On Wednesday, January 2, 2019 at 9:46:12 PM UTC, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, January 2, 2019 at 1:08:28 PM UTC-8, wrote:
On Tuesday, January 1, 2019 at 6:23:18 PM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
On Tuesday, January 1, 2019 at 5:01:16 PM UTC, jbeattie wrote:
On Tuesday, January 1, 2019 at 7:55:57 AM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
Jay Beattie says: " This is what the government would have proved at trial."

Really? Surely you mean "This is what the government CLAIMS it would have proved at trial." The Mueller team of Democrat donors first bankrupted General Flynn and then threatened to go after his son if he didn't roll over. There's a very large difference between extorting a confession from someone by threats to his family, and proving whatever he confesses to under duress in a contested case in court. Surely they taught you that much at college? If not, you should ask for your tuition to be returned.

This "Russia Dossier -- Mueller Special Counsel Investigation" will go down in history as the most corrupt series of incidents in all of American history.

Top-posting is a federal offense.

Kiss my ass.

Happy new year Andre!

Since I don't live in PDX, I wish you a year in which you can put up your hourly rate to a thousand dollars.

Things slow down at the pulp (fiction) mill?

Nah. The press got taken over by one of the Big Three, precisely for the literary quality of its writers, and everyone got well to several factors of capital gains, which attracts a lower tax rate, as I'm sure you keep telling your clients from Big Oil.

I know how disappointing it can be to actually look at a transcript where an intelligent, high level official represented by the greatest (over-priced) legal talent in the United States cops a plea in open court -- after ten minutes of admonitions and specifically states under oath that the plea is voluntary and not coerced. Recall that the plea was to lying and not the underlying (possible) Logan Act violation or other federal law violations. We'll learn about that later when the Mueller report is issued. Flynn lied, got caught and got prosecuted. It's pretty simple. He'll get probation or maybe a suntan opportunity at Club Fed. BTW, all criminal investigations are coercive, and when you lie and get caught, you're just throwing gasoline on the fire. Nixon and Clinton proved that point.

-- Jay Beattie.

Oh, I read that when it first became available via NR's Andy McCarthy, I think. I'm a sucker for reading deceptively nuanced prose. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I wasn't disappointed at all. It reads to me, as I expected, like a wholelotta "intelligent, high level officials" -- what was it that judge said again, ah, yes --"composing". And certainly what they're composing isn't music.

Funny thing: the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn first said he hadn't lied. It was Mueller, who wasn't in the room, who decided that after all he was lying, and disappeared the agents' original reports, and wiped their phones, for which one hopes he will be held to account. Funny thing, that sequence, but only if your sense of justice is blunted. (Well, or if you're a lawyer who doesn't believe in the concept of exculpatory evidence.)

AJ
Who will watch the watchers?

While Lyndon Johnson was in the Oval office he was so well thought of as of his honesty that the 89th Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act. Funny how it has been the strong point in showing the people in this country what Democrats really are.


FOIA was authored by a Democrat, John Moss, from CALIFORNIA 3rd District. It revised provision that had been in the APA since 1946, and Moss had worked for 12 years to get it through congress. It passed through the 89th congress -- through a house and senate both controlled by Democrats. It was signed by a Democratic president. How much more Democratic can you make a piece of legislation.

Interestingly, President Ford opposed amendments in 1974 that form the back-bone of the current FOIA. His veto was overridden by congress:

Following the Watergate scandal, President Gerald R. Ford wanted to sign FOIA-strengthening amendments in the Privacy Act of 1974, but White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld and deputy Dick Cheney were concerned about leaks. Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Antonin Scalia advised the bill was unconstitutional and even telephoned the CIA asking them to lobby a particular White House staffer. President Ford was persuaded to veto the bill on October 17, 1974, according to documents declassified in 2004. However, on November 21, the lame-duck Congress overrode President Ford's veto, giving the United States the core Freedom of Information Act still in effect today, with judicial review of executive secrecy claims..

Scalia remained highly critical of the 1974 amendments, writing years later that "It is the Taj Mahal of the Doctrine of Unanticipated Consequences, the Sistine Chapel of Cost-Benefit Analysis Ignored." Scalia particularly disliked the availability of judicial review, decrying that if "an agency denies a freedom of information request, shazam!—the full force of the Third Branch of the government is summoned to the wronged party's assistance."

-- Jay Beattie.

See, even Democrats used to do the right thing. Pity they don't any more.

Andre Jute
The truth shall set ye free -- John F Kennedy, opening the Langley HQ of the CIA, quoting the New Testament