It’s Monday, January 29th, 2018…but before we begin, we found this political report from AEI of interest, if for no other reason than one particular data point:

The Russia investigation: Where is public opinion?

“Around 4 in 10 in recent polls said they don’t know who Robert Mueller is or haven’t heard enough about him to have an opinion…”

Which fairly screams the question…

Because it means if a significant segment of the population doesn’t even recognize Robert Mueller’s name, let alone his significance, they cannot even begin to grasp the import of Mueller’s relationship with many…

…if not all of the prime actors in this kangaroo court, relationships which would have required anyone else to recuse themselves at the outset due to a gross conflict of interest.

But this is about The Donald…not Slick Willy, Barry or Hillary…so neither the rules nor the rule of law applies.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, in a must-read commentary at NRO, Andy McCarthy suggests, when it comes to…

The Clamor over the Nunes ‘FISA Abuse’ Memo

Let’s see what he’s got.

“There is a great deal of commentary, some of it hysterical, about a short memo authored by Republican staffers on the House Intelligence Committee under the direction of Chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.). The memo is said to be about Obama-era abuses of the executive branch’s surveillance authorities under federal law — specifically, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The contents of the memo are not yet known to the public, so the commentary is the familiar game of shaping reaction to it.

The Republican script is that this was “Watergate on steroids.” The Democratic counter is that the memo is a one-sided partisan summary that takes investigative actions out of context in order to make mountains out of molehills. Unless and until we can read the document, we cannot make a judgment about which of these assessments is true, or at least closer to the truth. We can, however, make some observations about the controversy.

…First, the main questions that we need answered are:

Were associates of President Trump, members of his campaign, or even Trump himself, subjected to foreign-intelligence surveillance (i.e., do the FISA applications name them as either targets or persons whose communications and activities would likely be monitored)?

Was information from the Steele dossier used in FISA applications?

If Steele-dossier information was so used, was it so central that FISA warrants would not have been granted without it?

If Steele-dossier information was so used, was it corroborated by independent FBI investigation?

If the dossier’s information was so used, was the source accurately conveyed to the court so that credibility and potential bias could be weighed (i.e., was the court told that the information came from an opposition-research project sponsored by the Clinton presidential campaign)?

The FBI has said that significant efforts were made to corroborate Steele’s sensational claims, yet former director James Comey has acknowledged (in June 2017 Senate testimony) that the dossier was “unverified.” If the dossier was used in FISA applications in 2016, has the Justice Department — consistent with its continuing duty of candor in dealings with the tribunal — alerted the court that it did not succeed in verifying Steele’s hearsay reporting based on anonymous sources?

These are not questions that call for nuanced explanation. These things either happened or didn’t. To provide simple answers to these straightforward questions would not be a one-sided partisan exercise, even if the person providing the answers happened to be a partisan.

…Conforming to House rules, Chairman Nunes has taken pains to make his memo available to all members of Congress before proceeding with the steps necessary to seek its disclosure. Thus, lawmakers have an opportunity to propose the inclusion of details that may be necessary to correct any misimpressions; or Democrats could prepare their own summary in an effort to demonstrate Nunes’s partisan spin. Congressman Nunes is a smart guy, and he clearly knows he will look very foolish if he plays fast and loose with the facts. It is in his interest not to do that, and the careful way he has gone about complying with the rules — rather than leaking classified information, as Trump’s opponents have been wont to do — suggests that his memo will prove to be a fair representation of the underlying information.

On that last point, it would be hard to imagine a more one-sided partisan screed than the Steele dossier. Democrats seem to have had no hesitation about using it as a summary of purported Trump collusion with Russia…”

Which just goes to prove you cannot spell “Lying, Pieces of Sh*t, Hypocritical Democrats” without an “L”, an “I” and an “E”!

Next up, courtesy of NRO‘s The Corner, the Center for Immigration Studies‘ Mark Krikorian relates what, at first blush, appears to be…

The Art of the Choke

That was then…

who the heck KNOWS what’s now; will the REAL Donald Trump please stand up!

“The White House immigration outline was released today and it’s not good. It could change tomorrow, for all we know, but as it stands now, this is a preemptive surrender on several issues.

The enforcement component is fine, as far as it goes – there’s no E-Verify, but the White House decided months ago not to push that, thinking it would be a bridge too far for Democrats, since it impacts illegals who are already here.

But the amnesty and chain migration components are fatally flawed. The fact that the amnesty would include a path to citizenship (i.e., the beneficiaries would eventually get green cards like regular immigrants) is fine with me – if you’re going to amnesty illegal aliens, just rip off the band-aid and get it over with.

Instead, the issue is the size of the amnesty, or rather the universe of people who would be amnestied. If – as the White House promised just days ago – the amnesty were confined to those who now actually have DACA work permits (or even those who had them but didn’t renew), administering the amnesty would be relatively straightforward. All those people are already in the DHS database, and even if they were all re-examined as part of the amnesty process (to weed out the fraudsters that snuck past Obama’s eagle-eyed DHS), it could still be done relatively quickly and with minimal disruption of the work of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS component that deals with green cards, work permits, and the like.

But going beyond DACA beneficiaries to those who could have applied but didn’t is a different thing. It’s not just a difference in degree, but in kind. A whole new process will have to be set up for the 1 million additional people who would be expected to apply. The other work of USCIS would grind to a halt, delaying other legal immigration applications, as happened when DACA was originally implemented (and remember that Obama’s DACA amnesty was smaller than what Trump is proposing). In addition, there would be an opportunity cost, with USCIS unable to pursue many urgently needed administrative reforms.

What’s more, expanding the amnesty beyond DACA beneficiaries is morally dubious. The reason they have a compelling case for amnesty before all enforcement measures and in place and legal immigration curbed is that not only did they arrive here as minors but they voluntarily came forward and provided their information to the government. Those who chose not to do so should not be granted the same extraordinary act of mercy.

Then there’s the legal immigration “cuts.” The outline says that no new applications for the visa lottery and the chain-migration categories would be accepted, limiting family immigration to spouses and minor children. Great! But it also provides for the continuation of those categories (and reallocation of the lottery visas) until the admission of all 4 million people on the current chain-migration waiting lists. This is the same gimmick that was in the Hagel-Martinez amnesty bill in 2007 – and the estimate at the time was that it would take 17 years before all those people got their green cards. In other words, legal immigration would not actually be reduced until after President Kamala Harris’s successor took office.

The Cotton and Goodlatte bills both grandfather people on the waiting list who were within one year of getting their green card applications adjudicated, and refund the application fees for everyone else. This is a reasonable measure, since as the date gets closer, people might be selling property and whatnot as part of their relocation planning.

But to wait almost two decades before there’s any reduction in legal admissions is absurd. First of all, if we’re going to amnesty close to 2 million illegal aliens (and maybe more, since past estimates have proven so woefully wrong), that needs to be offset by immediate reductions elsewhere. What’s more this would be yet another example of the other side getting what it wants up front, with promises of things we want in the future. As Popeye’s friend J. Wellington Wimpy might have said, “I will gladly reduce immigration on Tuesday for an amnesty today.”

The White House has botched the DACA issue, cutting Bob Goodlatte’s House bill off at the knees and making it more likely that either there will be no bill at all or that any final bill the president signs (which is guaranteed to be even weaker than this) will fatally demoralize Republican voters in November. If the latter happens, the president will be well on the way to joining Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton in the impeached-but-not-removed club.“

Writing at Townhall.com, Derek Hunter echoes Krikorian’s sentiments, while making some great points of his own as he legitimately wonders…

Are We Heading for an Immigration Sellout?

Yeah…except that chain migration wouldn’t actually cease for some 17 years!!!

“…The White House announced their end of a deal on the so-called “DREAMers,” the people the media constantly remind everyone are in the country illegally “through no fault of their own,” and it’s bad.

First off, can we just say that the country owes these adults (because they’re all adults now) nothing. Their parents broke the law, knowingly and willingly. The idea that granting them citizenship is the only “moral” option because they’re here “through no fault of their own” is ridiculous. There are millions of Americans with parents in prison, should their parents be released because leaving someone without their parent is a situation they’re in “through no fault of their own”? If someone embezzled millions of dollars and spoiled their kids with the money, should the kids get to keep the house and all their gifts purchased with stolen money because they’d obtained them from stolen money “through no fault of their own”? Hell no.

So why should children of illegal aliens simply be given the greatest thing the United States has to offer because they weren’t caught earlier? There is no statute of limitations on violating immigration law – every day someone is in the country illegally they are breaking the law. It’s a continual violation. You can’t trespass on someone’s property, but hide in their treehouse or garage for a week and the trespassing expires, then get to move into the house.

Worse is President Trump’s plan grants amnesty to 1.8 million illegal alien DREAMers, not the 700-800 thousand who’ve actually registered for the program. Why? It doesn’t matter why. A case can be made for those who did register being granted something, including the ability to stay in the country legally (though not citizenship), but what is the rationale for extending it to people who didn’t bother to comply with then-President Barack Obama’s DACA program? None…”

In all fairness, this could be The Donald’s gambit to bait the Dims with an offer providing them practically everything they’ve ever wanted for illegals, knowing they’ll refuse any offer involving funding, however de minimis, for an effective wall.

Two thoughts occur to us: first, keep in mind Progressives and their anarchist allies ultimately won’t be satisfied with anything less than open borders, i.e., uncontrolled illegal immigration.  Second, the Dims might well take Trump up on his offer knowing, as Mark Krikorian previously noted, they get the vast majority of what they want (at least for now) in the present…and can always defund the wall when they regain control of Congress in the future.

Since we’re on the subject of The Donald’s rambling ruminations, the incomparable Stilton Jarlsberg offers this sneak preview of Tuesday’s SOTU address:

A prediction we can only hope and pray comes true!

In a related item, also courtesy of NRO, David French details…

Democratic Immigration Extremism and Warnings of Extremism to Come

The cultural power of the progressive machine has moved the boundaries of acceptable political discourse.

“Who’s the racist who once said this:

“All Americans…are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers”?

Who’s the racist who once said this:

“When I see Mexican flags waving at pro-immigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration”?

If you guessed the last two Democratic presidents — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, respectively — then you’re correct. If you believe their own party would excoriate them for the same words if they uttered them today, then you’re also correct. It’s time to acknowledge that the Democratic position on immigration has moved rapidly and decisively to the left, so rapidly and decisively that internal progressive debates that were common even a few years ago are settled. Over. To some activists, good-faith dissent from the new position simply isn’t possible. It’s proof positive that you’re racist.

Indeed, this change is so rapid and so dramatic that (even) thoughtful liberals are taking note. Last summer Peter Beinart wrote a long piece in The Atlantic chronicling the transformation. The party platform substantially changed. Politicians like Bernie Sanders were browbeaten into backing an ever-more open-borders position. (Which, frankly, is nothing new to Bernie.) Beinart talked to Jason Furman, the former chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic advisers. “A decade ago or two ago,” Furman said, “Democrats were divided on immigration. (ILLEGAL immigration to be precise!) Now everyone agrees and is passionate and thinks very little about any potential downsides.”

As Beinart notes, this change hasn’t happened because there’s now some sort of unshakeable scholarly agreement about immigration’s economic or cultural benefits. Instead, a combination of political and cultural pressures have shoved Democrats to the left, and they often justify that move by citing a scholarly consensus that does not exist. (As evidenced by the subject matter of today’s Environmental Moment which follows.)

Conservatives look at this change and think, “Here we go again.”

In the last two decades we’ve witnessed remarkable, rapid Democratic changes from tolerance to intolerance on critical political, cultural, and religious issues. Think of the major sexual-revolution controversies over abortion and gay marriage.

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton used the phrase “safe, legal, and rare” to articulate the Democratic position on abortion. The 2006 Democratic takeover of the House was empowered in part by pro-life Democrats. Now there’s an active debate as to whether pro-life Democrats even fit within the party’s “big tent,” and the question of party support for a moderately pro-choice mayoral candidate in Omaha, Neb., sparked bitter infighting.

Safe, legal, and rare? Now some activists want women to “shout” their abortion. By some counts, the number of pro-life Democrats in the House has gone from more than 100 to fewer than five.

The transformation on gay marriage has been faster and even more decisive. Not long ago Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton made religious and cultural arguments about the definition of marriage that would be considered bigoted today. To say they “evolved” on the issue is an understatement. Evaluating the records of both Clinton and Obama, PolitiFact judged both to be “full flops.”

What do these issues have in common? Identity politics. Immigration (race), abortion (gender), and gay marriage (sexual orientation) activate key portions of an increasingly identity-driven Democratic coalition, and the activist base doesn’t just nudge the party to the left, it shoves as hard as it can. While it shoves, it also shouts about all the “isms” and “phobias” that slander the opposition and silence dissent…”

We remain down with our Quote of the Day at the top of the page: no tickie, no entry.  Which makes us, by any Progressive standard, a racist, misogynist SOB; and by any other definition, a cold, harsh realist!  

And in the Environmental Moment, writing at Reason.com, Christian Britschgi reports on a big-government, inherently unreasonable Dimocratic solution to a non-existent problem; and no, we’re not making this up, nor is the article from The Onion:

California Considers $1,000 Fine for Waiters Offering Unsolicited Plastic Straws

This sucks.