President Trump's Obstruction of IN-justice
   
No wonder Donald Trump was so angry. No wonder he wanted to stop the Mueller investigation. He didn’t collude with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. He knew he was innocent.

And almost three years ago he foresaw that a biased fishing expedition by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his liberal lawyers would undermine his ability to govern and provide Democrats and the liberal media with an endless supply of damaging political ammo.

Now that Attorney General William Barr released the redacted Mueller report, the whole world knows that Mueller completely exonerated Trump of collusion with Russia.

Mueller was unable to decide whether the president was guilty of obstruction of justice. But the desperate Democrats in the House and the disappointed fake journalists over at CNN don’t care that Mueller found Trump guilty of no crime.

They’ll spend the next 20 months parsing the Mueller report’s footnotes and milking the unanswered question of obstruction for every possible drop of political poison they can find.

By noon on Thursday CNN’s all-liberal panel of eight Trump-hating pundits and legal experts like Jeffrey Toobin already were back to their usual tricks.

They spent half the morning spinning the importance of the inconclusive “obstruction” part of Mueller’s report and trashing Attorney General Barr as a shill for the president.

Dana Bash and crew showed no sympathy for the unfair, incorrect and deranged assault they and their soulmates at MSNBC, the New York Times and elsewhere have subjected Trump to for three years.

You’d think Toobin and a few of the others would have been pleased to find out that the president of the United States did not collude or conspire with the Russians to fix the 2016 election.

Instead, ignoring how wrong they were about everything, they were excitedly talking about how the Mueller report’s examples of presidential obstruction attempts could serve as a handy road map to impeachment for House Democrats.

Some CNN panel members, to their shame, were visibly disappointed that Trump was saved by several staffers who had the good sense and ethics to refuse to do what he asked of them.

According to the Mueller report, there were ten examples of Trump trying to get control of the Russia investigation.

They included firing FBI Director James Comey, urging Trump’s useless Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “re-recuse” himself and trying to get various staffers to lie or not cooperate with Mueller.

The facts surrounding those presidential attempts to interfere are not in dispute.

But the president never fired anyone, even though he had the Constitutional power to do it, and he never obstructed Mueller from doing his work.

The White House even turned over millions of documents and the president waived his right to use executive privilege.

If any of his White House staff had followed the president’s requests concerning the Mueller investigation there might have been a legitimate case for obstruction.

But they ignored him. And they did exactly what they are supposed to do — they kept the boss from making a serious mistake.

I say bravo to the president’s staff for saving his butt. They did their job. They protected President Trump from himself.

As the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Thursday, the president reacted to the Russia collusion charges the way any innocent man would react to a frame up.

President Trump had every right to be outraged and frustrated by Mueller’s investigation, which he always knew was a Democratic witch hunt.

If he never colluded with anyone in the first place, as Mueller has proved to the satisfaction of everyone except maybe Rachel Maddow and Adam Schiff, it’s hard to see how the president could be guilty of the crime of obstruction.

If anything, the only thing President Trump was guilty of was trying to obstruct injustice.

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Sorry, Democrats, but Your Stars Are Socialists
   
There was Bernie Sanders at a Fox News Channel town hall, not giving an inch in a forum every Democratic presidential candidate has shunned.

His reward was a cataract of good reviews, and monster ratings. Sanders had a solid hour to try to reach people not favorably inclined to his worldview, at the very least demonstrating that he’s willing to show up outside his political silo.

Why hadn’t any of the other Democrats done it before? Because they lacked the verve and ideological self-confidence of Sanders, as well as the independent streak to buck the Democratic Party’s attempt to hold the line against Fox. As a message candidate, Sanders is willing to take his anywhere.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, miraculously transformed into a relatively moderate Democratic elder stateswoman, has understandably been pushing back against the notion that she leads a socialist party defined by a few radicals in the House.

On “60 Minutes,” she stalwartly declared: “I do reject socialism as a economic system. If people have that view, that’s their view. That is not the view of the Democratic Party.” She dismissed the left wing in her caucus as “like, five people.”

In sheer numbers this is true, but it’s the wrong way to count.

The fact is that the most compelling stars of the party are self-declared socialists with a knack for generating controversy and media attention, and with committed mass followings. Pelosi might wish it weren’t true, but poll numbers, fundraising and follower counts don’t lie.

Sanders is reliably second — sometimes first — in national and state presidential polling. He’s outraised everyone else in the field and, with his massive small-donor base, probably can continue to do so for the duration. More than anyone else, he has defined the Democratic Party’s current agenda.

It’ll be much harder to maintain that the Democratic Party isn’t socialist if it nominates one as its presidential candidate, which everyone paying attention realizes is a real possibility.

If this happens, it won’t be the work of conservatives hoping to negatively brand the Democrats, but of the party’s faithful. The same goes for the prominence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It is often said that conservatives are “obsessed” with her; maybe so, but the same is true — and probably more so — of everyone else.

AOC has been on the cover of Time magazine, Rolling Stone (with Nancy Pelosi, as it happens), Hollywood Reporter and Bloomberg Businessweek. Annie Leibovitz photographed her for Vogue. She’s been interviewed by “60 Minutes.”

She has nearly 4 million Twitter followers, and more than 3 million followers on Instagram, where she feeds the insatiable obsession of her fans — not her critics — with videos from her apartment.

She was among the top 10 House Democrats in fundraising the first quarter, and had the highest percentage of small donors (her ally, Ilhan Omar, also excelled).

It’s obviously vexing to Pelosi to see a House majority built by the careful avoidance of ideological extravagance and won in marginal districts hijacked, at least in terms of public attention, by a few freshmen and a 77-year-old Vermont socialist.

They might not define the center of gravity of the party at the moment, and the radical freshmen have lost most of their tussles with Pelosi. But there is a reason that they are so famous, with such fundraising prowess. The crusading purity of Bernie Sanders has an inherent appeal, and the outrageousness of the freshmen attracts attention, which always begets more attention.

Yes, there are vast numbers of Democrats out there who aren’t on Twitter or Instagram. Maybe there are enough of them to nominate Joe Biden, or a Pete Buttigieg can win on a progressive platform clothed in a moderate demeanor.

But the party’s stars will have something to say about it. The great Zionist Theodor Herzl maintained, “It is the simple and fantastic which leads men.” As Bernie Sanders showed, it’s also willing to go on Fox News.

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U.S. to end all waivers on imports of Iranian oil, crude price jumps

The United States on Monday demanded that buyers of Iranian oil stop purchases by May 1 or face sanctions, a move to choke off Tehran’s oil revenues which sent crude prices to six-month highs on fears of a potential supply crunch.

The Trump administration on Monday said it will not renew exemptions granted last year to buyers of Iranian oil, a more stringent than expected decision that caught several key importers who have been pleading with Washington to continue buying Iranian oil sanctions-free.

The United States reimposed sanctions in November on exports of Iranian oil after U.S. President Donald Trump last spring unilaterally pulled out of a 2015 accord between Iran and six world powers to curb Tehran’s nuclear program. Eight economies, including China and India, were granted waivers for six months, and several had expected those exemptions to be renewed.

Tehran remained defiant, saying it was prepared for the end of waivers, while the Revolutionary Guards repeated a threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipment channel in the Gulf, Iranian media reported.

The White House said it was working with top oil exporters Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to ensure the market was “adequately supplied.” Traders, already fretting about tight supplies, raised skepticism about whether this more stringent approach, along with ongoing sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry, could backfire in the form of a major spike in prices.

“It is a surprise that the requirement to cease importing Iranian oil should come at this next May deadline,” said Elizabeth Rosenberg, director of the energy, economics and security program at Washington-based Center for a New American Security. “Having only several weeks’ notice before the deadline means there are lots of cargoes booked for May delivery. This means that it will now be harder to get it out by the deadline.”

Iran’s oil exports have dropped to about 1 million barrels per day (bpd) from more than 2.5 million bpd prior to the re-imposition of sanctions. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a briefing Monday, said “we’re going to zero across the board,” saying the United States had no plans for a grace period for compliance beyond May 1.

The White House intends to deprive Iran of its lifeline of $50 billion in annual oil revenues, Pompeo said, as it pressures Tehran to curtail its nuclear program, ballistic missile tests and support for conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

A senior administration official said President Donald Trump was confident Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will fulfill their pledges to compensate for the shortfall in the oil market. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Frank Fannon said Riyadh was taking “active steps” to ensure global oil markets were well supplied.

Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih, in a statement on Monday, did not commit to raising production, saying it was “monitoring the oil market developments” after the U.S. statement, and that it would coordinate with other oil producers to ensure a balanced market. OPEC is next scheduled to meet in June.

While Saudi Arabia is expected to boost output again, analysts fear the U.S. move - along with sanctions on Venezuela - will leave the world with inadequate spare capacity.

The international Brent crude oil benchmark rose to more than $74 a barrel on Monday, the highest since November, due to the uncertainty surrounding increased supply from Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations, while U.S. prices hit a peak of $65.92 a barrel, the highest since October 2018.

“Despite high and fast-rising oil prices and high geopolitical disruption risk, (Trump) is betting the farm that Saudi Arabia and the UAE will contain upward price pressure by more than offsetting Iranian oil,” said Robert McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, an energy consultancy.

In addition to China and India, the economies of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Italy and Greece had also been granted waivers.

Trump has been clear to his national security team in recent weeks he wants the waivers to end and national security adviser John Bolton has been working on that within the administration.

“One thing that has clearly been going on inside the administration is a debate about when they should get to zero,” said Rosenberg.

In recent months, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members have cut supply dramatically. OPEC, along with ally Russia and others, agreed to reduce output by 1.2 million bpd, but they have exceeded those benchmarks, with Saudi Arabia alone reducing supply by 800,000 bpd.

While Italy, Greece and Taiwan already have halted purchases, doing so could prove much more challenging for China and India. Turkey, another buyer, already has slammed the U.S. decision. “We had indicated privately that zero was coming and now we’re here,” a senior administration official said on Monday, referencing Turkey’s concerns.

Geng Shuang, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a daily news briefing in Beijing on Monday that it opposed unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran and that China’s bilateral cooperation with Iran was in accordance with the law.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying the South Korean government had been negotiating with the United States at all levels to extend the waivers and that it would continue to make every effort to reflect Seoul’s position until the May deadline.

In India, refiners have started a search for alternative supplies but the government declined to comment officially.

A spokesman for the Japanese embassy in Washington said Tokyo was not planning to comment on the decision but Japanese officials say the Iran issue was discussed at a meeting between the Japanese foreign minister and Pompeo last Friday.

It is also expected to come up during a visit to Washington this Friday by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which is expected to focus on North Korea and the challenge posed by China’s rise.

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9th Circus rebukes Trump, upholds most of California’s sanctuary laws

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals discarded the Trump administration’s attempt to block two of California’s sanctuary laws and determined Thursday that the laws, which restrict local cooperation with federal law enforcement, will remain in place.

One of the laws in question, Senate Bill 54, bars police and sheriff officials from notifying federal immigration authorities, in most cases, about when an immigrant inmate was released from jail. The other, Assembly Bill 450, requires employers to notify their staff if there will be an immigration inspection of employee documents.

According to Judge Milan Smith Jr., there is "no doubt" that Senate Bill 54 “makes the jobs of federal immigration authorities more difficult." Even so, he argued that the law "does not directly conflict with any obligation" for states or local governments imposed by federal laws "because federal law does not mandate any state action."

Smith also determined that Assembly Bill 450 "imposes no additional or contrary obligations that undermine or disrupt the activities of federal immigration authorities."

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals did block a portion of a third sanctuary city law that was passed in 2017, known as Assembly Bill 103. The court blocked part of the law requires state officials to examine federal immigration detention facilities in California.

"Only those provisions that impose an additional economic burden exclusively on the federal government are invalid," Smith wrote.

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