Webster’s dictionary defines “Potemkin village” as “an impressive façade or show designed to hide an undesirable fact or condition.” So it is that the adjective “Potemkin” is used to characterize any artifice contrived to deceive others into thinking that things are better than they really are. As set forth below, I pose the question as to whether or not, based on its operations and recent events, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“FISC”) can fairly be described as a Potemkin institution which in reality serves only to give the false impression that it is protecting U.S. citizens by imposing constitutional limits on...
Not too long ago, I was privileged to represent a former big city police officer who had been charged with raping two young women of questionable virtue. He had met one of them through an online site where, among other things, prostitutes advertised their services. That purported victim had introduced him to her friend who became the second complainant. It was no secret – and the prosecution was well aware – that the two young women were hookers. Nevertheless, despite the fact that my client had retired after being grievously wounded in the line of duty, he was arrested in...
“Tickling the wire.” That’s the slang expression used by law enforcement personnel to describe the process of trying to breathe life into a moribund or unproductive wiretap. When the subjects of such surveillance fail to discuss their criminal activities over the monitored telephones or at the bugged premises, surreptitious steps can be taken to induce them to do so. For example, in the case of a federal wiretap on a drug dealer’s telephone, if few incriminating communications have been intercepted, the local police can be enlisted to conduct an apparently unrelated car stop, interrogation and search of the subject. This...
In 1949 my parents moved from the small town of East Point, Georgia to a quiet, tree-lined street in the northwest section of Atlanta. There we had wonderful neighbors who became our close friends and with whom we shared life’s joys and sorrows. I could – and probably should – write a book about growing up in that neighborhood during the 1950s and 1960s. Until then, suffice it to say that, according to today’s child safety experts, I was killed or seriously maimed approximately 4,279 times before reaching adolescence. The boys on our block played with bows and arrows, knives,...
In his muddled, obfuscatory farewell remarks, Special Counsel Robert Mueller strongly suggested that, although he and his cohort of Hillary Clinton acolytes had reached no conclusion as to whether President Trump had obstructed justice, Congress should address that question by means of the impeachment “process”. Why? Because Team Mueller had not been able to “exonerate” the President. But exoneration is a non-legal standard which completely inverts and perverts our system of justice which places the burden of proof on the prosecution to prove its case. In every criminal trial across America, the judge instructs the jury that the burden of...
Now that the Russian collusion hoax has been debunked, and not even the Hillary Clinton acolytes who comprised Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office saw fit to charge the president with obstruction of justice, the party is about to get very rough for the FBI, Justice Department and CIA leaders who concocted the hoax and who illegally spied on American citizens. On April 10, 2019, Attorney General William Barr testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had been spied upon by U.S. intelligence agencies. According to Barr, the “question was whether it [the spying] was adequately predicated.”...
Today before the Senate Appropriations Committee Attorney General William Barr gave testimony that is guaranteed to pucker Deep State sphincters throughout the D.C. swamp. Regarding spying on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, he testified as follows: ATTORNEY GENERAL BARR: As I said in my confirmation hearing, I am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016. And a lot of this has already been investigated, and a substantial portion of it has been investigated and is being investigated by the office of the Inspector General, but one of the...
It’s been a busy time here. Today The American Spectator published my piece refuting the New York Times’ claim that the FBI started investigating President Trump after he fired FBI Director James Comey. Titled The FBI Prostituted Itself, you can link to it at the TAS website here or you can read it below. Also today, the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s website, Philly.com, published my commentary regarding the negative impact of Philadelphia’s sweetened beverage tax on supermarket sales in the city. You can link to it here or read it below after the TAS article. One Inky reader had a strong reaction...