Conservative Review

Virginians might have dodged the bullet of a mass gun control bill, but lest some think sanity has been restored to the Virginia legislature, the same Democrat politicians relentlessly promoting restrictions on self-defense for law-abiding citizens are pushing for release of violent criminals. One major bill is now headed to Governor Ralph Northam’s desk.

On Monday, Virginia’s Senate passed HB35, which offers early release to juveniles serving a life sentence without parole once they have already served 20 years. This is a growing trend in a lot of liberal states, but a number of Republicans have bought into this radical idea of retroactively abolishing life without parole for juvenile murderers. This bill will potentially offer release for over 700 people sentenced to life as juveniles, according to liberal activists supporting the bill.

This people got into prison by killing at least one person. I doubt their ability to successfully navigate life out of prison will have been improved by 20 years inside, surrounded by criminals, with no job skills and a felony murder conviction.

There are crimes for which I would support this sort of reform. Murder is not one of them. For exceptional cases, there's the executive clemency (pardon) system. But... that won't get criminals out of prison and onto the voter rolls in time to save the Dems in 2020. So, mass releases are the way to go.

Or, you know, mass escape plots.

Bolton's book release during impeachment trial just a publicity stunt.

This lawsuit seeking records on Seth Rich may expose a lot of deep state malfeasance. If the DNC emails released by Wikileaks were leaked (for which Seth Rich is pretty much the only publicly known possibility) rather than hacked by the Russians, the entire Russia hoax falls apart.

Sundance thinks this is a response to Barr showing weakness. Possible. I was disappointed in Barr's comments to Trumps' tweeting, but I was willing to chalk it up to personality differences. However, Barr's lack of solid results on this front (especially now that we are formally into Trump's re-election year) is concerning.

Remember: if the Deep State gets Trump out of office, they win and all of this goes away forever. Barr has said some good things but he is an inside player who has run coverups before (Ruby Ridge).

The downside here: it's still only an acting appointment. I have no doubt the "Acting" part will be used as an excuse to play keepaway with the import secrets.

The same penumbras and emanations that protect a woman's "right" to have an abortion apparently do not protect a man's right to have his reproductive organs unmolested by government mandated vasectomies. At least, they don't in the mind of an Alabama Democrat female legislator.

Trump recently pardoned a few people; less than just about every other President in recent history. The media promptly freaked out about that, and are now claiming that Trump offered to pardon Assange (the man behind Wikileaks, who published the DNC leaked emails, and the Podesta emails) in return for saying where Assange got the DNC emails from. The implication is that Assange would be pardoned in return for a lie, and the pardon is thus a corrupt bargin and obstruction of justice.

There are problems with this narrative.

First, Trump did not pardon Assange and did not ask that a pardon offer be conveyed.

Second, Assange has always maintained he did not receive the DNC emails from a hacker, and has strongly suggested he got them from a leaker (Seth Rich) who was subsequently murdered under unusual circumstances. The FBI has something to hide about Seth Rich's murder, and the timing of the recent indictment strongly suggests they want Assange in custody and under control so he cannot speak out.

Third, the charges against Assange have pretty obviously been false from the beginning. In Europe he was accused of ... accidentally not wearing a condom during consensual sex and thus this is rape. Except those got dropped. The people involved seem likely to be plants, and not the kind you need to water every day. The other US charges are related to the Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning affair, and originate from the Deep State SpyGate team. They are also slim, revolving around helping with "hacking" that never happened.

So why the big stink about the pardon thing, when the Assange part wasn't in the news until the media injected it?

Because the Judicial Watch FOIA suggests more about Seth Rich will be coming out, and the idea of Trump getting Assange to testify somehow is obviously scaring the wits out of the Deep State. If Assange testifies that it wasn't Russia, and it was Seth Rich... all of Russiagate blows up.

Remember when I told you she's running?

Ace of Spades

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Bloomberg have both told people privately in recent weeks that if they thought they could win, they would consider entering the primary -- but that they were skeptical there would be an opening, according to Democrats who have spoken with them.

She's running.

Hillary Clinton says "Never say never" about signing on as a Vice Presidential candidate to one of the Democrats running.

They would be foolish to extend an offer to Hillary. But the question and answer shows where her mind is. Even though she probably recognizes she can't win the primary in any normal fashion, she still wants in. And being someone's VP is better than nothing, right?

Fox News

Claims that a Maltese academic offered “dirt” on Hillary Clinton to a former Trump campaign adviser are “absolutely … not true,” the professor is heard saying on a newly released audio recording, according to a British newspaper.

Professor Joseph Mifsud made the remarks in October 2017 to a reporter from The Telegraph of London, the newspaper claimed Thursday in a story promoting its “Crossfire” podcast.

The paper’s website includes an audio clip of 1 minute and 33 seconds of the reporter, Robert Mendick, purportedly talking with Mifsud, whose whereabouts have been unknown in recent years...

Fox News could not independently verify whether the voice was that of Mifsud, but his lawyer, Stefan Roh, expressed skepticism, given that much of the recording was centered on Mifsud insisting he did not work for "any service, secret service or intelligence or none of this kind.”

So, let's review.

If it IS Mifsud, he said he doesn't work for any intelligence agencies, and did not say anything to Papadopoulos about dirt on Hillary. This would seem at first glance to be bad news for the SpyGate folks since it goes against the Russian narrative -- but the FBI is not claiming their investigation began with Mifsud and Papadopoulos. They claim it began after that.

If it ISN'T Mifsud... as Mifsud's lawyer says... who is it and what motive do they have for the claims?

Cui Bono? Who benefits?

The US intelligence agencies who desperately want to cover up their own involvement in this farce. Producing a fake Mifsud recording and leaking it to the media seems an easy way to create confusion and doubt over their involvement with the man who seems to remain in hiding or perhaps dead.

Why are Democrats so violent?

No consequences.

This appears to relate to his leaks concerning the Clinton investigation and lies to investigators on that topic. That is, it does NOT mean McCabe is cleared of SpyGate conduct.

Given how the government has handled the Michael Flynn and Roger Stone cases, backing off of this case appears on its face to present a double standard. Democrats get a pass, especially if they are named Clinton. Republicans get nailed to the wall with the government asking nearly a decade in jail for similar acts.

If Barr wants Trump to stop tweeting criticism of DOJ, Barr needs to start delivering the prosecutions.

Allegedly, of course. But the source is the IG report. The FBI receive most of Steele's information, but then meets with him in October. There, according to the IG report, they (several FBI agents from Crossfire Hurricane) shared with Steele the information they had gathered on alleged Trump-Russia links.

This would allow Steele to investigate -- or make up -- details the FBI needed to support their own investigation and obtain further FISA approvals. It would also allow Steele to ferry the FBI's collected information back to the Clinton campaign, effectively turning the FBI into an opposition research team for the Clinton campaign.

It probably also puts the agents involved in legal jeopardy.

New York Post

“In Indiana they were shooting teachers with rubber pellets so they would feel the adrenaline of what a school shooting would feel like,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, which is part of Everytown. “In California recently, a superintendent hired a stranger to wear a mask to rattle the doors of classrooms without letting faculty and students know. We’ve seen students asked to pretend to be victims and lie down using fake blood in the hallway.”

So why are they doing this to the children?

New York Post

“Everywhere I travel, I hear from parents and educators about active shooter drills terrifying students, leaving them unable to concentrate in the classroom and unable to sleep at night,” said Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association. “So traumatizing students as we work to keep students safe from gun violence is not the answer. That is why if schools are going to do drills, they need to take steps to ensure the drills do more good than harm.”

Of what possible use could two generations of traumatized, terrified children -- some of whom may viscerally believe they actually experienced a school shooting, with people they knew bleeding to death in the hallways as they fled?

If that was the nature of your childhood trauma, how easily could you be taught to redirect that terror and anger at the things and people that your teachers and the media continuously claim are to blame for such horrific events?

And if you are one of the tiny percentage of disaffected, unhappy, or mentally ill teenagers who actually makes the decision to commit horrific violence and murder -- have you not been taught for years exactly what form that violence should take to inflict the most harm?

This is a generations-long, premeditated, propaganda campaign against the right to keep and bear arms.

Meaning in History

BREAKING: Gabriel Sanz-Rexach is Obama official who was the FISA gatekeeper at DOJ in 2016 when the illegal warrant to spy on Trump campaign was authorized. Sanz-Rexach also happens to be the same official who just certified to the FISA court that DOJ & FBI would reform their ways.

BREAKING: Dana Boente was the hi-ranking DOJ official held over from the Obama admin who signed off on the now-invalid 3rd FISA warrant to spy on Trump aide Carter Page. Boente is now the FBI's GC who just certified to the FISA court the FBI would reform its FISA abusing.

BREAKING: FBI Director Wray is initiating FISA-reform training but only at FBI field offices -- even though the illegal FISA abuses took place primarily at FBI headquarters.

This is how the Deep State works.

PJMedia is calling this a huge 2nd Amendment victory. It's not. We avoided a loss -- for a year. They will be back when there is more time for the electorate to forget about the issue.

But dodging the bullet now is the best we can hope for, and we can fight it again when it comes back knowing that they have blinked once already.

Well, clearly the first class of students at the Space Force academy will be known as Space Cadets.

CNSNews

The Internal Revenue Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 to “unauthorized” alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

That was not the only Atlanta address theoretically used by thousands of “unauthorized” alien workers receiving millions in federal tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a TIGTA audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent thousands of tax refunds to “unauthorized” aliens were in Atlanta.

The IRS sent 11,284 refunds worth a combined $2,164,976 to unauthorized alien workers at a second Atlanta address; 3,608 worth $2,691,448 to a third; and 2,386 worth $1,232,943 to a fourth.

This is fraud on a tremendous scale. Why doesn't the IRS stop it? $50 million to a single address in a single year? And this happened in 2011 -- a year the IRS was obviously too busy engaging in political persecution to detect obvious fraud.

Unfortunately, we didn't get any arrests or indictments. We did get a LOT of other news. Look below the fold for the headlines, in case you missed anything.

Bloomberg floats trial balloon for Hillary as VP. Whether this is Bloomberg's attempt to enlist Hillary's presumed control of party machinery behind his candidacy or Hillary pulling levers to get the nomination by the only means she can (knowing that the people would likely not vote for her in the primary again), it's clear Hillary wants to be on the 2020 ticket.

I don't think she'll get it. This is Bloomberg's proposal to co-opt Hillary's support, not a real offer. But I bet Hillary thinks it's a real offer.

It's unclear exactly what a "review" means, but it sounds like control of the case is being handed to another prosecutor. This may lead to a different DOJ posture in the case, but it's unlikely to lead to punishment for the people who persecuted Flynn. On the other hand, some people seem to think that this is a review for prosecution of the people involved.

If it was the latter, I think we would not be seeing comments about the new prosecutor working closely with the old one. But there's certainly a possibility that the new prosecutor will see something clearly criminal in how the case was handled simply by looking at the records. And the article at NBC seems very clear that this was an inquiry into the Flynn interview.

I want to believe it's the latter.

The prosecutor in charge of Flynn's case does not seem to be backing down.

The TV star who alleged he was beaten up by MAGA-hat-wearing Trump supporters and was then confronted by evidence he faked the whole thing (and paid two set extras to help), only to be charged with wasting police time, and beating the charges by abusing political connections, has now been charged with 6 counts of lying to police.

As far as this guy goes, he's small fry. But like broken window theory policing, it's important to go after the small fry when they break the law in small ways. When people trying to create fake hate crimes for attention and political advantage get away with it, other people are incentivized to do the same. When the attempts are detected as fakes and prosecuted, further fakes are deterred instead.

That said, there is a double jeopardy issue here.

Immediately after Flynn files to withdraw his guilty plea, suddenly new documents are released.

If it wasn't exculpatory, they would not have held it until now.

The actual documents aren't publicly available yet, as far as I can tell.

There is no reasonable, non-biased explanation for this.

Daily Wire

The Blaze has released an audio recording that they recently obtained that appears to show Artem Sytnyk, Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, admitting that he tried to boost the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton by sabotaging then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign.

The connection between the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Ukrainian government was veteran Democratic operative Alexandra Chalupa, “who had worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Clinton administration” and then “went on to work as a staffer, then as a consultant, for Democratic National Committee,” Politico reported.

Is it still a conspiracy theory if there is a recorded admission from the conspirators?