Tag: democrats

FBI agents descended on Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar’s house, but won’t say what they’re investigating

The FBI was on the scene Wednesday near the Laredo home of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar for what authorities described as a court-authorized ongoing investigation.

FBI spokesperson Rosanne Hughes confirmed law enforcement’s presence in the area but did not clarify what authorities were investigating.

Hughes said in a statement that the FBI was present on two streets around Cuellar’s house in Laredo “conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity.”

“The FBI cannot provide further comment on an ongoing investigation,” she said.

On Wednesday evening, Cuellar’s office released a statement: “Congressman Cuellar will fully cooperate in any investigation. He is committed to ensuring that justice and the law are upheld.”

Agents were seen taking cases and other items from the congressman’s home, according to MyRGVNews. FBI officials were also present at a downtown building owned by Cuellar that reportedly houses his campaign office as well as other private businesses, according to KGNS News.

First elected in 2004, Cuellar is a longtime representative of his Laredo-based 28th District.

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Congress’s 1/6 Committee Claims Absolute Power as it Investigates Citizens With No Judicial Limits

In its ongoing attempt to investigate and gather information about private U.S. citizens, the Congressional 1/6 Committee is claiming virtually absolute powers that not even the FBI or other law enforcement agencies enjoy. Indeed, lawyers for the committee have been explicitly arguing that nothing proscribes or limits their authority to obtain data regarding whichever citizens they target and, even more radically, that the checks imposed on the FBI (such as the requirement to obtain judicial authorization for secret subpoenas) do not apply to the committee.

As we have previously reported and as civil liberties groups have warned, there are serious constitutional doubts about the existence of the committee itself. Under the Constitution and McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases interpreting it, the power to investigate crimes lies with the executive branch, supervised by the judiciary, and not with Congress. Congress does have the power to conduct investigations, but that power is limited to two narrow categories: 1) when doing so is designed to assist in its law-making duties (e.g., directing executives of oil companies to testify when considering new environmental laws) and 2) in order to exert oversight over the executive branch.

What Congress is barred from doing, as two McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases ruled, is exactly what the 1/6 committee is now doing: conducting a separate, parallel criminal investigation in order to uncover political crimes committed by private citizens. Such powers are dangerous precisely because Congress’s investigative powers are not subject to the same safeguards as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. And just as was true of the 1950s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that prompted those Supreme Court rulings, the 1/6 committee is not confining its invasive investigative activities to executive branch officials or even citizens who engaged in violence or other illegality on January 6, but instead is investigating anyone and everyone who exercised their Constitutional rights to express views about and organize protests over their belief that the 2020 presidential election contained fraud. Indeed, the committee’s initial targets appear to be taken from the list of those who applied for protest permits in Washington: a perfectly legal, indeed constitutionally protected, act.

This abuse of power is not merely abstract. The Congressional 1/6 Committee has been secretly obtaining private information about American citizens en masse: telephone records, email logs, internet and browsing history, and banking transactions. And it has done so without any limitations or safeguards: no judicial oversight, no need for warrants, no legal limitations of any kind.

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Conspiracies as Realities, Realities as Conspiracies

American politics over the last half decade has become immersed in a series of conspiracy charges leveled by Democrats against their opponents that, in fact, are happening because of them and through them. The consequences of these conspiracies becoming reality and reality revealing itself as conspiracy have been costly to American prestige, honor, and security. As we move away from denouncing realists as conspiracists, and self-pronounced “realists” are revealed as the true conspirators, let’s review a few of the more damaging of these events. 

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When is a conspiracy theory not a conspiracy theory?

It is fascinating how the meaning of the phrase “conspiracy theory” changes depending on who is using it. Or more specifically, it depends on how Democrats are using it to advance their political goals.

For years, if not decades, some Americans were noticing behind-the-scene, well-concerted efforts to impose on our country a form of semi-totalitarian regime, not unlike the one that collapsed in the Soviet Union three decades ago. However, anyone who pointed to facts that supported claims of coordinated attempts to reduce the governments’ accountability to the American people, restrict individual liberties, expand governmental powers, and strengthen federal law-enforcement agencies was promptly branded as a “conspiracy theorist” (think of the character Mel Gibson played in Conspiracy Theory) who might belong in a mental hospital and certainly shouldn’t be taken seriously.

There were no conspiracies in America, we were told, and anyone who suggested that there were such conspiracies was insane, evil, or both.

That “mainstream” rhetoric changed a bit in 1998 when Ms. Hillary Clinton, defending Bill against charges of sexual misconduct with Monica Lewinsky, claimed he was the victim of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” No one in the “mainstream” called her a “conspiracy theorist,” never mind asking for factual proof of her claim. Nineteen years later, when we were suddenly told that President Donald Trump “colluded with Russia” (another name for conspiring with Russia), despite (as we learned later) zero credible evidence supporting them, no “mainstream” narrator referred to House impeachment managers and their Congressional supporters as crazy “conspiracy theorists.”

But the progressive “mainstream” did not permanently abandon—at least, not permanently so—its disdain for “conspiracy theories.” It was back to its usual modus operandi during the 2020 presidential elections. Then, everybody who was concerned about plans to facilitate election fraud and cheating and, after the fact, was concerned about the swift destruction of evidence and the refusal to investigate to allay voters’ fears, was promptly relegated to the “conspiracy theorist” category.

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False Flags Suddenly No Longer A Crazy Conspiracy Theory

In a drastic pivot from typical denunciations of false flag operations as conspiratorial nonsense that don’t exist outside the demented imagination of Alex Jones, the US political/media class is proclaiming with one voice that Russia is currently orchestrating just such an operation to justify an invasion of Ukraine.

“As part of its plans, Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday. “We have information that indicates Russia has already pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct a false flag operation in eastern Ukraine.”

“Without getting into too much detail, we do have information that indicates that Russia is already working actively to create a pretext for a potential invasion, for a move on Ukraine,” Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby told the press on Friday. “In fact, we have information that they’ve pre-positioned a group of operatives, to conduct what we call a false flag operation, an operation designed to look like an attack on them or their people, or Russian speaking people in Ukraine, as an excuse to go in.”

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NYT Warns of ‘Right-Wing Threat’ to Democracy, Calls to ‘War-Game’ Insurgency, Secession, Civil War

The U.S. may be on the verge of collapse due to right-wing threats on democracy, according to a recent New York Times piece that called to intensify “war games” for scenarios concerning the 2024 presidential elections such as “insurrection, secession, insurgency and civil war” in order to avert “political decay” of the country.

A Thursday New York Times essay, titled “We Need to Think the Unthinkable About Our Country,” begins by deeming the U.S. perhaps “even more alarmingly fractious and divided” one year after the January 6 Capitol riot. 

“Regrettably, the right has sustained its support for [former President] Donald Trump and continued its assault on American democratic norms,” it continues.

The essay was penned by Jonathan Stevenson, a former National Security Council staffer in the Obama administration, and Steven Simon, a former staffer in the State Department and on the National Security Council in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations.

Speculating that the next presidential election “will almost inevitably be viciously (perhaps violently) contested,” the authors warn of a “politically existential” threat to the country due to right-wing preparations for a potential 2024 “power grab.”

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Senate Democrats Use the Jim Crow Filibuster to Protect the Kremlin

That the filibuster is an inherently racist tool, a relic of Jim Crow, is an odd position for Democrats to take given that just yesterday, they used the filibuster to block legislation proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Indeed, Sen. Cruz’s bill not only attracted the votes of forty-nine out of fifty Republican Senators (the only exception was Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)), but also six Democratic Senators who face close races in 2022 and/or are from purple states: Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-NV), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA). That meant that Cruz had 55 votes for his bill — a clear majority. So why did it not pass? Because Senate Democrats invoked the racist Jim Crow relic in order to refuse to allow a vote on that bill unless it first attained 60 votes to close the debate. In other words, Democrats — on Thursday— used the filibuster to block Cruz’s bill despite its having the support of the majority of the Senate.

What makes the Democrats’ conduct here even more notable is the substance of Cruz’s bill that they blocked with the filibuster. Cruz sought to impose sanctions on the Russian pipeline company Nord Stream 2, which is constructing the pipeline that will allow Moscow to sell large amounts of cheap natural gas to Germany and to Europe more broadly. There are few more pressing priorities for the Kremlin, if there are any, than construction of this pipeline. So by blocking Cruz’s bill, Democrats not only used a racist filibuster, but they did so in order to protect Vladimir Putin and a vital Russian company from sanctions.

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Political science professor claims in Politico essay that Constitution is enemy of Democracy

The day prior to the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, Politico magazine ran a guest column by a political science professor who argued the U.S. Constitution has become a threat to democracy.

Corey Robin, a professor at Brooklyn College and the City of New York Graduate Center, wrote a piece titled “Republicans Are Moving Rapidly to Cement Minority Rule. Blame the Constitution.” 

In the piece, he argues the modern Republican Party and the Constitution are preventing the “national majority,” meaning the Democratic Party, from legislating effectively.

“Driving the initiatives of the Republicans and the inertia of the Democrats are two forces,” Robin writes. “The first is the right’s project, decades in the making, to legally limit the scope and reach of democracy. The second is the Constitution, which makes it difficult for the national majority to act and easy for local minorities to rule.” 

In the essay, Robin also criticizes constitutional facets of the American electoral process including the Electoral College and the Senate, all for the purpose of repeatedly leveling anti-Democratic accusations against the GOP.

“Democracy is not just the enemy of the Republican Party. It is also the enemy of the Constitution,” he writes. “Americans associate the Constitution with popular liberties such as due process and freedom of speech. They overlook its architecture of state power, which erects formidable barriers to equal representation and majority rule in all three branches of government.”

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