The End...

A Return to Camelot? RFK, Jr. Townhall.

How Politically Partisan are the Feds?

Means and Ends. Property as the "means" for achieving "happiness" and thereby securing the end goal of "happiness".

Shakespeare, "Hamlet" (Act IV, Sc. iv)

How all occasions do inform against me

And spur my dull revenge. What is a man

If his chief good and market of his time

Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.

Sure He that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and godlike reason

To fust in us unused. Now whether it be

Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on th’ event

(A thought which, quartered, hath but one part

wisdom

And ever three parts coward), I do not know

Why yet I live to say “This thing’s to do,”

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means

To do ’t.

Worthy Causes

Where's Hunter THIS Weekend?

Cristina Laila, "Joe and Hunter Biden Take Off to Camp David For Weekend Getaway"

They’re laughing at us.

Joe, Hunter, and grandson Beau Biden took off to Camp David for the weekend.

Hunter attended the State Dinner at the White House on Thursday night after his father’s corrupt Justice Department gave him a sweetheart deal.

House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-MO) on Thursday detailed MULTIPLE felony charges that whistleblowers said the IRS recommended against Hunter Biden.

Rather than charging Hunter Biden with felonies for evading taxes and providing false statements to the feds, Joe Biden’s corrupt DOJ gave him a sweetheart deal.

The Justice Department, with Merrick Garland at the helm, also blocked search warrants for Biden’s Delaware home and Hunter’s storage locker.

Later that night Hunter was spotted at the State Dinner with Merrick Garland.

WATCH:

Hunter Biden and Merrick Garland attended the same state dinner last night just hours after the Department of Justice was accused of a massive cover up involving Hunter's tax fraud case.

They are laughing at you.

They think you are stupid.

They are in one big elite club with… pic.twitter.com/vgN1XNUlAD

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) June 23, 2023

Now Hunter is joining his father on Marine One to spend the weekend at Camp David, a presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains.

.⁦@POTUS⁩ ⁦@JoeBiden⁩ with his grandson Beau and son Hunter Biden board Marine One for Camp David. pic.twitter.com/tNHrP96Wze

— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) June 24, 2023

The world is in chaos, but Joe Biden doesn’t have a care in the world.

Joe Biden has spent 40% of his presidency on vacation with no visitor logs.

Meanwhile... in New Hampshire... 

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Peace Speech II: the line! #Kennedy24 pic.twitter.com/G6vMcdE1LD

— RFK AllTheWay Pod | Matthew Tower (@RFKAllTheWayUSA) June 20, 2023

Perfidious Albion Plays its' Best Card Against Putin...

The U.K.: Masters of Soft-Kill

 

...but don't be fooled for a minute that Wagner is "headed towards Mos-Cow."  Rostov on Don was always their objective... to cut Russian supply lines and isolate Crimea.  The only question now is "how long Wagner can hold on to it?"

The British paid off the Wagner mercenaries.  And as Machiavelli said in "The Prince":

Summary: Chapter XII: Concerning Various Kinds of Troops, and Especially Mercenaries 

All princes must build on strong foundations. The two essential components of a strong state are good laws and good armies. Good laws cannot exist without good armies. The presence of a good army, however, indicates the presence of good laws.

There are three types of armies: a prince’s own troops, mercenary troops, and auxiliary troops. Mercenary and auxiliary troops are useless and dangerous. Mercenaries are “disunited, undisciplined, ambitious, and faithless.” Because their only motivation is monetary, they are generally not effective in battle and have low morale. Mercenary commanders are either skilled or unskilled. Unskilled commanders are worthless, but skilled commanders cannot be trusted to suppress their own ambition. It is far more preferable for a prince to command his own army.

Historically, dependence on mercenaries ruined Italy. During the breakup of Italy, which the Church supported in hopes of increasing its own stature, many townships hired mercenaries because they had little experience in military matters. Since the mercenaries were more concerned with increasing their own prestige and status than with taking risks or accomplishing military objectives, the conflicts between these mercenary forces devolved into a series of ineffective, staged, pseudo-battles, ultimately degrading Italy’s political and military might.

The Most Hated Democrat in the Democratic Party

Ep. 6 Bobby Kennedy is winning pic.twitter.com/jW51PYahLV

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 22, 2023

War with Russia - Another Burisma/ Biden Quid pro Quo?

Is Larry "The One"?

Complicit Media

Meanwhile the University Discourse attempts to earn its' keep from the Master (and make his arbitrary commands intelligible for the Hysterics)...

Trust the Science.  Trust the Experts.

Merging Uni-Party Interests - Ukraine, the New "Woke" NeoCon and "War Mongering" Democrat Globalist Alliance

The Anti-War Left is dead.  The Conservative NeoCon is also dead.  With the rise of Donald Trump, old enemies have found a common interest in pursuit of global economic hegemony and capitalism.

The Woke Imperium

The Lawfare Persecution Continues...

Will Scharf, "6 Reasons DOJ’s ‘Get Trump’ Documents Case Is Seriously Flawed"

Proving a defendant’s intent and knowledge can often be tough. But it’s even tougher here because of the Presidential Records Act.

I am a former assistant U.S. attorney, worked on two Supreme Court confirmations, and clerked for two federal appellate judges. I have reviewed the indictment brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith in the documents case against former President Donald Trump, and have serious concerns with the way this case is being framed in the public and with some aspects of the way the prosecution itself is being conducted.

Here are six major issues I see that need to be addressed by the special counsel’s team.

1. Interplay Between the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act

Others have already spoken insightfully about the scope of the Presidential Records Act (PRA). Mike Davis of the Article III Project has published and spoken on the subject, and Michael Bekesha of Judicial Watch had a fascinating article in The Wall Street Journal detailing his experience litigating the Clinton Sock Drawer Case.

Basically, their argument distills down to the idea that the president’s authority to retain personal records, as well as his rights to access his presidential records, make it impossible to prosecute him under the Espionage Act section at issue here, § 793(e), because the government cannot prove “unauthorized possession,” as required under the statute.

I want to make a different point relating to the intent element of the Espionage Act, the statute Trump is being charged under.

Section 793(e) requires the government to prove that the defendant knew he had National Defense Information (NDI) in his possession, knew there was a government official entitled to receive the information, and then willfully failed to deliver it to that official.

This is a very high set of mens rea bars to jump in any circumstance. Proving a defendant’s intent and knowledge can often be tough. But it’s even tougher here because of the Presidential Records Act.

The Presidential Records Act sets up a system where the president designates all records that he creates either as presidential or personal records (44 U.S.C. § 2203(b)). A former president is supposed to turn over his presidential records to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and he has the right to keep his personal records.

Based on the documents I’ve read and his actions I’ve read about, I believe Trump viewed his “boxes” as his personal records under the PRA. There are statements he made, quoted in the indictment, that support that view. If Trump considered the contents of these boxes to be of purely personal interest, hence his designation of them as personal records, did he knowingly retain NDI?

Did he really think these documents, like years-old briefing notes and random maps, jumbled together with his letters, news clippings, scribbled notes, and random miscellaneous items, “could be used to the injury of the United States”? Or did he just think of them as mementos of his time in office, his personal records of the four years, akin to a journal or diary?

If he thought these boxes were his personal records, he may have believed NARA simply had no right to receive them at all — meaning he did not willfully withhold anything from an official he knew had the right to receive them because he didn’t believe that anyone had the right to receive them.

By breathlessly bandying around classification levels and markings, the special counsel is trying to make this case seem much, much simpler than it is. Classification levels do not automatically make something NDI, and having classified documents in your possession is not enough to convict here. It is simply not the case that the fact that previously classified documents were found in boxes in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom means Trump is guilty.

That’s what they want you to think, and that has the media’s inch-deep view for the most part, but it’s dead wrong.

More than anything, this case hinges on the ability of the special counsel to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” aspects of Trump’s state of mind that will be extremely difficult to prove in this case because of his obligations and rights under the Presidential Records Act — in addition to all of the usual issues.

2. Classification and National Defense Information

Just because something is classified — even Top Secret, SCI, NOFORN, FISA, pick your alphabet soup — does not mean it is National Defense Information within the meaning of the Espionage Act. NDI, for the purposes of an Espionage Act prosecution, is defined as one of a long list of items “relating to the national defense which information the possessor had reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”

A lot of the documents listed in the indictment are older, or seemingly random. Would Trump in 2022 have had reason to know that a 2019 briefing document “related to various foreign countries, with handwritten annotation in black marker” could harm the U.S. or help foreign countries?

It is tough to say because we cannot see the documents, but that is a question the jury is going to have to decide in the end, and Trump’s legal team needs to drive home this point over and over again: Classification is not dispositive in this case. Harm to America or benefit to foreign countries is the standard.

Anyone who has worked around government knows that overclassification is a huge problem. A ton of documents end up being classified because of arcane technical rules that may not reflect the real world. If the president were to ask the Navy what’s for lunch for the next week at Coronado, for example, there is a good chance the answer comes back with a classification marker on it.

To put it simply, not everything classified constitutes NDI. This case revolves around actual legal standards and statutory language, not a bunch of scary-looking all-caps acronyms.

3. Walt Nauta and DOJ Misconduct

Far and away the most troubling side story to emerge from this saga so far are the allegations made by Trump aide and co-defendant Walt Nauta’s lawyer last week.

You may have missed it if you blinked. Not surprisingly, the corporate media have mostly buried this one.

Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward, alleged in a court filing that during a meeting with prosecutors about his client’s case, the head of the Counterintelligence Section of DOJ’s National Security Division Jay Bratt “suggested Woodward’s judicial application [for a DC Superior Court judgeship] might be considered more favorably if he and his client cooperated against Trump.”

If true, and I find it hard to believe that Woodward just made the whole thing up, this is wild misconduct. Truly wild. It could undermine the entire case against both Trump and Nauta. It could end careers at DOJ if fairly investigated.

Woodward is a highly accomplished lawyer. He spent a decade at Akin Gump, a top law firm, clerked on the D.C. Circuit, and has very substantial experience in government investigations. This is not some fly-by-night TV lawyer. He is a legal heavyweight, and he is leveling an extremely serious allegation of misconduct against a senior official at DOJ.

Watch this issue as the case against Trump and Nauta begins to move. We will all hear more about it, I am sure.

4. Attorney-Client Privilege

The indictment relies on a significant amount of information received, in one form or another, from one of Trump’s lawyers, Evan Corcoran, who was compelled to testify in front of the grand jury. According to news reports, the argument for breaching the privilege was the crime-fraud exception, which is worth examining in greater detail.

The attorney-client privilege protects from disclosure to the government confidential communications made between clients and their attorneys. It has been around for centuries and is considered a core protection in our system of justice.

The crime-fraud exception, though, allows the attorney-client privilege to be broken in rare circumstances when two requirements are met: First, there needs to be a prima facie showing that the client was engaged in criminal conduct. Second, the client has to have obtained or sought the attorney’s assistance in furthering that crime.

I have not seen DOJ’s filings on Corcoran, but I would be interested to know how they argued this. First of all, what was the crime they used as a predicate? Was it unlawful retention of the documents? If so, there is nothing in the indictment that I can see indicating Corcoran’s communications with Trump would have furthered that in a way that would justify breaching privilege.

Was it obstruction? I think this is the most likely option: They pierced attorney-client privilege using obstruction as the predicate crime for the crime-fraud exception, saying that Trump’s conversations with Corcoran amounted to him attempting to enlist Corcoran in a criminal obstruction scheme.

Now, we will see how this theory goes for the government. I have my doubts.

But if that is the case, just reading this indictment, it seems as though the obstruction charges may have been structured specifically in part just to get Corcoran’s testimony in, to help buttress what would otherwise be a much weaker case against Trump on the substantive charges.

In any case, the special counsel is going to have to show why the communications in question were a solicitation by Trump to Corcoran to join him in criminal acts, as opposed to Trump asking a lawyer he hired to advise him on his legal defense, to tell him what his options were, or to outline what defensive steps might be possible, and what was done by others in previous cases like Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Reading the conversations in the indictment, they sound a lot more like honest attorney-client communications than they do crime fraud to me, even with all ellipses and modifications made by the special counsel’s team.

I expect a motion by Trump’s legal team on this issue, and if they win that will cut the guts out of much of this case. It will be very tough to prove intent and willfulness the way the government needs to without Corcoran, at least based on what we see in the indictment.

5. Timing: Why Now?

This is not a legal defect in the indictment, but it is an important point nonetheless. Why are they bringing this case now?

They know Trump is the leading candidate for president. They know he is beating Biden in the polls. They must know how bad it looks for a sitting president’s DOJ to indict that president’s primary political opponent.

DOJ has long had policies in place to prevent new indictments from being brought, or overt investigative acts being committed, in the months preceding an election in order to avoid the appearance of political timing. The same reasoning clearly applies here.

The special counsel’s team did not have a statute of limitations issue, they could have easily just announced the facts as they saw them after the search warrant was executed and all the documents were recovered, and then held off on further investigative acts and the indictment until after November 2024.

The fact that they did not follow that course is strong evidence to me that a big part of this is the burning desire among many on the left to “get Trump.” They don’t care about the law. They don’t care about the facts. They don’t care about norms or propriety or anything else. They just want Trump in cuffs.

The fact that our law enforcement and intelligence apparatuses are being weaponized in this way against a leading presidential contender is truly a black mark on them and on our republic.

If I were Trump’s lawyers, I would consider moving to continue further proceedings until after November 2024. Let the case sit. The country doesn’t need to litigate this right now. We need to pick our next president. If DOJ won’t agree to that continuance, let them explain why this has to happen right now. There is no good reason that I can see.

6. Jack Smith: Why Him?

If you could pick any lawyer in the country to handle a controversial case against a former president, a case involving an aggressive, unprecedented use of the Espionage Act, a controversial law in and of itself, what lawyer would you pick?

You’d probably want just a consummate professional, right? Career prosecutor with no political profile at all? White knight in shining armor who’s never lost a case?

Or you could pick Jack Smith.

The single case Jack Smith is most publicly associated with was the prosecution of Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.

In that case, using a very aggressive interpretation of the scope of federal bribery and honest services fraud statutes, Smith nuked the career and life of a popular Republican politician, before having all his convictions overturned by the Supreme Court in a unanimous opinion.

A unanimous Supreme Court smacked Smith down for an overzealous, legally defective prosecution of a Republican politician, and the opinion was so devastating that DOJ did not even attempt to retry the case. It was just dropped.

As has been noted publicly as well, Smith’s wife is a leftist filmmaker who produced a hagiography of Michelle Obama, and he currently lives in the Netherlands. Was there not anyone else up to the task on this side of the Atlantic?

If this is not a political prosecution, if Merrick Garland wasn’t just trying to “get Trump,” then why was Jack Smith the pick? Like the timing, the decision reeks of politics.

The Biden Tapes

A Musical Interlude...

The Ever-Growing PanOptic National Security State

America is Crying

News You Can Trust!

2023 - Snark's Triumph Over Science in the Society of the Spectacle

Liel Leibovitz, "Do You Remember 2005?"

Twenty years ago, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained his views about vaccines on The Daily Show—and was met with respect and interest. In the years since, what’s changed?

Now that Succession is over, I’ve got something else to binge on. It’s only seven minutes and two seconds long, but it’s arguably less predictable and more dramatic. It’s an interview on The Daily Show—the original one, with Jon Stewart, before it soured into a mess so rancid it can’t even find a permanent host—from July 20, 2005. The guest? Robert F. Kennedy Jr., there to talk about thimerosal, the mercury compound used as a preservative in some vaccines and which Kennedy believes is the likely cause of various neurological disorders as well as the reason for the spike in autism in the U.S.

RFK Jr.’s message is the same one he delivers today. “It’s not all vaccinations,” he told Stewart, just the ones that use the substance he deems unsafe. Stewart pushes back, at one point asking why the government would conspire to suppress his arguments, even at the price of public health. RFK, Jr. responds. And so on and so forth. Which is to say: The entire interview is driven by curiosity and good faith and ends with respect: “It’s a remarkable story,” Stewart says. “I wish we had more time, but I appreciate you getting the word out and I know parents of kids with autism truly appreciate it. I know it’s a very difficult thing for them to be dealing with, so I’m sure they appreciate the help and support.”

That was 18 years ago.

Back then, the very same ideas, expressed the very same way, earned RFK Jr. a friendly, measured spot on the nation’s hottest television program. Today, it brings him smug condescension and often vicious contempt, from The New York Times announcement of his run for president informing readers that his campaign would be “built on re-litigating Covid-19 shutdowns and shaking Americans’ faith in science” to the Center for Countering Digital Hate placing him on its “Disinformation Dozen” list and demanding that his social media accounts be blocked. “He’s a crazy conspiracy theorist,” Times opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo shot back at someone on Twitter who dared to wonder why RFK Jr. might deserve attention, the smear rolling off Manjoo’s keyboard with the ease of someone receiving talking points from the Politburo instead of doing the work of having thoughts of his own.

What changed?

It’s a vitally important question for anyone wishing to understand our current collective lunacy, so let’s take the scientific approach. We know RFK Jr. is saying the same things he did in 2005, so he’s the constant in this equation. Could it be, then, that the years that passed since his Daily Show appearance brought with them a deluge of new facts and findings that make the same statements sound so much more odious? That, after all, is how science—the real deal, not the hashtag sort—works, constantly reviewing new information to test old hypotheses.

But the science concerning thimerosal has been largely settled since … 2001. Four years earlier, in 1997, the FDA revamped procedures and standards, and asked pharmaceutical companies to report on the thimerosal content in their drugs. The data came in mid-1999 and left the experts appointed to review it split. Here’s how Dr. Paul A. Offit, co-inventor of the RotaTeq vaccine, put it in that hotbed of radicalism, the New England Journal of Medicine: “Several attendees left the meeting concerned that infants might be receiving too much mercury from vaccines,” he wrote. “On July 9, 1999, after much wrangling, the CDC and AAP [American Academy of Pediatrics] decided to exercise the precautionary principle. They asked pharmaceutical companies to remove thimerosal from vaccines as quickly as possible; in the interim, they asked doctors to delay the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine in children who weren’t at risk for hepatitis.”

A concern emerged that messaging the decision improperly would lead to reluctance to vaccinate children, which prompted the U.S. National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine to issue another report two years later. Here’s its conclusion (bold in the original text): “Based on this body of evidence, the committee concludes that the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.”

In the 2005 interview, Stewart brings much of this to the fore, and has a nuanced, interested, and thought-provoking conversation with RFK Jr., who fully acknowledges the concerns well-meaning public health officials may have about the ways the general population might misjudge risks and benefits if given information it doesn’t fully understand. Which is why, RFK Jr. concluded bluntly, the best policy is simply to tell the messy and complicated truth and trust that people are smart enough to make their own informed decisions.

If you’ve paid any attention during COVID, you know that RFK Jr.’s counsel went unheeded. There are too many examples of this to choose from, but my favorite one is CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky stating, in a White House press conference four months after the vaccines were first distributed, that her agency recommends that pregnant women get the shot. The agency’s own website, however, made it clear that the agency simply didn’t have enough data to make any sweeping guarantees, as pregnancies last nine months and as vaccines simply hadn’t been around long enough for anyone to say with any certainty that they would have no effect on fetal development.

And so, QED: Eighteen years after his Daily Show appearance, RFK Jr. is the same RFK Jr., and the science is the same science. That’s more than we can say for those who call themselves “liberal” or “progressive” or “left wing” and still fancy themselves smart or educated. Once upon a time, these cats were able to do as Jon Stewart had done all those years ago: ask probing questions, listen politely, and acknowledge that a person making an argument you dislike—even one you believe is wrong—is not necessarily a peril to be eliminated or a threat to be silenced but a voice to be engaged.

These formerly smart people also used to understand that “science” wasn’t an article of faith—as in Fauci’s “I am the science” or the COVID-era mantra “trust the science”—but a disinterested method involving constantly arguing about facts, even those that seem settled. No more: In 2018, for example, a senior Columbia University climate scientist, writing in Scientific American, thundered that she would no longer debate climate science. “Once you put the established facts about the world up for argument,” she wrote, “you’ve already lost.” Which is more or less what the Roman Inquisition said once Galileo suggested that the Earth revolved around the sun.

As Kennedy continues his presidential bid, it’s likely that we’ll hear more terms like “anti-vaxxer” or “conspiracy theory” or “disinformation” thrown about with cloying, sanctimonious gravitas. But if you want some real insight into the folks wildly brandishing these terms, just watch how they treated RFK Jr. not too long ago. He hasn’t changed a bit, but they, alas, have.

“‘You may seek it with thimbles—and seek it with care;

You may hunt it with forks and hope;

You may threaten its life with a railway-share;

You may charm it with smiles and soap—‘”

Silencing Dissent 101

MTG Spills the Beans on Joe Biden's $5m Burisma Prosecutor Buy-off Bribe

Agenda for a Trump 2nd Term...

Why the War on Russia has FAILED.

...and how the rest of the world could learn a lesson from the de-corporatization of their economies.

Red Meat for Warmongers

The manufacturing of consent continues... as NATO and the US National Security State double down on war