PrairiePundit

Red States: ... Aaron Maté ✔ @aaronjmate Asked whether, under the Dems' impeachment standard, the Clinton campaign's solicitation of the Steele dossier would be considered foreign interference, illegal, or impeachable, @ RepJeffries says no -- because the Steele dossier "was purchased." 3,428 5:30 PM - Jan 30, 2020 Twitter Ads info and privacy 2,138 people are talking about this I had to rewind that back a few times just to make sure I wasn’t hearing him wrong. That’s how ludicrous this is. Let me get this straight. Even though the Steele Dossier was clearly foreign election interference (most likely a Russian disinformation operation), Democrats now want to assert that it was all fine and dandy because it was paid for? That’s really the line they want to go with? So if Trump just pays foreign agents for dirt on Biden in 2020, Democrats won’t complain about that at all? Does anyone reall

Byron York: Of course Donald Trump packed the Knapp Center arena on the campus of Drake University, filling all 7,152 seats in the stands, with more on the floor. Of course another 1,000 people or so, kept out by the fire marshal, hung around in sub-freezing temperatures outside to watch the president's speech on a big screen. Of course the Trump event dwarfed those of any of his Democratic rivals days before the Iowa caucuses. Here in the first-voting state, President Trump is just bigger than his opponents. And if that message isn't made clear by just looking around, he spent a good deal of his speech reminding the audience of it. He is big, and they are small. He's on top of his game, and they can't get it together. He matters and they don't. "Joe had a crowd so small the other day that they set up a round table," Trump said of former Vice President Joe Biden, as the crowd laughed. "Joe, Joe, he always gets the name wrong. How many times has

The Atlantic: Why Texans Don’t Want Any More Californians Migrants from the Golden State could change the character of their new homes. While there have been some Texans concerned about the influx from California, other statistics suggest that the majority of those leaving for Texas are conservatives fleeing the evils of liberalism.  Regulations have made housing unaffordable for young families and their cities are being hollowed out with fewer kids. ... Last year, I wrote that expensive housing in America’s richest cities was pushing away families with children, leading to a “childless city.” California’s biggest metros are on the bleeding edge of this trend. Since the end of the Great Recession, home prices in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco have increased by 70 percent , 80 percent , and 116 percent , respectively. This has driven middle-class families to either move inland or leave entirely. San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children under 18 of any maj

Elise Stefanik is especially strong in hammering this misleading reporter with the facts.

Twitter: Rick Scott @ScottforFlorida I’ve been held hostage with 99 other people in the U.S. Capitol. Why? Because the Democrats hate @realDonaldTrump and are trying to cover up @JoeBiden ’s corruption. Watch the full story 1.3M views 0:25 / 2:04 4:06 PM · Jan 28, 2020 · Sprout Social 9.4K Retweets 21.1K Likes This is great.

Matt Margolis: 5 Times Obama Broke The Law But Democrats Didn’t Impeach Him The Democrat standard appears to be that if the action benefits their political objective it is OK.

David Marcus: Media Continues Dishonesty On Dershowitz’s Argument Against Impeachment Of course Alan Dershowitz is not arguing that nothing a president does in pursuit of reelection can be impeachable. And the news media knows it. ... What these breathless accounts of Dershowitz’s words have in common is just how wrong they are. Let’s look at the quote in question. He says, “If the president does something that he thinks will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” The context here matters a lot, and in fairness Dershowitz could have been a bit clearer. In fact, he did clarify his remarks in the evening session of senators’ questions. Prior to this selection of his statements, Dershowitz laid out three types of motives the president could have had for his actions. First, one purely and solely concerned with the national interest, second one in which his motive also includes his electoral interests, an

CNS News: In his address to the nation Wednesday, President Trump announced that he is imposing "additional punishing economic sanctions on the Iranian regime" that will remain in place "until Iran changes its behavior." Trump recounted some of Iran's bad behavior, noting that its "hostilities substantially increased after the foolish Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2013, and they were given $150 billion -- not to mention $1.8 billion in cash." He continued: Instead of saying thank you to the United States, they chanted death to America. In fact, they chanted death to America the day the agreement was signed. Then Iran went on a terror spree funded by the money from the deal and created hell in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration. Trump said Iran "must abandon its nuclear ambitions and end its support

Melanie Phillips: U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East “deal of the century” offers the Palestinians a state. They have rejected it and threatened instead to ramp up violence against Israel. No one can be surprised. They have rejected every offer of a state previously made to them in 1937, 1947, 2000, 2008 and 2014. So is this latest deal anything more than Groundhog Day for the Middle East all over again? Yes, because this isn’t a deal. It’s an ultimatum. Israel intends to enact its part in the plan unilaterally by declaring sovereignty over the Israeli settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley. The big change is that, despite the subsequent crossed wires over timing, the United States will accept this. That’s because this isn’t a “peace process” in which both sides must progress in tandem with each other — a process that gave the Palestinians an effective veto even while they continued to wage their war of extermination against Israel. For the first time, here’s an Amer

The Lid: Last week it was “he’ll be impeached forever.” But facing the prospect of he’ll be acquitted forever, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, D-CA., hit peak “stupid.” On Thursday, she put forward the notion that President Trump really won’t be acquitted if the Senate votes to acquit him. ” Do you think President Trump will be chastened…or will he be emboldened because the Senate will have acquitted him?” a reporter asked. Her answer was, to put it mildly, curious. “He will not be acquitted. He cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial. If you don’t have a trial, if you don’t have witnesses and documentation and that. I would hope that the senators, if it comes to a tie or if there’s a question of hearing testimony or receiving documents would leave it up to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Republican-appointed in a Republican Majority court. I would think that they would have confidence in the Chief Justice of the United States, that is really his title.” ...

Washington Post: Acquittal vote possible today The final outcome of President Trump’s Senate trial has never been in doubt. Instead, the main drama has been how much more Republican senators want to learn about what he did before deciding whether he should be convicted. The Democrats' case never made any sense.  To try to impeach a President for asking for an investigation into corruption in a foreign country is absurd on its face, and the only thing I find surprising about is how many people on the left fell for this scam.  I suspect most of them were also looking for an excuse to try to reverse the 2016 election despite the obvious benefits to this country of the Trump Presidency. Some Republicans have also questioned the President's judgment in asking for help in a corruption investigation, but would they just let Biden get away with his monetizing of the Vice Presidency to enrich his family?  That would be a real scandal if they took that course.  The Democrat shou

NY Times: American Life Expectancy Rises for First Time in Four Years Life expectancy, the most basic measure of the health of a society, rose slightly in 2018, after a rare and troubling decline driven by the opioid epidemic. One of the additional benefits of a robust economy is that it reduces depression which should lead to less dependency on drugs to deal with it.  That could be one factor in the decline in the use of opioids.  There has also been a concerted effort by the Trump administration to stop the flow of drugs into the country.  It has probably done more for the nation's healthcare than any legislation being pushed by the left in this country which wants to go to a rationed healthcare scheme and do away with non-government healthcare programs.

Red States: Sekulow Just Nukes Schiff Over His Hypothetical About Using ‘Foreign Solicited Dirt to Start Sham Investigations’ ... “Manager Schiff said it would be wrong if the FBI or the DOJ was starting a political investigation of someone’s political opponent. And I’m thinking to myself, but isn’t that exactly what happened? The Department of Justice and the FBI engaged in an investigation of the candidate for president of the United States when they started their operation called Crossfire Hurricane. He said it would be targeting a rival, well, that’s what that did. He said it would be calling for foreign assistance in that. Well, in the particular facts of Crossfire Hurricane, it’s been well established now that Fusion GPS utilized the services of a former foreign intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, to put together a dossier. And that Steele relied on his network of sources around the world including Russia and other places to put together this dossier which then James C

Karl Rove: While many Americans were focused on Washington this week, I was paying special attention to Fort Bend County, Texas. What took place in that Houston suburb may reveal more about the 2020 election than the impeachment trial in the Senate does. Fort Bend held a special runoff election to fill a vacant state House seat left open by the resignation of the Republican incumbent, who took a job with the University of Texas. Sensing an opening, state and national Democrats decided a win in House District 28 would give them a head start on flipping the nine seats they’d need to control the Texas House and boost their efforts to overturn GOP state legislative majorities from Arizona to Florida, Wisconsin to Pennsylvania and a dozen states in between. The reason for this intense Democratic interest in state politics is redistricting. Democrats saw how Republican state legislative majorities affected the composition of the U.S. House after the 2010 census. Democrats want to do in

Townhall: MSNBC cut to a commercial break as soon as President Trump’s legal defense team took the microphone to answer a question about how the Framers would view partisan impeachment. Reading a question from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and some of his colleagues, Chief Justice John Roberts said: “How would the Framers view removing a president without an overwhelming consensus of the American people and on the basis of articles of impeachment supported by one political party and opposed by the other?” The network apparently didn’t want its viewers to hear how White House defense attorney Alan Dershowitz would answer that one. Dershowitz went on to say Alexander Hamilton directly addressed this concern and he believed the Framers would be “appalled” by how the impeachment of President Trump has been carried out. “Alexander Hamilton] said the greatest danger of impeachment is if it turns on the votes of one party being greater than the voters of the other party in either house. S

Victor Davis Hanson: The Left has shown that the collusion exoneration last year by the heralded Robert Mueller investigation—all 22-months, the “dream team,” and $34 million of it—meant absolutely nothing. Nor did it matter that Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz found no justification of “collusion” in the Steele dossier to justify the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants it issued to spy on Carter Page. Both the Mueller and Horowitz investigations confirmed that even the partisan and warped FBI “Crossfire Hurricane” intrigues could find no Russian-Trump collusion. And yet the House impeachment managers cannot finish a sentence without exclaiming “Russian collusion,” as if it has now transmogrified into some exotic foundational myth. Remember, no sooner had Mueller found no collusion between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Kremlin and no actionable obstruction than the progressives narrative was recalibrated into Ukrainian quid pro

NY Times: Trump’s Mideast Plan Leaves Palestinians With Few Options The landscape has shifted so much that a proposal that would have been a nonstarter a decade ago has put the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in a bind. It is not as if the Palestinians have a better alternative to the deal being offered.  They have consistently refused to do a deal that recognizes Israel's right to Israel.  They have pushed a false narrative that they were indigenous to the area, when in fact they are part of an Arab Muslim colonial effort in the area.  Most of them have either Egyptian or Jordanian heritage.  They have also pushed a false narrative that Jews are not indigenous to the area.  The Palestinians would be wise to accept the deal being offered, but they have a long history of not being realistic about their circumstances.

NY Times: Brexit Is Here, and It’s a Texas-Size Defeat for the E.U. The loss of such a rich, sizable, powerful member state will weaken the European Union’s momentum and its diplomatic weight. The EU was the opposite of a free market system.  It wanted to control every aspect of trade including the size and shape of bananas.  When it came to terrorism, the Europeans refused to allow the Brits to even deport terrorists to their home country.  It forced them to spend ridiculous amounts on housing and feeding those same terrorists who could not be deported.  It was just nuts on too many issues and it actually stymied enterprise. If the Brits are smart they will enter into a trade agreement with the Trump administration which will enhance their markets and improve their quality of life.

Julie Kelly: In a fair world—one with responsible media organizations that didn’t act as propagandists for the Democratic Party—the news that a secret government court admitted it authorized unlawful warrants to spy on an innocent American based on his political activity would be front-page news. The January 7 order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court revealing that at least two of the four warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page were “not valid”—meaning they were illegally obtained—would be on a nonstop loop at CNN and would dominate the news and opinion pages of the Washington Post. But alas, the average CNN viewer or Post reader will be hard-pressed to find coverage of such a shocking disclosure; after all, how could either outlet report that bombshell when two signers of the garbage applications—former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe—now work as paid contributors to those same news organizations? Just as

Breitbart: Schiff Claims It’s Wrong for President to Investigate Rival — After Defending Obama Investigating Trump What Schiff is really arguing is that Biden is above the law despite substantial evidence of corruption and monetizing the office of the Vice President.  He is also ignoring the fraudulent Russian collusion hoax that was the basis of a $40 million dollar investigation of the Trump campaign along with illegal search warrants.

Julie Heini: ... Horowitz found that the warrants were riddled with “material misstatements and omissions,” moreover the FBI knowingly withheld exculpatory information in their surveillance applications. Nonetheless, the IG concluded that there was legal justification for the opening of the CH counterintelligence investigation in July 2016 and full counterintelligence investigations into Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, General Michael Flynn and Carter Page in Aug 2016. Horowitz claimed that he could not conclude that there was improper motivation because he did not find documentary or testimonial evidence to prove it. He later clarified to lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee that the conclusions of the report “don’t vindicate anyone” involved with Crossfire Hurricane. Sens. Grassley and Johnson, as ranking members of the Senate Finance and Homeland Security committees, wrote to Attorney General William Barr, expressing “deep concern” over the redacted portions of the

Kerry Picket: ... Hawley explained what it would mean for Democrats who vote to acquit Trump: “I think they’re just going to have to admit — well, listen this was ill-advised from the beginning. What it really has been is a partisan attempt to overturn an election. I mean, that is what this really comes down to. They don’t like the president. They’ve never liked the president. They wanted to impeach him from day one. They were hellbent on doing it. And now, oops, they accidentally did it, and they can’t prove a case because there isn’t a case. And they’re putting the whole country through this, Tucker. That’s why it is time to bring this to an end. Let’s vote. We’ve heard the evidence. They don’t have a case. Let’s vote.” Hawley’s claims that we’re watching “the Democrats case just fall part” comes the same day that Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) claimed the impeachment case had been “proven beyond any doubt at all.” Hawley’s claims are more grounded in reality, though. Some Senate Dem