Whoa: Former U.S. Attorney General, Longtime Clinton Confidante Both Call for End of Mueller Probe

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It’s only Monday, and it has already been an eventful week on the Russia investigation front. We’ll get to the president’s tweets and the DOJ’s response in a moment, but let’s start with a fresh pair of op/eds urging the conclusion of Robert Mueller’s probe. Finding anti-Mueller commentary online isn’t exactly a challenge, but these pieces are noteworthy because of their authors. The first comes from a respected former US Attorney General who served during the last Republican administration, but isn’t known as a partisan fire-breather or bomb-thrower. The other comes from a longtime Democratic strategist with close ties to the Clintons. In an essay penned by Michael Mukasey for USA Today, the former top federal law enforcement officer contends that the current special counsel investigation is operating beyond the bounds of standard operating procedure — and questions its initial legal basis:

Because Attorney General Jeff Sessions had worked on the Trump campaign, he recused himself from the matter, and so the deputy — Rod Rosenstein — took the decision to appoint a special counsel. The regulations require that such an appointment recite the facts justifying the conclusion that a federal crime was committed, and specify the crime. However, the initial appointment of Robert Mueller did neither, referring instead to a national security investigation that a special counsel has no authority to pursue. Although Rosenstein apparently tried to correct his mistake in a new appointment memo, he has thus far refused to disclose, even to a federal judge, a complete copy of it. In other investigations supposedly implicating a president — Watergate and Whitewater come to mind — we were told what the crime was and what facts justified the investigation. Not here.

Nor have any of the charges filed in the Mueller investigation disclosed the Trump campaign’s criminal acceptance or solicitation of help from the Russians. The one indictment that relates to Russian criminality charges that the Russians hacked Democratic Party computers and committed other social media abuse, but says specifically that if the Trump campaign got the benefit of it, that was “unwitting” — i.e., without criminal intent…The ongoing investigation saps the resources and attention of the Trump administration. If the administration cannot function, the burden of this constantly shifting investigation will give rise to a narrative that any failure was due to the Mueller diversion — that the Trump administration was stabbed in the back. That is potentially more damaging to our politics than any salaciousness that might be tossed up by Robert Mueller. For both legal and political reasons, the end of this investigation is overdue.

(Read more from “Whoa: Former U.S. Attorney General, Longtime Clinton Confidante Both Call for End of Mueller Probe” HERE)

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CNN Host Pretty Much Told to Get the H**l out of the Oval Office (Again)

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It seems CNN’s Jim Acosta just loves being trashed by the Trump White House. It does get him to complain on live television, as if he’s some martyr, a beleaguered journalist under the crushing regime of some authoritarian country. He’s not, but here was another instance where White House staffers had to more or less tell Acosta to get the hell out of the Oval Office. It was a press spray event. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte visited President Trump yesterday.

“This audio is a pretty good example of how the WH aides also known as press wranglers are almost screaming as reporters try to ask questions of Trump in our ‘pool sprays,’” he tweeted after the incident.

The press has been complaining about how Trump treats them. It’s a new world for them; we have a man who actually punches back—and his supporters love it. Even here they’ve overreached, claiming his attacks against the media is somehow dangerous to the country. Spoiler: it’s not. And a friendly reminder: it was Hillary Clinton who first coined the phrase “fake news,” not Trump. The New York Times’ publisher, A. G. Sulzberger, recently relayed his concerns to the president:

President Trump and the publisher of The New York Times, A. G. Sulzberger, engaged in a fierce public clash on Sunday over Mr. Trump’s threats against journalism, after Mr. Sulzberger said the president misrepresented a private meeting and Mr. Trump accused The Times and other papers of putting lives at risk with irresponsible reporting.

[…]

“I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous,” said Mr. Sulzberger, who became publisher of The Times on Jan. 1.

(Read more from “CNN Host Pretty Much Told to Get the Hell out of the Oval Office (Again)” HERE)

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NFL to Dallas Cowboys: Shut up About the National Anthem

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Well, the national anthem wars are not over at the National Football League, but they don’t want people talking about it, or at least—they don’t want the Dallas Cowboys talking about it. The NFC East team has reportedly been told by the NFL’s front office to more or less shut the hell up about the anthem. Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott said over the weekend that the anthem protests took away from the game. This came after Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said his team would have a mandatory stand policy for The Star-Spangled Banner last week (via The Hill):

. . .

Yes, Prescott caught some heat for these remarks. The NFL knows this is a bad issue for them. NFL ticket sales plummeted, as did network ratingslast season with this nonsense. Of course, no one should be fired or suspended for taking a knee, despite what President Trump called for last year, but with regards to being pilloried on social media and elsewhere—this is what you get. No one is saying they should be thrown into the gulag, but if you’re going to do this be prepared to be torched—big league. Even in deep blue New England, Patriots fans thought it was a sign of disrespect. When people view it as a desecration of those who have served, and especially those who have died defending our country—there is not winning this issue. The pervasive explaining for these protests was the big sign that the pro-taking a knee side had lost. Trump had won. And he will continue to win as long as he keeps forcing the Left into defending the indefensible with these culture battles. In October, The New York Timesreported on the Trump effect over the NFL. The owners knew the stakes in this fight…and they knew they were not on the winning side:

N.F.L. owners, players and league executives, about 30 in all, convened urgently at the league’s headquarters on Park Avenue in October, nearly a month after President Trump began deriding the league and its players over protests during the national anthem.

It was an extraordinary summit; rarely do owners and players meet in this manner. But the president’s remarks about players who were kneeling during the anthem had catalyzed a level of public hostility that the N.F.L. had never experienced. In the spirit of partnership at the meeting, the owners decided that they and the players should sit in alternating seats around the large table, which featured an N.F.L. logo in the middle.

(Read more from “NFL to Dallas Cowboys: Shut up About the National Anthem” HERE)

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There’s a Shutdown No One’s Talking About, and Levin Says ‘We’ll Never Recover’

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Monday on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin addressed the government shutdown threat President Trump directed at the Democrats to pressure them into voting to fund a border wall.

“The Republicans are frightened by such a prospect,” Levin said. “And yet, I can’t think of a single government shutdown that has occurred during a Republican presidency that has had an undue negative influence on the outcome of the succeeding election.”

Levin noted the government shutdown in 2013 resulted in Republicans picking up seats in the Senate in 2014. He went on to argue that the $21 trillion national debt, if left unchecked, will shut down the American economy. And if a government shutdown is the only way to force the Democrats to cut spending, so be it.

“The debt is out of control,” Levin said.

Listen:

“You talk about a government shutdown … you’ll have a shutdown all right, and we’ll never recover from it,” Levin said. “The government is going to shut down, the economy is going to shut down if we do not get control over this debt and if we do not get control over the government.”

(For more from the author of “There’s a Shutdown No One’s Talking About, and Levin Says ‘We’ll Never Recover’” please click HERE)

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Here’s Another Big Fact the Obama Administration Hid to Pass Obamacare

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Over the weekend, Politico ran a report about how a “Trump policy shop filters facts to fit his message.” The article cited several unnamed sources complaining about the office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and its allegedly politicized role within the current administration.

One of the article’s anonymous sources called ASPE’s conduct over the past 18 months “another example of how we’re moving to a post-fact era.” Richard Frank, a former Obama appointee and one of the few sources to speak on the record, said that he found the current administration’s “attack on the integrity and the culture of the office…disturbing.”

For all its focus on the Trump administration, the Politico article omitted another key story—one I told its reporter about last week, but did not make it into the article. During the early years of the Obama administration, ASPE lay at the heart of the failure of the CLASS Act, a $70 billion Obamacare program.

As a congressional staffer conducting oversight of the CLASS Act in 2011-12, I reviewed thousands of pages of e-mails and documents from the months leading up to Obamacare’s passage. Those records strongly suggest that ASPE officials, including Frank, withheld material facts from Congress and the public about CLASS’s unsustainability, because full and prompt disclosure could have jeopardized Obamacare’s chances of passage. . .

The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program, or CLASS for short, intended to provide a voluntary insurance benefit for long-term care. Included as part of Obamacare, the program never got off the ground. In October 2011, HHS concluded it could not implement the program in an actuarially sound manner; Congress repealed the program entirely as part of the “fiscal cliff” deal enacted into law in the early days of 2013. (Read more from “Here’s Another Big Fact the Obama Administration Hid to Pass Obamacare” HERE)

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Social Worker: Migrants See Child Brides ‘as Their Sons’ Tickets to Europe’

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Here’s another entry in the chronicle of Western difficulties assimilating Third World immigrants: Swedish authorities report growing problems with migrants sending young daughters to marry older men abroad, both as a strategy to avoid assimilation and to gain European citizenship. While underage marriage is essentially banned in Sweden, the country recognizes underage marriages conducted abroad.

“People see young girls as their sons’ tickets to Europe,” social worker Zubeyde Demirörs told Politico for a recent article. Demirörs, now 45, was herself forcibly married to a Turkish man 22 years her senior when she was 15. . .

ow she runs a shelter to help girls in similar situations, and hears “similar stories every day,” despite many public campaigns, especially since the height of the European migrant crisis in 2015, to reduce the practice. Last year the Swedish government launched a unit to address honor crimes after a surge accompanying asylum-seekers.

Summer is the busiest time for marrying girls off, because they are on holiday from school: “This time of year my phone just doesn’t stop ringing. May, June, July — that’s when many girls are taken back to their parents’ home countries, mostly to rural parts of the Middle East and Africa,” Demirörs told Politico. Marriage before age 18 is the norm in many poor countries. In Niger, the world’s No. 1 in this regard, 77 percent of marriages occur before the female is 18. . .

In response to seeing an increase in this evil custom and others such as female genital mutilation within their borders, Swedish lawmakers are considering proposals to not recognize foreign marriages involving minors, travel bans for those suspected of bringing daughters abroad for forced marriages or mutilation, and extraditing foreigners involved with honor crimes. Just last month Denmark began implementing stringent new laws to address similar problems. Beginning at one year old, children living in immigrant “ghettos” must now attend 25 hours per week of mandatory assimilation instruction, or their parents may lose welfare payments. (Read more from “Social Worker: Migrants See Child Brides ‘as Their Sons’ Tickets to Europe’” HERE)

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The Facts Behind the Trump Tower Meeting Are Incriminating, but Not for Trump

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. . .Don Jr. was emailed by a British music promoter, Rob Goldstone, who promised that the Russian “crown prosecutor” had information that would “incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia.” When the meeting took place, in walked two Russian nationals, Rinat Akhmetshin and Natalia Veselnitskaya, who proceeded to talk to Don Jr., Jared Kushner, and others about how Americans could once again adopt Russian children, if only the Magnitsky Act were repealed. Eyes surely rolled, and the meeting was ended. Kushner even messaged his assistant to try to come up with an excuse to leave the meeting early. . .

CNN’s Chris Cillizza called the anonymously sourced report a “collusion bombshell,” and said it was maybe the “most important [event] of Donald Trump’s presidency.” One wonders how many times CNN and its employees have said similar things, only to see their hopes dashed?

The truth is that it doesn’t matter whether Trump knew of this meeting or not, or whether Mueller can ever prove that he did. Don Jr. and his associates did nothing wrong in setting up this meeting. But the events surrounding the meeting are damning for the intelligence agencies, the media, and the Democrat Party. . .

At the time of this meeting, the public did not know that Democratic National Committee emails had been stolen. Only the DNC and the Clinton campaign knew that. On June 9, 2016, everyone in conservative-ville, including Don Jr., was still hoping to discover the 30,000 emails that Hillary Clinton deleted from the home-brew server she used while secretary of state. . .

Somebody colluded with Russia, and it wasn’t Donald Trump. Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin were working to repeal the Magnitsky Act for the Kremlin with none other than Fusion GPS, the same opposition research firm the DNC and Clinton campaign had hired in April 2016 to dig up—or create—ties between Trump and Russia. (Read more from “The Facts Behind the Trump Tower Meeting Are Incriminating, but Not for Trump” HERE)

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Trump Launches Religious Freedom Task Force to Undo Another Obama Legacy

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On Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the formation of a Religious Liberty Task Force to protect the conscience rights of Americans from being violated by government regulations.

“Today I am announcing our next step: the Religious Liberty Task Force, to be co-chaired by the Associate Attorney General and the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy—Jesse and Beth,” Sessions said at a Department of Justice Religious Liberty Summit.

“The Task Force will help the Department fully implement our religious liberty guidance by ensuring that all Justice Department components are upholding that guidance in the cases they bring and defend, the arguments they make in court, the policies and regulations they adopt, and how we conduct our operations. That includes making sure that our employees know their duties to accommodate people of faith,” he explained.

The formation of this task force follows an October memo from Sessions broadly directing the Department of Justice to make accommodations to protect religious liberty. In his remarks, Sessions warned of “dangerous” anti-religious sentiments in the country threatening the rights protected by First Amendment.

“A dangerous movement, undetected by many, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom. There can be no doubt. This is no little matter. It must be confronted and defeated,” Sessions said.

“We have gotten to the point where courts have held that morality cannot be a basis for law; where ministers are fearful to affirm, as they understand it, holy writ from the pulpit; and where one group can actively target religious groups by labeling them a ‘hate group’ on the basis of their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Sessions cited examples of Americans being forced by government to violate their conscience, notably “nuns ordered to buy contraceptives” — referencing the plight of The Little Sisters of the Poor — and the bigoted anti-Catholic questions asked by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., of Judge Amy Coney Barrett at her confirmation hearing last September.

He said the Department of Justice will remain in contact with religious groups across the country to continue to improve its policies and respect religious liberty.

“This administration is animated by that same American view that has led us for 242 years: that every American has a right to believe, worship, and exercise their faith in the public square,” Sessions said. (For more from the author of “Trump Launches Religious Freedom Task Force to Undo Another Obama Legacy” please click HERE)

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CNN Host Wonders Why Obama Is Partying While Dems Are in Disarray

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Former President Barack Obama and wife Michelle were spotted dancing at a Beyoncé and Jay-Z concert over the weekend in Maryland. CNN’s Jake Tapper thought it was pretty bad timing. The Democratic Party is currently dealing with a schism that has pitted moderates or mainstream lawmakers against young progressives. Statistics show that the party is well outpaced by Republicans on the national and local level. Yet, there was Obama dancing the night away.

Does Tapper have a point? Should Obama be doing more to address his party’s concerns? They could certainly use some help. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated Rep. Joe Crowley in shocking fashion in New York, top Democrats panicked. Some, like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, tried to downplay the young progressive’s victory. Sure, Ocasio-Cortez may represent those radical New Yorkers in the 14th congressional district, but the country as a whole? Don’t get “carried away,” Pelosi said. (Read more from “CNN Host Wonders Why Obama Is Partying While Dems Are in Disarray” HERE)

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Brutal: Examining Ocasio-Cortez’s Painful Answer on Funding Her Socialist Utopia

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As we flagged on Friday, media sensation and instant lefty icon Alexandria Ocasio Cortez appeared on the Daily Show last week, where she was confronted with a relatively simple question by host Trevor Noah. Ocasio Cortez is campaigning on a laundry list of new government programs and entitlements, including “Medicare for All,” free college, and a “universal jobs guarantee.” But how does she intend to pay for for this calorie-exploding buffet of government largesse? Her response to that fundamental challenge was a bit of a jumbled mess, to put it rather mildly:

After muttering some words about “back of the envelope” calculations and touting a discussion with a Nobel Prize-winning economist, she exclaimed that if wealthy people and corporations would just pay their “fair share,” her dreams could become realities. What was remarkable about her answer was not that she deployed standard-issue Democratic talking points invoking Warren Buffett’s secretary; you could abruptly wake virtually any left-of-center political figure from a deep sleep and quiz them about long term federal debt, and he or she would groggily start mumbling and “fairness.” No, what was most interesting about AOC’s reply was how simultaneously honest and incoherent it was. She proposes “reversing” the tax reform law, which would result in a $2 trillion tax increase on families and businesses. The economy is booming in large measure because job creators have finally been afforded precious certainty, and because America’s grossly uncompetitive corporate tax rates were made much more competitive. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are feeling better about their economic conditions because they have more disposable income, thanks to an across-the-board lowering of the federal tax burden, across all income groups. AOC wants to undo that progress and apply the additional revenue toward government programs.

. . .

Ocasio Cortez’s idea is to reduce spending on the military…in order to vastly expand already-troubled healthcare and retirement programs. The math doesn’t even come close to adding up. Defenders of Cortez’s socialist vision have responded to these inconvenient realities by contending that other western nations manage to pull of government-run healthcare, so we make it work — or by flatly stating that specifics aside, we’ll somehow find a way to finance the scheme:

(Read more from “Brutal: Examining Ocasio-Cortez’s Painful Answer on Funding Her Socialist Utopia” HERE)

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