George W. Bush Decides To Help Save The Senate, House

Notoriously silent since leaving office, W. dipped his toe back in the political arena as his brother, former Florida Governor Jeb! Bush ran for the 2016 GOP nomination for the presidential race. He went on the record admitting that he left the top race on the 2016 general election ballot blank and he made a veiled reference to Trump in a 2017 speech. Now, however, as top Republicans get a bit edgy about the impending (maybe) blue tsunami or wave or ripple, Bush is hitting the campaign trail to raise some money.

“While he prefers to consider himself retired from politics, President Bush recognizes how important it is to keep the Senate and decided to help a few key candidates,” said Freddy Ford, a Bush spokesman.

This morning he did a closed-door event for Rep. Will Hurd who is in a district that swings back and forth between parties. Trump lost Hurd’s district in the 2016 election. Then Friday Bush heads to Florida for two events benefitting Governor Rick Scott now running against Democrat Senator Bill Nelson. Next week he will be in Fort Worth for North Dakota candidate Kevin Cramer, challenging current Democrat Senator Heidi Heitkamp. And the last event announced is in Dallas for Texas Rep. Pete Sessions.

The district Sessions represents is the one in which Bush lives and also home to the George W. Bush Presidential Library. It is a race that the Democrats had in their sights when the national party originally listed seven or so districts for flipping in 2018.

George W. Bush has drawn criticism among Texas Republicans since leaving office and essentially turning his back on Republicans trying to change course from the eight disastrous years of Barack Obama. While it is admirable for former presidents to remain on the sidelines and not criticize the current president – as Barack Obama did last weekend – it is quite another matter when he admits not supporting the party’s nominee for President. In this case, Trump won and Jeb! flamed out very early in the primary process. The Bushes, like many of us (yes, especially me) didn’t understand the full extent of the dissatisfaction most Americans felt towards standard candidates from both parties. The voters were looking for something completely different and that is why both Trump and Bernie Sanders rose in popularity. Yes, Bernie is a career politician but he was able to capture the imagination of the new direction of the Democrat Party as it lurches towards socialist dreams.

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Brent Bozell: Corrupt Democrats Are Not 'News'

When seeking to demonstrate the degree to which the "objective" news media act like Democratic partisans, the best place to start is scandals, as in "Have you heard all about the latest Republican scandal?" versus "What Democrat scandal?"

On Aug. 8, Republican congressman Chris Collins of the Buffalo, New York, suburbs was indicted for insider trading and lying to the FBI.  ABC, CBS and NBC played this story to the hilt, with 18 minutes and 24 seconds of coverage in just the first 24 hours, according to the Media Research Center. CBS devoted the most coverage, pounding away for 7 minutes and 6 seconds. ABC came in second, offering 5 minutes and 41 seconds, and NBC was right behind, with 5 minutes and 37 seconds.

On Aug. 21, prosecutors indicted California Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter on charges of wire fraud and campaign finance violations. The morning and evening newscasts on ABC and CBS spent a total of 4 minutes and 44 seconds covering the story in the first 36 hours. In contrast with Collins, Hunter was "lucky" that there was breaking anti-Trump news — the conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the guilty plea of former longtime Trump confidante and lawyer Michael Cohen to charges of campaign finance violations.

It thrilled the networks that these two men, Collins and Hunter, were the first congressional endorsers of Donald Trump for president. That multiplied the "newsworthiness" for them.

Now wait a minute! Why, that's such a loaded, unsubstantiated conclusion!

Except it isn't. Look what happens when a Democrat is indicted. And tried. And convicted. And sentenced.

These very same three networks, these champions of public integrity, were bored to tears by the indictment and trial of former Democratic Congressman Chaka Fattah of Philadelphia. During the year and a half between his 2015 indictment and 2016 conviction and sentencing for misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars of federal, charitable and campaign funds, the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening programs offered a measly 68 seconds of "news."

In other words: Collins received 16 times as much coverage as Fattah in just one day. But wait. It gets worse.

There's former Rep. Corrine Brown of Florida, who was sentenced to five years in prison in 2016 for using an alleged children's charity called One Door for Education as a personal slush fund for herself and several aides. She used it for more than $300,000 in personal expenses, including tickets for NFL games and a luxury box for a Beyonce concert. "Brazen barely describes it," the judge, Timothy Corrigan, said of Brown's sham charity. Never heard of her? There's a reason.

Network coverage: Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Both Fattah and Brown were members of the Congressional Black Caucus and were defeated in 2016 primaries by other black Democrats after the national whisper of their indictments. Both had been in Congress for two decades and faced no serious general-election opposition for most of that time.

There are other House Republican scandals the networks have noticed since Fattah and Brown. On Dec. 13, 2016, NBC's "Today" featured a nearly two-minute-long report on former GOP congressman Aaron Schock's arraignment on corruption charges in federal court.

Even after they leave office, Republicans garner more attention than incumbent Democrats.

On Oct. 5, 2017, when pro-life Republican Congressman Tim Murphy from Pennsylvania resigned after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported he had urged his mistress to get an abortion (she wasn't actually pregnant), all three broadcast evening shows ran reports on it. It added up to more than 6 1/2 minutes of coverage in the morning and evening, and almost 5 minutes of it aired on NBC.

Think of this, and then feel free to laugh at NBC's Chuck Todd, who proclaimed on Sunday's "Meet the Press" that charges of a liberal bias in the media are an old Roger Ailes tactic "not based in much fact."

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Kavanaugh hearing antics showed Dems’ contempt of Congress

Democrats like to pillory President Trump for destroying American institutions and breaking the norms of conduct. Yet, during the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats blatantly and flippantly violated Senate norms, rules and traditions — and inflicted in the process considerable damage on the institution.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) interrupted the very first sentence of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) opening statement. Protesters constantly interrupted questions asked by senators of both parties, as well as Kavanaugh’s answers; they were challenged only by Republican senators. But even in this chaotic atmosphere, Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-N.J.) decision to violate the committee’s confidentiality agreement with the executive branch, pursuant to which the committee received documents that otherwise would have been withheld, was particularly egregious.

On Wednesday night, Booker asked Kavanaugh about an email exchange dating to the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. He quoted a committee confidential document — that is, a document that no senator had the authority to make public, and which Kavanaugh did not have in front of him.

Early Thursday, to ensure that  Kavanaugh and the American public would be able to see the emails for themselves, Grassley worked with the Department of Justice and former President George W. Bush’s attorney to release several committee confidential documents, including the one Booker had quoted. They were taken off the “committee confidential” roster at 4 a.m.

Despite the accommodation extended to him by Grassley and the Trump administration, Booker proceeded to engage in a display of remarkable grandstanding. On Thursday morning, he announced he would release the documents marked committee confidential. “This is about the closest I’ll ever have in my life to an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment,” he said — even though the documents had already been released.

Booker’s performance is stunning, in large part because he could have had the emails released well in advance of the hearing. As Grassley often made clear, senators were given the opportunity to request the public release of documents that were initially marked committee confidential, but only Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) did so. It seems that Booker decided to put his presidential ambitions ahead of Senate protocol and transparency.

Booker’s flouting of committee confidential protocol is more than a violation of the Senate rules. What he did is also truly destructive for the legitimacy of the Senate itself, given the fact that the documents at issue were provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee based on an assurance to the executive that they would be treated in accordance with certain procedures. Given this precedent, this administration and its successors will be much more reluctant to provide documents to the Senate based upon assurances that they will remain confidential, thereby impairing the Senate’s oversight and legislative functions.

All of this underscores the low esteem in which the Senate Democrats hold their own institution. This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that the email string that precipitated all of this sound and fury does not contain anything particularly dramatic or support what Booker implied: rather than seeming like someone who approved of racial profiling, even in the tense post-9/11 days, Kavanaugh makes clear that he “favor[s] effective security measures that are race-neutral.”

In marked contrast to the poor behavior of some senators, the nominee behaved with remarkable patience and thoughtfulness. Kavanaugh answered questions fully, effectively and fairly, while showing himself to be a fair and impartial judge. He declined to answer questions about cases that might come before the court and he avoided being brought into current political debates; doing either of those things would have undermined his appearance of impartiality. In so doing, he followed what is known as the Ginsburg Standard.

As Andrew Grossman and I recently argued in The Wall Street Journal, all judicial nominees must follow the rule, invoked by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during her confirmation hearing in 1993: “A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case — it would display disdain for the entire judicial process.” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) once called this approach a “grand tradition,” and Kavanaugh upheld it by declining to answer questions about issues that might come before him, including abortion.

Meanwhile, Harris sought to pull Kavanagh into a political discussion of last year’s Charlottesville, Va., riots, and attempted to probe his view of how President Trump handled the situation. Kavanaugh responded, “I am not here to assess comments made in the political arena, because the risk is I'll be drawn into the political arena.” With this answer, he again echoed Ginsburg, who refrained from answering political questions that were “not relevant to the job for which you are considering me, which is the job of a judge.”

Booker’s action has injured the Senate as an institution and merits an appropriate institutional response. Indeed, only the Senate has the constitutional authority to deal with this matter and, with this power, comes responsibility. Under Supreme Court precedent, Gravel v. United States (1972), Booker’s actions were clearly covered by the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause. Gravel, which involved the senator who made public during a committee hearing the top secret “Pentagon Papers,” teaches that senators are not subject to executive branch investigative or prosecutorial action in these circumstances, leaving the Senate as the only entity that is empowered to take any disciplinary action.

Whatever the nature of Booker’s action or his justification for it might be, the Senate is entitled to censure him, and that censure itself is immune from judicial review, as the D.C. Circuit made clear in Rangel v. Boehner (2015). There, a House member challenged his censure, and the court ruled that the judiciary had no power to inquire into congressional disciplinary actions because of the immunity conferred by the Speech and Debate Clause.

Kavanaugh showed respect for the Senate, the judiciary and the hearing itself. The same cannot be said for many of the senators asking him questions.

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Construction of California’s Stonehenge Costing $3.1 Million Per Day

Historian Victor Davis Hanson coined a great nickname for California’s Bullet Train construction project, calling it “California’s Stonehenge.” The project is proving to be a very costly monument to the ego of state politicians.

How costly? California’s high-speed rail project is back in the news thanks to the Los Angeles Times‘ Ralph Vartabedian’s reporting on the ever-escalating cost of the troubled project, where the construction bills are now topping $3.1 million per day:

The California bullet train project has cost state taxpayers an average $3.1 million a day over the last year—a construction spending rate higher than that for the Bay Bridge, Boston’s Big Dig or any U.S. transportation project in recent history.

But still it’s not enough, planners say. Yikes! How much would be enough for the planners?

In order to hit its 2033 deadline and $77-billion budget, the California High Speed Rail Authority will have to increase daily spending by up to nine times over the next four years or risk putting the already-delayed system further behind.

If that seems crazy, that’s because it is. At least, according to some professional civil engineers.

“That burn rate is ludicrous,” said civil engineer James Moore, director of USC’s transportation engineering program. “It is so far outside standard experience that it doesn’t make sense to assume it will occur.”

I would never doubt the ability of politicians determined to spend money at rates that have never before been achieved for an infrastructure project. Right now, California is trying to build the easiest part of its already-scaled back high-speed rail system, over flat land with relatively few obstacles, and it is costing California’s taxpayers over $3.1 million per day. Just imagine how big the daily bills will become once they get to the modestly difficult parts of the construction, or to the parts that will be technically challenging.

But if they cannot, all they would need is to further delay the completion date of California’s bullet train project beyond the 13 years that it has already been delayed. Or cut back the amount of track they will build even more than the 123 miles that they’ve already subtracted from the original plan in transforming it into the current scheme.

Or both. No matter what, until the project is permanently canceled, the one thing that can be guaranteed is that its cost will grow even higher than the $77 billion it is slated to cost California taxpayers today.

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Democrat "generosity"



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Stalin is alive and well in Britain

Hate-filled British Labour Party heavyweight John McDonnell incites harassment of Tory MPs. "I want to be in a position where no Tory MP can show their face in public without being threatened with direct action. They are social criminals & we will try them for their crimes."




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