GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Now, every 1st Amendment advocate is a Nazi

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As V pointed out earlier, Now, Everybody Who Isn’t a Radical Is a Nazi. The same goes for First Amendment supporters.

Here is the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Among other things, it means that horrible Nazi-leaning citizens get to peaceably assemble and demonstrate. So do horrible Commie-leaning citizens (Antifa) – if it’s done “peaceably”.

And what does “peaceably” mean? It does NOT mean smiles, rainbows, unicorns, or coming all unarmed. Nope. It means:

  1. The demonstrators co-ordinate with local authorities to prevent problems. Including (but not limited to) them getting a permit.
  2. If problems occur anyway, they obey lawful commands to disperse (and can be prosecuted if they don’t).
  3. Others can show up and counter-demonstrate, but…
  4. those others have NO superior rights or authority. For example, counter-demonstrators have no right to attack. It is NEVER “understandable” or “justified” if they attack, no matter how odious are the demonstrators’ opinions, signs or speeches.

Under those terms: Nazis, KKK, or even Commies (Antifa) are allowed to assemble and do a little march. This is why, in 1978, the ACLU successfully defended the right of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, IL.

Here’s the point: EVERY American, no matter their color or background or life experience, must accept this. Because, that’s America. It’s how America rolls.

Now, what happened in Charlottesville last weekend?

  • Various groups, not limited to white racists, got a permit to assemble in a park.
  • They began to assemble peaceably.
  • BEFORE anything bad happened – indeed, even before the start time on their permit – Democrat Governor McAuliffe declared them unlawful and ordered them to disperse.
  • Counter-demonstrators did not have a permit, assembled anyway and, by many first-hand accounts and videos, physically attacked the demonstrators as they were dispersing.
    • Correction: The counter-demonstrators were permitted for 2 nearby parks; still NOT the park nor the streets where the demonstrators were.
  • After an hour or two of that: one person, possibly with the demonstrators or possibly mentally ill, rammed a car into the counter-demonstrators.

Horrific as that final crime was, are those counter-demonstrators who attacked people somehow “understandable” or “justified” or “morally better”? Not under the terms of the First Amendment.

So, should President Trump call out the demonstrators alone and give them all the blame? Not under the terms of the First Amendment.

Either you support the First Amendment, or you don’t. If you do, then you have to put your focus on neutrally defending everyone’s First Amendment rights, as President Trump does.

This goes for the colossal dummies Rubio, Romney, McCain, and all you Democrats and SJWs out there. If you believe in the First Amendment, you’ll unite behind the President’s approach. If you don’t, we know the truth about you.

It’s time to remember your Constitution and rally behind First Amendment rights (and other rights, like due process) for all citizens, especially the ones you can’t stand.

UPDATE – Icing it: Atlanta leftie mob tears down a Peace Monument. Because, yes, mobs are that stupid.

ACLU does something right

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As political lobbies go, the ACLU is infuriating because they are so often wrong, left-oriented and Social Justice Warrior-ish. For example, they defend racial preferences (also known as racism) in college admissions. But on rare occasions, they will get something incredibly right.

In this instance, the ACLU challenges advertising restrictions in our nation’s capital from DC Metro:

The ACLU, ACLU of D.C., and ACLU of Virginia are teaming up to represent a diverse group of plaintiffs whose ads were all branded as too hot for transit: the ACLU itself; Carafem, a health care network that specializes in getting women access to birth control and medication abortion; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA); and Milo Worldwide LLC — the corporate entity of provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

To put it mildly, these plaintiffs have nothing in common politically. But together, they powerfully illustrate the indivisibility of the First Amendment. Our free speech rights rise and fall together — whether left, right, pro-choice, anti-choice, vegan, carnivore, or none of the above…

Let’s start with the ACLU. Earlier this year…the ACLU decided to remind everyone about that very first promise in the Bill of Rights: that Congress shall make no law interfering with our freedoms of speech and religion. As part of a broad advertising campaign, the ACLU erected ads in numerous places, featuring the text of the First Amendment. Not only in English, but in Spanish and Arabic, too — to remind people that the Constitution is for everyone.

ACLU intended their First Amendment campaign stupidly as an anti-Trump thing; but the ads themselves merely stated the text of the First Amendment, which people on the Left definitely need to be reminded of. Beautiful! But then:

Our ad was rejected because WMATA’s advertising policies forbid, among many other things, advertisements “intended to influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions” or “intended to influence public policy.”

Get it? The wise authorities at DC Metro refuse to let the First Amendment be posted on their trains. The mere text of the First Amendment! As to the Milo aspect:

Milo Worldwide submitted ads that displayed only Mr. Yiannopoulos’s face, an invitation to pre-order his new book, “Dangerous,” and one of four short quotations from different publications: “The most hated man on the Internet” from The Nation; “The ultimate troll” from Fusion; “The Kanye West of Journalism” from Red Alert Politics; and “Internet Supervillain” from Out Magazine…the ads themselves were innocuous, and self-evidently not an attempt to influence any opinion other than which book to buy.

WMATA appeared to be okay with that. It accepted the ads and displayed them in Metro stations and subway cars — until riders began to complain about Mr. Yiannopoulos being allowed to advertise his book. Just 10 days after the ads went up, WMATA directed its agents to take them all down…

The ideas espoused by each of these four plaintiffs are anathema to someone — as is pretty much every human idea. By rejecting these ads and accepting ads from gambling casinos, military contractors, and internet sex apps, WMATA showed just how subjective its ban is. Even more frightening, however, WMATA’s policy is an attempt to silence anyone who tries to make you think.

Bingo.

Taking your money at gunpoint

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You pay taxes because the government forces you to. The only differences between taxation and robbery are:

  1. The government makes it legal (when they do it).
  2. The government has more window-dressing or layers of deception. For example, they’ll say that you pay taxes voluntarily. (Which is deception, because they will jail you and/or your banker if you don’t pay; and shoot you if you resist jail.)

In Seminole County, FL, they just got a little more honest. Seminole County tax collector will allow employees to carry guns.

Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg told the Orlando Sentinel that according to Florida law, he and his employees are considered “revenue officers” and are exempt from the state’s ban on the open carrying of firearms while performing their duties…

He said 15 to 20 employees will be allowed to carry firearms. Greenberg said no one will be forced to carry a weapon, adding that he “can’t imagine that they wouldn’t want to.”

The citizens, by contrast, can’t carry guns. So now the tax collectors are armed, and the citizens aren’t. (Whereas before, they met on slightly more equal terms and had to bring the police in for any physical disputes.) Roman empire, here we come!

Hey lefties!

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If President Obama had ordered an FBI investigation to stop: It would have been a legal order. He would have been 100% within his constitutional powers.

Whether it would have been a politically smart move, is a different and legitimate question.

Whether he would have been covering something up – or maybe not – is a different and legitimate question.

Whether Congress and/or media and/or citizens should then investigate whatever he MIGHT have been covering up, is a different and legitimate question.

Whether he would have been right morally, is a different and legitimate question.

Whether Congress should then try to punish him, via censure or impeachment – or maybe not – is a different and legitimate question.

But would Obama’s order, as such, have been a crime of obstruction? No. Because here in America, we have something called a “constitution” which creates “separation of powers” including a unitary “executive branch”, in which the FBI resides.

The FBI does not reside in the legislative branch (Congress).

The FBI does not reside in the judicial branch (Supreme Court).

The FBI resides in the executive branch and, at the end of the day, follows the policies and orders of a chain of command that goes to the Attorney General and then to the President.

That is how the U.S. system of government works. Obama could have literally ordered the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation to stop, and he would have been within his legal powers. (But again: the optics, morality, and how Congress and the citizenry should follow up on his order, would be different and legitimate questions.)

Now, substitute “President Trump” for “President Obama” in the above, and do the math. We’ll wait.

After that, we can turn to fact that President Trump actually never ordered any FBI investigation to stop.

Which fact means that you, lefties, are working yourselves up – and dividing America with your hate-filled hysteria on the Comey-Flynn matter – and making deadly (or potentially deadly) assaults on your fellow Americans – for nothing.

Much ado, part II

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I wanted to capture some details for future reference.

  • Comey affirms that NYT has been publishing false stories of Trumprussia collusion.
  • Comey admits to maliciously leaking his own memos.

    Hmm – does this put Comey in legal jeopardy? (UPDATE: Seems more and more like it should. Comey’s formal memos of what happened on his job are government property. Could they be privileged information? Even classified? Then who was Comey to take them out of the office when he was fired; much less, to leak them?)

  • Senator Jim Risch dismantles any ‘obstruction’ case against Trump:

    Risch: ‘I hope’, this is [Comey’s version of] the President speaking, ‘I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go…I hope you can let this go.’

    […]

    Comey: “Correct.”

    […]

    Risch: “Thank you for that. He did not direct you to let it go.”

    Comey: “Not in his words, no.”

    Risch: “He did not order you to let it go.”

    Comey: “Again, those words are not an order.”

    Risch: “He said ‘I hope’. Now, like me you probably did hundreds of cases, maybe thousands of cases charging people with criminal offenses…Do you know of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice, for that matter of any other criminal offense, where they said or thought they hoped for an outcome?”

    […]

    Comey: “I don’t as I sit here.”

  • In other comments, Comey said that he interpreted Trump’s words as a direction, but that is, of course, B.S. Because
    1. Comey affirms above that he knew it wasn’t a direction, AND
    2. If Trump had given Comey a direction that Comey felt to be unethical or illegal, then Comey is in legal jeopardy for not having reported it sooner.
    3. Furthermore, per HotAir, Tom Cotton got Comey to acknowledge that he never threatened to resign over Trump’s behavior, as Comey did in a famous 2004 confrontation in John Ashcroft’s hospital room. Instead, and by his own admission, Comey told Trump “that I would see what we could do.”

    This exchange is stunning…ly bad for Comey:

    Rubio: Did you object to or inform the WH counsel about Trump’s “I hope” statement?
    Comey: “No.”
    Rubio: “Why not?”
    Comey: “I don’t know.”

  • We also have Comey and Trump both calling each other liars on certain points, which makes it he-said-he-said.

    Ever read Trump’s book? He has been dealing with lawyers day-in, day-out for DECADES. Figuring out how to influence people, without actually committing legal or ethical violations. His sister was a big-time Federal judge. The notion that President Trump would make inappropriate remarks to the likes of Comey, was always shaky.

  • Comey reveals that the Obama administration pressured him to downplay Hillary’s scandal. Call it a “matter”, not an “investigation”:

    LANKFORD: …the previous attorney general [Loretta Lynch] asking you about the investigation on the Clinton e-mails saying you were asked to not call it an investigation anymore. But call it a matter. You said that confused you. You can give us additional details on that?

    COMEY: Well, it concerned me because…the campaigns were talking about interacting with the FBI in the course of our work. The Clinton campaign at the time was using all kinds of euphemisms, security matters, things like that for what was going on.

    We were getting to a place where the attorney general and I were both going to testify and talk publicly about it I wanted to know was she going to authorize us to confirm we have an investigation. She said yes, don’t call it that, call it a matter. I said why would I do that? She said, just call it a matter…that concerned me because that language tracked the way the [Clinton] campaign was talking about the FBI’s work and that’s concerning…the attorney general was looking to align the way we talked about our work with the way [the Clinton campaign] was describing that. It was inaccurate. We had an investigation open for the federal bureau of investigation, we had an investigation open at the time. That gave me a queasy feeling.

    Where’s the outcry on that? Or, might it be coming? 🙂

UPDATE:

  • Alan Dershowitz – hardly a conservative – makes the interesting point that, if Trump ever had ordered Comey to stop an investigation, his actions would be totally constitutional. Worth viewing.

    Here’s what I got from it. A President can’t interfere with a judicial process. For example, he can’t tamper with juries or witnesses, end a prosecution (short of doing a presidential pardon), defy a subpoena or destroy evidence. But an FBI investigation is NOT a judicial process. Constitutionally, the FBI Director takes orders from the President. Past presidents have ended investigations they didn’t like. If Congress smells a rat, Congress can impeach the President; but that, too, is a non-judicial process (separate and political).

  • These exchanges settle a lot. Flaming skull time!

    Senator Burr: Are you confident that no votes cast in the 2016 presidential election were altered?
    Comey: I’m confident. By the time I left, I had seen no indication of that whatsoever.

    Senator Burr: Did the President, at any time, ask you to stop the FBI investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 elections?
    Comey: Not to my understanding, no.

    Senator Burr: Did you ever have access to the actual [DNC e-mail] hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?
    Comey: In the case of the DNC…we did not have access to the devices themselves. [ed: which means, and as I’ve stated before, the FBI relied on a report by CrowdStrike, a discredited DNC-paid company]

    Senator Risch: While you were director, the POTUS was not under investigation [at any time], is that a fair statement?
    Comey: That’s correct.

    Senator Collins: I’m trying to understand whether there was any kind of investigation of the President under way.
    Comey: No.

    Senator Rubio: …the president agreed with your statement that it would be great if we could have an investigation…
    Comey: Yes, sir. He actually went farther than that. He — he said, “And if some of my satellites did something wrong, it’d be good to find that out.”

    Lefties: You are not living in reality, if you think Trump is in trouble on this set of issues.

The meaning of Trump’s presidency

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With America’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, another piece of the puzzle is in place. I think I’m getting a Big Picture.

For a myriad of reasons – economic, financial, demographic – we have been moving into a multi-polar world. As opposed to a world where the U.S. is the one, super-wealthy super-power.

Like an oncoming glacier, the shift is very slow – but unstoppable. I’ve been contemplating it for years – and sometimes discussing it on the blog, as in my old posts (that I keep meaning to update) on the gradual decline of the U.S. dollar as the world’s central currency.

Trump is ahead of this shift, and left-wingers are behind it.

Despite their anti-American attitudes and railing against “white supremacy”, left-wingers take great comfort in the idea that the U.S. is the world’s one, super-wealthy super-power. In many a discussion, when I’ve tried to warn a liberal friend how policy X must inevitably undermine the U.S. position in the world, he or she smirks – yes, smirks – and says “But we will always be on top, because of reason Y.” (We have the best military, the best universities or tech research, Hollywood / the most seductive culture, control of the Internet or SWIFT payment system, whatever.)

I think their belief is basically infantile.

  • The child needs to fantasize that the parent is super-capable and benevolent and will always be there for her, no matter what.
  • And a malicious / narcissistic child fantasizes about being able to dish out endless tantrums and torture on the parent – without damaging the child’s life in any way.

Likewise, the left-winger needs to fantasize that the U.S. will always be the one, super-wealthy Super Mommy And Daddy – no matter how many rocks, bombs or burdens they (the left-wingers) throw at the U.S.

Which brings us to the Paris climate accord. It doesn’t do much of anything good. Just a couple big, bad things.

  1. Uphold left-wing fetishes – environmental extremism, statism, globalism – thus demonstrating leftie supremacy; and
  2. Drain the U.S. of wealth – in the form of payments for the Green Climate Fund, tens of billions of new aid to India and other countries, even more burdens on industry and U.S. energy, etc.

Withdrawing from the Paris agreement is so upsetting to left-wingers because it reverses both of those. Now, what is Trump’s rationale for withdrawing?

  • He thinks the U.S. is already responsible environmentally, and will continue to be.
  • He thinks we need to think a bit more about ourselves. We need to mine our own coal. We need to bring back manufacturing jobs. We need to NOT pay into the Green Climate Fund, billions of new aid to India, etc.
  • Meanwhile, the agreement lets China, India and even Europe burn coal and increase their CO2 emissions. That makes no sense. The agreement puts the U.S. at a senseless disadvantage.

Trump’s actions are consistent with, and helpful in, a multi-polar world where the U.S. stops being the Supreme Mommy and Daddy and instead, “gets real” about what the U.S. needs in order to be a good place to live for U.S. people.

He said it in January – “America First” – and now he’s carrying it out. That, and restoring the Constitution (at least a little). Because withdrawing from Paris de-fuses a constitutional bomb. (As will ending the Obamacare insurance-buying mandate, when they finally get around to that.)

Leftie reactions are telling: It’s the end of the world, the U.S. has “resigned as leader of the free world”, Germany’s Angela Merkel now leads the free world, etc. It’s exactly the tantrum you would expect them to throw – if they had an infantile attachment to an idea of the U.S. as the one, super-wealthy Super Mommy and Daddy, upon whom they could inflict any torture or burden that they pleased.

Trump is turning out to be the Bad Mouth Man who will end it, at least partly. And that’s good.

More Obama-NSA abuses

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Yet another story that should be all over the media, but I haven’t seen it much. (If you have, let me know.)

Why wouldn’t it be covered? I find that it reflects great discredit on the Establishment (both political parties, Deep State and Controlled Media). As I started to say yesterday, they have ways to decide what you’re going to hear about. For as long as they can, they will bury stories that don’t fit their agenda.

To review some background:

  • Under the 4th Amendment, the government isn’t supposed to spy on U.S. people without a court-ordered warrant.
  • “The FISA Court” is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 “to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.” (Wiki)
    Note, foreign.
  • But FISA Court hearings are secret and only the government and the court judge are present, like a kangaroo court. The adversarial system is abandoned.
  • As such, FISA tends to be very lenient to the government. Over time, they have created a secret body of law that gives the government sweeping powers to do domestic warrantless surveillance under an alleged “special needs exception” to the 4th Amendment.
    • One example – In 2013, Edward Snowden leaked a FISA order that requires phone companies to provide a daily, ongoing feed of everyone’s phone call data to the NSA. Super invasive!
  • Even so, FISA isn’t toothless and doesn’t approve everything – as you shall see. They need to preserve respectability, at least in their own eyes.
  • FISA judges are appointed solely by the Chief Justice of the United States. In this regard, Establishment Republicans control the FISA court.

That’s just background. Now for the news, as reported by John Solomon and Sara Carter at Circa.com.

Under President Obama, the NSA secretly conducted years of surveillance and searches on Americans that not even the secret, super-lenient FISA Court would approve.

The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community…

The Obama administration self-disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing Oct. 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that set off alarm…

The normally supportive court censured administration officials, saying the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an “institutional lack of candor” and that the improper searches constituted a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue,” according to a recently unsealed court document dated April 26, 2017.

The admitted violations undercut one of the primary defenses that the intelligence community and Obama officials have used in recent weeks to justify their snooping into incidental NSA intercepts about Americans.

Circa has reported that there was a three-fold increase in NSA data searches about Americans and a rise in the unmasking of U.S. person’s identities in intelligence reports after Obama loosened the privacy rules in 2011.

Officials like former National Security Adviser Susan Rice have argued their activities were legal under the so-called minimization rule changes Obama made, and that the intelligence agencies were strictly monitored to avoid abuses.

The intelligence court and the NSA’s own internal watchdog found that not to be true…

The American Civil Liberties Union said the newly disclosed violations are some of the most serious to ever be documented and strongly call into question the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to police itself…

RTWT. Naturally, the NSA is scrambling to reassure people that it has fixed the problem. Riiiiiiiight. And Susan Rice didn’t lie and none of the surveillance data was ever misused against Obama opponents or improperly unmasked. Riiiiiiiight.

To people who understand civil liberties and limited government, all this is a huge deal that shows how far out of control the U.S. “intelligence community” (Deep State) has gotten. Chris Farrell at Judicial Watch compares it to President Lincoln’s suspension of habeus corpus during the U.S. Civil War.

Where is the Special Counsel on this?

Or the media coverage? Bush’s NSA did some illegal surveillance in the 2000s – and in 2005, was duly slammed by The New York Times. A large kerfuffle. “But that was then.” It served the interests of someone powerful – someone in deep alliance with, or control of, The New York Times – to weaken Bush. Not so much with Obama, eh?

See the FISA Court’s declassified order spanking the Obama administration, here. By the way, note how large sections of the relevant law and dockets are blacked out, showing how the FISA system has created secret law that the citizens aren’t supposed to know about. That’s horrible.

Also from Circa: Comey’s FBI was neck deep in the abuses.

The FBI has illegally shared raw intelligence about Americans with unauthorized third parties and violated other constitutional privacy protections, according to newly declassified government documents that undercut the bureau’s public assurances…

How America’s largest cities voted

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Commentor TnnsNe1 did some research. Thanks! I didn’t realize, until the moment I saw it, that I had been wanting to know.

From ESPN: “If you are a city in America, you are a racist city,” (Michael) Smith stated.

So, I did a bit of research (all figures by county) on the election results. Here are the results for the 15 most populated urban areas:

NYC Clinton 82%
LA Clinton 72%
Chicago Clinton 84%
Houston Clinton 48%
Philadelphia Clinton 82%
Phoenix -Trump- 48%
San Antonio Clinton 54%
San Diego Clinton 57%
Dallas Clinton 61%
San Jose Clinton 73%
Austin Clinton 66%
Jacksonville -Trump- 48%
San Francisco Clinton 85%
Indianapolis Clinton 58%
Columbus Clinton 60%

Emphasis added (because I just didn’t see, when I first read it). We can re-order it by Clinton’s percentage:

San Francisco 85%
Chicago 84%
NYC 82%
Philadelphia 82%
San Jose 73%
LA 72%
Austin 66%
Dallas 61%
Columbus 60%
Indianapolis 58%
San Diego 57%
San Antonio 54%
Houston 48%
Phoenix under 48%
Jacksonville under 48%

Given the premise that a vote for Hillary was a vote for the worst human being in that 4-way race, my guess would be that people are

  • reasonable in Phoenix, Jacksonville, Houston, San Antonio.
  • And less so in San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, San Jose, Los Angeles.

I’m not shocked that California has many of America’s less-reasonable people.

Finally, I must point out that this is exactly why the Framers created the Electoral College: so that America’s large cities – what with their numbers, kraziness and groupthink – would not have an overpowering influence in choosing the President (nor in the Senate).

He’s Baaa-aaaaaack

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After Milo’s trouble in February, I knew he’d be back. He has a lot to say, he needs the attention, he’s fun and the camera loves him.

Via Breitbart.com, it’s MILO’S FREE SPEECH WEEK. (I think the all-caps are part of the shtick?)

In light of recent controversies, I am planning a huge multi-day event called MILO’S FREE SPEECH WEEK in Berkeley later this year. We will hold talks and rallies and throw massive parties, all in the name of free expression and the First Amendment. All will be welcome, regardless of political affiliation.

[…]
During MILO’S FREE SPEECH WEEK, we will give out a new free speech prize — the Mario Savio Award — to the person we believe has done most to protect free expression at UC Berkeley and its surrounding area. Each day will be dedicated to a different enemy of free speech, including feminism, Black Lives Matter and Islam.

If UC Berkeley does not actively assist us in the planning and execution of this event, we will extend festivities to an entire month. We will establish a tent city on Sproul Plaza protesting the university’s total dereliction of its duty and encourage students at other universities to follow suit.
I intend to return Berkeley to its rightful place as the home of free speech — whether university administrators and violent far-left antifa thugs like it or not.
– MILO

Mario Savio was, per Wiki, “a key member in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. He is most famous for his passionate speeches, especially the ‘put your bodies upon the gears’ address given at Sproul Hall…on December 2, 1964.”

P.S. I respect and admire Ann Coulter, but do you want to know the difference between her and Milo? A penis and $20,000. (My understanding is that she charges 20K to speak to College Republicans, while he charges them zero. If that’s incorrect, I would be happy to hear it in the comments.)

CIA vs. WikiLeaks: It’s Awn

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Of course the fight between them was already on; I’ll get to that in a moment.

President Trump’s CIA director, Mike Pompeo:

CIA Director Mike Pompeo, in his first speech since taking over the agency, lambasted WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange — calling the group a “non-state hostile intelligence service” that is often abetted by “state actors like Russia.”

Speaking Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Pompeo called Assange a “fraud,” someone with no “moral compass” and a “narcissist who has created nothing of value.”

He asserted that Assange and former National Security Agency staffer and famed leaker Edward Snowden “seek to use that information to make a name for themselves” and they “care nothing about the lives they put at risk or the damage they cause to national security.”

Asked why he would focus on WikiLeaks rather than other issues, Pompeo said he felt it was vital to inform the American people about the threat they pose.

There’s more. RTWT.

Some of Pompeo’s claims are absurd, and others are all too real. First, the absurd: That Snowden did it to make a name for himself.

The guy is almost a prisoner – in Russia, of all places. If he comes back to the U.S., he faces trial. Snowden agrees that he should face trial, and says that he will do so – when he is allowed to mount a public-interest defense (presenting his side of it, that he acted in the public interest when he revealed masses of NSA classified info). But I digress. The point is: Snowden has given up so much to reveal what he revealed, that saying he did it for the fame is ridiculous.

Similar thoughts would apply to Assange, who is almost a prisoner in Ecuador’s embassy in London. While no one is ever perfect, both of these men have acted from their ideals. In denying that so crudely, Pompeo counts on his audience to be stupid.

As to what’s real in Pompeo’s speech: There is no question that both Snowden’s revelations and WikiLeaks make the job of U.S. intelligence agencies much harder. That has to be a bad thing, in many respects. The question is whether, in some other respects, it might also be a good thing?

What has been revealed, first by Snowden and more recently by WikiLeaks Vault 7, is: massive surveillance programs whereby U.S. intelligence agencies spy not only on enemies, but on allies and on ordinary Americans. Really unconstitutional programs and capabilities. So unconstitutional and invasive that they destroy U.S. moral authority and make us understandably hated by the rest of the world.

Until recently, Pompeo’s boss, President Trump, was pro-WikiLeaks (see here – Trump literally said “I love WikiLeaks!”). And against excessive surveillance, such as the Obama administration’s surveillance on Trump before, during and after the 2016 election. Likewise with Pompeo himself. But their love for WikiLeaks was before the Vault 7 revelations and more to come, which could be ugly enough to destroy the CIA as an institution.

In the past, I’ve blogged on my ambivalence about Snowden (example, see here). But, in the last year, I’ve come more to his side; glad that he and Assange did what they do. The more so because of news headlines in the last 5 months: I believe that some leaders of the U.S. intelligence community have tried to damage (if not overthrow) a duly elected President, with a campaign of “intelligence leaks” that are so empty and misleading as to be lies-in-effect. That would be a separate issue. But one that proves the said leaders’ bad faith and anti-constitutional intentions.

In short, we’re at a sad juncture where several issues point to the same conclusion: the U.S. intelligence community is way out of control and in great need of investigation and cleanup.

As always, feel free to disagree or state your view, in the comments. (As always, I’m looking for “agreeable disagreement” and exchange; don’t expect me to come instantly to your viewpoint.)