[The Federalist] Conservatives stood agape last week at the inspector general’s refusal to state the obvious in his 568-page review of the FBI and Justice Department’s handling of the Clinton probe: A pro-Hillary political bias led officials to let her off the hook.
While Michael Horowitz’s report highlighted numerous instances of anti-Trump and pro-Hillary bias, in true lawyerly fashion he focused in the conclusion on the lack of "documentary or testimonial evidence" showing that political prejudice "directly affected" the decisions made in the investigation.
As a lawyer with a niche in employment law, this phrasing struck a chord of hilarity in me, because the methods of proving discriminatory intent are well-established, and such direct evidence of animus (or favoritism) is not required to show that an illegal motive drove an employment decision.
Under the federal statute that prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of age, sex, race, national origin, or religion, a plaintiff must prove an employer took an adverse employment action because of the employee’s membership in a protected class. In other words, an employee must prove that because he is African-American, and not Caucasian, the employer denied him a promotion (or didn’t hire him, or fired him). Over the years, the courts have crafted two methods of proving discriminatory intent: the direct method and the indirect method.
Under the direct method, a plaintiff must present direct or circumstantial evidence of animus. Direct evidence basically involves an admission that the illegal animus, whether it be race or sex, national origin or religion, motivated the employment decision. "I fired Ed because he is too old to coach football," would be a simple example.
Circumstantial evidence may also establish discriminatory intent but requires an added inference. For instance, circumstantial evidence that racial animus motivated the employer could come in the form of past racist statements or racial slurs, even without the employer tying the employee’s race to the current employment decision. An employer’s past race-based employment decisions would likewise serve as evidence that race motivated the employer’s treatment of this employee.
[The Hill] Robert Mueller may be preparing to wind down the special counsel investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia and hand off at least one prosecution following the probe's conclusion.
The Washington Post reports that Mueller has added several prosecutors to his team, specifically assigned to the case against several Russian nationals charged in the alleged effort to spread disinformation using stolen identities during the 2016 election.
Mueller's new additions will likely take over that case, which is expected to last longer than the probe into Russian collusion in the election. The Post reports that the new hires are the first indication of Mueller preparing for the end of his investigation.
Mueller's indictment of 13 Russian nationals and organizations earlier this year is one of several that have been spawned by the ongoing special counsel investigation, including the indictments of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for bank fraud and lobbying violations as well as several other former Trump associates.
#2
Mueller's new additions will likely take over that case, which is expected to last longer than the probe into Russian collusion in the election.
Wait a minute. The investigation into Russian collusion has been going on now for what? A year and a half? Two years? It seems to me if they had an actual case against these Russian nationals they could go to trial tomorrow morning and be done with it in a week or a month tops. What's that old saying? Justice delayed is justice denied. If they have no case they should drop it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/24/2018 11:00 Comments ||
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#3
Collision final report: both Putin and Trump like Slavic women!!!
...one of those tough but fair liberals who still ends up voting for the Democratic ticket in the end...
said that there might be legal problems coming out of the IG report ‐ but there are no criminal problems for President Trump. I'm afraid Dershowitz is entirely correct about the claim of "executive privilege."
[Townhall] Unless you have been hiding on a South Seas island, you have become quite aware of the Justice Department Inspector General’s (IG) report released regarding the Clinton Investigation plus more. There are so many points here, but let’s focus on the most important ones:
1. This has nothing to do with the everyday men and women of the FBI. FBI Director Christopher Wray should stop hiding behind them like his mother’s skirt. This is all about the leadership of the FBI ‐ the seventh floor of the building.
2. There was a culture created and protected that allowed a definitive bias to exist during the 2016 election and beyond in that group. That is on Comey’s head and there is no evidence Wray has obliterated that culture. 2 of 13 points.
[WSJ] It makes no difference how honorable he is. His investigation is tainted by the bias that attended its origin in 2016.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation may face a serious legal obstacle: It is tainted by antecedent political bias. The June 14 report from Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, unearthed a pattern of anti-Trump bias by high-ranking officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Some of their communications, the report says, were "not only indicative of a biased state of mind but imply a willingness to take action to impact a presidential candidate’s electoral prospects." Although Mr. Horowitz could not definitively ascertain whether this bias "directly affected" specific FBI actions in the Hillary Clinton email investigation, it nonetheless affects the legality of the Trump-Russia collusion inquiry, code-named Crossfire Hurricane.
Crossfire was launched only months before the 2016 election. Its FBI progenitors‐the same ones who had investigated Mrs. Clinton‐deployed at least one informant to probe Trump campaign advisers, obtained Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court wiretap warrants, issued national security letters to gather records, and unmasked the identities of campaign officials who were surveilled. They also repeatedly leaked investigative information.
Continued on Page 49
#3
I suspect he's finished and he knows it. He's probably looking for a way to extricate himself from this shi* sandwich with some degree of honor and respect.
[PJMedia] America is stumbling into a trade war with China that just might undo most of the good that the Trump Administration has done for other parts of our economic policy. Yes, China is a huge threat to the United States. I've been shouting this from the rooftops for the past five years, while the neo-conservative conventional wisdom held that China would collapse of its own weight. Yes, China is determined to overtake us in critical technologies. And yes, China plays dirty.
As it stands the Trump Administration's China policy will lose us the war, and I hate it when that happens. With apologies to J.M. Barrie, the Administration has drifted into Navarro-Navarro Land. If we want to stay ahead of China we have to revive American innovation. You can't revive American innovation as long as they steal any advance you make and produce it at half the price - cheap labor + government subsidies for taking over the market by selling below production costs
...Tariffs won't do much. The Trump Administration appears to think that the threat of tariffs will scare the Chinese into giving up their technological ambitions. They won't. Tariffs will hurt us as much as they hurt the Chinese, and the Chinese are much better at taking pain than we are. IMO, Obama era and tolerance for the current left wing hooliganism argue otherwise.
...A trade deal to reduce the deficit might be well and good, but it doesn't solve our problem. In that respect I agree with the so-called hardliners, namely trade adviser Peter Navarro: the real issue is China's attempt to leapfrog the US in critical technologies. In a report issued Tuesday, Navarro cited six forms of Chinese "economic aggression":
1: State-sponsored IP theft through physical theft, cyber-enabled espionage and theft, evasion of US export-control laws, and counterfeiting and piracy.
2: Coercive and intrusive regulatory gambits to force technology transfers from foreign companies, typically in exchange for limited access to the Chinese market.
3: Economic coercion through export restraints on critical raw materials and monopsony purchasing power.
4: Methods of information harvesting that include open-source collection; placement of non-traditional information collectors at US universities, national laboratories, and other centers of innovation.
5: Talent recruitment of business, finance, science, and technology experts.
6: State-backed, technology-seeking Chinese investment.
...Tariffs won't work. A tariff war might succeed in reducing China's growth rate substantially and tipping the US into recession. But it won't stop China's gradual advance.
#3
...yeah, just ignore currency manipulation, stealing trade and manufacturing secrets, et al. It's all about exporting unemployment. No one plays free trade. Everyone watches out for themselves and looking for gullible rubes to exploit.
[DAWN] WORLD attention is rightly focused on America’s controversial "zero tolerance" immigration policy and the US decision to withdraw from the United Nations ...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly... Human Rights Council.
The US moves have been criticised by many in Europe. But in fact, governments on this side of the Atlantic are engaged in a similarly epic struggle over immigration, human rights
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
06/24/2018 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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[DAWN] IN what is likely to be the first in a string of ratings actions, Moody’s has downgraded the outlook on Pakistain’s credit rating from stable to negative.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving society.
The global rating agency gives "heightened external vulnerability risk" as the main reason, going on to say that "[f]oreign exchange reserves have fallen to low levels and, absent significant capital inflows, will not be replenished over the next 12-18 months".
The situation makes it difficult for the government to raise more foreign exchange through international bonds, which increases "government liquidity risks".
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
06/24/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
When I think of dynamic, vibrant market economies, it ain't this fucking shithole country.
[Wash Times] Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a huge public relations hit for daring to quote scripture while explaining why borders should be secure, even if it means separating children from the adults who’ve carted them into the nation illegally in the first place.
But let’s get this straight, and straight-away: Borders are indeed biblical.
So is the rule of law. So is the concept of keeping out those born in other nations about whom U.S. immigration folk know little ‐ and that goes for children, as well as adults.
The left likes to whip out their Bible books and sell otherwise. But what do they know?
Democrats, after all, were the ones who removed mention of God from their national party platform back in 2012. Facing near-immediate fire, these Dems then quickly voted to revise that anti-God stance and put back what they had just taken out ‐ but it was hardly a do-over that ended decisively.
As ABC remembered it back in September 2012: "The first two voice votes [to put back God into the platform], which require a two-thirds majority to pass, were tied between ’ays’ and ’nos.’ On the third vote it was still hard to tell whether the ’ays’ were audibly louder than the ’nays’ in the half-full [Democratic convention] arena. When [convention chairman] Antonio Villaraigosa ... announced ’the ays have it,’ loud boos erupted across the arena."
Lovers of God the left are not.
Yet on borders, suddenly the Democrats are biblical scholars, as schooled on scriptural truths as, say, Rev. Franklin Graham.
Just recently, Nancy Pelosi railed: "The very hypocrisy of the attorney general to quote the Bible, the hypocrisy of all people of faith in our country not to clamor for what the administration is doing [at the border] ... For this administration to pose as people of faith and pose as people who care about family and children is of a height of hypocrisy that knows no bounds."
Spare us the sanctimony, please.
Pelosi spoke those words after Sessions brought up Romans 13, the chapter here the Apostle Paul tells how individuals should obey the laws set forth by God’s duly selected government leaders ‐ meaning, of course, even illegals.
But that’s not the only spot in the Bible that justifies this White House’s tougher immigration policy.
How about in Genesis where God destroyed the Tower of Babel, for one, and gave the builders different languages ‐ which then sent them scattering, seeking new lands to set up their own nations? Surely, that’s a creation of countries ‐ of countries with their own languages, cultures, laws and, dare say, boundaries-slash-borders. By God’s hands; by God’s design, no less.
Or there’s this, from Paul speaking in Acts 17: "The God who made the world and everything in it ... made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation."
Or this, the part where God tells Ezekiel, before commencing to divide the land into set portions: ’These are the boundaries by which you shall divide the land for inheritance among the twelve tribes of Israel."
#1
Sovereignty is the main case for closed borders. The original indigenous population of the Americas never even thought of that until far too late. The opposition hates the very existence of the USA.
#5
To stop the migration of kinda sorta almost like possible butt not really ANCIENT DIRT?!
Posted by: Jack Chaiter7913 ||
06/24/2018 22:29 Comments ||
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#6
Anguper Hupomosing9418, That line was saying that every male will have nothing to do with Ahab. Apparently it is quite normal for males to piss against the wall seeing there's no real functioning toilets then.
So standing to piss = Male. Squatting to piss = Female.
(Yes I looked it up and read the entire chapter)
Jehu was just appointed king of Israel and he was commanded to do battle against Ahab and wipe Ahab and his lineage out completely and to free all the men, both slaves and free men.
[DavidWarrenOnline] I am in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, in June 1972. Well, really I am not, gentle reader. Rather I am glancing at a ragged old notebook, which I should have pitched decades ago. It has risen to the surface of a heap, a raft of dust and nostalgia. Forty-six years have gone by! Who scribbled all this pretentious nonsense? Me, I’m afraid. My best excuse is that I was not quite twenty. (I don’t suppose that will work any more.)
A short plump man is pacing his office, his hands as if tied behind his back. He is Derek Davies, editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review ‐ a weekly I once held in veneration; a constellation of brave, capable journalists, of many nationalities; who had sometimes got the magazine banned, or themselves locked up, in the countries from where they were reporting; the best newsmagazine in Asia. (And now, quite extinct.) It was also a late relic of the colonial era, and of the Fabian aspirations descending from the London School of Economics. Oh, gentle reader, the men who held dominion over palm and pine were progressive to the core.
We were discussing contemporary journalism. Rather, Mr Davies was discussing this, as he paced; I was listening politely.
"I have grown very tired of journalisme engagé," he asserted.
He was agreeing with something I had not quite said, about the tone and posturing I had witnessed among journalists in Vietnam, on a mission that had little to do with reporting. These were hacks indifferent to the truth, incurious about their sources, vain, self-serving, committed only to good salaries, and scoring political points. Though I was very young, I was already jaded from the experience of watching them concoct dramatic fantasies, in the hope these would pass for front page news, and win them Pulitzers. Yet few were as bad as their editors, back home, who added the finishing touches.
I made an exception for the photographers, who risked their skins in the field. Often they were surprisingly rightwing. This was because they’d had the opportunity to stare Communism in the face, and understood what the Americans were fighting. Whereas the writers, romanticizing the Viet Cong, strayed seldom from the comforts of Saigon.
Mr Davies knew all this. He told me several ear-curling stories, without mentioning his own correspondents. But he was not so brave to risk defying the bigger names, the self-made legends ‐ a gallery of well-connected leftists now long since forgotten. The limit of his ambition was to check their facts, when they were most egregiously mistaken. This was something, however, and it made the "FEER" a much more informative read than, say, Time magazine, or Newsweek ‐ as much "fake news" then as today, though in those days a little more sophisticated.
Not journalism, but only journalisme engagé; Mr Davies feared this would be the future. For a moment he was dark, for what he described was a spirit of malice; an overwhelmingly destructive attitude of mind; and deriving from that, a terrible blindness. The engaged journalist can no longer see what is right before his eyes. He makes no concession to realities. He cannot attribute ‐ to his "Johnson" or his "Nixon" or his "Trump" ‐ any particle of honest intention. He focuses instead a compulsive hatred, with no self-deprecating relief. In his imagination he beholds a pure monster.
[IsraelNationalNews] What happens in America does not stay in America. It moves to Israel ‐ politically speaking. Or maybe it’s the other way, from Israel to America.
So, they haven’t toppled Benjamin Netanyahu as of the moment, not for lack of trying, but they have snatched for themselves second prize.
Sara Netanyahu has been indicted on charges of fraud and breach of trust. To these of you who didn't get the straight story - how can you with American press? She was basically Mike Flynned. They do have a cook who cooks for the family and used catering for official functions - because it's a lot cheaper: 100000$ in five years (the caterers probably giving them a discount and using "catering for PM official functions" for advertisement.
This has been coming for years, around the same time the prime minister himself has been under investigation for alleged corruption (he was charged by police for misconduct but not indicted) ‐ and it is not for us to touch this third rail of legalities, but only to marvel at what it’s like in both countries when Leftists go on the warpath.
We’re like twins.
Trump has been under withering scrutiny since he took office, and so it’s been for Netanyahu from day one.
For both leaders, success doesn’t count, so long as they wear the wrong label. Their enemies won’t give them a break even if they score win after win.
Progressives don’t like to lose, and when they do, they do get nasty. Through Robert Mueller and the entire left-wing media apparatus, they will probe the legitimacy of your election and failing that, they will go after your wife and kids, as Peter Fonda just did in a tweet so vile, the Secret Service had to be called in.
Yes, he apologized. It’s what they do after they’ve been caught sharing their true feelings, so on top of derangement, include hypocrisy as their daily double.
Before that it was Robert De Niro, and before that...well, all of them, or nearly so.
For Liberals, around here anyway, anything goes. Nothing is sacred. Courtesy of the Left, this is not the best of times in America.
The name-calling has been running on steroids.
No First Lady has ever encountered this. Never. Ever.
We don’t know if Mrs. Netanyahu was driven to tears over her legal difficulties, but we can be sure that Mrs. Trump was shaken by tweets calling for her son’s abduction.
No First Lady has ever encountered this. Never. Ever.
She never signed on for this ‐ and no feminists have rallied to her side. Is it any different for Sara Netanyahu?
Or are women sisters only if they vote and march a certain way?
From a distance, we can’t say that this is just another day in Israel, though on the latest for Sara Netanyahu, there must be cheering wherever Leftists gather.
The figuring must be that since they got her indicted, he must be next.
But it is just another day In America...another day when Liberals call everybody else a Nazi over the immigration snafu.
It is not the migrant kids they love so much, it is Trump they hate so much. They will try anything and use everything to destroy him...him and the millions who voted for him.
Those millions are the GOP silent majority that won’t remain silent if Leftists keep it going at this rate of vulgar animosity.
There will be a reckoning. I remember being shocked when I read "Connecticut Yankee" as a teen and finding that Twain approved of French "Terror". But that was a long time ago when I believed that western leftists are mistaken but, basically, well meaning people - I grew in Soviet Union. No more, they are all Khmer Rouge for me now.
Worker at PM residence allegedly served family lasagna with glass from broken jar; her apology note said to show PM's wife at times had no competent cooks on hand, had to order in
Honestly, I’m appalled — I’d fire the person immediately and without references.
It is very clear that the media as a class loathe Mr. Netanyahu and those in his circle, and have been searching avidly for any lever that will bring him down.
As I recall, a previous attack on his wife was that she collected the empty bottles for recycling that would otherwise have gone into the trash after their official functions, or something like that, and kept the proceeds rather than turning the money in to the prime minister’s office.
[PJ] It's come to this: according to some, people should be picking their casual dining choices based on their politics.
NPR published an opinion piece by writer Monique Truong that claims in the headline that it is "hypocrisy" for administration members who support President Trump's way of handling the long-ignored border crisis to eat at Mexican restaurants. These are people who work for the president, of course, so they are essentially being taken to task for doing their jobs.
Truong considers recent forays to Mexican food dining establishments by administration policy adviser Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to be a "spectacle" that is "utterly galling to many Americans who object" to the recent policy of dealing with felony immigration offenders, which the president ended this week.
Truong acknowledges the pervasiveness of "Mexican-inspired" food in the United States. I'm from Tucson, it's not called "Mexican food" here, it's just "food." She concedes that it is now part of the "American table" but sternly lectures that we should be "appalled" that people who aren't on board with open borders and illegal immigration should choose to spend their hard-earned money at a Mexican restaurant. Her tortured logic asserts that since Mexican restaurants have "back-of-the-house" staff that "came from Mexico or Central America, with or without documents," people who oppose illegal immigration are experiencing a "disconnect" when dining at these establishments.
Of course, Truong can't precisely state it that way because the illegal nature of the situation is never even alluded to when open borders people are discussing the issue.
#2
Two can play: NPR is a hypocritical organization for displaying the American flag
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/24/2018 9:02 Comments ||
Top||
#3
If they eat they are "callous hypocrites" if they don't eat they are "nativist xenophobes". The one thing that Is certain is that the writer is a shill for the opposition.
#5
I read the headline on Fox News website and I just couldn't believe the complete stupidity of the comments...how long have there been Mexican restaurants in the US? I bet they predate this phony diatribe about immigration being played out in the press.
They've been selling tamales from push carts in San Antonio since before the siege of the Alamo and now I am a hypocrite for eating at Mi Tiera (best cabrito on the planet)???
Newt is right they are so desperate to keep people from knowing what's in the IG report that they are essentially throwing anything and everything against the wall...it sticks only because the media is worthless
#7
Mexican cuisine is the only one (to my knowledge) physically prepared from some original Mexicans! No wonder Hernando Cortez was able to recruit thousands of would-be livestock for slaughter, aka "non-Aztec Mexicans" back in the 1500s.
#9
Good. IMO, one of the main reasons these "people" became so crazy is that there are lots of benefits and no costs to their "virtue" signaling. The other is that they're natural scum.
#12
"Who's fairest? Like, could it be clearer?"
"I can't see you, deary. Come nearer."
Instead of White Roses...
A nosy proboscis!
Two bolshy chicks peck at the mirror.
[Declination] Today, I intend to be very plain with my readers. I tire of beating around the bush. And to be frank, that is what I have been doing for quite some time, though this was not my intention.
You see, I have fallen victim to describing in detail the symptoms, and how they might best be treated, with too little regard for the disease itself. This is a common affliction during the twilight of the West. Left and Right alike know that the West is dying; that it is deeply ill. The Right proposes to treat the symptoms, the Left prescribes euthanasia. For them, death is the only cure to any disease.
My ancestor is reputed to have said, when given the opportunity to inspect the ax that was to behead him, "this is sharp medicine; but it is a sure cure for all diseases." Perhaps the Left has taken this too literally, or perhaps theirs is a cult that worships death. We can only speculate.
Our first instinct as men, when accused of a crime, is to plead our innocence and to offer our proofs. With an impartial jury, this may work if the proofs are good. If the accuser is malicious, however, and merely intends harm regardless of innocence, the pleas will please him. The proofs will be laughed at. He will feel powerful, presented with your own weakness.
Right now, as I type this, debates are raging across social media, and many of them are loaded with accusations of moral violation. These do not even contain the pretense of an impartial jury, as a legal violation might, but the consequences can be just as dire. Your job, your business, your possessions, your relationships, and reputation are all on the line. Are you, perhaps, a racist? Do you hate the poor? Do you stand on a cliff ready to push granny to her doom?
Plead your innocence and your accuser will laugh. Fail to plead, and your guilt is established. It is a Catch-22, a Kafkatrap. The mind recoils from resultant feelings of guilt and shame. This weapon is the most powerful one in the enemy’s arsenal. We have survived by ignoring it, hiding from it, or dismissing it, depending on one’s inclination. Facing the guilt and shame head-on is a daunting task only a few are truly capable of.
How did it come to this? Why is the weapon so effective?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[The Federalist] Conservatives stood agape last week at the inspector general’s refusal to state the obvious in his 568-page review of the FBI and Justice Department’s handling of the Clinton probe: A pro-Hillary political bias led officials to let her off the hook.
46 years ago, you say? June of 1972 and the press was 'concocting dramatic fantasies'? Even then? 
[PJ] It's come to this: according to some, people should be picking their casual dining choices based on their politics.
