RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15069/impeachers-new-crimes

The search for the perfect impeachable offense against President Trump is reminiscent of overzealous prosecutors who target the defendant first and then search for the crime with which to charge him. Or to paraphrase the former head of the Soviet secret police to Stalin: show me the man and I will find you the crime.

All civil libertarians should be concerned about an Alice in Wonderland process in which the search for an impeachable crime precedes the evidence that such a crime has actually been committed.

Under our constitutional system of separation of powers, Congress may not compel the Executive Branch to cooperate with an impeachment investigation absent court orders.

Conflicts between the Legislative and Executive Branches are resolved by the Judicial Branch, not by the unilateral dictate of a handful of partisan legislators. It is neither a crime nor an impeachable offense for the president to demand that Congress seek court orders to enforce their demands. Claims of executive and other privileges should be resolved by the Judicial Branch, not by calls for impeachment.

The effort to find (or create) impeachable offense against President Donald Trump has now moved from the subjects of the Mueller investigation — collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice — to alleged recent political “sins”: “quid pro quo” with Ukraine and obstruction of Congress.

The goal of the impeach-at-any-cost cadre has always been the same: impeach and remove Trump, regardless of whether or not he did anything warranting removal. The means — the alleged impeachable offenses — have changed, as earlier ones have proved meritless. The search for the perfect impeachable offense against Trump is reminiscent of overzealous prosecutors who target the defendant first and then search for the crime with which to charge him. Or to paraphrase the former head of the Soviet secret police to Stalin: show me the man and I will find you the crime.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/23/while-demo

In the upside-down world of Washington politics, President Donald Trump appears to be fixing Obamacare, while Democrats are running around the country dismissing it as a horrible failure.

The latest evidence of the former is that Obamacare premiums are set to drop 4% next year, after declining 1.5% last year, according to a report released by the Health and Human Services Department this week. This comes after five straight years of huge increases, during which Obamacare premiums more than doubled.

The news is so remarkable that even the Washington Post had to admit that “Obamacare is getting more affordable under the Trump administration.”  Oh, and the Obamacare markets are becoming more competitive, too, with the number of plans climbing by 13%, giving nearly 70% of the country access to at least three plans.

The Post even acknowledges that these improvements come “despite dire predictions by Democrats that the Trump administration would destroy the insurance marketplaces.”

“Dire predictions” is right.

When Trump signed the tax cut law into effect, he zeroed out the much-hated individual mandate tax. Critics said it would destabilize Obamacare markets because the young and healthy, freed from the tax penalty, would drop coverage, leaving the Obamacare insurance pool sicker and more expensive.

http://thedailychrenk.com/2019/10/23/im-deep-state-im-help/

It’s 2019, so it’s perhaps time to update Ronald Reagan’s famous dictum that “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

The media and the left (but I repeat myself) have spent the past three years ridiculing the concept of the “Deep State” and those who subscribe to its existence. We have been told it’s a crazy right-wing conspiracy theory to believe that some public servants, mostly in the fields of intelligence, law enforcement and diplomacy, might cooperate in informal cabals to pursue their preferred policies regardless of who is in power and to protect their fiefdoms from oversight, interference and the executive, legislative and judicial control. To wonder whether some influential people in the federal bureaucracy, connected through a revolving door with the progressive establishment, might have contemplated preventing the election of their bete noire and his removal from office once their initial efforts proved unsuccessful invited accusation of delusion and paranoia.

This narrative is now officially old and busted. The new and hot one: the Deep State exists and it’s good.

As Michelle Cottle, member of “The New York Times” editorial board, writes in her op-ed “They Are Not The Resistance. They Are Not a Cabal. They Are Public Servants: Let us now praise these not-silent heroes”:

President Trump is right: The deep state is alive and well. But it is not the sinister, antidemocratic cabal of his fever dreams. It is, rather, a collection of patriotic public servants — career diplomats, scientists, intelligence officers and others — who, from within the bowels of this corrupt and corrupting administration, have somehow remembered that their duty is to protect the interests, not of a particular leader, but of the American people.

Fiona Hill, Michael McKinley and the whistle-blower who effectively initiated the impeachment investigation — when these folks saw something suspicious, they said something. Their aim was not to bring down Mr. Trump out of personal or political animus but to rescue the Republic from his excesses. Those who refuse to silently indulge this president’s worst impulses qualify as heroes — and deserve our gratitude.

Throughout the Trump presidency, there has been a trickle of fed-up individuals willing to step up and protest the administration’s war on science, expertise and facts.

Is that what it is! Just patriotic public servants trying to save the people from a democratically elected President of their own country.