It’s Monday, February 17th, 2020…but before we begin, here’s another devastating demonstration of Dimocratic disdain for law abiding citizens, as FOX News informs us a…

NYC subway thief thanks Democrats after his 139th arrest, release: ‘Bail reform, it’s lit!’

“Charles Barry, 56, has been arrested six times since the start of this year. He’s been released each time without having to post bail under New York’s new bail reform law since his alleged offenses were nonviolent, the New York Daily News reported. In the past, Barry’s served several stints in state prison and has a lengthy record, including six felonies, 87 misdemeanors and 21 missed court hearings, the newspaper reported, citing court records.

“Bail reform, it’s lit!” Barry yelled to reporters Thursday outside the NYPD Transit District 1 headquarters in the Columbus Circle station before officers transported him to Manhattan Central Booking. “It’s the Democrats! The Democrats know me and the Republicans fear me. You can’t touch me! I can’t be stopped!”

…Officers arrested him Thursday after he was spotted jumping a subway turnstile in Penn Station. Barry, a career criminal, has repeatedly duped subway-goers by dressing as MTA officials and robbing people after offering to help them buy their tickets, police said…”

Dimocrats: punishing the rest of us for their crimes and counterproductive policies ever since Slavery.  And making Mayor DeBlowMeo’s endorsement one Bernie should perhaps decline.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, if, like us, you were decidedly dismayed to learn the Trump/Barr DOJ was declining to pursue criminal charges against Andrew McCabe for lying…repeatedly…to the FBI, NRO‘s Andy McCarthy offers at least an explanation, as he answers the question inquiring minds are asking:

“…Why not indict McCabe on felony false-statements charges? That is the question being pressed by incensed Trump supporters. (Or anyone with an honest sense of equity and justice.) After all, the constitutional guarantee of equal justice under the law is supposed to mean that McCabe gets the same quality of justice afforded to the sad sacks pursued with unseemly zeal by McCabe’s FBI and Robert Mueller’s prosecutors. George Papadopoulos was convicted of making a trivial false statement about the date of a meeting. Roger Stone was convicted of obstruction long after the special counsel knew there was no Trump–Russia conspiracy, even though his meanderings did not impede the investigation in any meaningful way. And in the case of Michael Flynn’s false-statements conviction, as McCabe himself acknowledged to the House Intelligence Committee, even the agents who interviewed him did not believe he intentionally misled them.

…It will be a while before we learn the whole story of why the Justice Department walked away from the McCabe case, if we ever do. I have some supposition to offer on that score. First, however, it is worth revisiting the case against McCabe as outlined by the meticulous and highly regarded IG, Michael Horowitz. If you want to know why people are so angry, and why they are increasingly convinced that, for all President Trump’s “drain the swamp” rhetoric, a two-tiered justice system that rewards the well-connected is alive and well, consider the following…”

What follows is well worth reading, yet less than satisfying.  Still, it at least makes minimal sense, though we remain adamantly opposed to the decision for several reasons:

(1). It allows McCabe to claim victory and maintain his innocence, his earlier apologies to his former colleagues for lying notwithstanding.

(2). At the very least, the DOJ should have used the prosecution to drain McCabe’s ill-gotten CNN gains dry.

(3). As McCarthy suggests, McCabe presented the perfect opportunity for the DOJ to restore the public’s faith in the nation’s criminal justice system, instead confirming in the minds of many…ourselves included…the existence of a two-tiered structure which favors the wealthy and/or politically-connected.  America would have understood a D.C. jury failing to convict; the country cannot appreciate the reasoning behind another non-prosecution. 

Only time will tell if John Durham’s investigation results in a punishment more in keeping with the magnitude of McCabe’s malfeasance and breach of trust.  But if not, number us among those very disappointed with Bill Barr and The Donald; disappointed…but not surprised.

Next up, NRO‘s David Harsanyi records when…

“…Many among the center–left commentariat are struggling to come to terms with the likelihood that the Democratic Party will nominate an authoritarian leftist for president. A lot of this anxiety is, no doubt, driven by recent polls that find a majority of Americans are more open to voting for a non-binary Martian atheist than for a socialist.

Others, however, have begun reinventing Sanders, who, they now contend, isn’t actually a socialist socialist, because he’ll never send you to die in an icy gulag and few of his policy ideas will ever come to fruition…”

Harsanyi’s opening line says it all:

“Just you watch: By the time Election Day rolls around in November, liberal columnists will be telling us that Bernie Sanders is the “real conservative” in the presidential race.“

But in politics, when one candidate gains, it’s only at the expense of another, as this next item courtesy of Speed Mach and Ira Stoll writing at The New York Sun details:

Biden Gets Borked In Historic Irony He Helped Create

“Who is to blame for an electorate that values youth over experience, that has elevated Pete Buttigieg and Barack Obama over Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton? The culprit is, in a significant way, Mr. Biden himself.

I realized this during the New Hampshire Democratic primary debate hosted Friday by ABC News. Asked about possible Supreme Court choices, Mr. Biden bragged, “I almost single-handedly made sure that Robert Bork did not get on the Court.”

…Bork’s defeat in the Senate at the hands of Mr. Biden and his colleagues was a turning point in many ways. One of the most significant ways was that it upended the standards for desirability in a judicial nominee. Pre-Bork, the most desirable thing was to have lots of experience so that senators would be convinced that the nominee was qualified for the job.

Post-Bork, the most desirable thing became to have as short a paper trail as possible, so as to minimize the chances that a nominee’s writing could be distorted or seized upon in a way that could ultimately derail the nomination.

People haven’t focused on it quite yet, but what we are and have been witnessing is a similar transformation in presidential politics. In presidential candidates, as with post-Bork judicial nominees, lengthy government experience has become a liability rather than a strength.

Look at how Vice President Biden’s long track record has hurt his own candidacy…”

While we understand Stoll’s logic, we fault him for his facts, as Biden’s track record, its length notwithstanding, is one which exemplifies the Peter Principle, i.e., Hairplug Joe was promoted far above his level of minimal competence.

Robert Bork was undeniably experienced, consistent in principle and incredibly intelligent.  Joe Biden (as well as, by all credible accounts, his offspring Hunter) was the polar opposite: though long-accustomed to and experienced at feeding at the public trough, the Dimocrats’ Crazy Uncle in the Attic has perpetually been prone to unintelligible misstatements and gaffes, changes positions like the wind and is possessed of less-than-penetrating perspicacity.

Put another way, being…

…has never been a guarantee Joe was up to a given task.

Moving on,…and we mean “moving”…courtesy of NRO, in an incredibly insightful look back at a national tragedy, Jack Butler suggests…

“Two years ago, 17 people died in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Fla. In the intervening years, both those who survived it and those who observed it from afar have tried to figure out how something so terrible could have happened.

That is understandable. Unfortunately, the tone of public debate on this matter was set early, and unhelpfully, on just one subject: gun control. The morning after the shooting, Parkland school superintendent Robert Runcie said that “now is the time to have a real conversation about gun control laws in our country.” Just a few days later, (now rightfully disgraced) Broward County sheriff Scott Israel said: “While the people who are victims of mental-health illnesses in this country are being treated, in the opinion of this sheriff, they should not be able to buy, surround themselves with, purchase or carry a handgun. Those two things don’t mix.” David Hogg, a Stoneman student at school on that evil day, demanded national action on gun control shortly after as well. “We are children. You guys are, like, the adults,” he said. “Take action, work together, come over your politics, and get something done.” Hogg then helped spearhead a mass political rally in Washington, D.C., the next month, the “March For Our Lives,” that again emphasized this call for federal action on gun control.

Those who survived something as horrendous as the Parkland shooting do not deserve unnecessary opprobrium. But the fact remains that it was not Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, President Donald Trump, or the National Rifle Association who were responsible for the murder of 17 people on that February day. It was a depressing cascade of actions (and inactions) by local actors over a series of years, and even on the day of the shooting, that sealed the victims’ fate. The collective failure to recognize and accept this, even years later, may be a consequence of a political culture that insists on all problems’ being made national. In any case, it simultaneously does nothing for the victims of Parkland and does little to prevent future similar slaughters…”

Cowardice, both political and physical, killed the students at Parkland high school two years ago.  And no amount of politically-correct redactions or revisions will alter that immutable fact.

Which brings us, inappropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s this compilation of the Great Gaffe Machine honoring Black History Month from the incomparable Stilton Jarlsberg…

…followed by two memorable memes from Shannon…

…and one Liberal illogic tree from Speed Mach:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with yet another titillating tale torn from the pages of The Crime Blotter, courtesy today of yet another of Baltimore’s finest, as… 

Prosecutors recommend nearly 5-year sentence for ex-Baltimore mayor in ‘Healthy Holly’ scandal

“…Prosecutors said Pugh arranged fraudulent sales of her books to schools, libraries and a medical system to pay for her mayoral bid as well as to buy and renovate a house in Baltimore City. The memorandum also says Pugh used a business she co-owned to launder a $20,000 check into her campaign from a donor who had already given the $6,000 limit, WJZ reported.

…“The facts establish that Pugh deliberately engaged in a broad range of criminal acts while serving as Maryland State Senator and Mayor of Baltimore City,” Hur added.

“As an educated businesswoman and successful politician, Pugh had countless opportunities for self-reflection, occasions when she could have checked her moral and ethical compass and chosen to change course,” he said. “She did the opposite, and chose to double down on a path of rampant criminal deception to fulfill her ambitions.”…”

Not to mention her greed.

“Pugh also lied to FBI agents, according to the memorandum, when they came to her house for her personal cell phone. She said she didn’t have it and gave them a work phone but agents heard it ringing from under a pillow in her bedroom when they called it a short time later, according to the station.

“Almost immediately, the agents heard a vibrating noise emanating from her bed. Pugh became emotional, went to the bed and began frantically searching through the blankets at the head of the bed. As she did so, agents starting yelling for her to stop and show her hands,” prosecutors wrote, the Baltimore Sun reported.“

Two thoughts come to mind: first, if only Hillary and her staffers had met with the same degree of determination by the FBI personnel investigating Mrs. Clinton’s manifestly illegal email server.

Second, are we the only one who, the thought of Pugh frantically searching under the blankets at the head of her bed for her personal cell phone, brought to mind this scene from Fargo? 

Oh, you betcha, yah!

Magoo