Jeff Sessions asks Obama's holdover US attorneys to resign

Weasel Zippers

"One exception may be Preet Bharara, who had been asked to stay on by President Donald Trump. He is in charge of continuing investigations of the Clinton Foundation.

"But cleaning house, although relatively normal, seems to be essential in a time where hold-overs seem to be trying to sabotage the current administration.

"Via Washington Examiner:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday asked the remaining 46 U.S. attorneys appointed by President Obama to resign.

According to the Justice Department, those resignations will “ensure a uniform transition.”

“Until the new U.S. attorneys are confirmed, the dedicated career prosecutions in our U.S. Attorney’s Offices will continue the great work of the department in investigating, prosecuting, and deterring the most violent offenders,” said spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores in a statement Friday afternoon.

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While You Weren’t Looking, the Democrat–Media Election-Hacking Narrative Just Collapsed

Andrew C. McCarthy

That supposed FBI investigation of collusion with the Russians? Never mind . . .

"They’re in retreat now. You may have missed it amid President Trump’s startling Saturday tweet storm, the recriminations over president-on-candidate spying, and the Jeff Sessions recusal — a whirlwind weekend. But while you weren’t looking, an elaborate narrative died.

For months, the media-Democrat complex has peddled a storyline that the Putin regime in Russia hacked the U.S. presidential election. There is, of course, no evidence that the election was hacked in the sense that the actual voting process was compromised. Rather, there is evidence that e-mail accounts of prominent Democrats were hacked months before the election, and thousands of those e-mails were published by WikiLeaks in the months leading up to the election.

"Into this misleading “Russia hacked the election” narrative, the press and the Dems injected a second explosive allegation — or at least an explosive suspicion that they’ve wanted us to perceive as a credible allegation meriting a serious investigation. The suspicion/allegation is: Not only did Russia hack the election, but there are also enough ties between people in the Trump orbit and operatives of the Putin regime that there are grounds to believe that the Trump campaign was complicit in Russia’s hacking of the election.

"Transparently, the aim is to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s election victory.

Finally, the third prong, without the support of which the stool would collapse: the impression that the FBI has been feverishly investigating what is said to be the Trump campaign’s collusion in what is said to be the Russian hacking of the election. This reporting is designed to get you saying to yourself: “Why would there be such a zealous investigation by FBI agents — in addition to several other intelligence and law-enforcement agents — unless there really were grave reasons to believe the shocking election-hacking conspiracy narrative?”

"Thus, details about investigative activity have been leaked to the media. The press and the Democrats then exploit the leaks to spin the “Trump complicity in Russian election-hacking” story. It seems not to matter how objectively ill-conceived the Russian election-hacking claim is, or how woefully insufficient the purported Trump–Russia ties are to support an inference of campaign collusion in the hacking. The specter of an investigation — breathless media reports of FISA-court applications, wiretaps, surveillance of agents of a foreign power, and mysterious servers; painstaking analysis of shady financial transactions involving Russian banks and funding streams — seems to make the outlandish conspiracy impossible to dismiss out of hand." . . .

"Now that they’ve been called on it, the media and Democrats are gradually retreating from the investigation they’ve been touting for months as the glue for their conspiracy theory."

Obama Wiretapping? Trump Colluding? We Are Headed Down a Rabbit Hole

Charles Krauthammer

"When he was Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, George Shultz was once asked about the CIA’s disavowal of involvement in a mysterious recent bombing in Lebanon. Replied Shultz: “If the CIA denies something, it’s denied.”

"Has there ever been a more dry, more wry, more ironic verdict on the world of espionage? Within it, there is admission and denial, smoke and mirrors, impenetrable fog and deliberate obfuscation. Truth? Ask the next guy.

"Which is why my default view of espionage is to never believe anyone because everyone is trained in deception. This is not a value judgment; it’s a job description.

"We learn, for example, from Tuesday’s spectacular WikiLeaks dump that among the CIA’s various and nefarious cybertools is the capacity to simulate intrusion by a foreign power, the equivalent of planting phony fingerprints on a smoking gun.

"Who are you going to believe now? I can assure you that some enterprising Trumpite will use this revelation to claim that the whole storyline pointing to Russian interference in the U.S. election was a fabrication. And who was behind that? There is no end to this hall of mirrors. My rule, therefore, is: Stay away.

"Hard to do with Washington caught up in one of its periodic conspiracy frenzies. Actually, two. One, anti–Donald Trump, is that he and his campaign colluded with Russian intelligence. The other, anti–Barack Obama–CIA– “deep state,” is that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower to ensnare candidate Trump.

"The odd thing is that, as of today, there is no evidence for either charge. That won’t, of course, stop the launch of multiple all-consuming investigations." . . .

Top 10 Most Obnoxious Hollywood Liberals

Human Events "Hollywood stars invariably get involved in the political debate from the left side of the spectrum.  What better way to draw attention to themselves than to testify before Congress about the latest threat to humanity, even if their cause is laughable.  It was hard to narrow it down to only 10, but here are the Top 10 Most Obnoxious Hollywood Liberals."