Another exhausting trip to Schiffville...

Where’s Waldo whistleblower?

Scott Johnson, Powerline 

In his presentation on behalf of President Trump in the Senate impeachment trial yesterday, White House Deputy Counsel Patrick Philbin raised the question of Adam Schiff and the whistleblower. Why have we not heard from him? Why has Schiff deep-sixed the testimony about him? RealClearPolitics has posted video of Philbin’s remarks along with this (lightly edited) transcript:

PHILBEN: I want to touch on one last point before I yield to one of my colleagues. That relates to the whistleblower. The whistleblower who we haven’t heard that much about who started all of this. The whistleblower we know from the letter that the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community sent that he thought that the whistleblower had political bias. We don’t know exactly what the political bias was because the Inspector General testified in the House committees in an executive session, and that transcript is still secret. It wasn’t transmitted up to the House Judiciary Committee. We haven’t seen it. We don’t know what’s in it. We don’t know what he was asked and what he revealed about the whistleblower. Now you would think that before going forward with an impeachment proceeding against the President of the United States that you would want to find out something about the complainant that had started all of it because motivations, bias, reasons for wanting to bring this complaint could be relevant, but there wasn’t any inquiry into that.

Recent reports, public reports, suggest that potentially the whistleblower was an Intelligence Community staffer who worked with then Vice President Biden on Ukraine matters, which if true would suggest an even greater reason for wanting to know about potential bias or motive for the whistleblower. At first when things started, it seemed like everyone agreed that we should hear from the whistleblower including Manager Schiff. I think we have what he said.

SCHIFF (tape): Yes, we would love to talk directly with the whistleblower.

We’ll get the unfiltered testimony of that whistleblower.

We don’t need the whistleblower.

PHILBIN: What changed? At first Manager Schiff agreed we should hear the unfiltered testimony from the whistleblower, but then he changed his mind and he suggested that it was because now we had the transcript. But the second clip there was from September 29th which was four days after the transcript had been released. But there was something else that came into play, and that was something that Manager Schiff had said earlier when he was asked about whether he had spoken to the whistleblower.

SCHIFF (tape): We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. We would like to.

PHILBIN: It turned out that that statement was not truthful. Around October 2nd or 3rd, it was exposed that the Manager Schiff’s staff at least had spoken with the whistleblower before the whistleblower filed the complaint and potentially had given some guidance, some sort to the whistleblower. After that point it became critical to shut down any inquiry into the whistleblower. During the House hearings, of course Manager Schiff was in charge. He was chairing the hearings. That creates a real problem from a due process perspective, from a search for truth perspective, because he was an interested fact witness at that point. He had a reason, since he had been caught out saying something that wasn’t truthful about that contact, he had a reason to not want that inquiry. It was he who ensured that there wasn’t any inquiry into that.

Now this is relevant here I think because as you’ve heard from my colleagues, a lot of what we’ve heard over the past 23 hours, over the past three days, has been from Chairman Schiff. He has been telling you things like what’s in President Trump’s head, what’s in President Zelensky’s head. It’s all his interpretation of the facts and the evidence trying to pull inferences out of things. There’s another statement that Chairman Schiff made that I think we have on video.

CHUCK TODD (tape): But you admit all you have right now is a circumstantial case.

SCHIFF: Actually, no Chuck. I can tell you that the case is more than that and I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now. Again, I think —

TODD: So you have seen evidence of collusion.

SCHIFF: I don’t want to go into specifics, but I will say that there is evidence that is not circumstantial and is very much worthy of investigation.

PHILBIN: That was in March of 2017 when Chairman Schiff was ranking member of HPSCI was telling the public, the American public, that he had more than circumstantial evidence through his position on H that President Trump’s campaign had colluded with Russia. Of course, the Mueller Report, as Mr. Sekulow pointed out, after $32 million and over 500 search warrants or roughly 500 search warrants, determined that there was no collusion. That wasn’t true. We wanted to point these things out simply for this reason. Chairman Schiff has made so much of the House’s case about the credibility of interpretations that the House Managers want to place on not hard evidence but on inferences. They want to tell you what President Trump thought. They want to tell you don’t believe what Zelensky said. We can tell you what Zelensky actually thought. Don’t believe what the other Ukrainians actually said about not being pressured. We can tell you what they actually thought. That it is very relevant to know whether the assessments of evidence he’s presented in the past are accurate. We would submit that they have not been and that that is relevant for your consideration.

Collective Denial on Iran

Collective Denial on Iran

Col Mike Walker, USMC (ret)

All,

Love to listen to the pundits from all perspectives sidestep the real crisis with Iran.

It is the most impressive example of collective denial of reality I have ever witnessed -- and it has been going on for decades.

It is a second and much more severe case of this type of infective mental disorder.

The first case dealt with North Korea where (as now) all the "best and brightest" minds were in complete denial that North Korea would get nuclear weapons.

But that pales in comparison to the collective denial about Iran's nuclear arms objectives.

In that sense, the JCPOA was a manifestation of schizophrenia.

It gave Iran a clear pathway to build nuclear weapons while denying Iran would follow it to build nuclear weapons.

You can't make this stuff up.

I listen over and over again to an endless stream of politicians, government officials, and media talking heads (literally from across the globe) drone on about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons as if it is not going to happen -- as if these opining poobahs have the "power" to prevent it.

That is a true mental disorder.

As with North Korea, Iran decided decades ago to get nuclear weapons and like Norht Korea, it will get them.

The only question is the one never addressed: What is the plan when Iran builds its weapons?

We have had decades to prepare but if you deny reality, you always wind up unprepared when reality eventually slaps you in the face.

That virtually assures us that we will be in a true global crisis when the Ayatollahs go nuclear.

I do not look forward to that day but I know who to blame: Ourselves.

Iran’s Options in a Showdown with America Are All Bad

Iran’s Options in a Showdown with America Are All Bad

By Victor Davis Hanson, National Review

Trump governs the tempo of the confrontation.

After losing its top strategist, military commander, and arch-terrorist, Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian theocracy is weighing responses.

One, Iran can quiet down and cease military provocations.

After attacking tankers off its coast, destroying an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia, shooting down a U.S. drone, and being responsible for the killing and wounding of Americans in Iraq, Iran could now keep quiet.

It might accept that its strategy of escalation has failed to lead to any quantifiable advantage. Trump did not prove a passive “Twitter tiger,” as his critics mocked. Instead, he upped the stakes to Iran’s disadvantage and existential danger.

The chances, however, for such a logical and passive readjustment by Iran are nil.

Iran believes that Trump’s beefed-up sanctions have all but destroyed its economy and could now extend to secondary boycotts of nations trading with Iran. U.S. sanctions have also squeezed Iranian expeditionary efforts to forge a permanent hegemony and a Shiite crescent extending to the Mediterranean.

If unchecked, American economic pressure could eventually lead to a popular rebellion that would topple the theocracy. In sum, a return to the status quo is unlikely.

Two, Iran can agree to reenter talks about its nuclear program and offer a few concessions.

Iran could concede that the prior agreement was designed to bank Iranian cash and nuclear expertise that would eventually lead to its developing nuclear weaponry after a period of feigned good behavior.

Yet a return to direct negotiations with Washington is also unlikely, especially since Iran once enjoyed a lopsided gift from the United States. Renegotiating anything less would be too humiliating for the revolutionary regime to endure.

Three, Iran can escalate its military operations and its use of terrorist surrogates. The death of Soleimani is Iran’s most grievous setback in decades, and Iran seeks vengeance.

The theocracy will view his death not just in terms of a strategic loss, but as a humiliation that cannot stand. Governments elsewhere in the Middle East are gloating over Soleimani’s killing, and especially over the thought of Iran’s inability to do much about it.

In reaction, Iran could strike American bases and allies in the region. The possibilities are endless. It might send more drones and missiles against other nations’ refineries. Hezbollah could shower Israeli cities with missiles. Iran might close the Strait of Hormuz in hopes of seeing the rest of the world suffer as it has.

Iran could also unleash its terrorist appendages to stage attacks on American and Israeli assets throughout Europe and the U.S., including military bases, airliners, and soft civilian targets.

Yet this choice is also unlikely.

The U.S. would not have to invade Iran to end it as a modern state. A strike against the U.S. or its overseas military installations would result in a devastating response. The theocracy knows that in hours, U.S. airpower could take out all of Iran’s oil refineries, power stations, and military bases while suffering few if any causalities.

Given U.S. oil independence and the global adjustments to existing sanctions on Iranian oil, the near-permanent loss of Iran’s oil would not greatly damage the world economy.

Iran will bluster and threaten, but waging an all-out war with the U.S. would be suicidal, and Iran knows it.

Fourth, Iran can continue its periodic attacks on U.S. allies and on troops and contractors in the region.

Constant provocation is not a good alternative, but it’s probably seen as preferable to the other poor choices. The strategic aim in such endless tit-for-tat would be to wear down the patience of the U.S. public in an election year.

Given the quick criticism of Soleimani’s killing from Trump’s progressive domestic opponents, and given the Obama administration’s past appeasement in response to Iranian provocations, Tehran might conclude that a hit-and-pause strategy is preferable.

It could incite Trump’s political opponents to brand him a warmonger who acted illegally by “assassinating” Soleimani.

Iran’s hope would be that Trump would lose the support of the anti-war members of his base in key swing states.

If such periodic attacks continued until Election Day, Iran might hope for President Elizabeth Warren or President Bernie Sanders. Either one would likely resurrect the flawed Iran deal and ignore Iranian aggression in Syria and Iraq.

Iran’s goal might be something like re-creating the melodrama of the 1979–81 hostage crisis, Saddam Hussein’s rope-a-dope strategy, or Bill Clinton’s three-month bombing campaign in Yugoslavia. Tehran hopes for American strategic ossification that could prove politically toxic.

But that scenario, too, is unlikely. As long as Trump replies with airpower disproportionate to any Iranian attacks, he, not Tehran, governs the tempo of the confrontation.

Iran created the current crisis. It has choices, but for now, they are all bad.


NRO contributor VICTOR DAVIS HANSON is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Case for Trump. @vdhanson

Qasam Solemani was fair game

Qasam Solemani was fair game

Col. Mike Walker, USMC (ret)

All,

Every member of the US and Allied armed forces I served with in the Middle East was fair game for the enemy to kill at any time and at any place.

If Solemani's Iranian forces could kill or, even better, capture and torture us to death for information then they would have done so in a heartbeat.

Solemani was a uniformed soldier on active duty in the Middle East directing active military operations against the United States and our Allies.

Just like all of us active duty US and Allied personnel who served or are serving in the Middle East, we were and are fair game.

So too was Qasam Solemani. He fought, he killed, and in turn he was killed. So sad -- too bad.

The Media Is Lying...

The Media Is Lying About The Attacks On The Embassy In Baghdad

Media figures are lying about Tuesday's attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Why?

Erielle Davidson, The Federalist

You can tell that the Obama administration’s legacy in the Middle East is in danger because the media, as the self-appointed janitors of that legacy, have gone into overdrive obfuscating the timing, context, and significance of this week’s attack on the United States embassy in Baghdad. Although President Donald Trump has gone a long way to dismantling Obama’s legacy in the region, much more remains to be done, including a halt to American taxpayer money that has been flowing into Iranian-controlled governments in Iraq and Lebanon.

Earlier this week Iran-backed militias stormed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, chanting “Down, down USA!” and hurling water bottles and smashing security cameras. The attackers breached parts of the embassy and were only disbursed the next day, after Trump deployed Marines to ensure the safety of our embassy personnel and property.

The attacks have been building for months, including roughly a dozen attacks on U.S. assets by these militias and American retaliatory strikes against five locations in Iraq and Syria belonging to the Iranian-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah. The group represents an ongoing replication of the “Islamic revolutionary model” that Iran first “exported” to and “perfected” in Lebanon in the early 1980s. 

The New York Times has labeled the attackers “mourners” responding to the U.S. strikes, while the front page of the first Washington Post edition of 2020 labeled them “protesters.” The latter is a particularly pernicious mislabeling. The media has done its best to conflate the attacks with anti-Iran protests that have been happening across Iraq for the last three months, but of course, those actual protesters are pro-Iraqi sovereignty demonstrators fed up with the corruption and the broad perception that the Iraqi government is controlled by Iran.

Confirming exactly that accusation, the Iraqi government has repeatedly attacked the anti-Iran protesters, killing hundreds and wounding thousands, while giving a free pass and ready access to the Iran-backed fighters who stormed our embassy.

The media’s goal is to characterize the protests as a wholesale rejection of Trump’s policies in the region, hence the wall-to-wall disinformation about mourning and protesting. What’s actually at stake is Obama’s legacy. The Iran Deal was a bargain in which Iran would be handed control over the Middle East in exchange for some temporary limitations on nuclear activities.

As Obama said, the Saudis — by which he meant Sunnis across the region — would just have to learn to “share the neighborhood” with Iran. The attack on our embassy shows what sharing the region actually means, and the anti-Iran Iraqi protesters are saying they reject it.

Trump has partially withdrawn from the Iran deal, and Tehran is feeling the pressure. Behnam Ben Taleblu, a scholar from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, recently said the “Death to America” chants are a “dead giveaway” that these protests are being orchestrated by Iran as an effort to shore up its position. “These are pro-Iran and pro-militia sympathizers that appear to be out of touch with the thousands of Iraqis who have been chanting ‘Iran, out!’”

Other parts of Obama’s legacy, however, persist. One of the most glaring in the aftermath of the attack on our embassy is that we continue to pour money into countries like Iraq and Lebanon that are outright dominated by the mullahs in Iran through proxies like the Hezbollah militias in those countries. 

Inside the administration, Trump loyalists have sought to cut that aid the Deep State has rushed in to preserve those policies. In Congress, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) recently sent around a two-page bill titled the “Stop Sending American Taxpayer Money to Governments Controlled by Terrorists Act.” The bill smartly proposed halting assistance to any Lebanese administration that is improperly influenced by Hezbollah.

Cruz’s bill should be expanded to include any government that is under Iranian control, not just Lebanon, as Iran has made attempts to establish proxy regimes in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. Given Iran is interested in expanding its hegemony in the region by reproducing the Islamic Revolution in neighboring countries, there is no realm in which American aid should facilitate such activities. 

Cruz’s proposal, and likewise an expansion of it, would amount to a full condemnation of what Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Tony Badran has labeled the Obama Realignment Doctrine, or. Obama’s strategy to restore a power “balance” in the Middle East by empowering Iran and disfavoring our long-term allies. Such an approach achieved its heyday in the Iran Deal and its repudiation in Trump’s withdrawal.

For those on the left, the current desire to salvage the remnants of Obama’s legacy has come at the expense of revealing the true nature of Iraqi unrest. It’s not only irresponsible but further reveals the level of perpetual dishonesty needed to sustain popular support (or at minimum, acceptance) of the Iran Deal. If your strategy requires lying to justify its existence, perhaps it’s not such a fantastic approach.

Erielle Davidson is a Staff Writer at the Federalist and a law student at Georgetown University Law Center. Find her on Twitter at @politicalelle.

'Impeachment Takes a Holiday' -- Starring Nancy Pelosi

'Impeachment Takes a Holiday' -- Starring Nancy Pelosi

Frank Miele. Real Clear Politics 

Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a “rogue leader” on Thursday, but based on what we saw last week, a more accurate assessment would be that Pelosi is the rogue leader presiding over a runaway Congress.

In her actions and words, Pelosi looked more like a wannabe Third World dictator than the hope of her nation, or even of her party. It was not enough for her to try to cut the president off at the knees with her sham impeachment vote; she also had to insult the Senate leader and try to assert House authority over the constitutionally mandated Senate role in trying any federal impeachment. To top it off, she implicitly dismissed the third branch of government by bypassing the judiciary’s traditional role as the broker between the legislative and executive branches.


That was the week that was, and it should be the final nail in Pelosi’s political coffin.

Dressed appropriately in black, she engineered the third impeachment of a president in United States history on a party-line vote with little evidence and a magical mystery timeline that oscillated between “clear and present danger” and “no big deal.”

Remember, Pelosi has been telling us for months that it was an urgent matter to unseat President Trump before he did permanent damage to the nation. Her designated impeachment czar, fellow Californian Adam Schiff, invented two non-criminal charges to be brought against the president — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — and rammed them through three committees and the full House. We were told that the nation could not possibly wait for a court to decide on the legality of the president’s assertion of executive privilege. Too long! Too late! Trump would collude with some new foreign power to interfere in our sacred elections — possibly with Latvia now that he has used up Ukraine and Russia! It was like a giant version of Risk, the game of world domination. Pelosi was going to roll the dice until she took all of Trump’s armies off the board — at least the ones in Eastern Europe.

But then something remarkable happened. As soon as Pelosi had Trump where she supposedly wanted him, skewered by impeachment, she reversed course. Within minutes of her victory in delivering a one-party vote, she announced that the House would not transmit the historic articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial anytime soon. The problem? Well, it seems Pelosi found something more urgent than impeachment — Christmas break. (Someone get Chevy Chase on the phone. He can’t pull off Nancy Pelosi,  but he will be perfect as bumbling Joe Biden. Isn’t it time for a sequel to “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”? Maybe “Impeachment Takes a Holiday”?)

Of course, we shouldn’t have been surprised by the delay. Turns out that during the urgent mission to save the nation from the dire threat of Trump’s wicked sense of humor, there had also been time for a weeklong Thanksgiving break as well. Maybe Nancy thought the Donald would retreat to Mar-a-Lago with his tail between his legs and never come back. She must have been very disappointed. But maybe she thinks Trump didn’t really return at all. Didn’t she call the president an imposter? Or is that just another debunked conspiracy theory?

Doesn’t matter. If anything, Pelosi’s stated reason for refusing to transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate on a timely basis was even more ludicrous than my “National Lampoon” scenario. The bottom line is that in trying to circumvent the constitutional role of the Senate and trying to delegitimize its leader, she has entered territory that is radical even for a “rogue” (her word again) political party.

“We are not sending it ... because it is difficult to determine who the managers would be until we see the arena in which we will be participating,” Pelosi said on the night when the articles were passed on a strictly partisan vote. Of course, she knew the arena because it is spelled out in the Constitution. (It’s the Senate, stupid!) And though Pelosi had a moment of clarity when she acknowledged, “It is up to the Senate to say what their rules will be,” she did everything in her power to shame, cajole and extort McConnell into running the trial according to the House’s rules — namely, that Trump gets no due process and the coddled whistleblower shall not be named.

Unbelievably, Pelosi told the truth the following morning when she admitted the entirely partisan reason why she is not transmitting the impeachment to the Senate: “Just to get this off the table right away, if we impeach the president immediately, everybody moves on to the next thing.”

D’oh! You already did impeach the president, Madam  Speaker. And since when did “moving on to the next thing” become a problem? Are you admitting that the Democratic House is really just an obstructionist tool of “the Resistance”?

Trump’s subsequent summation on Twitter was concise and on point.

"So after the Democrats gave me no Due Process in the House, no lawyers, no witnesses, no nothing, they now want to tell the Senate how to run their trial. Actually, they have zero proof of anything, they will never even show up. They want out. I want an immediate trial!"

Pelosi made one other mistake in her political gambit. In her zeal to attack McConnell, she apparently forgot the Constitution mandates that the Senate trial of a president shall be presided over by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. So she’s also thumbing her nose at John Roberts by suggesting he’s unable or unwilling to run a fair trial. Based on what?

This is no surprise. There is no such thing as “obstruction of Congress” as a high crime — or even a low crime. Obstructing Congress is what all presidents do when they think Congress is wrong. It’s called the balance of power. The arbiter of that never-ending battle between the executive and legislative branches is the judiciary. Yet, as I mentioned at the outset, the House Democrats refused to seek court guidance on how to proceed when President Trump invoked executive privilege to prevent the delivery of documents and testimony to the Congress. That’s because the Supreme Court has long upheld that the executive branch does not automatically have to submit to congressional subpoenas or demands.

If Pelosi took Trump to court, she would very likely lose, and then be left with nothing but her stupid “abuse of power” complaint against Trump when clearly it is Pelosi and the House Democrats who have abused their power time and again.

Verdict: Trump wins again.

Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His books — including “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake?” — are available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com to read his daily commentary or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA or on Twitter @HeartlandDiary.

Tucker Carlson: Dems have no choice but...

Dems have no choice but to march forward on Trump impeachment – although it will destroy them

Tucker Carlson: Fox News


It is here. After months of false starts and threats and endless posturing by some of the saddest, most ineffectual people in America, impeachment apparently is imminent. Barring some last-minute plot twist -- and that could happen -- Donald Trump will join Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton as the third American president ever impeached by the House of Representatives.

So Democrats have been promising to do this since before the president was even elected as president, and yet still, it feels kind of weird, surprising -- surreal, even -- that it's finally going to happen. Why?

Because impeachment -- and there's really no disagreement about this -- is a terrible idea for the country.

At this point, there's no question that Democrats can't actually remove the president, and in trying, they will only hurt themselves.

The polls are clear, and yet -- and here's the fascinating point -- they're doing it anyway. Here's Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin explaining why they're doing it: 

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.: The president's continuing course of conduct constitutes a clear and present danger to democracy in America.  We cannot allow this misconduct to pass.  It would be a sellout of our Constitution, our foreign policy, our national security and our democracy.

See if you can follow the logic chain -- maybe you can spot the missing link. Here's what he's arguing: Leaving a president in office until voters can decide to remove him from office if they want, is "a danger to democracy."  It's a "sellout of our Constitution." OK.

So, in case you've forgotten, what is the crime that undergirds this impeachment proceeding? What is the president accused of doing?

Well in case you've forgotten, it's that Donald Trump may have delayed military aid to the government of Ukraine.

Now, keep in mind that the only purpose of aid to the government of Ukraine is to antagonize Russia. Keep in mind also that Russia is a country with more nuclear weapons than any other country on the globe.

But according to Rep. Jamie Raskin, not giving weapons to Ukraine is a clear and present danger to America. It's a "sellout," he says, of our national security to pause in our relentless attacks on Russia, even for a moment.

That's a remarkable assertion.  Hard to believe he could defend that in a rational conversation but it doesn't even stand out under the current standards of political rhetoric.

There's a lot of talk like that all of a sudden. The entire impeachment saga, in fact, has become detached from reality.

Here are the most basic facts about it:

Democrats do not have the votes to remove President Trump from office. They never will have the votes to remove the president.
The point of impeachment is to remove a president. They cannot do that.
This process is doomed before it even begins. And by the way, they don't have the votes because voters don't support it.
The irony is that our democracy is working just fine.

Voters support it, in fact, less than they did. After a full month of watching public hearings on impeachment, Democrats have not gained support, they have lost it. In late October, when this began, about half the country backed impeachment. Forty-four percent said they were opposed to impeachment In the most recent polling. Those numbers have inverted.

In other words, the more people learned about impeachment, the less they wanted impeachment. That's not one person's opinion, that is the sum total of the polling. -- The numbers could not be clearer on this question. And yet, even in the face of all that data, elite Democrats still will not admit it. They're literally in denial.

Watch Democratic Party cheerleader and CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin attack his own company's polling when it doesn't match what he believes must be true.

David Chalian, CNN political director: You see a decline from our last poll in Democratic support from 90 percent down to 77 percent.  

Jeffrey Toobin, CNN legal analyst: Can I just say, my twin brother, that I don't believe that poll for one second.  

Chalian: What part?  

Toobin: The 90 to 77 percent. It's just I don't believe it. It makes no sense that that number would change like that. I mean, you know, life has shown us that polls are sometimes wrong, and David, that poll is wrong just because I said so, OK?
  
"Why don't you believe?"  "Because I don't! Because I look out my window and I see the horizon that means it's flat. You can tell me the Earth is round, but I just don't believe it.  Enough with your dumb numbers in your scientific theories. I just don't believe it," says the legal analyst. OK.

What you're watching, obviously, is one man degrade himself. But it's bigger than that. It's the definition of ideological extremism -- and that's the inability to change course, no matter what the evidence tells you.

So, that's the point at which this is no longer politics, of course, we left that a long time ago. What you're looking at is religion. And of course, being the Democratic Party, their religion it's always the exact opposite of what they claim it is.

So, as President Trump noted in a recent letter to Nancy Pelosi: “You are the ones interfering in America's elections. You are the ones subverting American democracy. You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our republic for your own selfish, personal, political and partisan gain.”

The public, whether they like Trump or not, agrees with that. The polling shows it, but the Democrats can't acknowledge that; they're stuck. So, in 2016, they went all-in on denouncing Trump -- remember this -- before the election and every one of his supporters, you, as beyond-the-pale racist, worthy of being hated. Not reasoned with or talked to, but hated and dismissed -- and physically assaulted in some cases.

But they lost anyway. And when they did lose, they refused to learn. They refused to even think for a moment about why they may have lost and instead moved seamlessly from racism into a conspiracy about Russia so bizarre they could never even fully explain its outlines. "What are you saying?" you would ask?  "Russia," they would say. OK.

That collapsed. You watched happened on live television. But what hasn't changed is the rage storm they created with years of propaganda.

They whipped their voters into such a frenzy that the voters can't be pulled back now. They want blood. And so Democrats have no choice but to march forward, despite the fact that it will inevitably destroy them. And they know it will. It's almost poignant.

Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Dec. 17, 2019.Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.

When our guardians fail us

When our guardians fail us

Victor Davis Hanson, Jewish World Review 

One symptom of a society in crisis is the unreliability or even corruption of its own auditors.

After all, when the watchmen have lost moral authority to watch, who can be believed or trusted? Or, as the Roman satirist Juvenal famously put it, "Who will guard the guardians?"

It was recently reported that FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith altered an email to bolster a suspicious FBI effort to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant authorizing the surveillance of Carter Page, a onetime employee of the Trump campaign.

If true, Clinesmith helped the FBI successfully delude the court into granting what was likely an illegal request to spy on the Trump campaign. Clinesmith was reportedly expelled from special counsel Robert Mueller's legal team for cheering on opposition to the Trump presidency by writing "Viva la resistance!" in a text message discussion.

After FBI Director James Comey was fired, he leaked his own memos of private and confidential conversations with the president. Whether Comey would go to jail hinged on how the FBI would categorize his memos post facto -- as merely "confidential," or as "secret" or "top secret."

Two of the adjudicators were Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, former Comey friends and FBI subordinates. The FBI eventually ruled that the leaking of the memos was not felonious. Page and Strzok, who were involved in an amorous relationship, were later dismissed from Mueller's team for exchanging texts that showed bias and hatred toward Trump, the object of their team's investigation.

We are awaiting the results of investigations being conducted by the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and federal prosecutor John Durham. Both are examining whether the nation's top investigators at the FBI, CIA, and DOJ were themselves corrupt.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, recently wrapped up an impeachment inquiry to discover whether President Trump committed impeachable offenses.

Schiff himself has lied about the prior relationship between the so-called whistleblower and his own staff. He read into the congressional record his version of a transcript of a presidential conversation that was so inaccurate and misleading that Schiff was forced to relabel it a "parody."

In surreal fashion, Schiff stated that he did not know the whistleblower's identity. Then, during the hearings, he claimed that he wanted to protect whistleblower's anonymity by halting all questions about direct communications with the whistleblower -- whose identity Schiff supposedly did not know.

The whistleblower, we were initially told, was a civic-minded, nonpartisan civil servant who risked his or her career to report alleged presidential misconduct. Although the whistleblower's identity has not been confirmed, what has been reported in the press suggests the very opposite of such a glowing nonpartisan portrait.

The whistleblower went first to the House Intelligence Committee staff for guidance on how to lodge a complaint. The whistleblower's lawyer was a known anti-Trump activist who had previously boasted about the effort to remove Trump, which he compared to a coup.

The whistleblower relied on hearsay and had no firsthand knowledge of presidential wrongdoing. Critics allege that the whistleblower will not come forward to testify, as promised by Schiff, because under cross-examination the whistleblower would have to detail a collaborative association with anti-Trump partisans and Schiff's staff.

It is easy for our legal and ethical custodians to hound unpopular politicians whom the media despises, and who incur strident political opposition. Investigators and inquisitors know that any dirt they can dig up, even if questionably obtained and of dubious truth, will earn them praise.
In the case of Trump, our watchmen embraced any means necessary to reach the supposedly noble and popular ends of weakening or removing him.

But the reason we have auditors in the first place is for precisely the opposite purpose: to examine evidence fairly even if the final conclusions are likely to exonerate someone deemed boorish and crude by most of federal officialdom.

In other words, our investigatory agencies should function like the First Amendment, which primarily serves not to protect free speech that we all admire but to protect unpopular speech that most prefer not to hear.

The moral test of our Justice Department, the congressional opposition and the FBI was to give even an often unpopular president some semblance of a fair audit.

All three so far have flopped miserably.

Their failures remind us why nearly 2,000 years ago Juvenal believed that society could not outsource to supposedly exalted moral officials the final authority to judge others.

Instead, we must count only on ourselves.

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, a professor of classics emeritus at California State University at Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.

On Brexit, why are Americans so against democracy for Britain?

The resistance in America comes from the establishment left, that doesn't honor elections...

On Brexit, why are Americans so against democracy for Britain?
Brexit was voted on by U.K. citizens. We need to respect the voice of the people. 
John Phelan, Star Tribune 

Once, democracy was considered a good thing. People making decisions on political matters affecting them, peacefully at the ballot box, was celebrated.

During the Cold War, and in the hot war against the Nazis before that, the fact that we were democracies was one of the things that made “us” in the West (I’m an immigrant from Britain) better than “them.” When the Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago and communism collapsed, we in the West cheered when the long-oppressed peoples of Eastern Europe and even Russia itself went to the ballot box for the first time.

But times change, it seems (“Stakes are high in U.K.’s snap election,” Nov. 5). Recently, electorates have developed the habit of voting in ways that elite classes don’t like. Consequently, we’ve witnessed a strange phenomenon — an uprising of well-off, powerful elites against the average Joe and his use of pen and ballot paper. Brexit, and much reaction to it in America, is a classic case.

In Britain’s 2015 general election, David Cameron’s Conservatives were unexpectedly elected on a manifesto promising “a straight in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017.” Parliament duly passed the European Union Referendum Act 2015, legislating for this referendum.

The government sent a leaflet to every home in Britain titled “Why the Government believes that voting to remain in the European Union is the best decision for the UK.” It read: “This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.”

The referendum was conducted June 23, 2016, asking the question: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” The options were: “Remain a member of the European Union” and “Leave the European Union.”

“Leave” won with 17.4 million votes — the most ever cast for anything in British history — 52% of those cast.

In the 2017 general election, 579 Conservative and Labour MPs — 89% of all those elected — were returned on manifestos explicitly committing them to honoring the result of the referendum. But, once back in Westminster, the promises made to the proles on the stump were discarded and Parliament has since done everything it can to veto the people’s vote of 2016.

The pro-E.U. Liberal Democrats, praised in the recent Star Tribune editorial “Stakes are high in U.K.’s snap elections” (Nov. 5), were the most brazen of all. They had spent years calling for such a referendum, indeed, such a commitment was in their manifestos for the 2010 and 2015 elections. In 2007, party leader Vince Cable wrote that they wanted to table a parliamentary motion calling “for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.” In 2008, they again called for a referendum and party leader Nick Clegg said, “Nobody in this country under the age of 51 has ever been asked that simple question. That includes half of all MPs. We’ve been signed up to Europe by default: two generations who have never had their say.”

Jo Swinson, who is now party leader (the Liberal Democrats have a penchant for regicide that would make a Roman emperor queasy), said that “the Liberal Democrats would like to have a referendum on the major issue of whether we are in or out of Europe.”

They got it. They lost it. And now they want to ignore it. Swinson has called for the referendum to be rerun, even while saying that she would ignore the result if “leave” won again. They do not see elections as opportunities for electorates to make decisions, but for electorates to OK decisions which have already been taken for them. And if they don’t, they can vote again until they do.

These people are neither very liberal nor particularly democratic.

The Star Tribune Editorial Board is right that there is much at stake in Britain’s election. This year marks the bicentenary of the Peterloo Massacre, in which yeomanry, police and soldiers attacked a Manchester demonstration demanding the vote for the working classes. Up to 700 people were injured, 18 were killed. The British people took a long and occasionally bloody road to secure their right, not only to vote, but to have that vote count. Among the journey’s highlights were the Peasant’s Revolt, the Civil War, the Chartist movement and the Suffragettes.

They have earned the right for their democratically expressed wishes to be acted upon, even when the Editorial Board thinks they are wrong.

John Phelan, a graduate of Birkbeck College, University of London, is an economist at the Center of the American Experiment.

Adam Schiff's 'ham sandwich': Not an inquiry, just a show

Adam Schiff's 'ham sandwich': Not an inquiry, just a show
Andrew C. McCarthy, The Hill

The most familiar metaphor about criminal investigations is, of course, that a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Like all good metaphors, there’s enough exaggeration in it to make a strong impression. It resonates, though, because it conveys the entirely accurate sense that a grand jury is a one-sided affair. We’re wired to believe there are two sides — at least — to every story. That’s why the grand jury rubs us the wrong way.

And that’s why the impeachment show — not inquiry show — that Democrats are running should really rub us the wrong way. 

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and his House Intelligence Committee are taking the show public this week. The inquiry he’s been running is, he claims, analogous to a grand jury investigation: It’s a preliminary investigative stage before the inquiry’s transfer to the Judiciary Committee for the formal consideration of articles of impeachment.

Grand juries, however, never go public. And that is precise because they are intentionally one-sided. They are kept secret by law to avoid prejudicing the suspect.

Prejudice is exactly what Schiff is aiming for, however. The point is not impeachment; it is to wound President Trump politically.

To be clear, Schiff’s grand jury analogy is bogus. Congress is not a grand jury. Grand juries are designed to be at least somewhat objective — a body of impartial citizens who, by constitutional mandate, must be satisfied there is probable cause that a crime has been committed before the state is permitted to indict and try a citizen presumed to be innocent. In theory, the grand jury is there to protect the suspect from an overbearing prosecutor. Here, House Democrats are the overbearing prosecutor, not the protective grand jurors.

What is happening in the House is a political exercise. Schiff is a hyper-partisan. With the anti-Trump media leaving his absurd grand jury analogy unchallenged, he exploits it when it is useful, namely when telling Republicans they will not be permitted to call their witnesses, and he puts the analogy aside when it is not useful, namely, in convening one-sided public hearings.

As a matter of due process, Schiff’s made-for-TV spectacle is a bad joke. That was underscored this past weekend when (a) Democrats gave Republicans a ridiculously short deadline to propose their own witnesses, whom Chairman Schiff reserved the right to veto; (b) Republicans duly proposed witnesses on the issues of Democrats’ collusion with Ukraine in the 2016 election campaign and in possible corruption; and (c) Schiff, as predictably as sunrise, ruled the GOP’s witnesses irrelevant.

In point of fact, the witnesses that Republicans seek to call are entirely relevant to what would be at issue in an impeachment trial, to wit: Is any misconduct by the president alleged in an article of impeachment sufficiently egregious that he should be removed from power?

But, see, a grand jury is not a trial. 

The ham sandwich metaphor is apt because the grand jury protection, though constitutionally required, is modest. The grand jury is not the forum for trying the case. Its sole role is to determine whether the prosecutor has enough evidence — just probable cause at this early stage — to warrant filing a formal allegation (the indictment), which transfers the case to a judicial court for a full-blown trial at which the prosecutor must bear the much higher, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt burden of proof.

In the grand jury, the prosecutor is not required to tell the defendant’s side of the story. The law does not even call for the prosecutor to share with grand jurors exculpatory evidence in the government’s files. The only matter up for consideration is: Does the prosecutor have enough proof of misconduct to proceed to the real ballgame — the trial?

In our system, because of the dictates of fundamental fairness, it is at the trial that things go public. That is because, at the trial, the accused is armed with all the Constitution’s due process guarantees — the right to counsel, to confront witnesses, to call witnesses and present a defense, the presumption of innocence and the high burden of proof imposed on the prosecutor.

So here is what Schiff is being allowed to pull off. 

He is claiming, “I’m just like the grand jury,” in order to confine the hearings to witnesses who will be most damning in portraying an abuse of power by the president — the exploitation of his foreign affairs power to squeeze a foreign government into helping his 2020 political campaign by investigating a potential Democratic rival. The grand jury analogy is Schiff's rationale for excluding witnesses Republicans want to call — witnesses who could put the president’s demands in context by establishing that Democrats colluded with Ukrainian officials in connection with the 2016 campaign and that prominent Democrats, such as Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, corruptly cashed in on his father’s political influence over Ukraine’s government.

That would all be fine if Schiff would be consistent with his grand jury pretense and do all of this behind closed doors. Then, when we finally got to a public stage, the president and Republicans would have equal time and equal right to present their side of the case. But that is not what Schiff is doing. He is using his control over a kangaroo-court process to publicize his dark version of events and to muzzle the other side.

This is a deeply un-American process.

I am not a knee-jerk Trump partisan. I am open-minded that the president may have abused his power, as all presidents do from time to time. I have always thought his best defense is that, in the scheme of things, the abuse was inconsequential: The Ukrainians got their defense aid without having to commit to investigating the Bidens; the president was within his rights to ask for Kyiv’s help in examining Ukraine’s role in the Obama administration’s controversial Trump-Russia investigation; the Trump administration has provided lethal aid in supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression, which the Obama administration would not do.

All of that matters because, in an impeachment case, the issue is not merely whether the president abused his power but whether the abuse, on balance, was so egregious that the president should be removed from power.

Congress is supposed to explore both of those questions — was there an abuse, and how egregious was it? It should be doing so in the light of day: Both issues, in public, with full due process rights for the president.

Adam Schiff and the Democrats are not a grand jury. They should not have been permitted to take the process behind closed doors and make it one-sided. But if they are going to keep it one-sided, like a grand jury, they should stay behind closed doors the way a grand jury does.

If the case is going on national television, fundamental fairness dictates that it be the whole case. Otherwise, it’s just a show, produced and directed by partisan Democrats.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, a contributing editor at National Review, and a Fox News contributor. His latest book is “Ball of Collusion.” Follow him on Twitter @AndrewCMcCarthy.

Tomi Lahren: We can't save California if conservatives keep leaving

Tomi Lahren: We can't save California if conservatives keep leaving

After delivering a speech on "American values" at the Fox Nation's first-ever "Patriot Awards" on Wednesday, Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren urged on Thursday for conservatives to stay in California and fight for the state.

Joshua Nelson, Fox News


Following an appearance on Fox Nation's first-ever "Patriot Awards," where she delivered a powerful speech on American values, Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren stopped by “Fox & Friends” and urged conservatives to stay in California and fight for the state.

“Why did we stop trying in California? That’s why I’m there,” Lahren said Thursday.


“If we keep leaving, we’re not going to save it. I get why people leave but I would say to conservatives out there, please stick around, it’s worth fighting for, it’s a great state,” Lahren said.

Last month, a poll showed that half of California's registered voters – including 74 percent of conservatives – have considered leaving the state.

The poll, conducted by the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC-Berkeley, found 71 percent of residents considered leaving California due to the cost of housing. The poll also found that 84 percent cited the "political culture" and 76 percent identified high taxes as the biggest reason.

Republicans and conservatives were three times as likely to strongly consider leaving than Democrats and liberals, the study found.

Meanwhile, massive crowds of Fox News and Fox Nation fans lined up Wednesday outside the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg, Fla., as ticket holders waited excitedly to take part in Fox Nation's "Patriot Awards."

The highly anticipated red carpet event featured a lineup dubbed the "Golden Globes of conservative media," as attendees were treated to a live "Final Thoughts" commentary by Lahren.

Lahren said there are many reasons people are leaving California, but high on the list is rising taxes, specifically to pay for illegal immigrants. She said many people wonder how Gov. Gavin Newsrom, a Democrat, got elected.

"Many people tell me, 'How did this guy get in there? He's destroying the state,'" she said, adding that the problems with homelessness in major California cities may cause more and more residents to "wake up" and support conservative policies.


Joshua Nelson is a freelance reporter for Fox News.