RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/21/questions-the-gop-should-ask-merrick-garland/

Senate confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland, Joe Biden’s pick for Attorney General, begin Monday. The wanna-be Supreme Court justice instead is poised to take the reins of a Justice Department tainted by egregious political prosecutions from James Comey’s Crossfire Hurricane to the destructive Robert Mueller special counsel probe. 

Despite years of assurances, only one Justice Department employee has been held criminally responsible for the lawless investigation into Donald Trump and his presidential campaign, which included the use of illegally-obtained FISA warrants to spy on Trump associates. On his way out the door, former Attorney General William Barr refused to litigate flagrant instances of election fraud that potentially swayed the outcome of the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden.

Unpunished for acting as the law enforcement arm for the Democratic Party, the Justice Department is now accelerating its hunt for Americans who dared to support Donald Trump in 2020. The Justice Department launched its “Capitol breach” investigation last month; Michael Sherwin, the acting U.S. Attorney for the D.C. office, which is overseeing the entire effort, warned the probe will be “unprecedented” in scope and scale.

More than 200 people have been arrested already and charged with various crimes for their involvement in the January 6 chaos. Most offenses deal with trespassing, disorderly conduct, or disrupting an “official” government proceeding.

Nonetheless Garland, in his inflammatory opening statement, will assure the Senate Judiciary Committee that he intends to prioritize the agency’s nationwide manhunt. “From 1995 to 1997, I supervised the prosecution of the perpetrators of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, who sought to spark a revolution that would topple the federal government,” Garland’s prepared statement reads. “If confirmed, I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on January 6—a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/brucecarroll/2021/02/21/new-studies-suggest-one-covid-vaccine-shot-may-be-enough-n1427147

There has been some very good news this week about the prospects of returning back to normal from the COVID pandemic earlier than thought. The first ray of sunshine is that herd immunity may be just weeks away in the United States.

This morning comes news that one of the reasons we are speeding toward herd immunity is that the various COVID vaccines are providing enough protection with just one dose.

Covid-19 survivors who have gotten a first dose of Covid-19 vaccine are generating immune responses that might render a second shot unnecessary, potentially freeing up limited vaccine supply for more people, several new research papers suggest.

The research, while preliminary, found that the previously infected people generated protection against the disease quickly and at dramatically higher levels after a first shot of the current two-shot regimens when compared with people who were vaccinated but hadn’t been sick.

“Everyone should get vaccinated. Not everybody needs two shots,” said Viviana Simon, a professor of microbiology at New York’s Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and an author on one study. “As long as we can’t deliver as much vaccine to everybody who wants it, I think it’s an important consideration.”

This is important news which, if it holds up under more study and scrutiny, would help offset the bumpy vaccination rollouts many countries seem to have faced over the last few weeks.

Giving just one dose means health officials could redeploy excess doses to more people and speed the reach of vaccinations, which vaccine experts and health authorities say is crucial as new forms of the virus increase transmission. Limited initial supply has contributed to the bumpy rollout of the vaccine and forced governments to favor high-risk individuals ahead of others.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/schumer-and-pelosi-would-deny-americans-freedom-terence-p-jeffrey/

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were ferocious advocates of religious freedom — when the question revolved around consuming peyote.

In the 1980s, as the Supreme Court’s summary would later explain in the case of Employment Division v. Smith, a “private drug rehabilitation organization” in Oregon fired two employees “because they ingested peyote.”

These employees, however, did not ingest the drug for recreational purposes. They did it, the court’s summary explained, “for sacramental purposes at a ceremony of their Native American Church.”

Even so, Oregon denied the two unemployment payments “under a state law disqualifying employees discharged for work-related ‘misconduct.'” 

The issue for the Supreme Court: Was Oregon violating the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion?

In an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court ruled it was not.

“We have never held that an individual’s religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the state is free to regulate,” the court stated.

“Subsequent decisions have consistently held that the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a ‘valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes),” said the court.

https://spectator.us/topic/inquiry-january-6-capitol-brian-sicknick-truth/

I support Nancy Pelosi’s call for a ‘9/11-style inquiry’ into the mêlée at the Capitol on January 6. I do so not because I think there is any valid analogy between the terrorist attack on the United States by Muslim fanatics on September 11, 2001 and the low-level riot at the Capitol. There isn’t. On 9/11 some 3,000 innocent people were murdered, billions of dollars of property was obliterated and important symbols of American economic and military might were attacked, utterly destroyed in the case of the World Trade Towers, seriously damaged in the case of the Pentagon. On January 6, a pro-Trump rally got out of hand despite the president’s instructions to proceed to the Capitol ‘peacefully and patriotically’.

Despite the chasm-like discrepancy between the events, Democrats instantly seized upon the riot, elevated it into an ‘armed insurrection’, and bewailed the assault on ‘our democracy’.

Indeed, so quick was the construction of this narrative that the cynics among us speculated that the riot, if not exactly premeditated by anti-Trump forces, was at least foreseen as an exploitable possibility. Something similar can be said about the deployment of the phrase ‘our democracy’. In this case, the first-person-plural possessive is very clearly intended to be exclusive, not inclusive. No one wearing a MAGA hat or waving a Trump banner is included in that ‘our’. The thousands of loyalty-tested National Guard troops and the tall, razor-wire-tipped fence hastily erected to surround the Capitol communicated the same message. It’s Us vs Them, comrade: talk about ‘unity’ and ‘our democracy’ but practice division and exclusion. Nancy Pelosi called the Capitol ‘the people’s house’, the ‘citadel of democracy’, but the armed troops and the fence bespoke a different reality.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-non-covid-spending-blowout-11613937485?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

“No wonder Democrats want to pass all this on a partisan vote. It’s a progressive blowout for the ages that does little for the economy but will finance Democratic interest groups for years. Please don’t call it Covid relief.”

The Biden White House is pointing to polls showing that its $1.9 trillion spending bill is popular, and the press corps is cheering. Yet we wonder how much public support there’d be if Americans understood that most of the blowout is a list of longtime Democratic spending priorities flying under the false flag of Covid-19 relief.

Let’s dig into the various House committee bills to separate the Covid from the chaff. The Covid cash includes some $75 billion for vaccinations, treatments, testing and medical supplies. There’s also $19 billion for “public health,” primarily for state health departments and community health centers. One might even count the $6 billion to the Indian Health Service, or $4 billion for mental health.

The package also hands more to businesses and individuals most hit by lockdowns. That includes $7.2 billion more for the Paycheck Protection Program, $15 billion for economic injury disaster loans, $26 billion for restaurants, bars and live venues, and $15 billion in payroll support for airlines. The recipients of this taxpayer money will at least be required to prove economic harm, and in some cases repay loans.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/paging-judge-gershon-can-new-york-cut-ties/91425/

It looks like Mayor de Blasio has flinched from abruptly closing the skating rinks operated by the Trump Organization. Hizzoner had announced they would be shut down before the Trump contract ended. It was to be a protest against President Trump’s speech January 6, even though the Senate determined that Mr. Trump wasn’t guilty of incitement. It seems, though, an outcry by skaters turned the mayor around.

“New York City kids deserve all the time on the ice they can get this year,” the New York Times quotes the mayor’s press secretary, Bill Neidhardt, as saying. “The Wollman and Lasker rinks will stay open under current management for the few weeks left in this season. But make no mistake, we will not be doing business with the Trump Organization going forward.” Nice to see the mayor come to his senses.

Ordinarily we might not write about this, but it happens to be the issue on which we started covering Mr. Trump. That was in July 2015, after the New York tycoon who would become the 45th president and his wife Melania descended the golden escalator at Trump tower to declare he would run for the GOP nomination in 2016. The City Council lit up with the idea of ending the city’s contracts with the Trump Organization.

We found that shocking. We wrote about it at the time in the New York Post. The idea of severing business ties to Mr. Trump was being pressed by the then speaker of the Council, Melissa Mark-Viverito. There had been no finding of wrongdoing by any authority. There had been no legal proceeding. She just didn’t like his position on immigration. Neither did we, but we liked the City Council overreach even less.