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Agustn Fuentes

Agustn Fuentes, the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Chair in Anthropology, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nations oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers.

He is among more than 250 members of the 240th AAAS class, which includes singer-songwriter Joan Baez, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and filmmaker Richard Linklater.

A prominent figure in the field of anthropology and a National Geographic explorer, Fuentes research interests include the roles of creativity and imagination in human evolution, multispecies anthropology, evolutionary theory, and the structures of race and racism.

Since its founding during the American Revolution by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock, and other scholar-patriots, the academy has elected leading thinkers and doers from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th.

Fuentes joins 27 other AAAS fellows from Notre Dame, 25 of whom are also affiliated with the College of Arts and Letters. Recent elections include Declan Kiberd, the Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies; Dianne Pinderhuges, chair of the Department of Africana Studies and a professor in the Department of Political Science; Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.; R. Scott Appleby, the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs; and Robert Audi, the John A. OBrien Professor of Philosophy.

Fuentes books include Why We Believe, which examines how religion became an essential aspect of human evolution; The Creative Spark, which argues that creativity and collaboration are the most important explanations for why humans are the way they are; Evolution of Human Behavior, which focuses on how and why humans evolved behaviorally; and Health, Risk, and Adversity, which provides a comparative approach to the analysis of health disparities and human adaptability and examines the pathways that lead to unequal health outcomes.

Fuentes was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011 and has served as chair of the associations anthropology section committee. He is a fellow of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, Institute for Latino Studies, the Kroc Institute for Peace Studies, and the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values.

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Notre Dame anthropologist elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences // College of Arts and Letters // University of Notre Dame - ND Newswire

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Why is there so much hatred for President Trump, hatred that started before he was even inaugurated? Was it because he beat Hillary Clinton or because of his many promises to build a border wall, bring back jobs from China, cancel the Iran nuclear pact, drain the swamp and stop American from becoming a socialist nation? Wasnt it President Obama who, five days before his own inauguration, said that we were five days from fundamentally transforming America? How many knew what that meant? Was Mr. Trump perceived as a threat to this transformation?

A sham dossier paid for by the Democratic National Committee was used to obtain warrants to spy on Mr. Trumps aides. A trap was laid for Gen. Michael Flynn, the appointed national security adviser, to get him to lie about talking to the Russian ambassador. We are slowly discovering that top Obama appointees, such as Eric Holder, Susan Rice and James Comey, were involved in the attempt to smear Flynn. How could all this go on without the knowledge and approval of the then president, Obama?

We can no longer trust the top leadership of the FBI. We are witnessing a breakdown in the role of Congress, which has become so polarized as to destroy any semblance of bipartisanship and doing what is right for America. Freedom of the press seems limited to saying negative things about the president. The mainstream media ignores the triumphs of this administration. The damage of all this to American democracy should not be underestimated.

WARREN MANISON

Potomac, Md.

Original post:
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: 'Transformation' at all costs - Washington Times

After working for President Obama for six years, Attorney General Eric Holder returned to the law firm where he had previously worked, Covington, where he became a partner in 2015.

Covington notes that In 2014, Time magazine named Mr. Holder to its list of 100 Most Influential People, noting that he had worked tirelessly to ensure equal justice. But this tells only a small part of Holders story as AG.

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Many, including the Heritage Foundation in 2014, identified how corrupt Holder was as AG [emphasis added]:

the American people recognize that Mr. Holder is an ideologue who considers himself part of Mr. Obamas political team first and the attorney general a very distant second. His first loyalty has been to helping the president break, bend, ignore or fail to enforce the law, doing untold damage to our constitutional system and the rule of law.

As former Justice Department prosecutor Andy McCarthy has said, the Justice Department under Mr. Holder has become a sort of full-employment program for progressive activists, race-obsessed bean counters and lawyers who volunteered their services during the Bush years to help al Qaeda operatives file lawsuits against the United States.

There is no way to know how long it will take to repair the damage that Mr. Holder has done to the management and operation of the Justice Department. One thing we do know for sure it will take a great deal of work by a new attorney general who is willing to take on the activists that Mr. Holder will leave embedded within the career civil service ranks of the department. And it will take political willpower and steadfastness of a kind that is rarely seen in Washington.

Through his numerous actions as Obamas AG, Mr. Holder proved that he was not concerned with law and the constitution, he was concerned with power.

General Michael Flynn obtained attorneys from Covington to represent him in the filing of a FARA form in December of 2016, shortly after the 2016 election. A few months later, General Flynns life was turned upside down and he hired Covington to represent him in charges being leveled by the Mueller gang. Eventually, the Covington lawyers working for the General coerced him to sign a guilty plea on charges he did not believe he was guilty of performing.

After millions in legal fees, and untold negative stories in the MSM, General Flynn obtained new lawyers and yesterday General Mike Flynn broke his silence after the government finally released Brady documents showing he committed no crimes.

In a tweet, the General released his response to the court where he declared that he no longer agreed to a guilty plea in his case:

Flynn Declaration@sidneypowell1@molmccann@BarbaraRedgate @JosephJFlynn1 @flynn_neill @GoJackFlynn @76LibertyWatch @lofly727 @FieldofFight https://t.co/lZYjp6NIov

General Flynn (@GenFlynn) April 25, 2020

In General Flynns tweet, he shared a number of devastating points where it becomes clear that his attorneys at Covington, in spite of taking millions in legal fees, were not working in the Generals best interest.

In one of the first meetings with Covington, Flynns lawyers asked if he had any dirt on President Trump:

Covington attorneys never explained to the General that there were any problems with his FARA filings which Flynn initially hired Covington to address. Covington lawyers said that they were willing to represent the General in any upcoming legal issues and he agreed:

Then over the 2017 Thanksgiving holiday, after months in the news, Covington attorneys called the General to tell him that the Mueller Special Counsel was planning on bringing charges against the General, and advised him that if he did not plead guilty, that he would be indicted on multiple counts and his son would be indicted as well. Covingtons lawyers told him that he could be looking at 15 years in prison and he could receive the Manafort treatment [where he would likely be abused in solitary confinement]:

Still at at this time, General Flynn did not believe that he had lied to FBI agents in January 2017.

A few days later, General Flynn was advised by his Covington attorneys that if he did not plead guilty, he would be indicted the next day. His attorneys also told him and his wife that the FBI Agents stood by what their statements were after their interview with General Flynn in the White House in early 2017:

General Flynn says that he would not have pleaded guilty if his Covington lawyers had told him that the FBI agents believed he was telling the truth in their interview and at no time did his Covington lawyers tell him this was the statement of the FBI agents:

Every time General Flynn said that he didnt lie after making his original plea, his Covington attorneys told him to stick with his plea:

You can read the 12-page declaration here:

Flynn Declaration by Techno Fog on Scribd

There have been numerous reports in the news of late, since General Flynn obtained former US Attorney Sidney Powell to represent him, that his Covington lawyers had numerous conflicts of interest in his case.

Not only this, but Powell tweets that the Mueller gang had a secret deal with Flynns Covington attorneys that was not shared with General Flynn:

In addition to the numerous conflicts, we reported in January 2020 that the DOJs Trisha Anderson went to work for Covington while they represented General Flynn. To this day we have no evidence that Covington notified General Flynn about hiring one of the individuals at the DOJ involved in the Russia collusion sham.

Covington had numerous conflicts of interest related to their biggest case ever, representing General Michael Flynn in his unjust indictment by the Mueller gang. His attorneys withheld evidence from their client. They asked for dirt on President Trump. They hired individuals that were involved in the criminal Spygate scandal.

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EXCLUSIVE: Was Obama's Former AG Eric Holder Directing ...

Enormous pressure is being mounted by Democrats to use the current COVID-19 crisis as an excuse to transform how we vote in elections.

Democrats are famous for wanting to transform the way this nation does things.

Eric Holder, a former attorney general in the Obama administration recently put it this way to Time magazine: Coronavirus gives us an opportunity to revamp our electoral system These are changes that we should make permanent because it will enhance our democracy. (He should have put it our democratocracy).

The ideas Holder and others are proposing include requiring that a mail-in ballot should automatically be sent to every voter. This will allow people to both register and then vote in time for Election Day. In this they see a wonderful opportunity to dispense with the current system and afford every citizen: lost, moved, dead or alive to vote from the comfort of their home. Heck, we can even have tax payers foot the bill for the postage. Perhaps youre wondering about the dead part, if not the other categories. Well it turns out Los Angeles County (population 10 million) has a registration rate of 112 percent of its adult citizen population. Add to this that its estimated that about one out of every five L.A. County registrations belongs to a voter who has moved, or who is deceased or otherwise ineligible to vote.

And lets finally give those hard working and ever dedicated door-to-door campaign workers an even greater reason to do so. Then they can just hit up those mailboxes overflowing with blank ballots directed to scores of different people who just happen to have the same address as the elderly person in the neighborhood who cant quite make it down that long driveway to their box in time most mornings. Why this technique even has a name. Its called ballot harvesting whereby political operatives go door-to-door collecting these ballots and then deliver them to election officials. Ah, election integrity something every democrat is suddenly interested in.

Finally, a way too of getting out the vote of those folks who are just too lazy to get to the polls, and then stand in line for ungodly amounts of time (for lack of voting machines) to now use (wait for it) paper ballots! Oh, and only if they are allowed to go in the first place given current shelter-in-place orders, some of which have a new restriction date thanks to our beloved governor (4 June) that actually exceeds the official polling date (2 June) as do several remaining PA counties. Good ol Gavin Newsoms got the ball rolling. He just signed his executive order requiring that every registered California voter, including those listed as inactive be mailed a ballot by this November. If you cant win with ideas you can certainly give fraud a chance.

Remember, never let a good crisis go to waste. Saul Alinsky would be proud of you, Governors. Lets keep em locked down and more likely locked out all to help realize Eric Holders dream: to enhance our democracy!

John Doherty

Telford

Original post:
Letter to editor: Dems want to use pandemic to change election rules - Montgomery Newspapers

A security camera in front of the full moon outside the Forbidden City in Beijing, China, January 31, 2018. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

After witnessing how easily the surveillance state can be weaponized for political purposes, one could have expected conservatives to rethink their perfunctory support for the states largely unchecked spying powers. If FBI agents will fabricate evidence against the opposition party during a presidential campaign, and use that evidence to attain warrants from an obliging FISA court, what do they imagine a motivated official could do to an average American?

Most Republicans, and a majority of Democrats, dont care.

On Thursday, many of the same GOPers whove been railing against FISA abuses that ensnared the Trump officials voted to reauthorize parts of the law that make such abuses possible. As is the case with nearly every extension of The Patriot Act this, the ludicrous USA Freedom Reauthorization Act; because laws that strip Americans of liberties tend to be given names that attempt to convince us otherwise they did so without any genuine debate about the efficacy of the law.

The legislation includes a new requirement for the attorney general to sign off on any FISA applications dealing with elected officials and federal candidates. The court exists to check the power of the executive branch and uphold constitutional protections. Its highly doubtful that someone like Eric Holder, who used the Espionage Act to spy on journalists, would feel greatly inhibited by this kind of directive.

An amendment written by Mike Lee and Patrick Leahy also increases the role of outside legal experts to weigh in on FISA court hearings. That sounds like a positive development. On the other hand, the Senate shot down an amendment that would have prohibited law enforcement from collecting your browser search history without any warrant. That sounds authoritarian.

Its worth noting that the handful of Democrats voted against the bill have spent the past four years propagating the Russia Collusion conspiracy, while never once mentioning that the unchecked FISA power they supposedly oppose made the entire fiasco possible. All of these senators also support bestowing other government agencies like the IRS with unlimited power to look at your personal financial records and political and charitable donations.

There is bipartisan consensus in Washington that you dont have any privacy.

The FISA bill now goes back to the House. Trumphas reportedly said he wouldnt sign any extension without a substantive reforms to the FISA process, at least according to Rand Paul. But since Bill Barr has lobbied for passage, a veto seems unlikely.

Go here to read the rest:
On Spying, Washington Is United in Hypocrisy - National Review