News from across the nation, by Don Early and Aaron Martinez, Basin Life Magazine
New U.S. Attorney General William Barr is one of the most intelligent attorneys in America and one tough guy amid the furor of Democrats of his testimony on Wednesday. After six hours of mostly ridicule that he was protecting President Trump and was lying about Special Council Robert Mueller’s Report and has midread it, Barr was a definite no-show for another day of being belittled by U.S. Representative Jerry Nadler and often embarrassing Democrats of the House Judiciary Committee.
Yesterday, defying the Congress, Attorney General Barr did not attend the House Judiciary Committee hearing and says he’s done with it. He is however, going to fully investigate the FISA court warrants. Insiders say there are many nervous members and former members of the FBI and the U.S. Dept. of Justice.
Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Nadler, is now accusing Barr of being afraid to testify. Nadler is refusing to let it go, and many members of Congress say it’s time for the witch hunt to end and for the House to get back to work for the American people.
Regarding Barr, “We plan on subpoenaing him. He can run but he can’t hide,” Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries told reporters yesterday.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said in a statement that the panel had placed “unprecedented and unnecessary” conditions on Barr’s testimony and called the questions posed by committee staff inappropriate.
“The attorney general remains happy to engage directly with members,” the statement said.
Attorney General Barr’s decision not to testify surfaced hours after the committee adopted a more aggressive format that would subject the attorney general to an extra hour of questions from committee lawyers, in addition to questions from Democratic and Republican lawmakers on the panel.
Nadler insisted that it was not the administration’s place to determine the format for the hearing.
“He is terrified of having to face a skilled attorney,” the chairman said of Barr. “Given how dishonest he has been … I can understand why he’s afraid of facing more effective examination.” Rediculous, say many Republicans including Sen. Lindsay Graham.
Chairman Nadler how now considered Barr’s move as a contempt if the full unredacted version of the report is not made available. And President Trump says they are about to get what they want and all will be revealed. Democrats are hoping to make Barr look weak before the IG report actually arrives, which may tell Americans the real story.
The Justice Department has made available a version of the report that has fewer redactions than the one issued publicly, withholding only grand jury information that must be kept secret by law, he added. The department would be willing to seek an accommodation over more targeted requests for Mueller-related documents, Boyd said.
Panicking, some Democrats including Senator Mazie Hirono said on Wednesday that Barr should resign. Asked if he agreed, Nadler told reporters: “He’s going to have to answer for apparently testifying untruthfully in both the Senate and the House, and that’s certainly one option.”
The U.S. economy is hot and American employers added a robust 263,000 jobs in April, suggesting that businesses have shrugged off earlier concerns that the economy might slow this year and now anticipate strong customer demand.
The unemployment rate fell to a five-decade low of 3.6% from 3.8%, though that drop reflected a rise in the number of people who stopped looking for work.
Average hourly pay rose 3.2% from 12 months earlier, a healthy increase that matched the increase in March.
Friday’s jobs report from the Labor Department showed that solid economic growth is still encouraging strong hiring nearly a decade into the economy’s recovery from the Great Recession. The economic expansion is set to become the longest in history in July.
“The broader economy remains on solid footing, meaning that coming months will see continued job gains and faster wage growth,” said Richard Moody, chief economist at Regions Financial Corp.
Trump administration officials insisted that the job market’s gains were a result of the president’s tax cuts and deregulatory policies.
“We have entered a very strong and durable prosperity cycle,” said Larry Kudlow, director of the White House’s National Economic Council.
Stock investors welcomed Friday’s jobs data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 135 points, or 0.5%, in mid-day trading.
American households have become more confident since the winter and are ramping up spending. Consumer spending surged in March by the most in nearly a decade. A likely factor is that steady job growth and solid wage increases have enlarged Americans’ paychecks.
Patti Davis, the daughter of former President Ronald Reagan, has torn into Republicans who remain silent about President Trump, in a stinging open letter published in The Washington Post today.
Davis noted in the blistering missive — titled “Dear Republicans: Stop using my father, Ronald Reagan, to justify your silence on Trump” — how Republicans have claimed her father’s legacy and “exalted him as an icon of conservatism and used the quotes of his that serve your purpose at any given moment.”
“Yet at this moment in America’s history when the democracy to which my father pledged himself and the Constitution that he swore to uphold, and did faithfully uphold, are being degraded and chipped away at by a sneering, irreverent man who traffics in bullying and dishonesty, you stay silent,” she added.
Davis listed some of the times when many Republicans have refused to criticize the president, such as when his administration introduced a policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“You stay silent when President Trump speaks of immigrants as if they are trash, rips children from the arms of their parents and puts them in cages,” she wrote.
Davis concluded her letter with a request to “the Republican Party that holds tightly to my father’s legacy.”
“If you are going to stand silent as America is dismantled and dismembered, as democracy is thrown onto the ash heap of yesterday, shame on you,” she wrote. “But don’t use my father’s name on the way down.”
America will breathe a bit from all of this, thanks to the weekend ahead.