Ninety miles from the South Eastern tip of the United States, Liberty has no stead. In order for Liberty to exist and thrive, Tyranny must be identified, recognized, confronted and extinguished.
House Democrats are trotting out their star witness for Tuesday’s impeachment show, Lt.-Col. Alexander Vindman. He listened in on the July 25 phone call between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodomyr Zelensky, that is central to the Democrats’ case. They allege that Trump demanded Zelensky dig up dirt on the Bidens in exchange for military aid.
At first glance, Vindman looks like the ideal witness, wearing US Army dress blues with medals. The media portray him as a hero reluctantly stepping forward to disclose presidential misconduct. But Vindman will wither under cross-examination, as he did during closed-door testimony on Oct. 29. You haven’t heard that because the media are misleading you.
Vindman’s job at the National Security Council is to write policy memos, schedule meetings and keep minutes of conversations with foreign diplomats. That’s why he was on the July 25 call.
Vindman claims that Trump “demanded” investigations from Zelensky in return for aid, according to page 316 of his earlier testimony. But that’s his opinion, not fact. GOP questioners pointed out that Trump had used gentle language, asking Zelensky for “a favor” and saying “whatever you can do” and “if that’s possible,” words that don’t suggest a demand. Vindman conceded it was his personal interpretation. “I think people want to hear, you know, what they have as already preconceived notions,” he said, according to page 256 of his earlier testimony.
Where did Vindman get his preconceived notion? He points to media stories accusing Trump and Rudy Giuliani of seeking investigations to damage Joe Biden. Vindman confessed he never met or communicated with Trump or Giuliani and didn’t know what Trump was thinking, according to transcript pages 36 and 177.
But the Democrats hilariously argue Vindman is on solid ground, because the stories quoted Giuliani, “so this is not some sort of media spin thing,” said Democratic question Daniel Goldman, per page 252 of Vindman’s testimony. Are Dems suggesting a president can be impeached based on media accounts, instead of real evidence?
When Vindman was asked if he had knowledge of a quid pro quo communicated to the Ukrainains, on July 25 or any other day, he admitted “no,” on page 317 of the transcript. That makes sense. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said Thursday he was unaware of any link between...
House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) “acted in concert” with Politico to leak allegedly false information from the impeachment inquiry as part of a “scheme” to advance the “inquisition” against President Donald Trump, according to an explosive defamation lawsuit filed by a senior Trump White House official on Monday.
White House official Kash Patel, who is a senior counterterrorism official on the National Security Council (NSC), filed the lawsuit in Virginia court in which he says Schiff “weaponized the media” to advance his impeachment agenda.
Patel is a former staffer to the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who later moved to the White House in the NSC to advise the president on national security and intelligence matters.
Patel on Monday filed the defamation suit in Virginia state court against Politico, Natasha Bertrand, a reporter for the establishment media outlet, and Robert Allbritton, the publisher and executive chairman of the media organization, all identified as defendants.
Patel accuses the defendants of defaming him by working with Schiff and members of his staff to disseminate false stories about him.
In the lawsuit, Patel alleges:
Defendants intentionally employed a scheme or artifice to defame Kash with the intent to undermine the President’s confidence in Kash and to further Schiff’s impeachment inquisition. Defendants acted in concert with Schiff to accomplish an unlawful purpose through unlawful means, without regard for Kash’s rights and interests. … Defendants abandoned all journalistic integrity and violated their own code of ethics in order to further the conspiracy with Schiff. Defendants did not seek truth; report truth; minimize harm; act independently; and they most certainly were not transparent.
In particular, Patel accuses Bertrand of writing two false stories for Politico claiming the NSC official was feeding Trump negative information about Ukraine and misrepresenting himself as an expert on the Eastern European country to the U.S. president.
Politico, however, refuses “to retract or clarify” the...
An MS-13 gang member was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for his role in a brutal machete attack at a park just outside Dallas, Texas.
Manuel Amaya-Alvarez, 22, pleaded guilty in May to four counts of violent crime in aid of racketeering (VICAR).
According to court documents, Amaya-Alvarez – an El Salvadorian national in the United States illegally – admitted he belonged to MS-13, a notorious and violent transnational street gang.
In Sept. 25, 2017, he admitted he and fellow MS-13 gang members attempted to “take out,” or kill, four individuals at Running Bear Park in Irving, Texas.
That night, the gang lured an individual – a man they perceived to be a rival gang member – to the park under the guise that they wanted to buy his tattoo machine. The man came with two other men and a female acquaintance. When they arrived, gang members lured them to wooded area in the back of the park, where additional gang members – armed with a shotgun, machetes, and clubs – lay in wait.
After Amaya-Alvarez and another gang member, both seated on a park bench, greeted the victims, the other gang members appeared and surrounded the victims, forcing them to kneel on the ground before...
If you are in need of more evidence as to why so many Americans are cynical about politics in general and Washington in particular (and isn’t current evidence sufficient?), you need look no further than the etymological shift taken by Democrats during the House impeachment hearings.
As The Washington Post first reported, the decision to replace “quid pro quo” with “bribery” when speaking of President Donald Trump’s phone call to Ukraine’s president came from focus groups conducted in key battleground states.
Among the questions asked of people was whether “quid pro quo,” “extortion,” or “bribery” was the best description of the president’s alleged conduct. The groups found “bribery” to be the most descriptive and “damning.”
Armed with their talking points, Democrats at the House Intelligence Committee hearing, across the country and on TV programs, began using the word bribery. Listening to some of the montages compiled by conservative media is hilarious. It is straight out of “newspeak” in George Orwell’s novel “1984,” which the author said was “designed to diminish the range of thought.”
This represents the death rattle of a party once known for promoting big ideas. Last week, the stock market achieved another record high, the Dow Jones Industrial Average topping 28,000, fattening the savings of current and future retirees. While not everyone is invested in the market, when companies make money, they tend to hire more...
There has been an understandable (and predictable) effort by President Trump’s opponents within the State Department and beyond to controversialize his foreign policy practices.
Among the supposed controversies is Trump’s use of his personal adviser and attorney Rudy Giuliani, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Special Envoy Kurt Volker, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, and Director of Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney to implement Ukrainian diplomacy.
Trump critics and some in the media have incorrectly termed that as “shadow diplomacy.”
Impeachment witness Ambassador William Taylor took great pains to repeatedly called this an “irregular channel,” implying there was something sinister and wrong– maybe even impeachable– about the arrangement.
In fact, the resisting diplomats are the ones who are conducting shadow diplomacy when they are acting contrary to the president’s wishes. Under the U.S. Constitution, the president directs all foreign policy; not the other way around.
Along those lines, there was something of a silent bombshell that nobody flagged in last week’s impeachment testimony from Ambassador Taylor.
Taylor testified that he understood it was President Trump’s desire to lock in a commitment from Ukraine to launch a corruption investigation by having the president, Vlodymyr Zelensky, say so on CNN. But Taylor further testified that he did not want the CNN interview to happen, and “sought assurances from Zelensky that he would not do so.”
Under what authority did Taylor resist the President’s foreign policy– presumably behind his back?
Taylor and others also testified they assumed President Trump was seeking a campaign 2020 quid pro quo from Ukraine, and that they resisted that, too. We now know that Trump never mentioned the 2020 campaign– at least there’s no testimony or documentation so far that he did. He discussed investigating corruption tied to the 2016 election.
And we also know that quids pro quo — although one was not consummated in the Ukraine case — are a common and necessary part of foreign aid.
So, under what authority did these diplomats, who are tasked with implementing the president’s foreign policy, assume his motivations as nefarious (having never met or spoken with him) and resist his policy desires?
Much of what they criticized isn’t controversial at all– except to the extent it’s President Trump who’s making the decisions. And, at times, his decisions are contrary to the opinions of some long-established diplomats.
What follows below is a description of the U.S. president’s authority when it comes to...
U.S.—Chick-fil-A has said it will stop making donations to Christian groups that oppose the LGBTQ movement.
The move is said to be a "good trade" as Chick-fil-A has sacrificed its Christian fans in favor of an outraged mob that will stop at nothing to destroy them.
Restaurant spokespeople say they believe this move will be enough to appease the LGBTQ community and aren't worried about further demands from the mob until Chick-fil-A is groveling at the outraged leftists' feet.
"In no way will this backfire on us," said Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy. "Surely the left will be entirely appeased by this move. They will definitely forgive us right away and welcome us as one of them. In no way will they hold our past activities against us. This is much better than our previous Christian audience, who were always adoring us and never protesting us."
Cathy said the Christian fans have been great, but it's boring just having loyal fans who support you through thick and thin, and he'd much rather have fans who stage die-ins and cancel you when you don't cave in.
"Sometimes you just want to be loved by a group that protests you for years and calls you...
