Rand Paul

Brennan Leaked Top Secret Info That Blew A US Operation

Published by Papa Giorgio

John Brennan Leaked Top Secret Information That Blew A US Operation To Help Friends Make Money — Rand Paul

More from RED STATE:

…Paul has written an op-ed at Breitbart (here’s the link) explaining why he thinks Brennan is a unique danger.

Clear evidence concerning the bias of multiple, high-ranking current and former intelligence community officials should make us think twice about letting retired intelligence officials keep access to classified information, especially if they become talking heads on television after leaving public service.

There is a great danger that vital, secret details may be revealed on television, even inadvertently.

John Brennan is no stranger to this problem.

Paul is referring to this incident.

White House efforts to soft-pedal the danger from a new “underwear bomb” plot emanating from Yemen may have inadvertently broken the news they needed most to contain.

[….]

And the operation that had placed a source inside terrorist headquarters in Yemen was shut down.

Disclosure of a highly classified intelligence operation in Yemen last year compromised an exceedingly rare and valuable espionage achievement: an informant who had earned the trust of hardened terrorists, according to U.S. officials.

The operation received new scrutiny this week after the Justice Department disclosed it had obtained telephone records for calls to and from more than 20 lines belonging to The Associated Press and its journalists in April and May 2012 in a high-level investigation of the alleged leak of classified information.

The informant, a British citizen born in Saudi Arabia, had been recruited by British intelligence to operate as a double agent within the group al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the most dangerous franchises of the al-Qaida terrorist network.

His access led to the U.S. drone strike that killed a senior al-Qaida leader, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed Quso, on May 6, 2012. U.S. officials say Quso helped direct the terrorist attack that killed 17 sailors aboard the U.S. guided-missile destroyer Cole in a Yemeni harbor in October 2000.

The informant also convinced members of the Yemeni group that he wanted to blow up a U.S. passenger jet on the anniversary of the U.S. attack that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. They outfitted him with the latest version of an underwear bomb designed to pass metal detectors and other airport safeguards, officials say.

The informant left Yemen and delivered the device to his handlers, and it ultimately went to the FBI’s laboratory in Quantico, Va.

Intelligence officials hoped to send him back to Yemen to help track more bomb makers and planners, but the leak made that impossible, and sent al-Qaida scrambling to cover its tracks, officials said.

Now we get to the punchline:

On Wednesday, FBI director Robert Mueller, appearing before the Senate Judiciary committee, promised the bureau would “investigate thoroughly.”

Everyone knew who leaked. And, as punishment, Brennan was made Director of the CIA.

This perfectly illustrates that pulling these clearances and most other clearances of former officials is vital…..

FBI and CIA Leaders Seem To Want Larger Government

Published by Papa Giorgio

Let me just say that the Founders would probably have preferred State agencies over an over-arching Federal one like the FBI. Comey seems to like the people now that will allow carte-blanche to what the regular agents call the “Seventh Floor.”

PAJAMAS MEDIA comments on Comey’s Tweet (emphasis added):

Former FBI Director James Comey — a lifelong Republican — urged Americans to vote for Democrats this November, echoing other #NeverTrump Republicans in abandoning conservatism just to flout the president. Ironically, his reasoning fits better for supporting Republicans than Democrats.

“The Republican Congress has proven incapable of fulfilling the Founders’ design that ‘Ambition must … counteract ambition,'” Comey tweeted. “All who believe in this country’s values must vote for Democrats this fall.”

Comey tweeted this at a time when not only progressivism (the ideology that encourages a bureaucratic state unaccountable to the people)  but outright socialism (a supercharged big government version of that ideology) holds sway in the Democratic Party.

If Comey were truly interested in “ambition counteracting ambition,” he would encourage years of more effective Republican rule, because only Republicans have shown the spine to begin dismantling the unaccountable bureaucracies that represent the greatest threat to the founders’ vision.

On Monday, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals sent a CHILLING BLOW to the unaccountable bureaucracy. That court struck down one alphabet soup agency — the FHFA — as unconstitutional because it violated the separation of powers. The FHFA is an administrative agency, but it was not accountable to the head of the administration, the president of the United States. The 5th Circuit defended the Constitution and restored sanity to the operation of government.

Similarly, President Donald Trump has been slashing regulations and ordering his administration to PARE BACK the excesses of the administrative state. Furthermore, on the very day Comey told Republicans to vote Democrat, Republicans in the House of Representatives passed the JOBS and Investor Confidence Act of 2018, a law that would VASTLY BENEFIT ENTREPRENEURS.

When James Madison wrote that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition” in Federalist 51, he was not addressing the different parties in Congress — the founders firmly opposed modern parties, what they would call “factions.” Instead, he was addressing the separation of powers between the Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court.

“Faction” has dominated American politics for nearly 200 years — with only a few respites. The separation of powers, however, has fallen on hard times. The current bureaucratic administrative state consists of dozens of alphabet soup agencies that effectively make laws, with very little oversight from Congress and rather tepid oversight from the president.

If the costs of federal regulation flowed down to U.S. households, they would cost the average American family $14,809 IN A HIDDEN REGULATORY TAX — that’s $14,809 on top of Social Security, income tax, and estate tax.

Furthermore, the administrative state fosters the perverse situation of a “deep state.” There are so many bureaucratic agencies that it takes a long time for a new president to replace the directors the previous president put in place. For this reason, there can be a large cabal of bureaucrats appointed by the last president (in this case Obama) who are hostile to the policies of the current president (in this case Trump).

[….]

If James Comey really wanted to return to the founders’ vision of ambition counteracting ambition, he would support Tea Party and conservative Republicans. These leaders would actually restore the Constitutional checks and balances, reining in the administrative state.

Instead, Comey turned traitor not just to the Republican Party but to the Constitution itself, supporting Democrats who are embracing socialism and even less separation of powers. Make no mistake: Comey’s “higher loyalty” is not to the Constitution.

/// READ IT ALL ///

Rand Paul On Donald Trump’s “Sh**Hole” Comments

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Dr. Paul looks good after being attacked by a crazed Leftist that broke six of his ribs.)

BREITBART has more:

Sen. David Purdue (R-GA), who was at the meeting, told ABC News’ This Week with George Stephanopoulos that Durbin’s account of events was a “gross misrepresentation,” adding that it was “not the first time we’ve had a gross misrepresentation by that individual.”

Purdue elaborated:

  • The gross misrepresentation was that language was used in there that was not used, and also that the tone of that meeting was not contributory and not constructive. In 2013, Senator Durbin also made the same accusation against a Republican leader in a meeting with President Obama, and said that he chewed out the president, and was so disrepsectful to President Obama we couldn’t even have the meeting. That’s what he said in 2013. Later that day, the president’s own press secretary came out and said, and I quote: “It did not happen.” This is about a gross misrepresentation. It’s not the first time.

“I Can’t See Myself Supporting Anyone But Trump” | Rand Paul

Published by Papa Giorgio

Rand Paul dodges on if a 2020 primary would be good for GOP: ‘I can’t see myself supporting anyone but’ Trump

….“I think no one can stop primaries from happening, and there could well be a primary that happens. Before you get to that, you need to know, is President Trump running for re-election,” Paul said. “You won’t know that until you get into the second, third year of his presidency. At this point, I can’t see myself supporting anyone but President Trump BECAUSE I THINK HE’S GIVEN US THE MOST CONSERVATIVE CABINET WE’VE SEEN SINCE REAGAN.”

“WE’VE REPEALED REGULATIONS FOR THE FIRST TIME. GAVE US A GREAT SUPREME COURT JUSTICE AND I’M HOPING HE GIVES US A COUPLE MORE IF WE HAVE RETIREMENTS. I see the glass as half full. Doesn’t mean I agree with him on everything. There will be people that if we can end the Afghan war, that’s who I would support. I don’t think that’s going to be an alternative to president trump. I like to accentuate the positive, and I would support him.”……

(WASHINGTON EXAMINER)

The Best is the Enemy of the Better (Repealing Obamacare)

Published by Papa Giorgio

 ~I want Full Repeal, NO replacement, free markets! ~

The above is a statement from a FB friend… and is the main thrust of this post.

Dennis Prager quickly mentions a Kimberly Strassel article via the WALL STREET JOURNAL. in this short clip Prager also prefaces Trump’s horrible statement about McCain’s being captured with what McCain said about half of America. And principle is thrown to the wayside in people like this not voting to repeal in part Obama-care.

Here is the article:

…What do Rand Paul, Susan Collins and John McCain have in common? Very little.

The press corps is busy quizzing the president, the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader on their plans for tax reform. The question is why they aren’t chasing after the three people who actually hold all the power.

If the past eight months have proved anything, it is that all the 24/7 news coverage of Donald Trump’s antics, all the millions of words devoted to Paul Ryan’s and Mitch McConnell’s plans, have been a complete waste of space and time. In the end, control of the entire policy agenda in Washington comes down to three senators. Three senators whom most Americans have never had a chance to vote for or against. Three senators who comprise 8% of their party conference. Arizona’s John McCain, Maine’s Susan Collins and Kentucky’s Rand Paul. Forget Caesar, Crassus and Pompey. Meet the Never-Trump Triumvirate.

At least the House Freedom Caucus scuttles GOP legislation based on shared principles. Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have also led revolts against bills, again based on shared criticisms. But what do the Arizona maverick, the Maine moderate and the Kentucky libertarian have in common? Very little.

Well, very little save motivations that go beyond policy. And that is the crucial point that is missing from the endless analyses of the McCain-Collins-Paul defections on health care. The media has treated the trio’s excuses for killing their party’s top priority as legit, despite the obvious holes in their objections over policy and process. What in fact binds the three is their crafting of identities based primarily on opposition to their party or Mr. Trump. This matters, because it bodes very ill for tax reform in the Senate. Overcoming policy objections is one thing. Overcoming egos is another.

Mr. McCain, who is gravely ill with brain cancer, has decided his final legacy will be a return to the contrarian “straight talk” persona of old, which wins him liberal media plaudits. The Arizonan has never gotten over losing the presidency, and it clearly irks him that Mr. Trump succeeded where he failed. His personal disdain for the president is obvious, and his implausible excuses for opposing the Graham-Cassidy health-care reform are proof that this is personal.

Ms. Collins is reportedly days awa y from deciding whether she’ll ditch the Senate gig and run for governor. That potential campaign has guided her every move for at least a year now—perhaps her entire career—and was clearly among her reasons last summer to abandon her party’s nominee and publicly excoriate Mr. Trump. It is a basic precept in Washington that Sen. Collins votes in whatever way best serves Sen. Collins. Right now that means being Never Trump.

Mr. Paul worked hard during his first Senate campaign to reassure Kentuckians that he was not his father, and it turns out that’s very true. Because even Ron Paul was to be found with his party’s House majority on issues that truly mattered, and largely saved his defections for the lost causes that produced 434-1 votes. Sen. Paul’s standards for “conservative” policy are as varying as the wind, and lately they blow toward whatever position can earn him the title of purest man in Washington.

The press was fixated this week on Mr. McConnell’s bad week, which is an easy piece to write. But it ignores the obvious reality that the Triumvirate seems to have never had any intention of letting its party succeed. After all, a senator who intended to stand firm on “regular order,” as Mr. McCain said, would have informed his colleagues of that demand at the beginning, rather than allow his colleagues to set up for another vote and then dramatically tank it (again) at the last minute. A senator who voted for “skinny” ObamaCare repeal in the summer on the grounds that anything was “better than no repeal,” in the words of Mr. Paul, would not suddenly engineer an unreachable set of demands for his vote on an even better repeal.

The Senate has no lack of lime-lighters. Nor is it low on Trump critics. Think Nebraska’s Ben Sasse and Arizona’s Jeff Flake. The difference is that the clear majority of the critics aren’t allowing ambition or disdain get in the way of votes for better policy.

But this raises the question of whether the White House understands that the Triumvirate is also the prize on tax reform. Mr. Trump took a shot at Mr. McConnell this week, but the president needs to shift his focus to those who hold the actual power. Those dinner invites to Chuck and Nancy would be better reserved for Ms. Collins. Its internal conversations need to focus on what forms of flattery or policy or misery might appeal to the political motivations of Messrs. McCain and Paul, and get them on side.

Because the Triumvirate made very clear during the health-care debate how it operates. Pretending it won’t do it again is to ignore reality.

I had one gent tell me that all the repeals (or bills changing Obama-care) were keeping up to 90% of the bill. But what was proffered would have killed the rest of the ACA. Here is a helpful visual of what the Republicans proposed:

I found this end to an article at THE FEDERALIST helpful… the part about “incrementalism.” Something the right doesn’t get:

….Donald Trump, who promised throughout his campaign to overturn Obamacare, could immediately put a deadline on the unconstitutional subsidy payments that the Obama administration concocted to keep the bill from imploding. Yes, liberals will continue to claim that conservatives are “sabotaging” the law, but there is no moral, policy, or political reason for the GOP to continue the illegal pay-off of insurance companies.  No matter how many welfare dollars Congress ends up pouring into fabricated markets or how much price-fixing they engage in, the “exchanges” are unsustainable. Why would conservatives want to take ownership of those failures?

As the Senate stands now, it’s improbable that Republicans will ever be able to cobble together a bill that will placate both the Susan Collins-John McCain wing and the Mike Lee-Rand Paul wing — in fact, I doubt Collins would vote for a single-payer bill if too many Republicans supported it. Even with more conservatives, I’m highly skeptical that repeal will ever pass. Yet it is not out of the question that help is on the way. Perhaps the GOP’s positioning on health-care reform will lead to midterm disaster. But we’ve heard this one before — sometimes right before a GOP wave election. Fact is, the 2018 Senate map is still not favorable to Dems.

Liberals like to argue that allowing Obamacare to fail would bring a single-payer closer to reality. Well, it is just as likely that prolonging Obamacare’s lifespan would help single-payer, as the next Democratic administration will surely continue to expand the reach of the law. (Unlike the GOP, Democrats don’t shy away from incrementalism.) If Republicans truly believe Obamacare has harmed America, there is no upside in fake bipartisanship. Not for the GOP. And not for the America people.

Dinosaur Syndrome: Big Hearts, Small Brains

Published by Papa Giorgio

Senator Rand Paul gives a passionate speech about how congress should send money to Hurricane Harvey survivors but shouldn’t increase the debt to pay for it. Paul makes the case that the US should stop sending money to foreign countries before we pay for our problems. Paul believes Congress continually votes with their hearts and not their heads.

Is There “Mass Incarceration” of Blacks?

Published by Papa Giorgio

Video Description:

IS THERE Mass Incarceration?! Michael Medved reads from a scholar on the issue, Barry Latzer, who wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal entitled, “The Myth of Mass Incarceration” (http://tinyurl.com/jkvm5pr). In the article we find some damning statistic… at least damning to the left, and some from the right.

People like Marissa Jenae Johnson, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, who recently said that saying “all lives matter” is a racial slur (http://tinyurl.com/jt9cffz), and Bernie Sander’s and Hillary Clinton are the one’s using this misinformation to get votes.

There are 4-calls that I included as well:

☎ The 1st call is a challenge of sorts to the stats ~ 13:52
➤ A Fox News break comparing Democrats and Republicans scale of freedom ~ 17:18
☎ The 2nd call is about legalizing all drugs (the straight libertarian argument) ~ 19:18
☎ The 3rd call is about prescription drugs and marijuana ~ 23:03
☎ The 4th call is just from a crazy person using a non-sequitur ~ 25:00

For more clear thinking like this from Michael Medved… I invite you to visit: http://www.michaelmedved.com/

Here is a portion of the Latzer article via the Wall Street Journal:

It has become a boogeyman in public discourse: “mass incarceration.” Both left and right, from Hillary Clinton to Rand Paul, agree that it must be ended. But a close examination of the data shows that U.S. imprisonment has been driven largely by violent crime—and thus significantly reducing incarceration may be impossible.

Less than one-half of 1% of the U.S. population is incarcerated, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), so “mass” is a bit of hyperbole. The proportion of African-Americans in prison, 1.2%, is high compared with whites (0.25%), but not in absolute terms.

There’s a lot of historical amnesia about the cause of prison expansion, a mistaken sense that it was all about drugs or race and had very little to do with serious crime. This ignores the facts. Between 1960 and 1990, the rate of violent crime in the U.S. surged by over 350%, according to FBI data, the biggest sustained buildup in the country’s history.

One major reason was that as crime rose the criminal-justice system caved. Prison commitments fell, as did time served per conviction. For every 1,000 arrests for serious crimes in 1970, 170 defendants went to prison, compared with 261 defendants five years earlier. Murderers released in 1960 had served a median 4.3 years, which wasn’t long to begin with. By 1970 that figure had dropped to 3.5 years.

Unquestionably, in the last decades of the 20th century more defendants than ever were sentenced to prison. But this was a direct result of changes in policy to cope with the escalation in violent crime. In the 1980s, after well over a decade of soaring crime, state incarceration rates jumped 107%.

When crime began to drop in the mid-1990s, so did the rise in incarceration rates. From 2000 to 2010, they increased a negligible 0.65%, and since 2005 they have been declining steadily, except for a slight uptick in 2013. The estimated 1.5 million prisoners at year-end 2014 is the smallest total prison population in the U.S. since 2005.

Those who talk of “mass incarceration” often blame the stiff drug sentences enacted during the crack-cocaine era, the late 1980s and early ’90s. But what pushed up incarceration rates, beginning in the mid-1970s, was primarily violent crime, not drug offenses.

The percentage of state prisoners in for drug violations peaked at only 22% in 1990. Further, drug convictions “explain only about 20% of prison growth since 1980,” according to a 2012 article by Fordham law professor John Pfaff, published in the Harvard Journal on Legislation….

(read it all)

Nadal Hasan = “Workplace Violence,” Supporters of Bundy Ranch…

Published by Papa Giorgio

Gay Patriot Slam-Dunks This!

  1. Nadal Hasan murders 14 people at Fort Hood While screaming “Allahu Akbar!” Not a terrorist.
  2. American citizens come together and, without firing a shot, protect a Nevada rancher from Federal Agencies who assaulted his family, killed his cattle, and destroyed his equipment. These are the people Democrats consider “domestic terrorists.”

I am reasonably confident King George III considered George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson to be “domestic terrorists,” too.

UPDATE (from Jeff): V makes a great point, one that bears repeating and that GP has before documented with links (e.g., here and here).

…read more…

Moonbattery makes the great point that:

…In stark contrast stand the righteous upholders of law and order, who repeatedly tasered Bundy’s son, threw his sister to the ground, shot his bulls, chased cattle with helicopters, tore up his fences, pointed sniper rifles at American citizens, trampled a sacred turtle burrow, et cetera.

Yet again Reid proves himself to be completely out of step with his constituents, whom he denounces rather than even pretending to represent. It doesn’t matter. As a Founding Father of oligarchical collectivism said, “The people who count the votes decide everything.” Guess who counts the votes in Nevada?

Update your Newspeak dictionaries. The word terrorist has now been redefined to mean “anyone who frustrates our rulers.” This is an improvement, because back when it meant “someone who has committed an act of terror,” the term was offensive to our government’s Muslim allies….

…read more…

(BACK TO THE TOP!) This is a Constitutional Crisis ~ George Will and the `Rule of Law` (Civics 101)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Sen. Rand Paul opines on what others (Democrats and Republicans) are saying… the President acted unconstitutionally, against his oath to uphold that same document.

While Will was speaking about Obamacare and the fixes the President want to make “ad-hoc,” this applies to other areas, such as the Defense of Marriage Act, and the like. Take note Bob Woodward really had no response to George Will.

Via Gateway Pundit:

Democrat Representative, Nick Rahall from West Virginia, had this to say about the Obama “fix” on CBS. “I’m not sure he had the legal underpinning for what he did.”

Here is an older Prager audio where he was reading an article about the “Imperial Presidency”