All Three Defendants Convicted of Murder in Ahmaud Arbery Lynching

Very emotional and uplifting press conference.

Spiritual. Grateful for the grace of God.

At NYT, "Three Men Found Guilty of Murdering Ahmaud Arbery: Defendants Face Up to Life in Prison":

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Three white men were found guilty of murder and other charges on Wednesday for the pursuit and fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, in a case that, together with the killing of George Floyd, helped inspire the racial justice protests of last year.

The three defendants — Travis McMichael, 35; his father, Gregory McMichael, 65; and their neighbor William Bryan, 52 — face sentences of up to life in prison for the state crimes. The men have also been indicted on separate federal charges, including hate crimes and attempted kidnapping, and are expected to stand trial in February on those charges.

The verdict suggested that the jury agreed with prosecutors’ arguments that Mr. Arbery posed no imminent threat to the men and that the men had no reason to believe he had committed a crime, giving them no legal right to chase him through their suburban neighborhood. “You can’t start it and claim self-defense,” the lead prosecutor argued in her closing statements. “And they started this.”

Though the killing of Mr. Arbery in February 2020 did not reach the same level of notoriety as the case of Mr. Floyd, the Black man murdered by a white Minneapolis police officer three months later, Mr. Arbery’s death helped fuel widespread demonstrations and unrest that unfolded in cities across the country in the spring and summer of 2020.

The case touched on some of the most combustible themes in American criminal justice, including vigilantism, self-defense laws, the effects of widespread gun ownership and the role of race in jury selection.

Like many other recent episodes involving the killing of Black people, the confrontation was captured on video that was eventually made public. Unlike many of the others, the video was made not by a bystander but by one of the defendants, Mr. Bryan.

From the beginning, Mr. Arbery’s family and friends raised questions about local officials’ handling of the case. The three men who were later charged walked free for several weeks after the shooting, and were arrested only after the video was released, a national outcry swelled and the case was taken over by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Jackie Johnson, the local prosecutor who initially handled the case, lost her bid for re-election in 2020 and was indicted this year by a Georgia grand jury, accused of “showing favor and affection” to Gregory McMichael, a former investigator in her office, and for directing police officers not to arrest Travis McMichael. The case was ultimately tried by the district attorney’s office in Cobb County, which is roughly 300 miles away from Brunswick in metropolitan Atlanta.

The case brought political and legal upheaval. Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed a hate-crimes statute into law, and sided with state lawmakers when they voted to repeal significant portions of the state’s citizen’s arrest statute.

During the trial, defense lawyers relied on that citizen’s arrest law, which was enacted in the 19th century. They argued that their clients had acted legally when, on a sunny Sunday afternoon in February 2020, they set out in two pickup trucks in an effort to detain Mr. Arbery, an avid jogger and former high school football player who spent nearly five minutes trying to run away from them.

Eventually trapped between the two pickup trucks, Mr. Arbery ended up in a confrontation with Travis McMichael, who was armed with a shotgun and fired at Mr. Arbery three times at close range. Mr. McMichael testified that he feared that Mr. Arbery, who had no weapon, would get control of the shotgun from him and threaten his life.

Over the 10 days of testimony in the trial, prosecutors challenged the idea that an unarmed man who never spoke to his pursuers could be considered much of a threat at all.

“What’s Mr. Arbery doing?” Linda Dunikoski, the lead prosecutor said in her closing statement. “He runs away from them. And runs away from them. And runs away from them.”

The verdict, read aloud in a packed, windowless courtroom in the Glynn County Courthouse, came at a time when Americans were already divided over the acquittal, a few days earlier, of Kyle Rittenhouse. Mr. Rittenhouse, who asserted that he was acting in self-defense, fatally shot two men and wounded another during protests and violence that broke out after a white police officer shot a Black man in Kenosha, Wis.

Before the verdict in the Georgia case, some observers worried that the racial makeup of the jury — which included 11 white people and one Black person — would skew justice in the defendants’ favor.

Superior Court Judge Timothy R. Walmsley oversaw the proceedings. When he approved the selection of the nearly all-white jury, he noted that there was an appearance of “intentional discrimination” at play, but he said that defense lawyers had given legitimate reasons unrelated to race when they moved to exclude eight Black potential jurors in the final stages of the selection process.

Before the verdict, Wanda Cooper-Jones, Mr. Arbery’s mother, said she had faith in the power of the facts that the jurors were shown. “I’m very confident that they’ll make the right decision once they see all of the evidence,” she said.

Mr. Arbery’s family said he was out jogging on the day of his death, but defense lawyers said no evidence had emerged to show that Mr. Arbery jogged that day into the defendants’ neighborhood of Satilla Shores, just outside of Brunswick, a small coastal city.

Video footage showed Mr. Arbery, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, walking into a partially built house in the neighborhood shortly before he was killed. It was a house he had walked into numerous times before. Each time, surveillance video showed him wandering around the property, but not taking or damaging anything. The owner of the house told police that items had been stolen from a boat that was sometimes stored on the property, though he was not sure the boat was there when the thefts occurred.

General concerns about property crime in Satilla Shores were widespread in early 2020, residents testified at the trial.

Travis McMichael told the police that he had seen Mr. Arbery outside the partially built house one evening 12 days before the shooting. During that encounter, Mr. McMichael said, Mr. Arbery put his hands in his waistband, as if reaching for a gun. Mr. McMichael called 911 that evening. Mr. Arbery ran away.

On the day of the shooting, a neighbor across the street saw Mr. Arbery in the house and called the police. Mr. Arbery left the house soon after, and ran down the street. Gregory McMichael spotted him and, along with his son, jumped into a truck and gave chase. Moments later, the third defendant, Mr. Bryan, began chasing Mr. Arbery as well.

At the trial, defense lawyers sought to show that the men were acting that day out of a “duty and responsibility” to detain a man whom they felt they had reasonable grounds to believe was a burglar, as Robert Rubin, a lawyer for Travis McMichael, put it. In her closing argument, Laura D. Hogue, a lawyer for Gregory McMichael, noted that Mr. Arbery had been on the property before and said he had become “a recurring nighttime intruder — and that is frightening, and unsettling.”

Travis McMichael was the only defendant to take the stand. He told the court he took his shotgun out during the pursuit because his U.S. Coast Guard training had taught him that showing a weapon could de-escalate a potentially violent situation.

He testified that he believed he had little choice but to shoot Mr. Arbery once they clashed...

More at Memeorandum.

And from Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "AHMAUD ARBERY CASE: Jury finds Travis McMichael, his father Greg McMichael and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Ryan, guilty of felony murder, among other charges."

Batya Ungar-Sargon tweets:

In a country with our ugly history, today is a good day. The tragic lynching of Ahmaud Arbery, the theft of a young man's life, cannot be undone by a just verdict. But it would have been compounded by an unjust one. We haven't overcome all our demons, but we are one step closer. https://t.co/Y8K8t2MijA

— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) November 24, 2021

Bari Weiss on the Rittenhouse Not Guilty Verdict

The best. Ms. Weiss is always the best.

If you are shocked by the Rittenhouse verdict reconsider what media you consume: https://t.co/zIMveD3IXN

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) November 19, 2021

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Wants to Abolish 'Our Carceral System'

Honestly, this woman's psycho.

At Fox News:

AOC says she wants 'to abolish our carceral system'https://t.co/yOdMRNKjpm

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 26, 2021

Judge Jeanine Slams Extremist Left's Attack on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (VIDEO)

I used to post Judge Jeanine's opening monologues quite often.

She's a real treasure (and doesn't take any crap). 

At Fox News:

Charles W. Mills, From Class to Race

 At Amazon, Charles W. Mills, From Class to Race.

'Critical Race Weary'

From Buck Sexton:

Much of the recent attention on Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) has been a result of the increase in Zoom teaching during the COVID-19 school shutdowns. Parents became aware of the kind of identity-politics indoctrination forced on their kids. Students who hadn’t even reached high-school age were being told that they were part of systematic oppression based on their skin color.

It has been known for a long time that academia is riddled with CRT nonsense, and college campuses have been demanding that students worship at the altar of “Diversity and Inclusion.” But corporate America has also been infiltrated with similar politically correct brainwashing.

The Marxist rot of CRT has spread into the executive suites of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world. Case in point: Raytheon Technologies. It’s the second-largest defense contractor in the world, with around 181,000 employees and revenue over $56 billion in 2020.

It’s not the kind of place one might expect to be nagging employees about “checking their privilege” or “confronting historical oppression.” This is a place that makes missiles that blow people up, among other things.

Yet thanks to an industrious think-tank scholar at the Manhattan Institute named Christopher Rufo, we know that when Raytheon isn’t coming up with new ways to drop bombs on the Third World, its employees sit through some of the most absurd and offensive racial sensitivity training imaginable.

Rufo got his hands on the actual training materials from Raytheon’s version of CRT training. He writes in City Journal about some of the most insane PC training modules, such as when:

“Raytheon asks white employees to deconstruct their identities and identify [their] privilege. The company argues that white, straight, Christian, able-bodied, English-speaking men are at the top of the intersectional hierarchy – and must work on recognizing [their] privilege” and step aside in favor of other identity groups. According to outside diversity consultant Michelle Saahene, whites “have the privilege of individuality,” while minorities “don’t have that privilege.”

Divisive Diversity

Deconstruct their identities? Intersectional hierarchy? These are Leftist absurdities, but they have to be taken seriously in so far as they’re part of a vast and growing “diversity and inclusion” complex. There are frauds who travel around from company to company to preach this nonsense, and they’re shockingly well-compensated and culturally influential.

In fact, there’s real power now behind CRT. As anyone who has been called into human resources at a Fortune 500 company for a “sensitivity” issue will be able to tell you, the HR policies of major companies now reflect the philosophy of CRT. Employees are expected to abide by the ever-changing dictates of these Diversity Czars or face the consequences.

These expectations even extend to the way colleagues are allowed to speak to each other...

Still more.

Yet again, contra Sexton, C.R.T. is not Marxist. See Kimberley Crenshaw, Critical Race Theory.

Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory

This is the key introductory text. It's pitched, really, at the undergraduate level. 

At Amazon, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction.

(For the advanced graduate-level, nearly impenetrable text, see Kimbery Crenshaw, Critical Race Theory.)

Ben Carson Slams Critical Race Theory

This is excellent, except for Carson's claim that critical race theory is "Marxist." 

There's plenty of Marxism in the schools, especially in the humanities and social sciences, but this ain't it. 

It's not so, according one of the leading founders of critical race theory, Kimberly Crenshaw, in her foundational anthology, Critical Race Theory.

And Carson's at Fox News, "Dr. Ben Carson: Fighting critical race theory – this is how we stop this blatantly racist ideology: We cannot allow CRT to rob American children of that same hope that was instilled in me."

'The Five' Slams 'Defunding the Police' (VIDEO)

I almost never watch "The Five." I prefer outnumbered way more, heh, with all those hotties. 

This is a good segment, though, especially Dagen McDowell and Jessica Tarlov.

Watch:

Two Dead After 32-Year-Old Man Stabs Mother and Her Brother During Live Zoom Session With Four Others Watching (VIDEO)

Honestly, if it wasn't for my wife, who uses some news app on her phone, which bombards her all the time with stories (and me, as I had to finally download that sucker, as my wife constantly forward articles to me), I doubt I would've caught it.

The New York Times reported on the story last week, with a lot of details there, "Woman Is Fatally Stabbed by Her Son During Video Call, Authorities Say: At least four people were on a work video call when Carol Brown and her brother were stabbed in an Altadena, Calif., residence on Monday."

Also at KABC Eyewitness News 7 Los Angeles, "2 fatally stabbed at Altadena home in incident partially witnessed on Zoom, officials say: Part of the incident was witnessed on a Zoom call, officials say."

Apparently, Ms. Brown worked as "a coordinator of Pasadena City College's Black STEM Program," according to London's Daily Mail, and her son, Robert, is black.

So, there's not much point in belaboring the argument, but as Altadena is in Los Angeles County, which foolishly elected the radical, Soros-backed District Attorney George Gascón last year, it's hard to see how justice will be forthcoming for Ms. Brown and her brother.

And while it's likely that her son had mental issues, and as I don't see anything about the motive for the killings, one can bet that that ghoul Gascón will find some way, perhaps justified, but likely not so much, to let this man, Robert, get away with murder.

And I'm already grieving for the four witnesses, because no matter how much psychotherapy they're offered or go through, they'll never get those heinous images out of their minds. 

High-Speed Police Chase in Battle Creek, Michigan: Najee Rechelle McGilbray Body Recovered After Fatal Crash (VIDEO)

You gotta read the whole thing, at the Other McCain, "Manufacturing an Atrocity Narrative: How BLM Distorts the Reality of Crime":

Go watch that video again. It’s 3:30 in the morning, and it seems fair to guess that McGilbray had been out partying somewhere. Given how she was weaving all over the road, she was probably drunk. With a prior record and a suspended license, she was almost certainly driving under the influence when Officer Gammons turned on his blue lights.

This is a very common scenario in police pursuits. I’ve watched dozens of them on YouTube in the past couple of months and, based on this extensive research, I know that there is a certain predictability in the answer to the obvious question, “Why do they run?” Having a suspended license is one common answer. Most of the time, the fleeing driver is, like McGilbray, someone with a prior criminal record who fears that being busted for a traffic offense will violate their probation and send them back to prison. In many cases, the police pursuit involves someone driving a stolen car, or someone with drugs and/or guns in the car. In other cases, the driver is wanted on an active arrest warrant.

My point is, fleeing/eluding is not usually about a mere traffic violation. Almost always, there is some more serious underlying crime involved, and guess who knows this? Cops, that’s who.

There are patterns to criminal behavior, and an experienced cop knows that if he blue-lights somebody and they take off, he’s probably dealing with somebody who’s already got criminal record. That’s why, if you watch enough of these videos, you become accustomed to the “felony stop” procedure when the chase finally comes to an end. The officer who initiates the pursuit will call for back-up, and usually there are at least three or four squad cars on the scene at the end of the pursuit. All the cops exit their vehicles with guns drawn, and the command is shouted at the suspect: “Show me your hands!” It’s a tense moment, because the police have reason to suspect they may be dealing with an armed felon.

Anyway, after watching video of this police chase in Battle Creek, I did a Google search and located the information about Najee McGilbray’s prior incident of felony fleeing/eluding. There also was a story about McGilbray’s family reacting to her death..

.

The Buck Stops With Barr

A great piece, from Kim Strassel, at WSJ, via Memeorandum, "The Weekend Interview: William Barr: ‘One Standard of Justice’":

The U.S. attorney general is meditating on one of his frustrations with the modern Justice Department: The outside world keeps moving faster; the wheels of justice ever more slowly. “Nobody wants to take responsibility anymore,” William Barr says with a hint of incredulity. “They wring their hands and push issues around the bureaucracy and trade memos for months.” His response: “Bring it to me! I’ll make the decision. That’s what I’m here for!”

If Mr. Barr, 70, dominated headlines over the past two years, it’s because he made a lot of tough calls. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s constitutionally dubious claims that President Trump committed obstruction of justice? No. An investigation of the 2016 Russia-collusion probe and the dismissal of charges against Mike Flynn ? Yes. New oversight of sensitive political investigations and surveillance of U.S. citizens? Yes. A criminal referral about Mr. Trump’s call to the Ukrainian president? No. Repeated demands—from the left and the right—for his department to engage in politics? No, no, no.

Consequential decisions have a way of annoying people—Democrats, Republicans, the staff, one’s boss—but Mr. Barr, who’d been attorney general before, from 1991-93, knew that going in. “I’m in a position in life where I can do the right thing and not really care about the consequences,” he told senators during his January 2019 confirmation hearing. In a 90-minute phone interview Tuesday—less than 24 hours after the announcement of his resignation, effective Dec. 23—he sounded his usual spirited self.

He reminds me why he took the job in the first place: “The Department of Justice was being used as a political weapon” by a “willful if small group of people,” who used the claim of collusion with Russia in an attempt to “topple an administration,” he says. “Someone had to make sure that the power of the department stopped being abused and that there was accountability for what had happened.” Mr. Barr largely succeeded, in the process filling a vacuum of political oversight, reimposing norms, and resisting partisan critics on both sides.

Mr. Barr describes an overarching objective of ensuring that there is “one standard of justice.” That, he says, is why he appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate the FBI’s 2016 Crossfire Hurricane probe. “Of course the Russians did bad things in the election,” he says. “But the idea that this was done with the collusion of the Trump campaign—there was never any evidence. It was entirely made up.” The country deserved to know how the world’s premier law-enforcement agency came to target and spy on a presidential campaign.

Mr. Barr says Mr. Durham’s appointment should not have been necessary. Mr. Mueller’s investigation should have exposed FBI malfeasance. Instead, “the Mueller team seems to have been ready to blindly accept anything fed to it by the system,” Mr. Barr says, adding that this “is exactly what DOJ should not be.”

Mr. Durham hasn’t finished his work, to the disappointment of many Republicans, including the president, who were hoping for a resolution—perhaps including indictments—before the election. Mr. Barr notes that Mr. Durham had to wait until the end of 2019 for Inspector General Michael Horowitz to complete his own investigation into the FBI’s surveillance. Then came the Covid lockdowns, which suspended federal grand juries for six months. Mr. Durham could no longer threaten to subpoena uncooperative witnesses.

“I understand people’s frustration over the timing, and there are prosecutors who break more china, so to speak,” Mr. Barr says. “But they don’t necessarily get the results.” Mr. Durham will, and is making “significant progress,” says Mr. Barr, who disclosed this month that he had prior to the election designated Mr. Durham a special counsel, to provide assurance that his team would be able to finish its work. The new designation also assures that Mr. Durham will produce a report to the attorney general. Mr. Barr believes “the force of circumstances will ensure it goes public” even under the new administration.

The biggest news from Mr. Durham’s probe is what he has ruled out. Mr. Barr was initially suspicious that agents had been spying on the Trump campaign before the official July 2016 start date of Crossfire Hurricane, and that the Central Intelligence Agency or foreign intelligence had played a role. But even prior to naming Mr. Durham special counsel, Mr. Barr had come to the conclusion that he didn’t “see any sign of improper CIA activity” or “foreign government activity before July 2016,” he says. “The CIA stayed in its lane.”

Mr. Barr says Mr. Durham’s probe is now tightly focused on “the conduct of Crossfire Hurricane, the small group at the FBI that was most involved in that,” as well as “the activities of certain private actors.” (Mr. Barr doesn’t elaborate.) Mr. Durham has publicly stated he’s not convinced the FBI team had an adequate “predicate” to launch an investigation. In September, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified a document showing that the FBI was warned in 2016 that the Hillary Clinton campaign might be behind the “collusion” claims.

Mr. Barr says Mr. Durham is also looking at the January 2017 intelligence-community “assessment” that claimed Russia had “developed a clear preference” for Mr. Trump in the 2016 election. He confirms that most of the substantive documents related to the FBI’s investigation have now been made public.

The attorney general also hopes people remember that orange jumpsuits aren’t the only measure of misconduct. It frustrates him that the political class these days frequently plays “the criminal card,” obsessively focused on “who is going to jail, who is getting indicted.”

The American system is “designed to find people innocent,” Mr. Barr notes. “It has a high bar.” One danger of the focus on criminal charges is that it ends up excusing a vast range of contemptible or abusive behavior that doesn’t reach the bar. The FBI’s use “of confidential human sources and wiretapping to investigate people connected to a campaign was outrageous,” Mr. Barr says—whether or not it leads to criminal charges.

Also outrageous, in Mr. Barr’s view, was the abuse of power by both the FBI and the Mueller team toward Mr. Trump’s associates, especially Mr. Flynn...

Keep reading.

Supreme Court to Hear Nazi-Era Art Cases

Background at the Times of Israel, "Heirs seek return of ‘cursed’ $200m golden treasure bought for Hitler: The Guelph collection, a trove of medieval Christian art, was sold to Nazi-run Prussia in 1935. Was the sale fair, or did Goering make its Jewish owners an offer they couldn’t refuse?"

And now at the Los Angeles Times, "Supreme Court weighs heirs’ claims over forced Jewish art sales during Nazi era":

WASHINGTON — Two years after Adolf Hitler took power in Germany, the Nazis achieved one of their cultural goals: the return of the Guelph Treasure, a collection of medieval Christian relics.

Under pressure from Hitler’s deputy Hermann Goering, a consortium of Jewish art dealers agreed to sell the collection to the Prussian State Museum. On June 14, 1935, Saemy Rosenberg signed the sale documents in Berlin on behalf of his partners, receiving about one-third of what they had paid for the items in 1929.

On Monday, the Supreme Court will consider whether Rosenberg’s grandson and heirs to two other art dealers can sue Germany and its state museum to recover the treasure or obtain compensation for the loss.

“This was a forced sale to one of the greatest art thieves of all time. And it was literally a present for Hitler,” said Jed Leiber, a musician and record producer in Los Angeles. He was referring to reports that Goering later presented the treasures to Hitler.

Most of the collection, known as Welfenschatz in Germany, is on display in the Bode Museum in Berlin.

Not long after the sale, Rosenberg and his family left Germany for Amsterdam, where his daughter is said to have been a playmate of Anne Frank’s. From there, they moved to London before finally settling in New York City after the war, where Rosenberg reestablished himself as a prominent art dealer.

In an interview, his grandson remembered the “wise, kind and elegant man” who taught him how to play chess. But he did not learn until decades later, long after Rosenberg’s death in 1971, about his grandfather’s role in the sale of the Guelph Treasure.

It is one of two Holocaust-era cases to be heard by the Supreme Court on Monday, and both turn on whether a foreign state — in this instance Germany or Hungary — may be sued in the United States for “rights in property taken in violation of international law.”

Usually, foreign governments and their agencies are shielded from suits under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976. But there is an exception for an “expropriation” that violates international law, and the federal appeals court in Washington last year refused to dismiss the suits against the Hungarian national railroad and the German state museum because the alleged seizures of property were acts of genocide.

“Nowhere was the Holocaust executed with such speed and ferocity as it was in Hungary,” the appeals court said in Simon vs. Hungary. In the summer of 1944, “Hungary rounded up more than 430,000 Jews for deportation to Nazi death camps,” the court noted. Government officials, including agents of the state railroad, organized four daily trains to shuttle victims to their deaths. Before cramming between 70 and 90 people into each freight car, railroad employees robbed them of all of their possessions.

Rosalie Simon and 12 other survivors of the death camps sued Hungary and its railroad, and the D.C. Circuit appeals court, by a 2-1 vote, rejected Hungary’s claim of immunity.

That decision helped clear the way for the suit against Germany over the Guelph Treasure. Before that, Leiber and his two co-plaintiffs, Alan Philipp and Gerald Stiebel, had filed a claim for recovery in Germany with an advisory commission for the Return of Cultural Property Seized as a Result of Nazi Persecution.

The commission, which included several retired German politicians and judges, decided the 1935 sale was the result of a back-and-forth negotiation and “not a compulsory sale due to persecution.” The reduced value reflected the impact of the Great Depression, the commission said.

The heirs then filed suit in federal court in Washington.

“It is beyond serious debate that Nazi Germany took property in violation of international law by systematically targeting its Jewish citizens to make their property vulnerable for seizure,” they argued.

Again, the D.C. Circuit Court agreed and refused Germany’s claim of immunity...

Keep reading.

 

Thanksgiving Pardon for Retired United States Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn

Leftists destroyed this man's life as a political vendetta. He was convicted on a "process" crime with no substantial underlying linkage to the allegations of electoral collusion with the Russians. 

Now he's received a presidential pardon, but how does someone rebuild one's life --- a life of patriotism and exemplary national service --- after a diabolical ideological smear campaign like this?

Thank goodness for President Trump. 

Background at NPR, "Trump Pardons Michael Flynn, Who Pleaded Guilty to Lying About Russia Contact, and at NYT (with fear and trepidation, lol), "Trump’s Pardon of Flynn Signals Prospect of a Wave in His Final Weeks in Office." 

And for the analysis, see Grim's Hall, "Michael Flynn Pardoned":

It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2020

In a particularly grueling miscarriage of justice, retired general Michael Flynn had to be pardoned for a crime of which he was innocent. Investigated by the FBI at the behest of President Obama, who decided for some reason that Flynn was a Russian spy, Flynn was cleared of all charges as a result of the investigation. The FBI closed the case. 

He was prosecuted anyway by a politicized Department of Justice, which nevertheless failed to produce the only piece of evidence it allegedly had against him. That evidence would have been the original "302" form showing that the FBI agents who interviewed him thought that he'd lied to them -- about a case in which the FBI had already cleared him. No such 302 was ever produced, allegedly being lost, but we do have one that we happen to know was edited long after the fact by disgraced liar and political agent Peter Strzok. We know this because he discussed it in unencrypted text messages with his lover, also-married disgraced former prosecutor Lisa Page. 

After a financially ruinous prosecution in which the FBI/DOJ produced almost none of the exculpatory evidence that the law requires them to produce -- including the record of the investigation that completely cleared him on all charges -- Flynn's sorry lawyers convinced him to plead guilty. This was done in such a way that the DOJ and his sorry lawyers (perhaps motivated by one of their partners, a former Obama attorney general) made an illegal deal to hide the agreement not to prosecute Flynn's son from the judge! Not only did the judge lack the information he needed to discern whether the guilty plea was coerced, anyone against whom Flynn later might have testified as a result of the deal would have been denied their constitutional right to know of the deal so they could raise it as a defense against the value of his testimony. 

That judge -- a personal friend of Obama's, it turns out -- wasn't upset about the fact that the law firm and the DOJ conspired to hide these facts from him in violation of the law. His ire was for Flynn, whom he accused of selling out his country even though the DOJ had never even attempted to charge Flynn with that. What they charged him with was perjury for "lying" to the FBI (in the vanished 302), and a paperwork violation for which the FBI investigation had already cleared him. 

(They cleared him of the FARA violation because he had in fact filed paperwork with the government under another act, on the advice of lawyers he hired specifically to help him meet the legal reporting requirements -- thus, he had not tried to hide his lobbying work for a NATO ally, and clearly they could not s how criminal intent. DOJ knew all of that and made him plead guilty to it anyway, if he wanted them not to send his son to prison on trumped-up charges too.) 

Then we spent a year while Flynn's new lawyer, Sidney Powell, managed to get all the exculpatory information illegally hidden from him in the first place. None of it convinced the judge one bit to let Flynn withdraw the coerced guilty plea, nor to accept the DOJ's determination that it should probably actually drop those baseless charges after all. Ordered to drop the charges by the DC Court of Appeals in a three-judge ruling, the judge instead sought en banc approval to continue the case. He was granted it, provided he would dispose of the matter with "dispatch." That was now several months ago, and instead of disposing of the case he has been dragging it out towards an obvious intent to sentence Flynn in spite of his innocence. 

What this case shows is how completely distorted our system has become...

Still more.

The Executive Branch and the Vision of the Founders

Attorney General William Barr's speech to the Federalist Society, "Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers the 19th Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society's 2019 National Lawyers Convention."

AG Bill Barr: "It is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and undermining the rule of law." pic.twitter.com/tX7pmHBhNK

— The Hill (@thehill) November 16, 2019

Traffic Camera on Stop Sign in La Jolla (VIDEO)

About 15 years ago I was pulled over by a highway patrolman after I picked my kid up from daycare. The daycare site was located in Fountain Valley, in a residential neighborhood, way out of the way of commuter traffic or what not. I rolled the stop sign nearby, making a right turn heading back towards Magnolia Street and the 405 freeway. As I reluctantly signed the ticket I asked the cop if he didn't have better things to do than ticket a generally law-abiding citizen picking up his preschooler from daycare? How about all the folks on the freeway nearby driving in excess of 80 mph? He said he was under a lot of pressure. (*Shrug.*)

Anyway, I stop more carefully at stop signs these days --- it's been 15 years since that ticket at least --- but I notice most other drivers do not. Cops maybe should station themselves at stop signs, like the one where I got busted, to better police these infractions. Sometimes drivers show no courtesy to pedestrians or oncoming traffic. It's actually pretty dangerous. I'm getting old though, even in my Dodge Challenger, heh.

At ABC News 10 San Diego:

Attack on America: 7,000-Strong 'Migrant Caravan' Heads to the U.S. Through Southern Mexico (VIDEO)

Kate Linthicum of the L.A. Times is a partisan advocate campaigning through her "journalism" for open borders and unlimited access for the so-called "refugees" of the illegal immigrant caravan.

And below, Newt Gringrich's recent op-ed at Fox News and a raw video of the recent migrant siege of the Mexico border, via Ruptly:

“All my life is there, waiting for me,” said a migrant who was deported a month ago from Phoenix. “I miss my Playstation. I miss Buffalo Wild Wings. I miss my car.”https://t.co/MdlDFLHuO9

— Kate Linthicum (@katelinthicum) October 22, 2018

.@newtgingrich: The caravan is an attack on America -- Stop the caravan now https://t.co/swtG7y3K1x

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 20, 2018

Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings

Confirmation hearings begin tomorrow.

I've been seeing a lot of tweets on Kavanaugh, especially from that crazy leftist wench Lauren Duca.

Here's some stuff online:

For @teenvogue: Why we can and must #StopKavanaugh https://t.co/frXNQmgAO9

— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) August 31, 2018

'The stakes are astronomical': Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing will be a battle royale https://t.co/JOynAks1yG

— The Guardian (@guardian) September 3, 2018

This isn't just any Supreme Court seat. https://t.co/JutYMnuYs2

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) September 3, 2018

How Brett Kavanaugh would transform the Supreme Court https://t.co/X7F7GNDb84 pic.twitter.com/lnYEMIdzIR

— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 3, 2018

"Brett Kavanaugh’s views on privacy and the Fourth Amendment should make Republicans think twice" https://t.co/J5RXRdNk5v pic.twitter.com/31NEdp8lFB

— The Hill (@thehill) September 3, 2018

Allie Stuckey vs. Tomi Lahren

Two blonde babes on the issues. The difference here is that Ms. Allie's an intellectual. She's hot, but she's not only smart but she's book-learned, especially Bible-learned. Ms. Tomi's not stupid, but she's more of an enraging personality. She makes strong points and gets you fired up. Sadly though no one is buying her pro-choice positions. She sounds rather pathetic about it, in fact.

Following-up from the other day, "Tomi Lahren Goes Off the Rails on Kavanaugh and the Right to Life (VIDEO)."

Oh, girl. The fact that you think overturning Roe v Wade has anything to do with religion shows how ignorant you are about the constitution & abortion itself.

Also, now YOU are dictating what conservatives should stand for? No thanks. https://t.co/TboXZQ37gI

— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) July 11, 2018

Former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards said that she fears the fate of Roe v. Wade, with Trump's selection of Judge Kavanaugh.
Good.

Listen and SUBSCRIBE to @ConservMillen's podcast:https://t.co/QA2I31rA8v pic.twitter.com/wSlEg7ZuTH

— CRTV (@CRTV) July 11, 2018

Ben Shapiro's Legal Team Shuts Down 'Cock Boy' Appeal

Interesting.

At Twitchy, via Instapundit, "LED BY SUPERLAWYER KURT SCHLICHTER: Our long national nightmare is over: Ben Shapiro’s legal team cleans Clock Boy’s clock in appeals court."