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Recently, there appeared in our finest newspapers The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal a spate of news stories that set official Washingtons mind at ease. As The Washington Post, put it, The Justice Departments internal watchdog (that would be Inspector General Michael Horowitz) is expected to find in a forthcoming report that political bias did not taint top officials running the FBI investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016. Nonetheless, the report will be criticizing the bureau for systemic failures in its handling of surveillance applications, according to two U.S. officials.

We shall have to wait until Dec. 9 to hear from Horowitz as to what those systemic failures were. Do these early reports on his work forecast a whitewash? It would appear so. But can anyone really take seriously that those systemic failures took place in the absence of bias? Such a claim requires a great deal of contortion. And the spate of stories last week suggests the form that contortion will take: Blame will fall not on Peter We Will Stop Him Strzok the virulent hater of President Trump who orchestrated the spying on the Trump campaign but on a low-level lawyer named Kevin Clinesmith. We are led to believe by these stories that while Clinesmith was biased against Trump Trumps victory had devastated him, he wrote in an email that bias never tainted his work or infected any of his colleagues. Many of whom, incidentally, are on record as sharing his bias. He was, you see, simply sloppy, or so the report is purported to say.

I read these happy, trouble-free news stories very carefully, and one thing struck me.Nowhere in any of the stories did anyone bother to ask the question: What precisely triggered the need for this investigation of the investigators?It did not start in a vacuum. Was it not largely precipitated by the discovery of the FBIs pervasive use of the Hillary-financed Steele dossier, upon which the Strzoks of this world relied for spying on Trump officials, all of whom turned out not to be Russian agents, as the FBI alleged?

Naturally, these stories skirt that issue. If Horowitz skirts that issue, too, his report will not amount to much, and we will have to look to Justice Department prosecutor John Durham for real answers. In April, Attorney General William Barr said, I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. It has not ceased to be a big deal, even if Horowitz breezes over it.

What real grounds did the Obama administration have for its spying? That has never been satisfactorily explained. Consider the irony here. During the impeachment hearing, we have heard Democrat after Democrat intone gravely that nothing is more abusive than a president seeking to get foreigners to spy on a political rival. Yet is that not exactly what Obama did in letting the John Brennans and Peter Strzoks loose to spy on the Trump campaign with the help of foreign intelligence bodies, such as MI6? If it was wrong for Trump to try to get our ally Ukraine to investigate the Joe and Hunter Biden, as the Democrats assert, how can they possibly justify the Obama administrations use of foreign intelligence bodies to spy on Trump?

Now, what youre going to see, I predict, will be perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of our country, said the president of the coming revelations from Durham. Let us hope he is right. Spygate dwarfs Watergate in seriousness. After all, the Obama administration was not caught in a third-rate burglary but in a high-level scheme to weaponize both domestic and foreign intelligence instruments against a political opponent. For over two years, I have been predicting the Justice Department would find evidence of FBI and CIA agents working together to spy on Trump operatives. The Durham investigation will bear this out. The media, of course, will try to pit Horowitz against Durham. Do not fall for it.

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is a syndicated columnist.

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Waiting for shoe to drop on Obamas use of spying - Boston Herald

Robert Hirsch of Miramar Beach takes issue with a previous letter to the editor about President Trump and the great things he has done, and points out President Obama actually deserves credit for those things.

The writer of All credit goes to Trump asked some questions and tried to make some points to which I would like to respond.

First, he tries to make the case that my investments are better since Trump became president. In 2008, right after Obama was elected and the stock market was in the toilet, I figured Obama would pull us out of the Bush recession and now was the time to invest. I was correct and my 2008 investments doubled. In fact, the markets continued rise is a credit to Obama, and, under Trump, the market has slowed and a new recession, according to economists, is just around the corner.

As for the Trump tax break, it is one big scam on the middle class. The tax law did away with exemptions, property tax deductions, and other deductions which help middle income families. To make it seem like such good thing, they lowered withholding, so workers initially received a bigger paycheck only to discover, come tax time, they had to pay it back. Sure, the standard deduction was increased but that will go down every year until 2015 when it will reach the 2017 level. The writer is probably retired and has a household of two so the loss of the exemption didnt hurt him like it would a young family with five in the household. Keep giving to charity, writer, because the middle class families may need the help in the next few years.

Now, in his opinion Democrats are not only anti-Israel but clearly anti-Semitic. On what does he base such an outlandish charge? Most American Jews are actually Democrats. Did he forget that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is being indicted for corruption? Trumps rhetoric has emboldened the racist and ant-Semites, and attacks on synagogues, mosques, and black churches has reached a level not seen since the 1950s. Not to mention the separation of Hispanic children from their parents and their being confined to virtual concentration camps. How can anyone in their right mind defend such a man?

History will show that President Trumps corruption and other crimes far surpass anything the writer could imagine.

Robert Hirsch, Miramar Beach

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Trump reaping credit due Obama - The Northwest Florida Daily News

From George Washingtons first in 1789 to President Trumps in 2018, Thanksgiving proclamations have been declared by U.S. presidents 164 times. Theyve been proclaimed during times of want as well as times of plenty, during financial crisis as well as economic prosperity, and in times of both war, peace, malaise, and hope. Yet by 2017, this tradition was at risk of disregarding its original purpose until reclaimed by President Trump.

Presidential Thanksgiving proclamations have always kept God at the center. A change occurred, however, with the first Thanksgiving proclamation from Barack Obama in 2009 God was only mentioned once while quoting Washington. From 2010 to 2015, God received only a few passing references. Obama stressed the cultural contributions of Native Americans, typically concluding by asking Americans to be thankful, not to God, but to each other.

In Obamas Thanksgiving proclamation in 2016, God was absent entirely. Obamas changes went against the sentiment of almost all Thanksgiving proclamations that had come before him.

In 1798 and again in 1799, John Adams issued proclamations calling for days of Fasting and Humiliation. After a 15 year gap, James Madison issued a Thanksgiving proclamation in 1814, followed by another in 1815 which marked an end to the War of 1812 and offered acknowledgments to Almighty God for His great goodness manifested in restoring to them the blessing of peace.

After Madison, no president until Abraham Lincoln issued a Thanksgiving proclamation. When, on Oct. 3, 1863, Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday to be held on the last Thursday in November, the proclamation became a presidential tradition. Despite the Civil War, two World Wars, wars in Korea, Vietnam, and throughout the Middle East, an unbroken line of presidential proclamations have reminded Americans to give thanks.

Whats remarkable about the proclamations is their consistency. Americans are called to meet in their accustomed houses of worship, to rest from work, and most importantly to offer prayers of gratitude to God. Andrew Johnson intoned, Resting and refraining from secular labors on that day, let us reverently and devoutly give thanks to our Heavenly Father for the mercies and blessings with which He has crowned the now closing year.

Ulysses S. Grant reminded the nation, It becomes a people thus favored to make acknowledgment to the Supreme Author from whom such blessings flow of their gratitude and their dependence, to render praise and thanksgiving for the same, and devoutly to implore a continuance of God's mercies.

Grover Cleveland was the first president to use his Thanksgiving proclamation to encourage Americans to reunite with forgotten friends and seldom-seen relatives, writing, let there also be on the day thus set apart a reunion of families, sanctified and chastened by tender memories and associations; and let the social intercourse of friends, with pleasant reminiscence, renew the ties of affection and strengthen the bonds of kindly feeling.

Being the son of a Presbyterian minister, and known for his virtuous character, Clevelands Thanksgiving proclamations are especially good. His 1886 proclamation is the first to explicitly call on Americans to remember their private duty to the poor with cheerful gifts and alms.

Beginning with his heartfelt proclamation given less than three months after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, Theodore Roosevelts proclamations were dependably powerful, reverent, and imbued with a sense of duty and purpose. Roosevelts 1908 proclamation should be read by every American.

Woodrow Wilson began a trend of progressive Democrats infusing Thanksgiving proclamations with politics. After spending 1916 promising to keep the United States neutral in World War I, Wilson utilized his Thanksgiving proclamation in 1917 to endear Americans to the war cause. Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his 1933 proclamation to advocate for workers rights, and his 1934 proclamation to promote social justice. Following FDRs lead, Lyndon Johnson pushed the war on poverty in his 1964 proclamation.

Yet in 1944, FDR gave one of the most explicitly Christian Thanksgiving proclamations ever. After thanking our Heavenly Father for the success of D-Day and the start of Europes liberation from tyranny, FDR suggested Americans engage in daily readings of Holy Scripture from Thanksgiving to Christmas to renew the nations understanding of eternal truths.

Gratitude for Heavens Grace on the United States goes back to Washingtons proclamations, where he wrote of signal favors, Providence, and Gods Divine beneficence in protecting and preserving the nation. Indeed, regular affirmations of Providence continued in the modern proclamations of presidents Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush.

With his first opportunity, President Trump returned the Thanksgiving proclamation to its religious origins, imploring Americans to seek God's protection, guidance, and wisdom and recognizing The Almighty as the root of our blessings once more. The presidents 2018 proclamation continued this trend, declaring the nations strong faith in God remains a beacon of hope to all Americans.

And that is certainly something we all give thanks for.

Joshua Lawson is a graduate student at the Van Andel School of Statesmanship at Hillsdale College, pursuing a masters degree in American politics and political philosophy. His work has appeared in the Washington Examiner and The Federalist.

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Trump restored references to God in presidential Thanksgiving proclamations after Obama abandoned them - Washington Examiner

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Last week toward the end of the week, there appeared in our finest newspapers The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal a spate of news stories that set official Washingtons mind at ease.

As one of the great gazettes put it, The Justice Departments internal watchdog [that would be Inspector General Michael Horowitz] is expected to find in a forthcoming report that political bias did not taint top officials running the FBI investigation into possible coordination between Russian and the Trump campaign in 2016 .

Nonetheless, the report will be criticizing the bureau for systematic failures in its handling of surveillance applications, according to two U.S. officials.

We shall have to wait until Dec. 9 to hear from Inspector General Horowitz as to what those systematic failures were. Do these early reports on his work forecast a whitewash? It would appear so. But can anyone really take seriously that those systematic failures took place in the absence of bias?

Such a claim requires a great deal of contortion. And the spate of the stories last week suggest the form that contortion will take: Blame will fall not on Peter We Will Stop Him Strzok, the virulent Trump hater who orchestrated the spying on the Trump campaign, but on a low-level lawyer named Kevin Clinesmith.

We are led to believe by these stories that while Mr. Clinesmith was biased against Mr. Trump Mr. Trumps victory had devastated him, he wrote in an email that bias never tainted his work or infected any of his colleagues. Many of whom, incidentally, are on record as sharing his bias. He was, you see, simply sloppy or so the report is purported to say.

I read these happy, trouble-free news stories very carefully, and one thing struck me. Nowhere in any of the stories did anyone bother to ask the question: What precisely triggered the need for this investigation of the investigators? It did not start in a vacuum. Was it not largely precipitated by the discovery of the FBIs pervasive use of the Hillary-financed Steele dossier upon which the Strzoks of this world relied on for their spying on Trump officials, all of whom turned out not to be Russian agents, as the FBI alleged.

Naturally these stories skirt that issue. If Mr. Horowitz skirts that issue too, his report will not amount to much, and we will have to look to Justice Department prosecutor John Durham for real answers. In April, Attorney General William Barr said, I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. It has not ceased to be a big deal, even if Mr. Horowitz breezes over it.

What real predicate did the Obama administration have for its spying? That has never been satisfactorily explained. Consider the irony here. During the impeachment hearing, we heard Democrat after Democrat intone gravely that nothing is more abusive than a president seeking to get foreigners to spy on a political rival.

Yet is that not exactly what President Obama did in letting the Brennans and Strzoks loose to spy on the Trump campaign with the help of foreign intelligence bodies, such as MI6? If it was wrong for Mr. Trump to try to get our ally Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, as the Democrats assert, how can they possibly justify the Obama administrations use of foreign intelligence bodies to spy on Mr. Trump?

Now what youre going to see, I predict, will be perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of our country, said the president of the coming revelations from John Durham. Let us hope he is right. Spygate dwarfs Watergate in seriousness. After all, the Obama administration was not caught in a third-rate burglary but in a high-level scheme to weaponize both domestic and foreign intelligence instruments against a political opponent.

For more than two years, I have been predicting the Justice Department would find evidence of FBI and CIA agents working together to spy on Trump operatives. The Durham investigation will bear this out. The media, of course, will try to pit Mr. Horowitz against Mr. Durham. Do not fall for it.

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. He is the author most recently of The Death of Liberalism, published by Thomas Nelson Inc.

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How the Obama administration's Spygate trumps Watergate - Washington Times

Says President Obama used government funds to pay for his personal vacations for the next 20 years and Trump sent him a bill.

Facebook posts on Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 in a Facebook post

BySamantha Puttermanon Monday, November 25th, 2019 at 4:55 p.m.

Did President Donald Trump send former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama a bill to "repay the government" for vacations they took that werent "official state business"?

The account is just as false now as it was when it first appeared in 2017.

The bogus story recently resurfaced in an Oct. 29 Facebook post that has been shared over 21,000 times. A portion of the lengthy post reads:

"... TRUMP JUST ENDED OBAMAS VACATION SCAM! Before Obama left office, he arranged with the State Department for a series of official visits to foreign countries spanning the next 20 years. Using discretionary funds from the Office of Presidential Visits and Vacations, Obama was planning to weasel what would have been another $2.1 billion in free vacations for him and up to 24 members of his family plus staff and even a dog sitter until the year 2036"

The post continues, saying that Trump canceled the Obamas plans, recalled Secret Service agents and sent the Obamas a $214 million bill for vacations they took that werent "official state business." It claims the Obamas spent 692 days on vacation.

The post was flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

No, President Obama didnt take $2.1 billion from the "Office of Presidential Visits and Vacations" an office that does not exist to pay for family vacations for the next 20 years, and President Trump didnt end the "vacation scam" and bill the Obamas to repay a portion of the money.

None of this is true. The entire story was fabricated and originated from satirical website, "The Resistance: The Last Line of Defense," which is a part of a network of satire and parody sites.

We were able to track down the article, which was posted in February 2017, using the internet archive tool Wayback Machine.

The website includes a disclaimer that reads:

"All articles should be considered satirical and any and all quotes attributed to actual people complete and total baloney. Pictures that represent actual people should be considered altered and not in any way real."

According to CBS News White House reporter Mark Knoller, who keeps records of presidential travel, President Obama took 29 vacation trips over his eight years in the White House. The trips spanned all or part of 235 days (not 692). He also made 39 visits to Camp David, totaling around 93 days.

Even though the original story was published with a disclaimer, versions of the account were copied and pasted in social media posts with no such explanation and circulated as real news.

We rate this Pants on Fire!

Continued here:
Trump, Obama story on 'vacation scam' was fabricated by satire website - PolitiFact