John Lausch needs to stay as US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois

Posted: February 14, 2021 by John Ruberry in business, crime, elections, News/opinion, politics
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Blogger with Durbin in Chicago in 2020

By John Ruberry

Last Monday the Justice Department asked 56 U.S. attorneys to resign. There were two exceptions, John Durham, the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, will stay on as the special counsel for the investigation of the Russian collusion hoax, and David Weiss, the prosecutor for Delaware, who is pursuing the probe into Hunter Biden’s taxes, and presumably, more.

Among the others are John R. Lausch Jr., the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, which of course includes that cesspool of corruption, Chicago and suburban Cook County. Appointed in 2017, Lausch has been methodically hacking away at the blighted forest that is Illinois government ever since. Among those indicted under Lausch’s term are a Chicago alderman, two suburban mayors (one of them was also Cook County commissioner), and two members of the Illinois General Assembly. They have one thing in common–all are Democrats. Lausch has chipped away at the political machine of state Representative Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), who until last month had been state House speaker for all but two years since 1983. Lausch uncovered an alleged scam involving Commonwealth Edison, Illinois’ largest electric utility, that has led to the indictment of four senior executives at that company, as well as a longtime lobbyist with decades-long ties to Boss Madigan. 

Madigan is the midwife of the Illinois pension debacle and he is the man who destroyed Illinois. Sadly, those aren’t crimes.

Lausch seems to be closing the ring on Madigan, who remains as chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party, a post he’s held since 1998. Madigan maintains his innocence and he has not been charged with any crimes. But he’s a tough one to investigate–Madigan doesn’t use email and he doesn’t own a cell phone. There’s a lot of smoke surrounding the 78-year-old legislator–but so far no fire has been discovered. 

It took a lot longer than it should have but Illinois’ insipid Republican Party, the Washington Generals to the Democrats’ Harlem Globetrotters, finally pursued tying other Democratic candidates to Madigan, which led to a pretty good, but not great, general election for conservatives last autumn. The best result was the resounding defeat of the so-called Fair Tax Amendent, which would have replaced Illinois’ flat rate income tax with one with graduated rates. As I’ve quipped a few times before, Illinoisans finally figured out that if the Democrats were given an unlimited budget they would exceed it. 

After the general election Illinois’ two Democratic US Senators, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, called for Madigan’s resignation as party chairman. No, they didn’t suddenly realize that Madigan is toxic to Illinois; Durbin and Duckworth didn’t like the general election results here. 

The state House took care of the speakership problem, the Democrats ousted Madigan last month but replaced him with a longtime ally of the Boss. 

The day after the Justice Department announced those federal prosecutor resignations, in what the Chicago Tribune called “a lame news release,”  those two party-line hack senators called on Biden to keep Lausch on the job. I am very suspicious of their motives. Duckworth is up for reelection next year and if the federal investigation into Chicago area corruption stalls she might get the blunt of the blame for not convincing Biden to keep Lausch in place. 

Durbin is the new Senate Justice Committee chairman and prefers not to be accused of keeping corrupt Dems in power in his home state. Back to gerrymandering and Madigan: Aftet the 2010 census the state congressional map was redrawn to be much more favorable to Democrats. The 8th congressional district was transformed from a competitive one to a layout favoring Democrats. In 2012 Duckworth ousted the Republican incumbent, future never-Trumper Joe Walsh.

Remember, for many Democrats Madigan has been very good to them. His skills at gerrymandering have produced supermajorities in the General Assembly and have bolstered Democratic numbers among the Illinois US House delegation. There may have never been a Senator Duckworth had she not won that House race in 2012. Through government and compliant corporations like Commonwealth Edison, Madigan has been able to hand out contracts, favors, and jobs to those loyal to him–as well as their relatives.

Lausch needs to be kept on the job in Chicago. 

Biden’s nominee for Attorney General is Merrick Garland, a Chicago area native who was nominated by Barack Obama to the US Supreme Court seat that eventually went to Neil Gorsuch. But he hasn’t lived here in decades. Yet my guess is that Garland has kept his eyes on the fetid muck in Illinois. Perhaps he can put in a good word for Lausch to Biden or whoever is making the calls in the White House on federal prosecutors.

Sorry to be repetitive, but I have to keep mentioning this fact. Illinois has lost population every year since 2014. 

People have wised up. But not me. Not yet.

UPDATE February 23: Last night Michael Madigan resigned his post as chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party. Last week Madigan gave up his House seat after 50 years in the General Assembly. Term limits anyone?

This afternoon, according to multiple media reports, Lausch will keep his job as US attorney until a replacement is found and presumably confirmed.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.

Democrat Pols Under Oath in the Senate? F-That lets get this trial over NOW!

Posted: February 14, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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Yesterday’s acquittal of the president making him, as the Babylon Bee puts it “The most acquitted president in history“, was amusing in several ways.

The complete meltdown of the left on twitter was satisfying. I haven’t seen them this angry since Tom Brady won the superbowl last week.

Mitch McConnell’s speech against Trump, while annoying and to some degree anger was also amusing in the sense that he laid a trap for Democrats to pursue the President in a court of law. A trap that would likely bring out a lot of evidence that the left and the democrats don’t want to see the light of day.

But the best part and most amusing of the day had to be the sudden of Democrat House impeachment managers, realizing that their case had fallen apart push for a vote on calling witnesses something that was thought to be previously settled.

Remember these are the same guys who rushed an impeachment vote through, without hearings, without evidence and without thought and then sat on it.

The Democrats got their vote and managed to when that had already been settled, Collins, Murkowski, Sasse, Romney all voted for witnesses and at that point Lindsey Graham decided to change is vote to support witnesses and made it clear there were several he wanted to call.

And that’s when the fun began.

The first problem was the rules that state that witnesses have to be deposed before they appear in the Senate which would mean a long delay, but since the senate had pretty much thrown the constitution out the window by having this proceeding it likely wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch to have a vote to fudge that.

No the real kicker was this. It was made clear that if witnesses being called several Democrat lawmakers including Nancy Pelosi would be called by the Trump team and would have answer questions under oath.

Now if there is one thing that Democrats were more afraid of than the prospect of having election fraud cases being ruled on their merits rather than on procedural grounds it’s having Democrat office holders having to testify under oath and having that testimony being part of the public record.

Once it became clear that would be the case the shine which had so excited the left (take a look at some of the tweet at this Breitbart post) particularly from media who had just said how afraid the GOP was of witnesses. How could this be? How could they cave? What is going on?

This is the problem with living in a bubble, you actually start to believe your own press releases

The anger on the acquittal was one thing, we all expected this but for them to win on a witness vote and then once getting the win watching them run for their dear lives…

…that’s special.

Final thought:

Given that massive failures already taking place in the Biden Administration the media/left likely could use a prolonged impeachment to distract from what is going on with the economy, with jobs, with schools, with the border, with Iran, etc etc etc. Weeks of people speculating on witnesses, what they are saying who is going to be called, how much time for depositions and the ever present possibility of getting Donald Trump to say something anything out of turn so they could cover that rather than spinning or ignoring Biden crashing and burning would have been invaluable.

Think how damaging the potential testimony of Democrat officials oath must have been for they guys to throw this distraction away?

Democratic governance

Posted: February 13, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

While D.C. Democrats try to impeach now-former President Trump, a constitutionally-questionable but revealing move – seems they can’t believe Biden won, either – the Democratic governors of the nation’s two largest states, California and New York, are in crisis mode.

A senior aide to Governor Andrew Cuomo – son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo – has now confessed to covering up the numbers of nursing home deaths caused by the Wuhan virus, which should doom Cuomo’s political present, let alone future. The poor dears were worried big bad President Trump was going to use the data against them politically, so they decided to lie to the public.

Last March, as the Wuhan virus took hold, Cuomo notoriously ordered infected elderly patients to return to their nursing home residence, where the virus would spread like, well, a highly contagious virus. In the U.S., 34% of all Wuhan-related deaths have been in nursing homes.

Cuomo claimed there had been 8,500 Wuhan-caused deaths in New York nursing home. Turns out it was nearly 15,000 people who died.

A man of any trace of honor would have resigned his office, but the days of honor seem lost, a relic of another time. Only chumps resign office these days, it seems.

Meanwhile, in California, the recall of Governor Gavin Newsom is on. The recall campaign reports it has obtained the required 1.5 million petition signatures, a month ahead of the St. Patrick’s Day deadline. Once the signatures are confirmed, the state Secretary of State – Democrat Shirley Weber – will schedule a recall election, likely in the fall.

The only other California governor to be recalled successfully was Democrat Gray Davis in 2003, replaced by Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. So far, Republican John Cox, the Republican candidate who lost to Newsom in 2018, has announced his intention to run again, as has the former mayor of San Diego, Republican Kevin Faulconer.

Trump’s former ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, appears set to run as well.

The media will be disappointed to know that one-time Bruce-named Olympic champion Caitlyn Jenner has declined to run. The media’s loss is sanity’s gain.

Some strategists claim Grenell’s candidacy will doom the effort at unseating Newsom, turning the election into a contest between Newsom and a Trumpist. But that ignores the dynamics of a California recall election.

On the recall ballot, voters will be asked two questions: shall Newsome be recalled, and, if so, who shall be governor? If more than 50% vote to recall Newsom, then whoever gains the majority of the remaining vote wins. Which means Grenell needs only a plurality of votes, not a majority, to be elected. With Trump still seeing strong support among Republican voters, dismissing Grenell’s chances would be unwise.

We want belief

Posted: February 13, 2021 by ng36b in dablog, Uncomfortable Truths
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As the impeachment trial winds down, what’s next?

My prediction: widespread non-compliance of future laws.

I watched the Bill Clinton impeachment trial, and it seemed pretty silly at the time. On one side, we wanted to remove a President for lying about a sexual relation he had with an intern. His defense seemed just as silly, as I watched people come up and talk about everything from race relations to economics. All around, it seemed kinda silly.

Trump’s impeachments were even sillier. Admitting news reports as evidence, without actually using eye witnesses or first-hand accounts? It basically broke down to “Trump said things we don’t like,” which in itself is a double standard considering the large number of Senators and Representatives that call for violence against Trump supporters on a regular basis.

Trump’s impeachment won’t change anything in Washington DC. But it will move a lot of people to no longer comply with the law. In front of everyone we’ve seen how the justice system no longer seeks justice. We’ve seen how easy it is to throw someone in jail over small items, or worse, over news reports that don’t have a shred of truth to them. The justice system is committed to getting convictions, period. The truth has become a afterthought.

People will react accordingly. When people don’t believe that the laws they live under are fair, they will find ways to circumvent them. They also will remove their participation from this part of society. We’re already seeing this as police forces are struggling to recruit new officers. The military faced this problem in the wake of the Vietnam Conflict, and will likely face it again given the new focus on “domestic terrorism.” Nobody wants to work where you could get punished capriciously, so they’ll vote with their feet.

The next thing we’re going to see is non-compliance with the worst of rules. If President Biden pushes for gun control, you’ll have gun owners melt into the background. The police can’t afford to go door to door and search every single house to find guns. Heck, they can’t find all of the illegal weapons, let alone legal ones. The same will go for LGBT training, zoning rules, traffic fines, etc. People will simply walk out of training, not follow zoning rules and simply not pay fines. The more it happens, the harder it’ll be to enforce compliance, and the more it will embolden these actions.

We live in a society that relies on most people voluntarily following the law. Police officers are there to punish law breakers, but we’ll never have enough cops to punish widespread disregard for the law. If a large swath of the population doesn’t believe the law is fair or being applied fairly, they’re going to disobey, and it’ll be difficult to stop them.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

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