The College Fix

Earlier this month an anarchist group that consists of UT Austin students called the Autonomous Student Network shared a tweet threatening to dox students who considered joining the Young Conservatives of Texas and Turning Point USA during freshman orientation.

The Left is determined to make not being a Democrat a social offense sufficient to deny you your job, your education, your access to financial and banking services, your right to free speech.

Like California. Like Venezuela. Like Cuba. Like Soviet Russia.

Cato

Several years ago, Nick Bronsozian was charged with possession of an unregistered machinegun under a tax law statute. The provision in question, 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d), says that in order to have a machinegun registered, a tax must be paid on it. Simple enough, right? Bronsozian didn’t pay his tax. Case closed. That’s what the government argued anyway, but the situation is more complicated than that.

A subsequently enacted law, 18 U.S.C. § 922(o), prevents the government from registering and accepting tax payments on new machineguns. So Bronsozian was charged and convicted of a felony for not paying a tax that the government would not allow him to pay. If that strikes you as odd, it’s probably because you’ve read the Constitution.

This is the ace-in-the-hole lawsuit I have been expecting would be filed as soon as we had enough justices on the Supreme Court to have a chance at winning a vote. It's basically arguing that you can't charge someone for not paying a tax (and registering your NFA firearm) if you aren't allowed to pay the tax. It's a completely common sense argument that strikes at the nature of the NFA as an end-run around the Constitution.

Because the laws which regular firearms would blatantly violate the 2nd Amendment if written to achieve their true purpose, they were instead instituted as tax laws, with taxes set at prohibitive rates for the time period ($200 in the 1930s) and eventually a ban on new tax transactions (1986). It wasn't that machine guns were made illegal; you just had to pay the tax. And you weren't allowed to pay the tax. (Existing, registered machine guns were grandfathered). The idea is to ban gradually, over time, as the limited supply wore out and no new supply became available.

It was always a constitutional problem that made the NFA laws vulnerable. But there was no point taking it to the Supreme Court until there was a chance of success. With honest justices, this is a winning argument. We just haven't had enough honest justices... until, maybe, now.

I'll be watching this one. This is how the Heller case started.

Judicial Watch

Judicial Watch announced today that it has been informed that Los Angeles County has sent notices to as many as 1.5 million inactive voters on its voter rolls. This mailing is a step toward removing the names of voters who have moved, died, or are otherwise ineligible to vote. The massive mailing is the result of a settlement agreement with Judicial Watch requiring the County to remove as many as 1.5 million inactive registrations. In addition, the California secretary of state has alerted other California counties to clean up their voter registration lists to comply with the federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), as the secretary promised to do in that same settlement agreement.

It's California, so I doubt they will actually be very clean, but it's something.

Breitbart

Thursday on MSNBC’s “Deadline,” former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe commented on President Donald Trump saying he would accept “dirt” on political opponents from foreign governments.

McCabe said, “As you know, the standard for opening our case is when we have information that might indicate that a threat to national security might exist or that a federal crime may have been committed. And so, in that time, in May of 2017, we clearly had that sort of information. We knew what the Russians had been doing since 2014, 2015, attacking our cyber infrastructure, our academic institutions, government institutions, think tanks. We knew they attacked the DNC. They weaponized that material to try to hurt Candidate Clinton and help Candidate Trump. We knew Trump was upset about the fact we were investigating that activity. He specifically asked us to stop investigating that activity, and when we didn’t follow his requests, he fired the director. ”

He continued, “So at that point, we had to consider the very real prospect that the president might be presenting a threat to national security. I have to tell you the comments I heard yesterday only reaffirm for me the concerns that we had in May of 2017.”

He added, “Look, this is what foreign intelligence services do every day. Their bread butter is building relationships and creating leverage with decision makers in government. That’s how they influence policy decisions. That’s how they collect information they shouldn’t have. If I am a foreign intelligence officer today, the message I got from the president’s own words yesterday was, it is open season on U.S. political figures in 2020.”

Steele, from whom McCabe and his FBI accepted foreign dirt, is himself a foreigner. Steele's claimed sources are Russians, not only foreigners but from a hostile foreign power.

I think this segment will make great campaign ads.

Bill Quick quoting Project Veritas quoting Google Big Sister

The report includes undercover footage of longtime Google employee and Head of Responsible Innovation, Jen Gennai saying: “Elizabeth Warren is saying we should break up Google. And like, I love her but she’s very misguided, like that will not make it better it will make it worse, because all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation, it’s like a small company cannot do that.”

See, Google, the thing is... you're not supposed to be in charge of deciding who wins elections. And that's what "preventing the next Trump situation" means.

Bounding Into Comics quotes the same person on fairness

“My definition of fairness and bias specifically talks about historically marginalized communities. And that’s who I care about. Communities who are in power and have traditionally been in power are not who I’m solving fairness for.”
“Our definition of fairness is one of those things that we though would be like, obvious, and everyone would agree to it and it wasn’t. There was, the same people who voted for the current president who do not agree with our definition of fairness.”

If your definition of fairness explicitly excludes half the country, it doesn't actually define fairness. And if your definition of "Nazi" includes Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and PragerU, it also doesn't actually define a Nazi.

For those who are not aware, the actual definition of Nazi is National Socialist.

Breitbart

Nearly 740,000 border crossers and illegal aliens are expected to be released into the interior of the United States this calendar year, new analysis projects.

Princeton Policy Advisors analyst Steve Kopits expects about 309,000 foreign minors and 226,000 adult border crossers to be released into the interior of the U.S. by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials by the end of the year. Additionally, about 202,000 adult illegal aliens are expected to enter the U.S. interior, undetected, according to Kopits’ forecast.

This projection indicates that far more than half a million foreign minors, adult border crossers, those claiming asylum, and illegal aliens are set to be released into the interior of the country — about 356,000 of which are a direct result of the February spending package approved by Republicans and Democrats and signed by President Trump.

Those are huge numbers. And it's never just one year; the invasion goes on year after year after year while Congress collects pay raises for doing nothing.

John Solomon at The Hill

When the final chapter of the Russia collusion caper is written, it is likely two seminal documents the FBI used to justify investigating Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign will turn out to be bunk.

Well, we know the Steele dossier is bunk... wait, two documents?

John Solomon at The Hill

The second document, known as the “black cash ledger,” remarkably has escaped the same scrutiny, even though its emergence in Ukraine in the summer of 2016 forced Paul Manafort to resign as Trump's campaign chairman and eventually face U.S. indictment.

In search warrant affidavits, the FBI portrayed the ledger as one reason it resurrected a criminal case against Manafort that was dropped in 2014 and needed search warrants in 2017 for bank records to prove he worked for the Russian-backed Party of Regions in Ukraine.

There’s just one problem: The FBI’s public reliance on the ledger came months after the feds were warned repeatedly that the document couldn’t be trusted and likely was a fake, according to documents and more than a dozen interviews with knowledgeable sources.

Once again, the FBI relied upon a document they knew was fake to open an investigation, obtain search warrants, conduct armed SWAT-style raids, and generally abuse their authority to violate civil rights under color of law.

And, in addition, it appears the FBI leaked information to reporters and then cited their stories in court.

John Solomon at The Hill

Liberal law professor Alan Dershowitz said FBI affidavits almost never cite news articles as evidence. “They are supposed to cite the primary evidence and not secondary evidence,” he said.

“It sounds to me like a fraud on the court, possibly a willful and deliberate fraud that should have consequences for both the court and the attorneys’ bar,” he added.

Meadows is asking the Justice Department IG to investigate. Good. But the courts need to get involved too, lest the requirement to testify truthfully become a dead letter.

It certainly appears that Rosenstein was giving Mueller free reign to dig up pretty much anything Mueller wanted to dig up. Many of the elements of the additional scope memo(s?) remain redacted, but at least one concerned Manafort colluding with Russian officials to influence the 2016 election. Notably, Manafort was never even charged with that. And that was just in the expanded scope memo we knew about; it now appears a third secret scope memo exists, dated October 20th, 2017.

Instapundit

Huma Abedin, the former Hillary Clinton Deputy Chief of Staff at the Department of State and close personal aide during the 2016 presidential campaign, said during a 2016 deposition that she first learned of her boss’ home-brew unsecured email system by “reading in some news articles about a year, a year-and-a-half ago, when it was—it was being publicly discussed.”

But now along comes another former Clinton aide, Justin Cooper, who previously worked for President Bill Clinton and for the Clinton Foundation, claiming he worked with Abedin to set up Hillary’s private email account in 2009.

If memory serves, Huma had an account on the system. And according to this report, she helped set it up.

Sara Carter

The state of New York, will be joining the list of twelve other states plus Washington, D.C., that allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, including California and Connecticut.

Shortly after the state Senate passed the controversial measure, the New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the legislation granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

And, of course, a "loophole" will allow for them to register to vote.

Sara Carter

In a letter to Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, the State Department revealed that it has identified “multiple security incidents” involving current or former employees’ handling of Hillary Clinton’s emails, and that 23 “violations” and seven “infractions” have been issued as part of the department’s ongoing investigation.

“To this point, the Department has assessed culpability to 15 individuals, some of whom were culpable in multiple security incidents,” Mary Elizabeth Taylor, the State Department’s Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Legislative Affairs, wrote to Grassley. “DS has issued 23 violations and 7 infractions incidents. … This number will likely change as the review progresses.”

“In every instance in which the Department found an individual to be culpable of a valid security violation or three or more infractions, the Department forwarded the outcome to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s Office of Personnel Security and Suitability (DS/PSS), to be placed in the individuals’ official security file,” Taylor wrote. “All valid security incidents are reviewed by DS and taken into account every time an individual’s eligibility for access to classified information is considered.

I wonder how many of them are being added to Hillary's file? Since it was her server that created the issue, she should get tagged in all of them, even if she didn't send any of the messages herself. (And surely she did send at least some).

American Greatness

According to the complainant, however, “there is reason to believe that Hillary for America and the DNC filed false reports by (a) failing to accurately report the ‘purpose’ of disbursements, describing disbursements for ‘legal services’ or ‘legal and compliance consulting’ when the actual purpose was research, and (b) inaccurately reporting payments to Perkins Coie that were, in reality, earmarked for Fusion GPS, in violation of FECA’s reporting requirements.”

In his House Intelligence Committee testimony, Simpson said that Perkins Coie paid Fusion $50,000 per month plus expenses beginning in April 2016. Steele, in turn, was paid about $180,000 for his foreign-sourced opposition research. (The only difference between what the Democrats actually did in 2016 and what Trump suggested this week is that the Democrats paid big bucks for their international meddling efforts.)

But the FEC still hasn’t taken action on the complaint—and there might be a reason why. Before joining the FEC, Weintraub herself was an attorney at Perkins Coie, serving as “Of Counsel to the Political Law Group” according to her FEC bio. A spokesman confirmed to me in an email that “nothing yet” has happened with the complaint and he could not say whether Weintraub has recused herself from investigating the claims against Clinton campaign and the DNC.

Why hasn't the FEC acted on this complaint?

Judicial Watch continues to forcefully extract documents via FOIA.

Judicial Watch

Judicial Watch announced today that the FBI released 277 pages of redacted records in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that show the FBI failed to produce information from an August 2015 meeting with Intelligence Community Inspector General about Hillary Clinton’s email server. The FBI claimed that notes are “missing” and the CD containing notes from meeting is likely “damaged” irreparably.

The CD was cracked... almost as if someone had smashed it with a hammer.

Sara Carter

Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr —who was a backchannel for the former British spy who compiled the anti-President Donald Trump dossier — received a total of $42,520 in performance bonuses from the Justice Department. He received those bonuses after being demoted for a conflict of interest and for not informing his superiors that his wife, Nellie Ohr, was working for the embattled research firm Fusion GPS, which hired former British spy Christoper Steele to compile the now debunked dossier.

According to documents unearthed by the government watchdog group Judicial Watch, after Ohr’s removal from his position as Associate Attorney General in 2017 and then later after his transfer from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force to International Affairs in 2018, he “received a total of $42,520 in performance bonuses during the Trump/Russia investigation. Ohr’s bonus nearly doubled from $14,520 (received in November 2015) to $28,000 in November 2016.”

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch stressed that the documents “raise questions as to whether the conflicted Bruce Ohr, who the FBI used to launder information from Christopher Steele was rewarded for his role in the illicit targeting of President Trump.”

More likely, rewarded in an addition to keep him quiet about his role in the illicit targeting of President Trump.

Active criminal investigations of vote harvesting in Texas.

The Daily Signal

Several U.S. embassies have reportedly disregarded the State Department’s directive not to display rainbow flags on flagpoles during Pride Month.

“This is a category one insurrection,” one diplomat who wished to remain anonymous told the Post, responding to the wave of disobedience to the State Department’s rule.

The President has the power to suppress insurrection. He should thank his enemies for self-identifying and remove them.

Remember all those separate individuals at the FBI, CIA, and State Department who keep insisting they were all hearing about Trump and Russia from Steele independently?

Turns out there was a task force. Under direct Presidential supervision.

His new council is Sidney Powell, who has criticized corruption at the DOJ. Only time will tell if this is too little, too late for justice to be served, or if waiting for Mueller to close up shop before beginning an aggressive countermove will save the day.

Woman considered bringing her gun to work because she was worried about coworkers. She chose not to because there was a rule against it. The next day, one of the coworkers she was worried about ignored the no-guns rule and shot up[ the place, killing her and 11 others.

Mueller alleges Russian intel ties in a Manafort contact... but the Russian in question is actually a source for the State Department. Sure, still a Russian. But a helpful Russian, apparently. And as an established agent, if Manafort or Trump were actually colluding with Russians, he would probably have mentioned it. And it's certainly foul play to smear Trump by association with a Russian who happens to be one of our informants. Not to mention smearing Trump for receiving a peace plan that Obama also received, but only mentioning the delivery to Trump.

ABC News

President Donald Trump stated he would "think about" a ban on gun silencers, following news that the suspected Virginia Beach shooter used a legally-bought gun suppressor.

"I'd like to think about it. I mean nobody's talking about silencers very much. I did talk about the bump stock and we had it banned and we're looking at that. I'm going to seriously look at it. I don't love the idea of it," the president told Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain.

As far as gun rights go, Trump has been pretty much a disaster... unless his judges strike down the gun control rules his administration is pushing by fiat.

I'm not suggesting any 3-dimensional chess here, but the courts seem to be the only real hope for advancing gun rights. The Establishment Republicans won't do it. Trump seems to be worse on that issue that the Establishment. And the Democrats, who used to be afraid to touch guns after Gore lost, are finding their courage again.

True the Vote wins $2M settlement from IRS.

John Solomon has questions for Hillary about Spygate. I think Obama also owes us answers.

Sara Carter

The FBI failed to document at least four interviews of witnesses in the bureau’s investigation into former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server to send classified emails, according to documents obtained by the government watchdog Judicial Watch.

Judicial Watch also discovered among the 218 pages of emails between former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and his paramour former FBI Attorney Lisa Page that then FBI General Counsel James Baker had instructed “FBI officials to expedite the release of FBI investigative material to Hillary Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall in August 2016. Kendall and the FBI’s top lawyer discussed specifically quickly obtaining the “302” report of the FBI/DOJ interview of Mrs. Clinton.”

Why bother interviewing if you aren't going to document the interview so you can potentially use it later?

Obviously because they had no intention of using it later.