Six Months and Millions Later, Still Nothing But Noise.

The illegal leaks from the grand jury to the media were correct in that an arrest would lead off the week’s news cycle and all but bury the Russian uranium scandal as well as Team Hillary’s funding of the Fusion GPS dossier. What today's charges really show is how little Robert Mueller really has. After nearly 6 months all he's got at this point is crumbs and table scraps. And for that you don't need a Special Counsel. 

Mueller threw the book at the scummy lawyer Paul Manfort with a twelve-count indictment that's intended to serve as valuable leverage as the special prosecutor tries to flip Manafort against Trump. This is all a last ditch effort by Mueller the especially conflicted prosecutor to save his own job in the face of increasing calls to resign.

This week the F.B.I. will finally produce documents to congressional investigators on Fusion GPS which will at the very least embarrass the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice. Mueller wants to distract from this because it exposes how James Comey, Mueller’s friend, is at the center of most of the created crimes dreamed up by President Trump’s enemies. This week the F.B.I. informant on the Uranium One investigation will communicate with congressional investigators. Mueller wants to distract from this too because Uranium One and the related scandals directly implicate Mueller and the entire Obama gangster government. 

The Manfort indictments are purely focused on alleged financial crimes and does not include any charges related to the question whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.  The left are giving themselves high-fives this morning as they think they can now smell Trump’s downfall and have fully and proudly aligned themselves with an unelected and unaccountable Deep State.  While the indictments don’t directly implicate the White House, it puts Mueller into god mode and erases any coverage of how the Obama regime, the Clintons and the Intelligence Community colluded to reverse the results of a legitimate election. Trump will rue the day that he didn’t fire Mueller.  

CIA-WaPo Suspicious “election hack” Claim

“The CIA says” is never a great way to start a sentence. But that’s the basis of the latest charge that Russia hacked the US presidential election.

Members of Congress have now been secretly briefed by the CIA on “the Russian affair,” and media, led by the Washington Post, are running with the story that Russia influenced the US election on the side of Trump. Until and unless the denizens of Langley decide to show specific and convincing evidence for their claim, this is disinformation.

It’s easy to assemble a circumstantial case. But each case has to be judged on its own merits, and the devil is in the details. If we aren’t privy to those details in the “Russian affair,” no judgement is possible. Of course, major media outlets don’t seem bothered by that. They’re happy to cite the CIA as an authority—conveniently ignoring the fact that people in the intelligence field are taught to lie. It’s their stock in trade.

You might remember the Washington Post’s role in defaming and destroying a reporter named Gary Webb, who published a series of articles in the Mercury News about the CIA seeding black Los Angeles neighborhoods with crack cocaine. The Post basically asked the CIA whether the charge was true, and when the Agency denied it, the Post attacked Webb as a “fake news” reporter. The same Washington Post is now leading the campaign to tie the Russian government to Hillary Clinton’s defeat. And the Post, once again, is using unproven statements from the CIA to back up their claim.

You could go on and on about the Post and its historic CIA ties. But now, right now, the owner of the Post is Jeff Bezos, who also owns Amazon. And Amazon has a $600 million contract to provide the CIA cloud computing services.

Boom.

Ordinarily, that would be called a fatal conflict of interest, whenever the Post opens up its yap about the CIA in any context. However, mainstream news outlets, the very big ones, don’t go around criticizing each other’s ownerships; so the Bezos-CIA relationship is conveniently ignored and left “in the past.”

And who exactly are the fake news outlet?

Is Bullet Head Knee Deep in the IRS Scandal?

US Rep. Elijah 'Bullet Head' Cummings (D-MD)

Every wonder why Democrat blowtorch Elijah Cummings was appointed to the House Oversight Committee investigating Lois Lerner and the IRS scandal? Protection and mudding the waters for the Obama administration, and himself.......Before the 2012 election, there seemed to be a concerted effort by democrats to get the IRS and other agencies onto the backs of conservative groups, and looks more and more like Ol' Bullet Head himself was involved......

Red Statements

Cleta Mitchell, who is representing True the Vote, filed an ethics probe against Elijah Cummings on February 6th (2014) with the Office of Congressional Ethics . Last fall, True the Vote started receiving 8 and 9 page letters from Cummings, claiming he was conducting an investigation of their organization as part of the House Oversight Committee. One problem. The House Oversight Committee is only allowed to investigate government agencies. Going after a private citizen is illegal.

Mitchell wants to find out if Cummings is responsible in part or completely for the harassment of Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote. After Cummings launched his “investigation” , Engelbrecht had her business audited twice, her personal taxes once, two visits from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, a surprise visit from OSHA, seven visits from the FBI.

Last week, emails were released to the committee that showed that Cummings was working with Lois Lerner, which is why he attempted to scuttle the investigation into the IRS, immediately as soon as it was announced.

Cleta Mitchell is turning up the heat with her public statements such as:  

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Some Homeland Security Employees Have Been Paid to Stay Home for Over a Year

WAPO - A year after auditors documented tens of thousands of federal workers on paid leave for at least a month and longer stretches that exceed a year, close to 100 Department of Homeland Security employees still are being paid not to work for more than a year.

The large number persists even after the Obama administration urged agencies in June to curtail their reliance on what is known as administrative leave, the government’s go-to strategy for dealing with employees facing allegations of misconduct.

Now Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who provided the numbers he received from DHS, is demanding answers from agency officials. In a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson Wednesday, he called the officials’ previous explanation for extended leave cases “too broad and vague to assess whether other actions might have been more appropriate.”

Grassley said the agency failed to explain how it was meeting federal guidelines to reserve paid leave for rare circumstances when an employee poses a physical threat in the workplace, or how sidelining employees for so long is consistent with numerous rulings by the comptroller general that federal workers should not be sidelined for long periods for any reason.

“DHS also failed to explain why such extended amounts of time were needed to conduct investigations into security issues, misconduct, or fitness for duty,” Grassley wrote.

DHS was one large agency cited by the Government Accountability Office in October 2014 in the first report on administrative leave. The audit, first made public by The Washington Post, found that 53,000 civilian employees were kept home for one to three months during the three fiscal years that ended in September 2013. About 4,000 of them were idled for three months to a year and several hundred for one to three years.

The tab for these workers exceeded $775 million in salary alone, auditors found. While employees stay home, they not only collect paychecks but also build their pensions, vacation and sick days and move up the federal pay scale.

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Crawling Across Broken Glass

Why Democrats do not care about Hillary's Scandals

The Wahoo

The Clintons weather scandals better than North Face weathers weather, surely in part because they have already survived so many. People have settled their opinions, expect the Clintons to behave in a certain way and their opponents to react in a certain way, and when both sides follow the script exactly nobody changes their mind. One either cares or does not care. Don't believe me? Google "Clinton scandals fatigue" and see how many stories there have been over so many years.

 There is another consideration that reinforces these tendencies for the 2016 election. The Republicans control both houses of Congress and have a critical edge on the Supreme Court heading in to 2016, and liberals are literally terrified of a GOP sweep of the federal government, which terror is only amplified by contemplating what a Republican could do with Barack Obama's approach to regulatory power. To Democrats a GOP sweep would fulfill the apocalypse, and they would crawl across broken glass, eat corporate food, or vote for Elmer Fudd to prevent it.

The Republicans could nominate Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and the Democrats could put up Jimmy Carter and James Buchanan and virtually every liberal would still vote for the Democrats in 2016 "because SCOTUS" or some other tweetable reason. The election will be decided in maybe seven states, and in most of those by turning out the base rather than by recruiting the declining population of centrist ticket-splitters. Therefore, the value, such as it is, in talking about Hillary's scandals is to stimulate the same fear on the right as currently prevails on the left. Which, of course, changes no minds, and will lead to another president with no mandate for governing the country other than the bare fact of victory.

(http://conservativewahoo.blogspot.com/)

Gallup: Both Parties Poll Below 40 percent Favorability

In a Gallup poll released Monday, 37 percent of Americans view the Republican Party favorably and 39 percent view the Democratic Party favorably.  This is because in many respects both parties are vestiges of the 20th Century and do not reflect the the will of even the real people who make up the respective parties, never mind the people who operate outside of the parties.  

Disgruntled Republicans were the first to really break with their party. The Democrats, filled with folks who embrace a more union lockstep mentality have been slower to voice their displeasure, but even they are leaving the herd.  People are fed up. They are increasingly empowered thanks in large part to the Internet. This poll is just a blip in an ongoing American trend.

"Except for a brief spike to 51% for the Democrats after Obama was re-elected in 2012, both parties' ratings have registered below 50% since 2010. The descent to sub-40% ratings for both parties marks a new low in an already inauspicious trend...."

As far as the Democrats go, guess that Hopey Changey thing hadn't worked out so well.....

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A Legacy of Racial Politics

Eric Holder leaves a dismal legacy at the Justice Department, but one of his legal innovations was especially pernicious: the demonizing of state attempts to ensure honest elections.

Those who oppose photo voter-ID laws and other election-integrity reforms are intent on making it easier to commit vote fraud. Well-established evidence show that voter-ID laws don't disenfranchise minorities or reduce minority voting, and in many instances enhance it, despite claims to the contrary by Mr. Holder and his allies. As more states adopt ID laws, the more left has railed against them with increasing fury, even invoking the specter of the Jim Crow era to describe electoral safeguards common to most nations, including in the Third World.

Ascribing racial animus to people who are trying to safeguard democratic integrity is a crude yet effective political tactic that obscures the truth. But there's something even worse than name-calling: legal interference from Washington with valid state laws.

Six Years Wasted

Americans are amazingly patient with their presidents, but Obama has pushed them beyond scandal fatigue. The “final straw” appears to be the illegal alien invasion masterminded by Obama.

The cliché is that “the fish stinks from the head” and it is clear now that the Obama administration reflects the corruption and incompetence of Barack Obama, a Chicago politician who leapt to power despite not even having served a full term as a U.S. Senator. He was elected to be the first black President of the United States and it is no small irony that even African-Americans know he has done little or nothing to address their needs and concerns.

He will not be impeached as he should be, but he will increasingly lack any power other than executive orders. The constitutional system will work, but it will take decades to repair the damage."

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Failure To Uphold Immigration Laws Violates Oath of Office

Texas Rep.Stockman Files Charges Ordering Arrest of Lois Lerner

Congressman Steve Stockman Thursday filed a resolution directing the House Sergeant-At-Arms to arrest former IRS Director of the Exempt Organizations Unit Lois Lerner on charges of contempt of Congress.

“Asking the Justice Department to prosecute Lois Lerner for admittedly illegal activity is a joke. The Obama administration will not prosecute the Obama administration. How much longer will the House allow itself to be mocked? It is up to this House to uphold the rule of law and hold accountable those who illegally targeted American citizens for simply having different ideas than the President,” said Stockman. Under the resolution Lerner would be held in the D.C. jail and would have full legal rights and access to an attorney.

“It’s time to for House to stop tacitly endorsing this administration’s illegal activity by refusing to hold him accountable. I expect Democrats to defend and even praise criminal activity. The question is whether Republican leadership will join them in mocking the House and breaking the law,” said Stockman.

Contempt of Congress is a criminal offense (Act of January 24, 1857, Ch. 19, sec. 1, 11 Stat. 155.) Congress’ power to hold someone in contempt has been recognized by the United States Supreme Court four times.

Democrats admit the House has the power to arrest those in contempt of Congress. “I could have arrested Karl Rove on any given day,” former House Speaker and current House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi told The Huffington Post just days ago, on June 20. “I’m not kidding. There’s a prison here in the Capitol. If we had spotted him in the Capitol, we could have arrested him.”

CNN has also recognized Congress’ power to arrest those in contempt of Congress, going so far in 2008 as to televise potential locations where Rove would be held.

The New York Times also recognizes the House’s power to arrest.

“From the Republic’s earliest days, Congress has had the right to hold recalcitrant witnesses in contempt — and even imprison them — all by itself. In 1795, shortly after the Constitution was ratified, the House ordered its sergeant at arms to arrest and detain two men accused of trying to bribe members of Congress. The House held a trial and convicted one of them,” the Times wrote in a Dec. 4, 2007 editorial.

“In 1821, the Supreme Court upheld Congress’s right to hold people in contempt and imprison them. Without this power, the court ruled, Congress would “be exposed to every indignity and interruption, that rudeness, caprice, or even conspiracy, may mediate against it.” Later, in a 1927 case arising from the Teapot Dome scandal, the court upheld the Senate’s arrest of the brother of a former attorney general — carried out in Ohio by the deputy sergeant at arms — for ignoring a subpoena to testify."

 The Text of Resolution H.Res. 664

via stockman.house.gov

Our Government in Action.....

Government bureaucrats: that thin, blue-flannel-suit line between civilization and Somalia. The Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, keeps us from having exploding water and headless chickens have done some odd things recently.  Contractors built secret man caves in an EPA warehouse, an employee pretended to work for the CIA to get unlimited vacations and one worker even spent most of his time on the clock looking at pornography. But it appears, however, that a regional office has reached a new low.

Management for Region 8 in Denver, Colo., wrote an email earlier this year to all staff in the area pleading with them to stop inappropriate bathroom behavior.  Eric Katz of the FedBlog tells America that EPA employees ARE POOPING IN THE HALLWAY, and that they are being told to STOP IT.

"In the email, obtained by Government Executive, Deputy Regional Administrator Howard Cantor mentioned “several incidents” in the building. Confounded by what to make of this occurrence, EPA management “consulted” with workplace violence “national expert” John Nicoletti, who said that hallway feces is in fact a health and safety risk. He added the behavior was “very dangerous” and the individuals responsible would “probably escalate” their actions. 

“Management is taking this situation very seriously and will take whatever actions are necessary to identify and prosecute these individuals" 

He asked for any employees with knowledge of the poop bandit or bandits to notify their supervisor. EPA spokesman Richard Mylott provided the following statement:

“EPA cannot comment on ongoing personnel matters. Our brief consultation with Dr. Nicoletti on this matter, a resource who regularly provides our office with training and expertise on workplace issues, reflects our commitment to securing a safe workplace.”

“Dangerous”? “Escalating”?  Smearing shit around is a time-honored tradition in American government.

Chalk One More Up in the Democrat Sleezeball Column

No experience in office? Check. Sketchy business partners? Check. Media manipulation? Check.

Well Hell, Let's Make Him Governor....

Sleezeball- Elect McAuliffe

Terry McAuliffe represents an unseemly side of Washington. His primary role in politics for the past two decades or more has been to spew the party line in the media, and raising lots of cash. Most notably, for the Clintons. He cooked up the idea of essentially renting out the Lincoln bedroom during the Clinton administration as a fundraising vehicle, and he smashed all previous presidential fundraising records in the process.

When McAuliffe was the Dems' top fundraiser, a campaign finance scandal besieged the Clinton White House. Coincidence? No. McAuliffe was all about pushing the envelope when it came to the political money chase. That alone is not be enough to render him a distasteful political candidate in his party. Quiet the contrary.

What's different about McAuliffe is his brazen mixing of his campaign fundraising activity and attempts to enrich himself personally. Many of McAuliffe's business deals have come about due to his place in the political cosmos, not because he possesses a wealth of business skill. That tangled history has linked him to a long list of slimy unsavory characters. 

Could a Beaten Weiner Still Become a Star?

Seems the Anthony Weiner for Mayor troops are making a film of the walking scandal sheet for a possible last ditch appeal in final stretch of the campaign. The New York Post reported that MTV filmmaker Josh Kreigman, who worked as Weiner’s congressional aide, has been following the candidate around, filming and recording every step of the way. 

If all else fails and he whithers in defeat, who knows, they could submit it as a resume' to ...oh.... maybe MSNBC. After all, if they would consider giving airtime to a over inflated testicle like Alec Baldwin, why not a world class dick like Anthony Weiner?  He'd fit right in with the rest of those freaks.

At the Dominican Day Parade Sunday,
Weiner waived a big flag and dashed around
shouting,“Viva la Republica Dominicana!”

NYP - Even if he doesn’t make it to Gracie Mansion, the mayor wannabe could star in a documentary film about his headline-grabbing campaign.

The Post spied MTV filmmaker Josh Kriegman — who is also Weiner’s former congressional district director — filming his every last word on the campaign trail recently. He’s often seen riding with Weiner, and a black mike box has been in Weiner’s back pants pocket for at least two weeks.

Camp Weiner would only say the recording is not for a television commercial — the first of which is slated to air on Monday. The $500,000 pitch follows his recent poll-number plunge in the wake of new revelations about his sexting habit, according to sources. Kriegman does not appear anywhere on Weiner’s recent campaign filings, though he worked for him as recently as 2005. “He appears to be with [Weiner] all the time. He’s been at retail stops, street fairs, forums. I bet he has amazing footage from the past couple months,” said one observer, who is often at multi-candidate events.

The responses to Weiner on the campaign trail have ranged from celebrity-spotting-like squealing to profane heckling."

The Nixon Scandal Template

“On August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon announced his resignation as of noon the following day, thus avoiding the humiliation of certain impeachment. It was a solemn moment in the life of the nation. The change in leadership took place with no soldiers with fixed bayonets in the streets to keep civil order. The nation accepted the departure of its disgraced president and welcomed his successor peacefully.”

This is how Harry Rosenfeld described that day forty years ago in his autobiography, “From Kristallnacht to Watergate: Memoirs of a Newspaperman."  The book evokes the long effort to get at the truth behind a June 17, 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex. Rosenfeld was the metro editor at The Washington Post at the time.

Many readers were not even born at that time and, for them, it is a useful lesson in the way a combination of tenacious journalism and the wheels of government combined to result in the historic resignation of a president who had won an impressive reelection.

Despite the slavish coverage of Barack Obama by much of the nation’s mainstream press, the fact remains that the “phony” scandals he wants to dismiss are in the news every day, building a momentum that could lead to his resignation in the face of impeachment.

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Well, at least the golf courses are still open......

'“It seems as if al-Qaeda, or its Arabian Peninsula branch, has succeeded in terrorizing the United States of America again, but this time without – as of this writing – detonating an ounce of C4. It doesn’t strike me as a wise idea to preemptively shutter 21 different American embassies across the Middle East and North Africa in response to NSA-collected terrorist chatter. What message does this post-Benghazi, “don’t say we didn’t tell you” move send to the citizens of the Middle East, who, it is our hope, understand the United States to be a powerful and fearless country dedicated to openness and to the defeat of fanaticism? We have already muddied any message of fearlessness by turning our embassies into bunkers. Now, we are admitting that these bunkers aren’t safe. What next? Virtual embassies on Facebook? Ambassadors who never leave Washington?" - Jeffrey Goldberg,  Bloomberg

image via Earl of Taint

On Saturday, as embassies around the globe remained closed due to terror threat, and while his national security team met for emergency session, President Obama golfed for his birthday. He headed over early to Andrews Air Force Base in order to get in a round of golf before heading to Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains to Camp David.

US Government Officially Charges Edward Snowden with Espionage......

 "Think of the irony here for a moment. Edward Snowden alerts the world that the United States is spying on its own citizens, and, in turn, the Federal Government charges him with spying."  - Poor Richards News

from The Washington Post

Federal prosecutors have filed a sealed criminal complaint against Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of documents about top-secret surveillance programs, and the United States has asked Hong Kong to detain him on a provisional arrest warrant, according to U.S. officials.

Snowden was charged with espionage, theft and conversion of government property, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the case.

The complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, a jurisdiction where Snowden’s former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, is headquartered and a district with a long track record of prosecuting cases with national security implications.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment......."

There was never any doubt that the Justice Department would seek to prosecute Snowden for one of the most significant national security leaks in the country’s history. The Obama administration has shown a particular propensity to go after leakers and has launched more investigations that any previous administration. This White House is responsible for bringing six of the nine total indictments ever brought under the 1917 Espionage Act. Snowden will be the seventh individual when he is formally indicted."

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The Other Side of the Sword - Damage Done by the NSA Leaks

In part from The Free Beacon

 "Jihadist websites urged terrorists to change passwords and shift communications to more secure means following the recent disclosure of the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance of the Internet, according to U.S. officials.

Postings monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies called for the changes in online communications and are the first sign of potential damage caused by the publication of the NSA’s large-scale program to monitor Internet traffic through major U.S. data companies.

The once top-secret program known as PRISM was disclosed by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who said he exposed the program as infringing on Americans’ civil liberties....."

"The al Qaeda-affiliated, open-access website Ansar al Mujahidin posted several messages earlier this week expressing concern and urging terrorists to seek more secure electronic communications outlets. Terrorists were critical of the Ansar al Mujahidin website administrators for not doing enough to warn members to the monitoring danger.

One jihadist identified as “Abu Muizz” stated that the NSA program is “very dangerous” as it can access email, chats, stored data, voice transfers, and social networking data. The program was a serious threat to jihadist media groups working through Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites.

In a troubling sign, the jihadist posted links to documents on the PRISM program. That is likely to allow terrorists to avoid or limit monitoring of Internet communications.

A second jihadist urged members of the al Qaeda forum to use software called Tor that can mask online identities and avoid discussing jihadist topics in online voice exchanges. Another jihadist urged terrorists to use Jitsi, a software program that allows secure video and audio calls and another software called MorphVOX that can mask voices.

The website also included, in an indication that al Qaeda is reacting to the NSA disclosures, illustrations for secure communications from a person who is a member of the closed al Qaeda website Shumukh al-Islam.

Jihadists on Twitter also urged fellow terrorists to avoid using Windows and shift to Linux. One posting said Microsoft had become “one of the CIA’s most dangerous tools” for countering terrorists...."

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On Striking a Balance Between Security and Freedom:

"Obama asks us to trust that he's using power judiciously. Under President Bush, liberals were never given reason to fear that government power was being used to persecute them. Enough said.

"The president assures us that 'no one is listening to our phone calls,' and that may be true. But this administration also assured us that no sweeping data collection on American citizens was going on, that the IRS was not unfairly singling out conservatives, that the Justice Department had not attempted to prosecute journalists, and that the Benghazi attack was the response to a video.

"It would be nice to trust the president, but it wouldn't be wise."

— Mona Charen, Nationally Syndicated Columnist

Joe Biden Leads White House IRS Scandal Investigation

The Vice president Vows to Get to the Truth and Who is behind the Scandal