Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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When the Obama administration CIA Director John Brennan testified before congressional committees over the last few months he informed them that he presided over a vast web of telecommunication networks that monitored Americans doing business in Russia. Some of these business people were inadvertently communicating with suspected Russian intelligence agents. At some point Brennan would feel a “disturbance in the force” and notify the FBI to investigate the American citizens who created the dis...
The James A. Farley Post Office in New York City was opened in 1914 and has the inscription, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Contrary to what many of us have believed since childhood, this is not the motto of the U.S. Postal Service. The sentence comes from the Greek historian Herodotus and celebrates a system of mounted postal messengers created by the Persians. U.S. Postal policy is not based on this...
Last week’s Republican effort to reform Obamacare imploded when Sen. John McCain, reinventing his role of “Maverick McCain,” cast the deciding vote against the so-called skinny repeal. A cynic reviewing the short three-act play written, directed and performed by McCain could only conclude that what occurred was payback in spades for treatment he received at the hands of Donald Trump during last year’s primaries. In Act I, Maverick rises from his sick bed and rides to the rescue of Republican sen...
For whatever reason, the term “impeachment” has been making a regular appearance in the media since Jan. 21. Democrats on the far left, alas I repeat myself, have the strange idea that if Donald Trump is impeached, Hillary Clinton will become president. They get this from reading blogs created by people who have never read the United States Constitution and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 as subsequently amended to include the newly created cabinet offices. A review of the suc...
It would do well for us to remember what happened the last time a special counsel was appointed to serve for the United States Department of Justice. In July of 2003, a newspaper columnist published the name of a CIA employee who was said to have covert (secret) status. The unauthorized disclosure of a covert CIA employee is against the law. The employee named was Valerie Plame and the scandal became known as the Plame affair. On Oct. 1, 2003, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage informed...
According to Wikipedia, “A conflict of interest exists if the circumstances are reasonably believed (on the basis of past experience and objective evidence) to create a risk that a decision may be unduly influenced by other, secondary interests, and not on whether a particular individual is actually influenced by a secondary interest.” Reading this carefully tells me that the appearance of a conflict of interest is, de facto, a conflict of interest. According to the King James Bible, Mat...
When Sally Yates testified before a Senate judiciary sub-committee, her bombshell was not that National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had lied to his bosses about speaking to Russian officials. Her big news was that the Russians could use this information to blackmail Flynn. Yates’ testimony was backed up by the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, who told the sub-committee that Moscow could use this type of information as leverage against Flynn and that, “This is a cla...
Much has been made in the news lately about the division between urban and rural citizens, and what motivates them to do things like vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in an election of bad or worse choices. I’m hoping some of the observations listed below might help you understand the differences: • Cities are full of glass-and-steel monuments to the religion of management. In this peculiar religion, the credit and pay don’t go to the worker who puts the O-ring in the hose to make it le...
Whatever else James Comey may be, the one thing that has become evident after all the testimony he provided various congressional committees is that he is the consummate political operative. Any testimony he gave should be viewed with that in mind. I base this analysis on several things. Comey began his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee by characterizing the president’s comments about a demoralized FBI as a “lie.” At best the demoralized characterization must be viewed as a dif...
On May 30, comedian Kathy Griffin and photographer Tyler Shields decided they would release a series of pictures with Griffin holding the decapitated head of the president of the United States. By the end of the day, her co-host on CNN’s New Year’s Eve show, Anderson Cooper, had tweeted, “For the record, I am appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in. It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate.” On Wednesday, CNN fired Griffin. She feels that Cooper betrayed her with his tweet. Even Chelsea Clinton tweeted, “This i...
Washington journalists and analysts like to pontificate regularly that the president of the United States is the commander in chief of the Armed Forces. The really informed correspondents will shorten up the title to CINC. At the same time, the media will pretend the president has no control over any other department in the executive branch of government. President Obama worked hard to help reporters in furthering this fantasy by regularly stating, “I learned about that on the news this m...
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was fond of saying there are known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. It’s time to review some known knowns about the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath. The Democrat Party chose to nominate a candidate who was under FBI investigation for committing a federal crime, mishandling of classified information. The major news media chose to accept the candidate’s claim that she was not under criminal investigation but rather und...
Democrats have long campaigned for public office on the divisive issue of group victimhood. There is no doubt that the election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president was a historic event. Democrats believed that their next historic event would be electing Hillary Clinton as the first woman president and she campaigned by repeatedly asking, “Wouldn’t you like to see a woman in the White House?” Following the Clinton win, there would continue to be many more historic first presi...
There are many “open letters to Donald Trump” written from such notables as Bill Nye (The Science Guy), consumer advocate and political activist Ralph Nader and astronaut Ron Garan to name a few. However, the open letter I commend to you today is, “An open letter to Trump from the US press corps” by Kyle Pope in the Columbia Journalism Review. Pope writes, “We, not you, decide how best to serve our readers, listeners and viewers. So think of what follows as a backgrounder on what to expect fr...
Once upon a time the earth was flat. Or at least this was the scientific consensus at the time. Einstein’s theory of relativity is grounded in part on the fact that the speed of light is constant (energy=mass times the speed of light squared). Or at least this was the scientific consensus at the time. Scientists are now questioning that the speed of light is constant and some believe that fairly soon quantum theory and the theory of relativity could be fighting it out to determine which theory w...
One of the reasons I dislike Twitter is that one is limited to 140 characters per tweet. This caused President Trump to tweet, “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” That came just after the New York Times published stories that indicated the FBI, NSA, CIA and Treasury Department were investigating Trump and his campaign staff. The Times topped off its stories with the headline, “Wireta...
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to trigger a partial nuclear option in 2013. He said the unprecedented move was necessary to fix a broken system. While Republicans bemoaned the fact that Reid’s actions were an exercise in raw power, Reid was playing a long game. He had just placed his party in a classic win-win situation. Although Republicans vowed to reciprocate when they reclaimed the majority, Reid knew they had never filibustered any judicial nominee who could win a majority vote a...
U.S. Republican Congressman Devin Nunes is chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Nunes is also a member of President Trump’s transition team. This latter point is of some importance to Nunes because he had received information that, “The intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.” Nunes announced that information at a press conference and then left to brief the president on these latest devel...
Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, recently remarked on CNN, “I think that Donald Trump has already done a number of things which legitimately raise the question of impeachment.” Ellison went on to state that, “On day one, he was in violation of the emoluments clause. This is a part of the Constitution that says as president you can’t get payments from a foreign power.” The Title of Nobility Clause, also known as the Emoluments Clause, proclaims: “No title of nobility shall be granted by the Unit...
Last Saturday, the Democratic National Committee’s 447 members gathered in Atlanta to elect a new national chairman from a field of seven candidates. It was the first time since 1985 that there was a contested election for the position. Although seven candidates had their names on the ballot, only two of them had any chance of winning. Tom Perez, secretary of labor under President Obama, also has ties to the Clinton organization and had the backing of such political luminaries as Joe Biden a...
The conflict between President Trump and the media once again came into public view during a press conference last week. Whether you agree with the president or not, you have to admit he has a valid objection as to how media presents news about the Trump administration. David French, writing in National Review On-Line notes that both the New York Times and CNN had major stories about Trump’s campaign team having repeated contacts or constant communications with senior Russian officials during t...
Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was on “Meet the Press” recently and demanded once again that the FBI investigate any links that President Trump may have with Russia and Vladimir Putin. Pelosi demanded, “I want to know what the Russians have on Donald Trump. I think we have to have an investigation by the FBI into his financial, personal and political connections to Russia and we want to see his tax returns so we can have truth in the relationship (with) Putin, whom he admires,” I have no...
In 1951, President Harry Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur for insubordination. Thirty years later, when 11,000 air traffic controllers ignored his order to return to work, President Ronald Reagan fired them. This year, when acting Attorney General Sally Yates refused to do her job, President Donald Trump fired her. Individual federal workers have always had disagreements with their elected employers, and have resigned or left when the differences could not be resolved. That appears to be...
On inauguration day, MSNBC put together a panel led by Rachel Maddow that included Chris Matthews, Brian Williams and Steve Schmidt to provide live coverage of the occasion. The network would have been hard pressed to come up with a more mediocre group of has-been losers. Williams lost his NBC anchor spot on the “Nightly News” for exaggerating the details of his military travels during the Iraq War. He was suspended without pay for six months and is now working on MSNBC. There is some doubt as...
“No man shall be deprived of the free enjoyment of his life, liberty, or property, unless declared to be forfeited by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land.” — The Magna Carta, circa 1215 “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” — Mark Twain, 1866 The U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Brown v. Board of Education decision on May 17, 1954. It ruled that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, as they are supported by all the ta...