Judicial Watch has pried loose a small quantity of Rod Rosenstein’s emails (suspiciously small) from the Department of Justice. They cover a few critical days in May 2017 when Rosenstein was in the process of appointing Bob Mueller as Special Counsel.
I am on an airplane (headed for another White House meeting tomorrow) and can’t comment on the emails in detail, but if you read through them, a few impressions jump out at you.
1) Rosenstein was a darling of the Democratic Party news media. His email exchanges with reporters from the New York Times and the Washington Post, who fawn over him, are striking. He gets to review news stories in draft form so as to correct any misimpressions the reporter may have formed. Stories are modified per his off-the-record input. Suffice it to say that this is not how reporters treat conservatives!
2) Reading emails to Rosenstein about the imminent appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate the Trump campaign conveys a sense of how pretty much the entire establishment has been arrayed against President Trump from the beginning. The self-righteousness–over a purported issue that we now know to be entirely fabricated–is nauseating.
3) This laughably pretentious email by Rosenstein, to a lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis, says it all. I would love to cross-examine Rosenstein on what he means by Mueller “sharing his view.” Click to enlarge:
4) Rosenstein acted as a political operative, behind the back of his putative boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions. No doubt he would say this was appropriate because of Sessions’ recusal. Still, this is childish at best, sinister at worst. You get the sense of Rosenstein and Mueller scheming together. Again, click to enlarge:
5) In the emails, there is one voice of sanity: Carter Page, the most innocent man in America! Once again, click to enlarge:
It is a very small window on to a very corrupt culture.
Israel election result too close to call – exit polls
From the Socialist BBC:
Exit polls following Israel’s second general election in five months suggest the result is too close to call.
The centrist Blue and White alliance of former military chief Benny Gantz is projected to win between 32 and 34 seats, and PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party 30 to 33 seats.
Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Avigdor Lieberman may end up being kingmaker.
Mr Netanyahu called the snap vote after failing to form a governing coalition in the wake of an election in April.
Negotiations on the formation of a new coalition are expected to start as soon as the preliminary results come on Wednesday morning.
Speaking to supporters early on Wednesday, Mr Netanyahu said: “We’ve all been through a difficult election campaign.
“We are still waiting for the actual results but one thing is clear. The state of Israel is at a historical point, we faced great opportunities and great challenges.”
Mr Gantz sounded more optimistic when he spoke to supporters a little earlier.
“Of course we’ll wait for the real results, but it seems we have accomplished our mission,” he said.
“The unity and reconciliation is ahead of us.”
What are the exit polls saying?
A revised exit poll released by Israel’s public broadcaster Kan early on Wednesday projected that Blue and White would win 32 seats and Likud 31 in the 120-seat Knesset.
In third place was the Israeli Arab Joint List with 13 seats; followed by Mr Lieberman’s secular nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party with nine; the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties with nine and eight respectively; the right-wing Yamina party with seven, and the left-wing Labour-Gesher and Democratic Union alliances with six and five respectively.
Channel 12 News put Blue and White and Likud level on 32 seats, while an updated poll Channel 13 News predicted that Blue and White would win 32 seats and Likud 30.
There was a muted response at Likud’s election night headquarters in Tel Aviv as the exit polls were released.
Hundreds of chairs for party supporters remained empty, as activists were kept outside the hall and leaders digested the numbers.
Likud’s foreign affairs director noted that Israeli exit polls had got things wrong in the past. Last time, they underestimated the number of votes for Likud and also for some of the religious parties allied to Mr Netanyahu.
The votes will be counted through the night. But it could take weeks of coalition horse-trading before the next government and prime minister emerge.
The election has been a referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu’s last 10 years in office. In opposition strongholds in Tel Aviv I saw queues of voters were waiting and hoping to end his political career.
Mr Netanyahu was, as usual, a formidable campaigner, even starring in his own commercials. His message was that he’s the only one – with his powerful friends like Donald Trump – to protect Israelis from Iran and the Palestinians.
On walkabout in Tel Aviv, I saw Avigdor Lieberman, who could be the politician the prime minister fears most once the coalition negotiations start. His Yisrael Beiteinu party could hold the balance of power.
One important factor is that although he used to be a major ally of the prime minister, now they’re opponents, even enemies.
After the exit polls Mr Lieberman’s supporters were the only ones who were celebrating. If the results back that up – polls aren’t always accurate – then the Netanyahu era in Israeli politics is ending.
I wonder how well the prime minister will sleep tonight.
What could happen next?
The BBC’s Tom Bateman says that if the polls are correct Mr Netanyahu has no simple route to government. In fact, the figures put him in an even weaker position than after April’s election, when coalition talks collapsed, he adds.
Mr Gantz could emerge as leader of the largest party, but he could have an even more complex job to form a government.
Mr Lieberman, an ally-turned-rival of the prime minister, could be crucial in deciding who takes office.
He prevented Mr Netanyahu from forming a coalition after the last vote because he refused to back down over a longstanding dispute with religious parties over a bill governing exemptions from military service for ultra-Orthodox young men.
At a rally in Jerusalem on Tuesday night, Mr Lieberman reiterated a call he made during the campaign for unity government.
“We only have one option,” he told supporters. “A broad, liberal, national government made up of Yisrael Beiteinu, Likud and Blue and White.”
Our correspondent says such a coalition only seems feasible if Mr Netanyahu were toppled as leader of Likud, as opposition groups have vowed not to sit with him at the helm.
Other possibilities could well play out first, including a third election, complicated by Mr Netanyahu’s looming hearing on corruption allegations, he adds. The prime minister denies any wrongdoing.
If the official results prove to be inconclusive, it will fall to President Reuven Rivlin to decide who gets the mandate to try to form a government. That person will have 28 days to do so, with a possible extension of not more than 14 days.
A spokesman for Mr Rivlin said he would hold consultations with party representatives “after he receives a clear picture of the results, and as soon as possible”.
Seven years ago today, as the presidential election contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney entered the home stretch, Vice President Joe Biden spoke at three events in Detroit. Biden was in the news that week because of an intemperate assertion that Republicans desired to put African Americans “back in chains.”
Such rhetorical excess is a hallmark of our time, especially when Democrats discuss race, but Biden’s infelicity put me in mind of a time a century and a half earlier when a Republican president was publicly challenged within his own party to do more to free human beings who were literally in chains.
The unsolicited advice to Abraham Lincoln came in the form of an open letter in a newspaper published by Horace Greeley. Although remembered today mostly for a phrase he didn’t utter (“Go west, young man”), in his own time Greeley was known as an ardent social reformer, journalist, and politician. He came relatively late to the cause of abolition, but once he did, Greeley was all-in. Even as Lincoln pushed reluctant Union Gen. George B. McClellan to press the fight against the Confederates, Lincoln was hearing it from his other flank. Greeley’s New York Tribune published an editorial headlined “Prayer of Twenty Millions,” in which Lincoln was told that many of those who had voted for him in the 1860 election were now “sorely disappointed and deeply pained” by the president’s presumed moderation toward the Southern states then in rebellion.
Three days later, on this date in 1862, Lincoln gave his answer.
* * *
Unbeknownst to Horace Greeley, Lincoln had been considering decisive action on the question of Southern slavery in the summer of 1862. The president had discussed it with his Cabinet and drafted a version of a sweeping executive order. But Lincoln believed it was best delivered from a position of strength. In the commander-in-chief’s mind, this meant issuing it after a military victory by Union troops. For this reason, Lincoln didn’t want to tip his hand entirely; neither did he want the Tribune’s editorial sitting out there unanswered. And on Aug. 22, 1862 — 157 years ago today — he formulated his reply.
“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave,” Lincoln wrote to Greeley, “I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”
This statement has been used by 20th century revisionists of various stripes to assert that Lincoln wasn’t all that committed to the cause of ending slavery. This criticism is not only wrong, it’s wrong in every respect. Abraham Lincoln had made his name in politics by speaking against slavery; the nascent political party he had joined was created to end it. Even as he wrote to Greeley, he was commanding a huge military force suffering frightful losses, a force called “Mr. Lincoln’s Army,” whose infantrymen marched off to war singing “John Brown’s Body,” later to be known as “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
In fact, Lincoln tipped his hand even in the Greeley letter, with his concluding statement: “I intend no modification,” he wrote, “of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.”
The “oft-expressed” observation was no exaggeration. Lincoln had forcefully denounced slavery before the Civil War and continued to do so throughout its duration. And he did so in ways that helped Americans see the cosmic issue at stake, which was whether all the Founders’ talk about freedom really meant anything at all.
In an Oct. 4, 1854 speech in Springfield, Ill., Lincoln had expressed it this way: “We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by fostering human slavery and proclaiming ourselves at the same time, the sole friends of human freedom.”
In an 1855 letter to his friend Joshua Speed, Lincoln amplified on this theme in more caustic language. “Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid,” he wrote. “As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal except Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
Three years later, Lincoln gave his famous “house divided” speech at the Illinois state Republican convention that nominated him for a Senate campaign.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Lincoln said. on that occasion. “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or the other.”
In his December 1862 State of the Union message to Congress, President Lincoln portrayed the intertwined goals of ending slavery and preserving the Union as one and the same. “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free,” he asserted. “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of Earth.”
At Gettysburg, Lincoln referred to the “unfinished work” of the Union dead as “a new birth of freedom” that validated not just the hopes of enslaved Americans, but the soaring principles of America’s founding.
In an 1864 letter to a friend from Kentucky, a newspaperman named Albert G. Hodges, Lincoln wrote, “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.” A month before he died, in a speech to the 140th Indiana Regiment, Lincoln said simply, “Whenever [I] hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
Lincoln’s actions, of course, spoke loudest of all. The military success he was awaiting on this date in 1862 came three weeks later at Antietam Creek. The cost was frightful: 2,100 Union soldiers killed, and another 9,500 wounded. The result was really a military stalemate, not a Union victory. But the Confederate losses were nearly as high, and the Battle of Antietam drove Robert E. Lee out of Maryland and back to Virginia. Less than two weeks later, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Syndicated radio host Dennis Prager joined Tucker Carlson Monday night about his lawsuit against Google for allegedly censoring his ‘Prager U’ short videos relating to conservatism.
Prager said Google is “transparently ideological” and “there is no question” that they censor conservative information.
“Google needs to say, ‘The truth is, we are not a conduit for free expression. We are here to, in fact, promote our views that are on the left,'” Prager said. “Either we’ll we a win or we’ll get honesty, and either way it’s a win.”
Prager U videos will always be available on RCP Video:
Republicans Just Scored A Strong Recruit In The Michigan Senate Race
by Geoffrey Skelley at fivethirtyeight:
.
John James, a Republican Senate candidate in Michigan.
BILL PUGLIANO / GETTY IMAGES
In the battle for control of the U.S. Senate in 2020, Republicans got some welcome news Thursday when Republican John James announced that he would challenge Democratic Sen. Gary Peters in Michigan’s Senate race. With the GOP defending 22 of the 34 seats that will be up in 2020, the party could really use more opportunities to go on the offensive — and the Michigan race may be just that.
Why is James’s candidacy notable? Well, the businessman and Army veteran ran for the state’s other Senate seat in 2018 and outperformed expectations against longtime Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, losing by only 6.5 percentage points. In the context of the 2018 cycle, this was the GOP’s seventh-best performance, according to a simple regression analysis that predicts a Senate race’s result by looking at the partisan lean of each state (how much more Democratic- or Republican-leaning the state is than the country as a whole1) and whether an elected incumbent from either party was running or not.2 That shows us how the actual candidates did compared to the baseline expectations for a generic candidate from that party:
James was one of the strongest Republicans in 2018
Margins of victory or defeat for Republican Senate candidates vs. their forecasted margins based on incumbency and the state’s partisan lean
MARGIN OF VICTORY OR DEFEAT
STATE
REPUBLICAN
RESULT
EXPECTED
DIFFERENCE
Utah
Romney
R+31.7
R+17.0
R+14.7
New Jersey
Hugin
D+11.2
D+22.5
R+11.3
Massachusetts
Diehl
D+24.2
D+34.5
R+10.3
Rhode Island
Flanders
D+23.1
D+31.8
R+8.7
Florida
Scott
R+0.1
D+8.5
R+8.6
Mississippi
Wicker
R+19.0
R+11.1
R+7.9
Michigan
James
D+6.5
D+13.5
R+7.0
Indiana
Braun
R+5.9
R+0.9
R+5.0
Washington
Hutchison
D+16.9
D+21.2
R+4.3
Missouri
Hawley
R+5.8
R+1.7
R+4.1
Mississippi special*
Hyde-Smith
R+7.3
R+5.1
R+2.2
Wyoming
Barrasso
R+36.9
R+35.1
R+1.8
Nebraska
Fischer
R+19.1
R+17.6
R+1.5
Wisconsin
Vukmir
D+10.8
D+11.5
R+0.7
Delaware
Arlett
D+22.1
D+22.7
R+0.6
Connecticut
Corey
D+20.2
D+20.6
R+0.4
Ohio
Renacci
D+6.8
D+7.0
R+0.2
California*
NA
D+30.2
D+30.3
R+0.1
Pennsylvania
Barletta
D+13.1
D+11.6
D+1.5
North Dakota
Cramer
R+10.8
R+12.3
D+1.5
Minnesota special*
Housley
D+10.6
D+8.0
D+2.6
Arizona
McSally
D+2.3
R+0.5
D+2.8
Hawaii
Curtis
D+42.3
D+39.5
D+2.8
Maine*
Brakey
D+19.1
D+16.2
D+2.9
Virginia
Stewart
D+16.0
D+12.6
D+3.4
Tennessee
Blackburn
R+10.8
R+14.6
D+3.8
Montana
Rosendale
D+3.6
R+0.7
D+4.3
New York
Farley
D+34.0
D+29.0
D+5.0
Maryland
Campbell
D+34.5
D+29.4
D+5.1
Nevada
Heller
D+5.0
R+0.6
D+5.6
New Mexico
Rich
D+23.6
D+17.9
D+5.7
Vermont*
Zupan
D+39.9
D+30.6
D+9.3
Texas
Cruz
R+2.6
R+12.2
D+9.6
Minnesota
Newberger
D+24.1
D+14.1
D+10.0
West Virginia
Morrisey
D+3.3
R+10.3
D+13.6
The only Republicans who did better than James in races that were at least somewhat competitive (races our model rated as anything less than “solid” for either party) were Rick Scott in Florida and Bob Hugin in New Jersey, though Hugin was likely aided by Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez’s scandals. During the campaign, James attracted support from top Republicans, including President Trump. James’s showing immediately put him on 2020 candidates-to-watch lists, and Peters’s seat seemed like a likely target.
Speaking of the incumbent, Peters could be vulnerable — in particular, more vulnerable than Stabenow was. First, he’s defending one of just two Democratic Senate seats that will be up in 2020 in states that Trump carried in 2016. (Alabama is the other.) The president only won Michigan by a whisker, but if Trump can keep the state in play next year, that would probably help down-ballot Republicans — Senate contests increasingly align with presidential races when they’re on the ballot at the same time. In 2016, for the first time in a presidential cycle,3every Senate race went for the same party that carried the state at the presidential level.
Second, Peters remains fairly unknown to his fellow Michiganders. In the first three months of 2019, 43 percent said they had no opinion of Peters — the largest share for any senator — according to Morning Consult’s job-approval data. Although Peters’s net approval rating was +10, his relative anonymity might make it easier for Republicans to define him negatively. His voting record is more conservative than that of many other Democrats in the Senate, but he has voted in line with Trump less often than the partisan lean of Michigan would predict.
Still, Peters shouldn’t be underestimated. He first won this seat in 2014 by a margin of 13 percentage points, successfully retaining it for Democrats despite a Republican wave environment that saw the GOP gain nine seats in the Senate. Peters also has a history of winning tough contests. Besides the 2014 campaign, which was initially viewed as competitive, he also won an incumbent-vs.-incumbent House primary in 2012 after being redistrictedfrom the suburbs into a Detroit-centered seat where then-Rep. Peters, who is white, prevailed in a majority-black district against Rep. Hansen Clarke, who has a mixed-race background (his mother is black and his father was an Indian immigrant).
Election handicappers agree that the Michigan race favors the Democrats, though there is some disagreement as to how much. With James in the race, the Cook Political Report and Inside Elections rate the contest as “likely” to go Democratic, but Sabato’s Crystal Ball says the race only “leans” toward the Democrats. Peters starts as a favorite, but James gives Republicans a real chance of winning Michigan’s Senate race in 2020.
Geoffrey Skelley is an elections analyst at FiveThirtyEight. @geoffreyvs
Reaction and analysis from former deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo and former independent counsel Sol Wisenberg.
William Barr has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate four times, has served two U.S. presidents, and has proven himself to be a consummate professional who deeply respects the great responsibilities and boundaries of the office of the attorney general. Considering the turbulent tenures of President Obama’s two attorneys general, Democrats’ partisan attacks on Barr’s honesty and transparency should fall on deaf ears.
To refresh your memory, Obama’s first attorney general, Eric Holder, became embroiled in a scandal when guns illegally sold to Mexican drug cartels by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were found at the scene of the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
When the House of Representatives requested documents related to the scandal, Holder refused and was held in contempt of Congress with 17 Democrats crossing the aisle to formally condemn him – the first time Congress had taken such action against a cabinet official. Obama invoked executive privilege to protect Holder and hide those documents from the American public: a decision that is still being battled in the courts.
His successor didn’t fare much better. In June of 2016, Attorney General Loretta Lynch met privately with former President Bill Clinton on her private plane on the tarmac in Arizona for an hour while his wife was being actively investigated by the Department of Justice for mishandling classified information through a private email server – an investigation Lynch later decided to close without pursuing charges.
Lynch claimed at the time that she would accept the FBI’s recommendation to pursue charges in the Clinton investigation, but according to testimony from FBI lawyer Lisa Page released earlier this year, it was, in fact, the Department of Justice that determined not to bring charges.
Democrats’ absurd claims about Barr are, in actuality, the sad truth about President Obama’s AGs.
A private meeting with the spouse of a major presidential candidate in an election year – which would have gone unnoticed was it not for a local television station – should be cause enough to doubt the impartiality of the nation’s top law enforcement officer. A secret meeting with the politically powerful husband of an investigative subject days before declining to pursue charges against her is a solid “F” grade on the tests of trust and transparency.
Barr, by contrast, has handled the release of the Mueller report with unprecedented transparency: releasing the full report with minimal redactions as quickly as possible and even allowing select members of Congress to view all of the report that is legally viewable at their convenience. As of this week, no Democrat has taken him up on that offer.
It wasn’t enough. Following Barr’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrats’ slander reached fever pitch: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wasted no time or investigation in declaring the attorney general of the United States a criminal, the junior senator from California falsely claimed Barr “lied to Congress,” and another Democratic colleague said he was “a paid hack for the president.”
Democrats’ public vilification of Barr is a glimpse into how Holder’s “Fast and Furious” scandal or Loretta Lynch’s tarmac summit with Bill Clinton might have played out without the air support of a breathless liberal media unwilling to portray Obama officials as anything but selfless public servants and Trump officials as anything but supervillains.
Democrats’ absurd claims about Barr – that he’s calling balls and strikes based on partisan allegiance, that he’s refusing to cooperate with reasonable congressional requests, that he may have declined prosecution to protect his political ally – are, in actuality, the sad truth about President Obama’s AGs.
Americans should remember this blatant double standard as we watch Democrats’ last-ditch effort to destroy Attorney General Barr, a distinguished public servant, and call these smears what they are: bluster from politicians desperate to stretch out the Mueller investigation as long as possible in an attempt to damage President Trump and baseless political grandstanding from presidential candidates.
In both cases, it should be treated as exactly as what it is: hypocrisy.
America’s Democrat Party’s Feminazi Wing Recently Demanded the Elimination of the United States’ “ELECTORAL COLLEGE”! Hillary Clinton had lost the November, 2016 Presidential Election according to the FEDERAL LAW of our American nation since 1801.
Without the establishment of the “Electoral College” there most likely would never have been a Republic called the “UNITED STATES of America” without wars! Comprises had to be made to satisfy the ‘power’ of the more populated states, such as massive Virginia, yet respect the existence of the needs of those states such as Rhode Island, Delaware, and Connecticut, and soon after the 13 Colonies becoming states, tiny Vermont and New Hampshire. Therefore the male wisdom of that era of the birth of our Nation, a bicameral legislature was agreed upon….the Senate, where the States would be equal in number (2) in the upper chamber, the Senate, and be awarded membership relative to their populations in the House of Representatives where mob rule could fight things out based upon the State’s population: with each state awarded one Representative. Today’s ‘bullies’ in the House are from California…..with 53 members, Texas, with 36, and New York and Florida each with 27.
Each state’s Electoral College vote depends upon the total number of Senators and Representatives determined by the general population of citizens registered in each state….
Census taking occurs every ten years. Why do you think the fascist leftists who own California these days are circling their wagons around those millions of illegal immigrants they are amassing for the 2020 decade?
Do you understand what the Electoral College is? Or how it works? Or why America uses it to elect its presidents instead of just using a straight popular vote? Author, lawyer and Electoral College expert Tara Ross does, and she explains that to understand the Electoral College is to understand American democracy.
Please click below for the Prager University review of our American Electoral College system:
MN Prager Discussion Group 