"So with respect to the Steele reporting," Auten told the committee, "The actual allegations and the actions described in those reports could not be corroborated." After years of digging, Auten conceded that the only material in the dossier that he could verify was information that was already publicly available, such as names, entities, and positions held by persons mentioned in the document.
A 15-year FBI veteran, Auten assisted the case agents in providing information on the reliability of FBI informant Steele and his sources and reviewing for accuracy their information cited in the body of the applications, as well as the footnotes.
In a declassified internal FBI spreadsheet he compiled in January 2017 to try to corroborate the dossier, Auten cited a September 2016 Yahoo News article as possible corroboration of "Page's alleged meeting with Divyekin" - even though the source of that article was Steele himself.
Former FBI Special Agent Michael Biasello, a 25-year veteran of the FBI who spent 10 years in counterintelligence working closely with intelligence analysts, said Auten should be "Held accountable" for his role in what he described as FBI headquarters' blatant disregard for the diligent process FISA warrants demand.
"All of them must be prosecuted for perjury, fraud and other federal crimes." The Spreadsheet Auten oversaw the early 2017 creation of a 94-page FBI spreadsheet that analyzed the credibility of the Steele dossier, excerpt by excerpt.
Auten learned as early as January 2017 that Steele's primary source, Igor Danchenko, lived in the United States, not Russia; yet Auten and the Crossfire team led the FISA court to believe he was "Russian-based" - and therefore presumably more credible.
According to the IG report, Auten also wasn't concerned about Steele's animus for Trump or that he was paid by Trump's political opponent, calling the fact he was paid by the Clinton's campaign "Immaterial." Under Senate grilling, Auten confirmed the fact-checking lapses highlighted by Horowitz, but remained unrepentant.
Wednesday, March 31, 2021
This Russiagate FBI Analyst Couldn’t Verify Anything In The Steele Dossier Yet Said Nothing For Years
The Invisible Asylum
With the proliferation on the streets of psychosis-inducing drugs such as methamphetamine, the United States has more cases of serious mental illness than ever before-and less capacity to treat and manage them.
The question now is not, "What happened to the asylums?" but "What replaced them?" Following the mass closure of state hospitals and the establishment of a legal regime that dramatically restricted involuntary commitments, we have created an "Invisible asylum" composed of three primary institutions: the street, the jail, and the emergency room.
In 1962, Washington State had 7,641 state hospital beds for a total population of 2.9 million; today, it has 1,123 state hospital beds for a population of 7.6 million-a 94 percent per-capita reduction.
Bruce Gage, lead psychiatrist for the Washington State Department of Corrections, estimates that 20 percent to 30 percent of state prison inmates suffer from serious mental illness.
Even the old flagship, Western State Hospital, has become a predominantly carceral environment, planning to accept only "Forensic patients" who can no longer be held safely in state prisons.
The people on the streets, most of whom have gone through repeated evaluations, have rehearsed the answers that will get them immediately released: "I'm not a danger to myself or others, I know where I can sleep, I know where I can get food." When I ask the team how difficult it is to get a long-term involuntary commitment at Western State Hospital, their response is unanimous: "Impossible."
It's easy to condemn the horrors of the old state hospitals, but the horrors of the invisible asylum may exceed them.
https://www.city-journal.org/olympia-washington-mental-hospitals
The Fair Speech Crusade
Of course, private websites also have property rights - obviously a sports blog doesn't have to post gardening ideas - as well as First Amendment defenses.
Most important, Section 230 shields websites from the complications and costs of assorted lawsuits.
Does Section 230 go too far? From the left, we hear that websites are guilty of underfiltering - for example, allowing the posting of material that's sexist, racist, dangerous, misleading, abusive, or worse.
Some in Congress threaten more regulation unless websites censor noxious speech.
Today, government doesn't allocate social media frequencies.
Nor should we saddle websites with the unmanageable task of vetting billions of daily posts.
If Congress insists on fixing what isn't broken, here's a possible compromise: condition Section 230 immunity on a good‐faith effort not to muzzle constitutionally sheltered speech.
https://www.cato.org/policy-report/march/april-2021/fair-speech-crusade
Illegal Aliens Released by BP Commit Home Invasion Robberies, Store Burglaries in U.S. Town
Violence sparked by the illegal immigrant crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border has spilled over into a sleepy little town unaccustomed to the devastating impact large influxes have on bigger cities near major crossings.
A series of crimes committed by illegal aliens and human smugglers has left the usually tranquil Arizona town of Sonoita, population of about 800, in shock.
Veteran ranchers and business owners in the area interviewed by Judicial Watch say that in the last few days there have been two home invasion robberies and two local stores were burglarized by a group of illegal immigrants who had just been released into their community by the U.S. Border Patrol in the predawn hours.
Another said the sparsely populated region, located about two dozen miles from the Mexican border, is a large grazing area that is "Not accustomed to this type of invasion of illegal activity." The ranchers, all lifetime Sonoita-area residents, asked not to be identified because the situation is getting increasingly heated.
Besides also burglarizing the convenience store next to her, Hubbell said the illegal immigrants stole all the cash donations in a shrine that the owner has in honor of her deceased mother.
A separate group of illegal immigrants processed and released by the Border Patrol was arrested within the last 24 hours, Hubbell said, for criminal behavior in Sonoita.
One national news syndicate obtained an internal government document that explains the move is "Intended to mitigate operational challenges, including risks to national security, during significant surges of illegal migration." A Texas congressman recently disclosed that federal officials have released around 2,000 illegal immigrants inside the U.S. without a notice to appear in court.
Stimulus Checks: Buying Americans' Support of the New Welfare State
As so-called "Economic impact payments" and boosted unemployment checks flood into bank accounts across the country, we can finally see the game like the players do.
The reason the public still broadly supports the bill - and why so many on the right have only tepid criticism - is that most Americans will only feel the bill's effect when they see stimulus checks land in their bank account.
Americans wanted sustainable, real economic growth based on work and earned income, not corporate welfare.
Want to boost support and silence opposition for the public option in Medicare? Just send checks to everyone.
Want to make it more difficult to vote against the Green New Deal? Add checks.
Infrastructure package? Federal jobs guarantee? Free college tuition? Checks, checks, checks.
Will we smile as we get our cut of the new welfare state? Will we ignore the damage we're doing to the truly needy, not to mention future Americans paying interest on this debt?
Hypocritical Dems Call Georgia Voting Laws 'Racist;' Criticize Voter IDs While Pushing for Vaccine Passports
During the opening segment of her nightly show on Tuesday Fox News host Laura Ingraham called out hypocritical Democrats for claiming that voter ID is somehow racist, while at the same time pushing hard for vaccine passport.
"That's exactly what Georgia is doing with the election reforms that Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law last week. After we watched Democrats try to undermine the commonsense voting rules, laws like this are long overdue. But Democrats somehow see this as a threat to their power, so they and their media lackeys are mischaracterizing these measures as, you guessed it, racist."
HARRISON: "What Georgia has done in this bill is in essence say to a group of folks in Georgia that you don't matter and you don't count."()WARNOCK: "This is Jim Crow redux in new clothes."()JOHNSON: "It's almost like a knee on the neck of Georgia voters, just like that officer had his knee on the neck of George Floyd."[Clip ends].
The law states that you have to show voter I.D. to cast an absentee ballot.
While not explicitly mentioning Georgia, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon issued this weaselly statement saying, 'We regularly encourage our employees to exercise their fundamental right to vote and we stand against any effort that may prevent them from being able to do so.
His company tweeted that the Georgia law is unnecessarily limiting provisional ballots, limiting trustworthy, safe and equal access to voting.
They oppose voter I.D. requirements for voting, but are one of the firms actually working on future vaccine passports.
Biden Looking To VP's Fake Diplomacy To Save Him From Border Crisis
"The Democrat-designed vice president waiting to replace Joe Biden as president, is, in video-taped reality, the 'Giddy-Up Giggle Queen" who is a clear and present danger to the children of the world.
"The comments from the vice president's office come after President Biden last week appointed Harris to lead his administration's efforts to address a record surge in migrants, including unaccompanied minors, that has strained capacity at immigration facilities at the southern border in recent weeks.
"Diplomacy" did nothing for the safety of migrant minors when a President Joe Biden staffer stood in front of the cameras of U.S. senators led by Sen.Ted Cruz tried to show Americans the conditions in which migrant minors now live.
It's not the roots of why migrants are fleeing to America but the results now that they've arrived, that the administration should be looking at.
What about fake news and messaging leaving migrants believe it is easier than ever getting into the U.S. with Biden in the White House and promises of coming free health care, education and social assistance?
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported encounters with more than 100,000 migrants in February alone.
Unaccompanied migrant minors need help, not fake diplomacy.
Race in America Still Incoherent
A white woman could have a black child, but a black woman couldn't have a white child.
These days white people try to pass for black, not black for white.
The history of black people in America has been bound up with their Christianity.
In our times, we rarely discuss issues concerning race from the perspective of traditional black Christians.
The blacks we see on television, whether a news anchor or an actor in a commercial, are mainly from the "Talented twentieth," to paraphrase Du Bois, that 20% of blacks who have a four-year college degree.
The real question for those "Social justice warriors" presumably angry over "Racism" is, how does this endless, non-stop "Cancel" purge help those black people who aren't part of the "Talented twentieth" improve their and their families' lives? How does burning down black small businesses, defunding black police officers, opening the border to illegal workers and welfare dependents, keeping at-risk black children out of school, slamming the door on charter schools for black students, stalling the economy with more intrusive regulations and more deficit spending, and continuing to ignore the epidemic of black-on-black crime-help ordinary black people?
Over the last four years we saw record-breaking economic improvement for black lives, with unprecedented levels of wages and employment, and just as we are poised to recover from the wounds of the grossly negligent pandemic lockdowns, the "Woke" Democrats are rushing to bring back the old tax-and-spend playbook and racialist demagoguery that will threaten that recovery and damage more of those "Black lives" that are supposed to "Matter."
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/race-america-still-incoherent-bruce-thornton/
Four Pinocchios to Biden for lies about "outrageous" Georgia voting reform law
The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler gives Biden four Pinocchios over his statements about Georgia's new voting reforms, highlighting two specific lies Biden issued over two days.
"Among the outrageous parts of this new state law, it ends voting hours early so working people can't cast their vote after their shift is over."
One of the biggest changes in the bill would expand early voting access for most counties, adding an additional mandatory Saturday and formally codifying Sunday voting hours as optional.
Counties can have early voting open as long as 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at minimum.
Mail-in absentee voting will look the most different for voters, especially after 1.3 million people used that method in the November general election.
A law signed in 2019 will permit early voting starting in 2022.
Not a single expert we consulted who has studied the law understood why Biden made this claim, as this was the section of law that expanded early voting for many Georgians.
A Cult of Victimhood
A person's moral authority to speak out on issues of oppression depends on the intersectionality of his identity groups, because only the oppressed can know what oppression feels like.
The white female would rank higher in moral authority because the score is three to one in favor of the female for the greater number of victim rankings.
Moral Elitism - Perceive themselves as having an immaculate morality and view everyone else as being immoral.
Moral elitism can be used to control others by accusing others of being immoral, unfair, or selfish, while seeing oneself as supremely moral and ethical.
In the world of the Victimhood Cult, the victim is the only moral authority in society.
The greater number of victim categories you fit in, the greater your moral authority becomes.
"Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men and weak men create hard times." In a society that labels masculinity as toxic, safety a sacred value, feelings to always be trusted and victimhood virtuous, hard times will be our future.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/a_cult_of_victimhood.html