Archive for the ‘Civil Rights’ Category

In 1927, the hated New York Yankees put together one of the most feared lineups in baseball history. The middle of their order was known as ‘Murderers Row‘. Their batting order featured center fielder Earle Combs, left fielder Bob Meusel and second baseman Tony Lazzeri. The ‘Row’ also included 2 other guys — Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth — who, I’m told, were pretty decent, too.

The Democrats have a different type of Murderers Row. The Democrats haven’t hesitated in squashing people’s liberties. David Avella and Georgia State Senate Majority Leader Michael Dugan put together this article to highlight the right way to govern during the Wuhan Virus crisis.

Americans never wanted to see small-business owners treated like criminals. We never wanted our parks and beaches to be designated as inherently dangerous. We have never been required to stay away from loved ones who are sick or dying.

As a nation, we understand the severity of the health crisis we now face, but the law should never be used to persecute an individual’s freedom nor to prosecute Americans operating legal businesses to support their families. Charging small-business owners with crimes is just too much, especially when the public wants leaders to pursue a level-headed approach.

That’s why governors like Gretchen Whitmer, Tim Walz, Tom Wolf and J.B. Pritzker are experiencing frequent protests. They don’t care about people’s rights. They just care about feeding their appetite for power. They are legitimately titled tyrants. This is how incompetent Michigan is:

In Minnesota, Tim Walz’s regulators are still admitting COVID positive patients back into nursing homes. In Pennsylvania, the state’s Commissioner of Health moved her mother out of a nursing home when she found out that COVID patients were getting moved into that nursing home. That’s before talking about Walz’s Department of Health not properly transporting tests to the lab. (They forgot to refrigerate the kits.)

Hundreds of people have died needlessly because these tyrants are incompetent or vindictive or both. This is how to do things right:

On March 14, Kemp issued an executive order declaring a public health state of emergency, calling forth the emergency powers of his office with the compliance of the legislature. On March 16, the legislature convened to ratify Kemp’s order. At that time, the House and Senate each had the opportunity to concur with or terminate the governor’s declaration. Having determined the gravity of the situation demanded emergency action, the Senate and House quickly agreed.

There are also two other features of what was done in Georgia that would serve other states well to match. First, public health state of emergencies must have the concurrence of the General Assembly. Second, the legislature must maintain the right to terminate the state of emergency at any time.

Together, these checks on the executive branch limit what the governor may order and create a partnership where the executive branch of government is agile enough to meet citizens’ needs without legislation.

That’s doing governance right. Michigan and Minnesota are governance that only a tyrant would love.

John Solomon’s article goes a long ways towards explaining the difference between legitimate unmasking requests and illegitimate unmasking requests. By now, Washington, DC, is awash with the Democrats’ spin on why the Flynn unmasking wasn’t a big deal. It’s a new version of ‘no big deal, just keep moving.’ That isn’t the truth. This is a big deal.

For instance, Solomon explained that “If a Treasury official like Raskin or the U.N. ambassador requested the unmasking because they were trying to deal with a foreign official confused by U.S. policy during the transition, that likely would be deemed a lawful intelligence purpose. But if an official requested the information because they personally did not like the incoming Trump administration or wanted to thwart Flynn during the transition through leaking or other means, it could be deemed an act against a political adversary and a misuse of unmasking.”

According to this article, “The first request appears to have been made as part of a report on Nov. 30, 2016. Along with Biden, other Obama administration officials listed are Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.” That’s long before the Flynn-Kislyak call. The Flynn-Kislyak call happened in late December.

A final question for the investigators resides in the policy question about whether unmasking has become too easy to do and therefore infringes on Americans privacy, specifically the Constitution’s 4th Amendment protection against unlawful search and seizure. On that front, there are already troubling revelations. Power, whose name was invoked for hundreds of unmasking requests, testified to Congress she did not make most of those requests attributed to her. That suggests some dangerous looseness in the unmasking system.

The political people who requested these unmaskings haven’t earned the benefit of the doubt. They each have a history of dishonesty.

It’s worth noting that Solomon said that Flynn isn’t the only member of the Trump team that the Obama administration unmasked. I suspect that there’s a closet of shoes left to drop on this. It might not be an Imelda Marcos-sized shoe closet but it’s still a shoe closet.

This CNN fake news article appears to be built more on wishful thinking than on reality. It says that “More than 82,000 Americans have died of coronavirus as of Tuesday. A top model now forecasts that 147,000 Americans will lose their lives by August. Millions are out of work. And the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is warning that reopening the country too early could have serious consequences. Which is all to say that the news is not good for President Trump. Death and despair threaten to swallow his reelection hopes. A Tuesday CNN poll found that most Americans (54%) believe the US gov’t is doing a poor job preventing the spread of the virus. And a majority (52%) still think the worst is on the horizon.”

That same poll showed President Trump leading in the battleground states by 7 points against VP Biden. Not in that poll is the fact that 2 Republicans won special elections Tuesday night. Mike Garcia won by 12 points in California. When Tom Tiffany won in Wisconsin’s 7th District by 14 points, Democrats insisted that represented a moral victory for Democrats because Trump won that district by 20 points in 2016. As Tiffany said, losing by 14 points isn’t a moral victory. This is rich:

Major news organizations are reflecting this grim reality with clear-eyed reporting, bold headlines, and historic front pages. So what is Trump, Fox News and the right-wing media machine doing? They’re constructing a separate alternate reality to keep their fans distracted from the news and outraged at the long-standing villains in the right-wing media universe. The general idea is that President Obama and others improperly used the levers of gov’t to conspire against Trump to win the 2016 election, with the “deep-state” later working to kneecap him when he was in office.

This isn’t an “alternate reality.” It’s just reality. The transcripts speak for themselves. Jim Clapper said under oath that he didn’t find “any direct empirical evidence” that President Trump or anyone in his campaign conspired with Russians. In fact, Fake News CNN and MSDNC haven’t talked much about the 63,000 pages of transcripts. Is that because those transcripts show that all 53 witnesses testified that they didn’t have any evidence of Trump-Russian collusion? Trey Gowdy said that he asked every witness that testified if they’d heard unsubstantiated rumors of Trump-Russia collusion. He even drew a blank on that. That’s what happens when political operatives attempt a coup against a duly elected president that the FBI hates. (Remember the Strzok-Page texts about the insurance policy.) These weren’t unbiased FBI agents. They were Democrat operatives. If you disagree, tell me the difference between Peter Strzok and Marie Harf.

This isn’t a wild conspiracy theory. The definition of theory is “a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural and subject to experimentation, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact.” These statements aren’t conjecture. They’re stated facts. Most importantly, they’re stated facts in a case where the Obama intel community improperly surveilled Carter Page and other Trump advisers.

When a government throws the rules out the window, which is what the Obama administration did, to surveil American citizens, it’s a huge deal. The Obama administration didn’t get a warrant to unmask Gen. Flynn. Surveilling American citizens without a warrant is a violation of that person’s Fourth Amendment rights. That isn’t a distraction. That’s a major crisis. Cases can get thrown out when the government violates a person’s civil rights. If a person isn’t read their Miranda Rights, all the information gathered from that interview is inadmissible.

That CNN thinks that violating Americans’ civil rights isn’t a big deal is disturbing. Then there’s this:

Over the past few days, they’ve started hyping the supposed scandal as if it really was, in fact, worse than Watergate. Coverage is all over Fox News’ programming, covered by both the supposed “straight news” anchors to the opinion commentators like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham. As WaPo’s Phillip Bump noted earlier this week, mentions of Michael Flynn, who plays a central role in all of this, have surpassed mentions of the coronavirus on Fox News in recent days.

The Wuhan Virus isn’t the threat to humanity that the press has insinuated. When a government improperly surveils the opposition party’s presidential candidate based on gossip, that’s a powder keg waiting to blow.

What does CNN think of the fact that the Obama administration surveilled Trump campaign advisers without proper predication? Would they scream bloody murder if that happened with Hillary instead of Trump?

It’s just one judge’s ruling but Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive order just sustained a major hit. This comes “after the Shiawassee County Sheriff said he wouldn’t enforce the order.” The article read “Karl Manke is ready for customers after a judge denied a temporary restraining order to close the barbershop.”

David Kallman, Manke’s attorney, said “We’re thrilled, yea. The court just denied the TRO request that the attorney general filed earlier today, which means Karl can stay open. And the judge did what we asked, which is if they want to have a hearing, present evidence and try to convince the court that Karl should be shut down, show how the proof. Show that people are actually being harmed.”

Later, Manke said this:

I had gone six weeks without a paycheck, with no money coming in. You know, I’ve been in this business 59 years. I’m entering my 60th now. I’m 77. I’ve always worked. I’ve never looked for handouts, I don’t even know what they are. I had somebody call me and say why don’t you get on food stamps. I don’t want food stamps. I want to work.

Manke said that he’s surprised by the amount of support he’s received:

“I came into this last Monday alone, thinking I’m going to swing in the wind alone,” he said, calling the governor’s order to keep non-essential businesses closed oppressive and he doesn’t need to be mothered by lawmakers. “I cannot believe the support that I’ve got. It’s overwhelming.”

Check this video out:

Just short of 2 minutes into the video, Manke said “I’ve never seen anything like this at all. I’ve never seen this type of oppression by a government, not even in the 60s.” It was difficult to hear Manke’s speech at times because of all the horns honking as they drove past Manke’s shop. That’s what a backlash forming sounds like. They’re mad as hell and they won’t take Gov. Whitmer’s oppression much longer. We The People should take up this battle cry:

“The government isn’t my mother, never has been. It’s time for us to take responsibility.”

David Kallman highlighted the fact that the Michigan legislature refused to extend “the declaration of emergency”, that declaration has lapsed. Since then, Empress Whitmer declared another state of emergency as a way of getting around the legislature’s decision. That new declaration is a legal dead man walking since it wasn’t authorized by the legislature. As Kallman said, that first declaration ended “according to state law.”

Kallman then stated that “If you can walk down the aisle at Walmart, you can walk down the aisle at your church and you can walk down the aisle to Karl’s barber shop.” Kallman then stated that Manke is following the same protocols (hand-washing, social distancing) that other businesses are practicing. What is Gov. Whitmer’s argument in light of those facts? That Walmart is better at hand-washing and social distancing? Her EOs are ridiculous and oppressive. The people know it, too.

It’s time for this selective oppression to end. The rule of law, due process and the right to pursue happiness (without endangering others) must mean something. They can’t just be words on a piece of paper.

John Solomon has worked overtime and then some to rip Adam Schiff’s mask off. So have Catherine Herridge, Sara Carter, Lee Smith, Gregg Jarrett, Kim Strassel, Mollie Hemmingway and Byron York. Solomon’s article highlights how utterly dishonest Adam Schiff is. Ditto with the upper echelon of the FBI. Strap yourself in. This isn’t a short ride.

The pursuit of the truth ended Thursday when the Justice Department formally asked a court to vacate Flynn’s conviction and end the criminal case, acknowledging the former general had indeed been cleared by FBI agents and that the bureau did not have a lawful purpose when it interviewed him in January 2017.

Attorney General William Barr put it more bluntly in an interview Thursday: “They kept it open for the express purpose of trying to catch, to lay a perjury trap for General Flynn.”

According to Solomon’s reporting, the FBI didn’t have a reason to investigate Gen. Flynn:

3. Case closed memo. FBI agents wrote a memo to close the investigation of Flynn on Jan. 4, 2017, writing they found “no derogatory” evidence that Flynn committed a crime or posed a national security threat. FBI management then ordered the closure to be rescinded and pivoted toward trying lure Flynn into an interview. https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/fbi-found-no-derogatory-russia-evidence-flynn-planned

Corrupt FBI agent Peter Strzok allegedly ordered Crossfire Razor, the codename for the Flynn investigation, to stay open. Later, in a text to his lover, said this:

“Our utter incompetence actually helps us.”

It’s fair to ask how this relate to Adam Schiff. Adam Schiff knew that the FBI line office wanted to shut down Crossfire Razor. Most importantly, he knew that the officers had found “no derogatory” evidence against Flynn. They found that out before President Trump’s inauguration. That meant that there wasn’t a legitimate predicate for the Flynn investigation. Solomon laid out his case in this interview:

Schiff is a sociopath. Solomon cites 10 different statements Schiff made in public that were contradicted by what was known by the intelligence community. This is disgusting:

Unequal treatment. James Comey bragged in a videotaped interview that he authorized the FBI to try to conduct a Flynn interview without the proper notifications and protocol, hoping to catch Flynn and the new Trump White House off guard. In other words, they didn’t follow procedure or treat Flynn like others when it came to due process. Comey said the tactic was “something I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration.” https://www.foxnews.com/politics/comey-admits-decision-to-send-fbi-agents-to-interview-mike-flynn-was-not-standard

Comey and Schiff are the most reprehensible figures in this disgusting episode. They’re both narcissists and sociopaths.

Aaron Rupar’s article is a perfect example of the MSM attempting to destroy a man’s reputation. Rupar started by writing that “President Donald Trump on Thursday seized upon new developments in the Michael Flynn case to reinvigorate his pet conspiracy theories about Obama-era law enforcement and intelligence community officials conspiring to bring him down.”

He followed that up by writing “First, some brief backstory. After being fired from his position as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency by President Obama in 2014, Flynn cozied up to Russia and became one of Trump’s more prominent campaign surrogates. Trump ignored advice Obama gave him during their November 2016 White House meeting and tapped him to be his first national security adviser, but Flynn planted the seeds of his own undoing before he even started the job by having secretive communications with Russian officials during the transition period.”

That’s sloppy journalism. It took me much less than a minute to find Gen. Flynn’s DIA bio. Here’s what it said about Gen. Flynn:

Michael T. Flynn graduated from the University of Rhode Island in 1981 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in Military Intelligence. His first assignment was as a paratrooper of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Since then, he has served in a variety of command and staff positions to include, Commander, 313th Military Intelligence Battalion and G2, 82nd Airborne Division; G2, 18th Airborne Corps, CJ2, CJTF-180 Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan; Commander, 111th Military Intelligence Brigade at the Army’s Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona; Director of Intelligence, Joint Special Operations Command with duty in OEF and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF); Director of Intelligence, United States Central Command with duty in OEF and OIF; Director of Intelligence, the Joint Staff; Director of Intelligence, International Security Assistance Force-Afghanistan and US Forces-Afghanistan and Special Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff, G2. He most recently served as the Assistant Director of National Intelligence for Partner Engagement before becoming the 18th Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency on 24 July 2012.

Someone with that much experience within the IC knows that there’s no such thing as “secretive communications with Russian officials” at any point. That’s standard protocol. Rupar isn’t too bright if he thinks that Flynn wouldn’t know this. Then there’s this BS:

FBI leadership was already aware at that time that Flynn had phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period. In those calls, Flynn advised Kislyak not to respond to new sanctions the Obama administration placed on Russia for interfering (on Trump’s behalf) in the just-completed presidential election. Intercepts of Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak raised concerns within the bureau that Flynn had violated the Logan Act, a law that prohibits unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments.

Jonathan Turley, one of the top constitutional law professors in the nation, has a significantly different view of things:

The new documents also explore how the Justice Department could get Flynn to admit breaking the Logan Act, a law that dates back to from 1799 which makes it a crime for a citizen to intervene in disputes between the United States and foreign governments. It has never been used to convict a citizen and is widely viewed as flagrantly unconstitutional.

Serious people don’t take the Logan Act explanation seriously. First, there’s the question of its constitutionality. Next, there’s the question of whether the Logan Act fits with people who are the incoming national security adviser.

Let’s return to something else from earlier in Rupar’s article. Rupar wrote that “Trump ignored advice Obama gave him during their November 2016 White House meeting and tapped him to be his first national security adviser.” Why would a smart person trust anyforeign policy advice from President Obama? He’s the idiot who authorized John Kerry to negotiate, then sign the JCPOA. In case Democrats haven’t noticed, President Trump shredded all of President Obama’s economic and national security policies pretty much on Day One. They were that awful. In many ways, Trump is the anti-Obama. Obama is the cool kid that didn’t get anything done. President Trump is the guy nobody likes until they see everything he’s accomplished.

Personally, give me the guy with the lengthy list of accomplishments over the smooth talker.

Anyone thinking that the (Comey/McCabe/Strzok/Page) FBI-Flynn fight will be the final fight is kidding themselves. Chuck Grassley’s tweet sounds like he’s just warming up:

New DOJ/Flynn docs are stamped w SCO as in Special Counsels Office

Did Mueller have these docs? Why did his team sit on them? What else is Mueller team that cost taxpayers $30+ million hiding? The ppl deserve answers 2restore faith in federal law enforcement agencies

— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) April 30, 2020

Random thought: Sen. Grassley is a serious senator. Unlike some of the Democrat show horses, Sen. Grassley brings a lunch pail when he starts asking questions. He’s extremely thorough and he gets to the bottom of things. If I was Mueller, I’d start worrying.

Another person who shouldn’t be taken lightly is Kim Strassel. She’s as persistent as Sen. Grassley. This is the first tweet of a lengthy multi-tweet string:

1) To really understand how outrageous are these new Flynn docs, you have to add to everything we already know. And key is remembering that the FBI had no REASON to interview Flynn. It already had transcripts of his conversations with Kislyak.

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) April 30, 2020

Rather than embedding the other tweets in this chain, I’ll just post the texts of those tweets:

1. The new docs show FBI had already cleared Flynn of ludicrous claims that he was agent of Russian power; it moved to close that investigation on Jan 4 2017. But then DOJ cooked up the absurd Logan Act claim, the notion Flynn had violated an obscure 1799 law.
2. Again if they thought he violated Logan, all they had to do was prosecute. They had the transcript. Their problem? They knew such ridiculousness would never fly. So how else to nail Flynn? As the notes show, Logan just became the pretext for interview.
3. The real goal was trap him into saying something at odds with transcript, to “get him to lie.” And the evidence of that strategy is everywhere. We have Comey bragging that they went around WH legal counsel, so Flynn would have no representation.
4. We have a new email from Lisa Page asking how FBI can get around issuing to Flynn the standard admonition against lying, suggesting Strzok just “casually slip that in.”
5. We have McCabe docs showing he discouraged him from getting lawyer. FBI decided to get rid of standard admonition altogether. Also did not tell Flynn he was being interviewed in an “investigatory” context, suggesting this was a chat between gov officials.
6. As for liberal commentators/legal scholars saying all this is “routine,” well, let’s sure as hell hope not. The FBI exists to investigate cries–not create them.

Actually, it isn’t routine. Thank God for old-fashioned liberals who fight for civil rights:

I have been a criminal defense attorney for decades. I have seen abusive tactics. However this is one of the most thuggish records I have seen. Most concerning is that they were trying to create a crime, not investigating a crime. The use of Logan only highlights that bias.

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) April 30, 2020

There was a time when networks like MSNBC and CNN argued for civil liberties and against such abuses. Now, because such principles would benefit Trump, there is just a shrug with a common mantra “everyone does it.” Yes, abuses occur but that is not license for their commission..

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) April 30, 2020

When Flynn is either exonerated or pardoned, expect Sidney Powell or some other high-powered attorney to file a lawsuit against Comey, McCabe, Strzok and Page. Expect Gen. Flynn’s wealth to be restored — and then some.

Greg Gutfeld frequently talks about the prison of 2 ideas in the context of people accepting that a decision comes down to just 2 options. With Georgia deciding to reopen their economy, Georgia Democrats are doing their utmost to prevent that from happening:

Georgia House Democrats urged Gov. Brian Kemp to immediately rescind an executive order that will allow some businesses and restaurants forced to close during the coronavirus pandemic to reopen later this week.

The letter sent Tuesday by House Minority Bob Trammell and dozens of Democratic legislators called Kemp’s decision “too much too soon” and warned that reopening close-contact businesses like tattoo parlors and massage therapy centers will make it impossible to maintain social distancing.

“Combined with the state’s well documented struggles with testing capacity, this premature executive order puts Georgians at risk and may very well wind up resulting in more prolonged restrictive measures in the future,” the Democrats said in the letter.

This is a purely partisan ploy. Democrats know that they don’t have a legal leg to stand on. As Andy McCarthy explains in this interview, states must meet multiple legal thresholds:

Talking about US AG Bill Barr’s statement about states going too far with their shelter-in-place orders, McCarthy said “What he’s saying is that when the government regulates your fundamental rights, which might include your right of free association, right of exercising your religion, your right to work, in many ways, they have to narrowly tailor their restrictions so that it’s the least restrictive way of burdening your fundamental rights and the Justice Department has already intervened in a case in Greenville, Mississippi, on behalf of religious believers who were being denied the right to do communal observance of Easter. So this is not like it’s a threat in the air. This is something that they’ve already done. And I think that the most important thing he said, Neil, especially for what you’ve been covering today, is that it’s not your burden as an American that your job is essential. It’s that it’s their burden, that is, the government’s burden, that your job can’t be operated safely before they can shut it down.”

Minnesota business owners participating in this upcoming Sunday’s #Liberate Minnesota protest at the Governor’s Mansion should highlight this information. Let’s force Gov. Walz to justify why he’s doing what he’s doing. Let’s force him, and the DFL, to explain how this is the least restrictive way of accomplishing the goal of flattening the curve and reopening Minnesota’s economy.

Gov. Walz might be able to accomplish one of those goal. I’m certain that he can’t accomplish both. Brit Hume brought another bit of common sense to this discussion in this interview:

“I think it’s time to consider the possibility, Shannon, that this lockdown, as opposed to the more moderate mitigation efforts, is a colossal public policy calamity,” he stated. “That the damage to the economy, businesses that I see, businesses are closing. Many may not reopen. Those jobs will be lost. Those businesses will be lost. Those incomes will be lost.”

“Plus, the effect on children who don’t have their normal life. They don’t have school. They can’t play with their friends, even outdoors. All these things are accumulating,” he continued. “They’re not going to get better, Shannon. They’re going to get worse with time. And, as I say, we may not recover from many of these losses for a very long time if ever.”

“Nobody is talking about going back to exactly where we were,” he explained. “What they’re talking about is moving forward, ending the lockdown, allowing people to continue to take the measures of avoiding crowds, washing your hands a lot, social distancing wherever possible, you can do that in offices, you can stagger the way people come to work. Some people stay home some days. Some people come in. There’s an awful lot that could be done. Wearing masks when indoors, particularly in stores and so on.”

It’s time to discard some of these prison of 2 ideas options. There are less restrictive options available. If that’s the case, implement them, not the draconian options that Gov. Evers, Gov. Walz and Gov. Whitmer have adopted.

This is the United States. We’re the most innovative nation in recent history. The notion that we have to be trapped in a prison of just 2 ideas isn’t part of our national DNA. Let’s apply common sense. Let’s innovate our way out of this just like we’ve our ways out of other calamities.

When Sen. Chuck Schumer attempted to intimidate Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, it wasn’t the first time Senate Democrats criticized members of the Supreme Court. Senate Democrats attempted to intimidate the Supreme Court when they submitted this brief, which closed by saying “The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’ Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal.”

That’s a thinly veiled threat by Senate Democrats to pack the courts because they don’t like the Supreme Court’s rulings. What’s clearly meant here is that the Supreme Court could avoid the Democrats’ court-packing if the justices delivered the right ruling in that lawsuit. This highlights the fact that Democrats view the Supreme Court as a legislature.

The Supreme Court is supposed to rule on cases by determining whether a statute lives within the Constitution’s limitations on government. The Constitution was designed to limit the reach of the federal government. The federal government was built by the states to take care of a limited, enumerated, list of things.

The Constitution’s Bill of Rights sought to expand individuals’ rights by codifying the right to seek redress of grievances before one’s government, the right to defend one’s family. It also guaranteed the right to a speedy trial and the right to confront one’s accusers. Article III wasn’t written to give Democrats political victories it couldn’t earn through the legislative process.

Democrats should stop using the courts in this fashion. That isn’t what they were designed to do. The reason why there are protests in front of the Supreme Court is because Democrats politicized it 50-75 years ago. President Trump is depoliticizing the Supreme Court by picking judges that apply the Constitution to the lawsuits they hear. Democrat justices rule in favor of the outcome they prefer, regardless of whether it fits the Constitution’s mandates.

Expect Democrats to continue their intimidation tactics as President Trump straightens out the judiciary.

After Saturday’s impeachment hearing, Sen. Schumer said that President Trump’s team underscored the need for more witnesses. That’s totally predictable but it’s totally wrong. One of the highlights of yesterday’s presentation was the number of times when President Trump’s team would play a clip from the House Democrats’ presentation. They’d let the clip sink in, then they’d play the full clip in context.

To use one of the senators’ words, it was like an episode of Paul Harvey’s Rest of the Story. (John Barrasso referenced Paul Harvey.) The House Democrats’ presentation included a snippet of information that sounded convincing in terms of convicting President Trump. Saturday, the Trump team played the full clip, including the exculpatory information. That served multiple purposes.

First, it served the purpose of re-highlighting Chairman Schiff’s untrustworthiness. Since Schiff’s reputation for dishonesty is famous, it didn’t take much time to prove that. Next, it served an important service in highlighting how following due process would’ve spared us this disaster. Had President Trump’s team been able to cross-examine the House Democrats’ witnesses in public during the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, aka HPSCI, there never would’ve been an impeachment because the exculpatory evidence would’ve already been part of the official record.

Videos @RepAdamSchiff showed repeatedly in the impeachment trial withheld critical information. We will continue to hear about the House Democrats’ flawed process as the team for @realDonaldTrump lays out it’s case. pic.twitter.com/k1ACSg08aC

— Sen. John Barrasso (@SenJohnBarrasso) January 25, 2020

Now that everyone can see the whole picture, the Democrats’ case has been demolished. No amount of new testimony will revive Schiff’s case. There’s too much proof that contradicts Schiff’s opinions. Now that we’ve seen the video of Schiff making up the transcript, it’s impossible to forget it. Now that we’ve seen Schiff’s interview with Chuck Todd about Russian collusion, people can’t forget this:

This isn’t just an indictment against the House Democrats’ impeachment managers. It’s an indictment of each House Democrat who voted for impeachment. Each Democrat voting for this impeachment voted against full due process. Each Democrat who voted for this impeachment voted for an impeachment inquiry that’s incomplete. The Democrats who voted for this impeachment didn’t take their responsibilities seriously enough. They voted as partisan hacks. Those Democrats didn’t vote as patriots.

House Democrats can’t now say that they did their job as investigators after President Trump’s team exposed the gaping holes in the Democrats’ evidence. This didn’t just poke holes in the Democrats’ case. It’s left honest people wondering what’s left of the Democrats’ proof. Michael Goodwin got it right in this article:

The aim wasn’t just to create reasonable doubt. The goal was to demolish the entire case against the president and expose lead prosecutor Rep. Adam Schiff and Speaker Nancy Pelosi as pure partisans trying to overturn the 2016 election and steal the next one.

Now that a counterargument is being presented, it’s difficult picturing this going much further. The cross-examination of witnesses is essential to justice. One-sided stories aren’t sufficient for justice. As we’ve seen here, a rogue prosecutor that’s willing to twist information can improperly injure defendants. That isn’t justice. That’s the starting spot of corruption.

Democrats chose to participate in Speaker Pelosi’s and Chairman Schiff’s impeachment rather than doing the right thing. That isn’t patriotism. That’s the definition of partisanship.