Month: September 2018

To do … what, exactly? After days of contentious back-and-forth between House Republican leadership and conservatives angry at Rod Rosenstein, Freedom Caucus leader Rep. Mark Meadows announced a deal earlier today to call the deputy Attorney General to answer for comments reported by the New York Times a week ago. If Rosenstein does not come to the House Judiciary and Oversight Committee willingly, Meadows says that committee chair Rep.Bob Goodlatte will subpoena him:

Leadership has agreed to call Rod Rosenstein before Congress, for a closed door hearing with our panel investigating, so he can explain his alleged comments on “wiring” POTUS–as well as other inconsistent statements.

If Mr. Rosenstein fails to show up, we will subpoena him.

— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) September 28, 2018

Republican leadership has struck a deal with Rep. Mark Meadows and other House conservatives to call Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein before Congress to testify behind closed doors about his alleged proposal that the Justice Department secretly record President Donald Trump and invoke the 25th Amendment to oust him from the Oval Office.

Certainly, Judiciary and Oversight has a constitutional duty to ensure that the Department of Justice operates properly, but … it’s tough to see what this particular issue has to do with Congress other than in the most academic sense. The offended party here would be Rosenstein’s boss at the White House, who has all the authority he needs to deal with those comments, if in fact they’re accurate. Trump himself seemed less concerned with them this week, stating that he’d rather keep Rosenstein around and will be talking with him soon, but not immediately; the White House says the meeting will take place next week. It hardly seems as though Trump considers it a high priority.

When asked about that, Freedom Caucus member Rep. Jordan shrugged it off:

“That’s a White House decision on what his status is,” Jordan said of Rosenstein, who reportedly verbally offered White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly his resignation earlier this week because he believed Trump was prepared to fire him.

“In my humble opinion, you can’t have the guy who’s running the Justice Department talking about recording the commander in chief, even if it’s done in a joking, sarcastic manner,” Jordan said. “If [Rosenstein did say such things] and the president is satisfied that it’s still OK, and keeps him, that’s fine — that’s the White House’s call. But we should be able to ask questions about what took place in that meeting.”

Clearly, they’re able to ask questions. But why bother, if it doesn’t bother Trump enough to fire Rosenstein over them? It’s tough to see what the point is, unless it’s to attempt to gain leverage over Rosenstein to push back against the special counsel investigation. However, they could do that directly, with the same oversight authority they’re invoking here.

That’s why Paul Ryan initially opposed the House from getting involved in this fight, saying on Wednesday that “we shouldn’t step in the way” of Trump. Perhaps Ryan just decided that it’s not worth the internal division to step in the way of a colossal waste of time, either.

And for comic relief on this profoundly dispiriting week in Washington D.C., we have Nancy Pelosi. Because even when all else seems lost in politics, we’ll always have the House minority leader’s hijinks to keep us entertained.

Before the hearing, Rep. Pelosi decided to share some thoughts on the process. And, of course, she did it in the inimitable stuttering, slurring style we’ve all come to know and love.

During the video, Pelosi claimed that Christine Blasey Ford had been “assaulted” by the GOP (apparently for even questioning her account) in addition to the assault that she automatically assumes Brett Kavanaugh inflicted on her and the assault of having her name released.

Here’s a video from the American Mirror. See if you can notice one thing about what Pelosi calls Kavanaugh.

TRENDING: Panicking NYT Deletes Source Name, Caught Hiding Game-Changing Facts on Kavanaugh

“The assault by the cowardice of the Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee to act in a manner in which they did, the process does not serve justice, does not serve seeing truth, does not serve the integrity of the Court, and does not serve the respect for women in our country,” Pelosi said.

“Three attacks. So let’s hope as we go forward that … Justice — Judge — not to be Justice, Judge Kavanaugh will not — that he will withdraw his name,” Pelosi added.

Good work there, Nancy.

As the Mirror pointed out, there was plenty of other brain freezing going on there; “stell” for “tell” or “rallegations” for “allegations.” In other words, it was mostly Scooby Doo talk.

“Justice,” however, may have been an accurate prediction, if one she didn’t intend to make.

Beyond the Kavanaugh case and its implications, which are indeed serious, I think we should probably take a minute and point out this isn’t the first such video of Rep. Pelosi that the American Mirror has managed to put together. In fact, you could pretty much do one for every other press conference she holds.

While Donald Trump’s verbal infelicity is often put into hyper-relief by the media, Pelosi’s diminishing rhetorical returns have been evident for quite a while now.

I understand the leadership position can be a tiring one, but it’s clearly taken more than a bit of a toll on Pelosi, whose performances in the Trump era have been deer-in-headlights-esque.

The slurring and stuttering wasn’t the most offensive part of this whole thing, though. The assumption that Kavanaugh assaulted Ford — even though he was never even charged with the act, much less accused of it until he was nominated to the Supreme Court — should be odious to anyone who has some respect for the concept of innocent until proven guilty.

RELATED: Rebel Democrats in Congress Banding Together Against Nancy Pelosi

Oh, and then there was the part about her being “victimized” by her name being leaked. Well, Rep. Pelosi, the letter in question was passed through two sets of hands: Rep. Anna Eshoo and Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Both are from your home state of California and both — more importantly — are Democrats. In other words, when it came to this being leaked, it was either a Democrat or one of their staff members, assumedly members of the same party.

If this really is an “assault,” Rep. Pelosi, it’s one perpetrated by members of your own party. But then, most of the proven assaults in this case have been perpetrated by the party of the left. Assault on the norms of the confirmation process? Check. Assault on the concept of innocent until proven guilty? Check. Assault on the accuser through leaking the letter? Check.

Not knowing the right words at the right time is one thing. Not knowing the basic facts is another.

Give her this much: She probably got “justice” right. It was definitely a mistake, likely out of her craven fear that Kavanaugh would win this showdown. He did.

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USA, USA.

Via WBTV:

It is said a picture can speak a thousand words, and we can think of a few for this powerful image.

Strength. Resilience. Freedom. Pride. Inspiring. America. Service.

These all come to mind when first looking at the image of a man on a kayak in flooded streets holding an American flag.

The moment captured by Laura Boehm shows her husband Todd Boehm, who served in the Army for 23 years before retiring, honoring the star-spangled banner.

Laura said as they were kayaking through the flooded streets on Rosewood Drive to check on their home, her husband noticed an American flag touching the water.

“We couldn’t let it fall,” Laura said.

Without hesitating, he paddled over to where the flag hung and adjusted it so it could continue to wave in the breeze over the devastation left behind by Florence.

Keep reading…

YouTube is cracking down on conservatives content, according to one prominent conservative.

In a radio interview with The Jewish Press, PragerU’s founder and president, Dennis Prager, explained how big tech has censored PragerU. Prager attributed it to the left’s definition of “hate speech,” saying that “Leftists — unlike liberals — do not believe in free speech for speech they differ with.” Prager also said that there “was little rhyme or reason” for YouTube and Facebook to censor, restrict, and delete PragerU’s video content.

PragerU has been embroiled in a lawsuit with YouTube alleging that the company was putting PragerU’s videos in restricted mode. Recently, PragerU discovered that Facebook was deleting and blocking nine of its videos. Facebook claimed that the censorship was “a mistake.”  

Dennis Prager told The Jewish Press, “YouTube seems to target: a) videos that defend America; b) videos that defend Israel; c) videos that criticize the Islamic world; and d) videos that make the case for God and religion.” Prager also accused YouTube of “misleading the public” because the platform markets itself as an “open forum.”

YouTube has put dozens of PragerU’s videos under a restricted filter, meaning that if someone put a filter on their YouTube feed, the videos disappeared. Facebook, however, had a much bigger problem: PragerU’s videos were flagged as “hate speech” by users, then a Facebook employee moved the entire page into a “feature block.”

In reference to PragerU’s lawsuit, Prager said, “If Google, the owner of YouTube, would announce it is a left-wing advocacy group, that would make a lawsuit harder to defend.” YouTube’s sister organization, Google, was just on the Hill today meeting with conservatives to address issues of bias against the right.