RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/alexis-de-tocqueville-on-presidential-scandals/
We need a republican remedy, not a bureaucratic one, to the disease of executive-branch abuses of power.

In the aftermath of Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz’s report on FBI misconduct during highly sensitive investigations of Hillary Clinton’s emails, we might turn to an unlikely source for wisdom: Alexis de Tocqueville.

In the midst of any contemporary agitation, it’s always useful to turn to Tocqueville. And he can offer plenty of resources for us to think about our contemporary scandal-ridden Washington, its breaches of the rule of law, and its accompanying investigations. Rumors of wrongdoing and federal inquests are nothing new. They usually find presidents at one point or another during their tenure in office: Watergate, Iran-Contra, Whitewater, Lewinsky, Valerie Plame, and now the accusations of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. The Obama administration largely escaped, though it may not have been for lack of evidence on certain matters. But to classify properly the power of scandal and investigation in our time requires thinking about how a modern democracy will hold itself accountable to the sovereignty of the people. We should labor for a republican remedy to the disease of executive-branch abuses of power. The bureaucratic remedy we have instead sought has only made us sicker.

Special Prosecutor Tocqueville

Near the end of Democracy in America, Tocqueville addressed the issue in a chapter entitled “What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear.” Passages in this chapter are prescient in their description of what we now call the administrative state. Tocqueville fears that a tutelary “protective power,” one that “is absolute, thoughtful of detail, orderly, provident, and gentile,” will come to rule democracies. This power, strangely, is exercised under the shadow of the sovereignty of the people, to guide and keep them free. Such consolidated rule will concede to the people a popular vote at regular intervals knowing that it, ultimately, holds the only authentic authority.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/aclu-abandons-free-speech-embraces-progressive-advocacy/The group has transformed from defender of constitutional principles to advocate for progressive causes.

An internal memorandum confirms it: The American Civil Liberties Union is on the brink. The ACLU memo, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, deals with the question of how the group should balance “competing values” when choosing whether to defend free-speech cases in court. “Speech that denigrates [marginalized] groups,” the memo reads, “can inflict serious harms.” Accordingly, “the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values” constitutes a reason not to defend it. This from a group that proudly touts its 1978 decision to stand up for the First Amendment rights of a group of neo-Nazis in Skokie, Ill. If the Skokie case demonstrated the ACLU’s “unwavering commitment to principle,” what does this memo evince?

Founded under radical auspices, the American Union Against Militarism became the National Civil Liberties Bureau and then the ACLU under socialist Roger Baldwin. The name changes prefigured its transformation from a left-wing political agitator to a principled defender of constitutional rights. Over the next three decades, as the ACLU defended the notion of the public square, litigated against loyalty oaths, and helped the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education, it continued to entrench itself in the political mainstream.

The backbone of the ACLU is its legal advocacy. But under the leadership of executive director Anthony Romero, that litigation wing has been increasingly buttressed by a political-lobbying outfit that exists to raise awareness — and revenue. Romero has broadened the scope of the ACLU beyond issues of speech, militarism, and racial segregation. Now, the ACLU proudly touts its efforts on “reproductive freedom,” “economic justice,” and stopping those who “use religion to discriminate.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/fbi-doj-bias-only-president-trump-can-address/

The president runs the executive branch, after all.

I confess to being more weary than dizzy from the Dr. Gowdy–and–Mr. Trey routine. Just three weeks ago, Representative Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee, assured us that everything was peachy with the FBI — no way, no how did the bureau “spy” on the Trump campaign when it deployed an “informant” to pry information from Trump-campaign officials. As Mollie Hemingway pointed out at the time, Gowdy had not seen relevant documents the FBI and Justice Department have been withholding from Congress — in fact, his spokeswoman said he did not even know what documents and records have been subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee (on which Gowdy also sits).

This week, Gowdy did a 180: back on the warpath, slamming the politically biased Feebs over “prejudging” the outcomes of the Clinton-emails and Trump-Russia investigations and delivering a chest-beating vow that the House would “use its full arsenal of constitutional weapons to get compliance” with its subpoenas — a threat that includes holding recalcitrant FBI and DOJ officials in contempt.

Whatever.

If I seem frustrated by Representative Gowdy, it is the frustration of an admirer. He is singular among lawmakers in his ability to ask piercing questions and drive home important points. But often there is little follow-through after a hearing’s highlight reel, and some of the scintillating rhetoric is, well, extravagant. The House is most certainly not going to use its “full arsenal of constitutional weapons” to pressure stonewalling agencies.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/23/russia-meddled-and-almost

Political leaders and journalists are deeply concerned about Russian meddling in U.S. elections. Took ’em long enough.

The Russians have been meddling in U.S. elections for at least 70 years.

In 1948, the Progressive Party—a front for the Soviet-controlled Communist Party—ran former Vice President Henry Wallace as its presidential candidate. Wallace arguably threw the election to President Truman by attacking him, undercutting Republicans’ claims that Truman was “soft” on the Russians.

“President Eisenhower today accused Soviet Premier Nikolai A. Bulganin of meddling in the American election campaign,” the United Press reported on October 21, 1956. Bulganin had suggested that Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson was more likely to get an agreement halting H-bomb tests. That, Eisenhower said, constituted “interference by a foreign nation in our internal affairs . . . in the midst of a national election campaign.”

Historian Bruce Dearstyne reported that the Russian ambassador in 1960 invited Stevenson to the embassy, “plied” him with “drinks, caviar, and fruit,” and offered to back him if he would run for president again. Stevenson rejected the offer.

Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier in 1960, bragged in his memoirs that, “by waiting to release the U-2 pilot Gary Powers until after the American election, we kept Nixon from being able to claim that he could deal with the Russians; our ploy made a difference of at least half a million votes, which gave Kennedy the edge he needed.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-bet-on-the-wrong-horse-says-an-unrepentant-101-year-old-spy-1529707003

Three decades after the Cold War, stories of Russian infiltration may come as a surprise to Americans. But some of us are old enough to remember that Russian skullduggery and espionage have a long history, going back to the inception of the Soviet Union in 1917.

The most infamous chapter was the atomic espionage case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were convicted of espionage and executed in June 1953. Even at the time, many people didn’t know there was a third defendant tried with the Rosenbergs. His name was Morton Sobell ; he was convicted and imprisoned for conspiracy to commit espionage. Born half a year before the October Revolution, he is still alive at 101.

I first visited him at his Manhattan apartment in 1982. He had freedom, girlfriends, a Social Security check. My early interviews with him hinted at how much he wanted to let the world know he had been a great spy—but he was torn. Was he a martyr who had helped the Soviets, or a scapegoat for the U.S. government? There was a tension between wanting to do the right thing for the U.S.S.R. by proclaiming his innocence and his egotistical need for attention by making his crimes known.

Julius Rosenberg recruited Mr. Sobell in December 1943 to spy for the Soviet Union. In June 1947, Mr. Sobell was hired by the Reeves Instrument Corp., which was working on ballistic-missile defense systems. The classified information he gave the Soviet Union was later used against America in both Korea and Vietnam.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/muellers-fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree-1529707087

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation may face a serious legal obstacle: It is tainted by antecedent political bias. The June 14 report from Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, unearthed a pattern of anti-Trump bias by high-ranking officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Some of their communications, the report says, were “not only indicative of a biased state of mind but imply a willingness to take action to impact a presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.” Although Mr. Horowitz could not definitively ascertain whether this bias “directly affected” specific FBI actions in the Hillary Clinton email investigation, it nonetheless affects the legality of the Trump-Russia collusion inquiry, code-named Crossfire Hurricane.

Crossfire was launched only months before the 2016 election. Its FBI progenitors—the same ones who had investigated Mrs. Clinton—deployed at least one informant to probe Trump campaign advisers, obtained Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court wiretap warrants, issued national security letters to gather records, and unmasked the identities of campaign officials who were surveilled. They also repeatedly leaked investigative information.

Mr. Horowitz is separately scrutinizing Crossfire and isn’t expected to finish for months. But the current report reveals that FBI officials displayed not merely an appearance of bias against Donald Trump, but animus bordering on hatred. Peter Strzok, who led both the Clinton and Trump investigations, confidently assuaged a colleague’s fear that Mr. Trump would become president: “No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” An unnamed FBI lawyer assigned to Crossfire told a colleague he was “devastated” and “numb” after Mr. Trump won, while declaring to another FBI attorney: “Viva le resistance.”

The report highlights the FBI’s failure to act promptly upon discovering that Anthony Weiner’s laptop contained thousands of Mrs. Clinton’s emails. Investigators justified the delay by citing the “higher priority” of Crossfire. But Mr. Horowitz writes: “We did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on [the] investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias.”

Similarly, although Mr. Horowitz found no evidence that then-FBI Director James Comey was trying to influence the election, Mr. Comey did make decisions based on political considerations. He told the inspector general that his election-eve decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation was motivated by a desire to protect her assumed presidency’s legitimacy. CONTINUE AT SITE