Chick-Fil-A Donated to SPLC? : But Salvation Army Is Dumped?

Goodness! What's next!! Again, a (supposedly) Christian company bowing to the demands of .03% of the population.

Maybe they never were a Christian organization, maybe they were just using  the Christians as tools like they are now using the LGBT people.

Maybe it's time to find another place to enjoy a good meal from people that actually care about the customers.

Chick-Fil-A Donated to Southern Poverty Law Center, Others on Left

Aaron Credeur / November 27, 2019

Chick-fil-A donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center and other left-wing organizations that promote abortion and LGBT rights, issues that run counter to the fast-food chain’s image as a Christian conservative business.

According to public tax documents first reported Tuesday by Townhall, Chick-fil-A donated $2,500 to the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2017 despite the organization’s history of hostility toward conservative causes.

SPLC is known for its controversial practice of designating conservative or religious organizations across the country as “hate groups” if those groups oppose left-leaning causes such as abortion on demand, same-sex marriage, or government coercion of faith-based businesses.

“Not only has Chick-fil-A abandoned donations to Christian groups including the Salvation Army, it has donated to one of the most extreme anti-Christian groups in America,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said Wednesday in a prepared statement.

“Anyone who opposes the SPLC, including many Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and traditional conservatives, is slandered and slapped with the ‘extremist’ label or even worse, their ‘hate group’ designation,” Perkins said.

Southern Poverty Law Center was linked to domestic terrorism when a gunman who stormed the Family Research Council’s Washington headquarters in 2012 admitted that he targeted the organization after seeing it on SPLC’s “hate map” showing the locations of groups that oppose its agenda. He carried Chick-fil-A sandwiches with him, police said.

A spokesperson for Chick-fil-A Inc. told The Daily Signal in an email that the donation to SPLC “was made by a volunteer member of the Chick-fil-A Foundation Advisory Board.” “Each volunteer adviser, in 2017, was offered the opportunity to recommend a grant recipient,” the spokesperson said Wednesday.

Other organizations that received grants from Chick-fil-A in 2017, the spokesperson said, include Meals on Wheels, the Holocaust Survivor Support Fund, and Emory University’s brain health research unit.

Chick-fil-A has come under fire recently from some conservatives for announcing that it has ended multiyear donations to conservative charities criticized by LGBT activists, including the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, leading some to call for a boycott of the restaurant chain.

 Commentary: Chick-Fil-A, Your Compromise Is Demoralizing

In a letter Tuesday to Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy, nearly 50 conservative leaders, including Heritage Foundation President Kay Coles James, criticized the company for “bowing to the pressure of left-wing extremist groups” and called on Cathy to rethink the company’s approach to charitable giving.

“[Y]our latest decisions to withdraw charitable giving to the Salvation Army and other Christian charities has betrayed the very people who stood with you,” the letter says. “You have instead allied yourself with a bully-tactic leftist movement that will never be satisfied with your compromises.”

The letter added: “There is a growing list of American corporations that have discovered, with each new compromise, [that] leftists only become more emboldened in their attacks.”

Besides the Southern Poverty Law Center, the 2017 tax records reveal that other groups that oppose conservatives received donations from Chick-fil-A, among them:

—YWCA USA, which is criticized for abandoning its Christian roots and becoming an abortion rights and pro-LGBT organization that has partnered with Planned Parenthood.

—Pace Center for Girls, an education group that welcomed feminist icon and abortion rights activist Gloria Steinem as a keynote speaker at its recent annual summit.

—Chris 180, a pro-LGBT children’s health and mental wellness group.

Conservatives across the country long have supported Chick-fil-A for its Christian business practices, such as closing on Sundays. But leaders on the right say they find it increasingly difficult to square the restaurant chain’s Christian image with its recent charitable-giving decisions.

“It’s time for Christians to find a fast-food alternative to Chick-fil-A,” Perkins said.

Voters In Baltimore Debate Issues : No Consensus!

Baltimore needs consensus on finding what Baltimore is and 

where it's going! Who is the leader?

Outside of the democrat headquarters in Baltimore, the voters are debating who to vote for in the up coming election for mayor.

The discussion was animated and at one point contested. Still, no consensus was reached so they adjourned to a local tavern to hopefully find some common ground.

But the patrons had to leave the restaurant and tavern early as it caught on fire, forcing everyone out into the street. 

It's still not confirmed but apparently several individuals were trying to clean off a table with a blow torch. Things proceeded to get out of control when someone decided to add in the effort by dumping some Jack Daniels on the table to speed up the process. Things of course went from bad to worse forcing everyone to flee the establishment.

The fire consumed the restaurant and four other businesses before it burned itself out as all of the other buildings on the block had already burned to the ground two years ago. The fire department never showed up as the believed most of the reaming sturctiure in Baltimore aren't woth the effort to save them from destruction.

Unfortunately nothing was accomplished by the time they had to flee. The group couldn't come to grips with their differences so went back to what they were doing before that tried to vote.

The Radical Left democrats : Will Hate Work As A Strategy?

Why do democrats believe that hateful lying about America and it's citizens will bring them the power for control that they so greedily seek?

The Victims of Race-Focused Liberals Are Blacks

Walter E. Williams / @WE_Williams / November 27, 2019

Former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said that racism in America is “foundational” and that people of color were under “mortal threat” from the “white supremacist in the White House.” Pete Buttigieg chimed in to explain that “systemic racism” will “be with us” no matter who is in the White House. Sen. Cory Booker called for “attacking systemic racism” in the “racially biased” criminal justice system.

Let’s follow up by examining Booker’s concern about a “racially biased” criminal justice system. To do that, we can turn to a recent article by Heather Mac Donald, who is a senior fellow at the New York-based Manhattan Institute. She is a contributing editor of City Journal, and a New York Times bestselling author.

Her most recent article, “A Platform of Urban Decline,” which appeared in Manhattan Institute’s publication Eye On The News, addresses race and crime. She reveals government statistics you’ve never read before.

According to leftist rhetoric, whites pose a severe, if not mortal, threat to blacks. Mac Donald says that may have once been true, but it is no longer so today. To make her case, she uses the latest Bureau of Justice Statistics 2018 survey of criminal victimization.

Mac Donald writes:

According to the study, there were 593,598 interracial violent victimizations (excluding homicide) between blacks and whites last year, including white-on-black and black-on-white attacks. Blacks committed 537,204 of those interracial felonies, or 90 percent, and whites committed 56,394 of them, or less than 10 percent.

That ratio is becoming more skewed, despite the Democratic claim of Trump-inspired white violence. In 2012-13, blacks committed 85 percent of all interracial victimizations between blacks and whites; whites committed 15 percent. From 2015 to 2018, the total number of white victims and the incidence of white victimization have grown as well.

There are other stark figures not talked about often. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting for 2018, of the homicide victims for whom race was known, 53.3% were black, 43.8% were white, and 2.8% were of other races. In cases where the race of the offender was known, 54.9% were black, 42.4% were white, and 2.7% were of other races.

White and black liberals, who claim that blacks face a “mortal threat” from the “white supremacist in the White House” are perpetuating a cruel hoax. The primary victims of that hoax are black people. We face the difficult, and sometimes embarrassing, task of confronting reality.

Mac Donald says that Barack Obama’s 2008 Father’s Day speech in Chicago would be seen today as an “unforgivable outburst of white supremacy.” Here’s what Obama told his predominantly black audience in a South Side church: “If we are honest with ourselves,” too many fathers are “missing—missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men.”

Then-Sen. Obama went on to say, “Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”

White liberals deem that any speaker’s references to personal responsibility brands the speaker as bigoted. Black people cannot afford to buy into the white liberal agenda. White liberals don’t pay the same price. They don’t live in neighborhoods where their children can get shot simply sitting on their porches. White liberals don’t go to bed with the sounds of gunshots. White liberals don’t live in neighborhoods that have become economic wastelands. Their children don’t attend violent schools where they have to enter through metal detectors.

White liberals help the Democratic Party maintain political control over cities, where many black residents live in despair, such as Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago.

Black people cannot afford to remain fodder for the liberal agenda. With that in mind, we should not be a one-party people in a two-party system.

COPYRIGHT 2019 CREATORS.COM

A Dog Performs to Music Like Majic : A Fun Video!

Here is a great video of a dog and handler doing a routine to music that is most incredible. Very enjoyable.

https://www.facebook.com/radio2westvlaanderen/videos/2449909835338765/

Advocate for Destruction of Civil Society : George Soros Understands How To Do It!

An international criminal that seeks to destory civil society.

A true believer in the socialist ideology.

Little left to wonder the progressive socialist liberal democrats defend an international criminal like Soros, they identify with him and his agenda to destory the Western culture of individual freedom and replace it with a masochistic centralized power to control all outcomes. 

By definition, George Soros is a international terrorist that brings chaos and conflict around the world, including the United States.

Criticizing George Soros Is Not Anti-Semitic

Dennis Prager / @DennisPrager / November 26, 2019

The former senior director for European and Russian affairs for the Trump administration, Fiona Hill, testified last week in the House impeachment hearings.

At one point, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., asked her: “Would you say that these different theories, these conspiracy theories that have been targeting you, spun in part by folks like Mr. Stone as well as fueled by Rudy Giuliani and others, basically have a tinge of anti-Semitism to them at least?”

This was Hill’s response:

''Well, certainly when they involve George Soros, they do. I’d just like to point out that in the early 1900s, the czarist secret police produced something called ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ which, actually, you can still obtain on the internet. And you can buy it, actually, sometimes, at bookshops in Russia and elsewhere. This is the longest-running anti-Semitic trope that we have in history. And the trope against Mr. Soros, George Soros, was also created for political purposes, and this is the new ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’ I actually intended to write something about this before I was actually invited to come into the administration. Because it’s an absolute outrage''

What is really an “absolute outrage” is that anyone—especially someone testifying in Congress before a national audience—would compare criticism of George Soros with “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

For those unfamiliar with “The Protocols,” they are the most infamous anti-Semitic forgery in history. Believed to have been written by Russian czarist officials in the 19th century, they purported to be a document written by Jews that outlined a Jewish plot to take over the world.

“The Protocols” are a lie, and their sole intent was to create anti-Semitism.

Criticism of Soros is rarely a lie, and its intent is rarely to create anti-Semitism.

Soros is a billionaire whose Open Society Foundations, with offices in 70 countries, is the world’s major funder of left-wing causes.

If Soros were to come from a Lutheran or Catholic family, there would be no less criticism of him. While it is always possible that some people attack Soros solely because he was born into a Jewish family (he does not identify as a Jew), there are few such people.

Much of Israel’s Jewish population, for example, loathes Soros. Are they anti-Semites?

Moreover, Soros loathes Israel. As Joshua Muravchik reported in The Wall Street Journal, “[I]n a speech … to the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, Mr. Soros likened the behavior of Israel to that of the Nazis … “

“George Soros,” the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement in July 2017, “continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments by funding organizations that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself.”

Martin Peretz, former longtime editor-in-chief of The New Republic, wrote:

''Soros is ostentatiously indifferent to his own Jewishness. He is not a believer. He has no Jewish communal ties. He certainly isn’t a Zionist. He told Connie Bruck in The New Yorker—testily, she recounted—that ‘I don’t deny the Jews their right to a national existence—but I don’t want to be part of it.’

Hill’s charge that criticism of Soros is “the new ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion'” is vile. It is what leftists like Hill—who was a member of the board of Soros’ Open Society Institute from 2000 to 2006—always do when a fellow leftist (who is not a Christian white male) is criticized. Leftists constantly labeled criticism of former President Barack Obama “racist” and branded criticism of Hillary Clinton “sexist” and “misogynist.”

Their goal is to inoculate leftists from criticism.

In addition to being an illegitimate tactic to silence critics, what Hill said was immoral because it reduces the evil of real anti-Semitism. The left has already cheapened the terms “Nazi,” “racist,” and “white supremacist.” You can now add “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” to the list. If “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is the same as attacking Soros, then “The Protocols” were not all that bad.

Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League should have censured Hill. But they won’t because so many Jewish groups—once run by liberals and conservatives who cared deeply about Israel and the Jewish people—are today run by many Soros-admiring leftists, whose primary commitment is to further left-wing causes.

In fact, it is close to certain that the leaders of most American (not Israeli) Jewish organizations agree with Hill.

I began a 2007 column on Soros this way: “What do Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Noam Chomsky and George Soros have in common? They were/are all radicals, born to Jewish parents, had no Jewish identity and hurt Jews (not to mention non-Jews).”

Criticizing Soros is no more inherently anti-Semitic than attacking Marx, Trotsky or Chomsky.

As the left sees it, isolating Israel for rhetorical attack, even supporting its economic strangulation—e.g., through the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement—is not anti-Semitic. But attacking Soros is.

Such is the broken state of the moral compass of the left and people like Hill.

COPYRIGHT 2019 CREATORS.COM

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Rashida Tlaib Is Above The Law? : AOC Is Above The Law? Hillary?

Criminal activity found for Tlaib? No way! She is a democrat. a radical leftist,

a incendiary socialist liberal. Nothing to see here!

Who cares? She is a progressive socialist liberal radical and her history shows her much worse, if that's even possible!

That she couldn't possibly have known she was breaking the law makes a lot of sense. Her actions are very similar to those of Hillary Clinton's where then head of the FBI James Comey told congress and the world Hillary didn't commit all those crimes intentionally. "No officers of the court would prosecute on such matters''.

And now we are to believe this was by accident, ignorance of the law? Hey, tell that to the traffic cop that stops you for speeding or running a red light, 'Oh no officer, I was just not paying attrition. It's not my fault.' The officer will say, 'Tell it to the judge!'

In Tlaib case, of course it is different then you or me, all she has to do is just has to tell the court to go ''F--- '' themselves, like she did about impeaching Donald Trump after she was elected to congress to a cheering crowed!

Nothing to see here, just like AOC and her criminal activity that is going no where! Who is above the law? Why do people willingly vote democrat?

Did Trump Critic Rep. Rashida Tlaib Violate Campaign Finance Laws and Ethics Rules?

GianCarlo Canaparo / @GCanaparo / Hans von Spakovsky / @HvonSpakovsky / November 25, 2019

“It’s pretty simple,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., tweeted last March, in calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment. “No one is above the law, including the President of the United States.”

But perhaps Tlaib—among Trump’s harshest critics in Congress—needs to follow up with another tweet, in the interests of transparency. This tweet could read: “No one is above the law. Except me.”

According to a report issued last week by the House Ethics Committee, there is “substantial reason to believe” that Tlaib used campaign funds for personal expenditures, thereby violating both campaign finance laws and House ethics rules.

The alleged violations stem from $17,500 that her campaign paid her, apparently to cover personal expenses, after she was elected to Congress.

Text messages and emails between Tlaib and her campaign staff show that throughout her campaign she repeatedly asked her campaign for money to cover personal expenses like “car maintenance, child care, and other necessities.”

At one point, Tlaib asked her campaign to give her $2,000 every two weeks. Between May 7 and Nov. 16, 2018, it did so. Then, on Dec. 1, 2018, it paid her $15,500.

In total, Tlaib’s campaign gave her $45,000 over seven months.

Federal campaign finance law (52 U.S.C. §30114(b)) prohibits the use of campaign funds for personal use. The law, including the regulations promulgated by the Federal Election Commission, defines “personal use” very broadly.

Personal use includes any “commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s campaign duties.” That plainly includes car maintenance, child care, and “other necessities.”

Additionally, House ethics rules prohibit representatives from using campaign funds for personal expenditures. They and their staffs are tasked with ensuring that their campaigns operate in compliance with the law.

While candidates may take a salary from their campaigns, there are very strict limits on that. Among the litany of restrictions is this one: The salary can only be paid for work performed before the election. The salary has to end the day the candidate is either elected or withdraws from the race and is no longer a candidate.

Tlaib’s eligibility for a salary paid from her campaign funds ended on Nov. 6, 2018, when she was elected to the House of Representatives. Yet her campaign continued to pay her through the end of December. She collected $17,500 after the election.

Tlaib’s lawyers concede that the payments were made after Nov. 6 last year, but argue that the money was for services performed before the election. But according to the report, documents taken from her campaign “suggest otherwise.”

A spreadsheet of campaign salary payments shows that Tlaib’s campaign paid her $2,000 on Nov. 16 last year for work performed between Nov. 1 and 15. And according to that same spreadsheet, the $15,500 paid on Dec. 1 was for work performed between Nov. 16 and Dec. 31 last year.

Additionally, the checks confirm those dates, as do emails from Tlaib’s campaign treasurer. As to the $15,500 payment, her campaign treasurer’s records show that at least $8,000 of it was paid for work performed after the election, and the remaining $7,500 was an unspecified “adjustment.”

It certainly appears to be a clear violation of federal law. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the best arguments her lawyers can come up with are that there was no “conscious disregard” of the law, and that it’s “most irregular” for the Office of Congressional Ethics to look into pre-election activities.

In other words, Tlaib should be excused because she didn’t bother to learn the law or because Congress should permit candidates to violate ethics laws with impunity until they get elected. It doesn’t take a lawyer to see how feeble these arguments are.

Given how bad this looks for Tlaib, it’s no surprise that she and her campaign staff refused all interview requests from the Office of Congressional Ethics.

And Tlaib’s problems extend beyond the Ethics Committee.

Both the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. Justice Department have jurisdiction over violations of federal campaign finance law. The FEC can force those who err to repay the money and impose a civil penalty – even where there was no “conscious disregard” of the law.

If Tlaib “knowingly and willfully” violated the law, that is a criminal violation that comes under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department. Criminal violations of the law can result not only in civil penalties, but prison time.

We agree with Tlaib that “no one is above the law.” Does she agree with her own tweet?

Originally published by Fox News

Swalwell Speaking in Tongues? : Greta Thunberg Understands Him! No!

She isn't sure where that failure for controlling his mental disease, his inability to rational or logical, his total break down of common sense, came from, but no matter, she is sure it most be a sign for the end of times. From the looks of her here, the question is moot.

Swalwell is totally mentally incapacitated. A babbling idiot! A threat to civil society. Much like Greta herself, demanding climate change will kills us all in the next 10 years, even when others that claimed the same thing 30 years ago but here we are!

Holy cow batman, we're still here and no Arizona beach front property for sale. Who knew?

democrat Swalwell puzzles and frightens Greta Thunberg on looking at someone

speaking things that are stupid but she understands!

Senate democrats Wage War On America : The ''Reisitance'' Is Domestic Terror~!

It's not about America or freedom or liberty, it's only about

getting back their birthright of absolute power!

As the AG Bob Barr laid out in his recent speech concerning the threat to our country from the progressive socialist liberals that are fully behind the ''Resistance'' movement that seeks to over-throw the duly elected President of the United States.

The Senate democrats are doing what ever they can to deny citizens and the nation it's Constitutional rights and liberties just for political revenge and corrupt personal advantage.

The democrats "Resistance" movement is domestic soft terror! Don't be fooled! It's who they are! America deserves better! The democrats are saying, America be dammed!

Senate Continues to Obstruct Trump’s Capable Nominees

Thomas Spoehr / Jack Penders / November 22, 2019

If you don’t believe our government is complex and inefficient, just ask presidential appointees navigating the Senate confirmation process.

Under our constitutional framework, the president hires the people he wants to run the executive branch, many of whom require Senate confirmation. This includes about 1,200 of the most senior employees, such as ambassadors or Cabinet members.

Unfortunately for the Department of Defense and other organizations dedicated to national security, the Senate confirmation process has become obstructive and hyper-partisan. This not only deprives the president of the ability to run the executive branch, it has grave consequences in the areas of homeland security and national defense in particular.

For example, within the Department of Homeland Security, which plays a key role in protecting the homeland from various threats, only 47% of key positions are occupied.

The director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of several important vacant positions at the department, is responsible for nearly 20,000 employees who enforce laws and guard the border.

Mark Morgan was nominated in May to run ICE, but his name has not yet even been referred to the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

At the Department of Defense, Dana Deasy has served since April 2018 as the chief information officer, where he leads the department in managing information and cybersecurity in an era of increasing cyber threats.

His appointment was announced in June, and he received a hearing on Oct. 29. But it remains unclear when he finally will be confirmed by the Senate.

At the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which leads intelligence integration, the Senate has yet to confirm a director for the National Counterintelligence Security Center, which fuses intelligence and shares information with partners.

The current director, William Evanina, has filled the position since June 2014, and was formally nominated in February 2018. Yet, five years and a change in administration since he assumed the role, he has yet to be confirmed by the Senate.

Common sense would dictate that candidates should have nothing to fear, as long as they were otherwise qualified and had no skeletons in their proverbial closet, but exceptional presidential appointees must run the gauntlet of bureaucracy regardless.

The disincentives range from a generally inconvenient process to outright intrusions on an individual’s privacy. Although it is important that we ensure political appointees are capable of fulfilling their duties, too much procedure is counterproductive.

Today, President Donald Trump’s nominees face a wall of resistance in the Senate, as Senate Democrats have abused the rules and procedures to slow down, and in many cases, kill off well-qualified nominees.

First, the days of giving unanimous consent are over for Trump nominees. In the past, that happened all the time as the Senate sought to boost productivity by limiting procedure.

Second, it is common for many, if not most, nominees to find that there is a hold on their nomination. Under Senate rules, individual senators can place a hold on any nominee they object to.

Trump’s nominations have taken longer than past presidents. According to The Washington Post, on average they spend “69 days in committee—longer than the 58 days for Obama’s nominations.”

To reach the confirmation vote, Trump’s nominees also had to wait 77 days on average compared to only 30 for President Barack Obama.

In the meantime, nominees are required to fill out the OGE Form 278 Executive Personnel Financial Disclosure Report as well as the dreaded SF86 for positions requiring a security clearance. The OGE Form 278 requests the nominee to provide detailed financial information, and the SF86 covers everything from decades of employment history to foreign travel.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the documents are reviewed by the Office of Government Ethics, but “committees review financial disclosure reports and some make them available in committee offices to members, staff, and the public.”

Therefore, if lawmakers wish to damage a nominee or the nominator, they can simply release the information to other hostile lawmakers and media.

These complexities often force the nominees to pursue legal counsel to help navigate the complex forms and processes. After many months of waiting and filling out form after form, the costs quickly add up.

The government has many plausible options to repair the broken process. The Senate could revise the list of Senate-confirmed positions again to reduce the total number of positions that require confirmation.

Nominees also would benefit from having more standardized paperwork that can be used by all involved organizations, instead of completing different forms for Senate committees, the Office of Personnel Management, or other government agencies involved in the process.

The Trump White House would be wise to beef up the Office of Presidential Personnel by appointing senior, experienced leaders to the office, and providing nominees consistent, constant information along the way. This has been severely lacking in the last two and a half years.

Nominees who are willing to leave their jobs and serve the public deserve to be treated with respect during the confirmation process, and most assuredly deserve an up-or-down vote in a timely fashion. The grandstanding and political maneuvering serves no one.

democrats Impeachment Strategy : Trump Had Bad Thoughts!

The democrats have no legitimate basis to remain in office. All must be 

defeated in 2020!

Who knew? They're just democrats doing what they do to get back the power of control that was stolen from in the last election.

Is having bad thought legitimate reasons to want the democrats destroyed for being corrupt and doing our country harm? Just saying.

Vengeance controls the democrats and hopefully drive them all into the unemployment office next year. They deserve no less.

Are Thought Crimes Impeachable?

Victor Davis Hanson / @VDHanson / November 26, 2019

During special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, his legal “dream team” tried to make a secondary case that Donald Trump also obstructed efforts to prove Trump-Russian “collusion.”

Trump was said to have advised his lawyers and other subordinates, past and present, not to cooperate fully with the Mueller investigation. Yet the special counsel did not pursue any actionable cases of egregious interference by the White House.

Indeed, Mueller would never have concluded his $35 million, 22-month investigation had he not enjoyed cooperation from the White House.

White House employees were questioned freely by the special counsel. Documents were released. When the special counsel’s exhaustive investigation into purported Trump-Russia collusion found no such crime, the fallback claim of obstruction arose. Trump allegedly wanted to curtail Mueller’s parameters of inquiry into something that was proven not to be a crime.

Mueller found no grounds for a criminal referral on obstruction of justice. But he repeatedly hinted that Trump had thought about obstructing the non-crime of collusion.

In the Ukrainian melodrama, Trump is accused of the thought crime of considering the withholding of military assistance unless Ukraine investigated possible Ukrainian tampering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and also former Vice President Joe Biden’s intervention in Ukrainian politics on behalf of his son.

Biden had bragged at a Council on Foreign Relations conference that his threats to withhold non-military assistance to Ukraine led to the dismissal of a prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. It turns out Shokin may have been considering an investigation of the energy company where Biden’s son Hunter Biden had been given a lucrative position on the board of directors.

Two questions arise from hours of impeachment inquiry testimony before the House Intelligence Committee:

One, did Trump cut off military assistance, prompting the compliant Ukrainians to launch investigations to ensure that endangered military aid was not curtailed?

Two, did Trump reverse prior U.S. foreign policy by cutting off military assistance, thus threatening the security of Ukraine?

Regarding question No. 1, military assistance was delivered to Ukraine after a delay. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy never announced investigations of the Bidens or election tampering.

In response to question No. 2, the Obama administration’s policy was to deny significant military assistance to Ukraine. Even non-military aid was apparently leveraged by Biden to force the Ukrainians to fire a prosecutor whose role in looking into Hunter Biden’s company is still murky.

In other words, Trump is accused of thinking about cutting off aid as a lever to force Ukrainian investigations. Yet the prior administration never extended significant military aid and threatened to cancel non-military aid over a bothersome prosecutor.

That disconnect prompts another question: Is thinking about cutting off military aid to Ukraine a greater crime than declining to provide Ukraine with significant military aid?

Trump is also accused of the thought crime of contemplating bribery. Critics allege that Trump wanted Ukraine to do him a “favor” of inestimable value by launching those investigations.

Trump supposedly used the gifting power of the U.S. government to obtain a personal political benefit to his 2020 presidential candidacy.

But that premise is shaky on a number of grounds. Trump did not receive any such investigatory help from Ukraine. Yet even if Ukraine had announced the investigations that Trump had sought, the fact that Joe Biden chose to run for president in 2020 does not exempt him from government scrutiny of his suspect behavior with regard to Ukraine when he was vice president.

Both Democrats and Republicans seem to agree that corruption is endemic in Ukraine and demands constant vigilance as a condition for foreign aid.

Moreover, the public did not learn about the bad optics of the Bidens in Ukraine from Trump-pressured Ukrainian leaks. Instead, Biden publicly bragged of his own clout in strong-arming the Ukrainians—and ostensibly about how tough he would be as a future president. Any benefit to Trump of showcasing Biden’s bad behavior came not from thinking about pressuring Ukraine, but from Biden’s own braggadocio.

Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, smeared Joe Biden’s reputation.

Trump has been accused of thought crimes, not actual crimes. Trump can be indiscreet, even crude, in his speech. But alleged bad thoughts are not crimes—at least not outside George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”

(C) 2019 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.