RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beto-orourke-goes-for-broke-texas-greg-abbott-gubernatorial-race-uvalde-shooting-robb-elementary-11653516141?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

It isn’t easy for a Democrat to win statewide in Texas these days, and Beto O’Rourke already lost once to Sen. Ted Cruz. Now he’s running for Governor against incumbent Greg Abbott, and on Wednesday he gambled on a stunt that could make or break his campaign.

Gov. Abbott and a variety of state and local officials were holding a press conference to update the public on the Uvalde massacre at Robb Elementary School. It was a governing, not a campaign, event.

After Mr. Abbott had spoken for several minutes, Mr. O’Rourke interrupted to point a finger at the Governor and declare, “This is on you,” referring to the murder of 19 children and two teachers by 18-year-old Salvador Ramos. “You said this was not predictable. This is totally predictable when you choose not to do anything,” Mr. O’Rourke added. The Democrat was then asked to leave by other officials on the stage, with at least one uttering an epithet.

Trailing in the polls, Mr. O’Rourke must figure he had to take a risk on politicizing the murders even as emotions are raw and officials are still trying to figure out Ramos’s motivation. Mr. O’Rourke famously said during his short-lived 2020 presidential campaign that he wanted to ban AR-15 rifles. On Wednesday he got his sound bite. We’ll see if Texans agree that this mass murder was all about gun control.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/beto_orourke_and_barack_obama_remind_us_that_dem_politicians_are_awful.html

On Tuesday, an evil man slaughtered 21 people, 19 of whom were children under ten. On Wednesday, two morally bereft Democrats—Beto O’Rourke and Barack Obama—used those deaths to score political points. Decent people were outraged. Indecent ones cheered them on.

Beto O’Rourke is an inconsequential man with few accomplishments who is determined to force people to recognize his non-existent greatness. Having failed both in his runs for U.S. Senator and U.S. President, his latest effort is to become the governor of Texas.

Somewhere along the way in his quixotic political journey, the beta man heard that there’s no such thing as bad press. If you can get the public’s attention, you’re gold. This swinish man then decided that he should crash Gov. Greg Abbott’s press briefing, which grieving parents might attend, to score political points. You can see his indecent grandstanding here, as well as the tongue-lashing he received from Uvalde’s mayor, Don McLaughlin, and from a member of the audience:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/mourn-justice-on-the-anniversary-of-george-floyds-death-too/

Among the casualties of the tragedy was equal justice under the law.

Today marks two years since George Floyd died in Minneapolis. His death might’ve just passed through the news cycle, were it not for that video captured by a bystander. It became a “day that will live in infamy” to all sides, for the harrowing circumstances of his death. To progressives, it was the pinnacle of “police brutality.” Conservatives mark the day as the beginning of the unchecked nationwide riots that erupted in the name of “racial justice.”

There is much to mourn on May 25. Floyd’s unnecessary death tops that list — but also the loss of law and order that followed and the erosion of impartial justice.

In the days after May 25, 2020, the four officers involved were fired. Mobs led by Democratic politicians such as Maxine Waters and Black Lives Matter formed early on and demanded that Derek Chauvin, the lead accused, and others be judged guilty, as prosecutors including Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison announced their intent to bring charges.

The egregious act was, after all, caught on camera, so the swift and harsh actions were hardly a surprise. But the Chauvin case that followed was a mess in many regards. The disgraced officer did stand before a jury, but one that wasn’t sequestered during the trial — i.e., quarantined from public knowledge about the case — and that was bombarded with the anti-Chauvin messaging in the corporate media that all of us received. The media released long polemics against his innocence every day.

As Chauvin was the most hated man in America, the presiding judge should have taken extra steps to maintain the jury’s constitutionally guaranteed impartiality. Yet jurors were free to hear protest leaders threaten violence, were they to return a verdict of not guilty.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/young-men-guns-and-guardrails-uvalde-texas-robb-elementary-shooting-salvador-ramos-mental-illness-11653514326?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday has produced the usual demands to “do something.” We share the impulse and the anger, but what specifically to do? The reason there are more demands than solutions is because the problem of how to stop mass shootings by disturbed young men is one of the hardest in a democratic society.

The profile emerging of Salvador Ramos, the 18-year-old who killed 19 children and two teachers, is depressingly familiar. A teenage loner with a disruptive family life. Bullied as a child because of a speech impediment. Immersed in video games and other virtual reality. Ramos, who was killed amid his massacre, had fought with his mother and hinted at violent ambitions. He shot his grandmother before he drove to the school and murdered children with a rifle in a fourth-grade classroom.

This is achingly similar to the profile of other young mass killers from Sandy Hook to Aurora, Parkland, Tucson, Virginia Tech and Buffalo. They suffer from some mental illness or profound social alienation. The societal challenge is anticipating when such a young man—and it is nearly always a young man—will snap, and how and when to deny him access to firearms.

As he often does, Barack Obama summed up the single-minded response of the progressive side of American politics. “Nearly ten years after Sandy Hook—and ten days after Buffalo—our country is paralyzed,” he wrote on Twitter, “not by fear, but by a gun lobby and a political party that have shown no willingness to act in any way that might help prevent these tragedies.” He continued: “It’s long past time for action, any kind of action.”

Leave it to the former President to demonize his political opponents in the wake of an act of madness. But note his default to “action, any kind of action.” Anything apparently will do as long as it offers the self-satisfaction that we are doing something, even if it turns out to be futile or counter-productive.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/25/warning-biden-is-already-plotting-to-restart-his-disinformation-board/

No bad idea ever dies in Washington. Once it takes root, it will reemerge in another form. So, all the huzzahs about the demise of the Biden administration’s Orwellian “Disinformation Governance Board” are premature.

As we note in our I&I/TIPP Poll, the board attracted widespread hatred among the public, with 55% saying that they wouldn’t trust it to decide what is disinformation fairly. Among independents, 75% didn’t trust it, which is close to the 81% of Republicans who said they couldn’t trust such a government board. Among “free speech” Democrats, in stark contrast to Republicans and independents, 73% said they trusted the board to be fair.

“No doubt, both White House and congressional Democrat internal polling showed similar results,” Terry Jones notes.

But don’t declare victory just yet.

For starters, team Biden said it would only put a “pause” on the board in the wake of a furious backlash from the public and revelations that the woman chosen to head it had herself peddled disinformation on numerous occasions.

During this 75-day “pause,” the Homeland Security Advisory Council will review the board and make “recommendations on how the department can garner public trust surrounding its disinformation efforts.” (Note statement says “how” not “if.”)