RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/descending_into_chaos.html

““That breakdown is upon us…Unless new leaders come forth who understand their duty to maintain the rule of law, the country will not pull back from disaster.”

The medieval Christian conception of the great chain of being, so ably described and analyzed by Arthur Lovejoy and E. M. Tillyard, has been one of the most resonant concepts addressing mankind’s unique position in the cosmos. Situated between the divine and the earthy, the angelic and the bestial, the spiritual world and the physical creation, the human being is understood as a hybrid being consisting of a “higher” nature and a “lower” nature in perpetual conflict with one another. It is a metaphor that makes good explanatory sense.

Thus, we are tugged in two antithetical directions, toward reason, order and imagination on the one hand and envy, resentment and malice on the other, toward the tablets on the mountain above and the calf in the wilderness below. The gravity of degradation, alas, is always stronger than the upward flight of intellectual clarity and moral commitment. This will never change, but the choice and struggle between the angel and the animal within us, between logic and appetite, is what constitutes the essence of human identity, and the intermittent victory of the former over the latter is what constitutes the essence of human potentiality — that is, of the truly human.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/trump-spares-stone-from-imprisonment-sparking-howls-from-amnesiac-democrats/

“The Stone episode has been farcical from the start, and it’s still not over.”

One-time defenders of unsavory Clinton and Obama pardons are outraged by the president’s commutation of his old associate’s 40-month sentence.

Bill Clinton pardoned his own brother for felony distribution of cocaine. And a key witness in the Whitewater scandal for which he and Hillary Clinton were under investigation. And three others convicted in independent counsel Ken Starr’s probe. And Marc Rich, in what was a straight up political payoff. And his CIA director. And his HUD secretary. And eight people convicted in an investigation of his Agriculture Department.

No surprise there: The Clintons and their supporters then, like Trump and his supporters now, regarded the special-prosecutor probes into the administration as witch hunts.

Clinton also commuted the sentences of convicted terrorists, some of whom hadn’t even asked for clemency. Shameless as he was, though, even he couldn’t bring himself to pardon Oscar Lopez Rivera, the defiantly unrepentant FALN leader.

President Obama took care of that.

Obama also commuted the sentence of a U.S. soldier who passed top-secret information to WikiLeaks. He pardoned his former Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman, who’d been convicted of making false statements about a leak of classified information to the New York Times. And when he couldn’t get Congress to amend federal drug laws the way he wanted them amended, Obama used the pardon power to slash hundreds of sentences, under an executive initiative later sharply criticized by the Obama-appointed DOJ inspector general.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/justice_for_roger_stone_.html

President Trump has corrected a miscarriage of justice. His commutation of the sentence, rather than a pardon, allows Stone to seek redress via the courts

On Friday, July 10th, President Trump commuted Roger Stone’s prison sentence.  The clemency order, not to be confused with a pardon, allows Stone to fight in the appeals court to clear his name against what many consider a legal railroading. Friends of Stone claim that Trump had offered a pardon only to be rebuffed by Stone who asked for clemency to remain out of jail as he fights through the appeals court.

The decision to grant clemency came after a series of revelations which proved that Mueller’s team of prosecutors had tampered with evidence, manufactured statements, and buried exonerating evidence in their case against General Flynn, prompting the Justice Department to drop the case out of embarrassment. Mueller’s prosecutorial misconduct in the Flynn case strongly mirrors the prosecution of Roger Stone. Despite no underlying crime or Russian collusion found, the prosecution chose to push forward with process crimes.

Stone was accused of threatening a witness after sending text messages to comedian Randy Credico, telling him “my lawyers are dying to rip you to shreds…prepare to die”. Stone felt Credico had spun a false narrative to Mueller’s investigators to throw him under the bus. Even Credico claims the texts were taken out of context and were not threats of violence or intimidation.

Stone was also charged with lying to Congress. When Stone was asked by Congress if he was speaking with Wikileaks, Stone replied that he did not have a contact in the organization, but was speaking with Credico, who had interviewed Julian Assange. This turned out to be a factual statement, but prosecutors alleged that Stone claimed his contact was Credico in order to protect Jerome Corsi. In hindsight, the claim that Stone was lying to protect Corsi from prosecution rings hollow, as Corsi was never found to have committed any crimes and was never charged.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/supremes-signal-a-brave-new-world-of-popular-presidential-elections/

The Court’s decision in Chiafalo v. Washington seems sure to intensify the partisan fight over the Electoral College’s future.

Whither the Electoral College?

The Supreme Court had its say on the matter during the always-eventful last week of the term. To repeat a contention often made in these columns, the High Court has evolved into an essentially political institution, robed in the judiciary’s apolitical veneer. Given that we are a deeply divided nation, that the late-term cases are usually the most controversial, and that the four left-leaning justices — those appointed by Democratic presidents Clinton and Obama — tend to vote as a bloc in these cliffhanger rulings, one doesn’t expect many 9–0 decisions when the calendar reaches late June (let alone July).

Yet there it was on Monday: Chiafalo v. Washington. At issue was the question of “faithless electors.” Specifically, may a state enforce the pledge it compels electors to make to vote for the presidential candidate who wins the state’s popular vote? The Court’s holding that states have the power to do so was unanimous. Significantly, though, the Court was not of one mind about why.

The case is worth our attention because of what’s been going on under the radar.

Among the Left’s many transformative projects is the drive to have presidents elected by a national popular vote. The project, known as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, would effectively eliminate the Constitution’s Electoral College system. It would reduce the College to a nullity by requiring a state’s electors to vote for the candidate who wins the national popular vote — regardless of whether that candidate loses the state’s popular vote. As Hillary Clinton and Al Gore could tell you, that would radically change how presidents are elected, and ultimately how we are governed.