RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/abortion-polls-are-garbage/

Media outlets do everything they can to obfuscate the issue and protect Democrats. It’s obvious in the questions they ask.

With the leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion by Samuel Alito overturning Roe v. Wade, the media have gone into hyperdrive trying to obscure the real contours of the debate. One of the most obvious ways they do it is by highlighting politically motivated surveys and conducting push-polling.

Take Politico’s recent Morning Consult poll, which informs us that 53 percent of voters say Roe should not be overturned. Even among Republican voters, only 48 percent support overturning Roe. First of all, who cares? It’s a completely irrelevant query, really. The court exists not to care what polls tells them. And, really, on what constitutional grounds do these 53 percent of Americans maintain the decision should be upheld? There is tons of evidence illustrating that, other than in the broadest terms, most Americans have no idea what Roe entails.

If you want to delve into the topic, a more far more worthwhile line of inquiry would be: “Do you believe the issue of abortion should be a protected constitutional right, or should voters be able to decide the issue on a state level?” This properly lays out the reality of choices that voters face. And I suspect the numbers would look quite different when the issue is framed properly. But, of course, that would mean informing those being questioned that overturning Roe doesn’t necessarily mean an abortion ban. That would be inconvenient.

The Morning Consult poll also finds that 41 percent of voters say it is “very important” for them to vote for a candidate in the 2022 midterms who supports “abortion access.” Every Republican-led law that’s been enacted on the issue of abortion in recent years, including the Mississippi bill that sparked the Dobbs case, provides “access” to abortion. Maybe some future bill won’t, but these do. Do you think those 41 percent understand this reality — one that is purposedly obscured by the question? I don’t.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/11/theyre-not-insane-they-have-a-plan/

What has happened to politics in America? I know we should never look to Hollywood for sagacity or nuanced political analysis, but things are out of control. Do you remember the TV show “Beauty and the Beast”? Or the original “HellBoy” movie? Ron Perlman starred in both and made a name for himself over the years play-acting tough guys. He seems to have forgotten it was all make-believe and that he’s only an actor. 

In the reaction he posted online to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signing a bill to prevent the systematic sexualization of children in Florida, Perlman ranted in an expletive-laden tirade like a character out of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” And it’s not just actors who have lost the plot. 

In response to the eminently reasonable law, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former cop who should know better, has spent taxpayer dollars on billboards in Florida to lure gay Floridians to move to New York. He seems to think homosexual Americans should love high taxes and skyrocketing crime rates. 

Is it just deranged thespians and virtue-signaling politicians who have been driven mad? Not quite. The ideological infection has spread all the way to the White House, with outgoing White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki breaking down at the prospect of the excellent Florida Bill becoming law. 

I could go on. Just consider the organized indoctrination in our schools by delightful teachers parading their trans agenda on TikTok. But at least the lunacy can’t affect the real world that you live in, where 2 + 2 = 4. The empirical world of real jobs, free markets, and concrete bottom lines will remain apart from this nonsense, right? Wrong. Thanks to the investigative journalism of Christopher Rufo, we now have internal videos from one of the biggest for-profit, capitalist entities in the world, the Walt Disney Co. These videos show their perverse agenda to sexualize their young viewers.  

Where did this all come from, and what do we do about it? Well, as with most diabolical movements in Western Civilization today, the radical transgender project can be traced back to the Frankfurt School of neo-Marxists. Whether it’s environmentalism, globalism, open-borders policies, or just systematic anti-Americanism, it can usually be traced back to that motley crew of malcontents. 

Transgenderism itself is particularly rooted in something called “queer theory,” the best analysis of which can be found in Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay’s crucial work Cynical Theories.  In it, using the works of key postmodernists, we learn that: “Queer Theory is a political project [designed] to challenge what is called normativity—that some things are more common or regular to the human condition.” If it’s normal, if it’s morally sound, if it’s traditional, it must be challenged and eventually overturned. 

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/11/imagine-the-unimaginable/

Americans are now entering uncharted, revolutionary territory. They may witness things over the next five months that once would have seemed unimaginable.

Until the Ukrainian conflict, we had never witnessed a major land war inside Europe directly involving a nuclear power.

In desperation, Russia’s impaired and unhinged leader Vladimir Putin now talks trash about the likelihood of nuclear war. 

A 79-year-old Joe Biden bellows back that his war-losing nuclear adversary is a murderer, a war criminal, and a butcher who should be removed from power. 

After a year of politicizing the U.S. military and its self-induced catastrophe in Afghanistan, America has lost deterrence abroad. China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia are conniving how best to exploit this rare window of global military opportunity. 

The traditional bedrocks of the American system—a stable economy, energy independence, vast surpluses of food, hallowed universities, a professional judiciary, law enforcement, and a credible criminal justice system—are dissolving.

Gas and diesel prices are hitting historic levels. Inflation is at a 40-year high. New cars and homes are unaffordable. The necessary remedy of high interest and tight money will be almost as bad as the disease of hyperinflation.

There is no southern border.

Expect over 1 million foreign nationals to swarm this summer into the United States without audit, COVID testing, or vaccination. None will have any worry of consequences for breaking U.S. immigration law.

Police are underfunded and increasingly defunded. District attorneys deliberately release violent criminals without charges. (Literally 10,000 people witnessed a deranged man with a knife attack comedian Dave Chappelle on stage at the Hollywood Bowl last week, and the Los Angeles County D.A. refused to press felony charges.) Murder and assault are spiraling. Carjacking and smash-and-grab thefts are now normal big-city events.  

Crime is now mostly a political matter. Ideology, race, and politics determine whether the law is even applied.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/democrats-readiness-ally-radical-groups-robert-spencer/

Ammar Campa-Najjar is the “grandson of Mexican immigrants” and was a rising star in the Democrat party until he became a failed Congressional candidate, losing to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). He is now trying to revive his fortunes by running for mayor of Chula Vista, California. He has received the endorsement of the Chula Vista firefighters’ union. He is also a committed Leftist, as his capsule bio at Ballotpedia reveals, “Campa-Najjar worked on Barack Obama’s presidential re-election campaign as a deputy regional field director before joining the Obama administration in the Executive Office of the President.” There is, however, one other important aspect of Campa-Najjar’s record: it reveals yet again the Left’s uncritical and indiscriminate readiness to ally with the most unsavory Islamic groups.

Campa-Najjar himself is not a Muslim at all, but a Christian; however, besides having Mexican immigrant grandparents, he is also the grandson of a jihad terrorist, Muhammad Yousef al-Najjar. In October 2018, when Campa-Najjar was mounting his unsuccessful Congressional run, Joel Pollack reported in Breitbart that Campa-Najjar “deleted an Instagram post in which he referred to his grandfather, Palestinian terrorist Muhammad Yousef al-Najjar, as a ‘legend.’ Muhammad Yousef al-Najjar was ‘a senior member of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September that murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics,’ according to the Times of Israel, and a deputy for Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/congresswoman-ilhan-omar-posed-photo-america-run-joe-kaufman/

Politicians take photos with a lot of people, and sometimes they wish they hadn’t. Given his statements belittling the US and her citizens, photos taken with Imtiaz Mohammad, founder of the American Muslim Progressive Caucus (AMPC), are probably ones that some office holders would wish they could take back. Yet, time and again, politicians smile and cozy up to him, lending themselves and their images to be shared on his social media. This was the case, when US Representative Ilhan Omar came to South Florida to speak at a CAIR event, and it has been the case for many others. Question: Do they agree with Mohammad’s contemptable views?

Imtiaz Ahmad Mohammad grew up in the Hyderabad area of Pakistan and arrived in the United States in 1991, first settling in New York, then Florida. Since coming to Florida, Mohammad has been involved in a number of ventures. He runs a plethora of South Florida beauty salons. In 2015, he incorporated and published a South Asian oriented monthly magazine, Pak Mag, which changed its name to Asian Times, in 2017, and which dissolved in 2018. He has also involved himself in the Democratic Party and different progressive causes, such as defunding police and abolishing ICE, and he had a couple of failed attempts at running for statewide office.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/12/bidens-america-the-land-of-plenty-shortages/

It’s taken President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats all of 16 months to turn the land of plenty into one plagued by empty shelves and rationing. Well, Biden did promise to “transform” America, but how many voters knew that this is what he had in mind?

The latest in the growing list of shortages is the chronic and dangerous scarcity of baby formula that is causing new parents to scramble to find supplies and stores to ration how much customers can buy. The latest industry data show that 40% of America’s baby formula supplies are out of stock, up from 29% in March and 11% last fall.

This is a potentially deadly situation if parents can’t get the food they need for their babies or try to make their own formula. As CNN reports, “Specialized formula is even harder to locate amid the widespread shortage. Parents are driving to neighboring states to try their luck, and many are pleading for help on social media, imploring strangers to share or even barter any extra supply they may have.”

One industry observer said that “supply chain issues, product recalls and historic inflation” are driving the baby formula crisis. As it turns out, Biden is at least partially responsible for all of those.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/10/judge-amit-mehtas-kangaroo-court/

Judge Amit Mehta sounded perturbed, to say the least.

The D.C. District Court judge handling numerous January 6 legal matters, including the Justice Department’s high-profile prosecution of the Oath Keepers, flatly dismissed concerns by defense attorneys that the first trial in the case will coincide with public hearings held by the January 6 Select Committee later this year.

“Even if Congress is on the steps of the courthouse reading the [final] report, I am not moving the September trial,” Mehta warned during a status hearing last week for nine Oath Keepers accused of seditious conspiracy among other charges.

Mehta’s outburst was telling. In any other jurisdiction in the country, a political stunt by a handful of partisan lawmakers would be widely criticized as an unfair hurdle for defendants facing trial on the same issue at the same time—especially for an exceedingly rare crime, akin to treason, for which the government is seeking life in prison. Further, any frustration would be directed at the politicians interfering in such a serious prosecution, not at defense attorneys protecting the best interest of their clients.

But of course, that isn’t the case in the District of Columbia. (See any lawsuit filed during the Trump era as evidence.) The tawdry marriage between Democratic Party politics and the legal process in the nation’s capital is routinely blessed by federal judges duty-bound to referee that line. And no one better represents the Beltway bench’s flagrant disregard for political interference than Mehta.

Appointed to the court by Barack Obama in 2014, Mehta, who emigrated with his family from India as a toddler, has taken judicial activism to a new level, particularly with respect to Donald Trump and his supporters. In 2019, Mehta denied Trump’s motion to prevent the Democratic-led House Oversight Committee from obtaining financial records dating back to 2011 from his accounting firm, arguing the committee presented “valid legislative purposes” for its request. A few months later, Mehta ruled against the Trump Administration’s plan to force pharmaceutical companies to publicly disclose the cost of prescription drugs.

The events of January 6, 2021, however, have shaken Mehta to his partisan core. His comments clearly demonstrate a biased view of what happened that day, not to mention a dubious—if not intentionally misleading—grasp of the facts. And the judge has created an egregious conflict of interest in handling the Oath Keepers criminal case by ruling against the group in a separate proceeding just a few months ago.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/attacks-supreme-court-justices-are-real-assaults-bruce-thornton/

The recent leak of the draft of a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe and Casey has ignited a national tantrum on the Left. Pro-choice organizations, Senators, and Congressmen are making veiled threats of violence against the five Justices voting for the pending decision; the usual suspects are promising “days of rage” redolent of the summer of 2020; and Justices have been doxed and their home addresses publicized––all are violations of federal law (18 U.S. Code § 1503), and all bespeak the Democrats’ modus operandi of resorting to force and intimidation to achieve their aims, rather than following the Constitutional lawmaking protocols and “democratic norms” they continually charge Republicans of subverting.

As usual with any assault on Constitutional guardrails, lies and the corruption of language are playing a big part in the (for now) rhetorical violence. Samuel Alito’s decision if it stands would not threaten any other Supreme Court decisions like those legalizing same-sex marriage or striking down segregation. It does not violate the Constitution, nor the principle of stare decisis, which is not absolute but contingent on the specific circumstances of particular cases. And, the big lie, it does not make abortion illegal or weaken democracy, but honors it by returning the issue of abortion to the Congress and the states, whose lawmakers are accountable to the voters.

Nonetheless, the intensity and irrationality of the tantrums and lies will likely move beyond words when the decision is formally announced, unless the earlier threats work and at least two justices submit to the intimidations of the mob. That outcome will be a sad day for our already weakened Democratic Republic, when one of its most critical protections against tyranny––the independence of the judiciary, upon which the integrity of democratic justice relies, and its crucial principle of equality before the law rests––is cancelled by intimidation and violence

This resort to force, as we saw on graphic display during the BLM and Antifa violence in the summer of 2020, is a repudiation of the founding principles of democracy going back 2500 years. The foundational principle of Athenian democracy, or any constitutional order run by citizens, is the substitution of language for violence. We see this epochal innovation memorialized in Aeschylus’ trilogy the Oresteia, which starts with the dark, blood-soaked Furies who demand bloodshed to expiate bloodshed; and ends on the sunlit slopes of the Areopagus, where twelve citizens listen to arguments, deliberate, and vote to convict or exonerate.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/whos-paying-protesters-harass-justices-and-daniel-greenfield/

Supreme Court justices have faced harassment and intimidation after a pro-abortion group calling itself Ruth Sent Us posted a map to their homes.

Justice Alito and his family, who wrote the draft opinion on abortion that had been leaked by leftists, have had to go into hiding at an undisclosed location.

Had conservative protests outside the homes of Sotomayor and Kagan led one of them to go into hiding, the FBI would already be on the case and the media would be calling it an insurrection and a threat to democracy, but it’s not political terrorism when leftists do it.

So you can be confident that none of the leftists threatening Supreme Court justices will themselves face justice. And if a single one of them is arrested, they will immediately have the best lawyers and a media press campaign claiming that free speech is being silenced.

Just to add bigoted intimidation of houses of worship, Ruth Sent Us also called for protests at Catholic churches. “Stand at or in a local Catholic Church,” it urged on its Twitter account.

While over the past two years, Big Tech companies have suspended or deplatformed conservative groups over the encouragement of political protests, including against lockdowns, Twitter has no problem with leftists encouraging the harassment of houses of worship.

“Do you dare to chant in your local churches?”

Abortion activists dressed like characters from the faltering Hulu TV show The Handmaid’s Tale disrupted prayer services while chanting their support for the murder of babies.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dojs-silence-on-the-lefts-lawless-intimidation-of-supreme-court-justices/

“Biden’s thug government continues.”

Fox News has a report on the Biden Justice Department’s refusal to take enforcement action against radical leftists who have been conducting demonstrations at the homes of Supreme Court justices, blatantly seeking to intimidate and influence the Court while it has the Dobbs abortion case under consideration.

As Rich noted last week (citing Allahpundit), a federal penal statute, Section 1507, unambiguously criminalizes this behavior. I’ve heard some suggestion in the commentary in recent days that Section 1507 may violate free-speech principles. It doesn’t.

The First Amendment has always permitted reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. The degree of permissible restrictiveness is heightened as the government’s interest becomes stronger.

The Constitution insulates the judiciary from politics, so it is obvious that the government has a high interest in protecting the integrity of the judicial process, on which the rule of law depends, by safeguarding judges, jurors, and litigation participants from intimidation and corrupt influence (e.g., pressure to decide a case based on fear rather than on faithful application of the law).

Moreover, Section 1507 does not criminalize all expression; only expression undertaken “with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty.” The government must prove this intent requirement beyond a reasonable doubt. The First Amendment is not a defense against menacing. Furthermore, free expression forbids only the criminalization of protected speech, not proof of speech as evidence of a standard crime. (The First Amendment, for example, does not bar a prosecutor from proving that the mafia boss said “Whack him” to the button man shortly before the murder.)