RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/the_federal_governments_catch22_strategy_to_cover_up_its_spying_on_sharyl_attkisson.html

We’ve been covering the incredible story of Sharyl Attkisson, the award-winning journalist, who discovered that her computer was being not just spied-upon but remotely taken over by the federal government. This was ten years ago, as she was reporting on the Fast & Furious Scandal for CBS News. She recorded video of her computer screen being remotely controlled, among other evidence.

The feds had no interest in pursuing their own wrongdoing, so Sharyl was forced to launch a civil suit, which has been in process for years now. We’ve publicized her GoFundMe appeal for help in the very expensive process of documenting the crimes and pursing justice in civil court.

Now, via her GoFundMe page, Sharyl reveals the way the feds have used the law to put her in a no-win Catch-22 situation. In an update written by Mark Fitzgibbons, who has organized the GoFundMe appeal, we learn the incredible, unassailable power the feds have:

You cannot make this up:
+The government’s computer intrusion is forensically confirmed and undeniable, with forensic proof that the govt. is the source.
+But since DOJ won’t hold their own accountable or prosecute them, my only recourse is to seek justice through this civil lawsuit.
+Forensic proof isn’t enough to get the case to a jury. The courts require me to somehow play detective and, in advance, identify the names of the govt. people responsible for the intrusions, and supply the proof of their direct involvement… but without the power to access the evidence.
+That’s because the law gives DOJ (guilty party in this case) the authority to grant or deny our to access to the crucial documents and govt. witnesses that are needed to produce specific names and evidence required by the court. We literally have to ask DOJ’s permission to interview the guilty DOJ agents or those with information, and access the evidence.
+So we ask, but, naturally, DOJ stalls, denies permission for us to get the documents and interviews, then asks court to dismiss case for lack of evidence and the court says “ok.”
+This is akin to a prosecutor having to get permission from a murderer to obtain the evidence against him and to interview witnesses. The murderer would just say no.
+Obviously, the law giving the guilty party authority over access to the evidence against it should be changed. 
+However, Congress won’t change law because there is no powerful interest that is lobbying, paying members, or writing the bill to do so– and that’s pretty much the main way laws gets changed or considered today.
+At the same time, CBS improperly withheld computer evidence in my case. They stalled and delayed while our deadlines ticked on. 
+We finally got that issue before a judge, who ordered CBS to turn over the computer evidence– but with little to no time left for us to get it forensically examined before court-imposed deadlines. And, even then, CBS stalled.
+In the end, there is no legal recourse for people like me, Carter Page and Gen. Flynn who are wronged by bad actors in govt. They have impunity. 
+This is why these issues are important not to just those of us impacted today, but to everyone who could be victimized in ways you can’t imagine until it happens to you.
We haven’t quite reached the end of our rope. Our case continues, thanks to you. But I thought you should be aware and let others know how broken our justice system it. This is a good example.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/stay_faithful_because_history_starts_today.html

What if, hidden behind the censorship, propaganda, and surveillance, a real movement for change is taking hold?

If you’re like me, the news cycle is one smack to the face after the next.  It’s not even a “cycle” at this point; it feels more like crawling out of bed under relentless machine-gun fire of bad news and trying to survive the day without getting hit.  

In this sense, getting “hit” is letting the bastards get you down (excuse my French).  It’s not easy, and it’s not for the faint of heart.  I look at it as a special challenge that all normal, non-woke, patriotic Americans must accept as part of living through this period of great change.

Can you witness all the cultural chaos and national hara-kiri, take a deep breath, give an affirmative nod to the Almighty, and say, “Lay it on me; let’s have it; I can take more”?  Because, at the end of the day, this spiritual contest for the West’s future will not be won by those with the most money, power, or spy toys at their disposal.  It will be won by those who take everything in stride and continue to stand.  In a battle of wills, strength of character alone determines who will prevail.

Now, that’s a pretty simple truth that we all often ignore, is it not?  It is easy to look at the vast array of forces set against us — a corrupt central government dedicated to censorship, political persecution, and open borders; a corporate oligarchy intent on eliminating private property for all but the reigning few; a new world order where Marxist globalism trades freedom for servitude — and conclude that there is little else to do but grab the nearest cardboard sign and scrawl a final, lamentable warning: “The End Is Nigh.”

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/05/a-compromised-president.php

I called Peter Schweizer this past Wednesday to ask for help in understanding the Chinese connection to the Biden family business. Peter cited his most recent book, Red-Handed, published last year by Harper Collins. Peter also pointed me to his contemporaneous New York Post column “Chinese elite have paid some $31 million to Hunter and the Bidens.” The headline is a bit misleading. For “Chinese elite” read “Chinese intelligence establishment,” as Peter states in the opening paragraph:

For those wondering why Joe Biden is soft on China, consider this never-before-reported revelation: The Biden family has done five deals in China totaling some $31 million arranged by individuals with direct ties to Chinese intelligence — some reaching the very top of China’s spy agency.

Peter appeared on Mark Levin’s weekly Fox News show to discuss Red-Handed. He pointed me to the Fox News story by Charles Creitz based on his appearance. Meet Che Fung, “the Superchairman” (as Hunter Biden called him in emails found on his laptop). I have posted video of the segment that Creitz reported on below.

Former TCF Financial Corporation general counsel Greg Pulles reviewed the House Oversight Committee report on the Biden family business released this week. I posted Greg’s comments here on Wednesday.

Greg’s comments reminded me of the heroic exploration of the Biden family business by Senators Grassley and Johnson. Their October 26, 2022 letter to United States Attorney David Weiss is the most recent summary of their work (and a potent reminder of the corruption of the Biden Department of Justice).

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/15/everything-youve-heard-about-the-debt-limit-is-wrong/

Contrary to widespread claims that the U.S. government will default on its debt if Congress doesn’t raise the debt limit, federal law and the Constitution require the Treasury to pay the debt, and it has ample tax revenues to do this.

Nor would Social Security benefits be affected by a debt limit stalemate unless President Joe Biden illegally diverts Social Security revenues to other programs.

The debt limit is a valuable tool for transparency, accountability, and for giving voters an ongoing say in how their money is spent.

The Debt Situation

The U.S. national debt has grown by $8.2 trillion since 2020 and is now $31.5 trillion. This is an average debt of $239,763 for every home in the nation.

Those figures don’t account for the government’s fiscal liabilities and unfunded obligations. When these are included — as the government requires in the financial statements of publicly traded corporations — the total federal shortfall is $135 trillion. This is an average burden of more than $1 million per household.

In addition, Biden has proposed a budget framework that will allow the national debt to grow over the next decade by $19.8 trillion, according to his own administration’s projections.

Such levels of red ink have perilous consequences for nearly everyone, like higher inflation, wage stagnation, investment losses, and lower standards of living.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/from_emthe_american_gulag_chroniclesem.html

The idea that Americans known as the January 6th protestors are now languishing in prison because they exercised their  rights to protest is shocking and beyond belief.

In the mid-1970s I and others worldwide were active in a letter writing campaign to Soviet Jewish refuseniks. Anatoly Sharansky is probably the most well-known of these dissidents.  While most of the letters were heavily censored, some did get through and it gave hope to those prisoners of conscience that the world was hearing them despite the malevolence of the communists.

One of my treasured documents is a letter from the wife of Hillel Butman, who was falsely accused of being a spy. She wrote to me that she “wished [me] much power for I knew what to do with it.”  It was a truly incredible and profound statement that I have never forgotten.

It reminds one of the unfortunate truth as stated by John A. Stormer in his Death of a Nation (1968) wherein he wrote,

Our founding fathers were men who — from their study of history… learned that down through history whenever man got power he used it to oppress other humans beings.

Thus, the idea that Americans known as the January 6th protestors are now languishing in prison because they exercised their G-d-given rights to protest is shocking and beyond belief.  It hearkens back to those refuseniks who were denied any justice and mercy.

The American Gulag Chronicles: Letters from Prison (2022) authored by Tim Rivers contains the letters and artwork by the latest victims of despotic rule under Joe Biden and his allies.  The editor-in-chief of this work is Marie Goodwyn, the mother of J6 defendant and video journalist Daniel Goodwyn.  Moreover, an international volunteer team of professional typesetters and proofreaders were instrumental in getting the book done.

To reinvent downtown retail, drastic changes may be required.

Some of those policymakers, including both Republican and Democratic leaders, have pointed to crime as a chief reason for the closures, following videos of brazen shoplifting incidents.

“We’re losing chain stores that are closing down. People who are being employed in those stores are losing their jobs” because of crime, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, said in February.

But the impact of shoplifting may have been overstated in some cases.

Walgreens said it saw a spike in losses, known as shrink, during the pandemic and cited organized retail crime in its decision to close five San Francisco stores in 2021. But it recently backtracked.

“Maybe we cried too much last year” about shrink numbers, a Walgreens executive said in January.

What Walmart’s pullback from Chicago says about Corporate America’s limits

And instead of a strong correlation with crime rates, the closures aren’t also a recent phenomenon.

San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York City, Seattle, Miami and Chicago lost retail stores from the beginning of 2017 to the end of 2021, according to research from the JPMorgan Chase Institute, a think tank.

What’s more, experts agree, the closures aren’t just about crime. Several trends have converged to put these stores at risk.

Perhaps most key is the glut of stores in America.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/11/if-reparations-are-due-the-great-society-crowd-should-pony-up/
Nationwide, it is estimated that more than five out of every six black children lived with both parents in 1950, a figure that had been fairly stable since Reconstruction. Then everything changed.

In no sane part of this great country are reparations really due, but no one has ever accused California of undue sanity. Last week, as Kurtis Lee of the New York Times reported with a straight face, a California panel approved recommendations “that could mean hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to Black residents to address past injustices.”

By “injustices,” Lee means things like slavery, Ku Klux Klan violence, and Jim Crow. As unjust as they were, these Democratic institutions did not cause the wealth disparities between blacks and whites that reparations boosters like to cite. No, the real damage was done much later by still another Democratic invention, the so-called “Great Society.” 

Growing up in Newark, New Jersey, I had a ringside seat on the change the Great Society wrought. In my forthcoming book, Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America’s Cities, I describe what I and others saw. 

Among the more instructive stories I tell is that of the late black radical Amiri Baraka, the father of current Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. In 1951, Baraka graduated from my integrated neighborhood high school, Barringer. He was one of four blacks in a homeroom of 29 students. 

“His carefree and jovial manner has lighted many of our classrooms,” wrote the editors of Baraka in his senior yearbook. At Barringer, Baraka ran track and cross country and belonged to the science club and the Latin Honor Society. Upon graduation, he was offered a four-year scholarship to Seton Hall University and lesser scholarships to Holy Cross and Rutgers University-Newark.

In mid-century urban America, Baraka’s success was not unusual. In his 1987 memoir, The Autobiography of Leroi Jones, Baraka unwittingly made the case against reparations. Despite slavery and Jim Crow, his friends from the neighborhood were doing just fine—“auto plants, utilities, electronic tube factories, mechanics, white-collar paper shuffling, teachers, small businessmen, security guards, commercial artists.” 

His classmates at the historically black Howard University were doing even better. “At least five of us became generals,” he wrote, “and many more at lower levels. An admiral or two. [Ronald] Reagan’s top Negro. [Spiro] Agnew’s top Negro. Negroes at all levels of state bureaucracy and madness.” 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/all-this-failure-is-deliberate/

I recently had a reader ask, “Why is Joe Biden still President?”  While I’m sure there was some facetiousness in his query, it’s actually worth pondering.  The simple answer is, he was elected (ahem) for a four-year term and still has about a year and a half left.  So, he is President because our Constitution allows him to be, and he hasn’t died yet.  But let’s examine the question a little deeper.

Everything Biden has done has been a disaster.  The economy is teetering.  The border is non-existent.  The banking system and the dollar are crumbling.  Our enemies are taking advantage of the weakness they perceive in the White House.  Crime is out of control in most of our once-great cities.  Traditional morality and decency are in the toilet.  Our children are being butchered and groomed for the hedonistic pleasure of a cadre of sexual deviants.  Women athletes are losing hard-earned rights because of the “transgender” movement, something that almost no one had heard of five years ago.  Government spending is without restraint and, as a result, inflation has soared, and America’s middle class is being squeezed into near oblivion.  The education system continues to produce semi-literates who will do—what?—in the future.  No patriot wants to join the military anymore.  The list of Joe Biden’s cataclysms is endless, but my space in this column isn’t, so I mention only a few of the most egregious catastrophes this man and his ideology have foisted upon the nation.  Why is he still President indeed?

Biden is President, but he is far from in control.  The Marxist, Leftist global movement, whatever groups are ultimately behind it, are using Biden and the Democratic Party as pawns in the supreme game of human domination.  Biden does everything he is told to do.  He is nothing but a puppet, a “useful idiot” as I explained recently—totally unable to think for himself.  The Far Left, the Marxist Left, manipulates him and his ideological band.  Biden doesn’t realize it, but some Democrats do.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-case-of-jordan-neely-stay-seated-and-do-nothing/

Imagine, for a moment, a different scenario in the Jordan Neely case.

Let’s say that Neely, a homeless individual and part-time Michael Jackson impersonator with a record of 40-plus arrests, had not been apprehended and put into a choke-hold by 24-year-old Marine vet Daniel Penny on the Manhattan-bound F-train on May 1, 2023.

Let’s also imagine that Neely’s mental breakdown rant on that same subway train went from threatening violence – “I’ll hurt anyone on this train” – to actual violence in which he attacked several passengers.

Imagine Neely turning on passengers by pushing, shoving, punching and kicking – as Daniel Penny observed the mayhem from the sidelines.

Imagine the press coverage after this fact.

“Passengers watch as homeless man terrorizes train and injures many. Who was there to defend the 80-year-old woman who died of a heart attack as Neely threw kicks and punches?”

The article would give an overview of the able-bodied passengers on the train who could have done something but didn’t.

“On board was a 24-year-old Marine vet who sat and observed as 80-year-old Mrs. O’Rielly fell to the floor and died” – one can envision news stations proclaiming.

The Jordan Neely incident could have easily gone this way.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/why-we-need-behavioral-vigilantes/

Jordan Neely’s death on May 1, 2023 by a Marine veteran who placed him in a chokehold after the 30-year-old, homeless African-American appeared on a New York subway train allegedly hurling garbage and verbal abuse at passengers is one extreme end of a social malady plaguing our society today: individuals who treat the public sphere as an extension of their private sphere (or lack thereof), and who subject others to their obtrusive behaviors.

Neely had been arrested over 40 times previously for various crimes ranging from lewd behavior to assaulting senior citizens. As one commentator noted: This guy has been arrested dozens of times and he is back on the subway causing people to be scared for their safety; either get some law enforcement on the subway or give citizens authority to protect themselves without recourse.

Other recent incidents include two women blasting music from their phones on a plane in flight (pictured above). The women gave the middle finger to annoyed fellow passengers. As the article points out, one of the alarming trends in travel is the rise of people using personal speakers in public and carrying on loud phone conversations without using headphones.

Another recent article describes a woman voted off a Frontier Jet for lobbing a barrage of vulgar expletives in an argument she started with a couple seated rows in front of her.

People who use their phones as personal speakers are polluting every pocket of the public sphere; their boisterous behavior indicates they believe they are entitled to treat shared public space as their own private space—indeed, as an extension of their disheveled bedrooms.

Why is it that so many people have no understanding of their responsibility not to dominate the public sphere, monopolize it, or even make themselves highly conspicuous and obtrusive in it?