Wednesday, May 13, 2020



Obama Laments DOJ Dropping Flynn Case, Trump Hits 'Obamagate'

The Justice Department dropped its case against Gen. Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security advisor, after documents revealed an FBI plot to entrap Flynn. That came amid increasing evidence from the recently released House testimony on the fake Russian dossier and Democrat claims of Russian election interference in 2016. Flynn was set up in order to take down Trump. In his testimony before the House, Barack Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, acknowledged: “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting [or] conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.”

Predictably, Obama decided to weigh in. Obama blasted the DOJ’s decision, claiming, “There is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.” Obama is concerned about Rule of Law? Please. Besides, Flynn wasn’t charged with perjury. He was charged with lying to the FBI. (Somebody get Bill Clinton on the phone to explain perjury charges.)

On Sunday, Trump pointedly hit back at his predecessor by dubbing the recent FBI revelations as simply “OBAMAGATE!” Trump justifiably called the investigation into his campaign and the subsequent attempt to bring down his presidency “the biggest political crime in American history, by far!” He noted that Obama “used his last weeks in office to target incoming officials and sabotage the new administration.”

Indeed, these latest revelations make abundantly clear that the true threat to Rule of Law can be traced directly back to Obama. Specifically, it was the actions taken by members of his Justice Department, who smeared Trump’s 2016 campaign with the Russia-collusion hoax and then undermined his presidency after his surprise election victory.

In order to keep their nefarious plot covered up, Obama’s DOJ deep-state cabal needed to “get Flynn fired.” As Andrew McCarthy explains, “I think the best way to look at this is what the FBI and the Obama Administration wanted to do here was really audacious if you think about it in terms of the idea of trying to continue an investigation after a new president has come into power and is in a position to shut down the investigation — when the president ultimately is the target of the investigation.”

McCarthy further notes: “I think what happened specifically with General Flynn is that while the president brought in a lot of people into his original administration who had various types of expertise, he was kind of short on people with a lot of national security and foreign relations background. General Flynn was an exception. He had been the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, he knew how the FBI worked in conjunction with the intelligence community and it is inconceivable to me, if you wanted to continue an investigation of the president during the president’s administration, that they could have pulled that off with a sophisticated intelligence actor being the national security advisor and being loyal to the president.”

McCarthy also observes, “[Flynn] would necessarily have found out that they had investigated the Trump campaign. He would’ve found out, for example, that they were in the FISA court conducting surveillance on Trump campaign advisors. And he would’ve been able to figure out pretty easily that President Trump was the ultimate quarry that they had in connection with the investigation.”

As the most “scandal free” administration in U.S. history is being exposed for having instigated and orchestrated a political scandal that makes Watergate look like child’s play, a clearly worried Obama is doing his best spin job. As the paper trail of the insidious plot by Obama and members of his DOJ to undermine Trump’s presidency is being uncovered, Obama feigned concern about Rule of Law. It’s as disingenuous as the whole Russia-collusion hoax, but count on the Leftmedia dutifully running the propaganda.

SOURCE 





A Hairdresser Shall Lead Them

“I have much respect for this court and laws. I have never been in this position before and it’s not someplace that I want to be. But I have to disagree with you, sir, when you say that I’m selfish, because feeding my kids is not selfish. I have hair stylists that are going hungry because they’d rather feed their kids. So sir, if you think the law is more important than kids getting fed, then please go ahead with your decision, but I am not going to shut the salon.” —Dallas hairdresser Shelley Luther’s response to Judge Eric V. Moyé of the 14th Civil District Court of Dallas. Moyé subsequently sentenced Luther to seven days in jail and fined her $7,000.

Every crisis has a seminal moment. Henry’s speech galvanized Virginians and convinced them to provide troops for the American Revolution. Luther, who represents millions of decent Americans wanting to stand on their own two feet and provide for their children, has seemingly galvanized the nation in a similar manner.

Henry’s speech was far longer than most Americans know. But it addressed the very same elitist contempt and heavy-handedness to which Luther was subjected. “Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none,” Henry warned. “They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging.”

As modern day Americans have been witnessing, the Democrat/Media Complex and its bureaucratic allies are using the current pandemic as the means to bind and rivet the nation to a similar group of arrogant elitists, who’ve unilaterally decided the Constitution can be suspended when they deem it necessary to do so.

Judge Moyé is one such elitist. In his imperiousness, he gave Shelly a chance to avoid jail — if she apologized. “If you would like to take this opportunity now to acknowledge: that your actions were selfish, putting your own interests ahead of those in the community in which you live,” Moyé lectured, “this court will consider the payment of a fine in lieu of the incarceration that you have demonstrated that you have so clearly earned.”

Moyé himself has earned a reputation as a racial arsonist. In 2007, he circulated a letter written by A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., chief judge emeritus of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. It described Higginbotham’s take on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, which Higginbotham himself illuminated during a 1994 lecture at the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. “I can only think of one Supreme Court justice during this century who was worse than Justice Clarence Thomas: James McReynolds, a white supremacist who referred to blacks as ‘niggers,’” he stated.

As for elitism, the same New York Times article described Moyé as a man “with a weakness for Cuban cigars and the finest steaks.”

And why not? Moyé earns $158,000 per year. Thus, he remains well paid — and currently employed.

Luther? Not so much. “We were shut down March 22, so it had been several weeks that the government was kind of telling us the [small business] money was coming,” she told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “The Dallas County Judge, Clay Jenkins, kept pushing back the date of when we would open weeks out in advance, before we would hear any new comings of what was going on with masks or whatever. When he finally pushed it back a final time I just woke up one day and I said, ‘I have to open, my stylists are calling me, they’re not making their mortgage.’”

Angry Americans woke up as well. As of this writing, the Shelley Luther Fund at the Go Fund Me website has raised a whopping $500,085, and Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick reportedly paid Luther’s $7,000 fine. Moreover, last Wednesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton put Moyé’s decision in the proper perspective, stating, “I find it outrageous and out of touch that during this national pandemic, a judge, in a county that actually released hardened criminals for fear of contracting COVID-19, would jail a mother for operating her hair salon in an attempt to put food on her family’s table.”

Dallas has indeed begun releasing more than 1,000 inmates from the county jail, including those with serious felonies. Unfortunately, it’s hardly alone in that regard. Thousands more inmates, and more violent offenders, have been released throughout the nation.

Remarkably, no one has asked a simple question: Why are lockdowns bad for convicts, but good for law-abiding citizens?

Moreover, why are law-abiding citizens being treated like convicts? Several protesters opposing draconian shutdown orders have been arrested.

“We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament,” Henry stated. “Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne!”

All throughout the nation, America’s equally arrogant Ruling Class, every one of whom remain largely immune to the consequences of their utterly capricious decisions, have demonstrated ample amounts of similarly elitist contempt for their fellow Americans. Americans trapped in an unemployment pandemic every bit as bad — if not worse — than the viral one.

Such realities apparently resonated with both Gov. Greg Abbott and the Supreme Court of Texas. Last Wednesday, Abbot amended his executive order. “I am eliminating jail for violating an order, retroactive to April 2, superseding local orders,” Abbott stated. “Criminals shouldn’t be released to prevent COVID-19 just to put business owners in their place.” A day later, the Court ordered Shelly’s release.

“If we wish to be free,” Henry stated, “if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending — if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained — we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!”

Two hundred and forty five years later, nothing has changed. Americans must once again fight to defend our Liberty. There is no nobler struggle than that. Kudos to Shelly Luther for reminding us.

SOURCE 




Case Pitting Job Anti-Bias Laws vs. Religious Freedom Set for Supreme Court

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday in a pair of consolidated cases, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru and St. James School v. Biel, that will examine the so-called ministerial exception.

That’s a legal doctrine that protects freedom of religion by exempting religious institutions from the application of anti-discrimination laws to employees who carry out important religious functions.

In this case, the court will decide whether it will be Catholic schools or judges and bureaucrats who determine whether teachers are adhering to Catholic doctrine in their duties, including teaching religion class to young children.

The case was supposed to be heard in April, but was rescheduled to May 11, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be heard via teleconference.

Here’s what happened in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru:

Our Lady is a Catholic school that provides education to young people steeped in Catholicism, its faith and traditions. In 2015, the school decided not to renew Agnes Deirdre Morrissey-Berru’s contract as a teacher.

School officials at Our Lady didn’t think Morrissey-Berru had been teaching in accordance with the Catholic traditions the school upholds. Morrissey-Berru sued and claimed the school was discriminatory.

The issue in St. James School v. Biel is nearly identical, and the Supreme Court will hear both arguments at the same time, in the interest of time and the cases’ similarities.

At the heart of these cases will undoubtedly be a zealous discussion of what defines the “religious duties” of a teacher and the scope of a religious employer’s “ministerial exception” from anti-discrimination laws.

The Supreme Court will likely inquire about the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling. That court sided with Morrissey-Berru’s discrimination lawsuit and said that although she had some “religious duties,” they were not “religious enough to warrant First Amendment protections” under the ministerial exception legal doctrine. Expect a lengthy discussion about this concept during oral arguments.

This isn’t the first time this issue has been before the court.

In 2012, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, establishing that religious organizations do have a First Amendment right to select their own religious ministers, teachers, or employees, without government interference.

It was the first case to apply the ministerial exception doctrine and, given that the justices are hearing a similar case on May 11, it’s clear that some of the issues have yet to be resolved.

As a Daily Signal article reported on the case back in 2012, the earlier case was a “major win for religious freedom” because the “Court clarified that the protections of the ministerial exception are not limited to cases where a religious group fires a minister only for a religious reason,” among other things.

However, as a Federalist Society commentary summarized it in 2019:

Hosanna-Tabor understandably did not answer all questions about how the doctrine operates.

Some of those questions are important. Such as how to determine what a religious ministry is, who a religious minister is, what types of government interference are impermissible, and how a substantive right grounded in both Religion Clauses should operate at a procedural level.

To give concrete examples: does a Jewish day school count as a ministry, even if it has an equal opportunity policy that forbids religious discrimination in employment, receives government funding, and accepts non-Jewish students?

Is the principal of a Catholic elementary school a minister, even if she has neither formal religious training, nor an explicitly religious title?

Employees of religious institutions should have legal recourse if they face unconstitutional violations of their rights. But the ministerial exception is critical to preserving the freedom of religious institutions to determine how their own doctrines are applied by their own employees when carrying out an important religious function.

That’s something that courts and bureaucrats do not have the competence to do.

The ministerial exception does not negate all claims against a religious employer. It creates an exception that protects employers of religious institutions from getting sued every time an employee decides he or she isn’t going to act in accordance with religious doctrines, gets fired, and wants to retaliate.

Given that the First Amendment’s Free Exercise and Establishment clauses should prevent government officials from meddling in the way religious organizations hire employees to carry out religious functions—or fire them when they don’t—this is an important case, and the distinctions they discover will aid future cases of a similar nature.

SOURCE 






Keeping middle seats empty for social distancing is not feasible, the airline industry argues

Of all the safety steps airlines are taking to lure travellers back onto their planes in the coronvirus era, the empty middle seat is the most alluring.

What passenger in an aisle or window seat hasn't wished or even prayed that the person heading down the aisle is not bound for the unoccupied seat next to them?

Qantas, Virgin Australia and many other carriers are granting that wish in the name of social distancing by blocking middle seat assignments and/or not filling planes to capacity to assure passengers it's safe to fly.

But passengers shouldn't get too giddy about the extra space, experts and some airline executives say, because it won't last forever.

"It's a lovely soundbite," said John Grant, senior aviation analyst with aviation analytics firm OAG. "It's just not practical."

He says the social distancing measures will be temporary, lasting perhaps through the Thanksgiving travel booking season.

It all comes down to money. Airlines make money when they fill a certain percentage of seats, and leaving middle seats empty means they'll have to charge more for the remaining seats.

The figure for low-cost carriers including Southwest and JetBlue, according to OAG: 52 per cent more per passenger on average.

The International Air Transport Association, which has come out strongly against permanent social distancing on planes because it says the risk of virus transmission is low and the new mask requirements will provide more passenger protection, says average fares would jump 43 per cent to 54 per cent around the world depending on the region.

In North America, filling just two-thirds of the plane by keeping middle seats empty would boost the average ticket price by 43 per cent, from $202 to $289, based on 2019 figures, IATA says. Airlines in the region need to fill three-fourths of their seats to break even, the group says.

Most travelers won't be willing to pay the price, critics and skeptics of permanent social distancing say. Leisure travelers, the passengers the industry expects to return first when travel demand comes back, are notoriously price sensitive and lured by cheap fares.

SOURCE  

******************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

************************************


No comments: