(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) Former President Donald Trump could avail himself of some significant legal self-help if he gets the keys to the Oval Office in 2024 according to an influential constitutional scholar.
Prof. Jonathan Turley claimed that the former-POTUS could pardon himself if the latter is convicted in the pending federal case in connection with the alleged mishandling of national defense documents.
A self-pardon in that case or any other one brought against a former president would be unprecedented, but obviously so is a criminal, political indictment of a former president.
Generally very measured in his legal analysis, Turley asserted that “Presidents can issue-self pardons,” even though he is not supportive of a commander-in-chief using that kind of escape clause.
The George Washington University law professor and self-described liberal explained that “While I do not agree with self-pardons, I do not see any constitutional barrier to the use of such presidential power.”
Turley also rejected the premise that Trump would have to temporarily turn the presidency over to his vice president under the 25th amendment and allow the VP, rather than himself, to issue the theoretical pardon.
He went on to explain that “Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution defines the pardon power as allowing a president to ‘grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.’ There is no language specifying who may or may not be the subject of a pardon. The president is simply given the power to pardon any federal crime.”
Turley also opined that a 1974 U.S. Department of Justice memo deeming self-pardons unconstitutional “was dead wrong.”
A pardon could be issued even if federal charges are still pending as reportedly established by an 1866 U.S. Supreme Court case ironically called Ex parte Garland.
Harvard Law School professor Mark Tushnet told CBS news that “The arguments about whether a president can pardon himself are not only unsettled in the sense that they haven’t come up before, but they’re also unsettled in the sense that reasonable lawyers could look at the materials and say either result is legally defensible.”
Jeffrey Crouch, a professor at American University, who is said to an expert on the president pardon power, told the same news organization that “The big unanswered question is whether the president might be able to pardon himself. No president has ever tried it, so we don’t know what the result would be if it was attempted.”
While it would be uncharted legal territory, if it ever happened, it would provide additional hours of anti-Trump content for MSNBC and CNN.
The constitutional controversy, if it ever arises, likely would wind up in the lap of the Supreme Court.
Those on the right have accused Democrats weaponizing the legal system against their political opponents in a process often called lawfare.
A president’s constitutional pardon authority does not apply to any state-level charges, such as the Trump indictment in New York City for a bookkeeping error, if that, or potential charges in Georgia for alleged election meddling.
A Harvard Harris poll released last week indicated that “If Trump is convicted, 53% of voters –- driven by 80% of Republicans –- support pardoning him in the interest of national unity.”
Should he win the White House, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has already pledged to pardon Trump in the documents case.
(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) An abortionist with “she/her” pronouns in her Twitter bio who previously claimed that Dylan Mulvaney is a woman has now compared murdering an unborn baby to removing a bug that has crept into one’s ear and eradicating a bacterial infection.
“People who are like ‘But a fetus in you isn’t your body so you can’t control it and have an abortion,’ um, excuse me but if a bug crawled in your ear are you also forced to host it or do you say wtf get this thing out?! Does the same go for bacterial infections?” Jennifer Lincoln tweeted.
Public backlash was fierce, with one Twitter user accusing, “I can’t believe a real, live doctor thinks a human and a bug are equal and a logical comparison,” one Twitter user wrote. Lincoln responded by gaslighting the woman.
“A real, live doctor thinks it’s disgusting people think they can force a person to remain pregnant. That’s terrible enough. That y’all are mad at my analogy but not forced birth is the tell,” she wrote.
Live Action, an anti-abortion organization that was created by Lila Rose, also responded to Lincoln’s original tweet.
“A fetus is a human being with human rights. A bug is not a human being and does not have human rights. Yes, the same goes for the non-human bacterial infection,” the pro-life organization informed.
Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon criticized Lincoln and her rhetoric through satire in a typical Bee fashion.
And once a child is born he's like a bug that got in through a window. You should be able to kill him for invading your home and being a nuisance, right? https://t.co/sNtO50d1nj
Catholic priest Fr. Matthew P. Schneider pointed out that Lincoln’s type of rhetoric almost always leads to genocide.
“Calling human beings ‘parasites’ has a history of being on the ethically abominable side in genocides (Nazis, Rwanda, etc.),” he wrote. “I hope that’s not what you intended.”
Following the initial uproar, Lincoln scolded pro-lifers by saying that a person who wants to have sex should think about the natural consequence of having sex.
“Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy. I know you want it to be that way because you want us to exist solely to make babies and stay home and raise them for you, but that’s not how it works,” she wrote.
Three days later, she doubled down on her previous statements.
“A fetus is literally a parasite. It cannot survive without the host. Not all parasites are bad, but you should get to consent to which ones you host,” she wrote.
(By Brendan Clarey, Chalkboard Review) The National Assessment of Educational Progress released assessment results Wednesday that show 13-year-olds tested in the 2022-23 school year saw dramatic declines in math and reading compared to previous years.
The NAEP’s Long Term Trend assessment, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, found the average reading score declined four points and the average mathematics score declined nine points.
According to Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, there was no hint of post-pandemic learning recovery.
“The ‘green shoots’ of academic recovery that we had hoped to see have not materialized, as we continue to see worrisome signs about student achievement and well-being more than two years after most students returned for in-person learning,” Carr said in a statement Wednesday.
Carr added that the lowest reading scores have not been this low since they began the assessment over 40 years ago and declines in math have never seen a more precipitous decline.
“The mathematics decline for 13-year-olds was the single largest decline we have observed in the past half a century,” Carr said. “The mathematics score for the lowest-performing students has returned to levels last seen in the 1970s, and the reading score for our lowest-performing students was actually lower than it was the very first year these data were collected, in 1971.”
Math scores declined for almost every student group, with White students seeing a 6-point decline and American Indian/Native Alaskan students seeing a decline of 20 points. Asian students did not see noticeable declines between the 2019-20 and the 2022-23 assessments.
Reading scores declined in the same time frame for black, White and students of two or more races. In contrast, American Indian/Native Alaskan, Hispanic and Asian students did not see significant differences.
Schools located in rural, urban and suburban areas saw declines, while those in towns did not see a difference. There were no measurable differences for students attending Catholic schools in mathematics or reading.
Before 2012, there had been improvements in average reading and math scores, but after 2012, scores started to fall before dipping starkly after the pandemic-related school closures.
In a statement, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said the Biden administration had expected academic recovery after the school closures to take years.
“The latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress is further evidence of what the Biden-Harris administration recognized from Day One: that the pandemic would have a devastating impact on students’ learning across the country and that it would take years of effort and investment to reverse the damage as well as address the 11-year decline that preceded it,” Cardona said.
The assessment also found that fewer students read for fun, with 31% of 13-year-olds saying they do not or hardly ever read for pleasure, up from 22% responding the same way in 2012.
“Reading for fun is strongly associated with higher achievement,” Carr said. “Aside from its academic effects, reading opens the mind and the heart to new ways of seeing and thinking about the world. Many of our young people will never discover latent passions or areas of interest without reading broadly on their own time.”
The NCES assessment also found that fewer students are enrolled in algebra classes, with 24% of students saying they were enrolled in a class in 2023 compared with 34% in 2012.
The assessment is used to gauge how students reading and mathematic skills have changed over time, and, unlike NAEP assessments, are administered by age instead of by grade. Chalkboard has previously reported on academic declines highlighted by NAEP assessments.
(By J.J. Brannock, The Center Square) Former Special Counsel John Durham said in a Congressional hearing on Wednesday that several FBI agents apologized to him for the way the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s Russian collusion probe was handled.
In his report on the Trump-Russia investigation, nicknamed Crossfire Hurricane, Durham reported that the FBI did not have an adequate basis to launch the probe, failed to examine all evidence, and continued investigations when evidence could not be verified. Durham also concluded the FBI did not interview key witnesses in the case, and abused its authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Durham said that the FBI opened Crossfire Hurricane without speaking to those who provided the information or consulting their own intelligence database.
He wrote in his report that an “objective and honest assessment” of the evidence, in possession at the launch of the investigation, “should have caused the FBI to question not only the predication for Crossfire Hurricane, but also to reflect on whether the FBI was being manipulated for political or other purposes.”
The report detailed the way the FBI handled similar controversies related to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, specifically in the speed and carelessness of the beginning of Trump’s Russia investigation.
“The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign,” Durham wrote in the report.
Durham reported that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the intelligence community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
The Durham Report also commented on the Steele dossier, a compilation of intelligence from former head of the Russia Desk for British Intelligence Christopher Steele that alleged election interference between Russian operatives and Trump’s campaign members.
“Our investigation determined that the Crossfire Hurricane investigators did not and could not corroborate any of the substantive allegations contained in the Steele reporting,” Durham wrote in his report. “Nor was Steele able to produce corroboration for any of the reported allegations, even after being offered $1 million or more by the FBI for such corroboration.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., after starting his comments with blatant misinformation, said that the hearing Republicans planned for the report was just an effort to distract and mislead the American public considering Trump’s recent legal trouble.
Nadler said, “After four years, thousands of employee hours, and more than $6.5 million in taxpayer funds, Special Counsel Durham failed to uncover any wrongdoing that Justice Department Inspector General Horowitz had not already found in 2019.”
(By Brett Rowland, The Center Square) The Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon on Wednesday alleging the online retailer used “manipulative, coercive, or deceptive” practices to get customers to enroll in Prime subscriptions.
The Federal Trade Commission’s partially-redacted complaint alleges the company tricked millions of people into enrolling in Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime, a $139 annual subscription service that has fueled the company’s growth and made it part of many Americans daily routines.
“Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money,” Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan said in a statement. “These manipulative tactics harm consumers and law-abiding businesses alike.”
Amazon said the Federal Trade Commission was wrong about Prime, a feature that the company said customers love.
“The FTC’s claims are false on the facts and the law. The truth is that customers love Prime, and by design we make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up for or cancel their Prime membership,” a spokesperson said. “As with all our products and services, we continually listen to customer feedback and look for ways to improve the customer experience, and we look forward to the facts becoming clear as this case plays out.”
The company also said the Federal Trade Commission filed the suit without prior warning.
“We also find it concerning that the FTC announced this lawsuit without notice to us, in the midst of our discussions with FTC staff members to ensure they understand the facts, context, and legal issues, and before we were able to have a dialog with the Commissioners themselves before they filed a lawsuit,” a spokesperson said. “While the absence of that normal course engagement is extremely disappointing, we look forward to proving our case in court.”
The complaint alleges Amazon “used manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs known as ‘dark patterns’ to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically-renewing Prime subscriptions.” It further alleges the company made it difficult to cancel Prime.
“The primary purpose of its Prime cancellation process was not to enable subscribers to cancel, but to stop them,” according to the Federal Trade Commission. “Amazon leadership slowed or rejected changes that would’ve made it easier for users to cancel Prime because those changes adversely affected Amazon’s bottom line.”
The Federal Trade Commission said Amazon made its cancellation process so difficult it was referred to as an epic poem by Homer.
“The FTC charges that Amazon put in place a cancellation process designed to deter consumers from successfully unsubscribing from Prime,” the commission said. “Previous reporting about the process in the media has noted that Amazon used the term ‘Iliad’ to describe the process, which the reporting cites as an allusion to Homer’s epic poem set over twenty-four books and nearly 16,000 lines about the decade-long Trojan War.”
The lawsuit came the same day Amazon announced the count down to its annual Prime Day.
“Prime Day is all about making our Prime members feel like a big deal, with deep savings and access to some of the best offers from brands they love,” said Jamil Ghani, vice president of Amazon Prime.
Amazon Prime gives members access to free two-day shipping, music streaming, video streaming and photo storage.
(Headline USA) A government watchdog confirmed this week that a subcontractor for EcoHealth Alliance, a scientific research organization funded by the U.S. government, was one of the first to catch COVID-19 in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The White Coat Waste Project obtained federal accounting records through a Freedom of Information Act request that revealed EcoHealth Alliance’s Ben Hu was being paid by the National Institutes of Health to conduct research in the WIV at the time of the COVID-19 outbreak. Hu was the WIV’s lead on the gain-of-function research believed to have produced the contagious COVID-19 virus.
“Ben Hu is essentially the next Shi Zhengli. … He was her star pupil. He had been making chimeric SARS-like viruses and testing these in humanized mice,” said Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.
“If I had to guess who would be doing this risky virus research and most at risk of getting accidentally infected, it would be him,” Chan added.
According to the grant form obtained by White Coat Waste, Hu was working for EcoHealth Alliance at the time. EcoHealth Alliance received a $3.5 million grant from NIH titled “understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence” for work to be undertaken from June 2019 through May 2024.
A U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spokesperson insisted that the funding had been ended by NIH in 2019. Still, the WIV received at least $815,000 in U.S. funding through EcoHealth Alliance, according to government records.
A report by journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag identified earlier this week Ben Hu, Yu Ping and Yan Zhu as the three Wuhan scientists who were first infected.
“Not only do we know there were WIV scientists who had developed COVID-19-like illnesses in November 2019, but also that they were working with the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2, and inserting gain-of-function features unique to it,” the report said.
(Headline USA) A young woman who participated in a 2016 MTV documentary about transgenderism announced this week that she was detransitioning from identifying as a boy, and revealed that she felt she had been forced into living as a boy for years.
In a 27-minute long video, “Milo” said she changed everything about herself to accommodate her male “gender identity” when she was just a teenager.
🧵1/ "Milo" from MTV's 2016 documentary "Transformation" is detransitioning. "I feel like I've kind of suppressed a lot of trauma…from when I was a teenager going through puberty & I was bullied at school by other girls for being kind of weird & stuff." https://t.co/qiU03gSBN1pic.twitter.com/aarHKcUFen
“My legal sex is male. I had that changed when I was 15 or 16 years old; legally it changed, I even had my birth certificate amended, Social Security, everything. Everything’s changed to ‘Milo’ and ‘male,'” she explained.
Milo said she also underwent physical treatments to make her look more like a boy, including testosterone shots, a double mastectomy, and a hysterectomy.
“This is something I hoped I would never say, but I think I regret medically transitioning to male,” Milo said. “I think I completely regret everything I’ve done; I’ve been miserable.”
Milo said she believes she was attracted to transgenderism because of her difficulties with puberty.
“I was bullied at school by other girls for being kind of weird and stuff,” Milo said. “Also, just feeling like I was going to be an object for men if I kept my body the way it was. Which I know now isn’t true.”
The young woman accused her doctors and therapists of pushing her into a social and physical transition without warning her of the long-term consequences.
“I think I was misguided. I think I was rushed into treatment before I explored all possible avenues of my feelings,” Milo continued. “I was also afraid to admit that I was uncomfortable with sexuality.”
Milo was featured in MTV’s Transformation documentary, which portrayed the social transition of “transgender” children positively. The show even offered the children “makeovers.”
In the documentary, Milo’s mother referred to her as a boy and said she “never had a daughter from the day he was born. I just didn’t know it yet.”
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) In July 2019, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, hammered former FBI official and special counsel Robert Mueller for failing to criminally charge Joseph Mifsud—a mysterious Maltese professor said to have originated the entire Russia-collusion fiasco by telling Trump associate George Papadopoulos in 2016 that the Russians had damning information on Hillary Clinton.
“The central figure who started it all lies to us, and you don’t hunt him down or charge him with a crime … And here’s the good news: That’s exactly what Bill Barr is doing. That’s exactly what the attorney general and [special counsel] John Durham are doing,” Jordan said at the time.
Originally, Mifsud was thought to be a Russian operative offering to work as an intermediary between Russia and the Trump campaign. As the Russia-collusion narrative collapsed, Jordan and other Republicans came to believe that Mifsud was more likely a Western intelligence operative looking to ensnare Papadopoulos and the Trump campaign in a counterintelligence sting operation.
However, it was revealed at a Wednesday congressional hearing that Durham, who was charged with investigating the origins of the Russia hoax, never got to the bottom of who Mifsud is—or for whom he was working in 2016.
“It’s hard to say who he’s associated with,” Durham said at the hearing.
For Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that was too much to handle. Gaetz ripped into Durham for his investigative failures, going so far as to accuse the former special counsel of working for the enemy.
“You had years to find out the answer to what Mr. Jordan said [in 2019] was the seminal question, and you don’t have it—which begs the question of whether you were actually trying to find that out,” Gaetz said.
“Because it’s one thing to criticize the FBI for their FISA violations and write a report—some consider your work a regurgitation of what the inspector general already told us,” he continued. “If you weren’t going to get to the bottom of what Jordan wanted, what’s this been all about?”
Durham said he “tried” to find Mifsud, but failed to do so. This irked Gaetz even more.
“You’re disappointed the FBI didn’t cooperate … We’re disappointed too, but the difference is: When normal folks do something wrong, there’s typically a greater effort to get those people before a grand jury to utilize the criminal process, when appropriate,” Gaetz said.
Gaetz then dropped his bombshell allegation, accusing Durham of helping the FBI cover its tracks.
“When you are part of the coverup, Mr. Durham, it makes our job that much harder,” he said.
Durham took offense to this remark, saying that he and his staff worked hard over the last four years on their investigation. But Gaetz was unmoved, further accusing the Durham team of being akin to the Washington Generals—the basketball team that loses nearly every game to the Harlem Globetrotters.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever investigated a crime—,” Durham attempted to respond, before being cut short by Gaetz.
“I don’t know if you have, Mr. Durham!” Gaetz said before his portion of the hearing concluded.
(Abdul–Rahman Oladimeji Bello, Headline USA) Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., recently encouraged climate activists from several environmental groups to show more aggression in their protest planned for later this summer.
According to a Daily Mailreport, the leftist “Squad” member had a virtual meeting with about 125 headliners from environmental groups, including Climate Defiance and Declare Emergency.
As part of their protest, these climate activists have blocked U.S. highways, defaced artworks in Washington and harassed politicians at public events. They are reportedly plotting to hold even bigger protests later this summer.
“We have to be much more aggressive in regard to fossil fuel expansions,” Tlaib said in the virtual meeting with the climate activists. “If we don’t get the policies we need, if our legislative process is failing us, then direct action gets the goods.”
Tlaib said she appreciated the environmental groups’ “civil disobedience actions” as she pushed them to be more proactive and “use the bullhorn.”
She also informed them that Congress and the White House would not cut as much pollution as they should until “the streets demanded it.”
The Daily Mail noted that Donald Zepeda, a Seattle-based mobilizer for Declare Emergency, had revealed plans to protest on federal properties in New York and Washington later in August.
“We aim for whatever causes the most kerfuffle; everyone has to see it,” Zepeda said.
“Everyone is impacted,” he continued. “Doing massively disruptive, nonviolent civil disobedience, it’s a necessary and important part of getting us to where we need to be.”
Filmmaker Adam McKay, who reportedly pledged $100,000 to the cause, supported the congresswoman and several activists who spent time in jail after protests.
“Nothing cuts through the BS and rigamarole more than straight-up disruptive activism,” he said.
“I’m talking about the power of the people,” he added. “I’m talking about the people that created democracy, that threw the kings out of power.”
Instead the Grey Lady would have blared headlines about how former special counsel John Durham privately confirmed the presence of a pee tape involving former President Donald Trump leading a throuple’s tryst with Stormy Daniels and E. Jean Carroll in the hidden sex-chamber at Mar-a-Lago, as Gen. Mark Milley’s handwritten plans to invade Canada unceremoniously propped up the wobbly leg of a solid-gold four-poster with mattress made from baby bald-eagle down.
“A source who spoke on deep background with no authorization to discuss the proceedings said that during the closed-door meeting with the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday, ostensibly to address reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Durham let slip that Russian President Vladimir Putin was using the immense box-office returns from cinematic screenings of the newly disclosed pee tape to fund his ongoing assault on Ukraine,” the Times’s Maggie Haberman might have written.
But alas, it was not so, for the crucial informant—the liaison needed to transmit such privileged details to the newspaper—was nowhere to be seen.
Elsewhere, disgraced Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., found himself trying to fend off the imminent possibility of a censure on the very same House floor where he once held court so efficaciously—and affectatiously.
Rep. Luna just introduced a new censure resolution against me.
And Rep. Gaetz introduced one against Bennie Thompson.
Now Rep. Boebert has introduced articles of impeachment against President Biden.
MAGA Republicans will do anything to distract from Trump’s indictment.
Schiff—who reached the peak of his powers during the Trump impeachment hearings by hijacking the lead committee role that normally would have gone to dim-witted, beta-male Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.—set himself up for a mighty fall after the GOP’s majority takeover this year.
But the moment of reckoning he now faces, due to his constant lying and leaking to the press, was facilitated by none other than his longtime mentor, Pelosi, after she controversially stripped two conservative House Republicans from their committees in a series of norm-violating acts that flouted conventional House rules and protocols.
Both Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., lost their committees not because they, like Schiff, had misrepresented the substance of classified hearings to paint a deceptive media narrative that benefited their political agenda. Rather, they engaged with Twitter users, posting content that was admittedly over the top but still protected under the umbrella of free speech.
In Gosar’s case, the offending tweet was a 90-second clip of Japanese anime that had the face of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-N.Y., superimposed on a cartoon villain who was then decapitated by the heroes, representing Gosar and other conservative lawmakers.
Democrats moved with deliberate speed to ensure such provocation did not go unanswered.
“This is a dark and dangerous road the majority is going down,” said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the House Rules Committee at the time. “I urge you for the future of the chamber to rethink this course.”
ROE VERSUS REID
Harry Reid / IMAGE: CSPAN via YouTube
If it were not for former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, there might have been no Roe v. Wade overturn last year.
While the Dobbs decision was a 6–3 ruling, one has to wonder if frequently feckless Chief Justice John Roberts would have been comfortable upending the 50-year-old precedent knowing that he was the deciding vote in a 5–4 majority.
Such might have been the case but for Reid’s decision to go “nuclear,” ending the filibuster on federal judge appointments halfway through the 113th Congress, when then-President Barack Obama’s radical choices were being forestalled by the Republican minority under Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Once it came McConnell’s time to wield the gavel a few years later, he recalled Reid’s partisan double-dealing as justification not to consider Obama’s nomination—none other than then-D.C. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland—to replace the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.
Instead, McConnell waited until after the 2016 election and allowed the winner—Republican Donald Trump—to name the new justice, while also extending Reid’s “nuclear option” to lower the Supreme Court’s confirmation threshold from 60 votes to a simple majority.
Without Reid, Garland’s confirmation might have come before the Senate, and he would have proven to be as unabashedly partisan on the high court as he has been in the Justice Department, where he presently serves as the Biden administration’s attorney general.
Trump’s presidency (assuming that a left-skewed Supreme Court had not found a way to overturn it) would thus have netted only two conservative justices at best. However, it is unlikely that any of the three justices he appointed could have survived the Senate confirmation hearings—where abortion would have been a major point of discussion—enough to clear the 60-vote bar without the Harry Reid nuclear option in place.
AN INDELIBLE STAIN
Bill and Hillary Clinton / PHOTO: AP
Of course, there is one reason and one reason alone that can truly be credited with securing Trump’s 2016 presidential victory over Hillary Clinton, and that is Bill Clinton.
When the leaked 2005 audio emerged that found Trump boasting to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about performing lewd sexual acts with available young women, sometimes without any implied consent, it would almost certainly have been a campaign-ender for any other candidate in any prior year.
But it just so happened that Donald Trump’s candidacy was, in many ways, a direct response to the immorality and impunity that Democrats—and the Clinton family in particular—had been able to exploit so brazenly in the years leading up to the election.
If Democrats were willing to turn a blind eye to the sex acts and dishonor that Bill Clinton had brought to the Oval Office, then the fed-up GOP’s answer was to respond in kind with a man who was the very antithesis of losing candidates like Bob Dole, Mitt Romney and John McCain—a man who would not let contrived and duplicitous left-wing shame attacks knock him down because he had no shame.
Conservative voters, including many women, felt confident standing behind Trump for his policies, despite his well-known moral shortcomings, because they had little doubt that Bill Clinton had carried on equally foul conversations in his private life and that Hillary and her media cohorts had not deemed those to be politically prohibitive.
Indeed, the righteous indignation coming from the newly pious Left over such a sex scandal only helped to fuel Trump’s momentum by reminding everyone of how dishonest and disingenuous the alternative was.
An American flag flies outside the Department of Justice in Washington. / PHOTO: AP
These are lessons worth remembering as Democrats flagrantly abuse the justice system for their own benefit ahead of the 2024 election.
The Biden family has crafted a tangled web of lies, oftentimes with reckless disregard for the longterm implications and a cocksure certainty that it can escape any real damage.
When it comes to dealing with the systemically corrupt institutions meant to hold the political class accountable—the media, the legal system, academia, dark-money oligarchs and corporate special interests—too many have rallied around them as a form of mutually assured self-preservation and symbiosis.
But once a critical mass of outraged constituents aligns, the tables have a way of turning, the trade winds shifting, and the pendulum reversing.
At the risk of repeating another 2022 red-wave jinx, the feeling is more palpable than ever that a major shift is underway—and as usual, it has everything to do with Democrats’ failure to consider the unintended consequences of their callous actions.
As their party becomes more radicalized, and more obnoxiously demanding, a growing number of people seem to be moving in the other direction, defining themselves as social conservatives in contrast to the unpalatable option they see presented as liberalism’s “new normal.”
Divisive cultural issues championed on the Left, such as LGBT activism—once viewed as being nobly akin to the ’60s-era civil-rights movement—have insinuated themselves too far into the lives of everyday citizens and have become unwelcome houseguests.
Likewise, the Marxism-rooted “black liberation” agenda of groups like “Black Lives Matter” has lost its luster in the aftermath of the 2020 race riots, which did little to improve racial progress but did help to drive up violent crime in many urban areas. The preposterous reparations demands coming from California tell us exactly how serious we should take such debate.
At every turn, rational people are finding their most basic moral values assailed and their intelligence insulted.
PAYING THEIR DUES
Hunter and Joe Biden / IMAGE: Donald J Trump via Youtube
Soon, it will be Republicans’ turn to hold these leftists accountable according to the new rules that they, themselves, have crafted during the Biden administration.
With the politicized attacks on Trump, the double-standard is obvious, yet again using the Clintons as the main precedent. Bill Clinton’s sock-drawer recordings and Hillary Clinton’s private bathroom server are both serious challenges that federal prosecutors will find themselves needing to explain.
Moreover, it is clear that the National Archives’s unprecedented step in drawing the Justice Department into an issue concerning the Presidential Records Act will not bode well for future ex-presidents, particularly Joe Biden, who already has demonstrated a track record of carelessly mishandling classified material.
Should the tables be turned, the rules that the Biden administration is now establishing for its own benefit can and will be used against them.
While the “Big Guy” may have spent years waiting for his retirement nest egg to finally mature in a Cayman Islands escrow account, he may find his final years spent instead wallowing in the D.C. gulag where his own gestapo has detained many Jan. 6 political dissidents.
As for Hunter Biden, who recently benefited from a sweetheart plea deal after seeing the five-year investigation into his damning criminal history get slow-walked by the FBI, he may find himself lucky enough to flee to one of the many countries where he has cultivated foreign business ties, but his status as a political-asylum claimant in China or Ukraine is likely to be far less comfortable than his lavish lifestyle as an influence-peddler.
And for Democrats everywhere who have found it convenient to simply not enforce the rule of law when it does not apply to their direct interests—be that keeping crime off the streets, protecting the innocence of children in schools, ensuring the sovereignty of our national borders or respecting the constraints on federal authority prescribed by the U.S. Constitution—if you do not stand up for equal protection under the law when the chips are with you, then be prepared for the unintended consequences that you are now setting in motion.
