“Freedom Is Never More Than One Generation Away From Extinction”

Alan Dershowitz, renowned liberal lawyer, Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus and civil libertarian, is more qualified and credentialed than most to point out the hypocrisy of the left. Ever since they revealed themselves as “Get Trump At Any Cost” partisans he has been doing so with a vengeance as he sees their actions as extremely dangerous to civil liberty.

His recent editorial contains a synopsis of the argument in his book, Trumped up! How Criminalizing Politics is Dangerous to Democracy. He explains how former civil libertarians are prepared to sacrifice civil liberties in the quest for their truth on the altar of “Get Trump.”

This is all too typical of the about-face many civil libertarians have taken since Trump became president. I have previously written about the ACLU’s abdication of its traditional role in challenging governmental overreach. For the new ACLU, getting Trump trumps civil liberties.

He points out that the sure way to destroy civil liberties is to first go after your political enemies by using an expansion of criminal law against them. Next you establish precedent based on your flawed application of law to destroy your political enemy which then lies around like a loaded gun waiting to be aimed against anyone. And that’s the way civil liberty dies. To illustrate his point Dershowitz cites Sir Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons.:

Roper: So now you would give the Devil benefit of Law!

Thomas More: Yes, what would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

Thomas More: And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

I’m grateful there are still a few intellectually honesty men among us fighting for our civil liberties because, as we’ve been warned, once gone they are unlikely to be restored.

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#FLOTUSFriday – Birthday Edition

What do you get for a woman who has everything?

How about a new Secretary of State,

and an end to a 65 year old war?

If I recall correctly it was just a year ago when Kim Jung Un was threatening to wipe out South Korea, Japan and the U.S. So it’s no wonder the President was too busy to go shopping for another bauble to mark Melania’s 48th birthday yesterday.

Imagine what our VSPDT has planned for her 50th!

MAGA!

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Yeezy Has Left the Plantation. Muh Man!

So, Kanye West has decided to leave the 21st century plantation.

Way, way off the plantation:

There will be hell to pay. For starters the media will try to make him out to be a mad man.

The artist’s latest statements follow media outrage over the weekend after he claimed to love the thinking of conservative black activist Candace Owens, AKA Red Pill Black.

On Monday he continued outraging the left by tweeting videos of conservative icon Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, examining the “golden age” taking place and discussing breaking free from “prisons of the mind.”

That day West also fired his manager Scooter Braun, and followed up with a series of messages saying he wanted to take over all aspects of his work, leading to reports he’s having a mental breakdown.

Independent thought!?!  A BLACK man??? Of course he’s crazy. What else could it be?

OK, maybe he’s a little crazy: nobody loves Hillary. And I suppose you have to be a little crazy to think you, as a black man can think for yourself.

Kanye revealed just how dangerous it is for a black man in America to leave the plantation. But he is fearless.

In fact, he’s so fearless he reminds me of our President.

In more ways than one:

For one thing, they both know how to melt the internet whenever they want to. And don’t forget, Kanye’s planning to run for president too.

Yo, Yeezy! Muh Man!

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State of the State Dinner: MAGA Edition

The Trump’s first State Dinner was held in the State Dining Room, where such affairs were intended to be held, rather than the circus tent constructed on the south lawn for many of the Obama era state dinners.

Trump’s State Dinner for France, Obama’s State Circus for India

And the table setting was boringly classic, left, unlike the Obama’s state dinner for Italy, right which was contemporary pink and green.

Of course you don’t need to erect a tent if you don’t invite half of Hollywood and all of the supportive press corps to break bread with you like they did during the Obama era state dinners:

In the media-whore contingency, l-r, Claire Shipman(ABC) and Mr. Claire Shipman (JJ Carney), Gwen Ifill (PBS) [RIP] and date, the honorable Andrew Sullivan (Newsweek/Daily Beast) of Sarah Palin “Trig is not your child” fame, and his current squeeze, Aaron Tone.

Mrs. Trump’s gown was elegant: Chanel black Chantilly lace haute couture gown hand-painted with silver and embroidered with crystal and sequins. There will certainly be much talk of its expense just as there was most certainly none about Lady M’s Naeem Khan gown covered with hand sewn crystals and sequins.

Vogue, compelled to cover the FLOTUS’ gown last night as that is their business, was guardedly non-committal as to its virtue or vice while Elle loved the dress but managed to track down some of the nastier tweets to include in its coverage.

But all in all, the dinner was considered a success:

About 130 guests, seated at round candle-lit tables decorated with bouquets of white flowers, dined on rack of lamb and nectarine tart served on a mix of china settings from the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. After-dinner entertainment (was) courtesy of the Washington National Opera.

Opera? What? No Beyoncé, role model for young girls? Figures, everyone knows Donald Trump is a sexist.

Beyoncé and her bouncing butt, role model for young girls everywhere

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MAGA! FLOTUS Hat Edition

Have you seen Melania this morning? She’s Making America Great Again.

Many First Ladies have worn hats:

Pat, Mamie, Rosalyn 

Lady Bird, Hilz, Jackie

Nancy

and  of course Lady M owned dozens of wig hats:

But nobody, not even Jackie or Nancy, has ever worn them like Melania:

And how dare she flaunt her white privilege like that?

Life really isn’t fair, is it?

America: We’ve always the one wearing the white hat.

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#MondayMoanin’ – And the Hillary Camp is Still At It

I hate to link to the New York Times, but Amy Chozick’s essay adapted from her upcoming book “Chasing Hillary” does reveal  some truths about the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign.

Apparently there really was some media bias!

I know this is hardly news but it’s fun to see it exposed and this way you won’t have to buy the book. But if you refuse under any circumstances to click on the NYT you can read some of the highlights at ACE including some feel good moments like this:

Mook eventually delivers the news of impending defeat to Clinton. "I knew it. I knew this would happen to me,” she answers. "They were never going to let me be president."

Perhaps if she had listened to her advisors - who suggested she might need to work on that “unlikable” aspect of her persona - instead of blowing them off with comments like “You know, I am getting pretty tired of hearing about how nobody likes me,” she might have been able to reduce her “unfavorable” numbers.

And then there is the infamous “deplorables” quip which we are advised was far from off the cuff but rather  a practiced phrase that was always guaranteed to get a good laugh in the enclaves of the rich and entitled:

“The Deplorables always got a laugh, over living-room chats in the Hamptons, at dinner parties under the stars on Martha’s Vineyard, over passed hors d'oeuvres in Beverly Hills, and during sunset cocktails in Silicon Valley,” Chozick continues.

And although Hilz was amongst a crowd of wealthy donors, by design free of hostile reporters, somebody had infiltrated the confab and recorded Her Nastiness at work:

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it…Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable.

And while this was the first most of us heard about it, apparently the biased reporters who covered her had heard it many times before:

That was no slip of the tongue, since "Hillary always broke down Trump supporters into three baskets," Chozick writes.

“Basket #1: The Republicans who hated her and would vote Republican no matter who the nominee.

Basket #2: Voters whose jobs and livelihoods had disappeared, or as Hillary said, 'who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens in their lives and their futures.'

Basket #3: The Deplorables. This basket includes 'the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic--you name it.'

As I noted at the time, that just meant we we’re going to need a much bigger basket.

Longaberger Basket Building

I think my favorite part of the Chozick piece was how she differentiated between the loyal journalists following Hillary’s campaign – who she called ‘travelers’ - and the loyal Clinton staffers – who she called ‘guys’. The fellow travelers designation seems apt but I thought the oh-so-sensitive Left objected to the generic use of ‘guys’ on the grounds it was sexist.

Still, the fellow travelers were as shocked as Hillary and her ‘guys’ when she lost. What had they missed?

Do they mean besides the obvious?

The next day, Times reporters consider what they'd missed -- and why. "God, I didn't go to a single Hillary or Trump rally," a colleague of Chozick's admits, "and yet, I wrote with such authority."

As it turned out it wasn’t that “they were never going to let me be president,” it was Hillary who would never let it happen. Seriously, you just can’t keep all that nasty hidden under a bushel basket forever.

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James Comey: Defender of Cafeteria Ethics

Newt Gingrich came right out and said what a lot of people think: James Comey - former U.S. attorney, deputy attorney general, corporate attorney, hedge-funder and FBI director - wrote a self-serving book filled with lies and half truths and may well be a “pathological liar.”

“I’m saying he taught himself a early age a series of self-serving emotions, which he uses … if you watch him for a couple of hours of this stuff, he uses it over and over,” Gingrich concluded. “This guy is almost a pathological liar.” Daily Caller

Worth a view:

Pathological liars may lie to gain sympathy…In order to keep up appearances, they may spin larger and more complicated lies. 

We all know somebody like this: they get a pained look on their face when they’re lying to you about whatever has gone awry not really being their fault but yours.

And like Comey, when you ask them a question they artfully deflect it and give you the carefully rehearsed answer to the question they wanted you to ask.

 Observe whether the person dodges questions. When confronted, a pathological liar may find a way to avoid answering a question. Pathological liars are manipulative by nature, so you may think they've answered something when they really have failed to do so.

Come to think of it that describes most Democrats. Not that Comey thinks of himself as a Democrat. No, he’s bigger than any political party.

(Comey) portrays himself as the defender of truth, the paragon of integrity, the embodiment of ethical values and principles and as someone guided by a steady moral compass…he even gives himself moral credit for not cutting in line at the FBI cafeteria! If there’s a Nobel Prize for restaurant manners, he should claim it.  Politico

When Trump-haters like Politico’s Jack Schafer say things like “When your 304-page book and marathon interviews produce sympathy for Donald Trump—even a dollop of sympathy—you’re doing it wrong,” trust me, he’s doing it wrong. But I’m sure he’ll get it all worked out in his head before he begins  teaching his course on ethical leadership at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

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