RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/virginias-moderate-governor-11549063724

This column is trying to understand the current fad among Democratic state officeholders for enabling abortions right up until the moment of birth. Since the abortion market generally has been in historic decline and the demand for such procedures at the end of a pregnancy is extremely small, it’s as if politicos like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are determined to demonstrate a sort of ideological zealotry. Perhaps somewhere there is a misguided Republican seeking to affirm his love for the 2nd Amendment by supporting the purchase of bazookas without a background check, but it would hardly represent a strategy for winning elections.

Perhaps most striking about this new Democratic fad among state officeholders is that it is not confined to people considered on the fringe of the party. Take Virginia’s Gov. Ralph Northam. When he ran for the Democratic nomination in 2017, he was presented as the bland alternative to the real “progressive” in the race, former Rep. Tom Perriello.

Columnist E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post wrote that then-Lt. Gov. Northam’s “reputation is that of a temperate, well-liked public servant.”

After Dr. Northam, a pediatric neurologist, secured the Democratic nomination, former Al Gore campaign staffer Carter Eskew wrote in a Post op-ed that “Northam is cut from the same moderate Democratic cloth that Virginians have favored recently.”

Shortly before the November 2017 election, James Hohmann wrote in the Post about the concern on the left that Dr. Northam was “too low key and too moderate.”

Dr. Northam’s “moderation’ was on display this week when he was asked in a radio interview about possible legislation to lower the barriers to abortions conducted while the mother is already in labor. His response suggested that he’s open to the adults involved exercising choices even after delivery: CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.city-journal.org/ny-public-disorder-growing-under-de-blasio

Gotham is in the throes of disorder. Law-abiding New Yorkers, no matter their race, ethnicity, sex, or socioeconomic strata, find themselves harassed by growing vagrancy, petty criminality, and social decay. Nowhere is this more evident than in New York City’s public and quasi-public spaces.

I wrote this from a Starbucks on the Upper West Side, where the average price for an apartment is $1.2 million. Just to your right as you enter is an area with five small tables, each with two accompanying seats. On the afternoon I came in, vagrants—not a Starbucks cup or pastry between them—had seized three of these tables. The most assertive of the lot had four paper and plastic bags filled with various items. She was slipping in and out of consciousness. A “crust punk” was harassing some of the paying customers, and was told to leave, apparently for the second time that day.

Starbucks is a private business, of course, and is free to serve as a tacit adjunct to New York’s and other cities’ shelter systems. (And it has set itself up to do so, after facing criticism last year for evicting some non-paying customers.) But in Bill de Blasio’s New York, the air of menace and disorder is palpable, whether one is in a café, on the streets, in a park, or riding the subways. Today’s New York is dramatically different from the New York of Michael Bloomberg or of Rudolph Giuliani’s second term. Under their leadership, public safety and public order were the top priorities. When citizens claimed police officers violated their rights, civil rights attorneys litigated these constitutional claims in federal and state courts. No responsible civil libertarian, though, would advocate surrendering public order wholesale because of individual instances of police misconduct.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/roger-stone-may-speak-at-his-own-risk-according-to-constitution/

A judge’s desire to run a tight ship is worthy, but it is secondary.

If I were the prosecutor on Roger Stone’s case, I’d be delighted that he continues to speak out publicly.

Capitol Hill has finally started to take notice of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s brass-knuckles investigative tactics: Rather than call defense counsel to arrange Stone’s surrender on charges of misleading Congress that have been expected for months, Mueller had dozens of well-armed agents swarm Stone’s home as if it were Osama bin Laden’s compound. But Stone’s lunatic theories, spun nightly on cable TV, make Mueller look downright judicious. In his latest rant, Stone deduces that “Russian collusion” is Mueller’s pretext not just to nail to him, but to impeach both President Trump and Vice President Pence, then install Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, finally, Hillary Clinton as president. Mueller, of course, has not even charged Stone with a conspiracy, or anything to do with Russia’s espionage; and in the many indictments he has filed, the prosecutor has never hinted at criminal misconduct by Trump, much less Pence.

As I mentioned to Rich Lowry during The McCarthy Report podcast this week, Stone’s statements in the raucous press conference outside the courthouse the day he was arrested were about 90 percent of the way to a guilty plea. The defendant conceded that, sure, he may have made some untrue statements in his congressional testimony, but they were surely immaterial or the result of failed recollection. Good luck with that. On CNN a few days later, while stressing that he had no advance knowledge of the WikiLeaks disclosures of Democratic emails, Stone acknowledged, “I always said that there could be some process crime.” Not the best approach when the indictment does not accuse you of such advance knowledge but does charge seven felony counts of process crime.

Still, the fact that it is not in Stone’s interest to keep talking does not vitiate his First Amendment right to do so.