Breakfast For The Brain Weekend Edition

Top of the morning to all ‘o ye Deplorables, feel free to binge on green beer this St Patricks’ Day weekend.

John McCain Associate Had Contact With A Dozen Reporters Regarding Steel Dossier

Via The Daily Caller

An associate of late Arizona Sen. John McCain described in detail his contacts with a dozen journalists and several government officials regarding the infamous Steele dossier, according to a transcript of a court deposition unsealed Thursday.

David Kramer, a former State Department official, said in a deposition on Dec. 13, 2017 that he provided a copy of Christopher Steele’s dossier to reporters from McClatchy, NPR, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and BuzzFeed and CNN’s Carl Bernstein.

He also shared the report with State Department official Victoria Nuland, Obama National Security Counsel official Celeste Wallander and Illinois GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger.

Kramer’s deposition sheds new light on the campaign by Steele and his employer, Fusion GPS, to disseminate the dossier to the press and government officials.

In the deposition, Kramer suggests that Steele and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson sought to use him and McCain as conduits to pass the dossier to the FBI.

Sir Andrew Wood, a former British diplomat, first briefed Kramer and McCain in November 2016 on the dossier, authored by Steele. Kramer flew to London on Nov. 29, 2016 to meet with Steele. The next day, in the U.S., he obtained a copy of the dossier from Simpson. On Dec. 9, 2016, McCain briefed then-FBI Director James Comey on the salacious report.

Read the entire article HERE.

Lawmakers Request Documents From DOJ Regarding Top Special Counsel Prosecutor

By Sara Carter

Republican lawmakers want answers regarding Special Counsel prosecutor Andrew Weissmann who is expected to soon be leaving his post at the Department of Justice, but significant questions still linger about his knowledge and connections with one of the FBI’s top sources into the Russia Trump probe.

Reps. Mark Meadows, R-NC, and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio want answers from the DOJ. They have requested documents, communications and have sent multiple detailed questions regarding Weismann, and his colleague DOJ prosecutor Zainab Ahmad. According to the letter, the Justice Department has been asked to respond to their request by 5 p.m. EST (today) Friday.

The concern is based on the recent information provided in testimony by senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr. Ohr had told lawmakers that he had met with Weissmann and Ahmad in the summer of 2016 and warned them that the anti-Trump dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele was not properly vetted. Ohr also told the prosecutors about Steele’s vehement bias against Trump.

In a letter sent to Attorney General William Barr on March 1, the lawmakers have asked the Justice Department to provide all information about “actions taken or not taken” by Weissmann and Ahmad after they met with Ohr.

“This development raises questions about the impartiality and independence of Weissmann and Ahmad as senior members of the Special Counsel investigation,” the letter states. “We write to determine what steps both Weissmann and Ahmad took to apprise Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the Justice Department of their contacts with Ohr and the substance of those meetings before their assignment to the Special Counsel’s office.”

Read the entire article HERE.

The Washington Post Snuggles with a Racist Security Blanket

Via American Greatness

Over the last three evenings, Americans watched Tucker Carlson refuse to be cowed by the sophisticated, well-funded, coordinated information operation designed to chase him off the air and make him unemployable for life.

One of the points he’s raised, not so much in his own defense, but rather as a counteroffensive against his enemies, is that Media Matters for America (MMfA)—his primary tormenter—enjoys a symbiotic relationship with the corporate Left media (CLM), to whom it can feed propaganda with the assurance that it will be regurgitated verbatim. “Symbiotic” because they need and feed off one another. MMfA lacks a sufficiently large megaphone to broadcast its message. The CLM, by contrast, not only has such a megaphone; fundamentally it is a megaphone. It’s lazy and so relies on others to feed it stories, which MMfA is only too happy to do.

As if to prove Carlson right, the Washington Post on Thursday published an embarrassingly spoon-fed story from (you guessed it) MMfA. It’s a perfect case study in how the CLM spins and misleads without lying and peddles propaganda under the guise of “news.”

The premise of the piece is accurately encapsulated by its title: “Tucker Carlson says he’s the victim of a powerful bully. Meet the 24-year-old who found the tapes.”

See what they did there? The Post deliberately glides right past who and what Carlson actually means by “bully”: MMfA itself, its deep-pocketed donors, its Democratic Party backers and beneficiaries, the rent-a-mobs it can instantly gin up on Twitter and even in person, and of course its media lackeys—emphatically including the Post. Instead, they try to say that Carlson’s “bully” is merely a lone “24-year-old” who “lives in the basement of a D.C. house she rents with five other people, a few cats and a dog named Noodles.”

Awww!

But is this “24-year-old” acting alone? Of course not. She’s low-paid, grunt labor for the real bully—or better to say, constellation of bullies—out to get Carlson.

Note how the Post doesn’t actually deny this. Rather, they simply give their credulous readers—which is to say, all of them—the misleading impression that this lone Gen Z upstart, all on her own, is taking on a TV titan.

Read the entire article HERE.

Michigan’s Big Brother Attorney General Will Crack Down Hard on Free Speech

Via The American Thinker

Who makes this kind of threat? Reinhard Heydrich, the notorious SS general and chief of the Gestapo? KGB head Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov? Big Brother?

They all talked that way. Last Friday, it was Michigan Department of Civil Rights director Agustin Arbulu’s turn to say it. He and Dana Nessel, the new state attorney general, announced plans “to increase the documentation and prosecution of hate crimes and incidents” in the state.

Not just hate crimes. Hate incidents.

What’s a hate incident? you may ask. The MDCR press release says, “Hate and bias incidents are those instances where an action does not rise to the level of a crime or a civil infraction.”

Designating certain crimes as “hate crimes” was a bad enough idea, but expanding on the idea to target lawful actions that can be subjectively described as hateful goes too far. Is crossing someone off your Christmas card list a hate incident? or instigating a social media mob to destroy your high school frenemy? If a woman turns down a date with a guy because he supports Trump, is that a bias incident?

The problem with words like “hate” and “bias” is that they’re far too easy to misuse. That’s especially the case with people (biased people) who reflexively describe others who don’t think like them as being motivated by “hate.” Leading the charge in this practice is the Southern Poverty Law Center, which “label[s] virtually anyone who does not fall in line with its left-wing ideology an ‘extremist’ or ‘hate group.'” Now Nessell and Arbulu are using SPLC’s “hate map” as a guide for targets to spy on. “Hate cannot continue to flourish in our state,” declares Nessel. Or at least hate as defined by Nessel, the ACLU, and the SPLC.

Read the entire article HERE.

The Democratic Party’s Anti-Semitism Problem Is Obama’s Legacy

Via PJ Media

Why does Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) still have her position on the House Foreign Relations Committee? House Republicans stripped Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) of his committee positions after making his own controversial remarks. Omar should have met the same fate. But considering recent history, it’s not surprising that Omar remains unpunished. It’s just the latest example of their party turning a blind eye to the rise of anti-Semitism in their ranks over the years—if not embracing it at times.

Perhaps the most shocking thing was Omar’s subsequent criticism of Barack Obama, calling his “hope and change” slogan a mirage. “We can’t be only upset with Trump,” she said. “His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was.” She added, “And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.” Ouch.

This was shocking because Omar should have thanked Obama. If not for his “pretty face” and smile, she likely would have experienced the public rebuke she deserved and lost her spot on the House Foreign Relations Committee. But, after eight years of anti-Semitism disguised as opposition to longstanding U.S. policy on Israel, the anti-Semitism she preached (and continues to preach) has become far more palatable in her party.

Prior to being elected president of the United States, Obama spent twenty years in the congregation of Jeremiah Wright. Wright’s anti-American and anti-Semitic remarks became a liability for Obama during the 2008 election but didn’t matter enough to the people who voted for him. Obama may have been forced to quit his church and distance himself from Wright, but that didn’t change who Obama was at heart—and it presented itself once he showed up to the White House.

Read the entire article HERE.

Japan Says Transgender People Must Be Sterilized For Official Recognition

Via Zero Hedge

A transgender woman who identifies as a man has sued Japan’s Supreme Court over a ruling earlier this year that requires sterilization before the state will officially recognize someone as the opposite gender, reports The Economist.

Takakito Usui has sued the court over the requirement that in order to be recognized as a man, she has to have her ovaries and uterus removed, as well as have surgery to turn her vagina into a penis. Applicants must also be over 20-years-old, single, have no minor children, and have been diagnosed as suffering from “gender-identity disorder.”

Usui has argued that this violates a person’s right to self-determination and is therefore unconstitutional.

Human-rights groups say demanding irreversible surgery is outrageous. Although several Asian countries, including South Korea, have similar laws, Western countries that once also used to require sterilisation, such as Norway, France and Sweden, no longer do. In 2017 the European Court of Human Rights called for the change in all 47 countries under its jurisdiction. Sweden has started to compensate transgender people who underwent mandatory sterilisation. -The Economist

Critics have argued that transgender people are not suffering from a psychological disorder. “The movement here has not been viewed as about rights but more about helping sick people overcome their illness,” says activist and professor Junko Mitsuhashi, a biological man living as a woman who studies the history of transgender issues, yet has not gained legal recognition as a woman due to an unwillingness to undergo gender reassignment surgery.

Of note, transgenderism – also known as Gender Dysphoria, is classified as a mental disorder by the Fifth Edition Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), published by the American Psychiatric Association.

Read the entire article HERE.

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