quote:

Originally posted by Flashlightboy:
The judge isn't doing anything radical and it's not even a close argument that it is.

This comes up rather frequently where local city council members or Board of Supervisors have their Twitter accounts constantly and routinely clogged with people who hate them posting stuff just to post it and the politicos don't want the trolling to be posted on their account.

So some politicians have started deleting the tweets leaving only the favorable ones. That's where the judge is coming from when she issued her ruling.

A politician cannot hold open a means of communication on a particular topic with the public where only favorable comments are allowed to be posted. In essence, a politician, once he invites public comment, cannot limit it to just good things because that's a 1st Amendment violation. The same rule applies to the internet as other means of communication.

Trump's handlers can offer tweaks such as deleting some defined classes of posts and a few other things as a work around.

Remember this isn't a Trump thing because there are trolls who post on Democrat and Republican Twitter accounts just to fill them up and Democrats want to delete them as bad as Republicans.

This makes no sense at all. Politicians are allowed to have websites that don’t allow comments. They can give speeches where hecklers are tossed out. They can do Q&A events where the questioners are vetted first. Why can’t POTUS ban trolls from his twitter feed? Is there a requirement that every public official allow any comment on their twitter feed? No, there isn’t. So why is POTUS subject to rules which others aren’t?

Obama would routinely go places where only friendly and vetted questions were asked. He hardly ever had a real public grilling. Hecklers were tossed from Hillary’s speeches. So I read your comments and I have no idea what rules you are talking about that supposedly apply to “politicians.”

quote:

Originally posted by arabiancowboy:

quote:

Originally posted by Flashlightboy:
The judge isn't doing anything radical and it's not even a close argument that it is.

This comes up rather frequently where local city council members or Board of Supervisors have their Twitter accounts constantly and routinely clogged with people who hate them posting stuff just to post it and the politicos don't want the trolling to be posted on their account.

So some politicians have started deleting the tweets leaving only the favorable ones. That's where the judge is coming from when she issued her ruling.

A politician cannot hold open a means of communication on a particular topic with the public where only favorable comments are allowed to be posted. In essence, a politician, once he invites public comment, cannot limit it to just good things because that's a 1st Amendment violation. The same rule applies to the internet as other means of communication.

Trump's handlers can offer tweaks such as deleting some defined classes of posts and a few other things as a work around.

Remember this isn't a Trump thing because there are trolls who post on Democrat and Republican Twitter accounts just to fill them up and Democrats want to delete them as bad as Republicans.

This makes no sense at all. Politicians are allowed to have websites that don’t allow comments. They can give speeches where hecklers are tossed out. They can do Q&A events where the questioners are vetted first. Why can’t POTUS ban trolls from his twitter feed? Is there a requirement that every public official allow any comment on their twitter feed? No, there isn’t. So why is POTUS subject to rules which others aren’t?

Obama would routinely go places where only friendly and vetted questions were asked. He hardly ever had a real public grilling. Hecklers were tossed from Hillary’s speeches. So I read your comments and I have no idea what rules you are talking about that supposedly apply to “politicians.”

Politicians are not forced to listen to any and all voices on a subject while giving a speech.

The rule the judge applied was that Trump's people were wanted to impermissibly delete all negative comments but when a politician posts on a site his position on a topic or, for instance, asks what people think, he can't just delete all the negative ones and leave only the posititve.

So when you mention hecklers, that is an instance where the attempted speaker or Twitter poster isn't trying to have a discussion on the raised subject but rather is heckling the speaker and in those instances, you can remove them since the substance and manner of talking are meant to be disruptive and inflame and not at all contributory.

If Trump gave a speech and someone stood up screaming, "You're a motherfucker for trying to keep abortion clinics from telling crack ho's they can't have an abortion you misogynistic prick!" that's not protected speech and the person can be removed. Their rant is meant to be disruptive, intended to inflame and just fill up airtime in a way that doesn't further the dialog.

So in a city council meeting where members of the public voice their concerns, the council will limit the speakers for time or content if speaker after speaker is saying the same thing and no additional speakers are going to say something else.

He can remove trolls but if you were to say on his account, "I think your policy on N. Korea is wrong and misguided for the following reasons..." that would be protected speech and not subject to being removed.

You don't have to have comments but if you do, there's a certain way you have to address them.

Simple solution have no comments, tweet and not allow any positive or negative, I’m quite certain other avenues of communication are assessed for favorable reactions from supporters or negative responses from usually positive sources. Take no comments now the lefties can’t whine and get no intelligence from the supportive comments.

quote:

Originally posted by spunk639:
Simple solution have no comments, tweet and not allow any positive or negative, I’m quite certain other avenues of communication are assessed for favorable reactions from supporters or negative responses from usually positive sources. Take no comments now the lefties can’t whine and get no intelligence from the supportive comments.

That would be permissible within the judge's ruling and existing 1st A law.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.co...-clinton-foundation/

Attorney Sekulow has uncovered 'thousands of documents' showing pay-to-play between Hillary state department & Clinton foundation.

What can this mean?

quote:

Originally posted by signewt:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.co...-clinton-foundation/

Attorney Sekulow has uncovered 'thousands of documents' showing pay-to-play between Hillary state department & Clinton foundation.

What can this mean?

I bet the FBI is all over it.

National Review
David French

Earlier today judge Naomi Reice Buchwald issued a 75-page decision holding that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked the plaintiffs on Twitter. For those who don’t use Twitter (lucky you!), “blocking” someone means that it is difficult to view and impossible to interact with their tweets when you’re logged in with your account. You can still view the tweets when logged out of your account, and you can interact with the tweets on a separate account, but blocking does cause a tiny amount of inconvenience for people who wish to vent at Donald Trump online.

While the decision isn’t as egregious as some recent court decisions against the Trump administration, it’s still wrong. Here’s the core question. Did Donald Trump create a forum “owned or controlled by the government” when he decided to use his personal Twitter account for official purposes? The judge says yes. I disagree. In reality, the forum is owned entirely by Twitter, and it’s controlled entirely by Twitter. For example, read these words from Twitter’s terms of service:

We may suspend or terminate your account or cease providing you with all or part of the Services at any time for any or no reason, including, but not limited to, if we reasonably believe: (i) you have violated these Terms or the Twitter Rules, (ii) you create risk or possible legal exposure for us; (iii) your account should be removed due to prolonged inactivity; or (iv) our provision of the Services to you is no longer commercially viable. We will make reasonable efforts to notify you by the email address associated with your account or the next time you attempt to access your account, depending on the circumstances.

Using Twitter isn’t like renting out a concert hall or reserving space in a public park. Twitter is in command, not Trump, and to the extent that Trump does anything, he does so only with Twitter’s permission. Twitter can alter his account — and his account alone — in its sole discretion and according to its corporate whims. “Control” is simply not a word that applies to anyone’s Twitter account. Twitter’s terms of service are so sweeping, that even Trump’s speech isn’t solely Trump’s speech any longer. Twitter can use his words at will:

By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed). This license authorizes us to make your Content available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same.

In other words, Trump is just like any of us. He’s playing in Twitter’s sandbox. He’s using Twitter’s forum according to terms and conditions that Twitter — and Twitter alone — sets.

There are other issues in play — such as whether the plaintiffs suffered a legally-cognizable injury when their sole complaint is that they can’t use the Twitter account of their choice to reply to Trump’s tweets, or whether Trump’s own free speech rights are impaired when a federal judge prohibits him from blocking hostile accounts — but ultimately the decision is wrong for the simplest of reasons. Donald Trump’s Twitter feed isn’t a government-controlled forum.

Link

How the Clinton-Emails Investigation Intertwined with the Russia Probe

National Review
Andrew McCarthy

Obama administration officials in the DOJ and FBI saw the cases as inseparably linked.
‘Cruz just dropped out of the race. It’s going to be a Clinton Trump race. Unbelievable.”

It was a little after midnight on May 4, 2016. FBI lawyer Lisa Page was texting her paramour, FBI counterespionage agent Peter Strzok, about the most stunning development to date in the 2016 campaign: Donald Trump was now the inevitable Republican nominee. He would square off against Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ certain standard-bearer.

The race was set . . . between two major-party candidates who were both under investigation by the FBI.

In stunned response, Strzok wrote what may be the only words we need to know, the words that reflected the mindset of his agency’s leadership and of the Obama administration: “Now the pressure really starts to finish MYE.”

MYE. That’s Mid-Year Exam, the code-word the FBI had given to the Hillary Clinton emails probe.

“It sure does,” responded Page. Mind you, she was not just any FBI lawyer; she was counsel and confidant to the bureau’s No. 2 official, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

If the thousands of text messages between Ms. Page and Agent Strzok are clear on anything, they are clear on the thinking of the bureau’s top brass.

In its Trump antipathy, the media-Democrat complex has admonished us to ignore the Strzok-Page texts. FBI officials are as entitled as anyone else to their political opinions, we’re told; and if they found Trump loathsome, they were no different from half the country.

That’s the wrong way to look at it. Regardless of their politics (which, the texts show, are not as left-wing as some conservative-media hyperbole claims), these FBI officials are a window into how the Obama administration regarded the two investigations in which Strzok and Page were central players: Mid Year Exam and Trump-Russia — the latter eventually code-named “Crossfire Hurricane.”

The two investigations must not be compartmentalized. Manifestly, the FBI saw them as inseparably linked: Trump’s victory in the primaries, the opening of his path to the Oval Office, meant — first and foremost — that the Hillary investigation had to be brought to a close.

And that is because bringing it to a close was already known, by May 4, to mean closing it without charges — opening her path to the Oval Office. It was the calculation of the FBI, the Obama Justice Department, the Obama-led intelligence agencies, and the Obama White House that wrapping up MYE was essential to stopping Donald Trump.

Trump had won the nomination, so now the pressure was on to remove the cloud of felony suspicion hanging over Mrs. Clinton.

The mistake is often made — I’ve made it myself — of analyzing the tanking of the Clinton emails case in a vacuum. There are, after all, reasons unrelated to Donald Trump that explain the outcome: Obama was implicated in Clinton’s use of a non-secure email system; Obama had endorsed Clinton; many high-ranking Obama Justice Department officials stood to keep their coveted positions, and even advance, in a Hillary Clinton administration; the Obama Justice Department was hyper-political and Clinton was the Democratic nominee.

But the Clinton investigation did not happen in a vacuum. It happened in the context of Donald Trump’s gallop through the Republican primaries and, just as important, of the Obama administration’s determination to regard the Trump campaign as a Kremlin satellite.

Conveniently, the Strzok-Page text occurred in what we might call the “late spring.” As I outlined in yesterday’s column, the “late spring” is the vague timeframe former Obama-administration officials gave to the House Intelligence Committee when asked when the FBI’s then-director, James Comey, briefed the president’s National Security Council about Carter Page. An obscure Trump campaign adviser, Page was regarded as a likely clandestine Russian agent by the Obama administration, on what appears to be flimsy evidence.

So . . . let’s think this through.

By May 4, the Obama administration has already concluded that the Trump campaign is part of a Russian covert op that must be stopped — or at least has rationalized that the Trump-Russia storyline can work politically to damage the Republican candidate.

At the same time, even though MYE is not yet formally “finished,” even though key witnesses (including Clinton herself) have not been interviewed, even though essential evidence (including the laptops used to store and vet Clinton’s emails) are not yet in the FBI’s possession, Director Comey and his top aides are already drafting the exoneration speech he will give two months later, recommending against prosecution.

And everybody knows the fix is in. The Strzok-Page texts show that the pressure to schedule the Clinton interview is based on the imperative to shut down the case, not to weigh what she had to say for investigative purposes. Clinton is permitted to have her co-conspirators represent her as lawyers at her interview — in violation of federal law, professional-ethics canons, and rudimentary investigative practice — precisely because no one regards the interview as a serious law-enforcement exercise.

When Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s shameful Arizona tarmac meeting with former President Clinton becomes a scandal in late June, she tries to mitigate the damage by announcing an intention to accept whatever recommendation the FBI makes. Lisa Page spitefully texts Peter Strzok. “And yeah, it’s a real profile in couragw [sic], since she knows no charges will be brought.”

That was July 1. The very next day, the FBI does its just-for-show interview of Mrs. Clinton. Three mornings later, July 5 (at the start of the work week after Independence Day), Comey holds his press conference to announce that, of course, no charges will be brought.

To accomplish this, he effectively rewrites the classified-information statute Clinton violated; barely mentions the tens of thousands of official government business emails that she destroyed; claims without any elaboration that the FBI can see no evidence of obstruction; and omits mention of her just-concluded interview in which — among other things — she pretended not to know what the markings on classified documents meant.

On the very same day, the FBI’s legal attaché in Rome travels to London to interview Christopher Steele, who has already started to pass his sensational dossier allegations to the bureau. And with the help of CIA director John Brennan and British intelligence, the FBI is ready to run a spy — a longtime CIA source — at Carter Page in London on July 11, just as he arrives there from Moscow.

With the pressure to finish MYE in the rearview mirror, Hillary Clinton looked like a shoo-in to beat Donald Trump. By mid September, Lisa Page was saying as much at a meeting in Deputy Director McCabe’s office. But Strzok was hedging his bets: Maybe “there’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

Soon, as the campaign wound down, the FBI and the Obama Justice Department were on the doormat of the FISA court, obtaining a surveillance warrant on Carter Page, substantially based on allegations in the Steele dossier — an uncorroborated Clinton-campaign opposition-research screed. Meanwhile, the FBI/CIA spy was being run at George Papadopoulos, and even seeking a role in the Trump campaign from its co-chairman, Sam Clovis.

Or maybe you think these things are unrelated . . .

Link

https://www.marketwatch.com/st...ff-summit-2018-05-24

Text of President Trump’s letter to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un calling off summit

Here is the full text of a letter from President Donald Trump to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in which Trump says he’s calling off their planned summit. The letter was released by the White House on Thursday morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.56% and other stock benchmarks fell after Trump said he was canceling the summit.

Dear Mr. Chairman:

We greatly appreciate your time, patience, and effort with respect to our recent negotiations and discussions relative to a summit long sought by both parties, which was scheduled to take place on June 12 in Singapore. We were informed that the meeting was requested by North Korea. but that to us is totally irrelevant. I was very much looking forward to being there with you. Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate at this time, to have this long-planned meeting. Therefore, please let this letter serve to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place. You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.

I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me. and ultimately, it is only that dialogue that matters, Some day, I look very much forward to meeting you. In the meantime, I want to thank you for the release of the hostages who are now home with their families. That was a beautiful gesture and was very much appreciated.

If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write. The world, and North Korea in particular. has lost a great opportunity for lasting peace and great prosperity and wealth. This missed opportunity is a truly sad moment in history.

Donald J. Trump

President of the United States of America

Lil Kim thinks the same thing the last NK dictator believed, that the US government is wimpy and will never do anything. Sort of a bait and switch, over and over again.

I look forward to Gen. Mattis's reply.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/l...07:37&utm_term=image

"Being inside this country hours after they blow up the nuclear site and learning of this, it was a very awkward and uncomfortable moment, and we'll have to see what happens in the coming hours and days on the ground here."


https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/24...site-intl/index.html

video of CNN reporter at link above

The little bastard was taking shots at VP Pence. He can blow up everything in his own country and it won't change the fact that this little bastard was spewing angry rhetoric at our leaders, just before a summit.

Figure it the fuck out, CNN, if you can. Kim's puppet masters have screwed things up for him.

There was a lot of doubt about the significance of destroying their site. Numerous reports were out that the mountain test site had collapsed and was no longer useful for nuclear testing.

within a very short time of those reports, Kim wants to talk denuc.

No this isn"t Obummer and Kerry begging and bending over to be butt fucked by the Iranians for any type of deal. This isn't Neville Chamberlain's of "peace for our time" deal with Hitler. This is how real adults negotiate: when one side is acting like an ass, you walk away. It puts all the pressure on them.

Don't be surprised if the meeting will occur in June or July. Like any good divorce attorney (hey their are good IF they are working for you ) would tell their client, this is only step 3 or 4 of a 10 step process and is all part of the negotiation.

Despite all the open celebration and jubilation going on at CNN and MSNBC today as they think Trump just "failed", I really do wonder if POTUS is actually putting an "Art Of The Deal" move on Fat Kim here?

“President Donald Trump posthumously pardoned black boxer Jack Johnson on Wednesday after an intervention from 'Rocky' actor Sylvester Stallone…”

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic...lone-intervenes.html

Watching the MOH ceremony today for Britt Slabinski is very humbling.

President Donald Trump shoved cheap-labor immigration back into the November election by suggesting he would veto any amnesty which emerges from the discharge petition process, and also by urging Congress to pass his four-part immigration package.

“I think it’s time to get the whole package,” Trump told Fox News’ anchor Brian Kilmeade. “It’s not such a big deal, Brian. It’s time to get the whole package … We’re going to change the system — we have no choice for the good of our country.”

Trump also rejected proposals for Congress to pass a quick amnesty for at least 2 million DACA illegals via the discharge-petition process. “Unless it includes a wall, and I mean a wall, a real wall, and unless it includes very strong border security, there’ll be no approvals from me because I have to either approve it or not,” Trump said in the Thursday morning broadcast. He added:

A [visa] lottery is ridiculous, you know. I mean, they take people from the lottery where you can imagine these countries are not putting their finest in that lottery, so I don’t like the lottery. Chain migration is a disaster, and you look at what’s going on where somebody comes in who’s bad and yet they’ll have 24 members of a family, not one of them do you want in this country. So chain migration is terrible, lottery is terrible … [and] we have to get rid of catch and release.

Trump also emphasized the opposition from Democrats, saying “we have the worst immigration laws in the entire world by far .. it is because of the Democrats. It is because of Chuck Schumer. It is because of Nancy Pelosi.”

“There is a lot of pressure on the Democrats to get it approved,” he said.

The four-part reforms sought by Trump would trim the inflow of legal immigrants by eliminating the visa lottery and chain migration. Over ten years, those changes would gradually pressure employers to raise wages for tens of millions of Americans and also help them buy houses by nudging down demand and real-estate prices. Those changes are strongly opposed by U.S. business groups who provide a large share of donations to the GOP’s leadership.

Trump’s four-part legislation would also fill many of the asylum and “credible fear” loopholes in border law that are used by cartel and migrants to get work-permits for hundreds of thousands migrants, many of whom need to repay their smuggling debts to cartels.

Trump’s declaration is a sharp blow to the current media-magnified, business-backed campaign to pass an amnesty via the discharge-petition process and is a populist rejection of the establishment’s bipartisan overall push for more cheap-labor immigration.



Reuters’ headline, for example, declared: “Trump rejects moderate immigration deal, wants ‘whole package.”

It is also a strategic pushback because the bipartisan establishment wants to exclude debate over immigration from the November election. Trump’s comments — “I can tell you there is a mood right now for border security” — shows that he recognize the popularity of the populists’ pro-American immigration preferences.

However, business groups are pushing hard to get an amnesty this summer and to get immigration out the midterm elections.

For example, 21 Republicans — mostly from dairy districts or Latino-majority districts — have signed the discharge petition to help them get an amnesty vote in the House.

If GOP Reps Jeff Denham and Chris Curbelo get 25 signatures, they will also get 193 Democratic signatures, giving them the 218 votes needed to stage a planned vote on the House floor on June 25. The complicated vote is expected to allow many GOP legislators to vote for a doomed pro-American bill — giving them a campaign-trail talking-point for November — but also allow them to vote for and pass a disguised amnesty bill sought by local farmers and national business groups.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has the power to block the floor vote. So far, he has not publicly threatened to block the vote, or even to deny campaign funds and committee assignments to the petition Republicans as they split the party before the November election.

GOP leaders are engaged in a closed-door negotiation to see if the discharge-petition GOP group can hammer out a compromise with mainstream conservatives and business-first GOP legislators, which would allow each group to display their support for their preferred policies. Trump’s threat of a veto will likely help the mainstream conservatives during the talks — partly because Democrats have strongly opposed any change to border-law loopholes.

GOP leaders are not trying to block Denham’s discharge petition, said Rosemary Jenks, policy director at NumbersUSA:

I have watched for far too many years the leaders of both parties shut down discharge petitions in a heartbeat with [the withdrawal of] campaign financing and committee chairmanships. It has happened over and over for decades, yet is not happening here.

Business groups are providing campaign aid to 11 of the 16 GOP signers who are candidates in the 2016 elections, as of May 23.

Trump’s November bet on immigration politics is backed up by numerous polls — and his success in the 2016 election.

Amnesty advocates rely on business-funded “Nation of Immigrants” push-polls to show apparent voter support for immigration and immigrants.

Amnesty advocates rely on business-funded “Nation of Immigrants” push-polls to show apparent voter support for immigration and immigrants.

But “choice” polls reveal most voters’ often-ignored preference that CEOs should hire Americans at decent wages before hiring migrants. Those Americans include many blue-collar Blacks, Latinos, and people who hide their opinions from pollsters. Similarly, the 2018 polls show that GOP voters are far more concerned about migration — more properly, the economics of migration — than they are concerned about illegal migration and MS-13, taxes, or the return of Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

Trump’s policies are delivering higher wages and overtime to many employees, including African-American bakers in Chicago, Latino restaurant workers in Monterey, Calif., disabled people in Missouri, high schoolers, resort workers in Hilton Head, the construction industry, Superbowl workers, the garment industry, and workers at small businesses, and even Warren Buffett’s railroad workers.


http://www.breitbart.com/2018-...reform-for-november/

Grassley: No, Subpoenas Aren’t Necessary To Protect FBI Whistleblowers

MAY 24, 2018 By Bre Payton
Federalist

In a prepared statement delivered on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon, Sen. Chuck Grassley assured FBI employees they were safe to come forward to Congress to reveal problems within the bureau without retribution.

Unnamed FBI employees said they wanted to be subpoenaed before going to Congress about issues they saw on the job, because they feared backlash if they spoke out without being legally compelled to do so, according to a story published by The Daily Caller earlier this week. Grassley pointed out that federal law prohibits FBI higher-ups from firing or punishing employees who disclose information to Congress.

“Congress has the power of the purse, and the bureaucrats need to understand that funding for their salaries comes with strings attached,” Grassley said. “You can’t prevent federal employees from talking directly to Congress. Period. Don’t even try.”

“If unelected bureaucrats have so much contempt for an employee who voluntarily informs the people’s elected representatives of facts necessary to do oversight, then we still have a lot of work to do,” he added. “That kind of thinking is dangerous, and totally contrary to law.”

Grassley sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is currently embroiled in a battle with the Department of Justice over information pertaining to the ongoing, year-old investigation into President Trump and his campaign associates, led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

“No FBI agent or other government employee should be afraid to cooperate with Congress or the Inspector General,” Grassley said. “Any FBI agent who has information to provide or questions about their rights to provide it should not hesitate to reach out and ask.”

Link

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Despite all the open celebration and jubilation going on at CNN and MSNBC today as they think Trump just "failed", I really do wonder if POTUS is actually putting an "Art Of The Deal" move on Fat Kim here?

It just goes to show that Trump isn’t going to put up with the little fat shit’s BS, whereas Obowma would hsve been apologizing for the US being the aggressor and starting the Korean war just to get a peace deal.