Month: September 2019

On his show “The Mark Levin Show” on Friday, nationally syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin disagreed with Speaker Nancy Pelosi on indicting a sitting president, suggesting that if we were to indict a sitting president, we the people would suffer.

“Let’s say the president’s convicted,” stated Mark Levin. “Does he go to prison? Does the president go to prison? There is nothing that says he had to resign. So is he going to govern from prison? ‘Well, we’ll impeach him.’ Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t.

“So, who suffers?” asked Levin later in the program. “We the people, we suffer. Who benefits? Well, his political opponents, and our enemies, they benefit. Because obviously a president is going to be burdened. He’s going to be distracted. You’re going to have the same media pushing indictments, pushing convictions, pushing sentencing. It would be an impossible burden not just for the president as a citizen but for the nation – but for the nation.

Mark Levin’s remarks stem from an exclusive interview Speaker Nancy Pelosi had with National Public Radio (NPR). During the interview, Speaker Pelosi suggests that it is necessary to pass laws for future presidents to be indicted, further stating that “[t]he Founders could never suspect that a president would be so abusive of the Constitution of the United States, that the separation of powers would be irrelevant to him and that he would continue, any president would continue, to withhold facts from the Congress, which are part of the constitutional right of inquiry.”

Below is a transcript, in pertinent part, of Mark Levin’s remarks from his show on Friday:

“Now Nancy Pelosi has a great idea, and, of course, tongue and cheek.

“Pelosi says ‘Congress Should Pass New Laws So Sitting Presidents Can Be Indicted.’ This is [National Pubic Radio].

“‘House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested a new law is needed to be able to indict a sitting president for potential lawbreaking while in office.

“‘In an exclusive interview with NPR, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she has not changed her mind on pursuing impeachment but is ready to change the law to restrain presidential power […] make it clear that a sitting president can, in fact, be indicted.

“‘“I do think that we will have to pass some laws that will have clarity for future presidents. [A] president should be indicted, if he’s committed a wrongdoing

“‘[I]f he’s commited a wrongdoing’? He should be indicted ‘if he’s committed a wrongdoing’?

“‘“There is nothing anyplace that says the president should not be indicted,”’ she said.

“Now, I’m going to address this. You know, years ago, when I was a young man who hadn’t experienced, you know, the soberness of age and so forth, I used to say, ‘Yeah. We ought to be able to indict a sitting president,” and then I really started thinking about it. It’s like Convention of States. I said, ‘Now let’s think this through.’

“Look at the environment today. If you could indict a sitting president. Now, she doesn’t explain herself because she’s incapable of explaining herself. Does she mean any federal prosecutor can indict a sitting president? Does she mean state prosecutors? Does she mean local DAs? What does she mean? She doesn’t know what she means. Somebody will have to tell her what she means. She’s dimwitted.

“Alright, well, let’s move on from there.

“How about a federal prosecutor?

“Well, ladies and gentlemen, how many U.S. attorneys are there, at least how many U.S. attorney offices are there? There are 93. So there’s 93 U.S. attorneys or acting United States attorneys. There are thousands of assistant United States attorneys – thousands. That’s a lot.

“And so, when you have a U.S. attorney and assistant U.S. attorney who wants to investigate a president, let’s say for campaign finance issues or nondisclosure agreements, or they want to investigate a president because they think the president has violated the emoluments clause or they think the president of the United States has obstructed or they think this, that or the other. What kind of a president will you have? What kind of a presidency will we have? They’ll be crippled.

…

“Let’s say the president’s convicted. Does he go to prison? Does the president go to prison? There is nothing that says he had to resign. So is he going to govern from prison? ‘Well, we’ll impeach him.’ Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t.

“Let’s take it a few steps further. The president is still a citizen. He’s a citizen. So at the same time he is trying to defend himself in all these phases of an investigation in a court case – he’s dealing with Iran; he’s dealing with China, North Korea, immigration, a thousand issues – that when a president isn’t threatened with an indictment. It takes years and years off their lives. It is an incredibly difficult job, even without the threat of a criminal prosecution.

“So, who suffers? We the people, we suffer. Who benefits? Well, his political opponents, and our enemies, they benefit. Because obviously a president is going to be burdened. He’s going to be distracted. You’re going to have the same media pushing indictments, pushing convictions, pushing sentencing. It would be an impossible burden not just for the president as a citizen but for the nation – but for the nation.

“‘Well, Mark, the president isn’t above the law.’ The president of the United States is one of a kind, whatever the party, whomever it is. There’s only one president. There’s hundreds of members of Congress. There’s hundreds of judges. There’s one president of the United States.

“And so, you could have one prosecutor, one prosecutor, decide, essentially, to reverse the course of an election just by bringing a charge – one prosecutor.

“‘Well, Mark, it would have to be coordinated with the attorney general’s office.’ No, it wouldn’t. Maybe, maybe not, we don’t know. It’s never happened. But let’s say it’s coordinated with the attorney general. So then you would have a cabinet member, who wasn’t elected by anybody, a cabinet member comes under enormous pressure from the editorial page of The New York Slimes and The Washington Compost, the daily drumbeat from the so-called newsrooms. Look at the attorney general in Israel. Look at how he buckled – and they do buckle. Look at our chief justice, how he buckles to media attention and media pressure. One attorney general might be no different.

“So, you would have a circumstance with the president of the United States, who, coming into office, would have his hands tied.”

Mark Levin also disagrees with Ben Shapiro, who agreed with Speaker Pelosi that a sitting president should be able to be invited, Shapiro suggesting in a tweet, “Curbing the executive through prosecution shouldn’t be off the table. In fact, I argued that with regard to the Obama administration. She should be careful what she wishes for.”

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, says he wants to hear the complaint filed by an intelligence community whistleblower that has so far been withheld from Congress by the Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.

“I mean, we want to — we want to hear from that whistle-blower,” Nunes told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo. “But it sure looks like the scheme has backfired. And this — like I said, I think this is probably the end of Biden’s campaign.”

“End of his campaign?” Bartiromo asked.

“I really do,” Nunes said. “I mean, not that he’s — he’s still formidable. He still has a bloc of support. But if you look, his lead is basically down to zero. If you look what happened in Iowa now, it looks like Elizabeth Warren is in the lead.”

On Sunday, President Trump told reporters that the conversation he had with newly elected Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in July “was largely congratulatory, with largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place, and largely the fact that we don’t want our people like Vice President Biden and his son (contributing) to the corruption already in the Ukraine.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump urged Zelensky to investigate the Bidens eight times.

All of this has renewed calls for impeaching Trump, with Democrat Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeting on Saturday: “At this point, the bigger national scandal isn’t the president’s lawbreaking behavior — it is the Democratic Party’s refusal to impeach him for it.”

Asked to comment on AOC’s tweet, Nunes noted that she is a “socialist.”

“So what do socialists do? They want full control. They want one-party control,” Nunes said. “So the only way to get one-party control right now is to impeach the president.

“So that’s what they’re trying to do. So the more I think that they’re — that they’re out there promoting this kind of craziness and silliness, I think the more the American people are going to be put off, and I think the higher likelihood that President Trump is reelected.”

Nunes said there are questions that former Vice President Biden needs to answer “as to what he was doing talking to Ukrainian leadership at the time when his son has a contract” (with a Ukrainian natural gas company). Biden (and others) called for the firing of a Ukraine prosecutor who was investigating Biden’s son.

“We want to get to the bottom of that, also,” Nunes said. “But this scheme seems to have backfired on Biden. I mean, Biden is already dropping in the polls, and this probably could be the end.”

On Sunday, President Trump tweeted:

Now the Fake News Media says I “pressured the Ukrainian President at least 8 times during my telephone call with him.” This supposedly comes from a so-called “whistleblower” who they say doesn’t even have a first hand account of what was said. More Democrat/Crooked Media con…..

..Breaking News: The Ukrainian Government just said they weren’t pressured at all during the “nice” call. Sleepy Joe Biden, on the other hand, forced a tough prosecutor out from investigating his son’s company by threat of not giving big dollars to Ukraine. That’s the real story!

Biden responded to the latest Trump controversy via tweet and the spoken word.

“Desperate Donald Trump knows that I can beat him, so now he’s enlisting the help of a foreign government — once again. It’s an abuse of power and violates every basic norm of the presidency. We cannot give him four more years in the White House,” Biden tweeted (or his campaign did).

Biden said much the same thing in Iowa on Saturday, as he demanded that a transcript of Trump’s July phone call be released.

“Trump’s doing this because he knows I’ll beat him like a drum,” Biden said. “And he’s using the abuse of power and every element of the presidency to try to do something to smear me.

Biden said he had “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”

Trump said that’s a lie. And so it goes.

Maguire is scheduled to testify in open session on Thursday, Sept. 26. And President Trump will meet with the Ukraine president this week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

 

Conservative activist Scott Presler mobilized 200 volunteers to remove 50 tons of trash from a homeless camp in Los Angeles, California on Saturday.

Presler’s volunteers removed more than five tons of waste per hour over a nine-hour span – and did so without any assistance from the government.

On Saturday morning, Presler posted Twitter videos of the ground of the homeless camp covered in waste, before cleanup efforts began around 9a.m., which he followed with videos showing his group’s progress – and the end result.

It’s almost 9 a.m. & we’re removing waste from a homeless camp in Los Angeles.

Why is an outsider from Northern Virginia here & not California elected leadership? #LosAngelesCleanup pic.twitter.com/yqW2pxKA3c

— #ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) September 21, 2019

“Why is an outsider from Northern Virginia here & not California elected leadership?” Presler asked in one tweet. In another, he declared the successful cleanup effort one of his proudest moments.

This is one of the proudest moments of my life.

I’ll never forget the day we cleaned up a homeless camp in LA. #LosAngelesCleanup pic.twitter.com/jTetowuLAu

— #ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) September 21, 2019

Presler has led similar cleanup efforts in other cities, including Baltimore, Maryland and Newark, New Jersey, according to The Daily Wire.

(CNSNews.com) – There were extraordinary scenes in Houston, Texas on Sunday as the leader of the world’s largest democracy, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, welcomed President Trump onto a rally platform to address a crowd estimated at 50,000, almost exclusively Indian Americans.

Modi did so on behalf of “over a billion Indians” – hundreds of millions of whom he said were “glued to their TV” despite the lateness of the hour in India – as well as people of Indian heritage in America and around the globe.

“We are witnessing history in the making,” he said, hailing the strength of the developing U.S.-India relationship.

In his comments, Trump touched on issues that have resonated with conservatives in the Indian American community, such as strong business ties, jobs, action against corruption, merit-based immigration – and security concerns.

When Trump referred to the threat of “radical Islamic terrorism” the audience came to its feet, and Modi was seen nodding, before himself standing and joining in the applause.

“Today we honor all of the brave American and Indian military service members who work together to safeguard our freedom,” Trump said. “We stand proudly in defense of liberty and we are committed to protecting innocent civilians from the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.”

Entitled “Howdy Modi,” the event was reportedly one of the largest receptions ever on American soil for a foreign leader. (Modi addressed similar events in New York City in 2014 and Silicon Valley in 2016, drawing sizeable, but smaller audiences than the one in Houston.)

Remarkably, the rally was honoring a politician who was denied a U.S. visa for almost a decade over allegations of religious intolerance.

Modi, a Hindu nationalist, was chief minister of India’s Gujarat state when clashes between Hindus and Muslims in 2002 killed more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims.

Accused of doing nothing to stop the violence, he was denied a visa by the George W. Bush State Department in 2005, a restriction that remained in place through President Obama’s first term and was only lifted after Modi became prime minister in 2014.

Outside Houston’s NRG Stadium, protestors demonstrated against Modi’s visit. The main focus of placards and slogans was not the violence in Gujarat in 2002, however, but his government’s controversial recent move to change the status of the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, the Muslim majority region divided and disputed between India and archrival Pakistan.

According to Indian media reports, during his Hindi-language address in Houston, Modi jabbed at Pakistan, without naming the country, saying that those who were unhappy about his government’s decision on Kashmir “are the same people who cannot govern their own country” and who “shield terrorism and nurture it.”

“The whole world knows them very well,” he said. “Their identity is in the sponsorship of terror and the world knows it.”

“Be it 9/11 in America or 26/11 in Mumbai, where can the conspirators be found?” Modi asked. “The time has come for a decisive battle to be fought against terrorism and those backing it.”

26/11 refers to the 2008 terror attack in India’s commercial capital during which Islamic gunmen killed 166 people, including six Americans.

The attack was carried out by Lashkar e-Toiba (LeT), a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, whose leader, Pakistani Islamist Hafiz Saeed, has evaded Indian justice for more than a decade. Since 2012, the U.S. has offered a $10 million‎ reward for information that brings Saeed to justice.

‘Joy and appreciation’

Introducing Trump in English, Modi hailed his “sense of leadership, his passion for America, his concern for every American, his belief in American future, and a strong resolve to make America great again.”

Modi recalled when Trump was running for the White House in the fall of 2016, he posted a campaign ad in which pledged that the Indian and Hindu American community would have in him “a true friend in the White House.”

That ad ended with Trump saying, “Ab ki bar Trump sarkar” – a Hindi phrase meaning “Next time a Trump government,” and a play on Modi’s own campaign slogan when he ran successfully for election in 2014, “Ab ki bar Modi sarkar.”

“The words of candidate Trump, ‘Ab ki bar Trump sarkar’ rang loud and clear,” Modi said. “And his celebration of Diwali in the White House lit up millions of faces with joy and appreciation.”

White House officials say Modi asked Trump to join him at the rally when the two met on the sidelines of the G7 summit in France last month. In his remarks in Houston, Trump said when Modi had asked if it would be possible, he had replied, “I’ll make it possible.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau there were some 4.4 million Indian Americans in 2017, making it the second-largest Asian ethnic group in the U.S., after Chinese Americans. Texas accounted for the second largest population (445,055), after California (848,600).

A poll by Delhi-based Centre for Voting Opinion & Trends in Election Research found that in 2016, 62.5 percent of Indian Americans in Texas voted for Hillary Clinton, compared to 18.8 percent for Trump.

 

The Trump-hating media are doing their best to ignore or denigrate the landmark, triumphal event yesterday in Houston, as at least 50,000 Indian Americans attended a rally featuring President Trump, India’s newly re-elected Prime Minister Modi, and a variety of dance numbers celebrating their community.  For instance, the New York Times, formerly America’s paper of record, has no news coverage this morning, and one sneering editorial page column by Roger Cohen,  describing the “rah-rah Lone Star State show.”

It was, as far as I know, by far the largest crowd that Donald Trump has ever addressed in his life:

YouTube screen grab

Fox News offered live coverage of President Trump’s remarks, and a little bit of PM Modi’s address to the crowd, delivered in Hindi, but when they were unable to access a simultaneous translation into English, dropped the feed from Houston.

It was a hoot, and true celebration of diversity. Check out the dancers in both Indian costumes (eat your heart out, Justin Trudeau) and Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders-like costumes:

YouTube screen grabs

But, in addition to the sheer cultural exuberance on display there were very serious political points being scored by both Modi and Trump.

For Trump, the event was an opportunity for outreach to one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups in the United States.  

The population of Indian-origin people in America grew by 38 per cent in seven years between 2010 and 2017, a South Asian advocacy group has said in its latest demographic report.

In 2017, the population of Indian-Americans with multiple ethnicities was recorded as 4,402,363, up 38.3 per cent from 3,183,063 in 2010, the South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) said in its snapshot.

There are at least 630,000 Indians who are undocumented, a 72 per cent increase since 2010. [number display corrected to American use of commas]

Indian Americans are a natural constituency for Republicans, tending toward high levels of education, intact families, entrepreneurship, and culturally conservative values.  Plenty of Democrat politicians attended the cent, including Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston, but it was President Trump who enjoyed the embrace of PM Modi, who was very, very popular with the crowd.

The event was an implicit message to China that the United States and India are best buddies and will work together on security and economic issues. It was also a message to Iran that the United States is displacing it as an energy supplier to India. Prior to the rally, a major long-term contract was signed for supply of LNG gas to India, including an investment of $2.5 billion dollars in a new LNG terminal by India’s Petronet.

For his part, Modi reaped considerable political benefit from the event televised live in India (at midnight local time) affirming his importance on the world stage. Modi used the occasion to boast of his moves to make Kashmir a part of Inida like any other state, rejecting the former status/
If you missed it on television, take a quick look at a couple of the videos embedded below.

Here is VOA’s excerpts of President Trump’s address:

And here is the full event, almost 4 hours long:

The Trump-hating media are doing their best to ignore or denigrate the landmark, triumphal event yesterday in Houston, as at least 50,000 Indian Americans attended a rally featuring President Trump, India’s newly re-elected Prime Minister Modi, and a variety of dance numbers celebrating their community.  For instance, the New York Times, formerly America’s paper of record, has no news coverage this morning, and one sneering editorial page column by Roger Cohen,  describing the “rah-rah Lone Star State show.”

It was, as far as I know, by far the largest crowd that Donald Trump has ever addressed in his life:

YouTube screen grab

Fox News offered live coverage of President Trump’s remarks, and a little bit of PM Modi’s address to the crowd, delivered in Hindi, but when they were unable to access a simultaneous translation into English, dropped the feed from Houston.

It was a hoot, and true celebration of diversity. Check out the dancers in both Indian costumes (eat your heart out, Justin Trudeau) and Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders-like costumes:

YouTube screen grabs

But, in addition to the sheer cultural exuberance on display there were very serious political points being scored by both Modi and Trump.

For Trump, the event was an opportunity for outreach to one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups in the United States.  

The population of Indian-origin people in America grew by 38 per cent in seven years between 2010 and 2017, a South Asian advocacy group has said in its latest demographic report.

In 2017, the population of Indian-Americans with multiple ethnicities was recorded as 4,402,363, up 38.3 per cent from 3,183,063 in 2010, the South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) said in its snapshot.

There are at least 630,000 Indians who are undocumented, a 72 per cent increase since 2010. [number display corrected to American use of commas]

Indian Americans are a natural constituency for Republicans, tending toward high levels of education, intact families, entrepreneurship, and culturally conservative values.  Plenty of Democrat politicians attended the cent, including Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston, but it was President Trump who enjoyed the embrace of PM Modi, who was very, very popular with the crowd.

The event was an implicit message to China that the United States and India are best buddies and will work together on security and economic issues. It was also a message to Iran that the United States is displacing it as an energy supplier to India. Prior to the rally, a major long-term contract was signed for supply of LNG gas to India, including an investment of $2.5 billion dollars in a new LNG terminal by India’s Petronet.

For his part, Modi reaped considerable political benefit from the event televised live in India (at midnight local time) affirming his importance on the world stage. Modi used the occasion to boast of his moves to make Kashmir a part of Inida like any other state, rejecting the former status/
If you missed it on television, take a quick look at a couple of the videos embedded below.

Here is VOA’s excerpts of President Trump’s address:

And here is the full event, almost 4 hours long: