THE ‘RESISTANCE' GOES LIVE-FIRE

By Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/
June 14, 2017


A wounded person is stretchered away from a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday, June 14th. A gunman opened fire on Republican congressmen as they practiced baseball at the field. (CNN)

The explosion of violence against conservatives across the country is being intentionally ginned up by Democrats, reporters, TV hosts, late-night comedians and celebrities, who compete with one another to come up with the most vile epithets for Trump and his supporters. 

They go right up to the line, trying not to cross it, by, for example, vamping with a realistic photo of a decapitated Trump or calling the president a "piece of s---" while hosting a show on CNN. 

The media are orchestrating a bloodless coup, but they're perfectly content to have their low-IQ shock troops pursue a bloody coup. 

This week, one of the left's foot soldiers gunned down Republican members of Congress and their staff while they were playing baseball in Virginia. Democratic Socialist James Hodgkinson was prevented from committing a mass murder only by the happenstance of a member of the Republican leadership being there, along with his 24-hour Capitol Police protection. 

Remember when it was frightening for the losing party not to accept the results of an election? During the third debate, Trump refused to pre-emptively agree to the election results, saying he'd "look at it at the time." 

The media responded in their usual laid-back style: 

A 'HORRIFYING' REPUDIATION OF DEMOCRACY -- The Washington Post, Oct. 20, 2016 

DENIAL OF DEMOCRACY -- Daily News (New York), Oct. 20, 2016 DANGER TO DEMOCRACY -- The Dallas Morning News, Oct. 20, 2016 

ONE SCARY MOMENT; IT ALL BOILED DOWN TO ... DEMOCRACY -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Oct. 21, 2016 

"(Shock) spiked down the nation's spinal column last night and today when the Republican nominee threatened that this little election thing you got there, this little democratic process you've got here, it's nice, it's fine, but he doesn't necessarily plan on abiding by its decision when it comes to the presidency." -- Rachel Maddow, Oct. 20, 2016

"Trump's answer on accepting the outcome of the vote is the most disgraceful statement by a presidential candidate in 160 years." -- Bret Stephens, then-deputy editorial page editor at The Wall Street Journal 

"I guess we're all going to have to wait until Nov. 9 to find out if we still have a country -- if Donald Trump is in the mood for a peaceful transfer of power. Or if he's going to wipe his fat a-- with the Constitution." -- CBS's Stephen Colbert, Oct. 19, 2016 

"It's unprecedented for a nominee of a major party to themselves signal that they would not accept -- you know, respect the results of an election. We've never had that happen before. ... This really presents a potentially difficult problem for governing ..." -- MSNBC'S Joy Reid, Oct. 22, 2016 

"This is very dangerous stuff ... would seriously impair our functioning as a democracy. ... This is about as serious as it gets in the United States." -- CNN's Peter Beinart, Oct. 20, 2016 

"Obviously, it's despicable for him to pretend that there's any chance that he would not accept the results of this election; it would be -- in 240 years you've never had anybody do it. ..." -- CNN's Van Jones, Oct. 20, 2016 

Then Trump won, and these very same hysterics refused to accept the results of the election. 

Recently, Hillary announced her steadfast opposition to the winning candidate using a military term, saying she'd joined the "Resistance." 

Imagine if Trump lost and then announced that he'd joined the "RESISTANCE." He'd be accused of trying to activate right-wing militias. Every dyspeptic glance at an immigrant would be reported as fascistic violence. 

But the media seem blithely unaware that the anti-Trump "Resistance" has been accompanied by nonstop militaristic violence from liberals. 

When Trump ripped up our Constitution and jumped all over it by failing to concede the election three weeks in advance, CNN ran a segment on a single tweet from a random Trump supporter that mentioned the Second Amendment. 

Carol Costello: "Still to come in the 'Newsroom,' some Trump supporters say they will refuse to accept a loss on Election Day, with one offering a threat of violence. We'll talk about that next." 

In CNN's most fevered dreams about a violent uprising of Trump supporters, they never could have conceived of the level of actual violence being perpetrated by Americans who refuse to accept Trump's win. (See Hate Map.) 

It began with Trump's inauguration, when a leftist group plotted to pump a debilitating gas into one Trump inaugural ball, military families were assaulted upon leaving the Veterans' Inaugural Ball, and attendees of other balls had water thrown on them. 

Since then, masked, armed liberals around the country have formed military-style organizations to beat up conservatives. In liberal towns, the police are regularly ordered to stand down to allow the assaults to proceed unimpeded. 

The media only declared a crisis when conservatives fought back, smashing the black-clad beta males. ("Battle for Berkeley!") 

There is more media coverage for conservatives' "microaggressions" toward powerful minorities -– such as using the wrong pronoun -- than there is for liberals' physical attacks on conservatives, including macings, concussions and hospitalizations. 

And now some nut Bernie Sanders-supporter confirms that it's Republicans standing on a baseball field, before opening fire. 

In the media's strategic reporting of the attempted slaughter, we were quickly told that the mass shooter was white, male and had used a gun. We were even told his name. (Because it was not "Mohammed.") 

But the fact that Hodgkinson's Facebook page featured a banner of Sanders and the words "Democratic Socialism explained in 3 words: 'We the People' Since 1776" apparently called for hours of meticulous fact-checking by our media. 

Did reporters think they could keep that information from us forever? 

The fake news insists that Trump's White House is in "chaos." No, the country is in chaos. But just like Kathy Griffin and her Trump decapitation performance art -- the perpetrators turn around in doe-eyed innocence and blame Trump. 

COPYRIGHT 2017 ANN COULTER 

'G-Man' Is A Book That'll Make You Root For The Hardboiled Good Guy Again

Frank Miniter 

https://www.forbes.com/

May 16, 2017

Stephen Hunter's latest novel G-Man, in the Bob Lee Swagger series, is a roaring good read.

Bob Lee Swagger is a Middle America Dirty Harry. He is a blunt, tough cop who knows his guns and how to use them. He is a purely American character of fiction we wouldn’t like to be on the wrong side of, but oh how we want to hear about what he has done to those who prey on us.

As the tenth Bob Lee Swagger novel, G-Man is Stephen Hunter’s Lonesome Dove, a big sort of book that takes well-established characters, especially Bob Lee himself, and puts them on an action-packed mission of self-discovery. Where it leads is a warning to us all about digging into the past to understand ourselves.

To explain why Hunter took the saga of this family into the past Hunter refers to himself as a “cranky old man” as he says that “ire” from Michael Mann’s pathetic 2009 movie version of Public Enemies(Johnny Depp as bank robber John Dillinger, come on!) prompted him to sit down and write G-Man. This book flashes back and forth from the present, as Bob Lee Swagger digs into the past and rouses old ghosts, to the gangster age of Baby Face Nelson and Bonnie and Clyde as Swagger’s grandfather is recruited to do something FBI agents weren’t so good at, out-shooting Tommy gun-toting gangsters.

Hunter was, of course, a movie critic for much of his career. He won a Pulitzer for movie criticism when he worked for The Washington Post. So movies, as manifestations of culture, are a big deal to Hunter. That's how a bad Hollywood version of America’s gangster-era ticked off a talented writer enough to make him give us a roaring good book.

The story begins as Bob Lee Swagger sells the Swagger family farm in Arkansas. When developers begin tearing down the farmhouse they find a steel case filled with 1934 memorabilia belonging to Charles Swagger, Bob Lee’s grandfather. Swagger’s father, Earl, had refused to talk about Charles, so the discovery of Charles’ well-preserved Model 1911 pistol and more starts Bob Lee on a quest to find out what happened to his grandfather.

As Swagger searches into the past, and to the hidden facts about his grandfather’s role in hunting gangsters, he unearths things others want to know. This past-to-present plot isn’t jarring, but rather is riveting.

This is the tenth book of the Swagger series and it answers questions that anyone who has followed the Swagger family saga want to know. Honestly though, after I first met Stephen Hunter in 2010, I was so enthralled by him—he is a natural story teller with an engaging demeanor—I picked up his 1993 novel Point of Impact, his first of the Swagger series, and couldn’t get into it. Hunter opens the novel with a deer-hunting scene to establish the Bob Lee Swagger character, but though it is wonderfully written, he gets key details about hunting and whitetail deer wrong—such as saying whitetail bucks have “harems” of does. It made me mistrust and dislike the book and I put it down.

Later, after finding that Hunter is a writer who physically explores what he writes about, such as the guns he writes so well about, I picked up other books in the series and was, again and again, grabbed by Hunter's writing and his characters.

In G-Man, here is how Hunter describes the Swagger lineage of tough, gun-savvy men: “The Swaggers, on back over the years, men with guns. And the men of the last three generations, Charles, his son Earl and his son Bob, they had it in spades and were, each of them, defined by war. Throw in Bob’s son, Ray, now at the FBI, defined by the War on Terror in the world’s brutal sandboxes. That made four straight. They all had it, that Swagger singularity that set them apart, curse or blessing, as circumstances dictated. Who knew where it came from, that odd gift to take a firearm, understand it, and make the first shot count—always.”

In the book Bob Lee decides he has to answer one question, even though he is warned to let the bloody past stay buried six-feet down. He wants to know: “Who was Charles F. Swagger.”

As Hunter masterfully pulls the thread that unravels this action-packed story it's hard to stop reading, as you just have to find out what Swagger discovers. 

(My latest book, out this summer, is a thriller called Kill Big Brother, an Orwellian nightmare that leads to a real answer about the future of our freedom.)

MR. TRUMP IS IN WASHINGTON

It is time for Trump to delegate the dirty work of attacking his opponents to his attorneys, advisers and supporters.

BYCAROLINE B. GLICK

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/

June 12, 2017


President Donald Trump announces his intent to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord on in the Rose Garden of the White House. ANDREW HARNIK/AP

Thursday afternoon, US President Donald Trump reacted to former FBI director James Comey’s Senate testimony by telling an audience of his supporters, “We are under siege.”

He was right.

Trump and his presidency are besieged by an army of investigators whose apparent goal is to delegitimize, with the goal of destroying, his presidency.

This was the lesson of Comey’s testimony on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Comey came before the committee to share his assessment of the connection between his firing last month and the FBI’s ongoing investigation of ties Trump, his advisers and associates maintained with Russian agents during the 2016 elections and the transition period that preceded his inauguration on January 20.

Despite the fact that the investigation was launched well before the November election, no evidence has surfaced of criminal wrongdoing by Trump or his associates.

So what purpose does the investigation serve? Among the important things Comey shared on Thursday was the answer to that question.

The first important piece of information Comey shared was that Trump is not and never has been under investigation.

Second, Comey told us he views Trump as a uniquely unacceptable president. Whereas Comey kept no notes of his meetings with former president Barack Obama; and whereas he wrote no summaries of his meetings with former president George W. Bush, Comey said that he wrote summaries of all of his communications with Trump.

Comey explained the disparity by noting, repeatedly, that he views Trump as singularly untruthful.

This is notable because, as Comey made clear Thursday, in everything related to the two men’s dealings since November, it has been Comey, not Trump, who has been deliberately misleading.

In his termination letter to Comey last month, Trump wrote that Comey had informed him three times that he was not under investigation.

And yet, in his March testimony before the Senate, Comey refused to admit that Trump was not a subject of investigation. To the contrary, Comey’s statement on the issue was deliberately vague and therefore misleading.

Even more damning, Comey admitted Thursday that he used a friend as a conduit to leak selected, and as it turns out, misleading, portions of his memo summarizing a meeting he held with Trump in February to The New York Times.

The article that the Times published on the basis of that memo alleged that during that conversation, Trump pressured Comey to close his criminal investigation of Trump’s former national security adviser Lt.- Gen. Michael Flynn.

During his testimony Thursday, Comey admitted under questioning that Trump did no such thing; Trump merely expressed his hope that Flynn would be cleared of criminal suspicion.

In other words, it was Comey, not Trump, who lied about the contents of their meeting.

Finally, and most crucially, Comey explained that he deliberately misled the public about Trump’s statements to him through his selective leak to the Times in order to achieve a political goal.

“I asked” my friend to communicate the contents of the memo with a reporter “because I thought that might prompt the appointment of the special counsel,” Comey said.

Indeed, the media storm set off by the Times’s story compelled Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein to appoint Comey’s close personal friend, former FBI director Robert Mueller, to serve as a special counsel.

Mueller’s mandate is expansive. Not only is he empowered to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” he is also empowered to investigate “matters that arise or may arise directly from the investigation and other matters within the scope of [the federal statute governing special counsels].”

In other words, Mueller is empowered to investigate anything he wants. He can charge people for illegal ties with Russia. And he can charge people who did nothing wrong with obstructing his investigation if he doesn’t like the way they answer his questions on Russia.

And, Mueller can keep the investigation open forever, keeping the pall of criminality over Trump’s presidency until the day he leaves office even if Mueller never indicts anyone.

So what can Trump do? As former House speaker Newt Gingrich and others argued following Comey’s testimony, Trump can and should fire Mueller.

Since Comey’s manipulative and misleading leak fomented Mueller’s appointment, and since Mueller is Comey’s close friend, Mueller cannot credibly be considered an impartial investigator.

Finally, since Trump is not under investigation, and given that both the House and the Senate are carrying out separate investigations into the same alleged collusion between Trump’s associates and the Russian government, there is no rationale for a third investigation by a special counsel.

Beyond firing Mueller, Trump should move immediately to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations of criminal wrongdoing by Obama administration officials.

Whereas Republican lawmakers are cooperating with Democratic lawmakers in the congressional probes against Trump and his campaign officials, Democratic lawmakers refuse to cooperate with their Republican counterparts in investigating any aspect of suspected illegal behavior by Obama administration officials.

Consider the case of former attorney-general Loretta Lynch.

Comey served up Lynch on Thursday when he told the Senate that she had instructed him not to refer to the criminal probe of then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s transfer of State Department documents, including classified documents to her private Internet server, as an investigation. Instead, in line with the language used by the Clinton campaign to diminish the significance of the probe, Lynch instructed Comey to refer to the investigation as “a matter.”

Comey’s statement alone provided the basis for a criminal probe of collusion between the Obama Justice Department and the Clinton campaign.

Then there is the issue of alleged abuse of NSA intercepts by senior Obama administration officials to spy on US citizens.

Given the Democrats’ stonewalling of their Republican colleagues, it would be eminently sensible for Trump to appoint a special counsel with the power to investigate all aspects of alleged unlawful spying on US citizens allegedly conducted by the Obama administration.

Finally, and most importantly, the time has come for Trump to recognize that he is no longer running for office and to begin to use the powers of the presidency presidentially.

The most urgent aspect of this is for Trump to fill the thousands of federal positions that are now being filled by Obama’s political appointees.

Once Trump hires professionals not loyal to Obama to fill mid-level and senior positions, the deluge of classified material daily making its way to the media will dry up. People who support, or at a minimum do not oppose, Trump’s presidency will have no impetus to abuse their positions to damage his presidency.

Staffing the federal government with people who do not hate Trump will also enable him to implement his presidential agenda far more effectively than he has to date. And that’s the thing of it: In areas that Trump has managed to advance his agenda – for instance, during his trip last month to the Middle East and Europe – he has been tremendously successful.

So too his legislative agenda is working its way through Congress. Although it is taking longer than he had hoped, it, too, is likely to pass. Lastly, Trump should recognize that governing and running for office are two different things.

When Trump went on the offensive against his Republican rivals in the primaries and against Clinton in the general election, he was punching up. He was empowered by those attacks, while his more established rivals were diminished when they responded.

The moment he swore the oath of office, Trump’s position changed. Now when he attacks his opponents, he diminishes himself and empowers them. When he says that Comey is a liar, he expands Comey’s importance.

It is time for Trump to delegate the dirty work of attacking his opponents to his attorneys, advisers and supporters. He must devote his public appearances entirely to advancing his own presidential agenda.

By firing Mueller, appointing a special counsel to investigate the Obama administration, removing Obama’s political appointees from government and replacing them with his own hires, and concentrating on implementing his agenda, Trump will end the siege on his presidency. He will defeat the self-proclaimed “resistance” whose purpose is to defeat him politically through administrative and bureaucratic abuses.

Whether Trump’s presidency will eventually be successful will still be an unanswered question. But, at the very least, it will finally get off the ground.

If Aaron Judge can chase Roger Maris’ 61 home runs, it could bring feel-good vibe to baseball

By John Harper

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/

June 13, 2017

Could Aaron Judge pass Roger Maris?

 (KATHY WILLENS/AP)

The comparison was too compelling to ignore: with his two home runs on Sunday, Aaron Judge had gone deep 21 times in 58 games. Back in 1961, Roger Maris hit his 21st home run in game No. 57.

In case you were wondering.

And, hey, why not?

At this point, after he hit that ball halfway to the Bronx Courthouse on Sunday, anything seems possible for Judge. He went into Monday night's game in Anaheim leading the American League not only in home runs, but in batting average, RBI, runs scored and walks. And then he hit another bomb in the Yankees’ 5-3 win over the Angels, going the opposite way for a two-run blast — his 22nd of the season — that broke a 3-3 tie in the eighth.

So in that sense, he’s more Mickey Mantle than Maris, raising the possibility of winning the Triple Crown, as Mantle did in 1956, and as no one except Miguel Cabrera has done in the last 50 years.

Still, it was Maris who hit those 61 home runs in 1961, famously breaking Babe Ruth’s single-season record of 60. And while Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds have since obliterated that number, their totals are so egregiously steroids-tainted that, in my mind and I believe millions of others, Maris’ 61 still stands as the unofficial record.

Wouldn’t it be something if Judge took a serious run at that?

As it is, the rookie slugger has completely changed the feel around the Yankees, re-energizing a jaded fan base with his must-see at-bats and athleticism that is remarkable for someone 6-foot-7, 282 pounds.

If he’s in serious pursuit of Maris come August and September, Judge would bring some of that feel-good vibe to the entire sport. In some ways, in fact, he could make home run numbers matter again.

As it is, the steroids era has made us all numb to what was once the most prestigious of all records.

McGwire and Bonds made a mockery of the single-season record, hitting 70 and 73, respectively, and by the time Bonds passed Hank Aaron’s career total of 755, everyone outside of San Francisco was rooting against him.

Likewise, Alex Rodriguez’s admitted steroid use took all the fun out of him reaching 600, and indeed, his numbers were so tainted that even 700 meant nothing to the Yankees, who forced him out only four home runs shy of the mark.

For that matter, even players perceived as clean, like Ken Griffey Jr. and Jim Thome, weren’t celebrated nearly as much for reaching 600 as players from earlier eras were for hitting 500, once the brass ring for all power hitters.

Yet I get the sense Judge could cut through some of that steroids-related fallout.

He’s a one-of-a-kind freakish athlete, but he is also as likeable as they come, which you can probably tell from his humble nature during TV interviews. And you know it’s sincere by the way his teammates react to him, always happy to talk about him.

If it were an act, they’d be rolling their eyes at questions about Judge by now, and, believe me, that’s the not the case.

In the clubhouse a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned to him that A-Rod had told me that he, Judge, bench-presses 450 pounds, which is off-the-charts strong. The young slugger seemed practically embarrassed that A-Rod had let that out publicly.

“I don’t really like to talk about that,” he said, smiling sheepishly.

Not that likeability is the primary reason Judge is the leading All-Star vote-getter in the American League, but it would give even non-Yankee fans a reason to root for him if he does get into some type of home run chase.

And I do think a lot of people would care if he got close to Maris, even if it’s an unofficial record.

Could he do it?

For starters it remains to be seen how much pitchers continue to challenge him. Judge already leads the league with 39 walks, and he’s now hitting .347, so in addition to his power he’s proving to be a very good hitter, getting better at laying off tough pitches and hitting the ball to all fields.

Maris likely would not have hit 61 if he didn’t have Mantle hitting behind him in the clean-up spot that 1961 season. Maris did draw 94 walks that year but he wasn’t intentionally walked even once.

Judge has already received three intentional walks and, while Matt Holliday is having a nice season, at some point he might not deter pitchers from pitching around the Yankees’ No. 3 hitter. However, Gary Sanchez is getting hot now, and maybe he moves into the No. 4 spot behind Judge in the coming weeks, which would be the ideal protection.

In any case, there is no question Judge is capable of hitting 60 home runs or more. Never mind his moon shots; his opposite-field line drives go 400 feet, as his second home run did on Sunday and his game-winning shot did last night.

Could he do it this season? Maris had 27 at the end of June, so Judge needs five more this month to stay on pace. From there, Maris hit 13 in July, 11 in August, nine in September and No. 61 on Oct. 1, in the final game of the regular season off the Red Sox’ Tracy Stallard.

The game that Sunday at the old Stadium was otherwise meaningless, as the 108-win Yankees had long since clinched the pennant, but it’s still remarkable that only 23,154 fans were in attendance that day, with history at stake.

I’m pretty sure that if Judge put himself in a similar position this season, tied with Maris for the Yankees’ season finale against the Blue Jays on Oct. 1, there wouldn’t be an empty seat in the place.

Yes, unofficial record or not, Judge could put the thrill back in the home run chase. And the way he’s going, it might only be a matter of time.

Book Review: ‘House of Spies’ By Daniel Silva

The Real Book Spy

https://therealbookspy.com/

June 11, 2017

Following last year’s bestselling novel The Black Widow, Daniel Silva picks up the story four months later with seventeenth Gabriel Allon novel, House of Spies.

Gabriel Allon, the wayward son of Israeli Intelligence who once served as the most lethal assassin in Israel’s arsenal, has now assumed the position of chief of the Office (the Mossad) after finally taking his long-awaited promotion.

For the first time in the Office’s history, the former director has stayed on after being replaced. Uzi Navot, who was once Gabriel’s career rival, is now his most trusted advisor. With Navot filling a variety of roles and overseeing some of the day-to-day tasks, Allon is able to remain hands-on in the operations department–similar to how his mentor, Ari Shamron ran things back in the day–where he has his work cut out for him.

Saladin, the ISIS mastermind who terrorized the West, and Gabriel–on a direct and personal level–remains at large. With most of the world’s foreign intelligence agencies dedicating significant resources to finding him, Saladin still manages to oversee a number of successful attacks. But when a single loose end presents itself, Gabriel clings to it and begins the difficult process of once again getting close to the world’s most dangerous terrorist.

Fueled by revenge, Gabriel Allon partners with several allied nations and launches a daring mission. Along the way, Silva weaves multiple fan-favorite characters into the fold, forming a strong supporting cast that, among others, includes Christopher Keller, the former British special ops soldier turned Corsica-based assassin turned newly minted MI6 agent.

Keller is just one in a long list of names that longtime fans of Silva’s series will recognize. Also back are Mikhail Abramov and Natalie Mizrahi, relatively new characters who are fleshed out and developed further in House of Spies, each playing a prominent role in Gabriel’s operation. 

After a long and successful career, Silva is still finding new ways to surprise his readers. Any worries that the series would shift in a negative way once Allon officially left field work can be put to rest. Silva might have tweaked his arsenal a tad, but he can still command his fastball with lethal accuracy and laser-like precision. And while his universe is rich with compelling characters, Allon is still the ace of his staff– and he can absolutely still carry this franchise.  

House of Spies is just the type of relentless, high-powered, headline-beating thriller that readers have come to expect from Silva, one of the truly great, must-read authors of his time. 

Book Details

Author: Daniel Silva
Series: Gabriel Allon #17
Pages: 544 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 0062354345
Publisher: Harper
Release Date: July 11, 2017
Book Spy Rating: 9/10
Order Now!

How come no one asks Tom Cruise about Scientology?

By Maureen Callahan

http://nypost.com/

June 8, 2017

Tom Cruise in a still from "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief" (Credit: HBO)

On his latest press tour for “The Mummy,” Tom Cruise has taken questions about his stunt work, his co-stars, his “Top Gun” sequel — all the toothless, boilerplate stuff Tom Cruise usually gets asked.

But why won’t anyone pose the one question he really should answer: How can Cruise possibly remain not just a Scientologist but its leading ambassador?

Even those with a glancing knowledge of the organization understand it’s deeply sinister. Yet over the past few years, the American public has learned more about Scientology, and Tom Cruise’s crucial role in it, than ever.

The publication of Lawrence Wright’s award-winning book “Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief” in 2015 exposed allegations of the abusive, corrupt and demented space-alien fiction it was long rumored to be. A harrowing HBO documentary followed, as did apostate Leah Remini’s memoir “Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology” and her docu-series “Scientology and the Aftermath,” which A&E picked up for an expanded second season, airing this summer.

Remini was raised a Scientologist from age nine and only left in 2013. “Even though I had been a member of the church for a very long time, I was stunned by some of things I learned,” she told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the show’s debut. “This series is breaking ground in bringing that information to light.”

Cruise, 54, has been an avowed Scientologist since the early 1990s, saying that the group helped him with his dyslexia. As he aged, things got weirder: He offered “detoxification therapy,” which Scientologists believe can eliminate toxins and drug addictions through vitamins and saunas, to 9/11 rescue workers. In 2004, he went on TV and castigated a “glib” Matt Lauer for not believing, as Cruise did, that “psychiatry should be outlawed.” The following year, he publicly criticized Brooke Shields for taking medication for post-partum depression, calling her “irresponsible.”

“These drugs are dangerous,” he told Access Hollywood. “When you talk about post-partum, you can take people today, women, and what you do is use vitamins.”

“Tom should stick to saving the world from aliens,” Shields replied.

The spectacular end of Cruise’s third marriage in 2012, with Katie Holmes seeming to flee in the night with their daughter and her freedom, aroused genuine suspicion. If someone with the protections of Holmes’s wealth and fame was afraid, what was really going on with Scientology?

It strains credulity to think Cruise, Scientology’s most important member and primary beneficiary, is unaware of the public perception of mind control, physical abuse and slave labor.

In an expose that same year for Vanity Fair, Maureen Orth detailed Cruise’s highly enmeshed relationship with David Miscavige, the head of Scientology. After declaring Cruise’s second wife Nicole Kidman insufficiently devout, Miscavige had her declared a “suppressive person” — or “S.P” in church parlance — and reportedly helped turn the couple’s two children, also Scientologists, against her. (Scientology vigorously denied basically all the claims made in the Vanity Fair article and other reports.)

After Kidman and Cruise divorced, Miscavige and his wife Shelly were tasked with finding Cruise’s next girlfriend in-house: only a fellow Scientologist would do.

As if this were a movie, audition tapes were submitted. The stakes were absurdly high. “You can’t do anything to displease Scientology,” said Marc Headley, the then-member who watched the reels, “because Tom Cruise will freak out.”

According to Vanity Fair, 25-year-old Iranian-born member named Nazanin Boniadi was chosen. In October 2004, she was prepped for one month without ever meeting Cruise or hearing his name; she was told only that she would meet a high-level church official. No matter that she had a boyfriend she hoped to marry; the church convinced her to end it. She was told to change her hair and remove the braces on her teeth prematurely. She was made to write a 20-page essay, single-spaced, on what she wanted from life. She was also made to sign two non-disclosure agreements and warned that if she made a single mistake, she’d be exiled.

“That’s how important this project is,” Boniadi was told.

For the first three weeks of their relationship. Boniadi was only allowed to talk to Cruise and his entourage, no one else. Cruise didn’t like the way her incisor teeth looked; he wanted them redone. Her hair also met with scrutiny, and Cruise’s own stylist Chris McMillan was called. When Cruise received the church’s Freedom Medal of Valor, Boniadi told him “very well done” and subsequently spent hours per day undergoing treatments to help her understand one did not speak to Tom Cruise like this. They might be sleeping together, but they were not equals.

Boniadi’s last real time with Cruise, Orth wrote, was on a trip to Telluride, with the star’s entourage along “to keep Cruise happy and to let him know how much money he was bringing into the organization, how many people joined Scientology because of him, and how much he was doing to save the planet.”

After a bad fall from a snowmobile, bruised and suffering menstrual cramps, Boniadi was denied medicine. The circumstances, according to Scientology doctrine, didn’t warrant it. In pain and isolated, Boniadi’s only resource a credit card belonging to Cruise’s production company, she burst into tears. She was then told to go chat with the Miscaviges, and after reportedly offending David by politely asking him to repeat himself a few times, was shipped off to a Scientology outpost in Florida.

There, Orth reports, Boniadi spent two months forced to clean bathrooms on her hands and knees, using a toothbrush and acid. In the dead of night she was forced to dig ditches. During the day, she was sent outside in the hot sun to stand on street corners and beg passersby to read Hubbard’s book “Dianetics.” Wherever Boniadi was, video of Cruise accepting his Freedom of Valor award played over and over.

A few months later, Cruise was dating Katie Holmes.

Orth’s piece also detailed how other Scientologists were put to work for Cruise. One high-ranking member called J.B., former brother-in-law and bodyguard to David Miscavige, said he customized Cruise’s airplane hangar, movie trailer, personal vehicles, cleaned his guns, and ran Cruise’s homes in California and Colorado, overseeing Cruise’s vast staff, all at a salary of $50 per 80-hour work week.

As of 2015, Tom Cruise’s estimated net worth was $470 million.

“I was used to build a limo from scratch,” J.B told the magazine. “I personally was one of David Miscavige’s tools that he used in his control of Tom Cruise and his family.”

In 2007, David Miscavige’s wife Shelly reportedly disappeared, and in 2013, Leah Remini filed a missing person’s report in Los Angeles. The LAPD reported the case closed that year. “The LAPD has classified the report as unfounded, indicating that Shelly is not missing,” Detective Gus Villanueva said. He added that detectives met with Shelly in person, though where or when he didn’t know. She has not been seen since.

Think of all questions that await Tom Cruise. How is it that such a stratospherically famous person — one so publicly involved in an organization, that, based on all that’s come to light, most closely resembling a brutal cult — remains so coddled?

It’s no surprise that the Hollywood Industrial Complex protects such a proven moneymaker, but it’s journalistic malpractice to allow Tom Cruise to continue his greatest role — that of a decent human being — uninterrupted.

FILED UNDER CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY ,  DAVID MISCAVIGE ,  KATIE HOLMES ,  RELIGION , SCIENTOLOGY ,  TOM CRUISE