Here We Are -- Pelosi, Obama, the Saudis, Political Judges, and Voter Fraud

DEAR READERS, I'M POSTING EARLY TODAY TO LET YOU KNOW THAT WE ARE WOBBLY BUT ONLINE. I hope everyone had a lovely long weekend, ate lots of turkey and cranberry sauce, and avoided being trampled in the Black Friday madness. Here are some stories that may have gotten lost in the long weekend celebration. • • • PELOSI ACTUALLY SOUNDED REASONABLE -- JUST ONCE. The Daily Caller reported last week that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi criticized members of her own party who support impeaching President Donald Trump and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Abolishing ICE and impeaching Trump are both popular positions with the Democratic Party’s base, although not nationally. Pelosi told the New York Times : "...I have those who want to be for impeachment and for abolishing ICE. Two really winning issues for us, right? In the districts we have to win? I don’t even think they’re the right thing to do. If the evidence from Mueller is compelling, it should be compelling for Republicans as well, and that may be a moment of truth. But that’s not where we are.” • Nancy Pelosi was speaking as the leader of the Democrat Party -- and she knows that impeachment or abolishing ICE are no-starters for the 2020 presidential election. Pelosi is also trying to beat back a challenge from an insurgent group of younger House Democrats intent on denying Pelosi’s bid to become speaker of the House of Representatives when their party retakes the lower chamber in January. In addition to bashing members of her own party, Pelosi told the NYT that the media’s Trump coverage is "obsessive." • BUT, Pelosi was soon back at bashing Trump herself, calling out his position that transgenders should not serve in the military. • • • OBAMA'S BRAIN IS STILL FUZZY. BizPac Review reported last week that : "Former President Obama seems to still be carrying around a chip on his shoulder and he doesn’t seem to mind using it to stir the pot during contentious times. Without offering any new solutions, Obama discussed how the world 'badly needs remaking' during a talk at the Obama Foundation summit in Chicago on Monday, the Daily Mail reported." The video clip is available at . Issues like climate change, education and agriculture are easy to solve, Obama insisted, claiming they are “not nearly as complicated as they are made out to be.” Obama argued that “mommy issues” and “racism” have gotten in the way of solving the world’s problems, and while never directly mentioning President Donald Trump by name, many thought the dig was aimed at him when Obama said : “The reason we won't do it is because we are still confused, blind, shrouded with hate, anger, racism, mommy issues.” In the conversation with Dave Eggers last Monday, Obama also seemed to imply that America was a better place before Trump became President. He reportedly remarked that if one could choose a time and place to be born, it would certainly be the United States, the Daily Mail reported, noting that : "There is no record of Eggers asking Obama why it would be so easy to fix the world and not the former president’s hometown of Chicago, where Obama spent more than a decade working as a community activist and legislator." Obama also said : “What prevents us from implementing most of the things that we would probably collectively agree would make the world better is not an absence of technical solutions. It’s because there are humans involved.” • A commenter noted : "This is coming from an failed former President who cannot separate himself from attention and whining about how he COULD have been successful. Get him a box of tissues...and a chair next to Acosta. Sit down...you are no longer in the oval office." • Obama was also attacking the very issues that his Democrat Party supports -- catering to the "snowflake" young people who are afraid of reality and using race to divide Americans into voting blocks that he thinks favors Democrat candidates. All wrong-headed. • • • TRUMP STEPS UP TO MIDDLE EAST REALITY. TheHill reported before Thanksgiving that : "President Trump said Tuesday the US would maintain a 'steadfast partner' with Saudi Arabia in a striking statement that described the world as a violent place and made it clear the administration does not want the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi to tarnish the relationship between the two nations. In the lengthy statement, Trump said 'we may never know' who was responsible for the killing of Khashoggi even though the CIA has reportedly concluded that Prince Mohammed ordered his assassination. 'Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event -- maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!' the President said. 'The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region. It is our paramount goal to fully eliminate the threat of terrorism throughout the world!' • The Saudi government has insisted the crown prince did not know of the operation, but numerous reports have cast doubt on the possibility that Prince Mohammed would have been ignorant of its existence. In any case, President Trump is right to maintain ties with Saudi Arabia. There are so many ways in which the Saudis help the vital positions that favor democracy and Israel and oppose Iran and Hezbollah and Russia and Syria that tossing the Kingdom aside for this breach of honor and reason would be dangerous. Real Politik is not always pretty, but it is sometimes absolutely necessary. President Reagan's Secretary of State James Baker once said : "Pragmatism without principles is cynicism, but principles without pragmatism is often powerless." President Trump got it right when he announced that the United States will continue to be an ally of Saudi Arabia. • • • CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS MADE A SILLY STATEMENT. President Trump is absolutely right about biased judges. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts defended judicial independence after President Trump criticized the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jon S. Tigar of San Francisco last week for issuing an order to stop Trump’s new emergency restrictions on asylum claims by immigrants from taking effect. The President called Tigar “an Obama judge” and Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts issued a rare public statement rebuking the President, saying : “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them." • The Washington Examiner's Siraj Hashmi noted that : "Like a basketball player who mistakenly shoots into his own basket and scores points for the opposing team, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has inadvertently backed President Trump’s accurate contention that there are liberal judges appointed by Democrats and conservative judges appointed by Republicans who rule differently on cases. Schumer piled on, criticizing President Trump in a Friday tweet : “I don’t agree very often with Chief Justice Roberts, especially his partisan decisions which seem highly political...But I am thankful today that he '' almost alone among Republicans '' stood up to President Trump and for an independent judiciary.” • The funny thing about Senator Schumer's tweet is that by calling Chief Justice Roberts a "conservative judge appointed by Republicans, "and saying that the Chief Justice issues “partisan decisions which seem highly political” -- Schumer is agreeing 100% with President Trump. • President Trump was factual in noting that district and appellate court judges from the 9th US Circuit -- that has jurisdiction over nine Western states and two US island territories -- tend to support liberal and Democrat positons in their rulings. AND, Chief Justice Roberts was right to say an independent judiciary is essential and an ideal that judges should strive for. BUT, we do not live in an ideal world. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals proves the point. The President correctly said that lawyers opposing his policies forum shop for federal judges appointed by Democrats, because they know such judges are more likely to rule in their favor. An increasing number of these judges seem to like the media attention their anti-Trump rulings get. Media fawning encourages this dangerous “judicial dicta” -- judges' statements in court rulings that go beyond the facts presented in a case and the application of law to those facts. District judges in the 9th Circuit are issuing nonsensical and often unconstitutional rulings. In some cases, they have claimed their rulings apply to every federal court in the nation. But, that is not how temporary restraining orders are intended to work. They are meant to apply only to the district or circuit that issues them. This is a matter for Congress to decide, but the Republicans didn't bother to address this issue when they controlled both houses, and now, it is not possible to do anything to limit restraining orders to the district or circuit that issues them, which would prevent nationwide blocking of any President's actions. • The 9th Circuit has the dubious distinction of being the Circuit whose decisions are most often overturned by the US Supreme Court (80%), but that doesn't halt the chaos created by its nationwide restraining orders. In the 9th US Circuit, Democrat appointees outnumber Republican appointees 116 to 33 at the district court level. At the appellate level, Democrat appointees outnumber Republicans 16 to 7. Hashmi says : "Of the 132 active Democratic-appointed federal judges in the 9th Circuit, 66 -- including Judge Tigar, who was criticized by President Trump -- were appointed by President Obama. That is, 57% of Democrat appointees to the 9th Circuit are “Obama judges.” And, it is these judges who have made headlines ruling against President Trump. In effect, what these numbers suggest is exactly what President Trump asserts -- that Democratic-appointed judges in the 9th Circuit are out of sync with US Supreme Court precedent, consistently leaning too far left, and with a majority Democrat appointees, most of whom are Obama appointees. Run a counterproof. What is the least- reversed circuit -- the one most in sync with the Supreme Court? The 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which was reversed only 55% of the time. What is that circuit’s composition? Republican appointees outnumber Democrats 9 to 2. Bottom line : An independent judiciary, in the best tradition of Chief Justice John Marshall, is vitally important. Judges should decide cases in a nonpartisan way. They should review facts impartially, then apply law without personal prejudice or political preference, resolve disputes on narrow legal grounds, construe the Constitution strictly, defer to other branches as constitutionally appropriate, and avoid legislating from the bench. To this extent, Justice Roberts is correct -- and in sync with what President Trump and traditional constitutionalists say : America needs a credible, nonpolitical, and independent judiciary. That is and should be a shared goal." • One of the Founders, Thomas Jefferson worried about this exact problem. In 1801, he foresaw judicial overreach and warned that leaders of the political opposition “have retreated into the judiciary as a stronghold, the tenure of which renders it difficult to dislodge them.” In 1807 Jefferson wrote to a friend : “The original error...[was] establishing a judiciary independent of the nation and which, from the citadel of the law, can turn its guns on those they were meant to defend, and control and fashion their proceedings to its own will." • President Trump was simply corroborating what Jefferson saw 217 years ago. HELLO, CONGRESS -- are you listening??? • • • DEMOCRAT PARTY SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED FOR ELECTION FRAUD. Florida officials are doing just that -- investigating the Democrat Party for fraud and looking at how they cheated and tried to steal the mid-term election. But, throughout the country there were reports of massive voter fraud. In one case, Florida Democrats discovered a secret stash of 83,000 votes after election day. This left their candidate, Senator Bill Nelson, only down 12,000 votes a week or so after election day forcing a recount. Evidence reported to the Florida Department of State also suggests a possible effort by Democrats to have voters fix ballots after the state’s deadline in at least four counties. Cure forms for mail ballots sent to voters by the party show the legal return date changed from the day before the election to an illegal two days afterwards. Democrat strategist Steve Schale says it was likely just a mix up : “Some 23-year-old staffer probably got two dates mixed up. They put the date down for the provisional ballot cure, not the absentee ballot cure, and actually by doing it, all they did was make it harder for their own voters to vote.” But, it was no mix up. The Democrats sued and won a challenge to extend the voter deadline -- AFTER they mailed out the fraudulent ballots with the wrong due dates on them. The Democrats were planning on having all these votes counted after the election deadline. A bigger story is that Democrats in Florida somehow obtained a list of all absentee ballots that were "vote by mail" with signature problems and contacted those people in hopes of having them provide their ballots so they could be counted in the election. • In California, Democrats reportedly bribed people on the Los Angeles skid row for their signatures to obtain votes -- 9 people face felony charges in connection with that voter fraud scheme. In Orange County, California -- a traditionally a Republican stronghold -- people suddenly voted for Democrat House candidates -- 40,000 more Democrats voted for the Democrat House candidates in the Orange County congressional races than voted for Democrat Gavin Newsom for governor. Less than 500,000 Orange County voters voted for the Democrat governor but tens of thousands of more votes were counted for Democrat US House candidates. Odd, isn't it? • In the Senate race in Montana, Senator Jon Tester -- who was behind on election day -- had a huge haul overnight and won by 5 points. • In Arizona, Taliban-supporting marxist Kyrsten Sinema was declared the winner a week after votes were cast -- she was behind on election night. • Where is Republican support for President Trump's efforts to eliminate voter fraud?? If Republicans were interested in not having elections stolen from them, they would fight for voter ID, and would work hard to provide better controls for the vote-by-mail process around the country. Without voter IDs, who knows who is mailing in ballots and ‘voting’ for Democrats. It’s time for Republicans to wake up and fight for the integrity of future elections. • • • DEAR READERS, I also want to note that Fox News talked to Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz last Wednesday about the written answers that President Trump has submitted to special counsel Robert Mueller. Dershowitz told Fox News it was a "very smart decision" for President Donald Trump to answer special counsel Robert Mueller's questions in writing rather than in person, as Mueller, the former FBI director, had tried to get the President to perjure himself. Dershowitz said : "Clearly, Mueller had tried to spring a perjury trap. When you answer the questions in writing and although the President said it was his answers, obviously the lawyers vetted them. That's designed to avoid a perjury trap. So, I think this has been a win-win for President Trump, when it comes to any kind of legal or impeachment vulnerability." • Trump's lawyers said Tuesday they provided Mueller's office with written responses to questions on Russian election interference, while pushing back on questions concerning obstruction of justice, and Dershowitz said Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani is "100 percent right" with his arguments on the issue. Dershowitz noted that : "A President can't obstruct justice by exercising his constitutional authority to fire, to pardon, anything of that kind. The President should not answer questions about how or why he exercised his constitutional authority. That is covered by executive privilege. You don't want to start allowing prosecutors to psychoanalyze presidential motives if the President acted according to Article 2 of the constitution so he was absolutely right." • I'll be back blogging tomorrow -- if I don't get caught in a "computer trap" !!!