gimmekeef wrote on Sep 26^th, 2016 at 10:09am:






http://www.wsj.com/articles/jim-comeys-blind-eye-1475191703



" Jim Comey’s Blind Eye  "


" The FBI director can’t defend immunity for Hillary Clinton’s aides—which says volumes.  "




By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL




" Two revealing, if largely unnoticed, moments came in the middle of FBI Director Jim Comey’s Wednesday testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. When combined, these moments prove that Mr. Comey gave Hillary Clinton a pass.

Congress hauled Mr. Comey in to account for the explosive revelation that the government granted immunity to Clinton staffers Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson as part of its investigation into whether Mrs. Clinton had mishandled classified information. Rep. Tom Marino (R., Pa.), who was once a Justice Department prosecutor and knows how these investigations roll, provided the first moment. He asked Mr. Comey why Ms. Mills was so courteously offered immunity in return for her laptop—a laptop that Mr. Comey admitted investigators were very keen to obtain. Why not simply impanel a grand jury, get a subpoena, and seize the evidence?

Mr. Comey’s answer was enlightening: “It’s a reasonable question. . . . Any time you are talking about the prospect of subpoenaing a computer from a lawyer—that involves the lawyer’s practice of law—you know you are getting into a big megillah.” Pressed further, he added: “In general, you can often do things faster with informal agreements, especially when you are interacting with lawyers.”

The key words: “The lawyer’s practice of law.” What Mr. Comey was referencing here is attorney-client privilege. Ms. Mills was able to extract an immunity deal, avoid answering questions, and sit in on Mrs. Clinton’s FBI interview because she has positioned herself as Hillary’s personal lawyer. Ms. Mills could therefore claim that any conversations or interactions she had with Mrs. Clinton about the private server were protected by attorney-client privilege.

Only here’s the rub: When Ms. Mills worked at the State Department she was not acting as Mrs. Clinton’s personal lawyer. She was the secretary's chief of staff. Any interaction with Mrs. Clinton about her server, or any evidence from that time, should have been fair game for the FBI and the Justice Department.

Ms. Mills was allowed to get away with this “attorney-client privilege” nonsense only because she claimed that she did not know about Mrs. Clinton’s server until after they had both left the State Department. Ergo, no questions about the server.

The FBI has deliberately chosen to accept this lie. The notes of its interview with Ms. Mills credulously states: “Mills did not learn Clinton was using a private email server until after Clinton’s tenure” at State. It added: “Mills stated she was not even sure she knew what a server was at the time.”

Which brings us to the hearing’s second revealing moment. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) pointed out that the FBI’s notes from its interview with Clinton IT staffer Bryan Pagliano expose this lie. In late 2009 or early 2010, Mr. Pagliano told investigators, he approached Ms. Mills to relay State Department concerns that the private server might pose a “federal records retention issue.” According to Mr. Pagliano, Ms. Mills told him not to worry about it, because other secretaries of state had used similar setups.

More damning, Mr. Chaffetz held up an email that Ms. Mills sent in 2010 to Justin Cooper, whom the Clintons personally employed to help maintain the server. The email reads: “hrc email coming back—is server okay?” Mr. Cooper responds: “Ur funny. We are on the same server.”

To be clear: When Mrs. Clinton had an email problem, Ms. Mills didn’t call the State Department’s help desk. She didn’t call Yahoo customer service. She called a privately employed Clinton aide and asked specifically about Mrs. Clinton’s “server.” She did this as chief of staff at the State Department. Mr. Chaffetz asked Mr. Comey why the FBI wrote that Ms. Mills was ignorant about the server until later.


Mr. Comey suddenly sounded like a man with something to hide. “I don’t remember exactly, sitting here,” he said, in what can only be called the FBI version of “I don’t recall.” He then mumbled that “Having done many investigations myself, there’s always conflicting recollections of facts, some of which are central, some of which are peripheral. I don’t remember, sitting here, about that one.”

Really? Only a few minutes before he had explained that the Justice Department was forced to issue immunity to Ms. Mills because she had asserted attorney-client privilege. Yet he couldn’t remember all the glaring evidence proving she had no such privilege? Usually, the FBI takes a dim view of witnesses who lie. Had the FBI pursued perjury charges against Ms. Mills—as it would have done against anyone else—it would have had extraordinary leverage to force her to speak about all of her communications regarding the server. It might have even threatened to build a case that Ms. Mills was part of a criminal scheme. Then it could have offered immunity in return for the real goods on Hillary.

But going that route would have required grand juries, subpoenas, warrants and indictments—all things that Mr. Comey clearly wanted to avoid in this politically sensitive investigation. Much easier to turn a blind eye to Ms. Mills’s fiction. And to therefore give Mrs. Clinton a pass.   "

Voodoo Chile in Wonderland wrote on Oct 1^st, 2016 at 12:26pm:

B-b-b But Jimmy said he's touring in 2017 with his own band he puts together............Of course he's said that the last two years.

a.completeunknown wrote on Oct 1^st, 2016 at 1:28pm:














" Once KGB  , ALWAYS KGB  , Ronnie !!!!   "


J.  " Edgar " Hoover !  ® ™ ©

     " Three milliseconds later , the sky erupts into a fireball three hundred yards wide as the surrounding air ignites , liquefying everyone in its proximity .
     Then comes the blast as the explosion rockets outward with the force of twenty thousand tons of TNT , followed immediately by a billowing mushroom cloud that rises more than fifty thousand feet into the air  , sucking  up dust , dirt , and bodily gases from the vaporized remains of those killed at the hypocenter .
     Within seconds , seventy thousand people are dead .
     Almost every person and building within a one - mile radius of the hypocenter has vanished .
     Pets , birds , rats , ants , cockroaches  -- gone .
     Homes , fishing boats , telephone poles , the centuries - old Hiroshima Castle   -- all disappeared .
     Day turns into night as the mushroom cloud blots out the sun . Beyond the one - mile radius of the hypocenter , some have survived , though at a horrible cost  . Flash burns blind all those unfortunate to be caught looking in the direction of the blast , while the intense heat maims and disfigures thousands , many of whom live miles away  . One group of Japanese soldiers is burned so badly that their faces literally melt away ; it is impossible to distinguish the back of their heads from the front .  "

gorda wrote on Oct 2^nd, 2016 at 12:43pm:


Edith/Riffy do not care. Trump all the way!!

Some Guy ?

<   ------ Some Guy  ...... ?!  ..... !!!!!!!!    :



http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-obamacare-silence-1475797216



" Trump’s ObamaCare Silence   "


" The failing health law should be his best weapon, but he seems unable to wield it.   "


By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL




" There is such a thing as a political goof. It should not be confused with a cosmic political error, mind-boggling in its inanity, inexplicable on any level, the electoral equivalent of stuffing your opponent’s ballot box.

An example of the latter is Donald Trump’s failure to jump on ObamaCare as an excellent path to the White House.

We are one month from an election, and President Barack Obama’s signature achievement is cratering, destroying millions of pocketbooks in its wake. States are reporting premium increases of 60%, 70%, 80%. Insurers, sagging under losses, are fleeing. Nearly a third of U.S. counties are now down to a single ObamaCare plan. Seventeen of 23 ObamaCare co-ops have imploded. Tennessee’s insurance commissioner warns her state’s exchange market is “very near collapse.”

The law’s supporters are flailing, incapable of defending it during this public death spiral. Ezekiel Emanuel, the physician who was one of the architects of the law, was left stammering on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show this week. Dr. Emanuel said that these premium increases are a one-time “correction.” He hilariously blamed Republicans for refusing to bail out the system. Bill Clinton, who is becoming ever more honest in his dotage, went on an extended riff about how his party’s health-care system was the “craziest thing in the world.”

Hillary Clinton has no such out, having fiercely embraced ObamaCare. She owns it, every bit as much as the president, having pledged to “defend and expand” it. Only this week Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, reiterated that she views the law as a “success” and plans to “build on it.”

Were she required to explain how to fix it—an obvious question never asked of her—she would nonetheless be forced to propose: a) more bailouts and subsidies; b) more coercive ways of forcing people into the system; or c) a government-run public option. Or all of the above. All of these choices are implicit acknowledgments of the program’s failure, and dead losers with voters.

For Republicans, ObamaCare has proved to be a political winner. The revolt against the law in 2010, back when it was not even real enough to have failed, propelled one of the greatest GOP gains in the House and the state legislatures in history. This is not some peripheral policy question—fracking, labor law, trade. Health care is the daily concern and frustration of nearly every American voter, right up there with paying the mortgage, the grocery bill and the IRS.

Yet Mr. Trump is almost entirely, and eerily, silent on the topic. In his prepared speeches, he gives ObamaCare a rote and glancing reference, part of a promise to repeal it. Trump news releases fly daily about the Clintons’ corruption and the problems with the North American Free Trade Agreement. But there is nary a whisper about the health-care system that is melting down across the country. Where are the ads? Where is the big speech?

Mr. Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, appears to be warming to the issue. He at least warned during Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate that a Clinton White House would build ObamaCare into a socialist, “single-payer” system. He has been reassuring conservative voters that a Trump administration would scrap the law’s contraceptive mandate. Asked about Mr. Clinton’s “craziest-in-the-world” judgment, Mr. Pence quipped that “sometimes with the Clintons, even the truth happens.”

Those eight words were eight more than Mr. Trump devoted to ObamaCare during his first debate with Mrs. Clinton. During that face-off, the Republican nominee spent a full minute giving the ins and outs of the leverage on his business. He failed to mention the failing health law even once.

Mr. Trump’s quiet is so pronounced as to seem almost intentional. The Republican primaries showed that he is uncomfortable talking about health-care reform. ( Marco Rubio once accused him of having no plan other than to get rid of the insurance “lines around the states.”)

The Republican nominee might be wary of being drawn into a debate on a topic he seems to know little about. He also might be reluctant to field questions from the press about how he would handle the few popular aspects of the law—such as coverage for existing conditions. His website is relatively vague on what would replace ObamaCare, citing only broadly agreed-upon conservative ideas, such as creating more health savings accounts.


But Mr. Trump might consider that his silence is doing damage to more than simply himself. Across the country, Republican candidates are facing voters angry about health care. It would help immensely if they could argue that repealing ObamaCare would be the pressing priority of a Trump administration. After years of having President Obama halt every GOP attempt to patch the law’s holes, this is an extraordinary moment in which the party can tantalize voters with the hope that the nightmare might end.

But to do that, Mr. Trump has to capitalize on one of the greatest political gifts any presidential candidate has ever been given.  "

gorda wrote on Oct 7^th, 2016 at 9:07pm:

He's a charmer ain't he?