Investigate the Mueller Probe Implementers

Russiagate -- a Bright, Shining Lie

3/26/2019 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com

"The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia ... to influence the 2016 US presidential campaign."

So stated Attorney General William Barr in his Sunday letter to Congress summarizing the principal findings of the Mueller report.

On the charge of collusion with Russia, not guilty on all counts.

After two years of hearing from haters in politics and the media that President Donald Trump was "Putin's poodle," an agent of the Kremlin, guilty of treason, an illegitimate president who would leave the White House in handcuffs and end his days in prison, we learn the truth.

It was all a bright, shining lie.

Reeling from Trump's exoneration, big media are now scurrying to their fallback position: Mueller did not exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice.

But Mueller was not obstructed. No one impeded his labors.

As for Trump's rages against his investigation, they were the natural reaction of an innocent man falsely accused and facing disgrace and ruin for a crime he did not commit, indeed, a crime that had never been committed.

The House Judiciary Committee may try to replicate what Mueller did, and re-investigate obstruction. Fine. This would confirm what this whole rotten business has at root always been about: a scheme by the deep state and allied media to bring down another president.

The Mueller investigation employed 19 lawyers and 40 FBI agents. It took two years. It issued 2,800 subpoenas. It executed 500 search warrants. It interviewed 500 witnesses. And it failed to indict a single member of Trump's campaign for collusion with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

Which raises this question:

If Mueller could find no collusion, after an exhaustive two-year search, what was the compelling evidence that caused James Comey's FBI and Barack Obama's Department of Justice to believe that such collusion had occurred and to launch this investigation?

Sunday, after Barr's summary of the Mueller report became public, Trump aired his justified anger: "It's a shame that our country had to go through this. To be honest, it's a shame that your president has had to go through this. ... This was an illegal takedown that failed."

Is there not truth in this?

Millions of Americans still believe what is now a manifest falsehood -- that their president collaborated with Putin in cheating Hillary Clinton out of the presidency. The legal bills of Trump, his family, his campaign aides and his White House staff must be huge. Careers, reputations have been damaged.

The nation has been distracted and bitterly divided over this since Trump's first days in office. He has had a cloud over his presidency since he gave his inaugural address. Any ability the president had to fulfill his campaign pledge and negotiate with the largest country on earth, Russia, a superpower rival, has had to be put off.

Is it unfair to ask: Who did this to us?

Who led the Justice Department into believing Trump conspired with the Russians? Why did it take two years to discover there was no collusion? Who gave Putin and the GRU this victory by helping to tear our own country apart?

Our establishment is forever demanding apologies. Where are the apologies for the outrageous accusations that Trump was guilty of something next to treason?

Sen. Joe McCarthy did not do a fraction of the damage to the reputations of Dean Acheson or George Marshall that the elite media have done, unjustly and maliciously, to the reputation of Donald Trump.

Years after French Artillery Capt. Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of colluding with the Germans in the late 19th century, and was sent to Devil's Island, evidence against another officer emerged.

Soon, it was Dreyfus' accusers who were in the dock of public opinion.

That needs to happen now. The instigators of this investigation, launched to bring down a president, have damaged and divided this nation, and they need to be exposed, as do their collaborators in the press.

The roots of Mueller's investigation go back to the Clinton campaign's hiring of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump. Fusion GPS hired ex-British spy Christopher Steele. He had sources in Russian intelligence who provided him with the contents of his infamous dossier. This was delivered to a grateful cabal at the FBI, which used it as the basis of a FISA court warrant to surveil the Trump campaign.

The dirt in the Steele dossier, much of it false, would be secretly shared with Trump-haters in the media to torpedo his candidacy; then, when Trump won, to destroy his presidency before it began.

Now that Trump has been exonerated, the story of how his accusers, using the power of the state, almost murdered a presidency with lies, propaganda and innuendo, needs to be brought out into the sunlight.

For democracy dies in darkness, and this can't happen again.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."

Congress: Concentrate, Contemplate, Legislate --End the Border Crisis

To Fix the Immigration Crisis, Build a Wall and Change the Law

3/16/2019 - Ed Feulner  Townhall.com

A new report from the U.S. Border Patrol proves that only the willfully ignorant can doubt that we’re dealing with an immigration crisis.

“The entire system right now is at full capacity,” agent Manuel Padilla said. “Actually, it's overwhelmed.”

Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 66,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexican border in February. That’s the highest total for a single month in almost a decade.

The makeup of the migrant population has changed as well. It used to consist primarily of single men from Mexico. Now it’s more likely to be families and children, arriving by the busload from Guatemala.

In February 2017, families and unaccompanied children made up 27 percent of those arrested or deemed inadmissible at the southern border. Two years later, it’s 62 percent.

Why the change? According to immigration expert David Inserra, loopholes in U.S. immigration law are the culprit. Combined with a weak asylum process, they “are creating incentives for adults to use children as pawns to get into the U.S.,” he writes in The Wall Street Journal.

Consider the unintended consequence of the Trafficking Victim Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. It requires the Border Patrol to treat unaccompanied alien children from countries other than Mexico differently. Border Patrol turns them over to the Department of Health and Human Services and lets them enter the U.S. pending an immigration-court hearing — one that may be years in the future.

“Many alien children are reunited with their families, who are often in the country illegally as well, and never heard from again,” Inserra writes.

It took time for word of this provision to spread to prospective migrants. The number of unaccompanied children crossing the border rose gradually for several years, then spiked in 2014. Yet even after President Obama called this an “urgent humanitarian situation,” Congress didn’t act.

Another loophole is more recent: a 2016 court case that requires the Department of Homeland Security to release all children, including those accompanied by parents, from custody. Detaining the entire family is, by law, off the table.

So when a family is arrested crossing the southern border, officials have two choices. One is to release the child while detaining the parents as their request for asylum is processed. But this so-called family separation is naturally unpopular, which leads to the second choice: Release the entire family and hope they show up at an immigration court hearing.

Spoiler alert: Most of them don’t.

They aren’t the only ones who fail to show up when and where they’re supposed to. U.S. law ensures that aliens who enter illegally aren’t promptly removed — they’re entitled to get a ruling on their asylum claims first. So there’s been a spike in asylum claims by those who say they face a “credible fear” of prosecution.

It’s not hard for most of them to pass their initial hearing, but the immigration-court system that is supposed to give them a final ruling has a backup that averages two years. What happens in the meantime?

“Most then simply disappear into the U.S.,” writes Inserra. “Some become victims of human trafficking or gangs. Few are ever removed from the country.”

Now you can see why proponents of a border wall often stress the need for “immigration reform.” Because while a border wall is a necessary component — one that will certainly help control the tide of illegal immigration — it’s actually part of a larger solution.

It doesn’t make much sense to build a wall while we continue to leave untouched laws that are drawing huge numbers here in the first place.

So as we pursue a better physical barrier, let’s also change the law to reduce these unhelpful incentives — and give the Border Patrol a much-needed break.

Border Wall -- Another Name for National Security

Build the Wall to Save Taxpayers Billions

3/14/2019 - Betsy McCaughey Townhall.com

President Donald Trump launched another battle for border-wall funding on Monday, calling for $8.6 billion additional dollars in his proposed federal budget for next year. Top Democrats came out swinging, bashing a border wall as "expensive and ineffective."

The truth is, Dems are not leveling with the public about the billions we're already forced to spend on shelters, food, diapers, medical care and child care for migrants sneaking across the border and claiming asylum.

Not to mention the costs of public schooling and healthcare provided free to migrants once they are released into communities. The wall will pay for itself in less than two years. It's a bargain.

Look what it costs us when a Central American teen crosses the border illegally without an adult. Uncle Sam spends a staggering $775 per day for each child housed at a shelter near Florida's Homestead Air Reserve Base. There they have access to medical care, school and recreation. They stay, on average, 67 days at the Homestead shelter before being released to a sponsor. Do the math. That's almost $52,000 per child. American parents would appreciate the government spending that money on their kids. Imagine the government handing you a check for $52,000 for your teenager.

However, there are bigger costs ahead. The number of illegal border crossers just hit an 11-year high with a total of more than 76,000 during the month of February alone. U.S. and Mexican officials predict hundreds of thousands more in the coming months.

The migrants use the word "asylum" as their get-in-free card. When they say it to a border agent, they gain entry to the U.S. 80 percent of the time according to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. They are temporarily housed and eventually released with an immigration court date. But half never go on to file an asylum claim, disappearing into the U.S., said former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

They're turning asylum into a scam. The system is meant to protect victims of persecution, such as Cubans fleeing Castro's prisons. Now it's overwhelmed by Central Americans escaping poverty for a lifestyle upgrade.

Legal immigrants also want to better their circumstances, but they play by the rules. What a slap in the face to see migrants jump the line.

Unfortunately, a federal appeals court just made the asylum hoax even easier. Last week, the left-leaning 9th Circuit ruled that migrants who fail to convince border authorities they face danger in their home country still have a "right" to a day in court in the U.S. That bizarre ruling won't stand. Another circuit court ruled the opposite way in 2016, clarifying that a border agent's decision is final and entering the U.S. is a privilege, not a right. The Supreme Court let that earlier decision stand, so count on the Supremes to reverse the 9th Circuit.

In the meantime, though, taxpayers are getting fleeced by caravans of fake asylum-seekers.

Even before the latest surge, the Department of Homeland Security spent over $3 billion in 2018 sheltering and feeding illegals at the border, which is nearly double the cost from 2011.

Add to that the hundreds of millions being spent caring for unaccompanied teenagers in 130 shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services.

President Trump has tried several strategies to protect taxpayers from these rip-offs. First, he barred illegal migrants from asking for asylum, requiring that asylum-seekers enter the country through official ports of entry. That would have reduced the numbers considerably. But in November, a federal district judge, also from the 9th Circuit, nixed the president's regulation.

Then, Trump devised a "Remain in Mexico" arrangement to make Mexico the waiting room for asylum-seekers. As long as they're south of the border, the U.S. doesn't have to house them, and they have no "right" to public schooling and emergency medical care on our tab. The program, if successful, will save U.S. taxpayers a bundle. It's one way Mexico is already helping to pay for the wall.

Dems claim it's a waste to spend billions on a wall. But the facts show we can't afford not to build it. As the cover of the president's new budget says, "Taxpayers First."

Our Nation's Future Hangs by a Thread!

How Middle America Is to Be Dispossessed

3/12/2019 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com

In all but one of the last seven presidential elections, Republicans lost the popular vote. George W. Bush and Donald Trump won only by capturing narrow majorities in the Electoral College.

Hence the grand strategy of the left: to enlarge and alter the U.S. electorate so as to put victory as far out of reach for national Republicans as it is today for California Republicans, and to convert the GOP into America's permanent minority party.

In the Golden State, Democrats control the governors' chair, every elective state office, both U.S. Senate seats, 46 of 53 U.S. House seats and three-fourths of each house of the state legislature in Sacramento.

How does the left expect to permanently dispossess Middle America?

Let us count the ways.

In 2018, over 60 percent of Floridians voted to expand the electorate by restoring voting rights to 1.5 million ex-cons, all of Florida's felons except those convicted of sex crimes and murder.

Florida gave Bush his razor-thin victory over Al Gore. Should Trump lose Florida in 2020, he is a one-term president. If the GOP loses Florida indefinitely, the presidency is probably out of reach indefinitely.

Florida's Amendment 4 is thus a great leap forward in the direction in which the republic is being taken. Gov. Terry McAuliffe of the swing state of Virginia restored voting rights to 156,000 felons by executive order in 2016, calling it his "proudest achievement."

In California and Oregon, moves are afoot to reduce the voting age to 17 or 16. Understandable, as high schoolers are more enthusiastic about socialism.

Last week, a bold attempt was made by House Democrats to lower the U.S. voting age to 16. It failed -- this time.

Some House Democrats apparently feel that with "Medicare-for-all" and the Green New Deal of Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez on the table, they have enough progressive legislation to satisfy the socialist base.

Thanks to Gov. Jerry Brown, every adult citizen in California who gets or renews a driver's license, gets a state ID card, or fills out a change of address form with the Department of Motor Vehicles is automatically registered to vote. Purpose: expand voter rolls to include those who have shown no interest in politics, so they can be located on Election Day and bused to the polls.

Ari Berman of Mother Jones writes that Nancy Pelosi's 700-page For the People Act that did pass the House contains "a slew of measures designed to expand voting rights, which ... include nationwide automatic voter registration, Election Day registration, two weeks of early voting in every state ... restoration of voting rights for ex-felons, and declaring Election Day a federal holiday."

House Republicans offered an amendment to the bill with language that said, "allowing illegal immigrants the right to vote devalues the franchise and diminishes the voting power of United States citizens."

All but six Democrats voted against the GOP proposal.

The Democratic Party does not want to close the door to voting on migrants who broke our laws to get here and do not belong here, as these illegals would likely vote for pro-amnesty Democrats.

If the new U.S. electorate of, say, 2024, includes tens of millions of new voters -- 16- and 17-year-olds; illegal migrants; ex-cons; new legal immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America who vote 70 to 90 percent Democratic, the political future of America has already been determined.

California, here we come.

As a Democratic insurance policy, Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen has introduced a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College.

Some Republicans support statehood for Puerto Rico, which would add six electoral votes that would go Democratic in presidential elections about as often as Washington, D.C.'s three have, which is always.

Ben Franklin told the lady in Philadelphia, "We have a republic, if you can keep it." Our elites today, however, ceaselessly celebrate "our democracy."

Yet John Adams was not optimistic about such a political system: "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy yet, that did not commit suicide."

Thomas Jefferson, a lifelong believer in a "natural aristocracy" among men, was contemptuous: "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49."

Madison wrote in Federalist 10, "democracies ... have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

If one day not far off, as seems probable, tax consumers achieve a permanent hegemony over the nation's taxpayers, and begin to impose an equality of result that freedom rarely delivers, the question of who should choose the nation's rulers will be tabled anew.

We do not select NFL coaches or corporate executives or college professors or generals or admirals by plebiscite. What is the empirical evidence that this is the best way to choose a president or commander in chief?

Peoples are wondering that the world over, as our democracy does not appear to be an especially attractive stock.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."

American Capability Amid Chaos

The Continued Resilience of Quiet America

3/7/2019 - Victor Davis Hanson Townhall.com

Fifty years ago, the United States was facing crises and unrest on multiple fronts. Some predicted that internal chaos and revolution would unravel the nation.

The 1969 Vietnam War protests on the UC Berkeley campus turned so violent that National Guard helicopters indiscriminately sprayed tear gas on student demonstrators. Later that year, hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets of major cities as part of the "Moratorium to the End the War in Vietnam." In Washington, D.C., about a half-million protesters marched to the White House.

Native American demonstrators took over the former federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay and stayed there for 19 months, declaring it their own sovereign space.

In November 1969, the American public was exposed to grotesque photos of the My Lai Massacre, which had occurred the year before. The nation was stunned that American troops in Vietnam had shot innocent women and children. My Lai heated up the already hot national debate over whether the Vietnam War was either moral or winnable.

Meanwhile, the trial of the so-called Chicago Seven, involving the supposed organizers of the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, roiled the nation. The courtroom drama involving radical defendants such as Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin descended into a national circus, as the battle between leftists and the establishment went from the streets to the courtroom.

It was also the year of the Woodstock music festival. More than 400,000 thrill-seekers showed up on a small farm in the Catskill Mountains in August 1969 to celebrate three days of "peace and music." Footage of free love and free drugs at Woodstock shocked half the country but resonated with the other half, which viewed the festival as much-needed liberation for an uptight nation.

Newly inaugurated President Richard Nixon characterized the national divide as the "silent majority" of traditional Americans fighting back against radical changes in culture and politics.

Under the strain of constant protests, the cultural and moral fabric of the country seemed to be tearing apart. Alternative lifestyle choices sometimes led to violence or death.

When a West Coast version of Woodstock was tried a few months later in Altamont, Calif., the concert ended up an orgy of murder, drug overdoses, random violence and destruction of property.

In July of 1969, liberal icon Teddy Kennedy ran his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Mass., and his young passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, was left to drown. Sen. Kennedy did not report the accident to authorities until 10 hours later.

The next month, members of hippie psychopath Charles Manson's "family" butchered seven innocents in Los Angeles, among them actress Sharon Tate. The Manson family apparently had hoped that the sensationalized murders would ignite some sort of racial civil war, thereby unraveling the United States.

Yet a wounded United States did not just survive 1969, but reached new heights of scientific, technological and cultural achievement.

For the first time in history, a national economy produced more than $1 trillion worth of goods and services in a single year, as American nominal GDP for 1969 exceeded that level.

America also put the first humans on the moon in 1969 -- and did it twice the same year, with the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 lunar missions.

Boeing's 747 jumbo jet made its first successful test flight in 1969. The 400-passenger airliner was so well designed and ahead of its time that it continues in service today, a half-century after its rollout. It took some 35 years for a European company to introduce a competitor to the 747, the Airbus A380. Yet the latter jet has been something of a white elephant. Many airlines have stopped using the A380, and Airbus has announced that it will stop producing the jets in 2021.

American computer scientists first used a precursor to the internet in 1969, when computers at UCLA and Stanford managed to share an electronic network, known as ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network).

Fifty years later, what are the lessons of the chaotic year 1969 for our similarly schizophrenic age of polarization, civil disunity, and unprecedented wealth and scientific advancement?

America is such a huge and diverse country, and so abundantly endowed with natural and human resources, that it is capable of achieving unprecedented scientific, economic and technological breakthroughs even as its social fabric is tearing apart.

Or, put another way, while the media highlights crime, protests, grievances and civil disorder, a majority of Americans still go to work unbothered each day.

And in a rare society with a free market, constitutional government and individual freedom, people continue to do amazing things even amid the utter chaos around them.