America's elitist university students still do not get it. (See 1 below.)
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Schiff head's claims an open hearing while his mind remains closed. What a sham, what a farce.
He no longer considers relevant certain witnesses because, if they were allowed to be cross-examined, it would blow his Gulag witch hunt.
To prevent any American from due process is outrageous and smacks of the way all fascists eventually act and Schiff head is not different.
During the second WW we were warned about 5th columnists. There are those in our government and the various intelligent agencies who have been wanting to rid us of Trump, want to decide what is best for America and disavow we had an election in 2016.
Even the liberal Alan Dershowitz is disturbed by what has been happening, as he should be.(See 2 and 2a below.)
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Haley chose not to undercut Trump. (See 3 below.)
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Here's a List of 100 Members of Congress Supporting CAIRThe Clarion Project's list is from 2018. We'd still like to see this year's list Read and Share
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Dick
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1) Cold Welcome for Veterans on Campus
Students at elite colleges seek to undermine the values that service members signed up to defend.
By Rob Henderson
‘But don’t you ever feel like a sucker for serving?”
A fellow military veteran asked me this question a couple of years ago, when I was a senior at Yale. Like me, he had recently completed his service and was studying at a top university.
He said he was mystified, observing that the predominantly working- and middle-class people in the military swear an oath to defend with their lives the U.S. Constitution, including the First and Second amendments. Meanwhile, affluent college students regularly trash the First and seek to dismantle the Second. Are veterans being duped, he questioned, into believing they are upholding American values while the richest kids in the world—the ones being groomed for success and power—try to undermine them?
He’s not the only one who feels that way. Many veterans I know who enter college are bewildered by what they see: students from the top income decile expressing derision for the values that service members signed up to defend. Perhaps they could be forgiven for feeling like suckers.
Seeing our peers question the Constitution isn’t the only jarring experience for veterans. For many, the treatment of race on campus is a major culture shock. The military is perhaps the most meritocratic institution in the U.S. Women and men of all backgrounds come together, united in their purpose to defend this great country. The best research we have shows that women and nonwhite service members report greater job satisfaction and quality of life than do white male members. Arbitrary physical features like race and sex were treated as inconsequential because we were evaluated primarily on rank and performance. In college, however, there are clear social incentives to disparage people for their race.
I recall being stunned when one student, with a gleeful expression, bellowed to a classmate, “F— your white tears!” Other students around her snapped their fingers to express approval. One’s sex is fair game, too. For veterans trying to integrate on campus, insulting men signals coalitional solidarity with those who adhere to the dominant campus ideology. This works even, perhaps especially, if you are a white man.
The intent behind the insult matters. In the military, we exchanged insults often. It’s a form of social bonding, a way to strengthen relationships with the target of the insult. It helps to bring us together. College students also insult each other to bond socially—but not with the targets of the insults. They wish to impress the onlookers. They’re looking for bystanders to snap their fingers or share their social-media posts. The purpose is to vilify a transgressor in order to bond with observers. It’s effective.
Veterans who first serve in the military and then attend elite colleges learn to navigate both moral worlds. On campus we learn to blend in, even at the cost of feeling betrayed. We keep our love for America to ourselves. We don’t want to give veterans a bad reputation. We want to make friends. We try to understand campus protesters, to see where they’re coming from. Maybe their grievances are a bit overblown, but still, they’re young. They’re still maturing. Just like we were when we volunteered our lives for this country. Just like our friend was when he hanged himself after returning from his second deployment.
In truth, many of the rich kids at elite colleges love American values, too. But they know that loving the Constitution and its first two amendments marks one as working-class or low-status, and that being against those things codes as educated. So they rail against those values to distinguish themselves from one crowd and fit into another.
This Veterans Day we can reflect on the sacrifices made by those who volunteered to defend the United States. But let’s also find time to consider that these sacrifices were undertaken to defend values that our ruling-class-in-waiting seeks to undermine. Many students at elite colleges are duping themselves, too. They don’t realize that they are protected by the very principles they despise and the people to whom they condescend.
Mr. Henderson is a U.S. Air Force veteran and a doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge.
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2)
Nonwitnesses for Impeachment
Democrats now don’t care to hear from Bolton or Kupperman.
By The Editorial Board
House Democrats open the public phase of their impeachment hearings this week, but the process isn’t gaining credibility with their decision to limit witnesses.
On Saturday Republicans offered their list of preferred witnesses to Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, who was given veto power in a partisan resolution vote last month. The GOP list includes the still-unidentified whistleblower; Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden ; Nellie Ohr, who worked for opposition research outfit Fusion GPS; and Trump Administration officials who dealt with Ukraine on foreign aid.
Mr. Schiff said he’d consider the list though he all but ruled out calling anyone who might shed light on corruption in Ukraine or Ukraine’s involvement in the 2016 election. Yet it’s impossible to understand Mr. Trump’s concern about Joe and Hunter Biden and corruption in Ukraine without that context.
Meanwhile, Democrats seem to have given up their desire to interview former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton and his former deputy Charles Kupperman. Democrats subpoenaed Mr. Kupperman to much media fanfare last month but then abandoned the subpoena last week, and they said they wouldn’t call Mr. Bolton though the lawyer for both men says they’d gladly testify.
The White House has barred both from testifying on grounds of national-security and presidential-adviser immunity, which Democrats claim is illegitimate. But suddenly Democrats don’t want to fight in court to prove their case, perhaps because they think they might lose but also because they want to rush to an impeachment vote within weeks. As Charles Cooper, the lawyer for Messrs. Kupperman and Bolton, put it in a Nov. 8 letter to the House general counsel: “If the House chooses not to pursue through subpoena the testimony of Dr. Kupperman and Ambassador Bolton, let the record be clear: that is the House’s decision.”
The good news is that Judge Richard Leon, who was assigned to the Kupperman case, refused the Democratic plea to drop the matter and will hold a hearing by phone on Monday. The chances he might rule increased when Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, asked Friday to join the Kupperman case after he was subpoenaed by the House. If the House now withdraws his subpoena as well, it will show that the House hearings are a pro forma exercise in prosecuting a predetermined narrative
2a) LISTEN: Liberal Democrat
Compares Democrats To Russian Secret
Police Under Stalin, Blisters CNN
By Hank Berrien
Speaking on the John Catsimatidis radio show, famed attorney and liberal Democrat Alan Dershowitz blistered CNN for its coverage of the impeachment proceedings against President Trump, saying, “CNN has banned me from their airwaves. CNN will not allow me on their network because they don’t want a liberal Democrat to be telling their viewers the truth about the Constitution.” Dershowiz also ripped Democrats, comparing them to the Russian secret police under the murderous Russian dictator Josef Stalin, asserting, “The Democrats are now making up crimes.”
Catsimatidis prompted Dershowitz by asking, “Do the Democrats today think that the American public is so stupid on some of the things they’re doing?”
And so the Democrats are now making up crimes. First they made up collusion. “Ahh! Collusion. It’s a crime!” I searched the statute books. There’s no crime of collusion except when businessmen get together to collude against the anti-trust laws, but no crime of collusion with a foreign country.Then after that, they said “obstruction of Congress.” No, no, no, no, no. Obstruction of justice is a crime; obstruction of Congress is part of our system of checks and balances. If you get a subpoena from Congress, and you’re the president or in the executive department, and you think you have an executive privilege, you have an obligation not to respond. That’s not “obstruction of Congress,” that’s checks and balances under our Constitution.So what we’re seeing, in a desperate effort to try to find crimes against President Trump: they’re just making it up. And that means we are all in danger, because if we can make up a crime — Congressman Cohen of Tennessee said that me and others who appear on Fox essentially were co-conspirators; we’re in on it. He’s now threatening people who are commentators, a liberal Democrat like me, who’s a commentator, that we’re in on it, that we’re co-conspirators. It is such a dangerous development to civil liberties.The ACLU should be up in arms, but they’re silent.
Catsimatidis commented, “The lawyer involved also was tweeting years ago or during 2017, 2018 on impeachment?”
Dershowitz replied, “Yeah, obviously this is weaponized. This is being used by people who want to weaponize it against a particular president.” He added that if the shoe were on the other foot, Democrats would be up in arms.
He continued, “CNN has banned me from their airwaves. CNN will not allow me on their network because they don’t want a liberal Democrat to be telling their viewers the truth about the Constitution. Instead, they have people out there who are just parroting the party line over and over and over again and misleading their viewers. They got virtually everything wrong on the Mueller report; they predicted everything wrong and their viewers suffer. And when their viewers are denied my voice and the voice of other people to present a somewhat different narrative, it’s just a terrible thing.”
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3) Nikki Haley claims top aides tried to recruit her to 'save the country' by undermining Trump
NEW YORK - Two of President Donald Trump's senior advisers undermined and ignored him in what they claimed was an effort to "save the country," former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley claims in a new memoir.
Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly sought to recruit her to work around and subvert Trump, but she refused, Haley writes in a new book, "With All Due Respect," which also describes Tillerson as "exhausting" and imperious and Kelly as suspicious of her access to Trump.
"Kelly and Tillerson confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren't being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country," Haley wrote.
"It was their decisions, not the president's, that were in the best interests of America, they said. The president didn't know what he was doing," Haley wrote of the views the two men held.
Tillerson also told her that people would die if Trump was unchecked, Haley wrote.
Tillerson did not respond to a request for comment. Kelly declined to comment in detail, but said that if providing the president "with the best and most open, legal and ethical staffing advice from across the (government) so he could make an informed decision is 'working against Trump,' then guilty as charged."
In the book, which was obtained by The Washington Post ahead of its release Tuesday, Haley offers only glancing critiques of her former boss, saying she and others who worked for Trump had an obligation to carry out his wishes since he was the one elected by voters.
The former South Carolina governor, widely viewed by Republicans as a top potential presidential candidate, has repeatedly sought to minimize differences with Trump while distancing herself from his excesses. Haley, 47, writes that she backed most of the foreign policy decisions by Trump that others tried to block or slow down, including withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord and the relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
In a New York interview with The Post coinciding with the book release, Haley also dismissed efforts by House Democrats to impeach Trump. She said she opposes Trump's efforts to seek foreign help for political investigations in a call with Ukraine's president, but that the actions are not impeachable.
"There was no heavy demand insisting that something had to happen. So it's hard for me to understand where the whole impeachment situation is coming from, because what everybody's up in arms about didn't happen," Haley said.
"So, do I think it's not good practice to talk to foreign governments about investigating Americans? Yes. Do I think the president did something that warrants impeachment? No, because the aid flowed," she said, referring to nearly $400 million in sidelined military aid.
"And, in turn, the Ukrainians didn't follow up with the investigation," Haley said.
In her book, Haley points to several examples of disagreements with Trump. She said she went privately to the president with her concern that he had ceded authority to Russian President Vladimir Putin after the two leaders met in Helsinki in 2017 and with her objection to what she called Trump's "moral equivalence" in response to a deadly white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, later that summer.
Haley's experience as governor during the 2015 murders of nine black churchgoers inside a historic African American church in Charleston by an avowed white supremacist made Trump's reaction to Charlottesville painful, Haley wrote. Trump said "both sides" had been to blame for the violence.
"A leader's words matter in these situations. And the president's words had been hurtful and dangerous," Haley wrote. "I picked up the phone and called the president."
Haley did not air any objections publicly, however.
Haley also recounts for the first time that she was treated for post-traumatic stress disorder following the Charleston murders. She described bouts of sobbing, loss of appetite and focus, and guilt for feeling that way when the victims and their families had suffered so much more.
In a CBS interview that aired Sunday, Haley said Trump was "not appropriate" to demand that four black or Hispanic Democratic members of Congress "go back" to their countries. Three of the women were born in the United States and all are U.S. citizens.
But Haley also defended Trump, saying "I can also appreciate where he's coming from, from the standpoint of, 'Don't bash America, over and over and over again, and not do something to try and fix it.'"
Haley is the U.S.-born daughter of Indian immigrants, and writes in the book about the painful experience of being an outsider in the American South, neither white nor black. Her family was frequently ostracized, she wrote, and the Haley was essentially disqualified from a children's pageant because Bamberg, South Carolina, only crowned one white winner and one black winner.
In writing about the administration, Haley recalls a disagreement she had with Tillerson and Kelly following an Oval Office showdown over her suggestion that the United States should withhold funding for the U.N. agency that supports Palestinians.
Kelly and Tillerson argued that cutting aid could lead to violence, greater threats to Israel, loss of U.S. influence and political problems for Arab allies, she writes. That view is common among Mideast watchers and Trump critics, who say the administration's approach is punitive and shortsighted.
Haley said she had the backing of Trump's Mideast peace envoys, including son-in-law Jared Kushner, but he was not in the room. She did not spell out the views of then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster.
In the meeting, Haley wrote, Trump seemed to be swinging away from her view, but told the three of them to go resolve their differences elsewhere. In Kelly's office afterward, Kelly told her, "'I have four secretaries of state: you, H.R., Jared, and Rex," she wrote. "'I only need one.'"
Tillerson and others had an obligation to carry out the president's agenda because he had been elected, not them, Haley wrote. If they disagreed strongly enough, she said they should quit.
"I was so shocked I didn't say anything going home because I just couldn't get my arms around the fact that here you have two key people in an administration undermining the president," Haley said in The Post interview.
On another occasion, Haley said Kelly stalled and put her off when she wanted to get in to see Trump. When she went around him, he complained. Kelly also made it clear that he thought Trump's decision to make Haley a full member of the Cabinet, and have her attend National Security Council meetings, had been "terrible," and that he would ensure the next U.N. ambassador did not carry that rank, she wrote.
Trump gave Haley a warm sendoff last fall, while Kelly's departure was announced in chillier terms weeks later. Haley's successor, Kelly Craft, who assumed the U.N. job in September, does not carry the same rank Haley did. Tillerson, meanwhile, was fired by Trump via Twitter in March 2018.
"I have found in politics that when you are a woman in politics you encounter two types of people," Haley said in the interview, conducted at her publisher's offices in Lower Manhattan.
"You encounter people who respect you for your skill and your knowledge and the work that you're trying to do, and support you in that process. Or you encounter people who disregard you and see you as in the way. That would happen at times," Haley said.
Asked whether she was calling Kelly sexist, Haley said she had no personal quarrel with the retired four-star Marine general, whom she called a patriot.
"It's a way of saying that sometimes he was not as conscious of the job I was trying to do," Haley said.
Trump liked her direct approach and was respectful when they disagreed, Haley said.
She wrote that each had taken the other's measure during the Republican primary, when she first backed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and publicly called on Trump to release his tax returns. Trump tweeted that "the people of South Carolina are embarrassed by Nikki Haley!"
"Trump had been kicked, and he was hollering. But what he didn't know then was, when I get kicked, I holler too," Haley wrote.
She fired back with what she describes as "Southern-woman code."
"Bless your heart," she tweeted.
The book's title is a reference to Haley's comment last year publicly refuting an assertion by White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow that she had suffered "momentary confusion" about forthcoming U.S. sanctions on Russia.
In a detailed blow-by-blow account, Haley wrote that she had gone on television at the request of the White House to address the U.S. response to a deadly April 2018 Syrian chemical weapons attack and the U.S. view that Russia was complicit. When asked about punitive sanctions, Haley said she answered with the latest information she had, which was that Trump had approved new sanctions that would be announced shortly.
But Trump had changed his mind and no one told her, Haley wrote, and then White House staffers hung her out to dry. The Post reported at the time that Trump changed his mind after Haley spoke.
Haley said when a promised White House statement holding her blameless failed to materialize later that day or the next, she gave Kelly a deadline of the close of the following day - a Tuesday - before she went public. Kudlow's remark to reporters on that Tuesday afternoon was evidence that Kelly did not intend to "fix this," she wrote.
Bucking some members of her staff who urged her to let it slide, Haley told a reporter: "With all due respect, I don't get confused."
Kudlow called within 15 minutes to apologize, and then went public with a mea culpa.
"Women are cautious about politics, for good reason," she wrote. "It's not a pretty business. It's often hateful. It would be wonderful if we could change our politics in America to make it less nasty and less personal. But until that happens, especially if you're a woman, you have to stand up for yourself. Always."
The book leaves the door open to a potential return to politics, but is silent about any White House ambitions. In the interview, Haley waved off the question. She will evaluate her next steps year by year, she said.
"I'm not even thinking that way. I'm thinking more of, we need to do all we can to get the president re-elected. And then from there, deciding how I will use the power of my voice," Haley said.
"I know I'm too young to stop fighting, I know that. And I know that I need and want to be involved in some way that's helpful."
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