Clinton-Appointed Judge APOLOGIZES to Flynn for Treason Remark During Sentencing

Byron York: Judge's accusations mar Michael Flynn sentencing hearing

. . . Now the case will be on hold for at least a few months. But for a few moments, the craziness that can surround political debate over the Trump-Russia affair — hot tempers, unfounded charges, promiscuous accusations of treason — made its way into a federal courtroom. And Michael Flynn's future remains uncertain."  . . .

Big League Politics  "Judge Sullivan apologizes for his “treason” comments, noting that he was confused about the dates during which Flynn acted as a foreign agent.
“ 'I felt terrible about that,” he reportedly said. “I’m not suggesting he committed treason,” Sullivan adds, further apologizing for his remarks in the prior session.
"Flynn’s conduct as a foreign agent ended in mid-November of 2016, far before Trump took office.

Photo of General Flynn added by TD

"In another example of the thuggery that has become the American “justice system” the presiding Judge in Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s sentencing hearing suggested from the bench that Flynn should be charged with treason.

“ 'You were an unregistered agent of a foreign country while serving as the National Security Adviser to the president!” said Judge Emmet Sullivan of United States District Court for the District of Columbia, according to Steven Portnoy of CBS Radio.

“ 'Arguably, this undermines everything this flag over here stands for! Arguably, you sold your country out!” the Judge reportedly continued.

. . . 

"Townhall has reported that Sullivan said he cannot hide his “disgust” or “disdain” with Flynn’s alleged behavior.

"Does this sound like an impartial judge to anyone? The political right is steadily losing confidence in high level law enforcement and a judiciary that seem bent on destroying the lives of President Donald J. Trump and those who supported him – and rightfully so.

"This story is developing." .  . .

45 Democrats jostling to challenge Trump in 2020

Washington Examiner  "An unprecedented 45 Democrats are jockeying for the party's nomination to challenge President Trump in 2020 — shattering the record for the number of candidates aspiring to be commander in chief.

"A review of potential contenders by the Washington Examiner reveals that up to 45 candidates could mount a serious bid to become leader of the free world. While many will undoubtedly decide against formally entering the race, most Democratic strategists expect at least two dozen to do so.

"Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, co-chairman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, said recently that the 2020 presidential contest could draw up to 40 Democratic hopefuls. “Look, we’ll have between 30 and 40 great candidates running for president,” he told MSNBC. “Everyone recognizes how urgent this moment is in our country’s history.”

"To have more than 40 Democrats seeking to win the White House would be "historic," James Thurber, the director of American University's Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, told the Washington Examiner.

"That number would be well over the 17 major Republicans who drew ire in 2016 for crowding the GOP primary field, ultimately to the benefit of Trump. And it would be more than six times as large as the "seven dwarfs," who were mocked for competing for the 1988 Democratic nomination, which went to then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Dukakis went on to lose to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush.

"So who are the 45 contenders who could soon be vying to become the 46th president of the United States?" . . .

Democratic New York State Senator Tells Republican Aide To “Kill Herself”

How things would be if Alec Baldwin were a state senator somewhere. Most likely California or New York. TD

Weasel Zippers

"And he has a prior history of violent behavior, starting with punching a traffic agent in 2005, pushing an aide and breaking her glasses in 2006 and breaking the finger of a NY Post photographer in 2009.  Via Democrat and Chronicle:

ALBANY – A state senator pushing a bill that would require pistol-seekers to submit to a social-media search urged a Senate Republican aide to kill herself in a now-deleted Twitter post on Tuesday.

The verified Twitter account of Sen. Kevin Parker, D-Brooklyn, posted the violent demand Tuesday morning after the aide, Candice Giove, accused him of misusing a Senate-issue parking placard.

“Kill yourself!” Parker’s tweeted.

The tweet was originally posted at 11:25 a.m. It was deleted minutes later.

By 12:18 p.m., Parker tweeted an apology.

“I sincerely apologize,” Parker wrote. “I used a poor choice of words. Suicide is a serious thing and and should not be made light of.”

Keep reading…

Incoming Democratic Conference Leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, called Sen. Parker’s tweet inappropriate.

Other these little incidents, the man is a credit to the New York Legislature

In January 2005, Parker was arrested after punching a traffic agent in the face during a dispute over a traffic citation that he had been issued. He was subsequently charged with third degree assault, a misdemeanor. The charges were dropped after he agreed to take anger management classes.^[2]

In 2008, an aide filed charges against Parker, claiming he pushed her during an argument and smashed her glasses.^[2]

Photo added by TD

On May 8, 2009, Parker was charged with felony criminal mischief for attacking a New York Post photographer and damaging the photographer's camera and car door. According to prosecutors, the photographer's finger was broken in the alleged attack.^[3] Parker was charged with a felony due to the value of damage to the camera and car door.^[4] As a result, he was stripped of his leadership position as majority whip and chair of the Energy Committee.^[5] Parker was convicted of a misdemeanor charge, criminal mischief, and on March 21, 2011 was sentenced to three years probation and a $1,000 fine.^[6] Had he been convicted of the felonies, he would have automatically lost his seat in the Senate, and the Senate had already expelled Hiram Monserrate for misdemeanor charges earlier in the year. The Senate Democrats expressed an unwillingness to expel Parker as they had Monserrate.^[7]

In February 2010, Parker was restrained by his colleagues during a profane tirade against Senator Diane

Democrats must have better 
people than these

Savino in which Parker referred to Savino as a "b****".^[8]

In April 2010, Parker launched into an outburst while colleague John DeFrancisco of Syracuse was questioning a black nominee for the New York State Power Authority.^[9] "Amid the nearly two-minute tirade, committee chairman Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) told Parker he would be removed from the hearing room if he didn't settle down."^[9]

Parker accused his colleagues of racism, and followed up in a radio interview by accusing his Republican "enemies" of being white supremacists.^[2] Following the tirade, Sen. Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx) was quoted as saying that Parker "need[ed] help."^[9]

Hollywood: shaping our "skulls full of mush" from childhood on

Oscar's Political Dilemma: How Left Is Too Left?  "A day after Universal's Neil Armstrong biopic First Man opened to a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival on Aug. 29, a political rocket came blasting out of the conservative netherworld to knock it from its orbit. That's when news spread that the movie had omitted a real-life scene: Armstrong planting the American flag on the moon.
"Right-wing outrage was immediate and helped ding the picture at the box office, where it failed to draw a crucial male demographic and earned a muted $44 million domestically." . . .

The best and worst of Hollywood political speeches

Alec Baldwin: Trump Is ‘Punishment’ for America’s ‘Slaughter of Native Americans, Slavery, Japanese Internment  . . . "Baldwin’s rant not only fails to mention that the United States has done a great deal to right these historical wrongs, he also doesn’t mention that most of these tragedies took place under Democrats.

"The Saturday Night Live star preceded this statement with another social media post, in which he called for all Americans to rally behind Trump’s eventual successor." . . .

“Every day I wake up, I still am horrified. I feel like I’m in some dream that Trump is president of the United States. I almost can’t even say it,” he told reporters after a Democratic Party fundraiser.

Mueller’s Collusion Hoax Collapses

Conrad Black  "The sudden death of the unutterable nonsense of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian government, announced as it was in the hand-off to the Southern New York U.S. Attorney of the shabby fruit of Michael Cohen’s plea bargaining, has divided onlookers into three communities of opinion.

The true believers in the collusion canard are left slack-jawed, like the international Left after the announcement of the Nazi-Soviet Pact: an immense fervor of faith is instantly destroyed; it is the stillness of a sudden and immense evaporation.

"The professional Trump-haters, the Democratic Party assassination squads in the Congress and media, like disciplined soldiers, have swiveled with parade ground precision and resumed firing after a mere second to reload, at the equally fatuous nonsense about illegal campaign contributions. Disreputable, contemptible myth-makers and smear-jobbers though they are, they deserve credit for fanaticism, improvisation, and managing in unison to sound half plausible in the face of the crushing defeat they have suffered and the piffle and pottage they are left to moralize about.

"Third, and slowest to respond, so sudden has been the change of the whole Trump-hate narrative, are those who never wavered from the requirement of real evidence of something before they would endorse the drastic act of impeaching and removing the nation’s leader. Some feel betrayed and some vindicated, but sensing no need for instant response, unlike the Trump-haters who are scrambling to try to cooper up some credibility for continuing their assault on the president, the third group is preparing with only deliberate speed to counter-attack the assassins-by-impeachment with their full and now overpowering armament of facts and law.

"The Trump-haters can make a strong case that the president is an obnoxious public personality—that he is boastful, exaggerates constantly, sends out silly tweets with grade two typographical errors in them and gets into ill-tempered slanging matches with half the people with whom he comes into contact. To a great many, he is just refreshingly puncturing official self-importance." . . .

Not the first "No Wall" the Democrats did say

Stilton's Place

"With Christmas only a week away, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are cementing their names near the top of the Naughty List by threatening a government shutdown rather than allow funding for the border wall that President Trump is demanding.

"Their gambit carries more risk than usual, owing to the fact that Trump is entirely willing to see the government shut down and take credit for it.

"It's a bit unclear exactly what form such a shutdown would take, as Democrats are still smarting from the last time they pulled this stunt and became laughingstocks for punishing the public by closing national parks, monuments (including the Vietnam Memorial), and forbidding families from looking at Old Faithful or Mount Rushmore." . . .

Arizona Governor Appoints McCain’s Replacement

The Federalist Papers

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey just appointed Martha McSally to serve out John McCains term until the next election in 2020

After losing to Kyrsten Stinema in the November midterm election, McSally gets another shot.

. . . "McSally is a combat veteran of the U.S. Air Force, who also holds the distinction of being one of the highest ranking women to serve in the USAF. In her 20+ years of service (1988-2010) she rose to the level of colonel. She was also the first female commander of the 354th Fighter Squadron.

"In 2001, she sued the Department of Defense, in an attempt to challenge the policy that required U.S. and UK servicewomen to wear body covering, when traveling off base, while stationed in Saudi Arabia.

"She served as the U.S. Representative for Arizona's 2nd District, since 2015.

"She will serve out the remainder of McCain’s term, then face a special election in 2020, to determine if she will be staying on as Senator McSally." . . .

"USA Today has the story:

Republican Rep. Martha McSally will replace retiring Sen. Jon Kyl to fill for the next two years the Senate seat long held by the late Sen. John McCain.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey’s decision to appoint McSally, announced in a statement Tuesday and effective next month, revives her political life less than two months after she narrowly lost the race for the state’s other Senate seat to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.  . . .

The Child Who Won the War Against Children

Rebecca McLaughlin  "It’s easy to sentimentalize the Christmas story. A newborn babe, angelic songs, a guiding star — the scene lights up our winter nights and warms our weary hearts. But when Herod orders the slaughter of all the male infants and toddlers within striking distance of Bethlehem, the tale suddenly becomes less family friendly. Indeed, in this moment, the Christmas dream becomes the stuff of nightmares.

"Our hearts revolt against infanticide. It strikes us as the most callous of crimes. But while the wholesale slaughter of baby boys would certainly have distressed first-century hearers, infanticide itself was broadly accepted.

“God was cradled in his mother’s arms, upending our ideas of power and telling a whole new story about babies.”

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"Abandoning infants — particularly baby girls — was common. Some historians estimate that the Greco-Roman world in the first and second century was as much as two-thirds male, due to maternal deaths in childbirth and selective infanticide (Christianity at the Crossroads, 36). Meanwhile, influential philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle had supported eugenics, the latter declaring, “Let there be a law that no deformed child shall live.” But even healthy baby boys were frequently abandoned. If someone else wanted them — to raise them as a slave, perhaps — it was finders keepers." . . .

Trump administration to repeal Obama-era school discipline rules

Rick Moran  . . . "Not just student safety, but the safety of faculty as well. The Obama rules presupposed that suburban white kids and inner city minority students misbehaved in the same way at the same rates, but the minority kids were punished more severely with suspensions. Race, not class, was the determining factor. Rather than risk a civil rights action by the Justice Department, school systems adopted more lenient disciplinary standards that, predictably, led to greater violence against students and teachers.

"No doubt there will be a lawsuit to keep these policies intact. But Obama's race based rules in education will be hard to completely eradicate given how widespread their effect has been."

What Are Teachers Rights Against Student Assault?

If you are assaulted and injured on the job, you are entitled to lost pay, medical expenses and workers compensation. Most workers compensation programs do not allow employees to sue their employers, but you may be able to sue abusive students or their parents. The National Education Association claims that many school administrators fail to remove chronic problem students from classrooms. If this is the case, your local education association can help you file a grievance against the school or principal.

If black, let students assault their teachers;  "Walter E. Williams decries Obama-era discipline standard that leaves wake of injuries"

. . . "Faced with threats from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, schools have instituted new disciplinary policies. For example, after the public school district in Oklahoma City was investigated by the OCR, there was a 42.5 percent decrease in the number of suspensions. According to an article in The Oklahoman, one teacher said, “Students are yelling, cursing, hitting and screaming at teachers and nothing is being done, but teachers are being told to teach and ignore the behaviors.” According to Chalkbeat, new high school teachers left one school because they didn’t feel safe. There have been cases in which students have assaulted teachers and returned to school the next day.

"Many of the complaints about black student behavior are coming from black teachers. I doubt whether they could be accused of racial discrimination against black students. The first vice president of the St. Paul, Minnesota, chapter of the NAACP said it’s “very disturbing” that the school district would retaliate against a black teacher “for simply voicing the concern” that when black students are not held accountable for misbehaving, they are set up for failure in life." . . . Read more here.

As Democrats eye health care again, keep an eye on these phony 'narratives' they will tell

Monica Showalter  "John Merline of Investor's Business Daily has always been that outfit's health care expert, not just explaining why Obamacare fails, but exposing all the smelly little shibboleths that propel such bad laws to find their way into the congressional ledgers. I think he actually read the 2,300-page original Obamacare law, quite unlike most Democrats who voted for it.

"Now with Democrats coming back into the saddle, focused primarily on 'fixing' health care, (when they can stop themselves from thinking about impeachment), Merline's taking it to another level, exposing the baseline myth that health care overseas in western socialized settings is best. He doesn't even go for the low-hanging fruit, such as Castrocare that crazier lefties like to praise, he takes on places like France and Canada with supposedly socialized medicine we are all supposed to want and that Democrats say they have in mind for us. His important new piece exposing that phony narrative hits it out of the park.

He begins:

The question often arises, "What is heath care reform and why do we need it?" The answer is almost always something like: The U.S. spends more than any other industrialized country on health care, but gets worse-quality health care. And, the U.S. is the only country that doesn't provide universal coverage to all of its citizens.

Each of these claims is technically true, but also very misleading. When you look at the data, the picture gets far more nuanced. And the alleged advantages foreign countries have over the U.S. start to dissipate.

"What I like about the piece is that it tells me a lot of things I didn't actually know.

"Did you know that there isn't really any such thing as 'socialized' medicine in Westernized countries? I didn't. I thought everyone overseas got a free ride, and it turns out they all have to pay something. It's like high deductibles we have here. Here's his example, citing Canada:" . . .

California hopes America will think like they do

California politics might benefit, but so will the left-wing Democrat candidates, given California’s penchant for supporting far left-wingers

"California has jumped ahead in the primary line. Usually holding their primary in June, months after Iowa’s kickoff in February, California’s Democrat primary will be held on March 3, 2020, allowing the state to have a greater influence in the primary game, reports the Wall Street Journal.

"From the WSJ:

The move from a June primary in 2016 will press hopefuls to consider a West Coast perspective on issues such as immigration and the environment, empower the state’s growing Latino and Asian populations and drastically increase the amount of money candidates must raise to mount a competitive campaign.

California’s calendar change is one of several developments reshaping Democrats’ primary process. Following the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary—two predominately-white electorates that are the traditional vetters of presidential candidates—at least six of the next nine states on the 2020 calendar will take Democrats through a swath of states where black and Hispanic Democrats dominate primary elections, including Texas.

. . . 

The geography for primaries will likely mean the voters critical to winning the presidential nomination will be considerably different from the electorate that carried the party to sweeping victories in the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats flipped 40 House Republican seats and regained the chamber’s majority.

. . . 

Live by the tweet....

Rich Terrell