GRAHAM: After Mueller, It’s Time to Investigate the ‘Other Side’ of Collusion Story

Ben Sellers
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‘When it comes to the FISA warrant, the Clinton campaign, the counterintelligence investigation, it’s pretty much been swept under the rug … Those days are over…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines)  Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC,  invoked his bipartisan bona fides on Monday to reiterate the conclusiveness of the Mueller report while calling on a special counsel investigation into the other side.

His press conference invoked a firm demand for fairness and equal pursuit of justice that may have been reminiscent to some of his stand during the Brett Kavanaugh hearing last September.

As chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham was one of the first to receive Attorney General William Barr‘s summary of the findings of the Mueller report.

On Sunday, he was returning from a golf outing with President Donald Trump when Barr formally announced that the report found no evidence of Russian collusion and insufficient evidence of obstruction of justice to pursue a case.

Graham said he hoped to have Barr appear before the committee in a public hearing to discuss the full Mueller report and his conclusions.

“The truth is, I want you to know as much as you possibly can know. This is a very big deal,” he said. “From my point of view, it was a great day for the president in terms of the underlying allegation, but now I’m hoping some of you will be interested in the other side of the story.”

Despite saying Trump had been deeply scrutinized more than any president since Nixon, Graham emphasized that he had been a vocal supporter of the Mueller probe from the beginning.

“Mr. Mueller has been given a chance to do his job: two years, 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, 2800 subpoenas, 500 people interviewed, 230 orders for communications records, 13 requests to foreign governments, $25 million dollars or more—that is what happened to the Trump campaign, and I’ve been OK with that scrutiny from Day 1,” he said.

He said his support for the rule of law superseded any political considerations—and called on opponents across the aisle, including ranking Senate Judiciary Democrat Dianne Feinstein, to follow the same principles by looking into the “bizarre” and “at a minimum, disturbing” allegations that partisan influences directed the FBI claims of Russian collusion that ultimately triggered the Muller investigation.

“When it comes to the FISA warrant, the Clinton campaign, the counterintelligence investigation, it’s pretty much been swept under the rug except by a few Republicans in the House. Those days are over,” he said.  “Going forward, hopefully in a bipartisan fashion, we will begin to unpack the other side of the story.”

Graham said he intended to ask Barr to appoint a special-counsel investigator similar to Mueller to investigate the lingering questions over whether the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee may have colluded with the Justice Department and FBI to interfere with the election.

He said several questions lingered about the false pretenses the FBI used in using the Clinton-commissioned Steele Dossier to justify to the secretive FISA court why it should be allowed to eavesdrop on Trump campaign staffer Carter Page.

He also said he wanted to know what influence the Clintons may have exerted over then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch that caused her to recuse herself from investigating Hillary Clinton, and whether partisan motives may have swayed the decision by then-FBI Director James Comey to drop the investigation into Clinton’s private server and missing emails.

“Am I right to be concerned?” Graham asked. “Seems pretty bad on its face, but [we need] somebody like a Mr. Mueller to look at that so that—if nobody else—those who believe that the FBI and the Department of Justice were playing politics, that they wanted Clinton to win and Trump to lose, that somebody can satisfy them that that was looked at.”

Other lingering questions surrounded the commissioning of the dossier itself, which relied upon information from ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who allegedly used sources close to the Kremlin to supply it, with little vetting from the American intelligence community.

“The salacious material generated [by the dossier]… is just a bunch of garbage,” Graham said, “I think generated by Russians who are trying to undercut our democracy.”

One clear conclusion from the Mueller investigation, though was that the Russians were involved in sowing discord all around.

“There’s things I can’t tell you—they were out to get us all,” Graham said. “… If you just think Russia just likes Trump and hate Clinton, you’re missing the point of what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to divide all of us against each other and done a pretty good job of it.”

Graham also said the Russians were continuing in those efforts, and he hoped that his deep dive into the 2016 campaign would help find ways to prevent future interference.

“Critical infrastructure before this debate was power companies, financial services. Now it’s gotta be the political system,” he said. “Parties need to realize that they’re subject to being attacked, that the vote-tallying process needs to be hardened, that the social-media outlets that we all rely upon and enrich our lives can be co-opted to spread lies, to pit one American against the other.”

Despite his support for the Trump, Graham called on the president to stay out of attempting to direct or interfere with the Senate inquiry.

Instead, said Trump should to use the political capital he received from Mueller’s exoneration to move forward his agenda rather than to settle personal scores with adversaries.

“I don’t need your advice about what I should do,” Graham said. “If I were you, Mr. President, I would focus on what’s next for the country.”

Graham took several questions from reporters during the press conference, with many of them conveying the Left’s refusal to let the investigation drop.

He encouraged Democrats to “learn from our mistakes” referencing Republican’s pursuit of impeachment against former President Bill Clinton, which, despite strong supporting evidence of perjury in a sexual harassment investigation, wound up backfiring politically against Republicans in the public eye.

Graham also dismissed the notion that Mueller and Barr had punted on fully investigating claims of obstruction of justice, which stemmed from Trump’s decision to fire Comey from his FBI post after the innuendo about Russian collusion had already led to partisan investigations of his associates, including short-lived national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Graham said the case for obstruction would be very difficult in light of the fact that the collusion never happened to begin with.

“It is important but not dispositive that the underlying crime did not exist,” he said. “You can actually obstruct justice even if there is not a crime, but the intent really does go to whether or not somebody is trying to protect themself—and if they did nothing wrong to being with, it’s pretty hard to prove.”

Putting it all into perspective, Graham said only those with partisan objectives were despairing over the outcome of the Mueller report.

“To those wanting an outcome of removing Trump, you’ve gotta be disappointed,” he said. “To those who wanted somebody to look at Trump without interference, you’ve gotta be pleased. To those that are happy that your president has been cleared of working with a foreign power, I think you’re a good American.”

AOC’s Racist Hand Sign, Stalinist Rhetoric Fuel Questions on Motives

Ben Sellers
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‘The Bronx Democrat is the last person qualified to accuse someone else of dredging up hidden signals of racism…’

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Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez / IMAGE: The Late Show with Seth Meyers

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-NY, continued Thursday to add fodder to the widespread speculation about her motives—even recent online rumors that she may be a racist in disguise.

On “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” Ocasio–Cortez made an articulated gesture that many in the leftist media have observed to be a symbol of white supremacy when previously used by President Donald Trump and his supporters.

Left-leaning news sites and social media have pushed the narrative—believed to have started on 4chan—that the signal represents “white power,” and even the “fact checking” site Snopes designated the claim as “unproven” rather than “false.”

While the theory that AOC may secretly be part of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas likewise remains unproven, the freshman congresswoman’s ubiquitous exposure and increasing name recognition have indeed transformed her from a so-called democratic socialist into more of a national socialist, known to vigorously defend her colleagues’ anti-Semitic stereotyping.

The obsequious Seth Meyers and compliant audience on Thursday allowed AOC to push several blatantly false narratives with nary a trace of incredulity.

For her part, Ocasio–Cortez’s blending of Stalinist rhetorical tactics with the presence and diction of a 15-year-old Valley girl were apt to leave non-indoctrinatees to the theology of ‘wokeness’ uncertain whether to laugh, cry or cower in fear.

Among the highlights (or lowlights) of the segment:

● She regaled the audience with an anecdote mocking a Republican colleague, whom AOC accused of being “unprepared,” while repeatedly using “like” and “um.”

    “Especially with my Republican colleagues, they say things and I’m like ‘What does that have to do with what we’re talking about now.’ There’s this one member who famously every single Financial Services Committee hearing, he says ‘I ask everyone this: Are you a capitalist or a socialist?’ And like the person’s like in charge of National Flood Insurance Program, and they’re like ‘What?’”

● She falsely insinuated that the only reason many on Fox News and other media are preoccupied with her is an illicit sexual attraction, not that she has prescribed a $93 trillion spending plan over 10 years that also would drastically impact the everyday freedoms of all Americans.

    “I mean, it’s weird, like why are so many grown men just like obsessed with this like 29-year-old?”

● Set up with a softball question (one of many) from Meyers about whether she was a “Manchurian candidate,” she denied and then deflected, bragging that tax-funded office staffers received no less than $52,000 in salary, far more than most entry-level wage-earners.

    “I’m not a Manchurian Candidate, but I do have amazing staff and in no part [sic] thanks to the fact that we pay a living wage in our office—we don’t pay any less than $52,000 a year—which means so far two of my staffers have been able to quit their second jobs in restaurants and be fully present at work.”

● While literally on a TV show where she was promoting misinformation through selective omissions, lack of context and false premises—and receiving no pushback—she accused Fox News of duping Republicans by doing precisely that.

    “It is funny because one of the side effects of kind of this Fox News lunacy is that, uh, is that other actual members of Congress, like, believe it and see it uncritically, and so I was on the floor once and this guy came up to me and he was like, ‘Is it true that you got $10 million from Netflix?’ and I was like ‘No?’ and it was like in the well, like we’re voting on like gun reform and I’m like ‘What else do you not know?'”

● She falsely framed criticism of the controversial Green New Deal, with help from Meyers, who claimed without evidence that opponents were primarily concerned with its position on methane emissions (i.e. “cow farts”) that would force people to give up ice cream.

    “It’s always good to see how these narratives are manipulated because they’re trying to say that the Green New Deal is about what we have to give up—what we have to cut back on—when in fact the Green New Deal itself is a resolution to be more expansive. … The only reason I think anyone would have to cut back on ice cream I think is if their doctor advised them to.”

● She deceptively touted the fact that the GND was a nonbinding House resolution while omitting the fact that a companion Senate bill also exists with more than half of its Democratic co-sponsors also having declared presidential runs.

    “One of the things that’s important that doesn’t get communicated is that our Green New Deal legislation is not a bill. It’s a resolution … it is a declaration—it is an intentional vision document. What it does is that it puts forward the large scope, the overall vision of what we’re trying to accomplish and to say, ‘Listen, if we’re going to make progress, we need to declare our north star…’”

● After costing New York City 25,000 jobs or more by criticizing a proposed Amazon deal, she sought to deprive Washington, D.C.’s homeless population of paid work opportunities by attacking lobbyists’ use of them to hold places in line in front of congressional offices. She also suggested that they had no right to be there because they were not “everyday people.”

    “[Y]ou know, congressional hearings are not a Beyonce concert. You know, they’re two different things, and this is one way in which money in politics has really sunk so steep to the fact that everyday people can’t even see their own elected officials because a lobbyist has paid to get in there first.”

● She allowed Meyers to refute valid, bipartisan criticisms about her fuzzy math on crucial economic matters by showing a picture of her standing next to a high-school science project.

    “Science was my first passion, and I pursued the intel science competition—I studied microbiology and the impacts of antioxidants on model organism known as a C. C. Elegans…”

In an excellent takedown of the Left’s calumny, Rabbi Yaakov Menken wrote for the Center for American Greatness in January that Ocasio–Cortez was “projecting her own defect” in her frequent accusations of racist dog-whistles against Trump and other critics.

“The Bronx Democrat is the last person qualified to accuse someone else of dredging up hidden signals of racism, especially against a president who has, from the beginning, opposed racism and bigotry in all its forms,” Menken wrote.

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The convergence of AOC and Seth Meyers—who routinely jockeys with Stephen Colbert to be the Joseph Goebbels of late-night television—made patently clear that racist views are not the only qualities Ocasio–Cortez and the new socialist Left are projecting onto opponents.

The question is not if but rather why she is purposely misleading and manipulating the public.

Scott Walker Raising Funds to Oppose Eric Holder’s Gerrymandering Ploy

Ben Sellers
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‘There is no legal strategy the Democrats won’t try in order to litigate their way into power…’

Scott Walker Tells NFL Players to Focus on Not Beating Their Wives 1
Scott Walker/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) One of the first casualties of Obama operatives’ bid to redistribute political power through court-forced redistricting, former Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wisc., now hopes to raise money to counter the Left’s expansive gerrymandering.

Walker was recently named the fundraising chairman for the National Republican Redistricting Trust, an organization launched in 2017 to oppose the “sue til blue” efforts led by former Attorney General Eric Holder, Milwaukee’s Journal Sentinel reported.

“Barack Obama and Eric Holder want to gerrymander Democrats into permanent control, so we are working to ensure that our side has the organization and resources to combat their efforts,” Walker said in a statement on the NRRT website. “Our reforms work, and if we have a fair chance to make our case, we win.”

Democrats—including then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—pitched their idea for a well-funded gerrymandering operation to donors at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, according to an October 2016 Politico article.

Their efforts reaped considerable success already in the 2018 midterm election, after using activist courtrooms to undo the legislative district maps and add Congressional seats for their party in states like Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which recently merged with Obama’s political campaign arm, Organizing for Action, currently has targeted 12 red states for gerrymandering in the lead-up to the 2020 election.

The goal is to substantially reverse the balance of power prior to the 2021 district maps being drawn—a duty that, in many cases, is delegated to state legislatures every 10 years, following the national Census.

“Governor Walker will be a tremendous asset to the NRRT as we prepare for the next round of redistricting,” said NRRT Executive Director Adam Kincaid. “There is no legal strategy the Democrats won’t try in order to litigate their way into power. To fight back we need Republicans like Governor Walker who believe in the future of our country and our party.”

Obama and Holder Team to Take Out Walker in 2018, Flip Ryan's Seat
Eric Holder & Barack Obama/PHOTO: WhiteHouse.gov

Holder has coyly rebuffed the charges that Democratic efforts are a power-play, including a recent denial at a stop in Walker’s home state, where the NDRC is investing heavily on behalf of a Democrat in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, despite the judicial candidate’s appeal to reject outside money.

“We’re not here to gerrymander for Democrats,” Holder said. “I just want to have a fair process—and I’m confident that if we have a fair process, Republicans, conservatives, will not do as well as progressives, as Democrats, in a fair fight.”

Other ways Holder recently has advocated for a “fair fight” include eliminating the Electoral College and packing the Supreme Court with liberal justices when Democrats are eventually able to regain executive power.

He also drew widespread criticism and condemnation prior to last year’s election for appearing to encourage left-wing activists to use violence in order to achieve their political ends.

“When they go low, we kick them,” Holder said. “That’s what this new Democratic Party is about.”

With Walker at the helm, the NRRT has said it hopes to raise at least $35 million prior to the 2020 election.

But the group’s best fundraising weapon may well be Holder’s and and other Democrats’ own extremist rhetoric.

JORDAN: Mueller’s Prosecutors May Have Departed Because of Their Biases

Ben Sellers
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‘I think people should view with some skepticism the notion that gets breathlessly reported every week that the Mueller investigation is coming to an end…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In late February, CNN broke the story that the investigation being led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia might wrap up any day.

But as the probe drags on, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, suggested another possibility in a recent interview with Fox News.

Jordan said the dismissal of two key investigators at the start of March—taken as a sign of closure—may have been due to their bias, the Washington Examiner reported.

Jordan, who is the ranking minority member of the House Oversight Committee and a prominent figure in the conservative Freedom Caucus, joined Rep. Mark Meadows, R-NC, in penning a March 1 letter to Attorney General William Barr, voicing concerns over Mueller staffers Andrew Weissmann and Zainab Ahmad.

“The reason Ms. Ahmad might have left is the fact that the report is coming soon. We all kind of suspect that it is,” Jordan told Fox News. “It also might be a letter that Mr. Meadows and I sent to Attorney General Barr just 19 days ago.”

The congressmen said that the two high-level prosecutors had undisclosed contact, prior to the opening of the investigation, with a key witness—then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr—as part of a small circle of colleagues at the Department of Justice.

“This development raises questions about the impartiality and independence of Weissmann and Ahmad as senior members of the Special Counsel’s investigation,” wrote Jordan and Meadows in the letter to Barr.

Ohr was revealed to have stepped outside the scope of his duties in acting as an intermediary between the FBI and political research/lobbying firm Fusion GPS, helping to launch an investigation into Trump that ultimately paved the way for Mueller’s probe.

The Fusion firm—where Ohr’s wife, Nellie, happened to work as a Russian expert—compiled the since-debunked Steele Dossier, which was originally commissioned as opposition research by the Hillary Clinton campaign and based on information from questionable, unvetted sources within the Kremlin.

Whatever the reason behind the two recent departures, political watchers have waited with bated breath for the potentially game-changing Mueller report.

Even Trump and his new attorney general’s office seemed to be making preparations for the release.

The final report would go directly to Barr, including recommendations from Mueller as to how to proceed with further investigative or legal action. Barr would then have the option to summarize it for Congress or to release as much as he deemed fit.

However, with notoriously partisan media leakers like Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., leading the House Intelligence Committee, that would almost certainly result in the public disclosure of even classified details.

As Barr’s Justice Department internally debated how much of the report to provide to Congress—which, in a rare bipartisan move, firmly demanded that they receive the whole thing—Trump this week also came out supporting the full public release of the report.

Meanwhile, indications pointed to the possibility that Mueller may yet have some work to do.

Rep. Jim Jordan, Others Cast New Doubt over Mueller Probe's Imminent Conclusion 1
Robert Mueller / IMAGE: CBS News via Youtube

Reuters reported that the former FBI director is still investigating leads in at least three areas:

  • the interactions between Paul Manafort and a Russian business associate
  • the role Roger Stone played in the Wikileaks release of hacked Clinton campaign emails
  • the claims that Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey a few months into his presidency may have constituted obstruction of justice

More cynically, perhaps, Reuters observed that funding for the special counsel’s office—which in FY2018 spent around $9 million—is approved through the end of the fiscal year, on Sept. 30.

Politico said also that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who directly oversaw the bulk of the nearly two-year-long investigation, has temporarily delayed his departure plans.

One former Obama-era U.S. Attorney, Preet Bharara, who was fired two months into Trump’s term after refusing to resign his post, also remained skeptical about the investigation nearing its end, reported the Examiner.

In a recent interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” while noting that he was now an outsider with no privileged information, Bharara said, “I think people should view with some skepticism the notion that gets breathlessly reported every week that the Mueller investigation is coming to an end.”

Vulnerable Alabama Sen. Doug Jones Dodges Question on Impeaching Trump

Ben Sellers
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‘I think I’m just going to hold that one for a little bit…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., knows he holds one of the most at-risk seats in Congress.

His refusal to answer a question about impeaching President Donald Trump showed just how great the pressure is to appease his constituents in the reliably red state while suppressing any hints of solidarity with his radically leftist colleagues in Congress.

The conservative America Rising PAC posted video of Jones awkwardly dodging the question—submitted by an audience member—at a book-tour event in Birmingham on Saturday.

Aware that he is being recorded, Jones reads the question and laughs: “Would the country be better off if Trump is impeached or beaten in 2020?”

Tucking the card into his shirt pocket, he replies, “Well, I think I’m just going to hold that one for a little bit,” Jones says. “I’m sure there’s a tracker here recording this.”

Jones narrowly triumphed over Republican nominee Roy Moore in the  2017 special election to replace then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Despite a deluge of dark-money funding and media attention, a targeted misinformation campaign on social media using fake Russian bots, accusations of outside voters flooding the state and an array of scandals—including accusations of pedophilia—swirling around his controversial opponent, Jones still eked by with an advantage of only 1.7 percentage points over the former state Supreme Court chief justice.

Although Nancy Pelosi recently declared that she would not pursue impeachment against Trump barring clear bipartisan support,  Jones’ position on impeachment could prove to be particularly significant.

Not only would bipartisan opposition help to derail partisan attempts to claim moral high-ground, but a recent rebuke of Trump’s national emergency declaration on the immigration crisis at the Mexican border showed that the president will need every bit of support possible if House Democrats do pursue impeachment.

The national emergency rebuke—though largely symbolic as Trump had promised a veto—may have been a sort of loyalty test for Trump and his agenda.

A dozen GOP senators voted against the president on the emergency declaration, including libertarian free-agent Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., as well as frequent Trump foes like Sens. Mitt Romney, R-Utah; Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; and Susan Collins, R-Maine.

While Jones and all his Democratic colleagues voted to pass the rebuke, the total fell eight votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto.

The same majority would be necessary if the Senate, following an impeachment trial, were to vote on whether to find Trump guilty and remove him from office.

Facing a similar position during the impeachment proceedings of President Bill Clinton, voters made their voice heard in the 1998 midterm, reversing a massive Republican wave in Congress.

Several prominent GOP leaders, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., were forced out in the wake.

Jones will face re-election next year.

With the majority in the upper-chamber at stake and turnouts likely to be massive, his seat will be one of the most closely watched in the contentious political free-for-all.

Colorado Joins Sour-Grape Blue States’ Bid to End Electoral College

Ben Sellers
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‘It’s going to be very difficult to explain… why you’re casting California’s electoral votes against the wishes of a supermajority of Californians in favor of Donald Trump…’

Colorado Joins Sour-Grape Blue States' Bid to End Electoral College
Jared Polis / IMAGE: NBC News

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Once considered a swing state, increasingly liberal Colorado dove headfirst into the partisan divide by joining a radical effort to eliminate the Electoral College in presidential elections.

Newly elected Gov. Jared Polis already had expressed support for the Democrat state legislature’s proposal to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. On Friday, Polis signed the bill, formally adding Colorado to the compact, Roll Call reported.

The agreement means Colorado would pledge all of its electors to the candidate who wins the popular vote nationally rather than letting its own voters determine whom the state will support.

It follows closely on the heels of the 2016 election in which Hillary Clinton officially received 2.8 million more votes than President Donald Trump while still handily losing the election.

Trump received 306 of the 538 total electors, with Clinton receiving only 232.

The popular-vote compact would be triggered only if it were to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win an election. Until then, states may continue to assign their electors according to the votes of their own citizens.

Colorado’s addition puts the total number of would-be electors in states supporting the compact at 181.

So far, 11 other states and the District of Columbia have joined: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia.

All the previous states have supported Democratic presidential candidates in every election since at least 1992.

Colorado, on the other hand, was still considered a red state during the administration of George W. Bush and backed the Republican president in his 2000 and 2004 elections.

Colorado Public Radio noted that the popular-vote compact would have changed the state’s electoral vote twice in the past 10 elections—in the 1996 race where it supported Sen. Bob Dole over incumbent Bill Clinton, and in the 2000 race between Bush and Al Gore.

But despite its conservative, rural strongholds, the growth of far-left enclaves like Denver and Boulder has drastically shifted the political balance in Colorado since the Obama era.

Polis, a self-funded billionaire, made history after being elected last year as the country’s first openly gay governor. He welcomed the support of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on the campaign trail.

Two other states, Delaware and New Mexico, currently have legislature-passed bills supporting the popular-vote compact that are awaiting their governors’ signatures, Roll Call reported.

Barry Fadem, president of the California-based nonprofit National Popular Vote Inc., which is leading the effort, told Roll Call that Oregon, Maine and Nevada are also in the group’s cross-hairs.

The addition of those five states would put the total at 206 electoral votes.


Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

 

Fadem said that the effort was unlikely to reach 270 prior to the 2020 election, but he was optimistic about 2024.

However, if the compact were to take effect, it almost certainly would lead to federal court challenges.

Electoral College defenders maintain that the system is necessary for smaller states and more rural ones to have their voices be heard rather than letting national decisions be railroaded by only a handful of mega-states.

Norman Williams, a law professor at Oregon’s Willamette University, told Roll Call the measure could potentially come into conflict with the rules outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

Although states are free within the Constitution to choose their own electors, an inconsistency in the way those electors are determined—such as what happens if one state’s recount rules were triggered and resulted in a reversal of the popular vote—would then have national implications and undermine faith in the entire system.

Another example may be the differing approaches to ballot-harvesting in the last election.

While California passed a law prior to the 2018 race that permitted the third-party collection of absentee ballots—and reversed the election-night victories of several Republicans by continuing to count absentee ballots long afterward—a Republican victor in North Carolina was denied certification because the same practice was deemed fraud.

Conservatives criticize the popular-vote initiative as yet another blatant ploy to throw disproportionate power to sanctuary states that routinely turn a blind eye to illegal immigrants and other ineligible voters casting ballots.

Many, including President Trump himself, have questioned the legitimacy of Clinton’s popular-vote win, largely driven by regions that not only refuse to enforce immigration laws or to cooperate with law-enforcement officials, but that allow illegal residents to obtain driver’s licenses and vote in local elections, leaving ballot integrity severely compromised.

Even if poll workers in states like California and New York were to be trusted to follow election laws—despite the weight of evidence to the contrary—Democrats continue pushing to expand their voting base and electoral influence through an open-border policy, effectively violating the existing laws in order to force themselves into power and impose new ones.

As often is the case, however, with the Left’s bad-faith efforts to secure its own power at the expense of democratic norms and institutions, there is always the possibility that a Republican candidate might, one day, win the popular vote—which then would trigger the likely refusal of hypocritical blue states to observe their own self-imposed mandates.

Offering the 2020 race as a hypothetical, Williams said, “It’s going to be very difficult to explain to Californians—to your California constituents as a California representative or senator—why you’re casting California’s electoral votes against the wishes of a supermajority of Californians in favor of Donald Trump.”

Either way, Williams added, the compact inevitably opened the door to voter disfranchisement somewhere down the line.

“That will be true in all of the states that are having to cast their electoral votes against the wishes of how the state voted,” he said.

CAIR’s Use of Tragedy to Quiet Critics Leads to Uneasy Alliance w/ Mosque Shooter

Ben Sellers
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‘Leftist and Islamic groups have been trying for years to silence all criticism … and in the New Zealand massacre they see the best chance…’

CAIR's Use of N.Z. Tragedy to Blame Critics Leads to Uneasy Alliance w/ Mosque Shooter
CAIR’s Nihad Awad / IMAGE: Fox News via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In a 74-page manifesto posted by the Australian man charged with killing 50 people Friday in two attacks on New Zealand mosques, the shooter repeatedly said his goal was to foment tension and division.

He now is getting help in that effort from the unlikeliest of sources, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has capitalized on the tragedy to pursue its own political objectives, including total suppression of Islamic criticism within the U.S.

According to the manifesto, the shooter sought “to create conflict between the two ideologies within the United States on the ownership of firearms in order to further the social, cultural, political and racial divide within the United [S]tates.”

The self-proclaimed white-supremacist’s objectives mirrored, in many ways, those of Middle Eastern jihadis in their bid to undermine alleged U.S. imperialism and global influence.

“[T]his balkanization will also reduce the USA’s ability to project power globally,” wrote the killer.

In a bizarre twist, one of those blamed for helping flame the “Islamophobia” that led to the attack was Chelsea Clinton, who was confronted by Muslim activists at New York University during a candle-light vigil Friday evening.

“This, right here, is a result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the words that you put out into the world,” a student activist told her.

The criticism apparently related to Clinton’s platitudinous condemnation following the series of anti-Semitic comments that Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., had made.

“We should expect all elected officials, regardless of party, and all public figures to not traffic in anti-Semitism,” tweeted Clinton—whose husband, Marc Mezvinsky, is Jewish.

In response to the abuse heaped on Clinton, current First Son Donald Trump Jr. tweeted his solidarity with her.

The hollow effort by Islamic activists to deflect criticism of anti-Semitic positions using claims of “Islamophobia” defied all logic.

But some also worried that Islamist advocacy groups would attempt to use the New Zealand violence to silence other types of criticism by pressuring social media platforms to suppress it.

Jihad Watch Director Robert Spencer, described by the radical leftist Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the most prolific anti-Muslim figures in the United States,” said he expects platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Google will take the opportunity to de-platform him.

“Leftist and Islamic groups have been trying for years to silence all criticism of jihad terror and Sharia oppression of women and others,” Spencer wrote in a piece published by Frontpage Mag on Monday, “and in the New Zealand massacre they see the best chance in a long time to move in for the kill.”

Spencer said the International Union for Muslim Scholars had called for a ban on Islamophobia at the end of a two-day summit in Istanbul on Friday.

“Since analysis of the motivating ideology behind jihad terror is routinely smeared as ‘hatred of Islam and Muslims,’ this will likely outlaw all such analysis and make opposition to jihad terror effectively impossible,” Spencer said.

Ironically, Saudi Arabia, which received international condemnation over its state-sanctioned dismembering of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, also chimed in on the mosque attack.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman tweeted that the attack “reaffirms the responsibility of the international community in combating hate speech and terrorism that is not condoned by religions or the values of tolerance.”

But CAIR, which held a press conference on Friday, was perhaps the most egregious in its bid to exploit the shooting.

“CAIR’s press conference was a full-court press for censorship, and it painted, yet again, a large target on our backs for increasingly unhinged and violent Leftists,” Spencer said.

At the press conference, CAIR founder and CEO Nihad Awad cited a sentence from the killer’s own manifesto to delegate blame onto President Donald Trump “as symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose” while somehow missing the many parts where he had discussed Islamic extremism as a motivating factor.

Spencer said the Islamist groups and Leftist allies—all eager to avoid confronting the faith’s anti-Semitic, anti-female, anti-LGBT and pro-violence track record—sought to muddy the waters between reasonable censorship of the New Zealand murderer’s hate-based rhetoric and reasonable criticism of Islamic extremists’ hate-based rhetoric, creating a sort of uneasy alliance between the opposing groups that seek to stoke U.S. tensions.

“They have succeeded in fooling many people into thinking that it is ‘bigotry’ and ‘racism’ to oppose jihad terror, and have made those who discuss the motivating ideology behind jihad terror toxic in the public square,” Spencer said.

“Now Hamas-linked CAIR is attempting to use the New Zealand massacre to achieve total victory: the complete closure of all media platforms to foes of jihad terror and Sharia oppression,” he said.

Kasich Agency Tasked w/ Cutting Gov’t Regs Instead Caused Backlog

Ben Sellers
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‘They got caught up in the bureaucracy trying to cut the bureaucracy…’

2020 Presidential Rumors Abound With John Kasich Back in NH
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.”

SPLC Ousts Co-Founder Dees amid Claims of Racism, Misconduct

Ben Sellers
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‘You know, it’s sort of like the pot calling the kettle black…’

SPLC Ousts Iconic Co-Founder amid Allegations of Racism, Misconduct
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.”

Center for Immigration Studies Sues Southern Poverty Law Center for 'Hate Group' Label
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.

A 1994 Pulitzer-nominated series published by the Advertiser delved into some of the earlier allegations against Dees.

“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.”

Cuomo Punishes NY Student-Athletes to Protest Defunct NC Bathroom Law

Ben Sellers
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‘North Carolina welcomes all people, and student–athletes shouldn’t be used as political pawns…’

Photo by Patja

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Not long ago, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo found a way to blame his state’s $2.3 billion budget shortfall on the federal tax-regulation overhaul supported by President Donald Trump in 2017.

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.

NC Lawmaker Offends Jihad Media with Term 'Jihad Media'
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.”

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