James "The Weasel" Comey on Twitter

Facts matter. The FBI’s use of Confidential Human Sources (the actual term) is tightly regulated and essential to protecting the country. Attacks on the FBI and lying about its work will do lasting damage to our country. How will Republicans explain this to their grandchildren?

I figure it will go something like this:

"Not so long ago, and not so far away, the Democrats -- some of whom are still alive in prison to this day! -- used the intelligence agencies of the United States in a coup attempt against the legitimately elected President Trump. The agencies involved were the FBI, CIA, NSA, DOJ, and many others. I can see you are puzzled, you don't recognize those names from your civics class? Those agencies are no longer around today; they were disbanded, their buildings demolished, and the earth upon which they had stood was salted, so that nothing would ever grow from their poisoned trees again..."

Guns.com

A 70-year-old Vietnam War veteran recently spoke with reporters about an incident earlier this year in which six of his guns were confiscated by authorities in Taberg, New York, after he was incorrectly flagged as “mentally defective.”

“I was guilty until I could prove myself innocent,” Don Hall told The Post Standard. “They don’t tell you why or what you supposedly did.”

Hall called the ordeal “a bad screw-up.”

After several months, Hall finally got back his guns, but not before a great deal of legal battles and red tape that left him feeling frustrated.

Mistakes happen. Police are notoriously unwilling to give people their guns back after a mistake.

Investors Business Daily

More troubling are Halper's extensive intelligence links. As a dual U.S.-British citizen and his close ties to both British and U.S. intelligence, did he task British assets to spy on Trump?

Was Britain's government a party to this? Did it know about Crossfire Hurricane? Or that Halper was spying on the Trump campaign? If so, it would not be the act of an ally.

We already know British intelligence was involved to some degree, without having any details. We know the head of one of their intelligence agencies resigned shortly after Trump's election, after only a few months on the job. It would be too much of a coincidence for that to not be related.

The House Intel committee is now investigating former SecState Kerry's role in the dossier. Were any of Obama's cabinet officials not involved?

Judicial Watch

Before resigning to run for Congress, the mayor of America’s fifth-largest city gave a political open-borders ally millions of taxpayer dollars to complete a job in an area it suspiciously has zero experience in. Under the shady deal, the radical La Raza group Promise Arizona (PAZ) will receive $2.4 million from the city of Phoenix to conduct “Business Assistance” during construction of a light rail extension. Some Phoenix City Hall insiders believe it’s a payoff by the outgoing mayor, Greg Stanton, to support his upcoming congressional run.

$2.4 million to a racial grievance group ("La Raza" = "The Race") for "business assistance" on a construction project? Yeah, it's a payoff.

But he's only the chief. He's appointed by politicians. Has anyone asked the Indians?

Conservative Treehouse

For those who don’t read it, a quick summary would be: We don’t actually have control over how this massive amount of meta-data is being used, searched, queried, and how the information within it is being filtered, minimized or extracted.

The NSA is essentially admitting to being overwhelmed with the scale of the data being collected, and they are similarly overwhelmed by the number of people who have access to this data....

In short: There’s a ton of activity that we know is taking place that is not supposed to be happening; and we really don’t know the full scale of the abuse we know to be happening -but can’t get our arms around- because, well, there’s just so damn much of it.

This is the problem with having massive government agencies that collect everything. Once they've got it, they can't keep it safe, and privacy is inevitably violated.

This is why the 4th Amendment should be read to mandate that they do not get access to it, at all, until they specifically go to a court and get specific permission for a specific person based on specific probable cause of a crime.

If he's right, it's not the first time Halper engaged in a little election meddling on both sides. And there are some very large payments from government accounts to him. It looks very much like the intelligence community is for hire and willingly takes money to help decide elections. That's a bigger scandal than even I expected.

Yes, elections. He apparently has close ties to the Bush family, which has surprisingly amiable relations with the Clintons. There are indications he meddled in the Reagan-Carter race, in the other direction, perhaps explained by his connection to the Bushes (George Bush Sr was Reagan's VP candidate). And if he'll do it twice, why wouldn't he or others do it much more often than that?

The claims from the intelligence community that revealing his name would jeopardize his life seems absurd and self-serving. Unless, you know, they think someone would object to him fixing elections for the intelligence community rather violently.

Daily Express

HOODED gunmen have opened fire with automatic rifles, kalachnikovs, in Marseille, in south France – with one person reportedly injured.
The men opened fire on a group of young people not far from the cultural space known as ‘La Busserine’, local media Corse-Matin reports.
Three vehicles with the masked individuals arrived in the city’s district of Busserine at 5pm local time, France’s ACTU17 said.
As police arrived on the scene they were blocked by some of the suspects in a Renault Megane, France Bleu reports.
There was then a shoot-out with police before the attackers fled the scene.
At this time it is unclear if any arrests have been made, but police are investigating and a cordon has been set up.
Investigators have so far found 9mm and 7.62 shells at the scene which correspond to Kalashnikov bullets
…
Mr Reynaud also ruled out terrorism as a motive, adding the shooting probably was drug-related.

They ruled out terrorism as a motive already? Smells like bullshit to me. Not to mention media censorship; have there been any reports in major US media about this attack? No?

Oh, and remind me again how this doesn't happen in the Europe?

And note how these are "automatic" rifles, not semiautomatic. That's the full military scary version that the gun control crowd likes to imply are heavily used in the United States. They aren't, but terrorists can get them even in gun control friendly Europe.

None of these companies can be trusted to remain neutral arbiters of speech. The early success of the Internet was based on the use of open protocols that allowed many sites and systems to communicate via the agreed-upon standards like HTML and HTTP. What we have now are huge walled islands controlled by large companies with distinct political biases.

Since when are these scouting organizations supposed to be political?

Lifezette

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was hoping his Republican colleagues would be embarrassed by their vote to jack up federal spending earlier this year and support his plan to phase in a balanced budget. Few were.

Paul got 20 other Republican senators on Thursday — less than half of the Senate GOP caucus — to vote for his “penny plan,” which would balance the federal budget over five years by cutting spending except for Social Security by 1 percent every year. No Democrats back the proposal.

Both of my state's Senators voted for Paul's plan.

Since Cornyn is in leadership, his vote is bullshit; he could control spending himself if he chose to.

Esquire

Anyway, I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know that I now actually do want to take your guns.

All of your guns.

Right now.

So, Dave, you've got your bloody shirt and you're waving it around trying to stir people up to come to my home and my family's homes and my friend's homes to take our guns. We have a saying that's apropos to this situation, just so you know, but before we get to that, I have a question for you.

There are millions of peaceful, law-abiding gun owners in America.

How many of us are you willing to kill to get our guns?

Will you stop at murdering ten times the number of people who die in school shootings?

Will you stop at one hundred times that number? One thousand times?

If you kill one million gun owners for every student who died in a school shooting this year, you'll still have millions of formerly peaceful, law-abiding gun owners left over who will not be very happy with you. And the blood of their friends, their family, their children, their parents... all of it will be on your hands, Dave, because you said you were going to come and take our guns, right now. You're not going to wait to change the law or allow for due process, so when we respond, it will be self-defense against felony home invasion and theft.

At least, I assume you meant you, personally, right? You'll be on the front lines going door to door, right? Taking the risk yourself?

Oh, and while you're on the front lines to confiscate guns from peaceful, law-abiding Americans, will you be threatening them with a gun?

Oh, you say you won't be doing it personally? You'll send the police? Well, Dave, fuck you anyway.

Molon Labe, bitch.

Sebastian seems to agree. So does Saysuncle.

UPDATE: He added a followup article, in which he claims his original article was "moderate" and that he just wants to "compromise". Sorry, no. We've compromised how many times over the past few decades? And every time you want something more as soon as the next inevitable tragedy rolls around. So, no. No more one-sided compromise. If you want something, at least consider giving us something we want in return. Because taking half of what we have left isn't compromise just because you left of half of what we started with.

Nunes seems to think so. They've already tried to sideline him once with a BS ethics investigation.

Law and Crime

In light of new reporting on the leaks of Michael Cohen‘s bank records, there are several indications, in my opinion, that the law enforcement official who came forward may have been paranoid about the threat Donald Trump and his associates represent when they expressed concern to the New Yorker about “missing” suspicious activity reports (SAR) and a possible cover-up.

NBC News reporter Tom Winter, who by his own admission got it wrong recently on a story about Cohen being wiretapped before the feds raided his home, office and hotel room, said that an official familiar with the workings of U.S. Department of the Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) said that the SARs the source described as “missing” are actually just “unavailable for viewing.”

It sounds like there are reporters out there who know the identity of the source who leaked those records. Find them and prosecute them. This bullshit has to stop.

Breitbart

A new report suggests an imminent Inspector General (IG) report may rule that FBI and Justice Department officials broke the law in their handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Investigative reporter Paul Sperry said Thursday that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has “found ‘reasonable grounds’ for believing there has been a violation of federal criminal law in the FBI/DOJ’s handling of the Clinton investigation/s,” adding that the top watchdog official has “referred his findings of potential criminal misconduct to Huber for possible criminal prosecution.”

If it's just one, we're probably looking at McCabe, for interfering and delaying before finally recusing himself after taking a huge payoff in campaign cash for his wife.

Another report says no criminal referrals. Not sure who I believe there. I would hope it's as simple as the decision hasn't been made yet. The final version is still outstanding.

President Trump

I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes - and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!

Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein asked the Department of Justice Inspector General to review the matter.

Trump is also demanding the FBI and DOJ release the documents requested by Congress.

President Trump

If the FBI or DOJ was infiltrating a campaign for the benefit of another campaign, that is a really big deal. Only the release or review of documents that the House Intelligence Committee (also, Senate Judiciary) is asking for can give the conclusive answers. Drain the Swamp!

And it looks like there will be an order to DOJ/FBI to release the documents to Congressional oversight, too. Personally, at this point, I'm curious who was making the decision to try to keep those documents held back, because it seems likely they have a vastly personal stake in hiding what those documents contain.

Yale scientists have brought a pig's brain back to life.

Borepatch

The Media is all in for curtailing the our Second Amendment rights. OK, then - maybe we should look at curtailing their First Amendment rights.

After all, this has a better chance of reducing school shootings than any of the gun control proposals that we've heard. And their publications are commercial in nature - they make money on talking up the school shootings, which likely encourages more school shootings - which leads to higher ratings and more money for them. Which is more important: Media profits or children's lives?

After all, we're constantly told that if it saves one kid's life than we should do it, amirite?

Go sign the petition.

I'm not sure if I want to go that far. Any serious attempt at regulating the media would invite regulatory capture immediately, and backfire upon the small, indepedent bloggers and commentators. But to be honest... yes, I do think the media attention given to mass murders that happen at school contributes to them happening again and again and again.

Here's a partial explanation of why.

CBSNews

On Tuesday, Boulder's City Council unanimously passed a ban on the sale and possession of assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and bump-stock devices -- even while attorneys from a pro-gun rights group threatened legal action.

In accordance with the new ordinance, owners of high-capacity magazines and bump stocks will have until July 15 to dispose of the firearm accessories or sell them. After that point, they will not be permitted in the city of Boulder.

They are already being sued for violating the state preemption law.

In Georgia this time. What the hell is going on?

Real Clear Politics

SEN. RAND PAUL: Well, you know, I’m concerned that there are reports that John Brennan, the former head of the CIA under President Obama that he was cooperating with British intelligence to spy on the Trump campaign. This is a big deal. Now, some are saying, oh, it was just incidentally collected. It`s still a big deal. And there is a question. There are some accusations it was actually ordered by President Obama`s administration, either through John Brennan or others. Gina Haspel is the acting director of the CIA. She is high enough up in the CIA. I think we should know what she knows about whether the Trump campaign was surveilled upon. We do know that John Brennan, since he has left government, has become an outspoken partisan against the president in very defamatory terms. So, yes, I`m concerned about Gina Haspel being a close acolyte of John Brennan. I also would like to know from her before she is appointed, if she is indeed appointed, I would like to know, what does she know about the surveillance of the Trump campaign and why was the CIA involved? ...

I could care less about what Haskel did to terrorists. But what she may have done to Trump's campaign is important. If there is reason to think she was involved, she should be questioned about it, extensively, under oath, after a thorough review of all available documentation. Treat this as an opportunity to get her on the record. And, if she lies... there's always a perjury charge, or contempt of Congress, or impeachment.

Treat it, as well, as an opportunity to extract a pledge from Haskel to provide Congress with everything CIA has on Brennan's abuses of power.

UPDATE: Confirmed.

Daily Wire

A report released on Monday raises new and serious legal issues for special counsel Robert Mueller and provides evidence of a possible conflict of interest in his role overseeing the Russia investigation.

Funny how all these upstanding straight shooters from the left always turn out to have skeletons in their closets when you bother to open them. In this case, a Russian billionaire in 2009 (under Obama, when Mueller was running the FBI) spent about $25 million trying to rescue an FBI agent captured in Iran. The operation ended when then Secretary of State Clinton refusing to make a statement that would allegedly have shifted the blame away from Iran.

Funny how leaving Americans to die is better for Clinton then a little diplomatic lying. Of course, the Russian billionaire involved has since been caught up in legal issues over ties to Paul Manafort, whom Mueller has charged, and the aid he gave to the FBI in that case may have been illegal as well.

Daily Caller

One of the Russian companies special counsel Robert Mueller accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election is asking a federal judge to determine if he is engaging in a sham criminal case.

Foreign interference in the presidential election is a “make-believe crime,” Concord Management and Consulting said in a court filing Monday. The company argues the case is an example of Mueller attempting to “justify his own existence” by indicting “a Russian — any Russian.”

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has “rejected the history and integrity of the DOJ and instead licensed a Special Counsel who for all practical political purposes cannot be fired, to indict a case that has absolutely nothing to do with any links or coordination between any candidate and the Russian Government,” Concord wrote in the court filing.

I don't claim to know if any of these companies actually did what Mueller is accusing them of or not. But Mueller should not be allowed to get away with sham indictments designed to smear a president. He should have to prove his charges.

Real Clear Investigations

Former CIA Director John Brennan’s insistence that the salacious and unverified Steele dossier was not part of the official Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election is being contradicted by two top former officials.

Recently retired National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers stated in a classified letter to Congress that the Clinton campaign-funded memos did factor into the ICA. And James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence under President Obama, conceded in a recent CNN interview that the assessment was based on “some of the substantive content of the dossier.” Without elaborating, he maintained that “we were able to corroborate” certain allegations.

These accounts are at odds with Brennan’s May 2017 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee that the Steele dossier was "not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence community's assessment" that Russia interfered in the election to help elect Donald Trump. Brennan has repeated this claim numerous times, including in February on “Meet the Press.”

May Brennan and Clapper be prosecuted for their lies to Congress with exactly the same force and intent as Michael Flynn was prosecuted for allegedly lying to the FBI.

Jack Dunphy, a pseudonym for a police officer who writes articles on police work online, has an article complaining the "untrained" are criticizing police work. He seems to think that being untrained in police work means the criticizes of police work are invalid, and, by implication, that members of the Civilian Oversight Board should be "trained" to police standards before they criticize the results of that police training.

He's got it exactly wrong.

Police should be trained to meet the standards of the Civilian Oversight Board. Those civilians are representing the larger public who employs the police force, and from whom collectively the police derive their authorization to operate.

Don't get me wrong; I believe civilian oversight boards should be fully informed about the training and policies used by the police forces they oversee. But their role in that process is not to be passively trained until they accept both the police training and the results that come from it. Their role is to understand the current training standards and evaluate the results of that training in the real world.

That they are civilians, not trained police officers, is the whole point.