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The Paul Manafort indictment is much ado about nothing . . . except as a vehicle to squeeze Manafort, which is special counsel Robert Mueller’s objective — as we have been arguing for three months (see here, here, and here). Do not be fooled by the “Conspiracy against the United States” heading on Count One (page 23 of the indictment). This case has nothing to do with what Democrats and the media call “the attack on our democracy” (i.e., the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 election, supposedly in “collusion” with the Trump campaign). Essentially, Manafort and his associate, Richard W....

Congressional investigators this week released emails suggesting that staff at the Federal Election Commission have been engaged in their own conservative targeting, with help from the IRS's infamous Lois Lerner. This means more than just an expansion of the probe to the FEC. It's a new link to the Obama team. In May this column noted that the targeting of conservatives started in 2008, when liberals began a coordinated campaign of siccing the federal government on political opponents. The Obama campaign helped pioneer this tactic. In late summer of 2008, Obama lawyer Bob Bauer took issue with ads run against...

[I begin] with the story of a series of Socialist scholars conferences that Barack Obama attended when he lived in New York City between the years 1983 and 1985. And when I finally reconstructed what had gone on at these Socialist conferences that Barack Obama attended, I truly was amazed because what I saw was a kind of map of Barack Obama’s entire subsequent political career. It was at this Socialist conferences in New York in the mid-’80s that Barack Obama encountered the groups, the strategies, and the mentors who would guide him throughout his entire political career. [T]hese Socialist...

Today in United States v. Rod Blagojevich: following up on his 2008 claims that then-Senator Barack Obama was one of a few people who could testify to his innocence, his defense team issued a motion today to subpoena the President to testify in court. Most of the juiciest bits involving Obama’s role in choosing a new Senator are blacked out, or so we thought. It turns a lucky PDF glitch gave us VIP access. Who wouldn’t want to see the blacked out part? Let’s investigate! Most of the non-blacked out portions of the motion are predictably tame general knowledge: the...

In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day. The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site "not to disclose the existence of this request" unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.

German authorities have banned the most influential internet website of Antifa – the country's militant left -- in the wake of violence that occured last month outside the G20 summit in Hamburg. In an unprecedented move against violent left-wing extremism, Germany’s Interior Ministry informed the owners of the left-wing site about the crackdown Friday, the Local reported. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière claimed the website helped incite the violence in Hamburg and warned of “serious consequences” of left-wing radicalism, the New York Times reported. “The prelude to the G-20 summit in Hamburg was not the only time that violent actions...

The feds warned that “a group of malicious cyber actors,” whom security experts believe to be the government-sponsored hacking group known as APT6, “have compromised and stolen sensitive information from various government and commercial networks” since at least 2011, according to an FBI alert obtained by Motherboard. The alert, which is also available online, shows that foreign government hackers are still successfully hacking and stealing data from US government’s servers, their activities going unnoticed for years. This comes months after the US government revealed that a group of hackers, widely believed to be working for the Chinese government, had for...

The case was over the abduction of Dong-Shik, a South Korean who was a permanent resident of the US and had spent seven years providing aid and proselytizing to North Korean defectors. An Israeli NGO announced on Monday that a US federal court in Washington, DC has granted it a historic $330 million default award judgment against North Korea in a civil damages trial for wrongful death, torture and kidnapping. The judgment, only announced Monday, but written on April 9, included $15 million dollars each to the son and brother of Reverend Dong Shik Kim, presumed dead, as well as...

Hatfill's lawyers alleged that the three officials who leaked investigative details to the news media were Roscoe C. Howard Jr., who from 2001 to 2004 served as U.S. attorney for District of Columbia; Daniel S. Seikaly, who served as Howard's criminal division chief; and Edwin Cogswell, who formerly served as a spokesman for the FBI. .... U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ordered the lawyers for the government and for Hatfill to seek "mediation" over the next two months. The prospects of a mediated settlement notwithstanding, Walton said he expected a trial could begin in December. Hatfill's lawyers, Grannis and...

Chad Pergram‏Verified account @ChadPergram 45s46 seconds ago Mayo clinic on McCain says his procedure "revealed that a primary brain tumor known as a glioblastoma was associated with the blood clot." #BREAKING McCain has a brain tumor. Will continue to be out for a while. Reviewing treatment options. Could include chemotherapy

"For those who don’t remember it, Journolist was just a listserv created by Ezra Klein. The list was invitation only and was mostly made up of progressive journalists. In theory, the list was a kind of digital water cooler where like-minded people could talk to others in the field. That may have been all it was much of the time, but when candidate Obama got in trouble in 2008, it also became a place for partisans to discuss a coordinated media strategy." When Kevin Drum (Mother Jones) argued that wasn’t the kind of campaign Obama wanted to run, Ackerman replied,...

Some Seattle-based social justice warrior named Frances S. Lee woke up over the weekend and realized his political ideology is no different than your basic religious cult, complete with sacred texts, religious dogma, church elders and strictures on speech and behavior that must not be violated. Mr. Lee is asking to be excommunicated from this amazingly destructive, anti-American church. Good for him. The trouble is, for every awakened SJW like Mr. Lee, there are a hundred mind-numbed nitwits waiting to take his place. By the way, as you read Mr. Lee’s piece, try substituting the words “Climate Change” every time...

CHOEUNG EK, Cambodia (Reuters) - The chief torturer under the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields" regime wept and prayed on Tuesday as he led the judges who will try him for crimes against humanity around the mass graves for some of its victims. Duch, also known as Kaing Guek Eav, accompanied 80 judges, lawyers and other officials of a U.N.-backed tribunal to the 129 graves, uncovered after a Vietnamese invasion sent the Khmer Rouge back to the jungles in 1979. "I saw Duch kneel in front of the trees where Khmer Rouge soldiers smashed children to death," a policeman told reporters...

Four days after Judge Schnider unsealed the custody records, Ryan dropped out of the race for the horror of (allegedly) propositioning his own wife and then taking “no” for an answer. Alan Keyes stepped in as a last-minute Republican candidate. And that’s how Obama became a U.S. senator. He destroyed both his Democratic primary opponent and his Republican general election opponent with salacious allegations about their personal lives taken from “sealed” court records. Obama’s team delved into Sarah Palin’s marriage and spread rumors of John McCain’s alleged affair in 2008 and they smeared Herman Cain in 2011 with hazy sexual...

Sorry to go so deep on a weekend, but seeing Brennan broadcast in a 22 minute interview is enough to blow the blood pressure cuff: I have never been more certain of something, yet simultaneously never able to prove it, as I am about two events. The first is that Jack Lew and the White House in 2010/2011 coordinated the DOJ attack, with Eric Holder, against political opposition using the IRS. The second event is that journalist Michael Hastings was killed by the dispatch of CIA Director John Brennan. Director John Brennan spent almost his entire formative career inside the CIA and...

.......almost every lawmaker blasted Former Treasury Secy Hank Paulson's $700B bailout as a deception and ultimate bait-and-switch ruse. "It was masterful deceit," said Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), hammering Paulson for his initial pleas to Congress a year ago to buy toxic assets.....that went to prop up banks and financial firms......Paulson's payoff to his Wall Street "pals," said one lawmaker. "You misled Congress," said Rep Stephen Lynch (D-Mass). Paulson, he said, concealed his ultimate motive....to give $700B to his pals.'" "You asked us, and not very tactfully, for a blank check," said Rep Mark Souder (R-Ind). ".......if we had known you...

Watching Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s erratic behavior administering the federal “Troubled Asset Relief Program” (TARP) is a dizzying, if not sickening, proposition for consumers, taxpayers, and investors alike. -- In a press conference last Wednesday, Hank Paulson announced a change in the TARP, saying that the plan would now center around capital injections into banks rather than the purchase of distressed assets (bad mortgages or securities which the market is pricing below a “fair” value), which was the fundamental purpose of the TARP at its creation. -- On October 27, White House Spokesman Dana Perino said, “It's possible that some...

It was springtime in the US.  The most recent unemployment number was 5.0%, a slight tic down from the previous month and in line with the previous 12-month, fairly low, average of 4.8%.  We were in a quarter of positive real economic growth, a 2.8% annual rate, following a previous quarter of positive growth.  On May 19, the S&P 500 hit 1427, the highest point since January 3 and essentially where it ended the previous year. On the foreign front, the surge in Iraq was clearly bearing fruit.  The number of US military deaths in Iraq in May was the...

In the summer of 2008, two months before Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Richard S. Fuld Jr., the firm's chairman, was continuing his desperate efforts to find a lifeline. They had begun in March, shortly after the demise of Bear Stearns, when Mr. Fuld called the legendary investor Warren E. Buffett seeking a capital infusion, to no avail. Lehman had raised money elsewhere, but that didn't help for long, and its condition again was worsening.Adapted from "Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — And Themselves." The book, being published Tuesday by...

Hank Paulson Tipped Off The Goldman-Led "Plunge Protection Team" About Fannie Bankruptcy 7 Weeks In Advance Today, BusinessWeek's Michael Serrill and Jonathan Neumann have released a blockbuster report based on a FOIA response by the Treasury, which proves that in America rules are only for little people, that this country has been a banana republic for years, that Animal Farm was spot on, and gives excruciating detail of how Hank Paulson tipped off a select group of Goldman diaspora hedge fund managers about the eventual failure of Fannie and Freddie 7 weeks ahead of this information becoming public knowledge. The...