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Why all the hate from Democrats? (See 1 and 1a below.)
1a and 1b were sent by very dear friends and fellow memo readers. One Christian the other Jewish.
I will also note that the use of the male words "he.him etc."is sexist and should be substituted by using "they" which is gender neutral. We must neuter our language so as not to offend the "snowflakes generation."
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Please understand I am not defending those associated with Trump who Mueller has sought charges against even though the charges had nothing to do with his own charge of proving Russian Collusion. As I noted earlier, it is as if Mueller and his gum shoes are more interested in creating crimes.
What I am doing is trying to be logical. In essence, Mueller is charging people for lying to various organizations and entities that lie all the time, ie. Congress, The FBI and government bureaucrats in general etc.
If you want to believe Hillary is not a liar and guilty of true collusion and RICO actions then have at it. All I will say is that, in my opinion, you are extremely partisan, biased and/or blind.
So let me get this straight. If you are connected to Trump and are caught lying to an entity that lies you are guilty yet, the entity remains free. I would argue this is what totalitarian regimes are all about and a double standard of lawful enforcement.
Now let's carry my "alleged" logic one step further.
When Trump was a real estate mogul/playboy and also a Democrat who happened to be a TV personality, gave money to Democrats, black charities and was adored by the mass media everything he was and did was acceptable. When he ran for president on the Republican ticket, all of a sudden, he became a crude realty mogul, took advantage of women, slept with bimbos, was a crook, cheated on his income taxes, was in bed with Putin, abused women, avoided serving in Viet Nam and is a dedicated racist.
In other words, once a former Democrat becomes a Republican, enters politics and beats their Democrat opponent, who is really a certified crook and liar, a metamorphosis occurs and they become something else they never were.
No wonder those who give a damn about their reputation,and actually have a good one, do not wish to serve their country. This is the Thomas, Bork and Kavanaugh story is it not? Only damn fools and liars like Pelosi, Schumer, Waters, Schiff and their ilk apparently are willingly eager to serve. Only those who seek power and personal wealth come forth and toss their hat and brassiers in the ring?
Harry Reid became a wealthy man after his so so boxing career and the same for those mentioned above. Incidentally many have walls around their palaces as well.
Class warfare is another method used by progressives radicals and it is called character assassination and is employed to drive people away from government service who would, otherwise, make great contributions. Just another fascist method/technique to cause citizens to lose faith in those who seek to govern and give back to society.
On the other hand, taxing these same people unconstitutionally is fair game. The message of the Warren's, Sander's and Casio's is that we don't want your service just your earned wealth.
This is the Democrat Party's America and I find it disgusting, destructive and dangerous.
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Even Bret Stephens sees what front running Democrats are unwilling to admit: Socialism is a disaster.
"Yes, Venezuela Is a Socialist Catastrophe By Bret Stephens, New York Times"
Watching all the Venezuelan Brass on TV supporting Maduro was right out of a Woody Allen Satire. These gum shoe Generals and Admirals with all their gold, medals and braid looked like the stooges they really are..
Russia, China and Cuba support Venezuela and even that should even mean something to Miss Ocasio.
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Watching all the Venezuelan Brass on TV supporting Maduro was right out of a Woody Allen Satire. These gum shoe Generals and Admirals with all their gold, medals and braid looked like the stooges they really are..
Russia, China and Cuba support Venezuela and even that should even mean something to Miss Ocasio.
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Will the new Atty. General do his job? (See 2 below)
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Are Democrats capable of good faith any more? Has their hatred consumed their ability to act rational?
Stay tuned and then you decide. (See 3 below)
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Finally, more good news (edited) from Israel and Ordman. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) The Left Doesn't Hate the US; It Hates Us
It may be hard for some to believe, but the Democrats today are interchangeable with the left, because there are no longer any moderate Democrats. And along with their journey away from the middle, the Democrats have become ever more illiberal in how they feel about their political opponents. To disagree with the left has become heresy punishable by excommunication and often preceded by what has become their specialty, hatred accompanied by personal, political, and career destruction.
The left, which had become convinced they would never again be relegated to the minority, were not only surprised, they were outraged. Who were these people to go against the “arc of history?” This is “not who we are” they complained.
It can be said that Trump’s election was the point where the Democrats abandoned the deplorable bastards who stole Hillary Clinton’s presidency, but it had been coming for a long time.
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2)
Finally, more good news (edited) from Israel and Ordman. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) The Left Doesn't Hate the US; It Hates Us
It may be hard for some to believe, but the Democrats today are interchangeable with the left, because there are no longer any moderate Democrats. And along with their journey away from the middle, the Democrats have become ever more illiberal in how they feel about their political opponents. To disagree with the left has become heresy punishable by excommunication and often preceded by what has become their specialty, hatred accompanied by personal, political, and career destruction.
When Barack Obama became president with full control of both houses of Congress, the left was ecstatic. Some were proud of their country for the first time, blissfully unaware that most Americans had always been proud of America.
It was clear to Democrats that citizens had finally agreed to give them the opportunity and power to realize their dream of a “fair” America of equal outcome with an unchecked government elite making all decisions for everybody in a socialist utopia where everyone can have everything they want, and no decisions or policies could ever be wrong and thus ever reviewable.
When voters began to realize that Obama wasn’t as moderate as he pretended to be to get elected, they began the eight-year trek away from the Democratic utopia. First, Democrats lost the House, then the Senate, and 2016, they lost the presidency.
The left, which had become convinced they would never again be relegated to the minority, were not only surprised, they were outraged. Who were these people to go against the “arc of history?” This is “not who we are” they complained.
It can be said that Trump’s election was the point where the Democrats abandoned the deplorable bastards who stole Hillary Clinton’s presidency, but it had been coming for a long time.
When Barack Obama went on his worldwide apology tour, he wasn’t apologizing for America, he was apologizing for Americans. To himself, He was America; and Americans were merely the evil people who refused to accept this higher truth. It wasn’t America that cost him the House and the Senate, it was Americans who rejected the truth that his radical transformation of the United States of America was god’s plan.
Trump wasn’t the beginning, he was the last straw. That’s what sanctuary cities, abolish ICE, open borders, DACA, amnesty, and a path to citizenship are all about. These things are not a function of compassion for the poor paperless migrant searching for a better life -- remember, Democrats were anti-illegal immigration when they thought illegals were a boon to business and increased profit. These policies are nothing more than a means by which the left can switch out Americans for people who aren’t so depraved as to think they have a right to vote against them.
The left doesn’t stifle, bury, and ridicule conservative opinion in the media, Google searches, college campuses, and the public square because they won’t tolerate disagreement, they do it because they know that only they are on the side of all that is right and just and hence, any dissent is evil. And all dissenters are malevolent. It’s not a lack of tolerance, the left is tolerant of all good people, but since only evil people won’t agree with them, the beastly get what they deserve.
This is why it’s so easy for them to go to extremes to express their hatred for a Kavanaugh or a Covington kid, or lie and cheat to destroy a candidate Trump, or commit crimes to usurp his presidency, or investigate anyone ever involved with the man; these people are villainous, and hatred and extremism in the battle with evil is no vice.
This is also why everything Trump does is labeled racist. He won’t agree with them and do as he is told; he also refuses to be quiet and accept a beating as all deplorables should. Instead, he tries to implement policies that he believes are good for all us loathsome Americans. This makes everything he does malicious and obviates the need for them to look at what he says or supports on an individual basis -- we are wicked, and he is wicked and therefore, everything he espouses or tries to accomplish is wicked as well.
Democrats don’t want to destroy America, they want to destroy us, and in particular, Donald Trump. We deserve it for who we are.
Right now, they are in the process of replacing execrable Americans with people who they believe will be better for the country, for America. Therefore, they can’t ever agree on funding for a wall -- a wall would only make that harder.
We should all beware of what they will do with us when replacement is no longer an option. After all, we already know what they are capable of -- they show us every day.
1a)The caliphate explained
If you give a Muslim a cookie, he'll complain that it isn't halal and demand that you provide one that is.
If you give a Muslim a Halal cookie, he'll demand that you give him a job so he can buy his own cookies.
If you give a Muslim a job, he'll demand you give him time out to pray.
If you give a Muslim time out to pray, he'll demand that you respect his prophet.
If you show respect for his prophet, a Muslim will demand that you stop singing your National Anthem.
If you stop singing your National Anthem, a Muslim will demand that you elect him to Congress.
If you elect a Muslim to Congress, he'll demand that we change our Constitution, so we are no longer allowed to speak freely or have guns or worship the god of our choice (or not any god at all).
If we change the Constitution to what a Muslim demands, he will demand that Sharia Law be followed by everyone in the land.
If Sharia is followed by everyone in the land, then Muslims will be permitted by law to execute anyone who disagrees with them or does not dress like them or does not worship Allah.
Congress, you gave a Muslim a cookie. So did you, London , France , Greece .
Already the newly elected congressional woman from Michigan is criticizing Pence for his Christian values and beliefs.
Its just starting.
1b)
1a)The caliphate explained
If you give a Muslim a cookie, he'll complain that it isn't halal and demand that you provide one that is.
If you give a Muslim a Halal cookie, he'll demand that you give him a job so he can buy his own cookies.
If you give a Muslim a job, he'll demand you give him time out to pray.
If you give a Muslim time out to pray, he'll demand that you respect his prophet.
If you show respect for his prophet, a Muslim will demand that you stop singing your National Anthem.
If you stop singing your National Anthem, a Muslim will demand that you elect him to Congress.
If you elect a Muslim to Congress, he'll demand that we change our Constitution, so we are no longer allowed to speak freely or have guns or worship the god of our choice (or not any god at all).
If we change the Constitution to what a Muslim demands, he will demand that Sharia Law be followed by everyone in the land.
If Sharia is followed by everyone in the land, then Muslims will be permitted by law to execute anyone who disagrees with them or does not dress like them or does not worship Allah.
Congress, you gave a Muslim a cookie. So did you, London , France , Greece .
Already the newly elected congressional woman from Michigan is criticizing Pence for his Christian values and beliefs.
Its just starting.
1b)
Some time ago, Iran's Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the Muslim World to boycott anything and everything that originates with the Jewish people.
In response, Meyer M. Treinkman, a Jewish pharmacist, out of the kindness of his heart, offered to assist them in their boycott as follows:
"Any Muslim who has Syphilis must not be cured by Salvarsan discovered by a Jew, Dr. Ehrlich. He should not even try to find out whether he has Syphilis, because the Wasserman Test is the discovery of a Jew. If a Muslim suspects that he has Gonorrhea, he must not seek diagnosis, because he will be using the method discovered by a Jew named Neissner.
"A Muslim who has heart disease must not use Digitalis, a discovery by a Jew, Ludwig Traube.
Should he suffer with a toothache, he must not use Novocaine, a discovery of the Jews, Widal and Weil.
If a Muslim has Diabetes, he must not use Insulin, the result of research by Minkowsky, a Jew. If one has a headache, he must shun Pyramidon and Antypyrin, due to the Jews, Spiro and Ellege.
Muslims with convulsions must put up with them because it was a Jew, Oscar Leibreich, who proposed the use of Chloral Hydrate.
Arabs must do likewise with their psychic ailments because Freud, father of psychoanalysis, was a Jew.
Should a Muslim child get Diphtheria, he must refrain from the “Schick" reaction which was invented by the Jew, Bella Schick.
"Muslims should be ready to die in great numbers and must not permit treatment of ear and brain damage, the work of Jewish Nobel Prize winner, Robert Baram.
They should continue to die or remain crippled by Infantile Paralysis because the discoverer of the anti-polio vaccine is a Jew, Jonas Salk.
"Muslims must refuse to use Streptomycin and continue to die of Tuberculosis because a Jew, Zalman Waxman, invented the wonder drug against this killing disease.
Muslim doctors must discard all discoveries and improvements by dermatologist Judas Sehn Benedict, or the lung specialist, Frawnkel, and of many other world renowned Jewish scientists and medical experts.
"In short, good and loyal Muslims properly and fittingly should remain afflicted with Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Heart Disease, Headaches, Typhus, Diabetes, Mental Disorders, Polio Convulsions and Tuberculosis and be proud to obey the Islamic boycott."
Oh, and by the way, don't call for a doctor on your cell phone because the cell phone was invented in Israel by Jewish engineer, Martin "Marty" Cooper.
Meanwhile I ask, what medical contributions to the world have the Muslims made?"
The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000; that is ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world's population.
They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz
Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1990 - Elias James Corey
1994 - Yaser Arafat:
1999 - Ahmed Zewai
Economics:
(zero)
Physics:
(zero)
Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad
TOTAL: 7 (SEVEN)
The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000; that is FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population.
They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World
Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger
Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel
Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
1996 - Lu RoseIacovino
TOTAL: 129 !!!
The Jews are NOT promoting brainwashing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non-Muslims.
The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants.
There is NOT one single Jew who has destroyed a church..
There is NOT a single Jew who protests by killing people. The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.
Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.
Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they demand that humankind respects them.
Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel 's part, the following two sentences really say it all:
'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel."
Benjamin Netanyahu: General Eisenhower warned us. It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.
He did this because he said in words to this effect: 'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened'
Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred.
It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.
It is now more than 65 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.
Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.
This e-mail is intended to reach 400 million people. Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world.
How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center 'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends some Muslim in the United States?
2)
Who allowed FISA surveillance abuse? New attorney general must find out
BY FRANCEY HAKES, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 01/23/19 10:00 AM EST
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
When I worked at the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review at the Department of Justice (DOJ), the procedure for obtaining a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant was an object lesson in checks and balances. Given the near-daily revelations about the underpinnings of the various investigations into President Trump and his inner circle, those checks and balances weren’t just ignored — they were thrown permanently out the window in the name of securing his election defeat or later removal from office.
We are privileged to live in a country where the rule of law and our tradition of professional law enforcement protect us from the kind of corruption rife in many other countries. But the conduct of the FBI and the Department of Justice in opening multiple investigations into President Trump and his inner circle calls that professionalism into question in a way that should concern us all, regardless of our political leanings.
In 1975, the Church Committee was formed by Congress to investigate whether the intelligence community was using its various surveillance technologies to target political enemies. Three major agencies — National Security Agency (NSA), CIA, and FBI — were all found to be illegally targeting Americans such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Muhammad Ali without court supervision, permission or warrants as required by the Constitution. In response to this shocking finding, Congress in 1978 passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was designed to impose strict controls on the use of clandestine surveillance tools against Americans to ensure they were never again used for political purposes.
There were strict guidelines and procedures in place for obtaining a FISA surveillance warrant when I was on special detail to the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review inside the Department of Justice in 2004 and 2005. Before the FBI brought an application to me as the department attorney who would swear to it and present it to the FISA Court, the application went through a series of reviews inside the FBI. These reviews are designed to ensure that a neutral person agrees there is sufficient evidence that the target of the warrant is an agent of a foreign power engaging in espionage or terrorism.
Generally, these warrants are never intended for use in criminal courts. They largely are used to gather intelligence that will aid in protecting national security. They also mostly are used to target foreign nationals in this country. If the target is a U.S. person, the department attorney must establish in the application for a warrant that the person is acting as the agent of a foreign power and, additionally, that he or she likely engaged in conduct that violates U.S. criminal statutes. As with criminal warrants, the factual assertions made to support the allegation that the target is an agent of a foreign power engaged in possible criminal activity must be reliable. That is, a bare assertion is not enough; it must be supported by reliable information and evidence.
Once the review is complete at the FBI, the agent presents the application to a department attorney for review and submission to the FISA Court. At this stage, the attorney must verify every paragraph of the application. This is done in consultation with the agent. I was trained to ask the agent how he or she knew each “fact” asserted in every paragraph. Importantly, I would be swearing to the application’s accuracy before the court, so I had a critical incentive to ensure the facts were accurately portrayed. My license, my reputation were on the line.
But, I had to rely upon the representation of the agent, and the FBI, CIA or NSA, to give me accurate information. I certainly couldn’t go out and verify the assertions myself. Once I was confident that each paragraph was accurate, and that the requirements of the statute were met, that application then went through several more people above me, supervisors who also were professional DOJ career attorneys, before it reached the final level of approval by the deputy attorney general. Only then, after purportedly neutral review inside the FBI and DOJ, would a FISA application be submitted to the court for approval.
We now know that the unverified allegations in the so-called Steele dossier were asserted as reliable facts in the original FISA warrant and three renewals against former Trump campaign volunteer adviser Carter Page. Former FBI director James Comey admitted as much in testimony long after the FISA warrant was issued. How could this happen? That is what the new attorney general must find out.
How could all the controls in place to protect Americans from clandestine surveillance fail so miserably? It is important to note that many more Americans beyond Carter Page likely were surveilled by the FBI. Every person with whom Page communicated had their emails or text messages captured and reviewed, potentially going back years.
The Obama administration was unveiling the names of Americans captured in FISA surveillance at record rates. This spider web of captures and potential invasion of privacy is exactly why it is so serious to utilize clandestine surveillance tools against Americans. And, it is why there are so many steps required to surveil Americans using those tools. Regular criminal warrants against criminal suspects have disclosure requirements so targets eventually know they have been surveiled. In contrast, clandestine surveillance may go undisclosed forever. So, many Americans may never know — and likely don’t to this day in the case of those with whom Page communicated — that they have been surveiled by government agents.
Why do we care that Page and many other Americans had their emails or other messages intercepted and reviewed based upon unverified allegations? If you think President Trump and his associates are dangerous, evil, stupid, or unqualified, then you might not care. The ends justify the means to you. But what if this supposedly dangerous, evil, stupid, unqualified president uses those same failures to his advantage and against his own enemies?
The new attorney general must investigate how this happened by tracing each person in the chain of the Page FISA warrants. Each must be asked about the factual assertions made under oath. Someone is accountable. Someone inside the Justice Department must answer for the abuse of our surveillance assets and sworn misrepresentations to the FISA Court. If they don’t, it will happen again. And again.
Francey Hakes was a prosecutor for 16 years and now consults on national security and the protection of children. As a former assistant U.S. attorney, she appeared before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, presenting applications for counter terrorism and counterespionage warrants on a special detail to the Department of Justice Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. She served as the first National Coordinator for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction from January 2010 to March 2012. Follow her on Twitter @FranceyHakes
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The Post Editorial Board
In agreeing to reopen the government for three weeks without funding for a border wall — previously his non-negotiable condition for ending the shutdown — President Trump clearly backed down.
Will Democrats now accept his call for bipartisan cooperation and seriously negotiate a compromise solution on the border-security issue?
Or will they bow to their hard-left wing and keep on pushing for Trump’s complete surrender?
The stopgap deal means 800,000 federal workers can return to work and will get their back pay. And it means debate on border-security funding can take place away from relentless negative media coverage of the shutdown’s effects.
Indeed, Trump acted just hours after La Guardia Airport was temporarily closed off when air-traffic controllers, after days of threats by their union, called in sick rather than work any longer without pay.
But if a border wall is no longer a precondition for ending the shutdown, Trump made clear it’s still very much on the table.
Moreover, he suggested strongly that if Congress doesn’t reach “a fair deal” in three weeks, he’ll declare a national emergency to fund the wall unilaterally.
At the same time, though, he indicated that he’s flexible on just what kind of a wall should be built — a significant nod to moderate Democrats who’ve said they favor some kind of physical barrier.
That gives both sides plenty of room to engage in genuine, honest negotiations — if Democratic leaders are willing.
Unfortunately, their track record is not promising: They’ve spurned every offer Trump has put on the table — including linkage to comprehensive immigration reform. Instead, they’ve kept on playing chicken.
Now that the president has blinked, it’s time to get serious. If they overplay their hand, it’s the Democrats who’ll be responsible for the consequences.
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