The accusations of Jeff Sessions lying to Congress are flying around, accompanied by calls for his prosecution and his resignation. However, democrat appointees have lied to Congress repeatedly over the last eight years.
DNI James Clapper:
It was an exchange made famous not because of what was said at the time, but because of what Americans discovered later.
At the tail end of a rare open session of the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 12, 2013, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked National Intelligence Director James Clapper whether intelligence officials collect data on Americans.
Clapper responded “No, sir,” and, “Not wittingly.”
It was a lie. How was it later explained away?
Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper wasn’t lying when he wrongly told Congress in 2013 that the government does not “wittingly” collect information about millions of Americans, according to his top lawyer.
He just forgot.
“This was not an untruth or a falsehood. This was just a mistake on his part,” Robert Litt, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said during a panel discussion hosted by the Advisory Committee on Transparency on Friday.
“We all make mistakes.”
Was he charged with perjury or forced to resign? Of course not.
CIA Director James Brennan
As reports emerged Thursday that an internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency’s inspector general found that the CIA “improperly” spied on US Senate staffers when researching the CIA’s dark history of torture, it was hard to conclude anything but the obvious: John Brennan blatantly lied to the American public. Again.
“The facts will come out,” Brennan told NBC News in March after Senator Dianne Feinstein issued a blistering condemnation of the CIA on the Senate floor, accusing his agency of hacking into the computers used by her intelligence committee’s staffers. “Let me assure you the CIA was in no way spying on [the committee] or the Senate,” he said.
After the CIA inspector general’s report completely contradicted Brennan’s statements, it now appears Brennan was forced to privately apologize to intelligence committee chairs in a “tense” meeting earlier this week. Other Senators on Thursday pushed for Brennan to publicly apologize and called for an independent investigation.
Was he charged with perjury or forced to resign? Of course not.
Attorney General Eric Holder:
In his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Eric Holder was asked whether the Justice Department could prosecute reporters under the Espionage Act of 1917. This was his answer:
In regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material — this is not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy.
Later, the Department of Justice disclosed that Holder had personally approved the application for the search warrant for James Rosen’s Gmail account:
[T]he Department took great care in deciding that a search warrant was necessary in the Kim matter, vetting the decision at the highest levels of the Department, including discussions with the Attorney General. After extensive deliberations, and after following all applicable laws, regulations and policies, the Department sought an appropriately tailored search warrant under the Privacy Protection Act.
It was so egregious that even HuffPo was outraged:
While worrisome, to be sure, the government’s characterization of Rosen’s actions is not quite the declaration of war against the news media that it first appears — for reasons I’ll discuss in a minute. Nonetheless, the leak investigation of Rosen, as detailed in the FBI affidavit, does represent the crossing of another red line: the government’s pursuit and seizure of the contents of email messages to and from a journalist.
Was Holder charged with perjury or forced to resign? Of course not.
The obama administration has also spied on Angela Merkel and Benjamin Netanyahu. obama has not shown a reluctance to spy on Americans but has been completely resistant to holding anyone account for the wrongs- not for Fast and Furious, the IRS targeting or anything else. democrats long ago surrendered their moral authority for wrongdoing. The denials from James Clapper about the obama administration spying on Donald Trump ring hollow.
Trump intentionally put “wire tap” in parentheses. There really is no doubt Trump was being surveilled. Hillary Clinton boasted about it.
It would completely be in character for obama to be spying on a political opponent in the middle of an election and then lie about it. After all, lying carries no consequences for democrats.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
Obama lied,Bill & Hillary lied,Gore liedreid lied,schumer lied all these liberal demacrats have lied as well nothings new just the same old same old
Well, what do you expect them to do, tell the truth? That would be disastrous for the, admitting to their failures and the illegal and illicit methods they used to try and cover them up.
Yet suddenly they act as if lying and lying before Congress is bad. I guess if the fabricate the lie, it is agregious… but if a liberal actually LIES, that’s just business. Democrat business.
http://i.magaimg.net/img/65d.jpg
The NYTimes knew Trump was wiretapped.
IF Obama had kept naming Trump and his address, he would have kept being turned down by the Clinton, Clinton, Carter appointed trio of FISA court judges!
So, he dropped off Trump’s name.
The FISA court signed off.
It’s very damning that Hillary bragged about knowing Trump was being “wiretapped,” before the election.
When did Bill Clinton meet with Loretta Lynch, again?
Late June, 2016.
When did Obama start trying to wiretap Trump?
Late summer 2016.
He just didn’t succeed until late October.
The democrats are lying? If this guy is correct, we may find out very soon what the really big lies have been.
The promised Trump tax cuts and trillion-dollars in infrastructure stimulus spending that have run the stock market up in recent weeks simply aren’t going to happen. Something else is coming, and it might be the perfect storm.
If anyone can find fault with Stockman’s facts or logic, I’d really like to hear the specifics. Otherwise, batten down the hatches.
Wall St. is misreading Trump, and a market bloodbath is imminent: Stockman
The entire obama so called presidency was a complete lie, period.
How many pinnochios have the demacrats earned in these last few years?
@Greg: Greggie the fault is that you believe it!! You also believed hilldabeast would win the election.
We probably aren’t going to have to wait long to find out who was right.
I see no indications whatsoever that republicans have a workable Obamacare replacement, or any clue how to reduce taxes while simultaneously financing Trump’s proposed military budget expansion and trillion-dollar infrastructure stimulus spending plan.
@Greg:
And you can keep you plan and your doctor and you’ll save $2500 per year and I didn’t set the Red Line.
It is a matter of fact that these democrats lied.
If a democrat is talking, the democrat is lying. End of story….
Sarah Westwood, of the right-wing birdcage liner the Washington Times, just stated twice on Neil Cavuto’s FOX News program that investigation resulting in the Trump dossier was originally commissioned by democrats working for Hillary Clinton.
That’s a flat out lie. The opposition research was originally commissioned and financed by republican Trump opponents, who hired Fusion GPS to do the research. Fusion engaged Orbis Business Intelligence to conduct the investigation.
Democrats didn’t become involved until after the republican primary, when “Never Trump” republicans turned the material over to them.
Twice in the course of two minutes, the woman looks straight into the camera lens and tells the lie that Clinton democrats originally commissioned and financed the investigation, and Cavuto sits there smiling and nodding like a Pillsbury dough boy bobble-head.
Nice attack on Cavuto, he suffers from MS.
He suffers from allowing a lying weasel to say what he and she both know is not true, which is not something that is beyond his control.
Integrity is not a condition related to one’s general state of health.
@Greg:
No, the waiting is over. You were wrong, we were right. There. All better.
@Greg:
Is someone lying if what they believe what they are saying is true? Let’s face it,not many Dims know the difference.
@Greg:
And Greg is living proof of that.
@RedTeam:
Touché
The dossier is a fake story, never happened. It has democrat fingerprints all over it.
It would be a shorter list of Democrats who haven’t lied. I mean, theoretically, statistically, there must have been at least one somewhere??
@RedTeam:
I get the impression greg likes to come here and get the shit kicked out of him daily. He can not believe he is in any way changing minds. This is a predominantly conservative site. In some circles we would call that a clue.
On the other hand he might think he is instigating remorse for having voted Trump in as President. And, finally, he is most likely a paid troll, maybe drawing a check from OFA or the dirtbag Soros
I’d go with troll. Most likely. It’s hard to believe that any thinking person could have some of the opinions that he comes up with.
Nothing the Dims or Intel community comes up with is credible. They say they don’t listen in on people then they reveal that Obama asked them to listen in on the Trump campaign and they refused to do so, then they say Obama had to remove Trump’s name from the request and then they approved it. So they listened in on the ‘not Hillary’ campaign staff. Then it’s revealed Obozo ordered them to listen in on Netanyahu and others, and they had no problem with that. Is there anyone with a functioning brain that doesn’t think that Obozo did ‘everything’ he could to get Trump defeated? Does anyone think that the legality of what he did was even a question?
People don’t have to be paid to point out that Trump is turning the conservative side of the national political equation into a cuckoos nest. The danger he represents is more than sufficient to motivate some verbal push back from anyone who’s paying close attention.
@Greg: All this coming from the paid propagandist jackass still barking from the wrong side of history.
Build a time machine, go back to 2008, and stay there.
There’s no longer a place for bigots like you to thrive in 2017.
@RedTeam: Paid troll. Very easy to guess the marching orders this clown greg gets, as only FA posts matching the latest hot-words at WaPo seem to get any action from Greg.
He’s done much more from Trump than anything against him, that’s for sure.
@Nathan Blue, #24:
Do you people get paid to express your opinions?
@Greg:
The greater danger would have been putting the most corrupt, lying and incompetent person ever to have run for the office in the White House. Thankfully, Hillary was defeated and the Obama stain can begin to be removed.
@Greg: News flash Greggie, Obolacare is a complete disaster!! If demoncraps want to let it go to crap and put millions more out of health insurance and insurers continue to drop out due to millions of dollars lost then so be it!! Yes that is an impending disaster caused by demoncraps and that is why America has continued to reject demoncraps. Sense Obolacare has been passed demoncraps have lost the House/Senate/and the White House!! Face it Greggie you lost!!
@Nathan Blue:
He is undoubtedly a paid troll. Who comes here to repeatedly have his shit pushed in? Notice when he is demonstrably proven wrong, he never stands by previous positions taken in defense of those. He stays with the topic as long as the alt left media continues to push it out as real news.
A paid troll is told what topics to participate in and when to abandon those for obvious reasons.
@July 4th American: yes, isn’t it remarkable how sure the dimocrats were that Trump was colluding with the Russians because they had him recorded on wiretaps, etc. but now that Trump has said he was illegally wiretapped the Dims have slid into reverse and said there were no wire taps. Seems as if they can’t keep their story straight. Wait, I’m talking about Dimocrats, that’s what’s expected of them.
@RedTeam:
Yes, they were all clamoring for an investigation including they troll greg.
Now, they are running for the tall grass.
@July 4th American, #31:
And there will be one, because the security of the nation is at stake.
While we’re waiting for a few more republicans to realize that, perhaps you should turn your full attention to convincing yourself that income-based health insurance tax credits are not Obamacare health insurance subsidies, and that a 30 percent premium penalty for failing to carry health insurance is not a penalty, provided it’s a private sector corporation that gets to pocket the money.
Hey, not to worry. The richest people in the country will get a tax cut out of the deal, coming to around $195,000 each. They’ll no longer be subject to the 3.8 percent investment income tax that was helping to finance health care. That should add around $27 billion a year to the federal deficit, based on 2015 figures. All considered, the tax cut angle looks pretty good—provided you’re one of the usual beneficiaries.
House GOP health bill adds up to big tax cut for the rich
@Greg:
isn’t it amazing the Dimocraps didn’t give a crap about the deficit when Obozo was adding on 10 Trillion dollars during his 8 years:( Note: that’s 1.25 trillion per year.) but now they’re all concerned about adding on only 27 billion per year. Isn’t that grand of them?
footnote: 1.25trillion divided by 27 billion equal 46. So Obozo’s deficit on that was 46 times as high as Trump’s.
@RedTeam, #33:
The EPA’s entire annual budget is only $8.1 billion. Planned Parenthood’s entire federal funding for a year totals only $0.5 billion. Republicans seem to think those are enormous numbers.
They have no problem giving the wealthiest people in the nation a $27 billion annual tax cut and pushing federal health care financing that much further into the red, however.
The reason I can’t follow the logic of republican arguments is because there generally is none to follow. It’s a lot easier just to follow the dollars, and see whose pockets they land in. The right doesn’t understand the most fundamental and obvious truth—a few people have far too much at the expense of everyone else, and we’re running up our collective national debt so they can have even more. The answer is simple: A far more aggressive progressive tax schedule, with all the loopholes and opportunities for evasion shut down. That’s what we had in the days of America’s greatest middle and working class prosperity.
Trump’s cabinet members have a higher net worth than the poorest 1/3 of all other Americans combined. If you think these people have the best interest of the nation as a whole as their top priority, there’s no hope you’ll ever see reason.
AG Loretta Lynch Signed Off on All FISA Applications to WireTap President Donald Trump
The FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance) Court is in the news this weekend after President Trump tweeted that former President Obama had petitioned a court twice in order to wire tap current President Trump when he was running for office.
In his first tweet President Trump tweeted:
“ Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
He next tweeted:
“ Is it legal for a sitting President to be “wire tapping” a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!
The FISA Court was put in place in 1978 when Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA):
“ The Court sits in Washington D.C., and is composed of eleven federal district court judges who are designated by the Chief Justice of the United States. Each judge serves for a maximum of seven years and their terms are staggered to ensure continuity on the Court. By statute, the judges must be drawn from at least seven of the United States judicial circuits, and three of the judges must reside within 20 miles of the District of Columbia. Judges typically sit for one week at a time, on a rotating basis.
Pursuant to FISA, the Court entertains applications submitted by the United States Government for approval of electronic surveillance, physical search, and other investigative actions for foreign intelligence purposes. Most of the Court’s work is conducted ex parte as required by statute, and due to the need to protect classified national security information.
Every single judge on the FISA Court as of today was appointed during Obama’s Presidency!
Five of the current eleven judges on the court are scheduled to be on the court for President Trump’s entire first term with six of the judges’ terms expiring before January 2021. Seven of the judges are scheduled into the year 2020.
Current Chief Justice John Roberts has been in his role since 2005 and therefore he has appointed all the judges to the FISA court. Judge Roberts is famous for supporting Obamacare in two radical positions, one of which Justice Antonin Scalia, in his withering dissent, refered to as “applesauce”. Knowing this, it is concerning that Judge Roberts also is responsible for the makeup of the current FISA court.
Only two in over 10,000 applications were turned down by the FISA Court. According to ABC News:
“ More than a thousand applications for electronic surveillance, all signed by the attorney general, are submitted each year, and the vast majority are approved. From 2009 to 2015, for example, more than 10,700 applications for electronic surveillance were submitted, and only one was denied in its entirety, according to annual reports sent to Congress. Another one was denied in part, and 17 were withdrawn by the government.
According to ABC, all applications to the FISA Court were signed off on by the Attorney General and therefore if any applications were processed in the past year, they were signed off on by Loretta Lynch. This means that Lynch signed off on any requests for wire tapping President Donald Trump during the Presidential race. This is disheartening knowing that she released a video over the weekend calling for the need for more marching, blood and death on the streets. This also means that she chose not to investigate the Clinton Foundation for illegal activities but rather signed an application to wire tap President Trump.
Finally, another very disturbing fact about the wire tapping request of President Trump is that the FISA Court turned down President Obama’s Administration’s first request to wire tap President Trump that was evidently signed off on by Attorney General Lynch. With only two applications denied out of 10,700 from 2009 through 2015, the fact that the Obama Administration’s application was denied by the FISA is very disturbing. The odds of this happening were 0.02%.
@July 4th American, #36:
No, Mr. Holt, it does not mean that.
FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. What it might mean is that Lynch signed off on requests for wiretap surveillance on foreign nationals suspected of illegal activity, and that people in the Trump organization then turned out to be secondary parties involved in recorded conversations. Generally speaking, there are at least two ends to every telephone conversation. When you’re conducting authorized surveillance on one end, you also hear the other.
@Greg: Obamacare was going to cost a trillion dollars over 10 years and still leave 30 million uninsured (basically where we supposedly started). Unfortunately, the Democrats screwed this up so badly and involved the government where it should not BE involved that it HAS to be replaced.
When passed, all Democrats cared about was destroying the before-tax benefit people had with their employer-provided health care so they could rob the people of $300 billion more a year… and just passing something to say they did it. Now Republicans have to do something counter to their ideology and, unlike the Democrats, there is great disagreement on how to do it. All Democrats cared about was how they could profit, individually, by the bill; Republicans actually want it to work.
@Greg:
Are you of the mistaken impression that the reason for cutting the EPA and Education and PP is about money? It’s about right and wrong.
So you’re concerned that Trump is going to see that well off people get more income? Where did the 10 Trillion Obozo gave away, go to? Surely you don’t think he was writing all those checks to conservatives?
I challenge you on your statement about the worth of the Cabinet. In fact, I’ll bet it’s not much higher, if at all, than Obozo’s was.
@Greg:
yes, but if that ‘other’ is an American citizen and is not named in the warrant, that information can’t be recorded or used. If ‘all’ warrants were signed by Lynch, then if one was presented to the court, it was signed by Lynch.
@RedTeam, #39:
Republican elected officials like to pretend furthering their agenda is about fiscal responsibility. Obviously it isn’t, because the budgetary effects of what they propose are negligible. The overall effect of they’ve proposed thus far will be a step in the opposite direction.
I don’t see it having anything to do with right or wrong, either. Their social issue agenda is primarily reactionary, and a means of gathering votes. There’s nothing right or constitutional about doing everything in your power to force women to give birth who do not wish to do so. There’s nothing right about poisoning the environment to increase your profit margin.
@RedTeam, #40:
It can’t be used as evidence in a criminal prosecution case. It could certainly be given full consideration in evaluating a person’s suitability for high public office, for a position of trust, or in determining the existence of a serious national security risk.
Just because an action or situation isn’t illegal or criminal doesn’t mean it’s acceptable.
@Bill… Deplorable Me, #38:
The republican proposal will have some downsides. Ultimately, people will die because they can’t afford healthcare. But it will be the state governments’ problem—like the Constitution intended, or something.
How Republicans Plan to Ration Health Care
A more positive article, from The Atlantic:
The People Helped by the Republican Health-Care Bill
Under provisions of the republican bill, insurers will be allowed to charge older people premiums that are up to five times higher than young people carrying the same coverage. It’s going to be interesting seeing how the public reacts, once they start figuring out what Congress intends to do. Republicans will likely try to keep that from happening for as long as possible.
@Greg: You are right… there’s nothing Constitutional about an agency created out of whole cloth that can make and enact regulatory law without a single elected official being involved. There’s nothing UN-Constitional about dissolving it when it has become an abusive extra-governmental left wing tool, either. If you abuse your toys, Greg, someone might just take them away from you.
Likewise with Murder Inc. Let them allow Congress tonaudit them or forget about taxpayer funds.
Funny how you liberals now use the same flawsnexposed in the Abysmal Care Act to attack a Republican plan still being formulated. Does your massive hypocrisy not embarrass you?
7 million were ripped from their insurance and doctors and herded into insufficient plans by Obamacare. Millions have been forced to purchase plans, under penalty of law, with higher premiums and deductibles so high that it renders them useless. In addition, as I pointed out, it would still leave 30 million without insurance and cost a trillion dollars. If the replacement is bad, blame those who invented the problem and screwed up the solution… YOU.
@Bill- Deplorable Me, #44:
Actually, corporate America—with the support of bought-and-paid-for politicians and their right-wing media whores—used Obamacare as a cover for dumping long-standing insurance arrangements with employees and retirees, exactly as they have previously weaseled their way out of employee pension programs. The rest of the their comprehensive corporate benefit package includes reduced corporate and investment taxes, reduced taxes for the wealthiest, aid in resisting calls for higher wages, and the repression of unions. Throw in the lowering of education funding to dumb down the serfs even further, a removal of pesky environmental protection laws, deregulation of the financial industry—because if you can’t trust those guys, who can you trust?—and open attacks on any media outlets and journalists who dare to question what’s going on. The press has suddenly become “The Enemy of the People.”
If republicans really gave a damn about the long-standing and continuously worsening health care problems that led to the Affordable Care Act in the first place, they would have done something about them during the 10 years that they controlled both the House and the Senate between 1995 and 2007. They didn’t, so democrats undertook the project at the first opportunity, and republicans squawked like alarmed chickens. They devoted their full attention to attacking Obamacare, to turning public opinion against it, and to every action that could be taken to weaken its financing and assure its failure. Regaining control of Congress, they ramped up that attack, going through the motions of phony repeals time and time again, rather than devoting even a moment to ironing out problems with ACA legistlation—something that would be required with any new complex legislation. Meanwhile, these idiots devoted no time whatsoever to crafting a replacement for the program they intended to kill, for 7 long years, because when their moment to repeal and replace finally came, they had nothing. Now they’ve quickly patched together this bill, glossing over the serious problems and asserting its passage is a do or die proposition. (Don’t worry about those problems! This is only Phase 1 of repeal and replace! There will be a Phase 2, and a Phase 3! By that point, the handle will be firmly attacked to your Miracle No-Stick Skillet!)
When people understand what this bill will do, I don’t think it’s going to pass muster. I don’t think you’ll get to “Phase 2” unless you can first sell “Phase 1.” I don’t think cleverly putting the bill’s real world impact off until after the next big election is going to go unnoticed. I don’t think Trump’s Twitter diversion tactics are going to provide sufficient cover. Each time, it takes a bigger and more outrageous diversion. There’s a limit, and we’re nearly there.
Sounds like a paid trolls script
@Greg:
Oh, you can’t imagine how grateful I am to our liberal benefactors for making that possible, declaring the plan I had as a “Cadillac plan” and taxing it to the point that it all had to be discarded and changed. I never knew I HAD. A “Cadillac plan”… till liberals deemed it so. Kind of like I never knew I was “wealthy” until I saw what tax bracket Obama put me in.
I wish liberals would stop being so helpful.
You know why Republicans never took on health care? BECAUSE IT IS NOT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S BUSINESS They KNEW it would be screwed up. And guess what… that’s exactly what happened. I would have preferred they simply let it collapse and let the ignorant liberals have the blame for the complete mess, but they DO care and they are putting THEIR necks on the block to fix YOUR mess. Otherwise, in a year or so, no one would have anything.
The problem with “Cadillac plans” is that they increasingly insulated the most materially fortunate from the problems everyone else have to deal with. The reason this matters is because the rules of the game are increasingly being made by, and and designed to favor, the most materially fortunate.
There’s a general belief on the left that the playing field needs to be leveled; that some sort of handicapping system is necessary to avoid a world consisting of a very small minority of haves, born to an abundance golden opportunities and privilege, and a vast majority who are little more than serfs. Money is too closely associated with power, and is becoming the means of buying even more power. There should be rich and poor, but the extreme ends of the spectrum should not be so far apart.
If we had a more aggressive progressive tax schedule, such micro-managing probably wouldn’t be necessary. That would be all the handicapping needed. Taxes would serve as a moderating redistributive mechanism, by funding socially beneficial spending. There would still be very wealthy people, just as there was when the top end tax rates were higher. There would undeniably be a lot fewer multi-billionaires, but it should be kept in mind that it’s far better to have a thousand people successfully becoming millionaires than one billionaire. We probably wouldn’t be nearly $20 trillion in debt. It’s all a matter of striking the correct balance.
That, and not a socialist state—which carries things too far to the other extreme—is generally the left’s actual perspective.
There is nothing moral about taking from one and giving to another.
Under Natural Law, property rights are paramount. The taking of person A’s labor and giving that to person B, who is not entitled to the labor of person A is plunder.
It is unconstitutional to confiscate one’s personal wealth to enrich another.
@Greg: Abundance of golden opportunities and privilege Greggie?? Sounds like your jealous because someone worked their ass of and got wealthy and created an abundance of jobs. Redistribution of wealth is total BS Greggie!! First take care of Americans and those who are in our country illegally should be sent home. The problem starts with government trying to redistribute wealth and therefore business must respond negatively. Greggie Capitalism actually works!! How would you describe extreme ends of the spectrum relevant to income and then who creates jobs for the middle class, I don’t think it’s those who are in our country illegally or the poor Greggie!! Most all Americans especially the middle class pay far to much in taxes, in fact our government has NEVER taken in more revenue in taxes then under the Obola administration and yet he ran up our debt by the trillions!! The blame Bush days are gone so don’t even go there Greggie!!