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Welcome to the official home and wonderful world of Pulitzer Prize Winning Political Cartoonist Michael P. Ramirez, daily editorial cartoonist for the Las Vegas Review Journal |
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MAY 8, 2019 BY JOHN HINDERAKER POWERLINE
DEMOCRATS CITE BAR FOR CONTEMPT The Democrats are out of ammo, so they continue to flog the dead horse of the Mueller Report. Today, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress. I assume the full House will follow up with such a citation on a party-line vote. Democrats have demanded that Barr produce the full, unredacted Mueller Report, perhaps on the theory that there must be a pony in there somewhere–if you remember the old joke–but more likely, simply to distract attention from the booming economy. Barr says that because it is illegal to disseminate grand jury testimony without the consent of the witnesses, he cannot legally comply with the Democrats’ demands. This position appears to be correct. In any event, I have not seen any attempt at a coherent response to it. The Democrats’ move is exclusively political. It has no practical consequences. It does remind us, however, that the first Attorney General to be cited for contempt of Congress was Eric Holder. In that case, Congressional Republicans were trying to get documents relating to the Fast and Furious scandal. Unlike today’s vote, the House’s vote to find Holder in contempt was bipartisan, with 17 Democrats joining the Republicans in the vote to hold Holder in criminal contempt. (21 Democrats voted to hold him in civil contempt.) Because of Holder’s stonewalling, Congress never did get to the bottom of the Fast and Furious gun-running fiasco. In that long-ago era of 2012, Democrats had a very different view of the merits of holding an Attorney General in contempt. Nancy Pelosi termed the contempt motion “ridiculous,” and said “It’s not only to monopolize [Holder’s] time, it’s to undermine his name.” Adam Schiff: “We ought to be thinking about what this does to the future relationship between the two branches of government and how the subpoena power is used and how it is abused. But, unfortunately, here I think it has become now a completely political exercise.” Elijah Cummings: “You accused him of a cover-up for protecting documents that he was prohibited by law from producing. You claimed that he — and I quote — ‘obstructed’ — end of quote — the committee’s work by complying with federal statutes passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president of the United States.” There is another difference between the two contempt votes. I did a Google search for “Holder contempt Congress.” It returned 2,520,000 results. Next I searched for “Barr contempt Congress,” and got 46,900,000 results: a 19 to 1 ratio. Is anyone surprised? read more from Powerline |
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Join Dave Sussman of Whiskey Politics as he explores why Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential election with famed historian Victor Davis Hanson. Dave is one of our favorite television personalities, and we think you'll love his conversation with our friend Victor at his home in the Central Valley of California.
Democrats Face a Bleak Post-Mueller Landscape
. By Victor Davis Hanson REAL CLEAR POLITICS May 09, 2019 Barr recently released a brief summary of special counsel Robert Mueller's conclusions that Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians to warp the 2016 election. Barr added that Mueller had not found enough evidence to recommend that Trump be indicted for obstruction of justice for the non-crime of collusion. Progressives, who for 22 months had insisted that Trump was a Russian asset, were stunned. But only for a few hours. Almost immediately, they redirected their fury toward Barr's summation of the Mueller report. Yet few rational people contested Barr's synopses about collusion and obstruction. Both the Mueller report and Barr's summation can be found on the internet. Anyone can read them to see whether Barr misrepresented Mueller's conclusions. Again, there have been few criticisms that Barr was wrong on his interpretation that there was no collusion and not enough evidence to indict on obstruction of justice. But now Democrats are calling for Barr to resign or be impeached for not regurgitating the unproven allegations against Trump. In other words, Barr acted too much like a federal prosecutor rather than a tabloid reporter trafficking in allegations that did not amount to criminal conduct. The besmirching of Barr's conduct is surreal. He certainly has not done anything even remotely approximating the conduct of former President Obama's two attorneys general. Has Barr dubbed himself the president's "wingman" or called America a "nation of cowards," as did former Attorney General Eric Holder? Has Barr's Department of Justice monitored reporters' communications or ordered surveillance of a television journalist? Has Barr used a government jet to take his family to the Belmont Stakes horse race, as did Holder? Has Barr met secretly on an airport tarmac with the spouse of a person his Justice Department was investigating, as did former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who had such a meeting with Bill Clinton? The Mueller report ignored the likely illegal origins of the Christopher Steele dossier, the insertion of an FBI informant into the Trump campaign, the unlawful leaking of documents, and the conflicted testimonies of former high-level intelligence officials. All of those things were potential felonies. All in some way yielded information that Mueller drew on in his investigation. Yet Mueller never recommended a single indictment of any of the Obama-era officials who likely broke laws. Mueller was instead fixated on possible collusion with Russia. But it is a crime to knowingly hire a foreign national to work on a presidential campaign -- in other words, to "collude." That is exactly what the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee did when they paid British subject Christopher Steele to smear Trump. Did Mueller argue that the possible crimes of John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe and other former government officials -- lying to federal investigators, perjury, obstruction of justice, deceiving the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, planting an informant into a political campaign, unmasking and leaking the identities of individuals under surveillance -- were only peripheral to his investigation? read more |