It's bad enough that Twitter will put you in Twitter Jail for referring to someone by their legal name if they are delusional and want to be called something else, or for using the correct pronoun that the person doesn't like. Apparently, in the UK, they will put you in real jail for the same thing.
Trump declares national emergency on southern border
Instapundit has the text of the emergency declaration. No word yet on whether the budget deal has been signed. I'd suggest not signing it; veto it and publicly outline the poison pills and demand Congress remove them.
My take on the combination... it will likely lead to lots of legal challenges and fighting. The good thing about a wall is that once you build it, it takes effort to get rid of it. If Trump can just build the thing while everyone is fighting over whether he is allowed to build it, it works like the well known saying that possession is 9/10ths of the law. Once the wall exists, it will be hard to get rid of it.
That said, Pelosi has already threatened to declare a national emergency on gun control when her party is in power next. Um... That might not go exactly how you expect, Nancy.
House Judiciary passes gun control with 5 Republican votes
I trust my readers already know why "universal background check" legislation is unConstitutional gun registration, not to mention unenforceable. The item of concern here is that this got 5 Republican votes on the way out of the committee. With Democrats in control of the House, it's not a surprise that it passed. It is a surprise that it got Republican votes on the way out.
For more than a year, the FEC has refused to even initiate an investigation of whether Hillary's financial control of the Democrat National Committee violated election law. Meanwhile, Mueller is outside of his mandate questioning people about inauguration donations.
The current Democrat Governor of Virginia, Northam, has admitted performing in blackface, and his yearbook page has a picture of two people in costume; one in blackface, one in a Klan hood. The governor says he isn't sure which of the two was him. Even if he wasn't in the picture (and I'm pretty sure he was, since he admitted that before he started denying it), including it on his yearbook page shows that he was proud of the racism, even in the context of a silly variety show or whatever it was.
He's not likely to last long in the governor's position, though he seems inclined to try to stick it out.
The current Lt Governor of Virginia, Fairfax, also a Democrat, has been credibly accused of sexual assault. His defense is "she was really into me" and he claims the encounter was consensual. That's an admission that there was sexual contact between the two and gives his accuser credibility. Maybe it really was consensual and this is a political ploy by Northam to discredit his replacement. But, you know, #BelieveAllWomen. By claimed Democrat standards this is disqualifying.
There's a major problem here that the current state of 4th Amendment law doesn't cover. I don't particularly object to a law that says, if you give your DNA to a third party for analysis, the police can get a warrant from a judge based on probable cause to access that DNA and test it against a crime scene sample. I have a major problem with the police being allowed to take their crime scene sample to that DNA analysis company and search their entire database for clues. There's no probable cause in that search, because you're searching millions of people at once.
And it only gets worse when you allow the police to do that without even getting a warrant.
The lack of any real kind of privacy protection is a major reason not to make use of DNA analysis at all.
Judicial Watch uncovered more emails and testimony from DOJ and FBI officials concerning the Clinton emails found on Weiner's laptop. Specifically, that Clinton lawyer David Kendall immediately (within hours) contacted FBI General Counsel James Baker when news of the letter to Congress notifying them of the email search broke.
The email contained "requests" and Baker conveyed a meeting within 24 hours to discuss it. The people Baker notified were: Comey, associate Deputy Director Bowdich, assistant director for national security Steinbach, assistant director for counterintelligence Priestap, Comey's chief of staff Rybicki, analyst Moffa, assistant director (acting) Herring, assistant director for public affairs Kortan, deputy general counsel Trisha Anderson, and of course the two lovebirds Strzok and Page. If I remember correctly, this was the week before the election.
There was in fact a conference call scheduled among those people as a result, and of course, Comey issued another letter two days before the election "clearing" Clinton. There are multiple lies documented, including Strzok lying that no new classified emails were found on the laptop. A lie by omission, as well, as they had only examined approximately 3,000 of the 340,000 emails on the laptop.
The emails obtained also document an offer of a quid pro quo: more funding for FBI positions in return for downgrading the reason for redacting released material to "from classified to something else."
We don't know what happened in that conference call, but we know the results: Comey's second letter falsely claiming to exonerate Clinton two days before the election, the examination of the laptop was halted pretty much immediately (long before the contents could be properly examined), and, of course, the return of Strzok, Page, and the rest of the conspirators to looking desperately for dirt on Trump as an insurance policy.
Here's a clue, Pelosi: Your last President, Obama, set the terms of DACA by doing it with his illegal pen and his illegal phone rather than passing legislation. What Obama can do with his pen and phone, Trump can undo with his pen and phone. You're just pissed that he's using it as a bargaining chip. Well, elections have consequences.
Occasional-Cortex releases details of her green new deal
Among other things, she plans to replace or refit every single building in the United States, completely eliminate cows because they fart greenhouse gases (though this may take longer than 10 years) and airplanes, provide government-guaranteed jobs for anyone unable or unwilling to work, replacing (almost) all cars with electric cars, and we'll pay for it all by LOOK A SQUIRREL!
The introductory paragraph claims the plan provides technical details on how to make it work. It's not a spoiler to say that whoever wrote it has no idea what "technical details" means. It's a word-salad of green proposals.
Oh, yes, you in the back with your hand up -- you have a question. What about nuclear power, you want to know? Maybe we could do that with nuclear power?
The answer is no. The Green New Deal will decommission all nuclear plants within 10 years if possible.
Perhaps the best part:
Human breathing emits carbon dioxide. The only way to achieve zero emissions in the United States is literal genocide.
People aren't born this stupid. It takes years of training and indoctrination, plus, apparently, a degree in economics from Boston University.
A reminder: Priestap was head of FBI's counterintelligence during the time this was going on, and he's generally considered to be a cooperating witness with the investigation into SpyGate. But for some reason, he can't talk about some of the trips he took to London during the same timeframe; supposedly they are connected to the Mueller investigation but he claims he didn't meet the known London players. So who did he meet and why was he there? And why can't he tell Congress?
FISC called on Mueller to explain surveillance abuses
In other words... Mueller has a pattern of covering up for FISA abuses, specifically involving omission of relevant information, and he's successfully covered up those abuses for the past 16 years. That likely puts the abuses in 2003 or 2002. And it highlights his involvement now in covering up similar FBI abuses that violated the Woods procedure he promised then would prevent future abuses like those he covered up.
Why, then, aren't the current FISC judges willing to enforce the laws in the way that the earlier ones were? Why aren't FBI and DOJ supervisors?
Felix Sater -- born Felix Mikhailovich Sheferovsky -- is of course a Russian, and colluded with the Hillary campaign to influence the 2016 election by smearing Trump with lies compiled into a "dossier".
