Friday, June 29, 2018

“Stock Up On Abortions”

Wednesday’s announcement that Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy would retire effective July 31, 2018 from the U.S. Supreme Court was cataclysmic for liberals; many of whom are desperately in need of intensive inpatient psychotherapy.

Kennedy’s announcement comes at a politically fractured time.

MSNBC’s host of Hardball, Chris Matthews, provided the most belligerent media reaction saying, “I don’t think the Democrats should allow even meetings to occur with Trump’s nominee to fill this vacancy.  If he gets replaced by a hardline social conservative the Democratic leadership will have hell to pay.  They cannot let this happen.  If they don’t use everything they’ve got─if they don’t play hardball─I think they’re through.”

Michael Ian Black, a purported comedian and author of a book on masculinity that Caitlyn Jenner is eminently more qualified to write, tweeted this following Kennedy’s announcement:
Some random feminist hag, claiming in her Twitter bio to be an actor, tweeted her sadz:
And then there’s Dan Rather─the legendary CBS newsman who in 2004 used forgeries to tip a presidential election in favor of the Democrats.  The disgraced newsman took to Facebook to post this screed:

“I know there is a feeling among many progressives that they have lost, that the future is a foregone conclusion.  They see the forces arrayed against them on the battlefield of justice and feel the doom of certain and impending defeat.  But turn to your left and right and see the long lines of fellow citizens.  Look behind you and see the formidable artillery of wealth and power that is on YOUR side.  Take a deep breath and feel the cool air of hope and justice in your lungs and then march forward.”

The division in this country emanates from those who hate America’s people, history, culture and institutions; most especially our Constitution.  Why?  Because it hampers their goal of total control or as The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer notably said, to “fundamentally transform America.”

The Left was cocksure the judicial activism they created─a world in which many of their most lasting achievements were brought about not by congressional votes but by court decisions─would continue unabated.

As Justice Kennedy’s departure and the consequent panic of the Democrats remind us, those who live by the courts, die by the courts.  Their weapon of choice against the forgotten men and women of this country will be their undoing.

Bronx Bolshevik Spouting Lies On Cue

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat the pants off the Bronx/Queens Democratic Machine Joe Crowley on Tuesday, June 26th.

Ocasio-Cortez says her first goal, if elected to the House in November, is to introduce legislation abolishing Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE).

She supports impeaching President Trump. Her radicalized anti-Israel stance became apparent in a tweet blaming Israel for the recent violence in Gaza perpetuated by Hamas: “This is a massacre. I hope my peers have the moral courage to call it such. No state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters. There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else. Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore.”

She also blamed Palestinian deaths on Trump’s decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish state’s capital, Jerusalem.

Along with her tweets, a former New York City Council candidate whose platform was to “defeat the greedy Jewish landlords” both volunteered for her campaign and attended her election-night victory party.

Roughly two hours after a gunman blasted his way into the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis with a shotgun Thursday afternoon killing five people, the Socialist bartender tweeted a wild-ass lie:
It appears our Bronx Bolshevik was just lazy enough to cite information from a crowd-sourced database that, in their own words, define a mass shooting “as a single outburst of violence in which four or more people are shot.  This is not the same as mass murder as defined by the FBI. 

There have been exactly three mass shootings in 2018:  Stoneman-Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, TX and the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis. 

Statista.com
Lying on cue and exploiting the deaths in Annapolis; who saw that coming? She’s gonna do just fine in the Democrat Party.

UPDATE:  We wish to thank one of our readers, Fran, for pointing out a mistake in the number of mass shootings which have occurred in 2018.  We originally reported two incidents inadvertently omitting the incident in Santa Fe, TX in May of 2018.  We deeply regret the error.

Thursday, June 28, 2018

I Was Mercilessly Hacked Today

You may not have noticed, but I was on a vacay for two weeks.  During my absence, co-bloggers Proof and Sig 94 were minding the store for me.

Apparently, a “black hat hacker” took control of my computer and managed to remove a Microsoft™ server and littered my files with garbage.

It took the tech at Microsoft™ an hour-and-a-half to clean everything up and reinstall the deleted server.

I don’t know how it happened.  I had recently contacted my IP provider to convert to a static IP address and update the firmware on my modem.  This attack was merciless.

I am still attempting to change passwords for everything and take the steps necessary to protect my bank account and other financials.

I feel totally disillusioned right now.  I hope you’ll bear with me as I try to settle down emotionally over this vile intrusion into my life.

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

SCOTUS Strikes Down Forced Union Payments


In a 5-4 split,  the US Supreme Court reversed a decades old decision that allowed public sector unions to force employees to contribute union dues.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that government workers can’t be forced to contribute to labor unions that represent them in collective bargaining, dealing a serious financial blow to organized labor. 
The court’s conservative majority scrapped a 41-year-old decision that had allowed states to require that public employees pay some fees to unions that represent them, even if the workers choose not to join. 
The 5-4 decision fulfills a longtime wish of conservatives to get rid of the so-called fair share fees that non-members pay to unions in roughly two dozen states. Organized labor is a key Democratic constituency.
The potential ramifications for this decision are tremendous. Union dues are a stable, reliable source of income for many liberal institutions. Filling this gap will take a concerted, coordinated effort to find ways to rip $$$ from the paychecks of millions of Americans.


  •  The DNC will be forced to seek other ways by which they can force unwilling victims to contribute to their political coffers. A possible strategy includes the unionization of the dead. This is consistent with other DNC efforts as the dead are most likely to vote Democratic.
  • The Teachers Unions may have to actually start considering ways to educate their students rather than fighting merit pay initiatives and attempts to limit tenure for incompetent educators. 
  • Service Employees International Union (SEIU) thugs will be forced to curb beatings as a way of controlling union voting and other forms of union discourse. Lawyers' fees may be limited to only employee rape, embezzlement, theft and fraud arrests. Legal representation for simple and aggravated assault charges may be financially out of bounds for the foreseeable future.

More here.

Monday, June 25, 2018

Oh Canada!

I love Canada, especially Ontario. Used to go up there fishing on my old BMW motorcycle. Saw "Phantom of the Opera" in Toronto at the Pantages Theater. Very nice country and simply wonderful, polite people. Well, except for Montreal...

Problem is, Canada is run by liberal idiots who do not appreciate the overwhelming influence of the economic juggernaut known as the USA. Their soy boy Prime Minister Trudeau and their equally incompetent trade minister Chrystia Freeland are about to ruin the Canadian economy by picking a fight with President Trump over tariffs.

Canada cannot win this fight. Canada will lose bigly.

The following is an informative video on what Trudeau and Co. have biten off.  Professor Ian Lee makes the observation that Canada is a pee wee hockey player challenging a NHL professional.  It will not end well for Canada.


Is it me or does Prof. Ian Lee remind you of actor Tom Wilkinson?

Flowing Curves Of Beauty


Women have a hard time deciding what to eat because the first time Eve did, she doomed humanity.




Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Things To Be Thankful For

Been busy, too busy lately. My shoulder is getting better bit by bit and my energy is increasing.

Hung a door and some drywall, refinished some furniture, cleaned up my workshop, constructed a fireplace mantle and shelving over it for my 1860 Springfield rifle replica. Took a ton of ibuprofen too.

Lots to do with family this Father's Day weekend with birthdays (2 grandsons) and two high school graduations. But time to reflect on being a dad brings me back to some incredible memories. Here's one:


Home to Ft. Bragg after her second deployment to Afghanistan five years ago. I thank God every day that she came home unharmed.

Monday, June 18, 2018

Flowing Curves Of Beauty


These are not that one drunk slightly overweight single girl wandering into the bar at last call.




Thursday, June 14, 2018

A New Addition



Yesterday at 1650 hrs. a new Republican took his first breath.

Victor James, my newest grandchild, weighed in at 6 lbs 12 oz.

Both he and my daughter are doing fine. My SIL has a great job where he can take as much time off as he needs, so he'll be home for 2 weeks to help take care of his 20 month old son and the newbie while mom  is recuperating.

That makes a half dozen grand kids and I still have two daughters who aren't even engaged yet. Come on ladies, I ain't getting any younger.

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

In The News


California authorities arrested a man who was trying to obey the state's bewildering array of gun laws and register his firearms. Obeying laws regulating firearms in California now require the same kind of services as filing your income taxes.
A California man had his home raided, guns seized, and will appear in court this week to face a dozen state felony charges after attempting to register a rifle in accordance with state law 
[...]The issues stem from a new California gun law, one of the strictest in the country, which redefined an "assault weapon" and required anyone with a gun that fell under the new definition to register it with the state. Joe Pilkington, a court-recognized firearms expert, told the news station that California's continually changing gun laws can be very difficult to navigate without professional help.
If California is trying to encourage gun owners to obey the law, this is precisely the way to do it. Not.


Our New BFF?
It doesn't contain everything that we would want, but it doesn't involve anything that we don't want.
President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed what Trump says is a “very important” and “pretty comprehensive” document after their Tuesday summit in Singapore. Trump and Kim refused to immediately tell reporters what the declaration said, saying it would be handed out later.
It's a pretty good start considering that we are still at war with North Korea.

Better Put Some Ice On That Interview
Former President and lip balm specialist William Jefferson Clinton decided to channel his inner Goebbels while speaking with Judy Woodruff on the the PBS Newshour.
The former president has come under fire once again for comments he made during a recent sit-down — this time noting how “norms have changed in terms of what you can do to somebody against their will.”
Fortunately the former President did not demonstrate to Ms. Woodruff how his "norms" have changed since his encounters with Juanita Broaddrick and Paula Jones.


This Raises The Bar For All Dumb Moves
Let's see. You have an incredibly well recognized international brand and you want to increase your consumer base to raise profits. What do you do?
IHOP stands for International House of Pancakes. The chain has been around for 60 years and has used the IHOP acronym since 1973. So what in the name of a Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity is IHOP thinking by changing its name to IHOb?
What does the "b" stand for? Burgers? Baloney? Ballistic missiles?  Sure, eating a lot of pancakes is not considered a healthy diet choice, but eating burgers is? Go to any burger joint and order a cheese burger with ketchup, that will add 455 calories to your waist line. Order their most expensive burger with all the extras you can ever imagine... that's gonna run you about 700 calories. The average chocolate chip pancake prepared in a restaurant is 185 calories. Even if you eat two, you're still better off with the pancakes.


Bring Out Your Dead!
My affection for Monty Python movies aside, I just don't think that the dead fully comprehend the issues needed to vote intelligently in our elections. Sure, this is a very unpopular opinion among Democrats, but the US Supremes also think that disenfranchising the deceased is a good idea.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday revived Ohio's contentious policy of purging infrequent voters from registration rolls in a ruling powered by the five conservative justices and denounced by liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor as an endorsement of the disenfranchisement of minority and low-income Americans. 
In a 5-4 decision in the closely watched voting-rights case, the high court overturned a lower court's ruling that Ohio's policy violated a 1993 federal law enacted to make it easier to register to vote. All four liberal justices dissented, and top Democrats said the decision will boost what they called Republican voter-suppression efforts. But other states may now follow Ohio's lead.
The liberals crow that Hillary won the popular vote in the 2016 Presidential Elections by 3 million. Of course that number includes 5 million dead voters and that's just in the State of Michigan.

Monday, June 11, 2018

Friday, June 8, 2018

Dogs Against Romney

A little over two years ago penultimate RINO “Mittens” Romney launched a scathing attack against then-candidate Donald Trump pleading with Republicans to “stop him at any cost.”

While speaking at the Hinckley Institute of Politics Romney said, “Given the current delegate selection process, that means that I’d vote for Marco Rubio in Florida and for John Kasich in Ohio and for Ted Cruz or whoever has the best chance of beating Mr. Trump in a given state.”

“There’s plenty of evidence that Mr. Trump is a con man, a fake.  Mr. Trump has changed his positions, not just over the years, but over the course of the campaign. This recklessness is recklessness in the extreme.  Donald Trump tells us that he is very, very smart.  I’m afraid that when it comes to foreign policy, he is very, very not smart.”

“Here’s what I know, Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud.  His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.  He’s playing the American public for suckers.”

That seething diatribe was pablum for the legion of Never Trumpers.

On Thursday, the one-time governor and twice-failed presidential candidate while at an invitation-only retreat─the same one he became emotional at two years before telling attendees that “seeing this is breaking my heart for the party”─is now saying the man he so clearly despised would easily win the GOP nomination in 2020 and solidly win a second term.

Talk about a sharp U-turn!

“Mittens” is in the midst of a Republican Senate primary campaign on June 26th against State Rep. Mike Kennedy.  A loss to Kennedy would be an embarrassing stumble tantamount to Granny Clinton’s collapse at the 9/11 Memorial ceremony in 2016.  Who could forget that?

Romney needs to win over Utahn skeptics who question his dedication to the state—he moved there after losing the 2012 presidential race—and some are wary of his criticism of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Remember when he choked during the last presidential debate with The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer?  I know you do.

He had Benghazi, he had Obamacare, he had the billions of dollars wasted on building the Obamacare website.  He was mute. He did nothing. He choked.  That was the quintessential moment he lost a winnable election.

Someone recently described Mitt Romney as a 6’2” oil slick with teeth.  I will always remember the one thing that dogged him [pun intended]:

He strapped a dog carrier to the roof rack of the family station wagon and put his Irish Setter Seamus into the carrier where the dog remained for the 12-hour trip from Boston to Ontario.

The Boston Globe first broke the story in 2007 when it published a seven-piece profile of Romney after he launched his first presidential run. The Seamus incident was contained in a story about his family life with wife, Ann, and their five sons. It was meant to illustrate Romney’s “emotion-free crisis management.”

The dog, which had a penchant for wandering away from the Romneys’ Boston home, ended up retiring to California with Romney’s sister, Jane, who had space for him to roam freely.  He lived to a ripe old age we’re told, no thanks to Mitt’s stunt.

Quote Of The Day

“[Mueller] cast a net on the waters and caught nothing.”

“This enormously complex U.S. intelligence scandal is difficult to follow, even for the media who do so for a living. But the revelations have been adding up. As they do, they create an ever-clearer picture of massive political corruption at the DOJ, FBI and CIA.”

“That is, ‘deep state’ collusion by our three main intelligence agencies, not collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.”

“As much as anyone, former CIA Director John Brennan, an admitted former Communist sympathizer whose questionable past behavior clearly should have disqualified him from a senior intelligence post in the U.S., worked assiduously to undermine the campaign and later the very presidency of Donald Trump.”

“On whose behalf was he doing this? His own? Or someone else's? Was it part of an Obama administration scheme to torpedo any chances that Trump would win the election?”

“Indeed, in recent weeks, the rationale for the Trump investigation — alleged concern about Russia hacking our election — has been shredded.”

“What's left is a major scandal, SpyGate as some call it. It makes Watergate look like a two-bit burglary conducted by political amateurs. Which is what it was.”

“That rumbling you now hear? It's the volcano of political corruption that now is shaking the earth and set to erupt in Washington, DC.”Investors Business Daily Editorial

A Wolfe At The Door

News broke late Thursday evening that a former Democrat staffer on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) is expected to be indicted for making false statements to special agents of the FBI during the course of an investigation into the unlawful disclosure of classified information to reporters.

Wolfe had worked under leadership of both parties since 1987, before abruptly departing the Senate panel at the end of 2017.

Over the past year, as the Committee's Russia inquiry heated up, Wolfe was responsible for escorting high-profile witnesses into the committee's secure spaces (SCIF), including Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

The Justice Department alleges that, as SSCI Director of Security, Wolfe “was entrusted with access to classified SECRET and TOP SECRET information provided by the Executive Branch, including the U.S. Intelligence Community, to the SSCI. In this position, Wolfe was responsible for safeguarding all classified information in the possession of the SSCI.”

Wolfe had a romantic relationship with New York Times reporter Ali Watkins.  Watkins also worked for BuzzFeed and Politico during her three-year-long relationship with Wolfe.

They exchanged tens of thousands of text messages.

According to the indictment, “Despite WOLFE’s statements, WOLFE had, in truth, engaged in extensive contact with multiple reporters, including conveying to at least two reporters information about MALE-1. WOLFE used his personal cell phone, his SSCI-issued electronic mail account and anonymizing messaging applications, including Signal and WhatsApp, to exchange electronic communications with reporters.”

According to the New York Times, Mr. Wolfe’s case led to the first known instance of the Justice Department going after a reporter’s data under President Trump. The seizure suggested that prosecutors under the Trump Administration will continue the aggressive tactics employed under President Barack Obama. [emphasis mine]

The Obama Administration had repeated tangles with journalists such as James Rosen of Fox News, including secretly subpoenaing phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors during a 2012 leak investigation into a story about a bomb plot. 

It appeared that the FBI was investigating how Ms. Watkins learned that Russian spies in 2013 had tried to recruit Carter Page, a former Trump foreign policy adviser. She published an article for BuzzFeed News on April 3, 2017, about the attempted recruitment of Mr. Page in which he confirmed the contacts.

The Washington Times notes, “The Justice Department claims Mr. Wolfe regularly met in secret with two of the reporters the FBI questioned him about as well as other journalists. Those meetings were often held in places unlikely to be discovered by others, including secluded areas of the Hart Senate Office building, restaurants, bars and private residences, prosecutors alleged in the indictment.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr and ranking member, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), said in a joint statement: “While the charges do not appear to include anything related to the mishandling of classified information, the committee takes this matter extremely seriously. We were made aware of the investigation late last year, and have fully cooperated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice since then.”

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Quote Of The Day

“In 2016, his Republican primary opponents didn’t recognize that we are living in an age of bread and circuses, an age Donald Trump didn’t create but into which he inserted his own circus. Curiosity seekers filled the tent and loved the show.”

“The sophisticates in the media thought they could beat Donald Trump at this game by burying him under waves of negative publicity. But he feeds off of it, just as he turned the Philadelphia Eagles’ White House no-show into a display of patriotic music, with the maestro at the center.”

“Now, fantastically, some Democrats are complaining that they can’t get their message out (the tax cut didn’t work, Medicare for all) because Donald Trump has blotted out the media sun. Gee whiz, whose fault is that?”

“The eclipse won’t end. The media has turned the Trump presidency into a phenomenon of constant self-absorption—their self-absorption in this one person. Donald Trump has become the biggest balloon in a political Macy’s parade of modern media’s own creation. They could let go of the ropes. But they won’t.” Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Ronald Reagan, President Trump And The Philadelphia Pigeons

Thirty-four years ago, President Ronald Reagan stood on the very spot on the northern coast of France where Allied soldiers had stormed ashore to liberate Europe from the yoke of Nazi tyranny.

In 1944 free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in Nazi concentration camps and millions more cried out for liberation.

President Reagan asked why these men, who were hardly more than boys with “the deepest joys of life” before them, would “put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk their lives to take those cliffs.”

He noted, “…We know the answer.  It was faith, a belief; it was loyalty and love.”

During yesterday’s “Celebration of America” ceremony which replaced the celebration intended to recognize the Philadelphia Eagles’ Super Bowl victory, President Trump told those assembled on the White House lawn, “I want to take this opportunity to explain why young Americans stand for our National Anthem. Maybe it’s about time that we understood. We stand to honor our military and to honor our country and to remember the fallen heroes who never made it back home. We stand to show our love for our fellow citizens and our magnificent Constitution. We stand to pay tribute to the incredible Americans who came before us and the heroic sacrifices they made. America is a great nation—a community, a family. And America is our home, and we love our home. So, we stand together for freedom. We stand together for patriotism. And we proudly stand for our glorious nation under God.”

The New York Times’ Michael D. Shear wrote, ”President Trump doubled down on his war with the Philadelphia Eagles on Tuesday, hosting a short celebration without the team as his spokeswoman accused the Super Bowl Champions of turning their White House invitation into ‘a political stunt.’”

It was indeed a political stunt.  White Press Secretary Sarah Sanders defended the President’s decision to cancel the Super Bowl celebration declaring, "The Eagles were the ones that tried to change their commitment at the 11th hour and the President frankly thinks that the fans deserve better than that and therefore we changed the ceremony to be a focus on celebrating our great country. Look, if this wasn’t a political stunt by the Eagles’ franchise, then they wouldn’t have planned to attend the event and backed out at the last minute."

The Eagles, according to Sanders, tried to reschedule the event to a time when President Trump would be in Singapore negotiating the vital denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

There is a portion of Ronald Reagan’s speech commemorating the 40th anniversary of D-Day that, to my mind, connects President Trump’s staunch defense of disinviting the Eagles:

“You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought─or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.”

The Eagles were the first to interject politics into this visit.  They abandoned the fans who wanted, just once more, to hail the heroes who outmatched New England and pretty boy Tom Brady to instead demonstrate their loathing of the President.

The Liberty Bell has been a unifying symbol for Americans.  Yesterday, it was silent.
Tyler Tines, a writer for SBNation and whose bio on Twitter says he’s “another black boy from the forgotten blocks of Norf Philly”, posited this screed:

To stand next to a figure like Trump on the South Lawn is to dishonor the very people, the unprivileged and oppressed, that athletes have traded their careers for. 

[SKIP]

The point was to rebuke the protesting athlete’s efforts. The president wanted to unnecessarily gloat and put forth a mandated national thinking after singing to God and having him bless America. He wanted to tout his steady dismissal of the beautiful, black protest that has overtaken this land. Such a flaunt can only be seen as laughable.

[SKIP]

The face of such pomposity deserves a righteous reaction — not commonplace answers. War has been declared here, and our basketball and football stars are being pitted against Americans, and in the middle there is a president, using the best of his policy and political wherewithal to attack their might.

[SKIP]

The understanding must be that this will not end. The presidency will continue its attack on the soul of the black athlete. Trump will always attack black athletes because they pose a threat to his form of white power. To strike back, to scold men he believes to be uppity and selfish, is to reassure his base.

A Little Boy’s Silent Vigil


UPDATE:  Welcome readers of Larwyn’s Linx.  We are grateful to Doug Ross for linking to this post.

Monday, June 4, 2018

Dragnet 2018: Not Your Grandfather’s FBI

The word “dragnet” was made famous in the mid-50s by the NBC TV show Dragnet, which featured Sergeant Joe Friday played by Jack Webb (pictured left).
A dragnet is a law enforcement term used to describe coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects.
As a matter of principle, the law enforcement arm of the United States government must operate on a presumption of innocence.  A prosecutor should be assigned only if there is strong evidence that a crime has been committed.  In the absence of such evidence, a prosecutor should never be assigned to investigate whether an American may have committed some unknown crime.
What former FBI Director James Comey described in his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in March of 2017 and what Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein later adopted to define Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s jurisdiction was not a criminal investigation or a prosecution nor did it provide a factual basis for either action.
The Obama Administration seized on, perhaps even created, the Russian probe in order to paralyze President Trump─to strangle his capacity to govern─and Obama holdovers in the Justice Department, for more than a year now, have been outrageously public about the existence of a “counterintelligence probe” and the Trump campaign investigation.
When Comey leaked his memos to the press, he knew it would instigate the appointment of a special counsel.
The collusion narrative was spawned by an unverifiable dossier bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton─a fact that was deliberately kept secret from the FISA court when the DOJ and FBI wanted warrants issued.
So far, four former Trump campaign associates─Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Richard Gates and George Papadopoulos─have been charged in Mueller’s inquiry into alleged Russian interference, though none of the charges are directly related to any misconduct by the President's campaign.
Alex van der Zwaan, an attorney, pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators during the investigation, and was sentenced to 30 days in prison in April. He was the first to be sentenced in the probe. 
Regarding Papadopoulos, there’s something fishy about the charge filed by Mueller against him according to former top federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy.
“While much that has gone on in the Mueller investigation is curious, I have assumed the candor of the special counsel’s portrayal of the Papadopoulos case:  The young man was approached by an agent of Russia [Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud], who eventually informed him the Kremlin had ‘dirt’ on the Democratic Party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton, in the form of ‘thousands of emails of Clinton’.  To my mind, then, the only questions involved (a) the nature of Mifsud’s relationship to the Putin regime and (b) whether the emails in question were the hacked DNC emails or the thousands of emails Clinton deleted from her homebrew server.”
[SKIP]
“Remember, there is no allegation that Mifsud actually knew the Russians had Clinton emails, let alone that he ever showed Papadopoulos any such emails.  The claim is that Mifsud was told by unidentified Russian officials that the Kremlin had the emails.”
“So, what happens after Mifsud, allegedly, told Papadopoulos the Russians had these emails?  According to Mueller’s statement of the offence, the following day Papadopoulos sends two emails to high-ranking Trump campaign officials about his meeting with Mifsud and neither one of them says anything about emails.  It appears Papadopoulos was myopically focused on the possibility─farfetched, but apparently real to Papadopoulos─that Mifsud could help arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin.”
McCarthy is no hack.  He is a member of the Federalist Society and a former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney in New York, best known for leading the prosecution against the Blind Sheik (Omar Abdel Rahman) and eleven other jihadists for waging a terrorist war against the United States – including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. After the 9/11 attacks, he supervised the U.S. attorney’s command-post near Ground Zero. He later served as an advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
The mainstream media has weaponized the storyline of Papadopoulos’ meeting with Mifsud as the exchange of information about emails that were hacked from the DNC and published during the 2016 presidential campaign.
McCarthy’s take is:  A very low-level, inexperienced Trump campaign adviser was interacting with a Maltese academic who had no real Kremlin ties and no inside information about whether Russia actually possessed damaging information about Clinton in the form of emails or otherwise.  This young campaign adviser then made a vague claim to an Australian diplomat, who did not hear him say anything about emails and did not report the conversation to his government through regular channels.
McCarthy adamantly asserts that after nearly two years of collusion banter, Congress needs to find the truth regarding whether Mueller’s contention that Mifsud and his associates were authentic agents of Russia or merely that Papadopoulos just thought they were.
NBC’s police drama, Dragnet, depicted law enforcement working methodically to investigate and apprehend criminals.  A gumshoe cop named Sergeant Joe Friday always insisted on “Just the facts, ma’am.”
Until just recently, the FBI’s credo of fidelity, bravery and integrity symbolized the world’s greatest law enforcement agency.  Now, the FBI [Comey, McCabe, Ohr, Strzok, Page] has damaged the constitutional values Americans embrace by picking a front-page fight with Donald J. Trump.
Dragnet 2018, what I prefer to call the Mueller probe, is an out of control investigation that was supposed to be about Russia has been more about money laundering in rug stores and porn stars than about the Kremlin’s meddling in the election.
Partisan forces (Obama holdovers) eager to feed the resistance inside the DOJ and FBI freely crusaded against a legitimately elected President and a lopsided team of Democrat lawyers working with Mueller have turned a mole hill into a mountain. Every conceivable angle has been probed; many of them far removed from Red Square.
Even with all the tools of spy craft, they’ve found nothing.  Nothing.
SEE ALSO:  “The Maltese Phantom of Russiagate” by Lee Smith (Real Clear Investigations)
“The Curious Case of Mr. Downer” by Kim Strassel (The Wall Street Journal)