintegrated and the underpinnings of society radically altered.
"Man" sought to outsource his needs and government became his crutch. We have been crushed by the bloat we created.(See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)Why The IG Report On FISA Abuse Will Unleash Barr’s Investigation Of Spygate
The closing of the final inspector general investigation into the Russia collusion investigation promises to open the flood gates for previously undisclosed information and indictments.
By Margot Cleveland
The forthcoming report from the Office of Inspector General on potential Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse will finally unleash Attorney General William Barr, and when it does, watch out.
For the last month, conservative pundits have predicted the ever-imminent dropping of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on his investigation into the circumstances surrounding FISA surveillance of former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. Horowitz’s report will likely provide new and damaging details surrounding the FBI’s use of the FISA court to spy on Page. More importantly, the conclusion of Horowitz’s probe frees Barr to conduct a broader and more exacting investigation into all aspects of the Russia collusion hoax.
Barr revealed this during his interview last week with “CBS This Morning’s” Jan Crawford. In his hour-long interview, Barr made several points clear. First, Barr confirmed that Horowitz’s investigation focused on a discrete aspect of the Russia collusion investigation—the electronic surveillance of Page. (Barr had previously stated that he anticipated receiving Horowitz’s conclusions concerning the propriety of the FISA process targeting Page in May or June, which makes the fevered predictions that Barr already had the IG report less impressive.)
Second, Barr explained that the norm for the Department of Justice was for investigations to be put “on hold while the Office of Inspector General conduct[s] its review.” Barr had suggested the same in his testimony last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
During that hearing on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, Barr praised FBI Director Christopher Wray and the FBI line agents, stressing that the potential overreach involved “a few people in the upper echelons of the Bureau and the Department [of Justice].” Those people are gone now, Barr noted, before adding that he was now working closely with Wray “trying to reconstruct exactly what went down.” But “one thing that people should know,” the attorney general stressed, was “that the bureau itself has been handicapped looking back because of the OIG investigation.”
At the time of his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, it was unclear what Barr meant by saying the FBI had been “handicapped” by the OIG’s investigation. But his comments to Crawford last week brought some clarity to his testimony: The DOJ does not proceed with investigations while the OIG is investigating the same matter.
That leads to the next significant revelation from Barr’s “CBS This Morning” interview: Utah U.S. Attorney John Huber, whom former attorney general Jeff Sessions had charged with assisting Horowitz in investigating potential FISA abuse, has done nothing to help unravel Spygate in the year-plus since his assignment to the FISA abuse investigation.
Rather, as Barr explained to Crawford, “Huber had originally been asked to take a look at the FISA applications and the electronic surveillance but then he stood back and put that on hold while the Office of Inspector General was conducting its review.” This stand-back approach “would’ve been normal for the department,” Barr added.
Barr’s explanation to Crawford about Huber’s role finally answers the question that has stymieing conservatives for more than a year: What has Huber been doing? Nothing! Huber “was essentially on standby in case Mr. Horowitz referred a matter to him to be handled criminally. So he has not been active on this front in recent months,” Barr acknowledged.
The current attorney general’s comments also reveal another reality: Sessions snookered conservatives, who had been clamoring for a second special counsel to investigate FISA abuse, by naming Huber, while knowing the Utah-based U.S. attorney’s hands would be tied under normal DOJ procedures.
Rather than bemoan Sessions’ timid approach to Spygate, conservatives (and those truly concerned about the rule of law and government abuse of power) should focus instead on the future. Here, Barr’s comments to Crawford demonstrate the reigning attorney general, unlike his predecessor, is bypassing the IG and putting the full force of the DOJ behind the investigation into the Russia collusion hoax.
Barr could have just expanded Horowitz’s investigation, Crawford noted in her interview with the attorney general. Yes, he could have. Like Sessions, Barr could have left the broader investigation into the origins of the targeting of the Trump campaign in the hands of the OIG. But he didn’t.
He explained: “Well the inspector general at the department, Mike Horowitz, who you know is a superb government official, he has limited powers. He doesn’t have the power to compel testimony, he doesn’t have the power really to investigate beyond the current cast of characters at the Department of Justice. His ability to get information from former officials or from other agencies outside the department is very limited.”
Further, while Sessions purported to sidestep that concern by appointing Huber to assist in the investigation as necessary, as we know now, the mere existence of the IG investigation “handicapped” the DOJ. By refusing to expand Horowitz’s probe, Barr has ensured that is no longer the case.
So, while the upcoming release of Horowitz’s report on the FISA targeting of Carter Page is significant in its own right, the closing of the final IG investigation into the Russia collusion investigation promises to open the flood gates for previously undisclosed information and indictments. And President Trump’s decision to authorize Barr to declassify documents, and Barr’s selection of U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead the investigation, suggests it will only be a matter of time before the deluge.
Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Cleveland served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge and is a former full-time faculty member and current adjunct instructor at the college of business at the University of Notre Dame. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
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2) Trump has already proved Team Obama was completely wrong about Iran
For years, the liberal foreign policy establishment presented Americans with a false choice on Iran: surrender or war. President Trump has proved that binary to be a fantasy, squeezing and deterring the Iranians without full-on confrontation.
“When I became president, Iran was a true state of terror,” Trump said in France this week. Now, “they are failing as a nation.”
Not that his critics give him credit — or room to maneuver. As The Daily Beast reported last week, alumni of the Obama administration have been secretly in touch with the Iranians — no doubt to reassure the mullahs that if they wait out Trump, their fortunes will turn.
Though it’s unprecedented to see former administration officials actively undermining official US policy abroad, the more the Obama alumni echo chamber’s Iranian apologists clamor to save the Islamic regime from economic ruin, the more we understand that the Trump administration’s strategy is working.
Iranian officials were, no doubt, thrilled to hear from their old friends. During the Obama administration’s capitulation, Iran was not only free to advance its nuclear ambitions and ballistic weapons capabilities, it could spread theocratic terror and conflict to virtually every troubled spot in the Middle East.
The government of Iran, which regularly holds American citizens hostage, was, according to officials in the past two administrations, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of US servicemen in Iraq.
In Syria, the Iranians back a regime that regularly gasses its own people. In Yemen — though you wouldn’t know it from mainstream news coverage — Iran precipitates conflict with Saudi Arabia by backing the radical Houthi rebels. In Lebanon, Iran’s proxy army of Hezbollah threatens our ally Israel. And in Gaza, Iran helps fund the terrorists of Hamas.
Now, just imagine how all these conflicts could look like when paranoid religious demagogues like Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had the capacity to threaten nuclear war. With no real oversight over military installations and programs, the Iran deal ensured this future.
Ever since the Trump administration pulled the United States out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, however, Iran’s reliance on its resources, its access to the world’s financial markets and its political legitimacy have been severely damaged.
We can’t predict with any real certitude what will happen in foreign affairs, but, as of now, the Trump administration has hampered Iran’s ability to stoke conflict in the region and created domestic pressure that may put checks on its militaristic ambitions.
The re-imposition of sanctions has cut Iran’s oil exports at least in half, which pushed the nation into an economic downturn. According to the International Monetary Fund, inflation has spiked more than 30% over the past year.
The unemployment rate, especially among the young and urban workers, has skyrocketed. The government is reportedly planning for cuts in military spending.
A number of major European companies have also been compelled to live by US sanctions. Who would you choose: the largest economy on Earth or a creaky militaristic terror state?
The frustration over the efficacy of Trump’s policy is probably what led to the recent attack on two Saudi Arabian oil tankers and other vessels near the Strait of Hormuz.
President Trump responded with a show of force and a warning that Iran would suffer greatly in any military conflict. This set off a panic among pundits about the prospects of war. The fact is that the way to maintain credible deterrence is to rely on force as an option. Without it, Iran would be free to instigate our allies, and conflict would be more likely.
Then there is the moral question.
Regime change can only come from within. Americans, for good reason, have no appetite to aid in democracy-building. Yet, Iran, unlike many countries in the region, is not a contrived entity, but a nation with an organic and robust national identity. A peaceful Iran would benefit the world greatly.
Which is why the Obama administration did worse than merely ignore protestors fighting for liberty in Iran; it strengthened the autocrats. A change in policy sends a signal to the Iranian people that the United States is no longer supine to their repressive rulers.
So while Iranian propagandists like Foreign Minister Javad Zarif are running around blaming the United States for Iran’s problems, the solution has never been clearer.
The Trump administration has laid out 12 demands on Iran, including ending its nuclear and advanced ballistic missile programs, ceasing terrorism, stopping its destabilization of the region and releasing political hostages.
Or in other words, all Iran has to do is act like any other normal nation.
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3) Must Freedom Destroy Itself?
A Notre Dame political scientist attributes America’s current discontent to the liberalism of the Founders. He sells their virtue short.
By William McGurn
The election of Donald Trump, an outsider who routinely and joyfully violates America’s political conventions, has spurred a lively debate about when and how U.S. politics went off the rails. Patrick J. Deneen’s answer: in 1776, with the founding itself.
In his 2018 book “Why Liberalism Failed”—which he finished writing before Mr. Trump’s election—the Notre Dame political scientist argues that the Founding Fathers’ liberal order was doomed from the beginning. “Liberalism has failed,” he writes, “not because it fell short, but because it was true to itself. It has failed because it has succeeded.”
It’s quite an assertion, and it has stoked quite a debate. Barack Obama, in a Facebook post a year ago, said it was “thought-provoking” and “offers cogent insights,” although he noted that “I don’t agree with most of the author’s conclusions.”
At the root of Mr. Deneen’s critique is a rejection of the entire Enlightenment view of the human person. As he tells it, the classical pre-Enlightenment understanding saw man as finding his fulfillment in his attachments—primarily to God, family and town. The Enlightenment, by contrast, viewed these as constraints from which individuals needed liberation, mostly by science and reason, so they could make their own choices. The problem, according to Mr. Deneen, is that once severed from these attachments individuals find themselves alone, vulnerable and in need of help, and the only institution powerful enough to offer it is the centralized state.
This argument has provoked sharp attacks from progressives and fellow conservatives. A reviewer from England’s left-wing Guardian accused him of advocating a theocracy in which political decisions “emanate . . . from an outside source, namely God (and a Catholic God at that).” A prominent conservative writer likened Mr. Deneen to Iran’s truculent former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Other conservatives took issue, more reasonably, with what they took as attacks on the Founders.
“Many readers thought I was being unpatriotic by criticizing our Founders,” he tells me over coffee on a visit to the Journal in New York. “But I don’t fault the Founders for not foreseeing that their atomistic philosophy would act as a solvent on our civic institutions.”
In the flesh, Mr. Deneen’s gloom about the American experiment contrasts with his personal cheerfulness and own rootedness. In Indiana his family lives in a house once owned by Moose Krause (1913-92), who was recruited to play football by Knute Rockne and went on to become a Notre Dame legend himself. Alas, even at home Mr. Deneen can see signs of the times. He says most of his students have no idea who Moose Krause was and little appreciation for their university’s history.
“I would go further and say that this is the case for most faculty, who regard institutional memory as irrelevant to their work,” he says. “I think an ethos of not just forgetting, but regarding the past as irrelevant, is a key feature of liberalism.”
The Trump election—along with the June 2016 Brexit referendum and other populist movements in Europe and elsewhere—make Mr. Deneen look prescient. These events, he says, seem to “shatter the belief” that liberalism—in the classic sense of the term, if not the contemporary one—is inevitable and unassailable.
The discontent that led to Brexit and the Trump presidency, Mr. Deneen says, is all around: the alienation between elites and the working class, the distrust of civic institutions, the belief that the economy is rigged in favor of the haves, and the increasing polarization between those who wish to hold on to traditional customs, beliefs and practices and those who want to bulldoze them. And it isn’t just government. Much of corporate America now regards half the country as deplorable. Look at Netflix ’s threat to boycott Georgia, with its generous film-production subsidies, because of a law that attempts to restrict abortion.
Mr. Deneen says he’s long believed this brewing discontent would produce, as he puts it in the book’s preface, a “widespread yearning for a strong leader, one with the will to take back popular control over liberalism’s forms of bureaucratized government and globalized economy.” Sounds like someone we know—but the 54-year-old Mr. Deneen confesses with a smile that he hadn’t expected it to happen during his lifetime.
“I am not surprised by the election of someone like Trump, though surprised that it was Trump,” he says. “It took someone who was completely outside mainstream political formation to intuit the vulnerability of the liberal operating assumptions of the left and right.”
Mr. Deneen is clearly right about some things. The decline of the family, the attacks on Christianity, the lack of trust in key institutions and the fraying of the social fabric are real and worsening problems. Mr. Deneen looks at all this and sees the “dismantling of the cultural norms and habits essential to self-government.”
The question is whether he’s right about the cause. He fingers global capitalism as a chief culprit: “The economic system that simultaneously is both liberalism’s handmaiden and also its engine, like a Frankenstein monster, takes on a life of its own, and its processes and logic can no longer be controlled by people purportedly enjoying the greatest freedom in history.”
What he means is that the economic system is based on a conception of human beings as self-maximizing, autonomous individuals whose primary concern is to satisfy their own appetites—and this undermines the virtues and manners that a free society requires to function.
Is this accurate? Did Adam Smith regard human beings as self-maximizing automatons? He did, after all, write “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” (1759) before “The Wealth of Nations” (1776). While some libertarians may blur the distinction between liberty and libertine, capitalism’s most capable defenders have always recognized that the market depends on virtues that the free market cannot itself produce.
To be successful as a capitalist, moreover, requires looking outside oneself to anticipate the customer’s needs. It isn’t “love thy neighbor as thyself,” but it isn’t as far removed from Jesus’ admonition as one might think. Where do you expect to be treated better, at a Chick-fil-A checkout or the post office?
Mr. Deneen is a Catholic who takes the church’s social teaching seriously. But reading the book, he gives only glancing acknowledgment to the billions of people around the world lifted out of abject poverty and misery since World War II precisely because their nations embraced capitalism—and mostly because of international trade, which so many critics of capitalism denounce.
It’s telling that in the 1991 encyclical “Centesimus Annus,” Pope John Paul II observed that the “chief problem” for poor countries is not the global market but their lack of “fair access” to it. Would the Chinese or Mexican worker who can now build a better life for his family because of foreign trade and development agree with John Paul’s view of the global market or with Mr. Deneen’s?
The more apt critique of capitalism is that many of the virtues vital to a liberal order—trust, honesty, self-reliance, public-spiritedness, patriotism—are best incubated by preliberal institutions such as church and family and village. Mr. Deneen disputes the Enlightenment claims about human autonomy—the view that we need to be liberated from the particular attachments, primarily faith and family, that make us human. As we’ve seen, when people are stripped of these traditional attachments they are left institutionally bereft. Only the state is strong enough to step in, which may be why the growth of the administrative state has become a hallmark of modern liberalism.
Mr. Deneen might have had an easier time of it if, in indicting the Enlightenment, he had distinguished between its French and Anglo-American variants. The former gave us Rousseau, abstract universalism and ultimately the guillotine, while the latter produced a free society governed by the oldest written constitution still in force.
In intellectual circles the French Enlightenment has dominated, largely because its grand philosophies appeal to intellectuals and accord them a higher standing. But the thinkers of the British Enlightenment were at once more humble and more human in their writings. This humility is reflected in the American liberal order: a secularism accommodating of religion, suspicious of abstraction and respectful of local communities and authorities.
Mr. Deneen concedes the distinction but counters that even in the British Enlightenment there were those who worried that the “rationalizing” force of the market might come to make every sphere of life a matter of consumer choice. It wasn’t Bernie Sanders, he notes, who lamented that “the age . . . of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded.” It was Edmund Burke.
Which brings us back to the Founders. Part of the reason they didn’t spend as much time as they might have on the virtues and institutions a free society needs to survive is that they had the luxury of taking them for granted. “The Founders lived in a time when the culture was thick,” Mr. Deneen says. “This was a time when the churches were vibrant, there were shared understandings of community, and people went about their lives taking these things for granted.”
So what’s Mr. Deneen’s alternative? Contrary to some of his critics’ claims, he forthrightly rejects the notion of “some sort of restoration of an idyllic preliberal age.” In addition, he says it’s important to acknowledge liberalism’s real achievements, such as how to avoid tyranny and promote self-government.
What he wants is to restore the ties that make for communities and a free citizenry. Unfortunately, when he gets specific, it can sound more romantic than practical: “The skills of building, planting, preserving and composting not only undergird the independence and integrity of the home but develop practices and skills that are the basic sources of culture and a shared civic life.”
Which points to a paradox. Mr. Deneen is probably right that localism is the best hope that people out of step with the dominant liberal culture have for living in harmony with their beliefs. Yet if he is right about the growing intolerance of the state, it’s difficult to see how such communities would have the freedom and autonomy to flourish.
Mr. Deneen believes that Americans can’t count on liberalism to preserve their freedom. Instead we need to address what the Founders missed in 1776. “For much of our history,” he says, “Americans were better than their official philosophy. To rekindle the American experiment requires not greater adherence to our liberal theory, but to the better angels of our nature that transcend liberalism’s cramped idea of liberty.”
Mr. McGurn is a Journal columnist and member of the editorial board.
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