Christians and Jews vs the Anti-Trump Anti-Religion Politics of the Democrat Party -- and Pope Francis?

THERE IS A LOT GOING ON TODAY. THE "DOSSIER," BILL BARR, THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS. To name a few. • • • THE BARR-MUELLER FRIENDSHIP IS TROUBLESOME. Newsmax passed on a Thursday CNN report that : "William Barr's 30-year relationship with special counsel Robert Mueller has given President Donald Trump pause, according to three people who spoke with CNN. Barr, the President's pick to replace Jeff Sessions at the helm of the Justice Department, on Tuesday during his Senate confirmation hearing said he and Mueller 'were good friends and would be good friends when this was all over,' referring to Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election." • Barr and Mueller first met at the Justice Department during the George H. W. Bush administration. Their wives are close friends who attend Bible study together, according to Politico, and Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr's daughters. Bil lbarr told the Senate : "I have known Bob Mueller for 30 years. We worked closely together throughout my previous tenure at the Department of Justice under President Bush. We've been friends since. And I have the utmost respect for Bob and his distinguished record of public service. And when he was named special counsel, I said his selection was 'good news' and that, knowing him, I had confidence he would handle the matter properly. And I still have that confidence today." • Barr also told senators Trump knew about their relationship. • BUT, as I said in yesterday's blog, Bill Barr seems more and more to be tired to the Swamp and will be hard pressed to find fault with anything Mueller does. That does not bode well in the face of the exploding anti-FBI testimony coming from Obama era Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. • • • OHR MAY BE THE KEY TO BREAKING OPEN THE OBAMA TRUMP SURVEILLANCE SCANDAL. That's what American Thinker's editor Thomas Lifson says, calling the Obama FBI spying on candidate and then President Trump "the biggest political scandal in American history." Lifson states : "The mobilization of law enforcement and intelligence assets by the Obama administration in 2016 to spy on the presidential campaign of rival party candidate Donald Trump is the biggest political scandal in our history. The Mueller probe of Trump is a cover-up, as are leaks to friendly media by anonymous former officials. Yet the pieces are falling into place to burn through the dust clouds and see the underlying crimes." • As we did in yesterday's blog, Lifson cites John Solomon of TheHill as "one of our leading sources for the real story obscured by the guilty parties and their media allies. Fully uncovering it will require prosecution of related crimes, and the testimony of cooperating witnesses in the interest of mitigating their legal consequences, up to and including prison time." AND, says Lifson, "Testimony given by former FBI top lawyer Bruce Ohr that has been leaked to Solomon provides, in Solomon's words : '...the most damning evidence to date that FBI and DOJ officials may have misled federal judges in October 2016 in their zeal to obtain the warrant targeting Trump advisor Carter Page just weeks before Election Day. Misleading a federal judge is a big crime." • We recall that Ohr testified that the officials who submitted the FIA warrant applications knowingly lied, because he warned them that the Fusion-GPS Trump Dossier was opposition research from the Hillary Campaign, as Lifson recounts : "The then-No. 4 Department of Justice (DOJ) official briefed both senior FBI and DOJ officials in summer 2016 about Christopher Steele's Russia dossier, explicitly cautioning that the British intelligence operative's work was opposition research connected to Hillary Clinton's campaign and might be biased. Ohr's briefings, in July and August 2016, included the deputy director of the FBI, a top lawyer for then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and a Justice official who later would become the top deputy to special counsel Robert Mueller. At the time, Ohr was the associate deputy attorney general. Yet his warnings about political bias were pointedly omitted weeks later from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant that the FBI obtained from a federal court, granting it permission to spy on whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia to hijack the 2016 presidential election." • John Solomon's sources told him that Ohr has corroborating evidence, including notes taken at the time. And Ohr warned them : "...saying he disclosed to FBI agents that his wife and Steele were working for the same firm and that it was conducting the Trump-Russia research project at the behest of Trump's Democratic rival, the Clinton campaign....These guys were hired by somebody relating to, who's related to the Clinton campaign and be aware." THAT is what Ohr told Congress as he explained that he warned the FBI. • Thomas Lifson believes that Bruce Ohr is prepared to turn state's evidence, perhaps to spare his wife, as well as himself, prison sentences. Lifson also questions Rod Rosenstein, who signed off on one of the FISA applications? Whyn asks Lifson, "is he getting out of the DOJ as soon as William Barr is confirmed. Will he have his hands full defending that signature on a document that misled a federal judge into granting an illegitimate warrant to spy on a presidential campaign?" • It must be noted that Thomas Lifson does not suspect Bill Barr of being a Swamp Creature. Lifson says : "William Barr had no motive beyond seeing justice served for accepting the nomination as AG. He already had as much prestige and money as he would ever need." • • • WHY WOULD ANYONE PICK ON THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS. The Daily Caller reported on Wednesday the seemingly bizarre news that the Senate passed a resolution from GOP Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska "presuming that it is unlawful to bar a nominee from office because of his membership in the Knights of Columbus." Sasse’s resolution passed without opposition just after 6 p.m. on Wednesday, following a floor speech in which the senator extolled the importance of religious liberty. • Odd, wouldn't you say? In this case, not really. Senator Sasse was responding to Democratic lawmakers who pressed judicial nominee Brian Buescher -- an attorney in the Omaha offices of Kutak Rock LLP, where he leads the agribusiness litigation practice, whose nomination to the US District Court for the District of Nebraska is pending -- about his affiliation with the Knights, a fraternal Catholic charity. In his floor speech, Senator Sasse cast the episode as the latest iteration of faith-based hostility Democrats have shown certain nominees, and so Senator Sasse introduced the Senate resolution providing that it is unconstitutional to disqualify a nominee from public office based on their membership in the Knights of Columbus. • The resolution, which the Daily Caller obtained in advance of its introduction, "comes after Democratic Senators Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Kamala Harris of California pressed a judicial nominee to the federal trial court in Nebraska about his affiliation with the knights, a Catholic mutual benefit society with almost 2 million members worldwide." Senator Sasse told the Daily caller : “There are many people on the left who act like every political fight is going to bring about heaven or hell on earth -- and so there are a lot of folks for whom politics is a religion. I think America at its best has affirmed the dignity of every individual and their right to free speech, free press, and freedom of worship.” • Sasse’s resolution was tactically shrewd -- passage effectively amounts to a rebuke of Harris and Hirono. Adverse political consequences could have followed had Democrats opposed it. The Daily Caller reported that a Marist poll sponsored by the Knights of Columbus released Wednesday found that 85% of respondents -- including 90% of Democrats -- said religion should not be a factor when assessing someone’s fitness to serve in the federal government. • The unanimously passed resolution reads : “It is the sense of the Senate that disqualifying a nominee to federal office on the basis of membership in the Knights of Columbus violates the Constitution of the United States.” Article VI of the Constitution forbids the imposition of a religious test on prospective officeholders. • Senator Kamala Harris is expected to declare her bid for President soon. She has been testing by means of a soft launch recently, including a January 10 appearance on “The Late Show” that left little doubt as to her intentions. • The ProgDem attacks on the Knights of Columbus started in December 2018 when Harris and Hirono asked federal judicial nominee Brian Buescher about his affiliation with the group in a series of written questions, which followed his November 28 confirmation hearing. The two Senators called the Knights an “all-male society” that takes “extreme” positions on social questions like abortion and gay marriage. Hirono proposed that Buescher resign his membership in the group to avoid the appearance of bias. Buescher answered that the Knights “do not have the authority to take personal political positions on behalf of all of its approximately 2 million members.” And, of course, the office of Constitution-challenged Senator Hirono has dismissed criticism of her inquiries as “far-right wing manipulation of straightforward questions.” • In his floor speech, Sasse drew an explicit parallel between the Buescher nomination and that of Judge Amy Coney Barrett who was questioned about how her religious convictions would bear on the discharge of her judicial duties, in view of Barrett’s scholarly writings on that subject as a student at Notre Dame Law School. Those questions were roundly condemned by Christian leaders. Like Buescher, Barrett is a Catholic. She was confirmed to the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals in October 2017. Sasse told the Daily Caller : “Brian Buescher’s experience with the Knights of Columbus is very similar to what you heard for Amy Barrett. I think there is a pattern here and I think we need to shine a big spotlight on it and make sure folks can’t get away with this nonsense.” • Fox News reporter Todd Starnes labels Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono "religious bigots." Starnes noted in an article last week that : "There are a disturbing number of Democrat lawmakers who believe Christians must renounce their religious beliefs and affiliations in religious-based organizations if they want to hold public office. The latest victim of this blatant religious bigotry is Brian Buescher, President Trump’s nominee for the US District Court in Nebraska. Buescher came under attack by Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, for his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a revered and highly-respected Catholic charitable organization. Both lawmakers posed a series of written questions demanding to know if he would end his membership in the Knights of Columbus should he be confirmed. 'The Knights of Columbus has taken a number of extreme positions,' Hirono wrote in the questionnaire. 'For example, it was reportedly one of the top contributors to California’s Proposition 8 campaign to ban same-sex marriage. We must call this out for what it is -- religious bigotry." • Starnes noted that Radio host Dennis Prager said on Fox Nation’s Starnes Country, that secularists and leftists are attempting to drive people of faith out of the public arena : “The only organized opposition [to leftism] comes from within Judaism and Christianity. The Orthodox Jew, the faithful Mormon, the traditional Catholic, and the Evangelical Protestant, these are the only organized opponents to leftism, and they know it, and they will do anything they can to suppress it.” • Starnes reminded us that : "...in 2012 Democrats removed God from their party platform. And in 2016 delegates heckled a preacher attempting to deliver a prayer during the national convention." And, now, congressional confirmation hearings resemble religious inquisitions. We remember that in 2017, Notre Dame law professor and mother of seven Amy Coney Barrett was grilled by Senator Dianne Feinstein over her orthodox beliefs, who made the outrageous comment : “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern." • American Thinker's Trevor Thomas wrote on Thursday : "What really troubled the Senate Democrats is the position of the Knights of Columbus on abortion and marriage. Never mind that such positions are perfectly in line with centuries-old teachings of the Catholic Church and that disqualification on such grounds would bar from public service every Catholic who actually adheres to the Church's teachings. As Matthew Continetti rightly notes : 'My concern is the anti-Catholic sentiment manifest in the Democratic Party. Last March, Feinstein demanded to know if Michael Scudder, now confirmed to the Seventh Circuit, worked with his parish 'to establish a residential crisis pregnancy center.' Last May, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island asked Peter J. Phipps, now confirmed as a district court judge, about the Knights. Last October, Feinstein, Harris, and three other Democrats wanted to know about the relationship between Fourth Circuit nominee Allison Jones Rushing and the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian nonprofit that supports religious liberty. Last November, Feinstein asked Third Circuit nominee Paul Matey, 'If confirmed, will you recuse yourself from all cases in which the Knights of Columbus have taken a position?' " • Trevor Thomas says : "Right-minded Catholics should thank God that Trump was elected. As Rod Dreher reported, a 'new Wikileaks dump from Clinton campaign chief John Podesta's emails reveals that Podesta created a couple of activist groups for the sake of undermining the Catholic bishops and the Church's authority.' As Thomas Peters tweeted, 'the head of Clinton's campaign has been organizing to fracture a major religion.' Or, as Dreher rightly noted : 'At the senior level of the Democratic Party's brain trust, a Clinton political operative -- a Catholic! -- created front groups specifically to undermine the authority of the Catholic bishops, and to separate the bishops from the people, as well as to secretly undermine Catholic teaching to make it more friendly to the Democratic Party's agenda. Podesta ought to be excommunicated.' " • Continetti notes that Democrats have not limited their religious bigotry to Catholics : "Baptists and Episcopalians are also under scrutiny. In June 2017, Bernie Sanders clashed with Russell Vought, now acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, over a blog post Vought had written regarding Islam that several Moslem groups considered Islamophobic. 'I'm a Christian, and I believe in a Christian set of principles based on my faith,' Vought said. By the end of the exchange, Sanders said, 'I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that this nominee is really not someone who is what this country is supposed to be about.' " • Democrats, says Trevor Thomas, also opposed Mike Pompeo's nomination as Secretary of State because of how "his Christian faith informs and impacts his politics." Pompeo -- a Presbyterian -- has served as a deacon, is open about his faith, and has also indicated that he actually believes what the Bible says about life, sex, and marriage. In November 2017, Sheldon Whitehouse critically questioned federal district court nominee Trevor McFadden -- an Anglican -- over his church's traditional teachings on marriage and the family. • This generation of radical Socialist-Marxist Democrats have also targeted Jews and the nation of Israel. Trevor Thomas reminds us that : "As John Perazzo recently noted, the black left is littered with racists and anti-Semites. These Jew-haters are not mere race pimps and publicity prostitutes à la Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, but are also elected Democrats. As Warren Henry revealed last year, 'Democrats are fielding even more anti-Semitic candidates for Congress.' They're not just running, but winning. As Henry points out, Michigan representative Rashida Tlaib -- who profanely promised to impeach President Trump -- 'is representative of the Democratic Party's gradual march beyond the embrace of candidates and officials who criticize Israeli policy or its current government to a much uglier place in politics.' Like a growing number of Democrats in Congress, Tlaib supports a 'one-state solution' to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, along with the 'boycott, divestment, sanctions' (BDS) movement. Henry also notes : 'The founders and leaders of the BDS movement support a 'one-state solution' that destroys Israel as Jewish state. The movement is the intellectual descendant of the 1945 Arab boycott, which did not distinguish between Jews and Israel. It is based on the premise that Israel is a racist apartheid state requiring the sort of action once taken against South Africa.' Marc Greendorfer recently revealed : 'While BDS has risen in the United States, so has anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitic incidents have spiked from a low point of 751 incidents in 2013 to nearly 2,000 in 2017. It is no coincidence that the spread of a movement that demonizes Jews has had the same effect in the US that similar campaigns had in the last 2,000 years.' The real agenda of BDS is the destruction of Israel. Robert P. George of Princeton warns that leading Democrats will soon altogether turn on Israel. The modern left hates Israel because the existence of a nation called Israel is among the greatest evidence that the God of the Bible is real. They hate God, so they hate Israel.' This is also why the left hates Christianity. Authentic Christianity points people to the truth. As a California church recently declared, 'Bruce Jenner is still a man. Homosexuality is still a sin. The culture may change, the Bible does not.' " • • • PERHAPS THE DEMOCRATS HAVE POWERFUL COMPANY. On Thursday, American Thinker's Monica Showalter wrote : "In the wake of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro swearing himself into office after a fraudulent election, the actual global consensus is that the regime ruling in Caracas is illegitimate. It's so bad the news accounts call the Maduro regime 'isolated.' Brazil, led by President Jair Bolsonaro, not only refused to recognize the regime, he openly recognized the constitutionally mandated succession of the Venezuelan National Assembly's leader, Juan Guaido. That's who's president to his country. Other nations, such as Paraguay, cut ties to regime and pulled their envoys. The United States and Canada have come very close to recognizing Guaido as Venezuela's president, too, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton (and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau) openly calling the regime 'illegitimate,' and all eyes now on whether President Trump will make recognition of Guaido official, which I think he will. At his January 10 inaugural, Maduro was indeed isolated, with just the pitiful support of socialist hellholes Nicaragua, Cuba and Bolivia. Nobody else could stomach it. Well, with one sorry exception: The Vatican." • It is difficult to accept that Pope Francis condones the Maduro regime. • Showalter is the only journalist giving us the Google translation from Spanish an account by Agencia EFE Argentine od the story by newspaper Clarin that claims the Vatican actually showed the flag for Maduro, giving him that patina of legitimacy as everyone else decent stayed away and now are getting flak for it : "After the [local bishops from the] church of Venezuela lambasted Nicolás Maduro by calling him 'illegitimate and immoral' on the eve of his inauguration, the Vatican sent a representative to the Venezuelan president's [swearing in] on Thursday, in a clear sign of support for the Chavista leader, leaving more than one of them surprised. This Monday, the Holy See came out to give explanations. And it justified the presence of the [Vatican] envoy [by] saying that the institution 'aims to promote the common good, protect peace and ensure respect for human dignity.' The new (interim) spokesman of the Vatican, Alessandro Gisotti, explained in a note that 'the Holy See maintains diplomatic relations with the Venezuelan State, its diplomatic activity is aimed at promoting the common good, protecting peace and guaranteeing respect for human dignity.' Therefore, the statement adds, 'the Holy See has decided to be represented at the inauguration ceremony of the Presidency, by the head of business ad interim of the Apostolic Nunciature of Caracas (George Koovakod).' " • • • DEAR READERS, that reminds us of the position Pope Francis has taken with China -- as he allows the legitimate Catholic Church in China to be savaged by the Communist regime in the name of trying to create a dialogue with the Chinese Communist Peoples' Party. As Monica Showalter states so clearly : "That culpable blindness has pretty well been how the Vatican has done business with Venezuela since Pope Francis took the reins in 2013. Under his leadership, the Vatican tried and failed to negotiate a 'peace settlement' with the Maduro regime about three years ago. It was junk diplomacy then, because it came after Venezuela's opposition had tried to do the same thing in good faith for at least ten years. By then the protests had grown massive and uncontrollable. Coming in after all that and pretending to be the peacemaker as if nothing had ever happened, led to exactly the failure Venezuela's democrats said would happen. This was a totalitarian regime and it was determined to hold power no matter what." • Maduro is being trapped from the north and south as the US and Brazil seem to be ready to recognize a new president -- a delicate, dangerous operation -- and one that puts others at personal risk. BUT, the anti-American, anti-conservative Pope Francis told his Vatican representative to attend Maduro's inauguration, for all the world and, more importantly, for Maduro and his gang of thugs to take as a glimmer of hope in their fast-sinking situation. It has become a hallmark of Pope Francis's papacy to defy the warnings of a country's own bishops, as he did in China, and now in Venezuela. Pope John Paul II must be shocked to watch this travesty of papal power being used for purely Leftist Progressive political purposes. What makes the Venezuelan treason even more tone deaf is that Pope Francis is a South American. He knows firsthand what picking socialist or extreme right thugs does. He can list the human tragedies that ensue, starting with his own Argentina. Showalter says : "The first Latin pope and his Vatican bureaucrats have picked the bad guy, the ruling dictatorship, over the suffering people, all in the phony name of preserving peace, something whose potential came and went years ago. Coming right on the heels of a recent scandal of a Vatican news site 'congratulating' the Cuban Castro regime for 60 years of oppression, including oppression of the Catholic Church, one wonders what its real alliances are. Venezuela is a hellhole regime at war with its own people and it's eventually going to fall. It's amazing that the Vatican is choosing to try to prop it up instead of supporting the people -- and in defiance of the international community." • Supporting Venezuela's democrats ought to be a slam-dunk for the Vatican and Pope Francis. Showalter again :"All an outsider can ask in the wake of the Holy See's decision is : what do they stand for? At a historic critical juncture, they made their choice, and they chose poorly." • We Christians in the West have long believed that we can practice our religion quietly, with the tolerance afforded by democratic political institutions. Sadly, and dangerously, that is no longer the case. As for Pope Francis, the Catholics of the world are voicing their opposition to his political anti-Church anti-Christian positions. We can and should support them as they speak out. AND, It is time for American Christians, Protestant and Catholic -- and Jews, religious and ethnic -- to stand up and demand their right as human beings to practice their religion and its culture without state interference, and to demand of anyone who presents himself or herself for public office to meet a new litmus test -- 'do you, without reservation, accept the Constitution's tenets in the First Amendment : "Freedom of expression and religion. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..." and in Article VI, Section 3: "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. • These radical Socialist-Marxist Democrats mean to destroy us Christians and Jews. We must not vote for them and give them the platform from which to succeed.