It’s Friday, November 4th, 2016…but before we begin, courtesy of Shannon Wood, proof positive Dimocrats are shuttling early voters to the polls in Chicago by the truckload:
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up on the last edition of the week, writing at Townhall.com, NeverTrumper Jonah Goldberg observes how…
In deciding to tell Congress about a new trove of emails that may or may not contain classified information and may or may not relate to Hillary Clinton, FBI Director James Comey broke Justice Department protocol both by releasing information close to an election and by revealing details of an ongoing investigation. It was a “stunning breach of protocol,” former Attorney General Eric Holder dutifully insisted.
Tim Kaine invoked protocol more than a half-dozen times Sunday in his interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “It is just extremely puzzling,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee said. “Why would you break these two protocols?”
“Puzzled” was the runner-up word of the weekend; Kaine used it repeatedly, as did Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook. “We are so puzzled right now,” Mook told NBC’s Chuck Todd.
Well, let’s try to solve this riddle. Comey’s regrettable decision is much easier to understand once you realize it is one small piece of the larger puzzle. He made a bad choice — though probably the least bad choice of those available to him — precisely because all of the relevant actors in this sordid mess have been breaking protocol for years.
Clinton broke all kinds of protocol by setting up her stealth server and then lying about it not only in public but also, I would argue, to Congress. She broke protocol when her aides smashed phones with a hammer and erased emails — official government records — after they were subject to a congressional subpoena.
Bill Clinton broke protocol when he met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch in secret while his wife was still under investigation by the FBI. Lynch, smarting from her breach of protocol with the former president, widened the breach by refusing to recuse herself and investing instead in the FBI director the authority to decide whether or not to prosecute Hillary Clinton.
President Obama broke protocol when he told “60 Minutes” that Clinton — with whom he had corresponded over an unsecure email channel — did nothing to endanger national security long before the investigation was even concluded.
And, of course, the Democratic Party broke not a formal protocol but one hell of a rule of thumb by nominating a woman who carries more baggage than the cargo hold of the Queen Mary…”
Yet Goldberg still cannot bring himself to vote against her. More on this particular Conservative derangement syndrome later.
Since we’re on the subject of derangment, consider this comment from a Dimocratic operative as quoted in Vanity Fair, then decide:
“This is not about Huma’s e-mails,” a surrogate told me. “It’s about the e-mails generally. There’s a lot of things that got us to this point. But if Weiner hadn’t taken pictures of his weiner, we wouldn’t be in this thing.”
Are Liberals simply refusing to acknowledge facts as evident as The Obamao’s ears, or do they really not appreciate none of this could/would have happened without Hillary’s deliberate flouting of every rule in the book?!?
One thing’s certain: if the middle levels of the FBI might be a hotbed of rabid Trumpeteers…
…the senior levels of every other department of the Executive Branch, most imporantly the White House and DOJ, are, as Kimberly Strassel notes at the WSJ, definitely part of…
“The most obnoxious spin of the 2016 campaign came this week, as Democrats, their media allies and even President Obama accused the FBI of stacking the election. It’s an extraordinary claim, coming as it does from the same crew that has—we now know—been stacking the election all along in the corridors of the Justice Department.
This is the true November surprise. For four months, FBI Director James Comey has been the public face of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. He played that role so well, putting the FBI so front and center, that the country forgot about Mr. Comey’s bosses. Revelations this week build the case that President Obama’s politicized Justice Department has been pulling strings and flacking for Mrs. Clinton all along.
One piece of evidence comes from WikiLeaks, in a hacked email between the chairman of the Clinton campaign, John Podesta, and Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik. It was sent in May of 2015 via a private Gmail account, which has become the favored way for Obama employees to hide communications from the public. “Heads up,” Mr. Kadzik warned, informing the campaign about a coming hearing and a recent legal filing about Mrs. Clinton’s emails.
…The Justice Department has tried to dismiss Mr. Kadzik’s tip-off to the Clinton campaign as a note “about public information,” sent “in his personal capacity, not during work hours.” But Mr. Kadzik is a senior government official. He does not get to feed any information to a potential target of an investigation, at any hour of the day or night.
What the email reveals is the mind-set of the senior officials at the Justice Department. They are in it to win it for Hillary.They have taken a cue from their boss, the president, who has felt free to personally absolve Mrs. Clinton, no matter how inappropriate that is…”
The “why” is detailed in this forward from Russell Painton:
The pertinent portions are highlighted in yellow. As former AG Michael Mukasey noted earlier this week in the WSJ, the bottomline remains the inextricable culpability of The Great Prevaricator, aka The Prince of Lies:
“The search for clues brings us to an email to then-Secretary Clinton from President Obama, writing under a pseudonym, that the FBI showed to Ms. Abedin.(Huma Weiner’s reaction to which is shown above.) That email, along with 21 others that passed between the president and Secretary Clinton, has been withheld by the administration from release on confidentiality grounds not specified but that could only be executive privilege.
After disclosure of those emails, the president said during an interview that he thought Mrs. Clinton should not be criminally charged because there was no evidence that she had intended to harm the nation’s security—a showing required under none of the relevant statutes. As indefensible as his legal reasoning may have been, his practical reasoning is apparent: If Mrs. Clinton was at criminal risk for communicating on her nonsecure system, so was he.“
When it comes to The Dear Misleader, we defer to the assessment of the late, great Robert Shaw:
Next up, as previously promised, we consider the position of those adamantly opposed to the most Conservative candidate with a reasonable chance of winning the White House. Here’s David French, writing at NRO back on October 18th, i.e., before Jim Comey’s attempt to salvage the last shreds of his soiled reputation and integrity:
“As I write this piece, millions of conservative Americans are searching their consciences, trying to decide whether they should vote for a man who openly refutes and mocks their core values, and thereby ensure that Hillary Clinton wins by three points rather than eight. They are making this decision against a backdrop of concern, intentionally stoked by well-meaning-but-deluded citizens, that America’s constitutional republic won’t survive a Clinton presidency.
These folks think and argue that America is one more bad president and one or two more Supreme Court justices from oblivion. They’re wrong.(No, David; you’re wrong!) That’s not to say that America is too big to fail or that we couldn’t “fundamentally transform” into something unrecognizable. But such a transformation couldn’t be singlehandedly pulled off by the Supreme Court or the President. If it happened, it would be the result of collective societal action over a sustained period of time. Our ship is resilient.It would take more than one iceberg to sink.
For that, we can thank Alexander Hamilton and the rest of America’s Founding Fathers. They built a system remarkably resistant to even sustained incompetence and corruption, with checks and balances so comprehensive that when America commits enduring sin, it does so only through the consent and participation of the governed, manifested through multiple branches of government…”
Our admiration for David French and his writings are second to none; but on this point he’s simply dead wrong. First, sure our ship of state’s resilient; but having already been piloted into multiple icebergs…
…she’s already well down by the bow and taking on water…fast!
Second, French minimizes our peril when he admits, “That’s not to say that America is too big to fail or that we couldn’t “fundamentally transform” into something unrecognizable.” Which is to say, sure, the fundamental, irrecoverable transformation of America is possible…French just can’t see it happening in the next 4 to 8 years.
Perhaps because he can’t recall the results of the last 8: a doubling of the national debt; a racially-motivated, government-sanctioned war on law enforcement; a cratering economy; 1/3 of the nation out of or not looking for work; mushrooming entitlements; uncontrolled illegal immigration; skyrocketing health insurance costs; political correctness run amok; the evisceration of our Armed Forces in an increasingly unstable world; a completely failed foreign policy; the unconstitutional politicization of the IRS, DOJ, EPA, FBI and every other segment of the federal government; a total disregard for truth and the rule of law at the highest levels of government; rule by executive decree. Oh,…and Benghazi!
Any questions?!?
As for French’s contention “such a transformation couldn’t be singlehandedly pulled off by…the President”, what does he consider the Iran nuclear treaty, or any of the hundreds of other times The Obamao’s acted either unconstitutionally or via executive order to the grave detriment of America?
Lastly, there’s his statement, “when America commits enduring sin, it does so only through the consent and participation of the governed, manifested through multiple branches of government”. Can my Conservative, Christian brother really have forgotten Obamacare, when a Dimocratic-controlled Congress broke every rule in the book to force through legislation unsupported by a single Republican, which was then rewritten by Chief Justice John Roberts to correct it’s unconstitutional contradictions?
And if a President Hillary gets to appoint a SCOTUS utterly dismissive of the Constitution, with a Congress as compliant as that which initially backed Obama, what on earth could possibly cause French to believe they wouldn’t shred what little of the Founder’ Republic Obama’s left?!?
From where we’re sitting, not much! At least, not much that makes any sense.
In a related item, the thoughts of another Conservative whose aim is way of the mark, as Jim Geraghty announces…
…I voted absentee this year, and voted for Evan McMullin. Needless to say, I instantly got the typically calm and easygoing response from Trump fans you would expect. Hugh made the argument that because Clinton’s actions with her private server are now so clearly harmful to national security that even a Never Trumper like me has to be rooting for his victory. (It’s easier to root for her defeat than his victory.)
Hugh convincingly argued that there will be more opposition to Trump’s unconstitutional instincts than to Hillary’s. If both are likely to face criminal charges and an impeachment attempt against their abuses of power, Trump will face opposition that Hillary will not. In short, “You have to vote for the lesser Constitutional crisis.”
The perfect slogan!
And you know what? Hewitt’s right, and Geraghty’s dead-ass wrong!!!. Look, we all make mistakes; Geraghty’s is just bigger than most. Jim remains concerned about what Trump MIGHT DO, rather than acting against what Hillary HAS DONE…and will inevitably continue to do!
Case in point: George Will, who in a ten-paragraph commentary highlighting the repeated depredations of Obama and the Clintons, uses one to inexplicably equate potential with certainty:
“So, herewith America’s choice. Restore the House of Clinton. Or confer executive powers — powers that President Obama by his audacity, and Congress by its lethargy, have proven to be essentially unlimited — on another competitor in the sleaze sweepstakes, Donald Trump, who shares his opponent’s disinclination to disentangle the personal and the political.“
What we see is an otherwise-intelligent individual who’s allowed his personal distaste for The Donald to override his reason.
“…By her behavior in the past year, Mrs. Clinton has ratified the worst things her critics say about her.
Some of our friends argue that Mrs. Clinton’s corruption is tolerable because it is merely about gaining and maintaining political power.This understates how much the Clinton blending of public office with private gain erodes confidence in honest government. It feeds the leftist narrative that business is merely another arm of the state and thus reduces support for free markets.
All of which means that if she does win on Tuesday, the manner of her victory would damage her ability to govern. Rather than win a policy mandate, she has chosen to destroy Mr. Trump personally. She would face a Congress that wants to investigate her from the first day and an electorate that is polarized and doesn’t trust her. (With inarguably good reason!) Her instinct would be to lean even more on the left for political support, making compromise with Republicans in Congress even more difficult.
We’re as optimistic as anyone about the resilience of American democracy, but four more years of aggressive progressive rule would more deeply entrench the federal Leviathan across ever more of the economy and civic life. The space for private business and nonpolitical mediating social institutions would shrink.
The case for Mrs. Clinton over Donald Trump is that she is a familiar member of the elite and thus less of a jump into the unknown, especially on foreign policy. The case against her is everything we know about her political history.“
Sorry, but could America’s foreign policy be any more befouled?!?
Thus, given the choice between the undeniable reality of Hillary and the mere possibility Trump might…might mind you…even begin to wreak the havoc Hillary most certainly will, in the words of the late, not-so-great Officer Davis…
Which brings to The Lighter Side…
Finally, we’ll end the day just as we began, with another little bon mot forwarded by Shannon Wood:
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