HALF-FULL REPORT 07/08/16

Snipers killed five Dallas police officers, wounded seven others and two civilians last night (7/7). One suspect has been killed, three are in custody. Others may still be at large.

The attack took place during what had been a peaceful demonstration in downtown Dallas to protest the shootings by police of black men in Louisiana Tuesday and Minnesota Wednesday.

One suspect told police negotiators “he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers,” said police chief David Brown, who is black.

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After being pulled over for a taillight violation in a St. Paul suburb, Philando Castile, 32, was shot multiple times Wednesday night by a “Chinese” police officer, said his girlfriend, Lavish Reynolds.  According to her, Castile was shot after he told the cop he had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Ms. Reynolds posted on Facebook a graphic cellphone video which begins just after Mr. Castile was shot.

Other than traffic violations, Castile had no criminal record. His death has been ruled a homicide. Jeronomo Yanez, the officer who shot him, has been placed on administrative leave.

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Alton Sterling, 37, was shot Tuesday morning by Baton Rouge police officers responding to a 911 caller who claimed Sterling – who had a long rap sheet for violent offenses and drug offenses – had threatened him with a gun.

Sterling resisted arrest. He had (an illegally obtained) gun in his pocket. District Attorney Hillar Moore said the cops appear to have acted in self defense.

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There were 987 fatalities from police shootings in 2015, according to the Washington Post.  Twice as many of those killed were white than black.  Blacks were more likely to be killed by black or Hispanic cops than by white cops.

Blacks are 12 percent of the population, commit about 60 percent of violent crimes. According to Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute, it is 18.5 times more likely a black criminal will kill a cop than a cop will kill an unarmed black person.

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The shootings in Dallas were a “vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement,” President Obama said this morning. “There is no possible justification for these types of attacks.”

Well said.  But he, other Democrats, and especially those in the “mainstream” media who rush to judgment before the facts are should reflect on whether their rhetoric has encouraged assaults on police officers.

Yesterday, in response to the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, the president said: “they are symptomatic of …the racial disparities that appear across the (criminal justice) system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve.”

In his statement today, Mr. Obama blamed the Dallas shootings in part on lack of gun control.

“When non-black cops shoot black suspects, the left insists – without a shred of evidence – that such killings are endemic among police officers, and that the entire system is racist,” Ben Shapiro noted. “But when obvious anti-white racists murder white cops (or when Islamists murder gay people) the left suggests that gun control is the issue.”

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Before the shooting in Dallas, the news this week was dominated by the remarkable statement Tuesday (7/5) by FBI Director James Comey and the reaction to it.

Comey spent 12 minutes laying out in exhaustive detail how Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official business as secretary of state endangered national security, violated at least three criminal statutes. But then the FBI Director said he wasn’t recommending prosecution, because Hillary hadn’t intended to harm the United States.

As pointed out by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former U.S. Attorney Andy McCarthy and many, many others, intent is irrelevant in the key statute Hillary violated. Section 793(f) of Title 18 of the United States Code criminalizes gross negligence, of which, if found guilty, officials not named Clinton go can to prison for up to ten years.

“McCarthy points out that all or virtually all states criminalize the negligent causing of death,” noted attorney Paul Mirengoff of Power Line. “But the federal code also criminalizes a host of other actions in which negligence, not intent, is the driver. There are thought to be nearly 5,000 such statutes.”

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So why didn’t Comey recommend that Hillary be indicted?

The editors of the Wall Street Journal think he wanted to keep Donald Trump from becoming president.

Princeton Prof. Robert George thinks he wanted to keep Bernie Sanders from being the Democrat nominee.

Comey could only recommend that Hillary be indicted.  It would be up to the attorney general actually to indict her.  And that wasn’t going to happen.

The FBI Director “wanted us to know Hillary was guilty as hell,” said Karin McQuillan. “But he was not willing to pit the FBI against Obama’s DOJ, so he let the guilty walk free without even an attempt at insisting she be charged.”

‘Did Director Comey cooperate the way American prisoners of war did, when forced to read statements praising their captors, by in effect blinking Morse code?” Thomas Lifson wondered.

“By getting out in front of the Justice Department, the FBI director, speaking publicly in an admittedly unusual fashion, was able to frame the case in a manner that Attorney General Loretta Lynch in all probability never would have,” said Roger Simon of PJ Media.

I hadn’t thought much of British Prime Minister David Cameron until he resigned after losing the Brexit vote.  It was the honorable thing to do, and he did it graciously.  After the laying out the case against Hillary, the honorable thing for Comey to have done was to announce his resignation, with a blast at the administration for undermining the rule of law. But American officials don’t resign in protest any more.  Their careers come before their principles, such as they are. But maybe Comey did the next best thing.

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Letting Hillary skate means the end of the rule of law, said Charles Hugh Smith and Michael Walsh and Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan.  We’re a banana republic now, said David French of National Review and Charles Gasparino of the New York Post.

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Hillary should be barred from classified briefings, said House Speaker Paul Ryan. Sen. Marco Rubio introduced a bill to strip her of her security clearance. Hillary shouldn’t be allowed “within 1,000 miles” of classified information, said MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.  Even Mika agreed.

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Some of the statements Hillary made under oath were “not true,” the FBI Director told the House Oversight Committee yesterday. That’s perjury, Republicans said.  Comey also said Hillary is “not sophisticated enough” to understand classified markings.  She was, however, sophisticated enough to order classified markings to be removed from documents she sent via her private server.

In must see TV, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-SC, a crackerjack prosecutor before being elected to Congress, leads Comey through the evidence Hillary intended to break the law:

https://youtu.be/tV6q9LOubfc

In a bizarre exchange reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s quibbling about the definition of “is,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-UT, asked Comey: “Did Hillary do anything wrong?”

“What do you mean by wrong?” Comey replied.

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It may now be impossible to successfully prosecute others who mishandle classified material.

“I intend to use the Hillary defense,” attorney Sean Bigley, whose firm specializes in defending those accused of breaching national security, told McClatchy Newspapers.

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Hillary’s email problems will last through November, predicts University of Chicago Prof. Charles Lipson.

Expect leaks from ordinary FBI agents, he said. “If they think their hard work was buried for political reasons, they won’t stay quiet.”

If there are verbatim leaks from secret documents, they’ll likely come from Russian intelligence, which almost certainly has hacked her server, and has a powerful interest in backing Trump, Lipson said.

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The most important Clinton emails are the ones that aren’t there, said Peter Schweizer of the Government Accountability Institute, who noted the “suspicious gaps” in Hillary’s email record tended to occur when she or Bill were meeting with suspicious foreign characters for whom she did favors after they made megabuck donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Comey dodged questions yesterday about whether the FBI is investigating the Clinton Foundation.

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In what may be her most brazen hypocrisy yet, Hillary said in Atlantic City Wednesday Donald Trump is for “protecting a system where the rich and powerful stick it to everybody else. He got rich playing by those rules and he wants to keep it that way.”  Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

Alas, everything Hillary said about Trump is absolutely true.  After Comey’s statement the day before, she’d be dead meat against any real Republican.  She has Trumpkins to thank that she’s running against the only “Republican” she could beat.

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After Comey handed him a club with which he could have beaten Hillary all week, The Donald Tuesday retweeted from a neo-Nazi web site an anti-Semitic cartoon, and praised Saddam Hussein.

This was at least the fifth time Trump has diverted the news media’s attention from a breaking anti-Hillary story by saying something stupid or obnoxious.  Megan McCardle and Erick Erickson don’t think its accidental.

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President Obama announced Wednesday he plans to keep 3,000 more troops in Afghanistan through the end of his term than he originally promised. Of 2,382 Americans killed in Afghanistan, 1,752 (74 percent) have died during Mr. Obama’s presidency. The Taliban now controls more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since the regime was ousted in 2001, our commander there said last month.

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Austria’s constitutional court has thrown out the results of the presidential election in May, narrowly won by the leftist candidate, due to massive voter “irregularities.” The court ordered a new election for September. If Norbert Hofer, who opposes massive Muslim immigration, wins the rerun, he would be “the first far-right head of state in the European Union,” Reuters whined.

Austria has been a hub for global jihad, but Austrian attitudes have shifted as terror gets closer to home.

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The Obamacare coop in Connecticut shut its doors Tuesday, the 14^th of 23 to fail.  Two more – in Maryland and Illinois – are in big trouble, are likely to shut down soon.

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A giant passed away Tuesday.  Bill Armstrong, who served in the House from 1973 to 1979, in the Senate from 1979 to 1991, died of cancer.  He was 79.  Bill was president of Colorado Christian University from 2006 until his death.

I admired Bill more than any other person I’ve ever known in politics, including Ronald Reagan, for whom I also had the privilege to work.

Bill could contend without being contentious.  I remember with enormous pride the afternoon in 1980 when Bill held the floor for hours, fighting the Carter administration and the Republican leadership of the Armed Services Committee to get the G.I. Bill reinstated, and a big pay raise for military personnel. Calmly and politely he swatted away arguments against it. I think Bill’s fight that day had almost as much to do with fixing our “hollow military” as Reagan did.

I feel confident that if Bill were in the Senate today, he’d be leading the fight to save America from Hillary, the Republican Party from Trump.

Jack Wheeler reminded me that it was a year ago this week he informed TTPers of my cancer, and asked for your prayers for me.  I’m grateful to all of you – and there were so many of you – who responded.  The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.  I pray I’ll use whatever time I have left to serve the Lord, my family and my country half as well as Bill did.

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Former Fox News hostess Gretchen Carlson, fired at the end of last month, has filed a sexual harassment suit against Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes.  Her charges are false and defamatory, she was fired because ratings for her show were low, Ailes responded.

I won’t have an opinion until more facts are known.  But leftists – for whom facts are irrelevant – are enjoying themselves mightily.

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Baltimore States Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who refuses to learn from experience, began Thursday the trial of Lt. Brian Rice, the fourth of six Baltimore police officers charged after the death in police custody of petty criminal Freddie Gray. The first three trials ended in a hung jury and two acquittals.

The case against Lt. Rice is the weakest, the prospect of conviction “vanishingly small,” said Andrew Branca a lawyer covering the trials for Legal Insurrection.

Mosby should be disbarred, said George Washington University Law Professor John Banzhaf, described by the Baltimore Sun as an “activist law professor with a penchant for filing high-profile lawsuits.”

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My putz of the week and my hero of the week is the same guy – FBI Director James Comey.  It isn’t clear yet whether he’s doing it deliberately, but every time he opens his mouth, he says something that hurts Hillary.  I liked especially his statement that Hillary – a Yale law school graduate – is just too dumb to know what “classified” means.  Every private in the Army knows what it means.  May Republicans on the Hill call Comey to testify again and again.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  He is the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.