So, we won't have Democrat Senator Bob Menendez to kick around anymore

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was convicted of all charges Tuesday in a sweeping corruption trial in which he was accused of accepting bribes of gold and cash from three New Jersey businessmen and acting as an agent for the Egyptian government.

A jury in Manhattan deliberated for parts of three days before finding the Democrat guilty of 16 crimes, including bribery, extortion, honest services fraud, obstruction of justice and conspiracy. ...

Two co-defendants were also convicted. The New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, were accused of paying bribes. A third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty prior to trial and testified against the others. ...

Prosecutors said serial numbers on the gold bars and fingerprints on tape that bound together the stacks of cash were traced to Hana and Daibes.

Complete story here.

LOL, Supremes overturn obstruction charge against Jan 6er who was in the Capitol for a whole four minutes, count 'em

It was 6-3, with Barrett defecting to the liberals and Jackson defecting to the conservatives.

Fischer was accused by prosecutors of charging at police guarding a Capitol entrance. Fischer, at the time a member of the North Cornwall Township police in Pennsylvania, got inside the building and pressed up against an officer's riot shield as police officers attempted to clear rioters, according to prosecutors. He remained in the Capitol for four minutes before police pushed him out, they said. ... Federal prosecutors estimate that about 250 of the roughly 1,400 people charged in the Capitol attack could be impacted by the ruling. ... about 50 Jan. 6 defendants were convicted and sentenced on the obstruction charge with no other felony. Of those, about half are currently serving a sentence of incarceration, less than 2% of all charged cases. [Right, like that makes it OK, Reuters?]

More.

That didn't take long: White House floats commutation of Hunter Biden sentence after saying it wouldn't pardon him or commute it

 The White House isn’t ruling out a potential commutation for Hunter Biden after his conviction

The position from the White House is a shift from what it said in September, when Jean-Pierre was asked whether the president would “pardon or commute his son if he’s convicted.” The press secretary responded at the time that “I’ve answered this question before. It was asked of me not too long ago, a couple of weeks ago. And I was very clear, and I said no.”

No one is above the law except for some of us, like Hallie Biden and the US Secret Service: Yesterday Hunter Biden was convicted of gun crimes, Joe Biden minutes later says families must be held accountable

 Apparently Hallie Biden won't be charged in any of this.

Nor the US Secret Service, which swooped in to try and get Hunter's falsified background check paperwork for the gun purchase and make Hunter's little problem go away:

Secret Service agents approached the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun and asked to take the paperwork involving the sale, according to two people, one of whom has firsthand knowledge of the episode and the other was briefed by a Secret Service agent after the fact.

The gun store owner refused to supply the paperwork, suspecting that the Secret Service officers wanted to hide Hunter’s ownership of the missing gun in case it were to be involved in a crime, the two people said. The owner, Ron Palmieri, later turned over the papers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which oversees federal gun laws.

Read the whole thing from Politico, March 25, 2021, here.

The Secret Service made the White House cocaine problem go away just last summer. 

 

Sad to learn Ron Radosh joined the enemy

In a cogent essay, a leading conservative scholar and former high ranking State Department official, Peter Berkowitz, examines why about half the country believes elite legal progressives “have weaponized federal law enforcement.” He notes that “four criminal indictments [were] brought against Trump−all between April 4 and August 10, 2023, more than two years after he left office and just as the 2024 campaign ramped up….” In other words (as the Marxists used to say) it was no coincidence. 

Berkowitz characterizes as “reckless” the Colorado Supreme Court decision to remove Trump from the ballot on the grounds that he violated the 14^th Amendment’s prohibition on those who “engaged in insurrection.” He points out that Trump has never been charged (let alone convicted) of insurrection. 

Berkowitz excoriates neoconservative Robert Kagan’s argument that “the threat Trump poses to freedom and democracy in America justifies abusing the law to banish him from the political arena.” In this sense, Berkowitz notes, ”anti-Trumpers thereby facilitate the unraveling of the rule of law that they seek to avert.” 

Gabe Schoenfeld and fellow apostate Ron Radosh devote an entire essay to rebutting Berkowitz’s argument. They defend the efforts by the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine Secretary of State to disqualify Donald Trump from running for president as “the working out of the rule of law.” Further, Schoenfeld and Radosh laud Kagan’s endorsement (he “deserves high praise”) of “taking every conceivable measure” to stop Trump.

What better language than “every conceivable measure” to describe the logic of war?

More.

Peter Navarro chose allegiance to the separate and equal power of the Executive, of which he was a part and which the Legislative transgressed in a political witchhunt

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department wants former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro to spend six months behind bars after being convicted of criminal contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena. ...

“The Defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law,” prosecutors wrote in Thursday’s sentencing memo.

 More.

The only reason Democrat Senator Bob Menendez didn't keep his cash in the freezer like Democrat William J. Jefferson was because it wouldn't all fit in there

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Authorities found more than $100,000 worth of gold bars in Menendez’s home, and $480,000 in cash — much of it hidden in closets, clothing and a safe.

More. 

 

 

 

 

"In a subsequent raid, agents found $90,000 in marked money in the freezer of Jefferson’s Virginia home."

 

If Donald Trump is convicted of anything will all of his lousy appointments suddenly be invalidated?

 Asking for 570 friends convicted of January 6th offenses.

Soft-on-sex-crime liberal Democrat in Wisconsin could make it to its Supreme Court on April 4

 

The Kelly commercial isn’t the first to attack Protasiewicz’s sentencing record. Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business association, launched an ad campaign highlighting multiple convicted rapists and pedophiles who received light sentences from Protasiewicz.

More.

Every damn time: The Army Times won't show the picture of the US Army reservist found guilty of spying for China, you have to go to the South China Morning Post for that

 Ex-Army reservist convicted of acting as Beijing agent...  

Former Chicago graduate student Ji Chaoqun convicted of spying for China part of larger plan: analysts

 

The most important thing to the Army Times obviously is to hide the man's identity, because you know, racism.

Nevermind the lunacy of recruiting foreigners to serve in the US military.

This country is so screwed it's almost indescribable.

 

 

 

Academic lunatics, but I repeat myself, are separately accused of setting both the Fawn Fire and the Dixie Fire in California

The second US academic in two months, Alexandra Souverneva, has been arrested and accused of serial arson in California. Last month California Professor Gary Maynard was arrested in a separate incident, and accused of being a serial arsonist. Neither of the accused to my knowledge has been convicted of arson crimes.

More.

But for all you know GLOBAL WARMING DID IT.

In their defense, fires are pretty easy to set when your governors chronically refuse to remove the dead undergrowth in the name of the biodiversity also preached by academia.

Sad to listen to Mark Steyn give know-nothings the golden EIB microphone today to blanket the country with bilge

We had a lawyer call in from Michigan, where I live, to complain about the governor's tyranny, failing to mention the 1905 Supreme Court precedent her lawyer cites which permits her actions to protect the citizenry. The lawyer must have gone to the same school as convicted Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.

Then we had a caller from Georgia tell us coronavirus infections are much more widespread according to results from several states using antibody tests, never mentioning that all of these antibody tests are unreliable and NONE of them are approved by the FDA.

That caller also said everything was improving in Sweden when the truth is quite the opposite. Sweden embarked on herd immunity early and is now reaping the whirlwind with 2,355 deaths and a mortality rate of 12%, more than twice that of the United States.

But yeah, let Georgia be Sweden.

I guess the Rush Limbaugh supporters in Georgia must know coronavirus will ravage the black enclaves of Atlanta, decreasing the surplus population.

2019's darling of left-wing MSNBC and CNN, Michael Avenatti, convicted on all counts, looks forward to 20 years in the big house and two more trials

He stays locked up pending sentencing in June.

Story.

Trump just keeps piling on the wins.

Roger Stone, prosecuted by Democrats, convicted by Democrats

Prediction: Nancy Pelosi will hold the articles of impeachment through the November 2020 election in order to get the Senate back in Democrat hands

After which she'll send the articles up to the Senate and get Trump convicted and expelled.

Her justification will be McConnell refusing to give Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland a hearing in 2016.

It's a gamble because the articles will have to be reauthorized in the next Congress, and presumes a Democrat sweep of both chambers. But what have they got to lose, except failure now or failure later?

Better to fail later and try to make political hay now while the sun shines. 

Wow, white Daily Beast POS who doxxed black blue-collar Pelosi-vid creator did 5 years for espionage

Daily Beast Writer, A Convicted Felon Previously Banned From The Internet, Doxxes Man Who Made Pelosi Meme Video

Bernie imploded within a week of his CNN town hall over his voting rights plan for criminals

75% of Americans disagree with Bernie Sanders' plan to let every US prisoner vote -- John Haltiwanger Apr. 30, 2019, 9:52 AM:

The vast majority of Americans — roughly 75% — do not support Sen. Bernie Sanders' proposal to enfranchise all prisoners, but many are open to giving voting rights to non-violent inmates, according to a new INSIDER poll. ...

During a CNN town hall last Monday, the Vermont senator was asked to clarify if he supports voting rights for people like the Boston Marathon bomber or people convicted of rape. Sanders replied that even "terrible people" should be allowed to vote, contending that disenfranchising any group of people is a "slippery slope."

Chicago's Kim Foxx let Jussie Smollett off the hook, turns out she let a convicted murderer go free

Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx lets Derrion Albert killer off the hook:

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The family of 16-year-old Derrion Albert wants to know why one of the men convicted in his murder is now free. The 16-year-old Fenger High School honors student was on the way home from school when he was caught in the middle of a gang fight and killed in 2009.  The I-Team has been looking into the Cook County State's Attorney decisions in the wake of the Jussie Smollett case and uncovered that the Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx decided not to pursue a stiff prison sentence for one of the attackers shortly after she took office. Cook County prosecutors charged four teens involved in the gang melee that led to Albert's death as adults. Three were convicted of murder at trial. One pleaded guilty. All are serving prison sentences.

Libertarian Senator Mike Lee talks grandly about "conservative" criminal justice reform when all he's after is throwing out federal mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses

Mike Lee thinks selling drugs (even while armed with a gun!) doesn't hurt anyone when the evidence is pouring in that marijuana is bad for the health of those who use it.

And he obviously hasn't lived with a user. If he had he'd know they make lousy family members and lousy Americans.

Did the young father of two let his children play with his gun, Senator?

Thanks for nothing, Utah!

Mike Lee: A conservative case for criminal justice reform:

For example, when I served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Salt Lake City, Weldon Angelos -- a young father of two with no criminal record -- was convicted of selling three dime bags of marijuana to a paid informant over a short period of time.

These were not violent crimes. No one was hurt. But because Angelos had been in possession of a gun at the time he sold the drugs (a gun which was neither brandished nor discharged in connection with the offense), the judge was forced by federal law to give him a 55-year prison sentence. The average federal sentence for assault is just two years. The average murderer only gets 15 years. While acknowledging the obvious excessiveness of the sentence, the judge explained that the applicable federal statutes gave him no authority to impose a less-severe prison term, noting that “only Congress can fix this problem.”

The meaning of "high" in "high crimes and misdemeanors" refers not to the nature of the offenses, but to their sphere

Gary L. McDowell, "High Crimes and Misdemeanors": Recovering the Intentions of the Founders (1999) here:

[I]t was essential to their way of thinking to make clear that impeachment was a political process dealing with political wrongdoing and not a part of the criminal justice process. Thus, they made clear that punishment for impeachment could not "extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States." But they emphasized that impeachment was not a bar to prosecuting criminal acts that the person impeached may have committed by noting that "the Party convicted [of impeachment] shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law." Thus, although an indictable crime may be deemed an impeachable offense, impeachable offenses are not simply limited to indictable crimes. ...

In all of the English cases the political nature of the offenses charged in impeachments was revealed by the use of the word "high" to modify both "crimes" and "misdemeanors." The use of "high" in "high crimes and misdemeanors" did not refer to the substantive nature of the offense, that it was a particularly serious offense, but that it was a "crime or misdemeanor" carried out against the commonwealth itself. This use of "high" to distinguish crimes and misdemeanors against the society as a whole derived from its use in distinguishing "high" treason from "petit" treason. Alexander Hamilton summarized this understanding of "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" as adopted by the Federal Convention in his explanation of the impeachment process created by the Constitution. The objects of impeachment, he noted, "are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself."