MSN

A survivor of the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman DouglasMSN High School, who was previously interviewed by CNN and MSNBC following the mass shooting, told Fox News he believes certain media outlets are politicizing the tragedy to push gun control.

Brandon Minoff, an 18-year-old senior, said the media chose to target gun control advocates instead of focusing on the 17 lives lost in Wednesday's slaughter.

Minoff said students at the school are well-meaning and passionate on both sides of the contentious gun issue. At least 100 students from the school were expected to march in front of the State Capital in Tallahassee on Wednesday to demand stricter gun laws. Dozens of his classmates have willingly approached reporters and anchors to advocate for what they see as solutions to stop the school shooting epidemic. But Minoff said not all of the students at the school share the same stance -- yet most of the coverage has ignored those who favor gun rights.

“I know many people who are pro-gun and others who support gun control but it seems that the media is specifically targeting those in support of gun control to make it seem as if they are the majority, and the liberal news outlets are the ones that seem to make the bigger effort to speak to these people, and I'm talking from experience,” said Minoff, who was interviewed on cable news in primetime.

Welcome to life as a gun-rights advocate.

Combine this with reports that CNN refused a survivor's question about armed guards and gave them a scripted question instead.

It sure looks that way. Remember, she's the lady married to the Bruce Ohr, who used to be the number four guy at the Department of Justice. They were both involved in the Steele dossier, Bruce in his capacity at DOJ, and Nellie working for Fusion GPS.

It used to be that being a communist, or a communist apologist, or being married to a communist apologist, would deny you a security clearance. Under Obama that policy seems to have been ... loosened.

No details yet and I imagine there will need to be a regulation written and published.

I think this is silly and likely illegal. Bump stocks operate the same way any other semi-automatic firearm works -- one shot per trigger pull. They just "automate" -- by human action, not machinery -- the trigger pulling. As far as I know, the latest mass shooting in Florida didn't use one, and the Vegas shooting is the only time a bump-fire device has shown up in a mass shooting since Waco.

This is, I think, the price of having a President who is generally on our side but isn't familiar with our issues.

I wouldn't mind trading this for some substantial increase in firearms liberty. Guns in school for teachers and adult students in college, maybe. Or national reciprocity. But if AG Sessions just writes up a regulation, the gun control crowd gets something for nothing. They should get nothing for free.

He also wants "improved" background checks, but that seems to be more of an effort to improve reporting to the NICS system rather than expanding the list of prohibited persons.

In both cases, the devil is in the details, but the bottom line is that the Redcoats are coming.

Probably worth noting that this is one of those cases where someone reports on what the President supposedly told his subordinate. We've been seeing a lot of Fake News fitting that pattern lately. Take with grain of salt.

UPDATE: Looks real. This is the downside of electing The Donald. The Donald doesn't know our issue.

UPDATE: Sebastian looks on the brighter side. It's a regulation written under a relatively friendly administration that can be removed under another instead of a law that has to move through the legislative process. The problem with this analysis is that since when does ATF loosen or remove these regulations even under friendly administrations? Not all that often. And the bump stock issue is such a stupid one; just one incident, admittedly a big one, using a bump stock and probably using it reduced the shooter's accuracy.

I suspect this is something that will go away and not come back, regardless of whether it's regulation or law.

US News

After Tnuza Jamal Hassan was stopped from flying to Afghanistan last September, she allegedly told FBI agents that she wanted to join al-Qaida and marry a fighter, and that she might even wear a suicide belt.

She also said she was angry at U.S. military actions overseas and admitted that she tried to encourage others to "join the jihad in fighting," but she said she had no intention of carrying out an attack on U.S. soil, according to prosecutors. Despite her alleged admissions, she was allowed to go free.

Four months later, the 19-year-old was arrested for allegedly setting small fires on her former college campus in St. Paul in what prosecutors say was a self-proclaimed act of jihad. No one was hurt by the Jan. 17 fires at St. Catherine University, but her case raises questions about why she wasn't arrested after speaking to the agents months earlier and shows the difficulty the authorities face in identifying real threats.

Surely, surely, we can identify the specific people who were responsible for the obviously mistaken judgment call that she should be let go and allowed into the country, and fire them?

Collusion! Russians! Of course they backed the socialist candidiate. He honeymooned in Moscow, for crying out loud. He's probably on the KGB payroll.

And Michael Moore, a pathetically fat leftist famous for making bad political propaganda for leftists, also showed up at an anti-Trump protest organized by those nefarious Russians. Collusion!

Polizette

An indictment of 13 Russians in connection with 2016 election meddling and comments by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should put to rest once and for all the allegation that members of President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russian government and business interests to defeat Hillary Clinton, a former federal prosecutor said Friday.

Joseph diGenova, who served as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia under President Ronald Reagan, told LifeZette that the indictment makes clear the election sabotage was a Russian effort that did not involve Trump or his campaign.

“This is over,” he said. “And the fact that no American wittingly cooperated ends this nonsense.”
[...]
“After the election, the defendants allegedly staged rallies to support the president-elect, while simultaneously staging rallies to protest his election,” he said. “For example, the defendants organized one rally to support the president-elect, and another rally to oppose him — both in New York on the same day.”

Sounds like the Russians were trying to set up a "Let's you and him fight" situation. And it's definitely a Where's the beef? scenario.

DaTechGuy

My take. There seems to be nothing here in terms of a grand conspiracy to change the election. You are talking minor rallies, buying megaphones, tweets and facebook groups and the spending of THOUSANDS of dollars in web ads.

Thousands of dollars in ads, most of it spent after the election, supporting and opposing candidates on both sides of the aisle, and basically trying to get opposing groups of protestors within fistfight range of each other. And most of it was published well before Mueller's investigation.

Julio Gonzalez asks the question.

The Federalist

The email is the second piece of evidence that Obama was somehow directly involved in the Russia investigation, although he said otherwise, in addition to the uncovered texts sent by Lisa Paige to her FBI lover and coworker, Peter Strzok. That’s more than enough to ask questions about his role in an investigation House and Senate Republicans are saying involved potential abuse of the federal government’s power to spy on an American citizen.

Unquestionably, the planks on the bridge leading to Hillary Clinton and her involvement in the FISA affair and with Russian activity designed to influence the outcome of an American presidential election are multiplying and becoming sturdier with every week that passes, while the ones leading to Donald Trump are rapidly crumbling.

But there also appears to be a new extension emanating from the Hillary Bridge, one leading to Obama himself, and one that was just made stronger by the hapless and perhaps unwitting actions of Susan Rice.

Of course Obama knew.

The problem was proving it, and Susan Rice helped us out with that quite a bit. Now, Obama can't claim he heard about it on the news, like he did for Fast and Furious and the IRS scandal.

National Review

The guiding principle of American law enforcement is that it is easiest to enforce the law on law-abiding people, while enforcing the law on outlaws is something that looks terrifyingly close to hard work. That’s why gun control so ensorcels the bureaucratic mind. (Which is to say, the progressive mind: The essence of progressivism is replacing organic institutions with permanent bureaucracies.) If you are a federal law-enforcement agent with a comfy desk chair, you probably cannot imagine a more attractive anticrime program than gun control. Gun dealers have federal licenses, and they have to apply for them: You don’t have to go tracking them down — they come to you. They fill out paperwork. They generally operate from fixed addresses with regular business hours. Convenient! What you have is the power of political interposition, which is a mild form of terrorism. Want to operate a sporting-goods store? “F*** you, pay me.” And — mirabile dictu! — they pay. Sometimes, they even evince gratitude that you’ve done them the great favor of taking their money and allowing them, generous fellow that you are, to dispose of their own property as they see fit.

Chasing down fleet-footed 18-year-old criminals through the rough parts of Chicago on a cold February evening? That’s work. And that’s why we don’t do squat to prosecute actual gun crimes — the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago won’t even look at a straw-buyer case unless it’s a major organized-crime enterprise — but we twist ourselves into knots to figure out how to create new hoops for federally licensed firearms dealers and their customers to jump through every time some pasty-faced virgin shoots up a school.

Chasing around pasty-faced virgins is work, too. Sometimes, you have to go so far as to pick up the phone.

That's all good rhetoric. The problem is, I doubt FBI Director Wray has any real influence -- positive or negative -- in how this particular case was handled. Making him a scapegoat may encourage the rest, but it will also have other consequences. The best thing Wray can do here is reform the FBI so that it actually takes such things seriously. How much reform will get done without a confirmed FBI Director, putting the power back into the hands of the same swamp creatures who abused national security tools to try to swing an election rather than focus on actual criminals?

Hot Air

If you happened to be in or around Los Angeles this week you may have seen some new visitors in town wearing ICE/Police body armor. They’ve been paying visits to a number of businesses and residences, rounding up illegal aliens and scheduling them for deportation hearings. Their primary targets are those with known criminal records, but since they have to go out into the community to locate these criminals (rather than picking them up from local law enforcement when they get picked up for other crimes), they’re encountering and arresting some with little or no criminal records as well.

Unintended consequences.

Associated Press twitter account

BREAKING: Florida governor calls on FBI director to resign after discovering FBI failed to investigate tip about Florida school shooter.

This seems a little harsh. Yes, it was a screwup. But taken in isolation, the one comment the FBI was provided was merely concerning. It was the corroborating information -- pictures of guns and dead animals on social media, reports of threatening behavior by multiple individuals in personal contact with him -- that raised the level of concern to something actionable.

And the elephant in the room: murder is a state criminal law issue. It's not a federal law issue. Local police were called to his home 39 times. Shouldn't at least some of those visits have provoked a question about whether he was on the NICS prohibited list?

UPDATE: It strikes me that it would be awfully convenient for the current "civil service" people at the FBI if there was no FBI director with Senate confirmation in office. It would give them a lot of freedom to act in their "#resistance". It would put the swamp back in charge. And that's probably why this call is being made.

Yes, the FBI screwed up here. But I can't remember the last time the FBI director resigned because of a criminal act, even when we had warnings -- see the Boston marathon bombing for one example.

So this is a swamp thing move.

Rep THomas Massie

It’s time to repeal the “Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990.” Let teachers carry to protect kids & themselves. Support H.R. 34 “Safe Students Act.”

Something must be done. This is Something. It Must Be Done!

Daily Wire

On Friday, the Mueller investigation’s grand jury indicted 13 Russians associated with election meddling. But that wasn’t the real headline. The real headline is that supposed Trump-Russia collusion doesn’t seem to exist. And that’s pretty clear from the indictment papers.

Hell, it's pretty clear from the timing of the announcement. Would Mueller indict 13 Russians associated with election meddling on Friday afternoon at news-dump-o'clock if there was anything to the charges? Of course not.

To the extent that a few Florida groups talked to the fake accounts set up by Russians to look like Americans, those groups a) are not charged with anything and b) did not know they were talking to Russians because c) the Russians were pretending to be Americans.

There's no collusion case here. And since we're talking about indictments against Russians there's practically no chance any of them go to trial.

UPDATE: David Hardy on the indictment. He thinks it's a nothingburger.

Daily Caller

Bruce Ohr, the Department of Justice official who brought opposition research on President Donald Trump to the FBI, did not disclose that Fusion GPS, which performed that research at the Democratic National Committee’s behest, was paying his wife, and did not obtain a conflict of interest waiver from his superiors at the Justice Department, documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation show.

The omission may explain why Ohr was demoted from his post as associate deputy attorney general after the relationship between Fusion GPS and his wife emerged and Fusion founder Glenn Simpson acknowledged meeting with Ohr. Willfully falsifying government ethics forms can carry a penalty of jail time, if convicted.

This seems to show Bruce realized the arrangement was wrong and would not be considered acceptable.

Power Line

The facts, to the extent they have been reported, are very weird. The murderer, Nikolas Cruz, packed up a semiautomatic rifle, a gas mask and plenty of ammunition and took an Uber to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Apparently the Uber driver saw nothing amiss. Cruz shot some people outside the school; I take it that he did this before entering. He went into the school and reportedly pulled a fire alarm, then killed fourteen or so students who poured into the halls. Having done so, he put down his rifle and left the school as if he were an ordinary student, apparently without anyone being the wiser. He proceeded to a Subway, and from there to a McDonalds, where he was arrested without incident well after the incident was over. If these really are the facts, it is hard to understand why Cruz encountered so little opposition.

Describing those facts as "very weird" is an understatement. Here's what leaps out at me:

1) The uber driver noticed nothing unusual? A gas mask and a rifle, going to a school? I can only assume the killer used some kind of duffle bag to hide what he was carrying, so that's explainable, I guess.

2) Almost all of these spree killers are either killed by police or kill themselves. This guy put down the rifle and left? Did he plan to get away? Did he actually do this, or did the police sieze on this guy as a convenient target because of his history of threats and disturbing social media?

Nothing to do but wait for the results of the investigation at this point.

Twitchy

It appears that Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS shooter Nikolas Cruz was known to the FBI as a threat back in September 2017 thanks to a YouTuber who alerted law enforcement over a comment left on a video

The comment itself was threatening enough for the FBI to interview him, but apparently not to actually do anything to address the problem. Other people knew about the killer's issues, and he had been expelled for disciplinary reasons. But he passed the NICS background check, apparently.

Background checks are not a panacea, because the people who need to be on the list don't get added (or have the criminal connections to easily obtain a firearm anyway) and the people who do get added are often the wrong people (such as the Obama admin adding social security recipients or VA patients who needed a financial advisor).

What's the right course of action here? I'm not sure there is one. Figure out what's causing people to go nuts in a mass-murderish way and fix it? That seems to have really developed only over the last 30 or 40 years, so there's probably something that caused it, but identifying and addressing that cause is one of those projects with an uncertain time, expense, and outcome.

Short of getting at the root cause, these murder sprees seem to continue until the murderer faces armed resistance sufficient to break his momentum. Putting armed adults in schools would offer the chance to stop such attacks early, but it's only a chance, not a certainty.

There are reports that the murderer was a member of a racial separatist group in Florida. They aren't denying the connection but are disavowing his violence. Given that he also follows Syrian resistance groups, I think he was attracted to violence generally, not any specific ideology. I would not be even a little bit surprised if he turns out to be on anti-psychotic or other psychoactive medications. Is that a cause or an effect? It's hard to tell.

UPDATE: Not a member, now?

The Hill

President Trump on Monday rolled out a White House budget that includes deep cuts to some federal agencies, an increase in funding for the Pentagon and $18 billion for a wall on the Mexican border.

It includes proposals to cut deficits by more than $3 trillion over a decade and lower debt levels as a percentage of the gross domestic product, but does not balance by doing away with annual deficits.

That's $3 trillion over ten years not just one year. There are still nearly trillion dollar deficits every year. And Congress won't make the cuts because Congress doesn't cut stuff, ever.

Daily Caller

GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of Calif., chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, may invite Chief Justice John Roberts to testify before the panel on alleged FISA abuses.

Nunes told radio host and Republican wise man Hugh Hewitt Thursday that committee Republicans have entertained the idea, as Roberts appoints all FISA judges, but cautioned no decision has yet been made. Hewitt and Nunes discussed the idea in connection with the committee’s memo on the secret intelligence courts, which alleged the FBI sought authorization to surveil President Donald Trump’s campaign aides on the basis of political opposition research.

Summoning Chief Justice Roberts may be unprecedented, but so is the abuse that took place here. While Congress may be overstepping its power in seeking to summon a Supreme Court Justice involuntarily, Roberts may choose to cooperate voluntarily. More importantly, Congress created the FISA court and retains the power of impeachment over its members. They can certainly summon a judge on the FISA court in the context of impeachment proceedings if they so choose, or request copies of legal decisions or other records made by the court.

Regardless of the exact mechanism, someone is going to have to go to the FISA court and ask some very pointed questions about how this happened.

Susan Rice's unusual email claims Barack Obama told them to do things in the Trump-Russia investigation "by the book". She emphasized that point repeatedly.

She protests too much. Maybe Obama said that, but if so, he said it after issuing explicit instructions to do things in some way that was not "by the book" and then said it to cover himself.

Well, law-abiding if you don't count felony burglaries. Seems to me that ICE is doing their job here. Meanwhile, judges are saying that Trump is somehow not actually president, or at least not as much as Obama was.

Trump should respond to these court orders with these words: "How many divisions does the judge have?"

National Review

Attorney General Sessions must find muscular, ambitious, and combative prosecutors (preferably from outside Washington, D.C., and preferably existing federal attorneys), direct them to call a Grand Jury, and begin collating information from congressional investigations to get to the bottom of what is likely one of gravest scandals in post-war American history: the effort to use the federal government to thwart the candidacy of an unpopular presidential candidate and then to smear and ruin his early tenure as president.

Only another prosecutorial investigation, one way or another, will lead to resolution, take the entire mess out of the partisan arena, and keep the anemic Mueller investigation honest — with the full knowledge that if its own investigators have violated laws or used tainted evidence or in the past obstructed justice, then they too will be held to account.

Read the whole thing.

The conclusion quoted about is a nice fantasy, but probably will never become reality. And thus the next president who wants to try this will not be deterred.

Daily Caller asked four experts to review the police report. Questions remain, including about his effort to use anonymous communications devices. If you are using anonymous communications devices, who are you communicating with? He also had searched for various other possible targets, and made reservations at a hotel near one of them. If you're planning to commit suicide, why make reservations at your next target? I remain convinced there is more to this, I just don't know what.

Daily Mail

Married senior policy advisor to President Obama pleaded guilty to attempted voyeurism for taking pictures up women's skirts on the DC Metro and resigned before the government could fire him

It's interesting how this was ignored for a year and then drops on the same day as a school shooting with 17 killed and an attack on NSA HQ?

It's like they wait for the time when everyone will be maximally distracted. And it does kind of put Rob Porter's "my wife said mean things about me during our divorce" problem in perspective, especially as he's out of a job shortly after the White House found out.

And Rob Porter, whatever he may or may not have done, isn't even accused of doing it on company time and a taxpayer travel allowance.

17 dead and the killer is in custody. Police are calling his social media and background "very, very disturbing" which is remarkably uninformative. Supposedly there were concerns about him -- enough to expel him. No word yet on whether those concerns would have been enough to make him a prohibited person. He follows Syrian resistance groups on social media, which means this may be terrorism.

I'm not really a fan of the NSA when their all-seeing eye of Sauron is turned inwards, but this seems excessive. "Several individuals" are reportedly involved, resulting in gunfire.

Now they can open doors. If they figure out how to climb stairs, we are doomed.