“The long-awaited showdown between the Justice Department and Congress is finally here.
It started late Friday afternoon. While the rest of the country was parsing the just-released report on the FBI from the Justice Department’s inspector general, senior congressional leaders and selected committee chairmen quietly met with FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at a secure location in the basement of the Capitol.
At issue was Justice and FBI’s continuing defiance of congressional subpoenas. At the top of this list is the demand from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for documents about why and whether the FBI had an informant insinuating himself with Trump campaign officials before the Russia investigation officially started.
On Sunday on Fox News, Devin Nunes, the House Intel chairman, made clear his “patience has run out.” The good news is that he and the other House chairmen at the Friday meeting—Judiciary’s Bob Goodlatte and Oversight and Government Reform’s Trey Gowdy —were fully backed up in their demands by Speaker Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan sent Messrs. Rosenstein and Wray an unambiguous message: Comply with Congress’s orders this week.
In a radio interview Monday morning with Milwaukee’s WISN, Mr. Ryan said “the new leadership at Justice and the FBI” has to decide whether it will be “part of the cleanup crew or the coverup team.” If Justice and the FBI don’t comply within the timeline he laid out, he said, “we are going to have to take action.”
Of all the actions Congress could take, a contempt finding or an impeachment is the most substantial. Unfortunately, recent Republican history with regard to the former doesn’t incline to optimism.
Disagree? Then you explain it!
Lois Lerner, the former official at the heart of the IRS targeting of conservative groups, and Eric Holder, Barack Obama’s attorney general, were each held in contempt by Congress. But in both cases, Congress blinked when it came to imposing effective consequences.
In June 2012, Mr. Holder was held in contempt for withholding documents Congress wanted from the botched Fast and Furious operation that put firearms in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. It was the first time Congress had taken such a move against a sitting cabinet member. The first contempt resolution referred the attorney general for criminal charges, while a second launched a civil suit seeking a court to order Justice to turn over the documents.
The Obama Justice Department declined to act on the criminal referral—as everyone knew it would. Though a judge would ultimately reject the administration’s claims of executive privilege, the ruling didn’t come until 2016. By that time Mr. Obama was wrapping up his second term, Mr. Holder had retired, and Fast and Furious had long since faded from the headlines.
But Congress has a third option for contempt: It can jail someone until he (or she!) produces the testimony or documents sought.The advantage here is that Congress can do this all on its own…”
These two videos of Ted Cruz and John Kennedy questioning David Horowitz are well worth your watching; but if time is a commodity on which you’re short, fast forward to the 6:16 mark in the Kennedy clip to hear the Louisianan ask what inquiring minds want to know:
Meanwhile, as this forward from Bill Meisen relates…
“Peter Strzok, the FBI agent under fire over a series of anti-Trump text messages, was “escorted” from the FBI building, his lawyer confirmed to Fox News on Tuesday.
Strzok’s lawyer, Aitan Goelman, argued that even though his client has “played by the rules,” he has been targeted by “unfounded personal attacks, political games and inappropriate information leaks.” “All of this seriously calls into question the impartiality of the disciplinary process, which now appears tainted by political influence,” a statement from Goelman said…”
Gee, it only took,…what…a year?!? So, in other words, what goes around, comes around! Talk about just desserts. Which leads inquiring minds to wonder, what about Ms. Page?
Here’s the juice:
Next up, in the latest non-issue blown to Biblical proportions by Progressives and their sycophants in the MSM, writing at Townhall.com, Cortney O’Brien reports how…
“The Trump administration’s policy of separating illegal immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border doesn’t sit well with some people, including former First Lady Laura Bush. In a new op-ed for The Washington Post, Mrs. Bush explained why the White House’s zero tolerance policy is “cruel,” “immoral,” and “breaks her heart.”
Mrs. Bush compared today’s policy of separating families to our treatment of Japanese Americans during World War Two…”
We liked Laura a lot better when she was seen and not heard. Her utterly inaccurate comparison notwithstanding, Tucker Carlson’s conversation with Derek Hunter highlightthe insanity her emotional appeal actually represents:
Echoing Bill Meisen’s sentiments, we like Sarah Sanders, but fail to understand why she has such difficulty explaining the reasons we take children away from their parents at the border.
It’s simple: because their parents have been arrested. When a U.S. citizen is arrested, they are separated from their children. The kids don’t join them in stir. And since the children have no legal residence in the U.S., they’re brought to and housed in federal detention facilities until their parents’ criminal case is resolved.
Again, the question we’re asking is, “Why are we giving illegal immigrants and their childrenmore rights than are granted to American citizens?!?
Even though Mrs. Bush tries her best to put a negative spin on the situation, any reasonable person cannot deny the children are given excellent care…certainly better than their parents afforded them while risking their lives to get to the border and cross illegally enter America.
Not to mention Liberals don’t seem to mind Paul Manafort’s been separated from his children.
“The latest furor over Trump immigration policy involves the separation of children from parents at the border.As usual, the outrage obscures more than it illuminates, so it’s worth walking through what’s happening here…”
…If someone is determined to come here illegally, the decent and safest thing would be to leave the child at home with a relative and send money back home.Because we favor family units over single adults, we are creating an incentive to do the opposite and use children to cut deals with smugglers.
…The missing piece here is Congress, but little outrage will be directed at it, and probably nothing will be done. And so our perverse system will remain in place and the crisis at the border will rumble on.“
At the risk of seeming harsh, until either Congress acts or our southern border is truly secured, we’d suggest The Left could better spend their time and money translating this book into Español…
…then teaching the kids, whose “parents” have dragged more than halfway across Central America, how to read…not to mention how to flush a toilet.
We’d be willing to bet our entire net worth the conditions these kids in “detention” are enjoying, despite their seeming austerity, beat the hell of what they’ve ever experienced in their lives to date, be it the quality/quantity of food, sleeping arrangements or sanitation facilities.
By the way, writing at his White House Dossier, Keith Koffler explains…
“The United Nations’ top human-rights official, a Jordanian prince who supports religious-blasphemy laws, condemned the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration-enforcement policy in a Monday statement. “The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said, citing the president of the American Association of Pediatrics’s characterization of the policy as “government-sanctioned child abuse.”
Zeid’s office previously condemned the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which holds that all immigrants who cross the border illegally will be prosecuted and, if they are accompanied by a child, separated from the child while they await trial. That practice “amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life, and is a serious violation of the rights of the child,” Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for Zeid’s office, told reporters earlier this month.
During both of Zeid’s terms as Jordan’s ambassador to the U.N., Jordan voted along with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in favor of resolutions calling for member states to adopt laws against religious blasphemy. The resolutions were part of the broader OIC effort to establish international religious-blasphemy laws.
…Zeid’s support for the religious-blasphemy resolutions was concurrent with the trampling of freedom of speech in his home country. In 2011, Jordan brought charges against Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and 19 of his colleagues for caricaturing the prophet Muhammad in their publication, Jyllands-Posten.Two years prior, in 2009, Jordanian poet Eslam Samhan was imprisoned for including Quranic verses in his poetry.
Zeid, who attended Johns Hopkins University and married an American, has been sharply critical of the U.S. during his four-year stint as the UN’s top human-rights official. He has asserted that the U.S. has an obligation to prosecute members of the CIA who participated in waterboarding and claimed American gun laws “lack rational justification.”“
“A Columbia County woman is back in jail after she failed to show up in court for an aggravated battery charge. In October of last year, Kimberly Dunn, 35, shot her ex-husband in the testicles after he tried to take an AC unit, according to an arrest report.Dunn’s estranged husband said he came to her home — with his brother — to pick up the unit. He had discovered that she was attempting to sell it on Facebook, the report said.
…When the man and his brother attempted to unhook the unit, Dunn sat on it to prevent the two men from taking it, the report said. When the ex-husband approached, he tried to remove her from the AC unit, but Dunn produced a pink stun gun and attempted to electrocute him, according to the arrest report. Dunn was struck in the head and dropped both the pink stun gun and a handgun, the report said.
Dunn reportedly got up off the ground and shot him in the testicles with the handgun. The man’s brother pushed Dunn to the ground and attempted to help his brother and drove him to the hospital. The report said that the ex-husband’s brother screamed, “You shot my brother” and began choking her until she blacked out…”
“A Georgia man planning to visit his dad on Father’s Day says his car – and his beloved dog – were stolen by a mysterious woman who was wearing only a bath towel.
Matt Sanders, of Hall County, said he packed his belongings and his dog, Bear, into the vehicle Sunday morning before going back into his home to grab his phone. When he came outside, he saw the woman sitting in the driver’s seat. “She’s in a towel, and I’m just like…’What?’”, Sanders told Fox 5 Atlanta. Then it hits me that someone is trying to steal my dog and my car.”
Sanders describes the woman as a middle-aged Caucasian with light colored curly hair, wearing nothing but a bath towel. He recalled pleading to the woman to give the dog back, but instead, she sped off.
“That dog goes everywhere with me,” Sanders told the station.“It’s just my child.” “That’s a person that I’ve spent my life with, and I want them back,” he told Fox 5 Atlanta.“My life isn’t complete right now. I’m torn up…torn up.”…”
We’re gonna go out on a limb and take odds what really happened is a far cry from Mr. Sanders’ account.
Loading ...
You must be logged in to post a comment.