RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/15/wikileaks-or-the-washington-post/

The imbroglio du jour of the political class is the question of whether Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder arrested last week in London, is a hero or a villain. Is he a journalist entitled to special treatment or a criminal deserving punishment?

And if pursuing then publishing classified materials is a federal offense, what kind of consequences should American journalists face for reporting classified information? Especially when the illicit information is intended not to warn the public of a legitimate threat posed by their government but for partisan political purposes—specifically, to advance the bogus Trump-Russia collusion hoax?

Assange has been charged in a federal district court in Virginia with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for allegedly working with former U.S. Army security analyst Chelsea Manning to access and post a massive trove of stolen classified documents.

“The primary purpose of the conspiracy was to facilitate Manning’s acquisition and transmission of classified information,” the indictment read. “Assange was knowingly receiving such classified records from Manning for the purpose of of publicly disclosing them on the WikiLeaks website.”

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/15/breathless-reports-hate-groups-aim-panic-americans-speech-controls/

A cluster of events this past week marked a steepening in the upwards trend toward online censorship.

In a New York Times and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report about online extremism, authors claimed the social media sphere enabled a “global network of white extremists” to develop and that this has led to a “surge of white supremacist and xenophobic terrorism in the West.” Although grasping in its conclusions and broadly flawed, the report was no doubt a clear enough justification for many to continue culling speech freedoms online.

In a near-identical report, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said certain social media platforms have become “round-the-clock digital white supremacist rallies.” They also conclude more policing from both industry and government must be done. Both reports coincided with social media executives being called to a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, where lawmakers demanded they do more to “stem white nationalist propaganda and hate speech online.”

The collective push to double down on a free-speech atmosphere already challenged post-Christchurch seems to beg the question: is it a surge in “hate” we’re witnessing, or a surge in “hate panic”?

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/15/feds-tell-every-american-exactly-theyre-money-every-year/

Congress should require that, within six months of Tax Day, the Internal Revenue Service must issue to all taxpayers a rundown of how much they paid, and what programs it went to fund.

Every April 15, Americans think about taxes. For something that grabs such a large part of our income, federal income taxes should be more prominent in our thoughts. Every day, every hour that you work, a piece of what you earn gets taken by the government before it even gets into your hands.

That is by design, and the withholding system not only guarantees the government the steady revenue it needs to function, but also makes sure that average taxpayers do not spend money that they will need to pay on tax day. The system is important—even necessary—to the functioning of a modern government, but it has one significant downside: people often do not realize how much they pay in taxes every year. That was shown to be especially true after the latest tax law changes: most people paid less in total taxes, but because their refunds may have decreased, they didn’t know it.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/15/candace-owens-has-shown-us-the-way/

How did this happen?

When did it become OK for one of the two major political parties in America to attack a young black woman, who works for an orthodox Jew, as a fascistic fan of Adolf Hitler after she was invited to testify before Congress?

When did it become OK for the representatives of the same party openly to label Israel, our closest friend in the Middle East, an “evil” state which has “hypnotized the West,” then libel their fellow representatives of having “dual loyalties” because they are Jewish, or to intimate that Israel simply shouldn’t exist?

And when did the all the leading names in that party’s list of candidates for president come to see it as obligatory to endorse a Green New Deal for the nation that has as its objective the outlawing of the internal combustion engine and air travel?