RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/04/losing-the-people-then-change-the-rules/

Court packing—the attempt to enlarge the size of the Supreme Court for short-term political purposes—used to be a dirty word in the history of American jurisprudence. 

The tradition of a nine-person Supreme Court is now 153 years old. The last attempt to expand it for political gain was President Franklin Roosevelt’s failed effort in 1937. FDR’s gambit was so blatantly political that even his overwhelming Democratic majority in Congress rebuffed him. 

Yet now “court packing” is a law school cause célèbre. It is hailed as a supposedly quick fix to reverse the current 5-4 conservative majority. 

Recently, a rough draft of an opinion purportedly overturning the Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion in all 50 states was leaked to the media by someone inside the court. 

That insider leak of a draft opinion was a first in the modern history of the Supreme Court. It violated all court protocols. Yet it was met with stunning approval from the American Left. 

The leaker either intended to create a preemptive public backlash against the purported court majority in the hope that one or two justices might cave and switch under pressure—or to gin up the progressive base to fend off a likely disaster in the November midterm elections.   

The recent leak, however, is consistent with a left-wing assault on the Court that has intensified over the last five years. Democrats have gone ballistic ever since George W. Bush and especially Donald Trump’s appointees solidified a conservative majority. 

During Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in 2018, protestors stormed the Senate chambers in protest. The Left rallied behind the now-convicted felon Michael Avenatti, who publicized crazy, wildly untrue charges about a teenaged Kavanagh.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/05/the-american-mushroom-cloud/

The left’s reaction to anything that doesn’t go its way becomes louder, shriller and more hysterical by the day, if not the hour. Its response to the alleged draft of a Supreme Court ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade landed like a cruise missile with a hot warhead. But that’s the way today’s Democrats operate. Counterattack any and every event that threatens their agenda by scorching as much earth as possible.

There are plenty of candidates for the most hinge-free response to the draft. But before we go further, we’d like to highlight Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren descent into madness. Watch the video with the audio muted. Does her body language, the spasmodic gesturing, the pointed finger remind anyone of a 20th century figure whose speeches we’re used to seeing in black-and-white newsreels?

Heaven help us.

Warren’s fevered tirade clearly shows we have reached the point that the left has decided that policy will not be made like sausage but through tantrum, intimidation, and riot. If the Supreme Court doesn’t rule its way, then the Court is illegitimate, stolen and therefore has to be destroyed to save itself from making incorrect rulings. As John Daniel Davidson so eloquently noted for The Federalist, “whenever the left feels they have lost control of an institution, they try to destroy it.”

But what should we expect given the childish outbursts and lawlessness following the 2016 election of Donald Trump? The Antifa riots and violent Black Lives Matter mobs that were tacitly approved, and in some cases supported, by the Democrats? And a hard-left press that strangled its last shred of credibility by trafficking the Russian dossier it new was fake, and then insisting in the most maniacal ways imaginable that only it can determine what is acceptable speech in the U.S.?

https://www.city-journal.org/the-five-best-prosecutors-in-america

In 1940, then–U.S. attorney general Robert Jackson gave a speech to prosecutors, telling them, “While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.” Jackson’s career exhibited this good side, and he went on to serve as the chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis. Jackson’s comments about the potential good and the potential evil of prosecutors ring true today.

To honor Jackson’s view of prosecutors, I have compiled a list of the five best and five worst in the United States today. The factors under consideration: public safety, fidelity to the rule of law, personal integrity, leadership, responsible innovations and training, community relations, office morale, and teamwork with other players in the criminal-justice system.

In the interests of starting with good news, let’s begin with the five best prosecutors. (I will describe the five worst in a separate article.) Fortunately, the United States has more than just five great prosecutors, but these five stand out, in my judgment.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-abortion-disinformation-campaign-roe-v-wade-samuel-alito-griswold-supreme-court-11651703428?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

First, they ban abortion. Next will be a contraception ban. Then a ban on same-sex and even interracial marriage. Soon we will all be living in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

That’s the parade of horribles that Democrats and the media are trying to sell Americans after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would repeal a constitutional right to abortion.

If Roe v. Wade falls, it “would mean that every other decision related to the notion of privacy is thrown into question,” President Biden warned Tuesday. “Does this mean that in Florida they can decide they’re going to pass a law saying that same-sex marriage is not permissible?” If we can borrow a word he likes, the President is peddling disinformation.

The press is full of similar pearl-clutching about which precedent the Supreme Court might strike down next. Is it Obergefell (2015), which enshrined gay marriage? Griswold (1965), which overturned a state law prohibiting married couples from buying contraceptives? What about even Loving v. Virginia (1967), which guaranteed interracial marriage?

The correct answer is none of the above, as Justice Samuel Alito’s draft takes pains to emphasize. The leaked opinion is explicit about distinguishing Roe and its 1992 legal revision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, from cases on unrelated social topics.

“None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion,” the draft says. “They do not support the right to obtain an abortion, and by the same token, our conclusion that the Constitution does not confer such a right does not undermine them in any way.”

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/homeland-securitys-disinformation?

The power to decree what is “disinformation” now determines what can and cannot be discussed on the internet. It is now in the hands of trained disinformation agents of the U.S. Security State.

The most egregious and blatant official U.S. disinformation campaign in years took place three weeks before the 2020 presidential election. That was when dozens of former intelligence officials purported, in an open letter, to believe that authentic emails regarding Joe Biden’s activities in China and Ukraine, reported by The New York Post, were “Russian disinformation.” That quasi-official proclamation enabled liberal corporate media outlets to uncritically mock and then ignore those emails as Kremlin-created fakes, and it pressured Big Tech platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to censor the reporting at exactly the time Americans were preparing to decide who would be the next U.S. president.

The letter from these former intelligence officials was orchestrated by trained career liars — disinformation agents — such as former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Yet that letter was nonetheless crucial to discredit and ultimately suppress the New York Post’s incriminating reporting on Biden. It provided a quasi-official imprimatur — something that could be depicted as an authoritative decree — that these authentic emails were, in fact, fraudulent.

After all, if all of these noble and heroic intelligence operatives who spent their lives studying Russian disinformation were insisting that the Biden emails had all of the “hallmarks” of Kremlin treachery, who possessed the credibility to dispute their expert assessment? This clip from the media leader in spreading this CIA pre-election lie — CNN — features their national security analyst James Clapper, and it illustrates how vital this pretense of officialdom was in their deceitful disinformation campaign:

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/all-hail-americas-new-truth-czar?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lk

If you heard about the recent birth of a new government committee called the Disinformation Governance Board—which will operate out of the Department of Homeland Security and be run by a woman named Nina Jankowicz who writes songs about misinformation for fun—you could be forgiven for thinking you hit your head and woke up in 1984. Rest assured, you did not. It’s entirely real.

Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 @wiczipedia
You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation 💁🏻‍♀️

Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 @wiczipedia

I had two on-camera interviews today and still have a face full of makeup; what should I make a TikTok about?

The Disinformation Governance Board, or the Ministry of Truth, as critics dubbed it, has an ambitious mission: to stop the spread of misinformation. That sounds nice. Except, what one woman calls “misinformation” another might just call “information.” As you may recall, recent stories labeled “misinformation” include some that look increasingly legit, like Hunter Biden’s forgotten laptop, the Covid lab leak theory, and Wayfair selling cabinets full of stolen children (ok, that one might actually be fake). 

While the federal government determining what’s true and what’s fiction may sound ominous, Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of Homeland Security, promises you that it’s not. Any rumors to the contrary, any concerns about this at all, are just more “misinformation,” he insists, and this new effort is designed purely to combat disinformation spread by human traffickers and the Russian government. Well, if there’s someone we should all trust, it’s definitely the guy who runs a surveillance service.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/05/obamas_fundamental_manipulation_of_free_speech.html

Setting the stage for the DHS announcement of the Biden Administration’s Disinformation Governance Board recently, at a Stanford University Cyber Policy Center symposium entitled, “Challenges to Democracy in the Digital Information Realm,” deceptive mind-control specialist Barack Obama emerged from behind his Joe Biden mask to deliver the keynote speech. 

According to the anonymous author of the 2009 Department of Homeland Security treatise on “right-wing extremism,” government needs to help companies better “…recognize the often-dangerous relationship between social media, nationalism [and] domestic hate groups” like pro-lifers, ex-military, Second Amendment supporters, Christians, and America-First patriots.

Well aware that the voice of the people threatens the trajectory of the global elite agenda, the former president used the opportunity to double down on what he does best, which is to manipulate minds with clever word games. The stunning effort focused on convincing the naïve that government control of public discourse somehow strengthens “democracy.”

Attempting to persuade Americans that controlling free speech correlates with democratic non-complacency, Obama argued that limiting freedom “nurtures” democracy by instituting a policy that runs counter to freedom.  

Credit where credit is due, the former president is masterful at presenting nonexistent consensuses as if they truly exist. Take for instance his suggestion that questioning the 2020 election threatens “democratic ideals” and is tantamount to affiliation with Putin, while simultaneously inferring everyone agrees that the 2016 election was stolen from Hillary.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/at-the-met-gala-a-night-of-gilded-irony/

When Edith Wharton wrote The Age of Innocence, her 1920 novel of the Gilded Age, she drew back the veil on the hypocrisy, arrogance, and tone-deafness of New York high society. She might have been surprised to see how today’s elites openly and explicitly embrace their gilded privilege.

Such was the case at last night’s Met Gala, the annual celebrity confab hosted by Vogue magazine’s Anna Wintour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Known for its bold red-carpet fashion and ostentation, the event is where the who’s-who of the entertainment, fashion, and corporate worlds, and sometimes politics, schmooze and party through the night on the first Monday in May. One of the world’s most exclusive social events, it’s been an ode to gilded — and guiltless — excess for the last 75 years. The Gala is followed by equally exclusive after-parties at Manhattan’s posh or hip hotels, including the Carlyle on the Upper East Side and the Standard in the Meatpacking District.

Metaphor and reality were fused at this year’s event, whose theme was, in fact, the Gilded Age. Perhaps Wintour chose that theme as a subtle yet searing joke on the attendees. Another interesting aspect of the evening was that, at both the Gala and the two after-parties, I observed that Covid seemed nonexistent. There was no proof of vaccination or negative test required for entry. Nor were masks required.

In itself, this is not a bad thing; Covid is receding and should be treated as a waning problem. What made it bad was the sheer hypocrisy.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/04/sen-ed-markey-is-a-dangerous-insurrectionist-who-must-be-canceled-for-his-attack-on-the-supreme-court/

The left’s freakout over a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade is hardly surprising. It has a collective breakdown whenever it loses on an issue, even a trivial one. But what did surprise us was the radical, downright insurrectionist talk spewed by at least one Democrat.

The unprecedented leak of a draft of a Supreme Court opinion – apparently in hopes that it would somehow change the outcome – was a sign of the left’s unbalanced mental state. As soon as the leak hit the internet, protests erupted, calls for packing the court and ending the filibuster re-emerged, and the hyperbole gushed forth.

Case in point is the statement from the two Democratic congressional leaders. “The Supreme Court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past 50 years – not just on women but on all Americans,” they screeched, adding that overturning Roe would be “an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history.”

What really caught our eye, however, was what Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey said:

“A stolen, illegitimate, and far-right Supreme Court majority appears set to destroy the right to abortion, an essential right which protects the health, safety, and freedom of millions of Americans. There is no other recourse. We must expand the court.” 

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3474968-joe-biden-is-making-americans-poorer/

Americans are getting poorer by the day, and they can thank President Biden.

Too harsh? Not at all. Stock markets are crashing, costing Americans trillions of dollars, and home prices will likely follow. All of this is happening even though our economy remains essentially strong.

Why the disconnect? Americans are worried about inflation and don’t think the Biden administration can fix it without plunging our economy into recession. With the president still hawking even more government spending, higher business taxes and increased regulations – all of which will drive prices higher – why would they?

Almost from the start, Americans knew that Biden’s policies were wrong for the country. From the second quarter of Biden’s presidency, consumer sentiment has trended sharply lower, even as jobs were plentiful and consumers flush with cash.

The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index stood at 88.3 in April 2021; today it has dropped to 59.4, one of the lowest levels since 1980, when the data were first collected. A reading, for sure, completely out of kilter with 3.6 percent unemployment.

According to a Real Clear Politics average of polls, only 38 percent of the nation approves of Biden’s management of the economy.

First, the facts: The economy shrank by an annualized rate of 1.4 percent in the first quarter, not because consumers stopped spending but mainly because we had a big jump in our trade imbalance. Imports surged nearly 18 percent on an annualized basis while exports fell. Economists at ISI Evercore estimate the blowout in the trade gap crimped real GDP growth in the quarter by 3.2 percent.