RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13454/trump-agenda

President Donald Trump has put a number of burning issues back on the agenda. These include the widening income gap in the United States, the unintended and unexpected consequences of outsourcing, and the disequilibrium created by signing trade agreements with countries with different labor laws and environmental, health and safety standards.

In foreign policy, Trump has managed to pass on an important message: don’t take American heavy lifting for granted! More importantly, Trump has persuaded millions of Americans excluded or self-excluded from the political arena to end their isolation and demand a meaningful place in collective decision-making.

Thus, for the time being at least, air-brushing Trump out of the picture is a forlorn task.

As the American political elite head for Christmas holidays, the buzz in Washington circles is that 2019 will start with fresh attempts at curtailing the Trump presidency or, failing that, preventing Donald Trump’s re-election in 2020. Amateurs of the conspiracy theory may suggest that the whole thing may be a trap set by the Trump camp to keep the president’s opponents chained to a strategy doomed to failure.

By devoting almost all of their energies to attacking Trump personally and praying that the Mueller probe may open the way for impeachment, the president’s opponents, starting with the Democrat Party leadership, have shut down debate about key issues of economic, social and foreign policy — issues that matter to the broader public. Reducing all politics to a simple “Get Trump!’ slogan makes them a one-trick pony that may amuse people for a while but is unlikely to go very far.

Despite sensational daily headlines furnished by the Mueller soap opera, there is little chance of the impeachment strategy to get anywhere close to success. And even if the pro-impeachment lobby succeeds in triggering the process, it is unlikely that this would lead to Trump’s removal from office. In fact, out of the 45 men who have served as President of the United States only two, Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton, faced formal impeachment procedures, but neither was driven out of office.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/rand_paul_issues_festivus_edition_of_the_waste_report.html

“The stupid, inane, shocking, maddening, and depressing examples of how our federal government spends your tax dollars.”

Read it and weep, taxpayers.

Every Christmas since he took office, Senator Rand Paul has issued a “Waste Report” on government spending. This year, Senator Paul has outdone himself in finding the stupid, inane, shocking, maddening, and depressing examples of how our federal government spends the hard-earned tax dollars of citizens.

So here we are, another year past, another year to forget. A government shutdown resolved by hiking spending; nuked budget caps; a debt over $21 trillion; and Congress okayed $1.3 trillion in new spending – all in the first three months! An October 2018 report from the Congressional Budget Office showed net interest payments on the debt for fiscal year 2018 at $371 billion, $62 billion more than payments for fiscal year 2017. Given such largesse, it may seem like a few million dollars is a drop in the bucket. But to borrow from a line credited to former Senator Everett Dirksen(R-IL): “a million dollars here and there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”

This year, The Waste Report is highlighting $114,514,631 of wasted money. We feature an old favorite due for an update and some instant classics, like a study of daydreaming. Exactly where taxes should go, right? No matter how much federal agencies waste, politicians think they’ve never got enough. But if there’s money to waste, there’s too much already. So, before the Feats of Strength can begin, there must be an Airing of (spending) Grievance.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/345004-sod-mattis-served-as-uae-military-adviser-before-appointed-to-trump
Defense Secretary James Mattis served as an unpaid military adviser to the United Arab Emirates before joining the Trump administration, CNN first reported Wednesday.

The Pentagon reportedly gave Mattis permission to take on the informal advisory role in 2015, during his time as a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He also received approval to work for the UAE from the State Department.

Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said Mattis advised the UAE on rebuilding its military. He was not representing the U.S. government and was reimbursed for travel by the UAE, Davis added.

Though not previously made public, Mattis properly disclosed the information when he was nominated to be defense secretary, CNN said.

“He certainly hasn’t been hiding it,” Davis told the network.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-next-in-fbi-oversight-11545350636

James Comey gave his follow-up testimony to Congress this week, in which he continued to profess memory loss about most of the 2016 investigation of the Trump campaign. Then again, the joke was on the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Thanks to two years of dogged investigation, House Republicans already know the story of the FBI’s 2016 doings. Mr. Comey wasn’t there to provide new details. He was there to account for his actions.

That’s the crowning achievement of this 115th Congress. Tax and criminal-justice reform and judicial appointments are all hugely important. But House and Senate investigators get pride of place for unraveling one of the greatest dirty tricks of our political times, in which a Democratic administration, party and presidential campaign either co-opted or fooled the FBI into investigating the Republican campaign. Lawmakers got to the bottom of this despite partisan attacks and institutional obstruction. Congress has taken that probe about as far as was ever going to be possible. The next steps are up to the White House.

In January 2017, CNN reported the explosive news that “classified documents” from a “credible” “former British intelligence operative” alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians. It sounded bad and set off a hysteria that led to the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the firing of national security adviser Mike Flynn, the launching of half a dozen investigations, and the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. Senior officials, including Mr. Comey, watched all this in full knowledge of the dossier’s provenance. They said nothing.

It was left to the House Intelligence Committee, under Chairman Devin Nunes, to extract the real story: that the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign hired opposition-research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn retained a British gun-for-hire (Christopher Steele) to compile the so-called dossier; that Fusion injected this into the FBI, the Justice Department and the State Department; that this political dirt was a part of the FBI’s decision to launch an unprecedented counterintelligence investigation (which included human informants) into a presidential campaign; that this dirt was also the basis for a surveillance warrant against former Trump aide Carter Page; that the “credible” Mr. Steele was fired by the FBI; and that the FBI withheld the most sordid details from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which granted said warrant. And we separately know the Obama administration was engaged in the unmasking of U.S. citizens and leaking of classified information. CONTINUE AT SITE

House Republicans approve bill to fund border wall, setting up a final showdown in the Senate originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

House Republicans voted to approve a bill to fund President Donald Trump’s $5 billion demand for a border wall, setting up a final showdown in the Senate ahead of Friday’s deadline to avert a government shutdown.

The vote received no Democratic support, and the bill’s prospects in the Senate are dim as Democrats have pledged to defeat the divisive measure.

The final tally was 217-185, with eight Republicans voting against the package, which includes $5.7 billion to construct a border wall, $7.8 billion for disaster relief and would fund the government until Feb. 8.

Trump praised House Republicans for passing the measure Thursday night, while noting that upcoming speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said last week in the Oval Office that the GOP did not have the votes.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/20/james-wolfe-

In a recent court filing, the defendant’s attorneys begged for mercy. The offender—once a high-level government official assigned with protecting national security secrets—had pleaded guilty to one charge of making a false statement to the FBI in 2017.

Citing his modest upbringing, community involvement, and decorated military service, the defendant’s lawyers asked the judge only to impose a sentence of probation rather than jail time.

“This case has garnered a significant amount of media attention,” the attorneys wrote, “and plainly sends a message to the public that lying to federal agents—even when those lies were denials animated by a desire to conceal a personal failing—has profound consequences.”

The appeal was supported by letters written by powerful people, including top lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who attested to the man’s overall decency, claiming he had already suffered enough and how his “conduct is contradicted sharply by the character of the man that his family and community and country relied upon and loved and respected.”

No, that entreaty was not about Lt. General Michael Flynn; it was on behalf of James Wolfe, the former security chief for the Senate Intelligence Committee who was caught not just lying to FBI officials but illegally leaking classified information to journalists, including his 20-something girlfriend. Wolfe’s misconduct was far more egregious—and damaging—than the process crime committed by Flynn.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13446/dershowitz-twitter-misinformation

Lying to the FBI is not a crime if the lie is not material.

“[18 U.S. Code §] 1001 explicitly requires that the lie must be material. The statute (a2) reads ‘…makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation;'” — Alan M. Dershowitz, on Twitter.

If Twitter users wish to spread stories as pseudo-reporters, they must also fact-check what they publish. If they do not, they become complicit in the spreading of disinformation.

Controversy over the responsibility Twitter has in policing its users has been at the forefront of our national discourse. There is also a role for individuals to play in propagating fair and accurate stories on this platform. On Twitter, information seems to spread at lightning speed and “news” stories have a way of taking on a life of their own. Twitter undoubtably has some virtue — I myself am a frequent user. It is a forum where otherwise disparate people can communicate quickly and information can be democratized. However, Twitter all too frequently can be used to deceive and mislead.

On Twitter, I am often the target of misleading news stories based on out of context or truncated quotes as well as outright lies. My recent commentary on Michael Flynn’s lying to the FBI is a perfect example of just that. On December 17, I was interviewed by Bill Hemmer and was asked about the repercussions of Flynn lying to the FBI. I first responded by stating:

“I hope the judge understands when he has the case tomorrow; Flynn did not commit a crime by lying because the lie has to be material to the investigation, and if the FBI already knew the answer to the question and only asked the question to give him an opportunity to lie, his answer, even if false, was not material to the investigation.”

My point was clearly laid out. A few minutes later, Hemmer brought the topic back to Flynn. I then, once again, clearly stated my aforementioned argument around materiality:

“The lie has to be material to the investigation, and if the FBI already knew the answer to the question and only asked him the question in order to give them an opportunity to lie, his answer, even if false, was not material to the investigation. Which answers the question [Hemmer interrupts]… Lying to the FBI is not a crime [Hemmer interrupts]…”

I was interrupted and unable to finish my point which was “lying to the FBI is not a crime if the lie is not material.”

https://www.city-journal.org/disparate-impact-analysis

A federal commission on school safety has repudiated the use of disparate-impact analysis in evaluating whether school discipline is racially biased. The Trump administration should go further, and extirpate such analysis from the entirety of the federal code of regulations, as well as from informal government practice.

Disparate-impact analysis holds that if a facially-neutral policy negatively affects blacks and Hispanics at a higher rate than whites and Asians, it is discriminatory. Noticing the behavioral differences that lead to those disparate effects is forbidden. In the area of school discipline, disparate-impact analysis results in the conclusion that racially neutral rules must nevertheless contain bias, since black students nationally are suspended at nearly three times the rate of white students. In 2014, the Obama administration relied on this methodology to announce that schools that suspended or expelled black students at higher rates than white students were violating anti-discrimination laws.

To understand how counterfactual such an analysis is, consider Duval County, Florida, which has Florida’s highest juvenile homicide rate. Seventy-three children, some as young as 11, have been arrested for murder and manslaughter over the last decade, according to the Florida Times-Union. Black juveniles made up 87.6 percent of those arrests and whites 8 percent. The black population in Duval County—which includes Jacksonville—was 28.9 percent in 2010 and the white population 56.6 percent, making black youngsters 21.6 times more likely to be arrested for homicide than white youngsters. Nationally, black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic male teens combined; if Hispanics were removed from the equation, the black-white disparity would be much greater.

Beneath those homicide numbers is a larger juvenile crime wave. “The reason so many kids commit murder in Jacksonville is not because they are murderers, but because they are everything else: drug dealers, robbers, thieves, rapists and a bunch of other types of criminals whose crimes of choice has a great likelihood of leading to a murder,” a teen murder convict, Aaron Wright, told the Florida Times-Union. Fifty-nine percent of juvenile murder convicts from Duval County who responded to the paper’s inmate survey reported that they were committing another crime such as robbery or burglary when they or their co-defendant killed their victim. Wright himself was robbing a woman when his fellow robber shot and killed her, making Wright guilty of felony murder.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/womens-march-sponsors-silent-on-anti-semitism-allegations/his is how toxic the far Left has become.

It has been a week and a half since Tablet magazine detailed extensive allegations of anti-Semitism and financial corruption on the part of the Women’s March leadership.

The organization, which since November 2016 has organized grassroots efforts across the country to demonstrate and vote against the Trump administration, has yet to offer a formal statement on the exposé. And so far, not one of the more than 100 partners and sponsors of the Women’s March has raised a fuss over the story — including more than 20 high-profile groups that National Review contacted directly seeking comment.

As of this morning, the Women’s March website still featured a November 20 statement from co-chair Linda Sarsour side-stepping demands from the group’s founder that the current co-chairs resign over their support for anti-Semitic Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Louis Farrakhan.

The Tablet essay, by Leah McSweeney and Jacob Siegel, from earlier this month added fuel to that fire. Several sources told the magazine that at the leaders’ first meeting in November 2016, Carmen Perez and Tamika Mallory, now co-chairs along with Sarsour, “first asserted that Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people — and even, according to a close secondhand source, claimed that Jews were proven to have been leaders of the American slave trade.”

Later, Mallory and Perez allegedly “berated” one of the group’s leaders over the fact that she was Jewish, saying, “Your people this, your people that” and “Your people hold all the wealth.” The co-chairs have also been accused by former group leaders of reshaping the financial structure of the organization for their personal benefit and of employing members of the NOI security team for Women’s March events.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/alan-dershowitz-michael-flynn-now-has-three-options-to-stay-out-of-prison

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan’s handling of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s sentencing hearing Tuesday on Flynn’s guilty plea to lying to the FBI was anything but exemplary. The judge – who has a well-deserved reputation as both tough and fair – made several fundamental errors right at the outset.

First, Sullivan suggested that Flynn might be guilty of treason. This reflects an abysmal ignorance of the governing case law. Nothing Flynn did comes even close to satisfying the strict definition of treason.

The U.S. Constitution states: “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same Overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”

Flynn admitted he represented Turkey – America’s NATO ally – before he became a federal employee as President Trump’s national security adviser, but said he failed to register until later under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not charge Flynn for failing to register – let alone with the far more serious crime of treason.

But Sullivan blundered by accusing Flynn of having been an unregistered foreign agent while he was serving in the White House, thereby having “sold your country out.” This was flat out wrong, since Flynn stopped working for any foreign government before he became President Trump’s national security adviser when Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017.