RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/apollo-11-anniversary-american-accomplishments/

Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary is an occasion for Americans to recall their ability to do the impossible.

Three days after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, the nation watched an elaborate state funeral unfold with great pomp, circumstance, and majesty in Washington, D.C. Americans, like most of the world, were in shock, and probably never gave a thought as to what it took to organize a major event like this on such short notice. Our British cousins, however, were incredulous.

London had been planning Winston Churchill’s funeral since the 1950s (he would not die until two years after Kennedy, in 1965). They even scheduled a week of rehearsals after the actual death took place. Shortly after the Kennedy funeral, the Duke of Norfolk, who was in charge of Churchill’s ceremony, kept asking any American he could find: “Three days — how?”

Americans never gave it a second thought. The Panama Canal, the transcontinental railroad, the Hoover Dam, and, later, the national highway system were all built, but Americans never dwelled on any of them, always looking ahead to the next big project.

The penultimate moment of national achievement (not counting World War II, because it was a joint effort with our allies) came five and a half years after that state funeral, when the world watched in amazement as two American astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, stepped on the surface of the moon in 1969, accomplishing a goal set by Kennedy in 1961 — to put men on the moon and return them safely before the decade was out. They made it with five months to spare.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/russia-legislation-congress-delegates-authority-executive-branch/

It does what lawmakers have become best at: delegating their authority to the president so they can later complain about how he uses it.

H ouse Republicans this week joined with the chamber’s Democratic majority to pass Russia legislation that highlights the bad joke Congress has become. When not calling for a pointless investigation that will enable them to preen in opposition to Vladimir Putin — something Democrats never cared to do prior to Hillary Clinton’s loss and Republicans have done less since Donald Trump’s win — the proposed legislation does what Congress has become best at: delegating its authority to the president, so it can later complain about how he uses it.

The Washington Examiner reports that the bipartisan “Vladimir Putin Transparency Act” passed on Tuesday “would require the Trump administration to investigate Russian President Vladimir Putin’s wealth.”

It wouldn’t really.

In our system, investigation and prosecution are functions of executive discretion and judicial due process. This is why, to take the most notable examples, the Constitution prohibits bills of attainder (which single out a person for punishment without trial) and ex post facto laws (which criminalize conduct that was legal when committed). The Framers wanted Congress to write the laws but stay out of the enforcement business — the two tasks in one set of hands being, notoriously, a recipe for tyranny. While Congress may urge the executive to conduct an investigation, it has no constitutional authority to direct that this be done.

Not surprisingly, then, when we read the legislation closely, we find that that the Putin Act, if ever signed into law, would express the “Sense of Congress” that the executive branch (specifically, U.S. intelligence agencies) “should”: (1) “expose key networks that the corrupt political class in Russia uses to hide the money it steals, (2) “stifle Russian use of hidden financial channels,” and (3) “do more to expose the corruption of Vladimir Putin.” But it would not mandate an investigation.

A dozen Republicans defected, and the dissenters represent a broad cross-section of the Republican conference. Susan Collins of Maine and Mike Lee of Utah are seldom ideological comrades, but both voted yes. Other override votes included Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Rob Portman of Ohio, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Utah’s Mitt Romney, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

The Senate voted Thursday to override President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on the southern border, and Mr. Trump said even before the vote was over that he’ll veto the resolution. While the 59-41 vote won’t have immediate policy impact, the magnitude of the 12 GOP defections is a warning about the needless harm Mr. Trump is doing to himself and his party.

Democrats were united against the emergency, and let’s stipulate that their motives are largely partisan. “This will be a vote about the very nature of our Constitution, our separation of powers, and how this government functions henceforth,” said Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, apparently without irony.

Where were Mr. Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when President Obama violated the separation of powers again and again to achieve his policy goals? Senate Democrats gave Mr. Obama a blank check on recess appointments, environmental and financial regulation, ObamaCare spending without appropriations, work permits for illegal immigrants, and much more. The courts later rebuked Mr. Obama on all of them.

The GOP opposition is more sincere and significant because it comes at some political cost. Mr. Trump has been banging away on Twitter that a vote to override is a vote for “open borders” and for Nancy Pelosi’s agenda. That’s false, but it’s never easy to vote against a sitting President of one’s own party on such a high-profile issue as immigration.

A dozen Republicans defected, and the dissenters represent a broad cross-section of the Republican conference. Susan Collins of Maine and Mike Lee of Utah are seldom ideological comrades, but both voted yes. Other override votes included Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Rob Portman of Ohio, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Utah’s Mitt Romney, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi. These aren’t liberals.

Many of these Senators agree that the southern border deserves more funding, and even a wall, but they think Mr. Trump is abusing his authority to spend money for purposes that Congress hasn’t appropriated.

The GOP also rightly fears how a Democratic President would misuse “emergency” powers to promote policies that a GOP Congress refused to endorse. Several Senators who voted with Mr. Trump in this case nonetheless favor amending the National Emergencies Act to check the President’s discretion.

Mr. Trump put Senators running for election in 2020 in a particular bind. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Martha McSally of Arizona and Ben Sasse of Nebraska all voted with the President. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who had earlier said he’d vote to override the emergency, changed his mind and also voted with Mr. Trump. They clearly didn’t want to offend the President and his supporters. But the Senators have now created a political opening for their Democratic opponents. Mr. Trump is doing needless harm to his party’s chances of keeping Senate control in 2020.

Mr. Trump should be careful not to test the limits of GOP Senate loyalty. He’ll need those votes to counter House Democrats and sustain his foreign policy. Seven Republicans on Wednesday joined Democrats to vote for a resolution that aims to cut off U.S. involvement in Yemen. Mr. Trump will now soon have to veto that too.

Watch out at the White House if Republican Senators start feeling more liberated to show the President the same lack of consideration he’s showing them.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/bombshell-strzok-told-congress-robert-mueller-never-asked-him-about-anti-trump-texts/
On Thursday morning, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) published a transcript of a June 2018 interview FBI Agent Peter Strzok gave to members of Congress before he was fired in August 2018 over anti-Trump texts between him and his lover, Lisa Page. Strzok had worked on three important investigations: the FBI probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails, the FBI investigation into possible Trump-Russia collusion, and the Trump-Russia probe headed by special counsel Robert Mueller.

After the anti-Trump texts came to light, Mueller booted Strzok from the special counsel probe, but according to the FBI agent’s testimony, Mueller’s team never asked him whether the anti-Trump bias revealed in his text messages impacted his investigation of alleged collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.

In the June 2018 hearing, Strzok repeated over and over that Mueller’s team never asked him about the anti-Trump bias in the texts or whether that bias impacted his work. This news seems particularly damning since it suggests the special counsel’s team did not care whether Strzok’s work was colored by anti-Trump bias.

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) asked the FBI agent a long series of questions about the Mueller probe. Strzok told him that the FBI investigation began in late July of 2016, that he was “one of the senior leaders” on that team, and that he joined the special counsel investigation “within a month” after its inception in May 2017.

The FBI agent discussed “the existence of the text messages” in an August 2017 discussion with Mueller and another lawyer, he said.

“There was a sense that special counsel Mueller absolutely wanted to run an investigation that was not only independent but also presented the appearance of independence, and the concern that these texts might be construed otherwise,” Strzok said.

Ratcliffe pressed him, “Do you think it’s fair, as these texts have been characterized, do you think it’s fair to say that they were hateful texts with respect to Donald Trump?”

“I wouldn’t call them hateful. I would call them an expression of personal belief in an individual conversation with a close associate,” the FBI agent responded.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/peter-strzok-clinton-doj-struck-deal-that-blocked-fbi-access-to-clinton-foundation-emails-on-her-private-server?utm_source=

Fired FBI agent Peter Strzok told Congress last year that the agency “did not have access” to Clinton Foundation emails that were on Hillary Clinton’s private server because of a consent agreement “negotiated between the Department of Justice attorneys and counsel for Clinton.”

That agreement was revealed in newly released congressional transcripts from Strzok’s closed-door testimony at the House Judiciary Committee on June 27, 2018.

When asked by then-majority general counsel Zachary Somers if “the Clinton Foundation was on the server”, Strzok testified that he believed it was “on one of the servers, if not the others.” But Strzok stressed that due to an agreement between the DOJ and Clinton, they were not allowed to search Clinton Foundation emails for information that could help in their investigation. The FBI would have been investigating Clinton’s emails in 2016, when former President Barack Obama was still in office and when Clinton was running for president against then-candidate Donald Trump.

Somers asked in the 2018 hearing: “Were you given access to those emails as part of the investigation?”

Strzok replied: “We were not. We did not have access,” according to the transcript.

The FBI’s investigation into Clinton, called the “Midyear Exam,” focused on whether she had mishandled classified information in emails that were sent and received through her private server.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/433989-nys-political-prosecution-of-manafort-should-scare-us-all

“The New York district attorney did not indict Manafort because he committed mortgage fraud. The DA indicted Manafort because he worked on the Trump campaign and could be pardoned during Trump’s presidency. That’s disgraceful.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has indicted Paul Manafort for mortgage fraud and more than a dozen other state felonies. This is a nakedly political prosecution. Democrats, who run the Empire State, are apoplectic that President Trump could pardon his former campaign manager, who has been sentenced to 90 months in prison in the Mueller probe.

The federal charges had nothing to do with the rationale for the special counsel’s investigation, which involves Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and any possible Trump campaign coordination in that effort. But there is no doubt that the convictions and sentences, which resulted from separate but related proceedings in the Eastern District of Virginia and the District of Columbia, are valid. In Washington on Wednesday, Judge Amy Berman Jackson added 43 months of incarceration to the 47-months of imprisonment Judge T.S. Ellis imposed in Alexandria last week.

The New York state charges, announced shortly after Manafort’s second federal sentencing, raise some interesting legal and strategic questions about double jeopardy and pardons.

Most of the time, a federal prosecution is no impediment to a subsequent state prosecution based on the same conduct or charges. Under the so-called dual sovereignty doctrine, there is no double-jeopardy protection because that constitutional safeguard only prevents the same sovereign from prosecuting a person twice for the same offense. In our system, the federal government and the states are deemed to be different sovereigns. It is a dubious proposition since it is supposed to be the people who are sovereign, regardless of whether we’re talking about federal or state government matters.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273095/nevertrump-bitter-enders-bruce-thornton

As Trump enters his third year of office, some Republican NeverTrumpers have gotten control of the symptoms of Trumpophobia, and have settled for the occasional snarky asides to maintain their anti-Trump bona fides while they write about serious issues rather than Trump’s alleged crypto-fascist assault on “democratic norms.” Others, however, have become bitter-enders, still clinging to the hope that Trump will be impeached or weakened enough to lose in 2020, thus sanctifying their irrational hatred of the best and most effective champion that conservatism is likely to find these days.

But make no mistake, no matter how seemingly marginalized or absurd, the bitter-enders are still functioning as a fifth column for the progressive “resistance,” providing a “conservative” and “bipartisan” cover for the Democrats’ rush to move America farther to the left in order to change our Constitutional Republic into a socialist technocracy.

Some of these bitter-enders have retreated into a left-wing financed, online redoubt they call The Bulwark, the motto of which is “conserving conservatism.” But that sentiment is hard to square with the editors’ decision to send evangelical pro-choice blogger Molly Jong-Fast to CPAC shortly after the Democrats in New York gleefully legalized infanticide. As Jim Treacher reported, Jong-Fast in her CPAC twitter commentary mocked millennial conservative activist Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, who put her in a “rage” for speaking obvious truths like Trump had “revealed” the left’s true nature. She also targeted Glen Beck, “who thinks socialism is very bad.” But she really got miffed at the “scary” pro-life panel and a host who is “very very very very anti-choice,” and she bragged, “People are mad at me for wanting to control my own uterus.” Treacher economically sums up the problem with The Bulwark: “They’re conserving conservatism by behaving just like the people they think have ruined conservatism.”

The Bulwark also is going after writers like Victor Davis Hanson, Hugh Hewitt, Mark Thiessen, and Henry Olsen who support Trump with what editor Charles Sykes calls “sophism and trollery.” Just recently contributor Gabriele Schoenfeld reviewed for The Bulwark Victor Davis Hanson’s new book The Case for Trump. The piece is titled “Sophistry in the Service of Evil,” and like the title, it is a tissue of the question-begging assaults on Trump favored by progressives, such as “blatant racial prejudice” and “racism”; and hysterical adjectives like “demented” and “morally unfit for office.” Indeed, Hanson’s dismemberment of the progressives’ Orwellian “racist” meme is, according to Schoenfeld an example of the “gaping hole that is [Hanson’s] treatment of Trump’s odious life-long record in matters of race,” which is “worse than sophistry”–– it is “sophistry in the service of a genuine evil.”

Schoenfeld finishes with a bit of true sophistry by using an ancient rhetorical device called apophasis: bringing up something unsavory then disavowing it:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/paul-manafort-sentencing-washington-dc-federal-court/

The 47 months from a Virginia court was a side show. Today’s sentencing is the main event.C ritics who last week blasted the light 47-month sentence imposed on Paul Manafort by Judge T. S. Ellis of the federal district court in Alexandria, Va., may lack familiarity with both the federal sentencing guidelines and the peculiarities of Manafort’s case. As I observed in my weekend column, he is going to get slammed when he gets sentenced today by Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the federal district court in Washington, D.C.

I am not telling you this based on some crystal ball I’ve been hiding. You just need to read Manafort’s plea agreement in the Washington case.

Manafort should have had only one case, not two. Even though the charges are different, the two cases were based on the same fact pattern, and they have always been two parts of the same whole. Manafort was tried twice instead of once, strictly because of his own choice.

Prosecutors would have preferred to file the whole case in Washington. But the case involved some counts (the tax counts, in particular) as to which Manafort was entitled to be tried in the venue of the offense — in Virginia, where he resided. Defending oneself in a trial is prohibitively expensive for those who have means to hire their own counsel; and trials are emotionally wrenching for an accused and his family. So most defendants waive venue objections; that allows all the counts to be tried once, in one district. But Manafort calculated that Virginia would be a friendlier place for him than Washington: He hoped to beat the case there, and maybe gain some momentum that might miraculously help him in Washington — or at least improve his argument for a pardon. He was largely wrong — convicted on all the counts the Virginia jury decided, and the hung jury on the other charges meant he could be tried again if the special counsel chose to do so. Consequently, Manafort pled guilty in the Washington case because it made no sense to fight on.

Judge Ellis may be sympathetic to Manafort, and he may have been trying to convey a signal, by the light sentence, that he thought the prosecution was overkill (i.e., that no matter how serious Manafort’s offenses are, he would never have been prosecuted if he had not gotten involved in Donald Trump’s campaign). But the Virginia sentencing exercise was theater. No matter what Ellis did, Manafort was going to be sentenced to heavy time in Washington.

In his Washington plea agreement, Manafort and his counsel agreed that his sentencing-guidelines range, at a minimum, calls for 210 to 262 months’ imprisonment (roughly 18 to 22 years). I say “at a minimum” because the agreement’s guidelines calculation includes a caveat that Manafort’s downward adjustment (2 “offense level” points) for accepting responsibility by pleading guilty could be withdrawn if Mueller’s office presses the contention that Manafort proceeded, post-plea, to lie in his failed cooperation attempt. If he is at offense level 39 instead of the currently projected 37, Manafort’s sentencing range spikes up to 262 to 327 months (roughly 22 to 27 years).

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/13/schiff-trump-impeachment-russia-probe-1219471

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said Wednesday that even if a report from special counsel Robert Mueller exonerates President Donald Trump, impeachment talk might remain on the table.

Schiff (D-Calif.), whose committee is still investigating the president’s ties to Russia during to the 2016 presidential election, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that if neither Mueller nor his panel find definitive evidence of collusion or obstruction of justice by Trump, he would consider that to be the end of the collusion inquiry, the most likely grounds for impeachment.

Still, he said, “there may be grounds for removal of office or there may be grounds for indictment after he leaves office that the Congress discovers.”

He pointed out that Mueller’s narrow mandate may have precluded the special counsel from investigating “whether the Russians were laundering money for the Trump Organization,” something Schiff said his committee is looking into.

“Our predominant concern on my committee is: Was this president, is this president compromised by a foreign power?” the California Democrat said.