‘They got caught up in the bureaucracy trying to cut the bureaucracy…’
John Kasich/Photo by Michael Vadon (CC)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) An Ohio agency put in place by then-Gov. John Kasich to reduce government inefficiency instead became part of the problem.
It may be an appropriate symbol, in some ways, of the flip-flopping Kasich’s transformation from conservative politician to Trump-bashing CNN commentator, as well as his inability to translate talk into effective action.
The Columbus Dispatch reported that Kasich established the Common Sense Initiative in 2011 “to make Ohio business-friendly by slashing state bureaucracy and streamlining business regulations.”
But CSI’s effort to slash regulations resulted in a backlog of 1,233 rules awaiting action. The Dispatch said that included 139 awaiting state-agency response, 229 were in a public comment period, and 865 were things that CSI simply hadn’t done.
CSI now falls under the oversight of Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, who criticized the backlog last month at a meeting of the National Federation of Independent Business.
“I let my staff know that was unacceptable,” Husted said. “We are not going to tolerate delays in getting our work done.”
After slapping CSI with an April deadline, Husted was able to clear more than three-quarters of the backlog.
“I’m trying to change the culture,” he said. “ … What I’m trying to do is establish a standard of customer service.”
The Dispatch cast much of the blame on Husted’s predecessor, former GOP Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor.
Although the law also established that stalled rules could move after 15 days to the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review, Taylor’s office discouraged moving the rules to JCARR until after they had received a CSI recommendation.
Kasich often touted CSI’s review of more than 2,100 rules per year on average, offering them as evidence of a business-friendly administration, said The Dispatch, but his reports and the agencies neglected to mention the backlog.
Roger Geiger, Ohio executive director of the NFIB organization where Husted delivered his comments, was among seemed to defend the agency’s efforts, saying it was the other state agencies’ lag in response that was the problem.
“If the government doesn’t respond, it can gum things up,” he said. “They got caught up in the bureaucracy trying to cut the bureaucracy.”
‘You know, it’s sort of like the pot calling the kettle black…’
Morris Dees / IMAGE: Biography via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Following hushed allegations of “misconduct,” Morris Dees, one of the iconic co-founders of the Southern Poverty Law Center was fired Wednesday.
“[O]ur work is about the cause, not the person,” wrote SPLC President Richard Cohen in an online announcement about the decision.
Cohen’s statement gave no elaboration on the reasons for the firing, but it obliquely hinted at internal strife within the organization.
“We’re committed to ensuring that our workplace embodies the values we espouse—truth, justice, equity, and inclusion,” he said. “When one of our own fails to meet those standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.”
Dees, 82, was a longtime public face of the SPLC, the Montgomery, Ala.-based civil rights group. He ushered it fame in the 1970s by suing members of the Ku Klux Klan and spun it into a leftist advocacy empire with a $44 million operating budget through his fundraising prowess.
The Los Angeles Times elegized Dees after the ouster as a “swashbuckling figure” whose autobiography read “like a treatment for a Hollywood epic.”
According to UPI, Dees said he had no part in the move and denied knowing the reasons behind it.
“It was not my decision, what they did,” he said. “I wish the center the absolute best. Whatever reasons they had of theirs, I don’t know.”
But recently, the SPLC has faced persistent criticisms from all directions that it may have lost its way.
On the Right, many have condemned its appallingly partisan efforts to target legitimate conservative and Christian organizations over issues unrelated to civil rights and label them as “hate groups.”
SPLC’s ‘Hate Map’/IMAGE: Screenshot via splcenter.org (Fair Use)
Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen said last year that the SPLC had lost all credibility and become a caricature of itself after it attacked a reformed Islamic radical and included him on a list of “Anti-Muslim Extremists” for criticizing elements of his own religion.
Those on the Left, meanwhile, have long bemoaned the organization’s predominantly white, male leadership hierarchy and, since at least the 1980s, have said Dees’ dominant influence was problematic.
Appropriately, the organization’s own mission appeared to have turned on itself as Dees was said to be embroiled in allegations of racism.
Sources including The L.A. Times said that Dees’ firing came after employees sent letters to management demanding reforms when a respected black attorney had resigned last week.
One letter, signed by around two dozen employees, reportedly complained of “mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism” and said they threatened the SPLC’s moral authority and integrity.
Cohen said Dees’ departure was one of several planned measures to address the crisis, the Montgomery Advertiser reported.
“Today we announced a number of immediate, concrete next steps we’re taking, including bringing in an outside organization to conduct a comprehensive assessment of our internal climate and workplace practices, to ensure that our talented staff is working in the environment that they deserve—one in which all voices are heard and all staff members are respected,” Cohen said.
“I think there’s a real question as to the sincerity and legitimacy of the organization because of the noticeable absence of blacks there,” said Donald Jackson, a former SPLC intern. “You know, it’s sort of like the pot calling the kettle black.”
Now, the king of passive–aggressive finger-pointing is back at it, voicing his disapproval of another state’s laws by punishing student–athletes from his own, reported the New York Post.
Cuomo said he would be forcing 13 State University of New York swimmers competing next week at the NCAA Division III national championships in Greensboro, N.C., to stay in Virginia due to a longstanding boycott of North Carolina over a since-amended law on transgender bathrooms.
Although North Carolina’s 2016 transgender bathroom ban, HB2, was repealed after widespread protests and boycotts, Cuomo griped that its replacement, HB142, still did not advocate to his satisfaction for LGBT potty privileges.
“It left discriminatory practices in place,” said grandstanding Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi.
“In New York, we do not support blatant discrimination, bigotry and bias,” Azzopardi crowed. “Standing up for equality is not a fad and as long as this anti-LGBTQ law remains in effect, New York tax dollars are not going to be spent there.”
The replacement bill ruled that North Carolina’s public restroom facilities would fall under the jurisdiction of the General Assembly, meaning that cities within the state could not create their own policies. HB2 was a response to efforts in left-leaning Charlotte to impose a mandatory, citywide transgender restroom policy.
Republican legislators in New York appealed to the governor’s office to reconsider for the sake of the athletes.
“It puts them at a competitive disadvantage and could have a negative impact on their performance,” said state Sen. Pat Gallivan.
The most direct route from Greensboro to Virginia would send the team approximately 40 miles away to Whitfield, Va.
Whitfield, Va.’s Travel Inn as seen from the pool area / IMAGE: Hotels.com
According to Hotels.com, the Travel Inn located there was a “no frills motel” with rooms available for $48 per night. It has a rating of 2 stars out of 5 possible.
Fortunately for the New York delegation, it does have a swimming pool where they could practice if the two-hour round-trip commute proved too prohibitive.
More likely, the team would extend its commute even farther north to Danville, which has choices including a Marriott, Holiday Inn, Comfort Inn and Hampton Inn.
However, those options are likely to stretch the tight New York budget even farther.
One GOP congressman from North Carolina, Rep. Mark Walker, offered to pay for the SUNY athletes to stay in Greensboro.
“Maybe Governor Cuomo has been so busy trying to raise taxes, scare off businesses and limit protections for unborn babies that he did not realize the H.B. 2 debate has passed,” Walker said in a release posted to his campaign website.
In addition to the state’s budget woes and a recent decision by Amazon to withdraw from a major New York facility, Walker made reference to the governor—and possible 2020 White House contender—signing the nation’s first law to legalize partial-birth abortions in January.
Cuomo controversially celebrated/gloated the abortion law’s passage by illuminating a symbol of national unity and resilience, World Trade Center One, in pink.
Walker condemned the petty, partisan games, which did nothing but harm Cuomo’s own constituents.
“North Carolina welcomes all people, and student–athletes shouldn’t be used as political pawns,” he said. “We would be proud to have the SUNY students stay in our great state.”
But some were less ready to let the issue drop.
As North Carolina faces two special elections this year to fill open Congressional seats, Democrats said they would make the defunct transgender law a centerpiece of their campaign messaging, reported WFAE.
Dan Bishop/YouTube
State Sen. Dan Bishop, one of the original sponsors of the HB2 bill, on Thursday entered into the race to replace Mark Harris in the 9th Congressional District, where a monthslong ballot-fraud investigation annulled the election results in February.
Bishop echoed Walker’s sentiments that the transgender spat was old news, reported the Charlotte Observer.
“The people of North Carolina have put that controversy behind them, and they’re ready to move on,” Bishop said. “It’s an exhausted issue. We’re on to a new campaign and new issues.”
Cuomo is not the only liberal outside of North Carolina who still harbors a grudge.
The creator of an upcoming Netflix show set in the state’s coastal Outer Banks area said in January it would refuse to shoot the series there unless North Carolina amended the law to allow municipalities to pass their own bathroom ordinances.
“OBX” creator Jonas Pate said he was “sending a message to those people who can bring these jobs and more that North Carolina still doesn’t get it.”
‘A lot of terrified, indoctrinated kids skipping school to serve as props in political, and legal, campaigns…’
PHOTO: @ClimateReality via Twitter
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Few believed that the Sunrise Movement‘s use of children to aggressively lobby Congress on behalf of the Green New Deal was the youngsters’ own idea.
What may not have been apparent, though, was just how cynical a ploy it was to turn one type of green into another.
Climate Litigation Watch, a nonprofit watchdog dedicated to accountability and oversight in the realm of climate-change lawsuits, revealed Wednesday that the recent efforts—which spawned an eyebrow-raising viral video of Sen. Dianne Feinstein scolding the youths—were part of a larger, well-funded litigation campaign originally mapped out seven years ago.
The campaign also is linked with the International Youth Climate Strike, a school walkout planned for Friday that has been endorsed by a litany of radical leftist organizations, including former Vice President Al Gore‘s Climate Reality Project.
According to The Nation, Friday’s staged protest, which will incorporate Green New Deal advocacy, may involve tens of thousands of middle- and high-school students in 30-some countries, disrupting many a classroom in the process.
All of it, said Climate Litigation Watch, is linked back to a 2012 closed-door meeting in La Jolla, California, organized by a coalition of groups supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.
An Untrustworthy Trust
Ironically, the descendants of Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller—one of the wealthiest people ever to walk the planet—now use their ill-gotten gains in a coordinated effort to bilk the fossil-fuels industry out of hundreds of billions of dollars to support green causes.
The La Jolla meeting, described as “infamous” by Climate Litigation Watch, was in response to the failures of cap-and-trade efforts to impose additional fines on carbon emissions, widely rejected by the energy consumers who would have borne the brunt of the costs.
The workshop instead produced a blueprint for a litigation campaign, using as its model the earlier effort to take down the tobacco industry.
“With the voters and their elected representatives repeatedly disappointing the activists, even in the face of the $-billion-plus-a-year climate industry’s media and pressure group campaigns, the lawyers had plans,” said Climate Litigation Watch. “These plans included sending children in waves to the streets.”
Our Children’s Trust/IMAGE: screenshot via Youtube
Very much on the activists’ minds was how to successfully deploy their litigation strategy while continuing to sway “the broad cultural shift in public perception,” and the necessity of choosing the right plaintiffs for the task.
Mary Christina Wood, a University of Oregon law professor, mentioned the nascent “atmospheric trust litigation” strategy that she had pioneered to demand government and third-party corporations foot the bill for massive reforestation and soil carbon sequestration initiatives.
“The beneficiaries in the case are citizens—both current and future—who claim that the defendants (the state or federal government or third-party corporations) have a duty to protect and not damage that resource, which they oversee or for which they bear some responsibility,” said the report from the Workshop on Climate Accountability, Public Opinion, and Legal Strategies.
The campaign ultimately produced the lawsuit Juliana vs. United States and several other spin-offs that used children as the plaintiffs.
Organizations such as Our Children’s Trust now provide teams of lawyers to help coach and direct the juveniles, doted upon by the liberal 9th Circuit court in San Francisco, to launch their attacks on energy producers.
However, the children’s lawsuits have met with mixed results elsewhere. In January, the Colorado Supreme Court shot down a bid by a group of Boulder teens to block future drilling permits in the state.
‘Dedicated to a Shakedown’
The shaky and uncertain legal foundation of the campaign means that the efforts now must branch out into other types of advocacy, such as legislation.
Whether or not the Green New Deal was part of the master plan, or if the proposal sponsored by socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-N.Y., was a happy coincidence, the existing infrastructure for exploiting youth activism was already in place.
The La Jolla strategy “turned out to mean a climate litigation industry, dedicated to a shakedown,” said Climate Litigation Watch. “And a lot of terrified, indoctrinated kids skipping school to serve as props in political, and legal, campaigns.”
In a rare break from attacking Israel with anti-Semitic stereotypes, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was among those who tweeted in support of Friday’s walkout, saying her own 16-year-old daughter, Isra Hisri, was one of the movement’s co-leaders.
Proud mom here! 🤗I hope other Members of Congress will join me in this strike.
But according to Climate Litigation Watch, the children’s activism campaign was not the only shady strategy to emerge from the La Jolla blueprint.
To support the litigation agenda, it said, “State attorneys general can also subpoena documents, raising the possibility that a single sympathetic state attorney general might have substantial success in bringing key internal documents.”
Since the revelations became public last November, one state legislature, the Virginia General Assembly, has passed new legislation to restrict its AG from employing non-government employees to do the bidding of special-interest activists.
“We applaud this vote while wondering, what’s wrong with the rest of these legislatures?” Horner said.
‘It is clear to us that our hopes, our lives, our investments and our existence have been relegated to an acceptable level of collateral loss…’
Bear’s Ears/Photo by Jeffrey Beall (CC)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In the twilight days of his presidency, Barack Obama decreed by executive order a massive land-grab to assert federal control over state- and privately owned land by declaring it a national monument.
“With the stroke of his pen, President Obama locked up 1.35 million acres … in Utah with his unilateral Bears Ears Monument designation,” said a recent press release from the Congressional Western Caucus, criticizing the theft.
Over the course of his presidency, in fact, Obama took more than 550 million acres of land and water—nearly 865,000 square miles—which amounts to more than the total land area of Alaska and Texas combined (833,738 square-miles) with enough room left over to add Maine (30,862 square-miles).
However, President Donald Trump’s modest return of about 3,200 square miles—approximately the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined (2,999 square-miles)—was met with an outsize, hysterical response from the conservationist lobby, whose partisan disinformation campaign seeped into everything from social media to travel articles.
On Wednesday, the CWC held a hearing to address the Left’s brazen exploitation of the 1906 Antiquities Act.
“They continue to perpetuate the falsehood that recent national monument designations have been locally-driven and done out of genuine concern for the protection of antiquities,” said the CWC press realease.
The hearing came in response to a separate hearing from the House Natural Resources Committee, which criticized Trump’s Interior Department for its audacious reapportionment of the monuments to the “smallest area compatible with the proper care of the objects to be protected,” in keeping with the legal parameters defined by the Antiquities Act.
“The reality is that the Obama and Clinton Administrations, urged on by well-heeled activist groups, abused their executive authority to lock-down massive amounts of land—without public review and irrespective of whether legitimate antiquities were protected in the process,” said the press release.
The CWC hearing included private property owners, energy and natural-resources advocates, representatives of American Indian tribes, and others who were adversely impacted by the previous administration’s actions.
“When the Bears Ears National Monument was originally made by President Obama, it was a very upsetting day,” said Suzette Morris, vice president of the Stewards of San Juan County and a member of Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, who dispelled the false narrative that Obama’s expansion of the southeastern Utah national monument was meant to preserve tribal lands.
“Our voices had not only been forgotten, they had been silenced by special interest groups funded by Hollywood actors, and by tribes who do not live anywhere near Bears Ears,” Morris said. “… They chose to ignore our voices and supported the Obama monument in secret rather than hearing our point of view. They did not ask us to support the monument, because the majority of us do not.”
Trump’s restoration of stolen land in the uranium-rich Bear Ears has been a focal point of much of the controversy, but others criticized the Left’s efforts more broadly, saying the Antiquities Act has been warped from its intended purpose of safeguarding resources into a means of imposing additional regulations and fees on the regions’ established industry and agricultural enterprises.
Steve Wilmeth, a rancher from Luna and Dona Ana County, N.M., said his private property—and means of livelihood—happened to be in the wrong place when Obama created the Organ Mountain Desert Peaks National Monument.
Wilmeth said 40 percent of the ranch now lies within the boundaries of the monument, but that the government staff overseeing it effectively asserts control over 100 percent of his enterprise by also claiming administrative purview of lands within the designated monument’s “footprint.”
“It is clear to us that our hopes, our lives, our investments and our existence have been relegated to an acceptable level of collateral loss,” Wilmeth said. “…We have one pasture that will have at least three overlapping management plans.”
Rep. Paul Gosar/IMAGE: Fox 10 Phoenix via Youtbe
Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., who chairs the CWC, sharply criticized the federal usurpation and executive overreach,
“President Trump is doing what should have been done long ago, carefully reviewing egregious national monument designations of previous Administrations that usurped power from the people and right sizing these monuments,” Gosar said.
His attack, ironically, seemed to parallel the rhetoric that some Trump opponents themselves have used to condemn the recent national emergency declaration for securing border wall funds.
“No president should have exclusive authority to circumvent Congress and singlehandedly rip away millions of acres of land and water from the American people and indigenous communities,” Gosar said.
Politico reported on Monday that many of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s closest advisers say he would be “f***cking insane” to run.
Nearly three dozen aides, consultants and allies of de Blasio that Politico spoke with dismissed the notion of a White House run.
Among the other i-word descriptors they used were “insufferable” and “idiotic,” said the article.
It quoted the mayor’s former campaign and City Hall adviser, Rebecca Katz, who said on a local podcast, “I believe Bill de Blasio has 100 percent the right message; I’m just not so sure he’s the right messenger.”
Of course, that is only what his supporters think.
As de Blasio of late has worked to relay his message, crowing about his liberal record and agenda in places like Iowa and South Carolina, he may face tough questions about his headline-grabbing proposal to guarantee health care for all (including illegals), as well as the New York legislature’s recent bill to permit partial-birth abortion.
Surprisingly, in January, de Blasio hinted during a CNN interview that he might attempt to court Trump voters.
While underscoring the current president’s perceived negatives, de Blasio said, “[O]n the economic issues, he understood people were hurting. Their lives were getting harder, not easier.”
He said Democrats needed to reclaim their working-class appeal: “We could go a lot farther. … We could be a lot bolder than what we’re doing.”
But even de Blasio’s effort to court Amazon to the city with a sweetheart tax-incentives deal in return for some 25,000 jobs drew criticism and proved disastrous when the e-commerce giant withdrew.
The mayor, who has seen his pool of enthusiastic advisers winnowed down to two volunteer aides and his wife, Politico said, was inverting the narrative of a candidate being drafted into higher office by loyal believers in the cause.
“It’s a stark contrast to the typical dynamics of a presidential exploration in which aides and allies tend to egg on the potential candidate” said the article. “Indeed, the strongest advocate for a de Blasio candidacy seems to be de Blasio himself.”
Still, Politico said, de Blasio seemed undeterred and has written off the criticism and discouragement as familiar refrains—ones that he has heard over and over throughout his political career and never paid attention to.
“I assure you I had a lot of folks who were friends and allies warmly put their arm around my shoulder and tell me what a crazy idea it was to run for Public Advocate, what a crazy idea it was to run for mayor,” he said.
‘The Committee is seeking documents for future public disclosure to harass and embarrass the President and his senior advisors…’
Elijah Cummings/Photo by AFGE (CC)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The honeymoon is over—if ever there were one—on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee after two top-ranking GOP members said Democrats secretly obtained leaked White House documents and gave them to the media but not to committee members.
GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, had written a letter of praise in late January to new Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings, D-Md., for his overtures at transparency and for vowing to include opposition party members in discussions about calling witnesses before hearings.
On Monday, though, Jordan and fellow committee member Mark Meadows, R-NC—both strong voices within the Freedom Caucus and staunch supporters of President Donald Trump—did the opposite, issuing a letter of complaint that castigated Cummings for failing to follow through on those 6-week-old pledges.
“These actions are not indicative of the objective, fact-based oversight you promised,” they said.
The concern related specifically to an investigation into the security clearances of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, and son-in-law Jared Kushner, both of whom serve in official advisory capacities in the White House.
On March 8, Axios reported that the Oversight Committee had received leaked documents pertaining to the process by which Ivanka Trump and Kushner had been granted security clearances.
Jordan and Meadows said that the Oversight Democrats never made them aware of the leaked documents or provided copies.
“We first learned about these documents from Axios’s reporting,” Jordan and Meadows said. “However, according to the article, the Committee had been in possession of the documents since early February.”
The two said that by keeping them in the dark, Cummings had broken not only his own pledge for transparency and bipartisanship, but also had violated the committee’s norms of courtesy and convention.
“[T]he Axios article—if accurate—suggests a departure from the Committee’s historical practice of sharing documents that will be made publicly available,” Jordan and Meadows said.
Although Cummings had earlier requested the documents through official channels, the White House refused to provide them, making the leak itself as significant a part of the Axios story as the contents of the purloined materials.
Jim Jordan & Mark Meadows/IMAGE: Fox News via YouTube
Because Jordan and Matthews are said to be in regular communication with Trump, it poses a particular challenge for Cummings in his efforts to pursue White House investigations without having them share details with the president.
But while being in possession of the leaked documents—unbeknownst to Trump—may provide a strategic advantage, Cummings’s surreptitious methods for obtaining and disseminating information risk violating the same sort of ethical practices that he is claiming to investigate.
“By not sharing documents with us, you are depriving us of the opportunity to participate in and be aware of the Committee’s work,” Jordan and Meadows said. “Without access to these documents, we cannot determine whether the information in the Axios story is cherry-picked, inaccurate, or out of context.”
They also criticized Cummings for leaking some of the documents to Axios, effectively undercutting the integrity of the investigation.
“By providing documents to the media before the Committee issues any reports or holds any hearings, one may conclude that the Committee is seeking documents for future public disclosure to harass and embarrass the President and his senior advisors,” Jordan and Meadows said.
The two have frequently clashed with Cummings since the new Congress began its session in January. They made their presence well known during the recent public testimony of convicted felon Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney, calling the hearings a “rigged deal.”
In their letter, they said that they detected a pattern in Cummings’ partisan approach of excluding its GOP members.
“As the star witness of your first big hearing, you invited Michael Cohen, a convicted liar who then lied to the Committee several times under oath. … Now, if accurate, you are leaking documents to the media without providing access to the minority.”
‘I don’t think we should go down that path because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it…’
Nancy Pelosi/IMAGE: CBS via YouTube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In an interview published Monday in The Washington Post, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave her strongest statement of opposition yet to impeaching President Donald Trump.
“I’m not for impeachment,” she said. “This is news—I haven’t said this to any press person before.”
The statement is sure to rankle many of her Democratic colleagues in the House, who have, in so many words, made constant calls to “Impeach the motherf***er.”
Several powerful committees have hired full-time staffs to investigate the president and have indicated that they plan to do so regardless of the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose report to the attorney general on collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia is expected any day.
As for supporters of the president, it may leave many wondering whether Pelosi taking it off the table could help usher in a spirit of relative bipartisanship, if it could offer some hint as to the contents of the Mueller report—or if it’s simply a trap being laid by a master manipulator to encourage Trump to let his guard down.
“Since you asked, and I’ve been thinking about this,” Pelosi told The Post, “impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”
Pelosi has, since becoming the House leader in January, given similar indications that there would need to be a high, “bipartisan” bar for impeaching, particularly as it would fail to remove the president from office if it came to a party-line vote in the Senate.
Such was the case with former President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s. Although there was clear material evidence that he had obstructed justice and perjured himself to investigators—and to the American public—about his sexual dalliances in the Oval Office, no Democrats in the Senate supported the charges that would have removed him from office.
The voting public also sent a clear message to the House of Representatives in November 1998, as impeachment was imminent, by reversing Republicans’ wave victory from the previous 1994 midterm and punishing the party with a loss of seats—though not enough to overturn their majority.
Thus far, no evidence has been presented publicly that would implicate Trump in an impeachable offense.
While accusations, bolstered by the testimony of Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen, suggest impropriety and possible campaign finance violations in payoffs delivered to two alleged Trump paramours, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, who would have conducted their romantic liaisons a decade prior to his campaign, those accusations reached nowhere near the level of Clinton’s offenses.
Rather, Cohen’s own felony convictions—including lying to Congress—have already led Trump allies to attack his credibility as a witness.
Moreover, based on precedent set by disgraced former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., Trump defenders could easily argue that any payoffs were personal in nature rather than campaign expenses.
Whatever Pelosi’s true intentions are, certainly one of them is deflating Trump’s ability to rile his base prior to next year’s election.
She made clear in no uncertain terms what she felt regarding Trump’s fitness for the office.
“No. No. I don’t think he is,” Pelosi said. “I mean, ethically unfit. Intellectually unfit. Curiosity-wise unfit. No, I don’t think he’s fit to be president of the United States.”
Pelosi conducted the interview with The Post on March 6, it said. The remainder will be published in a forthcoming edition of The Washington Post Magazine.
‘I am hoping that the country gives serious thought to the fact that the government has no objective criteria for race and they know it…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A Washington State business-owner is challenging the biased and capricious policies that determine eligibility for disadvantaged and minority status in state and federal incentives programs.
Taylor’s case, if accepted, could prove to be a landmark decision on the standards that the government uses to determine racial identity.
“If they pick up the case I am hoping that the country gives serious thought to the fact that the government has no objective criteria for race and they know it,” Taylor told Liberty Headlines in an email.
After a DNA test showed that Taylor was 90 percent Caucasian, 6 percent American Indian and 4 percent of sub-Saharan African descent, he submitted the test to Washington’s Office of Minority and Women’s Business Enterprises, which—according to court records—certified him as black and allowed him to qualify as a Minority Business Enterprise.
Based on his MBE eligibility, Taylor also applied for the federally-funded Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program through the U.S. Department of Transportation.
PHOTO: Lisa Zins (CC) via Flickr
However, questioning the validity of the DNA test, they demanded that Taylor provide proof of a direct ancestor and found “little to no persuasive evidence that Mr. Taylor has personally suffered social and economic disadvantage by virtue of being a Black American,” reported The Atlantic.
The Washington OMWBE bureau later reversed its MBE certification upon reviewing Taylor’s eligibility.
Email records and a polygraph test that Taylor provided to Liberty Headlines indicate that he received conflicting accounts from the state bureau—some of whom allegedly supported his efforts “because it would be best for the country to show we are all the same,” according to the documents.
Although Taylor had his birth certificate updated to reflect his Native American ancestry, the program had by then changed its eligibility requirements to require a tribal affiliation.
According to e-mails, a staffer in the Bureau of Indian Affairs advised him to contact the Muckleshoot tribe, saying it accepted non-indigenous tribal memberships, but Taylor continued to challenge, saying the DNA test alone should suffice.
“Explain to me how it is that a non-native American who has no native American, who was adopted into a tribe, who has no heritage is considered native American over someone who has native American heritage genetically as well as on their birth certificate and thus should receive benefits due to their tribal membership,” Taylor wrote the BIA staffer.
The legal question at hand took on added significance after the national news surrounding a DNA test submitted by Sen. Elizabeth Warren showed she was between 0.09 and 1.56 percent Native American.
Elizabeth Warren / IMAGE: The Late Late Show with James Corden via Youtube
Warren initially touted the result as a confirmation of her claims, demanding that President Donald Trump pay her $1 million for being proven wrong in doubting her. However, widespread condemnation of the test led her to apologize to the Cherokee Nation for making the false claims.
It was also revealed that Warren had listed minority status on her registration with the Texas Bar Association and other professional groups early in her career, and that she likely benefited from appropriating the minority identity, either directly or indirectly through affimative-action policies.
Taylor said in his lawsuit that he audited the federal agencies responsible for denying his claim and found “tens of thousands of Caucasians that have been certified as minorities,” according to his polygraph.
Despite the (not entirely unexpected) rejection by the 9th Circuit, Taylor said the outcome—he is in the process of filing a writ to petition the Supreme Court to hear the case—puts him where he wanted to be.
“I was hoping to get here or that they let me go to trial,” he said, “either way I could show the system for being flawed.”
And he added that for the bureaucracies involved, the litigation will prove much costlier than it would have been simply to apply an equal and consistent standard from the start.
“It would have been much easier to have just taken the certification and the monies that would have gone with the certification.”
‘The proposed redactions have nothing to do with national security and are anathema to our goal of government transparency…’
Bruce Ohr / IMAGE: Fox News via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After growing impatient with stonewalling by the Department of Justice, Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., released unreacted transcripts from the testimony last August of former high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we gave DOJ an opportunity to review them for information that would endanger national security, but after many months and little progress, our patience has grown thin,” said Collins. “The proposed redactions have nothing to do with national security and are anathema to our goal of government transparency.”
At the same time, government accountability advocate Judicial Watch—whose Freedom of Information requests into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi scandal resulted in the revelation of a secret, unsecured server that she used to transmit confidential information—said it had received 339 pages of records from the DOJ related to Ohr.
Despite being heavily redacted, those records, Judicial Watch said, reveal the breadth of communication between Ohr and Christopher Steele, a British intelligence operative who had been working for both the FBI and, indirectly, the Clinton campaign.
“The records show that Ohr served as a go-between for Steele by passing along information to ‘his colleagues’ on matters relating to Steele’s activities,” Judicial Watch said in a press release. “Ohr also set up meetings with Steele, regularly talked to him on the telephone and provided him assistance in dealing with situations Steele was confronting with the media.”
The duel disclosures come as many anticipate the conclusion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigation into Russian collusion with the campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump to defeat Clinton.
Republican allies of the president have maintained that it was not a question of undue interference from the Russians on Trump’s behalf but rather that of biased and corrupt influences within the FBI, who initiated an intricate smear campaign in their bid to secure the White House for Clinton—and later to undermine the nascent Trump presidency.
Robert Mueller/IMAGE: Georgetown Univ. via YouTube
“Will [Mueller] find any so-called ‘collusion’? Or was the only ‘collusion’ among agency personnel who hated the president and started this investigation?” asked Collins.
Mueller will submit his findings and recommendations to Attorney General William Barr, who will then determine what to pass on to Congress. Whatever they receive will likely be made public by the Democrat-led House of Representatives.
House committee chairs, anticipating the findings, already have declared that they will continue their own impeachment-driven investigations into Trump.
Based on the behavior of “deep state” bureaucrats within the intelligence community, the Republican-led House in the 115th Congress launched its own investigations, bringing in key players like Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and former counterespionage chief Peter Strzok.
At the center of it all was Ohr, an associate deputy attorney general, whose wife, Nellie, began working for Fusion GPS as a Russia analyst in late 2015, a few months after Trump announced his presidential campaign.
Fusion, a D.C. firm specializing in political research, had been contracted by the law firm Perkins Coie—whose clients included the Clinton campaign and other Democratic organizations—to gather negative campaign information on Trump using Steele as their primary source.
However, rather than issue a public attack on Trump based on the salacious, unverified—and ultimately discredited—information compiled in the Steele dossier, Clinton’s team indirectly conveyed it to the FBI through Ohr.
The FBI, in turn, selectively leaked innuendo to The New York Times and other compliant media sources, then used the public interest generated by the false narratives to justify eavesdropping on Trump officials in warrant applications filed with the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court.
Excerpted highlights of the transcripts of Ohr’s testimony are as follows:
Trey Gowdy/IMAGE: Fox News via YouTube
On foreign nationals conveying potentially biased information (pp. 22-23)
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.): How did you vet those—how did he vet those sources? How did Fusion GPS vet those sources?
Ohr: I think— don’t know the specifics. The fact that my wife was looking at some of the same figures, like Sergei Millian, suggests that that was one way they were trying to vet the information. So when I provided it to the FBI, I tried to be clear that this is source information. I don’t know how reliable it is. You’re going to have to check it out and be aware. These guys were hired by somebody relating to—who’s related to the Clinton campaign, and be aware—
Gowdy:. Did you tell the Bureau that?
Ohr: Oh, yes.
Gowdy: Why did you tell the Bureau that?
Ohr: I wanted them to be aware of any possible bias or, you know, as they evaluate the information, they need to know the circumstances.
Gowdy: So you specifically told the Bureau that the information you were passing on came from someone who was employed by the DNC, albeit in a somewhat triangulated way?
Ohr: I don’t believe I used—I didn’t know they were employed by the DNC, but I certainly said, yes, that—that they were working for—you know, they were somehow working associated with the Clinton campaign. And I also told the FBI that my wife worked for Fusion GPS or was a contractor…
Peter Strzok & Lisa Page/PHOTOS: Justice Dept. & Ohio State U.
On anti-Trump lovebirds Lisa Page’s and Peter Strzok’s involvement (pp. 81-82)
Valerie Shen (counsel on behalf of Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.): What was your understanding of why Lisa Page was participating in that meeting?
Ohr: I think she was working on the investigation.
Shen: Okay. And what was your understanding of why Peter Strzok specifically was in that meeting?
Ohr: I believe he was working on the investigation as well.
Shen: Again, I mean, this was discussed last round. Obviously, these two names have been in the news for lots of different reasons. I guess I just want to be able to dispel any notion that there’s anything more perhaps than two officials performing their jobs at the time. So trying to form the question. Do you have any reason to believe that Lisa Page and Peter Stzrok’s attendance at this meeting should indicate any nefarious purpose or concern or implication of bias on the Russian investigation or law enforcement community at large?
Ohr: The answer is no. I saw their participation as appropriate since I had originally conveyed my information to Mr. McCabe, and he in turn had put Lisa Page and then Peter Strzok in contact with me. So it seemed like the natural progression…
Glenn Simpson & Christopher Steele (screen shot: PBS NewsHour/Youtube)
On potential conflicts of interest between Fusion GPS and the investigation (pp. 91-92)
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC): How did she [Nellie Ohr] get a contract job with [Fusion GPS founder] Glenn Simpson?
Ohr: I don’t remember who made the contact, whether she spoke with Glenn Simpson directly or whether there was another party or someone else involved. I just know it wasn’t me.
Meadows: So when she came home and said, “Honey, I got a job with Glenn Simpson,” what did you say?
Ohr: Oh, I’m sure we had a conversation at the time. I just can’t remember now.
Meadows: Did you say there may be a conflict of interest if she’s being—if Glenn Simpson is being paid by the DNC or Hillary Clinton and I’m working for the Department of Justice? Could there potentially be a conflict? Did you say anything like that?
Ohr: Well, my wife started working for Glenn Simpson, doing—a contractor for Fusion GPS in late 2015, and I don’t believe it had anything to do with the campaign at that point.
Meadows: So she never talked about the campaign with you?
Ohr: Well, at some point I became aware that the topics she was researching had to do with the possible—
Meadows: When did you become aware?
Ohr: I don’t recall exactly.
Meadows: So when you became aware what was your conversation? Did you tell her that it created a problem for you because you were with the Department of Justice?
Ohr: I think she can work for the firm that has dealings with the DNC. I don’t think that’s—
Meadows: And you can investigate it—while she’s working for the firm that is hired by the DNC and you can be the source that leads information from that same group to the FBI? Do you not see a problem with that, Mr. Ohr?
Ohr: I can’t—
Meadows: I mean, would you do it the same way if you had it to do over again, Mr. Ohr?
Ohr: That’s hard to say. I was not part of the investigation….
