The Detroit News is pushing Kethledge for Supreme Court, the guy who reversed a deportation order of a criminal alien

The Detroit News, here, suffering as it does from a mental disorder known as libertarianism.

Kethledge is being pushed by the Republican Establishment as easier to confirm, in other words by the open borders crowd. For a reason.

The nitwits out there are getting into the weeds of "aggravated" in order to explain this away, some ignorantly equating "aggravated" in the law with "violent", which is hardly controlling. All sorts of things which aren't inherently violent are defined as aggravated by the law, including things which are obviously violent. For example, illicit trafficking in controlled substances and firearms are aggravated, as are money laundering, receipt of stolen property, disclosing classified information (Hillary), fraud (Obama), forgery, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Kethledge ignored the meaning of aggravated in the law in the case described, which suggests he might well dismiss the law in other circumstances when it is attractive to do so, for whatever reason.

There are better candidates than Kethledge who would enforce immigration law instead of try to find an excuse to get around it, which is also what Obama tried to do with the DACA executive order. 

We've had facts vs. alternative facts, but now Nancy Pelosi introduces "classified facts"

Which, since we're never going to be allowed to see them, mean only some people have the true but secret knowledge, right?

So we're supposed to just trust authority, you know, like her.

Nancy Pelosi is Exhibit A for the enemy in The Open Society and Its Enemies, but there are twenty-five more letters in the alphabet, and hardly enough.

Pelosi, quoted here:

"What they're putting forth is a total misrepresentation. It is false," Pelosi told CNN's Chris Cuomo. "In order to refute it, you'd have to tell the facts, and the facts are classified."

Senator Grassley says Comey's leak of his own memos included classified information

From the story here:

A top Republican senator said Wednesday that it appears former FBI Director James B. Comey leaked classified information in his effort to shape the narrative surrounding President Trump’s decision to fire him. ... He said he’s personally reviewed the seven memos, but was forced to do so in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF. “The FBI insisted that these reviews take place in a SCIF because the majority of the memos are classified,” he said. “FBI personnel refused to answer factual questions during the document reviews, including questions about the chain of custody of the documents I was reviewing, the date that they were marked classified, and who marked them as classified.”

Comey's early FBI draft memos on Hillary in May 2016 called her "grossly negligent"

But by July she was just "extremely careless".

John Solomon for The Hill notes here that 

'The change is significant, since federal law states that gross negligence in handling the nation’s intelligence can be punished criminally with prison time or fines. ... “There is evidence to support a conclusion that Secretary Clinton, and others, used the email server in a manner that was grossly negligent with respect to the handling of classified information,” reads the statement, one of Comey’s earliest drafts from May 2, 2016.'

Obama's Defense Intelligence Agency knew about North Korean nukes in 2013, Obama tried to suppress it, and WaPo reported neither

So forgive us, Kurt Andersen, for believing in conspiracies.

His side no doubt will respond with one of their own: Trump is leaking lies in order to start a war.

From the story here:

During an April 11, 2013, House Armed Services Committee hearing, Congressman Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., inadvertently revealed several unclassified sentences from a DIA report that said DIA had determined with “moderate confidence” that North Korea has the capability to make a nuclear weapon small enough to be launched with a ballistic missile.

The Director of National Intelligence and Obama officials subsequently tried to dismiss Lamborn’s disclosure by claiming the DIA assessment was an outlier that did not reflect the views of the rest of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

It was clear what Obama officials were doing in 2013.  The DIA report represented inconvenient facts that threatened President Obama’s North Korea “strategic patience” policy -- a policy to do nothing about North Korea and kick this problem down the road to the next president.  Obama officials tried to downplay the DIA assessment to prevent it from being used to force the president to employ a more assertive North Korea policy.

It’s worth noting that the Trump White House has not condemned the Washington Post story as a leak.  That’s probably because it was an authorized disclosure of classified information to advance President Trump’s North Korea strategy.

Comey's "private" memos were government property, contained classified information which he may have mishandled, improperly stored or shared

From the story here:

FBI policy forbids any agent from releasing classified information or any information from ongoing investigations or sensitive operations without prior written permission, and mandates that all records created during official duties are considered to be government property. ... 

[T]he revelation that four of the seven memos included some sort of classified information opens a new door of inquiry into whether classified information was mishandled, improperly stored or improperly shared. 

Ironically, that was the same issue the FBI investigated in 2015-16 under Comey about Clinton’s private email server, where as secretary of State she and top aides moved classified information through insecure channels.

Mollie Hemingway throws together a litany of James Comey's many misdeeds and mistakes

But stops short of calling Comey a law unto himself for some reason, which is what he is.

The article reads like it was written to meet a deadline, and suffers for it.

The best reminder in the story is that under Comey the FBI destroyed evidence, just like Hillary did, for which they both should be in prison:

[U]pon learning that two Clinton staff members had classified information, the FBI didn’t subpoena those computers but gave the employees immunity in return for giving them up. The FBI severely limited their own searches for data on the computers and then destroyed them. A technician who destroyed evidence lied to FBI investigators even after he received immunity, and Comey did nothing. And after the FBI discovered that President Obama had communicated with Clinton on the non-secure server, Obama said he didn’t think Clinton should be charged with a crime because she hadn’t intended to harm national security. As former Attorney General Michael Mukasey noted, “As indefensible as his legal reasoning may have been, his practical reasoning is apparent: If Mrs. Clinton was at criminal risk for communicating on her nonsecure system, so was he.”

Here.

And the White House examined a transcript of a wiretapped conversation of Michael Flynn

Someone in the US government was wiretapping all over the place, and the White House read all about it.

It doesn't matter that Comey at FBI denies he's doing it, or that the FISA court refused to allow wiretaps. Someone wiretapped Flynn during the transition, and Manafort during the campaign, which means at Trump Tower.

President Trump is not wrong.

The New York Times, February 13, 2017, here:

The White House had examined a transcript of a wiretapped conversation that Mr. Flynn had with Mr. Kislyak in December, according to administration officials. Mr. Flynn originally told Mr. Pence and others that the call was limited to small talk and holiday pleasantries.

But the conversation, according to officials who saw the transcript of the wiretap, also included a discussion about sanctions imposed on Russia after intelligence agencies determined that President Vladimir V. Putin’s government tried to interfere with the 2016 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf. Still, current and former administration officials familiar with the call said the transcript was ambiguous enough that Mr. Trump could have justified either firing or retaining Mr. Flynn. ...

Officials said classified information did not appear to have been discussed during the conversation between Mr. Flynn and the ambassador, which would have been a crime. The call was captured on a routine wiretap of diplomats’ calls, the officials said.

Hillary's maid Marina Santos had illegal access to classified e-mails, both electronic and printed, and to classified faxes

Reported here:

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton routinely asked her maid to print out sensitive government e-mails and documents — including ones containing classified information — from her house in Washington, DC, e-mails and FBI memos show. But the housekeeper lacked the security clearance to handle such material.

In fact, Marina Santos was called on so frequently to receive e-mails that she may hold the secrets to E-mailgate — if only the FBI and Congress would subpoena her and the equipment she used. ...

Just how sensitive were the papers Santos presumably handled? The FBI noted Clinton periodically received the Presidential Daily Brief — a top-secret document prepared by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies — via the secure fax. 

A 2012 “sensitive” but unclassified e-mail from Hanley to Clinton refers to a fax the staff wanted Clinton “to see before your Netanyahu mtg. Marina will grab for you.”

Hillary aide Patrick Kennedy at State Dept. tried to bribe FBI to reclassify Benghazi document

From the story here:

We have here a clear pattern of corruption that makes Watergate look like child’s play. Hillary’s aide, Patrick Kennedy, tried to bribe the FBI to change the classification of a Benghazi document so as to enable Hillary’s false claim that she didn’t send or receive classified information on her illegal home server. The FBI, to its credit, refused. (James Comey wasn’t involved at that stage.)

Hillary’s aide then asked whether the FBI would be saying anything publicly about the classification issue. Once assured that the FBI would be silent, Hillary took the stage and alleged publicly, and falsely, that she never used her illegal home server to send or receive classified information. One wonders, too, how many critically important documents have been “archive[d] … in the basement of DoS [the State Department] never to be seen again,” based on bogus FOIA exemptions.

Donald Trump has his faults, but Hillary Clinton is far too corrupt to serve as President of the United States.

That lying bitch Hillary on headers last night: None of my emails had a 'classified material' header

That's because she made sure they were removed, disproving her claim to the FBI that she was ignorant of what the markings meant.

(See here for Hillary's bald-faced lying to a US Navy veteran at last night's Commander in Chief forum.)

When Jake Sullivan complained in 2011 that he couldn't send something to Hillary because of a classified material header, she told him to remove it and send it non-secure, as recounted by HotAir already in early January here, where the email is reproduced. It took her all of four minutes to commit a crime.

Why are we still rehashing this? Hillary should be under indictment, not running for office.

Hot Air:

In a thread from June 2011, Hillary exchanges e-mails with Jake Sullivan, then her deputy chief of staff and now her campaign foreign-policy adviser, in which she impatiently waits for a set of talking points. When Sullivan tells her that the source is having trouble with the secure fax, Hillary then orders Sullivan to have the data stripped of its markings and sent through a non-secure channel. ... “If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.” That’s an order to violate the laws handling classified material. There is no other way to read that demand. Regardless of whether or not Sullivan complied, this demolishes Hillary’s claim to be ignorant of marking issues, as well as strongly suggests that the other thousand-plus instances where this did occur likely came under her direction.

For Congress to see Hillary's FBI file, Comey requires layer upon layer of security which Hillary was allowed to discard

From Kim Strassel, here:

[T]he process highlights not only the absurdity of Mrs. Clinton’s claim that her server was no big deal, but also the irresponsibility of the FBI’s decision not to prosecute. Duly elected members of Congress are traversing layers of security and guards, clearances in hand, to view a few top-secret documents. Ask Mr. Comey why what is demanded of them was not demanded of Hillary.

But the contradiction gets even more extreme. The FBI has placed additional, and unnecessary, strictures on the Hillary file. It warned lawmakers against publicly sharing any information from the documents—even unclassified information. So the FBI chief won’t prosecute Mrs. Clinton for spreading secrets across the globe, but he bars Congress from talking about unclassified issues that potentially get to the heart of today’s presidential race. One might wonder why. ...

The entire spectacle—from the investigation to this week’s handover of files—demonstrates how much damage Mr. Comey has done to the FBI’s credibility.

Hillary Clinton's seven perjuries before Congress: Clinton v Comey July 2016

Clinton: "I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email”.

Comey: “There was classified material emailed".

Clinton: “There was nothing marked classified on my emails, either sent or received”.

Comey: “There were a small number of portion markings on, I think, three of the documents. I don't think that our investigation established she was actually particularly sophisticated with respect to classified information and the levels and treatment. Even if information is not marked ‘classified’ in an email, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it".

Clinton: “It [her private e-mail set up] was allowed, but it was not a good choice”.

Comey: “You could be walked out [for that at the FBI] or, depending on the nature of the facts, you could be reprimanded".

Clinton: “I provided the department … with all of my work-related emails, all that I had”.

Comey:  "The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014."

Clinton: “I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two”.

Comey: "[She] used multiple devices during the four years of her term as secretary of state".

Clinton: "“The FBI has the server that was used during the tenure of my State Department service”.

Comey: "Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to view and send e-mail on that personal domain. As new servers and equipment were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored, and decommissioned in various ways." 

Clinton: “There were no security breaches”.

Comey: "[W]e assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account".

Read the whole thing here at The Hill.

So Obama learned of clintonemail.com through news reports like everyone else while e-mailing her there 22 times

Sounds like someone's lying again and needs to be impeached. Otherwise things could get a little out of hand, no? I mean that's what happens when people get in the habit of flouting the law.

March 7, 2015:

'Obama, after delivering a Saturday speech in Selma, Ala., was asked when he found out about Clinton’s personal email system run from her Chappaqua home. “The same time everybody else learned it through news reports,” he told CBS News.'

January 29, 2016:

'The State Department on Friday said for the first time that “top secret” material had been sent through Hillary Clinton’s private computer server, and that it would not make public 22 of her emails because they contained highly classified information. The department announced that 18 emails exchanged between Mrs. Clinton and President Obama would also be withheld, citing the longstanding practice of preserving presidential communications for future release. The department’s spokesman, John Kirby, said that exchanges did not involve classified information.'

Hillary email to Jake Sullivan requested he remove "classified" from document before sending it

From the story by Keith Koffler here:

“This is gigantic,” said [Joseph] diGenova. “She caused to be removed a classified marking and then had it transmitted in an unencrypted manner. That is a felony. The removal of the classified marking is a federal crime. It is the same thing to order someone to do it as if she had done it herself.” On the June 17, 2011, email chain with senior State Department adviser Jake Sullivan, Clinton apparently asked Sullivan to change the marking on classified information so that it is no longer flagged as classified. ... The revelation also appears to put to the lie Clinton’s claim that she never handled classified information on her server.

FBI successful at recovering e-mails from "wiped" Hillary private server used while she was Secretary of State

Bloomberg originally reported here:

The FBI has recovered personal and work-related e-mails from the private computer server used by Hillary Clinton during her time as secretary of state, according to a person familiar with the investigation. ... Internal government watchdogs have determined that classified information ended up on the system. Their findings sparked the FBI inquiry. ... There has been some question as to whether Clinton deleted her messages or took the more thorough and technical step of “wiping” the server. [Andy] Boian said Tuesday that Platte River [Networks] had “no knowledge of it being wiped.”

British newspaper and David Cameron government try to smear Edward Snowden

The Guardian reports on the story, here:

'Downing Street and the Home Office are being challenged to answer in public claims that Russia and China have broken into the secret cache of Edward Snowden files and that British agents have had to be withdrawn from live operations as a consequence.

'The reports first appeared in the Sunday Times, which quoted anonymous senior officials in No 10, the Home Office and security services. The BBC also quoted an anonymous senior government source, who said agents had to be moved because Moscow gained access to classified information that reveals how they operate. ...

'[Eric King of Privacy International] added that if Downing Street and the Home Office believed that Russia and China had gained access to the Snowden documents, then why was the government not putting this out through official channels.

'He added: “Given Snowden is facing espionage charges in the US, you would have thought the British government would have provided them with this information.”'

The Guardian destroyed the Snowden hard drives in front of British security in July 2013 after the British government threatened to shut down the newspaper, as reported here:

'New video footage has been released for the first time of the moment Guardian editors destroyed computers used to store top-secret documents leaked by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

'Under the watchful gaze of two technicians from the British government spy agency GCHQ, the journalists took angle-grinders and drills to the internal components, rendering them useless and the information on them obliterated.'

The Guardian acknowledged at the time that the Snowden files exist in other jurisdictions:

'[The Guardian's] Rusbridger told government officials that destruction of the Snowden files would not stop the flow of intelligence-related stories since the documents existed in several jurisdictions. He explained that Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian US columnist who met Snowden in Hong Kong, had leaked material in Rio de Janeiro. There were further copies in America, he said.'

So . . . who in the United States would want the twofer of smearing Snowden by outing British operatives?

Obama's Hot Mike Proves He Has Treasonous Plans For US Missile Defenses The Voters Would Reject

The congressman, of course, doesn't quite put it in those terms, here, but it's clear the president has hatched a plot which the Russian president supports:

[T]he defense authorization bill signed into law by the president contains a provision that limits the president’s ability to share classified data with Russia.

“Congress took this step because it was clear based on official testimony and administration comments in the press that classified information about U.S. missile defenses, including hit-to-kill technology and velocity at burnout information, may be on the table as negotiating leverage for your reset with Russia,” Turner said, noting that the president said he may treat the limit as nonbinding when he signed the defense bill into law.

The comments in Seoul, in addition to the signing statement, “suggests that you and your administration have plans for U.S. missile defenses that you believe will not stand up to electoral scrutiny,” [Rep. Mike] Turner [R., OH] said.

The Weekly Standard has the hot mike transcript, here:

President Obama: "On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space."

President Medvedev: "Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…"

President Obama: "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility."

President Medvedev: "I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir, and I stand with you."

What more evidence do we need that this traitor needs to be removed from office?