NY POST: HOW TEAM OBAMA TRIED TO HACK THE ELECTION

New revelations have surfaced that the Obama administration abused intelligence during the election by launching a massive domestic-spy campaign that included snooping on Trump officials.

The irony is mind-boggling: Targeting political opposition is long a technique of police states like Russia, which Team Obama has loudly condemned for allegedly using its own intelligence agencies to hack into our election.

The revelations, as well as testimony this week from former Obama intel officials, show the extent to which the Obama administration politicized and weaponized intelligence against Americans.

Thanks to Circa News, we now know the National Security Agency under President Barack Obama routinely violated privacy protections while snooping through foreign intercepts involving US citizens — and failed to disclose the breaches, prompting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court a month before the election to rebuke administration officials.

NY Post

Those of us who are old enough to remember The Gipper agree

Reagan Speech Writer: "Very Striking" Parallel between Trump and Reagan Speeches

Article and Video

The Establishment elites don't realize what they're messing with if they win

TRUMP FACES THE FURY OF THE RULING CLASS

A lobbyist friend who visited Capitol Hill recently came away horrified. “I now am ready to believe that the partisanship is so unhinged that it’s a threat to the Republic,” she writes in an email.
This Washington hysteria comes at a time of full employment, booming stocks, relative peace and technological marvels like an electronic robot named Alexa who fetches and plays for you songs of your choice. What’s the fuss about?
We all know the answer: Donald Trump. The Washington body politic has been invaded by an alien presence and, true to the laws of nature, that body is feverishly trying to expel it. These particular laws of nature demand rejection of anything that threatens the livelihoods and prestige of the permanent governing class.
The “threat” that has Washington quaking is the first serious effort in a long time to curb federal regulatory power, wasteful spending, and a propensity to run up mountainous budget deficits and debt. That’s presumably what the voters wanted when they elected Donald Trump. Democrats—accurately regarded as the party of government—seem to fear that Mr. Trump might actually, against all odds, pull it off.
The Washington Post, the New York Times and other apostles of the Democratic Party have apparently set out to prove that despite their shaky business models they can still ignite an anti-Trump bonfire.

So far, what they’ve gotten is people cheering when journalists are shoved to the floor. Plus:

The Washington community knows how to fight back when it feels threatened. Leakers are having a ball, even if it has taken a lot of journalistic imagination to turn the most notorious leaks into “scandals.” Almost everyone in town has a stake in fending off the Trump threat: government workers and the businesses that serve them, public unions, lobbyists and their clients, owners of posh hotels and restaurants that cater to well-heeled visitors seeking government favors, journalists whose prestige derives from the power center they cover, academics who show politicians how to mismanage the economy, real-estate agents feeding on the boom—to name a few. It’s a good living, and few take kindly to a brash outsider who proclaims it is his mission to drain the swamp.
Mr. Trump is on the attack and Washington is fighting back. Is the Republic in danger? Another question is how much danger will it be in if Mr. Trump loses?

I don’t know why these people think that Trump voters will just stay home and sigh if the Establishment wins. It’s likely to be something much uglier. That the Establishment can’t even conceive of other people besides itself deciding to ditch the rules is just one more reason that it’s unfit to govern.

Emphasis added.

Source article from Instapundit

ISIS tells followers to mark start of Ramadan by attacking ‘innocents and civilians in their homes, markets and roads’ after Manchester bombing

Terror group said the killing of 'infidels' in the West was 'beloved and effective'

The jihadist group made the call in a video message entitled Where are the lions of war? published on YouTube, reports The Telegraph.

It said: “Muslim brothers in Europe who can’t reach the Islamic State lands, attack them in their homes, their markets, their roads and their forums.”

Source Article with more background

A very good read from American Thinker

Why did Trump say that Obama spied on him? Because he did.  And many other Americans.

But the liberal media isn't covering it.

American Thinker

Gunmen Massacre 

Coptic Christians in Egypt, Killing at Least 26

Masked militants riding in three SUVs opened fire Friday on a bus packed with Coptic Christians, including many children, south of the Egyptian capital, killing at least 26 and wounding 25, the Interior Ministry said.

To the judges in the 4th and 9th Circuits - this is what real religious discrimination looks like

From National Review

A shocking new undercover video exposes the grisly reality of ripping apart fetuses.

The gruesome footage from this latest video leaves no doubt as to why NAF and Planned Parenthood want to silence CMP’s investigators. Those in the abortion industry know they’re taking human life. They just don’t care.

Gruesome and shocking don't describe this adequately 

On this day in 1861

LINCOLN SUSPENDS HABEAS CORPUS

Following his election in the face of Southern opposition, Abraham Lincoln had to travel through Baltimore by train secretly under threat of assassination to take office as president in a badly divided county in 1861. Following the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 and the secession of Virginia on April 17, he faced the possibility of the nation’s capital being isolated from the North if the neighboring border state of Maryland would secede and join the Confederacy. Given the small size and scattered location of the United State army, Lincoln called for help from Northern governors to defend Washington, D.C. 

On April 19, when the 6th Massachusetts regiment took to the streets of Baltimore (known as “Mob City” and home to many secession sympathizers) to switch trains enroute to Washington City, a mob attacked it. In the ensuing fracas known as the “Pratt Street riot”, four soldiers were killed and 36 wounded and 12 civilians died. In the wake of this bloodshed, Baltimore Mayor George Brown and Maryland Governor Thomas Hicks requested that Lincoln send no more Northern troops by train through Baltimore. Lincoln responded: “Union soldiers are neither birds to fly over Maryland nor moles to burrow under it”. While Hicks was pro-Union, he authorized Maryland militia to prevent the passage of more Union troop trains by disabling railroad bridges and cutting telegraph wires. Answering the call was the Baltimore County Horse Guards, including Lieutenant John Merryman, a farmer.  

Its origins in the Magna Carta, the Founding Fathers in the Constitution enshrined the right to a Writ of Habeas Corpus to ensure that Americans who were arrested by the government had the right to go before judges to be informed of the charges against them. Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the Constitution states in what is called the suspension clause: “The Privilege of Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it”. With a rebellion underway and Washington threatened by the formation of a Confederate army across the Potomac river and with Congress not in session, on April 27 Lincoln authorized Winfield Scott, commander of the army, to suspend Habeas Corpus if necessary to ensure the safety of the military supply lines between Philadelphia and Washington. Before Congress convened on July 4, Lincoln would also suspend the writ on the Florida coast and between Philadelphia and New York.

Source article with more background

I'll bet you haven't seen this in the lib media.

Trump In Israel Gave ‘Rachashei Lev’ Pediatric Cancer Patient Her Dream

But big news in Israel

Rand Paul: Obama Administration's Spying on Americans a Gross Abuse of Power

Source Article Real Clear Politics

Stupid government regulations

Oregon Takes Small Step toward Self-Serve Gas

Only NJ and OR prohibit self-serve gas but that is changing

Source Article

This qualifies as reporting?

Althouse: "I've noticed what I think may be a significant trend in reporting in the Trump era: reporting it as news that somebody is — perhaps only by slanted inference — nervous."

And, as Althouse points out, maybe it's the other people who are really nervous.


Althouse Blog "Nervous"

Wait for this on CNN

Professor Tribe vs. Sheriff Clarke: Who’s the more careful scholar?

If you pay attention only to liberal-slanted mass media outlets, you’d assume the answer is easy.

Surely Professor Laurence H. Tribe of the prestigious Harvard Law School must be a much more careful scholar than Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke, who has recently been branded, in what we view as a political hit job, as a “plagiarist” — not just by CNN (which made the initial charge), but also by the Washington Post, USA Today, NY Daily News, ABC, and Slate, among other mass-media outlets.

But he’s not. Sheriff Clarke, a part-time scholar, is vastly more careful (not to mention honest) than Professor Tribe. In this post we boil down the factual comparison, concisely, in one place.

As we detailed in yesterday’s post (many thanks to law professor Glenn Reynolds (“Instapundit”) for this morning’s post promoting both it and John Hinderaker‘s commentary on our earlier post), well-documented charges of scholarly misconduct have been leveled against Tribe in connection with six of his published works (five books and one essay), published over a period of more than two decades.

Source Article

The U.S. intelligence leakers just won't stop and it isn't just Trump who dislikes it

Furious’ British Police Suspend Intelligence Sharing with U.S. Following Manchester Bombing Leaks to NYT

The United Kingdom has now stopped passing intelligence gathered as part of the investigation into the Manchester bombing to the United States according to claims made by the British state broadcaster BBC.

While British police had discovered the identity of Salman Abedi, the suicide bomber who killed 22 in Manchester on Monday, the name was withheld from the media initially for operational reasons. Yet less than 24 hours after the attack took place, American newspapers citing “government sources” were able to name the attacker.

Later further leaked intelligence including detailed crime scene information, and photographs of shrapnel, a backpack, and a battery were released by The New York Times. The BBC report states the “likely” culprit of the leaks are U.S. law enforcement officials who will have received access to the data through the transatlantic ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence sharing agreement, rather than the White House.

The nature and speed of the leaks by these U.S. officials have caused “disbelief and astonishment” in the British government.

Source Article

Retired UW Law Prof and Obama-Voting Althouse Rips One-Sided WaPo Coverage of Trump

I feel as though I have to try to unravel the WaPo report because I cannot trust WaPo to do anything other than to try to hurt Donald Trump. . .

I'm thinking about what I heard Bob Woodward say this morning on C-SPAN:

“There is this kind of sense of too many people writing things like—when is the impeachment coming, how long will it last, will he make it through the summer, and so forth. No, there may be stuff that comes out, but it has to be hard evidence. I worry for the business and I worry for the perception of the business by people, not to just Trump supporters, but people that see that kind of smugness that they are talking about.”

Althouse Blog re WaPo Article

This is big

FISA Court Finds "Serious Fourth Amendment Issue" In Obama's "Widespread" Illegal Searches Of American Citizens

A newly released court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) found that the National Security Agency, under former President Obama, routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall.  In describing the violations, the FISA court said the illegal searches conducted by the NSA under Obama were "widespread" and created a "very serious Fourth Amendment issue."These new discoveries come from a recently unsealed FISA court document dated April 26, 2017 and center around a hearing dated October 26, 2017, just days before the 2016 election, in which the FISA court apparently learned for the first time of "widespread" and illegal spying on American citizens by the NSA under the Obama administration.

Link to source article

On this day in 1964

Goldwater Urges Withdrawal or Limited Nuclear Weapons in Vietnam to Support U.S. Troops

Johnson wins election landslide.  58,000 American boys die in Vietnam.

On this day in 1964, Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater said the U.S. should do whatever it took to support U.S. troops in Vietnam and, if Democrat President Johnson was not prepared to “take the war to North Vietnam,” the U.S. should withdraw.  Goldwater also suggested using low-yield nuclear weapons to defoliate infiltration routes and destroy bridges, roads and railroad lines bringing supplies from China.

Johnson responded by labeling Goldwater a warmonger who would drop atomic bombs on the people of Hanoi, a theme expanded upon in the Democrat Party’s famous “Daisy” ad showing a little girl picking daisies in a field while an atomic bomb goes off.  

Johnson won a landslide victory and went on to ignore the advice of his generals and mislead the American people regarding the scope of American involvement in Vietnam and what lay ahead.   

By the time the Vietnam War was over, 58,000 American boys, most of whom had been drafted and forced to go to Vietnam to fight, had been killed. [Partial source: Lt. General H.R. McMaster (President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor), Dereliction of Duty (1997).]

The Daisy Campaign Ad

This Day in History

Maybe I need to start wearing lederhosen just to be safe

Two Portland White Women Forced to Close Burrito Shop After Being Bombarded with Accusations They Stole  'Mexican Culture'

 But has anyone checked their DNA?

 

Time to do something radical

NEWT GINGRICH: OPIOD ADDICTION WON'T BE CURED BY TOUGH SENTENCES

Frankly, putting people battling opioid addiction in jail rather than in treatment programs could lead to more opioid-related deaths. 

A huge body of evidence shows opioid addiction is a chemical brain disease – not a behavioral or lifestyle decision. Because of this, many people who are chemically predisposed to opioid addiction become hooked after taking lawfully prescribed opioid-based painkillers following a surgery or an accident. Once the prescription runs out, they turn to the illegal market to feed their addiction. These are not people with malignant intentions, they are suffering from an addiction – a medical condition.

How do we know imposing tough sentences doesn’t work to stem the tide of drug use, trafficking, and addiction? Because we tried it in the 1980s by assigning strong sentences to crack cocaine violations – and it failed miserably.

Over the last 30 years, the federal prison population has ballooned from 24,000 to about 200,000. In that time, taxpayers have spent billions financing this failed experiment. About half of those 200,000 federal inmates are incarcerated on drug charges – and only 14 percent of those convicted of drug offenses are major traffickers. Many in the remaining 86 percent of drug offenders don’t even have prior criminal records. Meanwhile, the number of people who self-report using illegal drugs has increased, and recidivism for drug offenders has been largely unaffected by stiff sentences.

Link to article

On this day in 1843

THE GREAT WAGON TRAIN 

EMIGRATION TO OREGON BEGINS

A massive wagon train, made up of 1,000 settlers and 1,000 head of cattle, sets off down the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri. Known as the “Great Emigration,” the expedition came two years after the first modest party of settlers made the long, overland journey to Oregon.

After leaving Independence, the giant wagon train followed the Sante Fe Trail for some 40 miles and then turned northwest to the Platte River, which it followed along its northern route to Fort Laramie, Wyoming. From there, it traveled on to the Rocky Mountains, which it passed through by way of the broad, level South Pass that led to the basin of the Colorado River. The travelers then went southwest to Fort Bridger, northwest across a divide to Fort Hall on the Snake River, and on to Fort Boise, where they gained supplies for the difficult journey over the Blue Mountains and into Oregon. The Great Emigration finally arrived in October, completing the 2,000-mile journey from Independence in five months.

In the next year, four more wagon trains made the journey, and in 1845 the number of emigrants who used the Oregon Trail exceeded 3,000. Travel along the trail gradually declined with the advent of the railroads, and the route was finally abandoned in the 1870s.

Source Article
Much more interesting stuff here

Dershowitz: Terrorism Not About Poverty, Disenfranchisement — About a Supportive Culture, Ideology

“You hear people try to be sympathetic to the terrorists, saying, ‘Oh, they grew up poor. They had no opportunity,'” Dershowitz said. “That is total nonsense. A lot of these terrorists are well educated. They’re wealthy. They’ve had every opportunity. They’ve been welcomed to countries like Great Britain, educated, welcomed to the United States. This is not about poverty. This is not about disenfranchisement. This is about a culture and ideology that supports it from the very very top down. And one of the worst offenders is the Palestinian Authority and Hamas that rewards — has a statute, a law on its book giving rewards to families of terrorists. That has to stop.”

Source Article

DILBERT: WHY TRUMP SHOULD STOP WHITE HOUSE PRESS CONFERENCES

Dilbert Blog

The Pre-Revisionist View of Robert E. Lee

Sanctuary City Mayor Trashes American Hero Robert E. Lee

“Slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil,” wrote the South’s greatest hero, Gen. Lee. He did not go to war for that repugnant institution. To this American, local was truly beautiful. “In 1861 he was offered command of all the armies of the United States, the height of a soldier’s ambition,” chronicles Clyde Wilson, distinguished professor emeritus of history at the University of South Carolina. “But the path of honor commanded him to choose to defend his own people from invasion rather than do the bidding of the politicians who controlled the federal machinery in Washington.”

Link to article

The Art of the Deal

ISRAELIS MAKE CONCESSIONS AHEAD OF TRUMP VISIT

AP Article

Because he's intellectually honest

LIBERAL HARVARD LAW PROF DERSHOWITZ:  COMEY CARES ONLY ABOUT PRESERVING HIS REPUTATION AND IS ACTING COWARDLY

On Saturday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz stated that former FBI Director James Comey is “all about preserving his reputation” and said Comey is “using his friends to get his point out. It’s cowardly.”

Dershowitz said that he’s always liked Comey, but Comey has been “using his friends to get his point out. It’s cowardly. And I think it’s about time that Comey is confronted directly with cross-examination. He was a great director of the FBI, but when the whole Hillary Clinton thing began, he cared more about his reputation and his dignity than about what was good for America.”

Dershowitz added, “I’d want to find out if he was the source of the leaks of the memo that he was quoted in. Second, I would ask him why he didn’t talk directly, why he’s using his friends. I would go back to his decisions to speak to the public.” He continued that while he disagreed with President Trump’s reported characterization of Comey as a “nutjob,” calling him a “showboat” is “not a bad characterization.”

He further stated Comey’s motives are “all about preserving his reputation above everything else.” Dershowitz further argued that Comey revealed Clinton investigation because thought Clinton was going to win, and he would be faulted by Trump supporters for not revealing the investigation, and so Comey revealed the Clinton investigation to preserve his reputation.

Dershowitz also stated that he believes Trump fired Comey due to Comey’s statement that he felt sick over the prospect that he might have influenced the election.

Link to article and video

Don't tell the judges in Seattle and Hawaii

TRUMP RIYADH SPEECH REAGANESQUE

Read the transcript of the full speech. It's worth it.

Trump Tells Saudis Islamist Extremism and Terror Groups Must be Stopped

Link to Axios Article

Daily Caller

PUTIN TARGETED HILLARY DURING U.S. ELECTION IN RETALIATION FOR HILLARY ACCUSING PUTIN OF FRAUD AND INTIMIDATION DURING 2011 RUSSIAN ELECTION

Daily Caller article

Did 16 Year Old James Comey Misidentify an Innocent Man as the Local Rapist?

Link to Daily Caller article