RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/strangely-beautifully-alive-11656701722?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

This is the weekend for reflection upon the most important sentence ever written in this country:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Of course the Declaration of Independence, created 246 years ago this week, contained many other useful sentences. One in particular may offer a healthy perspective for those among us who are inclined to restructure American governance when it doesn’t yield a desired political outcome:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

The Declaration also noted that the “King of Great Britain” had “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Among these offenses, contemporary political combatants may wish to note, was that the British government was not allowing enough immigrants to come to America:

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

In our own time the southern U.S. border has tragically become a place of lawlessness, suffering and chaos. Yet the people of color who endure almost unspeakable hardships, risk their lives and sometimes die trying to enter the U.S. demonstrate every day that America is not a racist, oppressive society but the hope of the world. People want in because they know that the liberty promised in that great sentence has been extended to all Americans. The founders were demanding an expansion of legal migration, which still sounds like a plan.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18666/dobbs-v-mississippi-case

Tribe’s blanket statement that never in history have Americans gone to bed with fewer rights than when they woke up is not only wrong historically and constitutionally, but also extremely insensitive to African Americans, Native Americans, the mentally ill, Japanese Americans and other marginalized groups that have been denied the most basic rights over the years.

The truth, which Tribe denies in the interest of his partisan narrative, is that the pendulum of rights has swung widely throughout our history. Even if Martin Luther King Jr. was correct when he said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” that arc has not always pointed in the direction of rights — or justice. In a democracy with a complex system of separation of powers, checks and balances and federalism, there will always be some back and forth with regard to rights.

Tribe seems to take for granted that his preferred rights are an ever-expanding given.

Falsehoods will not set us free. Only hard work, based on truth, will push the arc toward justice.

Whatever one may think of Dobbs v. Mississippi, the Supreme Court decision overruling Roe v. Wade, some critics have overstated its uniqueness in taking from Americans their preexisting rights. Professor Laurence Tribe badly misinformed his readers when he said the following:

“Friday was a singular day in our history: the first day in living memory that Americans went to bed with fewer inalienable rights than they had when they woke up. Not just in living memory. Ever.”

Tragically, there have been dozens of cases throughout our history in which Americans had their most fundamental rights taken away.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/30/the-jan-6-committee-is-causing-never-trumpers

“But I do know that the testimony we heard on Tuesday was a farce, that the Jan. 6 committee is an abysmal spectacle and an abuse of government power, and that anyone on the right who can’t see that should either hang up his commentator hat or go ask The Atlantic to host his newsletter.”

So many right-of-center commentators want so badly to be liked by the left they’re willing to ignore the truth about the Jan. 6 committee.

Something is very wrong with the supposedly right-of-center media outlets and commentators treating the Jan. 6 committee like something other than the appalling Stalinesque show-trial that it is. In particular, the Washington Examiner and National Review both ran embarrassing, delusional op-eds about the hearings this week. The Examiner even ran an editorial declaring, “Trump proven unfit for power again.”

Why is Trump “unfit for power”? Because of former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony on Tuesday. It was hailed by the corporate press as “explosive” and “damning,” featured on the front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post, and replayed ad nauseum on all the cable news shows.

Before we get to the Examiner and National Review, we need to talk about the Hutchinson testimony. Hutchinson, who was billed as a star witness for the committee, did indeed make a number of explosive claims on Tuesday. The problem is that she didn’t actually witness anything. Her hearsay claims were blown to pieces almost as soon as they appeared, in some cases because people with firsthand knowledge immediately came forward to dispute them, and in other cases because the claims themselves were ridiculous on their face.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/30/nevertrump-hearts-cassidy/

At least their taste in Trump antagonists is getting better.

After more than six years of bandwagoning with every haggard nemesis of Donald Trump—Stormy Daniels, Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Alexander Vindman, and Marie Yovanovitch to name a few—NeverTrump reunited this week to swoon over a telegenic 25-year-old former aide in Trump’s White House: Cassidy Hutchinson. The latest actor to offer a cameo appearance in the January 6 select committee’s show trial caught the collective eye of pundits on the putative Right whose mypoic contempt for Donald Trump caused them to be wrong about basically everything since 2016.

Playing the part of the aged rescuer to the J6 damsel-in-distress, NeverTrump praised her courage and defended her uncorroborated and at times outlandish claims about Trump’s conduct related to the events of January 6. Over-the-top descriptions of her surprise performance headlined their immediate reaction to her two-hour testimony. 

National Review’s Andrew McCarthy appeared the most smitten with the former intern for Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Representative Steve Scalise (R-La.). Her testimony, McCarthy insisted, was “spellbinding,” “compelling,” “stunning,” “riveting,” and “devastating” to Trump. 

“Things will never be the same after this,” the former federal prosecutor warned in a column published Tuesday evening. “All in all, though, Hutchinson showed the nation, moment by moment, what he was like on a day when, undeniably, Trump was at his worst.”

McCarthy’s former NR colleague David French was similarly awestruck. Before Tuesday, French explained in a lengthy fan letter to Hutchinson at The Dispatch, he had little hope the committee would produce evidence to prove Trump was criminally responsible for what happened on January 6. 

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/30/attacks-on-pregnancy-centers-are-more-than-mere-protests/

There is great irony in the violence directed against pregnancy centers since the leak and then official release of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision. Reports of vandalism and destruction include graffiti such as “if abortions aren’t safe neither are you” and firebombing.

Pregnancy centers across America offer many services to women and men, their unborn children, and children post-birth—including pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease testing, ultrasounds, counseling, diapers, clothing, medical referrals for healthcare or community resources, and parenting classes. These services are provided free and funded by donations. 

If the people protesting the reversal of Roe v. Wade are claiming women’s health is endangered by limiting or ending access to abortion, then why target pregnancy centers? The pregnancy center in my local community states on its website: “Our Center does not offer, recommend or refer for abortions or abortifacients. We are committed to offering accurate, up-to-date information about abortion procedures and risks.” 

In the interest of women’s health and well-being, should a woman not be fully informed about the risks related to terminating her pregnancy? Are the protesters instead trying to intimidate those who offer these services and eliminate places where one can get information about making an informed choice? What motivates these protesters?

Alexis de Tocqueville observed that one of the dangers of democracy is when individualism and selfishness take hold and the individual relates everything to himself alone, preferring himself in everything. His remedy for this extreme individualism is found in uniting a particular interest to the general interest. In other words, we can avoid a situation where individuals have reference only to themselves by getting them interested and invested in the public good. Tocqueville argues this is accomplished by virtue of free institutions in which all can participate, primarily through the vehicle of political and civic associations. The individual may consider how events relate to himself, but participation in associations hinders him from devolving into selfishness. These associations are part of the civil and political fabric of America.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/the-democrats-crime-problem/

Their unwillingness to get serious about this surge is going to cost them dearly.

Perhaps we’re nearing a rapprochement with our friends on the left about what is now the No. 1 concern among the key voting group of Latinos. Yes, Democrats twist themselves into knots when the subject is crime, violent crime, or criminals. But the Dems are finally coming around to the idea that there is at least a problem with “gun violence.”

That’s the spirit. Darn those guns! They should all be locked up and given hefty prison sentences.

But this is progress. True, I think most Americans understand guns to be built into the equation when it comes to violent crime. People don’t greatly fear being attacked with slingshots or blow darts. Still, if it will make Democrats happy to frame our very disturbing crime problem as “gun violence,” I will go along. Ordinarily, Democrats have as much difficulty saying the word “criminal” as Fonzie had when he tried and failed to admit he was wrong. We’ll be happy to reframe criminals as “people involved with the perpetration of gun violence” if Democrats will agree to put such people in prison for appropriate periods of time. The interest they show in doing this is limited.

Democrats who say they’re concerned about gun violence show very little interest in reducing it. Nearly nine in ten voters think crime is going to be a major issue in the midterms, and it’s obvious which party stands for going easy on criminals.

If Democrats would like to prove that they actually abhor gun violence, they can stop nattering about adding time and paperwork to the process of becoming a licensed gun owner, since licensed gun owners are not the problem.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/cair-takes-aim-virginia-governor-clare-m-lopez/

In a June 14, 2022 op-ed in the Washington Post, Corey Saylor, the Director of Research and Advocacy at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), issued a demand to the administration of newly-elected Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears. CAIR, which was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror funding trial, wants the Youngkin administration to “reject [Brigitte] Gabriel and ACT for America.” A May 20, 2022 photo posted on @ACTBrigitte’s Twitter page showed Lieutenant Governor Sears posing with Gabriel. Displaying that photo, CAIR issued a May 27, 2022 press release calling Gabriel  a “[n]otorious racist and anti-Muslim bigot” and calling on Sears to “repudiate her alleged ties with a notorious anti-Muslim hate group leader.” CAIR’s more recent Washington Post article then made reference to that photo of Gabriel with Sears and claimed that ACT for America is an “anti-Islam extremist group” whose leadership should be ostracized and rejected.

It would seem a bit rich that an organization such as CAIR, which itself has been named specifically in the legal documents of a terror financing trial, should be providing advice on professional associations to anyone, much less the Government of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Ronald Weich, Assistant Attorney General of the United States Department of Justice, wrote a letter to then-U.S. Congresswoman Sue Myrick dated February 12, 2010, in which he responded to her about how CAIR came to be named an unindicted co-conspirator of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in the United States v. Holy Land Foundation et al. (CR. No. 3:04-240-P N.D.TX.) case. In that letter, Assistant Attorney General Weich provided official trial testimony and other evidence introduced in that trial “which demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders, and the Palestine Committee. Evidence was also introduced that demonstrated a relationship between the Palestine Committee and HAMAS, which was designated as a terrorist organization in 1995.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/will-antifa-11-face-justice-san-diego-daniel-greenfield/

While Jan 6 dominates the media from cable news to the press headlines, far from Washington D.C. the violence of Jan 9 recently led to the first conspiracy indictment of Antifa rioters.

The violent clashes at a Pro-Trump rally in San Diego on Jan 9, 2021 were more of what Americans had been forced to accept as the new normal over the last six years.

Just more of those “mostly peaceful protests”.

The fighting near Crystal Pier at Pacific Beach saw police officers being hit with rocks and glass bottles. Store windows were broken and five police officers suffered injuries in the violence.

The previous year had seen worse, but this time something was about to change.

The confrontation between Black Lives Matter and Antifa, and Trump supporters and police proved to be a catalyst for deploying a new legal strategy against the social justice riots. 

In December, Antifa members were indicted on a variety of assault charges and even animal cruelty, but also, and much more importantly, on conspiracy to riot. The conspiracy charges for the first time treated Antifa as a criminal conspiracy, rather than acting as if the individual rioters had all randomly assembled to riot as previous cases against the violent leftist group had done.

Antifa and other leftist ‘brands’ have often functioned as phantom organizations with no obvious form of association beyond online coordination. That makes it difficult to accuse leftist rioters of a conspiracy. However the indictment focused on their ‘likes’ for a post calling for “direct action”.

Direct action is a euphemism for political violence.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/01/which-crisis-will-be-the-next-to-catch-biden-off-guard/

A little over 500 days into his presidency, Joe Biden has an unblemished record — of being “caught off guard” by every major crisis that has engulfed the country since January 2021.  The question now is, what’s the next crisis that will catch Biden flat-footed and for which he will have no solutions?

Search for “Biden caught off guard” and see for yourself how often this has made news over the past year and a half.

To save you the effort, here are just a few examples:

Even Biden caught off guard by his administration’s foreign policy crises

Coronavirus resurgence catches Biden off guard

How the border problem caught the Biden team off guard

Biden Caught Off Guard By Reporter’s Question On The Baby Formula Crisis

Joe Biden caught off guard by ruling to scrap facemasks

Biden was caught off guard by the Taliban’s rush to victory in Afghanistan. Caught off guard by inflation. Caught off guard by the supply chain crisis.

And remember, this is the guy who, we were told repeatedly, would surround himself with experienced pros. One commentator gushed that “the adults are back in charge, and the American people are about to be reminded of what it’s like to have a competent government working for them.”