“If you read between the lines of the adjutant general’s statement, it’s clear that McEachin’s comment is already causing a stir within the Guard itself. The men and women of the Virginia National Guard signed up to defend freedom, not establish a police state on American soil where soldiers search for scofflaws who refuse to register their rifles with the Virginia State Police.”

Democrat Congressman Donald McEachin’s comments about using the National Guard to enforce Governor Ralph Northam’s proposed gun control laws in Virginia has caused a storm of controversy in the state, to the point that the Adjutant General of the Virginia National Guard has issued a statement, after scores of phone calls and emails from concerned citizens and curious media figures.

Readers will remember that Steele was hired by Fusion GPS, an opposition-research outfit hired by a law firm called Perkins Coie, to manufacture ties between Trump and Russia. Meanwhile, Perkins Coie was hired by, and working closely with, the Clinton campaign and other Clinton operatives.

Steele paid a British national with ties to Russia—Edward Baumgartner—to create a “dossier” tying Trump to Russia via wild and unsubstantiated claims, which Baumgartner created using unknown russRussian sources. Once the dossier was created, Steele and other Clinton operatives, including the infamous Sid Blumenthal, injected the allegations of the dossier into the Obama administration. This included getting the dossier circulated at high levels within the State Department, and within the Department of Justice and FBI.

Eventually, using the dossier, the FBI secretly spied on the Trump campaign. And the Clinton campaign tried to use the FBI’s investigation to smear Trump, which amounted to interference in the 2016 election by the Clinton campaign, using Russians to assist her efforts. Using Steele, the Clinton campaign planted media stories smearing Trump as a Russian agent, then responded to them as if they had appeared organically.

In the U.K., which has stricter libel laws than does America, Steele wouldn’t even back up his dossier in court. Instead, he emphasized that he never wrote it, which is of course true, because Baumgartner and unknown Russians wrote it.

Liberals pay lip service to global warming dogma, but they apparently don’t believe it, as they continue to live large, emitting massive quantities of CO2. Al Gore is a classic example, but his hypocrisy is the rule, not the exception. Greta Thunberg is similar, burning up vast quantities of fossil fuels as she travels around the world (by yacht, while multiple handlers fly) preaching the global warming dogma.

Another data point similar to the Aramco IPO is the price of coastal properties. Liberals allege that sea level is rising alarmingly–it isn’t, in fact–and you likely have seen images of the Statue of Liberty half-way under water.

If people actually believed these claims, prices of coastal properties would be plummeting. But the opposite is happening. Buyers apparently have no fear that their coastal homes and businesses will soon be underwater, or that a decade or two from now global warming theory will have been confirmed so that they won’t be able to sell their properties. Thus, we saw Barack and Michelle Obama pay $15 million for an estate on Martha’s Vineyard, just feet above sea level. Do as I say, not as I do.

On page five in the third paragraph of the dossier, former British spy Christopher Steele wrote that agents of the FSB, the Russian Federal Security Service, were approaching Russian-Jewish-Americans who worked in the IT industry to conduct covert operations.

“The DNC pays for the Steele dossier, solicits the Steele dossier, and then gets the Federal Bureau of Investigation to go get FISA warrants, surveil an American citizen, and surveil a presidential campaign all on the basis of this manufactured garbage that they paid for. I mean that’s extraordinary," he complained. "That has got to be a first time in history. In fact, let me just ask you, Mr. Horowitz, are you aware ever of another presidential campaign being targeted by the FBI like the Trump campaign was?”
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"To me, this is the untold story of the 2016 campaign," continued Hawley. "I don't know who at the DNC hatched this, but I suppose they ought to take a victory lap, but certainly they should be remembered for it; to get the FBI to pursue surveillance of a rival presidential campaign and then into the newly elected president's term I think is just extraordinary."

Hawley then grilled Horowitz about why the criminals at the FBI involved in this are still employed. No one knows. Hawley closed with this bombshell: "I think the collusion here was between the DNC and the FBI."

Politico’s Jack Shafer has eloquently argued that the press should name the whistleblower. It is not against the law – whistleblower protections are to prevent retaliation in the workplace and apply to his superiors, not the media. Yet while the press eagerly tried to out Deep Throat or the anonymous author of “A Warning,” they suddenly lack curiosity.

They’ve also been hypocritical. In September, The Times reported the whistleblower was a male CIA officer who worked at the White House and was now back at the CIA. Why? Executive Editor Dean Baquet said, “we wanted to provide information to readers that allows them to make their own judgments about whether or not he is credible.” The cynic might say they were trying to argue that the whistleblower was credible.

But if that’s the argument, and if Ciaramella is the whistleblower, isn’t it also relevant that he, according to Sperry, previously worked with CIA Director John Brennan, a fierce critic of Trump, and Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s political opponent and the crux of the impeachment inquiry? That he’s a registered Democrat and that he was – again, according to Sperry – accused of leaking negative information about the Trump Administration and that’s why he was transferred back to Langley?

What, if anything, did he leak? Did he work with Biden on Ukraine, apparently Ciaramella’s area of expertise? Did he know about Burisma and Hunter Biden? Who told him about the call, and why did that person not complain instead of him? How did Schiff’s staff help him tailor the complaint?

This is only the fourth time in our history that a president has faced impeachment. Shouldn’t we know the answers to these questions now, and not in two, three years when the inevitable official reports and tell-all books come out? Why must we wait for the truth?

The great debate about whether the FBI spied on the Trump campaign continues. The question is why there is still any argument. The newly-released report from Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz shows that by any definition the FBI did indeed spy.

The proof is in the details of the report. In addition to the much-discussed wiretap of Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, Horowitz discussed the bureau's use of what is called a CHS -- a confidential human source, or, in more common terms, an informant, and a UCE -- an undercover employee, or a secret agent, to gather information from at least three targets in the Trump campaign. One was Page, another was George Papadopoulos, also a member of the advisory team, and the third was an unnamed "high-level Trump campaign official who was not a subject of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation."

Horowitz described "multiple CHS operations undertaken by the Crossfire Hurricane team." There were "numerous CHS interactions with Page and Papadopoulos." There was the CHS contact with the high-level campaign official. And then there were "additional CHSs" who attempted to contact Papadopoulos but did not succeed.

All the meetings and conversations were secretly recorded by the FBI. Some were also monitored live, as they happened, by agents and supervisors. The Horowitz report quoted liberally from transcripts of the recordings.

The Trump campaign was "clearly spied upon," attorney general Bill Barr said in an interview with NBC Tuesday. "I mean, that's what electronic surveillance is. I think wiring people up to go in and talk to people and make recordings of their conversations is spying."

“Today’s Southern Poverty Law Center is aggressively anti-Christian and morally bankrupt – both inside and out. The SPLC has been imploding from within, with its own former employees saying the group is racist, bigoted, and rife with sexual misconduct and discrimination. The problems have become so significant that employees are currently seeking to unionize. Earlier this year, SPLC’s founder was fired, and its president and top lawyer resigned, but there is little sign that the group is moving beyond its reputation as a ‘ highly profitable scam.’

In April 2018, former FBI Director James Comey appeared on Fox News with Bret Baier. Looking back at this clip after the release of the Inspector General’s FISA report, it is evident Comey lied to Baier about knowing Christopher Steele’s dossier was funding by the Democratic National Convention and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

During the interview, Baier pressed Comey about his knowledge on the Steele dossier. Comey claimed he did not know for a fact that the Steele dossier was funded by the DNC or the Clinton campaign.

“When did you learn that the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign had funded Christopher Steele’s work?” Baier asked.

“Yes, I still don’t know that for a fact,” Comey said.

“What do you mean?” Baier asked.

“I’ve only seen it in the media. I never knew exactly which Democrats has funded — I knew it was funded first by Republicans,” Comey responded.

“That’s not true that the dossier that Christopher Steele worked on was funded by Republicans,” Baier said.

The IG report shows that Comey was indeed informed of the funding of the dossier. According to the report, on October 12, 2016, then National Security Division (NSD) Assistant Attorney General Stuart Evans raised concerns to both Comey and Andrew McCabe about the DNC and Clinton campaign funding the Steele dossier.

Last week, the airwaves were full of media praise for Nancy Pelosi to cover for a meltdown seemly aimed at reporter James Rosen but I feel was much more a vent toward a plan going very badly. The media certainly came with both barrels. Chris Mathews and selected Hardball panelists agreed that it may well have been her “finest hour.” That tower of truth Lawrence O’Donnell celebrated her “crushing” of Rosen. Andrea Mitchell attested to Pelosi’s “deep faith” and her sincerity in citing her status as a properly raised Catholic. And the ever-so conservative of convenience David Brooks, no doubt more impressed by the crisp crease of her pantsuit than her substance, called it a “beautiful moment.”

When I bothered to watch the clip of the press conference (actually just a tight, measured statement to the reporters) and her turning on Rosen as she was leaving, my first impression was of a cornered rat striking out and releasing the frustration with its predicament. It might have been quite a bit of her own doing, but Pelosi has been cornered into calling for the bills of impeachment after losing all of the battles needed to make the measure favor her party and her ends.

A person who knows they have control of the situation does not meltdown like that. In her case, I believe she was on-board for an impeachment from the beginning ...

The heavy-handed committee meetings with such apparent lack of fairness (not mention evidence of any real kind) have been an across-the-board bust. The more they do, the easier it is to see they have no real case except a distaste for the president and anyone who voted for him. The parade of “witnesses” has been little more than a collection of career swamp dwellers unhappy with the rejection of their great policy insight who had no first-hand knowledge of anything and a selected set of snarky left-wing academics – all of whom appeared to talk down to everyone else without a D in front of their name or not holding a media card. One of the self-important, bow-tied professors even began by instructing us on his “conclusions” before even addressing any points of law and constitutionality.
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But even that poling which is allowed to reach the public eye shows the president gaining ground, not just across-the-board but in so-called battleground states and districts. And the crowning touch was data which suggested his approval among minorities was well over 30 percent. That is indeed a panic signal for the party of dependency.

For several reasons, in that flash of time when Madame Speaker wheeled on Rosen, I didn’t see a devout Catholic defending her love for all mankind (except, of course, for those in their first, second, or third trimester – or maybe a few minutes past), I saw a scheming rat cornered and angered she couldn’t find the next turn in the maze.