RUTHFULLY YOURS

While We the People distract ourselves with porn stars and royal weddings, the cracks in our Constitutional order continue to multiply and widen.

Evidence continues to mount that a sitting president, Barack Obama, colluded in using the nation’s security and surveillance apparatus to subvert the campaign and then presidency of a legitimately elected candidate and president. This effort consisted of numerous illegalities: a mole planted in Donald Trump’s campaign; a FISA warrant granted on the basis of false opposition research paid for by his rival; the outgoing president’s expansion of the number of people allowed to unmask the identity of Americans mentioned in passing during surveillance; a rogue FBI director, James Comey, who illegally usurped prosecutorial powers to exonerate a felonious Hillary Clinton; and other FBI agents colluding in the plot to damage Trump. And don’t forget a Deputy Attorney General appointing the close friend of the fired and disgraced Comey as a special counsel to investigate the non-crime of “collusion,” an investigation that has gone on for a year with nothing to show but a handful of indictments resulting from dubious perjury traps.

To quote Bob Dole, “Where’s the outrage” at these attacks on the Constitution?

Outrage is surely warranted. These assaults on the rule of law and accountability to the people are akin to the catalogue of “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States,” published in the Declaration of Independence. Yet our “watch-dog” media in the main have become the publicists for this attack on the foundations of our freedom, as they flack for the political party that long has resented the limitation of power enshrined in the Constitution. Only a few Cassandras, notably FOX News’ Sean Hannity, are trying to alert the citizenry to the coming conflagration that if unchecked could leave the architecture of our freedom in smoking ruins.

In fact, what we are witnessing in the deep-state Democrats’ undermining of divided government, check and balances, and government accountability, is the culmination of a process begun over a century ago. Addled by the false knowledge of scientism and secularism in the 19th century, the progressives took aim at what they scorned as the archaic political structures based on the permanence of a flawed human nature’s susceptibility to corruption by power. Divided and balanced power, the progressives argued, is inefficient and incapable of solving the new conditions and problems created by industrialization and modern technology.

On Friday, communist and cop-killer supporter Anthony K. “Van” Jones sat with President Trump’s close adviser, Jared Kushner, and his wife, Ivanka Trump, at a White House forum on prison reform.

Flashing his GQ smile, Obama’s former green jobs czar was back at the White House after being forced to resign in 2009 when conservatives exposed his anti-American activities.

Under Obama’s watch, the con man helped to scam taxpayers out of billions of dollars for bogus green energy projects designed to employ low-income minorities. Soon, the money disappeared, and over 60,000 jobs promised by Obama never materialized.

Now Jones has moved on to another big-government reform movement guaranteed to take money from people who don’t commit crimes and redistribute it to people who do. Jones and his Dream Corps #Cut50 initiative backed the First Step Act, just passed in the House.

Of course, Jones supports this legislation. It’s another windfall for the progressive huckster. No doubt, his network of lucrative non-profits will haul in part of the $250 million of taxpayer monies the bill authorizes for various educational and mental health support programs.

Since 2014, Jones has been pushing for sentencing reforms, early release, pleading down violent crimes to nonviolent misdemeanors, and generally driving down incarceration numbers, much as the PROMISE program does in Broward County.

According to some Democrat lawmakers, the First Step Act doesn’t go far enough, but President Trump told Jones during the WH gathering on Friday, “If you see something you don’t like, call me. We’ll get it changed before we sign it and have to go through the whole process again.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/suffer-the-little-children-1527029941

What’s more important—finding a foster home for needy children, or identity politics? The answer from the political left is exacerbating a crisis in Philadelphia that is leaving hundreds of children to languish in group homes.

Catholic Social Services has worked in Philadelphia for decades and oversees about 100 foster homes. But two months ago the city abruptly halted referrals to the group because the Catholic charity holds Catholic beliefs about same-sex marriage. Last week several foster parents represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty sued in federal court to resume the group’s foster-care placements.

Catholic Social Services works with children regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation. But on Catholic religious grounds the charity won’t certify same-sex or unmarried couples as foster parents, instead referring them to another state-approved organization. More than two dozen alternative agencies exist, and Catholic Social Services says no gay couples have even sought its help for certification, much less filed a complaint after being turned away.

Philadelphia has nonetheless denounced Catholic Social Services as discriminatory and launched an investigation into its practices. Unless the group agrees to provide written certifications for same-sex foster parents, the city will terminate its contract in June.

Multiple media sources have now confirmed that American academic Stefan Halper is the “top secret” informant the FBI asked to sidle up to Trump campaign officials in 2016. Some questions follow: Who asked Mr. Halper to keep tabs on the Trump officials, and when and why?

The answers go to the credibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s claim that it didn’t open an official counterintelligence probe into Trump-Russia collusion until July 31, 2016. The answers might also show if Obama Administration officials knew about this mission, or if political actors working for the Clinton campaign such as Fusion GPS played a role.

One mystery concerns Mr. Halper’s interaction with Trump aide Carter Page. The New York Times reported on Friday that Mr. Halper’s contact with Trump officials happened only after the July 31 launch of the probe. The story notes that Mr. Halper reached out to campaign adviser George Papadopoulos “late that summer” and then to Mr. Page “in the ensuing months.” A Washington Post story adds that Mr. Halper sat down with Trump official Sam Clovis on either “August 31 or Sept. 1.”

But Mr. Page tells us he actually met Mr. Halper in mid-July, at a symposium at England’s University of Cambridge, where Mr. Halper is an emeritus professor. Mr. Page says the invitation to that event came much earlier—the end of May or early June. Mr. Page declined to say who invited him but says it was someone other than Mr. Halper.