It’s Wednesday, May 9th, 2018…but before we begin, just when we thought Hillary couldn’t be any more obnoxious or unattractive, she now not only possesses the ability to bore to death those forced to endure her unending excuses for losing to the only candidate in history almost as unlikeable as she, but the power to turn anyone who views her…

…to stone; a fate which, after having her ghastly visage burned in their brains, such unfortunates would  likely welcome.  Hat tip to the great Stilton Jarlsberg for the “minor” editing.

As for Trump pulling out of the Iran deal, The Great Misleader has only himself to blame, for as the WSJ notes:

“Mr. Obama issued his own broadside Tuesday against withdrawal, but then he made it easier for Mr. Trump by never winning domestic support for the deal. He refused to submit it for Senate approval as a treaty, which would have had the force of law. Mr. Trump is walking away from Mr. Obama’s personal commitment to Iran…

…not an American commitment.“

In fact, far from it.  As for the objections voiced by B. Hussein, John Kerry, Ben Rhodes, Tommy Vietor or anyone else with a vested interest in this hopelessly myopic misdeed…

Along with the Progressive ponies you road in on.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, courtesy of Mark Tapscott and Lifezette, Texas Republican and former judge Louie Gohmert suggests…

40 Questions Special Counsel Robert Mueller Needs to Answer Now

A Republican lawmaker contends the prosecutor has a lot to explain about his present job and prior posts as well

Imagine if you will, as does Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness and this forward from Pete Jameson, were the shoe on the other foot:

What if Mueller Questioned Barack Obama?

Along with a generous sprinkling of…

…”I don’t recall”.

In a related item, NRO‘s Andy McCarthy details…

“Well sure, we filed an indictment. And yeah, we took a victory lap in the big bells-n-whistles Main Justice press conference. But that doesn’t mean we, like, intended to have a trial…

That seems to be the Justice Department’s position on its mid-February publicity stunt, the indictment of 13 Russians and three Russian businesses for interfering in the 2016 election.

…When Mueller brought the only case he’s charged that involves Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, we noted that it was more theater than prosecution. The Russian defendants are all beyond U.S. jurisdiction, so there would be no trial, and thus no possibility that the allegations would ever be tested in court. It seemed like a perfect opportunity for the special counsel to try to control the narrative: an indictment asserting something that, however highly probable, would be very difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal trial — namely, that the Russian regime meddled in the U.S. election.

Here’s how I put it at the time:

When prosecutors are serious about nabbing law-breakers who are at large, they do not file an indictment publicly. That would just induce the offenders to flee to or remain in their safe havens. Instead, prosecutors file their indictment under seal, ask the court to issue arrest warrants, and quietly go about the business of locating and apprehending the defendants charged. In the Russia case, however, the indictment was filed publicly even though the defendants are at large. That is because the Justice Department and the special counsel know the Russians will stay safely in Russia.

Mueller’s allegations will never be tested in court. That makes his indictment more a political statement than a charging instrument. To the extent there are questions about whether Russia truly meddled in the election, the special counsel wants to end that discussion (although his indictment will not satisfy those skeptical about Russia’s responsibility for hacking Democratic accounts, or who wonder why the FBI and Justice Department never physically examined DNC servers).

Alas, figuring that he was playing with the house money, Mueller made a reckless bet: He charged not only Russian individuals but three Russian businesses. A business doesn’t have the same risks as a person. A business can’t be thrown in jail. And while members of Mueller’s prosecutorial stable have a history of putting real businesses out of business, a business that is run by a Putin crony and serves as a front for Kremlin operations is not too worried about that either.

So…guess what? One of those Russian businesses, Concord Management and Consulting, wants its day in court. It has retained the Washington law firm of Reed Smith, two of whose partners, Eric Dubelier and Katherine Seikaly, have told Mueller that Concord is ready to have its trial — and by the way, let’s see all the discovery the law requires you to disclose, including all the evidence you say supports the extravagant allegations in the indictment. 

Needless to say, Mueller’s team is not happy about this development since this is not a case they figured on having to prosecute to anything more than a successful press conference. So, they have sought delay on the astonishing ground that the defendant has not been properly served — notwithstanding that the defendant has shown up in court and asked to be arraigned.

Understand, service of process is simply the means by which a party seeks what Mueller has already got: the opposing party’s appearance in the lawsuit. But Mueller’s argument is so priceless we can’t let it go unstated: In order to serve the defendants in a criminal case in which Mueller alleges that Russia is an adversary government that conducted espionage operations against the American election, the Justice Department sought the assistance of…yes…the government of Russia. I know you’ll be shocked to hear this, but DOJ says Russia never got back to them.

Something tells me that Concord’s appearance in court is Russia’s way of getting back to them.

The federal court in the District of Columbia has scheduled Concord’s arraignment for Wednesday, so Mueller filed his papers late last Friday to try to get the matter postponed. But, as Politico’s Josh Gerstein reports, on Saturday evening, Judge Dabney Friedrich curtly denied Mueller’s request. Mueller’s prosecutors had suggested that weeks of briefing were necessary to probe the question of whether Concord had been served properly. As Concord has voluntarily appeared, however, it is not apparent why that question needs examination — if he wants to stand on ceremony, Mueller could just hand the lawyers a copy of the indictment when they see each other in court this week.

In fact, though, Concord’s lawyers have been scrutinizing the indictment very carefully, and making demands for discovery that they say Mueller has ignored for weeks. To put it mildly, this is not a case the special counsel is anxious to try; he is even less thrilled at the prospect of disclosing his evidence and investigative files to a business controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin. Apart from being close to Putin, Prigozhin is personally charged as a defendant in the case — he controls not just Concord but all three businesses charged in the indictment.

By indicting Russian businesses that belong to a Kremlin-connected defendant who cannot be forced to leave Russia, Mueller risked exactly what has happened: one of the businesses showing up to contest the case at no risk, in effect forcing Mueller to show this Kremlin-connected defendant what he’s got, even though he has no chance of getting the Kremlin-connected defendant convicted and sentenced to prison.

The surest way to put an end to this unwelcome turn of events would be to dismiss the indictment — or at least drop the charges against the three businesses so Prigozhin and the Kremlin can’t use them to force Mueller’s hand. Of course, that would be very embarrassing. But as all prosecutors are taught from their first day on the job: Never indict a case unless you are prepared to try the case.“

To paraphrase Alan Clark in Barbarossa, it is well hubris is a trait shared by despots, as in it are sown the seeds of their eventual destruction.

Here’s the juice: like Hillary and John McCain, Robert Mueller is a rotten apple, his Deep State/Swamp reputation notwithstanding.  Unfortunately for America, he and those like him accurately represent the condition of most of the inside-the-Beltway barrel.

Speaking of the devil, as The Hill notes…

McCain says he regrets picking Palin as running mate

That’s okay, Senator: the rest of us regret nominating you!

Next up, writing at his Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty asks and answers…

Wait, Why Is Anyone Complaining about Prosecutions for Illegal Gun Possessions?

The New York Times reports about concerns that the Trump administration is too tough on criminals who purchase or possess guns illegally:

Urged by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to punish offenders as harshly and as quickly as possible, federal prosecutors have increasingly pursued low-level gun possession cases, according to law enforcement officials and an examination of court records and federal crime statistics. Mr. Amos’s conviction was part of the Justice Department’s broad crackdown on gun violence during the first 15 months of the Trump administration.

Mr. Sessions’s approach has touched off a debate about whether he is making the country safer from violent crime, as he and President Trump have repeatedly vowed to do, or devoting resources to low-level prosecutions that could instead be put toward pursuing bigger targets like gun suppliers.

“It’s a good idea to enforce the existing gun laws,” said Avery Gardiner, co-president of The Brady Campaign, a nonprofit coalition that works to combat gun violence. “That’s something prosecutors should do. But going only after the people who are purchasing the guns illegally is only part of the story.”

Rarely will you see it put so explicitly! Of course, this is an argument from self-interest. If the problem of gun violence can be addressed sufficiently by enforcing existing laws…then there isn’t much need for a group like the Brady Campaign to push for additional laws, now is there?

What’s indisputable is that for a long time, through administrations of both parties, federal prosecutors largely looked the other way on illegal attempts to purchase a firearm. In 2013, the Washington Post concluded, “Neither the Bush administration nor Obama administration ever prosecuted even one-quarter of one percent of the people who failed to pass a criminal background check.” Attempts to prosecute straw buyers were similarly rare; it simply was deemed a low priority.

The Times article seems to suggest that prosecuting individuals for illegal possession of a firearm is a waste of time, money, and law enforcement resources. But we’ve seen several mass shooters in recent years who shouldn’t have been able to purchase a gun because of past criminal behavior (the Charleston church shooter, the Texas church shooter, the Waffle House shooter) or past run-ins with police that did not result in charges (the Parkland shooter). Every dangerous criminal is “low priority” at the beginning of his career.

Thus the Brady Campaign is no different than the Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson/Louie Farrakhan/Black Lives Matter race-hustlers: they must incite fabricated flash points of anger, division and resentment to perpetuate their own purpose, power and profit. 

Since we’re on the subject of misplaced priorities and deliberate deception, again from his Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty reveals the sudden and suspicious insight granted…

Broward County School Officials: Oh, Wait, We Forgot to Tell You…

The Parkland shooting was nearly three months ago. The school district is still discovering new details about their own discipline records of the shooter:

Broward school district officials admitted Sunday that the confessed Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School gunman was assigned to a controversial disciplinary program, after the superintendent repeatedly claimed Nikolas Cruz had “no connection” to the alternative punishment designed to limit on-campus arrests.

Two sources with knowledge of Cruz’s discipline records told WLRN he was referred to the so-called PROMISE Program for a three-day stint after committing vandalism at Westglades Middle School in 2013.

When asked for a response, a spokeswoman for Superintendent Robert Runcie stated on Friday that district administrators were aggressively analyzing Cruz’s records. Then Tracy Clark said on Sunday afternoon the district had “confirmed” Cruz’s referral to PROMISE after he vandalized a bathroom at the middle school on Nov. 25, 2013.

However, it’s unclear if Cruz ever attended the program…

“Let me reiterate this point,” Runcie started off during an interview in his office last month. “Nikolas Cruz, the shooter that was involved in this horrific accident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, had no connection to the PROMISE program.”

How do you not figure that out for this long? Unless there is some sort of effort to hide the truth from the public…

Ignorance of the facts in the immediate aftermath of an horrific event is one thing:

The purposeful obfuscation of the truth months after the massacre is another…and frankly reeks of a cover-up.  Were we a tax-paying citizen of Broward County, we’d be asking Robert Runcie…

…before politely suggest he join Sheriff Scott Israel on the unemployment line.

Which brings us to The Lighter Side:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with another titillating tale torn from the pages of The Crime Blotter, as we learn a…

New York woman, 26, used obituaries to rob families during funerals, police say

A New York City woman was arrested after police said they discovered she used obituaries to rob grieving families while they were out attending their loved one’s funeral. Greensburg Police charged Latonia Shelecia Stewart, 26, from the Bronx, with conspiracy to commit burglary, a felony, and criminal possession of stolen property, a misdemeanor, The Journal News reported.

Officers who were investigating a string of robberies noticed the victims were listed as next of kin in funeral arrangements, and those families’ homes were then robbed during the time they were attending the funeral services, police said. So detectives staked out the home of a recently deceased Greenburgh resident and, when a car that matched the description of the suspect’s vehicle pulled up, police said they found stolen property from a February burglary…”

Once again, life imitates…

…art!

Frankly, we have to give Latonia Shelicia Stewart an above-average for headwork.  Though had she applied the same amount of thought to a legitimate business concept, we’ve no doubt she’d not only be far richer, but free to walk the streets.

Magoo