Hillary claims to "feel the urge" to run against Trump in 2020. Her plan to win the nomination, if in fact she seriously intended to run, is probably to campaign for the superdelegates to vote for her at the convention after a split non-majority vote among the candidates who actually ran for the nomination. She probably won't run herself (having missed filing deadlines by now, and I suspect unable to withstand the rigors of a long campaign for health reasons) but will campaign behind the scenes to be "drafted".

I do not think this will work, but it's the only reason I can see for her to keep talking about running. Unless she is just that senile, or needs media attention to scare up donations to her foundation as it flounders for lack of influence to sell.

This one targeted gun rights advocates, alleging they left a printed threat on his windshield. But the evidence appears to show he printed it himself and put it on his own car... in his garage.

This is one of those victories that seems small, but adds up quickly. Basically, someone with a misdemeanor battery conviction in the past wants to buy a gun, and the Illinois Supreme Court said unanimously that despite the plain language of the law, she could do so (including, as this is Illinois, obtaining a FOID and so on). The court treated the right to own a gun as equivilent to rights like voting, serving on a jury, and holding office.

The downside is, it's specific to this individual, at least for now. The court is telling the legislature they need to do a better job defining who loses their firearms rights when, and that this specific situation has gone too far.

Hat tip to Saysuncle.

Amazing levels of stupidity on display. Would Biden really abolish our military branches entirely and rely on a civilian militia -- presumably a disarmed one, based on his party's attitude towards the 2nd Amendment? Seems unlikely, but that's what "no standing army" means.

Either Biden is cognitively impaired by age, or just stupid.

Cory Booker shut down FBI's investigations. A mass shooting followed.

There's a fine line between investigating groups like this that arguably advocate violence and respecting their First Amendment rights to associate and speak short of violence. I don't know the details of the rhetoric of the various groups and how that compares to the activities of violent individual members. But in hindsight, it seems non-controversial to suggest that maybe someone should have been looking into them.

And since Booker is trying to run for President, where he would have the authority to set policies on such matters, it's worth pointing out about him.

I don't believe in laws that punish people for simply being related to other people, but in democratic elections there is room for a healthy skepticism about electing people whose parents were, to put it mildly, bad examples.

Department of Agriculture employs "Mindfulness experts" and "forest bathers" at $100K/year and sends employees to conferences on those topics.

Given how many registered voters actually vote, this is a bigger problem than it seems. Each registered voter who doesn't vote is an invitation to undetectable fraud.

Instapundit

Hawley to Introduce Bill to Move Federal Agencies out of Washington D.C. to Economically Stagnant Areas. “The ‘Helping Infrastructure Restore the Economy (HIRE) Act,’ which is cosponsored by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.), would move 90 percent of the positions within ten executive agencies to economically distressed regions that have a stake in the work of those respective agencies.”

This seems like it would be remarkably constructive. Rather than have armies of functionaries in suits in DC deciding how we should live our lives, we can move those functionaries to places closer to their responsibilities.

Remember when Republican governor Chris Christie allegedly closed down a bridge for unnecessary repairs to get some political benefit and the media made a huge fuss over it? Well, neither do they.

This is the office that was paying Stefan Halper significant money for "research papers" that were overpriced, not to spec, and possibly fraudulent (some of the people reported as coauthors don't remember working on the papers). If Halper was being paid by the US government for his already known activities related to the Trump campaign, Michael Flynn, and others... some of which predate the official start of the FBI investigation.. then who tasked him and authorized the pay?

Governor Blackface McKlanhat tries to take credit for peaceful nature of Virginia gun rights march. I'm not letting Northam off the hook for this either.

YouTube admits censoring livestreams and videos of the gun rights protests in Richmond, Virginia today. This is important news and political speech content where no violence occurred.

I've previously pointed out that when Democrats take power in recent elections, they take immediate steps to rig the next election by changing the rules. Mostly, I was pointing to laws that would allow felons to vote (Florida, Virginia, Kentucky). But it's worse than that. Virginia has many more election-rigging changes. The gun control laws proposed actually also count as election-rigging; they want gun owners to leave the state because they can't exercise their rights.

Reason discusses the FBI's FISA reform proposal, along with the FISC's advisor comments. Both of them fall short.

First, the FISC advisor has been heavily criticized for arguing that the FBI did nothing wrong here. His advice to the FICS about reform proposals is critical, suggesting even more reforms and safeguards. That either surprising given his past opinions... or not surprising, given that he wants to preempt criticism while his appointment is under scrutiny. Put simply, he's likely not an honest player and can't be trusted; this play is the opening bid where he tries to claim he's not a Deep State stooge.

Remember when Mueller was described as a paragon of virtue and apolitical competence? Yeah, I'm betting it's like that.

Second problem.

Reason

Kris does not defend the FBI's actions surveilling Page in his response, saying bluntly that nobody is disputing that "basic, fundamental, and serious errors" were found in the Page warrant requests. Kris worries that Wray's plan doesn't really account for what procedures will be used with surveillance requests that intersect with political campaigns. And while Kris does support the improvements that Wray has listed, he says the FBI needs to go further. He is calling for better communication between the FBI and Justice Department attorneys, which in this case partly contributed to the information gaps in the warrant applications. Kris also suggests the possibility of having field agents, not just agents working at FBI headquarters, signing onto warrant applications or at least requiring them to attest to the court to the facts that are in the warrant application. Field agents might be more likely to notice an important omission.

Kris also says the court should require that the FBI regularly submit reports on training participation rates and test scores. The court could, in turn, prohibit FBI agents who haven't successfully completed FISA warrant from signing on as declarants; at the very least, the court would know to bring an extra level of skepticism.

After providing a number of similar suggestions, Kris concludes: "The FBI must restore—and the Court should insist it restore—a strong organizational culture of accuracy and completeness."

Everyone involved here -- the FISC and their advisor Kris (above), Wray, IG Horowitz -- are all operating on the premise that the FBI and DOJ were acting honestly. They just screwed up. They "forgot" key facts. They failed to verify. And if they had had just one more training program, they would have known to do the right thing.

That's bullshit.

This was malice. And malice will ignore the rules, no matter what they rules are, except for one thing and one thing only: consequences.

The people who did this need to be jailed.

It's interesting to know how they got released, but there are still some questions about timing. This doesn't make Rosenstein into a good guy. He believed their release was inevitable, and this forestalled releasing the complete and unredacted texts which would likely be even more damaging.

Aid for a hurricane in 2017 was recently found in a massive warehouse, possibly being sold on the black market. Note that they got even more aid in 2019 for an earthquake when the emergency supplies from the 2017 hurricane were just sitting in warehouses. Disgusting and corrupt.

National Review

It is worth bearing in mind: Impeachment is not just any trial. It stops the legislative business of the United States cold. There will be no movement of bills, no consideration of appointments, no hearings on vital issues such as Iran and the use of force. The impeachment trial will impede the work of the Supreme Court, since the chief justice must preside. In this instance, the impeachment trial will even wreak havoc on the Democratic nomination campaign, as senators — including top-tier contenders Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — must sit as jurors for six days a week.

That's an aspect I had considered for Supreme Court nominations, but I hadn't thought it through to include the judicial nominations that Trump has been pushing through so rapidly. If the Dems can shut down the Senate's confirmations for the 2020 election year, that's a big win for them if Trump loses, even if the impeachment itself fails. They would have to drag out the impeachment for that, which would annoy their candidates, but it might be worth it. And even if not, six weeks of no more Trump judges is not nothing.

Here's where the money went. Yes, down the drain, but not in the right way. Basketball, daycare, and even a bonus for signing up for more welfare.

Worth noting: of $390M total, $144M was spent on water, $129M on economic and "social" development. That adds up to $273M. Where did the other $117M go?

So... all you need to do is claim to be a man if you are a woman, or a woman if you are a man, and they'll release you? We wouldn't be able to hold any of them. Which is the entire point.

A little-reported guilty plea to a charge of leaking documents from Treasury about the Trump campaign and people of interest in the SpyGate scandal. The guilty plea includes illegally downloading and leaking to the press records on Manafort, Richard Gates, the Russian Embassy, Maria Butina, and Prevezon Alexander... along with thousands of other files containing sensitive government information.

This shit has to stop.

The New York Times says so. Commentary here.

Or rather, filed a motion to do so. It's awkward because it's so late in the process and the judge may be sort of pissed off. But aside from that he has a good case for his innocence, and likely even better once evidence is released.

The problem is that DOJ won't want to release it, and the judge has been sending mixed signals.

The immediate trigger for the motion appears to be a DOJ filing asking for prison time and saying Flynn did not cooperate, which is arguably a violation of their agreement. Of course, DOJ will argue Flynn broke the agreement first.

In my opinion, the malfeasance from DOJ invalidated any plea agreement.

Note that the news isn't that it was terrorism, it's that the government admitted it.

Gulags and burning cities.