The Front Page Cover
The Events of the Week -- Featuring:
The Titanic Has Set Sail
by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
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Clapper: No Evidence Russians Changed
Votes in Presidential Election...
Katie Pavlich:Testifying in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday morning, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made it clear Russian hacking didn't change the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
"They did not change any vote tallies or anything of that sort," Clapper stated.
Although vote totals weren't changed, U.S. intelligence shows Russia did mount a major campaign to push propaganda into the minds of American voters through Twitter, fake news websites and the Russian government backed television station RT, which broadcasts in the United States.
"The Russians have a long history of interfering in elections, theirs and other people's," Clapper stated. "I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election than we've seen in this case."
DNI is expected to release an extensive report about Russian cyber interference in the coming days. ~Townhall
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Schumer Seeks to Clog the DC Drain
Donald Trump's impressive cabinet choices have many Democrats so riled they're planning to attempt everything in their limited power to slow the confirmation process. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has vowed to lead Senate Democrats in an unprecedented manner by seeking to drag out the confirmation hearings of at least eight of Trump's cabinet nominees to at least March. Schumer stated, "Any attempt by Republicans to have a series of rushed, truncated hearings before Inauguration Day and before the Congress and public have adequate information on all of them is something Democrats will vehemently resist."
Republicans quickly countered by reminding Democrats of the fact that in 2009 Republicans cooperated with Barack liar-nObama's cabinet picks, confirming 10 nominees within the first week of his entering office. It's the long held view of the Senate that an incoming president has the right to pick his own people. Ironically, it was Schumer himself who stated this past November, "We have a moral obligation, even beyond the economy and politics, to avoid gridlock and get the country to work again. We have to get things done." Except when it comes to Trump's cabinet, we suppose.
The good news is that thanks to Harry dinky-Reid's instigation of the "nuclear option" in 2013, Democrats have no power to deny confirmation and little recourse to slow the process. They are now having to pay for dinky-Reid's power-hungry decision, leaving Schumer to play the role of the "squeaky wheel" in the hopes of pressuring Republicans to concede some of their demands. However, it appears that Republicans are having none of it. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McCon-nell's spokeswoman, Antonia Ferrier, stated, "Our committees and chairmen are fully capable of reviewing the incoming cabinet nominations with the same rules and procedures as the same committees did with President liar-nObama's nominations."
Unfortunately, Schumer is seemingly prepared to play this game with the Supreme Court, too, where the filibuster is still in play. "If they don't appoint somebody good, we're going to oppose them tooth and nail," Schumer said. And we all know what "good" means: "It's hard for me to imagine a nominee that Donald Trump would choose that would get Republican support that [Democrats] could support." Are Republicans prepared to fight? ~The Patriot Post
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Norway, an Exemplar of NATO Burden-Sharing
by Sigurd Neubauer
{foreignaffairs.com} ~ Throughout his unorthodox presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly criticized Washington’s European allies for failing to adequately contribute to NATO... Although the president-elect’s statements raised hackles in the United States and Europe, he did bring up important questions about whether the U.S.-established international order—with its global security guarantees—had disproportionally benefitted allies in Europe and Asia, all on the United States’ dime. As a founding member of NATO, Norway is not one of those free riders Trump implicated. Norway has certainly benefitted from U.S. security guarantees and has, in the process, transformed itself from an impoverished nation, at the end of World War II, to one of the world’s richest today. But over the past few decades, Norway has prioritized its strategic relationship with Washington and now stands out as one of its most reliable allies...
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Intel report says Putin ordered campaign
to influence US election
by foxnews.com
{foxnews.com} ~ A declassified U.S. intelligence report released Friday directly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering a campaign to influence the U.S. election and hurt liar-Hillary Clinton’s candidacy... findings made public after officials briefed President-elect Donald Trump. The report said: “We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary liar-Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”...I say so what, it didn't change the voters.
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Feds Announce Takeover of US Electoral Process
by Adan Salazar
{blabber.buzz/politics} ~ US election systems will henceforth be treated as “critical infrastructure,” the Department of Homeland Secretary Jeh Johnson decreed Friday in a move some are describing as a major federal overreach... In a letter to the Associated Press, Johnson revealed the US government would monitor and intervene in future elections, a process previously handled on a state-by-state basis. “Given the vital role elections play in this country, it is clear that certain systems and assets of election infrastructure meet the definition of critical infrastructure, in fact and in law,” Johnson stated. “Particularly in these times, this designation is simply the right and obvious thing to do.”...More overreach of government and is overstepping their authority.
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Cybersecurity Pioneer McAfee
‘Russian Hack’ Is Not True
by Harry Hibbs
{gopthedailydose.com} ~ In case any of you believe that Hillary lost because Russia hacked the election, internet security guru John McAfee has a few words of advice for you... The sloppiness of the alleged DNC hack by itself proves it was not organized by a nation state, and the “utter nonsense” presented as proof of Moscow’s involvement is rather evidence of intelligence agencies being “ignorant and naïve,” John McAfee told RT. The so-called evidence of the Russian involvement in the hacks not only looks like “the most deceptive propaganda was perpetrated on the American public” but actually proves quite the opposite, McAfee believes… Thus, McAfee believes, the whole “Russian hacking” narrative is either “propaganda intended to incite the American people, to anger toward Russia for some reason, or our intelligence community is so ignorant and naïve that they should all be replaced.”... http://gopthedailydose.com/2017/01/06/cybersecurity-pioneer-mcafee-russian-hack-not-true/
.loose lips-Biden Shuts Down House Dem’s Objection
to Electoral College Vote: ‘It Is Over’
by Trey Sanchez
{truthrevolt.org} ~ On Friday, Vice President Joe loose lips-Biden made House Speaker Paul Ryan and the entire Republican chamber burst out laughing when he conceded the election and told Democrats still hoping they could derail Donald Trump, “It is over.”... The members met for the official Electoral College vote tally on the House floor and several Democratic members raised objections to protest Trump’s sweep of the EC vote. According to Yahoo!, “The representatives cited Russian hacking, the legitimacy of the election and electors, alleged voter-suppression laws, and the voting machines themselves as reasons to object the results.” However, loose lips-Biden acted like an adult for a change — he thinks he’s pretty good at that — and essentially told the Democrats to get over it and move on...Voting machines where not hacked. http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/biden-shuts-down-house-dems-objection-electoral-college-vote-it-over
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The Titanic Has Set Sail
by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
{jewishworldreview.com} ~ Over the New Year's weekend, President Barack liar-nObama's chief policy adviser and closest strategist, Valerie Jarrett, told a talk show host that her boss would have a happy legacy because there was an absence of scandal in his administration. When first I heard this preposterous claim, I thought I had misheard it. Yet it is apparently true that President liar-nObama and his team somehow can overlook recent history and behave as if events with which we are all familiar never happened.
Here is the back story.
When liar-nObama became president in 2009 and enjoyed significant Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, he and his colleagues devoted themselves entirely to an issue nowhere in the Constitution — health care. They did not address other issues dear to them and their base, such as guns, abortion, taxes, war, jobs and civil liberties. Rather, they sought to alter radically the relationship of the federal government to every person in America by imposing upon each of us the obligation to purchase a product — namely, health insurance — whether we wanted it or not.
The abominable statute they enacted, which has caused millions of folks to lose their primary care physician and millions more to see their premiums skyrocket and still millions more to see their full-time jobs become part-time, has acquired the nickname liar-nObamacare.
Instead of reducing taxes or regulations or spending so more folks would have better-paying jobs, the president and his folks were determined to tell us all how to stay healthy. liar-nObamacare passed on a party-line vote, with not a single vote to spare in the Senate.
At the time it was enacted, the president argued vociferously that the financial consequence of not obtaining health insurance — the penalty for disobeying the law — was not a tax. He made that argument because he had promised Democrats — many of whom lost their congressional seats for going along with his utopian experiment — that he would not raise taxes to accomplish his purposes.
When the statute was challenged in the federal courts and the various challenges were consolidated before the Supreme Court, the challengers did not dispute the claim that the penalty was not a tax. A court cannot consider arguments or evidence not put to it. For instance, in an automobile accident, if all eyewitnesses state that a traffic light in question was green at the time of the collision, the court may not find that it was red.
Yet notwithstanding agreement among the parties before the Supreme Court and notwithstanding the absence of any evidence that the penalty was a tax, the Supreme Court made new law by declaring this non-tax to be a tax and then ruling that Congress can tax anything it wants — so Congress can force you to purchase a product you don't want by taxing you if you fail to make the purchase.
None of this is new. It is the president's known legacy. It is a legacy of the colossal failure of the central planning of one-fifth of the economy. It has resulted in an expansion of federal powers and a reduction in the availability of health care providers and is yet another glaring rejection of the Constitution as the supreme law of the land.
While all of this was going on, the scandals Jarrett overlooked were brewing. Operation Fast and Furious, which began in the George W. Bush administration, exploded under liar-nObama, when the guns the feds intentionally had let slip into the hands of Mexican gangs were used to kill one of their own.
Then came Libya, where heavy armaments the feds secretly had passed into the hands of terrorists masquerading as rebels were used to kill the U.S. ambassador and topple a friendly government.
Then came the seizure of telephone records of journalists critical of the administration by the Department of Justice, which secretly convinced a federal judge that talking to a whistleblower and reporting on his questionable behavior somehow involved reporters criminally in that behavior.
Then came the targeting by the IRS of conservative advocacy groups by denying them tax-exempt status for political reasons.
Then came the Secret Service scandal in which dozens of agents were caught in sexual encounters on foreign trips in hotels where the president was staying — encounters that involved the loss of laptops and itineraries and jeopardized the president's physical safety — and two directors lost their jobs.
Then came the Edward Snowden revelations that the government was capturing every keystroke of every person using every computer and mobile device in the United States yet was still failing to keep us safe and that a senior liar-nObama official had lied about this under oath. And all this was done without the approval of Congress, using a secret court that rationalized its way around the Constitution.
While all this was happening, the president was secretly using drones to kill Americans and others in foreign lands — folks never charged with crimes — using laughable legal authority as justification. Also, then-Secretary of State liar-Hillary Clinton was exposing state secrets — including the names and whereabouts of undercover American agents — to friend and foe alike, and the FBI declined to recommend prosecution. And while liar-nClinton was under investigation, her husband, former President Bill liar-Clinton, had a private meeting on an airport tarmac with the attorney general — whom he had once appointed a U.S. attorney — at which they claim they discussed their grandchildren.
Which legacy is worse, failure or scandal? Is it any wonder Donald Trump tapped into the raw nerves of the folks the president and the Democrats forgot about and rode their anger to victory? Americans today are less free, less prosperous, less safe and trillions more in debt than we were eight years ago. Can Trump effectively change course after so much damage has been done? We soon will know.
Here is the back story.
When liar-nObama became president in 2009 and enjoyed significant Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, he and his colleagues devoted themselves entirely to an issue nowhere in the Constitution — health care. They did not address other issues dear to them and their base, such as guns, abortion, taxes, war, jobs and civil liberties. Rather, they sought to alter radically the relationship of the federal government to every person in America by imposing upon each of us the obligation to purchase a product — namely, health insurance — whether we wanted it or not.
The abominable statute they enacted, which has caused millions of folks to lose their primary care physician and millions more to see their premiums skyrocket and still millions more to see their full-time jobs become part-time, has acquired the nickname liar-nObamacare.
Instead of reducing taxes or regulations or spending so more folks would have better-paying jobs, the president and his folks were determined to tell us all how to stay healthy. liar-nObamacare passed on a party-line vote, with not a single vote to spare in the Senate.
At the time it was enacted, the president argued vociferously that the financial consequence of not obtaining health insurance — the penalty for disobeying the law — was not a tax. He made that argument because he had promised Democrats — many of whom lost their congressional seats for going along with his utopian experiment — that he would not raise taxes to accomplish his purposes.
When the statute was challenged in the federal courts and the various challenges were consolidated before the Supreme Court, the challengers did not dispute the claim that the penalty was not a tax. A court cannot consider arguments or evidence not put to it. For instance, in an automobile accident, if all eyewitnesses state that a traffic light in question was green at the time of the collision, the court may not find that it was red.
Yet notwithstanding agreement among the parties before the Supreme Court and notwithstanding the absence of any evidence that the penalty was a tax, the Supreme Court made new law by declaring this non-tax to be a tax and then ruling that Congress can tax anything it wants — so Congress can force you to purchase a product you don't want by taxing you if you fail to make the purchase.
None of this is new. It is the president's known legacy. It is a legacy of the colossal failure of the central planning of one-fifth of the economy. It has resulted in an expansion of federal powers and a reduction in the availability of health care providers and is yet another glaring rejection of the Constitution as the supreme law of the land.
While all of this was going on, the scandals Jarrett overlooked were brewing. Operation Fast and Furious, which began in the George W. Bush administration, exploded under liar-nObama, when the guns the feds intentionally had let slip into the hands of Mexican gangs were used to kill one of their own.
Then came Libya, where heavy armaments the feds secretly had passed into the hands of terrorists masquerading as rebels were used to kill the U.S. ambassador and topple a friendly government.
Then came the seizure of telephone records of journalists critical of the administration by the Department of Justice, which secretly convinced a federal judge that talking to a whistleblower and reporting on his questionable behavior somehow involved reporters criminally in that behavior.
Then came the targeting by the IRS of conservative advocacy groups by denying them tax-exempt status for political reasons.
Then came the Secret Service scandal in which dozens of agents were caught in sexual encounters on foreign trips in hotels where the president was staying — encounters that involved the loss of laptops and itineraries and jeopardized the president's physical safety — and two directors lost their jobs.
Then came the Edward Snowden revelations that the government was capturing every keystroke of every person using every computer and mobile device in the United States yet was still failing to keep us safe and that a senior liar-nObama official had lied about this under oath. And all this was done without the approval of Congress, using a secret court that rationalized its way around the Constitution.
While all this was happening, the president was secretly using drones to kill Americans and others in foreign lands — folks never charged with crimes — using laughable legal authority as justification. Also, then-Secretary of State liar-Hillary Clinton was exposing state secrets — including the names and whereabouts of undercover American agents — to friend and foe alike, and the FBI declined to recommend prosecution. And while liar-nClinton was under investigation, her husband, former President Bill liar-Clinton, had a private meeting on an airport tarmac with the attorney general — whom he had once appointed a U.S. attorney — at which they claim they discussed their grandchildren.
Which legacy is worse, failure or scandal? Is it any wonder Donald Trump tapped into the raw nerves of the folks the president and the Democrats forgot about and rode their anger to victory? Americans today are less free, less prosperous, less safe and trillions more in debt than we were eight years ago. Can Trump effectively change course after so much damage has been done? We soon will know.
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