Let’s take yesterday:
First, the Pope Francis outrage:
Breitbart News: (excerpt)
Pope Francis has conferred the title of “Commander of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great” on Lilianne Ploumen, a Dutch politician and vocal agitator for abortion rights.
Last year, Ploumen founded a pro-abortion organization called She Decides, which offers funding and support for international NGOs that provide, facilitate or campaign for abortion.
In an email to the Catholic Herald, Ms. Ploumen said that she was “very honoured” by the pontifical medal, which was sent via the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs last month.
In an interview with Dutch radio, Ploumen said she views the honor as a sign of the pope’s progressivism, as well as acknowledgement for her work in supporting abortion rights.
Ms. Ploumen said that the award came after much personal investment in contacts with the Vatican, which she defined as “lobbying.” ( also see our previous post)
AND THEN, THERE’S THIS:
Posted January 18 by John Hinderaker at Powerline: (bold our emphasis)
BOMBSHELL: SIMPSON ADMITS FUSION GPS WENT TO THE PRESS TO SALVAGE HILLARY’S CAMPAIGN
“…the House Intelligence Committee has released transcripts of its interviews with Glenn Simpson, founder of Fusion GPS and the source of the Democrats’ smear campaign against Donald Trump. I have spent considerable time reviewing the two transcripts, found here and here. I will have more to say about Simpson’s testimony tomorrow, but for the moment…” :
“One thing Simpson did elucidate is why he and his colleague Christopher Steele took their fake dossier to the press in the last days of the presidential campaign”:
MR. SIMPSON: Come the end of October, some extraordinary things started happening. The Russians — WikiLeaks releases John Podesta’s emails, and then, you know, most extraordinary of all, James Corney sends a letter to Congress saying he is reopening the Hillary Clinton email investigation. And that was, I believe, around the 25th. And, you know, if you are me, you know, and you have been in politics and campaigns and investigations, and this is your whole world, and you have been doing it basically since you got out of college, you know, one of the things that you — that is really ingrained in you is the rules of Washington — and when I say rules, I mean like regulations of the Justice Department about interfering with an election. It is not something that you are just aware of as a technical requirement, it is something the people embrace, which is that law enforcement shouldn’t interfere in elections by announcing investigations of people at the last minute.
And so we were shocked, and I felt – I mean, I guess I was angry. But in any case, you know, the result of that was predictable, which is that, you know, it began to influence the election. And, so, we tried to decide how to respond to that.
***
So at that point, I, of course, was really confused, and I would say Chris was a little scared, because he didn’t — he thought that – he didn’t really understand what was going on with the FBI. In any event, at that point I felt like the rules had just been thrown out and that Corney had violated the sort of one of the more sacrosanct policies, which is not announcing law enforcement activity in the closing days of an election.
And so, we began talking to the press again about — we decided that if James Corney wasn’t going to tell people about this investigation that, you know, he had violated the rules, and we would only be fair if the world knew that both candidates were under FBI investigation.
“So Simpson and Steele went to the press in order to try to influence the outcome of the election.
Q You said we had to decide how to respond. Who is “we” in that statement?
A It’s mainly a reference to myself and to Chris. You know, it was mainly between Chris and myself.
“Mainly.”
Q Anyone else?
A You know, I am not going to get into client communications, but, you know, I was still working for a client at that time.
Simpson has already said that his client was the Democratic National Committee.
Q Did you discuss with your client how to respond?
MR. LEVY: I think that is confidential.
MR. SIMPSON: I am not going to give you that.
***
Q And did you discuss that plan to expose this information with Perkins Coie, the Clinton campaign, or the DNC?
A I am going to decline to answer that.
“There you have it: James Comey’s announcement that he was reopening the Hillary email investigation–an investigation in which he eventually whitewashed Mrs. Clinton, notwithstanding unequivocal evidence of crimes on her part–triggered a response. Hillary, or the DNC, ordered Simpson and Steele to promote to the press their quarter-baked dossier of fabrication and speculation, in an effort to counterbalance Comey’s reopening of the email investigation. That pretty much tells you all you need to know.”
AND, FINALLY: – more indication as to how much there is to drain in the swamp
Rachel Frommer writing at The Free Beacon:
State Department Touts SPLC, Open Society Foundation in Grant (excerpt) Grant money going to orgs that will teach students about countering hate crimes
The State Department touted the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center and George Soros’s Open Society Foundation in announcing a new grant extended to British organizations to create a program teaching high school students about the United States’ tactics in countering hate crimes.
The Embassy of the United States in London included the progressive groups among “organizations of interest” listed in the grant description of the “Youth Exchange on Social Cohesion” program, through which $50,000-75,000 will be awarded for the development of a program that brings UK high school students stateside to learn about American strategies in building communities that prevent violent extremism and radicalization.
The SPLC, a legal advocacy and civil rights watchdog, purports to combat racist organizations and individuals, but has been panned for classifying Muslim moderates as “anti-Muslim extremists.” Maajid Nawaz, a prominent UK Muslim reformer who founded an anti-radicalization organization, is suing the SPLC for identifying him as an Islamophobe. The SPLC has also refused to designate “antifa” a hate group, while applying that epithet to politically conservative and religious groups.
Soros transferred a massive $18 billion to his Open Society in October to fund its lobbying efforts. Counted among the country’s most influential left-leaning organizations, Open Society has extensively bankrolled grassroots activism, while Soros was a major funder of the Latino group that produced an advertisement for the recent Virginia gubernatorial election depicting Republican candidate Ed Gillespie as allied with white supremacists. Gillespie lost the election.
The left-leaning Anti-Violence Project and Human Rights First were also linked to as “organizations of interest,” though the grant description did not make clear if these groups were being recommended to applicants as potential partners.
The organization selected to run the “Youth Exchange on Social Cohesion” will admit up to 10 British teens aged 15 to 18 years old to be “immersed” in American society over two to three weeks this summer. Participants will visit three to four states to explore programs that promote tolerance and inclusion in communities and schools . . . .
DLH
