[American Thinker] Lawyers are trained never to ask a question of a witness if they don’t already know the answer. But it is quite different in journalism ‐ at least in principle, if the principle is getting at the truth. But alas, in these days of fake news and fanatical dead-ender opposition to President Trump, those MSM TV networks committed to driving Trump from office might want to consider retraining for their talking heads. Make them more like lawyers and avoid embarrassnents like that suffered by CNN’s Brian Stelter.
Courtesy of Grabien, here is a disastrous interview in which the guest, Larry Johnson, confirmed the story that Judge Andrew Napolitano told on-air about British intelligence passing along surveillance data involving the Trump administration.
Here is the rush transcript:
STELTER: "Let me ask you about this thing."
JOHNSON: "Sure."
STELTER: "So my sense is that on Monday, Napolitano says this on TV, he says he has Intel sources who believe this is true. You’re saying you were one of those sources, but you didn’t know Napolitano was going to use you like that?"
JOHNSON: "What happened was I communicated, when Donald Trump tweeted what he did Saturday two weeks ago, the next day I was interviewed on Russia today. I had known about the fact that the British, through ghcq were information back channel, this was not at the behest of Barack Obama, let’s be clear about that. But it was done with the full knowledge of people like John Brennan and Jake clapper. Two people I flow within the intelligence community in January, they were very concerned about this because they saw it as an unfair meddling in the politics, but it was a way to get around the issue of American intelligence agencies not collecting."
STELTER: "To be clear, you have this secondhand? So you didn’t get this information directly, you’re hearing from others.
JOHNSON: "I’m hearing it from people who are in a position to know, that’s correct.
Interesting that Johnson states it 'was not at the behest' of anyone in particular but not further stating that the action was unknown by the 'particular'.
Supposedly O was 'incensed' that he was directly named in this and really began to start a rant. Something a true narcissist would feel and do when found out. Then he'd be invited to go on vacation or something and let the cooler heads brush the tracks away.
Normal folks would just go 'huh?' and say something like "He's nuts!" and get on with their lives.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/20/2017 16:51 Comments ||
Top||
#3
POTUS is sticking with his 'wiretap' story. This from a Salon 21 Nov 16 story. Emphasis added:
My new paramilitary pal fit in perfectly with the armed-camp aesthetic that’s blossomed around Trump Tower. The addition of fences and concrete barriers to already clogged holiday season sidewalks has brought all the joys of the airport security line to Fifth Avenue. The scores of police officers now stationed around the skyscraper give it the air of a military outpost in a hostile land. (All at a bargain basement price of $1 million-plus per day for the city of New York.) Police Commissioner James O’Neill recently reeled off the forces which — in addition to traffic cops, beat cops, and bomb-sniffing dogs — now occupy this posh portion of the city: “specialized units, the critical response command, and the strategic response group, as well as plainclothes officers and counter-surveillance teams working hand-in-hand with our intelligence bureau and our partners in the federal government, specifically the Secret Service.” The armed man in tactical gear who had joined me belonged to the latter agency.
Salon link here.
h/t Instapundit
[NYPost] When Donald Trump moved into the White House, were you under the impression it was tantamount to either Fifth Avenue Moses coming in to part the filthy waters of the Swamp, or MussoHitler about to bring down the mighty hammer of neo-fascism upon the US?
If so, the joke’s on you. If there’s any ancient tale that presaged the start of the Trump Era, it’s the Voyage to Lilliput in "Gulliver’s Travels."
Gulliver-like, Trump finds himself tied down by a thousand tiny strings, paralyzed by micro-people he can barely detect. Because of their combined power, he can’t do much of anything. If it’s the system vs. Trump, the system is winning, bigly. But it isn’t Berserkeley radicals or marching feminists in pussy hats who are leading the charge to #resist. Resistance to change is as natural in Washington as cherry blossoms in spring.
#3
"My little friend Grildrig; you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country. You have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator. That laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which in it original might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions."
- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Part 2, Ch. 6
Along, I had been thinking that Travels was a travelog.
[Daily Caller] A senior member of the Trump administration’s beachhead team at the EPA unexpectedly resigned over concerns of the "integrity" of political appointees and career employees. Swamp draining be hard.
David Schnare was expected to take a top post at EPA, but he abruptly resigned March 15. It wasn’t for personal reasons, but over what he called a "question of integrity." Schnare resigned with the title of assistant deputy administrator.
"This wasn’t about me being angry or upset," Schnare told The Daily Caller News Foundation, saying his resignation had a "much deeper story" than he was willing to disclose at the time.
Skipping to the bottom line:
Reports already suggested tension between President Donald Trump’s political appointees and EPA career staff.
An unnamed career staffer told Politico that EPA employees will "fight actions they deem ill-advised or illegal by quietly providing information of what is happening inside their agencies to advocacy groups and the media."
A small group of EPA staffers began using encryption apps, like Signal, to communicate in a way that can’t be tracked by the White House. The actions may violate federal records law. May violate federal law? Acts of sedition, encrypted apps, unauthorized software, homebrew servers ?
Other government employees may have started "rogue" Twitter accounts to attack the Trump administration over social media, and a former EPA official suggested agency employees would boycott Trump if he ever came to visit the agency. Emphasis added.
se·di·tion /səˈdiSH(ə)n/ Conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch.
Synonyms: Rabble-rousing, incitement to rebel, subversion, troublemaking, provocation; rebellion, insurrection, mutiny, insurgence, civil disorder "the on-campus protestors were charged with sedition"
#1
Close it down completely and transfer everyone elsewhere. This is likely going on in all federal agencies to one degree or another. An example must be set.
#10
Geve everyone a week off without notice (or more if necessary). Cut the network off from the world and have folks go through the computers and servers.
Decide upon prosecution, termination, or advancement depending upon the results.
#11
A senior member of the Trump administration’s beachhead team at the EPA unexpectedly resigned over concerns of the "integrity" of political appointees and career employees.
Does "Integrity" mean taking too many hits on the beachhead? Draining the swamp in DC must be like trying to swim through mud.
[SultanKnish] A proposal has been making its way through the social justice sewer system to have white people pay a 5% privilege tax.
That would be a lot cheaper than the current wealth redistribution built into the tax system.
In 2004, black people made up 12% of the population and 20% of those who didn’t file taxes at all. It was estimated that 50.7% of African American households, 52% of Hispanic households and 37% of white households paid no income taxes.
The numbers would likely have only gotten worse after the recession, which destroyed large numbers of African-American jobs, and the Obama years, which traded social welfare for economic progress,
An otherwise equal tax system with a 5% white privilege tax would be an enormous improvement.
How do you calculate the income losses for a white student shut out of college by affirmative action or a white business owner’s income losses due to preferential business programs aimed at minorities? Not to mention that incompetent with a degree is a lot more harmful than one without. Mind you, IMO, the real enemy are "cognitive elites", not their dupes.
#2
5% privilege tax for being white? I get the author's point about it being cheaper--it's about cost. There's a privilege of being white? I hadn't noticed that privilege. What is it? One should fight such nonsense on the basis of principle not cost. More PC BS.
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.
[Daily Caller] A senior member of the Trump administration’s beachhead team at the EPA unexpectedly resigned over concerns of the "integrity" of political appointees and career employees.
