Better in their words…

Source: CORRUPT OBSTRUCTION ☙ Thursday, December 14, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

🔥 Yesterday, NBC ran an electrifying story headlined, “Supreme Court agrees to hear Jan. 6 case that could affect Trump prosecution.” It’s at once the best January 6th news we’ve had for a long while and it’s also very promising news for the Trump prosecution. Incidentally, the tireless lawyer and unsung hero who convinced the Supreme Court to take this important case is my friend Norm Pattis.

As you may know, the federal government criminalized January 6th protestors and Capitol tourists by re-purposing a rarely-used evidence law, originally passed to stop people from destroying evidence in white-collar crimes. The repurposing wasn’t surprising. Ever since Biden occupied the White House and appointed Grandma Garland to the DOJ, we’ve seen nonstop criminal prosecution of conservatives via ‘creative’ legal theories, which have delighted democrats and the compliant corporate media, who have no imagination or ability to extrapolate whatsoever.

Anyway, hundreds of peaceful Capitol protestors have been convicted by D.C.  juries under 18 U.S. § 1512(c)(2), a law passed in 2002 after the infamous document shredding story fell out of the Enron case. The law provides up to 20 years in prison for illegally destroying evidence or — and this is the tricky bit — when someone “corruptly … obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.”

Someone at DOJ saw that language, which was supposed to be about illegally (“corruptly”) destroying evidence so it couldn’t be used as evidence at trial (the “official proceeding”). The DOJ saw that and thought “Eureka!” Congress had assembled on January 6th to certify the presidential vote totals, and the meeting could be described as an “official proceeding.” The Trump supporters didn’t want the vote to be certified yet, so they were allegedly trying to “obstruct, influence, or impede” that proceeding.

And there you have it. Voilá! Twenty years.

The DOJ picked Jacob Chansley as its guinea pig to test out its new legal theory. Chansely was the colorful “QAnon Shaman” who’d be certain to inflame a cerulean-blue DC jury. And the DOJ’s strategy worked perfectly: the jury gave Chansley five years, and the DOJ got its precedent.

Since then, hundreds more J6 defendants have been convicted under the same re-tooled evidence statute. Relying on that swelling, Frankensteinian body of legal precedent, Jack Smith indicted President Trump for the very same crime in the DC ‘election interference’ case.

In yesterday’s thrilling development, the Supreme Court granted certiorari — agreed to hear — an appeal from a January 6th defendant named Edward Lang who’d been convicted under the evidence statute. In essence, Lang argues the evidence statute is “unconstitutionally vague,” letting prosecutors twist the law like Chinese bioweapons engineers into any shape they want. Significantly, the appellate court decided 2-1 to uphold the DOJ’s novel interpretation of the statute.

That’s significant because, if the four Supremes who voted to accept the case had agreed with the appellate court, they wouldn’t need to take the case. They could just deny certiorari, and then the DOJ’s interpretation would become the law.

So the bare fact the Supremes took the case is highly suggestive that at least four of them have something they want to say about it. Most observers think it doesn’t look too good for the government.

The decision created a lot of excitement, as it should have. If the Supreme Court throws § 1512(c)(2) out as unconstitutional, all those J6 prisoners will be released, and most of the election interference case against President Trump will dissolve just like a fresh dusting of snow evaporating on a warm morning.

Some folks, like WND News, even went so far as to predict Jack Smith, Trump’s prosecutor, will be forced to drop the charges just because the Supreme Court took the case.

My take is: this is a perfect, politically expedient opportunity for the Court to weigh in on a bunch of politically-difficult issues without taking the hit. Nearly every conservative judge in other courts who’ve looked at this issue found the statute to be too vague, so the Supreme won’t have to stretch at all to reach that conclusion. They can just quote lower-court opinions. And the Court could also easily help out President Trump, in a case that on its face has nothing whatever to do with Trump. Easy peasy.

This is an exciting and encouraging development. If you like the legal stuff, you can read Ed Lang’s Petition for Certiorari here.

💉 Canadian business journalist with the Financial Post Ian Vandaelle, 33, died December 5th after a short illness, when his family declared him brain dead and removed life support.

During his life, Ian was a staunch, highly-motivated citizen volunteer for the covid vaccines. He was kind of a hard-liner actually, and frequently used his position to call for more vaccine mandates, strict passports, and harsh penalties for people who didn’t comply:

I only mention Ian’s relentless “tough love” toward unvaccinated folks as evidence that he was himself well inoculated. Dr. Fauci would certainly have been super proud of Ian’s willingness to take the mRNA shots notwithstanding all the contaminants, and of Ian’s ceaseless, uncompensated vaccine advocacy.

We pray that Ian’s partner and family will find peace.

🔥 The New York Times ran a fawning story yesterday headlined, “Hunter Biden, Defying Deposition Subpoena, Again Offers Public Testimony.”  After Hunter Biden raised the legal stakes yesterday by refusing to comply with a Congressional subpoena, the airwaves and Internet-waves were filled with corporate media shills squawking the phrase “no evidence” louder than a flock of hungry seagulls chasing a party-sized bag of spilled Doritos.

Instead of showing up for his subpoenaed deposition, Hunter held a press conference for swooning reporters right outside where he was supposed to be testifying, defiantly claiming to be a victim of harassment and “no evidence” prosecution, and denying he ever did anything wrong except get addicted and then valiantly put his life back together.

House Republicans said okay, fine, we’ll do it the hard way.

🔥 Yesterday, CNN also reported the news that the House of Representatives successfully voted to ‘formalize’ the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden’s Bribery Case.

The progress toward impeachment reflected the successful work of the Oversight Committee in developing an increasingly-solid evidentiary case that Joe Biden is a hopelessly-sold out foreign agent. Meanwhile, Democrats and corporate media reporters kept squawking, “no evidence! no evidence! Awwwk!”

They say denial is a river in Egypt. Or words to that effect; I don’t know the dialect.

Also yesterday, the Hill ran a “somebody said something” story about former Obama campaign advisor David Axlerod shivving Joe Biden:

Indeed.

🔥 Science! In a local development, Fox News ran a story yesterday headlined, “University of Florida scientists arrested after allegedly putting kids in cages while they went to work.”

According to the arrest report, whenever they weren’t at home, the married scientists kept their two young children in an unscientific “large unsanded, wooden enclosure made of pressure-treated 2×4’s, that appeared to be a makeshift cage.”

Science! In a wild explosion of understatement, Gainesville Police Sergeant John Pandak told reporters, “I’m not used to walking in and seeing a cage where children are kept at night and, of course, when home alone.”

Few are.

Dustin Huff, 35, and Yurui Xie, 31, scientists, were charged with aggravated child abuse and the kids have been placed with vetted relatives, and by all accounts sounded relieved not to have to sleep in a cage anymore.

Lest you think I’m being unfair by painting scientists too broadly with this ugly caged-children brush, please first recall that one of the fathers of modern psychology, B.F. Skinner, kept his daughter in a cage for two years. Skinner euphemistically called the cage he kept his baby daughter in an “air crib,” and it briefly became popular with other virtue-signaling science worshippers, until sane people closed the Overton Window and the history books on that awful practice.

And still they tell us we must “trust the scientists.” No, thank you.

🚀 Math is hard, ya’ll. I know you’re going to be tempted to make mean jokes about our woke military generals, how the Pentagon lost a war with a calculator, and other stuff like that, but please try to be civil. A couple weeks ago, the Intercept ran an inglorious story (difficult to find anyplace in corporate media, for some reason), headlined “Pentagon Fails Sixth Audit in a Row, Claiming “Progress Sort of Beneath the Surface.”

The Pentagon has the largest budget of any federal agency — nearly a trillion dollars. Yet it has never passed a single annual audit mandated by Congress. In a recent press briefing, the Department of Defense frankly admitted it had no timeline for passing an audit.

Not ever. It’s too hard. It’s just no use.

“I’ll just say that we remain a trusted institution,” Pentagon comptroller Michael J. McCord optimistically forecast during a separate press briefing about the failed audit. “We’ve made a lot of progress to date.”

Reporters expressed skepticism about the “progress” part.

When asked by one reporter to say when the Pentagon expects to pass an audit, deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said she can’t predict the future, but that when the Pentagon does pass, she would let them know.

I did not make that up. Or exaggerate. That’s literally what she said.

I know you’re feeling sorely tempted to analogize the Pentagon’s childlike inability to audit its own budget — a battle without any opponent — to the Pentagon’s inability to win a war against motivated, nuclear-armed opponents, but you shouldn’t make that analogy.

I’m not sure why you shouldn’t, since it seems like accounting for the money is so much easier of a job than winning wars. Plus you don’t have to kill anybody. If they can’t even do the simple stuff, how will they do the complicated parts?

But nevermind. Trust the narrative! Which is: the Pentagon’s absolute failure to account for the taxpayer money it gets for free despite having a virtually unlimited budget does not reflect the Pentagon’s overall ability level at all.

So.

🔥 Yesterday’s best clip featured Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy on a live CNN Town Hall, rapidly tossing truth grenades like Hunter’s laptop, the Wuhan lab leak, and the Gretchen Whitmer fednapping trial (resulting in the jury finding the defendants not guilty). Vivek seized the live TV opportunity to go full-on, 100% January 6th Truther, while CNN anchor Abby Phillip was desperately trying to interrupt the candidate and redirect the question and was losing her mind:

CLIP: Vivek Ramaswamy lists government lies and calls J6 entrapment (5:09).

As I’ve said before, I think we’re going to hear a lot more like this as new politicians enter the pipeline who weren’t connected with any of these awful scandals. I think it will happen for the jabs, too.

There’s a whole lot to love in Vivek’s answer, but I think my very favorite part was when Vivek said, “Abby, what I want CNN’s audience to know…” In other words, Vivek knew who he was really talking to: he wasn’t talking to Abby Phillip, but to the CNN audience, who are mainly people who think only white guys named Trump believe the government coordinated January 6th.

Say what you want about Vivek Ramaswamy, but it sure is fun watching him spar with woke reporters.

Have a terrific Thursday! And get back here tomorrow morning for a fresh mug of delicious, farm-to-table Coffee & Covid.

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