‘Even though I can’t vote, I can get 200 people to vote, and that matters…’
Belen Sisa / IMAGE: Inside Edition via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) While activists and media press for investigation into the use of illegal immigrant workers at President Donald Trump’s family-run golf courses, 2020 White House contender Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is openly hiring illegals for his own staff.
Sanders announced on Wednesday that he had brought on Belen Sisa, an Arizona-based activist and recent Arizona State University graduate, to be his deputy national press secretary, according to the Washington Examiner.
While ineligible to legally vote in the U.S., she was a page to the Arizona delegation at the 2016 Democratic National Convention and has been active in outreach within the Latino community.
“Even though I can’t vote, I can get 200 people to vote, and that matters,” Sisa told the Arizona Republic at the time of the 2016 convention. “Everything can change depending on who becomes the next president. Our voice is starting to matter, and we can have an impact even though we can’t cast a ballot ourselves.”
That includes her having been arrested at least twice while protesting for immigration reform outside congressional offices, according to the Examiner.
According to Sisa’s mother, commenting at the time of her arrest, her DACA eligibility was due to expire in 2018.
It is unclear whether any sort of provisions were made by Sanders’ office that would prevent her from being deported—or whether federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement may have issued any detainer orders following her two arrests.
Sanders, despite saying questions like age and gender were irrelevant, recently signaled his desire for a younger, female running mate in his presidential campaign.
He also promised to address the calls from former staffers to reform his staff culture following allegations of rape and misogyny during his previous campaign.
Despite volunteering for the Sanders campaign last time around, Sisa told family members who were eligible to vote to support Hillary Clinton, according to the Arizona Republic.
‘The release of aliens previously convicted of crimes … will only rise now that sanctuary policies are state law…’
MS-13 members IMAGE: Vice via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on detainer requests for illegal immigrants in California not only revealed the shocking number of criminals released, but it also dispelled the common leftist narrative that President Donald Trump’s election triggered the current immigration clash.
The suit came from the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which asked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release the data for a 27-moth period from late 2015 to the end of 2017. In total, it said California law enforcement refused to cooperate with ICE 5,638 times during the span.
Nearly 40 percent of those refusals were for Level 1 requests, designated for the most dangerous criminal offenders.
The refusal to comply with the ICE request means that the criminals, rather than being remanded into the immigration agency’s custody, were released back into the community, where they were allowed to continue their crime sprees and pose additional risk to law-abiding citizens.
“The results of this investigation are disturbing, but also a wakeup call for Americans to demand more accountability from their anti-borders elected leaders,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “Sanctuary laws not only violate federal law; they put their residents and law enforcement officers in imminent danger that is preventable.”
The narrative of an organic ICE resistance began to emerge after Trump took office in January 2017, perhaps due in part to the Obama Administration’s efforts to suppress data revealing its sharp decline in deportations and its increase in the “catch and release” of illegals.
But the data showed that even under an administration that was soft on immigration enforcement, California already was deep into its resistance efforts.
Although California passed a state law, SB54, in October 2017, effectively codifying its designation as a non-compliant “sanctuary” state, a press release from IRLI said that the data in question came before the bill’s passage, meaning law enforcement agencies had no legal obligation to refuse ICE requests.
“It is logical to conclude that refusals of ICE detainer requests and the release of aliens previously convicted of crimes or have pending criminal charges from police custody will only rise now that sanctuary policies are state law in California,” IRLI said.
The refusal to honor the requests directly resulted in tragedies such as the death of Mexican national Javier Hernandez–Morales earlier this month.
Hernandez–Morales was shot after he opened fire on Napa County Deputy Sheriff Riley Jarecki during a routine traffic stop, attempting to shoot Jarecki at point-blank range before she returned fire, as her body camera revealed.
The data showed four detainer requests for Hernandez–Morales for battery on a peace officer, probation violations, driving under the influence and selling liquor to a minor. He already had been deported three times.
Ronil Singh
Although Jarecki averted tragedy by sheer luck, Irli said law-enforcement cooperation also could have averted the violent Christmas Day murder of Police Corporal Ronil Singh. ICE was never notified about the two previous DUI charges, nor the gang affiliation, of Singh’s killer, Mexican national Paulo Virgen Mendoza.
Of the seven other suspects arrested in connection with Singh’s death, who assisted Virgen Mendoza in his efforts to flee back to Mexico, at least six were illegal immigrants whom ICE placed detainers on after their arrests, IRLI said.
“How many more incidents like the death of Corporal Singh and the near-death encounter of Deputy Sheriff Jarecki must we endure before California and other states see the direct connection between sanctuary laws and violent crime?” asked Wilcox.
ICE does have some allies in the state, however. The California Sheriff’s Association came out in opposition to SB54, and Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens took the additional step of setting up an online database that ICE could reference to know who was being held, including the date and time of their release.
‘This was tactically clever on Leader McConnell’s part, but strategically not smart at all because now we’re talking about climate…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As its Democrat supporters made clear they would not participate in either a vote or a serious public debate on the Green New Deal launched by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-N.Y., questions lingered as to just what the goal was for releasing the proposed framework in early February.
The Congressional Western Caucus yesterday held what it promoted as the first in-depth public review of the radical spending program, which would add trillions in debt to the economy while gutting at least one major U.S. industry—fossil fuels—in its bid to eliminate carbon emissions within 10 years.
Notably absent from the hearing were representatives of groups advocating for the GND, despite several having been invited to participate.
Shaky Economics
The Congressional Western Caucus cited liberal economist Noah Smith that the total cost of the GND proposal is estimated at $93 trillion—or $65,000 per household annually for the first 10 years.
Even without some of the more outlandish promises from the revised FAQ section of the GND framework, it would amount to $6.6 trillion annually, currently much more than the annual gross domestic product of every country in the world except for the U.S. and China.
“That is three times as much as the federal government collects in tax revenue and about 34% of U.S. GDP,” said a memo released by the caucus. “Under the Green New Deal, Smith estimates that nearly 75% of the economy would be spent by the government.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez/IMAGE: screenshot via Twitter
Ocasio-Cortez has said the plan would be paid for by running up deficits: asking the Federal Reserve to extend credit and having “government taking an equity stake in projects”—in other words, print more money and socialize private industry.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, however, denounced the shaky theoretical foundation of the ‘AOC’ economic plan as “just wrong” while dismissing the notion of Fed involvement.
The Congressional Western Caucus, in its fact-sheet on GND costs, said the main economic argument by supporters of the deal was little more than a deflection.
“When asked, supporters of the Green Deal don’t have a well thought out solution to pay for it,” the CWC said. “Often they instead claim the cost of inaction is higher or come up with some other spin that deflects from how much the Green New Deal will actually cost and how American taxpayers will pay for those costs.”
Representatives from several pro-energy and free-market groups spoke Wednesday at the CWC’s panel hearing, but GND advocates who were invited—such as Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning fake-economist and New York Times opinion columnist—did not answer the call.
Meanwhile, E&E News reported that Evan Weber, co-founder and political director of the Sunrise Movement, publicly encouraged Senate Democrats to vote “present” on the current Senate resolution that McConnell plans on bringing to the floor.
“This vote is a sham,” Weber said. “Mitch McConnell obviously doesn’t support [the Green New Deal] so he’s trying to put [the vote] forward as a political ploy.”
The Long Con
It thus remains a mystery, when the groups vocally promoting the deal reject both policy discussions and floor votes, how they intend to advance the measure—particularly as they have said the 10-year plan is needed immediately so that the world doesn’t end in 12 years.
However, some see in the effort a strategy pulled straight from the Alinsky–Obama playbook: to make extreme demands as a starting bid and allow them, over time, to seep into mainstream thought.
“I think this [floor vote] was tactically clever on Leader McConnell’s part, but strategically not smart at all because now we’re talking about climate,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, told reporters on Monday. “And that’s not terra firma for them.”
Even if the plan fails to garner immediate support and is widely mocked and dismissed, by giving validity to it in public debate, both Republicans and Democrats are helping move the chains toward an eventual “availability cascade” that will position parts of it to be enacted when the radicalized Left ultimately regains power.
The House version of the bill currently has 89 co-sponsors joining Ocasio–Cortez, while the Senate version, sponsored by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., has 11 other co-sponsors—more than half of whom have declared they are running for president in 2020.
Many of the GND’s Democratic detractors also have carefully measured their words, calling it “aspirational” even if presently impractical.
“What we would love for all Democrats to do is come to the table and begin to help flesh out the many policy details that will be needed to actually make the Green New Deal a reality,” said Weber, as his Sunrise Movement continued to lobby Congress aggressively despite the arrest of more than 40 of its child–activists.
Eventually, the common-sense, expert testimony presented in dry, dull hearings like the Congressional Western Caucus’s will lose out to the flashier images of insolent young protestors reciting patently false, half-memorized talking points overtop of surly, scolding senators.
Although much has been made about the Sunrise Movement’s alarming use of children to shout down elected officials, one thing that it clearly shows is that they are in it for the long haul. The 10-year plan to fully implement the GND may, in fact, involve nine years of indoctrination and brainwashing, followed by one year of extreme legislative action.
And if the $93 trillion pricetag never gains enough steam to reach the lofty net-zero emissions goal by 2029, undoubtedly then-President AOC will assuage her followers by instead settling for only $50 trillion and the end of U.S. capitalism.
‘While McConnell has spent his career gutting voting rights, we are making it easier for working Californians to vote…’
screenshot via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headline) One of the few staffers remaining after the Huffington Post‘s recent downsizing took it upon himself Tuesday to fact-check statements by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the recent ballot fraud in North Carolina.
Instead, the ‘fact-check’ proved yet another example of leftist media fakery.
HuffPo reporter Sam Levine has covered North Carolina‘s 9th Congressional District scandal as part of his ‘voting rights’ beat throughout the months of breaking developments and investigative efforts by the State Board of Elections.
Yet, in his armchair journalism, Levine overlooked entirely the extensive history of voter fraud committed by Democrats in rural, tobacco- and textile-driven Bladen County, where the high school band turns up to play the opening of a new Hardee’s.
In his efforts to discredit McConnell, Levine used the exact phony tropes that McConnell had criticized, thereby illustrating the Left’s disingenuous posturing on matters of election integrity.
The ‘Fraud’ Sham
Levine’s article quoted McConnell on the Senate floor decrying Democrats’ hypocrisy over voter fraud. “For years and years, every Republican who dared to call for common-sense safeguards for American ballots was demonized by Democrats and their allies,” McConnell said. “We were hit with left-wing talking points insisting that voter fraud wasn’t real.”
But McConnell noted that Democrats were now relishing in the opportunity to pin such charges on an opponent, despite their having so frequently downplayed the issue.
Mitch McConnell/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)
“So now, as you might expect, now that an incident of very real voter fraud has become national news and the Republican candidate seems—seems—to have benefited, these long-standing Democratic talking points have been really quiet,” McConnell said.
To counter, Levine harped on the nuanced distinction between polling-place fraud and absentee-ballot fraud, while falsely claiming that the former does not impact elections.
The article bolstered the partisan talking point by referencing a 2006 study on the 2004 election to assert that no significant polling-place fraud exists in 2019.
Unfortunately for America, the political landscape has changed dramatically since the year when incumbent Republican George W. Bush, still riding high in popularity after the 9/11 attacks, defeated John Kerry.
It was only during the Obama years that the Alinsky-reading community organizer—with help from friends like George Soros—began encouraging election overseers to deploy the type of corrupt, partisan tactics long used in his adopted hometown of Chicago to systematically undermine election integrity.
The HuffPo’s treatment of the voter-fraud issue ignored considerable documented evidence nationwide that shows hundreds of thousands of non-citizen immigrants often are added automatically to the voting rolls and allowed to vote with very little scrutiny in the same “sanctuary cities” that openly flout federal immigration laws.
Additionally the bloated voter registries include deceased voters (some still on the rolls from the 19th century), duplicate voters and others who are ineligible to vote by law (e.g. certain convicted felons).
As McConnell said in his Senate remarks, reasonable efforts at reform—such as voter ID laws and tighter restrictions on the use of provisional or absentee ballots—have been met with considerable resistance from Democrats, who dubiously claim that forcing voters to physically appear at the polling place and provide rudimentary evidence of their identity would disfranchise many.
Democrats have claimed “that modest efforts to ensure that voters who are who they say they are and are voting in the proper place were really some sinister right-wing plot to prevent people from voting,” McConnell said.
The Bladen County Machine
McCrae Dowless/IMAGE: aDDmoreJuice TV via Youtube
Perhaps aware of the lack of evidentiary support for his false claims on polling-place fraud, Levine’s HuffPo piece quickly pivoted to discussing details of the North Carolina case, where recently indicted political operative McCrae Dowless was hired by GOP candidate Mark Harris to assist with a range of “get out the vote” initiatives.
Naturally, Levine attempted to paint Harris, a Baptist minister by trade, in the most nefarious of lights by selectively highlighting and omitting details of the investigation in his three-sentence summary.
He also used an embedded tweet from go-to Democratic attorney Marc Elias to attack Republican ballot fraud, ignoring countless cases in which Elias himself has personally been implicated in committing such fraud to overturn election results that favored Republicans.
Moreover, the HuffPo piece disregarded the fact that Democrats also have been implicated in North Carolina’s ballot-harvesting efforts—although when Republicans raised complaints against Democratic candidates, including current North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, they were summarily dismissed.
Dowless, the operative at the center of the current scandal, had a reputation as a political mercenary-for-hire in Bladen County, where he had previously counted Democratic candidates among his client list.
More significantly, the HuffPo made no mention of the Bladen County Improvement Society—nor has it in any of its coverage, according to a simple search. The Democratic political-action committee is accused of using the same tactics Dowless allegedly used to manipulate elections.
Both Dowless and the pro-Democrat BCIS were well known to state-level elections officials and investigators during the 2018 campaigns following past allegations of ballot fraud in 2016 and earlier.
In fact, Dowless himself had filed a complaint against the BCIS, charging that he had been the victim of ballot-harvesting in a municipal race for the sanitation department.
Among those who were aware of the past complaints was Joshua Malcolm, a partisan left-wing member of the state Board of Elections who had deep ties to the corrupt Bladen political machine.
It was Malcolm who, in late November, first raised the last-minute objections to certifying Harris, citing the longstanding fraud issues in his part of the state. However, he also had motioned to dismiss the similar claims that Dowless raised against Democrats about the 2016 race.
Although many Democrats likely benefited from Bladen County’s ballot-fraud operations before Harris did, Malcolm’s sudden selective outrage and his choice of timing to block the Republican winner seemed all too convenient.
California Corruption
Jerry Brown/photo by Like us on Facebook at CAGuard (CC)
Glossing over the Bladen County Democrats’ corruption, Levine jumped from his cursory explanation of the North Carolina fraud into another McConnell charge, that the issues in the “Tarheel State” paralleled those in California.
In 2017, lame-duck California Gov. Jerry Brown legalized precisely the sort of ballot harvesting that Dowless stands accused of in North Carolina. Miraculously, the following year, the West Coast liberal stronghold was able to reverse the election-night victories of multiple GOP candidates through late returns of absentee ballots, with some of the disputed precincts’ tallies lasting for weeks afterward.
This effectively halved the number of Republican congressmen in the state, where they already were drastically under-represented.
“We have no way to know if those ballots were sealed or even voted when they were harvested,” McConnell said. “The only evidence we have is the voter cast his or her ballot is the signature. Now, this past election cycle turned out favorably for California Democrats.”
But despite the clear double-standard Democrats applied, expressing indignation in North Carolina for the same ploy they had just legalized in California, partisan shills like Levine and Washington Post columnist Phillip Bump attempted to spin and redirect the issue.
The HuffPo article cited an estimate by President Donald Trump that in California there were up to a million illegal votes cast in the 2018 midterm—only to dismiss it by saying “There’s no evidence that’s true.”
Nor, of course, is there any evidence that there is no evidence. That’s because Democrats have no intention of investigating or providing evidence of their own corruption.
However, after California was forced by freedom-of-information lawsuits to disclose its voter rolls, a recent Judicial Watch examination revealed that 112 percent of the eligible adults in Los Angeles County were registered.
In January, the state pledged as part of a settlement agreement to remove some 1.5 million inactive voters from its registry. It remained unclear, however, what evidence California officials will provide to demonstrate their compliance.
As if to underscore the Left’s blatant and unapologetic duplicity, Levine’s HuffPo piece allowed California’s radical secretary of State, Alex Padilla, to have the last word.
Ironically, Padilla deflected from his own state’s issues by accusing McConnell of deflection, before offering a non-denial denial about California’s support for rampant ballot fraud.
“In a page straight out of Donald Trump’s playbook, Mitch McConnell is trying to deflect away from corruption perpetrated by North Carolina Republican campaign operatives by attacking California,” said Padilla.
Nowhere, however, did Padilla’s statement seem to discount the fact that California likely used illegal votes to overturn the Republican victories. Instead, he euphemistically touted “voting rights” that, presumably, included those who were legally ineligible or otherwise cast potentially fraudulent votes.
“While McConnell has spent his career gutting voting rights, we are making it easier for working Californians to vote,” Padilla said. “In California, we’re expanding voter registration opportunities, expanding early voting and vote-by-mail, and giving voters the choice to decide who they trust to return their vote-by-mail ballot.”
‘I owe it to the citizens of the Ninth District to have someone at full strength during the new campaign…’
Mark Harris / IMAGE: WRAL screenshot
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Baptist pastor Mark Harris, the Republican candidate in North Carolina’s disputed 9th Congressional District, does not plan to run in the election do-over that the state Board of Elections unanimously voted for last week.
The board’s dramatic four-day hearing, following months of investigation and legal wrangling, came to a surprise conclusion when Harris, whose own son had been compelled to testify against him, called for a new election in the face of evidence that absentee ballot harvesting had tainted the race.
Harris also revealed that he had suffered two strokes while in the hospital in January recovering from an infection.
In a message to supporters on Tuesday, Harris said he would be undergoing surgery in late March.
“I owe it to the citizens of the Ninth District to have someone at full strength during the new campaign,” he said. “It is my hope that in the upcoming primary, a solid conservative leader will emerge to articulate the critical issues that face our nation.”
Robin Hayes, chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, issued a statement of support shortly after the news broke.
“The most important thing for him to address is his health,” Hayes said. “This has been a grueling process for all involved, and we unequivocally support his call for a new election.”
Harris’s decision all but assures that the soap-opera-like saga will continue with a competitive primary to take on Democrat Dan McCready in the yet-to-be-scheduled election.
“There are numerous quality candidates that are discussing a run and although the Party will not be involved in a primary, we have no doubt that a competitive nominee will emerge,” Hayes said.
Robert Pittinger / IMAGE: CNN via Youtube
Former Rep. Robert Pittenger, the incumbent before Harris unseated him in last year’s Republican primary, had previously announced his intention not to run again, but many awaited word on whether he would stand by that decision in light of the turn of events.
Harris, meanwhile, asked his supporters to rally behind Union County Commissioner Stony Rushing.
“His background and his experience have proven him to stand firm on so many of the issues that concern us, including the issue of life, our national security, and religious freedom,” Harris said.
In December, Republicans in the state legislature successfully overrode a veto from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to amend the state code and require that a primary also be held in any congressional general election ordered by the elections board.
However, in a story filled with twists and turns, political intrigue, and accusations of election theft and impropriety from both sides, the possibility of a McCready challenge to that law may not be off the table yet.
The previous statute required that all candidates listed on the ballot in the original election be included on the new ballot and listed in the same order as before.
Both the state-level Supreme Court and the federal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals are heavily skewed with liberal judges, meaning a legal dispute would likely need to go to the U.S. Supreme Court before Republicans received a favorable verdict.
By that point, the two-year term would be all but over, leaving McCready—who outpaced Harris considerably in fundraising, courtesy of wealthy out-of-state donors—well positioned for a 2020 challenge.
McCready’s head attorney, Marc Elias, was dubbed Democrats’ “best Election stealing lawyer” by President Donald Trump during the Florida election recounts last November.
As soon as Democrats sent their best Election stealing lawyer, Marc Elias, to Broward County they miraculously started finding Democrat votes. Don’t worry, Florida – I am sending much better lawyers to expose the FRAUD!
Still, Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba University and expert in state-level politics, expressed his doubt that the McCready team would try to force Harris onto the new ballot.
“It wasn’t clear to me, at least, that the State Board of Elections indicated which elections would be held,” Bitzer told Liberty Headlines, “but I presume they were going on the idea that the new law requires a new primary election.”
Although Bitzer said the timing of the legislation could potentially open a window for more courtroom drama, the deterrents of introducing more uncertainty into the race and leaving the district without representation seem likely to prevail.
“I do think McCready’s campaign is looking at a legal challenge, since the law was passed after the investigation had begun,” Bitzer said. “But I’m not sure if he would lodge a challenge to it.”
‘If the Democrats are going to give a felon a platform, they should be honest about their motivations…’
Michael Cohen / IMAGE: CNN via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Michael Cohen, the former attorney of President Donald Trump, took to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to claim that Trump committed crimes while in office and often misled about his financial worth.
But prior to Cohen’s testimony, Freedom Caucus Republicans on the House Oversight Committee penned an op-ed piece in USA Today calling it a “rigged deal.”
Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Mark Meadows, R-N.C., co-authored the piece arguing that the testimony of Cohen—who already has been convicted for lying before Congress—was nothing more than political theater, engineered by Democrats in their ongoing bid to bring impeachment charges against the president for political reasons.
“The Oversight Committee shouldn’t feed Cohen’s insatiable desire for celebrity while playing patsy for political aims of the far left,” wrote the congressmen. “If the Democrats are going to give a felon a platform, they should be honest about their motivations.”
They said even Cohen’s own legal counsel, former Bill Clinton advocate Lanny Davis, acknowledged in a recent podcast that there was potential for Democrats to overplay their hand.
“That would turn Cohen’s testimony into a partisan hit job designed to help their party,” Jordan and Meadows said .
The two said they and other committee Republicans planned to use their time at the hearing to focus on grilling Cohen about his own “shady activities”—including the crimes he has plead guilty to and others that he has previously refused to disclose.
“We will call out the Democrats’ charade for what it is—a partisan circus meant to destroy President Trump,” said the op-ed.
Cohen faces a three-year prison sentence for the crimes he admitted to. In addition to lying to Congress, those include tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations.
While most of the charges are unrelated to his association with Trump, the campaign violations stem from the $280,000 total in hush-money payments Cohen indirectly provided to two alleged Trump paramours: porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy bunny Karen McDougal.
Both women were said to have conducted affairs with Trump around 2006, a decade before his run, but sought to shake down the real-estate mogul after he announced his candidacy for president.
Cohen has said Trump directed the payments.
However, legal debate remains over whether they would constitute a campaign expense or a personal expense, with precedent favoring Trump.
Some, including Trump, have also noted a double-standard of selective prosecution.
President Barack Obama was found guilty in a Federal Election Commission audit of illegally accepting nearly $2 million in unreported campaign contributions.
Although required to pay a $375,000 fine, he faced no threat of criminal indictment and very little public scrutiny.
….which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s – but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!
Cohen—who also is slated to testify before two other congressional committees and claims to be recovering from a shoulder surgery—was recently permitted to push back his sentence by two months.
It is unclear whether he is angling for additional sentencing leniency through his testimony or if he is simply trying to settle scores against his famous former client. However, Jordan and Meadows said they intended to find out.
Jim Jordan & Mark Meadows/IMAGE: Fox News via YouTube
“We’ll ask our Democratic colleagues if they really believe that providing a congressional forum for Cohen to avenge his grudge with the president will help promote America’s democratic values,” they said.
The two Republicans, who some consider to be Trump’s right-hand in the legislature, already have clashed on occasion with new House Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings, D-Md.
After recent overtures suggested that Cummings would invite Republican input and pursue transparency when calling witnesses to testify before the committee, his invitation to Cohen seemed a direct affront to that spirit of bipartisanship.
“Our committee is designed to ensure the efficiency, effectiveness and accountability of the federal government. It provides a check and balance on the role and power of Washington—and a voice to the people it serves,” Jordan and Meadows said.
“We should not give up the committee’s voice to an admitted liar like Michael Cohen,” they added. “It is disheartening that Chairman Elijah Cummings’ first major hearing will do just that.”
‘Dear @Snapchat, thanks for the overly-racist new filter…when can we expect Blackface?’
IMAGE: Snapchat
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Some may consider it stellar, but to others, a new Snapchat filter might seem a bit off-color.
A recent filter by the picture-sharing social media platform appeared to darken everything but the eyes and lips of the user, evoking a common trope from the racist minstrelsy of yore.
It seems the filter was likely intended to be a face in the nighttime sky, but especially when paired with other questionable add-ons celebrating Black History Month, it evoked a decidedly different image.
The episode comes at a time of increased sensitivity over the use of blackface due to a series of scandals earlier this month involving three top Virginia public officials.
Following Northam’s scandal and unrelated rape accusations against Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who is black, the third in line for succession, state Attorney General Mark Herring also acknowledged wearing blackface while a student at the University of Virginia.
Ralph Northam’s 1984 Eastern Medical yearbook / IMAGE: CNN screenshot via Youtube
However, the media’s effort to create a “dialogue” about blackface and raise awareness also drew backlash for what appeared to be sugarcoating Northam’s “clearly racist” use of it (in the governor’s own words) with more innocuous instances such as dressing up like admired musical performers.
The emphasis on its ubiquity also seemed to be an attempt to spare the governor from facing serious consequences.
While Northam has not been held accountable to date, some leftist advocacy groups and causes already have used the scandal as leverage to make extreme demands for him to support their political agenda.
The recent episode would not mark the first time Snapchat has generated controversy with its racially-charged filters. At least twice in 2016 the company drew flak on social media and elsewhere.
On April 20—a day associated with marijuana culture among pot advocates—it offered a filter that allowed users to transpose Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley‘s face onto their own.
The Bob Marley snapchat thing is blackface in 2016 effectively. Digital disrespect
‘Klobuchar is the person perhaps best equipped to send the current president packing…’
Amy Klobuchar / IMAGE: CNN via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Media efforts to paint Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., as a moderate may be one of the boldest attempts yet to gaslight the American public.
The term “gaslighting” refers to a form of psychological manipulation that aims to warp people’s perception of reality. First featured in the eponymous 1944 Ingrid Bergman movie, it enjoyed a resurgence in the 2001 French film Amelie, and the Twitter era has since resurrected it as a popular hashtag topic.
One such narrative has recently developed around Klobuchar, who announced her 2020 presidential bid on Feb. 10, with many outlets claiming she is among the few bridge-builders in the upper chamber able to cross the aisle and cooperate with her Republican counterparts.
But regardless of whether she is more pleasant than her fellow Democratic primary contenders, in terms of Klobuchar’s actual voting record, nothing could be farther from the truth.
Radical Record
On a report card by the think-tank FreedomWorks that evaluated support for right-wing issues, Klobuchar—who just began her third term in the Senate—had one of the worst lifetime records of any active senators, voting with conservatives only 6 percent of the time.
For comparison, socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., had 11 percent; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had a 12 percent rating, and Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Cory Booker, D-N.J.—both joining Klobuchar in the 2020 presidential primary ring—had 17 percent ratings.
Another pro-freedom advocacy group, Freedom for All, factored in co-sponsored bills and gave Klobuchar an even lower rating, 2 out of 100.
One record-tracking site that purported to be nonpartisan was slightly more generous. Govtrack.us, in holistically analyzing Klobuchar’s legislative efforts during the 115th Congress (2017-2018), ranked her the 15th most conservative Democratic senator last session.
Joe Manchin/Photo by Governor Earl Ray Tomblin
“The three-term senator is no Joe Manchin,” said Politicoin a recent profile, referencing West Virginia’s aisle-crossing Democrat with a more conservative voting record than several centrist Republicans.
“Klobuchar votes with her party when it comes to big issues like abortion and immigration,” said the article. “… But she’s also established herself as someone who can cut deals with Republicans and occasionally tacks to the center. It’s a combination that that could give her a boost among primary voters seeking a candidate with bipartisan bona fides if it doesn’t doom her with a party running to the left.”
Minnesota ‘Nice’
Those singing Klobuchar’s praises tend to acknowledge her undeniably radical voting record but say other factors, such as her “Minnesota nice” attitude, make her an effective leader.
The Politico profile was among several articles surrounding her 2020 announcement that found Republican senators all but endorsing Klobuchar.
“I hope I’m not condemning her nascent run for the presidency,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said. “She’s too reasonable, too likable, too nice.”
She also garnered the support of NeverTrump conservative George Will, who wrote in a Jan. 30 Washington Post column, “When Democrats are done flirting with such insipidity, their wandering attentions can flit to a contrastingly serious candidacy, coming soon from Minnesota. … Klobuchar is the person perhaps best equipped to send the current president packing.”
But conflicting reports have painted a different picture about her supposedly even-keeled demeanor.
Klobuchar came onto the radar of those outside the upper-midwestern dairy belt or inner D.C. circles during her confrontation last September with then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, when she asked him if he had a drinking problem.
Kavanaugh’s defiant “Have you?” response underscored the fact that it was an irrelevant and inappropriately sensationalist, personal attack for the public forum.
The judge later apologized and reiterated an earlier statement about his respect for Klobuchar, but the Left used it nonetheless to target his “temperament.”
The reports of her mistreatment, curiously, seemed to come from predominately left-leaning outlets such as reputability-lacking websites BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post.
Some commentaries came to her defense, pointing to a double-standard that would never fault a male candidate for having a brusque personality.
“Do men get accused of this type of bitchy behavior?,” asked “View” co-host Joy Behar, herself the subject of similar criticisms. “I don’t think so.”
Klobuchar addressed the issue of her temperament with reporters following the Minneapolis rally where she announced her presidential candidacy.
She said the snowflake staffers’ gripes stemmed from the demandingly high standards she had set both for herself and the country.
“Yes, I can be tough, and yes I can push people,” she said, according to HuffPost. “I have high expectations for myself, I have high expectations for the people that work for me, but I have high expectations for this country.”
Who Smells Gas?
If the media’s Klobuchar coverage is yet another example of fake news, the question remains, then, who is behind it.
Perhaps some moderate conservatives who truly would like to see her oust Trump are going a little too far in praising her personal demeanor.
Or it may be that she is actually the weakest candidate due to her radical voting record, making her the most favorable opponent to Trump supporters.
On the other hand, some radical liberals may going out of their way to place Klobuchar at the center of the ideological spectrum in order to crowd out more conservative “centrist” candidates—a tactic that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has also been pursuing with his threats to run as an independent.
Or it could be that Klobuchar, herself, is the one behind the trickery. Bloomberg reports that she has recently sought to veer to the right of some of her competitors by denouncing socialist agenda items such as the Green New Deal and free college tuition.
“Klobuchar literally reeks, in a good way, common sense and I think that is going to be a very helpful attribute for anyone who can muster that in competing against this White House,” said Jerry Crawford, a prominent Democratic strategist in Iowa, which will hold its caucus—the first of the primary season—in about ll months.
However, if America’s idea of “common sense” is a radical liberal who just happens to reject socialism, at least the fossil-fuels industry can breathe easy—it will take some heavy-duty gas to keep all those lights lit.
‘The people of North Carolina deserve nothing less than the full confidence and trust in the electoral system….’
Mark Harris / IMAGE: WRAL screenshot
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After three and a half harrowing days of testimony during what was supposed to be a one-day evidentiary hearing before the North Carolina State Board of Elections, battered Republican candidate Mark Harris on Thursday called for a new election.
The NCSBE later voted unanimously in support of the election re-do following months of legal and political wrangling over accusations of ballot fraud.
Harris was being cross-examined on the stand by Marc Elias, the attorney for his Democratic opponent, Dan McCready, when Harris’s counsel suddenly asked for a recess to confer.
After the board adjourned for lunch, it went into closed session. Outlets including Raleigh’s WRAL said that Harris then called for a new election in the state’s 9th Congressional District—the outcome McCready’s team had been seeking.
In another surprise revelation on the stand, Harris said that he had suffered two strokes while in the hospital overcoming an infection in January, and that he was struggling to get through the hearing, reported the Charlotte Observer.
It cast serious doubt as to whether Harris would, in fact, be the candidate in the election re-do. Robert Pittenger, the Republican incumbent whom Harris defeated in last year’s primary, had previously said he was not interested in another run, but the new developments may change that.
State Republicans now reportedly plan to hold a primary before the yet-to-be-announced date of the general election and allow candidates to file to replace Harris.
NCGOP Chair Robin Hayes released a statement of support for Harris’s reversal on Thursday.
“We respect Dr. Harris’ decision on behalf of the voters. This has been a tremendously difficult situation for all involved and we wish him the best as he recovers from his illness and subsequent complications.”
They had previously hoped that evidence would show any alleged ballot fraud engineered by Bladen County political operative McCrae Dowless was insufficient to overcome Harris’s 905 vote advantage, leading the board to certify the November election.
But the high-powered legal team for McCready may simply have outflanked Harris.
Marc Elias / IMAGE: WRAL screenshot
Elias, who was Hillary Clinton’s campaign counsel during the 2016 election, has a long history of representing the Democrats’ top figures, sometimes under nefarious circumstances.
On Wednesday, the board hearing caught many off guard—including the Republican candidate himself—by calling Harris’s son, John, to the stand.
The younger Harris, an assistant U.S. attorney in the state, testified that he had e-mailed his dad warning about the rumors of fraud surrounding Dowless, but the elder Harris chose to disregard them.
The testimony appeared to have an emotional toll on both men.
“I love my dad and I love my mom,” John Harris said. “I certainly have no vendetta against them, no family scores to settle, OK? I think they made mistakes in this process, and they certainly did things differently than I would have done them.”
During the morning testimony on Thursday, Mark Harris told the board that he hadn’t furnished the records of the exchange with his son, nor acknowledged it in public statements about the election fraud, because he had considered it a “family conversation” and not official campaign advice.
Harris said he dismissed the warning at the time because he knew his son had not been to Bladen nor spoken to the many people in the county who touted Dowless’s get-out-the-vote efforts. He said his son was known to have a streak of “arrogance,” but that in this case he was right.
Hayes said the board’s work to clean up the pervasive atmosphere of fraud in the state remains paramount. Republicans there have previously pointed to systemic ballot-fraud abuse that goes well beyond Dowless and had previously favored Democratic candidates.
“We will continue to work with legislators and investigators on how we can improve the electoral system so that these kinds of situations can be avoided in the future,” Hayes said. “The people of North Carolina deserve nothing less than the full confidence and trust in the electoral system.”
‘That’ll be totally up to the new attorney general…’
Robert Mueller screen shot (NBC/Youtube)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) For once, President Donald Trump may be hoping that CNN is not reporting #FakeNews.
The Drudge Report cited the leftist cable network—home to frequent nemeses Jim Acosta, Don Lemon and Brian Stelter—in its banner headline Wednesday declaring that the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller may be coming to an end as early as next week.
CNN said newly-confirmed Attorney General William Barr was making plans to submit a summary report to Congress, “the clearest indication yet that Mueller is nearly done with his almost two-year investigation.”
Four of Mueller’s 17 investigators have now ceased work for the office, with most returning to their former roles in the Department of Justice. Observers also noted that the office staff was spotted carrying files and boxes out last week.
However, the exact timetable remained unclear, especially as officials may seek to avoid having its release conflict with Trump’s diplomatic efforts at an upcoming Vietnam summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Trump told reporters that he would leave it to Barr’s discretion how to time the release.
“That’ll be totally up to the new attorney general,” Trump said. “He’s a tremendous man, a tremendous person, who really respects this country and respects the Justice Department.”
Although the official report from Mueller is required to be submitted confidentially to the DOJ, according to CNN Barr has expressed his desire to be as transparent as possible with Congress.
Even so, some were already tempering their expectations as to what the report might—or might not—reveal. House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., expressed his belief earlier this week that the findings would be unduly influenced by pressure from the White House and said that he would continue to investigate regardless of the findings.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (second from left), flanked by House committee chairs Elijah Cummings, Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff / IMAGE: Senate Democrats via Youtube
Mueller’s probe into allegations of Russian collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia began in May 2017, only four month’s after Trump’s inauguration, and has been a source of constant criticism from the president, as well as proving a valuable weapon for his partisan opponents to deploy, despite there being no publicly released information yet that would directly implicate Trump.
Several top campaign associates have fallen in its wake, with some, like former adviser Paul Manafort, likely to spend the rest of their lives in jail, barring a sentence commutation from the White House.
Others, like former lawyer and confidant Michael Cohen have turned against Trump, casting their lot for leniency with Mueller and Congressional liberals who could offer a favorable deal for cooperation.
Although the grand jury used to indict many of the former staffers has not convened since Jan. 24—when it approved charges of obstruction, false statements and witness tampering against Roger Stone—some investigations unrelated to Russia have been referred by Mueller to other offices.
That includes the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York, which among other things is pursuing a charge by Cohen that Trump illicitly coordinated payoffs of porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal, whose shakedowns over decade-old affairs may have constituted campaign spending violations. Thus far it is the only criminal activity to directly implicate the president.
