Category Archives: Russia

UPDATED (7/30): The Robert Mueller Inquisition Is The Star(r) Chamber By Any Other Name

Donald Trump, Government, Hillary Clinton, Justice, Law, Republicans, Russia, The State

No matter how you slice it, support for the The U.S. Office of Special Counsel, with its “storm-trooper tactic” and overweening, extra-constitutional powers, is WRONG, whether headed by Kenneth Starr or Robert Mueller. The moniker Star(r) Chamber stuck for good reason. Republicans conducted such a witch hunt; Dems are doing it now  Tucker the Great expresses regret for supporting the first.

Another honest man is Democrat Mark Penn.

Via Real-clear Politics:

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: Mark Penn was for many years one of the highest-level advisors to Hillary Clinton. He’s the author of the new book, “Microtrends Squared”, he joins us tonight. Mark, thanks a lot for coming on.

MARK PENN, FORMER HILLARY CLINTON CHIEF STRATEGIST: Thank you.

CARLSON: So, you wrote kind of an amazing piece the other day in “The Hill,” titled something like, questions I have for Robert Mueller. Tell us some of the questions that if you could ask, you would.

PENN: Well, remember, Tucker, I spent a year working with President Clinton against Ken Starr and that effort.

CARLSON: Well, I remember very well.

PENN: I just find that that was child’s play to what’s going on here. And I think Mueller has some questions about what the president was thinking when he fired Comey. Well, I certainly have some questions about what he was thinking when first he went to apply for the FBI job in the first place with Rosenstein. And then, turns around the next day, didn’t he already have a plan when he turned around.

Boy, when he put that team together, and there wasn’t a single Trump donor, what was he thinking then?

And when he looked at these dossiers and discovered that there was no foundation there, how did he deal with that? How does he justify these kinds of really stormtrooper tactics, I think is perhaps not an exaggeration, when you go guns drawn to political consultants, wiretapped all over the place over payments to porn stars?

This thing has gotten out of control. And while he wants to question the president, it seems that no one could really question either Mueller or Comey or Rosenstein, and that is precisely the problem.

CARLSON: Yes. It is the problem. And I hate to admit it since I supported the Ken Starr independent counsel investigation, and I look back in shame because of that. But that was the case that the Clinton people made at the time, there’s no oversight here. And that’s a huge problem.

And it turns out you were right about that.

In your piece, you made reference to his behavior in Boston when he worked there in the Whitey Bulger case. Briefly summarize that, if you would, because I thought it was really interesting.

PENN: Well, really the question – and I think Professor Dershowitz has really been out on this thing. But in the Bulger case, there were four innocent people in jail due to prosecutorial misconduct. And he was head of the office.

And so, you do not really find him in the legal cases, but that means he waited until the courts overturned things to release the people. And so, what was he thinking when that was happening? How did he permit that? How did he permit these kinds of gross abuses? And how does he then supervise an investigation now that seems to be filled with them?

CARLSON: Mark Penn, again, you have authority on this subject. And so, it’s nice to hear from you. Thanks a lot.

PENN: I went through it once. And I hope America doesn’t go through it again.

CARLSON: Yes. Hillary never would have allowed this. She’s too smart for this. There’s no doubt. Thank you.

An arm of the oppressor:

UPDATE (7/30): Title corrected: “An investigation in search of a crime.”

UPDATE (7/30): What-Aboutism: A Pale, Weak Defense Of Trump’s Pro-American Tactics With Putin

Argument, China, Foreign Policy, Government, Propaganda, Reason, Russia, The State

Limited government has a constitutional obligation to secure the peace by defending and protecting its constituents—not the world. Duly, and since my values are not yours and vice versa, a limited government doesn’t enforce “our values.” 

POTUS is doing just that with Mr. Putin.

Hence this Breitbart article amounts to a bit of “What Aboutism.”

In “The President’s Controversial Policy Toward Russia: The Good Guys Risk Losing If the Bad Guys Are United — Part One,” the author seems to galvanize FDR and Churchill to argue—what exactly?—that Putin is a Stalin, with whom we have to make strategic common cause?

No idea.

What Aboutism should be added to the list of logical fallacies. It is not a substantive argument to say, “Oh, lookie, FDR did it too, Churchill did it too. You like them. Why not Trump?”

The other “argument” here is that China is worse than Russia, the premise being that we should do battle with the former but not the latter. In other words, the American government, a paragon of perfection, has enemies more worthy than Russia.

It might be that Synophobia is more justified than Russophobia, but the point remains that an American president should pursue not war, but peace and prosperity, albeit through mighty strength. Those are pursued through diplomacy.

UPDATE (7/30):

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UPDATED (7/22): NEW COLUMN: Doubting The Intelligence Of The Intelligence Community

Homeland Security, Intelligence, Russia, The State

THE NEW COLUMN IS “Doubting The Intelligence Of The Intelligence Community.”

Peter Strzok, the disgraced and disgraceful Federal Bureau of Investigation official, is the very definition of a slimy swamp creature. Strzok twitched, grimaced and ranted his way to infamy during a joint hearing of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, on July 12.

In no way had he failed to discharge his professional unbiased obligation to the public, asserted Strzok. He had merely expressed the hope that “the American population would not elect somebody demonstrating such horrible, disgusting behavior.”

But we did not elect YOU, Mr. Strzok. We elected Mr. Trump.

Strzok is the youthful face of the venerated “Intelligence Community,” itself part of the sprawling political machine that makes up the D.C. comitatus, now writhing like a fire breathing mythical monster against President Donald Trump.

Smug, self-satisfied, cheating creature that he is, Strzok can’t take responsibility for his own misconduct, and blames … Russia for dividing America. In the largely progressive bureau, moreover, Agent Strzok is neither underling nor outlier, for that matter.

He’s an overlord, having risen “to become the Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division, the second-highest position in that division.”

As Ann Coulter observed, the FBI is not the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover.

Neither is the Intelligence Community Philip Haney’s IC any longer.

Haney was a heroic, soft-spoken, demure employee at the Department of Homeland Security. Agents like him are often fired if they don’t get with the program. He didn’t.

Haney’s method and the authentic intelligence he mined and developed might have stopped the likes of the San Bernardino mass murderers and many others. Instead, his higher-ups in the “Intelligence Community” made Haney and his data disappear.

Post Haney, the FBI failed to adequately screen and stop Syed Farook and blushing bride Tashfeen Malik.

A “blind bootlicking faith in spooks” is certainly unwarranted and may even be foolish.

What of odious individuals like former FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and his predecessor, James Comey, now openly campaigning for the Democrats? Are these leaders outliers in the “Intelligence Community”?

As Peter Strzok might say to his paramour in a private tweet, “Who ya gonna believe, the Intelligence Community or your own lying eyes?” The Bureau in particular and the IC cabal, in general, appear to be dominated by the likes of the dull-witted Mr. Strzok.

Similarly, it’s hard to think of a more partisan operator than John O. Brennan—he ran the CIA under President Obama. True to type, he cast a vote for Communist Party USA, back in 1976, when the current Russia monomania would have been justified. Brennan has dubbed President Trump a traitor for having dared to doubt people like himself.

The very embodiment of the Surveillance State at its worst is Michael V. Hayden. Hayden has moved seamlessly from the National Security Agency and the CIA to CNN where he beats up on Trump. …

… READ THE REST. THE NEW COLUMN IS “Doubting The Intelligence Of The Intelligence Community.”

UPDATE (7/22):

TUCKER:

Ann:

Paul Craig Roberts on politicos all hostile to peace:

Patrick Buchanan:

Liberals Decry The Collapse of American Foreign Policy. If Only.

Foreign Policy, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Neoconservatism, Russia

CNN’s Don Lemon says that “we are witnessing the collapse of American foreign policy” (7/19/018).

If only. It’s not quite as promising as that.

We Deplorables had hoped to witness the collapse of the American foreign-policy Establishment. But alas, I fear this monster will regroup when Trump The Slayer leaves office. Sad.

The Big E, the permanent state, is just too malignant and invasive. It enervates and innervates everything. It won’t allow change, such as peace with Putin.