RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Republican congressional leadership’s failure to repeal Obamacare has led to suggestions that, perhaps, they should have approached their task through “regular order.” Since Congress has not operated under “regular order” at all since 2006, and with decreasing frequency in the decades before that, younger readers, especially, may be excused for not knowing what these procedures are. Far from being arcane ephemera, they are the indispensable catalyst that makes American government responsible to the people. Casting aside “regular order” was essential to the rise of the unaccountable administrative state and the near-sovereignty of party leaders, lobbyists, and bureaucrats.https://amgreatness.com/2017/07/23/restoring-republic-means-reimposing-regular-order/

Herewith, a summary of what “regular order” means, what purpose it once served, why and how it was shunned, and of what has ensued.

More than a half century ago, Daniel Berman’s college-level text, A Bill Becomes a Law, the template for K-12 civics courses, described more or less how Congress had operated since the 1790s. Bills introduced in House or Senate would be sent to the relevant committee, and thence to the proper sub-committee. The ones thought worthy—including those funding the federal government’s operations—would be the subject of public hearings.

The committees’ partisan majorities and minorities would try to stage manage the hearings to make the best case for the outcomes they desired on each point. In the process, public support would strengthen or wane for particular items and approaches. Then, each subcommittee’s public “mark up” of its portion of the bill would reflect the members’ votes and compromises on each item.

Once the several subcommittee products had made their way to the full committee, the same process would repeat. Votes on contested items, and on the whole bill, would end the full committee’s “mark up” and send the bill to be scheduled for action on the House or Senate floor.

Just to get to this point, every element of every bill had to be exposed to public scrutiny. Senators or congressmen on the committees offered amendments and had to vote on the record for each part of the bill. On the House floor, amendments would be limited. But in the Senate, there could be—and often were—“amendments by way of substitution.” By the time the “yeas and nays” were tallied on the final bill, just about all members had had as much of a crack at it as they wanted. The final product would be the result of countless compromises “on the record.”

In 2017, it is useful to recall that this process used to apply to each and every government activity that required a dollar from the U.S. treasury, each and every year. For the past 11 years, however, all the money drawn from the treasury have come from single “continuing resolutions” (CRs) or “omnibus” bills, drafted in secret by “leadership” staffers, executive branch officials, and lobbyists, on which there have been no hearings and which few members have ever read, and on which few if any amendments have been allowed. These “Cromnibuses,” served up as the government runs out of spending authority, end up being passed by the majority party’s near unanimity.

While this is consistent with the Constitution’s words, “no money shall be drawn from the treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law,” it wholly reverses their intent. Individual congressmen and senators are cut out of the legislative process. The voters can no longer hold each accountable. When Republican leaders make common cause with the Democratic Party against Republicans who won’t go along, whom they accuse of “shutting down the government,” they create a bipartisan ruling party. That makes both parties equally responsible, and ensures that changing your vote from D to R or R to D won’t make a difference.

Senators and congressmen abandoned regular order because it hinders their craving for power and flight from responsibility. Voters elect them to vote accountably on important matters. But since such matters are almost inevitably divisive, they do their utmost to avoid voting on them.

Did Congress learn anything from Lois Lerner ? Judging from Capitol Hill’s self-abasing deference to Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, the answer is no.

You remember Ms. Lerner. She was the official at the center of an Internal Revenue Service effort that denied conservative political advocacy groups tax-exempt status, or at least held up approval long enough that these groups could not be a factor in the 2012 election.

Back when Republicans were holding hearings on the matter, time and again they were lectured not to do anything that might affect the FBI’s investigation—which eventually ended with no charges against anyone. Though Ms. Lerner was found in contempt by the House for her refusal to testify, it proved all for show.

The tip-off came when then-Speaker John Boehner, rather than use Congress’s inherent contempt power to jail Ms. Lerner until she talked, opted for classic swamp symbolism—by passing the buck to an Obama Justice Department everyone knew would never prosecute her.

The result? Ms. Lerner avoided having to answer any hard questions. The IRS merrily continued to lose or destroy crucial documents. And John Koskinen, the awful replacement IRS commissioner who stonewalled and misled, remains in office.

The Lois Lerner fiasco offers a sobering lesson for a Congress whose various committees are holding hearings on Russia’s intervention in last year’s elections as Mr. Mueller investigates the same. While Mr. Mueller’s office is a watered-down version of Ken Starr’s or Lawrence Walsh’s , it remains true that special prosecutors corrupt even if they don’t corrupt as absolutely as independent counsels. The main headlines of the past week—Is Donald Trump attempting to undermine Mr. Mueller? Will Trump Fire Mueller?—all speak to the challenge a special prosecutor poses to the constitutional authority of the president.

Far less scrutiny has been devoted to the challenge Mr. Mueller poses to the authority of the legislative branch. In this case, ironically, the challenge stems less from the aggressiveness of the special prosecutor than from the meekness of Congress. In between their public tributes to Mr. Mueller’s sterling character, too many in Congress seem to worry more about how they might be affecting his investigation than about what his investigation might be doing to theirs.

One small snapshot: Mr. Mueller, an unelected appointee, had the Trump memos written by former FBI Director James Comey even as the FBI was refusing to release them to the elected representatives of the American people.

When Mr. Mueller was appointed back in May, Sen. Lindsey Graham rightly noted that though he respected the decision, the appointment will “really limit what Congress can do, and it’s going to really limit what the public will know about this.” Alas, the South Carolina Republican went on to say that “we in Congress have to be very careful not to interfere in his lane.”

Certainly representatives and senators shouldn’t set out to frustrate Mr. Mueller’s investigation. But neither should they permit Mr. Mueller to frustrate theirs. CONTINUE AT SITE

Jared Kushner on Monday introduced a useful precedent for the Trump Presidency: comprehensive disclosure. In an 11-page statement released before meeting this week with the Senate and House intelligence committees, the President’s son-in-law and White House aide described his contacts with Russian figures during the campaign and after the election.

The statement to the committees ends with a definitive denial of collusion with the Russians: “I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government.”

The Beltway media are past the point of no return on their collusion odyssey, so there is little chance that Mr. Kushner has put this issue behind him. But as we suggested in these columns last week (“The Trumps and the Truth”), the White House’s best defense against death by a thousand cuts of anonymous leaks is radical transparency on Russia. Mr. Kushner’s statement has provided a template.

There isn’t much in this statement about Russia beyond what we know, but Mr. Kushner expressly rebuts some of the more incendiary news reports of recent months.

The biggest was the recent disclosure of a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer, which was also attended by several functionaries serving as “translators.” About 10 minutes into the meeting, which he calls a waste of time, Mr. Kushner says he emailed his assistant: “Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting.” Aside from the amusement of this extraction effort, Mr. Kushner’s email to his assistant is surely available to investigators for confirmation.

Mr. Kushner also rebuts suggestions that he served as a back-channel conduit between the Russians and Trump Administration, and he denies ever discussing sanctions against Russia with its then ambassador to the U.S., Sergei Kislyak.

In Mr. Kushner’s accounting, the Russian ambassador comes off as a suspiciously eager pest, constantly seeking meetings with the President-elect’s son-in-law. Mr. Kushner says he finally agreed to a meeting that would have set off alarms of skepticism in a more politically experienced person. Mr. Kislyak puts him together with one Sergey Gorkov, “a banker and someone with a direct line to the Russian president.”

An important point is that with this and the other contacts described, Mr. Kushner offers details about what was, and what was not, discussed at these meetings. Up to now, Team Trump has taken the view that because every story is unfair or a witch hunt, they are under no obligation to provide their side of these allegations. Which has left the field open for months to media speculation.

Now we have the Kushner disclosure template. Lying to Congress is a crime, so this statement and its details involve some risk for Mr. Kushner if some other meetings or Russian connections turn up. But if this is all there is, the collusion narrative will have to find another protagonist. The President and other campaign officials could save themselves and the country much grief with similar disclosures.

President Donald Trump has himself to blame for the appointment of Robert Mueller. But that doesn’t mean Mr. Trump or the republic deserves the damage Mr. Mueller seems willing to do to the body politic. Just like former FBI Director James Comey and too many other Washington officials, the special counsel’s office appears to be leaking everything except evidence of collusion.

If Mr. Mueller somehow manages to demonstrate that the 2016 Trump campaign really did cooperate with Russia to rig the election then of course it will all be worth it. But news of his expanding investigation suggests that Mr. Mueller doesn’t think he can—and has instead focused on simply searching for anything detrimental to Mr. Trump.

It’s possible Mr. Mueller is running a tight ship and that various accounts of his expanding investigation are either false or based on sources who are actually not that familiar with his investigation. But let’s assume for the moment that, for example, Bloomberg’s story, “Mueller Expands Probe to Trump Business Transactions,” is accurate. The news service reports:

The 2013 Miss Universe pageant is of interest because a prominent Moscow developer, Aras Agalarov, paid $20 million to bring the beauty spectacle there. About a third of that sum went to Trump in the form of a licensing fee, according to Forbes magazine. At the event, Trump met Herman Gref, chief executive of Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank PJSC. Agalarov’s son, Emin, helped broker a meeting last year between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer who was said to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton and her campaign.

Another significant financial transaction involved a Palm Beach, Florida, estate Trump purchased in 2004 for $41 million, after its previous owner lost it in bankruptcy. In March of 2008, after the real-estate bubble had begun losing air, Russian fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev bought the property for $95 million.

As part of their investigation, Mueller’s team has issued subpoenas to banks and filed requests for bank records to foreign lenders under mutual legal-assistance treaties, according to two of the people familiar with the matter.

Why would a counterintelligence investigation focused on potential foreign influence on last year’s election be examining the details of a 2008 real estate transaction? One reasonable conclusion is that Mr. Mueller’s team has quickly decided that they don’t have a lot of hot leads from 2016. Also, if Mr. Mueller and his associates actually did discover proof that Team Trump colluded with the Russians to rig the 2016 election, would any further evidence be required?

Focusing on some of the particulars, it seems that if one wanted a well-known beauty pageant to be staged in the exotic locale of Moscow and to feature one’s Russian pop-star son as it was broadcast on a large American television network, one probably would expect to write a fairly large check.

As for the real-estate transaction, there may be important facts that haven’t been made public, but selling to a Russian oligarch didn’t make Mr. Trump unique in his industry. In fact, it might have been more odd if Donald Trump had been an American developer of luxury real estate who did not do business with Russians.

A Journal story in 2008 noted that the Trump sale to Mr. Rybolovlev was part of a larger trend:

As many of America’s wealthy are roiled by the credit crisis and general financial gloom, a growing number of rich Russians are house-shopping — and buying — in costly U.S. enclaves…

Several years ago, the weakening dollar began to draw more overseas buyers but Russians were scarce. Now, Russia’s economy is booming amid soaring energy prices. Moscow real estate is among the world’s costliest, making property elsewhere a relative bargain.

In New York City, foreign buyers now make up about 15% of the market, with Russians the largest contingent, says Hall Willkie, president of real-estate firm Brown Harris Stevens. “A few years ago we didn’t see any Russians,” Mr. Willkie says. “But now, especially at the high end of the market they are buying big apartments…so they are a significant factor.”

What should happen now? In June, National Review’s incomparable Andrew McCarthy offered some good advice for the Deputy Attorney General:

Rosenstein should issue a directive superseding his original appointment of Mueller in order to more tightly and appropriately define Mueller’s jurisdiction. The new directive should describe, in writing, the potential crimes that have been uncovered in the Russia investigation.

Daniel Webster spent a total of 27 years in the Senate and the House and served as Secretary of State for three Presidents. So, he knew whereof he spoke when he once warned: “Now is the time when men work quietly in the fields and women weep softly in the kitchen; the legislature is in session.” Today, his words sound dated and, perhaps, sexist, but his meaning resonates. Congress can be dangerous to our health. Webster understood power – its benefits, its temptations, its iniquity. To the good, it is a means to improve society; to the impressionable, it is an aphrodisiac; to opportunists, a venue for harm.

It is true that our representatives no longer represent us as they once did. Demographics prove the point. In 1800, there were 32 Senators and 106 House members, representing a population of 5.3 million people, or one for every 38,400 people. By 1900, the population of the U.S. was just over 76 million. We were represented by 90 Senators and 357 members of Congress, or one representative per 170,000 residents. Today, with a population of 321 million, 100 Senators and 435 House members, each member represents, on average, over 600,000 residents. Our representatives are less representative. However, the adaption of social media and changes in communication and travel should mean they are not isolated, that they should be able to better understand and be more responsive to the needs of the people. Somehow, that doesn’t seem true. They live, it appears, as secluded as the gods once did on Mt. Olympus.

The arguments used to support term limits tend to congregate around the idea that our representatives are out of touch; that party affiliation is more important than the wants and needs of constituents; that cronyism has become endemic and costs of campaigns, along with the time required to raise funds, take their toll. Term limits would encourage more active participation, and representatives would be freer to use judgement rather than heeding the demands of lobbyists. Term limits would promote fresh ideas and empower more quickly new arrivals to the Senate or the House. There are times when Congress absolves itself of laws it imposes on constituents. Ruth Bader Ginsburg made that point: “One might plausibly contend that Congress violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers when it exonerates itself from the imposition of laws it obligates people outside the legislature to obey.”

After an election, approval for Congress typically rises. People assume that the new Congress will enact laws championed by the victors during the campaign. But, inevitably they disappoint. The 2016 election was no exception. Congressional approval rose to 39% in January, but has subsequently slipped to 20%, according to Gallup, about where it was before the election. Bickering and rancor returned. Egos prevent accommodation. Whichever party is in control follows the advice of former Louisiana Governor Huey Long: “I used to get things done by saying please. Now I dynamite them out of my path.”

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Obama, the humanitarian huckster-in-chief, weakened the United States military for eight years presenting his crippling policies as altruistic when in fact they were designed for destruction. His legacy, the Leftist Democratic Party with its “resistance” movement, is the party of the Humanitarian Hoax attempting to destroy American democracy and replace it with socialism.

Barack Obama perpetrated the Humanitarian Hoax on the military

In a stunning reversal of military protocols and procedures Barack Obama perpetrated the Humanitarian Hoax on the military. Scheduled to take effect July 1, 2017 Obama’s “Tier Three Transgender Training” materials were presented as compassionate and deeply respectful of the minuscule population of transgender soldiers. In fact these protocols and procedures were designed to weaken the military by making the feelings of a few soldiers more important than combat-readiness, and by placing the needs of individuals over the well-being of their units. Obama’s policies were not misguided they were deliberate.

Defense Secretary James Mattis has ordered the military branches to study the impact of President Barack Obama’s decision last year to allow open transgender troops to remain on duty rather than being automatically discharged.

Left to Mr. Mattis is a decision on whether to induct transgender people into the military. Facing a July 1 deadline, Mr. Mattis delayed a decision until at least January.

The mission of the military is unequivocally national defense – the protection of America and her people. The military is one of the only appropriate collectives in a democracy. It is a unique culture with unique rules where collective units, not individuals, are prioritized and where the mission supersedes the men/women who serve. Police departments are another form of appropriate collective in a democracy whose similar mission is national defense at a local and state level. Obama and his leftist Democratic Party are deliberately trying to weaken and undermine American police departments as well.

Obama’s long-term plan for socialism and its cradle-to-grave government control

Obama’s long-term plan for socialism and its cradle-to-grave government control is a political power grab that steals individual right and replaces them with national government rights. Like any predator the Democratic Party focuses its prey on the short game and disguises its long term objective. Sexual predators do not lure children with vegetables – they offer candy. Political predators do not lure their voters with hard work – they offer them free college, free healthcare, free food, free housing, free everything – and then the windows close, the doors lock, and the prey is captured and exploited.

Socialism is political candy for Americans who have been indoctrinated to believe that it will provide social justice and income equality. There are no individual rights in socialism – all rights belong to the national government. There are no property rights in socialism – all property belongs to the national government. The only social justice or income equality provided by socialism is that everyone is equally poor and equally exploited.

A forty-year-old Australian woman named Justine Damond called 911 in Minneapolis Saturday night to report what she thought might be a rape; when police arrived, she approached the police car, and a Minneapolis police officer named Mohamed Noor shot her dead. Since then, Noor has refused to be interviewed by investigators, but has spoken to friends about what happened and why. The more Noor and those who know him have spoken, the more it becomes clear: Justine Damond was a casualty of “Islamophobia.”

Mohamed Noor is a Somali Muslim. He was the first Somali Muslim on the Minneapolis police force. In 2016, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges expressed her excitement about that fact: “I want to take a moment to recognize Officer Mohamed Noor, the newest Somali officer in the Minneapolis Police Department. Officer Noor has been assigned to the 5th Precinct, where his arrival has been highly celebrated, particularly by the Somali community in and around Karmel Mall.”

Hodges wasn’t excited because Mohamed Noor had the skills necessary to become a fine police officer. She was only excited because he represented a religious and ethnic that she was anxious to court. And it is increasingly clear, as we learn about Mohamed Noor’s nervousness and jumpiness and lack of respect for women, and from his own account of events that he relayed to friends (that he was “startled” and reacted by opening fire), that Mohamed Noor was not cut out to be a policeman. He did not have the temperament for it, and if he hadn’t killed Justine Damond, he would likely have done something similar at some point.

So why was he on the force at all? Because he was the first Somali Muslim on the Minneapolis police force. He was a symbol of our glorious multicultural mosaic. He was a rebuke to “Islamophobes” and proof that what they say is false. Minneapolis authorities placed a great deal of faith in Mohamed Noor. He was for them the triumph of diversity, the victory of their worldview. But he has let them down.

Mohamed Noor is not a jihad terrorist. This was not a jihad attack. He is just a trigger-happy, panicky, reckless individual who held his job not because he was fit for it, but because of what he symbolized. And in the wake of his failure, Minneapolis multiculturalists aren’t about to reconsider their religion. On the contrary, they are doubling down. Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges has immediately recognized — as authorities do everywhere after jihad attacks — that the real victims are not those who were killed or wounded, but the Muslim community. She should have issued a statement saying that she recognized that Mohamed Noor was not hired because he was competent, but because he was a Somali Muslim, and that she sees now that Leftist social engineering on the police force costs lives. She should have promised that from now on, police officers will be hired based on their fitness for the job, not their religion or ethnicity.