Maybe some protester means well.  But the screaming, cursing mob holding hundreds of police hostage while cities are systematically looted and burned is aiding and abetting the rampaging criminals.  The Senator is no doubt proud that hundreds of criminals were released on account of the viral panic that news organizations are still pushing, albeit feebly.  Bail reform was supposed to be a great improvement to the judicial system.  At present, it means that thieves and arsonists are freely doing what they do.  Apparently it was done of the basis of compassion and racial justice, but looks like a huge mistake right about now.  But Chuck is proud.

Is there some doubt that at least a portion of the rampaging gangs that have torn American cities asunder were put back on the streets just in time?  The Senator must be very proud.  He’s undoubtedly proud of all the other sanctuary cities that put the wants and needs of criminals way ahead of the security of law-abiding citizens and proprietors of formerly successful businesses.  

It was almost as if the Mayor of New York held the police at bay while the city burned.  We hesitate to divine motives, but the fact is New York’s most glamorous districts were reduced to poverty while news reporters stood in their masks with cameras rolling.  The looting went on hour after hour with no sign of any interference by law enforcement.  Later we learn that there were some few hundreds of arrests, but the looters and rioters were immediately returned to the streets, thanks to the last time the legal system was “reformed.”  Few if any are removed from the problem at hand.  

Mad Dog Mattis finally lived up to his name.  President Trump chose his top generals and advisors without litmus tests regarding their personal leanings.  He expected everyone to behave professionally and live up to universal expectations of high standards.  He thought they’d suspend any personal persuasions, performing their sworn duties on behalf of the United States.  Boy was he wrong!  Several of these “highly respected” professionals have shown themselves to be anything but.  They keep their heads down, grumbling privately about the president until they arrive at what they believe to be an opportunity to do maximum damage.  Then the long knives come out.  Mad Dog suggested the mayhem we’re seeing is the logical result of three years of immature leadership, directing his comments at the President.  So, what was the reason for Ferguson?  Was it Obama’s fault?  The ignorant protesters still act out the “hands up don’t shoot” fallacy.   Even though it was proven to be false, the media continued to show great deference.  They keep talking about the need for a conversation.  But this has gone way beyond a discussion.  

Mad Dog provided additional red meat to the angrily sneering “news” reporters.  He’s bolstered their case allowing them to rub his military rank and service in everybody’s face while basking in the reflected glow of his intemperate comments. What former general attacks the President who promoted him so enthusiastically?  The deep state undoubtedly cheered.  At least Mad Dog gave them a little temporary cover.  If there’s any shred of justice left in America, they’d better enjoy the moment.

Then there was the case of Mark Espers.  He’s publicly stated his disagreement that the President would use the military to protect national monuments in Washington D. C., many of which have already been vandalized with slogans of the mob.  Isn’t it great when those to whom the president entrusted important responsibilities defy him in public?  

Now we’re supposed to worry about the Constitutional powers of the President to protect national monuments with the military, many of which have already been vandalized and fouled with nonsense slogans?  Who does he think he is?  How dare he call out the soldiers and Humvees to protect the symbols of America?  Doesn’t he realize that someone might be upset?  We’re all upset!  It’s obvious the mob would break or topple every national symbol.  They’d burn down the White House with President Trump inside, such is their wild-eyed rage.  And they’re righteous, according to the media.  No, the only “right” and equitable thing to do would be to join the protest.  If the media had their way, we’d all go taunt some policeman while our buddies plunder the lives of those who worked for a living.  That is until the “authorities” told them they couldn’t!  What happened to the quarantine?  We were told we’d be putting everybody in “danger” if we so much as leave the house.  But we’re expected to display great deference and sympathy toward the mob burning up the lives of the law-abiding.

Violent mobs don’t have to stay home.  They don’t have to worry about going to work, work is still closed in the cities with large protests, and the government will now make it possible to survive without working.  They can stay up all night if they want.  They no longer have jobs.  Everyone else is quarantined!  Nobody better dare get in the way of the rampage, because those jumping around in the faces of police are right, according to nearly every source of news.  Their feelings have been hurt! You’ve got million-dollar ball players pretending to cry on national television because we don’t understand how “hurt” their feelings are.  Make it a river.  But then, where were the tears?  Pinched up faces don’t move us much.

How dare we respect the flag?  How dare we love the United States?  Don’t we realize how racist we are?  Don’t we realize that all the stealing is not really stealing at all?  It’s “symbolic taking,” and we have to support it if not contribute to it.  The news media has taken a knee, and they’re demanding we all do.  Say that you respect the flag?  You’ll be attacked, should they know your name.  The anarchists are blowing up ATM machines, as many as 50 reported in Philadelphia alone, using dynamite.  One idiot blew himself up in the process.  And the uh, “protesters” have defaced nearly every memorial in D. C.

They’re arguing that the president is pushing beyond his authority to invoke the Insurrection Act used by several Presidents over the last hundred years.  It was most recently used by President Bush Sr. in response to the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles.  Is this current situation not infinitely worse?  Back in the day Los Angeles was a significant concern.  Today, law and order in the United States is breaking down completely, and Chuck Schumer is proud.  Maybe he just wants to be the last one they loot and burn.

Imagine how proud he’ll be then.

It seems that the riots and looting is starting to recede.  But don’t worry, another crisis has been planned, and another one after that.  The only shame is that the coronavirus panic murdered the economy, and we’re all supposed to feel good about it.  The “news” media is still pushing the virus.  Commercials are still advising that we stay home and stay safe.  They think we’ll continue doing business with them?

Russia collusion was a scam, and one that no-one has paid for, except for those who were falsely accused and broken by attorney’s fees.  The Ukraine phone call impeachment was utter nonsense, despite the bug-eyed dumbster (Adam Schiff) to which we were all subjected.  The reaction to the virus was all out of proportion to reality, but we’re going to be herded around by idiotic rules for the foreseeable future. Much to our amazement, the President must have been legitimately spooked by the dark predictions of medical professionals.  He stood by while the economy was destroyed, even before the rampage started, and that’s a huge disappointment.  Any suggestion that America might recover is enough to start another round of rioting.  As we’ve realized for some time, those who hate this nation won’t be satisfied until it’s utterly destroyed.  Sadly, that’s a real concern.  We were right when we warned that things might get ugly.  We didn’t know how right we were. 

Calls to defund police departments are gaining steam.  In Minneapolis, they’re talking about disbanding the police department completely.  Imagine how peaceful the metropolis will be when there are no police.  Come to think of it, that’s exactly what we’ve been watching!  America has some serious problems all right.  They have nothing to do with racism, but they have everything to do with the hideous sins that political correctness regards as national values. Have we forgotten that “values” like these got Sodom and Gomorrah burnt up?  Forget about hurting the feelings of the mob.  Why do you think we’ve been left vulnerable to these violent, America-hating leftists?  And one more thing.  They hated America long before the advent of President Donald Trump.  This play-book was created by the radical movement clear back in the ’60s.  One of the most prominent of them (Bill Ayers, Weather Underground) was Obama’s mentor. He’s been teaching…we wonder what.  They were ready to destroy everything in the name of… yep, police brutality.  Racial inequality.  We lived through some idiotic episodes, and here they come again.  This time with two generations of miseducated miscreants, taught by ’60’s era radicals.  Nice.

Source: https://www.garnertedarmstrong.org/not-proud/

The post Not Proud first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn and President Donald Trump are pictured during the presidential campaign in New Hampshire in September 2016. At least two Republican senators have urged Trump not to pardon him. | AP Photo

After months of criticizing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, President Donald Trump’s supporters are issuing increasingly bold calls for presidential pardons to limit the investigation’s impact.

“I think he should be pardoning anybody who’s been indicted and make it clear that anybody else who gets indicted would be pardoned immediately,” said Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and senior vice president at the conservative Center for Security Policy.

“It’s kind of cruel what’s going on right now and the president should put these defendants out of their misery,” said Larry Klayman, a conservative legal activist. “I think he should pardon everybody — and pardon himself.”

Klayman and Fleitz spoke before Mueller indicted thirteen Russian nationals on Friday for staging an elaborate 2016 election interference operation in the United States. Democratic leaders said the hard evidence of Russian meddling underscores the importance of letting Mueller’s investigation run its course.

But many conservatives note that the new indictment shows no evidence of collusion between Trump associates and the Kremlin. That reinforces their view that Mueller’s real target, if any, should be Russian President Vladimir Putin — not Trump’s circle. “[H]ow long will the leftist witch hunt against @RealDonaldTrump continue,” the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted hours after the indictment’s release.

And while the latest indictment could make it harder than ever for Trump to fire Mueller, as he has sought to before, mass pardons would be another means of defying the special counsel.

A president has the Constitutional power to pardon any citizen convicted of a federal crime, ending any prison sentence and clearing his or her record with the stroke of a pen. Pardons face no judicial or Congressional review, and the president is not obliged to explain his decision. The act of a president pardoning himself, however, has never been tested.

Some Democrats are taking all the possibilities seriously.

“Doling out presidential pardons to try to cover up any collusion or obstruction of justice is unacceptable and will be met with furious resistance across the country,” Patty Murray, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said during a floor speech earlier this month.

Last fall, several dozen House Democrats co-sponsored a largely symbolic resolution expressing disapproval for the prospect of Trump pardoning himself or any of his family members. They’ve also been asking without success for Judiciary Committee oversight hearings on the issue.

So far, the talk of pardons has mostly centered around Flynn, whose clemency Trump did not rule out in a brief mid-December exchange with reporters. “I don’t want to talk about pardons with Michael Flynn yet. We’ll see what happens,” Trump said.

That “yet” was music to the ears of Flynn’s supporters and family members, many of whom have taken to social media to build support for pardoning the retired Army lieutenant general who pleaded guilty in December to Mueller’s team for lying to the FBI.

“About time you pardoned General Flynn who has taken the biggest fall for all of you given the illegitimacy of this confessed crime in the wake of all this corruption,” Flynn’s brother, Joseph Flynn, wrote in a mid-December tweet. “Pardon Flynn NOW!” he added in a later message.

During a video interview with the prominent alt-right activist Jack Posobiec at the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C., last week, Flynn’s outspoken adult son, Michael Flynn Jr., encouraged viewers to promote online messages calling for his father’s exoneration and pardon.

“Just keep pushing out those hashtags, the ‘#ClearFlynnNow’ and the ‘#PardonFlynnNow,” Flynn Jr., said.

Tom Fitton, president of the conservative activist group Judicial Watch, said that allegations of anti-Trump bias among Justice Department and FBI officials circulated by conservatives would justify granting clemency to Trump associates like Flynn.

“The whole super structure of the Russia investigation is compromised,” Fitton said. “Those caught up in it deserve some protection. Rather than just let the virus run its course, it’d be appropriate for the president to consider pardons for people who are caught up in the prosecution.”

Trump’s lawyers and aides insist it’s premature to discuss even the possibility of pardons. “There have been no pardon discussions at the White House,” Ty Cobb, the White House attorney who leads the president’s official response to the Russia investigation, told POLITICO on Friday just hours before Mueller’s latest indictment was released.

After the Washington Post reported in July that Trump had tasked his aides with researching his pardon powers, Trump dismissed the story — while also making clear his view of the law.

“While all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us. FAKE NEWS,” Trump tweeted.

Attorneys for Flynn, Flynn Jr. and Gates declined comment. Lawyers for Manafort and Papadopoulos did not respond to requests for comment.

Presidential pardons or other acts of mercy can be highly controversial — and typically occur at the end of a president’s term.

President Barack Obama was criticized for commuting the 35-year prison sentence of Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive diplomatic cables and military reports to WikiLeaks.

Siding against his own vice president, President George W. Bush denied a pardon for former White House staffer I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was convicted for obstructing a federal investigation into the leaked identity of a CIA operative, though Bush did commute Libby’s prison sentence.

Perhaps most famously, in September 1974, President Gerald Ford pre-emptively pardoned the man he replaced in the Oval Office, Richard Nixon, who resigned rather than face impeachment over the Watergate scandal. Nixon had also stepped down just days after an opinion from his acting attorney general, Mary C. Lawton, found that “under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself.”

Explaining the Nixon pardon, Ford cited a need for the country to avoid “prolonged and divisive debate” that would accompany the criminal trial of the former Republican president that many expected. He also decreed that his pardon would cover all federal crimes that Nixon “committed or may have committed or taken part in” as president.

Critics were furious at the move, which a New York Times editorial declared a “profoundly unwise, divisive, and unjust act.”

A federal district court rejected a constitutional challenge to Ford’s pardon the next year, citing an 1867 Supreme Court decision during the Andrew Johnson administration which held that presidents have “unlimited” pardoning power. “It extends to every offense known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment,” the justice writing for the 5-4 majority wrote.

Some conservatives want Trump to heed those words. In an Oct. 29 Wall Street Journal op-ed column — published on the eve of Mueller’s first indictments against Manafort and Gates and the release of the Papadopoulos guilty plea — two conservative lawyers called on Trump to “end this madness by immediately issuing a blanket presidential pardon to anyone involved in supposed collusion with Russia or Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign… and to anyone for any offense that has been investigated by Mr. Mueller’s office.”

“The president himself would be covered by the blanket pardon we recommend,” wrote the lawyers, David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, veterans of the White House counsel’s office and Justice Department in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. They argued that Russian election interference is a matter for a Congressional investigation, not a criminal one.

At a mid-November hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) grilled Attorney General Jeff Sessions on whether he thinks Trump can pardon former aides and family members even before they might be convicted of — or even charged with — crimes. Sessions declined to answer beyond saying that “the president has the power to pardon, no doubt about that.”

“We should be worried if you are telling us the president should be able to pardon in advance all of those being investigated,” Deutch replied.

Trump has issued one pardon since taking office, to the controversial Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was facing criminal contempt of court charges for defying a court order to stop profiling Latinos.

That August action, in the face of strong political opposition, makes some conservatives think that Trump would be willing to defy his critics again. “He did it for Sheriff Joe, so I’m thinking he would do it for other circumstances as well,” Fitton said.

There has been little sign of Congressional Republican support for the idea of pardons. In the days after Flynn pleaded guilty, South Carolina Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott both urged Trump not to pardon Flynn. Scott said it is important to have accountability and “a process that is clear and transparent.”

Pardons would also come at a high political cost, former George W. Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. “It’d just raise even more questions about Donald Trump if he pardons those closest to him because people will think he’s trying to protect himself.”

“You should let justice run its course,” he added.

Even some conservatives who support pardons in principle are wary of the severe political backlash they are certain to trigger. Mike Cernovich, a conservative activist who has been affiliated with the alt-right but rejects that label, said he believes the moment for pardons has passed and that Trump needs to wait until after the November mid-term elections.

“If the Democrats take over, pardon everyone,” Cernovich said. “They’re coming for you anyway. They have their nuke with impeachment. You have your nuke with pardons. And then settle in for an interesting two years.”

Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/19/trump-russia-pardons-mueller-flynn-417094

The post Conservatives urge Trump to grant pardons in Russia probe first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.