This is the continuation of a series of posts dealing with issues where some individuals in the United States government are attempting to hold at least a portion of the rest of the federal government accountable and responsible for its actions and inactions. The public displays we find, however, are not unlike the most bizarre of Kabuki Theater or Theater of the Absurd.
Here, Trey Gowdy addresses conflict of interest issues with a massive Leftist lawyer regarding the IRS, Lois Lerner and Loretta Lynch.
Please remember, ladies and gentlemen, these are your federal tax dollars either
My thanks to the SHR Media Network™ for allowing me to broadcast in their studio and over their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as appear on the Sack Heads Radio Show™ each Wednesday evening.
As an aside, because the ™ symbol so annoys my Favorite Troll™ I’ve decided to apply it elsewhere as you can see.
JL Curtis was born in Louisiana in 1951 and was raised in the Ark-La-Tex area. He began his education with guns at age eight with a SAA and a Grandfather that had carried one for ‘work’. He began competitive shooting in the 1970s, an interest he still pursues time permitting. He is a retired Naval Flight Officer, having spent 22 years serving his country, an NRA instructor, a retired engineer in the defense industry, and now a starving author. He lives in North Texas, He currently has two series in work. The Grey Man, a Texas based current fiction series revolving around LEOs and Marines. And the Rimworld Series, started with a short story that was an Amazon Best Seller for five days after its release.
I’ve read Jim’s work, I purchased all of his books (as you can see above) and I believe in his writing. For those who enjoy military/law enforcement-oriented books, Jim’s THE GREY MANseries is highly recommended. For those of a sci-fi bent, Jim’s newest book (the beginning of a series) RIMWORLD: Into The Green will please those of a more realistic science fiction nature. Either way you can’t go wrong with a Jim Curtis book. I’m a reprobate bastard so I like the actual printed books that I can hold in my fetid paws.
You can (heavy sigh) acquire his books on Kindle as well. If you must. Harumph.
Tonight in the Saloon:
We speak to veteran and author Jim Curtis;
White Mamba dislikes my bartender Flakbait; guess who’s serving tonight?
Another Bolivian time check;
Another great chat roll; thanks to Mary Brockman for bringing the horde with her;
BZ chickens out on activating the live video stream; cowardly indeed;
Alan Dershowitz writes about terrorism; he’s absolutely correct. Why did it take a Leftist attorney to write a piece that should have been penned by Republicans?
Euro Leftists snicker at Trump whilst he calls on them to pay their “fair share.” This is a slap in the face to EVERY American Taxpayer; you are EXPECTED to pony your cash up for your Euro betters you dumpy proles, groundlings, commoners, serfs, US trash; I wonder why you’re not speaking GERMAN today, eh wot?
Only 5 of the 28 NATO countries are contributing their contractual 2% GDP to help out NATO; it’s the US that mostly funds NATO as it does with the United Nations;
Estonia and Poland are meeting their NATO obligations; France, Germany, Belgium are not even pretending to do so;
It’s the AMERICAN TAXPAYER who is getting boned by the entitled European Elite cock gobblers who DEMAND that you pony up your cash;
The EU proves BZ’s Criminal Axiom is now applicable to Europe: “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine unless you have the strength to keep it”;
Europe to American Taxpayers: get going. Harder work and more of it;
BZ wants to set up more author interviews in the future to include CJ Box, Brad Thor and perhaps even Joseph Wambaugh, my personal hero from the 1970s;
Trey Gowdy: surveillance programs will not be reauthorized until answers are given;
President Trump: leakers will be prosecuted. The NYT has now decided to jeopardize the security relationships between the US and foreign powers;
Lou Dobbs: we are at war;
Too many Republicans are EstabliHacks and kissing the arses of Demorats;
Virginia Trump travel stay issued from the 4th DCA;
Muslims are now determining the “fake law” for the United States;
Minnesota wavers on FGM; “I guess it might not be all that bad”;
In honor of Memorial Day, the entire Grey Man series will be on sale starting Friday, the 26th, ending on the 30th. Get them early for the deeper discount.
Please join me, the Bloviating Zeppelin(on Twitter @BZep and on Gab.ai @BZep), every Tuesday and Thursday night on the SHR Media Network from 11 PM to 1 AM Eastern and 8 PM to 10 PM Pacific, at the Berserk Bobcat Saloon — where the speech is free but the drinks are not.
As ever, thank you so kindly for listening, commenting, and interacting in the chat room or listening via podcast.
Want to listen to all the Berserk Bobcat Saloon archives in podcast? Go here.
Gowdy: No Reauthorization of Surveillance Programs Until Unmasking Questions Answered
by Jeff Poor
Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said Congress would not reauthorize certain surveillance programs until questions about the “unmasking” of Americans’ identities under the past administration were answered.
“We are not going to reauthorize these surveillance programs if the American people are not satisfied their security is going to be safeguarded,” Gowdy said. “So, the leaks are one issue. The unmasking within the intelligence community — that is a privilege to be able to request that a U.S. person’s name be unmasked. And I want to know who is making that request, what is the evidentiary basis of that request and if it’s late in your tenure, like the day before you leave office, that should send off alarms and sirens as to why that person does it.”
Mind you, the mid-and-upper level managers aren’t. They were too busy aligning themselves and slashing at each other in order to grasp a small piece of the bottom of former FBI Director James Comey’s cape, hoping to climb over whatever corpses necessary to kiss the Comey Ring.
Now that Comey is gone, thanks to President Trump, management is in a bit of a kerfuffle to say the least. Whose ring or arse to kiss now in management? Certainly not acting-Director McCabe. He’s — well — acting director. And Andrew McCabe is rife with sufficient conflicting baggage himself that the next FBI director may just kick McCabe to the proverbial curb. Which would be quite appropriate. McCabe reeks, in my opinion, of Leftist/Demorat corruption.
Here is Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe not actively campaigning for his Demorat wife. All is well. Nothing to see here. No corruption, no conflict of interest. Just ask former FBI Director James Comey. Just don’t ask the line-level agents.
Let’s cut right to the chase: James Comey should have been fired immediately following his disastrous press briefing last July, in which he candidly laid out the case against Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information and then refused to recommend charges. Overstepping his authority while radiating sanctimony, arrogating power while clumsily intervening in the election, Comey deserved to be sacked on the spot.
Absolutely. Comey’s press conference about his decision to do nothing about Hillary Clinton was right out of Kabuki Theater if you know something about the law and its application. Or if you could simply read and understand a few paragraphs of English.
Everything since has been one long slow twist in the wind for Comey, a former US attorney in Manhattan, where his most notable accomplishment was sending Martha Stewart to jail.
Ignore for the moment Comey’s series of missteps resulting from the Clinton investigation and his increasingly erratic and unconvincing public fan dance as he sent the nation into electoral paroxysms over the past 10 months.
Precisely. And unnecessarily so. Former Director Comey set a terrible precedent for the FBI. He couldn’t keep himself out of camera lenses or shut his mouth.
Now the bureau’s tied up and bogged down in the almost certainly chimerical “Russian hacking” fantasy, which bubbled up out of the leftist fever swamp in the wake of Clinton’s loss in November, and for which there is exactly zero evidence.
Now there’s an accurate analogy. Wish I’d thought of it.
The American Media Maggots insist that FBI agents are in full lacrimal duct mode after Comey’s firing. The truth is that the FBI is a tight-knit and proud organization that seldom admits to internal turbulence in public. It is anathema to the institution.
The American Media Maggots also conveniently forget this from 2016. From the UKDailyMail.com:
EXCLUSIVE: Resignation letters piling up from disaffected FBI agents, his wife urging him to admit he was wrong: Why Director Comey jumped at the chance to reopen Hillary investigation
by Ed Klein
James Comey revived the investigation of Clinton’s email server as he could no longer resist mounting pressure by mutinous agents, sources say
The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary
He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents
Comes was also worried that Republicans would accuse him of granting Hillary political favoritism after the presidential election
When new emails allegedly linked to Hillary’s personal server turned up in Abedin and Anthony Weiner’s computer, Comey jumped at the excuse
James Comey’s decision to revive the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server and her handling of classified material came after he could no longer resist mounting pressure by mutinous agents in the FBI, including some of his top deputies, according to a source close to the embattled FBI director.
‘The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,’ said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades, shares family outings with him, and accompanies him to Catholic mass every week.
‘Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,’ said the source. ‘They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.’
According to the source, Comey fretted over the problem for months and discussed it at great length with his wife, Patrice.
He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents. The letters reminded him every day that morale in the FBI had hit rock bottom.
“Stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk.” Disaffected agents. Poor morale. Lack of confidence in leadership. Betrayal. Disgrace. Spoken to singly, the narrative of agents is different than that of the American Media Maggots.
DailyCaller.com printed quotes, following Comey’s firing, from agents who didn’t wish to be named to include “we don’t need a political hack” to “good riddance” and “It should have been expected because he was not doing a good job. He had it coming to him.”
Personnel who have spoken to me on both coasts say roughly the same thing, indicating they believed Comey was an embarrassment to the agency who started well but began seeking the limelight behind decisions that reflected political and not legal motivations.
Of course, the agents didn’t want to be named and wished to be publicly quiet because that’s not what they do and it’s not what they believe their director should do either.
Overall, one said, it was like a big pressure valve had been opened at 935 Pennsylvania; you could almost hear the collective sigh of relief. Confidence in leadership will likely return. I personally suspect, bit by bit, you’ll begin to hear just how lacking in leadership and confidence the agency had been under James Comey.
James Kallstrom, former Assistant Director for the FBI, summarized best.
Even when things were good, they weren’t fabulous under James Comey. In three-and-a-half years of his admin , Grabien.com documented the Top 10 Scandalous Low Points for the FBI:
1. Before he bombed the Boston Marathon, the FBI interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev but let him go. Russia sent the Obama Administration a second warning, but the FBI opted against investigating him again.
2. Shortly after the NSA scandal exploded in 2013, the FBI was exposed conducting its own data mining on innocent Americans; the agency, Bloomberg reported, retains that material for decades (even if no wrongdoing is found).
3. The FBI had possession of emails sent by Nidal Hasan saying he wanted to kill his fellow soldiers to protect the Taliban — but didn’t intervene, leading many critics to argue the tragedy that resulted in the death of 31 Americans at Fort Hood could have been prevented.
4. During the Obama Administration, the FBI claimed that two private jets were being used primarily for counterterrorism, when in fact they were mostly being used for Eric Holder and Robert Mueller’s business and personal travel.
5. When the FBI demanded Apple create a “backdoor” that would allow law enforcement agencies to unlock the cell phones of various suspects, the company refused, sparking a battle between the feds and America’s biggest tech company. What makes this incident indicative of Comey’s questionable management of the agency is that a) The FBI jumped the gun, as they were indeed ultimately able to crack the San Bernardino terrorist’s phone, and b) Almost every other major national security figure sided with Apple (from former CIA Director General Petraeus to former CIA Director James Woolsey to former director of the NSA, General Michael Hayden), warning that such a “crack” would inevitably wind up in the wrong hands.
6. In 2015, the FBI conducted a controversial raid on a Texas political meeting, finger printing, photographing, and seizing phones from attendees (some in the group believe in restoring Texas as an independent constitutional republic).
7. During its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified material, the FBI made an unusual deal in which Clinton aides were both given immunity and allowed to destroy their laptops.
8. The father of the radical Islamist who detonated a backpack bomb in New York City in 2016 alerted the FBI to his son’s radicalization. The FBI, however, cleared Ahmad Khan Rahami after a brief interview.
9. The FBI also investigated the terrorist who killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Fla. Despite a more than 10-month investigation of Omar Mateen — during which Mateen admitting lying to agents — the FBI opted against pressing further and closed its case.
10.CBS recently reported that when two terrorists sought to kill Americans attending the “Draw Muhammad” event in Garland, Texas, the FBI not only had an understanding an attack was coming,
Continuing, from the New York Post.
What’s needed now is a restoration of what should be the FBI’s primary mission, as it was in the early Hoover days: counterterrorism. Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it’s far less important for the bureau to be chasing bank robbers in Burlington and Butte than it is for it to function as the nation’s first line of homeland security defense.
Sad but true. I made my bones on the reactive Squad 3. Those days may be over. But even with the FBI’s newest sea change, who should lead that ship in those turbulent seas following James Comey?
In a conciliatory gesture to the Demorats I believe, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pick would be Merritt Garland. From FoxNews.com:
McConnell thinks Garland as FBI director ‘fantastic idea,’ ex-adviser says
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is behind the idea of Judge Merrick Garland, whose Supreme Court nomination McConnell squashed, becoming the next FBI director, a former adviser to the Kentucky senator said Sunday.
“I think the senate majority leader thinks that’s a fantastic idea,” former adviser Josh Holmes, who now runs the strategy firm Cavalry LLC, told “Fox News Sunday.” “He certainly thinks (Garland) will be qualified. And (McConnell) certainly thinks he would be somebody that he could support.”
Garland was former President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016.
However, McConnell infuriated Democrats by declining to hold Senate confirmation hearings on Garland, saying the next president should have that choice.
The idea of Garland as the next FBI director was posed by Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee after President Trump on Tuesday fired agency Director James Comey.
Some are considering Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn as well. Politico.com writes about some serious complications, however.
If President Donald Trump selects Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn as his next FBI director it would accelerate a major shift in Republican politics with implications for both the Senate and the national GOP.
If Cornyn were to accept the position as director, it would leave a GOP leadership vacuum in the Whip position.
Further, ABCNews.com indicates there are 11 candidates in the running besides John Cornyn:
Rep Trey Gowdy;
Former Rep Mike Rogers;
Former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly
Former 4th DCA Judge J Michael Luttig;
Former Deputy AG Larry Thompson;
Current FBI official Paul Abbate;
Former Assistant AG Alice Fisher;
Current Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe (worst choice);
Former Manhattan US Attorney Michael Garcia;
Former US Attorney John Suthers.
At this point I think I’m safe to say that, no matter who President Trump selects, there’s going to be a fight in confirmation.
This is the continuation of a series of posts dealing with issues where some individuals in the United States government are attempting to hold at least a portion of the rest of the federal government accountable and responsible for its actions and inactions. The public displays we find, however, are not unlike the most bizarre of Kabuki Theater or Theater of the Absurd.
My thanks to the SHR Media Network™ for allowing me to broadcast in their studio and over their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as appear on the Sack Heads Radio Show™ each Wednesday evening.
Our special guest on the show was veteran and author J.L. “Jim” Curtis from 
I’ve read Jim’s work, I purchased all of his books (as you can see above) and I believe in his writing. For those who enjoy military/law enforcement-oriented books, Jim’s 
Mind you, the mid-and-upper level managers aren’t. They were too busy aligning themselves and slashing at each other in order to grasp a small piece of the bottom of former FBI Director James Comey’s cape, hoping to climb over whatever corpses necessary to kiss the Comey Ring.