Don's Tuesday Column

   THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   02/27/2018

               Intelligence report propaganda        

        There was a memo written by Democrats, way back in the George Bush presidency, that leaked out of an intelligence committee. It was not for public consumption; moreover, it contained such damaging admissions (to their cause of tarnishing Bush over the Iraq War) that it was given little coverage by the partisan news media. I remember reading it thoroughly and was astounded at the crass, shameless, duplicitous and manipulative approach those Democrats chose as their "ticket" to undermining not only the rationale for the Iraq War, but also President Bush's authority and legitimacy in general.

        That internal memo basically "war gamed" how the Democrats would use every trick they could muster to discredit, undermine, obfuscate and flat-out lie about the intelligence supporting the decision to start the Iraq War. Numerous "if...then" strategies were laid out; "if" discrepancies over pre-war statements were found, "then" the worst interpretation would be spread to  sympathetic media outlets to drive the narrative and coverage. "If" pre-war intelligence contained any less-than-certain level of confidence, "then" only the uncertainty would be emphasized. "If" no actual contradictions could be found, "then" Democrats would spread fabrications that couldn't be refuted by Republicans without compromising classified raw intelligence and "sources and methods." 

         Bear in mind that American troops and equipment were on the line in Iraq at the time. The mood of the public had shifted from support for the war to ambivalence and opposition in some quarters. If you recall, it was twice voted for by Democrats based on available information, including by Hillary Clinton based on her access to Bill Clinton's intell on Saddam's weapons and support for terrorists. Democrat voters would believe and espouse whatever came from Intelligence Committee Democrats; the partisan news media would take that cue and proceed to replicate the role they played undermining America's efforts--and Americans' support--in the Vietnam War.

        If history is a reliable guide, then consider the perfidious role by Democrats, and their news media adjuncts, in undermining the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon (with help from his tape recorder), America's clandestine-but-essential CIA foreign spying, President Reagan and his missile strategy, Reagan's anti-communist efforts in Nicaragua, Bush 43's Iraq War and War on Terror, up to the current campaign to de-legitimize President Trump, his election and agenda. That consistent role has effectively divided America into warring camps and subverted every justified action by their political opponents--enemies, in their estimation. Division is the undisputed goal of the current Russian efforts against America and our national unity in serving the Constitution's design of electoral, political order. Any dispassionate analysis would have to conclude that it is the Democratic side doing the Russians' bidding. 

        Consider all of that when hearing about the current memo from Intelligence Committee Democrats seeking to refute the Nunes memo that revealed embarrassing, underhanded, even illegal abuse by the FBI/DOJ investigating Trump et al. I see clear indications that Democrats (traditionally on the anti-law enforcement side) now disingenuously champion the FBI/DOJ only after the successful politicization of its bureaucratic leadership (under Barack Obama) as a tool in the "law-fare" campaign against President Trump and his administration.

        The immediate goal, revealed by Democrat Schiff's Intelligence propaganda, I mean memo, is to sow confusion and contention into what would otherwise be a rather straightforward, condemnable narrative: The so-called Steele "dossier" contained false, unverified, unverifiable and salacious dirt on Trump (See above for the anti-Bush tactics over Iraq War intell). 

        A key point in the GOP (Nunes) memo is that DOJ and FBI officials used the "Trump dossier" by Christopher Steele, paid for by the Democrats and Clinton, as an important, essential element in every FISA warrant from every FISA Court--Courts that were never told it was paid-for-propaganda. It was infused with anti-Trump bias and, in Steele's case as a foreign agent using Russian government and non-government sources, was a product serving no purpose other than to keep Trump from becoming President and provide impeachable grounds to remove him. 

        There is the real, verifiable Russian collusion: 1) designed and intended to subvert the election; 2) collusion that did change votes and continues to move Democrat impeachment plans forward with their desperately-desired House takeover; 3) at the very least, make Trump a one-termer. The Mueller investigation team is composed almost entirely of hard-core Democrat lawyers, typified by the take-no-prisoners, get-a-scalp-at-any-cost tactics of Mr. Weinstein. Witness the questionable guilty conviction of Mr. Flynn over disreputable disclosure failures and an FBI agent that affirmed Flynn didn't actually lie.

        Consider Mueller's indictments of 13 Russians for conspiring to sow confusion in the 2016 presidential election (which included favoring Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein); also, the zero chance of extraditing them to face charges. Under that standard, Steele--who is not a citizen, colluded with Russians and actually meddled in our election--and the Democrats who received and spread his propaganda sure look guilty of the same charges.

7 Terrible Liberal Gun Control Arguments … And How To Beat Them

Kurt Schlichter

I argue for a living. I often deal with hacks, liars, and agenda-driven fanatics. But never in a quarter century of being in court rooms have I faced such a blizzard of constitutional illiteracy, technical ignorance, flabby reasoning, and outright lies as I have dealing with people who think our Second Amendment rights are up for debate.

Our rights are not up for debate. But, as a courtesy, because talking is the way a free people should endeavor to solve problems, we should debate them anyway. Rational discussion beats the alternative – many of us are vets who saw the alternative overseas – even if the other side prefers emotional blackmail using articulate infants to bum rush their anti-civil rights policies. So, here are seven (it could have been 50) of the most annoying – and dishonest – arguments you will hear, and how you can fight them.

1. You Don’t Actually Have The Right To Own Guns Because You Aren’t In A Militia!

Nope. That’s wrong right off the line because Heller v. District of Columbia (2008) 554 U.S. 570, holds as a matter of settled law that individuals have the right to keep and bear arms regardless of their militia status.

The Second Amendment provides: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Justice Scalia, writing for the majority in Heller, dismissed the argument that this right somehow, despite the clear text, belongs to “militias” and not individuals. Your opponent may not like that, but that’s what Heller says. That’s what the Constitution says.

And, as usual, Justice Scalia’s reasoning was incisive and compelling. He dismissed the militia reference as merely announcing just one purpose of the Second Amendment, not its only purpose. The prefatory clause does not limit the scope of the right, but even if it did that interpretation would not change the nature of the right. The “militia” is, by statute (10 U.S. Code § 246), “all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and … under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States….” This demonstrates the Founders’ intention that “able-bodied” citizens must protect their communities and Constitution. History teaches, and Justice Scalia observed, that these citizens maintained their personal weapons at home, and were ready to act when needed – whether it was to stop Redcoat gun control activists at Lexington and Concord or to mobilize to defend Korean stores during the Los Angeles riots in 1992.

I was there with the Army in LA, by the way. Don’t tell me chaos can’t happen here.

2. But Wait – It Says “Well-Regulated Militia.” Doesn’t That Mean The National Guard?

No. Guard soldiers and airmen are part of the militia, but the Guard is a component of the United States Army or Air Force. During my time in the Guard, my uniform’s service tape read “U.S. Army” and I held a U.S. Army Reserve commission. Guard members are part of the standing military; the interpretation liberals assert would render the Second Amendment meaningless, which is what liberals want, but that’s not how one interprets a legal text.

Well, aren’t citizens with guns not “well regulated?” No. Congress regulates the militia – Article I, Section 8, Clause 16 of the Constitution provides that “The Congress shall have Power To ...provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia….” And Congress has decided what “well regulated” means. It means the current level of regulation, since that is what Congress has imposed. It could enact further regulation, if it wished. If the Congress feels like decreeing that every member of the militia (which Congress can expand as it wishes to better reflect society) must be armed with an AR15, it can. (Hint hint).

And no, the rest of the Amendment limits the ability of Congress to disarm “the people,” so it can’t “well regulate” the right out of existence.

3. Well, Scalia Still Says Guns Can Be Regulated, So We Can Ban Modern Weapons!

No. What the anti-civil rights crowd likes to do is cite language from Heller that recognizes a few traditional exceptions to when and what arms may be kept and borne – in other words, gun banners try to have narrow exceptions swallow up the rule. Always pivot back to and demand that these people recite the basic holding: The Second Amendment recognizes the right of citizens to individually keep weapons in common use for lawful purposes, including self-defense.

Liberals hate when you do that, especially when you confront them with the fact that Heller protects weapons “in common use.” In that case, it was handguns. However, the fake assault weapons that liberals hate (which are involved in a tiny fraction of crimes) numbers in the millions. AR15-style weapons are in common use. Deal with it.

4. We Just Want Common Sense Gun Regulations Since There Aren’t Any Now!

Oh, I guess they never filled out a Form 4473. You know, all the lies about it being “easier to buy a gun than a Pepsi” do not exactly inspire us to believe that the gun banners’ pleas for “common sense reforms” are anything but the first steps toward confiscation and disarming our citizenry. Lying demonstrates a lack of good faith.

Nor does the fact that none of these “commonsense gun regulations” addresses the problems they cite. Ask your gun banner pals which reforms they want that would have stopped any of the recent killing sprees by people who are notconservative observant Christian or Jewish NRA members. Background checks are their usual go-to. Those are already a thing, and the scumbags all passed, except for the one scumbag whose check the FBI screwed-up.

You know, instead of hassling citizens who have committed no crime, maybe we ought to demand our law enforcement agencies start doing their damn jobs.

5. You Have Blood On Your Hands!

Actually, don’t stop them when they go this way. Scummy drama queen invective like this is proof that our stubborn defense of our rights is working, and that they have nothing else but to lie about us. Their hysterical shrieking helps motivate other people who may not have been paying attention to protect their rights. After all, “You support murdering children!” is a super-effective way to alienate normal folks and highlight the essential dishonesty of the gun banners.

6. No One Wants To Take Your Guns!

This is another classic lie. In fact, that’s exactly what liberals want to do. How do we know? They tell us when they think we are not looking – and, with more frequency, when we are. It’s fun when they say they don’t want to take your guns, then say you have to give up your ARs. If your opponent is getting wistful about Australia’s gun confiscation, he wants to take your guns.

Let’s get serious. They all want to take your guns. Why? Two reasons. First, it takes power from the citizenry. Liberals love that. Second, gun rights are important to normal Americans because the fact we maintain arms means we are not mere subjects. We are citizens, with the power to defend our freedom. Liberals hate that we have that dignity; taking our guns would humiliate us, and show us who is boss. They want to disarms us not because of the gun crime – name a liberal who wants to really do something about Chicago as opposed to hassling law-abiding normals – but because they hate us and want to see us submit.

Even the Fredocons are getting into the act, which is no surprise since Never Trumpism is always the first step downward to active liberalism. Pseudocon Bret Stephens demanded that America repeal the Second Amendment in the New York Times in October 2017. Fellow puffcon Ross Douthat simpered something similar, and the Captain Stubing of Conservatism, Bill Kristol, tweeted his concurrence.

7. The Second Amendment Is Obsolete And This Stuff About Defending Against Tyranny Is Crazy!

Obsolete? Isn’t our Constitution a living document that should change with the time? Well, in the last couple decades gun rights have expanded massively across the country via legislation – faster and more thoroughly than gay marriage did – so the Constitution is evolving toward recognizing more gun rights. Anti-civil rights holdouts like New York and California are failing to recognize that the Constitution changes with the times and stuff, and those states must conform to the new consensus about the freedom to keep and bear arms. That’s how this works, right? Right?

Did you liberals say that our government is always going to be benevolent? Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of the revelations of government misconduct and oppression of individual citizens for their views. Also, since Trump is totally Hitler for real, isn’t giving him a monopoly on force a bad idea?

Finally, there is the claim that “a bunch of violent country guys with rifles couldn’t take on the government anyway.” First, at the threshold this is a disgusting slander. Violence is a last resort justifiable only in cases of outright, active violent tyranny where no political or judicial processes are available. The idea that American citizens, many veterans, are somehow chomping at the bit for a civil war is right up there in the Liberal Slander Top 10.

American citizens do retain the right to use force to stop such tyranny. If some government decided to say, round up Jewish citizens, violence would be appropriate to protect our fellow citizens as a last resort. Luckily, our street level law enforcement personnel and military would never do such a thing, but that does not mean a situation could never arise where people acting under the color of authority might seek to violently violate the Constitution and deprive citizens of their rights and lives. The Founders were wise to recognize our citizens’ right to have the ability to resist violent tyranny.

But could citizens effectively resist violent tyranny? That’s a long story – someone ought to write a novel on the subject – but the short answer is, “Yes.” As Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan all teach, a decentralized insurgency with small arms can effectively confront a modern police/military force. Of course, in America’s case, the police and military rank and file are much more likely to sympathize with their fellow citizens and freedom than with some hypothetical tyrant, making such a horrifying scenario highly unlikely – though not utterly impossible.

But the bottom line is that two untrained idiots with handguns shut down Boston. What do you think 100 million Americans – many trained and some battle-tested – could do with their rifles? (To get a feel for the level of utter dishonesty among our opponents, just scroll down to the comments and count the lies about me somehow supporting civil war in this column).

The liberals want to have a conversation about guns. So should those of us who love freedom. We have the facts. We have the law. We have the right. And we have a choice.

Citizens bear arms and hold a veto over tyranny. Serfs obey their masters because they have no choice. Pick one.

 https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2018/02/22/7-terrible-liberal-gun-control-arguments--and-how-to-beat-them-n2451718

A GUIDE TO WEAPONS FOR THE UNINFORMED

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN GUN CONTROL

The way the Left swings into action every time a nut commits mass murder with a firearm, you would think that school shootings are the leading cause of death in the U.S. Michael Ramirez reminds us that according to FBI homicide statistics, rifles are the country’s least popular murder weapon. If you really wanted to do something about violent crime, it would make more sense to crack down on knives. Or fists. Click to enlarge:

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RUSSIAN BOTS WERE A NON-FACTOR IN 2016

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, RUSSIA

Michael Moore’s appearance at an anti-Trump rally organized by Russian meddlers illustrates how inconsequential Russian meddling, at least in the form discussed in the recent Mueller indictment, was. Sure, Moore would not have attended this particular rally absent Russian meddling because, absent such meddling, the rally apparently would not have occurred.

But did Russia influence Moore’s view of Trump? Of course not. Did Russia influence Moore’s willingness to express his view or the vehemence with which he expresses it? No, again.

As even the New York Times has acknowledged, “the false information and political advertisements that the Russians are accused of spreading could ring true only to those already predisposed to suspect the worst.” People predisposed to believe the worst about, say, Hillary Clinton weren’t going to vote for her. They were going to vote for someone else, be it Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, or Donald Trump.

A similar analysis applies to concerns that Russia was out to undermine our democracy by poisoning our discourse. Rich Lowry writes:

The Russians wanted to boost Trump, but as a Facebook executive noted, most of their spending on Facebook ads came after the election. The larger goal was to sow discord, yet we had already primed ourselves for plenty of that.

Does anyone believe, absent Russian trolls on Twitter and Facebook, that we were headed to a placid election season involving an incendiary, mediagenic former reality-TV star bent on blowing up the political establishment and a longtime pol who had stoked the enmity of Republicans for 30 years and was under FBI investigation?

I don’t. No reasonable person could.

In short, as the New York Times has said, “Russian interference was a drop in the ocean.”

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/02/russian-bots-were-a-non-factor-in-2016.php

The Media Is Lying To The Parkland Survivors

PETER HASSON

Associate Editor

I don’t usually write opinion columns and I wasn’t planning on writing one after Wednesday night’s CNN town hall, but the more I thought and reflected on it, the more I became convinced of one ugly truth: the media is failing the Parkland students.

We’re doing so in three ways.

1) We’re lying to them about the political process. Two moments from the CNN town hall, which represented a WWE cage match more than a conversation, offer clear examples.

The first came when Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio pointed out that a truly effective assault weapons ban, one without loopholes, “would literally ban every semi-automatic rifle that’s sold in America.” The students on stage and in the crowd erupted in applause.Anybody with a working knowledge of the political process knows a ban on semi-automatic weapons will never happen. I say weapons here because it’s not just about rifles. Dylan Roof used a pistol to slaughter several church goers. The reality is that semi-automatic weapons of any stripe could be used to commit such atrocities.

Due largely to impracticality, Congress isn’t going to ban semi-automatic rifles in America. Rubio voiced the idea as an example of a fairy tale. It will never happen. Full stop. Journalists on both sides of the aisle know it won’t. Or at least we should. And yet reporters indulged the fantasy anyway, playing up the exchange as a “win” for the students and a “loss” for Rubio, as if cheering fairy tales makes them more likely to come true.

The second moment came when a student, Cameron Kasky, confronted Rubio about donations from the NRA and used his classmates’ deaths to demand Rubio denounce the NRA’s support. “In the name of 17 people, you cannot ask the NRA to keep their money out of your campaign?” asked Kasky.

Attacking the NRA has been a consistent theme of the student campaign for gun control. The idea, encouraged by journalists and liberal activists, is that NRA donations are the reason Republican politicians (and many Democrats) aren’t going to ban most rifles or (as some would like) ban guns outright.

The truth is the NRA supports members who already support the Second Amendment, rather than the reverse. Further, the organization’s campaign donations make up a tiny drop in the bucket of political spending. The actual money carries nominal weight compared to the millions of NRA members who vote for politicians who represent their beliefs and values about the Second Amendment.

That roughly half the country supports these congressmen gets to the heart of the matter: the political process is fundamentally about compromise. If the gun control crowd wants to achieve substantive goals, they’re going to have to find points of compromise with those millions of NRA members — the same members they are, much to the glee of their fans in the media, smearing as child murderers. Has anybody bothered informing these kids of how the political process works?

We’re setting them up for further hurt and disappointment by giving them false hope of political goals that aren’t going to happen.

Look no further than the Florida legislature’s vote on banning assault weapons on Tuesday. The bill immediately died in the House. The truth is the vote was a political stunt. Democratic state Rep. Jared Moskowitz admitted as much Wednesday and chastised his Democratic colleagues for playing “procedural games” with the vote. Did the students watching in the gallery know it was all just a game? Judging by their grief-stricken faces, it sure didn’t look like it. But at least Florida Democrats got a day or two of good PR from CNN.

Congress has real options at its disposal to curb gun violence, such as improving the background check system or exploring gun violence restraining orders. But if these students are expecting their protests to result in Washington banning the vast majority of rifles in America, they’re going to be deeply disappointed. And anyone who allows them to play up that fantasy is doing them a profound disservice.

2) We’re failing the Parkland survivors in another way: by indulging and applauding grieving teenagers’ worst impulses.

These teenagers (and adults as well but especially the teenagers) are hurting and searching for answers. I don’t blame them for being angry — they’re in tremendous amounts of pain, it’s a natural reaction — but I do blame the adults goading these teens on as they lash out in anger, accusing people who had nothing to do with a mass murder of being responsible for it.

It may make a 16-year-old boy feel good for a moment to blame Dana Loesch for his friends’ deaths, but it’s not really going to make his pain go away. Again, has anybody mentioned that? Or has everybody been too busy ooh-ing and ah-ing as they share viral clips of grieving teenagers totally “DESTROYING” the NRA?

When all is said and done, when the next scandal or tragedy is dominating the news cycle and rifles are still legal, these poor kids will still be searching for answers that yelling at the NRA won’t give them.

3) Which brings me to my third point: we’re exploiting the Parkland survivors. We may not be doing so intentionally but the fact is we are. For if the media aren’t operating with the students’ best interests at heart — and the first two points make clear that’s not the case — then we’re operating with some other primary motivation.

It’s no secret that the people cheering on these pained and suffering students just happen to share the same political goals (and enemies) as the students. It’s a lot easier to cheer somebody on when they’re skewering your political opponents as child murderers.

And then we have traffic and ratings incentives for the media, which are to package these teenagers’ hurt and confusion into segments and clips to be aired over and over again, turning their real pain into reality TV for the rest of us.

When CNN executives give the order to put emotional and vulnerable teenagers front and center all day, do we really think their thought process is guided by what’s best for the teens? Is Jeff Zucker all of a sudden an altruist?

The more likely and more uncomfortable truth is that networks are putting their own interests first (as networks tend to do) and rationalizing it away as a public service. You can rationalize exploitation any way you want to, but it’s still exploitation.

The ugly truth is we’re lying to the Parkland survivors about the political process, enflaming their pain and exploiting their grief. May God have mercy on us all.

Tags: CNN Town Hall, Dana Loesch, Marco Rubio, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

http://dailycaller.com/2018/02/22/the-media-is-lying-to-the-parkland-survivors/

ON GUNS, DEMOCRATS SWING AND MISS AGAIN

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN GUN CONTROL

No matter how many times they fail, the Democrats always seem confident that next time, they will successfully climb the gun control hill. This time, they certainly gave it the college try. CNN and MSNBC were all in, and plenty of Republican politicians seem intimidated. (Marco Rubio deserves credit for being willing to show up at CNN’s town hall, express his views and take the heat.) A boycott of the NRA is underway, and the bank that has offered an NRA affinity card is terminating it.

But is there any reason to expect a different result this time around? I don’t think so. Based on the surveys I have seen, Americans’ views on gun control and mass murder haven’t budged. Rasmussen finds that 39% of Americans think stricter gun laws will decrease violent crime; that’s the Democrats, more or less. But an equal number, 39%, say stricter gun laws won’t make any difference, while 15% say they will increase violent crime. (Those respondents are almost certainly correct.)

This finding is interesting, too: only 24% say they have confidence in the government to fairly administer gun laws, while 58% say they don’t trust the government to enforce gun laws fairly.

The Democrats no doubt hoped that the Parkland, Florida shootings would hurt President Trump, but that hasn’t happened, either. His response has been strong and sensible. Voters seem to agree, as today’s Rasmussen tracking poll of likely voters finds Trump’s standing rising, with 50% now expressing approval. This compares with Barack Obama’s 45% approval rating in the same poll at the same time in his first term.

So if Republicans don’t panic, I think the current bout of gun hysteria will fizzle, as its predecessors have in recent years.

UPDATE: One more thing: the Democrats have been furiously attacking Dana Loesch, who serves as a spokesman for the NRA. But she is more than a match for them. I like this, from Instagram:

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How the MSM and Russian Trolls Are Destroying the Democratic Party

How the MSM and Russian Trolls Are Destroying the Democratic Party

 

BY ROGER L SIMON 

In what feels like the 27th year of the Trump-Russia-Collusion Investigation, what we have most recently learned is that a lawyer no one ever heard of may have made a false statement to the FBI and even erased a few emails concerning events that happened years before the election and have something to do with Ukraine. We have further learned that a group of Russians in St. Petersburg have been trolling us since at least 2014 (what took them so long?), playing both sides against the middle and even going so far as to organize a post-election demonstration in front of Trump Tower featuring Michael Moore assuring us that "he's not my president!" while being cheered on by some extraordinarily credulous women with microphones from CNN.

Forget going from the sublime to the ridiculous. This has gone from the ludicrous to the harebrained.  The fact that anyone could be taking this nonsense seriously anymore boggles the proverbial mind, but they do -- especially at that antediluvian relic known as the mainstream media.

And therein lies the treachery -- not for Donald Trump, who spends far too much time paying attention to it himself, but for the Democratic Party because, seemingly entranced (even hypnotized) by the non-stop (even now) coverage by CNN and other so-called serious outlets, they have completely forgotten who they are, i. e. a political party with policies, goals, etc.

Trump vs. Oprah: The Matchup We Deserve?

Lost in a Russia-induced haze, the Democratic Party virtually no longer exists.  They have no ideas, no proposals, nada.  There's nothing but Nancy Pelosi whining about "crumbs" while genuine tax reform is appearing live in people's paychecks. The Democrats can dream about a "wave election," but the only wave that seems to be coming their way is a surfer's wipeout.

Nevertheless, CNN et al. bleat on about Russia, Russia, Russia. I have news for Zucker, Tapper, Acosta and company.  No one's interested.  This is the boy who cried wolf times twenty. The public has been on to the game for months now. It's even beginning to show in the polls.

In the process, Adam Schiff may have become the most visible Democrat on the planet, but his face is the image of slimy prevarication. He's Nixon with less hair. Everyone sees it -- except for that same loyal media claque.  It's hard to understand how they could have been so clueless.

They also didn't get that Devin Nunes is a natural born Mr. Smith, an honest guy from the heartland (Fresno), while Schiff is a natural born hustler representing the Hollywood Hills and Burbank. It's basic casting.  The media is supposed to know something about this, but they miss it by a mile -- and have been unwittingly destroying the Democrats in the process.

Howard Dean: Devin Nunes 'Belongs in Jail'

As one who has been more than once to Russia and, yes, even knew people in the KGB back in the day (please don't surveil me, Mr. Mueller.  I'm a loyal American), I am certain that Donald Trump is correct in at least one of his tweets.  The Russians are laughing their asses off about this.  And they deserve to.  We are the biggest doofuses of all time.

Something has gone very wrong here.  The question is how to correct it.  Harvard's esteemed Alan Dershowitz has been everywhere insisting that the special counsel investigation should never have occurred. Without a specific crime cited, it had no basis and should have been an  internal national security matter and conducted as such.

That's undoubtedly true, but leaves outstanding the question of what to do about some real specific crimes that do seem to exist -- actions taken by the FBI itself, the suborning of the FISA court, etc.  This opens a giant can of worms that leads back to the Clinton campaign and foundation, all the unfortunate detritus that has been filling an hour of the Hannity show for over a year.

Dershowitz suggests we forget that too.  For whatever reasons -- I could speculate, but I won't -- he's a "let bygones be bygones" guy. He says it's all political in the end and should be decided at the ballot box.

I disagree.  But maybe I'm too sentimental about the rule of law.  It's a brave new world out there, after all, where we live by the rule of trolls.  Who knows what they're cooking up now for their willing stooges in our media?

Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media.  His latest book is I Know Best:  How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If  It Hasn't Already.

https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/msm-russian-trolls-destroying-democratic-party/