Oct. 29, 2019
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
D.C. establishment wants to remove Trump because he is trying to end the endless wars in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere
It is fitting
that the Washington, D.C. establishment wants President Donald Trump removed
from office for considering withholding military assistance to Ukraine, or that
the talk of impeachment intensified as Trump was announcing the U.S. military
withdrawal from Syria, for it was that type of caution in the use of military
force that helped Trump get elected in the first place in 2016. A joint study
from Professor of Political Science Dr. Douglas Kriner of Boston University and
Associate Professor of Law Dr. Francis Shen of University of Minnesota Law
School in 2017 found that in the Civil War, Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq wars,
there was a strong correlation between states that had the highest casualty
rates that tended to vote against the incumbent party in the presidential
election. Maybe that’s why so many in Congress want to get rid of him, because
he is not fighting the wars that they want him to and yet are too scared to
authorize formally via the legislative process provided in Article I, Section 8
of the Constitution.
Cartoon: Leaking
John Brennan has
a problem.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai praised for answering threat from Huawei, ZTE
Americans for Limited
Government President Rick Manning: “Federal Communications Commission Chairman
Ajit Pai has demonstrated once again that he and the Trump administration are
willing to lead the fight in protecting America from China's technological
takeover. The FCC's decision to consider whether to prohibit companies that do
business with Huawei and ZTE from accessing the $8.5 billion Universal Service
Fund is an important step in protecting the United States' technological
infrastructure from Chinese dependency. Chairman Pai is absolutely right to
move forward with this important reform and all of America owes him and the FCC
a debt of gratitude for this forward thinking approach as we face a 5G future.”
Andrew McCarthy: There is no basis for Barr to recuse himself over Ukraine
“Being mentioned
on a phone call is not a basis for recusal. Second, it is commonplace for the
Justice Department to seek assistance from foreign governments in gathering
evidence or providing access to witnesses, in both the investigative and the
trial phases of criminal cases. With respect to Ukraine specifically, the
United States has had a treaty on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters
for nearly 20 years. President Clinton directed that the treaty be signed in
1998 and ratified it in early 2001 with Senate consent. That is, if Attorney
General Barr had explicitly asked President Trump to seek Ukraine’s assistance,
that would have been completely appropriate and routine.”
D.C. establishment wants to remove Trump because he is trying to end the endless wars in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere
By Robert Romano
It is fitting that the Washington, D.C. establishment wants President Donald Trump removed from office for considering withholding military assistance to Ukraine, or that the talk of impeachment intensified as Trump was announcing the U.S. military withdrawal from Syria, for it was that type of caution in the use of military force that helped Trump get elected in the first place in 2016.
A joint study from Professor of Political Science Dr. Douglas Kriner of Boston University and Associate Professor of Law Dr. Francis Shen of University of Minnesota Law School in 2017 found that war takes its toll on voter attitudes towards the incumbent party.
Kriner and Shen noted that in prior studies the Civil War, Korean and Vietnam as well as the Iraq wars, there was a strong correlation between states that had the highest casualty rates that tended to vote against incumbents associated with the war.
And 2016 was no different. The study stated, “we find that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump. Our statistical model suggests that if three states key to Trump’s victory – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House.”
Maybe that’s why so many in Congress want to get rid of him, because he is not fighting the wars that they want him to and yet are too scared to authorize formally via the legislative process provided in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
How much of a difference would have lower casualty rates made in the 2016 outcome? Per the study, “In each state, our analysis predicts that Trump would have lost between 1.4 percent and 1.6 percent of the vote if the state had suffered a lower casualty rate… such margins would have easily flipped all three states into the Democratic column. Trump’s ability to connect with voters in communities exhausted by more than fifteen years of war may have been critically important to his narrow electoral victory.”
It could happen again in 2020. Former Americans for Limited Government and current Market Research Foundation President Bill Wilson, commenting on a Sept. 5-6 Yougov study, noted that President Trump’s support among females almost doubled when coupled with statements praising presidential assistant Jason Greenblatt on his work seeking peace between Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Wilson added that Trump’s 2020 re-election “may in fact hinge on deepening his non-interventionist policies, fighting the warmonger neo-cons and bringing our troops home.”
In fact, this has been a clear pattern since President Trump began running for president in 2015. When he adopted the Michael Flynn position on cooperating with Russia on counterterrorism issues to kill Islamic State, the national security apparatus has been out to get him.
President Trump’s non-interventionist stance in the election fueled paranoid and false suspicions by intelligence agencies and the Justice Department that Trump and his campaign were Russia agents, leading to a nearly three-year long investigation into nothing, which was ultimately debunked by none other than Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Mueller in his report found “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” and “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference.”
Ironically, just as the U.S. was pulling out of Syria, one of the greatest strikes against Islamic State occurred as U.S. special forces were eliminating the founder of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Critics like Saturday Night Live aired an ill-timed, ill-considered skit blasting President Donald Trump for withdrawing U.S. military forces from Syria and “bringing jobs” and territory back to Islamic State.
This proved the U.S. could exercise force in the region when necessary to go after a specific target even though it was moving forces out of northern Syria along the Turkish border.
Another unfortunate was that by leaving Syria, the Kurds would be slaughtered by Turkey. Instead, the U.S. was able to almost immediately broker a ceasefire between Turkey and the Kurds, with Syria and Russia’s cooperation to contain any potential conflict including reemergence of Islamic State.
As for Ukraine, President Trump has been supportive of Ukrainian efforts to broker a peace settlement with Russia to end the five-year civil war that has cost more than 13,000 lives. The civil war there began after the U.S. supported the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 to get a trade deal between Ukraine and the EU ratified, and Russia annexed Crimea and the breakaway provinces in eastern Ukraine.
Now, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says that the key to peace is to engage in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling for a renewal of the Minsk Accords. Zelensky has even called for elections in the Donbass region once the status of military forces is settled.
But if the swamp in D.C. had its way, President Trump would be thrown out of office, and maybe Zelensky, too, so that the war policies in Syria and Ukraine could continue. That makes 2020 a choice election again: between President Trump who wants to keep the U.S. out of war, and the war party in Washington that wants make certain they never end.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
Cartoon: Cleanup on aisle deep state
By A.F. Branco
Click here for a higher level resolution version.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai praised for answering threat from Huawei, ZTE
Oct. 28, 2019, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's decision to hold a vote on whether to block use of the $8.5 billion Universal Service Fund from being used by companies to do business with Huawei and ZTE:
“Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has demonstrated once again that he and the Trump administration are willing to lead the fight in protecting America from China's technological takeover. The FCC's decision to consider whether to prohibit companies that do business with Huawei and ZTE from accessing the $8.5 billion Universal Service Fund is an important step in protecting the United States' technological infrastructure from Chinese dependency. Chairman Pai is absolutely right to move forward with this important reform and all of America owes him and the FCC a debt of gratitude for this forward thinking approach as we face a 5G future.”
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2019/10/fcc-chairman-ajit-pai-praised-for-answering-threat-from-huawei-zte/
ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured column from the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, there is no legal basis for Attorney General William Barr to recuse himself on matters related to Ukraine as he investigates foreign intelligence involvement in the false 2016 Russiagate conspiracy theory that was President Donald Trump and his campaign were Russian agents:
There is no basis for Barr to recuse himself over Ukraine
By Andrew C. McCarthy
Here’s a question: If Dianne Feinstein didn’t recuse herself from the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, why should anyone ever be recused from anything?
Senator Feinstein is in the news, making the characteristically hyperpartisan and frivolous claim (on Twitter) that Attorney General Bill Barr should “recuse himself from matters related to Ukraine because of concerns about his role in President Trump’s efforts to damage a political opponent and undermine the Russia investigation.”
Feinstein says she is speaking for Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, all of whom have signed a letter to the AG.
There is no basis for Barr to recuse himself.
First, before we ever get to the law, the Democrats’ claim is factually vacant. The AG has no role in President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. Barr did not ask the president to intercede with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for the purpose of seeking assistance with the ongoing Durham probe of the Russia investigation. Despite the president’s reference to Barr in the July 25 Zelensky phone call, Barr did not communicate with Trump about Ukraine before the call. Barr did not follow up with the Ukrainians, nor did he discuss Ukraine with the president or the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Being mentioned on a phone call is not a basis for recusal.
Second, it is commonplace for the Justice Department to seek assistance from foreign governments in gathering evidence or providing access to witnesses, in both the investigative and the trial phases of criminal cases. With respect to Ukraine specifically, the United States has had a treaty on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters for nearly 20 years. President Clinton directed that the treaty be signed in 1998 and ratified it in early 2001 with Senate consent.
That is, if Attorney General Barr had explicitly asked President Trump to seek Ukraine’s assistance, that would have been completely appropriate and routine.
In point of fact, the AG made no such request. Had he done so, though, he would have been properly functioning as attorney general in a Justice Department investigation. There would not be a scintilla of basis for recusal even if Barr had had the “role” that Feinstein wrongly claims he had.
Third, we come to Feinstein’s claim about Barr’s role in the president’s purported effort to “undermine the Russia investigation.” This brings us back to what I warned about three weeks ago. The Democrats have been laying the groundwork for the argument that they pounded away at this weekend: The Barr/Durham investigation is not a legitimate Justice Department investigation; it is a political initiative of the Trump 2020 campaign. It’s not true, but that’s their story and they’re sticking to it.
You have to admire the Democrats’ chutzpah. Consider: They know full well that the GOP-controlled Senate is not going to remove the president from power if the Democratic-controlled House impeaches him. And they are still so worried about being punished by voters for overplaying their hand that they won’t take an accountable vote to have the House as an institution — the institution constitutionally vested with impeachment power — conduct the “impeachment inquiry” that the Democrats are pursuing. Their impeachment gambit, with its secret hearings and strategic leaks, is blatantly political. Yet even as they engage in precisely the political abuse of impeachment power that the Framers feared, they loudly claim it is the Justice Department that is abusively politicizing its powers.
The best defense is a good offense, but they shouldn’t get away with it.
We do not know to what extent, if any, Ukraine factors into the Barr/Durham investigation. As I recount in Ball of Collusion, there is public reporting that the Obama administration used its considerable influence over Ukraine — which included financial aid that Kyiv desperately needed — to affect Ukraine’s law-enforcement investigations. This reportedly included pushing Ukrainian investigators and prosecutors to investigate Paul Manafort, who was affiliated with the Trump campaign for several months (four of them as its chairman). It is sheer speculation, however, that this alleged episode forms any part of the Justice Department’s look at the origins of the Russia investigation.
Even if we assume that it does, though, Ukraine still provides no basis for the attorney general to recuse himself. This is not a Jeff Sessions situation. Barr’s predecessor, AG Sessions, recused himself from the Russia investigation (which became the Mueller investigation) because it presented a fact pattern in which Sessions had been an active participant: The FBI and DOJ were conducting a counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign’s purported “collusion” with Russia, under circumstances in which Sessions had been a top delegate of the Trump campaign and had had contacts with Russian officials.
Ukraine is nothing like that. Again, we do not know if the reported Ukrainian activities are part of Durham’s probe, but Barr was not a government official in 2016. He had no part in the Obama administration’s dealings with Ukrainian officials. Moreover, as outlined above, he also had no role in President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine; but even if he had had such a role, the Trump–Zelensky negotiations are not the focus of the Justice Department’s probe of the Russia investigation’s origins.
Of course, if Congress, in its oversight capacity or even if it seeks to impeach the president, decides to explore the Trump administration’s dealings with Ukraine, it is undeniably within Congress’s power to do so. Nevertheless, the fact that Congress chooses to examine the executive branch’s activities is not a basis for the relevant executive-branch officials to be disqualified.
Senator Feinstein’s claim, on behalf of Judiciary Committee Democrats, that Attorney General Barr should recuse himself is nonsense, both factually and legally. He should ignore it.
