Mueller’s Fumbling House Testimony Undermines Case for Obstruction

Ben Sellers
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‘There is no way Mueller ran this thing!’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As expected, former special counsel Robert Mueller began his day of testimony before two House committees with a lot of responses that he “can’t get into that.”

But as he appeared to fumble his way through interrogation, some wondered if it was Mueller being overly cautious or whether he simply lacked the information needed to respond.

Mueller, famously laconic, is said to have once called his chief of staff and when asked what he needed, responded with “Nothing” only to say that he had checked in with him.

Amid concerns over the partisan operatives that the special counsel had assisting him in the nearly two-year investigation into Russian collusion, his ignorance on the crucial machinations of his staff would legitimately be cause for President Donald Trump and supporters to raise major red flags and question whether the investigation itself was compromised.

The Gateway Pundit reacted to Mueller’s stuttering and fumbling during his morning testimony by concluding, “There is no way Mueller ran this thing!”

Fox News pundits characterized it as a “frail” performance, according to Mediaite.

Meanwhile Grabien compiled a montage of some of the early lapses.

Mueller requested at the last minute that one of his subordinates, Aaron Zebley, be sworn in to help fill in the gaps.

Because the first three hours of Mueller’s testimony, before the House Judiciary Committee, related primarily to President Donald Trump’s alleged obstruction of justice, the special counsel’s own direct role is a significant point in the defense against those claims.

Just as Trump’s intent is crucial in light of the fact that there was no collusion with Russia, if there was a valid intent for the president to seek Mueller’s removal, that would undermine the claims of obstruction even further.

The obstruction claims largely centered around Trump’s efforts to have Mueller himself dismissed by White House counsel Don McGahn and others due to conflicts of interest.

This would not have ended the investigation, but simply have replaced him with a different—and presumably more partial—investigator.

Mueller, who served as FBI head under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, was a close personal friend of his successor, James Comey, whose firing triggered the investigation.

Justice Deparment Let Mueller Be Special Counsel Despite 'Conflict of Interest'
Robert Mueller, James Comey and Barack Obama / IMAGE: The Obama White House via Youtube

Trump also claimed that Mueller sought the position himself shortly before Comey’s departure—although Mueller denied that the interview in question was for the FBI job.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., submitted a December 2017 opinion piece to Fox News that outlined many of the conflicts of interest among Mueller’s hand-appointed staff.

Among them were the roles of disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok and counsel Lisa Page, whose texts to each other revealed substantial anti-Trump bias.

Both were instrumental in the FBI’s investigation of the discredited Steele Dossier prior to joining Mueller’s staff.

Both ultimately were dismissed from Mueller’s staff and also dismissed by the FBI for their ethical lapses.

Biggs also noted that Zebley had worked for Hillary Clinton, and one of the lead prosecutors, Andrew Weissmann maintained close ties with Democratic figures including Clinton.

It was revealed in June that Weissmann had accepted a book deal to detail his work for the special counsel investigation.

“This was a Andrew Weissmann witch hunt blessed by Rod Rosenstein and the corrupt Department of Justice,” said the Gateway Pundit. “This was a criminal attempt to remove a sitting president from office.”

Mueller reiterated in his opening statements his earlier claims that Congress should continue to investigate and potentially impeach Trump on the obstruction claims.

However, if Democrats were relying on the strength of his testimony to reinforce their partisan effort and make the case before the American people, it seemed highly unlikely that it would move the dial any.

Sportscaster Ignores ESPN’s ‘No Politics’ Rule to Vent on Trump Tweets

Ben Sellers
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‘We’ve done a lot of research in this area, and our fans have told us that this is not why they tune into ESPN…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) It may be news to many that, in the wake of its controversy surrounding former correspondent Jemele Hill, sports network ESPN had implemented a “no politics” rule.

Less surprisingly, that rule has been swiftly disregarded by the virtue-signaling, Disney-owned franchise’s stable of other far-left anchors, who feel their own level of Trump derangement justifies a politically-charged sermon.

Miami-based ESPN Radio personality Dan Le Batard did just that, according to Sports Illustrated, when he ranted on Thursday over President Donald Trump’s recent sparring with several socialist congresswomen who have dubbed themselves “The Squad.”

Like many in the leftist media, Le Batard—a second-generation immigrant with parents from Cuba—took umbrage with Trump’s suggestion that the Somalia-born Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and her freshman Democratic colleagues—who frequently criticize American values—should “go back” to the places they prefer over the U.S.

At a rally Wednesday in North Carolina, Trump supporters began chanting “Send Her Back” as Trump continued to lambast Omar.

Using a tweet from Fox Sports contributor Nick Wright as his launchpad, Le Batard called the Trump rally “deeply offensive” before going off on his own company’s policy of not wanting to alienate a major segment of its audience.

“We don’t talk about what is happening unless there’s some sort of weak, cowardly sports angle that we can run it through, when sports has always been a place where this stuff changes,” Le Batard said.

Echoing the rest of the left-leaning media, Le Batard repeated a common trope attempting to link Trump’s comments with racism.

“It is so wrong what the president of our country is doing,” he said, “trying to go down getting re-elected by dividing the masses at a time when the old white man—the old rich white man—feels oppressed being attacked by minorites, black people, brown people, women.”

Trump defenders on the Right have nearly universally countered that the president’s criticism was about the substance of their rhetoric and policies, not their skin color.

Omar and fellow “Squad” members Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-NY, have received frequent criticism for their own race-baiting and controversial comments that deploy profanity and anti-Semitic tropes.

That rhetoric has drawn rebukes from both sides of the aisle, though a resolution to specifically condemn Omar’s anti-Jewish tweets was watered down in March after a revolt by the Congressional Black Caucus.

ESPN’s own woes stemmed from a series of tweets by Hill that included calling Trump a white supremacist. The network had earlier been criticized for its double-standard in allowing her inflammatory remarks to slide while punishing conservative commentators.

ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro addressed the “no politics” policy in a May interview with Vox, according to Sports Illustrated.

“What we don’t want is people to tune into ESPN, or people to tune into an ESPN feed on a social platform and get pure political commentary,” Pitaro said. “We don’t believe that that’s who we are. We don’t believe that that’s why people tune into ESPN.”

Pitaro said the network based many of its policy decisions on data. “We’ve done a lot of research in this area, and our fans have told us that this is not why they tune into ESPN.”

Rand Paul Pushes Back on ‘Gutter Snipe’ Jon Stewart After False 9/11 Funding Claims

Ben Sellers
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‘He pretended for years when he was on his comedy show to be somebody who could see … through the B.S. on both sides. Well, now he is the B.S…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., hit back to what he said were ad-hominem attacks from comedian Jon Stewart over a funding bill to compensate 9/11 families.

Stewart, who became a liberal icon during his years hosting Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” made an impassioned speech before Congress last month, accusing members of apathy for neglecting the Victim Compensation Fund for first responders.

After Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, sought to fast-track a funding bill without the usual approval process, though, Paul objected, along with Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, saying that the measure should be spending neutral and draw from elsewhere rather than adding to the deficit.

“Until you’re willing to cut that stuff out to pay for something more important, like the 9/11 victims, you’re not doing your job,” Paul said in an interview with Fox News’s Neil Cavuto. “Just to add it on and borrow it is inexcusable, it’s wrong.”

Paul countered Stewart’s claims that he was guilty of “fiscal responsibility virtue signaling” by saying it was the erstwhile celebrity who was the real glory-hound.

“The left-wing mob doesn’t care about the truth,” he said. “Jon Stewart doesn’t care about the truth—it’s all about ‘Me, me, me, Jon Stewart. Look at me, I’m on TV.’”

Calling Stewart a “gutter snipe,” Paukl said that both the comedian and Gillibrand were among those peddling false narratives about the nature of the spending bill and about Paul’s own track record.

“It’s really kind of disgusting,” Paul said, “because he pretended for years, when he was on his comedy show, to be somebody who could see both sides and see through the B.S. on both sides. Well, now he is the B.S.”

Jon Stewart Excoriates Congress for Apathy Toward 9/11 Victims Fund
Jon Stewart/IMAGE: YouTube

While those who sought to rush the bill through Congress claimed that it would appropriate $10.2 billion to the fund over the next decade, Paul said that, in fact, it would amount to roughly $2 billion every year until 2092, with no limits on the amount that may be spent.

“Who in their right mind would vote for a bill that doesn’t have a dollar amount in it?” he asked. “What you would do, if you were responsible, is you’d allocate it for three, four or five years, and then you’d come back and re-assess it.”

Paul noted that the proposed carte blanche—which is still likely to pass overwhelmingly, despite his objections—would come on top of $12 billion that already has been provided to the fund.

“This isn’t a stingy country. This isn’t a country who forgot the 9/11 heroes or the firemen,” he said. “… This is a country that will continue to do more, but we shouldn’t completely lose our heads and say, ‘Oh, well it’s a good cause, so we really shouldn’t have any budgetary restraints.’”

Paul said that only about 10 to 15 people in the Senate seemed to be concerned by the massive amount of borrowing, which has raised the current national debt to more than $22.5 trillion, with $2 million more being borrowed every minute.

“I’m asking something very reasonable,” he said: “that an amendment be included to consider whether we should pay for this [by] taking something somewhere else in the budget—doesn’t actually reduce the deficit, it just keeps the deficit from getting bigger.”

He also noted that he had put up similar roadblocks to reckless spending, regardless of the cause, on every new bit of funding—be it disaster relief, emergency border funding or tax cuts.

“I’ve spent my entire Senate career putting forward ‘pay fors’ for any time spending is expanded,” he said.

Last month, Paul spoke at a press event for the Citizens Against Government Waste’s release of its annual Congressional Pig Book.

The event highlighted some of the ridiculous ways tax dollars had been spent, bringing pork-barrel funding up by 4 percent last fiscal year despite a moratorium on earmarks.

Paul reminded Fox viewers of some of those measures, including the appropriation of $2 million for a study on whether people were more or less likely to eat food that had been sneezed on in a buffet line.

“How about the $300,000 we spent on Japanese quail to see if they’re more sexually promiscuous on cocaine?” he asked.

Rather than be excoriated for his efforts, Paul said he should be commended as one of the few fiscal watchdogs in Congress.

“When they argue and they bellyache and say, ‘Oh, he’s blocking the bill’—no, I’m trying to have a debate in our country about whether or not deficits matter and whether or not we should offset new spending,” he said.

Landlocked States Ask DOT to Overturn Washington’s Attack on Oil Exports

Ben Sellers
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‘Once again, a coastal state is trying to dictate what commodities other states can transport to market…’

IMAGE: Montana Department of Justice

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After far-left lawmakers in Washington state passed a law tightening regulations on crude oil shipments through the state, two other states are asking federal authorities to step in and overturn it.

Montana and North Dakota officials petitioned the Department of Transportation to overturn the law, signed by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee under the pretense of environmentalism and safety issues due to claims that the oil was too volatile and exceeded the allowable vapor limit.

Although the national standard for crude oil to be considered stable is 14.7 pounds per square inch, the new Washington law sets that threshold at less than 9 psi, which would amount to substantial added extraction costs for the exporting states.

Although the states rely on Washington ports to ship the oil elsewhere, the new regulations make doing so economically inviable, Montana Attorney General Tim Fox said in a news release on Wednesday.

“Once again, a coastal state is trying to dictate what commodities other states can transport to market,” Fox said.

Fox said the landlocked states asked the DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to step in because the federal Hazardous Materials Transportation Act superseded state law.

“Under a law passed by Congress and signed by the president, the U.S. Department of Transportation has established a rigorous and uniform set of regulations for the safe transport of materials such as crude oil,” he said. “Washington state politicians want to pretend those standards are insufficient as a pretext for their anti-oil agenda.”

Fox and North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said the Washington law was specifically designed to target drilling in the Bakken Shale Formation, which had made the region one of the top oil exporters in the world, with North Dakota extracting roughly a million barrels a day by recent estimates.

“[M]ake no mistake, Washington’s new law was designed to target Bakken oil precisely,” said the petition. “The shale revolution—and in particular the extraction of crude oil from the Bakken—has driven the overall uptick in transport of crude oil by rail.”

But apart from the substantial economic impact on the regions, the attorneys general said that the Washington law also set an alarming precedent for interstate commerce if allowed to stand.

“[O]ne state with access to particular transportation routes can dictate national and foreign energy policy by restricting or removing other states’ ability to move their natural resources and other hazardous materials,” the petition said. “And if other states follow Washington’s lead and set their own idiosyncratic hazardous-material transportation requirements, the patchwork effect of those laws and regulations could ironically make the nation less safe.”

Rahm Emanuel Denies Democrats’ Pivot to Far-Left Extremism

Ben Sellers
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‘Those of us who practice politics know that sound does not always equal fury…’

Rahm Emanuel Says Trump's Base Really Didn't Want to Repeal Obamacare
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel/Photo by danxoneil (CC)

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Rahm Emanuel recently called Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez‘s top staffer a “snot-nosed punk,” but on Thursday he denied that the freshman Democrat’s socialist-tinged politics had transformed the political landscape.

Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago and chief-of-staff for President Barack Obama, wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post  attempting to downplay and debunk the “myths” that an emergent radicalism was taking root—which he feared would cost Democrats the 2020 election.

“Not only has the party not lurched, but also the presumption that Democrats are undergoing some sort of ideological transformation may undermine our opportunity to defeat President Trump next year,” he wrote.

With the exception of former Vice President Joe Biden, nearly every leading Democrat in the field has endorsed or agreed to co-sponsor Ocasio–Cortez’s Green New Deal, estimated to cost some $93 trillion and substantially impact the lifestyles of all Americans, be it through taxes, dietary regulations or travel restrictions.

Biden and other self-declared “moderates” in the pack, like South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, have endorsed their own scaled-down versions of the plan.

Most of those running also support some variation of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders‘s Medicare for All proposal to socialize healthcare and eliminate private insurance.

At the second Democratic debate in June, all of the candidates on the stage controversially said they would include illegal immigrants in their health plans.

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Candidates during the Democratic primary debate raise their hands in response to a question over their support for eliminating private health insurance and extending public health benefits to illegal immigrants. / IMAGE: America Rising PAC

Meanwhile, many of the candidates support transforming the government’s system of checks and balances, such as eliminating the Electoral College and packing the Supreme Court.

Some have even gone to the extremes of endorsing long-rejected ideas like slavery reparations and open borders.

But according to Emanuel, those same voices have always been a part of the Left.

The clamor for radical progressivism was unlikely to survive in the general election, he said.

“[T]hose of us who practice politics know that sound does not always equal fury,” he wrote. “No one denies that the progressives have gotten louder and angrier over the past several years.”

Emanuel then conjured the specters of past policy failures from the Bill Clinton era onward that he said liberal Democrats still held grudges over.

“[M]any on the left feel as though their demands have been deferred, denied or never addressed—not by the two Republican presidents elected since then, but worse, not by the two Democrats, either,” he said.

Even so, he added, those voices did not constitute the majority within the Democratic base, where “[r]oughly half” described themselves as “moderate” or “conservative.”

Emanuel said winning over the swing states, where several centrist Democrats in traditionally conservative districts won in the 2018 election, was the key to success in next year’s race.

“Our nominee will need the voters in their districts to win a sufficient number of purple states,” he said.

Emanuel observed that during the pre-Clinton era, when far-left progressives dominated party politics, Democrats lost nearly every presidential race—save for Jimmy Carter‘s single term—in a span lasting more than two decades.

“History has proved there aren’t enough voters on the far left, on their own, to elect and reelect a president or maintain a majority in Congress,” he said.

He rejected the misconception that a Democratic candidate running against President Donald Trump needed to “mirror Trump’s abrasive political style” by acting as the president’s “liberal mini-me.”

Emanuel—who was forced out of running for a third term in Chicago due to his own unpopularity and failed policies—said that with the robust economy Trump’s approval rating should be much higher.

Rather than pin it on the shady polling practices and negative coverage pervasive in the mainstream media, he said those approval ratings reflected a public rejection of Trump’s confrontational approach.

“Americans do not like the poison pouring out of his mouth and Twitter feed,” Emanuel said. “Democrats shouldn’t lean into what Trump does poorly. We should offer a contrast—someone competent, balanced, thoughtful and capable of reaching across the aisle.”

Emanuel did not specify which Democratic candidate would fulfill those criteria. However, he closed with a generic appeal to all Democrats of every persuasion to come out in full force.

“Whatever disagreements we may have with one another, nothing is worth the cost of extending Trump’s tenure,” he said.

KAMALA HARRIS: Trump a ‘Predator’; AOC’s Squad ‘Desperate in Need of Help’

Ben Sellers
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‘The thing about them is, by their very nature and character and instinct they prey on the vulnerable…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Despite claiming she would be a unifying force as president, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., simultaneously launched an ad hominem attack on the current president while managing a backhanded smack-down of far-left freshman Democrats in the House of Representatives.

During an appearance Wednesday on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Harris unloaded on Trump, who during a rally in North Carolina had extended his ongoing feud with “The Squad,” including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-NY, and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

Trump earlier in the week had suggested the freshman congresswomen—known for expressing anti-American and pro-socialist sentiments—should leave the country, spurring a feeding frenzy of liberal media to accuse the president of racism.

Remarkably, Harris—whose own race-baiting was evident in a recent attack on Democratic front-runner Joe Biden during a June primary debate—tiptoed around that issue, instead attempting to characterize Trump as a “predator.”

Harris explained that Trump’s purpose in “preying” on the freshman congresswomen while largely ignoring her at the rally was that they were less capable of defending themselves.

“The thing about [predators] is, by their very nature and character and instinct they prey on the vulnerable,” she said. “They prey on those they believe to be weak. They prey on those who are in need of help, and often desperate in need of help.”

Echoing Trump’s call that the congresswomen should “go back” to the countries and cultures they preferred over America, Harris said that Trump himself should “go back” to being a reality television host.

“He obviously achieved success there; he has obviously achieved very little success here, so he should just go back to that.”

Ironically, after launching her attack, Harris went on to call for national unity, suggesting that she—despite having promoted extremist positions on issues such as slavery reparations—would be the candidate to achieve this.

“People may not agree with all my policies, people may not vote for me, but I’m gonna tell you this: We have got to get to a place where we as Americans agree,” she said. “We have got to unify as a country around our commonalities, around our collective priorities.”

Harris went on to elaborate on some of her priorities. After having flip-flopped several times over whether she endorsed a Medicare for All bill that would force an end to private insurance, Harris downplayed the radical plan while reaffirming her support.

“The vast majority of doctors will be in that system,” she said, “and you can keep your doctor under that system, and it will be that when you walk into that hospital, when you walk into the doctor’s office, you don’t have to fill out all those forms and give your credit card—you just give your Medicare card and then you walk in and you walk out when you’re done.”

Harris told Kimmel the plan would permit supplemental private insurance, although that point has been widely disputed by analysts of the actual bill that Harris is co-sponsoring with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

Even though she claims she intends to unify the country, Harris also has announced that she would pursue many legislative and policy changes through executive orders—including a sweeping restriction of Second Amendment gun rights.

She told Kimmel that she would seek such unilateral action to allow U.S. citizens to purchase drugs more cheaply from across the border, referring to her plan to go after pharmaceutical companies.

“If we can’t get Congress to act on that, then what I’m prepared to do as president is take executive action to, one, allow people to buy their drugs from Canada,” she said.

Additionally, Harris said she would force drug companies to lower their prices while appointing an attorney general “who will prosecute pharmaceutical companies for predatory practices.”

Detractors have said such moves may dramatically suppress research and innovation within the private medical sector.

Harris’s appearance came on the same day as a Quinnipiac poll of California Democrats revealed only 9 percent of her home-state’s party loyals thought she had the best policy ideas among Democratic primary contenders.

Although Harris narrowly edged out national front-runner Biden as the top choice in the state, where she currently serves as U.S. senator and was previously attorney general, she trailed Biden in a question on who was the best leader and another on who was best equipped to defeat Trump.

She was fourth in the policy ideas question, behind Biden, Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

Harris told Kimmel, however, that the polls were meaningless to her.

“The only poll that matters to me is on Election Day,” she said.

MSNBC/RINO Bush/McCain Staffer Nicolle Wallace Criticizes ‘Racist’ Tweets

Ben Sellers
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‘We might get it wrong sometimes, but whatever that gut reaction to him is, in this instance, it is textbook racism…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Resident RINO Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday gave her NBC network bosses what they desperately sought—a NeverTrump critic from the Right to repudiate President Donald Trump’s recent tweets.

“Whether you love him or hate him, he’s a racist,” she said during an appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”

Wallace, a former communications director for the George W. Bush administration, first bailed on the Republican Party during the 2008 election, when she refused to support the John McCain candidacy because of his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

As the current anchor of “Deadline: White House” on MSNBC, she has made a full-on conversion to the far-Left during the Trump administration, explaining that she refused even to read the president’s controversial tweets on air.

“We, as a show, have made a lot of choices about not repeating the most hateful things that come out of the White House,” she told Meyers, “and having worked there, I think I’m particularly triggered by the use of the White House property … for spewing hate speech, for spewing lies.”

Wallace said her show also had refused to cover media briefings by former Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

As policy, she added, it does not broadcast live speeches from Trump, which would force her sensitive audience to hear him without any filtration through the left-wing echo chamber.

“We feel like we’re fire-hosing our viewers by doing that” Wallace said, perhaps intending to invoke imagery from the 1960s civil rights movement.

Since subtlety is not what the Peacock pays her for, Wallace went on to make explicitly clear that she was in line with the Left’s narrative regarding Trump’s weekend attack on Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-NY; and other freshman Democrats who have dubbed themselves “The Squad.”

Trump elicited media hysteria by tweeting that the anti-American congresswomen should “go back” where they came from, even though Somalia-born Omar was the only non-native member of the group.

Wallace validated the deranged leftists’ emotional response—which has led to several recent hoaxes and false reports in the media.

Echoing the debunked Jussie Smollett conspiracy and other recent panics, she continued to stoke fear that the president’s tweets signaled imminent danger for his opponents.

“We might get it wrong sometimes, but whatever that gut reaction to him is, in this instance, it is textbook racism,” Wallace said. “And it’s racism on purpose, it’s racism out loud—and I think there’s a lot of concern in Washington, growing concern, that someone’s gonna get hurt.”

Such unsubstantiated claims have become a common trope among Trump adversaries, who reflexively have accused him of xenophobia and Nazism throughout his presidency—much as they did for Wallace’s former White House boss, George W. Bush.

Like others in the press who have demanded—largely without success—that Trump’s fellow Republicans denounce the president’s comments, Wallace also attempted to link the tweets to his supporters, insisting that they take ownership.

After griping that she had received no return phone calls from Republicans to come on her show, Wallace said that the reluctance to criticize Trump was, itself, harmful to the country.

“We didn’t hear back from anybody,” she said. “I obviously still talk to a lot of Republicans—I worked in the last Republican administration before this one—and it’s, it’s, it’s searing. Um, their silence is almost as damaging to this country as Trump’s conduct.”

Democrats, likewise, have faced heavy criticism for their ongoing refusal to condemn anti-Semitic comments made by Omar and fellow “Squad” member Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.

After scuttling a resolution in March that directly criticized Omar’s anti-Semitic tweets, the House—facing a revolt by the Congressional Black Caucus—watered it down to condemn all forms of hate speech.

Ocasio–Cortez’s accusations last week of racism within her own party leadership also ignited infighting within the Congressional Democrat ranks and questions as to whether the extreme Left might be deploying the “race card” too freely.

But those compunctions went by the wayside after Trump goaded the socialist-spouting House freshmen.

“You cannot look your children … in the eye and say this is anything other than racism,” Wallace said. “And when we stop calling black ‘black,’ white ‘white,’ up ‘up,’ down ‘down,’ he’s won.”

OUTED: Dems Use Courts to Award Districts They Could Have Won on Their Own

Ben Sellers
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‘They lost at the ballot box under maps their own analysis proves were fair, and they’re now trying to convince a court to hand them a majority they couldn’t win for themselves…’

Dem. Attorney Marc Elias Used Activist Court Rulings to Redraw GOP Districts 1
North Carolina’s Congressional districts/IMAGE: USA Today via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A trial in North Carolina over partisan gerrymandering revealed that hypocrites on the Left who are challenging the current electoral map had, in fact, used big data to try to clinch their own victory through court-forced redistricting.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court determined in Rucho vs. Common Cause that it was outside the jurisdiction of federal courts to rule on partisan gerrymandering, both in North Carolina and nationwide.

However, it left open the possibility that state courts could use their own constitutional bylaws to forcibly redraw districts they deemed to favor one political party—even if the courts themselves were blatantly partisan.

Democrats, who already in 2017 had forced the GOP state legislature in North Carolina to redraw what it claimed were racially biased districts, brought both federal and a state-level cases challenging the previously-approved redrawn districts after they failed to change the outcome of the 2018 election.

While the Democrats in that election were able to undo GOP super-majorities in the NC state legislature, they could not secure an outright majority, instead demanding that the unfairly “partisan” maps must again be redrawn.

But in the course of discovery for the state-level case, it was revealed that the Democrats not only thought they would win the last election, they had a deep-data analysis of every voter to back it up.

According to GOP state Sen. Ralph Hise, one of the Republican legislators who is fighting the left-wing activists, the Left spent thousands of dollars to keep this data secret and waited until only after the election results to begin complaining.

“The Democrats analyzed the 2017 maps, which showed they could win Democratic majorities,” Hise said in a press release.

“They successfully kept this information secret—until now,” he said. “They lost at the ballot box under maps their own analysis proves were fair, and they’re now trying to convince a court to hand them a majority they couldn’t win for themselves.”

The so-called ‘support scores’ drew on data purchased from a group called Break the Majority.

That information culled not only past voting habits but also consumer spending and other habits to form a somewhat accurate profile of how each voter in the district might lean.

Although Democrats have cried foul at Republicans’ reliance on big data in elections—for example, their claims that the Facebook profile information gathered by the nonpartisan Cambridge Analytica and purchased prior to the 2016 election constituted a privacy breach—they have surreptitiously done the same.

The effort has national implications as former Attorney General Eric Holder and his National Democratic Redistricting Committee lead the charge to “sue till blue” by asking left-leaning courts to redraw GOP districts across the country.

The NDRC—which recently merged with former President Barack Obama’s campaign arm, Organizing for Action, believed to have some of the most sophisticated voter-profile databases around—has declared a dozen vulnerable red-leaning states to be in its cross-hairs prior to the 2020 election.

Those elections, in turn, will determine the legislative makeup that will oversee the next round of redistricting.

This means that despite a federal Supreme Court ruling against them, left-wing activists may use the state courts—along with their immense financial resources and databases—to sway state legislatures, which will then legally redraw the U.S. congressional districts in their favor.

“For too long, the Democratic Party has failed to focus on the state and local elections that impact the lives of American citizens on a day-to-day basis and determine who has a seat at the redistricting table,” Holder wrote in a recent op-ed for The Washington Post.

He called on his billionaire friends—such as George Soros, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg—to help undo the will of the voters by any means necessary while targeting state-level races.

“Democrats must invest in—and win—state and local elections in 2019 and 2020 to make sure that Republicans do not retain total control in the remaining states and manipulate the process again during 2021 redistricting,” Holder wrote.

North Carolina state Sen. Phil Berger—another of the GOP legislators fighting the state court case to re-redraw the districts—was among those who condemned Holder’s brazen political ambitions.

“That’s not democracy. It’s judicial usurpation of democracy,” Berger said. “Mr. Holder wants to repeat this across any state where he can promote a liberal judicial majority if he can’t elect a liberal Legislature or Governor.”

9th Circuit Lets DOJ Withhold Funds for Sanctuary Cities

Ben Sellers
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‘Cooperation relating to enforcement of federal immigration law is in pursuit of the general welfare, and meets the low bar of being germane to the federal interest…’

Watchdog Group Publishes List of Los Angeles 'Problem Cops'
Photo by Rennett Stowe (CC)

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A federal appeals court in California overturned the lower court’s injunction that said officials could not withhold funds to so-called sanctuary cities for their refusal to cooperate with immigration authorities.

The ruling, filed last Friday by a three-judge panel in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, specifically reversed a challenge from Los Angeles to the Justice Department‘s Community Oriented Policing Services.

The program gives points for enforcement of illegal immigration laws among a multitude of factors in awarding grant funding to local jurisdictions.

The decision is the latest in a series of surprise court victories for the Trump administration in the 9th Circuit, a once notoriously liberal stronghold that has become more ideologically balanced after recent judicial appointments.

The randomly selected panel comprised two George W. Bush appointees and one Bill Clinton appointee, who dissented.

The Immigration Reform Law Institute celebrated the ruling as an encouraging sign from the once activist bench.

“We are gratified that the Ninth Circuit showed common sense in this case,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI, in a press release.

The court “did not buy the bizarre argument that keeping criminal aliens in a city actually makes people safer, because it supposedly makes illegal aliens trust the police more,” Wilcox said.

“It is refreshing that, instead, the Ninth Circuit accepted the obvious connection between public safety and getting criminals—including career criminals—out of our nation’s cities,” he added.

The decision, issued by Judge Sandra Segal Ikuta, affirmed that immigration enforcement was a relevant component in the program’s underlying purpose.

“[C]ooperation relating to enforcement of federal immigration law is in pursuit of the general welfare, and meets the low bar of being germane to the federal interest in providing the funding,” Ikuta wrote.

Opponents argued that immigration enforcement flew in the face of “community-oriented” policing by discouraging cooperation with local authorities.

But the court cited previous decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress, acknowledging that illegal immigrants “are reported to be responsible for a disproportionate share of serious crime.”

Since there was no codified legislative definition of what “community-oriented” policing entailed, the court ruled that the determination was entirely within the purview of Attorney General William Barr and his department.

Echoing a recent Supreme Court decision that validated the Commerce Department’s authority to include a citizenship question on the national census, Ikuta chided the district court for attempting to substitute its own judgment for that of the agency.

The DOJ “need not demonstrate to [our] satisfaction that the reasons for the new policy are better than the reasons for the old one,” she said. “[I]t suffices that the new policy is permissible under the statute, that there are good reasons for it, and that the agency believes it to be better.”

GOP Sens. Urge FTC to Launch Probe into Big-Tech Censorship Efforts

Ben Sellers
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‘By controlling the content we see, these companies are powerful enough to—at the very least—sway elections…’

Facebook: ‘Type With Your Brain’ Tech Coming 1
Photo by clasesdeperiodismo (CC)

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Despite a $5 billion fine on Facebook last week over its data-privacy violations, two GOP senators said Monday that the Federal Trade Commission must do more to rein in the site’s electioneering efforts, along with those of other web utilities like Google and Twitter.

Of particular concern is anti-conservative bias and censorship, which all three of the major tech companies—and many others in the left-leaning Silicon Valley area—have openly engaged in.

Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote the FTC encouraging it to take a deeper look at the tech sites’ practices, even if there was not an explicit law-enforcement purpose t0 such an investigation.

“The vast majority of internet traffic flows through just a handful of these companies,” Hawley and Cruz said in their letter, addressed to all five FTC commissioners.

“They control the ads we see, the news we read, and the information we digest. And they actively censor some content and amplify other content based on algorithms and intentional decisions that are completely nontransparent,” the senators said. “Never before in this country have so few people controlled so much speech.”

While the “more salient” examples of censorship practices, such as account suspensions, have been well documented, the senators said they were worried about the more subversive efforts to suppress voices they disagreed with.

Conservative advocacy groups like Project Veritas and the Daily Caller have published a number of whistle-blower testimonials, and their insights figured largely into a social-media summit hosted last week by President Donald Trump.

“[N]obody knows who or what these companies censor or amplify,” said the letter. “Most content curation occurs in ways impossible for outsiders to detect.”

Even as the corporations claim to be themselves protected by free speech and private-enterprise regulations, their efforts at social engineering have exposed the partisan underbelly.

Google was revealed to have at least considered blacklisting and burying content that was favorable to Trump’s ban on immigrants from terrorist-sponsoring countries.

Facebook recently acknowledged that it had blocked pro-life ads during recent Irish elections to repeal a constitutional amendment and legalize abortion.

Twitter has threatened to apply its subjective—and constantly shifting—community standards even to the tweets of politicians—despite recent court rulings that define it as a public platform and prevent elected officials from blocking other users.

“By controlling the content we see, these companies are powerful enough to—at the very least—sway elections,” wrote the senators. “And we’re told we have to be satisfied simply with trusting them not to abuse this immense power.”

Cruz has been a longtime advocate for subjecting the tech companies to greater scrutiny and accountability.

During a recent hearing before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet, he grilled a Google representative over a Project Veritas investigation that revealed how the search-engine powerhouse, which also owns YouTube, had downgraded conservative outlets when recommending additional content.

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