Schiff Memo Released, Sheriff Under Investigation, Media Madness, A Simple Casket

Inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola
made this treated plywood casket for Rev. Billy Graham
in 2006. Graham, who died Feb. 21, 2018, led ministries
that supported the construction of two chapels
at the country's largest maximum security prison.

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Schiff Memo Released - Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and other Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released their memo over the weekend.  The Schiff memo was supposed to counter the Nunes memo, which outlined how elements of the "Deep State" tried to sabotage the Trump Administration.

The Schiff memo is a complete failure.  You can tell because they wouldn't have released it on a Saturday afternoon if it was at all compelling.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote that the Schiff memo confirms that the FBI relied entirely on the discredited Steele dossier to obtain a warrant to wiretap Carter Page and that the government misled the court regarding its origins.  That warrant was the foot in the door to monitoring others within the Trump transition team.

Nothing in the Schiff memo undercuts the work of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes.  In fact, McCarthy summed up his analysis of the Schiff memo by writing that it "does more to harm than to advance the Democrats' defense of the Obama administration and the use of the FISA process by the FBI and the DOJ."

By the way, the media and the left are lying again when they suggest that the Trump Administration deliberately blocked its release.  The Schiff memo went through the same process as the Nunes memo.

There was a committee vote, and then the memo had to be vetted by appropriate intelligence agencies.  But unlike the Nunes memo, Democrats intentionally included material that had to be redacted, which delayed the process.

Here's the bottom line, friends:  Even with all the monitoring and intercepts that occurred, no one found any evidence of collusion with Russia because there wasn't any.

Let me remind you that Russia's meddling effort wasn't meant to elect Trump.  It was intended to exacerbate tensions within America.  And it continues to this day with the Russian operatives exploiting the Parkland< shooting and divisions over gun control.

Sheriff Under Investigation - Over the weekend, Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran and more than 70 state legislators sent a letter to Governor Rick Scott demanding the removal of Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel for "incompetence and neglect of duty."

The letter comes after news that local law enforcement officials received more than 20 calls about school shooter Nikolas Cruz, including warnings that he had held a gun to heads of relatives and fears that he "planned to shoot up the school."

Yesterday, Governor Rick Scott announced that he had ordered an immediate investigation of the response to the Parkland school shooting.  That investigation will be conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Sheriff Scott Israel is refusing to step down.  Israel is aggressively defending himself in the media, and continuing to attack the NRA.

By the way, in recent years a member of Sheriff Israel's team has been busy briefing Florida mosques on active shooter situations.  His advice to the mosque members:  "Arm yourselves."  So Sheriff Israel and his team think mosque attendees should arm themselves but public school employees should not.

Media Madness - It would be virtually impossible to offer an award for ridiculous headlines because there are too many possible recipients.  But a recent headline from a Washington Post editorial is a clear front runner:  "Guns Are Killing Our Inalienable Right To Life."  This is from a newspaper that never saw an abortion it didn't like.

The taking of 17 innocent lives in Parkland, Florida, was an evil act.  But the daily carnage from abortion is well over 1,700 innocent lives lost.

Sadly, there is no media outrage about the inalienable right to life for innocent children in the womb.  While corporate sponsors are abandoning the NRA, >Planned Parenthood has no trouble raking in corporate cash.

A Simple Casket - Several years ago, the Graham family decided that Billy and Ruth Graham would be buried in simple pine caskets.  The source of those caskets, however, would likely surprise many people.  They were made by convicts at the nation's largest maximum security prison in Angola, Louisiana.

Richard "Grasshopper" Liggett was one of the inmates who built the Grahams' caskets.  At the time, he said, "Billy Graham is a simple man who preached a simple message.  He must be buried in a simple casket."  You can read about the tremendous transformation of the Angola prison here.
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Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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