[American Thinker] Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano, who of late has been the poster child for the increasingly leftward tilt of the network touted as "fair and balanced," and who believes that President Trump is guilty of colluding with the Russians to affect the 2016 election and of pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political opponent, insists that the inquiry by Rep. Adam Schiff is perfectly legal because there is no requirement in law that a vote to conduct such an inquiry be taken. As he states in an article in the Daily Herald:
The due process Trump seeks ‐ notice, hearing, fairness, counsel, cross-examination, confrontation, neutral judges ‐ is only relevant during a trial. The House does not conduct trials; the Senate does. There and only there ‐ if we get there ‐ will the president have his due process rights.
But, as Napolitano himself notes, the House has rules, and one of those rules says that in the absence of a clear legal guideline, House precedent should be honored. The House may not have trials, but it is capable of witch hunts and inquisitions. President Trump is entitled under House precedent to the same process, including due process, that Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton got. Until the impeachment inquiry against President Trump, the House honored the tradition of relying on precedent as a guarantor of fairness:
[The Lid] Russia expert Fiona Hill, who reportedly left the National Security Council on 19 July 2019 (i.e., six days before the Trump phone call to Ukraine on 25 July), testified in a closed-door hearing to Adam Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee this week. Hill had been brought to the NSC in the spring of 2017 as one of the staffing decisions in the transition from Michael Flynn to H.R. McMaster.
One might say that the problem with laying out Hill’s connections to the usual suspects of Spygate is knowing where to start.
But that’s not really a problem. The place to start is with Ms. Hill’s connection with Christopher Steele, which Politico reported on in a 30 September 2019 article on her. Here’s how Politico put it:
#7
There's supposed to be a vote to censure Schiff tonight. Expect the Dems to block.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/10/mitt-romney-middle-impeachment-fight/600373/
#11
Expert, maybe. Reality has a habit of humbling experts.
In 1991 I remember overhearing a conversation between postgrads commiserating about one of their fellows Bad Luck™. The unlucky one had spent years getting a International Poltical Studies PhD about Soviet Russia and was all set to parlay his Kremlinology skills into a cushy government job when... ♫ CRASH! ♫ the Berlin Wall fell.
[PJ Media] Journalism isn't just dead ‐ it's decomposed.
When Chris Wallace ‐ in all Deep State unctuousness ‐ asked Mick Mulvaney on Fox News Sunday to comment on a "well-connected Republican" who allegedly told Wallace there was a 20 percent chance the GOP would vote to remove the president from office, he not only was aiding in that decomposition, he was picking up a shovel and helping dig its grave.
Wallace didn't identify who this "well-connected Republican" is or what he actually said in context, just the tidbit the host wanted to tell us. What Wallace was doing was engaging in propaganda, creating a smear based on the flimsiest hearsay.
But, as we all know, he's not alone. This was only one of a myriad of cases and far from the worst. The employment of anonymous sources by media has been debated (and attacked) for years but since Trump was elected, their use has escalated into the stratosphere.
...Almost all of our leading newspapers and networks engage in this activity, some pretending to have checks and balances that are inscrutable from the outside and likely conveniently fudged from the inside.
...Trump made a mistake in labeling this "fake news." Besides being too colloquial, the term is too generic and allows for the possibility that in some cases at least this dishonesty may be an accident. People make mistakes, after all. Yes, but it's hardly ever true in these cases. It's usually quite deliberate deception. A much, much more accurate term would be disinformation, a technique frequently employed by intelligence agencies. It's a safe bet that many of these leaks arrived from ours. In that, our intelligence agencies were following in a grand tradition. The Soviets were experts at it. They wrote the book on disinformation.
...Now the disinformation that is being put out is that Trump is on the rocks with Republicans. Mitt Romney may vote to impeach. Both The Washington Post and the WSJ have new stories warning of ‐ or more properly "concern trolling" about ‐ this disaffection. The word must be out. Chris Wallace was echoing the same narrative. The newly-minted NeverTrumper Matt Drudge is linking all this.
But is it true or is it disinfo? I'll go with the latter. In fact, given Trump's popularity with the Republican rank-and-file, it would be suicidal for incumbent Republican politicians to vote him out. They'd be out themselves at the next primary. And reporters at the WaPo and WSJ know that, unless they've been living under the proverbial rock or are willfully disregarding last week's Trump rally in Dallas that had more supporters standing outside the venue than any political candidate in recent memory has had inside. (I know--the polls say he's in trouble. Have you ever done a poll yourself? I have, several, for this website years ago, and learned some interesting things. Just as freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one, the results of a poll belong to the man who sets it up, i. e. asks the questions.)
What our media is doing is lying unabashedly as it has been doing since the outset of the Russia probe. Every one of the respected outlets listed above repeatedly reported the existence or the imminent proof of Trump-Russia collusion based on anonymous leaks. None of it ever happened. It would be interesting to know what percentage of those leaks came from members of intelligence agencies. I suspect it would be a scary number.
Those same media outlets are now making a big deal out of the Ukraine, even though Trump was obviously trying to figure out who had instigated the Russia probe in the first place. Wouldn't you?
#2
I haven't watched TV news in many years (including Fox News), except for getting the returns on Election Night. Nor do I automatically trust anything I read in any newspaper or on any website, without getting confirmation elsewhere and without waiting a generous amount of time for ALL the relevant facts to be known. Everything is suspect at first.
As far as I can tell, the reporting from the MSM is no different from what it would be if their paychecks were issued directly by the Democratic National Committee. In effect, even if not in fact, they are no more than the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
10/21/2019 9:21 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Did the left take over the schools or the media first? They seem to dominate both and it appears to be a long-term problem for the Republic.
#4
Not "propaganda" - it's profit- and ratings-driven.
Not "disinformation" - they're too clownish to merit comparison with Beria or the NKVD or KGB.
Better term: Shitshow.
= corrupt, for-profit low entertainment fueled by blatantly stupid, false, unprofessional, clownishly incompetent tall takes, fibs, fairytales and outright lies.
[CarolineGlick] The ongoing criminal probes against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhahu are reaching their climax. After conducting a marathon four-day pre-indictment hearing for Netanyahu earlier this month, Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit reportedly intends to complete his review of the state prosecution’s cases and decide whether to indict Israel’s longest-serving prime minister by the end of next month. The main charges against Netanyahu relate to his associations with media owners.
For three years, illegal leaks from the investigations have dominated the news. The key question ‐ indeed, just about the only question ‐ that has been endlessly discussed is whether or not Mandelblit will end Netanyahu’s political career by indicting him on corruption charges.
The importance of this question is self-evident. On the one hand we have a democratically elected leader. On the other hand, we have unelected state prosecutors who wish to oust him from power by indicting him.
Continued on Page 49
#5
The Israeli establishment has long sought to destroy Netanyahu, the only political leader in Israeli history who was never a member of their club and never sought their approval. They haven’t been able to defeat him at the ballot box and now they have placed their hopes in the politicized state prosecution.
Seems like I've heard that story before. But in the US, Trump is a recent phenomenon. The plan looks to be the same, however.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/21/2019 17:45 Comments ||
Top||
h/t Instapundit
[Reason] As the candidate who is both furthest left in the Democratic presidential field and least favorably-inclined toward Israel in his public statements, it would not inherently be surprising that Bernie Sanders has attracted the support of far-left political figures with a history of antisemitic comments and actions, including Linda Sarsour, Ilhan Omar, and Amer Zahr. It might seem surprising, however, because Sanders is Jewish, and one might think that (a) people with a history of antisemitic comments and actions are likely antisemitic; and (b) antisemites wouldn't endorse a Jewish candidate. Indeed, supporters of these Bernie endorsers have been quick to use their endorsements as evidence that they aren't antisemitic; after all, no antisemite would endorse a Jew for president. Right?
Wrong. The problem with this reasoning, and much of the discourse around antisemitism in general and on the far left in particular, is what one might call "the Nazi standard." In other words, to only recognize antisemitism when it resembles the most virulent, murderous version of antisemitism, that of the Nazis, a version that is outspoken and proud of its antisemitism, and considers Jews subhuman, beyond redemption, and marked for extinction.
#1
Anti Israeli stuff is no more anti semitism than anti American comments are anti the people that live here.
I think Israel sucks because of the way they treat the west bank, but, I don't think Jews suck, except for the minority of Jews that do suck, like all other people groups.
#2
true Anti-Israeli stuff does not equal Anti-antisemitism but from what I can tell the crossover of the two groups is close to 90%.
Holding Israel to a different standard than you hold every other nation in the world requires some explanation if folks aren't to assume Anti-antisemitism or total ignorance (or both).
[Babylon Bee] CROCKETT'S FORT, TX‐Local man Bob Paulson always refers to his favorite sports teams in the first-person plural, though the teams are exerting themselves and playing really hard while he himself is lying on a couch and covered in a thin layer of Cheeto dust.
"We really have to get the bullpen together, or it's going to be a rough postseason," he said a few weeks ago while watching his favorite baseball team. Sure enough, his team was eliminated from contention, and Paulson was devastated. "We've always got next years," he said.
Luckily, there's still the NFL.
"Our receivers are killing us," he said, shaking his head while watching Thursday Night Football last night. "Come on, we've got to do better!"
"We had some good pickups in the draft, but they just haven't panned out like we hoped they would," he added, head in his hands, fingers smearing a fresh line of orange dust across his forehead. "We're working with what we got, but honestly, unless we make some big moves before the trade deadline, we're gonna be up a creek without a paddle."
Sadly, his favorite sports teams have never heard of him.
I noticed a few years ago that the word "racist" was just a new form of "witch".
They don't make sense from a sense making perspective because they're not engaged in a sense making exercise. You cannot reason with someone who rejects the value of reason.
"God is dead and we have killed him, and there is not enough water in the world to wash away the blood."
-- Freiedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 1882.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
10/21/2019 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
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.
[Babylon Bee] CROCKETT'S FORT, TX‐Local man Bob Paulson always refers to his favorite sports teams in the first-person plural, though the teams are exerting themselves and playing really hard while he himself is lying on a couch and covered in a thin layer of Cheeto dust.
