If Hillary Is Indicted, President Clinton Could Pardon Herself and Congress Might be Helpless

From 2016: Law & Crime

It is Friday, January 20, 2017 and Hillary Clinton has just been sworn in as the 45^th President of the United States after narrowly defeating Donald Trump in November. Republicans managed to hold both the House of Representatives and the Senate. A few weeks after winning the election, however, the Department of Justice handed down a multi-count indictment against Clinton over her handling of classified information and her involvement in an alleged pay for play scandal with the Clinton Foundation during her time as Secretary of State. It is a scenario that several of our commentators, and twitter followers have asked us to analyze.
. . . 
"In Clinton’s case, however, the conduct underlying this hypothetical indictment occurred prior to her taking office. The House of Representatives, as far back as 1873, has determined that a person cannot be impeached based on conduct prior to them holding office. In other words, House precedent says a President Hillary Clinton could not be impeached as president for crimes related to the e-mail server or the Clinton Foundation." . . .

The ongoing shame of CNN

Look, I hate to be That Guy but the anti-Trump nonsense is not liberal politics. It is corporate decision. Comcast (NBC), Disney (ABC), and Time-Warner (CNN) want globalism because they believe in the long-term, globalism will mean fatter executive checks and larger bonuses.  Don Surber

Thomas Lifson: Slam dunk video exposes CNN/MSNBC idiocy on Trump: 

"Cable news Trump-haters, besotted with outrage, don’t bother to sweat the details when it comes to venting their spleen on President Trump.   Finding something – anything – on which to express outrage is their daily challenge.

Last Friday, when President Trump tweeted that he was looking forward to the jobs report, about to be released, they went into high dudgeon.

"Amusing though that sort of indignation can be, it gets hilarious when they make up an imaginary contrast with their fantasies about the wonderfulness of ex-President Obama. Add in a dare to find an example of Obama doing the horrible, terrible, probably illegal and impeachable thing that President Trump did, and they set themselves up for serious embarrassment and humiliation,

"Watch the one minute video from the GOP below and be rewarded with a dose of exquisite schadenfreude."

Fake News of the day; John C. Nolte at Breitbart calls CNN garbage.

. . . "Jim Sciutto of CNN posted the picture and snottily wrote, "Trump is smiling next to a man who runs a gulag jailing some 200,000 North Koreans and who oversaw the sinking of a South Korean Navy ship killing 46 and the hacking of Sony North America."

"I posted a photo of FDR and Stalin smiling during World War II. Among Stalin's many, many atrocities was the starvation of 6 million Ukrainians during the Holodomor. They were reduced to cannibalism." . . .

He works for a network that cut a deal with Erdoğan to keep one of its international channels open. Turkey is not the only dictatorship that Time-Warner through its CNN beds with. The most infamous case was when it covered up the war crimes by Saddam Hussein to keep its bureau open in Baghdad, which became a propaganda arm for Hussein.
Read its confession here.

 Media Beclowns Itself Over Trump Jobs Report Tweet

Branco Cartoon – Blue Daze

The Democrats Descend Into Farce  . . . "Or how about this? The May jobs numbers were posted last week and the economy is flying high. Unemployment is as low as it's been in decades and black unemployment is lower than ever. Here's what Don Lemon — CNN's Dumb to Chris Cuomo's Dumber — says about the report: "There's no question today's job report is good news, including the news that we're as close as we've ever been to full employment in the black community. But what's full employment without full respect?" Don apparently thinks Americans don't respect all black people. Who's going to break the news that it's just him we don't respect?" . . .

Whining about good news  "CNN's Don Lemon on Friday's record job numbers report for blacks: "What's full employment without full respect?"

"When someone hires you, it is safe to assume he respects you enough to entrust an important corner of his business to your care, and that he intends to pay you with money." . . .

Money pays the rent and furnishes food for the family.  Respect won't buy you a teacup of Starbucks, but then Don Lemon's cup is always way more than half empty.

Woman who appeared on HGTV finds out she has cancer after a doctor watching spots a lump on her throat

ABC News  "An eagle-eyed surgeon and social media are being credited with helping to save a woman's life after the doctor took action online when he spotted a lump on the stranger's neck when she appeared on an HGTV show.

"Dr. Erich Voigt, a New York-based ear, nose and throat surgeon from NYU Langone Health, just happened to be watching "Beachfront Bargain Hunt" when he noticed a small lump on the neck of a woman featured in the program. It was something only a trained doctor would recognize as needing attention, he said." . . .    Video

Dr. Erich Voigt discusses how he saw a lump on a woman's throat
while watching HGTV and it turned out to be Thyroid cancer in an
interview with ABC News' Eva Pilgrim.

. . . "Voigt let her know she needed a sonogram and a biopsy. Although already a brain cancer survivor, McGuinness' doctors had not noticed the lump in her throat. She went to see a specialist, and eventually was diagnosed with Thyroid cancer." . . .

Rick Santorum claims Obama 'exacerbated racism' long before Trump

Washington Examiner  "Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., claimed Sunday that Barack Obama "exacerbated racism" by aligning himself with anti-police activists whenever people of color were targeted by law enforcement during his presidency.

"Santorum made the comment during a CNN segment about President Trump's success in 2016, and whether he capitalized on Republican backlash to the first African-American president.

" 'You elect the first black president and there was an uproar. ... What Donald Trump did was he tapped into it," Karine Jean-Pierre, a spokeswoman for the progressive group Move On, said during the segment." . . .

. . . "He continued, "Many people saw Barack Obama ... doing more to exacerbate racism. Every time someone of color was involved, he took the side, many times, against the police."

" 'He did it over and over and over again," Santorum said claiming Obama could have "brought this country together" if he had adjusted his response to certain tragedies while in office.

"The tense exchange between Santorum and Jean-Pierre came in response to questions about a new book by former White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes. In it, Rhodes claims Obama once suggested he may have pushed Americans "too far" in racial politics and the culture wars." . . .

Sailor Pardoned By Trump Plans To Sue Obama, Comey

Daily Wire

"A former Navy sailor who was prosecuted by the Obama Administration for taking photos of classified sections of the submarine where he served, and was later pardoned by President Trump, is taking aim at former President Barack Obama, former FBI director James Comey, and the Justice Department, suing them for treating him differently than they treated Hillary Clinton after she left classified information at risk.

"As Fox News reports, Kristian Saucier served one year in prison after federal prosecutors argued he had endangered national security by taking photos of the submarine's propulsion system and reactor compartment and then obstructed justice by destroying a laptop and camera. Saucier claimed he wanted the pictures for service mementos. He was pardoned by Trump in March and plans to claim in his lawsuit that Obama and the other defendants treated him with unequal protection under the law.

"Saucier's attorney, Ronald Daigle, told Fox News “We’ll highlight the differences in the way Hillary Clinton was prosecuted and how my client was prosecuted. We’re seeking to cast a light on this to show that there’s a two-tier justice system and we want it to be corrected.' ” . . .

Starbucks Employees Say 'Bias' Training Was Mostly Anti-Cop Propaganda

Blue Lives Matter "Philadelphia, PA – Employees of color who attended the highly-publicized “unconscious bias training” for Starbucks employees on Tuesday have reported it was more of a lesson on police brutality than anything else.

"Starbucks closed 8,000 stores for several hours on May 30 to facilitate seminars for its employees after the coffee shop was at the forefront of a racial controversy in April.

"“It felt like we were off task the entire time because we didn’t reflect on the situation itself,” a black 18-year-old Starbucks employee called “Tina” told Philadelphia Magazine.

“ 'The training materials focused a lot on police brutality, which had nothing to do with the incident that happened,” Tina said.

"She was referring to the incident that occurred at a Philadelphia Starbucks on April 12 when two black men were arrested for trespassing after employees called the police because they hadn’t purchased anything and refused to leave.

"On that occasion, despite the controversy that surrounded their ejection from the coffee shop, no force was used to remove the men, and there have been zero allegations of police brutality." . . .

Confronted about Monica Lewinsky in light of #MeToo, Bill Clinton displays an attitude that had me gasping aloud in disgust.

Althouse  "That's the "Today" show, this morning, I believe. The interviewer is Craig Melvin, whose demeanor is rock solid. I'm not seeing the whole interview, but from this clip, I would criticize Melvin for focusing only on what Clinton did to/with Monica Lewinsky. Ask him about Paula Jones (not to mention the others)!

"Bill Clinton focuses on himself and acts like the debt he owed his lawyers — $16 million — is commensurate with the harm he did to the women. That's not enough for #MeToo purposes (and it was never enough for me).

"And Bill says it's already been litigated and 2/3 of Americans agreed with me. But that can only mean that 2/3 of Americans thought that he shouldn't be removed from office because of the asserted offense (basically only perjury in a deposition in a civil lawsuit). The American people haven't agreed with him that it's okay to treat women like that.

"And then Bill starts chuckling, in his trademark Southern manner, over the good he's done for women. The tone, the fake casualness, and the reliance on his idea that we have the idea that he's a good guy — it's just so disgusting." . . .

California and Conservatism

Victor Davis Hanson

. . . "Is there some hope? A recent April poll from the liberal UC Berkeley Haas center proved a shock in reporting that 24 percent of the survey’s participants agreed that it’s “very important” for the U.S. to increase deportations of undocumented immigrants, while 35 polled said it was “somewhat important” — an aggregate majority result expressing a desire for future legal immigration only. The poll included a majority of Hispanic residents, upon whose schools, communities, and social services open borders and illegal immigration most heavily fall. Currently there are early pushbacks against the new steep gasoline taxes; high-speed rail, whose half-built overpasses are our modern Stonehenge, has lost most public support.

"What, then, is the chance of California’s recalibrating as a conservative state? It largely hinges on meritocratic, measured, diverse, and legal immigration that studies show most successfully leads to assimilation, intermarriage, and integration, a melting pot that makes residents see their particular tribal affiliations as incidental rather than essential to their characters.

"When that happens, millions of Californians of all backgrounds will more likely vote for issues such as reducing taxes, encouraging energy development and middle-class housing construction, and investing in infrastructure such as freeways and reservoirs (rather than building impossible utopian high-speed rail projects), reforming pensions, curbing teacher unions, and allowing more charter schools and school choices. In other words, the present-day Democratic voter will someday question why such high sales, income, and energy taxes result in such poor social services, as the state’s highways and schools rank near last in the nation." . . .

Left buys into fake news about Martha Stewart refusing Trump pardon

Rich Terrell

Monica Showalter  "So did Martha Stewart refuse President Trump's pardon of her, on a maliciously prosecuted insider stock trading case, based on her progressive views? Nope, not to anyone's knowledge.

"But a satirical news site put that out there and sure enough, out on Twitter and elsewhere, much of the left bit into the fake news and passed it around. Obviously, the satirists knew the left would believe it." . . .

"What Trump did, in fact, was a bipartisan thing, given that Stewart is a friend of the Clintons and holds Democratic views, something she never allows to pollute into her magazine. For most people, this is fine, and the selective prosecution she got was bad stuff. Trump fixed it, Stewart has accepted it (a thank you would be nice, but let's not get ahead of ourselves) and now she gets her life back as it was. Above all, Trump's pardon was based on a sense of justice, not her being a member of the right party, as Obama would have required. Can you imagine Obama pardoning a Republican? Never would have happened, and never did happen. Republicans, such as Dinesh D'Souza, were special targets of Obama's prosecutorial apparat, and to correct that injustice, Trump to his credit pardoned D'Souza, too. Obama, by contrast, pardoned mainly drug dealers and petty criminals, along with a few favorites. Trump's pardon power extends to actual cases of injustice in the judicial system, and sends a message to selective prosecutors ambitious for headlines that their efforts may be junked." . . .

Oklahoma becomes the 8th state to fall under California travel ban

Rick Moran   San Francisco Chronicle:

“ 'Our taxpayer dollars do not fund bigotry,” Becerra said. “No exceptions.' ”

. . . " I'm sure there are plenty of California laws that Oklahomans object to, not least of which are sanctuary laws that spit in the face of the rest of the country when it comes to allowing illegal aliens to enter with impunity. California cannot guarantee that all those illegals will remain in California. No doubt some will end up in Oklahoma, placing a burden on state residents who did not vote for sanctuary policies. California cannot invoke federalism in one instance and not in another.

"If "bigotry" is the standard by which a state is judged, California should clean up its own house. There are other kinds of bigotry besides idiotic notions about race, ethnic origin, or sexual orientation. If the definition of bigotry is a "stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own" then California should be kicked out of the union. There is no state more intolerable of minority political beliefs. There is no state more intimidating to the free flow of ideas. There is no state more hostile to free speech and freedom of thought."

Eventually, California will get around to banning travel to most states. They will define bigotry more and more broadly until only the most rigidly politically correct states will be left.

The left is destroying science (as it always does)

Vlad Tepes

Probably more than you want to know in this video:

How the Left Is Destroying Science (Science vs. Scientism) From 2016.

. . . "Because these profoundly devout Christians considered physics and mathematics simply another manifestation of a holy and ordered Creation, they never worshipped science.  Lying was a sin, and lying about the nature of the world was a particularly serious sin, because it knowingly concealed the true nature of the world.

"Within the Medieval university was that same sort of freedom and mutual respect that had never existed before except in the academy of Plato.  As with the academy, the Medieval university had schools of thought and different interpretations of what phenomena meant.  This was science.

"Scientism, on the other hand, is a vile misology that arose at the end of the nineteenth century and has infected those processes intended to discover the truth about our world ever since.  The most evil and dishonest regimes in modern history – Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Maoist China – were all utterly and passionately devoted to whatever pseudo-science was needed to support the party. " . . .

The Liberals' War on Science 
"How politics distorts science on both ends of the spectrum"

Is Loony Left Gov. Jerry Brown killing California? What does that mean for America?

 . . . “America can’t afford more political paralysis. One side or the other must win. This is a civil war than can be won without firing a shot. But it is a fundamental conflict between two worldviews that must be resolved in short order. California, as usual, resolved it early. The Democrats won; the Republicans lost.  . . .

Steve Hilton

"Exuberant Democrats – carried along by the self-righteousness of their authoritarian and puritanical identity politics zealotry, and self-confidence in the supposedly inevitable electoral annihilation of President Trump and Republicans in November – are starting to see a long-cherished liberal dream as an imminent reality: California as a model for the whole nation.

"You’ll get the picture if you read a widely-shared article published earlier this year by Medium, written by tech guru Peter Leyden, headlined “The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War.” The article is subtitled: “Why there’s no bipartisan way forward at this juncture in our history – one side must win.”

. . . 

"And you see it in Brown’s bizarre championing of Proposition 47, which essentially decriminalized the theft of any item under $950. His stance has been a social policy disaster, giving a green light to drug-fueled crime throughout the state.

. . . 

"So we’d better take this seriously. Democrats, as the old political adage goes, now want to do to America what they’ve done to California. It’s an alarming prospect. . . .  (Emphasis added by TD)

Hat tip to Harley Standlee; Placerville, CA

Related:

California Bans State Employees From Traveling to Oklahoma

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced Friday that the state would banstate-funded and state-sponsored travel to Oklahoma due to an Oklahoma law that allows certain adoption agencies to deny services to same-sex couples.

California Central Valley farmer Victor Davis Hanson wrote: 

Will Unfinished Train Overpasses Become California’s Stonehenge?

California's unfinished high--speed-rail overpasses will stand as monuments to the state's insatiable appetite for spending money it doesn't have.

 Christmas Lessons from California

. . . Over some 50 consecutive months of drought, California did not start work on a single major reservoir — though many had long ago been planned and designed.Instead, given the lack of water-storage capacity, and due to environmental diversions, tens of millions of acre-feet of precious runoff water last year were simply let out to the ocean.This year, the state may want all of that water back. . . . 

Cartoons added by TD.