AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: ‘The FBI Raid On Melania’s Closet Was Justified,’ Says Merrick Garland Wearing Gorgeous New Evening Gown And Sun Hat.
To be fair, he really looks fabulous in that rig:
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
August 13, 2022
THE BANNINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES: Twitter Suspended Paul Sperry, but He’s Still Reporting Some Troubling Things About FBI Raid.
BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE: David Brooks: Did the FBI just reelect Donald Trump?
According to a Trafalgar Group/Convention of States Action survey, 83% of likely Republican voters said the FBI search made them more motivated to vote in the 2022 elections. More than 75% of likely Republican voters believed Trump’s political enemies were behind the search rather than the impartial justice system, as did 48% of likely general election voters overall.
In a normal society, when politicians get investigated or charged, it hurts them politically. But that no longer applies to the GOP. The judicial system may be colliding with the political system in an unprecedented way.
What happens if a prosecutor charges Trump and he is convicted just as he is cruising to the GOP nomination or maybe even the presidency? What happens if the legal system, using its criteria, decides Trump should go to prison at the very moment that the electoral system, using its criteria, decides he should go to the White House?
I presume in those circumstances Trump would be arrested and imprisoned. I also presume we would see widespread political violence from incensed Trump voters who would conclude that the Regime has stolen the country. In my view, this is the most likely path to a complete democratic breakdown.
In theory, justice is blind, and obviously no person can be above the law. But as Damon Linker wrote in a Substack post, “This is a polity, not a graduate seminar in Kantian ethics.” We live in a specific real-world situation, and we all have to take responsibility for the real-world effects of our actions.
America absolutely needs to punish those who commit crimes. On the other hand, America absolutely needs to make sure that Trump does not get another term as president. What do we do if the former makes the latter more likely? I have no clue how to get out of this potential conflict between our legal and political realities.
We’re living in a crisis of legitimacy, during which distrust of established power is so virulent that actions by elite actors tend to backfire, no matter how well founded they are.
My impression is that the FBI had legitimate reasons to do what it did. My guess is it will find some damning documents that will do nothing to weaken Trump’s support. I’m also convinced that, at least for now, it has unintentionally improved Trump’s reelection chances. It has unintentionally made life harder for Trump’s potential primary challengers and motivated his base.
Flashback: How David Brooks created Donald Trump.
THE ATTACK ON SALMAN RUSHDIE IS AN ATTACK ON US ALL:
The thought of it turns the stomach. A man stabbed for writing a book. And not just any man, but Salman Rushdie. The author with the price on his head. The author of the The Satanic Verses, the novel burned by Islamists around the world. The author whose act of ‘blasphemy’ at the tailend of the 20th century showed us just how deep the problem of Islamist intolerance is – and just how deep Western liberal cowardice is in the face of this most violent and unhinged variant of cancel culture.
We are all praying for Salman Rushdie today, even us godless types. He was airlifted to hospital yesterday after being stabbed multiple times in the neck and abdomen on stage at an event in New York. Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, says he is on a ventilator and unable to speak. ‘Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged’, he says. Those who believe in freedom the world over are willing him to pull through.
We are not yet sure why the suspect – 24-year-old Hadi Matar from New Jersey – rushed on stage and stabbed Rushdie in reportedly crazed fashion. But we can make an educated guess. For more than 30 years Rushdie has lived under an execution order. On 14 February 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against him and anyone involved in publishing his ‘blasphemous’ fourth novel. He went into hiding for nine years. The book’s Japanese translator was stabbed to death in 1991. Its Turkish translator narrowly escaped an Islamist arson attack in 1993, which claimed the lives of 37 others.
Read the whole thing.
ROGER SIMON: Can a GOP Congress Stop the New IRS Gestapo?
Naturally, conservatives are alarmed, even terrified, that the IRS could be so politicized. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been rushed into the fray to reassure us, through a “directive”:
“Specifically, I direct that any additional resources—including any new personnel or auditors that are hired—shall not be used to increase the share of small business or households below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative to historical levels,” she said.
Would Yellen, the woman who told us inflation was transitory and that there was no recession, lie to you? Or if she has issued such a “directive,” does it have legal force? And what are these historical levels anyway? What part of history is she referring to?
I have a two-word of rebuttal to Ms. Yellen: Lois Lerner.
From the Daily Mail:
“After nearly two years of jockeying with Congress over the IRS’s history of discriminating against conservative nonprofit groups, former official Lois Lerner won’t be charged with a crime for defying a congressional subpoena and refusing to answer questions.
“U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen, on his last day in office, told House Speaker John Boehner in a seven-page letter that Lerner could wrap herself in the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, even though she offered a self-serving opening statement before clamming up during a May 22, 2013, hearing.”
With 87,000 new employees, almost all avid statists—who else would join the agency—we are headed for déjà vu all over again, i.e., Lerner’s “historical level,” only worse in a yet more divided time. (As someone once said, “Personnel is policy.”)
So to Republicans in the House and Senate, speechify all you wish, but start really acting now, being concrete, even before you might have majorities. Get with the smartest conservative tax lawyers you can find and figure out some way to put a halt to as much of this as possible. Throw a wrench in the machine.
Keep America free. It’s barely hanging on.
As Mark Steyn has written, maybe it would be easier to list which federal agency doesn’t have its own personal SWAT team?
August 12, 2022
SALMAN RUSHDIE ON A VENTILATOR, LIKELY TO LOSE AN EYE AFTER ON-STAGE ATTACK:
“The news is not good,” the 75-year-old writer’s agent, Andrew Wylie, told The New York Times.
“Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged,” said Wylie.
Rushdie, who is still unable to speak, was attacked by a lone man while speaking at an event at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, NY, about 75 miles south of Buffalo.
Related: The best response to Salman Rushdie’s stabbing. What happened in New York today cannot be allowed to win. The illiterate cannot be allowed to dictate the rules of literature.
RIP: Actress Anne Heche dead at 53 after horror car crash. “Though the actress is legally dead, her heart is still beating and she remains on life support in order to donate her organs, her rep said.”
WAR ON WOMEN UPDATE: Gender-neutral Joan of Arc at Globe. “Joan of Arc will be portrayed as a gender-neutral character in a new play at the home of Shakespeare in London, in a radical departure from the usual depiction of the historic figure. Audiences for I, Joan, which will open on August 25 at the Globe and run for two months, will hear Joan use the pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them.’”
Finally.
JIM TREACHER: Wait. The Bad Orange Man Had… Nuclear Documents? Seriously? “It’s been seven years since You-Know-Who rode down that escalator and threw his hat into the ring, and the Democrats have learned absolutely nothing. The more they try to hurt this guy, the more they end up helping him. Now they’re galvanizing the right behind him. Even traitors like me, who think 1/6 was bad and probably wanted Hillary to win, are incredulous that they’re abusing their power like this. It’s already backfiring, but at least the libs can still air out their bloodthirsty fantasies:”
I’ll TAKE THINGS NO ONE IS SAYING FOR $500, ALEX: “We’d talked about the dynamics of Iowa, her competitors and the pressure she put on herself not ‘to screw this up.’ But here and now [Elizabeth Warren] offered her plainest view of the landscape yet: ‘Everyone comes up to me and says, ‘I would vote for you, if you had a penis.’”
KIMBERLY STRASSEL: The Payback for Mar-a-Lago Will Be Brutal.
Democrats may be betting that adverse coverage of Mr. Trump will help them in November, or in 2024. They’d better hope so. Their media defenders recklessly ignore the boomerang history of unleashed governmental powers and the long-term political danger of violating precedents and norms. A Democratic Congress enacted, and Jimmy Carter signed, the first independent counsel law in 1978. Two decades later it led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment.
If anything, a perceived political persecution of Mr. Trump could help him to a second term. And he would be even more unrestrained as the 47th president than he was as the 45th. A second Trump administration wouldn’t have the caliber of grown-ups who signed up for the first tour. Mr. Garland’s raid has made even the highest political figures fair prosecutorial game, and the media’s new standard is that the department can’t be questioned as it goes about ensuring “no one is above the law.” Let’s see how that holds when a future Republican Justice Department starts raiding the homes of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, James Comey and John Brennan.
Payback could come even sooner. Democrats set a new low with their Ukrainian impeachment circus, and a GOP House next year might be up for a reprise. Get ready for a few more select committees—perhaps excluding the minority party, as the Democrats effectively did with the Jan. 6 committee—to investigate Mr. Garland’s politicized department or Hunter Biden’s finances. Watch them subpoena sitting Democratic representatives, as the Jan. 6 committee did to Republicans. Reps. Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar and Eric Swalwell may find themselves on the back bench with a new Republican majority eager to follow Mrs. Pelosi’s example and strip the opposing team’s members of committee assignments.
All this tit for tat will further undermine our institutions and polarize the nation—but such is the nature of retributive politics. Which is why the wholesale Democratic and media defense of this week’s events is so reckless. Both parties long understood that political restraint was less about civility than self-preservation. What goes around always comes around. What went around this week will come around hard.
To coin a 2016-era Insta-phrase, choose the form of your destructor.
PIVOT! Biden relaunches national initiative Cancer Moonshot to accelerate fight against cancer.
President Joe Biden is relaunching a national campaign to accelerate the rate of progress against cancer, he announced Wednesday.
First launched in 2016, Cancer Moonshot aims to reduce the cancer death rate by at least half over the next 25 years. It will also aim to improve the experience of survivors or those fighting cancer. A Cancer Cabinet will be formed as part of the initiative.
The announcement included a call to action to jump-start cancer screenings, more than 9.5 million of which have been delayed due to COVID-19. The administration has also set aside budgets for biomedical and health research through entities like the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health.
Typing up press releases on the “Cancer Moonshot” seems to be the Biden administration’s regular “Stray Voltage” fallback in a desperate attempt to get bad news out of the news cycle. Flashback: Desperately Unpopular Biden Makes Play to Control Cancer Cures With ‘Moonshot.’
—Athena Thorne, PJM, February 2nd.
No word yet if the “Cancer Moonshot” will cure the deadly strain of #OilCancer that emanates from oily windshields.
Flashback to January, 2016: Obama’s new, new!, new!!, new!!!, new!!!! war on cancer. ICYMI: Nixon started giving cancer the Apollo treatment in 1971.
Obama, 2016: “Last year, Vice President Biden said that with a new moonshot, America can cure cancer. Last month, he worked with this Congress to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health the strongest resources that they’ve had in over a decade. So tonight, I’m announcing a new national effort to get it done. And because he’s gone to the mat for all of us on so many issues over the past 40 years, I’m putting Joe in charge of Mission Control. For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the families that we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all.”
To be fair, between the out of control inflation and oil crisis he triggered, and this week’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, Biden has been doing quite a fair Nixon impersonation himself.
BIDEN DOES HIS BEST BANANA REPUBLIC IMPRESSION:
The United States isn’t a banana republic. It is doing quite a convincing impression of one, however. On Monday night, the FBI raided Donald Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago, apparently looking for evidence that the 45th president, a spring chicken at seventy-six, had hidden official documents in contravention of the Presidential Records Act — an offense that could see him barred from returning to office. Legal scholars are by no means sure that anybody would be able to prove that Trump willfully withheld sensitive government records — after all, the FBI said that Hillary Clinton had been “extremely careless” with her emails as Secretary of State, then a State Department investigation declared her not guilty of deliberately mishandling evidence. Still, the authorities didn’t break into any of Clinton’s homes (not publicly, anyway), and so Monday’s raid looks a lot like what Trump says it is — an act of political intimidation you might expect from a tinpot dictatorship in the developing world; a desperate bid to find something — anything — that might prevent Trump running for the White House again in 2024.
Within a few hours, almost as if he knew it had been coming, Trump released a video that resembled nothing so much as a presidential campaign announcement. “We are a nation that has in many ways become a joke,” declares the Donald on film, as gloomy black-and-white images turn to vivid color. “But soon we will have greatness again.”
Perhaps the FBI knows something very damning about Trump that we don’t. If not, why would the Bureau, or possibly Attorney General Merrick Garland, do something that appears so neatly to validate the Trumpist refrain that the “Deep State” will stop at nothing to take down their hero? Why would Trump’s enemies give him a near-perfect launchpad opportunity?
Conspiracy theories sprout everywhere. One is that the FBI — led as it is by a Trump appointee, Christopher Wray — is at some level working with — not against — Trump in order to help absolve him in the public eye over his behavior in the aftermath of the November 2020 election. Another, slightly less far-fetched idea is that the Democrats are trying to goad the Donald into announcing his 2024 campaign before the fast-approaching midterm elections. That would be because the dreaded idea of a Trump comeback might mobilize Democratic voters in the coming months and help prevent a Republican “red wave” at the ballot in November.
What’s certain is the Republicans are itching to start counter-investigations into the Biden administration as soon as their party seizes control of Congress. Hours after the Trump raid, House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy declared: “When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned. Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar.”
Biden’s White House has gotten so bad that actual banana republics are looking down at us: President of El Salvador bashes US government over FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. “The leader of El Salvador chided the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, rhetorically asking what the United States would say if he did something similar.”
OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH MAR-A-LAGO: MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle Demands You Stop Calling The FBI Mar-a-Lago Raid a Raid!
On MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, host Stephanie Ruhle spent the opening segment of her show on Tuesday evening with her assembled panel to discuss the fallout from the FBI’s raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. While the panel discussion itself could constitute a NewsBusters blog in and of itself, what Ruhle said at the end of the segment outshined everything else in its stupidity.
Wrapping up the segment and about to head to a commercial break, Ruhle sanctimoniously claimed the FBI raid on Trump’s Florida home wasn’t actually a raid. “We keep hearing a lot of people call what the FBI did at Mar-a-Lago a raid. But for fact’s sake here’s the deal, law enforcement doesn’t even use the term raid,” Ruhle wailed.
She’s far from alone: Taking Cue From Dems, Media Abandon ‘Raid’ To Describe Trump FBI Raid (Video).