Power Line has the story based on comments by Lindsey Graham on one of Fox's talk shows. Assuming this is accurate, and it seems likely given Graham's comments on top of all the circumstantial evidence and the lack of other potential justification for heavily-reported evesdropping by the Obama administration on the Trump campaign, neither the FBI nor the DOJ can be trusted to investigate themselves. Even under new political appointee leadership, existing employees may well have been involved personally or choose to cover for their friends and colleagues who were. We need a special counsel who can investigate the entire situation: the FBI, the DOJ, the intelligence agencies, and even the national security staff at the White House. Remember that two high level officials at the Obama White House have already been revealed as requesting the unmasking of high level Trump campaign officials.

So, the Netflix production of Bright is getting a lot of attention and love on the blogosphere. I wanted it the weekend it was released, and was mildly looking forward to it. I'm actually surprised it is getting the favorable commentary that it is. It wasn't at all a bad movie; it just didn't register to me as exceptional in the way that it seems to have registered with others.

The Daily Caller

A cousin of Huma Abedin who did a half-billion dollar deal with a man known as the “Russian Donald Trump” was convicted of fraud Tuesday, and the judge ordered him jailed immediately, saying he had demonstrated a “disdain for the courts and legal process” and was a flight risk.

It's funny how this didn't get more attention when Huma was closely associated with the Democrat candidate for president.

Despite three times more negative media coverage for Trump than for Obama, the two presidents have the same approval rating (at this point in Obama's presidency compared to this point in Trump's). But the media can't shut up about how awful Trump's approval ratings are. I don't remember them ever pushing that idea under Obama.

Sharyl Attkisson has a list. It doesn't include the times she was spied on and her computer hacked. Note that the names Brennan and Clapper show up multiple times.

The Hill

Brown granted pardons to 132 individuals, and commuted 19 prison sentences. Among those pardoned were Mony Neth and Rottanak Kong, both Cambodian men who were picked up during October immigration sweeps, according to The Sacramento Bee.

Kong was convicted in 2003 on a felony joyriding charge, while Neth was convicted on a felony weapons charge in 1995. Both served jail time.

He's apparently trying to use the pardon to prevent them being deported.

If Democrats do not depend on illegal votes from illegal aliens, why do they work so hard to protect them?

Marketwatch

The World Health Organization is in the process of finalizing the 11th update of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), a guide that describes different health problems and their symptoms. The latest draft version of the new ICD includes an entry for “gaming disorder,” which is essentially video-game addiction, as Forbes first reported.

The mental health organizations are happy to slap the disorder label on anything they think their members can get paid to fix, especially by parents desperate to produce functional children rather than special snowflakes.

Keep this in mind when evaluating whether "mental health experts" should be able to make decisions concerning your gun rights.

No, it wasn't anything to do with breaking her promises to voters. It appears to be related to $803K of false reimbursement claims. She's running for a house seat in Virginia, the same state she allegedly defrauded. If she wins, she can probably earmark the same amount of money on a regular basis.

She also admits lying to the FBI about it afterwards. Normally I'm skeptical about convictions for lying to the FBI, especially when there's no real underlying crime involved. In this case, with dozens of people dead and more wounded, and the underlying issue being foreknowledge of a terrorist attack? Lock her up.

The Hill

Trump has spent almost one-third of presidency at one of his properties: report

President Trump has spent nearly one-third of his time in office at one of his company's properties, according to a Wall Street Journal review of the president's travel.

According to the review, during Trump's first year in office, he spent more than 100 days at one his properties, including nearly 40 days at his golf course in Bedminster, N.J.

He was also at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for about 40 days, according to the Journal.

So, almost one third of the presidency, hmm? Let's look at that on a weekly basis. 7 days in a week. One third of that is 2 days plus a fractional 1/3rd day.

Alternative headline: "President spends weekends at home."

PJMedia

A Republican congressman on the House Judiciary Committee says Hillary Clinton received special treatment during the email investigation in 2016 while she was running for president.

"We have email evidence from Andrew McCabe indicating that Hillary Clinton was going to get an 'HQ Special,' a headquarters special," Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) alleged on Fox News' "America's Newsroom" Friday.

He explained that the "headquarter special" was an indication that "the normal processes at the Washington field office weren't followed and he had a very small group of people that had a pro-Hillary Clinton bias who had a direct role in changing the outcome of that investigation from one that likely should have been criminal to one where she was able to walk."

This appears to be a direct, on the record admission of obstruction of justice. If it was some random FBI agent complaining about the investigation without being involved on it, that would be one thing. But McCabe is a high level agent with significant authority over the investigation, as well as ethically compromised due to his wife's campaign for office which received a huge amount of money from a close Clinton ally during the investigation. While he did eventually recuse himself, it was after the conclusion was basically certain.

If, in addition to all of the above, he has admitted in writing that Hillary was going to get special treatment, that should be a trivial conviction for obstruction of justice and likely bribery.

National Review

In conclusion, while there is a dearth of evidence to date that the Trump campaign colluded in Russia's cyberespionage attack on the 2016 election, there is abundant evidence that the Obama administration colluded with the Clinton campaign to use the Steele dossier as a vehicle for court-authorized monitoring of the Trump campaign and to fuel a pre-election media narrative that U.S. intelligence agencies believed Trump was scheming with Russia to lift sanctions if he were elected president. Congress should continue pressing for answers, and President Trump should order the Justice Department and FBI to cooperate rather than -- what's the word? -- resist.

There is some pretty solid timeline-based evidence here. As well as the simple, common-sense based implication from all the news that's been leaked and disclosed over the past year. The reason everyone is so desperate to avoid admitting it is that admitting it means admitting to criminal misuse of our national intelligence agencies for political purposes.

Following Hillary's loss in 2016, I would have been content to see her fade off into the sunset and retire from public life. It's not justice, but it's something I would have considered acceptable. But with this #resistance bullshit, and as we have seen more and more details of the attempted election interference by the FBI, DOJ, and intelligence agencies, more and more I think people will need to be prosecuted and thrown in jail to allow us to return to a normal, sane form of government again.

A shooting spree by a man with an islamic/arab name, originally from Turkey, recently traveled to the middle east. Officials say he was targeting police officers. And the FBI appear to have stopped another attack before it was carried out, although in the latter case, we see the usual pattern of an FBI informant urging an individual to specific violent acts.

We can't stop terrorist attacks by pretending there are no terrorist attacks.

UPDATE: He's here on a chain-migration visa through a distant relative.

Politico

House Republicans are investigating contact between the FBI's top lawyer and a Mother Jones reporter in the weeks before the left-leaning outlet broke the first news story about the existence of a disputed dossier alleging ties between President Donald Trump and the Kremlin, according to two congressional GOP sources who described documents linking the two men.

The GOP sources said the documents — made available recently to lawmakers by the Department of Justice — revealed that James Baker, the FBI's general counsel, communicated with Mother Jones reporter David Corn in the weeks leading up to the November 2016 election. Corn was the first to report the existence of the dossier on Oct. 31 and that it was compiled by a former high-level western spy.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that Baker had been reassigned within the FBI, though the reason for the move was unclear.

Well, either he was reassigned because of his involvement with the dossier, or he was reassigned for something worse. Regardless of which one is the case, he was misbehaving in some fashion and got caught. Odds are it was related to the Trump investigation or the Hillary investigation, and we have a clear link to the dossier based on the timing.

The list of people at the FBI involved in this election interference seems to cover the entire upper echelons of the FBI. And lets not forget that other Obama Administration national security figures are also implicated in the unmasking.

Turns out the BLM engaged in serious misconduct that may lead to a third mistrial. I don't really have a good understanding of who is right on the law in this case, but the government agent's misconduct in support of their persecution speaks for itself.

Washington Free Beacon

Congress instructed the Department of Justice on Thursday to turn over all documents and communications that may be related to newly disclosed efforts by the Obama administration to handicap an investigation into the terror group Hezbollah and its Iranian benefactors, according to a letter sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The letter represents the first salvo in a new investigation by congressional leaders into allegations senior Obama administration officials thwarted a decade-long Drug Enforcement Agency investigation into Hezbollah's illicit operations.

On the one hand, the president has the authority to direct law enforcement resources where he thinks appropriate. On the other hand, obstruction of justice!

I suspect the Obama/Hillary administration will regret their decision to criminalize policy differences after losing in 2016.

Front Page Magazine

As the intrepid Luke Rosiak notes in the Daily Caller, Imran’s brother Abid ran a used-car lot in Falls Church, Virginia, called Cars International A. Trouble was, the “CIA” dealership had no inventory and the sales people were fakes. As Rosiak learned, the Awan dealership “took money from a Hezbollah-linked fugitive” whose financial books were “indecipherable.” And as the DEA was aware, “the Iranian-linked terrorist group frequently deployed used car dealerships in the US to launder money and fund terrorism.” On the other hand, the DEA had trouble going after the terrorists.

You may remember the bit about a man from Pakistan working a sweet no-show, no-qualifications IT job in Congress that may well have been a blackmail operation. Well, the investigation continues, and it turns out his suspicious car dealership is linked to Hezbollah, and the investigation into his activities was blocked by the Obama administration. One of the officials involved in stonewalling the investigation was Bruce Ohr, who has made the news for being involved in the anti-Trump dossier at the FBI. Another was John Brennan, CIA director for Obama, and a man who proudly voted for a communist -- literally, the Communist Party USA presidential candidate, in 1976. Also, by the way, known for being aggressively anti-Trump and generally using his national security credentials to bolster his political talking points.

Apparantly, Senator Grassley doesn't think the President should run the executive branch. Senator, that's not the way it works.

Congress is preparing subpoenas for the FBI personnel accused of anti-Trump bias, including Ohr, Strzok, McCabe, and Lisa Page. The fact that the FBI isn't making these people available voluntarily is disturbing.

The attacker reportedly has a history of drug use and mental health issues but there is no mention of Islam or terrorism, despite the attacker being of Afghan descent previously known to police, the vehicular attack method being popular among terrorists, and the attack taking place during the christmas season which is also popular among specifically Islamic terrorists.

UPDATE: He claims he did it to protest mistreatment of muslims. And there was someone else caught fleeing the scene with a bag of knives.

PJMedia

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) pledged to “shut down” the U.S. Senate over any legislation that would require private companies to create a “back door” to access encrypted information because “it would be such a grave mistake.”

“I recently asked a question of the Director of National Intelligence [Dan Coats] with respect to encryption and they said that they had not ‘to date’ sought an order to compel a provider to alter encryption, so it sounds to me like the government still thinks that FISA can be used to weaken strong encryption,” Wyden said during a government surveillance and privacy discussion at George Washington University last week with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

“I want you to know, and I think Sen. Paul agrees with me, how important it is to protect strong encryption and not allow the government to say that there ought to be back doors and require companies to build back doors into their products. Rod Rosenstein recently said, and he’s a Justice Department fellow, ‘we’ve got to get back to looking at responsible encryption,’ which struck me as code for saying the government thought it could require companies to build back doors to their products,” he added.

Senators Paul and Wyden are in the right here. The DOJ on the other hand seems to try this pretty much every time there is a new administration or a renewal authorization before Congress where they might get some changes, or protect their illegal pressure campaigns on device manufacturers (Apple, etc).

It is impossible to weaken encryption for law enforcement without also weakening it for the ordinary users who need the security. Worse, most of the proposed solutions here would create a single point of failure. If the FBI master key was hacked -- and even the NSA cannot keep its hacker tools safe from other hackers -- then everything would be compromised, quite likely for years given how long it takes to update and replace a widely deployed vulnerability.

Further, the usual argument -- "Oh my god, we won't be able to stop terrorists!" -- is bullshit. They got tips on the Boston Marathon bombers. Didn't stop them. Many other examples. There is no magic shield, and terrorists are under no obligation to use pre-tapped phones or computers.

Preserving the privacy of millions of honest citizens is worth more to everyone than the desperate mirage the intelligence agencies are chasing.

McCabe can't remember when he found out the dossier was an opposition research document. Apparently there are documents with his signature related to that, so his lapse of memory seems very convenient. He also couldn't remember anything in the dossier that the FBI had been able to verify, though he did remember they tried very hard.

When you're under oath, "I don't remember" means "I don't want to say."

Celebrity offers 7-figure bribe to two Senators, publicly and in writing. Well, twitting. What an idiot.

Did vote fraud swing another election in Virginia? Seems likely. Remember, Virginia has a Democrat governor now and he's been working hard to get felons on the voter rolls.

IRS IG says IRS still harassing taxpayers.

Politico

In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States.

He's not only the president, he's also a customer...

Fox News

A new legal complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission alleges that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee used state chapters as strawmen to circumvent campaign donation limits and laundered the money back to her campaign.

The Committee to Defend the President, a political action committee, filed its complaint with the FEC on Monday with the allegations that the Hillary Victory Fund (HVF) solicited cash from big-name donors, including Calvin Klein and “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane -- money that was allegedly sent through state chapters and back to the DNC before ending up with the Clinton campaign.

Campaign finance law is bizarrely arcane. So much so that it is probably deliberately intended as a barrier to entry for normal people wanting to participate in politics. Normally I view FEC complaints and such as somewhat suspect. However, the details of Hillary's alleged scheme (which we already know through comments from people at the DNC) seem to have swung the primary election to her. It needs to be investigated, at least.

A terrorist who committed an attack in Germany (the Christmas Market attack) had downloaded bomb making instructions to his phone nearly a year prior to his actual attack. He also communicated directly with ISIS in Libya. He was already under surveillance due to a tip from an informant in 2015 at the time. The police did nothing and he committed his attack in 2016.

And yet they want to censor Facebook instead of kick these people out of their country.

Fox News via Legal Insurrection

“Kati: Why are you excited to see this victory? Man: Because, we came here all the way from different parts of the country as part of our fellowship, and all of us pitched in to vote and canvas together, and we got our boy elected!”

It's possible that he meant other parts of the state. But it's also possible -- and historically likely, given other comments on this topic -- that the Democrats really did bus in voters from out of state to try to swing this Senate seat.

At this point, I'd say Roy Moore is right not to concede. There are enough absentee and military ballots to possibly change the outcome, and they should be counted. (Military votes will likely heavily favor Moore, which will be necessary to overcome the current lead held by Jones). If election fraud is discovered on top of that, it may well be enough to swing the seat back to Moore.

UPDATE: Moore's lawsuit has been dismissed. I believe that means he was unable to present convincing evidence of fraud. Unless he has such evidence, it's now time to concede.